On
May 10, 2000 this writer was in
Here
the funerary rite is conducted by Gonzaga University,
which sponsored a movie double-feature, with free admission, at the historic
"Met" theatre in downtown
I
arrived in time for "Mr. Death" and having read some downbeat
revisionist notices about this biography of the execution equipment designer
and "reluctant" gas chamber skeptic, I was expecting a propaganda
triumph for Holocaustianity. Far from it!
Being
an uninhibited movie-goer with a sense of humor I laughed aloud where Morris
cues the audience to laugh: at Fred's idea for the installation of paintings
and a TV set in the lethal injection death room, at his fiance's statement that
when she asked what Fred did for a living her friends told her, "He kills
people," and at his stepson's description of the spectacle of an electric
chair in Leuchter's front yard.
Since
laughter is contagious, mine sparked it in other audience members, which
unsettled the masochists who had girded themselves for yet another dreary
"Holocaust" gorefest.
I
applauded and shouted "Amen" when Fred spoke about freedom of speech,
when David Irving praised Leuchter for his utter honesty and when Ernst Zundel,
looking distinguished and avuncular, compared Fred with George Washington
(Morris quite properly avoided inflammatory epithets and identified Irving as a
"revisionist historian" and Zundel as a
"publisher/broadcaster").
Leuchter's
Jewish critics in the film contrast poorly with the revisionists. I was amused
to see the obnoxious Shelley Shapiro absurdly blast Fred as an
"anti-semite" when by this point in the movie it was clear that he
had walked into revisionism with the guilelessness of a child. "Holocaust
expert" Robert Jan Van Pelt comes off as a caustic zealot, referring to
Van
Pelt made several statements favorable to revisionism: that the extermination
program is all "in code" and that the Nazis were "the first
'Holocaust' deniers." These assertions contradict the intentionalist
When
Morris shows Zundel in front of a lurid banner held aloft by helmeted
Zundelists and emblazoned with the slogan, "The Holocaust is Hate
Propaganda," the audience seemed to take a collective breath, as if their
subconscious had been involuntarily jolted -- like someone seated in a Leuchter
electric chair -- by the sudden emergence of an axiomatic truth long buried.
"Mr.
Death" is a pioneering cinematic humanization of revisionists. Neither the
recanted testimony of the cowed chemist James Roth nor the melodramatically
somber music which accompanies Van Pelt through the "Holy of Holies"
(actually so cloying it amounts to a parody of "Holocaust"
soundtracks), detract from this powerful impression.
"Mr.
Death" showcases a quintessential Yankee tinkerer and individualist; an
American innocent of the recurring type that made such great copy for writers
from Frances Trollope to Mark Twain.
Fred
Leuchter, who gets the last word in the film, both about his own Calvary and
his lack of bitterness toward Jews, represents something transcendent in
American life, a figure who is the antithesis of the true believer and the
totalitarian automaton. If the world was peopled with nothing but Fred Leuchters,
Orwell's 1984 could never arrive. His technological expertise and love of
gadgetry has more in common with Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison than with the
cloned simulacra of humanity running amok today, wired to the data hive.
I
began distributing my leaflet, "Fred Leuchter and the Truth about
Revisionism," which contains Internet URLs for three of revisionist Germar
Rudolf's scientific essays, in the darkened theatre as soon as the narrative
had ended and while the film's credits were still rolling. The audience of
about 150 was simultaneously stunned, respectful or at least curious. Errol
Morris had done his work. Receptivity was on high. His movie had bulldozed 20
years of hateful caricatures and left a door unhinged through which this
revisionist sauntered as casually as I do through my own front door.
I
continued my leafletting in the lobby and then outside, on the steps of the
venerable old showplace. I got a couple of dirty looks and had a humorous
encounter with an ardent liberal lady who, while waiting for "Mr.
Death" to begin, had been lecturing her 8 year old son on the evils of the
revisionists. "You coward!" she shouted at me. "You gave me this
flier in the dark when I wasn't looking."
"Here,"
I replied in front of a small crowd of laid-back Spokaneites, as I reached for
the leaflet which she waved at me, "Give it back to me and I'll hand it to
you here in broad daylight in front of everyone." Her red-faced
perorations drew smirks of derision as she stormed off.
"Anne
Frank Remembered" was slated to screen in a half hour and I lingered on
the theatre's steps passing out my fliers to the departing Leuchter audience.
As the Anne Frank audience turned up, I switched fliers and drew from my
backpack my bright yellow tract on "The
Exploitation of Anne Frank for Cynical Political Reasons," and began
disseminating that one. Since I was distributing it on the steps of the
theatre, the arriving audience took it for an official playbill and I soon
exhausted my entire supply!
I
know that my encounters with the good people of
Some
twenty years ago a Korean war vet, sometime playwright and full-time beatnik,
encountered a lone revisionist tractarian. The leaflet he read changed his
life. He would eventually become one of revisionism's most effective
contemporary leaders. Yes, that's how Bradley Smith found the courage to doubt,
by means of something so humble as a piece of paper proffered on a
street-corner.
When
I'm on the cold and rainy streets of
The
Anne Frank exhibit will be at
Michael A. Hoffman II
Hoffman
is a former reporter for the