BEST WITNESS The Mel Mermelstein Affair and the Triumph of Historical Revisionism By Michael Collins Piper With an Introduction by Mark Lane and an Afterword by W. A. Carto Center for Historical Review Washington, D.C. 1994 Internet Edition: AAARGH 2003 BEST WITNESS / THE MEL MERMELSTEIN AFFAIR Except for the introduction, this book is not copyrighted. It may be copied by anyone so long as full credit is given to the publisher: CENTER FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW 132 THIRD STREET, S.E. WASHINGTON, D.C. 20003 Printed in the U. S. A. Second printing Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: ISBN: 0-935036-48-2 – 2 – BEST WITNESS / THE MEL MERMELSTEIN AFFAIR DEDICATION To my late father, T. M. Piper. A proud Marine, my father survived bloody combat in World War II, convinced he was fighting for his country. Many years later, as a result of his careful study of the works of revisionist historians, he came to realize that he was a survivor of a war that need not – and should not – have been fought. Along with his three brothers and a host of friends, my father marched off to war. He was one of the lucky ones who came home again, having fought to destroy what he then believed to be the perpetrators of what we now call "The Holocaust." In my final conversation with my father – just three hours before he died on July 21, 1990 – he and I discussed a recently revealed "detail" from the history of the Holocaust: the intriguing determination by the Polish authorities that contrary to everything we had been told by the "official" histories – four million people were not "gassed" at Auschwitz. In fact, the Polish authorities had finally decided, "only" some 1.5 million died there. Just a detail, of course, but one of many that, taken together, cast a grim light on "the facts" about "The Holocaust." To Dr. Marie Zittel. A proud German-American, "Aunt Marie" is one of the growing number of grass-roots revisionists across America and around the globe who are helping many others learn the real truth about the events of our past, the efforts of the Establishment truth-distorters notwithstanding. And to Willis and Elisabeth Carto. Without them, there simply would be no historical revisionist movement of any consequence in the world today. They have struggled – against sometimes incredible obstacles – to keep historical revisionism alive. And it is very much alive. – 3 – BEST WITNESS / THE MEL MERMELSTEIN AFFAIR A NOTE TO THE READER FROM THE PUBLISHER: You hold in your hands a "burned book" that was not supposed to have ever been published. It miraculously survived a series of events that could only have been orchestrated by forces with a great interest in keeping highly significant news from the public – the news that in a court of law one of the world's most famous "Holocaust survivors" was proven a fraud. This was the greatest victory, in spite of all the obstacles, that the Institute for Historical Review and perhaps the cause of holocaust revisionism, had ever had, following a protracted legal struggle that lasted over ten years. An author commissioned to write the book immediately after the victory, September 19, 1991, repeatedly reported "progress" in the task although after more than a year and a half not a line was written. Then, when it was finally written by another author, and readied for the printer, a second duplicitous employee of the Institute, although directed to get the book into print as soon as possible and agreeing to do it, figuratively if not literally "burned" the book. This edition was pieced together from the odds and ends remaining in the possession of the three authors, Mark Lane, Michael Collins Piper and Willis Carto, and is substantially the same book suppressed by the perfidious employees of the Institute for Historical Review. – 4 – BEST WITNESS / THE MEL MERMELSTEIN AFFAIR Table of Contents Introduction by Mark Lane Preface: The Cult of Death................................................................Page 1 Chapter One A Shy and Retiring........................................................Page 5 Chapter Two What is Revisionism?....................................................Page 13 Chapter Three Doubting "History"......................................................Page 19 Chapter Four The Reward Offer..........................................................Page 29 Chapter Five Who is Mel Mermelstein?...............................................Page 33 Chapter Six A Nuisance Suit.............................................................Page 41 Chapter Seven The Offensive Escalates................................................Page 49 Chapter Eight Not Reasonably Subject to Dispute?................................Page 53 Chapter Nine A Media Victory ..........................................................Page 59 Chapter Ten Another Reward Offer......................................................Page 65 Chapter Eleven Terror.......................................................................Page 69 Chapter Twelve The Settlement..........................................................Page 75 Chapter Thirteen Damage Control ......................................................Page 83 Chapter Fourteen Explaining the Facts.................................................Page 89 Chapter Fifteen Mel Strikes Again......................................................Page 95 Chapter Sixteen Mel's Biggest Mistake................................................Page 103 Chapter Seventeen A Prevaricator Under Oath........................................Pages 107 Chapter Eighteen A Vexatious Litigant.................................................Page 115 Chapter Nineteen Judicial Notice, Again ..............................................Pages 125 Chapter Twenty An "Expert" Witness...................................................Page 131 Chapter Twenty-One The Movie Star...................................................Pages 137 Chapter Twenty- Two Countdown to Trial............................................Pages 147 Chapter Twenty-Tbree The Beginning of the End...................................Pages 155 Chapter Twenty-Four The "Borking" of Mermelstein..............................Page 171 Chapter Twenty-Five The Case Unravels..............................................Page 177 Chapter Twenty-Six The Judge Speaks.................................................Page 187 Chapter Twenty-Seven Surrender.........................................................Page 193 Chapter Twenty-Eight An Unpublicized Victory....................................Page 197 Chapter Twenty-Nine The Soap Lady Chapter Thirty.............................Page 201 Chapter Thirty The Triumph of Historical Revisionism...........................Page 221 Afterword Why Is 'The Holocaust' Important? by W. A. Carto ................Page227 – 5 – BEST WITNESS / THE MEL MERMELSTEIN AFFAIR Introduction by Mark Lane For almost five decades I have attempted to set the record straight in any number of matters and thus I have become entangled in controversy. Some of those efforts have had international ramifications; responding to the false assertion by the United States government beginning in 1963 that its president had been murdered by a solitary madman. Some had but local consequences; exposing the unjust imprisonment and brutal treatment imposed upon children by the state at a "school" for "mental defectives" at a place called Wassaic, New York, a decade earlier. Not being prescient I was never armed before tilting at each windmill of the state with knowledge as to my chance for success, even measuring victory by the minimal standard of convincing a few that there might be some substance in my argument worthy of examination – or at least that although I said those things I was almost certainly certifiably sane. In early 1964 a happy ending predicated upon even so cleverly biased a barometer, seemed illusory. There I stood alone proclaiming the troubling facts, shouting the mandatory questions almost silently into a government and media created windstorm of abuse, ridicule and disinformation. Some years later almost everyone agreed with me and added that they always had. For some many years publishers would not print my books, colleges canceled contracts for me to lecture, radio and television stations excluded me from their interview programs, some issued an edict "barring" me "for life." In time those loyal executives have left, some voluntarily seeking the good life elsewhere, some have been ousted in a coup others in a less violent manner simply died. I have surfaced once again on their stations and programs with still more inconvenient matters to place on the agenda resulting in further executive proclamations of fealty to the throne and my subsequent, but almost immediate, dismissal from the debate. Therefore, wounded, scarred, a little tired, but neither exhausted nor discouraged and still eager both to see things as they are and dream of how they might be changed, I learned to [ii] approach with some care each new potential conflict against an enemy possessing the seemingly mutually exclusive attributes of quasi-omnipotence and invisibility. This latest chapter begins in 1945 when Willis Carto and I both worked in an organization committed to the overthrow of governments by the use of force and violence. It was the United States Army, World War II was raging, and Willis and I were not to meet, or even know of each other until four more decades had passed. We each served honorably in the military, each were discharged honorably;