Mark Weber:

Ingrid Rimland:

In her address to a special IHR meeting in southern California on Thursday evening, Feb. 3, 2005, Ingrid Rimland spoke about her husband’s ordeal, the experiences that shaped her historical outlook, and her commitment to the revisionist cause. Speaking, she said, “from the heart,” this was her first public talk since her husband, Ernst Zundel, was arrested two years ago.

IHR director Mark Weber also addressed the gathering of some 40 men and women, which included numerous professional persons and a few children. (Both addresses can be heard on the “Audio Archives” section of the IHR website.)

Rimland explained that her view of World War II is very different than that of most Americans because it is based on unusual first-person experiences. She spoke of her childhood in an ethnic German Mennonite community in the Soviet Union, recalling the day in 1941 when Soviet authorities took her father away, which she compared to the day in 2003 when US authorities took away her husband.

German forces arrived just as the remaining women and children of her community were about to be deported by the Soviets to Siberia. For the next two years, she said, they lived under German rule in peace and freedom, including religious freedom. Along with many others in central and eastern Europe during those years, she remembers the German soldiers as liberators and protectors. She said that she owes her life to the German army.

In 1943, as the tide of war changed, she joined many others in a great westward trek. She recalled her grim ordeal in Germany during the final months of the war and in the immediate postwar period, and her new life in South America and later in the United States.

In his address, Weber spoke about Ernst Zundel’s character and personality, citing incidents from their relationship over the years. He recalled their first meeting in Toronto in 1988, when he testified as a witness in the second “Holocaust Trial.”

Stressing the blatant injustice of Zundel’s two years of detention in solitary confinement, Weber cited editorials in Canada’s most prestigious daily newspaper, the Globe and Mail, that condemned his treatment. He is being held on a “guilt by association” pretext, the paper says, and acknowledges that he poses no risk to people or property. “He has never been charged with a violent crime and does not urge others to commit violence,” the Toronto daily noted. “The willingness of Canadian authorities to twist the narrow purpose of the security-trial legislation to go after Ernst Zundel is a blot on Canadian justice.”