LEUCHTER BANNED FROM BRITAIN
British authorities have banned Fred Leuchter from entering the United Kingdom. British Home Secretary Kenneth Baker said that he decided to ban the U.S. gas chamber expert because his "deeply repugnant" views are an offense to British Jews and because "his presence here would not be conducive to the public good." Leuchter has no right to appeal the order.
Leuchter, America's foremost expert on execution hardware, carried out a detailed forensic examination of the alleged extermination gas chambers of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek in 1988. He concluded that the supposed gassing facilities there were never used to kill people as alleged, and never could have been used for that purpose. A scholarly report on his findings has been widely distributed in many countries. (The sumptuously illustrated U.K. edition of the _Leuchter Report_, complete with a hard-hitting foreword by David Irving and introduction by Robert Faurisson, is available from the IHR for $20.00, plus postage. A leaflet version of Leuchter's address to the 1989 IHR conference, "Inside the Auschwitz 'Gas Chambers,'" is also available: ten copies for $2.00.)
Until the ban, Leuchter was scheduled to speak at a meeting in central London on Friday, November 15. He will now address the gathering in a video presentation. The main speaker will be French Revisionist historian Robert Faurisson, who will talk on "The Myth of the Gas Chambers." Joining him will be best-selling English historian David Irving, who is organizing the private meeting in defiance of public threats.
Home Secretary Baker said that he was not able to also ban Faurisson because the French professor, who was born in England, holds both British and French citizenship. But Baker warned that Faurisson would be "subject to the law on matters such as incitement to racial hatred" if he visits the country.
News of the ban was prominently featured in a front page report in the London _Jewish Chronicle_, October 4.
The Leuchter ban is obviously in response to a demand first made last summer by Britain's main Jewish organization, the Board of Deputies. Britain's far-leftist National Union of Students also joined the campaign to ban Leuchter. Simon Pollock of the Union of Jewish Students is the "driving force" behind the NUS campaign, the _Jewish Chronicle_ reports.
Ben Helfgott, chairman of the Board of Deputies' Yad Veshem Committee, threatened at that time "that violence would greet the revisionists if they were allowed in," the _Jewish Chronicle_ reported (July 12). Other Jewish leaders have announced that they will organize pickets and demonstrations to protest the November 15 meeting.
Of course, it is not Leuchter who represents a danger to "the public good," but rather those like Helfgott who threaten violence against entirely peaceful visitors. Leuchter is not a political man, and his sworn courtroom testimony and subsequent lectures (including addresses at the IHR Revisionist conferences of February 1989 and October 1990) have been completely sober and free of polemics.
The suggestion that a lecture by Leuchter at a private meeting represents any danger to the public order is grotesque. This ban is all the more outrageous when it is recalled that the British government recently permitted the notorious African-American demagogue Al Sharpton to visit Britain, even providing him with police protection while he engaged in provocative racialist rabble rousing.
Instead of taking action against those who, like Helfgott, openly threaten public order and tranquility, British officials have dishonorably surrendered to pressure and intimidation.
Civil liberties activists in Britain and the United States who are normally so quick to vociferously protest restrictions against free speech have so far said nothing about this latest blow against freedom of expression.
If Britain's ban against Leuchter was something of which the British government and people could be proud, it certainly would have been publicized in the country's newspapers. The fact that the only paper to give any coverage to the ban has been the _Jewish Chronicle_ is evidence that many important people in Britain privately understand very well that the ban is in fact a shameful capitulation to Zionist- Jewish pressure, news of which should best be kept hidden from the general public. (American newspapers have apparently reported nothing whatsoever about the ban.)
The campaign against Leuchter and anyone else who questions the Holocaust story points up, once again, the inability of the Holocaust Lobby to respond calmly and rationally to the ever more effective Revisionist critique of the orthodox extermination story.
The IHR condemns the British government's ban against Leuchter, and urges all supporters of freedom of speech and inquiry to protest this outrageous measure.
An official of Britain's Jewish Board of Deputies recently noted with satisfaction that Holocaust Revisionist writings have already been banned or severely restricted in several countries, including France, Germany, Austria and Canada.
According to legend, eleventh-century King Canute (Knut the Great) of England once rebuked a flatterer who praised his seemingly absolute power by demonstrating his utter inability to keep the ocean tide from coming in. Lacking this wisdom, today's Holocaust Lobby has not yet grasped that, regardless of official decrees like the Leuchter ban, the rising Revisionist tide cannot be stemmed. History shows that, whatever the obstacles, truth has a way of ultimately triumphing.