| Dear President Putin:
You probably are not aware of my husband, Ernst Zündel -
but hundreds of thousands of people all over the world know
his name. Ernst Zündel is the man who, under vicious siege
by a powerful political lobby, sent an investigative team from
Canada to Auschwitz in 1988 to test forensically if "gassings"
really happened - and found that they did not. Science
does not lie, and scientific findings can be verified. His
evidence must stand or fall in the free market of ideas. My
husband has pleaded for a safe, impartial global forum ever
since to make his findings known.
The Canadian Holocaust Lobby has never forgiven Ernst
Zündel. Recently, he was arrested on US soil - allegedly
because he missed an interview with Immigration and
Naturalization Services officials. No judge. No hearing. No
recourse. Instead, leg irons and handcuffs - and brutal
incarceration in four maximum detention prisons, first in
America and now in Canada. False news was spread in
mainstream media that he had "overstayed his visa". Not so. He
was married to a U.S. citizen, and we have irrefutable
documentation that he was legally entitled to be here. His
"punishment", just for a starter? Banned from the U.S.A. for
20 years!
My husband's brutal treatment by government officials in
what many vainly hope are still two of the West's most
law-abiding democratic countries is reminiscent of the darkest
days of the Stalinist years. I know whereof I speak. At the
age of five, I lost my father in a very similar arrest in 1941
- never to see him again!
I am a Russian-born, German-descendant, award-winning
novelist, best known for an early novel, "The Wanderers", a
fictitious account of the life of my Russian-born Mennonite
grandmother. More recently, I wrote a trilogy, spanning seven
generations and 200 years and all the major political
upheavals of the last two gruesome, bloody centuries. My
people, living peacefully in the Ukraine since 1789, were
ethnically cleansed in the Stalinist purges, and only a
handful of us could save ourselves, escaping with the
retreating German Army in 1943 to Germany and, then, in 1948,
to South America.
I grew up in the jungles, functionally illiterate and
knowing little of the political realities of dictatorships
that transformed and decimated countries like Russia and
Germany. As an adult, I emigrated to Canada and then to the
United States, always thinking of the country of my birth,
Russia, as a place out of the depths of hell - until I learned
about an intellectual movement called Revisionism.
My now imprisoned husband is globally known as a
Revisionist pioneer. Ernst Zündel has a profound
geopolitical understanding of the moneyed interests that would
set brother against brother, causing rivers of blood and tears
for the gains of a handful of oligarchs who fattened
themselves on our pain. Today I know that Russia was as
horribly victimized as Germany was. Russia suffered as much as
Germany did - and as America will suffer, unless America wakes
up and comes to understand today's events in light of what was
done so cruelly to law-abiding people yesterday. The people of
America MUST urgently try to understand today's events and
dramas in historical perspective. Today's Russia is far ahead
of the United States in that respect - in fact, I am the one
who sponsored the first ever Revisionist seminars in Russia in
a Teachers College, a feat I have not been able to accomplish
here in our so-called "free speech" country. Russia
welcomes conscientious scholarship and does not fear
controversial historical findings.
Referring to my husband's brutal arrest, one of my Russian
Revisionist correspondents called Ernst and myself
"America's Refuseniks" and pledged his intellectual
solidarity. It is an apt description of who we are and what we
do. We refuse to believe in historical lies. We refuse
to be dictated to and told who are our friends and who should
be our enemies. We refuse to surrender our Freedom of Speech.
We refuse to swallow manufactured history such as the
"Holocaust by gassing" - a lie that has become an intellectual
stranglehold on every Western country. If our findings are
deemed "wrong", then let's have a civilized debate in a
respectable national forum where both sides can offer
arguments and evidence - and let the people judge!
Recently, I read an essay by Russian General Anatoly
Wolkow, titled "People, Listen To The Signals!" Here is a
former enemy of Germany who stretches out a hand of friendship
to soften the political mistakes of the past and bring
long-needed healing to both Germany and Russia. I believe
there are millions of Russians who would identify with what he
says. I know there are millions of Germans all over the world
who would like nothing better than to bury the hostilities of
World War II and once again be known as Russia's partners,
friends and scientific benefactors. America would benefit from
such a reconciliation. America is not in need of yet another
war.
We need to find ways to each other!
I plead with you to send a message to those millions,
Germans and Russians alike, as well as millions in America and
Canada, that we are kin, not enemies. A Russian leader of
courage and vision could tell the Western world that the
Russia of today has finally become autonomous, living by
democratic principles, abhorring censorship. There is a
way to shame short-sighted Western bureaucrats for their
repressive laws - and wake up people globally to the realities
of vested interest power plays that move us ever closer to a
frightening abyss.
A simple gesture, even if only symbolic, would telegraph
around the world that Russia, emerging out of decades of
repression, has thrown away her dictatorial shackles - declare
Ernst Zündel, Prisoner of Conscience, in broad daylight
kidnapped "legally" by his nefarious enemies on U.S. soil,
to be the West's most notable "Refusenik" - and offer
him asylum and a passport.
Sincerely,
Ingrid Zundel,
Ed.D. |
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