Newsletter No 266

                                                                                                                              ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                                      November 2005
                                                                                           No 267

RENDITION!

Forget HITLER and the NAZIS!

ABU GHRAIB and GUANTANAMO, HERE WE COME!

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Submission to Senate Enquiring Into Proposed Terrorism Legislation

By Dr Fredrick Töben, Adelaide, 9 November 2005

_____________________________________

Why does Australia need a Terrorism Law when current Australian laws enabled security forces, on 7 November 2005, effectively to follow through with an action designated a TERRORIST PREVENTION action.

"Under the existing laws, they have averted a disaster from taking place in this country; they have arrested the people who have been conspiring ... so we don't need new laws." (Washington Post, 9 November 2005)

1. What Australians are not told is that this hunt for Muslim terrorists is a decoy, a ploy to hide the real targets of this law: REVISIONISTS who refuse to believe in the HOLOCAUST. To date current laws have proven ineffective to silence the voices of REVISIONISTS.

2. A REVISIONIST'S alleged crime is refusing to go along with those who are forcing the HOLOCAUST belief into Australia's social fabric - recently into the global village as per UN-designated 27 January holiday.

3. The HOLOCAUST is considered to be so sacred that it needs to be legally protected. This indicates the HOLOCAUST has become a legally protected dogma. From this fact will flow legal consequences, much like the Soviet Union legally persecuted dissenters, for example, who were labelled REVISIONISTS and ANTISEMITES. The upholders of the HOLOCAUST ideology use the following concepts to stifle/shut down any debate that questions their intentions: HATER, HOLOCAUST DENIER, RACIST, NEO-NAZI, and now TERRORIST - all this is subsumed under the war cry: for FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY and against TERRORISM.

4. This is incompatible with our Common and Statute Law tradition where individuals are not placed into CONCEPTUAL PRISONS from which there is no escape. Words alone should not constitute a physical action – reminiscent of the times when I grew up in Australia during the 1950s where school children would chant: “Sticks and stones may break my bones…”. The message was quite clear that individual responsibility also played a role here. Unfortunately, such sensibilities have not continued to mature individuals and the victim mentality has taken hold within our society.

5. Today the victim mentality is all pervasive. The Internet offers a prime example where individuals claim they are offended by material they read, for example about the HOLOCAUST, which upsets them, thereby requiring redress because of hurt suffered. The notion that such hurt could be eliminated by merely switching off the computer is regarded as a further attack upon the person’s sensibilities. No rational argument is permitted for the sake of clarifying the dispute – it will quickly be labelled ‘hate-speech’, thereby closing any avenue where at the end there is illumination/understanding of a problem/disagreement.

6. In a number of European countries it is a criminal act not to believe in the HOLOCAUST. The pretext for legal persecution is that the person who refuses to believe in the HOLOCAUST is offending those who believe in the HOLOCAUST. The non-believers, the sceptics and dissenters are labelled with any or all of the above concepts. This labelling relieves the labeller of challenging the arguments that REVISIONISTS develop when they construct their own world view. A fall-back mind-set also calls on Adolf Hitler and the NAZIS as still being around, and motivating anyone who refuses to believe in the HOLOCAUST.

7. The implementation of the proposed Terrorism Law will follow the pattern set by Canada’s corrupt judicial system wherein REVISIONIST Ernst Zündel was held in prison for two years without effectively being able to defend himself against any allegations, then extradited to Germany. In the Zündel case, whenever Canadian defence counsel asked for information about the allegations levelled against Zündel, prosecutor and judge would block this request for information and justify their actions on grounds of NATIONAL SECURITY. See: Imagine You're Ernst Zündel, below. Australia’s terrorism laws will stifle/shut down debate on this and similar topics, and as in the Zündel case individuals will have to prove their innocence in procedures that do not offer any defence.

8. Legal precedent is thrown overboard in Canada, and now also in the USA where Germar Rudolf has since 19 October 2005 been resisting extradition to Germany. In both the Zündel and Rudolf cases, US authorities have violated basic legal procedures. In each case the arrest was justified on grounds that both men had failed to keep an appointment, something manifestly a mere pretext - and an outright lie - to justify actions against a dissenting mind. The HOLOCAUST enforcers in the USA are following a mindset that is like the 'security threat' in Canada, and like the 'terrorism justification' in Australia. In all three instances it is a Zionist-Jewish mindset, and its willing persecutors, whose interest is to save and secure the existence of the Zionist-racist state of Israel.

9. A similar pattern of legal abuse is used against Australian David Hicks, the young adventurer who converted to Islam and who knows about the JEWISH PROBLEM facing the world, in particular in Palestine. Australia's Foreign Minister, the Hon Alexander Downer, refuses to extend empathetic understanding to David Hicks, yet goes overboard for the accused drug-smuggling Australians facing long prison sentences, and death, in Asia.

10. Jewish Australians who serve in the Israeli Military are, of course, not targeted by ASIO, because Jews the world over re-won their status as victims after briefly losing it for four days – after the UN Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and related matters, ended in Durban, South Africa, 30 August - 7 September 2001. Jews, and in particular Israelis had been roundly condemned for their racist and terrorist conduct of genocide against the Palestinians. All this focus on world Jewish activity ended when 9/11 occurred and the Muslim world was labelled as ‘terrorists’, and Jews-Israel was re-welcomed to the world community as victim of terrorism.

11. The Christian world is pliable to the Jewish world, but the Muslim world does not fear the Jews - and so the label of TERRORISM effectively neutralises Islam as a competing force against Judaism's aims of 'saving the world' under the banner: JUDEO-CHRISTIAN RELIGION. Christians have been absorbed into the Judeo-Christian world view, but the Muslims have not. Nor has anyone who refuses to believe in the HOLOCAUST, which has become the temporal religion for the Judeo-Christian World View. Attempts are under way to make the HOLOCAUST the unifying concept within which Australian Muslims will be absorbed into the Judeo-Christian world view.

12. A large sector of the REVISIONIST community has embraced a world view where anything to do with the death cult of the HOLOCAUST RELIGION is rejected outright in favour of an uplifting and life-affirming PHILOSOPHY as found for example, in GERMAN IDEALISM, which overcomes excessive materialistic nihilism and anti-nationalist JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY. Such a world view is feared by those who are obsessed with Judeo-Christianity, and by those who wish to establish without challenge WORLD JEWISH SUPREMACISM.

13. It appears that some leading Australian politicians have the proverbial JEWISH-ZIONIST gun at their heads, but then it is up to such politicians not to bend to such pressure. It is hoped that later, when and if things go wrong, such politicians will not blame the Jews for having supported legislation that takes away our free speech and other civil liberties.

Dr Fredrick Töben, Director

Adelaide Institute,

PO Box 3300, Norwood 5067,

08-8331 0808 04170 88217

toben@adelaideinstitute.org

ERNST ZÜNDEL REFUSES TO BELIEVE IN THE HOLOCAUST

Imagine you're Ernst Zündel

Saturday, March 5, 2005, Toronto

Imagine that you're 65 years old and you're in jail. In solitary confinement. You are strip-searched whenever you see your lawyer. Once before. Once after. For two years.

Imagine that you're there because two politicians signed a piece of paper ("security certificate") saying that you are a security risk. You are not charged with a crime. You don't have a criminal record. You have lived in Canada for 42 years.

Imagine that those two politicians don't have to be right, so long as a judge thinks that they are "reasonable". So long as they are "reasonable", they can deport you to a country where you go to jail for saying something that you have the right to say in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada had promised you that right.

Imagine that the prosecutor and the judge get to meet secretly without you and your lawyer and you never find out what they did in secret, what they read, who they saw. Again and again.

Imagine that your lawyer thought he was at a critical point in your trial. He thought the lunch break was longer then usual. Turns out the judge and the prosecutor were having a secret session again while you had lunch. They refuse to tell you or your lawyer what happened.

Imagine that you are accused of causing violence so bad that you are a danger to Canadian national security. When you ask when and where, they say: can't tell you. You ask why not, they say: national security.

Imagine that the judge making so many mistakes that it took more than 100 pages of transcripts to show them all. Imagine the judge making the same mistakes again and again. And always to your detriment. Imagine this judge having the power to deport you and you have no right of appeal.

Imagine that a prominent civil libertarian tells you this process is wrong and he will stand with you to say so, only to back out at the last minute.

Imagine that he comes back as soon as you were deported, condemning this process as your plane left Canada.

Imagine that a judge says she thinks this process is unfair to you and will say so in court, only to change her mind at the last minute.

Imagine that a newspaper counts the number of security certificates and yours is never included. Imagine the moment you have been deported, everyone talks about how awful and illegal security certificates are.

Imagine that the media is suddenly interested in you, as soon as they are sure that you will be deported. Your deportation and upcoming jail time is reported in meticulous detail.

Imagine that this is Canada in 2005 and you've been named in a security certificate.

Imagine that everyone says that security certificates are a disgrace to Canada but somehow it was fine to use one on you.

Imagine that you may be Ernst Zündel, or you may be someone with an opinion disliked by many.

Peter Lindsay & Chi-Kun Shi,

Counsel to Ernst Zündel

THE BATTLE OF THE WILLS

_____________________________________

Germar Rudolf to be deported from USA then to serve at least 5 years for DENYING THE HOLOCAUST - no trial - SOME YEARS AGO HE WAS SENTENCED IN ABSENTIA BY A GERMAN COURT. Final US appeal result expected on Thursday, 10 November 2004.

Siegfried Verbeke - arrested at Amsterdam Airport, now believed to be also at Mannheim prison, Germany.

While Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zündel, Siegfried Verbeke, et al, are extradited for thought-crimes to Germany, others get away with committing serious economic crimes. Abe Goldberg, above, celebrates his fame and fortune and does not have to fear extradition to Australia: Missing magnate surfaces as a Polish property tycoon at:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/11/08/1131407638770.html?oneclick=true

Horst Mahler and Ernst Zündel - Holocaust denier's trial opens

Judge dismisses one of his lawyers, delaying the case until next week

By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Nov. 8, 2005, 8:16PM

Associated Press http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3447857

MANNHEIM, GERMANY - The trial of Ernst Zundel, a Holocaust denier who wrote the book The Hitler We Loved and Why, opened Tuesday with the judge dismissing a defense lawyer, himself a far-right activist convicted of incitement earlier this year.

German authorities accuse Zundel of decades of anti-Semitic activities, including repeated denials of the Holocaust — a crime in Germany — in documents and on the Internet.

Zundel, 66, faces charges of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead. He was deported from Canada eight months ago after authorities there ruled he posed a threat to national and international security.

Shortly after the trial opened, Judge Ulrich Meinerzhagen ordered defense attorney Horst Mahler dismissed on grounds he was barred from practicing earlier this year after he was convicted of incitement for distributing anti-Semitic propaganda.

Meinerzhagen questioned whether the rest of Zundel's lawyers would be prepared to mount a "regular" defense after one of them described Jews as an "enemy people" in a motion.

Supporters pack courtroom

The trial was adjourned until next Tuesday to allow for a ruling on a defense motion calling for the judge's removal. The judge, defense attorney Juergen Rieger said, "only wants defense lawyers who adopt the views of the prosecution."

Zundel said little as he sat among his attorneys, but he has said that he is a peaceful campaigner being denied the right to free speech. If convicted, he could be jailed for five years.

Dozens of his supporters packed the courtroom, and Meinerzhagen threatened to clear them all out when many shouted "Shame!" as the defense complained it was being muzzled.

"These are measures not even used in the gulags in the Soviet Union," Rieger told the judge.

He said that Zundel was targeted for "stepping on the toes of the Jewish community."

A prominent white supremacist and Holocaust denier since the late 1970s, Zundel ran Samisdat Publishers, a leading distributor of Nazi propaganda. He also provides content to the Zundelsite on the Web, which has followers around the world — hundreds of whom demonstrated against his arrest by German authorities in March.

Before the trial, the International Auschwitz Committee sad survivors of the death camp see the trial as "an important success" in the international campaign against Holocaust deniers who use the Internet to spread anti-Semitism.

The 20-page indictment cites Zundel's texts dating from 1999 to 2003, which prosecutors say demonstrate his attempts "in a pseudo-scientific way, to relieve National Socialism of the stain of the murder of the Jews."

Zundel "denied the fate of destruction for the Jews planned by National Socialist powerholders and justified this by saying that the mass destruction in Auschwitz and Treblinka, among others, were an invention of the Jews and served the repression and blackmail of the German people," it says.

AL Gore's first visit to Australia for 2 1/2 years started in controversy last night when the former US vice-president addressed a fundraising event for the Jewish National Fund.

More than 1000 members of Australia's Jewish community attended the dinner, held at Sydney's Randwick Racecourse.

But the former presidential candidate was greeted by a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered at the front gate to the racecourse, waving flags and calling for the federal Government to strip the fund of its tax-deductible charity status.

The Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine said the funds raised at the event would be spent supporting the construction of new Jewish settlements in disputed territories.

Jamal Daoud, interim convenor of the coalition, called on the Howard Government to put a stop to the Jewish fund's use of its status as a tax-deductible charity to support construction activity in the arid Bnei Shimon region in North Negev.

"We are concerned that tax-deductible money is going to finance illegal settlements in North Negev," Mr Daoud said.

"We want to send a clear message to the Australian Government that this is unacceptable."

Glen Barclay, an expert on Middle East politics at the Australian National University, said Mr Gore would have no choice but to accept such a speaking engagement with a Jewish organisation such as the JNF, especially if he still aspired to the White House.

"It would be political suicide for him to reject it," Dr Barclay said.

"Whether he has political or academic ambitions, he doesn't want to be the target of denunciation by the Jewish lobby."

The fund raised at least $66,000, selling tickets for $66 a person for the event, which was billed as "your once only chance to hear this firm friend of Israel".

The dinner was closed to the media at Mr Gore's request.

Police and private security officers guarded every entrance and the perimeter of the racecourse during the event.

Tomorrow night, Mr Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential race to George W. Bush and last visited Australia in May 2003, will speak about sustainable investment at the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia's national conference.

A spokeswoman for the association said Mr Gore was not being paid for his appearance.

Since losing the election, Mr Gore has developed a cable network called Current TV, which lets viewers submit contributions over the internet and even decide what makes it to air.

He has also set up an investment consultancy, Generation Investment Management, with business partner David Blood.

SYDNEY, Australia -- Two Islamic terrorist cells were competing to become the first to stage a major bombing in Australia, a prosecutor said Tuesday after police arrested 17 suspects in a series of coordinated pre-dawn raids in two cities.

About 500 police arrested nine men in the southern city of Melbourne and eight in Sydney, including one man critically injured in a gunfight with police.

Police said they expected more arrests in coming days and weeks, but Prime Minister John Howard on Wednesday assured Muslims they were not being targeted.

"People who support terrorism are as much their enemies as they are my or your enemies," Howard told Sydney Radio 2GB. "There is nothing in our laws, nor will there be anything in our laws, that targets an individual group, be it Islamic or otherwise."

Ameer Ali, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said the country's nearly 300,000-member Muslim community was shocked at the number of arrests and that all the suspects appeared to be Muslims. Some of their supporters clashed violently with news cameramen in Melbourne and Sydney on Tuesday.

One of the suspects, Abdulla Merhi, wanted to carry out attacks to avenge the war in Iraq, police said in a Melbourne court. Howard was a strong supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has sent hundreds of troops to the country.

Norm Hazzard, who heads the state's counterterrorism police unit, said the suspects were followers of the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

"I think you can go back to Osama bin Laden and those who follow his philosophy that is what terrorism in its modern form is all about and there's no doubt that this group followed that same philosophy," he said.

Police said the alleged plotters apparently had not settled on a target.

Adam Houda, a defense lawyer, said the Sydney suspects were innocent.

"There's no evidence that terrorism was contemplated or being planned by any particular person at any particular time or at any particular place," he said.

The raids came less than a week after Howard strengthened counterterrorism laws and said intelligence agencies had warned of a possible terrorist attack. He went on national TV Tuesday to say the risk was not over, despite the arrests.

This country has never been immune from a possible terrorist attack," he said. "That remains the situation today and it will be the situation tomorrow."

Ali traveled to Canberra on Wednesday to appeal to the government to abandon plans to pass additional counterterrorism laws by Christmas.

Muslims were concerned that provisions preventing terror suspects from discussing their detentions and interrogations and the media from reporting it could conceal abuses in the system and lead to racial profiling.

"Under the existing laws, they have averted a disaster from taking place in this country; they have arrested the people who have been conspiring ... so we don't need new laws," Ali said.

Both cells were led by one of the detainees, the 45-year-old firebrand cleric Abu Bakr, an Australian who was born in Algeria, a prosecutor said. Bakr made headlines earlier this year by calling bin Laden a "good man."

The suspects were stockpiling the same kind of chemicals used in the deadly July 7 transit bombings in London, prosecutor Richard Maidment said at a hearing for the nine people arrested there.

"Each of the members of the group are committed to the cause of violent jihad," he added, saying they underwent training at a camp northeast of Melbourne.

Bakr was charged with leading the terrorist group while the Melbourne suspects were charged with membership of a terror group.

The seven men arrested in Sydney were ordered jailed until another session Friday on charges of preparing a terrorist act by manufacturing explosives. The man shot by police was under guard in hospital and was not immediately charged.

Detective Sgt. Chris Murray told the court that police surveillance had picked up one suspect, 20-year-old Merhi, pleading for permission to become a martyr.

Murray said Merhi appeared impatient and it was clear to police he wanted to die in a way "similar to the nature of a suicide bomber."

Maidment said the Melbourne cell appeared eager to be first to stage an attack.

"There has been discussion amongst the Melbourne group that the Sydney group were further ahead of them and they were anxious to do something themselves," he said.

Associated Press writers Meraiah Foley in Sydney and Rod McGuirk in Canberra contributed to this report.

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/11/08/AR2005110800122.html

TEL AVIV -- Nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood, the Polish Embassy building has become a site of pilgrimage for a growing tide of Israelis who are seeking to reclaim what under Polish law is their birthright.

Almost a year after Poland became part of the European Union last May, thousands of Israelis are eyeing the homeland of their parents and grandparents as a ticket to sharing in the prosperity of the new Europe. Some just want the convenience of traveling on the Continent as an EU citizen. But others covet the economic and legal benefits to help them build careers and businesses.

For students, it could mean free tuition at internationally recognized universities. For businesspeople, citizenship means valuable access to a foreign market. Polish Jewish immigrants streamed to Palestine before and after World War II, and more than 1 million Israelis could be eligible for Polish citizenship. But the bureaucracy is onerous. "This expresses Israelis' desire to be tied into the European Union in one shape or form," said Ilan Charsky, a lawyer who handles paperwork for Israelis hopeful of gaining Polish citizenship, a process that takes about six months. "The people who can get this link are very interested to be a part of it."

His clients include an employee of Intel's subsidiary in Israel who wants to transfer to the company's offices in Ireland and sees Polish citizenship as a way to easily get a work visa. A businessman mulling an investment in properties in Corfu, Greece, needs the European passport to be eligible to put in a bid. Mr. Charsky said he's handling more than 1,200 citizenship requests from Israelis of Polish descent.

According to the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv, about 1,200 Israelis obtained citizenship in 2004. A few years ago, the numbers were negligible. "Poland as a country has changed. Several years ago, we were members of the socialist union, and now we are part of the European Union," said Edward Dobrowolski, a consul who oversees visas at the embassy. "People know that the Polish passport is opening the door to other countries and other possibilities," he said. The demand isn't limited to Poland. Last year, about 2,200 Israelis obtained German citizenship, according to a spokeswoman from the Tel Aviv embassy. Among the crowd of a dozen prospective citizens, there were three generations of Israelis waiting, each with a different perspective about gaining Polish citizenship.

For young Israelis who aspire to succeed in a globalized world, having one passport is not good enough. Lior Spivak, a 25-year-old with an undergraduate degree in business, said the possibility of studying or working abroad outweighed any concern about the Continent's history of anti-Semitism. "Anti-Semitism is everywhere in the world -- whether in the U.S. or in Europe," he said. "That won't be the decisive factor in my decision."

Parents say they want to give their children any advantage they can. "We want to leave something for our kids," said Shoshana, who declined to give her last name. The member of kibbutz Ma'anit said she has been encouraging her parents to visit Poland for years, but to no avail. Bringing her parents to the embassy took a bit of convincing as well. "I am embarrassed that I need to ask for something like this," said Shoshana's father, who also refused to give his name. The resident of Hadera said that he spent most of World War II in Russia and then moved to Israel afterwards. "I've never been back. I know them, and they were worse than the Germans," he said.

Those who have re-established ties with Poland think the discrimination still exists. Hana Viesbrot, a 71-year-old native of Hrubishov, Poland, has visited Poland twice, but thinks the country is not eager to give Israelis citizenship. "They are afraid because they think people will want their homes back."

But not everyone is lining up at the embassy. Yehudit Re'em, who attended elementary school in Poland, lives near the embassy and sees crowds outside the entrance every day, rain or shine. But she's never joined them. "After all that has happened, I'm not interested," she said.

Germany puts on trial a high profile product of its Nazi past. Yet it does so with little sense of drama.

Ernst Zundel, a German citizen who was a distasteful fixture in Montreal and Toronto for 40 years, is charged with inciting hatred, denying the Holocaust and dishonouring the dignity of Jews, living and dead. Zundel is largely unknown in Germany and the media have so far ignored him. "He doesn't have real influence on Germany's neo-Nazi scene," says Manfred Murck, Hamburg deputy chief of the German intelligence service that monitors extremist groups.

Yet behind the stone walls and barbed wire of this city's maximum security prison, Zundel doesn't miss an opportunity to spread his neo-Nazi ideology.

He avoids mingling with what he calls the "down-bred," multicultural group of murderers and thieves he's been jailed with since being deported from Canada eight months ago. He prefers the company of the guards, describing their "humane" behaviour as stirring warm feelings of belonging to the German "Volk," the sense of national identity that under Hitler became synonymous with racial superiority - and mass murder.

Even his lawyer believes Zundel has little chance of avoiding jail under Germany's strict laws. But while in custody awaiting trial, the 66-year-old revisionist remains defiant and on the lookout for recruits. He seizes the chance when guards ask, as Zundel claimed in a recent letter, "What is it that you know that is so feared by the system?"

"Then I let loose with pure Zundelism and watch my artillery barrage land right on target in the depths of their souls - and I KNOW, Ingrid, by their reaction that I have not lost the magic touch," he wrote to his American wife. "It's an uplifting feeling for I know that the time will come when that `KNOWING' will be treated like a national resource." "To hell with the rest of the world," he added. "This is the new world coming!"

Even among diehard neo-Nazis, such comments are dismissed. Christian Worch, a leading neo-Nazi organizer, says right-wing extremists are far more preoccupied by immigration and unemployment than revising history, especially when simply claiming the Holocaust is exaggerated can land you in jail. Worch, 49, who served five years for denying the Holocaust and waving the swastika in public, says he asked neo-Nazi leaders whether pro-Zundel demonstrations should be organized and got little more than a shrug.

From 1998 to 2003, 114 people in Germany were convicted of having made statements that "approve, deny or minimize" crimes committed by Hitler's regime, and are "liable to disturb the public peace." Many had denied the Holocaust ever happened, or stated, for example, that fewer than six million Jews were killed. The crime carries a maximum penalty of five years. More than 1,400 others were convicted of inciting "hatred against parts of the population."

In Canada, Zundel spent two years in jail on a federal security certificate before federal court Judge Pierre Blais called him a "racist hypocrite," a threat to Canadians, and threw him out of the country.

In Mannheim, it's Andreas Grossmann's job to keep him in jail as long as possible. As lead prosecutor in the case, Grossmann also wants to stop Zundel from turning the trial into a platform for neo-Nazi propaganda. Zundel did exactly that during Toronto court proceedings in the 1980s, which resulted in the Supreme Court overturning a conviction for spreading "false news." "It's perhaps better if no one talks about it," says Grossmann, referring to media coverage the trial might receive.

Previous Holocaust deniers convicted in Mannheim include Fred Leuchter, who presented a report at Zundel's second Toronto trial claiming the Auschwitz death camp had no gas chambers. The report, flatly dismissed by leading historians, has become gospel in the revisionist world. Zundel is charged with statements contained on the "Zundelsite" website and in biweekly "newsletters" he sends to followers. The indictment includes his claims that most Jews in concentration camps died of disease, that Hitler never ordered their extermination, and that a "Holocaust lobby" has since "blackmailed" millions of dollars from the German state.

Grossmann expects Zundel be jailed for three to five years. "Not only are they liars and preachers of hate, they're also cowards," Grossmann says. "What they really believe is that the Holocaust happened, that it was good, and that the only mistake is that they didn't get them all. But they don't dare say that." Zundel will appear before three judges and two jurors. Five days have been set aside for the trial, but Grossmann expects Zundel's defence team to drag it out as much as possible.

Zundel's lead lawyer, Jurgen Rieger, says his first motion will be to replace all three "biased" judges. He'll describe Zundel as "a prisoner of conscience," argue that the website is fully run by his Zundel's wife and note that it's based in the U.S., where its content is protected by freedom of speech laws.

Grossmann instead points to a court ruling that convicted German soccer fans for giving Nazi salutes at a match in Poland, simply because the images were broadcast on German TV.

Rieger acknowledges he has little chance of having top Holocaust deniers accepted as expert witnesses. German law prevents a defence that tries to prove the denier is right. Rieger was fined 3,600 euros for trying to use the tactic while defending another client. Yet his team has sent Grossmann documents making similar claims. "If the lawyer stands up in court and says publicly that the Holocaust did not happen, then I will have another case to prosecute," Grossmann says flatly.

Germany's blanket ban on Holocaust denial is similar to laws in several European countries. "There's a deep-seated fear here that if these hate messages are voiced, some or many Germans might be attracted to them. I don't see that danger at all, but this is an expression of the German trauma," says Winfried Brugger, professor of constitutional law at the University of Heidelberg. "Every politician says we have a healthy, robust democracy in Germany," he adds. "But when it comes to right-wing radicalism most people think, `Germany is frail and we are not 100 per cent sure that we won't again fall into the Nazi trap.'"

Brugger says simple Holocaust denial should be protected as free speech. Publicly confronting such lies "revitalizes" a truth that may otherwise become a hollow mantra, he argues.

An April survey sponsored by the American Jewish Committee found a high level of Holocaust awareness among Germans, including 77 per cent who identified Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka as extermination camps. "Germany has the lowest level of anti-Semitism in Europe," says Albert Mayer, head of the Jewish Community of Berlin. "It's not paradise, but it's a pretty good place to live." Since 1989, Germany's Jewish community has grown from 27,000 to 200,000 - almost half of its pre-World War II level - largely through Russian immigration.

Other studies have found a German tendency to turn a blind eye to crimes their parents or grandparents may have committed during the war. The blame is invariably placed on abstract Nazis rather than real ones close to home, causing analysts to warn that the lessons of history haven't been fully learned. Increasing concerns are the almost five million unemployed, the highest since hard times propelled Hitler's National Socialists to power in 1933. Direct parallels would be absurd, but neo-Nazis like Worch count on the economic troubles to boost their support.

In September's national election, the neo-Nazi linked Nationalist Party received 1.6 per cent of the vote. In eastern Germany last year, it captured 9.2 per cent of Saxony's ballots in regional elections. "People denying the Holocaust are like a virus, a virus of pure anti-Semitism. If we don't punish this crime, the virus can spread," Mayer says.

Supporters pack courtroom

Australia Says Two Cells Were Competing