Newsletter No 275

                                                                                                           ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                       February 2006
                                                                      No 275

With his recent statements on "the myth of the Holocaust", the president of Iran has given new momentum to the development of historical revisionism, as is made plain by the following exchange between the Managing Director of the Neda Institute of Political Sciences (Teheran) and the Frenchman Robert Faurisson.

Dr Jawad Sharbaf, Managing Director, Neda Institute of Political Sciences, Teheran, to Professor Robert Faurisson, December 19, 2005

I take this opportunity to express Neda Institute of Scientific-Political Research and Studies' deep sorrow to you and all revisionists regarding the UN resolution on "Holocaust Day" [of November 1, 2005]. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's recent remarks doubting the "Holocaust" have created a favourable situation for revisionism. Our assumption for the time being is that the President will undoubtedly do his best if you make contact and request assistance for organising an international conference on revisionism. Should you require any help in this regard, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I heartily thank you for your message and your proposal concerning the organisation of an international revisionist conference. In November of 2000 I had the honour of being a guest for a week in Teheran at the invitation of an Iranian government agency. On that occasion, I made the acquaintance of your Institute where I was welcomed by Dr Soroush-Nejad and a group of professors, one of whom was then finishing the Persian translation of my Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire (1980). For these last five years, during which we have maintained contact, I have noted that your country's political heads have been reluctant to denounce the lie of the alleged "Holocaust" of the Jews, a lie whose ravages, wrought for more than half a century now, and to the particular detriment of the Palestinian people, are a disaster that worsens from year to year. I was hoping that one day a high government official would have the courage to put it plainly to the world that that "Holocaust" was but a legend or a myth. On December 8, 2005, - a date that will be remembered - the President of your country, Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, - a name that will go down in history - dared to voice doubts on the historical reality of the alleged "Holocaust". On December 12, he spoke of it as a "myth". Moreover, he spoke in defence of the revisionists' right to express themselves freely. On December 22, in Egypt, the general guide of the Moslem Brothers, Mohamed Mehdi Akef, also used the word "myth" in that regard but not without retracting in part two days later, potent and intimidating as that myth is. On December 23, an Iranian official, Mohamed-Ali Ramin, head of the association for the defence of the rights of Moslem minorities in the West, declared that your President wished to see the European governments let academics in their countries publish the results of their research into the "Holocaust".

On November 1st, unanimously and without a vote, the representatives of the 191 countries constituting the UN adopted an Israeli-drafted resolution proclaiming January 27th "International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust". Moreover, this text "Rejects any denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or part". Thus are targeted all those who, like the revisionists, demand a re-examination of the evidence and testimonies on which the argument of the alleged "Holocaust" of the Jews is based. In the main, the upholders of that argument affirm that, during the Second World War, the Germans 1) had a policy of physical extermination of the Jews; 2) had designed, built and used great slaughterhouses for humans called gas chambers (not to be confused with the crematory ovens, which had nothing criminal about them) and 3) caused, by this means and others, the death of six million Jews.

The proposition was adopted through a sleight of hand that I have described in a text of which you are aware entitled "The UN Decides a Universal Ban on Revisionism".

The accusation brought by the Jews against the German people constitutes a slander. Marked with the sign of Cain, that people has thus far had no other recourse than to lose itself in contrition for a crime that it never committed. Sixty years after the war, Germany is still in a state of subjection and has not yet had the right to a peace treaty. The German (and Austrian) leaders ceaselessly ask the Jews' forgiveness and lay out colossal financial "reparations" to Jewish or Zionist organisations and the State of Israel. For sixty years, those countries' rulers have lived in dread of arousing the Jews' wrath; consequently they can be seen stifling any sign of historical revisionism. In Germany, in Austria but also in a good many other countries in Europe, the Jews have succeeded in getting special laws passed serving to protect their own version of the history of the Second World War from any challenge.

The imposture of the "Holocaust" is the sword and shield of the Jewish State, its no. 1 weapon. It enables the Jews and Zionists to indict the whole world: first Germany which, according to it, committed an abominable and unprecedented crime, then the rest of the world which had let that crime be committed. The Jewish extremists and the Zionists have gone on to charge Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, Stalin, De Gaulle, Pope Pius XII, the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as all the countries that took part in the Second World War and even all the neutral countries, beginning with Switzerland. All are accused of having been indifferent to the tragedy and of having let the Jewish people be exterminated as alleged!

So it is that in taking a position today against the lie of the "Holocaust", Iran happens to be defending not only Palestine and the Arabo-Moslem world but also an entire part of the human race against a gigantic slander, blackmail and extortion operation.

You inform me that, thanks to President Ahmadinejad, the occasion may finally have arisen to envisage the holding of an international conference on revisionism.

You surely know that the revisionists were, in 2001, preparing to hold such a conference in Beirut from March 31 to April 2 of that year. But Israeli and American pressures became so threatening that Lebanese President Rafik Hariri had to forbid the gathering. We should therefore be happy to turn to President Ahmadinejad and request his help in holding a conference in your country. However, in view of the circumstances, such a project seems, sad to say, unrealisable at this moment. Allow me to explain why.

At present the main revisionists who, in 2001, would have participated in the Beirut conference are either in prison, in exile or in a precarious situation that forbids them from crossing national borders and from boarding a flight at an international airport.

We may take the appalling case of Ernst Zündel. Married to an American lady and living peacefully in the State of Tennessee, he was arrested outside his house on February 5, 2003 and thrown in jail under a pretext made of lies. Then he was delivered to Canada where, for two years, he languished in degrading conditions of solitary confinement in a high-security prison. Finally, he was handed over to Germany, where he is now in prison (in Mannheim) awaiting trial for revisionism. In Canada, as in Germany, revisionists are deprived of the right to defend themselves. In those countries, when a man accused of revisionism stands before a judge, the latter begins, in line with the routine, by having him swear to tell the truth. But if, in the following minute, the accused says, for example: "I affirm that the alleged Nazi gas chambers did not exist because the truth - which I can well demonstrate - is that they could not exist", the judge will interrupt him immediately. The Canadian judge will tell him: "Before this special court [christened 'Human rights tribunal'] truth is no defence". As for the German judge, he will tell him: "You have not the right to challenge obvious facts of common knowledge ('offenkundig')". Thus neither the revisionist in question nor his lawyers can present a defence on the merits of the case. In Canada, judge Pierre Blais, presiding alone without a jury over proceedings against Ernst Zündel admitting of no appeal, the special court went so far as to examine anonymous witnesses in closed session. Then, in Mannheim, the chief judge dismissed in succession the four lawyers whom Ernst Zündel had chosen, and this because he suspected them of revisionism.

Still in the United States, near Chicago, the German citizen Germar Rudolf was recently kidnapped in the same style, torn from his American wife and their child and delivered to Germany; he is in prison in Stuttgart.

The Belgian Siegfried Verbeke was arrested last summer at Amsterdam airport and handed over by the Netherlands to Germany; he is in prison in Heidelberg.

The British historian David Irving was arrested in November while travelling in Austria and is now in prison in Vienna.

These four persons risk being sentenced to years of imprisonment, except perhaps David Irving if, as his lawyer lets it be understood that he will do, he retracts, shows repentance and pleads for the court's leniency.

Other revisionists are in prison in Germany or Austria, notably the barrister Manfred Roeder, the school headmaster Ernst G. Kögel and the chemist Wolfgang Fröhlich.

Germany has become Israel's "Guantanamo Bay" by the intermediary of a sort of judicial and police mafia which, in the United States and Canada, lashes out at revisionists (and at certain Arabs or Moslems) within the so convenient framework of the "fight against terrorism".

In Switzerland the revisionists Gaston-Armand Amaudruz (aged 84) and René-Louis Berclaz have recently got out of prison, but might well return there.

Some important revisionists are living in exile in difficult conditions. I shall refrain here from naming either them or the countries where they have found refuge.

There remains the case of those revisionists who are neither in prison nor in exile. Their existence is hardly more enviable. The police harass them, the courts convict them. To speak only of France, Jean Plantin (prosecuted in Lyon), Vincent Reynouard (prosecuted in Limoges) and Georges Theil (prosecuted in Grenoble, Limoges and Lyon) have been or are currently under diverse sentences, including that of imprisonment without remission. Bruno Gollnisch, member of the European parliament, is to be summoned before a court in Lyon simply for having said that he wished historians could express themselves freely on the problem of the Nazi gas chambers' existence! I myself am to appear on June 20, 2006 at the 17th chamber of the Paris criminal court for having given a telephone interview of revisionist substance to the Iranian television channel "Sahar"; charges were brought by Mr Dominique Baudis, president of the Conseil Supérieur de l'audiovisuel.

Fredrick Töben, an Australian national of German origin, had developed his revisionist activity in Australia and on the Internet. While travelling in Germany and seeking to inquire at the source about judicial repression of revisionism in that country, he soon found himself in prison there. Now back in Australia, he has been hit with a "gag order", that is, he is in principle bound to silence on pain of summary conviction for contempt of court.
In Poland, Dariusz Ratajczak, the Czech republic, and other countries of Europe, revisionists are also prosecuted and convicted.

In Sweden, Ahmed Rami carries on with indomitable courage a struggle for both Islam and revisionism which has earned him time in prison.

In Germany, the number of publications burned by the police because of revisionism is not officially known but it might be considerable. Likewise in Canada.

I shall not relate here the revisionists' exclusions from professions of all sorts in various countries or the family tragedies and suicides provoked by the repression. In Munich on the 25th of April 1995 the revisionist Reinhold Elstner burned himself to death as a protest, as he had written, against "the Niagara of lies" poured upon his people. The mainstream German press passed his heroic act over in silence and the police there, doing as ordered, confiscated the bouquets of flowers laid at the site of that sacrifice and proceeded to question those who, by that gesture of compassion, had shown their own anguish. In France, armed Jewish groups use violence with impunity even in the halls of the central courthouse in Paris. Personally, between 1978 and 1993, I suffered ten physical assaults on the part of Jews who, however, were never tried.

If the Jews and Zionists use physical violence and judicial repression in this way, it is because, on the level of scientific and historical argumentation, the revisionists have beaten them hands down. The drama of it for the Jews and Zionists is that they have been lying and that this fact is becoming known more and more. Certain Jews and even certain Israelis seem to be conscious of this. A minute few have had the courage to declare their scepticism concerning the reality of the "Holocaust" whereas others have been content to speak out against "the Holocaust religion", "the Holocaust industry" or the "Shoah business".

In conclusion, I think that, until things have changed somewhat, an international conference is, unfortunately, impossible. But, in accord with an idea put forth by professor Arthur Robert Butz, I shall say that we hope to see President Ahmadinejad create in Iran an international centre for revisionist studies whose first task would be to propagate historical revisionism's attainments in the Arabo-Moslem world via the Internet or any other medium. Meanwhile, we request that Iran make repeated appeals to the Western world for the freeing of our prisoners of conscience.

In any case, we for our part consider that as long as in the United States, Canada, nearly all of Europe and as far away as Australia the revisionists are subjected either to special laws or tribunals, underhanded police procedures, or methodical vilification by media in the service of certain Jewish or Zionist pressure groups, the Western world will have ever less right to impose lessons of lawfulness, morality or democracy on others.

I disagree. The conference should be held under any circumstance. The incarceration of Ernst Zündel, Germar Rudolf, David Irving, Siegfried Verbeke et.al. is not a blow to revisionism but to the holocaust religion. Before these events revisionism was in a deep crisis. All the facts that dismantle the Big Lie are reported in hundreds of articles and books. Germar Rudolf summarized the findings of the revisionists. There is nothing more to be done in this field. Now it is time to go to jail for the truth.

Robert, do you remember the words you shouted when we said goodbye in Vichy:? „Auf ins Gefängnis! - Let’s go to jail!“. The Truth is the weapon with which to destroy Jewish supremacism, and this will change the world and save mankind. But Truth never wins without these human beings who are ready to die for the Truth.

The question for the human race now is whether there are enough of those human beings to rescue the peoples from Yahweh.

Thousands of Moslems are ready to die for Allah. This is no option for us Europeans. Europe is the continent of freedom. Freedom means to live for the Truth. Nothing else.

Imagine! The leading and well known revisionists are invited by the Iranian Head of State to participate in a scientific conference of historians to discuss the Holocaust. The invited persons join in a declaration in advance that they know the risk of being kidnapped on their journey but will go to Teheran anyway. If these persons are then picked up because of delivery orders from Israel or their vassals, the fight to free the revisionists becomes a world affair. This is – after having said in your writings what has to be said – the maximum you can achieve for mankind.

Subject: Holocaust Remarks of Iran President Reflect Official State View - www.Tadp.org

Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Friday that remarks made earlier this week by the country's president that the Nazi mass murder of Jews during World War II was a "myth" was the official Iranian government's position on the issue. "The words of [president] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust and on Israel are not personal opinions, nor isolated statements but they express the view of the [Iranian] government," Mottaki said. Ahmadinejad made the Holocaust remarks on Wednesday while it was in October he said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

"The Europeans have to understand that the current Iranian government doesn't have any intention to play the role of someone who listens without having the right to reply," he said adding that if Europe wants to have relations with Iran "it has to learn to listen to our opinions and take them into account."

In 1976, Holocaust revisionism produced its last "standard work," if there ever was such a thing: Prof. A.R. Butz' Hoax of the Twentieth Century. "How can a quarter century old text not be obsolete today?" Butz asks in the preface of the 2003 edition of his own book, pointing out "the age of this text, and the great advances

Hence, there is a great need for a new, integrated work summarizing Holocaust revisionism after 30 years of very intensive and thorough research.

And here it is, the new standard work of Holocaust revisionism! It was written by German scholar, writer, and publisher Germar Rudolf, based on the research of the most prominent revisionists, most of which Rudolf had the pleasure to publish in a multitude of German and English language journals and books over the past 15 years.

The book was written to fit the need of both those who have no in-depth knowledge of the Holocaust or of revisionism, as well as for well-versed readers familiar with revisionism. Anyone who wants to bring himself up to date on revisionist scholarship, but does not want to read all the special studies that were published during the past ten years, needs this book!

Since 1992, Rudolf has been giving lectures to various mainstream audiences all over the world. His topic is very controversial: the Holocaust in the light of new forensic and historical findings. His listeners initially think they know exactly what "the Holocaust" is all about, but their world view is completely turned upside down after the evidence is presented. Even though Rudolf p resents nothing short of full-fledged Holocaust revisionism, his arguments fall on fertile soil, because they are presented in a very pedagogically sensitive and scholarly way. This book is the literary version of Rudolf's lectures, enriched with the most recent finding of historiography to a topic regulated by penal law in many countries.

The book's style is unique as is its topic: It is a dialogue between the lecturers on the one hand who introduce the reader to the most important arguments and counter arguments of Holocaust Revisionism, and the reactions of the audience on the other hand: supportive, skeptical, and also hostile comments, questions, and assertions. The Lectures read like a vivid and exciting real-life exchange between persons of various points of view. The usual moral, political, and pseudoscientific arguments against revisionism are all addressed and refuted.

This book is a compendium of Frequently Asked Questions on the Holocaust and its critical reexamination. With more than 1,300 references to sources and a vast bibliography, this easy-to-understand book is the best introduction into this taboo topic both for readers unfamiliar with revisionism and for those wanting to know more.

* Mail: Castle Hill Publishers, 253 West 72nd street Suite 1711, New York, NY, 10023, USA.

Last month, British historian David Irving was arrested in Austria for the crime of denying the Holocaust. When he goes on trial this February, facing up to a decade in prison, he could become a martyr for antisemitic kooks — kooks like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A couple of weeks ago, Ahmadinejad commented that, in Western nations, "if someone were to deny the existence of God... they would not bother him. However, if someone were to deny the myth of the Jews' massacre, all the Zionist mouthpieces and the governments subservient to the Zionists tear their larynxes and scream against the person as much as they can."

Last week the grotesque sentiment was seconded by Mohammed Mehdi Akef, head of the influential Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who said that "the most serious lie is the Jews' Holocaust, which they have exploited in order to extort global solidarity."

With Jew haters around the globe reaching for this particular slander, from among the ample palate of hurtful things people have said about Jews over the centuries, we might wonder why. Why this libel? Why now? The answer is simple.

Lately we Jews have displayed a weakness for a style of rhetorical overreach in which the Holocaust is deployed as a stick to threaten those whom some of us find objectionable. It should not startle anyone if Jew haters, seeing what a favorite weapon the Holocaust has become, seek to wrestle it out of our hands by denying it ever happened.

Last month in Houston, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of the 1.5-million-member Reform movement, compared religious conservatives to Nazis for retaining the idea that marriage is a partnership of a man and woman. Yoffie said, "We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations."

Placing conservative Christians in the same tradition that brought us the Holocaust was a theme already familiar in the statements of prominent Jews. When Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" came out last year, even some usually perspicacious analysts couldn't resist linking the traditionally Catholic Gibson with Hitler and the Holocaust.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer linked Gibson's movie to the "blood libel that... led to countless Christian massacres of Jews and prepared Europe for the ultimate massacre — 6 million Jews systematically murdered in six years."

In The Washington Post, Richard Cohen summarized his own view: "I thought the movie was tawdry, cartoonish, badly acted and antisemitic, maybe not purposely so but in the way portions of the New Testament are — an assignment of blame that culminated in the Holocaust."

Walter Reich, former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, found in Gibson's "Passion" signs of "that kind of anger that became the seedbed in which the antisemitism that flourished in the last century, and the Holocaust it produced, took root."

The Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham Foxman, said that he is "always hesitant to make comparisons of today's evils... to that of Adolf Hitler." But that didn't stop him from locating "The Passion" in the same vein of hate that led to the Holocaust. "The very reason that Jews have gone through so much is the thinking and viewpoint reflected in the Gibson film," he explained to the New York Post. "For 1,950 plus years the accusation that the Jews killed Jesus has been the source of antisemitism — inquisitions, expulsions, pogroms and eventually the Holocaust."

The fact that Gibson's film led to no manifestation of increased antisemitism anywhere in the world has not, to my knowledge, resulted in any of these commentators retracting their statements.

It's not only Christians, however, against whom we wield the ax of Hitler's incomparable genocide. When Israel's incomparably humane plan to evacuate Gaza of its Jewish residents was carried out, one found Jewish settlers comparing themselves to Holocaust victims — wearing orange Stars of David to recall the yellow star that Jews in the Nazi era were compelled to wear. An Israeli housing minister noted, "Unfortunately, I am no longer surprised when a Jew compares me and other Israeli officials to Nazis."

At least the Gaza evacuation was a serious event worthy of anguished responses. There was no such quasi-justification for Rabbi Marvin Hier's invocation of Auschwitz, on CNN, after England's Prince Harry committed the stupid but trivial offense of showing up at a costume party in Nazi attire. Hier, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, urged that Harry "should visit Auschwitz to show the world that he can be serious, that he understands the great atrocity that occurred there."

There we have an American filmmaker, Israeli government officials and a foolish young British royal all bludgeoned with Birkenau. The world is aware how jealously the Jewish community guards the Holocaust, both as a memory and as a weapon. That antisemites wish to cause us pain seems an unalterable fact of life. But how they do this, and what form of slander they choose, is something over which we have some influence.

Our enemies seek to torment us by denying history, even though there are countless other ways they could express their hate. That is so in part because of choices we make. For this, we can thank ourselves, our leaders and other Jews who speak for us.

David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History" (Doubleday).

Sounds of Summer: Alleged war criminal denies involvement in murder of Jewish man

HAMISH ROBERTSON: Hello, I'm Hamish Robertson. As part of the ABC's summer season, we now present a Current Affairs Special.

Earlier in the year, the Australian Government considered the case of a suspected Hungarian war criminal – more than 60 years after he allegedly murdered a Jewish man.

Charles Zentai, an Australian citizen living in Perth, has been accused of carrying out the murder in Budapest in 1944.

Mr Zentai was serving in the Hungarian Army at the time.

He later fled from Hungary as the Soviet Army advanced, and he emigrated with his family after the war.

He moved to Western Australia and until his name started being mentioned in relation to the murder allegations, Dr Zentai lived a relatively peaceful life.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre says it's time for Charles Zentai to face justice over his alleged activities during the Second World War, and he's shortly to face an extradition hearing.

But Mr Zentai's family and friends believe he's totally innocent and say they're shocked by the allegations.

So has justice caught up with Charles Zentai after more than half a century, or is it all a terrible mistake, based on flawed evidence?

David Weber prepared this report.

DAVID WEBER: The Simon Wiesenthal Centre says Charles Zentai tortured and murdered a Jewish man and threw his body into the Danube. Charles Zentai denies he's a war criminal. He maintains he never murdered anyone. He's said as much to a TV crew soon after the allegations were first raised in Australia.

REPORTER: You are not a war criminal?

CHARLES ZENTAI: No.

REPORTER: You did not kill Peter Balazs?

CHARLES ZENTAI: No. I didn't know him.

DAVID WEBER: Since that interview, Charles Zentai has spoken through his lawyer. But the Simon Wiesenthal Centre says Mr Zentai's case is the strongest that's ever been put to the Australian Government for an alleged war criminal.

The Centre's Dr Efraim Zuroff.

EFRIAM ZUROFF: We should not be blinded by the number of years that passed, or the age of the defendant. The fact that someone reached an elderly age in no way diminishes his guilt, in no way turns that person into righteous gentile.

DAVID WEBER: But if what Dr Zuroff says is true, it would mean Charles Zentai had been lying to his family for more than 50 years. Mr Zentai's son is appalled at the suggestion.

ERNIE STEINER: I know in my heart that my father is telling me the truth. I have to look him in the eye and ask him those things. But once I read through the family transcripts, there it was and it verified everything he'd ever, ever told us.

(sound of bombs exploding)

DAVID WEBER: Charles Zentai was in his early 20's when the Russians invaded Hungary. He was serving the Hungarian army in a transport unit.

RADIO ANNOUNCER (archival): The Hungarian capital of Budapest now faces attack from yet another quarter. Marshall Tito announces that Yugoslav and Russian troops have crossed the Danube near the northern frontier of Yugoslavia and advanced into Hungary.

(sound of bombs exploding)

DAVID WEBER: The Germans had retreated to Budapest after suffering a series of defeats in 1944.

RADIO ANNOUNCER (archival): Russian troops in southern Hungary yesterday extended their great salient up to Lake Balaton by the capture of nearly 100 places. These included a town 30 miles from Budapest and another on the shore of Lake Balaton.

DAVID WEBER: The Russians were coming. In Budapest, some prepared for battle while others received evacuation orders. Some panicked and some fled. Some went out to exact retribution on Jewish people. In November, the teenager Peter Balazs was one of those to be targeted. He was pulled off the streets and murdered. He was apparently being punished for not wearing a yellow star. He was beaten and tortured before being killed and thrown into the river, with his body weighed down so it would sink.

(sound of machine gunfire)

Within weeks, the Soviet army had laid siege to the Hungarian capital. German efforts to relieve Budapest failed and the city finally fell on February the 13th 1945. It's estimated that around 160,000 people died.

(sound of bombs exploding)

Less that 800 German and Hungarian soldiers survived. More than half the city was destroyed. The women were repeatedly raped. There were suicides; many Hungarians simply went missing.

Three months later, the war in Europe was over.

RADIO ANNOUNCER (archival): This is London calling. Here is a news flash. The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 2 (archival): We're breaking into our programs for the second time tonight, this time with some splendid news from Moscow. Berlin has fallen. Marshall Stalin has just announced the complete capture of the capital of Germany, the centre of German imperialism and the cradle of German aggression.

DAVID WEBER: It's estimated that one tenth of the victims of the holocaust were Hungarian Jews. After the war, two men from Charles Zentai's unit were arrested in related to the murder of Peter Balazs. They were convicted in 1947. But they'd implicated Charles Zentai. And witnesses at the trial testified that he was involved. Charles Zentai has maintained he left Budapest as ordered one day before the murder of Peter Balazs.

The day Peter Balazs was killed was November the 8th. The date Charles Zentai provides for his departure is November the 7th. In 1994, Mr Zentai was recorded on tape for family archives. On the tape, Charles Zentai is asked when it was that he left Budapest. He and his now deceased wife said it was on November the 7th, with a large complement of troops and families.

INTERVIEWER: So you moved to the west?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: What were the dates when you actually left?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Seventh of November we left Budapest.

WIFE: That was with the army.

CHARLES ZENTAI: With the army.

WIFE: So we are both safer.

INTERVIEWER: And your aunty went with you?

WIFE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: How many of you would you estimate?

CHARLES ZENTAI: We had 600 personnel and 800 horses and 53 families.

DAVID WEBER: Charles Zentai and his family went to Germany and then to Italy before leaving Europe for good. They arrived in Australian in 1950. Charles Zentai raised his family working as a nurse and he became active in the Catholic Church. He retired, living in the southern Perth suburb of Willetton. His wife passed away after some years of illness.

Then, in March 2005, Hungary issued an international arrest warrant for Charles Zentai who was now 83 years old. Mr Zentai, seemingly surprised by a commercial television news crew, allowed them a brief interview.

CHARLES ZENTAI: All I have to say and want to say at this stage, that this is all wrong and I'm prepared to go back to Hungary to defend myself.

REPORTER: You are not a war criminal?

CHARLES ZENTAI: No.

REPORTER: You did not kill Peter Balazs?

CHARLES ZENTAI: No, I didn't know him.

DAVID WEBER: But the Hungarians hadn't provided enough information to the Australian Government in order to seek extradition. So there was a silence for months and months as the extradition request was sorted out. Then, Charles Zentai was arrested. Mr Zentai's lawyer Michael Bowden complained that he wasn't able to get access to the documents being used against him.

MICHAEL BOWDEN: The next step is for him to be brought before the court. The court will then decide whether or not he's eligible for surrender. It then goes back to the minister to determine whether or not he will in fact be surrendered. It is likely to take some considerable period of time. The extradition will be challenged on a number of bases – not only the legal and formal requirements but also the manner in which the original evidence that they're relying on was obtained.

DAVID WEBER: But Mr Zentai had got bail, which is a rare thing in an extradition case.

MICHAEL BOWDEN: The age of Mr Zentai of course is 83; he's been in Australia for in excess of 50 years. He's known about this for some considerable period of time and obviously he doesn't represent a flight risk, as the Magistrate has found. The matter is likely to take some time. It's very stressful for Mr Zentai and his family as I'm sure you'll appreciate. Other than that, I really don't want to take the matter any further.

DAVID WEBER: Does he deny the allegations?

MICHAEL BOWDEN: There is no doubt that the allegations are denied.

DAVID WEBER: Some days after the arrest, Father John Flynn came to the defence of Charles Zentai. He's known Charles Zentai since the 1970's. He wrote to the Justice Minister Chris Ellison, calling on him not to allow the extradition. Father Flynn spoke up for Mr Zentai on ABC Local Radio in Perth.

JOHN FLYNN: I'm responding and I'm reacting just as a person that has known Charlie in the parish for, you know, the time that I've been in the parish, and I'm only making the statement on the basis of the person, the real person that I know. And I think it's something that needs to be taken into account. This is the person – this is the type of person he is. And it throws a question up, I think, whether or not such a person could possibly be involved in the sort of crimes that he's been accused of.

DAVID WEBER: The Justice Minister Chris Ellison said he wouldn't meet Father Flynn or anyone else.

CHRIS ELLISON: Well certainly I respect Father Flynn's views, and I know he holds them genuinely, but I've had a lot of correspondence on this matter from a variety of people in the community, in particular the Jewish community. But what I have indicated is that I will not meet with Mr Zentai, nor anyone else, on this matter. The usual process is for me to take written submissions. Once you start meeting with people the question is where do you stop because other people who have an interest in the matter will say look, I want to see you as well.

DAVID WEBER: Charles Zentai's son Ernie Steiner approached the media to speak on behalf of his father. He said he was convinced of his father's innocence.

ERNIE STEINER: We absolutely reject the allegations. We know my father was not in Budapest on the November 8th, 1944, that he actually left with a large contingent of civilians and military people on the 7th of November 1944. And we have documentation from a family interview that we conducted in 1994 when my mother was still alive, and these dates have been verified in the documentation and the audio twice, they mention that date.

DAVID WEBER: What do you have to say about the evidence that's been gathered against your father and been made public in some cases?

ERNIE STEINER: The evidence that has been gained from the people's courts of Hungary in 1947, and it's well known that the people's courts of those days were corrupt. Hundreds of innocent people were executed in Budapest following those people's courts. And yet they're using that evidence to gain the extradition of my father.

DAVID WEBER: Ernie Steiner had this to say about the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

ERNIE STEINER: They have made a huge mistake and they have done a lot of good work in the past. But why, after all these years, are they pursuing my father when it would have been far more logical really, to do this years ago. My father's never hidden, he's always had the same name, Zentai, since he was 13 years old. The family name was changed by his sister originally, and my dad had no say in it, when he was 13. He's always lived at a registered address in Germany and in Australia. And he's always had a public profile. He's been President of the Hungarian Club. He's never tried to hide at all.

DAVID WEBER: Have you asked your father since these allegations were raised whether he did it?

ERNIE STEINER: Absolutely. I did, and you have to ask those things, and I know in my heart that my father is telling me the truth. I have to look him in the eye and ask him those things. But once I read through the family transcripts, there it was and it verified everything he'd ever, ever told us.

DAVID WEBER: What's your father's health like?

ERNIE STEINER: My father's health is not good. He has had a heart condition for 30 years, and he also has peripheral neuropathy – he's losing feeling in his limbs. He's given up driving, and not to mention the stress that this is putting on him, and he just cannot understand why it has all come to this.

DAVID WEBER: Ernie Steiner said the matter had proved to be stressful for the family.

ERNIE STEINER: My children read things in the paper or they see things on television and the vilification, you know, labelling my father a Nazi. He was never a Nazi. He was a conscripted officer. He was never involved in people round-ups. He was in a transport division and also part of the military school.

DAVID WEBER: The older sister of Charles Zentai, Julia Nicoletti, remembers leaving Budapest in early November. She said her brother was not a keen member of the Hungarian army and he was not anti-Jewish. It was Julia Nicoletti who had the name Steiner changed to Zentai. She did this before the war to make it easier to get work. Although the family was and still is Catholic, the name Steiner gave the impression they were Jewish, and the family risked ongoing discrimination. Julia Nicoletti's account is that she left the capital with her brother in the convoy that Charles Zentai has referred to. But she can't remember the date of their departure.

The Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has dismissed the arguments and claims put forward by those defending Charles Zentai.

EFRAIM ZUROFF: An effort was made by the Balazs family to have Hungary seek his extradition from Germany when they learned about his role in the murder of Peter Balazs and that he had escaped to occupied Germany and was in the American zone. But the Americans did not respond to that request – there was a general reluctance to send people back to Eastern Europe – that might have been one of the reasons. And afterwards, the issue was basically forgotten.

DAVID WEBER: Except in the cases of higher-ranking Nazis, sending suspected war criminals back to face their accusers was not a high priority in the immediate aftermath of the war. Then, in 1948, Hungary became a communist state in Stalin's style. The west became very reluctant to send suspected war criminals to countries in the Soviet block.

Dr Efraim Zuroff.

EFRAIM ZUROFF: We should not be blinded by the number of years that passed, or the age of the defendant. The fact that someone reached an elderly age in no way diminishes his guilt, in no way turns that person into a righteous gentile. If Mr Zentai's healthy – our impression is that he is healthy – we think it's extremely important that he be held accountable and this is what we expect of the Australian Government. We're sending a message, and that is that if someone harms Jews, if someone tries to destroy the Jewish people, there'll be other Jews who will make every effort to try and bring that person to justice, to hold them accountable. It may take 10 years or 20 years or in some cases much more, as in this case.

DAVID WEBER: Dr Zuroff agreed to talk further about Operation Last Chance, which was established to clear up the remaining Nazis considered guilty of war crimes, as well as their sympathisers. Operation Last Chance has been launched in Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Austria and Hungary. The program offers up to 10,000 euros for information. Dr Zuroff said there'd been a mixed reception.

EFRAIM ZUROFF: As you can imagine, there are numerous people who are not exactly thrilled that the project is launched in their country, but that's precisely why it was launched. In other words, we're not only trying to bring Nazi war criminals to justice, we're trying to promote public debate and ensure historical truth in textbooks and in the new narratives that are being written in post communist Europe.

DAVID WEBER: Why were the countries that I mentioned, why were they particularly targeted in Operation Last Chance?

EFRAIM ZUROFF: Because we're focussing on the countries in which the local population actively participated in the murders. In each one of those countries, the local population were active partners in the mass murder of Jews, and that's why we're focussing on them. As you can imagine, we have to focus on the people who are actually hands on killers and people who bare their extra responsibility for mass murder because as well all understand, time is running out, which is the reason that the project was called Operation Last Chance. This is something that we think is particularly important given the fact that these countries are now democracies, they have independence and they're in a position for the first time, to really confront their World War II record, and we think that the way that this record is confronted and the extent to which these countries are willing to face the past and acknowledge their own guilt is a major factor in how these countries will interact with the rest of the world, the quality of their democracy, their relations with the Jews, the attitude towards anti-Semitism – all these issues which we think are of significance.

DAVID WEBER: Why are people being paid for information?

EFRAIM ZUROFF: Well, we're offering money – not all the people who give us information actually wanted the money. And many times the information is submitted with the clear statement that we don't want the money, we're not doing it for the money. But the offer of money is basically an attempt or a way of getting public attention to the project, because believe me, if I had gone to these countries and held a press conference and said okay, I want you all to be people of good conscience now and give information and do the right thing – I don't think a single journalist would have showed up to the press conference.

DAVID WEBER: Given the funds that have been made available, have you had many nuisance reports – claims being made about people that are simply not true?

EFRAIM ZUROFF: We had at least one such report in Latvia, as it turns out. But so far it has not been a common phenomenon. I'm actually quite surprised. What often does happen though is that people will give us information that is really worthless because either it can't be checked out because it happened so long ago, or it's simply of no value and precious time is wasted in processing that information.

DAVID WEBER: How many Nazi war criminals or sympathisers or indeed, killers of Jews who were nationals of some of those other countries, how many have been unearthed by Operation Last Chance?

EFRAIM ZUROFF: We've already received the names of 390 suspects in the nine countries in which Operation Last Chance was launched, as well as some other countries. In other words, the launching of the project led to the receipt of information regarding people in other countries in which the project was never officially started.

DAVID WEBER: Like Australia for instance?

EFRAIM ZUROFF: Like Australia for example, right

DAVID WEBER: After the extradition hearing in Perth, the Justice Minister Chris Ellison will make a decision, with a departmental report to guide him. Mr Zentai's lawyer has indicated he'll use all the appeals processes available. The case could go all the way to the High Court.

HAMISH ROBERTSON: That report was compiled by David Weber in Perth. You've been listening to a Current Affairs Special.

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There is a new action to remove John Demjanjuk from the USA. He has been legally persecuted for decades and each time legal prosecution exonerated him. The new move will most likely rely on the fraudulent pattern used by US authorities in 2005 on Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf.

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