The Saga of David Irving by Ernst Zündel

Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel (born April 24, 1939) is a German Canadian Holocaust Revisionist.
In 1977, Zündel founded a press publishing house called Samisdat Publishers.
David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English writer specializing in the military history of World War II. He is the author of over 30 books on the subject, including The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Uprising! (1981), Churchill's War (1987), and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996).
On November 11, 2005, he was arrested during a visit in Austria for the “thought crime” - committed in 1989 (!) - of having referred to “mythical” gas chambers at Auschwitz . Denied bail, he was held in jail until his trial on February 20, 2006, when a court in Vienna sentenced him to three years in prison for having “denied the Holocaust.”
While Irving is the most prominent “thought criminal” in the western world today, his case is by no means unique. In several European countries, as well as in Israel, “Holocaust denial” is a crime. The list of those who have been imprisoned, fined or forced into exile for expressing skepticism about the official Holocaust story is a long one, and includes Robert Faurisson, Roger Garaudy and Georges Theil in France, Siegfried Verbeke in Belgium, Jürgen Graf and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in Switzerland, and Günter Deckert, Hans Schmidt and Fredrick Toben in Germany.
Zundel is probably best known for his central role in the "Holocaust Trials" of 1985 and 1988. He was brought to court in Toronto on a charge of "publishing false news," and specifically for publishing a reprint edition of a booklet entitled Did Six Million Really Die?.

Zundel's two lengthy trials - the 1985 trial lasted two months, and the 1988 trial lasted four months - have been the closest thing anywhere to full scale debates on the Holocaust issue. For the first time ever, "Holocaust survivors" and Holocaust historians were closely and critically questioned under oath about their claims and views.To wage the legal battle that was forced upon him, he brought together an impressive international team of revisionist scholars, legal specialists, researchers, and many others. From numerous libraries and archives in North America and Europe , this group assembled at "Zundelhaus" one of the most impressive collections of evidence anywhere on this chapter of history.

Among those who testified on Zundel's behalf in the trials were Robert Faurisson, David Irving, Mark Weber, William Lindsey, Udo Walendy, and Bradley Smith. As a result of the two trials, an enormous quantity of compelling evidence refuting the Holocaust extermination story was presented to the court and thereby was made part of the permanent public record. Perhaps the most important of this evidence was the historic testimony of American gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter about his on-site forensic examination of the alleged extermination gas chambers in Poland .
Zundel was found guilty in the 1985 trial, but the verdict was set aside by the provincial appeals court. It ruled that the judge in that trial had, among other things, given improper instructions to the jury, and had improperly excluded defense evidence. In May 1988, at the conclusion of the second Zundel trial, the jury declared him guilty. A few days later, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment.

On appeal, Canada 's Supreme Court threw out the conviction, declaring on August 27, 1992, that the archaic "false news" law under which he had been convicted was a violation of the country's Charter of Rights. This was not only a personal vindication by Canada 's highest court; Ernst Zundel secured an important victory for the rights of all Canadians.

Zundel's next great legal battle was fought out before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Toronto on charges, instigated by Jewish groups, of promoting "hatred or contempt" against Jews through the "Zundelsite" Internet web site (www.zundelsite.org), operated by Ingrid Rimland from the United States. In this legal action, as the Tribunal's presiding Commissioner declared, the truth or validity of the supposedly "hateful" items was not a consideration. (Ultimately the Tribunal declared the "Zundelsite" to be unlawful, but because the site is based in the US , the ruling is unenforceable.)

During the 42 years he lived in Canada , Ernst Zundel was never convicted of a crime. He was, however, repeatedly a victim of violence and hate. He survived three assassination attempts, including by arson and pipe bomb. He's also endured years of legal harassment and repeated jailings.
On February 5, 2003, Ernst Zundel was arrested at their quiet home in the mountain region of eastern Tennessee . He was seized on the pretext that he had violated immigration regulations, or had missed an interview date with US immigration authorities, even though he had entered the US legally, was married to an American citizen, had no criminal record, and was acting diligently, and in full accord with the law, to secure status as a permanent legal resident.

After being held for two weeks, he was deported to Canada . For two years -- from mid-February 2003 to March 1, 2005 - he was held in solitary confinement in the Toronto West Detention Centre, on the pretext that he is a threat to national security.
On March 1, 2005, Zundel was deported to Germany , just as Jewish groups had been demanding. Since then he has been held in the Mannheim prison were he faces years of imprisonment for the "thought crime" of "denying the Holocaust." ("Holocaust denial" is against the law in Germany , France , Switzerland and some other European countries.)

On June 29, 2005, the public prosecutor in Mannheim formally charged Zundel with inciting "hatred" by having written or distributed texts that "approve, deny or play down" genocidal actions carried out by Germany's wartime regime, and which "denigrate the memory of the [Jewish] dead.