(audio) Ernst Zundel’s Life Story – w/ Jim Fetzer 2012 — “This is the first time I’m speaking to somebody in this detail” – Includes Full Transcript

• • •

(source)

– ecce Ernst Zündel –

in his own words :

T H E R E A L D E A L W I T H J I M F E T Z E R P O D C A S T

F R I D A Y , A U G U S T  3 , 2 0 1 2

Ernst Zundel

Persecuted & imprisoned for research on WWII
P O S T E D B Y T O T A L A T

Ernst Zündel’s last interview 2012 – Published on August 10, 2017 …

JF – This is Jim Fetzer, your host on The Real
Deal, with an extraordinary guest today from
Germany, a man who has been punished more
than anyone else I know for his articulation of his
sincere beliefs about controversial issues in
history – in this instance in particular about the
holocaust. He has published numerous books, but
he also has had an extraordinary series of legal
encounters with governments, including those of

the United States and Canada. His name is known
well worldwide. Ernst Zundel, welcome to The
Real Deal.
EZ – Greeting to you. I am shaking in my boots,
Jim Fetzer – and they are not jackboots, Jim, they
are hiking boots made in China as is appropriate,
right?
JF – We are very nearly the same age, you were
born in 1939 and I was born in 1940.

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EZ – I saw that you left the US Forces which
surprised me, virtually at the time when I went
for Prime Minister of Canada.
F – Ah, fantastic, fantastic!
EZ – How about that …
JF – Yes, you must tell us, make a sketch of your
history, Ernst. How you became interested … from
the beginning … where were you born?
EZ – We will start with that, right?
JF – Yes
EZ – Ok, I was born in a small town in the Black
Forest in Germany, famous for its Cuckoo clocks.
The house that I was born in was in my family for
over 400 years.
JF – was that Oberammergau?
EZ – No no, Black Forest, Black Forest is closer to
Karlsruhe, Pforzheim, Stuttgart, Strassburg, we
are close to the French border.
JF – When I was 15 years old I was on a bicycle
tour, through (SETA?) staying at youth hostels
England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland
and France.
EZ – You must have been in good shape!
JF – It was a wonderful experience – this is 1956.
EZ – Wow, during the time of the Hungarian
Revolution.
JF – That’s true, that’s true too. So …
EZ – Let me continue …
JF – Yeah …
EZ – Jim, I was born into this old house, we were
six children all told. My father was a lumberjack,
Holzfäller we call it in German, and we had a few
cows, chickens, goats, sheep and look in this
medieval -l its really a medieval house made of ..
actually they didn’t even have cement these poor
peasants. They used clay between stuff they
collected, little rocks from the fields and the rest
was timber. Just like you see in old newsreels or
things about history. We had an outdoor toilet,
and for many years they had no running water
nor electricity that was only installed during the
time of Hitler – before that it was just deepest
middle ages, you know. But I was lucky, I was
born to the luxury of life, electric light and
running water, and I went to our local country
school after the war was over. The first day in
school was in the church basement of our little
town, five thousand souls, and the reason why it
was in the church basement was because the
French army had just taken over our school house
and Moroccan and Algerian troops were stationed
in our old school house; and the teachers were
actually kind of kindergarten teachers, because
most of the other regular teachers in Germany
had been National Socialist Party members or
belonged to organisations that were forbidden by
the new occupation forces. So we were, get this,
for Americans, teachers and American audiences,
we were 104 children in my class – 104 children,
because so many refugees had come from the
east, and so many people had come from

bombed-out cities who were then living in these
small towns like ours.
JF – How many teachers did you have for a
hundred children?
EZ – One
JF – One teacher for a hundred children!
EZ – And she was not even a real teacher. She
was a very nice totally overwhelmed kindergarten
teacher – Frau Maier was her name. But you know
she was lucky, we were all so starved and so
weak and so traumatised by the war that we were
not rambunctious. I remember though, we were
orderly even as six year old school children, we
were impacted by what the hell had happened to
our society and our families.
Most of the fathers of course were either in allied
prisoner of war camps, had been killed or were at
least not at home; and so it was the women who
were looking after us, my mother included. She
was alone with six children and all those chickens
and goats. But we were lucky Jim, because we
had this homestead and we could feed ourselves,
because hunger starved the land in Germany, I
mean serious hunger. We got two slices of bread
per person a day, and sugar or meat you could
hardly talk about, you know. And so I was at the
time sick with malnutrition and had pneumonia
frequently, because of being not fed well enough
and so were my brothers and sisters. So there
was no rambunctiousness, those teachers could
cope with us, you know.
And so, as things improved, I will have to say
thanks to American help. Americans gave at the
time porridge, oats, and what they did in the
school house, they had these big pots and the
school janitor cooked those cups of porridge –
each child had to bring a cup from home and so at
the morning break at 9 or 10 am, we either got a
cup of milk or we got porridge, and believe me
that was for us children a real treat and for the
parents a real relief.
And so when thing improved further, we had
hand-me-down clothes. My father came back from
prisoner of war camp, he was in the French prison
camp, and during the war he had been a medic,
and he was with the ambulance train. Germany
had this very good system, because it was a
continental power, we brought our cripples or
invalids usually who could no longer walk or be
taken by ordinary train back to Germany. They
came in these ambulance trains which were like
hospital trains that had their stretcher
arrangement and so on.
And so during the entire war that was his job. So,
he saw a lot of misery and unfortunately all these
wounded, and crippled and shattered men
impacted on him so badly so that when he came
back he was an alcoholic.
And so I grew up in these miserable surrounding
in The Black Forest with not enough really warm
clothes or warm shoes, always having leaky

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leather hand-me-down shoes with wooden soles
that were cottoned on there. I must tell you, it
wasn’t exactly a nice childhood from the point of
view of comfort but we were in life’s struggles for
survival, and I and my brothers and sisters made
the most of it in school.
It turns out I was one of the brighter children out
of the 104. Usually I was in first, second or third
spot; and I loved going to school for two reasons:
It was warm, we were fed and I could sit down
and didn’t have to climb the steep hillsides cutting
grass and stuff like that; didn’t have to feed my
animals. So school was like R&R for me, and I
made the most of it – I loved going to school Jim,
I loved going to school. And that continued till I
actually got to Canada.
But I am getting a little ahead of myself. I took
training as a commercial artist, photo re-toucher
and graphic artist in Germany, made an
apprenticeship and that apprenticeship was very
thorough, and allowed me, once I decided to
leave home, to earn very good money. First in
Germany, and then I decided to emigrate,
because I was a pacifist, a Christian and did not
want to join an army because I was totally
believing that the German military were at the
root of all this terrible stuff that had befallen us. I
totally believed the allied propaganda and so I
hightailed it out of Germany and looked for a
country where there was no military draft. And to
my surprise only Canada had no military draft.
JF – Now Ernst, in terms of the German
educational system, were the high schools
referred to as Gymnasium?
EZ – That’s right
JF – You completed the Gymnasium?
EZ – No, we were too poor – my father drank
away all the money. I probably finished 8th grade
of public school – and Volksschule they called it in
Germany.
JF – I tend to conjecture, however, that those 8
grades in Germany then were probably equivalent
to a high school education.
EZ – Absolutely, I could always easily keep up
with my high school graduates in the United
States or in Canada because the German
educational system at that time was still very
good and very thorough.
JF – Very rigorous
EZ – Yeah, and so, when I was finished with
public school with 8 years and then went to
Pforzheim, the nearby city, to be training in the
Graphic Arts Institute, I was able to attend a
special graphic school there. To continue you had
still geometry and history. We had no foreign
languages, I must say, that the allies had
forbidden for us to learn foreign languages. . .
pardon ?
JF – Instruction was given in German or English?
EZ – No, no – in German.

JF – Why would the allies forbid the learning of a
foreign language?
EZ – Because then the rule then was and the
hatred was such that they thought that the
Germans would be bottled up – Germany was
more or less like a glorified concentration camp.
Yeah, we had no foreign language at all. This was
one of the things that at first was a kind of a
handicap for me because when I decided, when
the army was breathing down my neck, the new
German army they had installed here, I could not
speak a foreign language which was a problem for
emigrating. And so when I came to Canada, I
basically came there with maybe four or five
hundred words vocabulary and then I had taught
myself in a correspondence course with a book
and by listening to BBC radio.
JF – Now, you would have gone to work, you
mentioned as a graphic artist when you were a
teenager.
EZ – Yeah, that’s right.
JF – About what year would that have been –
mid-fifties?
EZ – 1953 to 1956, when you were bicycling
throughout the land, I was just finishing my
three-year apprenticeship and one year later I
already cast around for a country where I could
escape to.
JF – So, you moved to Canada in 57?
EZ – Yeah – in 58
JF – In 58, yeah, that was the year I graduated
from high school.
EZ – Yeah so in 58 I already got there, and I was
such a hillbilly, Jim. I didn’t even know that
Canada was a Commonwealth and that the Queen
of England was also the Queen of Canada. And I
was so surprised on the ship, we emigrated by
ship, that there was a Queen on the Dollar bill.
You can imagine, we had no radio or no TV at our
house, and so I was really a hillbilly, I have to say
that, you know
JF – Where did you arrive in Canada? In the
vicinity of Toronto?
EZ – I arrived in Montreal, and the immigration
department from Canada had decided that
Toronto was the centre of the graphic arts, and I
would most likely be better off to go there,
because they knew I would find a job more easily,
and they were absolutely right. Within three days
with my virtually non existent English I landed a
fantastic job. And based on my, I had taken
samples of my work with me, in a duffle bag, I
presented that, I had from my dictionary, I said a
few sentences about graphic arts firms advertising
agencies and so on, and within three days I had a
fantastic job making $90 a week – that was a lot
of money at that time. And they hired me, they
told me later on, only because they didn’t want
another company to snap me up, because I was
so versatile and skilled in my work. And so for the
first week or month I did nothing but learn

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English in that firm. At night I went to night
school, and I took to English like a duck takes to
water.
JF – That’s wonderful. Yes, your English is quite
good.
EZ – I totally immersed myself and I got ahead
and tested at the end of it and I passed those
tests usually with 96/94, one even with 90
percent of the things answered correctly, you
know. And so Jim, during the evening school that
I attended to learn English, I met one heck of a
good looking French/Canadian lady, and within
months she was my wife, and within a year we
had a baby.
JF – How wonderful.
EZ – Our first son was born in 1960, and during
pregnancy my wife got homesick, as women
sometimes do, and she kept saying to me, I’d like
to go back to Quebec where I can be with my
French speaking people. And I thought to myself
oh, wow, can you imagine I have just mastered
enough English as I can cope, and now she wants
to go to Quebec? But you know, when you are
young and in love, the world is open to you, I said
yes and packed up my few belongings and I had
bought a car by then. We drove to Quebec and
then I pounded the pavements in Montreal, the
biggest city in French Canada and landed not a
job but various contracts as a freelance artist. So
I became a freelance artist with my broken French
and my better English, and I earned within a very
short time a very good living, due to American
help, in the person of Dale Carnegie.
JF – And your wife then is your wife today?
EZ – No, my wife and I, we separated after 29
years of marriage.
JF – I see.
EZ – Ingrid is my third wife.
JF – I see.
EZ – I had a little interim experience, that was
lets say character forming, in between.
JF – Yes
EZ – Back to Quebec – in Quebec of course once I
stuck roots down there, I took Dale Carnegie
courses, and Dale Carnegie had this famous book
about ..
JF – How To Win Friends And Influence People …
EZ –… How To Win Friends And Influence People
.. and then how to appear in public, and then I
found another American self-help guru. You have
to understand, I am a great lover of self-help
books. This man’s name was Napoleon Hill.
JF- Ernst, I can’t imagine where I would be today
if I had only taken your Carnegie’s thoughts to
heart…Dale Carnegie’s thoughts to heart.
EZ – I tell you, Napoleon Hill was, however, the
crème de la crème. He wrote a book Think And
Grow Rich …
JF- Think And Grow Rich – I love it!
EZ – 21 million copies sold.

JF – Of course you notice he got rich by thinking
of the book.
EZ – Yeah – I think you are right, that’s exactly
right, but I learnt from that man, because I was
such a simpleton and hillbilly. I learnt from that
American self- help author how to sell myself,
Jim. He was a real self-promoter, and he actually
was like a magic key. I never looked back after I
read that book, Think And Grow Rich, by
Napoleon Hill.
JF – Fascinating.
EZ – I doubled my income within 6 months, Jim
Fetzer.
JF – Did you really?
EZ – I doubled my income within six months.
JF – I have been always so terrible at anything
related to business or finance.
EZ – Jim, I was an absolutely passionate and still
am a passionate defender and believer in free
enterprise.
JF – And you became somehow involved in
Canadian politics at some point?
RZ – I loved being involved in politics after I
overcame my shyness due to this Dale Carnegie
and Napoleon Hill training, because I was so
terribly intimidated by the world, and these two
authors set me free. I took courses in what they
call personal development which included public
speaking, and of course that meant I had to force
myself to go to church groups, then air force
cadets and so on to talk about World War II
topics. And that was the beginning of my
involvement in political topics.
JF – So you were doing research at libraries
reading works …
EZ – Yeah, I went to libraries, to the public library
and I studied these books, and of course now I
could read certainly English fluently and French
haltingly, and a whole new world opened up for
me. And then I met a French Canadian who had
been in a concentration camp in Canada during
World War Two. He was a Canadian officer but he
had the misfortune of having had a party, a
political party, quite a large political party,
virtually you have to call it National Socialist. And
I met him, and he made available to me his own
private library of over 4,000 books, many of them
German, many of them sent to him by Rudolf
Hess’ organisation.
JF- Ernst, you know many, many of your
problems no doubt have arisen because the public
in general, I am sure, that’s certainly is true in
the United States and maybe slightly less in
Canada, simply don’t do a lot of reading, they
don’t know a lot of history. I would say Americans
are even more ignorant of history than they are of
science. We are a scientifically illiterate nation.
EZ – Yeah well, but to me all this was almost,
excuse me to say that, irrelevant.
JF – Yes

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EZ – I was living in a world of my own by
Napoleon Hill. I was out there making the
maximum use of the new freedoms that the North
American continent gave me.
JF – Yes, yes.
EZ – And it was wonderful. In the sixties, well you
were there, we were the same age, in the sixties
America and Canada were pulsating, thriving,
confident, forward looking societies. Everything
was hustling and bustling you know, and it was
the absolute right environment for Ernst Zündel to
be in.
JF – Especially until up to 22 November 1963
when the assassination of JFK took away our most
promising million-visionary political leader.
EZ – Yeah, you are absolutely right. And I
remember the day where I was and what I was
doing like most other Americans and Canadians
still do today. I know where I have been, thinking
and doing on that tragic day.
JF – Yes. I was a young marine core officer
anchored aboard the LPHG, LPH meaning Landing
Platform Helicopter. It’s a carrier but it has a
shallow draft because it doesn’t require the deep
hull for fixed wing aircraft, since helicopters take
off and land vertically. And I was awakened at
3.30 in the morning by the officer at the deck,
who happened to be the executive officer of the
mortar battery of which I was the fire direction
officer to tell me, that JFK had been shot. Then an
hour later he had awakened me to tell me they
caught the guy who had done it, and that he was
a communist, which I thought then was pretty
fast work.
EZ – Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember all that
seeing black and white flickering through the
television, you know. Shocked. The whole, I think
the whole North American continent was basically
in shock by that experience, you know.
I was then, as I said, cutting my teeth on North
American society, doing really well in the graphic
arts. I was selling my paintings which was really
my premier love. I had wanted to be actually a
fine arts painter, not a commercial artist. And
here I had a good career, making good money,
good cars, a bungalow. I was leaving the rest in
the dust behind.
And then I went to Europe, took my wife to
Europe, had my little boy with us. We travelled
Europe for thre-and-a-half months, I had made
enough money, and then came back to the United
States, ah to Canada, and then went down to the
United States, opened a mobile art gallery in a
former hairdressing saloon on wheels in Texas of
all places, exhibited my paintings, and it was a
total disaster.
JF – Well, Texas is a bit of a backwater,
culturally.
EZ – Can you imagine, I had not done any
research.
JF – What town in Texas were you ?

EZ – I went to Midland
JF – Midland?
EZ – Yeah, Midland
JF – That’s ironic, that’s George W Bush’s
stomping ground.
EZ – Yeah, I know. I was impressed by the living
rooms of these Texans. They were almost as big
as European ball rooms, you know.
JF – Yes, yes. Ernst, we are going to take our first
break. Jim Fetzer here on The Real Deal with my
very special guest today Ernst Zündel.
JF – You were telling us you made it to Midland,
Texas, which is quite ironic all things considered
and that it was a bit of a disaster because there
was no appreciation for your work.
EZ – Yeah, you know why? Right across the
border were all these Mexican artists and they
painted very competently these nice little Indian
children with their big googly eyes and on black
velvet no less and in very faint low colours
JF – Yes, totally different orientation toward art…
predominant at the time
EZ – Yes, that’s right. They did not want Bavarian
churches and Alpine themes that I was painting.
JF – They probably never even heard of Bavaria.
EZ – Yeah, I was exhibiting my paintings, my
brother who was doing this with me, also lived in
the United States, two years younger, came to
me with a letter and he was absolutely pale in the
face, and he said Ernst, I have just been drafted
to the US army. The Draft Board had caught up
with him, and that meant my Texas adventure
was coming to an abrupt end. I had to sell the
gallery and leave my paintings in storage, and
headed north to Canada, and as soon as I had
once again I had started my business in the
graphic arts in Montreal, I decided I go to night
school to improve my French and then study
political science.
JF – Was it you yourself who was being drafted?
EZ – No, my brother.
JF – Your brother, your brother?
EZ – Yeah, because I was a Canadian resident.
JF – So your brother was a US citizen at that
time?
EZ – No, my brother, my younger brother was
drafted …
JF – So, what I am saying, he was then a US
citizen to be subject to the draft?
EZ – No he was not even a US citizen today.
JF – Nevertheless, he was drafted?
EZ – He was drafted.
JF – Where was he residing at the time?
EZ – In Texas …
JF – Somewhere also in Texas?
EZ – Yeah, yeah.
JF – And even though he wasn’t a US citizen he
was drafted? That’s striking to me, I didn’t even
know that was legal.
EZ – Yeah well, I was there when he was showing
me the letter and so on. Anyway, so the first

25

thing when he was in the US forces, they of
course heard his accent and the sergeant said to
him, Ok Zündel, goose step ahead – ha, ha.
JF – Goose step ahead … Were they intelligent
and make him a translator or have him working
on a truck?
EZ- No, no. My brother weaselled his way through
various jobs and eventually ended up in Los
Angeles in some medical area where they were
flying in these wounded soldiers from Vietnam.
JF – This was in the army, he was drafted into the
army?
EZ – Yeah.
JF – And was he in the army medical core
eventually?
EZ – Eventually what he did is, he said he would
be carrying out body bags of soldiers who had
died and washing and cleaning the surgical
instruments from the operating rooms, and he
told me about a building that was off limits, which
he later on apparently found out, from Vietnam
they were flying in dead GIs with their innards
taken out and filled with drugs.
JF – and filled with drugs …
EZ – Yeah
JF – This was mid to late 1960s I take it?
EZ – Yeah, that’s right, mid 60s.
JF – Because of course Lyndon escalated the war.
I mean Jack was pulling our advisors out of
Vietnam, but Lyndon reversed it immediately.
EZ – Yeah, I remember at the time, Jim Fetzer, I
was totally alert to the political situation by then.
Reading in an American magazine, for business, it
was the biggest business magazine in America,
dealing with all these large corporations and so
on, and it showed in there the contributors to
Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign.
JF – Was it Forbes?
EZ – No, there is another one – there was
another one.
JF – Yeah.
EZ – And that became – because by then I was
fluent in English, and I was not surprised when I
saw then, after President Kennedy was
assassinated, these were all war related
corporations.
JF – Yes
EZ – That were their supporters, you know.
JF – Yes, [ ..?], General Dynamics, the whole
bunch.
EZ – Yeah that’s right, that’s right. Helicopter
manufacturers in Fort Worth Texas down there,
they have these jet factories and so on, you
know.
But anyway, Ernst is by that time back in Canada
and picked up my business again. And I never
had any trouble because I loved being in
business. I was like a kind of a … if I was down
one day, the next day I was out and picked
myself up with Napoleon Hill indoctrination, and

before I knew it I was having enough money
again.
JF – So this is late 60s, early 70s?
EZ – Yeah, late 60s, and then I went to Sir
George Williams University, today called
Concordia University, and studied basically
political science but we also had to take History,
English, and I studied as a side issue The History
of Architecture.
JF – Is Concordia in Canada?
EZ – Yeah, in Montreal.
JF – in Montreal?
EZ – Yeah, in downtown Montreal next to McGill
University. McGill is the largest Canadian
University. It was an English Language University,
and not the University of Montreal which was
French.
But anyway, after two years at the University, in
the evening, during the day I was running my
paintings and doing my graphic arts and so on, I
decided to drop out because I was not really
learning anything …
JF – Just on parallel tracks. I’d resigned my
commission in the marine core in 1966 after four
years of service I’d been commissioned after
graduating from Princeton and a graduate school
in Indiana where I received my PhD in History and
Philosophy of Science in 1970 and began
teaching. So, the period now I met my first
academic position at the University of Kentucky
while you are in Canada at Concordia and all that.
EZ – Yeah, right. I wondered why you resigned
your commission. I read in your bio, why did you
do that?
JF – Well, I did not want to make the military my
career. In fact during the four years I debated
between going on to law school and going into
higher education. My two closest friends at
Princeton, one had a higher GPA but lower law
boards, and the other had higher law boards and
lower GPA. And one went to Harvard and one
went to Yale. So I knew that I had options open if
I wanted to go into the law. But I was confident
that I would gravitate toward criminal law but I
regard myself as the employee of my clients,
while I would make a lot of money I wouldn’t
have time to enjoy it and I’d feel a great sense of
grief and responsibility if I lost cases. So the
whole idea of the kind of freedom you have as a
faculty member appealed to me immensely, and I
never regretted that decision.
EZ – I am glad to hear that, I am glad to hear
that, because you are a testament of the
situation, maybe thanks to your military training,
was absolutely correct, based on your character,
self assessment and so on, you know. Very good.
JF – Yes
EZ – And I see you were immensely successful in
your chosen field.
JF – I had a gift for research, and I think
Princeton instils that and still does, and I

26

gravitated to the philosophy of science, you know.
I was studying with some of the most
distinguished philosophers in the world though I
didn’t know it at the time. I had courses in
ancient philosophy with the great Vlastos,
philosophy in science with Karl G. Hempel, even
existentialism with Walter Kaufmann. It was
ranked the number one philosophy department in
the world at the time.
EZ – Fantastic! You know I have to tell you and
confess, that had it not been for my free
enterprise and my Napoleon Hill direction into the
business field, I loved university, I loved
university.
JF – I think you have quite an aptitude and you
would have been successful as a university
teacher, as a professor. I think you would have
done well. Particularly with your gift, you would
have probably been a perfect history teacher und
could have inspired students with introductory
courses that would …
EZ – And Jim, maybe I would not have served
seven years in prison.
JF – That’s right, that’s right. Its ironic you know,
you really… its because of your gift for research
and your keen interest in history that you got into
this political trouble, basically most people simply
don’t know history and don’t have a gift for
research, and couldn’t appreciate the difference
between the realities of what your are discovering
in the allusions that are reported in the history
books.
EZ – Actually, you are right and on the money. I
actually started out with my research on the
forbidden topic in the university, because I had
still then some English Canadian university
professors who would grade my papers and they
would say: Zündel, content excellent, grammar
horrible. Yeah how about that?
JF – Did Canada have any laws, you know, about
thought crimes or expressions of opinion about
controversial historical events? I mean, to me the
whole idea of thought crimes is simply absurd. I
believe that research on every topic should be
completely open, unfettered, unconstrained. After
all a certain event or series of events is a
historical reality then competent research is going
to confirm it? And if it was not, then surely if it is
dis-confirmed we are all entitled to know. I mean,
some beliefs about some events have such
extraordinary political ramifications that if we are
basing our actions on false beliefs about historical
events, it seems to me we can commit all sorts
mistakes in the actions we take, to deal with
problems that may or may not have any basis in
reality.
EZ – Actually, to answer your question – Canada
then, Canada of the 1950s and 60s was very
much still like the United States. You know, we
had virtually unfettered freedom, at that time.
JF – Freedom of speech, freedom of thought …

EZ – Freedom of speech, yeah. And you
remember during that time the free speech
movement at Berkley for instance?
JF – Yes.
EZ – We had the same. We had a local version of
that in Montreal, in Quebec at our university and
other universities.
JF – That was largely related to the anti-war
movement, was it not?
EZ – That’s right, that’s right. But it was still … in
Canada because we had a separatist movement of
French Canadians, wanting to separate from
English Canada and so on, it took on a little
flavour. I went to university at that very heady
time. There was kind of a new departure that was
going on.
JF – Were Canadians serving in Vietnam?
EZ – Yeah, volunteers. Canada had a special
typical Canadian kind of DMC surveillance. They
had a plane from Canada Air was the plane
manufacturer that could fly 18,000 miles nonstop.
They would leave from Trenton air base in Ontario
and fly all the way to Vietnam. Yes, Canadian
troops went down there at the time, but a small
contingent only.
JF – Did the war become highly controversial in
Canada, too, then?
EZ – Well, because many American draft dodgers
came to Canada and were at my university for
instance, you know. And we had a professor
Markuse, a Jewish professor who had fled from
Germany, and he was one of the professors in
residence there, a guest professor and so on. So
the turmoil that was caused by the war by the
anti-war movement had spilled over to Canada
and I was right in there. I was one of the editors
of the student newspaper, at that time, and had
my own column already, it was called Politics,
Past, Present and Future, and I naturally aired

these topics. And since I was a pacifist and anti-
militarist, one of the reasons why I left Germany

to come to Canada, I was right in there with that
topic.
During that time I discovered that I had a political
streak in me for daily politics. The Canadian Prime
Minister, Lester Pearson had contracted cancer
and was dying. He was the chief of the Liberal
Party, the ruling party, and so the ruling Liberal
Party was to have a convention to choose a new
leader who would then automatically become
Prime Minister of Canada. And I looked at that
and I said, boy, Ernst, now here is a golden
opportunity, ha ha. And I made …
JF – Were you at this point a Canadian citizen?
EZ – No, I was just coming to that. The drawback
was, I was not yet a Canadian citizen, I was a
German citizen. But that didn’t deter Ernst, I went
ahead anyway, so registered, applied for
Canadian citizen, registered as a candidate,
toured the country and speechefying and giving
the press conferences; and because I was tri-

27

lingual, and there was a large German immigrant
population – the Germans were the third largest
immigrant group in the country, I had a French
Canadian wife, could speak English, French and
German, it was quite a sensation. I was the
youngest immigrant, only immigrant candidate
ever who stepped up to the plate. I was the
youngest candidate ever, I was the only student
enrolled at a university ever, and I had a fantastic
media profile.
JF – And you were in your mid twenties?
EZ – Yeah 29.
JF – You mentioned about your pacifism and so
forth. My younger brother – I have several
brothers, all younger and a sister, but by different
marriages. So I have brothers and sisters who are
unrelated to one another, although they are all
related to me. He was two-and-a-half-years
younger and also went to Princeton; he was a
freshman when I was a senior. He studied history
and appealed for conscientious objector status for
his draft board in Southern California, and it may
be the only time that the draft board received a
letter from an active regular duty officer in the
marine core. I was then a captain affirming his
sincerity in supporting his application for
classification, which they granted by a vote of 3-
2. He had told me, if he had been denied he was
going to Canada.
EZ – Right. Yes, that was an option then. You see,
and my case, my pacifism was a little different,
because I was ever since my childhood always
forward thinking. I left Germany before I was
drafted. I was the first year post-war-year to be
drafted, and I did not want to be drafted, and so I
cast around for a country where they did have no
draft. Canada had no draft, and that’s why I opted
there. So I never went through the
embarrassment or the indignity having to say I
am a coward, I don’t want to fight with a gun in
my hand – I just left.
JF – You were running to beat Pierre, right?
EZ – Yeah.
JF – Tell me how did that go, what were the
major issues that were being debated at the time?
EZ – At the time it was separatism.
JF – You mean Quebec from the rest …
EZ – Quebec separating, yeah – and Marxism.
Because one of the candidates running against me
later on became Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre
Eliot Trudeau, had been and was undoubtedly a
closet Marxist. And many of the Liberals, the new
Liberals, it was the Liberal Party that I was a
member of and running for prime minister they
were closet communists, and so were the
separatists. That was the issue that was then

being fought. I was a dyed-in-the-wool anti-
communist, and so I was really a kind of – they

called me the ‘dark horse’ candidate.
JF – Tell me about the distinctions as they were
then drawn in Canadian politics between being a

Marxist, being a communist and being an anti-
communist.

EZ – Well, the conservative party was the largest

opposition party and then were generally anti-
communists. The Liberal Party had already

infiltrators from socialists to basically closet
Marxists, and they were really manipulating and
abusing the Canadian traditional system and
catapulting themselves into positions of power –
not saying I am a Marxist, saying I am a liberal
socialist, and I, in my anti-communism, went
head-on against this basically was a subterfuge.
JF – Let’s explore this a little further. Marxism of
course believes in economic determinism, is a
fundament causal force affecting history. Marx, of
course, says in analysis of capitalism and the
propensity to accumulate more and more wealth
and power in the hands of fewer and fewer, which
would lead to an eventual reaction within society,
a violent revolution, that would lead to a
temporary dictatorship of the proletariat and then
a more egalitarian society. But where Marx did
not anticipate the emergence for example of
labour unions and the potential for political
reforms, in a piecemeal fashion that might
prohibit that were the regulation of capitalism.
Now, I would take that the term communism, as
you are using, had to do more with the Soviet
Union and a totalitarian form of government that
was completely authoritarian. Would I be correct
in that assumption?
EZ – Yeah, yeah, but the Canadian version is
always a little shaded in various layers of grey
and so on. The driving force behind it at that time
was Fidel Castro’s Cuba, because Canada had
refused to put a boycott on, like the United States
had, you know.
JF – Good for Canada.
EZ – Yeah, so our intellectuals were tending
towards a Cuban version of Marxism,
communism, whatever it was. And there was a
“Fair Play for Cuba” committee in Canada that
was quite powerful, the same committee that Lee
Harvey Oswald supposedly belonged to…
JF – Supposedly is the operative word, yes that
was his feigned persona. He was actually working
for American intelligence. They were setting him
up although he didn’t know it, but the probable
patsy for the assassination, which was all so
familiar. Castro was qualified as anti communist in
the United States largely because he had
nationalised the properties of Anaconda and
United Fruit. Any national leader who cuts down
on the profit margins of an American corporation
is automatically branded as a communist.
EZ – Yeah, yeah, I remember when he closed the
casinos and nationalized the sugar cane
companies.
JF – That’s right, and of course the Mob was
upset because they were running the biggest
money laundering operation in the western

28

hemisphere out of those casinos and resorts in
Nevada.
EZ – Yeah, exactly, and so, that’s exactly what
happened, and later on … but is like the pond
that Ernst was swimming in, you know, at the
time in Quebec City.
JF – Your anti communism was mostly directed
against the authoritarianism and expansionism of
the Soviet Union?
EZ – Right. I was a classic liberal in the 19th
century sense, you know.
JF – hmmm (laughing)
EZ – I would have been right at home with
Madison and George Washington…
JF – And Thomas Jefferson …
EZ – and Thomas Jefferson, one of my big heroes,
oh, Thomas Jefferson, I loved reading that man’s
stuff today, you know.
JF – You know Jeff he had an assembly of Nobel
Prize winners at the White House, and he
observed during the event that this was the
greatest collection of intellect and ability ever
assembled together at one time under the same
roof, save when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
EZ – Ha ha – fantastic statement. Love that. And
so, my campaign actually was what they called a
maverick dark horse candidate. I came out of
nowhere, was not beholden to any financial
interests or lobbies. I was financing my campaign
all by my own self, earned graphic arts paintings
produced money. And that gave me independence
of course. And so I went across the country
speechifying giving press conferences and
coverage was fantastic. And I made it to the inner
circle, meaning there were 123 different
candidates started out, it was whittled down,
whittled down when they ran out of money and
couldn’t get enough votes and support, there
were seven candidates left, and I was candidate
number seven. And so I spoke to the assembly of
[BOA?] who asked me about my citizenship – did
I quake in my boots? You can be sure because I
was carrying in my pocket a German passport,
and I had not been made a Canadian citizen, only
after the election campaign was over did the
government decide to deny me Canadian
citizenship, without giving me a reason for it.
JF – We are going to take our second break.
This is Jim Fetzer your host on The Real Deal
with my very special guest today – an
extraordinary man Ernst Zündel.
JF – This is Jim Fetzer continuing my conversation
with Ernst Zündel. Ernst, you were talking about
Canada, the Canadian government deciding to
deny you Canadian citizenship after your
campaign without giving a reason. What is your
suspicion as to the real reason they did that?
EZ – Oh I can tell you that quite frankly. Here I
was a dark horse candidate, independent in
organisation and money, not beholden to any
lobby, and that would have been a very difficult

thing for the old established political system in
Canada to cope with. I was like an independent. I
was a bit like the American – what’s his name –
the presidential candidate from Texas, the doctor
….Ron
JF – Ross Perot?
EZ – No, no.
JF – Ron Paul …
EZ – Ron Paul – I was the Ron Paul of Canada,
you know, at the time. But just a little bit left. I
am with my German passport in my pocket, my
party platform in my wallet or case and suddenly,
in the building in the basement of this sports
stadium basement where the convention was
taking place, I hear over the intercom: Would
candidate Ernst Zündel please come to the
speaker’s podium – your speaking time has
begun. I grabbed my case and dashed up the
stairs, and suddenly rising out of nowhere stood
this huge mountain two meters tall in front of me
in his flak jacket and his uniform, and he said:
Where do you think you are going?
JF – He wasn’t going to let you speak?
EZ – He challenged me, so I pointed with all the
chutzpah I could muster – I pointed at my
delegate’s patch, and I said: Did you hear the
intercom just now? They are calling my name, my
speaking time has begun, I am candidate Ernst
Zündel, and he saluted smartly and stepped
aside, and I walked up to the podium and spoke
to 30,000 Liberals live audience in this sport
stadium in Ottowa.
JF – So he was actually only blocking you,
because he didn’t realize you were the speaker?
EZ – Yeah, that’s right.
JF – That’s fortunate. I thought he might have
been blocking you because he did know you were
the speaker.
EZ – No no, I bluffed my way back past the
Mounties, and behind me on the podium were all
the other seven candidates, the future Prime
Minister, the Finance Minister, the Foreign
Minister and so on, you know. I spooled off my
tri-lingual speech, and of course it was nationally
broadcast, and I went down to the headquarters
of the Liberal Party in that sports stadium and
said I would like to withdraw from the contest.
They were flabbergasted. And you know, Jim, why
I did quit? I didn’t know they were going to deny
me citizenship, and so I didn’t want to be known
as the 200 or 100 or 50 or 10 or even 1 voice cast
candidate. I had hoped that I had a political
future in Canada, and I didn’t want to have this
noose drawn around my neck, that my Micky
Mouse campaign, which I fought with my own
money, would kind of sink my future political
chances, and I did not finish the counting of the
votes. In other words, they had to spend an hour
when the votes were being cast that my name
was not on the ballot. Now, why would I do that?
I went into that campaign only, only to speak up

29

for the German and Canadian immigrant section
of the voters, because they were not being

properly represented. And there was this anti-
German hate propaganda going on, you were in

that land at that time and I was the one who
wanted to use that opportunity for a national
platform to speak against it, and I did.
JF – It would have been terribly interesting to see
how the vote would have gone.
EZ – Yeah, yeah.
JF – My suspicion is you probably would have
finished third or 4th, no worse.
EZ – Yeah, but you see, you know what the
problem was Jim Fetzer? I had no political advice,
I had no political experience. It was by the seat of
my pants, really a maverick candidature.
JF – But the people were responding to that, I
have no doubt, Ernst.
EZ – Absolutely, absolutely. The Canadian press
was saying, there is something wrong with
Canadian politics, when an unknown like Ernst
Zündel can gather such support and such
accolades …
JF – I’d put it the other way round. I’d say there
is something right about Canadian politics when
an unknown migrant can garner such support and
receive such accolades.
EZ – Yes Jim, that’s what I was feeling myself,
thank you for giving me the compliment – ha, ha.
JF – Had I been your campaign manager I would
have said – by all means stay here.
EZ – In hindsight and with the wisdom of the
years gone by, it was a foolish thing to have
dropped out. You see, sometimes in the heat of
battle, or whatever it was I did not want to be
saddled with the stigma of not having gathered so
many votes.
JF – You actually would have done tremendously
well. I am quite confident. I mean you may not
have won, but I think you would have made a
very impressive showing.
EZ – It was a mistake and I know it was a
mistake that I dropped out because, although
they denied me, after about two months they
denied me my citizenship. I would have been a
political force to be reckoned with.
JF – I believe that’s true.
EZ – But I was too inexperienced and politically
not suave enough, you know, I was a firebrand.
JF – The commission of mistakes is an aspect of
the human condition. In fact, in my research on
the nature of mind I had concluded that the
capacity to make a mistake is an indication, a
criterion of the presence of mentality, so that
because the capacity for mental exercise involves
the use of signs, where signs are things that
stand for other things. So, if you can mistake a
sign is standing for other than it stands for, like a
spider leaping on a television screen when it sees
another spider in the mistaken belief its another
spider, is an indication of the presence of mind

which is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom but
which is largely misunderstood for failure. To
appreciate the character of mind itself. I
published on this especially in a book entitled,
The Evolution of Intelligence: Are Humans the
Only Animals with Minds?, and in many articles.
EZ – Yeah, so, back to my career. It naturally
impacted on my political career and it forced me
to concentrate on the one topic that I was good at
and I could be useful to society, and that was
revisionism – historical revisionism.
JF – Yea, historical revisionism, and it seems to
me all historians should be revisionists, because
they should always be accumulating more
evidence, more alternative interpretations of
historical events, and constantly doing and sifting
and winnowing the evidence to get a more
accurate characterisation of what actually took
place in the past, lest it remain a pack of lies the
living play on the dead.
EZ – So, Jim that event naturally put my life in a
different direction. I was still making good money
as a graphic artist, I was winning awards for my
paintings. There was one painting where actually
327 Canadian artists, Canada wide exhibited their
paintings, and wouldn’t you know one of my
paintings was the best of the show.
JF – Wonderful.
EZ – So I got an award and got $1,000. In those
days you could buy a Volkwagen almost for
$1,000.
JF – Yes, yes. Are your paintings accessible
online?
EZ – I think so – you know I have to confess Jim I
am a computer-phobic ignoramus. I have not
even been to the Zundelsite in decades. I don’t
know what’s on there. But I know there is
something out there because people keep
commenting on it. I do not use a computer at this
time. I have no access because I am too dumb to
access even my wife’s site.
JF – Well, anyone who can master languages the
way you can would have a considerable facility for
the use of a computer. Once you got the knack of
it, which I think …
EZ – Right now, right now – and of course for
seven years that I was in prison they kept
computers as far away from me as possible, I
always applied taking extra … I wanted to take
Spanish or take Russian even in my desperation
when they didn’t want me to learn Spanish, you
know. I never was allowed near a computer,
except for the very last six weeks of my seven
years.
JF – That’s ridiculous, that would have been the
perfect time.
EZ – I was harping. Here were seven years going
by, all I did was basically paint and write.
JF – You could have done a tremendous amount
of research, I mean a computer is a fantastic
resource.

30

EZ – Yeah, and so now I am taking lessons and
some young friends are trying to get me up to
speed. Ingrid donated to me for my birthday a
computer, and I am trying desperately to enter
the 21st century.
JF – I would just say based on my experience,
and I hope it is a Macintosh, because I find it …
EZ – Yes it is – Ingrid bought me a very fine
Macintosh, and the first time after we met, having
not seen each other for almost eight years, I was
presented with this gorgeous, metallic looking
instrument, and boy, the clarity and so on
absolutely surprised me. She showed me some of
my paintings that she has back in Tennessee still
– gorgeous! Reproductions and so on, just
fantastic.
JF – That you can see online. How did you get
from your major speech at the political
convention, which would have been, let’s see
around 71 or 72?
EZ – Yeah, around that time.
JF – to an incarceration for a seven year period? I
mean that seems quite an extraordinary
transformation in your life.
EZ – Yeah, what happened was, I used the
decade of the 70s to school myself and to travel
the world, because I had the money to different
archives and so on, did all this research, because
there was no internet then, about the Holocaust
and World War Two revisionist topic. And so, all
the stuff that I used then in the 1980s during my
trials, actually the background was made, and the
foundation was laid during that 10 years when I
was out in the political wilderness. That’s where it
came from, that was the big step.
JF – Repeat that, when you were in the political
wilderness…
EZ – The foundation was laid because I could no
longer run for being a candidate – because they
had denied me citizenship. I had to make myself
useful, and I did it by becoming a researcher into
history, World War Two history.
JF – This is while you were still working as a
graphic artist?
EZ – Oh, Yeah, exactly.
JF – You were using your time in libraries and
elsewhere to do research?
EZ – Yes, because you know I was producing
annual reports and catalogues, and there were
seasonal peaks, and during the off season I would
then jet off to New York or Los Angeles, or Vienna
and Germany…
JF – You mean the catalogues you were
producing was in your capacity as a graphic artist,
for companies producing brochures and
catalogues to feature their products?
EZ – That’s how I earned my living, yeah. And the
free time that I had, and the money that I earned
allowed me to do this research, and could do
these interviews with World War Two survivors,
from Generals to Admirals. I remember one,

interviewing Admiral Sir Barry Domville in England
who had written a book, From Admiral to Cabin
Boy, and others. I was gathering first eyewitness,
original evidence, which I then later on, I did not
realize at the time, that I was preparing for what
really was going to be my life’s work. I always
had a tape recorder along, interviewed these
people; later on I took on video cameras and so
on, travelled the world, did that research. It was
the foundation for these lengthy trials in Canada,
because then I published an internationally
circulated newsletter in English and in German,
and that began to make me famous, or infamous,
whichever you want to look at, and that’s when I
came to the attention of the German political
system, the German political police and of course
to the Canadian spy services. And then I was …
my supporters in Germany in 1981 were raided in
the largest police raid in German history. Over
2000 raids were conducted on one weekend –
involving 300 prosecutors, 50 judges, 10,000
policemen.
JF – Ernst, lets step back a step or two. You were
in Germany working as a graphic artist, doing
research…
EZ – No.
JF – No, no, no – I know, I am going through the
steps. The last I recollect, you were in Germany
producing your brochures and doing research on
history, then you became involved in doing all
these interviews, tape recording, producing the
newsletter. You were still in Canada at the time?
EZ – Oh, yeah, Canada was always home base.
So all the books and and all the booklets I had
written, all my newsletters and so on, not one
was produced in Germany. They were all
produced in Canada and later on in the United
States.
JF – And did you visit libraries in Toronto,
Washington and New York?
EZ – Regularly, regularly, including the Holocaust
Museum Library in Washington DC.
JF – What you were turning out was at variance
with the conventional wisdom about the World
War Two history?
EZ – Exactly. I went to the Imperial War Museum
in England, for instance, and the Wiener Library
and so on. I was gathering all these documents –
they were at variance with what the general
wisdom seemed to be, and so that’s how I
became to be this – in German Querdenker,
somebody who is like the fly in the ointment.
JF – And so what period of time are we talking
about – late 70s or are we talking about the 80s
now?
EZ – We are talking from the early 70s to the
beginning of the 80s. The first police raid in
Germany because of my by then considerable
fame and worldwide reach due to my newsletter
that was going to 43 countries at the time. The
police raids took place in Germany basically

31

against my tape recorded interviews and then my
newsletter and my booklets.
JF – The raids were targeting recipients of your
newsletter?
EZ – Yeah but illegally. The German authorities
had broken the banking secret, or whatever, and
they were using the receipts from payments for
books and book orders, tape recording orders and
outright donations. And they were raiding these
people’s homes and seizing all my publications –
they would at four or five o’clock in the morning,
you know.
JF – They were raiding homes of German citizens
who were interested in your research on World
War Two and depriving them of possessions they
had purchased perfectly legally in order to
implement a political agender.
EZ – Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.
JF – What laws were they reportedly enforcing by
these raids on the homes of German citizens and
the appropriation of their personal possessions?
EZ – They have all kinds of repressive laws that
they had adopted already in the 60s when there
had been swastikas smeared on Synagogues and
so on. So they had a legal handle to do what they
did. What it was is, they would come to these
homes – many of my supporters were World War
Two generation, and they would bust into their
houses at four or five in the morning, bring six or
seven cops, and when they were women, women
cops, and they would go through their belongings
and seize … they wanted to especially have one
book which I had published, called The Green
Book, in German An Mein Volk – meaning ‘To My
People’, in which I outlined what the problem was.
They took ultimately truckloads full of the stuff I
had sent over the years, and concentrated it in
Stuttgart. They charged me then under these
anti-revisionist laws and for one-and-a-half,
almost two years, we fought them in the Stuttgart
court and to the surprise of everybody I won my
case.
JF – Fascinating.
EZ – And they had to give back, seized by now,
you know they had seized my bank account, and
the people, of course, didn’t know that and so
they were donating money and spending money
for the Amis [Americans], which was supposed to
be a checking account in Europe. And when I won
my case they had to give me what had
accumulated – DM50,000.
JF – What year was that Ernst?
EZ – We are talking 1980/81.
JF – So in 1980/81 they were enforcing these
laws that are really prohibitions on freedom of
speech, freedom of thought, freedom of the
press. They would be viewed from the American
law and international perspective.
EZ – Yeah, absolutely, and of course I was safe
and secure back in Canada, and I was trying to be

careful in order not to kind of jeopardise the lives
and careers of these old people.
JF – How were you represented in Germany in the
courts? Were you there personally or no?
EZ – No, I never went there, because I knew I
had an arrest warrant out, my attorney told me
that, my German attorney. And I had a German
attorney for 15 years I hadn’t met before and he
fought these cases and used to run and also won
that decisive case against what they call hate
literature, you know.
JF – He must be quite brilliant.
EZ – He died unfortunately after my trial in
Mannheim – very young …
JF – And his name was?
EZ – Rieger, Jürgen Rieger
JF – I am going to speculate, but I am going to
guess is that it was probably not from natural
causes.
EZ – Well, they say it was.
JF – What is said and what is true are not
necessarily the same.
EZ – Yeah, so what happened was, after the raids
Jim Fetzer, something odd happened. Up until
that time the Canadian authorities and the
Canadian police, and the politicians who had a say
in Canadian affairs treated me with a kind of kid
gloves and very respectfully, but when the raids
in Germany took place, that was like a
declaration, and open season on Ernst Zündel,
and from that moment on January 25th, no March
25th 1981, I became a public target and the
persecution never let off to this day.
JF- To this day.
EZ – To this day. And so, after the raids, I won
my case, and so the next thing is, the authorities
did not renew my passport, my German passport.
And so I spent six years in the Canadian gulag,
virtually out there as we say in Siberia, you know.
I could not travel, I could not visit my brother in
the United States, I could not go to Europe, I
could not visit my mother, because I no longer
had a valid passport.
JF – So you couldn’t even travel to the United
States?
EZ – I could not go across because I had no more
valid passport for six years!
JF – And you were being ostracised internally in
Canada politically?
EZ – Ah, well, boy, I can tell you that. The
persecution and vilification from the 25th March
1981 on was relentless and I have to say vicious
and continuous.
JF – And it took the form of letters to the editor,
editorials and the whole like forms of public
denunciations, political speeches.
EZ – Newscasts, ministers, everybody who
wanted to get a cheap headline dumped on Ernst
– ha, ha. I never knew I was such a bad guy until
that time.

32

JF – Ernst, this is unbelievable. We are going to
take our final break. This is Jim Fetzer your host
on The Real Deal, concluding my conversation
with Ernst Zündel.
JF – Ernst, this is really astonishing that after that
raid, even though you would eventually prevail in
court, you were subjected to all of this abuse,
public attacks, censorship and so forth. You were
denied renewal of your passport, you could not
travel, as you compare it to a gulag. When you
won your case – how long did it take between the
raids and the actual process and the legal aspects
in order to prevail in court? And was there any
change then, evidently, my inference is, there
was no change politically in your position? …
EZ – It made no difference to the Germans, it
made no difference to the Canadian authorities or
the agitation that went on by the various lobbies
that had targeted me, and the thing is, I won my
case ultimately in the highest court in Germany,
and they had to give me my passport back.
So I won the case outright in the beginning, and
then when they yanked my passport, my attorney
had to go, if we won it in the highest
administrative court, they had to give me my
German passport back, but they only gave it to
me for one year. Normally a German gets a
passport for 10 years. So we immediately re-filed
again. After another year of not having a
passport, I was finally forced by the highest
administrative court for the German authorities to
issue me a 10 year passport.
And now, after that 10-year passport had run its
course, they refused to extend it because they
had passed a new law that a German could lose
his passport for political activities. And it is that
expired passport that started all this travail my
being kicked out of the United States because I
had no valid document. And when I went across
the Canadian border, in handcuffs by US
marshals, they used this that I had an expired
passport to incarcerate me, and for the next
seven years I never saw daylight again.
JF – That’s astonishing.
EZ – Unbelievable story. I got a little ahead of
myself. I was charged in Germany, and won my
cases over there outright, to the astonishment of
everybody else, and then I was charged criminally
in Canada under a law from 1800 – no from 1275
where the King of England had passed some kind
of law that did not allow singers in taverns singing
ballads on how bad the king was and so on. It
was called ‘The False News Law’. And that law
was such an obscure law that my lawyers and I
had not ever thought that I was going to be
charged under this false news law. It was 800
year old almost. And it had not been enforced,
except for once in 1905. And so I was utterly
stunned when I am charged suddenly by this
thing, had to go to court and from that moment
on I did a kind of rotating door appearance in

courts, and never, never, never again was without
litigation.
JF – And of course legal representation is
expensive.
EZ – I was drained, I was drained financially. All
the money that I had saved – and I was a, as you
know, quite a successful graphic artist. Eventually
my own money ran out, my graphic arts company
was bankrupted by these things, because the
publicity was so fierce and viral, then only the
book purchases were keeping me alive. Then the
perversity happened, the Canadian Government
yanked my mail rights from me. I could not
receive or send any mail.
JF – You are kidding me!
EZ – Yeah, I could not receive or send any mail on
pain of four years imprisonment.
JF – This is inhumane!
EZ – And so then I appealed it. I found myself a
lawyer from the Canadian Civil Liberties
Association, and a nice little frail lady, and she
fought, I appealed against this ban which was my
right under legislation. And I appealed this postal
ban, and in the longest postal hearing in Canada
won my case against the postal hearing. And I got
my mail rights back. They had to give me a
truckload full of mail which they had collected
since.
JF – Really?
EZ – Yeah, Jim I had to go to pay my property
taxes – I had to go to the City Hall, went up to
the counter and said I am Ernst Zündel I want to
pay my property tax. ‘We don’t do that’ – I said
look, I am banned from the mail, I am here with
my money, will you please take my money, I
have to pay my tax. They said: ‘We have no
facility and no rules blah, blah, blah. It was an
embarrassment for me from day one just to pay
my taxes and look after my business. All the
things that I bought I had to pay by cash,
because I could no longer pay my American
Express Card or Diners Club. Imagine, 20th
century.
JF – A truckload of mail.
EZ – Many of the cheques of course, Jim Fetzer,
that were in there that would have helped me to
survive were stale …
JF – In the mail?
EZ – They had expired – because it was two-year
old mail
JF – They were defying you of resources that
would have made a difference.
EZ – Yeah, and so what happened was – I from
that moment on decided now this is going too far,
I am now going to fight tooth and nail. And in
1983 I was charged criminally for publishing false
news, 1984 there was like a grand jury in panel in
Canada; in America it is called a preliminary
hearing that lasted for two weeks, and I fought
strenuously, and was convicted. I spent in the
decade of the 80s, I spent twelve times in prison.

33

JF – You were convicted under this ancient law? …
EZ – under this ancient law …
JF – for false news reporting false news, but, but,
but – how were they able to establish the news
you were reporting was false?
EZ – Well, this is exactly it – when I was in front,
you know, in front of the courts, they denied me –
similar to what they do in Europe, they denied me
to submit evidence. For instance, World War Two
area photographs of the camps and so on. And
so, after get this nine-and-a-half-year, Jim Fetzer,
after nine-and-a-half years of continuous legal
warfare in the 80s, I finally prevailed in 1992
August 27th, in front of Canada’s highest court,
the Supreme Court, which ruled that Ernst Zündel
as a member of a minority must have the right to
his historical viewpoint, even if the majority thinks
it is wrong or false, I must have a right to present
it, as long as I present it peacefully and
democratically. And they struck down that law
from 1275.
JF – Fascinating.
EZ – So, the Canadian Criminal Court had it
altered, and this is Ernst’s revenge, because in
Canada the Criminal Court is French and English,
and suddenly there were one-and-a-half to two
pages empty, because that law was declared
illegal, unconstitutional.
JF – Did that have reverberations for the UK as
well? The Commonwealth as a whole?
EZ – I don’t know that. I was happy that it was in
Canada it had reverberations, because now
suddenly I had the right to speak. My enemies
were so stunned, Jim, that I had peace for about

a year or year-and-a-half, and then they re-
charged me.

JF – And then they re-charge you?
EZ – They re-charged me.
JF – And then they re-charged you under a law
that had found to be invalid?
EZ – No under a different law, under a different
law.
JF – Seems it took them a year to figure out how
to come after you
EZ – Yeah, they were institution shopping, you
know, and finally these were these powerful
detractors of a certain ethnic group …
JF – What law were they now pursuing?
EZ – Now let me see, what was the law…
JF – Some kind of hate speech?
EZ – I don’t remember – No they never ever
during my entire career charged me under the
hate law. Anyway they dragged me once more –
they went to the police and pressed charges, and
the police took another seven months, three
different police forces to investigate my activities
and after seven months said: ‘We are not going to
charge Ernst Zündel again.
JF – Good for them.
EZ – Yes I was so surprised, three police forces.
And of course my enemies were furious. Then

came the Supreme Court decision which was
pending at the time, and the Supreme Court
finally set me free. And after that was over, they
dragged me before a political tribunal, called The
Canadian Human Rights Commission.
JF – What year is this now?
EZ – We are talking here 1995.
JF – In 1995.
EZ – Yeah, I litigated for nine-and-a-half years to
free myself – twelve times in jail in the meantime.
Because every time in Canada when your case
comes up before the courts you have to check in
at the prison. So that they can take you in
handcuffs, and that they know you are going to
be there for the date that is slated for you.
JF – In Canada, if you are charged with a crime,
you are incarcerated to make sure you are not
going to flee?
EZ – Well, I was out on bail – $10,000 bail,
property bond and so on. But still, before a court
case, and I had so many court appearances, Jim
Fetzer, I had flow charts in my office to know
where and at what time and what month I was
going to have to appear. So each time when you
have a court appearance, as a man out on bail, I
had to check into our Toronto prison, in order that
they could take me by paddy wagon in the
morning to the court.
JF – And this was the standard procedure? This
wasn’t specific to you but it was of course one of
humiliation?
EZ – Well, people were saying that I was getting
a little ‘Sonderbehandlung’ special treatment, you
know.
JF – Yeah I don’t doubt …
EZ – But in the end, I’ll give you the other side of
the coin. It kept my name in front of the Canadian
public, and I was interviewed, I nearly said day
and night, you know. I mean, I became a
household word in Canada because of the
persecution.
JF – I can believe that, and quite justifiably, I
mean your case is so extraordinary and so
outrageous. I mean, it defies any intellectual
principles. I can imagine this, I mean, this idea
that punishing someone because they have a
point of view that is at variance with a prevailing
wisdom is simply outrageous and absurd.
EZ – Yeah, so what happen is then Jim, they
dragged me, after I won in the Supreme Court,
they dragged me before this Human Rights
Commission which is an eminently political body,
appointed by at the whim and at the pleasure of
the Prime Minister, the ruling Prime Minister. And
this political tribunal, called Human Rights
Tribunal, they had a ruling that says – Truth is no
Defence.
JF – Truth is no defence – ha, ha!
EZ – Right. Of course my sole defence has always
been, I am searching for a historical truth, this is
my version of the truth. I am not asking anyone

34

to believe it. I was giving them my version of
what I considered my political or historical truth,
you know.
JF – How could any tribunal or commission ever
adopt a principle that truth is no defence? That’s
astounding to me.
EZ – Shamelessly they did and still do.
JF – So what happened before this Human Rights
Commisssion? It seems to me grossly misnamed
under these conditions.
EZ – Oh, can you imagine it. So finally, anyway
we fought and I fought – I generated the money,
oh man I am telling you, sometimes I had legal
costs of $15,000 a week, $15,000 a week. Yeah,
so by then I had met Ingrid Rimland, my wife. We
were not married then, and what happened is now
I was in front of this tribunal and bombs
appeared, mobs appeared 2,000, 3,000, 5,000
people – demonstrators gathering before my
house, intimidating my staff trying to stone the
building. 100, 200, 300 policemen.
JF – These were mobs that were opposed to you
– having the freedom to speak?
EZ – Yeah, The police told me they were hired for
a hamburger some french fries a coke and $10 or
something.
JF – How outrageous! These were political stunts,
this was political theatre.
EZ – Yeah, pressure was put on the authorities
not to relent with me, you know.
JF – This is like the Republican lawyers down in
Florida who were storming the election boards
who were counting ballots.
EZ – That’s it. Jim what happened was I fought
and I fought one year, two years, three years,
and suddenly when I did not cave in, bombs
appeared, bomb threats appeared, these mobs
appeared in front of my house, and one of these –
I was away on a speaking tour with my lawyer in
British Columbia and – some unknown person, to
this day, unknown to this day, burnt my house
down.
JF – No!
EZ – Yea, and so …
JF – Where were you residing at the time?
EZ – In that house!
JF – Yeah –in which community?
EZ – In Toronto, downtown Toronto.
JF – You had a home in downtown Toronto that
was burnt to the ground subjected to arson?
EZ – Yeah – they burnt it down on 8th May 1995
to celebrate Germany’s defeat in World War Two.
JF – To celebrate Germany’s defeat in World War
Two they burnt down your house?
EZ – That’s right. Unluckily I was out in
Vancouver with my lawyers speechifying, turned
on the evening news in the motel. A friend had
come naturally in the morning, knocked at the
door, at six o’clock in the morning – Ernst come
quick, turn on the TV, your house is burning in
Toronto. And here I am lying in my pyjamas in

this hotel room in Vancouver and I can see my
library going up in flames.
JF – How aweful!
EZ – I saw it was a fire alarm. They closed down
the whole downtown area and a main drag and I
saw by the television news which section of my
library, which contains 6,000 volumes, was
burning at that time.
JF – Unbelievable!
EZ – Talk about book burning!
JF – How disgraceful!
EZ – So I flew back to Toronto and gave a
crackerjack series of press conferences, and
began to rebuild my house. Only one little snag. I
had had no insurance, because previous to that a
bomb had gone off in my house.
JF – The insurer dropped your insurance?
EZ – They dropped me into cold. I had no
insurance and I had two of my floor – my library
gone and 30 years of my research painstakingly
assembled over the case burnt to a crisp. Yeah.
JF – That is just gut wrenching. Anyone who
engages in scholarship would recognise the
dimensions of this travesty.
EZ – Yeah, yeah. Then I met Ingrid, my wife. And
she came from California, came up to see me, and
so we walked through the stinking, dripping top
floors that had to be eventually taken off, and all
my library gone, and she said how can I help?
And I said well, I grabbed into my pocket and
there was an envelope singed at the edges and
soaking wet and there were $850 in it. And she
said what is that? Well I’ve found that, it was in
my pocket and I just found that. And she said,
what do you want to do with it? Well, I said,
maybe you could take lessons, because I didn’t
know about, it was the beginning of the Internet.
And so, Ingrid went to San Diego University or
some place and took lessons on how to set up a
website.
JF – How wonderful, wonderful.
EZ – Unbeknown to me, guaranteed, hand on the
Bible, she chose the word ‘Zundelsite’.
JF – Ernst now, this is 1995?
EZ – Yeah, 1995, 1995, 8
th May

JF – I need a concise summation on how you got
from there where you are today now.
EZ – Ok, I’ll give you that in a little bit split. The
website went up, Ingrid has called ‘The
Zundelsite’, and then a worldwide boycott
happened, because the German authorities shut
down the server in San Juan in California. And
that created an international firestorm from the
internet community and students around the
United States especially and in Europe mirrored
the Zundelsite. And so shortly after, two months
or something, six weeks, seven weeks, the
authorities caved in and the Zundelsite survived,
because now there are all these 18 mirror sites
around the world. That once again caused an
international brouhaha. But I then realized I had

35

no more protection in Canada, not by the
authorities, not by the local police, because after
all the house had burnt down and nobody was
making serious efforts to find the arsonists, and
that’s when I decided together with Ingrid, we
were going to get married and I was going to
come to the United States. And I did, in 2000 we
were married and I moved to the United States,
Tennessee and lived there, I thought, happily
ever after in retirement. But not so for my
enemies. One morning I was arrested by a party
of three different US organisations – marshals,
immigration service and so on, and I was taken in
handcuffs from my home with nothing but my
American media association press cards and some
money in my pocket. And then I was shipped to
Blount County Jail, and was never allowed to see
an American. The judge had no arrest warrant
that they could show me. They just said I had
missed an immigration hearing or meeting with
an immigration official. That was the last time I
was in the United States. Legally I had been
fingerprinted by the FBI, I’d been given a social
security number, I had been given a permit that I
could work, and yet they declared me that I
missed this hearing and shipped me out of the
country without ever seeing an American judge.
JF – Unbelievable!
EZ – And so, when I went across the border I had
an expired German passport. They didn’t ship me
to Germany where my passport was from. For
some strange reason they shipped me back to
Canada. And the Canadian authorities
immediately arrested me at the Canadian border
because I had no valid documents – it was
expired. And I spent for the next two years legally
litigating that I could remain in Canada or return
to the United States.
JF – I have no doubt this was all carefully
contrived by those who wanted to do you ill.
EZ – Oh, yeah, Jim Fetzer, there is a story to be
told by some investigative reporter. It’s not going
to be me, because this is the first time that I am
speaking to somebody in this detail. Anyway,
after two years in Canada, in solitary
confinement, with 24 hours light on a day, the
orange suit of the terrorists, I was declared a
security risk in Canada, and I was
unceremoniously thrown out of the country. In my
cell was 24 hours light on, no toothbrush, no
soap, no towel, my bedding was changed after
three-and-a-half months – it was hell.
JF – What year was this?
EZ – 2003-2004.
JF – So this is post 911?
EZ – Yeah, I was declared a security threat under
these newly passed anti-terrorist laws. And I was
taken out of Canada by the former Minister of
Justice in Canada. He was the presiding judge,
and every time I appeared before him, the
lawyers for the national security establishment

met with him in camera, neither my lawyer nor I
were ever called. Who appeared, what they said,
what the accusations were, in other words it was
like a patriot act inquisition.
JF – Yeah, its incredible, and ironic, because we
have adopted so many of the laws that justified
the Nazis’ persecution of minorities in Germany.
EZ – Yeah, and so Jim, I appealed the case to the
Supreme Court in Canada; they didn’t look at the
case. Then another person an Arab was shipped
out of Canada. Another Arab who was also called
a security threat appealed it and the Canadian
Supreme Court declared the very law under which
I was railroaded out of the country
unconstitutional. But by then I was already in
prison in Germany – for the next five years.
JF – So when you were kicked out of Canada they
brought you to Germany. How did you arrive back
in Germany?
EZ – Ha, they brought me in a specially chartered
jet, with a seven-man contingent, with a person
in charge of expulsions from Canada and high
political big wigs, RCMP federal police, in a
chartered jet that cost the Canadian taxpayer
$245,000. I was the only passenger, and I was
handcuffed with leg irons for the whole eight-hour
trip.
JF – So you were a dangerous criminal instead of
a historical revisionist?
EZ – Yeah, and so I was picked up at one o’clock
at night at Frankfurt Airport and immediately
taken into investigative custody, and never saw
freedom again for the next five years.
JF – Now you are out on probation?
EZ – Now I have served my, all told over seven
years and a few weeks, and at the end of my five
year maximum prison term I received three years
probation, and so last year I saw my probation
officer, and that will end on 1st of March next
year.
JF – I can’t tell you how much I admire you and
how much your strength and courage and
conviction are an inspiration for the world and
everyone who cares about truth and justice!
EZ – Now Jim Fetzer, I want to end – I suppose
we are running to the end of the time – I just
want to say – all these experiences Jim have not
soured me on the United States and not even
Canada, because the Anglo-Saxon, I was a
beneficiary of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence until the
Patriot Act changed everything. Had it not been
for the Patriot Act I would have been living for the
last eight years with my wife in the Tennessee
Woods, have painted, have a gallery there. I
would have enriched America with the fruits of my
labour and my talent. As I said to you before, I
am a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal of the 19th century
stripe, and I am quintessentially an American of
the style of Thomas Jefferson. The world that I
would like to live in is the world of Thomas

36

Jefferson and George Washington, and I am
longing to get back to the United States.
JF – Well, Ernst I share your concern for historical
revisionism because as a student of 911 the
entire event was a fabrication, it was a national
security event that was approved at the highest
levels of the American Government, my
researches convince me of that. And I am doing
everything I can to expose the sham of that
historical event just as you have done what you
can to expose the hypocrisy about other historical
events. And I cannot thank you enough for
coming on this programme with me and sharing
your spirits.
EZ – Yeah, I don’t want to forget to mention that
in the 29 pages of charges against me in
Germany, there were eight charges against my
writings against 911.
JF – Really?
EZ – My first newsletter post 911 was issued on
23rd September and in which I already outlined
what is now public knowledge, but I heard you
say on the Alex Jones show on the 23rd …
JF – of September 2001, already?
EZ – 2001, I said in my newsletter worldwide.
And eight charges were against me, and I did not
want to have a holocaust trial in Germany. I knew
I hadn’t a chance of a snowball in hell. I wanted
to have a 911 trial in Germany. And when the
judges saw that I had mustered all kinds of
experts on this topic, already in 2005, Jim, they
dropped all 911 related charges.
JF – Fascinating! Is that available anywhere, your
911 research?

EZ – It must be some place. I have been so
disgusted by what has happened to me. You are
the first person after my ordeal, I can call it that,
you know, that I have ever talked to at such
length. Because of what I saw you say on that
Alex Jones channel, and what my wife told me
what kind of a man you were, then I saw the bio
of your research you had done over the years, I
thought to myself, although it is dangerous for me
to say this, you know, to speak out in public, I
thought that if anybody was going to give me a
fair shake, it was going to be Professor Jim
Fetzer.
JF – Was that bio on Wikipedia?
EZ – A part of it. Ingrid told me that you were
unhappy with what they called you in there.
JF – They have butchered my bio, I mean they
just cut it out. They cut it down, they had taken
off everything significant, everything that was
evidential or scientific or probative from my Wiki.
This has just happened, I published a new piece
about it, entitled James Henry Fetzer Wikipedia
Not, which is just another illustration in which
thought and information is being controlled how
censorship is being imposed of which you are the
world’s most sterling example, Ernst. I can’t
thank you enough for coming on the show.
EZ – I appreciate you and all your efforts, and
you of course are the ideal person to realize what
they use the Patriot Act for.
JF – Ernst, you are a magnificent human being, I
can’t thank you enough. I am so glad you were
here. Thanking my Special Guest, Ernst Zündel,
for this extraordinary conversation.
___________________________________________