OS
Rebel Without A Cause

AT 23, DAVID COLE IS BECOMING ONE OF THE LEADING SPOKESMEN
FOR THE HOLOCAUST 'REVISIONIST' MOVEMENT.

HE IS OUTSPOKEN.

HE IS DETERMINED.

AND HE IS JEWISH.

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSOCIATE EDITOR

n a recent letter to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette,
the resident of a Pennsylvania town chided
columnist George Will for denouncing Holo-
caust deniers as "lunatics or sinister cynics."
While admitting he is "no expert on the
Holocaust," Richard Wilson of Dravosburg
said sufficient evidence exists that justifies
questioning whether anyone was gassed to death at
Auschwitz. He arrived at this conclusion, he said, after
watching a video by David Cole.
The video, sold through the Institute of Historical
Review (I R), features a young man in a yarmulke tour-
ing Auschwitz. He claims to be there as "a righteous
Jew seeking the real facts to answer those back home
who say there were no gas chambers."
Yet Mr. Cole's "conclusions" are anything but an an-
swer to Holocaust deniers. Instead, he portrays
Auschwitz as a veritable country club.
At 23, David Cole is ready to take on the
likes of such Holocaust scholars as Yehuda
Bauer and the late Lucy Dawidowicz. A Cal-
ifornia resident who never completed high
school, he quickly is becoming a leading
spokesman for the "revisionist" movement,
which alleges there was no Nazi plan to ex-
terminate the Jews.
This year is going to belong to David Cole,
says his good friend Bradley Smith, head of
the Committee for Open Debate on the Holo-
caust. This year will see David Cole make it
to the forefront of the movement. "This year,"
Mr. Smith says, "David Cole is going to be-
come a star."
Just one thing makes Mr. Cole different
from other such "revisionist" stars, includ-
ing Willis Carto, David Irving and Ernst
Zundel.
David Cole is Jewish.

D

avid Cole was born and raised in
Los Angeles, the son of Sandra and
Dr. Leon Cole, both of whom were
Jewish. Mr. Cole describes his child-
hood as "very happy," and he has little patience
for those who suggest his involvement with
the "revisionists" has anything to do with
rebelling against Judaism and a troubled
youth.
His mother, a New York native, was raised
in a secular home. "My grandmother was an
Orthodox Jew and kept a kosher home," she

says. "I spent much time with her. However, as she did
with her own children, she never attempted to force her
beliefs on anyone else."
Mr. Cole's upbringing also was secular — the fami-
ly even had Christmas trees — until his parents di-
vorced and his mother remarried when David was 4.
Sandra's second husband was a Jewish Londoner who
survived the Blitz.
(Because of his "revisionist" work, Mr. Cole does not
divulge his mother's last name since remarrying, or the
name of his stepfather. Dr. Leon Cole is no longer alive.)
"There was a little tension at first," Mr. Cole says,
because his stepfather maintained Jewish tradition and
wanted Mr. Cole to get a Jewish education. "I wanted
to sleep in," Mr. Cole says. "I wasn't about to get up and
drag myself to some temple school."
A salesman, Mr. Cole's stepfather "had to learn to

respect" his and his mother's lack of interest in religion.
This lessened the stress until Mr. Cole became inter-
ested in "revisionism," which his stepfather strongly
opposes. "He felt ashamed of me," Mr. Cole says. "The
whole World War II thing was important to him."
Today, the two speak, but are not close. Mr. Cole says
his relationship with his mother is good, though she
does not necessarily agree with his Holocaust denial.
As a child Mr. Cole was curious, "always asking ques-
tions and reading whatever he could get his hands on,"
his mother says. "He always had an independent streak.;
once he decided to do something, it was very hard to
talk him out of it."
In high school, Mr. Cole was interested in theater.
He attended Hamilton High, a predominantly black
and Latino school in Los Angeles, from which he was
expelled after getting into a fight with his drama teacher.
Today, he lives in Beverly Hills and does not
work, thanks to a large trust fund his parents
established. When not out denying the Holocaust,
he also says he is active on behalf of abortion
rights. Radio talk show host Howard Stern is his
hero.
"Fascinated by ideology...I always felt superi-
or to it," Mr. Cole says. He spent his high school
years joining everything from the Revolutionary
Communist Party to the John Birch Society to
the Church of the Creator, a notoriously anti-Se-
mitic, racist organization with close ties to the
White Aryan Resistance.
In 1989, the Church of the Creator published
a letter in its Racial Loyalty in which Mr. Cole
wrote, "My work as a video producer puts me
in touch with many other White Men who are
looking to wrestle away the mass media from its
Jew controllers and use the media to further the
goals of the White Race."
Mr. Cole explains: "I enjoyed infiltrating
ideological groups." He continued doing so "until
I got bored."
Then, in 1987, at an atheists' club meeting, he
met David McCalden.
A native of Belfast, Mr. McCalden was a neo-
fascist with a longtime record of anti-Semitic ac-
tivities. In the 1970s, he served as director of the
California-based Institute of Historical Review
(which is devoted to denying the Holocaust, or
as its supporters say, the "Holohoax"), then left
to establish the "Truth Missions," also commit-
ted to denying the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
Among Mr. McCalden's publications was Exiles

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