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22 Detroit Jewish News

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Holocaust revisionist group launches new
advertising campaign in campus newspapers,
including Wayne State's South End.

JULIE WIENER
St4TWriter

7

aron Tachman had an
unpleasant surprise two
weeks ago when he showed
up for work at Wayne State

University.
While reading the campus newspa-
per, The South End, Tachman saw a
quarter-page advertisement suggesting
that gas chambers were not really used
during the Holocaust, the diary of
Anne Frank was a "literary concoc-
tion" and that Holocaust survivors
may have given false testimony.
Placed by the Committee for Open
Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH),
a Holocaust revisionist group, the
advertisement is part of a national
campaign targeting college students.
"I was a bit shocked to see it," said
Tachman, a staffer at Hillel of Metro
Detroit (HMD) and the Campus Ser-
vices Director at Eastern Michigan
University. "I'd heard about this group
but never saw a newspaper publish
these types of ads."
Wayne State University was not the
only campus targeted by CODOH,
which has been advertising sporadical-
ly in campus papers since 1991, but
took a three-year hiatus from advertis-
ing in 1995. In the early 1990s, the
University of Michigan and Michigan
State University papers printed
CODOH advertisements. According
to CODOH Director Bradley Smith,
the current advertisement has
appeared in .nine campus papers,
including those of the University of
Vermont and the University of Toledo.
The current advertisement promises
$250,000 to any individual arranging
a 90-minute debate (with prime time
coverage on national television)
between Smith and the Anti-Defama-
tion League. ADL leaders say they will

not consider such a debate and that
the $250,000 offer is simply a gim-
mick to get people to read the adver-
tisement and visit CODOH's Web site
(www.codoh.com). Articles on the
Web site describe ADL and campus
Hillels as "the shock troops represent-
ing the Holocaust lobby," accuse Elie
Wiesel of being a "false witness," call
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Muse-
um "a costly and dangerous mistake"
and make numerous other assertions.
"This is a neo-Nazi organization
that wants to rehabilitate Germany
and Hitler's agenda.and question
whether the Holocaust occurred," said
Don Cohen, Michigan ADL director.
"There's no issue to debate. It's entire-
ly manufactured to promote hatred of
Jews and rehabilitate an agenda of
anti-Semitism."
CODOH's Smith was not available
for interview, but faxed partial answers
to questions posed to him via e-mail.
In responses to questions about fund-
ing, he said only that his budget was
"maybe one one-thousandth that of
the ADL."
According to Jeffrey Ross, the Anti-
Defamation League's national director
of campus/higher education affairs,
CODOH is funded by the Institute
for Historical Review, a California-
based tax-exempt Holocaust revisionist
organization, which operates on an
$11-million bequest from Thomas
Alva Edison's granddaughter.
Grassroots response to The South
End advertisement on Sept. 16 has
been minimal, said HMD Director
Miriam Starkman. "I don't know if
that's indicative of the fact that not
many people read the paper or if peo-
ple just didn't catch that ad, but stu-
dent and faculty reaction was virtually
nonexistent," she said.
Hillel of Metro Detroit and Michi-
gan ADL leaders urged the paper to

