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`MR. DEATH' BE NOT PROUD from page 75

effectively becoming a crusader for
the cause of capital punishment.
There is no discussion of capital
punishment as policy, no mention of
deterrence, vengeance, justice or
injustice, yet there is plenty for
opponents of capital punishment to
take from these scenes. And we learn
much about Leuchter that prepares
us for his next career move.
In 1988, Canadian neo-Nazi
Ernst Zundel was on trial under a
Canadian statute that makes it a
crime to "publish false history" with
intent to incite racial hatred. His
defense team hired Leuchter to sup-
port Zundel's claim denying the
Nazis' use of gas chambers. Leuchter
packed up his newlywed bride and
traveled with a support team for a
working honeymoon at Auschwitz.
It seems Leuchter began the trip
with no ideological commitment to
Holocaust denial, only confidence
that since he personally had not ver-
ified the existence of gas chambers,
they must be open to question. He
relished the role of engineer (uncre-
dentialed, as we later learn) as expert
witness, and thought his research
would help make quite a name for
himself. It did.
The most disturbing and surreal
scenes in the film were not shot by
Morris but by an anonymous video-
grapher who accompanied Leuchter.
With Leuchter's wife serving as a
lookout, we see him playing
Sherlock Holmes in the remains of
the murder sites, illegally vandaliz-
ing, nay desecrating, them in search
of evidence.
At times Leuchter smiles a strange
crooked smile at the camera and
waves the little hammer he used to
excitedly chip concrete from the
walls of rooms where hundreds of
ti:ousands were murdered. He is

clearly caught up in the thrill of it
all and, in his earnestness, fails to be
moved by where he is and what he is
doing.
He truly believes his homegrown
techniques will get to the truth in a
way that tons of previous evidence
to the contrary had not.
Leuchter gets in deeper and deep-
er, apparently still unaware of the
depths to which he has fallen. We
see a copy of his report published by
the Aryan Nations, and his earnest
address to a gathering of the
Institute of Historical Review, a
rabidly anti-Semitic group at the
core of the pseudo-scientific attempt
to deny the undeniable.
Importantly, the film is very effec-
tive in exposing Leuchter's "research"
as hopelessly inept and immaterial
to the question at hand.
Especially enlightening is the
interview with the manager of the
laboratory where Leuchter had his
ill-gotten samples analyzed. The
manager patiently explains why the
tests do not provide support to the
deniers' claims.
Watching and listening to
Leuchter, you're struck by the mix of
passion and moral blindness that
undoubtedly helped fuel the
Holocaust and countless other
human tragedies.
While shedding some light on the
efforts and lunacies of the deniers,
the film is most effective in showing
the danger of those ordinary individ-
uals who, for varying reasons,
become their willing partners.
As Auschwitz expert Robert Jan
van Pelt, who reviews the documen-
tation of the gas chambers, notes,
those who "go in with blinders on
will see what they want to see."
This film will help remove those
blinders. 0 x:xx:xx:g (out of four stars)

Current Holocaust Denial Incidents
• On Jan. 25, the student newspaper at Schoolcraft College in Livonia
printed their second Holocaust denial ad in two years from Bradley Smith's
"Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust."
• The following week the official newspapers in, Syria and Saudi Arabia
questioned the truth of the Holocaust, giving the conspiracy theories a
strong anti-Zionist spin.
• British Holocaust denier David Irving (who appears in the film crediting
The Leuchter Report's "earth-shattering results" with turning him into a
"hardcore disbeliever") is suing Emory University Professor Deborah
Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, for his unflattering portrayal in
Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and
Memory. The London trial is under way and is expected to last for three
months.
• For more information on Holocaust denial, visit the Web sites of the
Anti-Defamation League (www.adl.org ) and Nizkor (www.nizkor.org ).

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