CSM opinion piece calls for freedom of speech for Irving

Writing in The Christian Science Monitor, Brendan O'Neill calls for freedom of speech for David Irving in Europe. This is noteworthy, given the CSM's historically anti-German leanings.

The intellectual cowards at The Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Despite the best efforts of The Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Holocaust Historiography Project is still on-line. On December 12, 2005, we received word from our previous hosting service that The Friends had lodged a "hate" complaint against our site. What a shame The Friends didn't contact us directly. What a shame The Friends couldn't point out a single error in fact or conclusion. Perhaps The Friends claim to have found hate on this site because that is what they brought with them. As with so many other such groups, with this action The Friends have shown themselves to be intellectually cowardly and morally bankrupt on the Holocaust.

Here's the message sent by our previous web hosting company:

"We have been contacted by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies regarding the content of the website www.historiography-project.org. Upon our investigation we find that the content contained on your website is offensive to the community due to its Holocaust denial nature and for this reason we are unable to continue offering web hosting services for it."

Usually when you receive a message such as this, it's a done deal -- you can protest, but it will do you no good. That's what happened in this case, too. We pointed out the moral and intellectual fraud inherent in such a complaint. We pointed out that there is no "Holocaust denial" material on this web site. We even pointed out that when people don't stand up for freedom of speech, they will soon find they have none. We had our attorney write to them, and some select friends. There was no response from our previous host, and the site was shut down within hours of the notification.

Fortunately, we were able to use those hours to obtain temporary alternate hosting. By the next day, we had secured more permanent hosting arrangements.

So, we're now with a new web hosting company, and we're setting up "mirrors" (copies of the website) with various servers around the world, with fast switching amongst servers. We should be less exposed to this type of censorship in the future, and should it happen again, we will be able to respond more quickly, with even less service outage than this time.

You may notice a bug here or there as we transition from the old host to the new. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience, but at least the material is all still here, and still available.

We have a bunch of winners

Announcing the winners of our 2nd Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge! First place goes to Charles Krafft, second place to William Comer, and honorable mention to Simon Gilford. In one respect, though, the real winner was Germar Rudolf, who was named by each of our winning contestants as the person to whom the prize money should be sent. So, Germar's legal defense fund is $250 richer, thanks to these three fine gentlemen. Of course, it didn't seem right to send Germar money without remembering Ernst Zundel, so we're kicking in an extra $250 for Zundel's defense fund, too.

New archive material on-line

It's going to be a huge project, but HHP is going to try to put the contents of the 11-volume Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression documentation on-line here. This material is sort-of available elsewhere on-line, but there are annoying mistakes and gaps in the presentation. HHP is not claiming to be perfect, but documentation this important should be properly presented, and we're going to try out best to see that it is. This will be a long-term project, so don't expect to have the entire set available overnight.

Germar Rudolf jailed

Germar Rudolf and his wife go to the Chicago office of the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) for a marriage interview. It goes well and ends with the INS certifying that their marriage is real. As they are about to leave, however, two officers of the INS appear and claim that Germar had been sent a letter instructing him to appear at their Chicago office for photographing and fingerprinting, and that he has not complied. Neither Germar nor his lawyer received such a letter, and they have not been shown a copy of it. The failure to appear would not in itself have brought any drastic action; in fact, the INS had had him photographed and fingerprinted long ago at the FBI office in Huntsville, AL. What exacerbates the situation is that recently the German government has made its second request for his extradition and some clerk at the INS, assuming the matter involved a real criminal case, flagged his file. In any case, Germar is detained and sent to a jail about 50 miles from Chicago.

Was it something we said?

According to the statistics for recent visits, 66 of the last 100 visitors to the site live outside the United States. Here's the breakdown:

Num	City	Region	Country Name
32	Mainburg	Bayern	Germany
6	Scarborough	Ontario	Canada
3	-	-	Korea, Republic Of
3	Sydney	New South Wales	Australia
3	Adelaide	South Australia	Australia
2	-	-	United Kingdom
1	Alice Springs	Northern Territory	Australia
1	London	England	United Kingdom
1	Vancouver	British Columbia	Canada
1	Kiev	Kyyiv, Misto	Ukraine
1	-	-	United Kingdom
1	Paris	Ile-de-france	France
1	-	-	Australia
1	Leeds	England	United Kingdom
1	Kampala	Kampala	Uganda
1	St. Andrews	Scotland	United Kingdom
1	Helsinki	Etela-suomen Laani	Finland
1	Kerkira	Kerkira	Greece
1	London	England	United Kingdom
1	Kassel	Hessen	Germany
1	London	England	United Kingdom
1	-	-	Finland
1	Kuwait	Al Kuwayt	Kuwait

New blog, new guest blogger

Bradley Smith of CODOH fame has a new weblog (AKA blog). He was doing fine by himself, but now he's going to invite others to contribute, starting with yours truly. Check it out.

New What's New page

We're experimenting with a new format for this page, using Google's Blogger technology.

Holocaust Collection to Be Housed at USC

What makes this story interesting is that the 52,000 Holocaust testimonies contained in the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education are not being housed in the history department, where you would expect them, but in the English department.

2nd Annual Halloween Contest

Announcing the 2nd Annual David McCalden Most Macabre Halloween Holocaust Tale Challenge. Enter and win big bucks! Just as important, by holding this 2nd Annual Contest, we've validated the 1st Annual Contest. We're hoping for many more of these annual contests in the years ahead.

We've moved to a new location!

We've moved the Holocaust Historiography Project to our new location on the Internet. If you're lost, this is where you are now.

Bye-bye Directory page

We've deleted the "Directory" page because it had become huge and cumbersome, and it merely duplicated links found in other, smaller directories on the site.

New search facility

We've added MSN search to the "Search" page.

Archived JHR materials now available

We've added files from The Journal of Historical Review. Technically, the JHR is still being published by the Institute for Historical Review, but the IHR hasn't published anything new in years, and seems to be doing virtually nothing, despite having a staff of three, 6,000 feet of offices and warehouse, six (count 'em!) different websites, and more targets of opportunity than you can shake a stick at. I'm making these files available in case it goes out of existence. Many articles from JHR dealt with issues other than the Holocaust, but I'm presenting it all more or less as it appears on the IHR website as a gift to the historiographic community.

DC Dave analyzes Andy Rooney

DC Dave has sent us a link to his analysis of some of Andy Rooney's bellicose utterances.

Ernst Zundel charged in Germany

Ernst Zundel appeared in a German court today for his arraignment on the charge of denying the Holocaust. Denying the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany. If Zundel is found guilty of inciting hatred, he could face up to five years in jail. Last week, politically-correct Canadian Federal Court Justice Pierre Blais created the pretext for deporting Zundel by ruling that Zundel had links to neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. "Mr. Zundel's activities are not only a threat to Canada's national security but also a threat to the international community of nations," Blais said in justifying his improper ruling.

Canadian authorities deport Zundel to Germany

Canada Tuesday deported Holocaust denier and former Tennessee resident Ernst Zundel to his native Germany. Once there, he is expected to be arrested on charges of inciting hatred via the Internet. German officials have said he would be arrested for decades of anti-Semitic activities, including repeated denials of the Holocaust, which is a crime in Germany.

Ernst Zundel set for deportation to Germany

Ernst Zundel has abandoned his fight to stay in Canada and is slated to be deported to Germany as early as Tuesday, his lawyer said yesterday. In a bitter denunciation of the Canadian legal system, lawyer Peter Lindsay said there was no point in trying to remedy the "horrible unfairness" to which Zundel had been subjected.

New counter added

We've added Statcounter code to each page to help track visitors. It's fairly sophisticated and fast, and it doesn't clutter up the page. It's nothing sinister: We just need to get some idea how effective we are at getting the word out.