 | |
| Abbreviation | IHR |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1978 |
| Location | |
Key people |
|
Parent organization | Legion for the Survival of Freedom |
| Website | ihr.org |
TheInstitute for Historical Review (IHR) is a United States–based nonprofit organization that promotesHolocaust denial.[1] It is considered by many scholars to be central to the international Holocaust denial movement.[1][2][3] Self-described as a "historical revisionist" organization, the IHR promotesantisemitic viewpoints[4] and has links to severalneo-Nazi andneo-fascist organizations.
The group was founded in 1978 inTorrance,California, byDavid McCalden andWillis Carto, and is headquartered inFountain Valley, California. It published theJournal of Historical Review until 2002, but now disseminates its materials through its website and via email. The parent corporation of the IHR and the affiliatedNoontide Press is the Legion for the Survival of Freedom.[5][6]
The IHR was founded in 1978 byDavid McCalden, also known as Lewis Brandon, a former member of theBritish National Front, andWillis Carto, the head of the now-defunctLiberty Lobby. Liberty Lobby was an antisemitic organization best known for publishingThe Spotlight, now reorganized as theAmerican Free Press.Austin App, aLa Salle University professor credited with being the first major AmericanHolocaust denier, inspired the creation of the IHR.[7][8]
At the IHR's first conference in 1979, IHR publicly offered a reward of $50,000 for verifiable "proof thatgas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or inAuschwitz." This money (and an additional $40,000) was eventually paid in 1985 to Auschwitz survivorMel Mermelstein, who, represented by public-interest lawyerWilliam John Cox, sued the IHR forbreach of contract for initially ignoring his evidence (a signedtestimony of hisexperiences in Auschwitz). On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions forsummary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of theSuperior Court of Los Angeles County took "judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in occupied Poland during the summer of 1944."[9][10][11]
On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered ajudgment based upon theStipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them.[11]
McCalden and Carto had a falling out over theMel Mermelstein case,[citation needed] and in 1981 Carto fired McCalden as IHR director. In response, McCalden attacked IHR members and associates in hisRevisionist Newsletter, including Carto,H. Keith Thompson, andKeith Stimely.[12] From 1982 to 1983, Stimely was assistant director of the IHR and was the editor of theirJournal of Historical Review from 1983 to 1985.[13]
In February 1985, Stimely quit the IHR, claiming that Carto had, without consulting him, removed part of an article byRobert Faurisson that was critical ofDavid Irving from theJournal of Historical Review; he was also aggrieved that Carto had refused to include a Yockey book,The Enemy of Europe, in hisNoontide Press catalog because he considered it too anti-American.[14] Stimely proceeded to denounce Carto and say that he had never understood Yockey, writing that "Yockey was, at the bottom of his heart, an artist; Carto is, at the bottom of his heart, a travelling salesman".[15] He wrote a resignation letter entitledThe Problem of Willis A. Carto or Goodbye to All That![16]
Tom Marcellus became its director. in 1971, Marcellus was a field staff member for theChurch of Scientology and was an editor for one of the church's publications. When Marcellus left IHR in 1995,Mark Weber, the editor of the IHR'sJournal of Historical Review (JHR) since 1992, took over as its director, and has been the IHR's director and spokesman since then.[17]
The IHR was the target of the far-right terrorist organizationJewish Defense League for many years.[18] Shortly before the IHR's office got firebombed on June 25th, 1981, a man claiming to represent the "Jewish Defenders" called the news agencyUnited Press International threatening to firebomb the IHR's HQ.[19] The office only sustained minor damage, a search turned up no bombs in the building, and no one was arrested.[20] On April 5th, 1982, the office was firebombed for a second time, this time causing damage to a copy machine, some furniture and some records.[21] A man once again called into a news agency claiming to represent the "Jewish Defenders", this time to the newspaperDaily Breeze.[21] On Sept. 5, 1982, the office was the target of adrive-by shooting, which only caused minimal damage and no injuries.[18]
On July 4, 1984, a third firebombing destroyed the institute's offices and warehouse. Thousands of books, cassette tapes, pamphlets, and 90% of its inventory were lost. Carto had not insured the facilities or stock.[22] They then moved to a new building inCosta Mesa, California.[23] In 2002, during the trial ofEarl Krugel for trying to send explosives to congressmanDarrell Issa and the King Fahd Mosque inCulver City, California, it was revealed that Krugel had admitted to an FBI informant in November of 2001 that he firebombed a "Nazi bookstore".[24] The FBI informant was originally trying to get information on if JDL members had ever firebombedADL offices, and Krugel replied with "Nobody hit the ADL although they deserve it richly.", and then "Uh, no it was on the uh, bookstore... that Nazi bookstore... the Holocaust deniers." The informant then replied with "I remember you telling me something about that.". Krugel then said "That was beautiful, man. I did it. It was better than I expected."[24] A law enforcement source familiar with the probe said investigators strongly believe Krugel is referring to firebombings of IHR offices and warehouses.[24]
The JDL had been known to protest the IHR's conferences where a few hundred attendees come to listen or give speeches. According to JDL chairmanIrv Rubin, the JDL threatened to protest inside and outside the Red Lion Inn, which was the first location for the 1989 conference. Rubin also reportedly said that several Jewish groups and newspapers agreed to call the hotel to "apply pressure in that regard. If it worked, it worked beautifully.”. However Steve Giblin, executive vice president of Red Lion Hotels & Inns in Vancouver, stated it was a mutual agreement to cancel the event and change venues because of scheduling conflicts. He also stated that he did not receive an ultimatum from the JDL, and only received two or three phone calls about the IHR.[25] Their 1989 conference had reportedly been forced to move locations twice after protests from the JDL, before finally carrying out the conference in the basement of the German Community Church in theOld World Village ofHuntington Beach, California.[26]
In the 1980s, the IHR's members, principally Marcellus and Weber, seeing the IHR as a serious group, became increasingly embarrassed by how outspoken Carto was in his antisemitism. They also began to dispute over Carto's usage of funds.[27][28] They alleged that Carto fled with several millions of dollars that were supposed to have gone to the IHR. This resulted in a lawsuit.[29] in 1993, they wrote a document, published in theJournal, rebuking him and calling him a liability that had contributed little to the IHR.[30] They voted to oust him.[27] In 1996, IHR won a $6,430,000 judgment in the lawsuit against Carto in which IHR alleged that Carto embezzled $7.5 million that had been left to Legion for the Survival of Freedom, the parent corporation of IHR, from the estate of Jean Edison Farrel.[31][32][33]
In 2001, Eric Owens, a former employee, alleged that Mark Weber and Greg Raven from the IHR's staff had been planning to sell their mailing lists to either theAnti-Defamation League or the Church of Scientology.[34][35]
Since 2009, Weber has pushed to broaden the institute's mandate.[6] In January 2009, Weber released an essay titled, "How Relevant Is Holocaust Revisionism?" In it, he acknowledged the death of millions of Jews but did not wholly reject Holocaust denial. He noted that Holocaust denial had attracted little support over the years: "It's gotten some support in Iran, or places like that, but as far as I know, there is no history department supporting writing by these folks." Accordingly, he recommended that emphasis be placed instead on opposing "Jewish-Zionist power", which some commentators claim was a shift to a directly antisemitic position.[6][36]
Although the IHR comments on a variety of subjects, it is most criticized for itsHolocaust denial.[1] IHR is widely regarded asantisemitic and as having links toneo-Nazi organizations. Multiple writers have stated that its primary focus is denying key facts ofNazism and the genocide ofJews.[37][38][39]
When the IHR devoted itself to publishing Holocaust-denial material, it insisted that its work in this regard was "revisionism" rather than denial:
The Institute does not "deny the Holocaust." Every responsible scholar of twentieth century history acknowledges the great catastrophe that befell European Jewry during World War II. All the same, the IHR has over the years published detailed books and numerous probing essays that call into question aspects of the orthodox, Holocaust-extermination story, and highlight specific Holocaust exaggerations and falsehoods.[40]
On the IHR website,Barbara Kulaszka defends the distinction between "denial" and "revisionism" by arguing that considerable revisions to history have been made over the years by historians and concludes:
For purposes of their own, powerful,special-interest groups desperately seek to keep substantive discussion of the Holocaust story taboo. One of the ways they do this is by purposely mischaracterizing revisionist scholars as "deniers."[41]
American environmentalistPaul Rauber wrote:
The question [of whether the IHR denies the Holocaust] appears to turn on IHR'sHumpty-Dumpty word game with the word Holocaust. According to Mark Weber, associate editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review [now Director of the IHR], "If by the 'Holocaust' you mean the political persecution of Jews, some scattered killings, if you mean a cruel thing that happened, no one denies that. But if one says that the 'Holocaust' means the systematic extermination of six to eight million Jews in concentration camps, that's what we think there's not evidence for." That is, IHR doesn't deny that the Holocaust happened; they just deny that the word 'Holocaust' means what people customarily use it for.[42]
According to British historian of GermanyRichard J. Evans:
Like many individual Holocaust deniers, the Institute as a body denied that it was involved in Holocaust denial. It called this a 'smear' which was 'completely at variance with the facts' because 'revisionist scholars' such as Faurisson, Butz 'and bestselling British historian David Irving acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed and otherwise perished during the Second World War as a direct and indirect result of the harsh anti-Jewish policies of Germany and its allies'. But the concession that a relatively small number of Jews were killed [has been] routinely used by Holocaust deniers to distract attention from the far more important fact of their refusal to admit that the figure ran into the millions, and that a large proportion of these victims were systematically murdered by gassing as well as by shooting.[43]
In 2007, theUnited Kingdom'sChannel 4 described the IHR as a "pseudo-academic body based in the United States which is dedicated to denying that the Holocaust happened,"[44] while thePittsburgh Post-Gazette called the IHR a "blatantly anti-Semitic assortment of pseudo-scholars".[45]
TheSouthern Poverty Law Center lists the IHR as ahate group.[46] In an article forThe Jewish Chronicle, British writerOliver Kamm, described the IHR as being "a pseudo-scholarly body". The British Holocaust denierDavid Irving delivered a speech to the organisation's congress in 1983.[47] Irving returned to speak at IHR conferences on at least four more occasions, in 1989, 1990, 1992, and 1994.[46]
The "Holocaust revisionist" arguments published by the IHR are not regarded as serious historical research by mainstream historians and academics; rather, they are regarded as works ofpseudo-science aimed at proving that the Holocaust did not happen. The editorial board of one of the leading historical journals,The Journal of American History, wrote, "We all abhor, on both moral and scholarly grounds, the substantive arguments of the Institute for Historical Review. We reject their claims to be taken seriously as historians."[48] In response, IHR printed Weber's letter disputing the claims.[49]
In April 2004, following a complaint by theDavid S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies,The Nation magazine refused to accept advertising from the IHR, stating "[T]here is a strong presumption against censoring any advertisement, especially if we disagree with its politics. This case, however, is different. Their arguments are 'patently fraudulent.'"[50] Weber responded with critical commentary in a letter to Leigh Novog of the advertising department ofThe Nation.[51]
Issa Nakhleh, an attorney who has served asU.N. Observer of theArab Higher Committee for Palestine, who already in 1972 openly denied the Holocaust,[52][53] and, "who, during the 1960s and early 1970s, was associated withGerald L.K. Smith (writing for Smith’s publication, The Cross and the Flag), and with the racist West Coast group, Western Front, in 1981,... spoke at the Third Annual Convention of the Institute for Historical Review,..."[54][55] Described as the "chairman of the Palestine-Arab Committee," he was a highlighted speaker[56] and in 1982, he published an article for IHR.[57]
In an article published inHit List magazine in 2002, authorKevin Coogan claimed there had been attempts to forge ties between American and European Holocaust-denial groups such as the IHR and "radicalMiddle Eastern extremists." According to Coogan,Ahmed Rami, a formerMoroccan military officer "foundedRadio Islam to disseminate antisemitic, Holocaust denying, and often pro-Nazi propaganda," and tried to organize, with the IHR, a conference in aHezbollah-controlled section ofBeirut,Lebanon.[2]
TheDaily Star, the leading English-language paper in Lebanon, in response to a planned IHR meeting in the country, called its members "loathsome pseudo-historians" and the institute itself an "international hate group." The paper reported "one formerPLO official [stating], 'with friends like that, we don't need enemies'."[58] With the help of the anti-Israeli Jordanian Writers Association, an alternative event was held with the theme "What happened to the Revisionist Historians' Conference in Beirut?"
The IHR published theJournal of Historical Review, which its critics – including theAnti-Defamation League, the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and other scholars, such as Robert Hanyok, aNational Security Agency historian[59] – accused of beingpseudo-scientific.[60] Hanyok described IHR as "a well-known forum for that faction of scholars and researchers associated with a movement known as 'Holocaust denial'".[61]
Jonathan Petropoulos wrote onThe History Teacher that the "[journal] is shockingly racist and antisemitic: articles on 'America's Failed Racial Policy' and anti-Israel pieces accompany those about gas chambers... They clearly have no business claiming to be a continuation of the revisionist tradition, and should be referred to as 'Holocaust Deniers'."[62]
Weber was the editor of JHR from 1992 to 2002,[17] when the JHR ceased publication. Since 2002, the IHR's main method of spreading its message has been through its websiteIHR Update and by e-mail.[37]
