Archive/File: pub/people/l/leuchter.fred leuchter.05
Last-Modified: 1994/01/11

Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
From: poser@vxdsyc.desy.de (Till Poser)
Subject: Re: FRED LEUCHTER SUDDENLY ARRESTED IN GERMANY
Message-ID: <CJHDHx.7LF@dscomsa.desy.de>
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, VXDESY System Gruppe
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 19:44:20 GMT

In article <9401082157.A6248wk@banished.com>, dgannon@banished.com writes:

|From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993):
|
| Fred Leuchter Arrested in Germany
| IHR Protests Politically-Motivated Act of Censorship
|
| Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., the American execution hardware specialist who
|insists that claims of war-time mass gassings at Auschwitz are not true, was
|arrested in Cologne, Germany, on October 28, half an hour before his
|scheduled appearance on a television show.
|
|[Photograph captioned, "Fred Leuchter"]
|
| Leuchter was arrested without an arrest warrant or formal charges.

As usual, Gannon lies. Then he relies. So he's nothing if not reliable.

There was an arrest warrant out on Leuchter for more than one year in case he hauled his sorry ass back to Germany.

| He
|was then taken to Mannheim, leaving his wife, Carolyn, behind in Cologne.
|Neither speaks German.
|
| Only the next day was Leuchter formally charged. Cited in the criminal
|charge were statements he had made during a speech at a meeting in Germany
|in November 1991, in which he spoke about his 1988 on-site forensic
|examination of the alleged execution gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and
|Majdanek. These facilities were not used, and could not have been used, to
|kill people as alleged, said Leuchter, a recognized specialist of gas
|chambers used to execute convicted criminals in the United States.

Here's something from Die Zeit:

The following is an unauthorised translation from an article in "Die Zeit" of November 5th, 1993. Any inaccuracies, linguistic strangeness, misrepresentation, usw. is probably due to my faulty translation (all quotation marks are as found in the German orignal):

An American with hate-crime inciting {volksverhetzende} slogans:

In Gaol Instead of On The Air

Mannheim:

An audience of seven and a half million were tuned in to the private TV station SAT1 on Thursday last week. They saw "live on the air" an unaccustomedly unconcentrated Margarethe Schreinemakers {the talks show host- T.P.}, the healing hands of a faith healer and were introduced to the utterly moving subject of "fat people and sex". But the show was not as expected, the usual hint of scandal was missing.

What remained hidden to the viewing public was a 51-year old American expert in excution techniques who for the first time could have expounded to an audience of millions that - according to his "scientific research"- there could not possibly have been a mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz from a technical point of view. Schreinemakers' guest on the subject of "killing as a profession" was otherwise engaged.

Fred A. Leuchter, author of the "Leuchter Report" (Die Zeit 40/1992 {in this edition, Die Zeit published a devastating synopsis and comment on the Leuchter Report in their regular "Zeitldufe" historical column - T.P.}), was at this time on the Autobahn between Cologne and Mannheim, accompanied by three policemen. A few minutes before the show ent on the air the internal security policmen {Staatsschutzer in the original - T.P.} from Mannheim arrested him in the SAT1 studio. More than a year ago a remanding warrant had been issued for the American, which was the reason for this lightning action. The arrest warrant, amongst other things, was for the reason of hate-crime and inciting to such.

The consequences of his lates public appearance in Germany had finally caught up with Leuchter. At that time the American, whose livelihood is the construction of execution devices for US-prisons, gave a talk in front of an audience of 120 listeners in the little town of Weinheim an der Bergstrasze. A video shows the expert Leuchter together with the chairman of the right-extremist NPD {Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands - T.P.}, Günter Deckert. And as always when Leuchter gives a public talk the subject on November, 10th 1991 was his "report" which he wrote after an extremely short visit {Blitzbesuch in the original - T.P.} to the remains of the NS concentration camps Auschwitz and Majdanek. This report, the distributed numbers of which are estimated to range in the ten thousands , is an over 100 pages thick pamphlet and in the brown scene as well known as the first stanza of the "Deutschlandlied". The main conclusion, translated by the highschool teacher {Gymnasiallehrer in the original - T.P.} for English and French Deckert: The Nazi gas chambers were unsuitable for the massextermination of Jews. Therefore there was no Holocaust.

For Deckert the occasion turned into a boomerang, since one year later he was sentenced to one year suspended imprisonment for inciting to racial hatred by the Mannheimer Landesgericht {state court - T.P.}. Main exhibit of the prosecution was the aforementioned video that showed him together with Leuchter. The verdict is as of now not in force, the revision lies with the Federal Supreme Court.

The prosecutor in charge for Leuchter now is the same man that was in charge of the Deckert case, Hans-Heiko Klein. The Mannheim state attorny acquired some fame in Germany for the trial on the subject of the poison gas factory in Rabita, where as the investigation prosecutor he demanded a much higher sentence for the Imhausen-boss Jürgen Hippenstiel-Imhausen and taken off the case by the chief state attorny. Since then he took a bead on the right-extremist scene around Mannheim, including NPD-boss Deckert who lives in the nearby Weinheim. Klein's tenacity has earned him vile abuse from the right-extremist scene and a legal action from the NPD-chairman. The utterly original grounds for this was "Inciting to racial hate against Germanophiles". After he came to power, so he threatened publicly, he would have the state attorny reeducated to waschroom attended.

Until then, Klein will continue plying his old trade. The case against Leuchter will be presented these days. And since there is quite a bit of danger that Leuchter would attempt to flee, it is quite probable that he will remain in custody - an attempt to set him free on bail has been denied by the court - and thus he will get a speedy trial. For his offense up to five years of prison can be awarded.

Die Zeit, Ed. Marion Grdfin Dvnhoff, Helmut Schmidt, Theo Sommer
Pressehaus
Speersort 1
20095 Hamburg
Tel: -49-40-3280-0
Fax: -49-40-327111

Postscript:

It is a pity that a relatively careless judge released him on bail, whereupon Leuchter immediately jumped bail and scooted from Germany and scarpered to the US. As it said in the article, up to 5 years can be awarded for this type of felony.

Till Poser             Internet: poser@vxdsyc.desy.de
-R- DESY Computing     Bitnet:   POSER@DESYVAX
bldg.2b-314, Notkestr.85  Hepnet:   VXDESY::POSER (13313::Poser)
D-22603 Hamburg 52     Tel.: -49-40-8998-3219

The original plaintext version of this file is available via ftp.

[ Index ]

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor