Institute for Historical Review
The Institute for Historical Review is an American public organization primarily dedicated to publishing literature on twentieth-century historical revision. Since its founding in 1978, it has been the leading American publisher of books and other materials questioning the history of the Holocaust.
History
Founded in 1978 by David McCaulden (also known as Lewis Brandon), a former member of the British National Front, and Willis Carto, chairman of the now defunct Free Lobby).
The organization holds conferences attended by David Irving, Ernst Zündel, Jürgen Graf, “representatives of neo-Nazi organizations from around the world” and other Holocaust deniers as well as critics of revisionism such as Michael Shermer.
From 1980 to 1986, then from 1987 to 2002, the Institute published its own quarterly unreviewed journal, the Journal of Historical Review. Since 2002, the Institute began distributing its publications on its official website and via e-mail.
The director of the Institute since 2000 is Mark Weber, a revisionist historian.
Attacks
According to a statement by an IHR executive, the office and staff have been attacked. The Southern California office and individual employees have been the target of systematic harassment campaigns, including car bombs, three firebomb attacks, damage to personal cars belonging to IHR staff, Jewish Defense League protests outside the offices, and numerous threats by telephone during work hours and at night, all shortly after the Institute was founded. Tom Marcellus, IHR Director in the 1990s, contends that the abuse reached such an extent that the family of one IHR employee had to leave.
On March 19, 1981, Mordechai Levy and other members of the Jewish Defense League attacked the car of an agent of the owner of the office, who had come to verify the safety of the building. Shouting threats, Levy smashed the front window of the car as he drove out.
In the early morning hours of June 25, 1981, the first IHR office was attacked with an incendiary bomb. However, the liquid, which resembled a “Molotov cocktail,” caused only minor damage. A man who claimed to represent “Jewish defenders” called and took responsibility.
Critics
Critics consider the leading Holocaust-denying organization and an anti-Semitic entity affiliated with neo-Nazis.
In September 1983, the leadership of IHR came into conflict with one of its founders, Willis Carto. The board of directors brought claims against Carto for using the institute’s money for personal gain and other abuses. The conflict was fueled by an interest in controlling a large sum of donations that had been bequeathed to IHR founder, The Legion for the Survival of Freedom, by Jean Farrel, Thomas Edison’s heiress.
Mermelstein v. Institute for the Revision of History
In 1980, IHR promised a reward of $50,000 to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz. Former Auschwitz prisoner Mel Mermelstein, a native of Mukachevo, accepted the challenge, presenting a notarized document that he had been deported to Auschwitz and that he had witnessed the Nazis sending his mother and two sisters to gas chamber number five.
IHR refused to accept this evidence and pay the reward. Mermelstein then filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles court demanding payment of the said reward and compensation for moral damages.
The court in hearing the case accepted Mermelstein’s allegations. Judge Thomas T. Johnson stated that the gassing of Jews at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 was an indisputable fact and could not be questioned.
According to the July 1985 court order, IHR paid Mermelstein $90,000 and published a letter of personal apology.
