War relics of World War II GIs resurface as the Reich stuff: despite efforts to suppress growing trade in antique Nazi paraphernalia, collectors say the truth about the horrors of Hitler's regime is important to the assessment of history

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 1, 2002 | by John Elvin

Holocaust deniers are a major cause of the current controversy, and most prominent among them is British writer David Irving, who spends his summers in Key West, Fla. The author of 30 books on events of World War II, he has made the incomprehensible claim that "more people died in the back of Ted Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz."

In a court case two years ago, a judge in Britain wrote a 300-page opinion that found Irving's views "hostile, critical, offensive and derisory" in keeping with "a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias." The judge added that Irving "makes surprising and often unfounded assertions about the Nazi regime which tend to exonerate the Nazis for the appalling atrocities which they inflicted on the Jews." Owing to his views, Irving is banned from a number of countries, including Germany.

While rejecting Irving as a colleague, many historians frankly envy the bounty of important documents that have come into his hands as a result of his apologist stance. For a biography he is preparing of Himmler, Irving was allowed to study some 200 letters written by the SS chief to his mistress that were carried off as a trophy by an American soldier. "There's a lot of material like this in American homes," he told an interviewer.

What is most surprising is the extent of support for Irving. In the face of huge court costs, he reportedly received individual donations ranging to $50,000 from fans around the world. A look at Irving's Website reveals him as totally unrepentant, flaunting his opinion that the Holocaust is a fabrication on the part of Jews seeking to extort reparations from the German government. (Although Irving's views would seem so bizarre as to need no rebuttal, critics fear that as time goes by and memories fade, more people will believe the Holocaust deniers.)

In addition to Irving, revisionist history and denial attract a horde of lesser known followers among so-called skinheads and neo-Nazi groups. In a question and answer section on the Wiesenthal Center Website, former skinhead T.J. Leyden, an ex-Marine and former neo-Nazi white-supremacy activist and recruiter, says the group he belonged to, Hammerskin Nation, "was worldwide. We had chapters in Brazil, Argentina, Austria, Australia, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Sweden, England and Ireland." He put the membership total at about 80,000 and, as a Web search reveals, Leyden's is but one of many similar groups. Researchers say there are more than 350 Websites devoted to Nazi revival.

To learn how Third Reich memorabilia actually is marketed, INSIGHT visited Ray Zyla's Mohawk Arms auction house, reached by a long drive through rolling hills of field and forest in west-central New York state. It is a locale where residents don't need a Norman Rockwell painting hanging on a wall; they simply can look out a window. The auction house is a plain, low structure bristling with plenty of obvious security measures. It poses a stark contrast to the Victorian-era homes and antique shops of the little village of Bouckville, looking more like a place people would try to break out of than into. Inside, a kind of culture shock awaits.