Left to right: A young Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel, and Adrien Arcand, veteran of the Canadian concentration camps. Arcand looks like the cat that ate the canary. He’s very pleased with his new recruit.
ERNST ZÜNDEL
THE AWAKENING!
A VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
TOM METZGER: I’m Tom Metzger, your host for Race and Reason, that longest-running racially oriented television show in the United States.
We are on now in over sixty cities across the country. And we keep producing.
Race and Reason is dedicated to total, absolute free speech. That island of free speech in a sea of controlled and managed news.
And we’re glad to have you with us today, because we’re on the road again. And today, we have a very interesting guest from Canada.
His name is Ernst Zündel.
He’s a writer, publisher, artist, and quite a figure in the press up in Canada. So, welcome to the show, Ernst. Good to have you with us.
ERNST ZÜNDEL: Glad to be here.
TOM METZGER: Ernst, most of the people, or some of the people, or maybe all the people, have not heard so much of Ernst Zündel in the United States.
Why are you such a controversial figure here in Canada?
ERNST ZÜNDEL: Basically, I became famous — or infamous — with a number of court cases. Legal battles. And, uh, that basically topped my fame. I was uh, quite a well known artist. I sold over 700 paintings in Canada. Hanging in some of the most famous places. And uh, sold paintings to Japan; Johannesburg, South Africa; sold them to Germany. So, the first part of my fame was for my art.
The second part of my fame was in the 60s when I was running for Prime Minister of Canada against the then later-leader, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Made it to the inner circle, to the shock and astonishment of all the pros in politics.
And then drifted out of things into the publishing field, published a number of controversial books, and eventually got sued by a Jewish woman, and she really made me a household word.
TOM METZGER: Now, wait a minute, now. Are, are you a German national?
ERNST ZÜNDEL: I’m, I was born in Germany —
TOM METZGER: — born in Germany.
ERNST ZÜNDEL: Yeah. Raised in Germany. Left because I didn’t like to join America’s vassal army, the Foreign Legion that they created in Germany.
And I looked around the world, where I could go without having to put on a uniform and shoot my fellow men. In those days, I was extremely liberal; I believed in all the propaganda the Allies had given us, and I was pacifist.
And I was raised a very strong Christian. And I found in Canada, the country, the one country in the world at that time where they had no draft. And so, I came here.
TOM METZGER: So, you’re — here you are and you ran for public office, you’re an artist and you’re doing quite well, and paintings all over, all over the world. But then, all of a sudden, you did something. You, you were publishing, and you published books —
ERNST ZÜNDEL: Well, I, I —
TOM METZGER: — what did you do that set the world on fire?
ERNST ZÜNDEL: Maybe it’s the name. Zündel in German means to spark something.
[Laughter]
Zündel is the root word for a spark plug, and uh, ignition of a car, you know, it all has to do with Zündelism, so, uh —
No, actually, quite simply, I came to Canada, as I said, for conscience reasons.
And uh, loved Canada, enjoyed it here. It was a wonderful country when I came here in 1958. And, I was young, healthy, quickly married the French-Canadian girl that I met in night school when I was learning English and established a family.
Moved to Quebec, lived amongst French people for nine years in the province of Quebec. Did my business in both French and English. And uh —
TOM METZGER: — Now, so far, we’re not very controversial —
Ernst Zündel, Adrien Arcand
And uh, he was a man known to Adolf Hitler. He was the leader of the largest political movement in the thirties and forties in Canada, called the Unity, National Unity Party of Canada. At one time, they had a swastika as their national emblem.
And, uh, he turned me — within a three-and-a-half-hour session — into a German.
I was so guilty, up until that moment, I felt so terribly guilty for what German people allegedly had done, that I wanted to forget that I was a German.
And here, this, in this far-away land, this man of French-Canadian origin, who had been an editor of one of the large newspapers in Quebec, turned me into a German who was proud of his country, proud of his heritage, and started me out on a quest that I had no idea that I was getting into.
But he made such an impression on me, after that three-and-a-half-hour detoxification, or, or whatever you want to call it —
TOM METZGER: — This, this must have been quite a man.
Now, here you are, you’re a pacifist. You’ve come to the United States [Canada] because you — and you obviously believed everything that the Allies had said about Germany. You come here, and you’re married, and you’re an artist, and uh, and you meet one man, and what was his name?
ERNST ZÜNDEL: His name was Adrien Arcand.
And he spent, himself, seven years — six-and-a-half years [five years and three months] in a Canadian concentration camp.
TOM METZGER: During the forties?
ERNST ZÜNDEL: During the, well, immediately when the war broke out, they arrested him without trial and kept him in Canadian concentration camps as a prisoner of war.
He showed me the mail that he would get from his wife, and it said “Prisonnier de guerre“, Prisoner of war, in his own country.
TOM METZGER: Now, you must — this man must have been one great salesman.
ERNST ZÜNDEL: He, well, he was — I consider him one of the geniuses that I have met in my life. He spoke seven languages, he spoke fluent German, he could speak English, Hebrew, Greek that he had taught himself.
He was also quite an artist. He was a brilliant writer, and a magnificent orator.
That man was a Canadian genius.
And he really did turn me around. I was, it was my great fortune to have met him.
TOM METZGER: So, in, briefly, how did he peel this guilt away?
ERNST ZÜNDEL: It was really quite simple. He had a huge library, of uh, in many different languages, three of which I spoke: German, English, French. And, uh, he was very clever in pointing out historical events using Jewish sources. When he knew the sting would be for me to react negatively towards the argument, he would bring a Jewish source, you know, it made it easier for me to accept it. Or bring an English source, or bring an American source, you know.
It was a magnificent — that man had deep insight into human beings. He was a very moral man, a very deeply spiritual, deeply Christian man, like many French-Canadians are.
And, uh, he set me on the right path. I’m forever grateful. Whatever happens to me in this country — whatever else happens to me — I mean, all the bombs, and the spitting at, and being punched out, and going to jail, and being dragged through the courts, that man made it worth it.
– 30 –
This part of segment one ends @ 6 minutes 50 seconds in.
The whole film is 56 minutes, 25 seconds, in two big segments. Download the full-length video to enjoy the rest.
Down With Hate! 