Mel Mermelstein

Mel Mermelstein (born 1926) is a former Jewish Auschwitz prisoner. He has been involved in several legal disputes with the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

A 2004 articles in The Revisionist stated that:

"The IHR had offered a sum of $50,000 to anyone who could present “provable physical evidence for the extermination of Jews in gas chambers.” Because Mel Mermelstein only offered his testimony, the IHR claimed that the condition was not met and rightly refused to pay Mermelstein. Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR for this sum. [...]

During the Mermelstein trial, the plaintiff could not present any “physical” evidence to support his claim. But the judge took “judicial notice” that the Holocaust and the killing in gas chambers with Zyklon B is a fact and that there is no appeal to a higher court:[7]

“Under Evidence Code Section 452(h), this court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944 [... ] It is not reasonably subject to dispute, and it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.”

With this decision, the judge declared as inadmissible any evidence to the contrary, which the defendant intended to present. Can a judgment be called a “confirmation of a historical fact” that is based on a hearing, during which no evidence was accepted other than the verbal claim of the plaintiff? Does such a verdict comply with the scholarly standards expected from the IHR by their German critics?

But that is not even the most important part of the entire affair, because this trial had an aftermath. A few years after this trial, Mermelstein and the IHR met again in court over the same issue. In an article on the above trial, published in a newsletter of the IHR, Bradley R. Smith, at that time a co-worker of the IHR, had called Mel Mermelstein a liar.[8] Mermelstein promptly sued IHR anew, this time to pay him eleven million dollars for the mental and emotional damages the IHR had allegedly done to him."

Mermelstein and his team of lawyers tried to turn this trial into a general trial on the Holocaust, which however was rejected. Some parts of the lawsuit were then withdrawn, some parts were dismissed, and with a higher court rejecting a final appeal by Mermelstein.

The 2004 article argued that "This underscored the worthlessness of Mermelstein’s statements as a historical witness for the alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz sufficiently. The German website trying to ridicule the IHR by referring to this case does not mention Mermelstein’s thunderous defeat at all, just as other opponents of revisionism fail to mention it."

Furthermore, revisionists have written extensive criticisms of Mermelstein's Holocaust allegations. See the "External links" section.

External links

• About the IHR/Mermelstein Settlement
• A Forgettable, But Survivable Hatchet Job on IHR, Movie Review
• IHR Scores Stunning Victory in Mermelstein Trial, $11 Million Lawsuit Ends in Vindication for Defendant
• “Best Witness”: Mel Mermelstein, Auschwitz and the IHR
• History and ‘Memory’, An Examination of the Evidence of ‘Holocaust Witness’ Mel Mermelstein
• California Court Rejects Mermelstein's Appeal
• Final Victory in the Mermelstein Case, IHR Prevails in Eleven-Year-Old Legal Battle
• The Mermelstein Lie

Note that besides the external sources listed here, an alleged Holocaust confessor/witness may be extensively discussed in the external sources listed in the articles on the particular Holocaust camps and/or other Holocaust phenomena the individual is associated with.