Dear Editor:

A friend has drawn my at-
tention to the Jatest effusion
of that lobotomized freedom
fighter, Doug Collins, in
your issue of February 20
headlined ‘Jews using Nazi
Tactics’.

Collins seems unable to
grasp the difference between
free speech and hate-
mongering. If a society
wishes to maintain freedom
of expression the way most
of us not bitten by mad dogs
understand it, it would be
imprudent not to enact some
measure of self-defence
against those who would
undermine the very basis on
which freedom rests. If the

8 - Friday, March 15, 4985 - North Shore News

Free speech or ha

essentially decent types run-
ning the Weimar Republic
had done this in time, the
world might) have been
spared the horrors of which
Zundel and his cohorts are
part of the poisonous after-
math.

Canada, like the Weimar
Republic, has been far too
negligent in this respect. |
have every sympathy with
the Attorney-General of On-
tario who, in prosecuting
Zundel, had to reach for an
absurdly archaic law. But it
was the lesser of two evils
and underlines the need to
draft new laws which can
deal with the Zuendels aad
Keegstras of this world.

Q

As EL understand it, Zundel
claims as his motivation for
peddling hate fiterature that
he wishes to help restore
Germany’s good name by
‘proving’ that) the horror
catalogue of crimes against
humanity were cither untrue
or exaggerated. He dismisses
the testimony of the few
surviving inmates of concen-
tration camps as delusion, In
one of his choicer fancies he
even claims that Dachau had
swimming pools and gardens
which prove that the inmates
were only on a bit of a rest
cure.

On this point, | have
something to contribute,
though 1 don't expect Col-

lins to be impressed by it.
As an officer of 5.0O.F,
(the Special Operations E
ecutive), | had occasion in
the insmediate aftermath of
the war to visit Dachau not
long aftger liberation. The
purpose was to try and find
out what happened to some
of our agents. 1 stil have
nightmares when | think
back to it. Are the dozen
photographs | took at the
time a delusion? One of
them shows the doors of two
evens in which corpses were
burned. [| don’t dwell on the
others. When confronted by
Zundel’s version of Dachau
as a kind of health spa, |
have to pinch myself to

make sure I’m. awake. The
fact that F was there, and
Zundel was just being born,
will be considered neither
here nor there by paranoids
beyond the reach of truth.
if Zundel really wanted to
help restore Germany’s im-
age, 1 wonder why he
doesn’t follow the line taken
by the West German pov-
erument. A civilized people
was taken over by brutes
who committed unspeakable
crimes. It happened, and
there's no use pretending it
didn't. The thing to do is to
forgive but never to forget,
because the strongest plank
in any plea for re-evaluation
of that ghastly period is that

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te mongering?

cir-
have

under appropriate
cumstances it could
happened to any of us.
As for Collins, 1 can't
help feeling a tinge of com-
passion. Scott, of the
‘Guardian’, who knew a
thing or two about responsi-
ble journalism, wouldn't
have hired him to empty the
waste baskets. Come to
think of it, there was one
paper where he would have
fet at home and: been
suitably rewarded. { was
called ‘Der Stuermer’, the
newspaper of Hitler's storm
troopers. But it hasn't been
hiring forsometime. ,
G.A. Spencer,
Vancouver