It was 1977. The mother of my girlfriend at the time was a librarian in a small eastern Ontario town. She was a Holocaust survivor from Czechoslovakia. I was the son of a Holocaust survivor. I received a call from her one morning asking if the next time I was in Prescott could I stop by the library; she had something she needed to show me.

That weekend I walked up the steps of Prescott’s iconic library on Dribble Street. Anne Steiner was waiting for me.

I greeted her warmly but I could tell she was very obviously troubled. She led me into her office, where spread out on her desk was a series of ugly pamphlets: “The Hitler We Loved and Why” and “Did Six Million Really Die?” Scattered amongst these neo-Nazi advertisements were other flights of the imagination, including “UFO’s-Nazi Secret Weapon” and “UFO Sightings Around the World.”

We were astounded. This was our very first brush with the hatred of Holocaust denial. The publisher of these books, hateful tracts, audio cassettes and much more was a man with whom I would become sadly, much better acquainted in the years to come, Ernst Zundel.

Under the guise of what he called “Samistadt Publishers,” Ernst Zundel became the largest distributor of anti-Semitic Holocaust denial material in the world. Schools, libraries, government officials, the media and ordinary folk with a hatred for things Jewish all became part of Zundel’s “mailing list.”

It’s estimated that by 1980 in Canada and the U.S. alone Zundel had outreach to more than 29,000 individuals and organizations. The number climbed much higher taking in Europe and the slowly growing anti-Semitism rearing its head at that time in certain countries of the Middle East.

My former colleague at Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), Manuel Prutschi, wrote in his pivotal expose “The Zundel Affair” of the pernicious methods of Zundel’s outreach:

“A story on Simon Wiesenthal in the New York Times Magazine of May 3, 1981, provides a particularly telling example of how Zundel’s mailings filter through German society and beyond. A Dutch tourist, vacationing in Upper Austria, was supplied with anti-Semitic material by a gas station attendant, who in turn, had obtained the writings from a friend who was a Samistadt subscriber.”

Zundel was not just your garden-variety Jew hater. He reveled in it. Nothing proved more fun for him than poking, scratching and tearing away at Jews and Jewish leadership. A few years before I began work at CJC, the long-time and respected Jewish organization was looking for someone to direct its Holocaust Documentation Bank Project. Among the historians and archivists who applied for the position was Ernst Zundel.

Indeed, Zundel had already become infamous as an anti-Semite and as Manuel Prutschi explained, he saw himself as “the ideal candidate.” Because, according to him, he was “extremely knowledgeable and sensitive in regard to the Holocaust issue and that he possessed a good understanding of Yiddish.”

As the years progressed his innate need to aggravate Jews continued ad nauseum. From sending out Jewish New Year Greetings to writing countless letters to CJC leaders demanding meetings to finally put the “Holocaust legend” to rest.

At one of the countless hearings and trials I attended having to do with Zundel I recall one day in which Zundel entered the courtroom with a large Jewish skullcap on his head. He turned to me and proclaimed that “today I am the Jew.”

Even after being released from a German prison in 2010, where he had completed a five-year sentence on 14 counts of inciting hatred, Zundel perhaps a bit chastened could still not help himself. Standing before a small crowd of admirers who gathered to welcome his release, Zundel claimed “It’s kind of a sad situation; there’s a lot to say. I’ll certainly be careful not to offend anyone and their draconian laws.”

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Ernst Zundel is now gone. However, there remain those who have chosen to continue his hateful legacy. It is sad that even in death, Zundel has apparently left enough of his noxious brew that others have gladly swallowed it.