Hell just got a little more crowded. Some might consider that inappropriate — about the dead, nothing but good should be said, per the Yiddish proverb — but, when the deceased in question is Ernst Zundel, a distinction needs to be made. Because, when the list of monsters is drawn up one day, Zundel will have achieved true distinction. In Canada, in this era, his evil and malevolence were almost without equal.

Getty Images Holocaust denier Ernst Zuendel (C) and his lawyers arrive for his reopened trial on Feb. 9, 2006 in Mannheim, Germany. Zuendel was extradited from Canada to German authorities in February 2005. Denying the holocaust is a crime in Germany.

Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel was born in Germany in April 1939, and died in Germany in August 2017. As far as we are aware, no one demanded photographic proof of his passing, or forensic evidence of the heart attack that killed him. But they would be entitled to do so. Zundel, you see, made his name — made a fortune — denying the murders of millions. He achieved worldwide infamy by peddling foul, criminal conspiracy theories about the Holocaust. That was what he sought to do, day after day after interminable day: deny one of the greatest mass-murders in the history of humankind. To whitewash the sins of Hitler and the other architects of the Holocaust. He studied graphic art in Germany, then scurried to Canada when he was 19 — tellingly, to avoid conscription by the German army. In Montreal, he laboured in obscurity, acquiring some skills as a retoucher of photographs. Even then, the little man excelled at erasing reality. Early on, his megalomania and self-delusion were manifesting themselves. In 1968, he actually ran for the Liberal Party leadership — the one that was won by the father of our present prime minister. He was against "anti-German" attitudes, he told the few reporters who bothered to listen. Zundel then drifted down the highway to Toronto in 1969, where he started up another undersized commercial art studio.

Patti Gower/Toronto Star via Getty Images Ernst Zundel.

Like all winged insects, he achieved a taste for the limelight. He got involved with something called Concerned Parents of German Descent, and bleated and brayed about how the media were being mean to Germans. As such, he issued press releases denouncing the acclaimed NBC TV miniseries, Holocaust. He started to get noticed, but for all of the wrong reasons. Like all cowards, too, Ernst Zundel was leading a double life. One enterprising journalist, Mark Bonokoski, discovered that Zundel was publishing anti-Semitic screeds under the pseudonym Christoph Friedrich. One his pamphlets was The Hitler We Loved And Why. At that point, others might have withdrawn from public view, or expressed regret, or chosen a different path. Not Ernst Christoph Friedrich Zundel. Not him. Zundel commenced his downward descent into the ooze and the muck of organized hatred. Now unmasked, Zundel became Canada's top purveyor of lies.