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In _The Journal of Historical Review_ Vol. 11, #2 (Summer 1991):

   
       REVIEWS:  "A Forgettable, But Survivable, Hatchet Job on IHR"
              
              (Or, "Never Forget -- Witness for the Defense")


NEVER FORGET.  Produced by Robert Radnitz.  Directed by Joseph Sargent.
Turner Pictures, Inc. 1991.  2 hours.

                        Reviewed by Tom Marcellus

     _Never Forget_, Turner Broadcasting's version of the "Mel
Mermelstein story," which hit the airwaves nationwide via the TNT cable
network on the evening of April 8, 1991 -- and in at least seven
airings during the week that followed -- was a pretty forgettable
effort.  The drama fell far short of both poetry and truth.
Nevertheless, _Never Forget_ did serve as a timely reminder to many --
and an introduction to many more -- that there is a Revisionist
movement, and an Institute for Historical Review, which challenge a
version of the Second World War, and its sacrosanct "Holocaust," that
until the appearance of _Never Forget_ were presented as uncontested
truth on America's most influential mass medium.

     As _Never Forget_ begins, this disclaimer rolls across the screen:

**********
  While certain scenes are adapted from incidents in the lives of the
Mermelstein family and other individuals, all legal proceedings
portrayed are based on actual transcripts and documents.
**********

     Like much that follows in the docudrama, these words are
deceptive.  In fact _Never Forget_ materially falsifies testimony and
court proceedings, as well as fracturing history and truth in fact and
in spirit from start to finish.

     The story of the Mermelstein affair has been truncated, partly to
keep production costs down (ergo, no Auschwitz stage sets) but also to
represent the judicial notice taken by Judge Thomas Johnson that "Jews
were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland in
1944" as a signal legal and historical victory which effectively ended
the lawsuit.  Thus, viewers are spared the dull story of the nearly
four years of legal maneuvering which followed, by which Mermelstein
and his lawyers sought to destroy IHR, and thus Historical Revisionism,
in America.

     The Mel Mermelstein of _Never Forget_, as played by Leonard Nimoy
of _Star Trek_ notoriety, is a prosperous businessman, happy family
man, and pillar of the community, not the man whom a Los Angeles Jewish
newspaper, quoting "members of the Jewish community" and a "close
friend" of Mermelstein, described as "a difficult moody man" and "his
own worst enemy" ("Mermelstein, Hailed As a Hero, Stood Virtually Alone
During Holocaust Trial," _Israel Today_, August 2, 1985, pp 6, 18).
His wife Jane, as played by Blythe Danner, is nothing less than a
transplanted Southern belle, while his three sons and one daughter make
a convincingly half-Jewish, all-American brood (for reasons which are
obscure, daughter Edie is presented in _Never Forget_ as a 12-year-old,
rather than the high-school graduate she actually was at the time).

     When he receives a letter from the Institute challenging him to,
in effect, put up or shut up following his public challenge to lead
IHR's Editorial Advisory board to the exact spot at which he witnessed
"the actual gassings of men, women, and little children in gas chambers
disguised as shower rooms," Mermelstein-Nimoy's earlier bravado seems
to crumble.  But he is nonetheless determined to call IHR's bluff by
providing proof that yes, Jews were gassed at Auschwitz, and thus claim
the $50,000 reward which had been offered, withdrawn when nobody
complied with the stated rules of evidence (those of American criminal
courts), and then offered again to Mermelstein (without authorization
from IHR's Board of Directors) by Director David McCalden, writing
under the name "Lewis Brandon."

     Mermelstein-Nimoy calls first on the Los Angeles office of the
Anti-Defamation League, then on the Simon Wiesenthal Center for
professional advice and legal help in getting the best of the
Institute.  But both groups turn him away, assuring him that although
the IHR is composed of "professional liars and haters," he is likely
to cause American Jewry more harm than good by giving them a public
forum.  Besides, both groups have busy schedules (Rabbi Hier's
Wiesenthal Center alone is on the trail of 400 "Nazi war criminals"!).
Mermelstein-Nimoy goes away dispirited, sadder if not wiser, still
resolved to confront and beat IHR.

     These scenes have a double meaning for the perceptive Revisionist,
and the second meaning is by no means deleterious.  Most readers of
these pages should take heart from the glad tidings that Holocaust
Revisionism "is cropping up every place," according to Rabbi Hier of
the SWC, who also notes that "we see this sort of thing all the time,"
and "[the IHR] is the largest racist and anti-Semitic group in the
country . . . well-funded, spread out all over the country, with
newspapers, radio and television outlets . . . just the tip of the
iceberg."  (Elsewhere in the movie, IHR is referred to in no less
flattering terms:  as part of "an empire of hate -- connected, well-
funded," and a group of "liars and bullies," whose books "you find when
you look under rocks.")

     Still, the obsessive (he's embarrassed even his eldest son with
his fixation on Auschwitz) Mermelstein-Nimoy is not about to give up.
He draws up a list of 16 lawyers whom he contacts one by one, all of
whom also turn him down.  Through all this, the hero is given spiritual
sustenance by visits to his homemade Holocaust museum, where he
reminisces in view of the old shoes, artifacts made from barbed wire,
cakes of soap, pictures and other memorabilia he has accumulated over
the years.

     Then wife Jane has an idea:  why not contact William Cox, a
Gentile lawyer who has done business with Mermelstein in the past but
curiously was not on his list of potential attorneys.  Cox, who is
portrayed by Dabney Coleman as the very stereotype of the "lovable
curmudgeon" into which TV alchemy can always be counted on to transform
ideologically acceptable cranks, ultimately accepts, after the required
drama of furst turning Mermelstein-Nimoy down and then waking him up
at 2 a.m. to say he'll take the case, supposedly PRO BONO, i.e.,
without fee.  And although Cox doesn't know "how much these liars and
bullies are willing to pour into the case," after communing with
himself among the paraphernalia of his Holocaust museum Mermelstein-
Nimoy courageously decides to go ahead with the task of making everyone
remember the last words he ever heard from his father, the plea to son
Mel to "never forget" (oddly enough, Mermelstein seems to have
forgotten these words when writing his allegedly autobiographical _By
Bread Alone_ -- they appear nowhere therein).

     On December 18, 1980, Cox writes IHR to tell the Institute of his
client's acceptance of the reward offer, enclosing Mermelstein-Nimoy's
"evidence" of gassing -- a sworn statement in which he details his
witnessing his mother and three sisters enter an Auschwitz "gas
chamber," and a list of other alleged witnesses to bolster his story.

     A ploy is hit on by which IHR will be sued for breach of contract
if it does not respond within thirty days, and Mermelstein-Nimoy sweats
out the waiting period, dogging his family, Cox, and bemused letter
carriers to make sure that the all-important IHR response (which in any
case would be addressed to Cox) has NOT come.  It doesn't (not by the
Cox-Mermelstein deadline, anyway), and it's off to the courts.

     What does come to Mermelstein-Nimoy's home through the mail in
this deceitful drama, however, is some "hair of a gassed Jewish victim"
and "pure Jewish fat" (a piece of soap).  The clear implication of this
emotive scene (Mermelstein's young daughter opens the envelope and
shrieks in terror) is that the "haters and deniers" have violated the
sanctity of Mermelstein's hearth and home with something base and
obscene.  That the Germans made soap neither from Jews nor anyone else
during the war, and that there would be no way to distinguish the hair
of a "gassed" concentration inmate from that of a "survivor," since the
Germans customarily deloused the shorn hair of inmates, are facts lost
on television audiences, most of whom must think:  "What despicable
monsters these Revisionists must be!"

     By now Mermelstein-Nimoy is reeling from the (imaginary) onslaught
of the "bigots."  His family is buckling too:  the kids (except for his
adoring daughter) haven't been supportive enough, and even his wife is
dubious about pursuing the case against the Institute.  By now the
television Mermelsteins are convinced they're dealing with the whole
phantasmagoria of "extremists" and "terrorists," and that their very
property and lives may be in danger.

     There are other reverses as Mermelstein-Nimoy begins to search for
other "eyewitnesses" to corroborate his story.  His first choice, an
old woman of evidently long-standing acquaintance, comes unglued at the
mention of Auschwitz:  the Gestapo still has the habit of dropping in
on her in the dead of night (he doesn't find a better "eyewitness" in
the drama, although in real life Mermelstein offered Miklos Nyiszli,
dead for some thirty years, to back up his reward claim).

     There are still more pressures on Mermelstein-Nimoy.  His pallet
manufacturing business begins to suffer because he can't remember
delivery promises, so consumed he is by his obsession with the case.
Next, an anonymous miscreant throws a dead pig on his doorstep, and
Mermelstein-Nimoy receives an anonymous phone call one night to inform
him that his business is on fire (after Mermelstein-Nimoy and son race
to the pallet company, the call proves to be a false alarm).

     Nerves wearing thin, Mermelstein-Nimoy and Cox infiltrate a
meeting of the "National Legion of Patriots," at which the speaker
(conveniently at that very moment) is in the middle of a harangue about
the myth of the Holocaust.  Mermelstein-Nimoy, enraged by what is in
fact a pretty fair summation of the basic Revisionist case, tries to
shout him down.  Cox wrestles him out of the meeting as the audience,
faces red with bulging veins and contorted with hate, scream insults
and slurs -- it's a far trek from _Star Trek_ for the poker-faced icon
who was Mr. Spock.

     Then it's on to the IHR's first deposition of Mermelstein-Nimoy,
in which he is sworn to answer questions from the Institute fully and
truthfully.  This is of course represented as a sadistic ordeal, with
both IHR's counsel, Richard Fusilier, and this reviewer (both of us
named) harassing Mel with cruel questions about his experiences at
Auschwitz.  To show how sneaky IHR's director is, I am chastised for
smuggling a microcassette recorder into the deposition in my jacket
pocket, which Mel discovers -- a real feat since microcassette
recorders were not even on the market at that time.  (And I cannot let
it pass that the actor who played me was plump, gray-haired, 25 years
too old, and decidedly uglier than me -- a personal insult for which
I'll forgive Mel if he will only let us alone.)

     After the harrowing ordeal of the exhausting deposition (the
plaintiff was suffered the indignity of having to answer hard questions
about his concentration-camp experiences), Mermelstein-Nimoy confesses
to his family that he might lose the case because of Fusilier's tricky
questions or because, at a key moment, he might forget or get crossed
up on some tiny detail about the gas chambers.  But finally there comes
the great and historic day in the courtroom of Judge Thomas Johnson,
who after hearing a heart-rending witness-stand account of
Mermelstein's personal experiences at Auschwitz, and his promise to his
father "never to forget," takes judicial notice that the Holocaust is a
fact not subject to reasonable dispute.  Much joy and celebration.  The
End (of this docudrama, anyway).

     If the viewer has remained awake through this dishwater-dull,
soap-operatic nonsense, he or she may be interested in an accounting of
what was actually true and what was demonstrably false in _Never
Forget_.  In fact, a lengthy list of material distortions and
falsehoods, as well as lesser violations of the truth made in hopes of
livening up the turgid Melodrama -- could be compiled.  Here are just a
few of them:

-  The drama represents the initial letter sent to Mermelstein as part
of a deliberate IHR plot to harass the "survivor."  In fact the letter
re-opening the reward offer was undertaken entirely on the initiative
of the late David McCalden, then director of IHR, who consulted neither
the Institute's board nor its founder.  (The announcement that the
$50,000 reward offer for proof of gassings at Auschwitz had officially
expired was made at the Second International Revisionist Conference.
The full and detailed story of the reward offer is told in the booklet
_Worldwide Growth and Impact of Holocaust Revisionism_, which is still
available from IHR.)  McCalden was shortly discharged, after subsequent
incidents gave further evidence of irresponsibility, and even
hostility, to the interests of IHR.

     All the same, in regard to the initial letter to Mermelstein,
_Never Forget_ veers, briefly and unexpectedly, toward something of the
truth, as opposed to his counsels' representations at the time and
subsequently.  In his *actual* letter of December 18, 1980, Cox
represented that the way in which the evidence submitted to claim the
reward would be judged was still undecided, suggesting that the
proceeding be televised and then voted on by the TV audience.
Thereafter, Mermelstein, Cox, and their successors swore ignorance of
any other proposed method of judgement -- *including the specification
that IHR would choose the judges -- despite the fact that a sheet of
rules including IHR's choice of the judges was routinely sent with
every reward application.*  _Never Forget_, however, has Cox speaking
dismissively of the Institute's "kangaroo court," and not tailoring his
case to a jury of couch potatoes; and Cox makes quite clear in the
drama that his strategy is based on luring IHR into the courts.

-  Never in any of his depositions has Mermelstein ever referred to
"gassed" hair, "Jewish fat" or a dead pig being delivered to his home.
In fact, the closest such incident this reviewer can recall was the
depositing of a dead pig, owned up to one Irv Rubin, on the porch of a
Jew who'd run afoul of Rubin through his alleged sympathies for the
Palestinians, about five years ago.  Rubin, chief of the terroristic
Jewish Defense League, once stated on Los Angeles television that
"Mermelstein is one of our financial supporters," although Mel denies
supporting the JDL or ever meeting Rubin.

-  The reviewer has never heard of a "National Legion of Patriots," nor
is there any record of Mel ever crashing any meeting at which Holocaust
Revisionism was being promoted.  Out of exemplary fairness, however,
IHR did invide William Cox to speak briefly at the Third International
Revisionist Conference held in Los Angeles in November of 1981.  Cox
appeared, said his piece (chastising the audience for attending a
conference sponsored by a group with such anti-Semitic views), and was
treated politely.

-  The claim put in Nimoy-Mermelstein's mouth during his deposition,
that his brother, like his father, was "worked to death" in the coal
mines of the Auschwitz sub-camp at Jaworzno, is a fabrication of the
docudrama.  In the actual deposition Mermelstein says nothing of the
circumstances of his brother's alleged death; elsewhere, Mermelstein
has claimed that his brother was shot for refusing to take part in an
evacuation march (which to the German guards could only have been
tantamount to an escape attempt).  A small thing, perhaps, but an
irrefutable indication of the liberties _Never Forget_ has taken with
the legal record -- and perhaps a sign of Mermelstein's continuing
inclination to alter his stories, or at least acquiesce in errors made
by others (during the deposition in question, Mermelstein claimed his
father died "of torture, hunger, and also because of inability to see
his son suffer and being beaten and tortured," but in an article which
appeared in the _Los Angeles Herald-Examiner_ on February 15, 1981,
reporter Timothy Carlson quoted Mermelstein as saying that he had seen
his *father* as well as his mother and sisters led off to the gas
chambers.  And there is solid evidence for *other* Mermelstein versions
of his father's death.)

-  There is no record of Mel ever receiving a crank call that his
business had been set aflame.  However, on the night of July 4, 1984
the office and warehouse of the Institute for Historical Review was
totally destroyed by arson, a crime that the authorities have never
seriously investigated and which set the IHR back by years and some
$400,000.

-  Whatever were the difficulties Mermelstein had in recruiting an
attorney at the outset (and they seem overdrawn to say the least),
there has been no shortage of free legal help through most of his ten-
year crusade against IHR and Revisionism:  there has been a legion of
top-flight lawyers at his beck and call.  He has enjoyed important
support from important segmants of the Jewish community (despite his
initial dismissal by those influential Jewish groups he first turned to
for help).  Nor has the judiciary of Los Angeles County and the press
been anything except extremely supportive of him.  The alleged "facts"
dramatized in the film are directly contradicted by the actual record.
It was IHR that was almost unable to file a timely answer to
Mermelstein's original complaint in 1980 because no lawyer, even noted
"civil rights" advocates in the area, would touch the case.
Fortunately, one attorney was found, Richard Fusilier, who agreed to
represent the IHR because no other attorney in the state of California
would take its case.

-  In real life Mermelstein is not precisely the normal personality
portrayed by Leonard Nimoy.  Nowhere in the film is there any mention
of the fact that he had been under psychiatric care long before IHR,
and the emotional distress its actions allegedly caused him, intruded
into his supposedly well-balanced mind and life.

-  The drama portrays Mermelstein as a cooperative witness willing, if
not eager, to answer Fusilier's questions honestly and completely
during the first deposition.  _Never Forget_ also depicts Mermelstein-
Nimoy as finally breaking down into heart-wrenching sobs when the
attorney's probing questions become just too much for an Auschwitz
"survivor" and "eyewitness" to his mother and sisters' "gassing" to
bear.  But what in fact took place at that deposition (I was present)
was that Mermelstein proved a most elusive respondent:  often he seemed
unwilling to give a straight answer to even the simplest questions,
misunderstanding them, waxing broadly philosophical, forgetting
inconvenient details, duelling back and forth with Fusilier and all in
all leading IHR's lawyer on a merry chase.  At no time during the
entire deposition did Mermelstein shed a single tear.  On the contrary,
he struck me as hostile, combative, and evasive throughout the entire
deposition.

-  At the dramatic conclusion of _Never Forget_, Mermelstein-Nimoy
takes the witness stand during the crucial hearing at which Judge
Johnson ruled on Mermelstein's request for judicial notice that Jews
were gassed at Auschwitz during the summer of 1944.  The docudrama has
Mermelstein touchingly recount the story of his promise to his father
to "never forget," whereupon Judge Johnson makes his historic ruling
and the movie ends reminding viewers that the fight against bigotry
and racism goes on.  But of the drama's initial assurance that "all
legal proceedings portrayed [have been] based on actual transcripts and
documents" to the contrary, Mermelstein neither took the stand at that
hearing nor gave any testimony whatsoever -- the entire scene is pure
invention, devised to provide something of an emotional catharsis to
what remains a weak, and for the millions undoubtedly soporific, made-
for-television movie.

     What has been the likely impact of this film on IHR and
Revisionism?  To be sure, every trick in the smearer's arsenal has been
employed (subject to budget limitations, of course).  Old hands at
Revisionism will immediately note the old trick of ascribing to their
enemies that which the Holocaust lobbyists, themselves, are guilty of,
thereby turning the truth right over onto its head.  Reversed is the
fundamental fact that the purpose of Historical Revisionism is not to
hector the Mel Mermelsteins and similar blustering Holocaust small-fry
but to challenge the mighty, the entrenched establishments and
interests which profit from historical falsehood.  IHR's only goal,
and its only weapon of self-defense, is "to bring history into accord
with the facts."  In the longer view, Mermelstein and his allies will
appear simply as pawns of those much larger and more sinister entities.

     That is why, despite _Never Forget_'s portrayal of Mermelstein as
a sympathetic underdog, it is not the Exterminationists who have
trouble recruiting lawyers or raising funds to exist, or who are
subjected to continuous barrages of threats, intimidation, assaults,
arsons, and even cold-blooded murder.  Nor, despite the docudrama's
dark murmurings of IHR well-connectedness and far-flung resources, do
real-life Revisionists encounter the least bit of objectivity, let
alone sympathy, towards their concerns in the press or the
entertainment media -- in contrast to the automatic acceptance that
even the wooliest and most mean-spirited "survivor" accusations win
from these industries.

     Above and beyond the Auschwitz lie itself, this is the Big Lie of
_Never Forget_ -- the whopper that the Revisionists are somehow
politically powerful, shrewd, bigoted, sadistic and well-connected,
while the Exterminationists are weak, innocent, and morally upright.

     Not to worry, though.  _Never Forget_'s liberties with fact are so
multifarious that it must fall of its own weight in the eyes of anyone
with the slightest knowledge of the facts of the case.  Even Gloria
Allred, LA law's far-left, fervidly Zionist, cartoonishly "feminist"
firebrand, whose firm took over Mermelstein's case from Cox, angrily
denounced the film as "historically inaccurate," adding her own brand
of Revisionism to the stew.

     And now comes the glimmer of truth, the blinding flash of the
obvious, as the great American political thinker Lawrence Dennis would
have put it.  Clearly, the intended purpose of trying to slam, smear
and isolate the Revisionists is counterbalanced by two quite unintended
messages to the viewer:  1) Historical Revisionism is strong and
growing, and 2) the embattled but still mighty IHR is leading this
movement, which is of the gravest concern to the Establishment.

---End of article---


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