Institute for Historical Review

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a United States–based nonprofit organization that promotes Holocaust denial. It is considered by many scholars to be central to the international Holocaust denial movement. Self-described as a "historical revisionist" organization, the IHR promotes antisemitic viewpoints and has links to several neo-Nazi and neo-fascist organizations.

The group was founded in 1978 in Torrance, California, by David McCalden and Willis Carto, and is headquartered in Fountain Valley, California. It published the Journal of Historical Review until 2002, but now disseminates its materials through its website and via email. The parent corporation of the IHR and the affiliated Noontide Press is the Legion for the Survival of Freedom.

History

The IHR was founded in 1978 by David McCalden, also known as Lewis Brandon, a former member of the British National Front, and Willis Carto, the head of the now-defunct Liberty Lobby. Liberty Lobby was an antisemitic organization best known for publishing The Spotlight, now reorganized as the American Free Press. Austin App, a La Salle University professor credited with being the first major American Holocaust denier, inspired the creation of the IHR.

Mel Mermelstein case

At the IHR's first conference in 1979, IHR publicly offered a reward of $50,000 for verifiable "proof that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz." This money (and an additional $40,000) was eventually paid in 1985 to Auschwitz survivor Mel Mermelstein, who, represented by public-interest lawyer William John Cox, sued the IHR for breach of contract for initially ignoring his evidence (a signed testimony of his experiences in Auschwitz). On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took "judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in occupied Poland during the summer of 1944."

On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them.

McCalden and Carto had a falling out over the Mel Mermelstein case, and in 1981 Carto fired McCalden as IHR director. In response, McCalden attacked IHR members and associates in his Revisionist Newsletter, including Carto, H. Keith Thompson, and Keith Stimely. From 1982 to 1983, Stimely was assistant director of the IHR and was the editor of their Journal of Historical Review from 1983 to 1985.

In February 1985, Stimely quit the IHR, claiming that Carto had, without consulting him, removed part of an article by Robert Faurisson that was critical of David Irving from the Journal of Historical Review; he was also aggrieved that Carto had refused to include a Yockey book, The Enemy of Europe, in his Noontide Press catalog because he considered it too anti-American. Stimely proceeded to denounce Carto and say that he had never understood Yockey, writing that "Yockey was, at the bottom of his heart, an artist; Carto is, at the bottom of his heart, a travelling salesman". He wrote a resignation letter entitled The Problem of Willis A. Carto or Goodbye to All That!

Tom Marcellus became its director. in 1971, Marcellus was a field staff member for the Church of Scientology and was an editor for one of the church's publications. When Marcellus left IHR in 1995, Mark Weber, the editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review (JHR) since 1992, took over as its director, and has been the IHR's director and spokesman since then.

Attacks by the JDL

The IHR was the target of the far-right terrorist organization Jewish Defense League for many years. Shortly before the IHR's office got firebombed on June 25th, 1981, a man claiming to represent the "Jewish Defenders" called the news agency United Press International threatening to firebomb the IHR's HQ. The office only sustained minor damage, a search turned up no bombs in the building, and no one was arrested. On April 5th, 1982, the office was firebombed for a second time, this time causing damage to a copy machine, some furniture and some records. A man once again called into a news agency claiming to represent the "Jewish Defenders", this time to the newspaper Daily Breeze. On Sept. 5, 1982, the office was the target of a drive-by shooting, which only caused minimal damage and no injuries.

On July 4, 1984, a third firebombing destroyed the institute's offices and warehouse. Thousands of books, cassette tapes, pamphlets, and 90% of its inventory were lost. Carto had not insured the facilities or stock. They then moved to a new building in Costa Mesa, California. In 2002, during the trial of Earl Krugel for trying to send explosives to congressman Darrell Issa and the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California, it was revealed that Krugel had admitted to an FBI informant in November of 2001 that he firebombed a "Nazi bookstore". The FBI informant was originally trying to get information on if JDL members had ever firebombed ADL offices, and Krugel replied with "Nobody hit the ADL although they deserve it richly.", and then "Uh, no it was on the uh, bookstore... that Nazi bookstore... the Holocaust deniers." The informant then replied with "I remember you telling me something about that.". Krugel then said "That was beautiful, man. I did it. It was better than I expected." A law enforcement source familiar with the probe said investigators strongly believe Krugel is referring to firebombings of IHR offices and warehouses.

The JDL had been known to protest the IHR's conferences where a few hundred attendees come to listen or give speeches. According to JDL chairman Irv Rubin, the JDL threatened to protest inside and outside the Red Lion Inn, which was the first location for the 1989 conference. Rubin also reportedly said that several Jewish groups and newspapers agreed to call the hotel to "apply pressure in that regard. If it worked, it worked beautifully.”. However Steve Giblin, executive vice president of Red Lion Hotels & Inns in Vancouver, stated it was a mutual agreement to cancel the event and change venues because of scheduling conflicts. He also stated that he did not receive an ultimatum from the JDL, and only received two or three phone calls about the IHR. Their 1989 conference had reportedly been forced to move locations twice after protests from the JDL, before finally carrying out the conference in the basement of the German Community Church in the Old World Village of Huntington Beach, California.

Ouster of Carto and later history

In the 1980s, the IHR's members, principally Marcellus and Weber, seeing the IHR as a serious group, became increasingly embarrassed by how outspoken Carto was in his antisemitism. They also began to dispute over Carto's usage of funds. They alleged that Carto fled with several millions of dollars that were supposed to have gone to the IHR. This resulted in a lawsuit. in 1993, they wrote a document, published in the Journal, rebuking him and calling him a liability that had contributed little to the IHR. They voted to oust him. In 1996, IHR won a $6,430,000 judgment in the lawsuit against Carto in which IHR alleged that Carto embezzled $7.5 million that had been left to Legion for the Survival of Freedom, the parent corporation of IHR, from the estate of Jean Edison Farrel.

In 2001, Eric Owens, a former employee, alleged that Mark Weber and Greg Raven from the IHR's staff had been planning to sell their mailing lists to either the Anti-Defamation League or the Church of Scientology.

Since 2009, Weber has pushed to broaden the institute's mandate. In January 2009, Weber released an essay titled, "How Relevant Is Holocaust Revisionism?" In it, he acknowledged the death of millions of Jews but did not wholly reject Holocaust denial. He noted that Holocaust denial had attracted little support over the years: "It's gotten some support in Iran, or places like that, but as far as I know, there is no history department supporting writing by these folks." Accordingly, he recommended that emphasis be placed instead on opposing "Jewish-Zionist power", which some commentators claim was a shift to a directly antisemitic position.

Holocaust denial

Although the IHR comments on a variety of subjects, it is most criticized for its Holocaust denial. IHR is widely regarded as antisemitic and as having links to neo-Nazi organizations. Multiple writers have stated that its primary focus is denying key facts of Nazism and the genocide of Jews.

When the IHR devoted itself to publishing Holocaust-denial material, it insisted that its work in this regard was "revisionism" rather than denial:

The Institute does not "deny the Holocaust." Every responsible scholar of twentieth century history acknowledges the great catastrophe that befell European Jewry during World War II. All the same, the IHR has over the years published detailed books and numerous probing essays that call into question aspects of the orthodox, Holocaust-extermination story, and highlight specific Holocaust exaggerations and falsehoods.