October 9: Mermelstein vs. Holocaust Denial

Mel Mermelstein, a Czech-born survivor of Auschwitz, was successful in his suit against the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a Holocaust-denial outfit, in Los Angeles Superior Court on this date in 1981. The year before, the IHR had publicly offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews had been gassed to death at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, who had seen his own mother and two sisters ushered to their deaths in the gas chambers, submitted a notarized account of what he had witnessed, then sued when the IHR refused to make payment. Judge Thomas T. Johnson declared, “This court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944.” It was the first time a U.S. court took “judicial notice” of the Holocaust (defined by the judge as “facts and propositions of generalized knowledge that are so universally known that they cannot reasonably be the subject of dispute”). Mermelstein, the author of By Bread Alone, The Story of A-4685, was awarded the $50,000, an additional $40,000 in damages, and a letter of apology from the IHR.
“As one who survived the infernos of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, my eyes are still blurring from the vision of that nightmare and my ears are still ringing with the agonized sounds of men, women, and little children who were lured and driven into the gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, solely and exclusively because they were Jewish.” —Mel Mermelstein