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Mel Mermelstein is a Hungarian-born Jew, sole-survivor of his family's extermination at Auschwitz concentration camp who defeated the Institute for Historical Review in an American court and had the occurrence of gassings in Auschwitz during the Holocaust declared a legally incontestable fact.

Mermelstein was born in Munkacs and was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 along with the rest of the Jewish community.

In 1980, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) promised a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz.

Mermelstein wrote a letter to the Jerusalem Post claiming he could prove that Jews were gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The Institute for Historical Review wrote back, offering him $50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed a column of women and children being driven into the tunnel that lead into (as he learned later) gas chamber number five.

After deciding not to wait on the IHR's decision, Mermelstein sued it in California Superior Court for breach of contract, anticipatory repudiation, libel, injurious denial of established fact, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and declaratory relief, demanding $17 million. During the pre-trial hearings, Mermelstein testified it was his mother and sisters he saw driven into the gas chamber and made controversial claims that he was ordered to use human soap made from the bodies or fats of Jews, which would later be discounted by mainstream historians .

On October 9, 1981, in a pre-trial determination, 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 is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact."

In California, the Evidence Code permits the Court to take judicial notice of "facts and propositions of generalized knowledge that are so universally known that they cannot reasonably be the subject of dispute." (Evidence Code sections 451(f) and 452(h)) This was the first time that any court in the United States took judicial notice of the gassings in Auschwitz.

During the long discovery phase, the IHR discovered no sort of tunnel led to Crematorium 5, which was an above-ground building .

On July 22, 1985, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas T. Johnson ruled in favor of Mermelstein, finding that he had provided sufficient evidence to prove his claim that Jews were gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The Court issued a judgment requiring the IHR to pay Mermelstein $90,000, and write him a public apology.

In 1986, the IHR, along with its founder Willis Carto, sued Mermelstein for allegedly libelling them during an interview with a New York radio station, but dropped the charges in 1988. Merlmelstein also sued the IHR in 1988 for an article in the IHR Newsletter that examined flaws and inconsistencies in his 1981 lawsuit testimony. This suit was dropped in 1991.

Mermelstein was portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in a 1991 TV movie on the 1981 lawsuit called Never Forget. He wrote an account of his survival in Auschwitz, By Bread Alone. The book also includes many relevant documents about his legal battles with the Institute for Historical Review.

Bibliography

• Mermelstein, Mel. By Bread Alone. The Story of A-4685. 1993. ISBN 0960653406

External links

• Deniers in Revisionists Clothing - Information about the Institute for Historical Review and the Mermelstein judgement.
• Mel Mermelstein files (Nizkor Archive Directory, Shofar FTP)
• History and 'Memory' The Institute for Historical Review's examination of Mermelstein's testimony.
• 'Best Witness': Mel Mermelstein, Auschwitz and the IHR Information from the Institute for Historical Review about the trials.

• Jewish Holocaust survivors
• Hungarian Jews
• Holocaust denial