Ernst Zündel

Who is Ernst Zündel?

Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel is a German publisher best known for his Holocaust denial. He has been jailed several times: in Canada for publishing literature "likely to incite hatred against an identifiable group", and on charges of being a threat to national security; in the United States, of overstaying his visa; and in Germany for charges of "inciting racial hatred". He lived in Canada from 1958 to 2000.

In 1977, Zündel founded a small press publishing house called Samisdat Publishers which issued such neo-Nazi pamphlets as "The Hitler We Loved and Why" and "Did Six Million Really Die?", both prominent documents of the Holocaust denial movement.

On February 5, 2003, Ernst Zündel was detained by local police in the US and deported to Canada, where he was detained for two years on a Security Certificate for being a foreign national considered a threat to national security pending a court decision on the validity of the certificate. Once the certificate was upheld, he was deported to Germany and tried in the state court of Mannheim on outstanding charges of incitement for Holocaust denial dating from the early 1990s.