Ingrid Rimland
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Ingrid Rimland (born 1936) is a German American and the wife of Ernst Zündel.
Born in Ukraine to a Mennonite family descended from nineteenth century German settlers, her family left the Soviet Union in 1943 following the retreating German Army as it was beaten back by the Red Army during World War II. Her family did not remain in Germany, however, and settled in Paraguay where she later married and had children. She immigrated to Canada in 1960 and then to the United States in 1967 where she obtained a doctorate in education at California's University of the Pacific specializing in children with special needs. She received an California Literature Medal Award from the Commonwealth Club of California in 1977.
Rimland has been the ostensible webmaster of the Zündelsite, a website promoting the views of Holocaust revisionist Ernst Zündel, since 1995. It has been alleged that Zündel himself has been the true operator of the site for most of its existence but relied on it being operated in Rimland's name in order to evade Canada's anti-hate speech laws since Zündel was living in Canada at the time of the site's debut.
From 1996 until the end of 2004, Rimland sent out a daily email message she called a "Z-gram" in order to promote Zündel's views and provide commentary on current events.
She has also written a fictional trilogy titled Lebensraum which tells the story of Ukrainians of German descent who "fight to preserve their own race" and in which characters express anti-Semitic views. Another of her novels, The Wanderers, depicts the German Army as liberators during their invasion of the Soviet Union.
After several years of collaboration, Rimland and Zündel married in January 2000 and settled in Tennessee, Rimland moving there from California and Zündel from Toronto. Zündel was deported from the United States in early 2003 after he allegedly failed to renew his visa and had been detained in Canada by the Canadian government until it deported him to Germany on March 1, 2005. Rimland has spent most of her time since her husband's arrest campaigning for his release and raising money for his legal defense while Zündel faces trial in Germany for what many believe to be Orwellian charges of "denying the Holocaust." Rimland is currently coordinating an appeal of Zündel's deportation at the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
