Mel Mermelstein

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Mel Mermelstein (September 25, 1926, Örösveg, near Munkacs) 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.

Before World War II broke out, Mermelstein lived in Munkacs. On May 19, 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz 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 editors of the LA Timesand others including 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 Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five.

Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in California Superior Court for breach of contract, anticipatory repudiation, libel, injurious denial of established fact, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and declaratory relief(see case no. c356542). On October 9, 1981, 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 $50,000, plus $40,000 for personal suffering, and write a public apology to Mermelstein.

Holocaust revisionists have subsequently claimed that the proof offered by Mermelstein was "never released to the public," implying that it had been sealed by the court or otherwise kept secret. 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 Holocaust.

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 about the 1981 lawsuit. The movie is called Never Forget. He wrote of the court battle in his autobiography, entitled By Bread Alone.

"About these so-called deniers of The Holocaust, and who they really are, see my letter to the editors dated August 1980 in my book By Bread Alone, The Story of A-4685."- Mel Mermelstein

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