Speaking Ill of The Departed

"Following a request I made to consider the cancellation of this event, I was informed that the library has received legal advice that it cannot reject this room booking request."
"My office will be asking the library board to review its room rental policies in the wake of this event."
Toronto Mayor John Tory

"[The book Did Six Million Really Die by Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel] ensures that both sides of this ethnic dispute are at least available to the general reader."
"[Zundel's departure from Canada to the U.S. represents part of a] brain drain."
Barbara Kulaszka, Polish-Canadian lawyer

Barbara Kulaszka, seen here in 1990 at Imre Finta's trial. She acted as co-counsel for Finta, who was found not guilty of war crimes. Kulaszka died in June. (CBC)

"[As a lawyer defending fascist racists Kulaszka realized many successes] to the detriment of Canadian society."
"Any contact I had with her was always negative, there was no humour in it. There was nothing. It was clear to me that she embraced the philosophy of the people she represented, and she did this for a very long time."
Bernie Farber, former  head, Canadian Jewish Congress

It is telling that Barbara Kulaszka, dead at age 64 from cancer, spoke of an "ethnic dispute" possibly at the heart of her legal defence of Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites over the years. She posed as a legal professional whose morals in defence of justice  and the rights attendant on free speech extended to any kind of speech or the printed word denigrating to others in society, going so far as to incite to violence on the basis of racial bigotry, aided by slanderous depictions of Jews, reminiscent of the racist propaganda of the Third Reich.

She edited the publication written by the infamous Ernst Zundel, fascist extraordinaire, Did Six Million Really Die? and in her claims that the book made available "both sides of this ethnic dispute" clearly refers to the unapologetic assistance given by Poles and Ukrainians in the general population where anti-Semitism was rife and deadly, to the Final Solution plans of the German occupation during the Second World War when Germany led its Axis partners against the response by the Allies in conflict, while taking the time and using stretched resources and personnel to achieve genocide.

She and her ilk brought through their emigration to Canada the traditional viral enmity against Jews to Canada, and while integrating into Canadian society continued to nurse that aggravating animus, in the process minimizing the extent and ferocity of the deadly horrors we know as the Holocaust. A public outcry has been occasioned by her death; there is no public remorse or compassion for the miserable death she suffered, but there is a reaction by those she affronted to plans for a memorial in her honour.

The organizer of Wednesday night's memorial, Paul Fromm, says he and all attendees are taxpayers of the city of Toronto, and that they paid for the library. (Betsy Trumpener/CBC)

Simply because that memorial event was scheduled to take place in a public library of the Toronto Public Library group, which rented out accommodation to those wishing to honour her memory. This woman was a colleague of the notorious Doug Christie who took it upon himself to represent the interests in criminal trials of inciting to hatred and violence of a series of neo-Nazis in Canada, as well as a member of the Hungarian WWII military, Imre Finta, who had rounded up Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps.

She herself honoured Christie on the occasion of his death by asserting how unfair it was to assume he made common cause with his clients. She claimed that his defence of his clients reflected the principles of law "which in the end protect all of us from the power of the state. That type of courage is very rare". Obviously, then, she considered  herself courageous for her support of fascist denial and hate-mongering. While she herself defended the speech of Holocaust denial itself, as much as the freedom to air it.

Aside from editing the Zundel publication she wrote an essay defending Holocaust revisionism. While those she defended will mourn her passing and will miss their champion, the world is a better place for her absence.