Mel Mermelstein has died. The local Holocaust survivor who, according to various headlines around the world:
Washington Post: "challenged Holocaust deniers"
LA Times: "took on Holocaust deniers and won"
NY Times:"Holocaust Survivor who sued deniers"
Jerusalem Post: "Holocaust Survivor who won case against deniers"
The Forward: "who fought Holocaust deniers"
And then here's our own local Register's headline: "who legally proved the Holocaust happened" which, to Rebel Girl's sensibility, lands a little oddly as if, before this, despite say, the historical record and, say the Nuremburg trials, some doubt remained until this 1981 legal decision. But Rebel Girl is so touchy lately, living as she is in these days of science denial and, dare she say it, historical revisionism.
Sigh.
Mel Mermelstein arrived at the little college in the orange groves a few years after Rebel Girl did, in the mid-90s, as an occasional special guest and speaker in a Humanities class, Understanding the Holocaust, taught by Dr. Richard Prystowsky. Those visits, the topic of Prystowsky's popular course and Prystowsky's ties to the ADL soon became part of the great struggle on campus. The class came under fire by college trustee Steven J. Frogue, who also taught history (or a version of history) at Foothill High School. Frogue's proposed seminar on the JFK assassination scheduled for Saddelback's campus and featuring a speaker tied to the Insititute for Historical Review, the Holocaust denial group successfully sued years earlier by Mermelstein, brought national attention to the district. Soon college board meetings were besieged by neo-Nazis who supported Frogue along with his critics. The meetings went on for hours. Recall efforts were launched twice and failed twice. Frogue eventually resigned in 2001. Frogue seems to remain active in a local Sons of Confederate Veterans. Of course. His son served as Trump's senior health advisor in 2016. Right.
Benjamin Hubbard, a professor of Comparative Religion at Cal State Fullerton, weighed in on the crisis at the college district with his essay, "The Truth Must Be Shown When the Holocaust Is Denied." Published in the LA Times in 1996, the article begins: "If someone denies the Holocaust, is it better to ignore the insult or to respond vigorously? Recent events at Saddleback College have shifted the question from the theoretical realm to the practical." He points out that "While Frogue may not deny the Holocaust outright, he appears to have swallowed the revisionist line of the so-called Institute for Historical Review, now based in Newport Beach, which raises questions, for example, about whether Jews were actually gassed at Auschwitz."
It doesn't take long for Hubbard to note that "It is amazing that this pseudo-institute continues to question the gassing of Auschwitz inmates in light of the landmark 1985 case, Mel Mermelstein vs. Institute of Historical Review et al."
His conclusion refers to one of those raucous board meetings:
Holocaust denial/revisionism is a sickness, a form of anti-Semitic hatred of the most vile type. It is a suppression of the truth of one of the most exhaustively documented events in history...Frogue and some of the bigots who spoke on his behalf at the Jan. 20 public meeting of the college district would do well to talk to survivors or visit one of the museums. Or they might consider taking one of the fine courses on the Holocaust offered at UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton or Chapman University, or Prystowsky’s at Irvine Valley College.
If the truth of the Holocaust is denied or minimized, then other unpleasant truths--about slavery, the treatment of Native Americans or the genocide of Bosnian Muslims, for example--might be next.
Over his lifetime, Mermelstein collected artifacts from the Holocuast which played a role in his famous lawsuit and were displayed in a museum he operated near his Long Beach home. The LA Times now reports that Newport Beach's Chabad's Center for Jewish Life will now house the collection. Huntington Beach High School English teacher Josh Anderson who worked with Mermelstein:
"recounted the story of how, when Mermelstein was a teenager in Auschwitz, his father told him and his brother they would have to split up, to increase the chances that one of them would make it out alive and live to tell the story of the Holocaust so the world would never forget.
'He did that, and he lived to 95,' Anderson said. 'Now, it’s Edie’s [Mermelstein's daughter] job, and my job, and the board’s job and all the teachers in Orange County’s job to tell his story.'
We've got a job to do. It's a good job. It's always been our job. Let's do it.
Mel Mermelstein died of COVID at age 95.
