Among Holocaust "revisionists," few have sparked more controversy than Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. At the time of his entry on the "revisionist" scene, Leuchter, 49, described himself as the Chief Engineer of Fred Leuchter Associates in Boston, Massachusetts, a firm specializing in gas chambers and executions, as well as "the design and fabrication of execution hardware used in prisons throughout the United States."
Leuchter became involved with the "revisionists" during the 1988 trial of Ernst Zundel, a German-Canadian neo-Nazi accused under a Canadian law of publishing hate propaganda. Zundel hired Leuchter to testify that the Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek concentration camps contained "no
execution gas chambers" and "could not have been then, or now, be [sic] utilized or seriously, considered to function as executing gas chambers." The court dismissed this testimony, because Leuchter lacked the credentials to prove his expertise on gas chambers. Zundel was convicted of the charges; however, Leuchter's work took on a life of its own in "revisionist" circles as The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth, published by Zundel's Samisdat Publishers, Ltd. of Toronto.

                    Nonetheless, the "research" Leuchter conducted to make these claims
                    was from the start both biased and hopelessly flawed. Accompanied to
                    Poland by his wife Carolyn, and three assistants, Leuchter described his
                    procedure as follows:

                          "We began our work in the alleged gas chamber at the
                         Auschwitz facility. Unfortunately, we were unable to
                         accomplish much due to constant interruptions by both
                         official and unofficial Sunday tours. It was too dangerous to
                         take forensic samples and [video] tape, so we left for
                         Birkenau about noon.

                         "At Birkenau. We took samples, documented our activities
                         on video tape and in still photos, and made scale drawings of
                         these facilities, carefully documenting the removal locations
                         of all the forensic samples. We had to break into the sauna
                         building, since it was locked.

                         "The following day, Monday, we again began our work at
                         Auschwitz, the Sunday tours having subsided. Upon
                         completion at Auschwitz, we drove again to Birkenau to take
                         our control sample. Unfortunately, the building was locked
                         and again we had to break and enter in order to access the
                         delousing chamber.

                         "We arrived at Majdanek. and examined the facilities. It was
                         extremely difficult to work here, in that a guard made rounds
                         every ten or fifteen minutes. It was necessary for me to
                         trespass beyond these gates in forbidden areas. Once we
                         were caught short: I was forced to hurdle the gate, and was
                         still in the air and in mid-jump when the guard entered.
                         Fortunately, he was more interested in Jurgen and his
                         camera to see me before I touched the ground."

                    Although an article in the July 1, 1991, issue of The Spotlight would claim
                    "there have never been any questions about Leuchter's lack of expertise
                    soon after the publication of his "Report " it was revealed that he had
                    graduated from Boston University in 1964 with only a B.A. in history, and
                    had never taken an engineering licensing test in Massachusetts. His
                    supporters dismissed the importance of certification for his peculiar
                    industry; however, an October 13, 1990, New York Times article quoted an
                    expert anesthesiologist on Leuchter's lethal injection machine: "His
                    injection system would render an inmate incapable of screaming about the
                    'extreme pain in the form of a severe burning sensation' caused by...
                    potassium chloride."

                    Newsweek additionally reported, "Leuchter was running a death row
                    shakedown scheme: if a state didn't purchase Leuchter's services, he
                    would testify at the last minute for the condemned man that the state's
                    death chamber might malfunction."

                    Before being brought to trial on criminal charges of practicing engineering
                    without a license, Leuchter signed a consent agreement on June 12, 1991,
                    admitting that he had misrepresented himself as an engineer, both in
                    letters and proposals to correctional facilities, and in his "Report" on the
                    concentration camp gas chambers. He therefore agreed to cease And
                    desist from using the title "engineer" in connection with his execution
                    equipment and the distribution of his writings.

                    Rather than retreat in light of these developments, Leuchter singled out
                    Jews for blame over the setbacks his career has suffered. In an IHR flyer
                    titled "Help Fred Leuchter Answer the Crazed Zionist Mob:' Leuchter was
                    quoted as saying, "This witch hunt must and will stop. I give fair warning to
                    all those who are part of this international cabal, to all those who have
                    unjustly attacked me and violated my rights-to the Klarsfelds, Shapiros,
                    and Kahns of the world, Fred Leuchter is coming for you! You will be
                    brought to answer in those same courts and before the same judicial
                    system you have sought to destroy."

                    Holocaust deniers have similarly clung to Leuchter's work. Indeed, when
                    the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing Nazi
                    war criminals to justice, published Jean-Claude Pressac's Auschwitz.-
                    Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, an oversized 564-page
                    book which details voluminous numbers of original Nazi documents,
                    drawings, and other materials relating to the gas chambers, furnaces,
                    buildings, and other death-camp facilities, IHR referred to the work as an
                    "ersatz Leuchter Report."

                    This article was originally published by ADL in 1993 as part of Hilter's
                    Apologists: The Anti-Semitic Propaganda of Holocaust "Revisionism

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