n009  0707  11 Mar 81
BC-INSTITUTE
By ROBERT LINDSEY
c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service
    LOS ANGELES - An unusual legal confrontration is under way in the
Superior Court of Los Angeles County in which the principal issue is
whether Nazi Germany used gas to murder Jews at Auschwitz.
    Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of the World War II concentration camp
in Poland, has filed a suit against the Institute for Historical
Review in which he asserts that the organization failed to honor a
pledge to give $50,000 to the first person who could prove that Jews
had been murdered in gas chambers at the camp.
    Mermelstein, who owns a business in nearby Long Beach, contends that
he submitted the required proof but that the institute reneged on its
offer. Barring an out-of-court settlement, it appears that the issue
of whether Mermelstein complied with the institute's challenge will
be tried in court.
    Merlmelstein has sued the institute and persons connected with the
organization for breach of contract, ''injurious denial of
established fact'' and other alleged actionable offenses and is
seeking $17 million in damages, in addition to the $50,000 prize for
proving that the Auschwitz atrocities actually occurred.
    According to most historians of World War II, as many as three
million Jews died at Auschwitz and, in all, six million people were
murdered in a systematic campaign of genocide against Jews. At the
Nuremburg war crimes trials and in an autobiography, Rudolf Hoess,
one of the commanders of Auschwitz, testified that a cyanide gas,
Zyklon B, had been used to commit mass murder at the camp.
    The Institute for Historical Review, which describes itself as a
nonprofit, educational foundation ''to investigate the true causes
and nature of war,'' disputes these accounts and contends that much
of what has been written about the Nazi Holocaust is a myth.
    In 1979 the institute said that it would give $50,000 to anyone who
could prove that Jews had been gassed at Auschwitz. It said that any
evidence it received would be weighed according to ''the same
standards as evidence in a U.S. criminal court.''
    Two claims were made, by Simon Weisenthal, the Austrian who has been
credited with tracking down scores of Nazi war criminals since World
War II, and Mermelstein.
    According to the institute's version of World War II history, large
numbers of Jews were arrested and mistreated by the Nazis and herded
to concentration camps, and many died from malnutrition, typhus and
other diseases. But it contends that gas chambers were not used to
murder the Jews and that there was no campaign of genocide.
    The Zyklon B gas found at Auschwitz and other camps, it says, was
used only to delouse the clothing of inmates, and what have been
described as gas chambers were really ''mortuaries'' where bodies
were taken after deaths occurred before they were burned.
    In an interview, Lewis Brandon, the institute's director, said of
reports of the Holocaust: ''It's a myth, using the big lie technique,
perpetrated solely to give the Zionists a shield against criticism of
Israel and to justify massive American aid to Israel.''
    An objective analysis of the available evidence, he contends,
refutes the orthodox view of the Holocaust. Regarding the Hoess
account, he says, ''His confession was made under duress.''
    The Institute for Historical Review has its headquarters near Los
Angeles in the suburb of Torrance. According to public records, the
institute and its publishing arm, the Noontide Press, operate under
city licenses issued to the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc.
    The treasurer of this organization is Elizabeth Carto, the wife of
Willis Carto, who is treasurer of the Liberty Lobby, a 25-year-old
organization based in Washington that has a reputation for supporting
extreme rightist causes.
    Brandon acknowledged that Carto, who has a home near its offices,
was the founder of the Institute for Historical Review. But he said
that it had no financial or other ties to the Liberty Lobby and that
the organization did not receive financial support from Arab
interests or pro-Nazis. ''About 20'' of the 2,500 or so people who
regularly purchase its literature live in Germany, he said.
    Mermelstein, who filed the suit, is a 55-year-old native of the
Carpathian region of Czechoslovakia. He submitted a long, frequently
poignant affidavit relating that he was arrested in the spring of
1944 with his parents, two sisters and a brother, and that a month
later, after three days and two nights of travel in a railroad
boxcar, they were delivered by SS troops to the Auschwitz-Birkenau
camp in Poland.
    He recounted seeing buildings used as gas chambers and open pits
filled with burning bodies. ''The last time I saw my mother and two
sisters was when they were driven into what I later discovered to be
the gas chamber at Birkenau at dawn on May 22, 1944,'' he said.
    Merlmelstein's claim for the $50,000 was submitted in December. Last
month the institute sent him a letter declaring that before it
considered his claim and that of Weisenthal for the $50,000 prize to
prove that inmates were gassed at Auscwhitz, it would first review a
claim by Weisenthal for another prize offered by the institute, a
$25,000 prize to anyone who authenticates ''The Diary of Anne
Frank,'' the account of a Jewish family's life in hiding in wartime
Amsterdam that according to most reports was written totally by Miss
Frank.
    Brandon asserts that Miss Frank's diary was rewritten by her late
father and possibly a second person.
    
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n034  1040  11 Mar 81
BC-PICTURE-ADVISORY
    Editors-Picture Service Subscribers:
    The following art is en route by mail:
    
    WORK--East Calais, Vt.--Working at her knitting machine in a quiet
room looking out on snow covered fields and craggy hills, Audrey
Pudvah says she doesn't feel the least bit exploited. In fact she
thinks her job knitting ski hats in her own home is a pretty good
deal. But what Mrs. Pudvah is doing is illegal. The two sides of the
issue. Two-photo combo. Moved 3-9 as a073.
    GIRL-SCOUT-COOKIES--New York--If you believe Vonda Blanton of
Wichita, Kan., the history of the Girl Scout Cookie began, as did
much of our earlier history, in Lexington, Mass., and she has the
recipe. However ... Two-photo combo. Moved 3-10 as a041.
    BREEDER--Oak Ridge, Tenn--A look at the Clinch River Breeder Reactor
project, which may be rescued by President Reagan. One graphic. Moved
3- 10 as a009,011.
    MARRIAGE--New York--Rita Barker, owner of what she says is the
world's largest agency devoted solely to finding husbands and wives,
says it all comes down to questions of the heart. One photo. Moved
3-10 as a003.
    THE NEW YORK TIMES PICTURE SERVICE
    
nyt-03-11-81 1340est
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