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This Is How It Happens
by R. Belser
It was two years ago, and I was in the main branch of my public library.
I was browsing the "New Fiction" section of the library, where recently published and acquired
novels were displayed; books which the staff felt were particularly noteworthy were propped upright
by those little metal book-holders, and I noticed a three-volume set entitled Lebensraum!,
by Ingrid Rimland. The theme of the trilogy was German history over the past century or so, as
experienced through the eyes of two German families, whose triumphs and tragedies were used to
tell a story which is rarely told these days: the story of the German people themselves.
As someone of German descent who still cherished that connection, my interest was quickly stirred, and
I resolved to return and take out the first volume of the set when I'd finished the books
I'd already chosen for that week. I did not get back to the library for some time, and when I did, I
could find Lebensraum! nowhere; I checked the shelves, the library's computer, and finally
asked for help at the reference desk. The reference librarian assured me that even if the books had been
stolen or for some other reason removed from circulation, there should still be a record of this--but
she could find nothing.
Not only were the books gone--there was no record of the library ever having owned them!
Later on, the pieces began to fall into place for me, when I learned that Ingrid Rimland is a
Revisionist--i.e., someone who holds that "Holocaust" dogma greatly exaggerates the number of
Jewish dead and that there is no forensic evidence to support many of the claims (e.g. "gas chambers", etc.)
and that she had a website which had suffered a concerted cyber-attack by those who disagreed
with what she and others like her had to say, while a close associate of hers--Ernst Zündel--
had been severely beaten and his house firebombed.
I began to understand how our freedom is...evaporating: for the loss of freedom in 21st
century America doesn't happen with a bang...or even a whimper; it happens with dead silence, and
books that no one misses because they disappear quietly, before most people even know they exist.
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