As “Bocage”
announced earlier today in French, Douglas (Doug) Christie has died.
For its part, the Canadian English-language
press has put out the news in terms which, unfortunately, can be easily
imagined when one knows that D. Christie had especially made himself known for
his uncompromising defence of a major figure of historical revisionism, Ernst
Zündel. But – a happy surprise – at least one newspaper, the Times
Colonist of Victoria, British Colombia, where D. Christie lived, has
reminded its readers that it was this extraordinary barrister who, in 1992, finally
enabled E. Zündel to gain an unhoped-for victory against the religionists of
“the Holocaust”.
At the end of a nine-year struggle in the face
of various representatives of the Crown and a coalition of Jewish and allied
organisations, E. Zündel, aided by D. Christie, the “Battling Barrister”, was
to get the Canadian Supreme Court to strike down the very section of the
criminal code that had been the grounds for his prosecution and conviction, a
section itself grounded in an obsolete article of an ancient English law
(namely, chapter 34 of the 1275 Statute of Westminster). Section 181 forbade
the publication of “news that [one] knows is false and causes or is
likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest” (in the words
of the judge during Zündel’s 1985 trial for having published the brochure Did Six Million Really Die?, his
activities had a “cancerous effect … upon society’s interest in the maintenance of racial and
religious harmony in Canada”). However, on August 27, 1992, the Court finally
decided that the law was incompatible with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
A Frenchman accustomed to seeing his country’s
justice system settle the fate of a revisionist in the space of one or two
afternoons, in the 17th chamber of the Paris criminal court, might
be astonished to learn that at Toronto, in 1985, the first Zündel trial lasted
seven weeks and the second, in 1988, over four months. One may add that, in
English-law (or common-law) countries, the contents of any trial are the
subject of a full transcript, whilst in France, in “our” 17th
chamber, generally, the clerk simply makes a few notes in the “plumitif”, the name given to the ledger
in which he or she mentions merely the
main facts of the hearing. The result is as follows: when a person receives
the text of a judgment regarding himself or herself and wants to know the terms
in which the judges have recorded and appreciated what he or she personally
said at the bar, there will usually be NOTHING or almost NOTHING! At most that
person will have the satisfaction of coming upon an “aside” of the type “Mr X
having been heard presenting his arguments”. A reader of this decision will
thus learn that the person in question had orally put forth “arguments”, but
will not know which ones! Nor will it be possible to know anything about the
worth or non-worth that the judges have assigned to each of those “arguments”.
The judges will perhaps do the reader the favour of expounding on (in their
way) and judging the written pleadings filed by counsel at the start of the
session, but they will hardly go any further. Curiously, French judges and most
lawyers seem very comfortable indeed with these pretences, this veritable sham.
Between good pals, settled in their habits, they agree in relegating the person
on trial to the least important rank. He or she is treated as a nuisance who, in
any case, does not understand much of the cup-and-ball game going on in which
the lawyers, prosecutors and three judges are enjoying themselves, using the
jargon that they share. As for the jury, they are conspicuous by their absence.
The historian who, years later, will want to know what was actually said in the
courtroom during such or such case, whether famous or obscure, can spare
himself the trouble of looking.
Nothing of the kind in the English legal
system, far more serious and severe, where one can know, word for word, what
was said all throughout any past trial, be it that of the humblest citizen. And
at least the latter will have been able to benefit from the presence of a jury.
D. Christie was skilled in making this system actually provide the guarantees
of fairness that it promised. He cared rather little for the judge whom, if
necessary, he let know that his role ought to be more like that of a referee.
For the real barrister that he was, the only things that must count, at one end
of the chain of procedure, were such sacred principles as that of full freedom
of expression and the refusal to be
intimidated and, at the other end, the jurors, always allowed, when the
time came, to put questions and seek clarification. He shunned legal quibbling
and, turning to the laymen, spoke to them in a language that was robust, direct
and precise. He was captivating in his ability to provide a definition, or
examples. He was impassive. He would have none of any showing-off. He liked the
simple and concrete. He struck with his bold way of going straight to the
burning heart of the matter to be dealt with. In common-law justice, chatter
and theorising are prohibited, there is no speech-giving and nearly everything
is done by way of pointed and precise questions to be followed by answers as
brief as possible. Lawyers and judges like facts and abhor the “emotional”
(i.e. words or behaviour liable to arouse emotion in one’s favour). As for the
court-appointed expert, he is not, as is the case in France, recruited from a
list of persons certified to be such but is rather one who, on the spot, after
examination, cross-examination and re-examination before the judge and the
jury, will have been able to demonstrate his experience, mastery of the subject
and ability to make himself understood by the layman. I personally assisted D.
Christie throughout the entire 1985 trial, and again for such part of the trial
in 1988 as my health allowed. Our collaboration proved so successful that we
managed, in 1985, to crush, in succession Raul Hilberg, Number One historian of
the “Destruction of the European Jews”, and Rudolf Vrba, Number One witness of
the alleged homicidal gassings at Auschwitz. The press at the time showed its
surprise at the defence team’s high degree of preparation. Then, at the 1988
trial, the “Leuchter Report” on the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Majdanek,
Auschwitz and Birkenau dealt the coup de
grâce to the exterminationist case. On the strict level of science and
history we had won all the victories that could be won but, of course, the
mainstream media strengthened their Holocaust propaganda all the more. On the
legal level, E. Zündel was provisionally guilty.
I forged a friendship with D. Christie, who was
of Scottish descent, and his wife Keltie Zubko, of Ukrainian origin. At the
Zündel House in Toronto we used to call them, respectively, “the Devil” and
“the Angel”. In itself, the atmosphere that reigned at the expansive residence
of E. Zündel was an exceptional success at organisation, allocation of tasks,
keenness in work, enthusiasm and warmth, with inevitable episodes of tension
and, at some moments, fear for our safety. E. Zündel has no match when it comes
to inspiring dedication to the just cause of revisionism, and rarely in my long
life have I seen a gathering of disinterested spirits of such high quality.
Many names come to mind: I shall not mention any of them for fear of forgetting
just one of those men and women who, together, wrote a fine page of the human
experience. I shall allow myself one sole exception and mention Barbara
Kulaszka, herself a barrister, daughter of a Scottish lady, whose name will go
down in history for the monumental work Did Six Million Really Die? / Report of the Evidence
in the Canadian “False News” Trial of Ernst Zündel - 1988,
published in 1992, VIII-564 double-column pages.
For the rest of their lives, Keltie and her
children should hold, in their memory of Doug Christie, reasons for pride, an
example of courage and a source of energy.
March 12, 2013
