The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a United States–based nonprofit organization which promotes Holocaust denial. It is considered by many scholars to be central to the international Holocaust denial movement. Self-described as a "historical revisionist" organization, the IHR promotes antisemitic viewpoints and has links to several neo-Nazi and neo-fascist organizations.
The group was founded in 1978 in Torrance, California, by David McCalden and Willis Carto, and is headquartered in Fountain Valley, California. It published the Journal of Historical Review until 2002, but now disseminates its materials through its website and via email. The parent corporation of the IHR and the affiliated Noontide Press is the Legion for the Survival of Freedom.
In 2009, IHR director Mark Weber published an article questioning the relevance of "Holocaust revisionism" in general, triggering infighting in the movement.
History
The IHR was founded in 1978 by David McCalden, also known as Lewis Brandon, a former member of the British National Front, and Willis Carto, the head of the now-defunct Liberty Lobby. Liberty Lobby was an antisemitic organization best known for publishing The Spotlight, now reorganized as the American Free Press. Austin App, a La Salle University professor credited with being the first major American holocaust denier, inspired the creation of the IHR.
The Anti-Defamation League describes its founding and early years:
The Institute for Historical Review and its publishing arm, Noontide Press, were founded in 1978 by the leading organizer of modern American anti-Semitism, Willis Carto, and his wife Elisabeth. Based near Los Angeles in Torrance, California, the group pioneered organizing efforts among Holocaust deniers, who had heretofore labored mostly in isolation and obscurity. The group's first "Revisionist Convention" in September 1979 featured speakers from the U.S., France, Germany, England and Sweden, many of whom subsequently contributed articles to the inaugural issue of IHR's Journal of Historical Review the following spring. With the Noontide Press offering a means for the sale and distribution of their writings, professional deniers had found something of a rainmaker in Carto.
McCalden and Carto had a falling out over the Mel Mermelstein case, and in 1981 McCalden left the IHR. Tom Marcellus became its director. Carto lost control of IHR in 1993, in an internal power struggle. in 1971, Marcellus was a field staff member for the Church of Scientology and was an editor for one of the church's publications. When Marcellus left IHR in 1995, Mark Weber, the editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review (JHR) since 1992, took over as its director, and has been the IHR's director and spokesman since then. Weber previously worked with the white supremacist National Alliance. Since taking over, Weber has continued to publish writing on the Holocaust and on World War II.
At the IHR's first conference in 1979, IHR publicly offered a reward of $50,000 for verifiable "proof that gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings existed at or in Auschwitz." This money (and an additional $40,000) was eventually paid in 1985 to Auschwitz survivor Mel Mermelstein, who, represented by public-interest lawyer William John Cox, sued the IHR for breach of contract for initially ignoring his evidence (a signed testimony of his experiences in Auschwitz). On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took "judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in occupied Poland during the summer of 1944." On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them.
On July 4, 1984, a firebomb destroyed the institute's offices and warehouse. Thousands of books, cassette tapes, pamphlets, and 90% of its inventory were lost. Carto had not insured the facilities or stock.
In 1996, IHR won a $6,430,000 judgment in a lawsuit against Carto in which IHR alleged that Carto embezzled $7.5 million that had been left to Legion for the Survival of Freedom, the parent corporation of IHR, from the estate of Jean Edison Farrel.