THE HOLOCAUST IN DANISH MEDIA 1998-2006
Af dr. Christian Lindtner
IRAN, Teheran, December 11-12,
2006
One of the main tasks of historical revisionism, including
Holocaust revisionism, is undoubtedly to investigate by means of
traditional source criticism what actually happened,
why it happened, and how it happened.
Holocaust revisionism is obviously a fairly recent phenomenon,
and even though there were precursors, modern scholarly refutations
of the numerous stories that make up the Holocaust myth may be said
to begin with Dr. Arthur Butz: The Hoax of the
Twentieth Century, first published 1976, i.e. exactly 30
years ago.
Since then much important work has been done in this highly
controversial field of historical research. I need only mention the
names of Robert Faurisson, Wilhelm Stäglich, Udo Walendy, Jürgen
Graf, Fred Leuchter, John Ball, Carlo Mattogno and Germar Rudolf.
Writers depend on publishers, and without the various activities
of brave men like Ernst Zündel and Thies Christophersen,
Siegfried Verbeke and Pedro Varela, - to mention only a few
names - the achievements of the scholars just mentioned
would have remained little know and have had a very limited impact.
With the enormous impact of the modern Internet the old state
of affairs has, of course, changed dramatically.
All the important results achieved within the last decades or so
are now easily available in the most up-to-date book by Germar
Rudolf: Vorlesungen über
den Holocaust, which first appeared in April 2005. With
this fine handbook, and perhaps a few other titles mentioned in
that book, you have virtually everything you need for all practical
purposes. Even though this brilliant young scholar deserves to be
put on a postage stamp, he is now behind bars in Germany, and under
trail in Mannheim. That scholars and publishers are put behind
bars, not just in Germany, is highly deplorable, and, in the long
run, a serious threat to the fundamental democratic ideals. So, the
issue is not just a purely historical one, but also a serious
political matter.
Today, as far as I can judge, Holocaust revisionism has reached
its main objective in demonstrating that there is no valid internal
or external piece of evidence for claiming that Hitler by means of
gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau or elsewhere, murdered millions
of Jews in cold blood. From whatever angle you look at it this
claim is so absurd that it in itself becomes a most interesting
problem how it can be that so many people for so long have believed
in what we now safely can call the Holocaust myth. The Hitlerian
gas chambers, like the alleged weapons of mass destruction of
Irak´s former dictator, have now been assigned to the realm of
myth. Or, if you wish, they are mere rumors, as Dr. Faurisson
phrased it in a famous note in 1979. And without a weapon of mass
murder, it follows that there can be no mass murder. Thus the
Holocaust, in the sense of mass murder of Jews by means of gas
chambers is, if you believe in logic, a mere myth.
Now, Holocaust revisionism is one thing, whereas the history of
Holocaust revisionism is another. By and large the history of
Holocaust revisionism deals with the various difficulties in
getting the research of Holocaust revisionists out to the public.
The history of Holocaust revisionism, even before 1976, covers a
wide field. Much still remains obscure. Surely, it is a most
interesting story, with serious as well as amusing aspects. Again,
by and large, it has to do with freedom of speech and freedom of
research. It focuses on the behaviour and activities of
individuals, historians as well as publishers and politicians, and
on the institutions and the media, who, as a rule have been engaged
in suppressing Holocaust revisionism.
So much for the general background.
The main purpose of this paper is to provide you with a survey
of the history of Holocaust revision in Denmark from about 1998 to
2006. Some of you will recognize certain patters familiar from
other countries. But there are also some noteworthy specific
features.
In this respect I myself am a first-hand witness. My own
personal contribution to Historical revisionism is, to be sure,
quite modest. On the other hand, I have devoted a considerable
amount of energy to make the results of other scholars better
known. Other tasks I had to put aside. Today, Denmark is one of the
few European countries where the whole matter can be discussed
rather freely. Surely, Holocaust revisionism is still somewhat of a
taboo, but I think that none of my many opponents would dare to
deny that the traditional rules of source criticism should also be
applied to the testimonies of the alleged witnesses to the
Holocaust. Denmark has a long and well-established tradition of
historical source criticism. My main reason for moving from my own
field - history of religions - into Holocaust studies, was as
simple as can be. Some 15 or 20 years ago, I observed that my
colleagues - not to speak of the mass media - were more than
willing to forget all about source criticism when it came to
politically dangerous or controversial issues such as the
Holocaust. This meant a real dilemma. What is a historian if he is
not critical of his sources? And how can he be critical if he lacks
courage?
In December 1997, or perhaps January 1998, the editor of the
cultural section - called "Eksistens" - of the Danish newspaper
Berlingske Tidende invited me to write an essay which was
published on January 24th , 1998 as "Holocaust i nyt lys" - i.e.
"Holocaust in a new light".. It created a stir, not just in my own
country. Others translated it into English and German - you can
easily trace these translations on the Internet. Extracts were
given in a pamphlet called "HALT": "Holocaust-Demontage in
Dänemark: Revisionistische Provokation für Pan-Europa!"
I had many personal letters coming in, especially from Sweden,
and I still meet people who, when they hear my name, confess that
they very well remember the deep impression my 1998 essay left on
them. Friends in Sweden and Norway tell me that this essay first
opened their eyes to the fact that there was something seriously
wrong with what they had been taught about the Holocaust in school
and in the mass media. The essay in Berlingske Tidende
also gave me many opponents - probably many more than I know of.
Since some of these opponents still refer to that essay - for
instance Jacques Blum and Eva Bøggild in their book: Løgnens
Veje - om benægtelsen af Holocaust, Copenhagen 2002 - it is
fair to say that my essay was, indeed, a break-through. In
this book I am, considered a liar - even though no lies could be
pointed out in my essay. So you have this paradox of someone being
called a liar who does not actually lie, like a circle that is said
to be square.
All this turned out to be a costly affair, personally, but not
unexpectedly. By profession, I am a historian of religions
(especially Buddhism and Christianity). As such I had to depend on
public funding which never used to be a problem. From my CV you can
see that I have published numerous books and learned papers in
leading scholarly journals. From now on most of my former friends
and colleagues turned their backs against me. For instance, I had
been invited to participate in various conferences (Buddhism,
philosophy etc.). But then came the protests, in most cases
from colleagues with Jewish names. Thus I came to know of something
you might call "dis-invitations": Since you do not believe
in the Holocaust, we do not want you to attend the conference to
which we initially had the honour of inviting you. More
seriously, I could no longer count on public support for my work in
the field of religious or textual studies. We all have our bills to
pay, but since 1998 I have not received a penny from the
foundations or institutions that used to fund my scholarly
work.
Most revealing about the state of Academic affairs in Denmark,
is the reaction to my publication of two volumes of Buddhist texts
translated directly from the original languages, Sanskrit, Tibetan,
Pâli and Chinese. They appeared in print in September 1998.
It must have taken a good deal of effort for my opponents to
marshal their troops against my. In the summer of 1999, some 23
theologians and so-called historians of religions, signing a letter
of protest to the publisher, demanded that my books be withdrawn
from sale, i.e. burned. At that time I had two more volumes of
translations, directly from the Sanskrit original, ready for print.
The publisher, who "had never experienced anything of this sort",
bent down to the pressure, and broke his contract with me. The two
first books were not burned, the two other books my publisher dared
not publish.
There were many other similar incidents, and I should only add
that I also came under attack, again and again, from historians and
journalists - all of this because of my Essay in Berlingske
Tidende. The important thing, however, is that no errors in
what I had published were pointed out. My opponents, forgetting all
about source criticism, simply repeated the old stories about the
Holocaust - ad nauseam.
Permit me to give you a few other examples of typical reactions
from professional Danish scholars.
The historians at the University of Copenhagen were very much upset
by my Essay on Holocaust in a new light. After all, I had accused
them for failing to inform the public honestly. This was their
simple duty. In a February 1998 letter to the editor, I pointed out
how even the National encyclopaedia lied about Auschwitz.
So the University invited a famous German professor,
Eberhard Jäckel, in order to help save the myth. This was in
May, and, indeed, our German professor spoke eloquently about the
uniqueness and incomprehensibility of the Holocaust. It was a
theologian, not a historian who spoke to those of us from the
Society of Free Historical Research that afternoon in May 1998. For
we were also present.
In the break I had the opportunity to talk to Prof. Jäckel, a
very typical "decent German". When I asked him for his comments to
the well known October 1919 article in the American Hebrew
about the 6.000.000 and the holocaust, he suddenly turned pale and
stiffened. No answer. One Danish professional scholar came running
to his rescue.. He screamed to me:" Are you the one who wrote in
the newspaper?" Assuming that the good man who thus yelled at
me was referring to my Essay, I answered: Sure, I am. And
then he screamed out the memorable five words that
describe so well the attitude of all professional scholars to
the controversial issue: That we will not hear! ((Danish: Det vil
vi ikke høre.) Before I could ask him for his views on source
criticism, if any, he grasped Prof. Jäckel and both of them ran
away and soon disappeared. This mode of behaviour was also a sort
of answer to my question.
What they then talked about, I can only guess. Probably it was
not about source criticism. But very soon some of the
professional historians took contact with some politicians. They
were all horrified, they said, by the fact that members of the
audience had asked Prof. Jäckel some critical questions. It was
about time that Denmark got an institute for Holocaust propaganda.
Well, that was no the way they phrased it, but that was what it was
actually supposed to be. The institute is still in existence, now
under a new name. It has its own website. It was established with
the purpose and promise to prove that the gas chambers had existed.
To this day it has failed to do so. We have often reminded them of
their duty. They have attacked us in many ways - but utterly failed
to do their duty.
Was this we-do-not-want-to-hear-this attitude of the University
also characteristic of other learned bodies in my country.? Already
back in 1996, a very active revisionist friend of mine, Mr Lars
Thirslund, had asked himself this question. And so, puzzled about
the gas chambers and the 6 million figure, he wrote a letter,
very polite, too, to the famous Royal Danish Academy of
Sciences and Letters, founded in 1742. Please tell me what is true
and what is false, he wrote.
Some months later my friend received an official reply from The
President of the Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Apart from
a personal attack on Mr Thirslund and his wife, the letter referred
to the doctoral dissertation about the Holocaust by Dr. Faurisson.
The President found this dissertation to be without value. Instead
he recommended the Kalendarium of Danuta Czech as a
reliable source of information. Moreover, the Academy did not want
to discuss the Holocaust any further.
As we all know, Prof. Faurisson´s dissertation had nothing to do
with the Holocaust, and the work of Danuta Czech is, while rich in
factual information, largely a piece of Communist propaganda,
that must be used with much critique. It contains no proof of the
notorious gas chambers. It merely assumes their physical
existence - exactly as did the President of the Danish Academy. So,
if the reply of the President was not very helpful to those
interested in reliable information about the Holocaust, it still
serves as an excellent primary source for those interested in
learning more about the intellectual and moral whereabouts of the
"best professional scholars" in Denmark here and now.
For his disgraceful scholarly timidity, Professor Birger
Munk Olsen, the former President, was honoured (or dishonoured)
with "The First Ever Cremonini Prize Awarded" in 2000. The
award was handed over to him by our brave American friend and
learned theologian, the late Dr Robert Countess.
Whether Dr Countess received a letter of thanks from Professor Munk
Olsen, I do not know. You can read more about this revealing
episode in Dr. Countess´ personal report in Germar Rudolf´s VffG,
Jahrgang 4, Heft 2, August 2000, pp. 190-192.
Clearly, the hide-and-not-seek behaviour thus is more
fundamental than the source critical attitude as far as
professional scholars is concerned.
With the Danish journalists it is better. I must say that I
have, as a rule, been given an opportunity to reply to public
attacks. For instance, Weekend Avisen printed a full page
interview with the title: "The Question is - Did the gas chambers
really exist?" This was in April 1999. And when I was attacked by
some prominent Jews for my Essay, Jyllands-Posten was good
enough to print my reply to the Jews: Superstitious and unwarranted
attacks on the freedom of research and speech, was my reply.
As to the politicians, they succumbed to the pressure from
professional scholars, who, as said, in their own way actually
exploit the Holocaust myth for their own personal benefit.
The Stockholm Conference on the Holocaust in January 2001
brought this out clearly. Swedish PM Persson stated on January 28:
" We pay homage to Stéphane Bruchfeld and Paul A. Levine, who wrote
the magnificent book "Tell your children.".
In fact, PM Persson´s "magnificent book" is only magnificent in the
sense that hate-propaganda and sloppy scholarly work can be said to
be magnificent. But perhaps PM Persson was being
ironical? It is now available in several languages,
unfortunately also in Danish, free of charge, which means that it
is financed by tax-payers. The authors already get their history
wrong on the front cover - the famous photo of Hungarian women,
children and old men, from May 1944. There is no evidence to prove
that "they are going to be gassed" - on the contrary.
The only pieces of "proof" given for the gas chambers, are two
modern drawings (page 54, for Treblinka, page 57 for
Auschwitz-Birkenau). PM Persson, I recall, also spoke of stones
that, if they could speak, would have told us what had happened to
the Jews. Good for the PM that stones do not speak - for they would
then have had another story to tell!
There were, to the best of my knowledge, no protests from
professional historians in Sweden or elsewhere. The revisionists in
Sweden and elsewhere, were, of course, not so easily fooled. My
friend major Göran Holming was among the few who dared to point out
some of the shortcomings of PM Persson´s "magnificent book".
Our Society for Free Historical Research, mentioned above,
was established in 1997, and it was from the very outset to serve a
two-fold purpose, namely to offer scholars from abroad a platform
from which they could speaks freely, and to inform the Danish
public honestly. About the notorious suppression of freedom
of speech in Germany, I had already published a full-page essay in
the Danish newspaper Information, October 1996. There is a
German version (by Jürgen Graf?) in the first volume of VffG, pp.
112-114, June 1997, under the title "Deutschland verletzt die
Freiheit der Meinungsäusserung". Unfortunately, as you all know,
things have hardly improved in Germany in this regard since 1996!
Brave Germans are still fined or send behind bars for expressing
controversial opinions in public. Will our neighbours ever
learn?
The first to accept our invitation was Jürgen Graf, in November
1997. Since then we have had the pleasure of inviting nearly all
the major revisionists: Robert Faurisson, Udo Walendy, Robert
Countess, Carl Nordling (Sweden), and Lars Adelskogh (the
author of the best book on Holocaust revisionism in Swedish: En
tom sack kan inta stå - Myten om "förintelsen I gaskamrartna" I
Auschwitz, 2002). Other revisionists also honoured us with
their visit, thus "propaganda tool " # 1, Lady Michéle Renouf,
January 2006. As you aware, Lady Renouf has only recently
released a 116 mins DVD, "Jailing opinions". In January
2006 we also had our friend Ahmed Rami coming to us from Stockholm.
He has probably done more than any other individual in
Scandinavia to dispel the myths about the Holocaust, thanks
to his radio Islam. In my opinion, Ahmed Rami has done more good
for Sweden than all those professional historians that ought to
have discussed the Holocaust seriously.
As a rule, the Holocaust revisionists cannot find opponents
willing to meet them face to face in a public debate. An
exception to this rule occurred when Prof. Faurisson debated the
Holocaust with a young self-styled anti-revisionist, Mr M.
Andersson. You can listen to the debate yourself by tuning in on www.holocaust.nu. It started in
2002, in response to the cheap propaganda of the official Center
that had been established in response to my Essay.
Having mentioned Sweden, I should also at least mention Finland
and Norway. Of revisionist activities in Finland I am not aware.
The same goes for Iceland and Greenland, to be sure. Since Finland
has certain traditional links to Estonia, where I myself and, more
recently, Jürgen Graf have spoken about the Holocaust, some
inspiration may hopefully drift across the Baltic from that
corner.
From friends in Norway, I understand that our activities in
Denmark have served as inspiration. Since May 2002, there was an
open debate in one of Norway´s leading papers,
Aftenposten. Largely responsible for this turn of the tide
was our late friend Arne Borgir, who as a young man served in the
Waffen-SS (Div. Wiking). The reaction of the professional
historians in Norway was, as expected, negative. Exactly as in
Denmark and Sweden. The title of Borgir´s book: Genocide.
Debatt i Oslo. The book was published in November 2003. Borgir
has dispatched his book to 165 members of the Norwegian Parliament,
and to 97 major newspapers. Only a few days before Arne Borgir was
to speak in Copenhagen, we received the sad news that this lone
fighter had passed away in his Oslo home on January 21st, 2006. His
motto was the one inscribed on the SS belt buckle: "Meine Ehre
heisst Treue".
The first book on Holocaust revisionism to appear in Norwegian,
was by A.I.Bru: Holocaust, Oslo 1979. But I have
never had it in my hands. I understand that the author was inspired
by Thies Christophersen, whose (in-)famous Die
Auschwitz-Lüge from 1973 - to come back from Norway -
appeared in Danish in 1981. The publisher was Nordland Forlag,
Aalborg, which also gave out the Report of Leuchter in 1990.
In 1989 Nordland published a fine but little known monograph
entitled Holocaust. Bakgrund, frågor och problem. The
author was Lars Magnuson - a pseudonym for Lars B. Högbom, a
Stockholm resident. Another gentleman, who attended our meetings,
was Oluf Krabbe, a former SS-officer. Under the pseudonym Holger
Dannis, Krabbe published the main revisionist work in Danish:
De 1000 Løgne og de 1000 Sandheder, Allerød 1996.
In the annual report on "Antisemitism" 1992, Danish Rabbi Bent
Melchior (p. vi) reported that: "There have also been more
anonymous articles attempting to disseminate Holocaust revisionist
ideas, but without any effect on the public debate". His brother,
Arne Melchior, MP, suggested during a debate in Parliament,
November 25, 1994, that "Nazi and racist propaganda" should be
punished by up to more than two years in jail. Foreign
Jewish leaders often expressed similar views in Danish media. The
President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Mr Edgar Bronfman,
was quite clear, when in the beginning of 1995 he stated: " The
growing numbers of revisionist supporters cannot be ignored. We
must use every resource to stop revisionism, now, before it´s too
late." (Source: IHR Newsletter, February 1995). In March
1996, all the Ministers of Justice in the EU signed a document to
the effect that Holocaust deniers should be punished. Denmark was
the only exception. I have, on the other hand, not been able to
find any documentation that any of these Jewish leaders expressed
their concern about the suppression of freedom of historical
research.
It was, therefore, the failure of the professional historians on
the one hand, and the attempts to suppress free research that
prompted us to establish the Society for Free Historical Research
almost 10 years ago. The Society, as said, not only served as a
speaker´s corner for foreign guests, but also as a source of
honest and reliable information for the Danish public.
Eventually, the Society thus got its own website: www.holocaust.nu. This was in
2002. Much has now been achieved, even though our resources were,
to say the least, extremely modest. Let it also be mentioned that
much work to inform the public about Holocaust revisionism has been
done by Mr Ole Kreiberg, who is responsible for the website www.patriot.dk.
It soon became clear that Danish school children were now
being systematically misinformed about the Holocaust. And so we
decided to publish a Guide to school children who, with or
without their teachers, paid a visit to Auschwitz. This
Guide has perhaps been the most successful of all the
outreaching efforts of the Society. The Guide simply asks
students to be critical, and not the believe everything they hear
or read, when they visit the camp in Poland. With this
Guide in their hands, Danish school children started
asking their teachers critical questions, and often their teachers,
finding no good answers, were embarrassed.
On the 8th of April 2005, the Guide found its way to
the front page of Kristeligt Dagblad, the major Christian
daily in the country. The chairman of the union of history teachers
expressed her indignation, but admitted that she had not seen the
Guide herself. But she promised to do something about it.
She never did, however. I was quoted for saying: "Our school
children are being misled by the wrong information provided by the
Danish Centre for Holocaust Studies. We cannot go on in
this way!". One spokesman of the Centre advised that school
children refrained from using the Internet, and only read books
recommended by the Centre. He was, in other words, a supporter of
traditional indoctrination. The other party should not be given a
fair hearing.
The Centre to which I here refer is now known under a new name.
It was founded largely in response to the challenge posed by my
1998 Essay. Unlike our Society it subsists (to use an euphemism) on
public funds. To this day, it has not responded. Essentially,
the Director was hired in order to prove the existence of the gas
chambers - not to speak of the invisible holes. The Director has
failed utterly. Some time ago he announced his resignation by the
end of this year.
The most serious attempt to refuse our Guide appeared
on January 27th - Auschwitz Day, as we now call it in Denmark
- 2006. It is a 64-page booklet, with many blank pages. The
authors are Jacques Blum, and his fiancé Eva Bøggild. The title of
the booklet is Auschwitz og Benægtelse (Auschwitz and
Denial), and it has been distributed to all Danish schools and
public libraries, free of charge, and subsided by various groups
and individuals, mainly Jewish.
It is an important publication, not because of its contents, but
rather for being the best that our opponents can muster. The
booklet contains nothing that is not known to revisionists. It
contains the usual distortions and misunderstandings, but it also
admits that all our "knowledge" is based on witnesses only. It even
claims to accept the traditional principles of source criticism -
but fails to make good use of them. The main sources, then, are
provided by the testimonies of Aumeier, Broad, Kremer - all from
the SS - and by Filip Müller, Henryk Tauber, Stanislaw Jankowski,
and Karl Bischoff. Finally, we also have a modern witness, as it
were, namely Robert Jan van Pelt.
Extracts from these sources are, as a rule, given out of
context. The authors fail to ask whether these witnesses are really
reliable or not. They remain unaware that Faurisson, Stäglich, Graf
et al., have already asked these questions, and convincingly shown
that we cannot rely on these testimonials for claiming the
existence of the Nazi gas chambers.
The conclusion, then, to be had from reading the most ambitious
attempt to refute our Guide, is a catastrophe. The authors
admit that there is no physical evidence, and - very much against
their will - are also forced to admit that there are no real
witnesses. If we have no physical evidence and if we have no good
witness on whose words we can rely - what, then, is the basis of
our belief in the Holocaust as a historical event?
In retrospect we may look at the course of events as follows.
Before 1998, it was the opinio communis that Hitler had
murdered millions of Jews, in gas chambers, and in cold blood. My
January 1998 Essay questioned this view seriously. For about 8
years a considerable number of professional (and not so
professional) Danish scholars used all the resources they
could get hold of, in order to prove that the Hitlerian gas
chambers did not belong to the mythical realm. Mostly they used
defamation, or silence, but finally came forth with arguments
- something they had always, and as it turned out, wisely so,
refrained from doing.
On March 12th this year I was interviewed on a serious programme
on Danish radio. Here, Eva Bøggild conceded the point about the
doors that opened the wrong way, but also held on to the falsehood
that the existence of the holes had recently been proved to exist.
Jacques Blum, adding a fantastic story of his own invention about
what went on behind the closed doors of the gas chamber, expressed
the view that my "greatness" consisted in the fact that Danish
radio had come to interview me. So, on the one hand, there should
be a public debate, but, on the other, it was not good to have a
public debate.
So, if there is a public debate in Denmark - as opposed to
virtually all other European countries - it is largely thanks to
the activities of the Society, and those journalists who still
attach importance to freedom of speech.
What about the future?
When Simon Wiesenthal, Sir Simon, passed away in September 2005,
Dr. Karsten Fledelius, a professional historian from the
University of Copenhagen, spoke on Danish TV about the Holocaust as
"the Fall of Western civilization", thus reflecting not any
original idea of his, of course, but a widespread common opinion.
And, as I recall, Fledelius also stated, perhaps in 1998, that the
gas chambers existed. No proof was given.
On the other hand, when Germar Rudolf appeared before the
Mannheim court on Tuesday morning, November 14th 2006, he, now 42,
described the same Holocaust as "a gigantic fraud" - "ein
gigantischer Betrug", and the brave German was also quoted for
stating: No court in the world has the right to decide scientific
questions authoritatively - "Kein Gericht der Welt hat das Recht,
wissenschaftliche Fragen autoritär zu entscheiden." His words
deserve to be kept in mind. The public prosecutor rejects the work
of Rudolf as pseudo-scientific. But he is wrong.
Thus the public opinion is divided. On the one hand there is the
religious view, without empirical evidence, that the Holocaust is
the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind. On the other there
is the view that the Holocaust never happened, that it is simply "a
gigantic fraud".
The conflict between superstition and science has, of course, a
long and sad history.It is facile to take the stand of Fledelius,
and to reject that of Rudolf.Unfortunately the scientific attitude
to Holocaust has only very limited public support today, and with a
few laudable exceptions, no political support at all.
Without personal courage, progress is an illusion. But there is
great courage, and there is small courage. In politics - who can
predict events to come? Once there is an opportune political
situation, when there is no fear, the Holocaust may be discussed
freely. But when will this be? How can we know?
My advice, therefore, is: Talk to people, especially young
people, normal people, honest people, people who can think for
themselves. Then, perhaps, little by little, change can be brought
about. Try to help them get rid of their fear. Fear fails as
a good adviser. Let us not, to quote our old Latin poet,
Ennius, be among those miserable people
qui sui quaestus causa fictas suscitant sententias,
but rather emulate the man who, to quote Statius,
serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint
Dr. Christian Lindtner, november 2006.