Mel Mermelstein, survivor who beat Holocaust deniers in court, dies at 95
Mel Mermelstein recalls the horrors he experienced as a prisoner of the Aushwitz concentration camp in 1944. Photo by Getty Images
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Mel Mermelstein, a Holocaust survivor who won a five-year court battle forcing a right-wing Holocaust-denying organization to retract its claim and pay hefty damages, died Jan. 28 at the age of 95 from complications of COVID-19.
Weeks later, tributes to Mermelstein are continuing to arrive at the family home in Long Beach, California, a testament to the public impact of his legal war with antisemites.
Born in a Jewish enclave in Mukachero, then part of Czechoslovakia and, after the 1938 Nazi takeover, part of Hungary, Mermelstein became a child of the war. When Mel was 17, he and his parents and siblings were deported to Auschwitz. When the death camp was liberated, Mel weighed 68 pounds and was the only surviving member of his family.
At that point, he vowed to become a lifelong witness to the Holocaust.
His pledge was put to the test in 1979, when the ill-named “Institute for Historical Review,” founded by longtime Holocaust denier Willis Carto as a group that could adopt the nomenclature of academic institutions to provide legitimacy to antisemitism, offered a reward of $50,000 to the first person who could prove that Jews had been gassed at Auschwitz.
Mermelstein took them up on their bet. According to The New York Times, he “provided documents, eyewitness testimonies, histories, photographs and even a can that had contained Zyklon B to the institute. He told of seeing his mother and sister driven into the gas chambers in 1944.” When he heard nothing back from the institute, he sued.
After five years of testimony, Superior Court Judge Thomas L. Johnson ruled in favor of Mermelstein, stating that the Auschwitz killings are “capable of immediate and reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.”
The Institute agreed to pay Mermelstein $90,000 to settle the case.
But Mermelstein was far from finished. Over the next decades he made 40 trips to Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other Nazi death camps, collecting his evidence: cyanide canisters, pieces of barbed wire, bone fragments and pieces of cremation ovens.
Mermelstein built a museum in his lumber yard to display some 700 artifacts and then invited students to tour the facilities. The collection is slated for permanent display at the Chabad Jewish Center in Newport Beach, California.
Get the Forward delivered to your inbox. Sign up here to receive our essential morning briefing of American Jewish news and conversation, the afternoon’s top headlines and best reads, and a weekly letter from our editor-in-chief.
His quest for truth was dramatized in the 1991 television movie “Never Forget,” with Jewish actor Leonard Nimoy portraying Mermelstein.
Surviving the deceased are Jane, his wife of 60 years, children Edie, Bernie, Ken and David, five grandchildren and one great-grandson.
The post Mel Mermelstein, survivor who beat Holocaust deniers in court, dies at 95 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
