Terrorists, criminals and phony refugees get ministerial permits or just plain flood in, but Canada's stultifyingly politically correct immigration department keeps a dissident writer out. Irving's troubles go back to the days when Gerry Weiner, the Jewish Minister of Multiculturalism in the Brian Mulroney government, led major efforts to deny Mr. Irving entry to Canada.

Historian David Irving & CAFÉ Director Paul Fromm

Since then, Canadians have had to travel to border cities like Detroit, Seattle or Niagara Falls to hear the gifted and controversial historian.

CAFÉ has consistently supported David Irving's right to be heard. Indeed, one of my "sins" according to the Ontario College of Teachers, was that, in November, 1992, I delivered a speech in Victoria, B.C, decrying David Irving's exclusion from Canada.

On July 12, David Irving spoke in Niagara Falls, NY, as part of a very extensive speaking tour that will take him from coast to coast. He warns it could be his "last" North American tour as his present U.S. visa, which took 18 months to obtain, is for a single visit. A future tour would be dependant on receiving another visa.

Mr. Irving spoke on his Austrian prison experience and some new conclusions about Jewish deaths in WW II. I then delivered a short talk on the fight against Internet censorship in Canada.

Soon after he was jailed in Vienna, it was revealed that there were 150 copies of David Irving's books in the Austrian prison system. The Austrian attorney general, clearly oblivious to the irony of her statement, announced that she had ordered these books by the "neo-Nazi" author David Irving burned!

Mr. Irving recalled the kindness of some guards, one of whom had invited him into his office for a Christmas drink of whiskey. When he was released, several police officers told him that the Austrian people respected him but that his trouble had all stemmed from a certain minority.

"Prison was not really so bad," said Mr. Irving, especially for someone who had survived the privations of an English public (actually, private) school. Upper class Englishmen, the writer joked, "send their children to public schools to learn the necessary arrogance to be Englishmen."  Prison, he said, was "the ideal situation for a writer." Without distractions, he wrote over 4,000 handwritten pages. Of these, 2,000 are for an autobiography and 2,000 for his book on Himmler.

Ex-Political Prisoner, Author in Jail, David Irving

For his first six months in prison, he received no letters at all. At his trial, court was told that he had received 500 letters, all supporting him. The judge worried that Mr. Irving's supporters might try to rescue him. So, after the brief one day trial and his harsh three year sentence, the judge had him returned to prison surrounded by 8 police officers with loaded automatic weapons.

Mr. Irving explained that, strictly speaking, he was not jailed for denying the killing of Jews in WW II, but for violating Austria's "banning law." This law outlaws any attempts to revive the Nazi Party. It is deemed that expressing any information that might lead to a more positive view of the Hitler era violates this law. There are at least 2,000 words forbidden under this bizarre censorship, including the use of the term "system politician, as that was a term used by the National Socialists.

The ex-political prisoner sees himself as a survivor. The efforts of dark forces to destroy this prolific and creative man go back a long way. "In 1968, my publisher heard two judges in a London club say: 'We have to destroy David Irving,'" the author explained.

Attendees snapped up Irving Books & Tapes

"I see Pat Buchanan has now picked up my Churchill material," Mr. Irving noted. Irving interviewed almost all of Adolf Hitler's surviving staff as well as his five personal secretaries. "Hitler was no threat to the British Empire," Mr. Irving concluded. One secretary Krista Schroeder, who was with Hitler almost to the very end, quoted Hitler as saying: "If only the British knew how little we want from them."

"We knew from code intercepts of a statement where the German Admiralty stated: 'We have no intention of invading England,'" Irving revealed.

"Churchill destroyed the British Empire," Mr. Irving charged. "He needed the Nazi 'threat' to stay in power and destroy the British peace movement. So, the British bombed Berlin and, in response to this provocation, the Germans bombed London," and this hardened public opinion.

Mr. Irving, who testified at Toronto Revisionist publisher Ernst Zundel's second "false news" trial, recalled the German political psioner now serving a five year sentence for expressing dissident opinions about World War II: "Ernst Zundel was a witty and humane man and a man of his word."