Musings on... Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr

I have a bit of an unhealthy interest in the Holocaust. For some reason, it has completely fascinated me since I was at school - I did my A level coursework looking at whether or not the Allies should have bombed Auschwitz. True to form, I’m doing my dissertation on Holocaust denial. 

Errol Morris is a bit of a dude. He’s a renowned documentary maker and famous for a number of docs, including The Thin Blue Line, a documentary that saved a man who was wrongly convicted of murder, by demonstrating the inadequacy of the case against him, and is a critically acclaimed documentary. Mr. Death looks at Fred Leuchter, an American execution expert, who was asked to testify at the trial of Ernst Zundel - a Holocaust denier and the author of the leaflet entitled ‘Did Six Million Really Die?’ This, unsurprisingly, landed him in court in Canada, and he faced the task of proving his claims. Leuchter, in his own words, “was the only person in the world that could provide that defense” due to his intricate knowledge in the execution of convicted criminals. He went to Auschwitz in order to ‘test’ whether or not the gas chambers could have been used for genocide. In order to do this, he got a chisel and hacked off bits of wall from inside the gas chamber, sent it to a lab and got it tested for cyanide residue. He also looked at the remains of the chambers as functioning execution equipment, coming to the conclusion they couldn’t possibly have been used to gas hundreds of thousands of prisoners, as it wasn’t airtight. 

The documentary clearly portrays Leuchter as a strange man - lingering shots of his odd facial expressions and creepy family photos of his business building execution equipment. There is a chilling aspect too - the opening credits are dominated by a flashing, horror film like picture with Leuchter sitting in what looked like a weird, electrified cage. It also made my eyes hurt. 

Weird....

What I found interesting is, despite his clearly wrong and dangerous assertions, he was the main narrator of the documentary, without much editing from Morris - this is a classic Morris technique and has a powerful effect. For me, it made it all the more sinister, especially at the beginning as he was describing his business. He chats about killing people as if it was an office job. At one point, he argues that there are more viable ways of killing that the Nazis would have used if they were indeed exterminating the European Jews, like hanging fifty people at once. He is also portrayed to be a complete idiot, mainly because he is one, and also by the techniques of Morris and the edit. He would say a sentence, usually something ridiculous, and one of his critics would say something to reveal his stupidity and call him on his motives. David Irving, the infamous British Holocaust denier describes him as a “simpleton”, which I think sums him up as he is portrayed in the film (although that doesn’t stop him from attributing his disbelief in the Holocaust as based on his findings). 

Whilst having a gander around my dissertation reading, there is a mention of Mr Death in Deborah Lipstadt’s book describing her trial. (David Irving sued Lipstadt in 1995 over defamatory comments about Irving being a dangerous Holocaust denier - Lipstadt won pretty much hands down). Mr Death was released in 1998, during which the trial was being prepared for by a team of scholars and lawyers. She saw a version pre-release and commented that there was nothing that explicitly said that he was an idiot, and suggested that Robert Van Pelt, an expert on Auschwitz, should comment. Van Pelt features in the final film, so we can only guess that Morris took her advice, despite Morris’ belief that the audiences would grasp that Leuchter was a nut.

I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Leuchter, he seems generally a bit up shit creek - I don’t believe he really understood the ramifications of his report. He describes himself as a “reluctant revisionist” and others believe him to be lost, and under a bit of a spell. I bet he regrets the whole thing, seeing as his wife divorced him and he lost his job... 

I’ll finish with some words of van Pelt that pretty much sums up the doc for me: 

“Holocaust denial is a story about vanity. It is a way to get in the limelight, to be noticed, to be someone”. 

If you'd like to find out a little more about Holocaust denial, go to www.hdot.org - a great little website that sums up its key features.