At IHR's first conference in 1979, the group offered $50,000 to anyone "who could prove that the Nazis operated gas-chambers to exterminate Jews during World War II." Not content with announcing the "reward" among its own ranks, IHR also notified well-known Holocaust survivors and Jewish organizations. A California businessman, Mel Mermelstein, who was 17 when he was interned with his family at Auschwitz in 1944 (his mother and two sisters did not survive), and who later founded the Auschwitz Study Foundation, received the notice, signed by Lewis Brandon -- one of the pseudonyms used by David McCalden, IHR's first director. Mermelstein remitted a notarized statement describing his internment at Auschwitz and his own observation, on May 22, 1944, of his mother and two sisters being driven by Nazi guards toward what he later learned was gas chamber number five. He received no clear response to either his initial or follow-up inquiries, but started getting Holocaust-denying hate literature in his mail and was described as a "racist" in leaflets that were distributed in his neighborhood. He filed suit against IHR for breach of contract, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress early in 1981.
In a pre-trial determination, the court took judicial notice -- i.e., accepted as a well-known and indisputable fact -- that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz [See box: "Judicial Notice"], and in July 1985 the lawsuit was settled in Mermelstein's favor. IHR was forced to pay the $50,000 reward as well as an additional $40,000 for pain and suffering. Under the terms of their agreement, IHR also issued Mermelstein a letter of apology.
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