Mel Mermelstein

Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how in 1944 he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five.

Represented by public interest attorney William John Cox, Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for breach of contract, anticipatory repudiation, libel, injurious denial of established fact, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and declaratory relief (see case no.

On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took "judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944",[1][5] judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that the gas chambers existed.

[5][4] In a pre-trial determination, Judge Thomas T. Johnson declared: This court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944.

[6] In 1986, the IHR, along with its founder Willis Carto, sued Mermelstein for allegedly libeling them during an interview with a New York City radio station, but dropped the lawsuit in 1988.

In 1988, Mermelstein (who was a member of the International Auschwitz Committee) included photo-enlarged copies of IHR's checks to him totaling $90,000 along with their apology letter in the exhibit "From Ashes to Life" at the Mills House Art Gallery in Garden Grove, California.

[7] About these so-called deniers of The Holocaust, and who they really are, see my letter to the editors dated August 1980 in my book By Bread Alone, The Story of A-4685.Mermelstein died from complications of COVID-19 at home in Long Beach, California, on January 28, 2022.