Ingrid Rimland, whose massive trilogy entitled Lebensraum has recently been banned as “hate propaganda” in Canada, brought tears to the eyes of many in her audience at a Toronto meeting, July 12 sponsored by the Canadian Association for Free Expression, which regularly supports the victims of Canada’s police state censorship laws. Commenting on the banning of her novel by Canada’s customs censors, Dr. Rimland warned: “What you experience here in Canada is the forerunner of what they have planned for America.
However, Americans are far braver and more defiant than Canadians.” “Truth was no defence in Russia, the same as in Canada today. There were people’s tribunals who sentences people to death or Siberia because they were ‘enemies of the people.’
Whole families were slaughtered in Russia,” under communism. Lebensraum tries to recapture the history of the German Mennonites who settled in the Ukraine in the late 18th century and their experiences over the subsequent 200 years, culminating in the traumatic Russian Revolution and the brutal expulsion and ethnic cleansing in the 1940s.
CAFE Director Paul Fromm and writer Ingrid Rimland display a copy of the already banned in Canada book – LEBENSRAUM
The third volume of her trilogy ends with a real letter. In the novel, it is a letter from Rarey, a tragic and idealistic American bomber pilot of German Mennonite descent. “He’d been raised to hate German by propaganda poison. These Mennonites had been raised to believe what was happening in Europe was demonic.
So, they sacrificed their sons to slaughter their German brothers,” she said. Rarey’s letter dreamed of the New World Order. “This is a good war and we must see it through. … If we can get this business of Fascism knocked off and get the world into some semblance of order and keep it there for a time, our son and his contemporaries will take over and make something really good of it.”
“Doesn’t that sound familiar?” Rimland asked. “That’s what happened” in two wars in this century; “brother against brother, because we didn’t know our culture.” Dr. Rimland explained that her task in Lebensraum is to recapture a lost history, a lost culture.
“What happened to our culture? How is it possible that we can lose something and not even realize it?” she asked. In his introduction, German-Canadian Wolfgang Mueller said: “Who is Dr. Rimland. She is not only prodigiously productive on the literary scene, but , above all, I think she is a fighter — a fighter for survival of herself and her family.”
Mueller is active in informing Canadians of the expulsion, rape and wholesale murder of ethnic Germans at the end of World War II — a wholesale ethnic cleansing that somehow never becomes a movie or docudrama in Hollywood’s presentation of World War II. “She is also a fighter for survival of truth and justice in this world,” Mueller praised. “How does she do it? She reminds “the Dark Forces” of their past misdeeds and exposes their present sins.
This makes them very uncomfortable. The Dark Forces don’t want to hear the truth. So, they have succeeded in Canada, at least for the moment, to malign the value of truth to such an extent that truth has become an endangered species. Here is Canada the Dark Forces have managed to legally declare the truth irrelevant. Truth is no longer a defence. The Canadian Human Rights Commission says so. This is not a nightmare. This is reality today in Canada!”
Ingrid Rimland with leaders of the German Canadian Community So why, asked Mueller, “is her new novel Lebensraum being banned here in Canada? Damned if I know. Is it the title? Sounds a bit like a certain Germanic desire, doesn’t it? Has the U.S.A.become too small for Ingrid Rimland? Does she intend to invade Canada? What excuse or explanation will the spin doctors of Revenue Canada come up with this time to explain their action?” [The Lebensraum 3 book trilogy is available for $90 from C-FAR Books, Box 332, Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3.] Elaborating on her desire to know the history of her own people, Dr. Rimland told of her hunger when she went to University in Kansas in the 1970s.
“We have a culture that nobody talks about. Do we tell our children about our culture. In that Mennonite library in Newton, Kansas, I found my German soul. I found out who I was. I started writing by hand the book that became The Wanderers.” [The Wanderers is available from C-FAR Books, Box 332, Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3 for $15.00] “My Mennonite community in Paraguay told me very little about my heritage. My mother was too busy keeping my family alive. However, I did hear that one woman used to own land in Russia.” The Wanderers had an odd history. The first publisher sold the rights to Bantam, which, says Dr. Rimland is owned by Jewish interests.
“Initially, 110,000 paperback copies were printed. Within 13 days, 35,000 copies were sold. Then, something spooky happened. The entire stock of books was shredded. Even I couldn’t get copies. I didn’t know why then. Now, I do. Mine was one of the first books that portrayed the German soldier in World War II as a hero, not a villain. I had to wait five years to get the rights back.
Then, I had to publish my own edition in China!” Dr. Rimland explains: The seed for this book Lebensraum was already planted when I finished The Wanderers. What if I could spread the message 10 fold? I was trying to express what my ethnic heritage is all about. I had this dream about writing the great American novel. I looked around at these people in America and Canada. They were incredibly rich, with their houses, land, money, and computers. Yet, these people didn’t know who they were. People are so afraid to talk.”