(http://www.the-idler.com)
A Voyage to Nanaimo
It takes two hours to cross the Georgia Strait by ferry from Vancouver, British Columbia, another half-hour by jitney from the Nanaimo terminal to reach the home of Kenneth N. McVay, webmaster for The Nizkor Project . The address is an ordinary suburban split-level in a middle-class neighborhood. There is nothing distinctive about its location.
Although I have called beforehand and spoken to Mr. McVay, when I ring the doorbell the voice of young woman asks behind a locked door, with concern: "Who is there?" I tell her and she replies, still not opening the door: "Who is it you are here to see?" I answer again, and still the door does not open. "And who are you?" Once more, I say that I have an appointment and have spoken with Mr. McVay. "I'll check," she says. I hear the padding of feet going away from the door, and wait a few minutes.
A short while later, the door opens. A 20-something young lady apologizes: "I'm sorry, but we get threats from Nazis. I'll show you to my father." I am taken to a back room, filled with computer equipment, monitors, and books. I notice a bound copy of the Eichmann trial sitting on the table. Seated in front of the array is McVay, apparently a 50-something computer nerd. He is tall, thin, with short hair and glasses, wired to the world through his ISP.
The Nizkor project which McVay runs from this room in the back of his house is dedicated to providing documentation on the World Wide Web of the Nazi destruction of European Jewry and other minorities during World War II. To that end, McVay has typed, scanned, and downloaded documents from archives, articles from books, and catalog entries from libraries, publishers, and film distributors around the world.
His objective is simply to combat "Holocaust denial" with documentary evidence. McVay is a member of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Union, and his site is a Blue Ribbon member of the campaign for free expression on the internet.
I first met McVay online. After some online discussions, he uploaded clips from my film Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?" to the Nizkor site. When I checked it out, I was amazed at the sheer size and breadth of Nizkor.
McVay has received the Order of British Columbia for his work, the rough equivalent of a provincial knighthood. But this Canadian character is, curiously, and American who migrated north in the late 1960's. He's an ex-Marine who went into the computer business after working for Lockheed.
In Canada with his schoolteacher wife, McVay set up a dedicated server to connect Salmon farmers, which was used to track the price of fish food and commodities. When the price of farm-raised fish plunged from $4.00 to $2.00 a pound, many of his customers went belly-up. But McVay still had contracts to provide computer service. Using his free connect time, he surfed the web pursuing his interest in history, especially military history relating to the Second World War.
There, on the fidonet, the usenet, in the early days of computing, McVay encountered his first Holocaust deniers. He was shocked. And pissed off that people would lie about history within living memory. So he flamed the "revisionists." Instead of receiving applause from online historians, he found himself chided for incivility. One made a suggestion McVay took to heart: Instead of insulting your opponents, answer them with facts.
That is what McVay did. What began as a hobby became a calling.
With plenty of free time on his hands, McVay began to transcribe documents onto the internet, building a unique database of Holocaust related material. Anything he could get his hands on, he added to his Nizkor project. As it grew and grew, he received support from individuals and some help from organizations. (He also accepts advertising). The site became a resource used by historians and ordinary citizens alike.
McVay has most recently added the complete transcript of the Eichmann trial to his online records. When asked to explain his motivation, he simply says, "I'm a collector."
McVay does not shrink from controversy. He has posted his acrimonious email debates with British author David Irving. He dedicates his site to the memory of all the 12 million victims of the Nazi extermination campaign: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the physically disabled, the mentally retarded, the children of mixed-race, Poles, and Slavs. He links to Willis Carto's Institute for Historical Review and other denial sites such as those of Fred Leuchter, Ernst Zundel and others, in order to discredit their bogus claims. He took up John Ball's $100,000 challenge to prove the Holocaust happened -- and details how the man refuses to answer his mail. McVay also links to a reference work on the basis of fallacious reasoning by Dr. Michael C. Labossiere.
Perhaps most moving is the section of Nizkor dedicated to the memory of John Hron, a Czech immigrant to Sweden, who was beaten to death and drowned by skinheads -- a victim of Nazi ideology in the 1990s. McVay invites web sites to link to this memorial and light a candle to remember John Hron. Hron was not Jewish.
Ken McVay may be a Canadian citizen today, but he is very much in the American mold -- an individualist who got mad at the liars and frauds and bigots and hatemongers, and who sought to expose them using the latest technology at his disposal. Working alone at first, he built a reputation for integrity that is unchallenged. He is an angry, edgy, driven man who has single-handedly beaten back the forces of darkness.
His website motto features a quotation by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas from a 1958 interview with Mike Wallace: "The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth."
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)