Mr. Death, the name carries many implications, and it fits Fred Leuchter well.  I wondered how a Holocaust denier who manufactured “humane” execution equipment would be portrayed in this documentary.  Everything in his life seemed to revolve around death in the, past, present, and future.  It turns out that I ended up feeling almost sorry for this man, almost, but not quite.  It amazed me that this man could even ask the question of the Holocaust’s occurrence.  It amazed me that his longing to be important appeared to overcome his reason.  It especially amazed me that to this day Leuchter still does not seem to realize the impact of his “honeymoon” journey to Poland.  This is a man who started out designing electric chairs, went from that to designing lethal injection devices, gallows, and gas chambers, all of which, he noted, he was not totally qualified, he had just made an electric chair or two.  However, he was “the” authority on execution devices and Ernst Zundel’s pick for the gas chamber analysis of Auschwitz.  Somehow Leuchter believed that he was very qualified to do this.  I don’t understand how Leuchter got so caught up in his excursion that he dismissed the hindsight of the chemist involved in the analysis and the historical evidence. I sat through most of the latter portion of the film in disbelief.  I was appalled at the way Leuchter irreverently chiseled away at a historical monument and gave no regard to the event that took the lives of so many.  He only spoke briefly of learning about the Holocaust in school; it was apparent that he was not familiar with much that went on during that time.
     Leuchter was accepted by the revisionist historians for a while, but after his worldwide presentation of “The Leuchter Report,” he had no one to turn to.  His pursuits had turned everyone away from him.  I was astonished that he found this surprising.  Even though we advocate freedom of speech and expression in America, it is well known that this freedom comes with many prejudiced biases to those who stray from “the norm.”  In Leuchter’s case, he wasn’t just straying from “the norm,” he was refuting a pivotal part of history, an inhumane occurrence that altered many lives.  His “freedom of speech” had many repercussions.  I did leave feeling almost sorry for this man and the card that life had dealt him, but I then came to the conclusion that he had created his own fantasy world that led to his fall.  He surrounded himself with death and believed himself to be an expert on it.  He is an expert on execution equipment, but he tried to let that expertise carry over into areas where it should have never appeared.