Monika Schaefer read out her personal statement, which according to the judge is usually not permitted. But the judge accepted that Monika dos not speak German perfectly, hence he decided to make an exception. Monika related how she became engaged politically and how she felt herself deeply drawn to Green politics. She campaigned many times for political office. That had all continued till she had learnt that Israel’s wars were being justified by false claims. There-upon she left the party. She had learnt very early to think for herself.

She had made the video herself. Once she had made the film and put it in the public domain, she then felt a feeling of relief and felt freed from a heavy burden. She had always held her parents under a general suspicion, but now she knew that there was nothing to reproach them with, because History was quite contrary to what we had been told since 1945. This was this reason why she had apologized to her mother.

​

As a consequence of the success of the video, she had lost many friendships; and a campaign of ritual defamation commenced against her. For example, in a small newspaper of a town with five thousand inhabitants, readers’ letters started appearing, written by readers from quite other districts, who would not normally read the news-paper. These readers’ letters served the purpose of defaming her. At the beginning, she had to force herself to go to her front-door. However when one deliberately and with conviction breaks such a taboo, because one knows that the official claims regarding the period 1933 -1945 are a shabby lie, then such ritual defamations are easier to bear. Every attempt had been made to intimidate her. For example, she always rides by bicycle, and one day at the traffic lights a car had sped away from her throwing the sand of the street against her. Also attempts had been made to ruin her financially. Not a single student from her locality came any more to take instruction on violin-playing. A regular witch-hunt was organised against her. This witch-hunt had split the community in which she lived. Whilst many had turned away from her, on the other hand, many others whom she did not know had come to her; and they could not understand what was happening. In July 2016 a new local law gave permission for music to be played in the local park close to her. A licence for this was needed, but this licence was refused to her. Finally her brother had made the offer, that it was better to come to Germany, if the situation in Canada should become too dangerous for her.

The judge asked, why she had made a video rather than chosen to write an article. Also he wanted to know why she had given advice as to where information on the subject could be found, for example referring to the video about Ernst Zundel or “Questions about the HC.” Monika replied that she herself had found the sources very helpful in order to understand everything. She wanted to invite everybody to learn more in order to understand what had really taken place in the period of 1933 to 1945. In reply to the question from the judge, why she found the lie so shabby [threadbare, seedy, mean], Monika declared because the intention was that the guilt feelings should continue for ever. The fact that she was in prison proved that. — Richard Edmonds