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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- True story you won't forget, 29 October 1999 Author: sail4me from So. Calif
I know William Cox who is portrayed here by Dabney Coleman. After watching the video with him he told me that it was an accurate account of the events that took place. Mr. Cox suffered significant financial losses taking this case but felt a personal need to continue. The concept of using "Contract Law" to establish other legal precedents is now taught to first year law students as a result of this case. Perhaps someday the video will be more widely available.
7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :- Terrifying, depressing view of one man's war for truth, 1 September 2005 Author: NumptyB from United Kingdom
I watched this drama on television and was numb afterwards. You hear of flat-Earthers and 'lunar landings were fake' conspiracy theorists and just say to yourself "well - they pays their money... that's their beliefs and they're entitled to them..." Then 'Never Forget' shows you, through drama, the lengths the stuck minds and morally blind will go to to deafen themselves and others to the truth. We have our own paranoid denialists in Northern Ireland, who only see the wrong done them never the wrong they've done. They spout the kindred of the poison Mel Mermelstein had to put up with. A good portrait of a man driven by his convictions: Leonard Nimoy certainly deserves praise for telling Mel Mermelstein's story, let alone turning in a fine performance in the lead. Despite any dramatic licence taken I'd set this TV movie as course text for history at Ordinary Level: it is quite clearly still needed.
5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- Excellent!!!, 30 December 1999 Author: (Melinium) from Kansas
I thought this movie was great. Great acting (especially by Leonard Nimoy) and a great story based on the holocaust and the real people. Nimoy put in a great effort and it's not so surprising since he is a great actor and he's Jewish and this movie felt a great deal to him. If you get a chance to see it on TV or rent it on video, SEE IT. You won't regret it.
5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :- Real Life Drama, 8 December 2005 Author: net3431 from United States
This film was created after a $17 million lawsuit alleging "injurious denial of established fact." The IHR settled out of court, and signed an apology. The apology was to Mermelstein, for extending the IHR gas chamber reward offer to him in full knowledge that Mermelstein was traumatized by the Concentration Camp. The IHR gas chamber reward (which requires hard evidence) was never pursued by Mermelstein. The IHR gas chamber reward is no longer offered, since it proved to be more of a lawsuit magnet than PR tool.The judge ruled: 'Under Evidence Code Section 452(h), this Court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944,' and 'It just simply is a fact that falls within the definition of Evidence Code Section 452(h). It is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.'In 1988 Mermelstein brought another suit against IHR, which he lost.
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :- decent show; should be on DVD, 20 December 2006 Author: Ajtlawyer from Richland, WA
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
"Never Forget" was run and re-run several times in the course of just a few days when it came out, as I remember, and I've never seen or heard of it since. But it is a decent picture and Leonard Nimoy is excellent in it as the Holocaust survivor who sues an anti-Semitic, "Holocaust is Myth" group who offers a cash reward to anyone who proves that the Holocaust really happened. Nimoy's character demands the money and when he's refused, sues the anti-Semites for breach of contract. In court he prevails by getting the court to take "judicial notice" of the fact of the Holocaust. "Judicial notice" is a mechanism of legal proof where the fact is so well-known that there is no reason to have to put on real proof (i.e., there's no need to prove in court that the sun rises in the east).I particularly remember Nimoy's scenes where he has to undergo a cruel deposition by the anti-Semites' lawyer who badgers him with questions and tries to get him to admit that he never saw anyone actually gassed at Auschwitz. Nimoy gets the final word though with his moving testimony before the court.
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- Not bad for a TV movie but a gross misrepresentation of the case., 10 January 2008 Author: vidjunki from United States
Leonard Nimoy's acting is, as usual, superb and the story moves along at a decent pace--never edge of your seat excitement but not dragging anywhere either. The problem is that it takes a fairly complex court case and turns it into a good v evil morality play. This often happens when movies are made based on real events because rarely are the actual events compelling enough to hold an audience.The problem with the movie is that the viewer is left with the impression that Mel Mermelstein--a Holocaust survivor--took on a vast, well-financed, powerful network of neo-Nazi extremists who believe the Holocaust is a myth and was able to prove once and for all in a court of law that the Nazi Holocaust did indeed occur and thereby score a great victory for historical truth.In actuality, the case was not about whether or not the Holocaust occurred but whether or not Mel Mermelstein had a valid contract with the Institute for Historical Review. Mr. Mermelstein did get the judge in the case to take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz.This, however, was not a major coup for historical truth nor was it anything new. As far back as 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal that tried the Nazi war criminals took judicial notice of the fact that Jews were murdered in gas chambers at Auschwitz--and that Jews were murdered in 'steam chambers' at Treblinka while at Belsen they were killed in a room with an electric floor.A fact is not proved to be true when a court takes judicial notice of it. Theoretically, a court should only take judicial notice of a fact because it has already been proved to be true. The fact that a judge in California took judicial notice of gas chambers at Auschwitz has meaning only to lawyers in a court room in California. It means nothing to a historian.In the movie, Mel Mermelstein proves that the Holocaust is true and the IHR is forced to pay him the $50,000 they offered to anybody who could prove a single Jew was gassed at Auschwitz and they are forced to apologize to Mr. Mermelstein for causing him anxiety and to acknowledge that Jews were indeed gassed at Auschwitz.Nothing could be further from the truth. The IHR in actuality settled out of court before trial because litigating the case would easily cost more than what Mr Mermelstein was asking in damages. The IHR did not have to acknowledge that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and, although they wrote an apology to Mr. Mermelstein for causing him anxiety, they did not apologize for questioning the official holocaust story.There'a a big difference between a husband who tells his wife he is sorry that he came home drunk last night and the husband who tells his wife he's sorry that she was angry at him for coming home drunk last night. The IHR apology is along the lines of the latter. They said they were sorry that Mel Mermelstein got upset that the IHR asked for proof of gassings at Auschwitz. The IHR did not apologize for asking for proof of gassings at Auschwitz.The movie ends with the historical truth of the Auschwitz gas chambers triumphing over the evil of neo-Nazi holocaust deniers, all because one man had the courage to speak the truth. As far as genuine Holocaust scholarship is concerned however, Mel Mermelstein contributed nothing to our understanding. He did not submit any evidence that Jews were ever gassed at Auschwitz to either the IHR or to the courts. As far as the offer the IHR originally made in 1979--$50,000 to anyone who can prove that there were gas chambers at Auschwtiz--Mel Mermelstein was able to provide an affidavit of his own experiences at Auschwitz but nothing more. He submitted nothing that addressed the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. He didn't even say that he saw the gas chambers with his own eyes!! To this day, Mel Mermelstein has not proved that there were gas chambers at Auschwtiz and nobody else has submitted any proof of gas chambers at Auschwitz in connection with the IHR contest either.The fact that anybody watching this movie would believe that they understand the basic facts of this case but instead would have no idea of what really happened is what makes the movie so awful in my mind. It would be a pretty good little flick if it was presented as a work of fiction. Presenting it as based loosely on the truth is misleading at best and is more accurately described as a demonstrable fraud.
1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :- Decent Flick but Takes Great Dramatic Lisence, 8 April 2007 Author: s_810 from United States
For a made for TV movie, it's not actually all that bad. Leonard Nimoy does a fine job and it's nice to see him step out of the Spock role every once in a while.Unfortunately it's takes a complex court case and turns into a simple good v evil morality play. It also unfairly portrays the villains as Nazis and anti-Semites, which they are not.Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the movie is the celebration of the judge's decision to take 'judicial notice' of pivotal facts in favor of Leonard Nimoy's character as a great victory when in fact this single action has suppressed historian's ability to factually investigate and understand one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century--the Holocaust.
0 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :- Those that hate..., 20 May 2007 Author: wolf008 from NY
For those that hate, there were never enough minorities tortured, hung, gassed or stuffed into ovens to satisfy their aversion. By means of their denial that the holocaust existed, or their statements that events were "over-exaggerated", they aim to further insult and injure the survivors and descendants of those who suffered Hitlers "final solution".There was a time after the war that we said "never again"! Never again would we allow genocide to occur anywhere on this planet. How soon we forget our pledge. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are still very much a reality, and just as it did in the early days of Hitlers Germany, it goes on mostly unfettered and continues today in places like Rwanda, and Malaysia. At the very least we need to send a message to those that hate and commit acts of wholesale murder.Hitler still exists. His legacy resides in men like president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who called for the destruction of Israel, and who goes virtually unopposed by the world community. It is no surprise that Ahmadinejad is a holocaust denier himself, and has even called for conferences in an attempt to question the events in Nazi Germany. He has called for Jews and Christians to be forced to distinguish themselves by wearing colored badges. Very reminiscent to Nazi Germany's requiring the Jews to wear the Star of David. Mostly Ahmadinejad is a man of words rather than actions at present time. However, there once was a time when Hitler was confined to spewing his hate in the beer halls of Bavaria. Do we ever learn? I have found that hate doesn't have to have logic or reason, it just has to exist. No matter where hate exists, no matter what race or religion it is aimed at, it must not go unopposed. These men and their ideas must be stopped. Today they come for your neighbor, but perhaps tomorrow they will come for you.
3 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :- It bothered me., 18 December 1999 Author: abelt (abelt@micron.net) from Greenleaf, Idaho
I watched this film some time ago because I've always had an interest in Holocaust studies. This film left a truly bad impression. Basically, they use the docudrama genre to play with facts the way Oliver Stone does. There is slanderous innuendo and other misrepresentation. If you take it with a grain of salt, you might be okay, but it is a good example why this kind of movie should rarely be made.
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