https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/02/01/holocaust-survivor-mel-mermelstein-dead/
Mr. Mermelstein, however, considered himself “duty-bound” to challenge the group and the ideology it represented.
“I watched my mother and sisters being led to the gas chambers, and they tell me it was a hoax,” he said. “They are hate-mongers, Jew-haters. I’m going to get them if I have to spend the rest of my life doing it.”
With the counsel of William John Cox, a public-interest lawyer who took the case on a pro-bono basis, Mr. Mermelstein charted a strategy that ultimately led them to court. Mr. Mermelstein accepted the institute’s challenge, submitting for the contest an account of his experience at Auschwitz, a copy of his 1979 memoir, “By Bread Alone: The Story of A-4685″ — and a claim for the $50,000.
When the institute failed to pay, Mr. Mermelstein sued the group and related defendants for the $50,000 in prize money and $17 million in damages, alleging libel, breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress and — perhaps most consequential — “injurious denial of established fact.”