We bit off more than we can chew
Dear Friends and Supporters!
This missive will be a little longer, for which we apologize, but there are numerous things to get you up to speed on, so please bear with us.
In early 2020, we launched our project "Staying out of the Memory Hole 2020", which aims at collecting and safely storing revisionist material currently available in the public domain, before government or corporate censorship wipes it off the net. Since then, one of CODOH’s coworkers has been busy scouring the internet for such content, with a focus on videos. We assumed the project would cost approximately $7,500, and asked our supporters to help us finance it through donations using our own crowd-funding page. However, we have already spent almost twice the projected amount on this. The result of this project is a vast collection of currently 1085 revisionist videos (and counting) which can be watched both at CODOH.com and on our BitChute channel. Since the way we handle videos on CODOH.com is not very user-friendly, we have also put in some effort to revamp that part of our library by giving it a dedicated video section that has the look and feel of a video-streaming site. We are currently populating that new section of our library, and are working on ironing out the kinks. It will be launching soon if all goes according to plan.
Unfortunately, the financial aid from the community of our supporters has been somewhat lacking. So far, our call for funding this Herculean effort has raised only $1,950. Of this total, $1,000 were actually paid by CODOH’s own president as a seed donation to kick off our campaign, so that does not even really count. Hence, of the $15,000 dollars spent on it, we have covered only 13% with donations from a few generous supporters. (It did not help either that, until a short while ago, we had a little bug on our donation page which prevented several payments from going through, without leaving any trace that anything was wrong, so we do not even know how many of you tried in vain to donate. Now that this issue has been resolved, we must make up for lost time.)
We from CODOH therefore would like to ask you all to help us cover our expenses by either making a general donation to our effort here, or by donating specifically to this project using our crowd-funding page using a credit card. There are, of course, other payment options (see here).
To cover the expenses we have accrued thus far, we took the funds needed from CODOH’s share of book-sales revenue created by Castle Hill Publisher’s online book store as [once] hosted on CODOH’s website. However, that resource has become somewhat unreliable lately, so we had to temporarily suspend the project. This ties into the other half of our message:
Call for Help
Financially speaking, the year 2021 has been very rough on us from CODOH and Castle Hill Publishers so far due to three events that took a toll on us:
1. German-language Market in Peril
As the year 2020 came to an end, the small German-language publishing and book-retail company “Der Schelm” (visit their site at https://derschelm.com/) had their German operations shut down by the German authorities (see here for a news report on this event: https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/Razzia-bei-rechtsextremem-Versandhandel-Der-Schelm,schelm100.html). As you can see from their website, “Der Schelm” offers our entire list of German-language books for sale. Their sales of our books make up a considerable portion of our sales of German-language material. Therefore, seeing "Der Schelm" survive this onslaught of government terrorism and thrive in the future is in our best interest. “Der Schelm” is still struggling to recover from this setback. Their sales have bounced back to some degree, but it is still considerably below the level where it was before. This has led to some loss of revenue for us.
2. Brexit
Britain officially exited the EU at the end of last year (hence Br-exit). Since Castle Hill Publishers’ European operation works from the UK, this means that all book shipments to continental Europe are now subject to customs proceedings. None of the European countries were logistically prepared for the flood of goods to and from the UK which, since January 1, 2021, had to be handled by customs. As a result, any parcel Castle Hill Publishers shipped out from the UK took 4, 6, even 8 weeks to get to the customers. Since it was initially unclear why shipments weren’t arriving in a timely fashion as expected, we suspended shipping books temporarily, and in consequence we also ceased announcing any new releases. In fact, we suspended all sales and marketing activities until this heck-of-a-mess was resolved. Hence, Castle Hill Publishers’ turnover resulting from sales to customers residing anywhere in continental Europe took a nosedive, and so did CODOH’s share of it.
3. Credit-Card Service Provider
After some lunatics thought it a good idea to storm the US Capitol back in January, corporate America lashed out against anything and anyone considered to be on the political right. Although we are neither left nor right nor up nor down nor front nor back nor inside or out when it comes to political orientation, we too fell victim to it when our gateway provider linking our credit-card processor to the US banking system banned us from using their services in late January. Our credit-card processor reacted to this by refusing to find us a new gateway provider. After more than two weeks of searching, we found a new credit-card service provider. But when they realized that half of our business is with customers outside the US, they marked us as a “high risk” business and demanded that they be allowed to keep 10% of all proceeds in a reserve account in case of foreign financial obligations from transactions that end in chargebacks or suspicions of fraud. Despite the fact that we can prove an immaculate track record in this area, they refused our efforts to reason with them on the matter. We do not know how long this hostage situation will last, but there is very little we can do about it at the moment. Since credit-card transactions constitute a major part of our sales and donations, this means another reduction in available cash flow.
…Yet We Keep Expanding
Despite all these obstacles put in our way these past five months, we have been able to accomplish a great deal. Here is a list of all the achievements your support has facilitated and made possible::
- We published four more Volumes of our prestigious series Holocaust Handbooks, both in English and German:
- Vol. 40 (just released): Deliveries of Coke, Wood and Zyklon B to Auschwitz: Neither Proof Nor Trace for the Holocaust (click here for the German edition)
- Vol. 41: The Making of the Auschwitz Myth: Auschwitz in British Intercepts, Polish Underground Reports and Postwar Testimonies (1941-1947). On the Genesis and Development of the Gas-Chamber Lore (click here for the German edition)
- Vol. 43: Rudolf Reder versus Kurt Gerstein: Two False Testimonies on the Bełżec Camp Analyzed (click here for the German edition)
- Vol. 44: Sonderkommando Auschwitz I: Nine Eyewitness Testimonies Analyzed (click here for the German edition)
- More books are in the pipeline (six, actually), but it is still too early to announce anything. Still, we have invested many thousands of dollars in them already, both for translations and author royalties. We will keep you posted. For most of these projects, we have added an entry on our crowd-funding page, just in case you are curious and consider supporting our efforts.
- When YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the like started pulling the plugs on us, we turned our attention to more ethical, free-speech-friendly social media venues. We we have created a presence on several alternative social-media platforms, are filling those pages with content, and are slowly building a following. To do all this, we have hired one paid contributor, who is assisted by an unpaid volunteer. Here is the list of platforms where we currently have accounts:
- We launched a website to sell our very own Merchandise. It is still in its early stages (and we might move it to a subdomain of our own website, if we can), so not much to see and buy there quite yet, but we’re getting there. We will send out a separate notification about this soon, once everything is set up properly.
- As already mentioned, we are in the final stages of revamping the CODOH library to better accommodate the more than 1,000 videos we have on our site. We hope to release this very soon. Once we do, we will let you all know.
We would like to ask YOU to join us in making history and fighting the good fight. If you think that what we are doing is worthwhile, and if you want us to continue doing this work, we ask you to contribute financially in order to help us overcome these formidable obstacles. You can do this by:
- buying our books (hard copies, e-books or audio books),
- buying our merchandise (the store is already functional, so give it a try),
- or by making a donation to either CODOH (to be invested in developing the library and reaching out through social media) or to Castle Hill Publishers (to help funding new book and documentary projects)
Please don’t think that others will help out, so you won’t have to. Every Dollar/Euro/Pound makes a difference, and every item purchased from us makes us stronger. Especially the many small contributions help us out enormously, as they add up to a considerable sum. So please, even if you can contribute only a little, please consider donating or buying from us. Ultimately, all we do depends on contributions from you. We cannot do anything without you.
Thank you very much for reading our petition!
Germar Rudolf and
Your entire team of CODOH and Castle Hill Publishers
www.codoh.com
castlehill.shop
