Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Attacking Frei

In an interview with John C. Snider, the editor of SciFiDimensions, a science fiction magazine Joe Nickell  responded to a question about the pollen evidence:

Max Frei was a Swiss criminologist - a sort of jack-of-all-trades criminologist - who made a fool of himself authenticating the notorious Hitler Diaries. . . . The pollens were very suspicious, as pollen experts quickly pointed out . . . . they all looked brand-spanking new - they looked like lab specimens. (34) 

Nickell had missed the obvious. Some of the photographs were lab specimens. They were labeled as such. Granted, Frei should have made it clear. But the argumentum ad hominem, the argument against the man, the suggestion that he made a fool of himself, was unwarranted. In that interview with Nickell that we mentioned at the outset of the book, the one were Nickell told Krieg of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking, as a way of elevating his qualifications, that he was a “jack of all trades,” Nickell also told Krieg that he was an “undercover detective, teacher, draft dodger, river boat manager, carnival promoter, magician and spokesperson.” He was also an unfair tarnisher of reputations. He had questioned Ray Rogers integrity and he would try to do the same to Frei.

Frei was multi-disciplined. He knew pollens and he knew handwriting analysis and many other specialties. We would expect that from a former director of a forensic science laboratory. The charge that he “made a fool of himself authenticating the notorious Hitler Diaries” is pure exaggeration. In 1981, the publisher of Der Stern, a German news magazine bought several volumes of a handwritten diary supposedly written by Adolf Hitler. It was understood that the diary had been in East Germany since the end of World War II after a plane carrying some of Hitler’s personal possessions had crashed near Dresden. As the story goes, farmers had recovered the diary in the wreckage and passed them on to an East German general. They were subsequently smuggled into West Germany hidden in pianos by a certain Dr. Fischer. Fischer approached Gerd Heidemann, a journalist for Der Stern, who acted as a middleman between Fischer and the magazine.