One half of our membership and the Association itself were victimized in mid-May by an unwelcome mailing from the so-called "Institute for Historical Review," a fringe group based in California which pretends to be a scholarly body but seems to be devoted equally to the denial that the Holocaust took place and the praise of Hitlerite Germany.

We regret to report that fail-safe procedures put into effect in 1982, designed to prevent the abuse of our mailing list, failed utterly. A newly established list-vending agency and misleading sample enclosure material contributed to the error, which should nevertheless have been avoidable. We apologize to the 7,000 members whose mail was polluted.

Remedial measures include 1) a mandatory further level of review of all would-be mailing list purchases, 2) dropping the offending agency from our list of eligibles, and 3) donation of the entire revenue from the transaction, $538.55 to the Holocaust Museum.