Robert FAURISSON
Transcript of the recording of a talk given in Stockholm on
December 4th, 1992
(text slightly revised and corrected in September 1999)
My name is Robert Faurisson. I am 63. I am a French university professor visiting Stockholm. Today is the 4th of December 1992. I am staying at the home of my friend Ahmed Rami. I am recording this talk on cassette to have it broadcast by any radio station in Sweden. I arrived yesterday at Arlanda airport. It is my second visit to Sweden. The first one was on the 17th of March 1992. On that very day, 17th of March 1992, I was stopped by the police. Yesterday also I was stopped by the police. The questions they asked me were more or less the same. So I am going to give you those questions and my answers. The first question was: "Why are you in Sweden?" The first time I answered: "It's in order to visit my friend Ahmed Rami and to meet the Swedish media who are insulting me and who never explain to their readers what I exactly say as a revisionist." The second time (that is, yesterday), I said: "It's to meet my friend Ahmed Rami. It's a private visit." But I met , all the same, when I got out of the airport, many, many people from the Swedish media. And I had to say something. So I made a very brief statement. I'll get back to this statement afterwards. Another question asked by the police was: "Have you already been convicted in your country, France, for your views?", meaning my revisionist views. My answer was: "Yes". And they asked me: "Have you ever been in jail?" My answer was: "Unfortunately, not yet, but I am ready to go to jail." And I said — they also asked me, this was the third question: "Is there any country which has expelled you, or which has forbidden you from entering?" And I said: "No. I've travelled in dozens of countries, but I've never been expelled. And never have I even been asked any questions. The first country in which I have been questioned is your country." And I said this to the two policemen of the Immigration Service. I think those are more or less the only questions they asked me. They decided that I could get out of the airport, and go into town. So you see, Sweden is a free country all the same.
I wouldn't say that about my own country, France, where, since 1990, we have had a special law that you don't have in Sweden. This special law says that, if ever you contest anything that was established by the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg 1945-46, you may go to jail.
When I got out of the airport, as I told you, I met those people from the media. I refused to answer their questions because they were totally beside the point, which is: "What is revisionism? What do you say, Mr Faurisson?" I only said two things. I said: "Why didn't you answer my challenge to the Swedish media on the 17th of March?" On the 17th of March I had come out with a text whose title was: "My Challenge to the Swedish media". This challenge looked very simple. It was: "Please, show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber." They said: "Why do you ask that?" I replied only: "You have 24 hours to answer my challenge. But be careful because, on Radio Islam, I am going to comment on your answer." And there was no answer. Hundreds of articles have been written about Ahmed Rami, about revisionism, about myself but never is this challenge mentioned. I would like to know why. The second remark to the people from the media was: "I have for you a second challenge and I already mentioned this a few weeks ago. This challenge is: « I am ready to meet on TV, but live on TV, any survivor, any historian who would be ready to say that the gas chambers, the Nazi gas chambers, existed »." And it's an offer that still stands. As you perhaps know, I have no access, in fact, to the Swedish media. And thus I cannot explain what I think is true and what I think is false about what we are told on the history of the Second World War. It is, all the same, surprising that the Swedish media talk so much about a foreign professor without giving the slightest idea of what he really says. He might, all the same, have some arguments. What are those arguments? So, if I am recording this cassette, it's to try to give an idea of revisionism's arguments. Of course, I would have preferred to be interviewed on radio, an official radio station. But, as you see, it's impossible. So this cassette may serve as a little source of light for some people. I am not responsible for the ideas of those who are going to broadcast this cassette. I am only responsible for what I am going to say. And even for what I am saying right now. So let us be clear about one thing. According to the Swedish media I am "a Nazi prophet." At the Paris airport I saw a journalist of the Expressen. His name is Nilsson. He came up to me and said: "I would like to have a conversation with you". To this man I said: "No Sir; aren't you that Nilsson who on the 18th of March 1992 dared to say that he'd had an interview with me on the flight to Sweden?". And that had not been the case. Mr Nilsson had invented that interview. He had lied. Then I said: "How is it that you call me a 'Nazi prophet'? How dare you insult me like that?!" And he said: "No, I don't say that you are 'a Nazi prophet', but everybody else says that you are 'a Nazi prophet' ". So I said: "Are you a journalist or are you a parrot repeating what you have heard?"
So, to those people who dare to say that I am a Nazi, my first answer would be, if I had to answer an insult, "now, that is not sure." Sometimes when you are insulted the best is not to answer, but if I had to answer I would say: "Now be careful. I am not a Nazi. And if you knew me, you would know perfectly well that, if I were a Nazi, I would certainly say it. I am not a shy person. I am not a Nazi and I am not a racist." Yesterday I saw two people who were making a demonstration against me. And they carried something written in Swedish. I had it translated afterwards. And this writing was something like: "Down with racism". I am extremely sorry. If I had known that it was "Down with racism" -- if I had known that, I would have stood in front of that inscription. And I would have said with my Somali friends, with Ahmed Rami, with my Arab friends, I would have said: "I totally agree. I am against racism. Now, be careful: I am against any kind of racism." And we know that there is also a Jewish racism. This racism is not better, not worse than any other racism. We have, I think, to combat any kind of racism. If you really want to have my political ideas, let me tell you I have no political ideas. I think that I have the right not to have any political ideas. But during the war in 1942, when I was 13, I remember having written on my desk with a knife "Mort à Laval." Laval was, as we say, the right arm of Marshal Pétain. He was for collaboration with the Germans. I was against. And if really you want to know the way I vote, although I think I should not tell you this, I am going to say: "In France the last time I voted it was for a man of the socialist party." I belong to no political organisation. I don't understand very much about politics and I am not very interested. I have too much work. And I don't like to talk about topics that I have not studied. I belong only to one organisation. This organisation is not very popular. I must apologise to people who believe in God. (Myself, I do not believe in God.) This organisation to which I belong, in France, is called "l'Union des athées". It's an association of atheists. And that's all.
Now, sometimes people say: "But even if you are not a Nazi, you are helping Nazi people by your theories about Hitler and so on." And I say: "I am sorry, I have to say what I think is exact. I don't say 'what I think is true' but 'what I think is exact.' If it pleases some people, okay; if it displeases some other people, I don't care. My only duty is to be exact." I am not going to hide something because it is unpopular. I have to say it. And I have met some people of the far right. But you must know that revisionism in France came from people of the left, people who are called libertarians. This was the case especially of Paul Rassinier. He was deported by the Germans. He was in a concentration camp. He suffered terribly. But, when he came back, he wrote a book called The Lie of Ulysses. And in that book he said: "This is what we suffered. But I don't understand how it is that some people can say that in the camp where I was there were gas chambers, because there were none". Paul Rassinier thought that we have first to be truthful. We have no right to lie even about our enemy. About people of the far right and about racists, this is what I would like to say: I think first that they are human beings; even Nazis are human beings; they are not beasts. And I have noticed that, among those people, sometimes or perhaps even often, those who admire strength admire strength because they themselves are weak. I don't want to shock anyone. I don't want to criticise people of the far right. Because it's too easy to do that. It costs nothing. All the media are doing so. So I'm not going to insist on that, because, as we say in English: "You mustn't spit on the underdog". Hitler died in April 1945. And National Socialism died with him.
Now, let us go on to the real topics. What is revisionism? And what do we revisionists say? What do we affirm? What do we contest? Revisionism is the work of people who believe that we have to revise what is generally accepted about World War II. In fact this word "revisionism" already existed in the '20's. It came from people who said: "Now that the war is finished between Germany, France, England and so on, we have to get rid of propaganda. Propaganda means lies and hatred. And we have to try to establish the facts." And that is how those historians, called already at that time revisionists, discovered, for instance, that it was totally false that Germans soldiers had cut off the hands of Belgian babies. It was a lie. And there were many, many lies of that kind that you could find in World War II. The same kind of lies. So we have to revise. Even when sometimes, not all the time of course, when you think that there are many, many witnesses of something, you still have to establish the facts. It's not enough to say or to believe that there are many witnesses. You have to find the hard facts. I myself got interested 32 years ago in what is called revisionism. I read at that time Paul Rassinier. And since then I have read thousands of books, hundreds of documents about this story of the Holocaust of the Jews. And I have wanted to see what is true and what is not true. What is exact, and what is not exact about what the Jews suffered. If I had to sum it up I would say that what is true is: There was a persecution of the Jews. It's quite true that there were deportations, concentration camps. Even that there were massacres. Because I do not know of any wars without massacres. I think that it is true that there were of course ghettos, concentration camps, labour camps and so on. But what we contest is that there was something else and much worse than that. Because, I'm sorry to say, concentration camps are something which exists today. Which has always existed. Let's take an example: If tomorrow there were to be a war between France and Italy, France would have to put in concentration camps all the Italians living in France, and the Italians would have to put in concentration camps all the French in Italy. Even the children. Remember that during the war, the Americans and the Canadians put into concentration camps people who were Japanese, and even Americans or Canadians of Japanese background. But, what we contest is what is added on to this. And what is added is that there was a plan to exterminate the Jews. That there was first an order from Hitler which said: Kill all the Jews. That there was a plan, a specific plan, that there were gas chambers, which were a specific weapon for a specific crime. And that the result of all this was 6 million Jews who died. This we contest. We say that this is not true. This is not exact.
But let me interrupt this for one minute to say something about what has happened in Sweden with the Jewish cemeteries. In France, we had something of that kind in 1990. Of course we people, we have nothing to do with such dirty things. Nothing. What I must say, and which is very troubling, is that in 1990 when we had this desecration of the Carpentras cemetery, immediately it was said that the far right and we revisionists, that we were responsible for that. Hundreds of thousands of people in France demonstrated against us. And then suddenly, nothing. Total silence about this. But you see, thanks to this exploitation of a cemetery desecration, the French parliament, at least the Socialists and the Communists, voted in this special law against us. We call it "The loi Gayssot ", after the name of a Communist politician. And this is the law I told you about earlier which makes it impossible to contest what I am contesting.
Now I'm going back to my demonstration. Please, I suppose that most of you believe that there was an order coming from Hitler to kill the Jews. This was said and repeated in the '50's, in the '60's, in the '70's. At the end of the '80's it was abandoned. Today you will not find one historian claiming that there was any order, either from Hitler or from any Nazi, aiming to kill the Jews. I suppose that most of you, you think there was such a plan. For example, a plan decided in Berlin-Wannsee, on the 20th of January 1942. This was said and repeated. Now it's been totally abandoned. And a very well known Jewish historian — his name is Yehuda Bauer — said in January 1992: "The silly story of Wannsee". Because in Wannsee nothing of the kind was decided. It was decided that the Jews would be expelled, if possible, from Europe. But no question of "extermination". So no order, no plan, no budget. If you decide on such a programme, especially in time of war, you need money to carry it out. You need to decide that such a sum of money will be given to such service, for such purpose. But, nothing.
Now, are there any gas chambers? Do you have any proof that a room called "gas chamber" was actually a room where people were killed by gas, and especially with Zyklon B? The answer is No. You have not the slightest expert proof of that. I'll get back to this question of the gas chambers and you will see that what we are told about it is a physical and chemical impossibility. I've used the word "Zyklon B". It's quite right that Zyklon B existed. It had existed since 1922 and it still exists today. It is, precisely, hydrocyanic acid to kill lice. Do we have any expert's report showing that a single body was found by the Allies in 1945 of a person who had been killed by poison gas? The answer is No. Hundreds, thousands of autopsies have been performed. Not one has demonstrated such a killing by this poison gas. So you see, no order, no plan, no budget, no instruction, no gassed body, no such weapon, I mean that there is no expert's report showing that this place was used as the weapon of the crime. Perhaps are you going to say: "But, what about the witnesses?" I believed as you do, you who believe that there were gas chambers, that we had so much proof, that we had so many witnesses. And I was shocked when for the first time I read that those gas chambers had not existed. So, believe me: I have read many, many testimonies. Especially, of course, testimonies coming from Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal and other people like that. And my conclusion is that there is not one witness of the gassings or of the gas chambers. Because — and this is really a scandal — not once in so many trials against German people, not once has a so-called witness been cross-examined on the very facts of gassing. Many times myself I have met Jews saying: "Now, Mr Faurisson, how can you say that there were no gas chambers? I was myself in Auschwitz. I am a living witness". Every time I have looked those people in the eye and said: "Now, you claim that you are a witness: please describe to me the gas chamber that you saw. Please describe to me the gassing." The answer is: "Now, Mr Faurisson, how can you expect me to have witnessed a gassing? If I had witnessed a gassing I wouldn't be here, alive, to talk to you." Which means: 1) that this person lied to me when first he or she said: "I am a living witness of the gassings;" 2) it means that in the opinion of this person there could not be any witnesses, which is false. You can imagine that, if those fantastic slaughterhouses had existed, we would have thousands of witnesses. So, if you don't have, as I've told you, an order, a plan, a budget, instructions, a body etc., no weapon and so on, and if you have no witnesses, then what is it that you have?
Sometimes people rather naively say: "But we know that the Germans destroyed the gas chambers and killed all the witnesses." I am sorry. It makes your position worse, because my question would be: "Please describe to me what the Germans are supposed to have destroyed. What do you know about that?" I need a description. For 32 years I've been looking for what such a gas chamber could look like. In 32 years I've never found it. Sometimes I've thought, "Here we are: I am approaching a gas chamber, something resembling a gas chamber". But every time it's been like a mirage. It's vanished. So I need simply an image. I've visited, of course, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek, Mauthausen, Hartheim, Dachau, Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen, Struthof-Natzweiler and so on. What we are shown in some of those camps, especially in Auschwitz 1, is really ridiculous. Never could any of those poor rooms have been a gas chamber.
And this is the most important part, I think, of what I have to say to you. It's about what a gas chamber, if it had existed, would have looked like. Many people make a mistake. They mix up executions by gassing with deliberate, suicidal gassings, or with accidental ones. There are many accidents with gas. If you want to execute somebody with gas it's extremely difficult. Because you want to kill that person and you don't want to kill yourself. You don't wish to run any risk: risk of explosion, risk of the gas's escaping from the room and getting into your quarters and killing you or making you sick. So you have something simple to do. You only need to see what is — and what was already in the '20's or in the '30's — an American gas chamber, in an American penitentiary to execute a prisoner with hydrocyanic acid. And Zyklon B is hydrocyanic acid. So, please go to the United States as I did to visit a gas chamber, or try to find documentation on it. And you will see how horribly difficult it is to execute one man, only one man with hydrocyanic acid. The most terrible problem is the problem of airtightness. Because hydrocyanic acid is a substance which sticks to everything. Which attacks everything. And you have to be very careful to keep a place, as much as possible, airtight, hermetic, so that there is no danger for yourself. And the second problem is, after the execution, to get rid of the gas, this gas which sticks everywhere. You need special fans. You need a very strong exhauster to exhaust the gas. You need a mixer to neutralise this gas. And this gas, supposed to have been neutralised, is ejected through a very high smokestack. And the day of an execution, the guards in the prison have no right to be on the roof, because it's too dangerous. And once the execution is finished, the doctor and the two assistants have to wait a long time. When they think that most of the gas is neutralised or expelled and neutralised, they put on a gas mask with a special filter, rubber gloves, boots and so on. They get into the place. And they have to wash the body of the man very carefully. Because hydrocyanic acid sticks to every part of the body. In your skin and in natural orifices. So this body, the body itself is very dangerous.
So when you go after that, when you go to Auschwitz and when you see this ridiculous place next to the place with the ovens, and when you see that they dare to say that this was an enormous gas chamber, excuse me, but you can only laugh at it. First you have three openings. You have two doors and an opening. So, two wooden doors. Poor little doors opening inwards. Which means, into the place where 800 people at that time are supposed to have been gassed. One of those little doors even has glass panes. You understand that if you had had 800 people in this place, or even one man, the pane would have been broken and the gas would have escaped to the SS hospital which was something like 20 meters away from there. One of the openings leads into the room of the crematoria. But hydrocyanic acid is an explosive gas. So you mustn't use it close to such a room. And here, you don't find the slightest mechanism to expel, to neutralise all this gas. It's really shameful to say that, and I must add that I was the first man to publish in my books plans of this place. In fact this place from '40 to '43 had been what the Germans call a "Leichenhalle", which is a place to put dead bodies: people who had died from typhus and so on. They waited there for cremation. It's a place where you store bodies, dead bodies. Then at the end of '43, beginning of '44, it was transformed into an air-raid shelter. And today you can even, if you have good eyes, you can see the separation walls as in an air-raid shelter in what we call zigzag, to cut, you see, the draft of the bombs. So, in fact, it was an air-raid shelter.The Poles, the Communist Poles in 1945 destroyed those walls and their successors want you today to believe that this was a gas chamber.
If you go to Birkenau you see the ruins of big crematoria. And you are told that those crematoria had gas chambers. I found the plan and we can see how they were built: they were what the Germans call a "Leichenkeller", which means an underground depot for bodies. And you are also shown, as at first in Auschwitz 1, an allegedly "real" — or "rebuilt", if you prefer — gas chamber. Because they have changed the story now. They say "It has been rebuilt by us Poles". If you have ruins in Birkenau, you have something normal to do. It's to make an investigation. Because ruins are very important. And this first place in Auschwitz 1 is very important. You need an expert report. How is it that no expert report has ever been made? I have never heard of a judge or people in the police saying, when there has been a crime: "As we have many witnesses, we don't need an expert report about the weapon". Even if the weapon is very usual. I mean a gun or a rope or a knife. How is it that for this fantastic weapon, which nobody has ever seen or is able to describe, how is it that there has been no investigation of the places in Auschwitz, Majdanek or Mauthausen supposed to have contained gas chambers? It's not too late. You can do it today. Why don't you do it? You are accusing Germany. You have no right to accuse if you have no proof. How is it that you refuse an expert report? Even today you don't want to make an investigation.
Now, let me tell you something. We revisionists, we asked for an expert report and, let me tell you, we got expert reports. There are today four expert reports. One is American. The second — this is a surprise — is Polish. The third is Austrian. The fourth is German. The first expert examination was made in 1988. We asked a specialist of American gas chambers, his name is Fred Leuchter, to make an investigation. He went to Poland. And a man in Toronto, a very important man, called Ernst Zündel, who is a revisionist, who had an enormous trial in Toronto (Canada), asked me to go and visit Fred Leuchter. And we asked Fred Leuchter to come to Toronto, we asked Fred Leuchter to go to Poland. And Fred Leuchter said: "Yes, I am ready to go to Poland. But beware: if I find that those gas chambers existed and functioned I am going to say it." And Ernst Zündel said: "That's okay." So, as I've told you, he went to Poland, and came back with a report, 193 pages. And he took, in Auschwitz, some wall-scrapings. You must know that hydrocyanic acid sticks to surfaces, as I've said, and can stay there for centuries. You can't get rid of it. This is why in the disinfection gas chambers in Auschwitz you can still see, very easily, blue patches outside. Even outside with the rain and the snow you have still those blue patches showing that there was hydrocyanic acid or prussic acid or, as we say, "blue acid". So he took back those scrapings and had them analysed by an American laboratory. And the result was extraordinary. Fred Leuchter had the idea of taking one sample from a disinfection gas chamber and many samples from places in Auschwitz 1 and in Birkenau which are supposed to have been homicidal gas chambers. The result was that in the disinfection gas chamber you had an enormous quantity of cyanide. And in the places where people and not lice are supposed to have been killed, you had no traces, or else very very small traces, probably due to the fact that those places had been disinfected with Zyklon B. As was the case with those "Leichenhalle" or"Leichenkeller" — I mean the places with dead bodies.
And this was said at the Toronto trial in 1988. On the 20th and the 21st of April 1988. I can tell you, because I attended this trial where I saw, I could say, the death of the myth of the gas chambers. But you see, after that, the Poles got very upset. The director of the Auschwitz museum decided to try to show that Leuchter was wrong. And they asked a laboratory in Krakow (something like 50 kilometres from Auschwitz) to carry out an investigation, to make another expert report, to show that Leuchter was wrong. And, believe me, this was most surprising. The result was that Leuchter was shown to have been right. But of course those people added: "But you see, it's not, all the same, as clear as that. Because you must understand that with the rain, with the snow and so on, those traces may have disappeared." Which is simply false. They cannot have disappeared. Then came a third expertise by a man call Walter Lüftl. He lives in Vienna. He is, or he was at that time, an engineer. He was dismissed after expressing his views. This man was the head of what they call in Austria the Chamber of Engineers. Not a common man. A very high-ranking specialist. Then came, in 1992, which means this year, the report of a German chemist, a very high-ranking specialist in chemistry. So, four expert reports, four proofs that the gas chambers, those homicidal gas chambers, never existed and, even, never could have existed. So after all, maybe we are wrong. Why not? If we are wrong, people have to show it. They must not call us names. What does it mean to say you are a Nazi or collaborating with the Nazis or that the Nazis are pleased with what you say? The only question is: "Are we right or wrong?" We don't insult anyone. Don't insult us. You accuse us. Please let us defend ourselves. You accuse us publicly. Please let us defend ourselves publicly. I find it very strange when people say: "Oh, those revisionists mustn't have access to the media, because some people might not see that they are wrong." Which means that those people think (I mean the people who do not want us to have access to the media): "I am a pretty intelligent man or woman. I can see that those revisionists are wrong. But I am not sure that other people are as intelligent as I am. And maybe they won't see what I see." This is too much. Please let the people listen to our arguments and then decide.
I want to go back to the interesting question of witnesses. Sometimes I am asked: "Now Mr Faurisson, do you mean that all those witnesses are liars?" I say No. I do not mean that. I see that very commonly in life, as long as we have not studied a question, we believe, we have to believe many things. And we may be totally wrong. So, I think that the big difference between, on the one hand, the revisionists, and on the other hand what I call the "exterminationists", which means people believing that there was actually an extermination of the Jews, the big difference is that we have studied the questions. We have been working very much. On the other side, they have not been working very much. Not because they are lazy and we are hard workers. No, it's because they have thought there is no problem and we have seen that there is a problem. When I say "we", I mean all sorts of people who have thought that testimonies are not enough. We have to be very careful with testimonies.
So I am going to take one example, or two. I want to talk to you about Elie Wiesel. I suppose you know of the man. He's a kind of professional witness going from one country to the other and saying: "I was in Auschwitz. I am a living witness", and so on. Sometimes I think, if I had Elie Wiesel before me I would say to this man: "Now, Sir, let us be honest. If you are the living proof of anything, it is that there was no extermination. Because if there were an extermination, considering that you yourself were in Auschwitz, you shouldn't be alive." How is it that there are so many survivors? Many Jews died. This is sure, but many Jews still survive. Survive from Auschwitz and the other camps. How is it? Elie Wiesel is a man who was in Auschwitz with his father. In the 50's he wrote a very thick book in Yiddish and published it in South America. It had no success at all. Then Elise Wiesel met in Paris a very famous writer whose name was François Mauriac. And François Mauriac said to him: "You must write a short book and I'll give you a foreword." And in the foreword François Mauriac said something about the gas chambers. But in the text by Elie Wiesel, the title being in French La Nuit , which means "the night", there is nothing, absolutely nothing about the gas chambers. How is it that he says, that he dared to say, (because this was more or less the version in the 50's), that in Auschwitz the Germans used to burn Jews alive, and especially babies? That they would bring babies into pits and put them into a fire? Can you imagine this physically? This is what he said in Night. But read this book very carefully and this is what you will find in it: at the end of the book Elie Wiesel says that he had, at the end of 44 — remember that the camp was taken by the Russian troops on the 27th of January 1945 — so, at the end of 44, that he had as a young boy of something like 15 or 16, to undergo a surgical operation. So this is strange. We are told that in Auschwitz the Germans used to kill the young people, the old people, the people who were ill and so on. How is it that there was a hospital for the sick? How is it that there were surgical operations? Anyway, he had to undergo a surgical operation and he was afraid of it. I can understand that because I remember that in those days you were very afraid of operations. But the Jewish doctor (because among the many doctors, there were many Jews), the doctor who took care of Elie Wiesel said: "Don't be afraid, I'll be there when you are operated on". And I think I remember that the surgeon himself was a Jew. I am not absolutely sure. This has to be checked. So the young Elie Wiesel in this so-called extermination camp is put into white sheets and is operated on. Later the Germans said: "Some of you are going to leave Auschwitz with us. You have no choice. You have to go with us inside Germany. Some of you — ill people, convalescent and so on — you have the right to stay and you will have doctors with you who will have to stay with you when the Russians get here". And Elie Wiesel says that he himself and his father had the choice between getting away with the Germans, supposed to be the exterminators, and waiting for the liberators, for the Russians. And the father and the son, they decided — do you know what? — they decided to get away with the Germans. Not to wait for the Russians. How can you explain that to me? You should put that question to Elie Wiesel.
Another false witness is Rudolf Vrba. A Slovakian Jew, he escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944 with another man call Wetzler. And both of them said: "We have something to say about Auschwitz. There are gas chambers and the Germans are killing so many people", and so on". And they made a kind of report. This report was published in Washington in November 1944. But, at the time, with no success. The people did not believe in those gas chambers very much. And then this man Vrba wrote a book called I cannot forgive. In this book he goes back to the question of the gas chambers and he says many many things without in fact describing them very well.
So in 1985, in Toronto, Ernst Zündel, the revisionist, had his first trial for "spreading false news". Because there is a law in Canada, there was a law saying that if you spread false news knowingly you are subject to imprisonment and so on. So this trial in '85 was against Ernst Zündel. I went to Toronto and I was a sort of consultant to the defence lawyer of Zündel. And the prosecutor brought an historian to the witness stand. His name is Raul Hilberg. The most famous Jewish historian of the "Holocaust". He wrote The Destruction of the European Jews. And he brought some witnesses who were supposed to have seen gas chambers and gassings and so on. And doctor Rudolf Vrba was one of those witnesses. First he was examined by the prosecutor and he went on and on talking about Auschwitz, Birkenau, the gas chambers and so on. It looked very easy for him. But when the cross-examination began for Rudolf Vrba, whom I call our "witness number 1", I mean the number 1 witness of the exterminationists, the catastrophe began for him. He was asked very specific questions, very material questions, topographical questions. Because we had plans of Auschwitz and Birkenau. And because we had aerial photos taken by the Allies during the war. Did you know that during the war the Allies flew over Auschwitz 32 times? Because in fact Auschwitz was a place were you had prisoners working in plants making synthetic rubber and so on. This is why you had so many flights over Auschwitz. And the American photos were extraordinarily precise. And you don't see any smoke in them. You don't see any people, thousands of people standing around the crematoria waiting to be put into the so-called gas chambers. You don't see anything of those stories told about Auschwitz.
So, Rudolf Vrba was asked questions about that. And it was very easy to show that he had lied on facts, figures, and so on. So the man, desperate, said that in his testimony, written testimony, he had used poetic licence. He used this phrase many times and even said it in Latin. He said "licentia poetarum ". It was a disaster. So afterwards, the prosecutor himself, who had wanted Rudolf Vrba on the witness stand, asked of his own witness a terrible question. He said: "Mr Vrba, Doctor Vrba, you've said that in your written testimony you had used poetic licence. Please tell us if on the witness stand you have used poetic licence." And Vrba said bla bla bla, "No,". But it was clear that he had also used poetic licence there. And this is not a comment of mine. We have the proof of this. Because when the second trial of Ernst Zündel came up three years later, in 1988 (the first decision had been overturned), the judge asked: "Are there any survivors coming to testify?" And the new prosecutor said: "No, your Honour, there will be no survivors to testify." And Raul Hilberg, the professor who had come to the first trial in '85, refused to come back in '88, and we know why. Because we had communication of some direct correspondence between the prosecutor and Hilberg, with Hilberg insisting, saying that he wouldn't come back because, in fact, he was afraid of the cross-examination. He had a very bad souvenir, memory of his first cross-examination in '85. So you see, in those very important trials we had the best possible historian for the exterminationists, the best possible witness. And for those people it was a real catastrophe.
Now, let me talk to you about an American professor at Princeton University. He is a Jew. His name is Arno J. Mayer. In '88 this man published a book, the title being The Final Solution in History. You must understand the title. It means in history, not in legend. Because "Final Solution" in history, this is true, this existed. The Germans used to say "Endlösung". But they used to say "territoriale Endlösung", "territorial Final Solution". When you say: "I want to see a final solution of unemployment", it doesn't mean you want to kill all the unemployed. When you say: "We wish to find a final solution of the Palestinian problem", it doesn't mean that you want to kill the Palestinians. The Germans wanted a final solution of a very, very old problem, the Jewish problem in their view. And they wanted to do it by emigration if possible, but by deportation if necessary. So Arno Mayer, who is a Jew, and who was terribly against us revisionists in 1981, seems to have changed his mind in 1988. Anyway, he published this book. And if you go and look at page 362, you'll suddenly discover a sentence that I am going to give you now.
And please, if you have to remember one thing out of all that I have to say, please remember this sentence from a Jewish historian who maintains that there were gas chambers, that there was an extermination, although, as he says, there was no order, no plan, no budget of course. He writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable". Do you see, "rare and unreliable"? We have been told so many times, and by all sorts of people who don't know anything about the topic — and especially the journalists, at least most of them — we are told and told repeatedly that: "Sources for the study of the gas chamber are as numerous as possible and as reliable as possible." But you see this man then, in 1988, had to confess that those sources were both "rare and unreliable".
And of course he gives his reasons for saying so. He says: "We have to be extremely cautious about so-called confessions. We have to be very careful about so-called witnesses. And he even says something more. He says that in Auschwitz "certainly", but perhaps in other camps also, in all the other camps also, there were more natural deaths than non-natural deaths. Let me explain to you what he means by "natural death" and "non-natural" death. "Natural death" means death by illness, epidemics, bad food, insufficient food, hard work, too hard labour. And "non-natural death" means death by suicide, or by crime. Because there were many crimes in those camps, of course. For Arno Mayer that means also gassings. But he does not say why he believes that there were gassings. He says: "We must be careful, you see. There were certainly more Jews who died of typhus, typhoid fever and so on than of any other cause". Which is really surprising. This is revisionism. Arno Mayer is a kind of revisionist. And although he claims that he is against us, he has been terribly attacked for his book.
Oh, for one moment let me get back to Elie Wiesel. I forgot to tell you something about this man. As I told you, in his book Night, not once does he talk about gas chambers. So I published something in '86. The title was "A prominent false witness: Elie Wiesel", and I said very simply, that there was not one word about gas chambers in this book, Night. So when the book was published in '88 in Germany, do you know what happened? In the German version of the book by Elie Wiesel, in 9 places in this little book where in fact you used to have "crematory" or "crematoria", you now have the word for "gas chambers", "Gaskammer". This is how one invents gas chambers.
Excuse me, getting back to Auschwitz and revisionism, there has been one more surprising act of revisionism done by the Poles themselves. In 1945-46 at the Nuremberg trial it was said that 4 million people had died in Auschwitz. Most of them in gas chambers. This was the official truth. Anyone who has visited Auschwitz or Birkenau (which is Auschwitz 2) knows that there was, there is, excuse me, a big monument. And until 1990, which means until 2 years ago, you had an inscription in 19 different languages saying: "Here 4 million people were killed by the Nazi Barbarians" or something like that. And suddenly in 1990, and because, certainly, of all of what we revisionists had done and published, the Poles said: "We cannot keep these figures". So they took away the 19 inscriptions. And if you go and visit the place, there is no longer anything where the inscriptions used to be. And the Poles are, as we say, scratching their heads and wondering what kind of inscriptions they are going to put on. Because they say: "We need to put another one. 4 million is impossible. It was between 1 million and 1 million and a half." But let me tell you: 1 million to 1 million and a half is also a fantastic exaggeration. So, if they put 1 million to 1 million and a half, then perhaps, in 10 years or so, they would have to change it once again. So they really don't know what to put. If you want my opinion — excuse me, but I cannot give you the reason for this opinion — I think that in Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945 something like 150,000 people died. It was an enormous camp, of course. But all the same, this is very many deaths. Most of them died in 1942 because of the typhus epidemic. Many Germans died of typhus in 1942, including the most important doctor in Auschwitz: he himself died of typhus. German women of the SS died of typhus. This is already an enormous figure. So we don't need to exaggerate.
One last thing: some people say: "Gas chambers or not, what's the difference?" And I say that the difference is enormous. Also because, first, you should put that question not to me but to the Jewish organisations. But be careful. I don't say the Jewish people. I say the Jewish organisations, who supposedly speak for Jewish individuals. You should ask them: "How is it that you insist so much on the gas chambers? How is it that in France, if you say that the gas chambers did not exist, you are taken to criminal court? And convicted, heavily fined. How is it?" Let me tell you that I understand the Jewish organisations very well . Because, if you don't have the gas chambers, the miracle of the gas chambers, you no longer have the central pillar of the "Holocaust". You don't have anymore this terrible weapon, this chemical slaughterhouse. Without a specific weapon of extermination you cannot make people believe in any policy of extermination. Because there are no documents. If you had the weapon, that would be enough. It would prove that the Germans decided to kill those people systematically. And, if you don't have gas, the gas chambers, you cannot justify any longer the fantastic figures like 6 million. So it's necessary. It's something secret. It's a kind of taboo. This is why the Jewish organisations and the state of Israel don't want anyone to touch this taboo. These gas chambers justify everything.
Sometimes people say: "But don't you mind about the Jews? What do you think the Jews can think of what you are saying?" And I say: "I know that it is troubling for the Jews. But they have to be courageous, like some of them who are revisionists". And I could give you names. I'm going to give only one. Because he is now the most important: David Cole, living in Los Angeles. He is a very active young man, totally revisionist, who has done some wonderful work quite recently. So we are not against the Jews. As Galileo was not against the Church when he revised the normally accepted view that the earth was immobile, and that the sun was going around it in the heavens and so on. He didn't say what he said because he was against the Bible or against the Christians. He said it because it was a fact. And if we say that the gas chambers did not exist, it is not because we are against the Jews. It's because the gas chambers did not exist. So the Jews must be courageous enough to say: "Oh, it's an invention of the war propaganda. We have to stop." The war stopped in 1945. This invention of the war propaganda should have stopped, too.
So I wish those people could be courageous enough to do so. You see, I have nothing myself to gain in being a revisionist. Because I think that my life is really difficult. The life of my wife is difficult. You see, I am constantly insulted. I am treated as a Nazi, and I am not a Nazi. As an anti-Semite, and I am not an anti-Semite. And even — let me tell you something. You know that a convention, an anti-Zionist convention was supposed to take place in Stockholm. And then the date was changed, and I couldn't go to it. But I was ready to go to this convention. Not as an anti-Zionist, but as a consultant, having to meet someone who was against my revisionist views. And I would be ready to go to a Zionist convention. I have said and I repeat: "I am ready to go to Israel to express my views". I am ready to meet anyone. I've said it to the Swedish media. I am ready to meet any survivor, any historian. But no politics, please. I am not interested in politics. We say, and we have to say really, that revisionism is the big intellectual adventure of this end of century. If you know of any adventure of this kind making your life extremely dangerous because you speak your mind, please tell me. Because I don't see any other adventure like the revisionist adventure. I'm fighting for what I think is exact. If I am wrong, please try to show it. But don't insult me. Don't insult us revisionists. The numbers of revisionists are growing and growing. And you are insulting more and more people. Don't think that our job is a bad job. I think that it is a good and clean job. Let me explain this to you. The Jewish organisations, since 1945, have not only been accusing Hitler, Göring, Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann and people like that. They are also accusing other people. They are accusing other people, who were not Germans, of having stayed silent about the extermination of the Jews. Of having been accomplices of the Germans by their silence. They are accusing — and this you can see if you visit the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles: you will see that on the one hand they are, of course, accusing Hitler and all those people, but they are also accusing Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Pope at the time, Pius XII. They are accusing everybody. All the earth, the whole earth, all the human race. They are accusing billions of people. They say: "You are — all of you — guilty". So I am not defending Hitler or people that I do not like, like Hitler, Göring and so on, but we are defending also, but only by chance, we are defending Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, the Pope, and the Red Cross, the International Red Cross. This does not mean that I like or I do not like those people. But what I like is to be exact. What I don't like is to lie. What I like is to try to be just. What I don't like is to attack people by defaming them. You have no right to calumny me, to defame me. You have no right. So I think that revisionism is not only something which is good for science, for history — I mean on a historical level, on a scientific level — but even on a moral one. I am pretty sure that the young generations will understand what we are saying. And perhaps not only the young generations.
Thank you.
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