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• Ernst Zündel - The Man, His Deeds & His Writings

   

  THESE lines are not addressed to those who already know Ernst Zündel - the man, his deeds and his writings - but to the Canadians who know only what the mass media, taken together, have chosen to report about him. It may be feared that those Canadians have been led to misjudge Zündel and, perhaps, hate him.

   

  To those people, who, in my view, are mistaken, I should say: examine with care the image of this man that most of the media in your country try to give you, whilst practically never letting you hear his voice. Use your discernment.

   

  To start, be on your guard against the repetitive, hollow and vague nature of the accusations brought against him. Do not let yourselves be taken in by the obsessive use of words like "Nazi" or "anti-Semite". These terms are used against him as easily and mechanically as stock insults. They are not born of any attempt at analysis.

   

  Quite the contrary: it is people who want to spare themselves just such an effort who resort to them. These words are employed to kill those to whom they are applied or, at the very least, to gag or send them to prison. Most often they are vituperations let fly to vent spleen. Uttering them is somewhat like spitting, and spitting has never been an argument.

   

  Ask yourselves whether Zündel, rather than the monster described for you, may not quite simply be a man attached to his country of origin, Germany, whose desire is to defend his homeland against horrific slanders.

   

  If you hear it said that he "denies the Holocaust of the Jews", reflect once again.

   

  Has he really asserted that, during the Second World War, the Jews did not suffer? The answer is "No".

  Has he actually maintained that Germany had no anti-Jewish policy then? The answer again is "No".

  Has he seriously claimed that Jews were not deported to concentration camps or labour camps? The answer is yet again "No".

  Has he advocated racial discrimination, or can there be found in his past any sign of racist behavior towards those with whom he has had contact as, for instance, their employer? Still once more the answer is "No".

   

  But then, if I am right and if I take it upon myself to tell you that Zündel has never held the ideas falsely ascribed to him, how is it that the mass media, in unison, have hidden this fact from you? Ask yourselves. And try to find the answer.

   

  I SHALL briefly tell you what Zündel has thought and written in the past and what he continues to think today in the prisons where, for over a two years, he has been held like the most dangerous of criminals.

   

  Like me and a fair number of other revisionists, he challenges, on the strength of solid arguments, documents and forensic reports, the core of what the Jews call their "Holocaust" or "Shoah".

   

  Upon the conclusion of his research, he found that Adolf Hitler had indeed sought a final solution to the eternal Jewish question but, as is spelled out in plain writing in the relevant documents, a "territorial final solution".

  He also found that an extermination of the Jews had never been contemplated, much less undertaken, but rather, as had often happened in the history of certain countries, a transfer of the Jews out of Europe: the "territorial final solution was to have been the Jews' resettlement in an autonomous territory of their own outside of Europe, anywhere except Palestine.

  As for the rest of Zündel's findings I shall, the better to make myself understood, draw your attention to current events and the war in Iraq. You have heard that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction". You know that such talk is a cold lie and that this lie made possible a military butchery, a crusade of "Good against Evil."

   

  War has always been hand in glove with propaganda, in all times and places. Still, to take but this one example amongst thousands of others, in the recent century, during the 1930s and 1940s, a frenzied propaganda was built up, especially in the great democracies of the West and the Soviet Union, against the Axis powers ("the axis of Evil", in a sense) and, especially, against Germany.

   

  The Allies thereby stirred their own soldiers to warlike ardour and, after the vast butchery, justified their own war and their own war crimes by heaping gruesome accusations on Germany. It was claimed, in particular, that Hitler had ordered the building of weapons of mass destruction and used those weapons to kill the Jews in a methodical manner and in industrial proportions.

   

  In fact, no trace of any such order has ever been found, nor any trace of the satanic weapons called "[execution] gas chambers" or "[execution] gas vans", and all the alleged "testimonies" of the existence and operation of such chemical slaughterhouses have shown themselves to be fraudulent.

   

  This is what so soundly struck Zündel. This is what he, ever since, has wanted to bring to the eyes of the world. It is this staggering discovery of colossal deceit that has led him to fight as he has done and as he will do till his dying breath. It is for this, and solely for this, that he is now being killed by inches.

   

  WE HAVE all been told that the rarest of virtues is the courage to fight for what one believes is true: the maxim is taught in the schools and universities, in the works of great literature and in picture books. It is a virtue much admired in certain men and women of the past. But when, suddenly, the living example of such courage appears in present reality, too often people fail to recognize it. They neglect it, or are mistaken about it.

   

  Trusting in appearances, they lend a willing ear to the rumours circulating with regard to the extraordinary person and, one fine day, unawares, find themselves in the camp of the slanderers. Having believed they had a great love of justice, they show themselves ready to uphold Lynch law in the face of this nuisance to society and to the fashionable way of thinking.

   

  I may add that if you knew Zündel you would respect him for his open-mindedness, intelligence, understanding of the most various kinds of people, and sincerity. Then, upon discovering the true personality of Zündel, the peasant, the artist, the thinker, you would very likely get the idea: "I was wrong about him. I've been fooled. In my thoughts and words, by my acts or omissions, I've condemned a man who, in reality, is a credit to his nation, to my own and to the whole human race". You would ask yourselves how to right the wrongs that have been done.

   

  I have the solution. Take your example from Zündel. If his ideas do not appeal to you, leave them to him but borrow a bit of his courage. Protest against the fate reserved for him up to today in a "high security" cell in Germany and denounce the sham proceedings that an alleged justice system is conducting against him.

   

  I thank you

   

   

• Just Who is Robert Faurisson?

  S. Mundi

  13 July 1998

   

  A pamphlet with a similar title, written by the brilliant political essayist who goes by the name of François Brigneau, appeared a few years ago in France. The present introduction will be a far more succinct answer than that found in Brigneau's book, but will try to keep to the idea that short need not mean incomplete.

   

    To the general French public Robert Faurisson is "a revisionist," more often "the revisionist," as he is likely to be the only such personality of whom they have heard, at least the only one who has willingly lent his name to the historical revisionist movement. This point is important, for it may be worthwhile to recall that last year, when the doddering Roger Garaudy, currently a Moslem, had scandalised the "intellectual" public by recirculating some key elements of Robert Faurisson's work (without bothering to mention this rich source), he was soon to be seen taking pains to distance himself from those historians whom the regime and its media have largely succeeded in passing off as mere "Nazi stooges," thus tools of the Devil, enemy of Abraham's god. By doing so Garaudy left some informed observers wondering whether the "philosopher" in his wisdom did not himself share this official view to some extent. Indeed he was later to stress repeatedly, at his subsequent criminal trial (yes, authors of books on history are prosecuted in France), his profound attachment and devotion to Abraham, his god, and his people. But all that is quite another matter.

   

    On one score the public are for once right: Faurisson is the French revisionist. Just what revisionism in fact is, though, they are at a loss to say in a coherent manner. What do revisionists wish to revise? History? Does not "revise" mean "change"? Change is often a scary notion. What can be the point of the revision? The bulk of the population, fundamentally –necessarily– conservative, are bound to be suspicious. But what, then, of the "élite", the "intellectuals"? Is it not their job to ask questions about the past, the present, the future, everything? More on them below.

   

    Back to our man. Robert Faurisson is a retired gentleman and a scholar of the old school, that is to say a well-bred man of classical education who made a successful carreer in the University. A University man, well-rounded: a sporting man (tennis, skiing) and one not limited in his curiosity by the bounds of his formal fields of study or, for that matter, by anything else.

   

    This free-wheeling curiosity was in 1960 attracted to the object which was later to win him renown, and to cause him dreadful tribulations of both a professional and physical nature: the official history of the Second World War, the aftermath of which formed then – and still forms now – the basis of the general political order in Europe and the world.  For it was in that year that he chanced upon a piece published in the German newspaper Die Zeit, in fact a letter from one Dr Martin Broszat of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, which stated that in the camp at Dachau nobody had been gassed to death. This affirmation flew in the face of the established version of the history of the war as officially laid down (a "fact of common knowledge") at the 1945-46 Nuremberg international show trial. During those proceedings the prosecution, in order to "prove" the truth of the Dachau gassing stories, had treated the court to a projection of an American "documentary" (propaganda) film, formally admitted as "genuine evidence": it in fact showed nothing more than a lone individual standing in a room which he described as a gas chamber in which a hundred people at a time had been regularly put to death.

   

    The Die Zeit letter thus touched on an aspect of the greatest possible importance, not just some minor detail. Very simply, the Nuremberg procedure was gravely flawed, for if it had blithely let false allegations of systematic mass-murder in one place pass as true, then the holdings of the tribunal in question must need some serious looking into as well. Likewise the version of the terrible events (the war itself) which that tribunal had solemnised by its verdicts. And Faurisson set about doing just that, sedulously and in great depth. By 1974 his present conclusion was solidly established: the "Holocaust" story was a farrago of disparate and contradictory eye-witness "testimonies" mounted against a background of vicious wartime hate propaganda.

   

    With hindsight, we ourselves (and all the more easily our distant descendants, unless the world  to come is peopled exclusively by mindless, senseless masses) may have no trouble in seeing the inclination to do this research as perfectly normal and desirable: the unprecedented destruction which had recently taken place on the continent, the enormous loss of life surely deserved all possible examination, from all reasonable points of view. Notably, if a systematic, mechanical mass slaughtering of civilians of a certain ethnic group had been carried out by one of the most cultivated and scientifically advanced nations on earth, nothing could be more natural than an urge to look into how this hellish deed had been planned and organised, how it had been done: with what means? Or so it seems to us rational observers.

   

    But far from being exposed to a candid, albeit horrified world, the diabolical instrument of the racial extermination which the noble Allies had fought to stop, the mass-execution gas chamber in functioning condition, has (notwithstanding the public exhibition of alleged examples in various states of repair at the grounds of some camps) remained shrouded in mystery, a desired mystery at that: Grand Wizard Elie Wiesel himself has recently written (in All Rivers run to the Sea) that it must be protected "from prying eyes," in other words, from rational examination. Thus the very thing which in its murderous efficiency is supposed to symbolise evil itself, this means of carrying out the systematic extermination of one people by another – a crime without precedent – and which is constantly used to remind the world of a modern-day martyrdom, on the one hand, and of the barbarous nature of yesterday's enemy, on the other, is left unexplained, undefined, literally a mystery.

   

    Idem for the question of the mass-murder's organisation and execution. If there is no trace of any relevant military or administrative orders, this absence is put down plainly and simply to the supernatural, the diabolical: the main order did not need to be made either orally or in writing, but instead was issued and received by means of telepathy (Raul Hilberg's "incredible meeting of minds" in his statement under oath at the trial of the German-Canadian revisionist Ernst Zündel in Toronto in 1985).

   

    Such a statement in the world forum of historiography (Hilberg does pass for a prominent "international authority" in "Holocaust" studies) may itself easily be seen, by the clear-sighted, as an outright admission that the case for the reality of the "Holocaust" has little to stand on. For his part, Faurisson's observation is, simply put: "Yes, it's incredible, that is, unbelievable. So unbelievable, that I don't believe it!"

   

    Here in France there have been two other such unwitting, monumental admissions on the part of the "authorities" (the "intellectual" and the legislative ones, respectively): the first, six years previous to Hilberg's 1985 pronouncement, the second in July 1990.

   

    In 1979, 34 "intellectuals" who had got wind of the Lyon literature professor's inconvenient curiosity – he had after all finally succeeded, after countless attempts, in getting a piece published in their favourite daily, Le Monde – actually took it upon themselves to publish a nearly full-page advertisement, in that same paper, of their refusal to countenance the examination of the gas chambers and their functioning. The query "How had this happened?" was, they declared, unfit to be put, "since it had happened" (sic). One was expected to accept simply (and I use the word advisedly) that, during the war, diabolical forces had acted, and that no questions as to their workings were allowed. And this in 1979, not 1579. To a revisionist's, indeed to any honest, sober, non-partisan eyes, it surely ought to have seemed that the "system" felt that the game was up, and that it was time to exert some firm repression.

   

    And repression was swift in coming. Faurisson was henceforth regularly prosecuted and convicted for making public the fruits of his labour. To date he has lost a good dozen criminal cases, all for historical revisionism. Since 1990, most of these have been brought against him under a law which Jean-Marie Le Pen has called the Lex Faurissonia,  a statute promulgated on the 14th of July of that year with the aim of stemming a purported rising tide of racism and antisemitism. (For the occasion the government and media had even resorted to the shamelessly ostentatious exploitation of a curious vandalism incident in a Provençal Jewish cemetery.) It intends to do this by forbidding a most devilish practice abroad in the land: the questioning of the holy writ of Nuremberg.

   

    If a rational mind refuses to entertain the notion of the divine, it necessarily has no time for the Devil either. It is with such a disposition that Faurisson has done his research into matters which he realised had simply not been thoroughly examined, or not examined in the least. Doubtless many others had wondered exactly how such awful things had come to pass, only to abandon the hypothesis of even the vaguest, shallowest research project, perhaps thinking: "Surely some experts must have taken care of the question at some time or other, this mass-gassing business in the midst of the '39-45 war." Robert Faurisson will be remembered – if, as I have remarked above, rational thought does not become extinct – as the man who, upon learning that that was not the case, himself insisted on examining these few, precise elements of recent history which have determined the political, intellectual, and (increasingly) cultural orientations of our world, and then proved that they were counterfeit.

   

    Nevertheless, a western world grown largely weary of its old martyrdom- and resurrection-based religion appears to be easily, steadily seduced by a new version which, unlike the old, has its kingdom set firmly in this world, and which accords special, near absolute rights and powers to the resurrected, in whatever land they (miraculously, of course) dwell: in Palestine, in Europe, or anywhere else.

   

    Who the hell, then, is this Faurisson?

   

   

• [Jan 2000] David Irving, at the Moment

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  19 January 2000

   David Irving, at the Moment

   

              Although he himself has never undertaken research into the "Holocaust" of the Jews, the British historian David Irving is subject, intermittently, to promising bursts of revisionism. In 1988, at the second trial of Ernst Zündel in Toronto, he affirmed his high esteem for the "Leuchter Report", the study which concluded that the existence of homicidal gas chambers in the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps was a physical impossibility. Thereafter, however, recognising the damage done to his career as a historian by that burst of revisionism, he proceeded to keep a certain distance from the revisionists, while at the same time unloading some strange accusations upon Germany. But no matter! Today, the libel suit which he has brought in London against the Jewish-American historian Deborah Lipstadt compels him, representing himself, to put forth the revisionist case on the gas chambers in order to fight his own. The prestigious Times in its 12 January issue carried a piece by a reporter who, having attended the previous day's sessions of this trial expected to last three months, went so far as to write:

   

  What is at stake here is not the amour-propre of individuals with grossly inflated egos. Rather it is whether one of the blackest chapters of 20th-century history actually happened, or is a figment of imaginative and politically motivated Jewry ("Academic buccaneer vs bookish schoolmaster", Times, 12 January 2000, p. 3).

   

               On the 13th, the Guardian  headlined the impossibility, according to D. Irving, of the Nazi gas chambers.

   

              In France, on the 18th, Libération devoted nearly a full page to the subject and to D. Irving's trial. A sidebar dealt with "Le négationnisme et la loi en France" (Holocaust denial and the law in France).

   

              Breaking with its policy of shrouding revisionism from the public eye, Le Monde, on the front page of its edition of 19 January 2000, has printed an article about the revisionist David Irving. In keeping with the newspaper's deep-seated dishonesty, this piece is oblique and malicious, lumps together disparate elements and repeats hearsay. But, as the careful reader will note, the article, by one Marc Roche, does let some information on the importance of the trial leak through.

   

              Personally, I expect David Irving to make twists and turns and recantations. He writes and publishes too much in order to allow himself the time, beforehand, to read attentively the documents which he quotes or which the opposing side submits. If he is acquainted with the revisionist literature, it is only just barely; he cannot be considered a spokesman for historical revisionism. I have always called him "the reluctant revisionist". Strong in appearance, he is, in reality, fragile. His opponents will have an easy time tripping him up. If one day he wins his case, at first instance or on appeal, it will certainly not be on the strength of his knowledge of the "Holocaust".

   

   

• A Prominent False Witness: Elie Wiesel

   

   

  A Prominent False Witness: Elie Wiesel

  By Robert Faurisson

   

  ELIE WIESEL won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He is generally accepted as a witness to the Jewish "Holocaust," and, more specifically, as a witness to the legendary Nazi extermination gas chambers. The Paris daily Le Monde emphasized at the time that Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize because: (note 1)

   

  These last years have seen, in the name of so-called "historical revisionism," the elaboration of theses, especially in France, questioning the existence of the Nazi gas chambers and, perhaps beyond that, of the genocide of the Jews itself.

   

  But in what respect is Elie Wiesel a witness to the alleged gas chambers? By what right does he ask us to believe in that means of extermination? In an autobiographical book that supposedly describes his experiences at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, he nowhere mentions the gas chambers. (note 2) He does indeed say that the Germans executed Jews, but ... by fire; by throwing them alive into flaming ditches, before the very eyes of the deportees! No less than that!

   

  Here Wiesel the false witness had some bad luck. Forced to choose from among several Allied war propaganda lies, he chose to defend the fire lie instead of the boiling water, gassing, or electrocution lies. In 1956, when he published his testimony in Yiddish, the fire lie was still alive in certain circles. This lie is the origin of the term Holocaust. Today there is no longer a single historian who believes that Jews were burned alive. The myths of the boiling water and of electrocution have also disappeared. Only the gas remains.

   

  The gassing lie was spread by the Americans. (note 3) The lie that Jews were killed by boiling water or steam (specifically at Treblinka) was spread by the Poles. (note 4) The electrocution lie was spread by the Soviets.n (note 5)

   

  The fire lie is of undetermined origin. It is in a sense as old as war propaganda or hate propaganda. In his memoir, Night, which is a version of his earlier Yiddish testimony, Wiesel reports that at Auschwitz there was one flaming ditch for the adults and another one for babies. He writes: (note 6)

   

  Not far from us, flames were leaping from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load -- little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it -- saw it with my own eyes ... Those children in the flames. (Is it surprising that I could not sleep after that? Sleep has fled from my eyes.)

   

  A little farther on there was another ditch with gigantic flames where the victims suffered "slow agony in the flames." Wiesel's column was led by the Germans to within "three steps" of the ditch, then to "two steps." "Two steps from the pit we were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into a barracks."

   

  An exceptional witness himself, Wiesel assures us of his having met other exceptional witnesses. Regarding Babi Yar, a place in Ukraine where the Germans executed Soviet citizens, among them Jews, Wiesel wrote: (note 7)

   

  Later, I learn from a witness that, for month after month, the ground never stopped trembling; and that, from time to time, geysers of blood spurted from it.

   

  These words did not slip from their author in a moment of frenzy: first, he wrote them, then some unspecified number of times (but at least once) he had to reread them in the proofs; finally, his words were translated into various languages, as is everything this author writes.

   

  That Wiesel personally survived, was, of course, the result of a miracle. He says that: (note 8)

   

  In Buchenwald they sent 10,000 persons to their deaths each day. I was always in the last hundred near the gate. They stopped. Why?

   

  In 1954 French scholar Germaine Tillion analyzed the "gratuitous lie" with regard to the German concentration camps. She wrote: (note 9)

   

  Those persons [who gratuitously lie] are, to tell the truth, much more numerous than people generally suppose, and a subject like that of the concentration camp world -- well designed, alas, to stimulate sado-masochistic imaginings -- offered them an exceptional field of action. We have known numerous mentally damaged persons, half swindlers and half fools, who exploited an imaginary deportation; we have known others of them -- authentic deportees -- whose sick minds strove to go even beyond the monstrosities that they had seen or that people said had happened to them. There have been publishers to print some of their imaginings, and more or less official compilations to use them, but publishers and compilers are absolutely inexcusable, since the most elementary inquiry would have been enough to reveal the imposture.

   

  Tillion lacked the courage to give examples and names. But that is usually the case. People agree that there are false gas chambers that tourists and pilgrims are encouraged to visit, but they do not tell us where. They agree that there are false "eyewitnesses," but in general they name only Martin Gray, the well-known swindler, at whose request Max Gallo, with full knowledge of what he was doing, fabricated the bestseller For Those I Loved.

   

  Jean-François Steiner is sometimes named as well. His bestselling novel Treblinka (1966) was presented as a work of which the accuracy of every detail was guaranteed by oral or written testimony. In reality it was a fabrication attributable, at least in part, to the novelist Gilles Perrault. (note 10) Marek Halter, for his part, published his La Mémoire d'Abraham in 1983; as he often does on radio, he talked there about his experiences in the Warsaw ghetto. However, if we are to believe an article by Nicolas Beau that is quite favorable to Halter, (note 11) little Marek, about three years old, and his mother left Warsaw not in 1941 but in October of 1939, before the establishment of the ghetto there by the Germans. Halter's book is supposed to have been actually written by a ghost writer, Jean-Noël Gurgan.

   

  Filip Müller is the author of Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, (note 12) which won the 1980 prize of the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA). This nauseous best-seller is actually the work of a German ghost writer, Helmut Freitag, who did not hesitate to engage in plagiarism. (note 13) The source of the plagiarism is Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, another best-seller made up out of whole cloth and attributed to Miklos Nyiszli. (note 14)

   

  Thus a whole series of works presented as authentic documents turns out to be merely compilations attributable to various ghost writers: Max Gallo, Gilles Perrault, Jean-Noël Gurgan (?), and Helmut Freitag, among others.

   

  We would like to know what Germaine Tillion thinks about Elie Wiesel today. With him the lie is certainly not gratuitous. Wiesel claims to be full of love for humanity. However, he does not refrain from an appeal to hatred. In his opinion: (note 15)

   

  Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate -- healthy, virile hate -- for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead.

   

  At the beginning of 1986, 83 deputies of the German Bundestag took the initiative of proposing Wiesel for the Nobel Peace Prize. This would be, they said, "a great encouragement to all who are active in the process of reconciliation." (note 16) That is what might be called "going from National Socialism to national masochism."

   

  Jimmy Carter needed a historian to preside over the President's Commission on the Holocaust. As Dr. Arthur Butz said so well, he chose not a historian but a "histrion": Elie Wiesel. Even the newspaper Le Monde, in the article mentioned above, was obliged to refer to the histrionic trait that certain persons deplore in Wiesel:

   

  Naturally, even among those who approve of the struggle of this American Jewish writer, who was discovered by the Catholic François Mauriac, some reproach him for having too much of a tendency to change the Jewish sadness into "morbidity" or to become the high priest of a "planned management of the Holocaust."

   

  As Jewish writer Leon A. Jick has written: "The devastating barb, 'There is no business like SHOAH-business' is, sad to say, a recognizable truth." (note 17)

   

  Elie Wiesel issues alarmed and inflammatory appeals against Revisionist authors. He senses that things are getting out of hand. It is going to become more and more difficult for him to maintain the mad belief that the Jews were exterminated or were subjected to a policy of extermination, especially in so-called gas chambers. Serge Klarsfeld has admitted that real proofs of the existence of the gas chambers have still not yet been published. He promises proofs. (note 18)

   

  On the scholarly plane, the gas chamber myth is finished. To tell the truth, that myth breathed its last breath several years ago at the Sorbonne colloquium in Paris (June 29-July 2, 1982), at which Raymond Aron and François Furet presided. What remains is to make this news known to the general public. However, for Elie Wiesel it is of the highest importance to conceal that news. Thus all the fuss in the media, which is going to increase: the more the journalists talk, the more the historians keep quiet.

   

  But there are historians who dare to raise their voices against the lies and the hatred. That is the case with Michel de Boüard, wartime member of the Resistance, deportee to Mauthausen, member of the Committee for the History of the Second World War from 1945 to 1981, and a member of the Institut de France. In a poignant interview in 1986, he courageously acknowledged that in 1954 he had vouched for the existence of a gas chamber at Mauthausen where, it finally turns out, there never was one. (note 19)

   

  The respect owed to the sufferings of all the victims of the Second World War, and, in particular, to the sufferings of the deportees, demands on the part of historians a return to the proven and time-honored methods of historical criticism.

   

  Notes

   

  October 17, 1986. Front page.

  There is one single allusion, extremely vague and fleeting, on pages 78-79: Wiesel, who very much likes to have conversations with God, says to Him: "But these men here, whom You have betrayed, whom You have allowed to be tortured, butchered, gassed, burned, what do they do? They pray before you!" (Night, New York, Discus/Avon Books, 1969, p. 79). In his preface to that same book, François Mauriac mentioned "the gas chamber and the crematory" (p. 8). The four crucial pages of "testimony" by Elie Wiesel are reproduced in facsimile in: Pierre Guillaume, Droit et Histoire (La Vieille Taupe, 1986), pp. 147-150. In the German-language edition of Night (Die Nacht zu begraben, Elischa [Ullstein, 1962]), on 14 occasions the word "crematory" or "crematories" has been falsely given as "Gaskammer" ("gas chamber[s]"). In January of 1945, in anticipation of a Russian takeover, the Germans were evacuating Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, a young teenager at the time, was hospitalized in Birkenau (the "extermination camp") after surgery on an infected foot. His doctor had recommended two weeks of rest and good food but, before his foot healed, the Russian takeover became imminent. Hospital patients were considered unfit for the long trip to the camps in Germany and Elie thus could have remained at Birkenau to await the Russians. Although his father had permission to stay with him as a hospital patient or orderly, father and son talked it over and decided to move out with the Germans. (See Night, p. 93. See also D. Calder, The Sunday Sun [Toronto, Canada], May 31, 1987, p. C4.)

  See the US War Refugee Board Report, German Extermination Camps: Auschwitz and Birkenau (Washington, DC), November 1944.

  See Nuremberg document PS-3311 (USA-293). Published in the IMT "blue series," Vol. 32, pp. 153-158.

  See the report in Pravda, Feb. 2, 1945, p. 4, and the UP report in the Washington (DC) Daily News, Feb. 2, 1945, p. 2.

  Night (Avon/Discus). See esp. pp. 41, 42, 43, 44, 79, 93.

  Paroles d'étranger (Editions du Seuil, 1982), p. 86.

  "Author, Teacher, Witness," Time magazine, March 18, 1985, p. 79.

  "Le Système concentrationnaire allemand [1940-1944]," Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, July 1954, p. 18, n. 2.

  Le Journal du Dimanche, March 30, 1985, p. 5.

  Libération, Jan. 24, 1986, p. 19.

  Published by Stein and Day (New York). Paperback edition of 1984. (xii + 180 pages.) With a foreword by Yehuda Bauer of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

  Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: un caso di plagio, Parma (Italy): 1986. See also: C. Mattogno, "Auschwitz: A Case of Plagiarism," The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1990, pp. 5-24.

  Paperback edition, 1961, and later, published by Fawcett Crest (New York).

  Legends of Our Time (chapter 12: "Appointment with Hate"), New York: Schocken Books, 1982, p. 142, or, New York: Avon, 1968, pp. 177-178.

  The Week in Germany (published in New York by the German government in Bonn), Jan. 31, 1986, p. 2.

  "The Holocaust: Its Use and Abuse Within the American Public," Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem), 1981, p. 316.

  VSD, May 29, 1986, p. 37.

  Ouest-France, August 2-3, 1986, p. 6.

  Summary

   

  Elie Wiesel passes for one of the most celebrated eyewitnesses to the alleged Holocaust. Yet in his supposedly autobiographical book Night, he makes no mention of gas chambers. He claims instead to have witnessed Jews being burned alive, a story now dismissed by all historians. Wiesel gives credence to the most absurd stories of other "eyewitnesses." He spreads fantastic tales of 10,000 persons sent to their deaths each day in Buchenwald.

   

  When Elie Wiesel and his father, as Auschwitz prisoners, had the choice of either leaving with their retreating German "executioners," or remaining behind in the camp to await the Soviet "liberators," the two decided to leave with their German captors.

   

  It is time, in the name of truth and out of respect for the genuine sufferings of the victims of the Second World War, that historians return to the proven methods of historical criticism, and that the testimony of the Holocaust "eyewitnesses" be subjected to rigorous scrutiny rather than unquestioning acceptance.

   

  Edition of: 10/93

• 'Ah, How Sweet It Is To Be Jewish..!'

   

  Paying Tribute to Jewish Power

   

  'Ah, How Sweet It Is To Be Jewish ...'

   

  Robert Faurisson

  Alain Finkielkraut is a professor of philosophy at France's elite Ecole Polytechnique who for years has been a darling of a certain section of the Parisian intelligentsia. In 1982, at the time of one of my first trials for calling the Auschwitz gas chamber story a historical lie, he revealed his concern about revisionism in a muddled work entitled L'Avenir d'une négation ("The Future of a Denial"). On the first page of this book he described me as being "of the ilk of Big Brother," and on page 66 he wrote: "In terms of method, the deniers of the gas chambers are the spiritual children of the big Stalinists."

   

  In 1987 I had a personal encounter with Finkielkraut in Paris' Latin Quarter, when an anti-revisionist conference was being held at the Sorbonne. Groups of young Jews were roaming the area, on the lookout for potential revisionists. Finkielkraut was with one of these groups. Together with three or four young Jews, he came into the café where I happened to be. I greeted him with the words "They're done for, your gas chambers!" a rash remark for which I was to pay an hour later. But, at that moment, taken aback, he mumbled a reply and quickly left the café with his friends.

   

  Since then I have followed his activities. He has steadily made something of a speciality of denouncing the "Jewish maximalism" of such figures as Claude Lanzmann.

   

  Last October, Finkielkraut wrote an essay defending Cardinal Stepinac (1896-1960), who was being widely attacked for having collaborated with Croatia's wartime "Ustasha" regime. The essay, published in the leading French daily Le Monde, October 7, 1998 (p. 14), is entitled "Mgr Stepinac and Europe's Two Griefs" ("Mgr Stepinac et les deux douleurs de l'Europe"). In it Finkielkraut defended both the late Cardinal's memory and the wartime Croatian Roman Catholic Church. He recalled that, from 1941, the Church defended the Jews against the Ustasha regime. Stepinac, he went on, suffered personally as a victim of what he calls "Europe's two griefs": Fascism and Communism.

   

  But what especially catches the reader's attention are the essays opening lines:

   

  Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century! We are no longer History's accused, but its darlings. The spirit of the times loves, honors, and defends us, watches over our interests; it even needs our imprimatur. Journalists draw up ruthless indictments against all that Europe still has in the way of Nazi collaborators or those nostalgic for the Nazi era. Churches repent, states do penance, Switzerland no longer knows where to stand ...

   

  Obviously, it is "sweet" to be Jewish in these final years of the century, but only a Jew has the right to say so. In effect, as Finkielkraut acknowledges, it is no longer possible to publish without the imprimatur of organized Jewry. In effect, I might add, the Jew reigns unopposed.

   

  Each year in France, the Interior Ministry and certain specialized and generously subsidized agencies carefully note and tally every incident in our country that might be regarded as anti-Semitic. Try as they do to inflate their figures, the result is clear: practically no anti-Semitic incidents can be detected in France.

   

  If it is true that it is so sweet to be Jewish, then what right do Jews have to complain of a (nearly non-existent) anti-Semitism, or to demand, and obtain, ever harsher legal repression of revisionism, which they have succeeded in identifying with anti-Semitism?

   

  This same October 7 issue of Le Monde reports that Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France's National Front party, must once again pay dearly for having had the temerity, at a meeting in Munich in December 1997, to state that the gas chambers are a detail of Second World War history. [See "French Courts Punish Holocaust Apostasy," March-April 1998 Journal, pp. 14-15.] The European Parliament, by a huge majority, had just voted to suspend Le Pen's parliamentary immunity. A German court may sentence him to five years' imprisonment. In the European Parliament, German member Willy Rothley, speaking for the Socialist faction, said that a goal of his country's penal code is to "protect the young against falsifications of history." He went on to warn: "If Mr. Le Pen does not answer the summons of my country's courts, he will be imprisoned as soon as he sets foot on German soil."

   

  In Germany, repression has reached new heights. (Even Americans traveling in Germany, or a neighboring country, can be thrown into a German jail for revisionist felonies.) For the same offending remark, Le Pen has been, and is again being, prosecuted in France. In 1991, a French court ordered him to pay 1,200,000 francs (more than $200,000) for his original "detail" remark, made in 1987. On the basis of an emergency interim ruling of December 26, 1997, he is also currently "under investigation" in Paris for his Munich "detail" remark. Thus, for the same statement, he is being charged simultaneously in Munich and in Paris.

   

  Precisely a week after the publication of his Le Monde essay, in which he conceded that Jews have nothing to complain about in France, Finkielkraut had the chutzpah to appear as a witness in the Paris Court of Appeal (11th chamber) to complain about the alleged threat to French Jews posed by revisionists. On October 14 he testified against Roger Garaudy, author of The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, and publisher Pierre Guillaume. Finkielkraut regarded Garaudy an anti-Semite and a "Faurissonian." He declared his approval of France's anti-revisionist "Fabius-Gayssot" law. The state, Finkielkraut said, must punish hatred. (The first to call for the introduction in France of an anti-revisionist law on the model of the Israeli law of July 1981 was a group of Jewish historians including Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Georges Wellers, united around René-Samuel Sirat, Chief Rabbi of France [Bulletin quotidien de l'Agence télégraphique juive, June 2, 1986, p. 1, 3]. This law, called the "Fabius-Gayssot Act," was promulgated on July 13, 1990.)

   

  Day by day, I follow with interest this mighty rise of Jewish power. In my own modest way, I pay tribute to this power. Each month I send my payment of 5,000 francs (about $900) to the "Paris Fines Receiver," which collects the sums I am obliged regularly to hand over for revisionism, that is to say, for having annoyed organized Jewry.

   

  I must constantly reckon with new charges and court battles.

   

  In France, in Germany, in Palestine -- indeed, when one looks closely, everywhere in the world, including Japan, it is prudent not to offend, even indirectly or unwittingly, those who, like Finkielkraut, can sigh: "Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century!"

   

  As for the rest of us, we do not even have the right publicly to mutter: "Ah, how grievous it is not to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century!"

   

  -- October 15, 1998

   

  Robert Faurisson was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in four books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have appeared in this Journal.

• The "Gas Chamber" of Auschwitz I

   

  Robert FAURISSON

   

  26 January 1998

   

  The "Gas Chamber" of Auschwitz I

   

           Since 1948, the year of the founding by the Polish communists of the Auschwitz State Museum, millions of tourists have visited the crematorium of the main camp (Auschwitz I) with its "gas chamber" (500,000 visitors per year in the early 1990's).

   

            That crematorium and that "gas chamber" are presented by the guides as genuine, but recalcitrant visitors who put questions to the authorities have been told, since my own visits of 1975 and1976, that it is in fact a "reconstruction" (understood to be an identical replica of the original). In reality, the whole is neither genuine nor an identical replica of the original. In 1941-42, it was the most conventional of crematoria with, especially, a cool room for the corpses and an incineration block with six ovens; in 1943-44, the six ovens were done away with and the cool room, along with other parts of the building, were transformed into an air-raid shelter with a surgical operating room serving the nearby SS hospital.

   

            I made these discoveries in 1975/1976 and published the subsequent results from 1978 to1980.

   

   • Eric Conan

   

              Fifteen years afterwards, the reporter-historian Eric Conan, although quite hostile to revisionism, published in the Express (Paris) of 19-25 January 1995 a lengthy study, "Auschwitz : la mémoire du mal" (Auschwitz: the Memory of Evil), in which he denounced the falsifications of the crematorium and its "gas chamber". Concerning this point, here are the findings of his inquiry, to certain words of which I add emphasis:

   

   In 1948, during the museum's creation, crematorium I was reconstituted in its supposed original state. Everything in it is false: the gas chamber's dimensions, the location of the doors, the openings for the pouring in of the Zyklon B, the ovens, rebuilt according to what some survivors remembered, the height of the chimney. In the late 1970's, Robert Faurisson exploited these falsifications all the better as the museum administration balked at acknowledging them (p. 68).

   

            E. Conan questioned a museum official about what he calls a "misrepresentation" and about what, according to him, Théo Klein, former president of the CRIF, the "representative council of Jewish organisations of France", calls an "artifice":

   

   Krystyna Oleksy, whose director's office, which occupies the old SS hospital, looks straight out on to crematorium I, has not resigned herself [to telling the truth about the gas chamber]: "For the time being, it is to be left 'as is', with nothing specified to the visitor. It's too complicated. We'll see to it later on."

   

             This person's reply amounts to saying: "We have lied. We are lying. And, until further notice, we shall continue to lie."

   

  • Robert Jan van Pelt and Debórah Dwork

   

             In 1996 two historians of Jewish origin, the Canadian Robert Jan van Pelt and the American Debórah Dwork, devoted a work to the history of Auschwitz, from 1270 AD (year of the town's founding) to  current times (Auschwitz / 1270 to the Present, published in London by Yale University Press, 1996, 443 pp.). They in turn state that the authorities at the Auschwitz State Museum have proceeded to make alterations, transformations, and falsifications of the Auschwitz I site as concerns both the detainees' reception building and crematorium I with its "gas chamber". The authors use the following words: "postwar obfuscation", "additions", "deletions", "suppression", "reconstruction", "largely a postwar reconstruction" (p. 363), "reconstructed", "usurpation", "re-created" (p. 364), "falsified" (p. 367), "falsifying" (p. 369).

   

            On the subject of the gas chamber they write:

   

   [After the war] four hatched openings in the roof, as if for pouring Zyklon B into the gas chamber below, were installed (p. 364).

   

    They point out that no sign calls the public's attention to any changes, on which...

   

   ...the guides remain silent [...] when they take the visitors through this building that is presumed by the tourist to be the place where it happened (ibid.).

   

   

   

   • Appeal to UNESCO

   

               The entire Auschwitz complex is registered by UNESCO as a protected world heritage site. Some countries of the Arab-Islamic world, irritated by the prosecution in France of Roger Garaudy for having called the gas chambers into question, could, if the latter were convicted on 27 February 1998, bring an action at UNESCO for the case of the emblematic "gas chamber" at Auschwitz; they might, at the same occasion, demand a forensic examination of the remains of the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau's crematorium II; the caved-in roof of this gas chamber has visibly never possessed any of the four special 25 by 25 cm (9 7/8 in.) holes which, we are told, were meant to allow the pouring in of the Zyklon B pellets. That being the case, how could an execution gassing operation simply have begun?

   

   

• Genocide By Telepathy, [Raul] Hilberg Explains

   

  Genocide By Telepathy, Hilberg Explains

   

  Robert Faurisson

   

  Raul Hilberg, the most prestigious of the authors who defend the thesis of the physical extermination of Jews by the Germans during the Second World War, began his investigation of this subject in 1948.

   

  In 1961, after more than a dozen years' labor, he published The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books). In this work, he presents "the destruction of the European Jews" as a vast undertaking personally supervised by Hitler who, he says, gave two orders to this effect. Then, he continues, various German administrative agencies, especially in the police and the military, acted in conformity with these orders, duly coordinating their efforts to prepare, organize, control and carry out this vast criminal enterprise.

   

  In 1976 appeared The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, a work by the most prestigious of revisionist authors, Arthur R. Butz, who teaches at Northwestern University near Chicago. He shows that the alleged extermination of the Jews constitutes "the hoax of the twentieth century."

   

  In 1978-1979, I published two articles in the prominent Paris daily Le Monde demonstrating that the alleged Nazi gas chambers could not have existed, and this essentially for physical and chemical reasons.Note 1 These articles caused something of a stir. Two well-known French intellectuals, Raymond Aron and François Furet, announced that an international colloquium of experts would be held to establish before the world that the extermination of Jews and the Nazi gas chambers really existed. Among the experts who figured in this was Raul Hilberg.

   

  Just before the start of the colloquium, a lengthy interview with Hilberg appeared in the influential French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, in which the German-born Jewish historian expressed some astounding ideas.Note 2 Regarding the destruction of the European Jews and the Nazi gas chambers, he basically said that no documents exist that really prove these things, but rather only some testimonies that "accord somewhat."

   

  While Hilberg of course holds to his basic extermination thesis, this explanation is radically different from the one he had previously given. It is obvious that revisionism is responsible for this change. Hilberg more or less conceded this, even if only indirectly. Specifically, he declared:Note 3

   

  I will say that, in a certain way, Faurisson and others, without wanting to, did us a favor. They raised questions which had the effect of engaging historians in new research. They have obliged us to once again collect information, to re-examine documents and to go further into the comprehension of what has taken place.

   

  The international colloquium took place as scheduled at the Sorbonne from June 29 to July 2, 1982, but behind closed doors. Then, an account of its discussions and conclusions was given at a press conference. But, to the surprise of everyone present, only Raymond Aron and François Furet appeared at the press conference, declaring, on the one hand, that "despite the most scholarly research," no one had been able to find any order by Hitler for the extermination of the Jews, and, on the other, that pursuing the revisionists in court was like conducting a witch-hunt. Not one word was said about gas chambers.

   

  Seven months later Hilberg summarized his new thesis before an audience of nearly 2,700 at Avery Fischer Hall in New York City: the entire German policy for the physical destruction of the Jews was to be explained by mind reading! No document attesting to this criminal policy could be found, because no such document existed. For several years, the entire German bureaucratic machinery operated through a kind of telepathy. As Hilberg put it:Note 4

   

  But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus -- mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.

   

  Let us note again those final words: "an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus -- mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy."Note 5

   

  Two years later, Hilberg confirmed those words and this explanation during the first "Holocaust trial" of Ernst Zündel in Toronto. He did this under oath during his cross-examination by Zündel's lawyer, Douglas Christie, whom I was assisting.Note 6

   

  That same year (1985) the "revised and definitive" edition of his book appeared. In it, the University of Vermont professor did not use the expression "consensus" or "mind reading." And yet he wrote:Note 7

   

  In the final analysis, the destruction of the Jews was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization.

   

  He also wrote of "countless decision makers in a far-flung bureaucratic machine" without "a basic plan." He mentioned "written directives not published," "oral directives and authorizations," and "basic understandings of officials resulting in decisions not requiring orders or explanations." There had been "no one agency," he wrote, and "no single organization directed or coordinated the entire process." The destruction of the Jews, he concluded, was "the work of a far-flung administrative machine," and "no special agency was created and no special budget was devised to destroy the Jews of Europe. Each organization was to play a specific role in the process, and each was to find the means to carry out its task."Note 8

   

  For me, this is like explaining what would have been a huge criminal undertaking of industrial proportions based, in particular, on a weapon (a chemical slaughterhouse using an insecticide), operating through the intervention of the Holy Ghost, all of which had been conceived and created through a kind of spontaneous generation.

   

  I refuse to believe that which is not believable. I refuse to believe in the incredible. I refuse to believe in what Hilberg himself calls "an incredible meeting of minds." I refuse to believe in mind reading or telepathy, just as I refuse to believe in the intervention of the Holy Ghost or in spontaneous generation. I take exception to any historical thesis, any system of historical explanation, based on such hare-brained notions.

   

  On November 23, 1978, the French historian René Rémond declared to me: "As for the [Nazi] gas chambers, I am ready to follow you; as for the genocide, I have the deep conviction that Nazism in itself was sufficiently perverse so that this genocide was part of its motivations and its actions, but I recognize that I have no scientific evidence for this genocide."

   

  This is indeed the least one might say when one is concerned about historical truth.

   

  Notes

   

  "'Le problème des chambres à gaz' ou 'la rumeur d'Auschwitz'," Le Monde, Dec. 29, 1978, and, "Une lettre de M. Faurisson," Le Monde, Jan. 16, 1979, Reprinted in: R. Faurisson, Memoire en Defense (Paris: La Vieille Taupe, 1980), pp. 71-75, 83-88, and in: R. Faurisson, Écrits Révisionnistes (1974-1998), published in four volumes in 1999, vol. 1, pp. 122-124, 131-134.

  "Les Archives de l'horreur," Le Nouvel Observateur, July 3-9, 1982, pp. 70-73, 75-76. The interview was conducted Guy Sitbon, regular correspondent in the United States for Le Nouvel Observateur.

  Le Nouvel Observateur, July 3-9, 1982, p. 71. Also quoted in the Summer 1985 Journal, p. 170.

  Quoted in: George De Wan, "The Holocaust in Perspective," Newsday (Long Island, New York), Feb. 23, 1983, p. II/3. Also quoted in the Summer 1985 Journal, pp. 170-171.

  According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, "mind reading" is defined as "The faculty of discerning another's thoughts through extrasensory means of communication; telepathy."

  Hilberg testimony on Jan. 16, 1985 (Toronto). Trial transcript, pp. 846-848.

  Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985, 3 vols.), p. 55.

  R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1985), pp. 53-55, 62.

  About the Author

   

  Robert Faurisson is Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar. Born in 1929, he was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in several books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal. This essay is an adaptation of a piece originally written in 1988.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  Genocide By Telepathy, [Raul] Hilberg Explains

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  January/February 1999

  Issue:

   

  Volume 18 number 1

  Location:

   

  Page 15

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Hoess

   

   

  HOW THE BRITISH OBTAINED THE CONFESSIONS OF RUDOLF HOESS

   

  ROBERT FAURISSON

   

  Rudolf Hoess was the first of three successive commandants of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is often called "THE Commandant of Auschwitz," and the general public knows of him from a book published under the title _Commandant in Auschwitz_. He appeared before the International Military Tribunal as a witness on 15 April 1946, where his deposition caused a sensation. To the amazement of the defendants and in the presence of journalists from around the world, he confessed to the most frightful crimes that history had ever known. He said that he had personally received an order from Himmler to exterminate the Jews. He estimated that at Auschwitz 3,000,000 people had been exterminated, 2,500,000 of them by means of gas chambers. His confessions were false. They had been extorted from Hoess by torture, but it took until 1983 to learn the identity of the torturers and the nature of the tortures they inflicted upon him.

   

  The confessions of Rudolf Hoess supply the keystone to the theory which maintains that the systematic extermination of the Jews, especially by means of homicidal gas chambers, was a historical reality. These confessions consist essentially of four documents which, in chronological order, are the following:

   

  1. A written deposition signed on 14 March (or 15 March?) 1946 at 2:30 in the morning; it is an 8-page typed text written in German; I do not think, under normal circumstances, a court in any democracy would agree to take into consideration those pages, lacking as they did any heading and any printed administrative reference; and crawling with various corrections, whether typed or handwritten, uninitialled and without a notation at the end of the total number of words corrected or deleted. Hoess signed it for the first time after having written: "14.3.46 2:30." He signed again after two lines which are supposed to have been handwritten but which were typed, and which say:

   

  I have read the above account and confirm that it is corresponding to my own statement and that it was the pure truth. [Official translation.]

   

  The names and the signatures of the two witnesses, British sargeants, follow. One did not note the date, while the other indicated 15 March. The last signature is that of a captain of the 92nd Field Security Section, who certifies that the two sargeants were present throughout the entire proceedings, during which the prisoner Rudolf Hoess made his statement voluntarily. The date indicated is 14 March 1946. Nothing indicates the place!

   

  The Allies numbered this document NO-1210.

   

  2. An affidavit signed 22 days later on 5 APril 1946. It is a typed text, 2 1/4 pages long, written in English. That is surprising: thereby Hoess signed a declaration under oath, not in his own language but in that of his guards. His signature appeared three times: at the bottom of the first two pages, then on the third and last page, after a text of four lines, still in English, still typed, which reads:

   

  I understand English as it is written above. The above statements are true; this declaration is made by me voluntarily and without compulsion; after reading over the statement, I have signed and executed the same at Nurnberg, Germany, on the fifth day of April 1946.

   

  There follows the signature of Lieutenant-Colonel Smith W. Brookhart after the statement: "Subscribed and sworn before me this 5th day of April, 1946, at Nurnberg, Germany."

   

  In its form, this text is, if possible, even less acceptable than the preceding one. In particular, entire lines have been added in capital letters in the English style, while others are crossed out with a stroke of the pen. There is no initialling in the margin next to these corrections, and no summary at the end of the document of the number of words struck out. The Allies assigned this document the number PS-3868.

   

  In order to hide the fact that Hoess had signed an affidavit that was in English when it ought to have been in his own language, German, and in order to make the crossed-out words and the additions and corrections disappear, the following trick was used at Nuremberg: the original text was recast and presented as a "Translation," meaning from German into English! But the person responsible for this deception did his work too quickly. He thought that a handwritten addition to paragraph 10 (done in an English handwriting style) was an addition to the end of paragraph 9. The result of that misunderstanding is that the end of paragraph 9 is rendered totally incomprehensible. There are, therefore, two different documents that bear the same file number, PS-3868: the document signed by Hoess and the "remake." It is the "remake," really a glaring forgery, that was used before the Nuremberg tribunal. One historical work that claimed to reproduce document PS-3868 by Hoess in fact reproduced the "remake" but omitted (without saying so) the end of paragraph 9 as well as all of paragraph 10: see Henri Monneray, _La Persecution des Juifs dan les pays de l'Est presentee a Nuremberg_, Paris, Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation, 1949, pp. 159-162.

   

  3. The spectacular oral deposition, which I have already mentioned, made before the IMT on 15 April 1946, ten days after the writing of document PS-3868. Paradoxically, it was a lawyer for the defense, Kurt Kauffmann, Ernst Kaltenbrunner's attorney, who had asked for Hoess's appearance. His obvious intention was to show that the person responsible for the presumed extermination was Himmler and not Kaltenbrunner. When it came time for the representative of the prosecution (at that point the American assistant prosecutor, Col. Harlan Amen) to question Hoess, he seemed to be reading from the affidavit signed by the latter but, in fact, he was reading excerpts from the "remake." Col. Amen gave an excuse for not reading paragraph 9 (and, at the same time, paragraph 8). Stopping after reading each excerpt, he asked Hoess if that was in fact what he had stated. He received the following responses: "Jawohl," "Jawohl," "Jawohl," "Ja, es stimmt," a two sentence response (containing an obvious error about the Hungarian Jews supposedly having been killed at Auschwitz as early as 1943 even though the first convoy of them did not arrive at Auschwitz until May 2 of 1944), "Jawohl," "Jawohl," "Jawohl," a one-sentence response, "Jawohl," and "Jawohl." [IMG, XI, pp. 457-461].*

   

  *Hoess is quoted according to the text of the German-language edition of the IMT series.

   

  In a normal murder case there would have been a hundred questions to ask about the extermination and the gas chambers (that is to say about the crime and an instrument of the crime which were without precedent in history), but no one asked those questions. In particular, Colonel Amen did not ask for a single detail nor for any additional information about the frightening text which he had read in the presence of journalists whose stories would make the headlines in newspapers around the world the next day.

   

  4. The texts generally collected under the title _Commandant in Auschwitz_. Hoess is alleged to have written these texts in pencil under the watchful eye of his Polish-Communist jailers, while in a prison at Cracow awaiting his trial. He was condemned to death on 2 April 1947 and hanged at the Auschwitz concentration camp fourteen days later. The world had to wait 11 years, until 1958, for the publication in German of his alleged memoirs. They were edited by the German historian Martin Broszat without regard for scholarly method. Broszat went so far as to suppress several fragments which would have too clearly made it appear that Hoess (or his Polish jailers) had offered outrageous statments which would have called into question the reliability of his writings IN TOTO.

   

  The four documents that I have just enumerated are closely connected in their origin. Looking at them more closely, there are contradictions among their respective contents, but, for the most part, they are internally consistent. The eight pages of NO-1210 are in a sense summed up in the 2 1/4 pages of PS-3868; that latter document served as the central document in the oral testimony before the IMT; and, finally, the memoirs written at Cracow crown the whole. The base and the matrix are thus document NO-1210. It was in the Cracow memoirs, written under the supervision of Polish examining magistrate Jan Sehn, that Hoess was to give particulars about how the British had obtained that very first confession.

   

  HOESS'S REVELATIONS ABOUT HIS FIRST CONFESSION

  (Document NO-1210 of 14 or 15 March 1946)

  The war ended in Germany on 8 May 1945. Hoess fell into the hands of the British, who imprisoned him in a camp for SS men. As a trained agronomist, he obtained an early release. His guards were unaware of the importance of their prey. A work office found him employment as an agricultural worker at a farm near Flensburg, not far from the Danish border. He remained there for eight months. The military police looked for him. His family, with whom he succeeded in making contact, was closely watched and subjected to frequent searches.

   

  In his memoirs Hoess recounts the circumstances of his arrest and what followed. The treatment that he underwent was particularly brutal. At first sight it is surprising that the Poles allowed Hoess to make the revelations he did about the British military police. On reflection, we discover that they might have done so out of one or more of the following motives:

   

  to give the confession an appearance of sincerity and veracity;

  to cause the reader to make a comparison, flattering for the Polish Communists, between the British and Polish methods. Indeed Hoess later said that during the first part of his detention at Cracow, his jailers came very close to finishing him off physically and above all morally, but that later they treated him with "such decent and considerate treatment" that he consented to write his memoirs;

  to furnish an explanation for certain absurdities contained in the text (NO-1210) that the British police had had Hoess sign, one of these absurdities being the invention of an "extermination camp" in a place which never existed on any Polish map: "Wolzek near Lublin"; confusion with Belzec is not possible since Hoess talks about three camps: "Belzek (sic), Tublinka (sic) and Wolzek near Lublin." Farther on, the spelling of Treblinka will be corrected. Let us note in passing that the camps of Belzec and Treblinka did not yet exist at the time (June 1941) when Himmler, according to Hoess, told him that they were already functioning as "extermination camps."

  Here are the words Hoess uses to describe, in succession, his arrest by the British; his signing of the document that would become NO-1210; his transfer to Minden-on-the-Weser, where the treatment he underwent was worse yet; his stay at the Nuremberg tribunal's prison; and, finally, his extradition to Poland.

   

  I was arrested on 11 March 1946 [at 11 pm].

  My phial of poison had been broken two days before.

   

  When I was aroused from sleep, I thought at first I was being attacked by robbers, for many robberies were tkaing place at that time. That was how they managed to arrest me. I was maltreated by the Field Security Police.

   

  I was taken to Heide where I was put in those very barracks from which I had been released by the British eight months earlier.

   

  At my first interrogation, evidence was obtained by beating me. I do not know what is in the record, although I signed it. Alcohol and the whip were too much for me. The whip was my own, which by chance had got into my wife's luggage. It had hardly ever touched my horse, far less the prisoners. Nevertheless, one of my interrogators was convinced that I had perpetually used it for flogging the prisoners.

   

  After some days I was taken to Minden-on-the-Weser, the main interrogation centre in the British Zone. There I received further rough treatment at the hands of the English public prosecutor, a major.

   

  The conditions in the prison accorded with this behaviour.

   

  After three weeks, to my surprised, I was shaved and had my hair cut and I was allowed to wash. My handcuffs had not previously been removed since my arrest.

   

  On the next day I was taken by lorry to Nuremberg, together with a prisoner of war who had been brought over from London as a witness in Fritzsche's defence. My imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal was a rest-cure compared to what I had been through before. I was accommodated in the same building as the principal accused, and every day we were visited by representatives for all the Allied nations. I was always pointed out as an especially interesting animal.

   

  I was in Nuremberg because Kaltenbrunner's counsel had demanded me as a witness for his defence. I have never been able to grasp, and it is still not clear to me, how I of all people could have helped to exonerate Kaltenbrunner. Although the conditions in prison were, in every respect, good -- I read whenever I had the time, and there was a well stocked library available -- the interrogations were extremely unpleasant, not so much physically, but far more because of their strong psychological effect. I cannot really blame the interrogators -- they were all Jews.

   

  Psychologically I was almost cut in pieces. They wanted to know all about everything, and this was also done by Jews. They left me in no doubt whatever as to the fate that was in store for me.

   

  On 25 May, my wedding anniversary as it happened, I was driven with von Burgsdorff and Buhler to the aerodrome and there handed over to Polish officers. We flew in an American plane via Berlin to Warsaw. Although we were treated very politely during our journey, I feared the worst when I remembered my experiences in the British Zone and the tales I had heard about the way people were being treated in the East. (_Commandant in Auschwitz_, Introduction by Lord Russell of Liverpool, English translation, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1959, p. 173-175.)

   

  REVELATIONS IN 1983 ABOUT THE BRITISH TORTURERS OF RUDOLF HOESS

   

  The Revisionists proved a long time ago that the various confessions of Rudolf Hoess contained so many gross errors, nonsensical elements, and impossibilities of all kinds, that it is no longer possible to believe them, as did the judges at Nuremberg and Cracow, as well as certain self-styled historians, without any prior analysis of their content and of the circumstances in which they were obtained.

   

  It was suspected that, in all likelihood, Hoess was tortured by the British soldiers of the 92nd Field Security Section, but a confirmation of that hypothesis was necessary. Confirmation has come with the publication in England of a book containing the name of the principal torturer (a British sargeant of Jewish origin) and a description of the circumstances of Hoess's arrest, as well as his third-degree interrogation.

   

  The book is by Rupert Butler. It was published in 1983 (Hamlyn Paperbacks). Butler is the author of three other works: _The Black Angels_, _Hand of Steel_ and _Gestapo_, all published by Hamlyn. The book that interests us is entitled _Legions of Death_. Its inspiration is anti-Nazi. Butler says that he researched this book at the Imperial War Museum in London, the Institute for Contemporary History and Wiener Library, and other such prestigious institutions. At the beginning of his book, he expresses his gratitude to these institutions and, among others, to two persons, one of whom is Bernard Clarke ("who captured Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoess"). The author quotes several fragments of what are either written or recorded statements by Clarke.

   

  Bernard Clarke shows no remorse. On the contrary, he exhibits a certain pride in having tortured a "Nazi." Rupert Butler, likewise, finds nothing to criticize in that. Neither of them understands the importance of their revelations. They say that Hoess was arrested on 11 March, 1946, and that it took three days of torture to obtain "a coherent statement." They do not realize that the alleged "coherent statement" is nothing other than the lunatic confession, signed by their quivering victim on the 14th or 15th of March 1946, at 2:30 in the morning, which was to seal Hoess's fate definitely, a confession which would also give definitive shape to the myth. The confession would also shape decisively the myth of Auschwitz, the supposed high-point of the extermination of the Jews, above all due to the alleged use of homicidal gas chambers.

   

  On 11 March 1946, a Captain Cross, Bernard Clarke and four other intelligence specialists in British uniforms, most of them tall and menacing, entered the home of Frau Hoess and her children. The six men, we are told, were all "practiced in the more sophisticated techniques of sustained and merciless investigation" (p. 235). Clarke began to shout:

   

  If you don't tell us [where your husband is] we'll turn you over to the Russians and they'll put you before a firing-squad. Your son will go to Siberia.

   

  Frau Hoess broke down and revealed, says Clarke, the location of the farm where her husband was in hiding, as well as his assumed name: Franz Lang. And Bernard Clarke added:

   

  Suitable intimidation of the son and daughter produced precisely identical information.

   

  The Jewish sargeant and the five other specialists in third degree interrogation then left to seek out Hoess, whom they surprised in the middle of the night, sleeping in an alcove of the room used to slaughter cattle on the farm.

   

  Hoess screamed in terror at the mere sight of British uniforms.

   

  Clarke yelled: "What is your name?"

   

  With each answer of "Franz Lang," Clarke's hand crashed into the face of his prisoner. The fourth time that happened, Hoess broke and admitted who he was.

   

  The admission suddenly unleashed the loathing of the Jewish sargeants in the arresting party whose parents had died in Auschwitz following an order signed by Hoess.

   

  The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjamas ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to Clarke the blows and screams were endless.

   

  Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: "Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse."

   

  A blanket was thrown over Hoess and he was dragged to Clarke's car, where the sargeant poured a substantial slug of whiskey down his throat. Then Hoess tried to sleep.

   

  Clarke thrust his service stick under the man's eyelids and ordered in German: "Keep your pig eyes open, you swine."

   

  For the first time Hoess trotted out his oft-repeated justification: "I took my orders from Himmler. I am a soldier in the same way as you are a soldier and we had to obey orders."

   

  The party arrived back at Heide around three in the morning. The snow was swirling still, but the blanket was torn from Hoess and he was made to walk completely nude through the prison yard to his cell. (p. 237)

   

  So it is that Bernard Clarke reveals: "It took three days to get a coherent statement out of [Hoess]" (ibid.). This admission was corroborated by Mr. Ken Jones in an article in the _Wrexham Leader_ (October 17, 1986):

   

  Mr. Ken Jones was then a private with the Fifth Royal Horse Artillery stationed at Heid[e] in Schleswig-Holstein. "They brought him to us when he refused to cooperate over questioning about his activites during the war. He came in the winter of 1945/6 and was put in a small jail cell in the barracks," recalls Mr. Jones. Two other soldiers were detailed with Mr. Jones to join Hoess in his cell to help break him down for interrogation. "We sat in the cell with him, night and day, armed with axe handles. Our job was to prod him every time he fell asleep to help break down his resistance," said Mr. Jones. When Hoess was taken out for exercise, he was made to wear only jeans and a thin cotton shirt in the bitter cold. After three days and nights without sleep, Hoess finally broke down and made a full confession to the authorities.

   

  Clarke's statement, obtained under the conditions just described by bullies of British Military Security under the brutal inspiration of sargeant-interpreter Bernard Clarke, became Hoess's first confession, the original confession indexed under the number NO-1210. Once the tortured prisoner had begun to talk, according to Clarke, it was impossible to stop him. Clarke, no more conscious in 1982 or 1983 than in 1946 of the enormity of what he forced Hoess to confess, goes on to describe a series of fictitious horrors presented here as the truth: Hoess went on to tell how, after the bodies had been ignited, the fat oozing from them was poured over the other bodies(!). He estimated the number of dead during just the period when he was at Auschwitz at two million (!); the killings reached 10,000 victims per day(!).

   

  It was Clarke's duty to censor the letters sent by Hoess to his wife and children. Every policeman knows that the power to grant or withhold permission to a prisoner to write to his family constitutes a psychological weapon. To make a prisoner "sing" it is sometimes sufficient to merely suspend or cancel that authorization. Clarke makes an interesting remark about the contents of Hoess's letters; he confides to us:

   

  Sometimes a lump came to my throat. There were two different men in that one man. One was brutal with no regard for human life. The other was soft and affectionate. (p. 238)

   

  Rupert Butler ends his narrative by saying that Hoess sought neither to deny nor to escape his responsibilities. In effect, at the Nuremberg tribunal Hoess conducted himself with a "schizoid apathy." The expression is that of the American prison psychologist, G.M. Gilbert, who was in charge of the psychological surveillance of the prisoners and whose eavesdropping aided the American prosecution. We can certainly believe that Hoess was "split in two"! He had the appearance of a rag because they had turned him into a rag. "Apathetic," writes Gilbert on page 229 of his book; "apathetic," he repeats on the following page; "schizoid apathy," he writes on page 239 (_Nuremberg Diary_, 1947, Signet Book: 1961).

   

  At the end of his trial at Cracow, Hoess greeted his death sentence with apparent indifference. Rupert Butler comments as follows:

   

  [Hoess] reasoned that Allies had their orders and that there could be absolutely no question of these not being carried out. (ibid.)

   

  One could not say it any better. It seems that Rudolf Hoess, like thousands of accused Germans turned over to the mercy of conquerors who were totally convinced of their own goodness, had quickly grasped that he had no other choice but to suffer the will of his judges, whether they came from the West or from the East.

   

  Butler then quickly evokes the case of Hans Frank, the former Governor of Poland. With the same tone of moral satisfaction he recounts the circumstances of Frank's capture and subsequent treatment:

   

  Celebrity status of any kind singularly failed to impress the two coloured GIs who arrested him and made sure he was transported to the municipal prison in Miesbach only after he had been savagely beaten up and flung into a lorry.

   

  A tarpaulin had been thrown over him to hide the more obvious signs of ill-treatment; Frank found the cover useful when he attempted to slash an artery in his left arm.

   

  Clearly, no such easy way out could be permitted: a US army medical officer saved his life and he stood trial at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. (p. 238-239)

   

  Rudolf Hoess and Hans Frank were not the only ones to undergo treatment of that kind. Among the most celebrated cases, we know of Julius Streicher, Hans Fritzsche, Oswald Pohl, Franz Ziereis, and Josef Kramer.

   

  But the case of Rudolf Hoess is by far the most serious in its consequences. There is no document that proves that the Germans had a policy of exterminating the Jews. Leon Poliakov agreed with this in 1951:

   

  As regards the conception properly called of the plan for a total extermination, the three or four principal actors committed suicide in May of 1945. No document has survived or perhaps has ever existed. (_Breviaire de la haine: Le Ille Reiche et les Juifs_, Calmann-Levy, 1951, Livre de Poche, 1974, p. 171)

   

  In the absence of any document, historians A LA Poliakov have repeatedly returned, primarily, to doubtful confessions like those of Kurt Gerstein or of Rudolf Hoess, sometimes modifying the texts to suit their convenience.

   

  Bernard Clarke is "today a successful businessman working in the south of England" (_Legions of Death_, 1983, p. 235). One can in fact say that it is HIS voice that was heard at Nuremberg on 15 April 1946, when Assistant Prosecutor Amen read, piece by piece, to an astonished and overwhelmed audience, the supposed confession of Rudolf Hoess. On that day was launched a lie of world-wide dimensions: the lie of Auschwitz. At the origins of that prodigious media event: several Jewish sargeants of British Military Security, including Bernard Clarke, "today a successful businessman working in the south of England."

   

  THE TESTIMONY OF MORITZ VON SCHIRMEISTER

   

  During the war, Moritz von Schirmeister had been the personal press attache of Joseph Goebbels. On 29 June 1946, he was interrogated before the IMT as a defense witness for Hans Fritzsche. His deposition was particularly interesting regarding the actual personality of Dr. Goebbels and the attitude of the official German news services toward the flood of atrocity stories about the concentration camps spread during the war by the Allies.

   

  At the end of the war, Moritz von Schirmeister had been arrested by the British and interned in a camp in England, where he was given the task of politically "re-educating" his fellow prisoners. Before testifying at Nuremberg, he was transferred by plane from London to Germany. At first he was kept at Minden-on-the-Weser, which was the principal interrogation center for the British Military Police. From there he was taken by car (31 March - 1 April 1946) to the prison at Nuremberg. In the same car rode Rudolf Hoess. Moritz von Schirmeister is precisely that "prisoner of war who had been brought over from London as a witness in Fritzsche's defence" about whom Hoess speaks in his "memoirs" (see above, p. 393). Thanks to a document that I obtained from American researcher Mark Weber, who gave me a copy of it in Washington in September of 1983 (a document whose exact source I am not yet authorized to indicate), we know that the two Germans were able to talk freely in the car that took them to Nuremberg. In that document, slightly more than two pages long, Moritz von Schirmeister reports, as regarding the charges hanging over Hoess, that Hoess confided to him:

   

  Gewiss, ich habe unterschrieben, dass ich 2 1/2 Millionen Juden umgebracht habe. Aber ich hatte genausogut unterschrieben, dass es 5 Millionen Juden gewesen sind. Es gibt eben Methoden, mit denen man jedes Gestandnis erreichen kann -- ob es nun wahr ist oder nicht.

   

  "Certainly, I signed a statement that I killed two and a half million Jews. But I could just as well have said that it was five million Jews. There are certain methods by which any confession cam be obtained, whether it is true or not."

   

  ANOTHER CONFESSION SIGNED BY RUDOLF HOESS

   

  The British torturers of Rudolf Hoess had no reason to exercise any restraint. After making him sign document NO-1210 at 2:30 in the morning of the 14th or 15th of March 1946, they obtained a new signature from him on March 16, this time at the bottom of a text in English, written in an English handwriting style, with a blank in the space where the name of the place ought to have been given. His guards made him sign a simple note written in English:

   

            Statement made voluntarily at _________ Gaol by Rudolf Hoess,

       former Commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp on 16th day of

       March 1946.

                         ___________________________

   

            I personally arranged on orders received from Himmler in May

       1941 the gassing of two million persons between June/July 1941 and

       the end of 1943 during which time I was commandant of Auschwitz.

   

                                      signed.

                                      Rudolf Hoess,

                                      SS-Stubhr.

                                      Eh. (?) Kdt. v. Auschwitz-Birkenau

   

       (even the word "signed" was written in an English hand).

  THE AUSCHWITZ MYTH

   

  We have known for some time that the Auschwitz myth is of an exclusively Jewish origin. Arthur R. Butz has related the facts in his book, _The Hoax of the Twentieth Century_, as has Wilhelm Staglich in _The Auschwitz Myth_. The principal authors of the creation and the peddling of the "rumor of Auschwitz" have been, successively, two Slovaks, Alfred Wetzler (or Weczler) and Rudolf Vrba (or Rosenberg or Rosenthal); then a Hungarian, Rabbi Michael Dov Ber Weissmandel (or Weissmandl); then, in Switzerland, representatives of the World Jewish Congress like Gerhard Riegner, who were in touch with London and Washington; and finally Americans like Harry Dexter White, Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Rabbi Steven Samuel Wise. Thus was born the famous World Refugee Board Report on Auschwitz and Birkenau, published in Washington in November 1944. Copies of this report were included in the files of the judges advocate general in charge of prosecuting the Germans involved in the Auschwitz camp. It constituted the official version of the story of the alleged gassing of the Jews in that camp. Most probably it was used as a reference work by the inquirers- interrogators-torturers of "THE Commandant of Auschwitz." All the names here mentioned are those of Jews. Moreover we now see that Bernard Clarke, the first British torturer, was a Jew. The second British torturer, Major Draper (?), may also have been a Jew. The same for the two Americans: psychologist G.M. (Gustave Mahler) Gilbert and Colonel Harlan Amen. Finally, in Poland, Hoess was faced with Polish Jews who treated him more or less the same way. When he wrote his "memoirs" it was under the supervision of instructing magistrate Jan Sehn, who was also probably a Jew.

   

  Establishment historians dispute that Hoess had been tortured and had confessed under duress. Since the publication of Rupert Butler's book in 1983, however, it is no longer possible for them to contest that. The Revisionists were right.

   

  Since 1985 it is even less possible. In January-March 1985, the trial of Ernst Zundel, who was accused by a Jewish association and by the Crown of spreading Revisionist literature, took place in Toronto (Canada). Rudolf Vrba testified as a Crown witness. (He lives now in British Columbia). Affirmative and self-assured as long as he answered the questions of the Crown, he suffered a spectacular rout when cross-examined by Ernst Zundel's lawyer, Doug Christie. For the first time since 1945 a Jewish witness to the alleged gassings in Auschwitz was asked to explain his affirmations and his figures. The result was so terrible for R. Vrba that finally the Crown itself gave a kind of coup de grace to its key witness. That unexpected event and some others (like the leading specialist of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, being caught red-handed in his lies) really made of the "Toronto Trial" the "Trial of the Nuremberg Trial."

   

  The unintentional revelations of Rupert Butler in 1983 and the unexpected revelations of the "Toronto Trial" in 1985 have succeeded at last in showing entirely and clearly how the Auschwitz myth was fabricated from 1944 to 1947, to be exact from April 1944, when Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler are supposed to have escaped from Auschwitz to tell their story to the world up until April 1947, when Rudolf Hoess was hanged after having supposedly told the same world his own story about Auschwitz.

   

  It is remarkable that from beginning to end that story comes from essentially or perhaps even exclusively Jewish sources. Two Jewish liars (Vrba and Wetzler) from Slovakia convinced or seem to have convinced other Jews from Hungary, Switzerland, the United States, Great Britain, and Poland. This is not a conspiracy or a plot; it is the story of the birth of a religious belief: the myth of Auschwitz, center of the religion of the Holocaust.

   

  [Photograph captioned, "This photograph was published after p. 161 of Lord Russell of Liverpool's _Geissel der Menschheit_, Berlin, Verlag Volk und Welt, 1960. The title of the original book in English is _The Scourge of the Swastika_. The caption of the photo says: 'The Confession of Rudolf Hoess.' It is not NO-1210 or PS-3868 but only a very short text of 16 March 1946. You will note the difference between the handwriting of the text of the confession and Hoess's own handwriting. In his introduction to the English edition of _Commandant in Auschwitz_ Lord Russell claims to furnish some informaiton on the conditions in which Hoess had to sign that note, but, since he commits errors in the chronology of the events in that regard, his information is to be received with reservations. (See _Commandant in Auschwitz_, p. 18.)"]

   

  [Photograph captioned, "The second photo was pubished as photo #22 in Tom Bower, _Blind Eye to Murder_ (Britain, America and the Purging of Nazi Germany -- A Pledge Betrayed), Granada: London, Toronto, Sydney, New York, 1981. The caption of the photo says: 'Colonel Gerald Draper of the British War Crimes Group photographed as he finally secured the confession of Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, to the murder of three million people.' As one remembers, Hoess said in his 'memoirs': 'I received further rough treatment at the hands of the English public prosecutor, a major' (_Commandant in Auschwitz_, p. 174). Did this major become a colonel and was his name 'Draper'?"]

   

  [Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box 1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic. $50 per year, foreign.]

  From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 7, Number 4 (Winter 1986-87):

• Much 'Holocaust' But No History -- The Failure of Rabbi Berenbaum

   

  Review

   

  Much 'Holocaust' But No History: The Failure of Rabbi Berenbaum

   

  The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [Washington, DC]), 1998. Hardcover. 851 pages (xv+836). Source references. Index. $65.00

  Reviewed by Robert Faurisson

  Michael Berenbaum, co-editor of this collection of essays, is a theologian and a rabbi. His personal drama arises from having wished, for several years, to pose as a historian, and from finding himself now, with the publication of this book, to be the plain and simple theologian and rabbi who, in reality, he has never ceased to be. Until rather recently (1993-early 1994) he had tried to reply to the revisionists on their own terms, that is, on the basis of material, technical and scholarly arguments: in short, on the level of historical research.

   

  But in this 1998 work there is no more of all that: here we are back to the "Holocaust" dogma, amid statements made without substantiating evidence in a quasi-immaterial world. No longer is anything "disputed" or "reexamined," except certain near-theological points, like the question of whether the "intentionalists" or the "functionalists" are right in their interpretations of the Germans' "genocide" of the Jews. This work offers not one photograph, model, drawing or document. Only on the dust jacket does there appear a photograph, that of a heap of shoes. Already in 1993 this image could viewed at the Washington Holocaust Museum, with the caption: "We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses."

   

  Berenbaum Gives Up on History

   

  In the 1980s and early '90s, several advocates of the "Holocaust" argument tried to adopt an approach based on scholarly and historical reasoning, if only to counter the revisionists. This was the stance of Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Georges Wellers, Adalbert Rückerl, Hermann Langbein, Eugen Kogon, and Serge Klarsfeld (with the aid of the pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac). Even Michael Berenbaum engaged in this pursuit, first in his 1993 Museum guidebook, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and then in a 1994 book he co-edited (with Yisrael Gutman), containing essays of 25 contributors: Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, published by Indiana University Press in association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

   

  But, in August 1994, an event was to disrupt Berenbaum's life. He allowed me to visit him in his office at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, in the presence of two other high-level Museum officials. Having taken note of his arrogant attitude, I decided to spare him nothing and, before his two colleagues, I spelled out for him, one by one, certain facts that showed the Museum and his book to be devoid of any scholarly or demonstrative value. In response he became quite angry, and ended up telling me that if the Museum exhibited no real material representation of a gas chamber (the door on display therein being that of a delousing gas chamber, and the model a mere whimsical mock-up), it was because "the decision has been made not to give any physical representation of the gas chambers."

   

  That interview probably contributed to his more recent decision to abandon the scholarly and historical terrain to the revisionists. It is also likely that the 1995-96 writings of anti-revisionist authors convinced him that the case for the "Holocaust," with its purported genocide and gas chambers, had become completely indefensible on the scholarly and historical level.

   

  One such author, French journalist and historian Eric Conan, reluctantly admitted that my discovery of the late '70s was legitimate: the alleged gas chamber at the Auschwitz main camp, visited by millions of tourists since 1948, is merely an imposture and not a "reconstruction." (See "Auschwitz: la mémoire du mal," L'Express [Paris], Jan. 19-25, 1995, esp. p. 68. See also: "Major French Magazine Acknowledges Auschwitz Gas Chamber Fraud," Jan.-Feb. 1995 Journal, p. 23.)

   

  Another anti-revisionist writer, Robert Jan van Pelt (who had collaborated with Berenbaum on the 1994 collective work), aligned himself with Conan's position, and even reinforced it, in his 1996 study, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (with Debórah Dwork, Yale Univ. Press, 1996, esp. pp. 363-64, 367-69).

   

  The coup de grâce was delivered by French historian Jacques Baynac who, in spite of his intense hostility to revisionism, came to recognize that there was no evidence at all with which to establish the existence of wartime homicidal gas chambers. (Le Nouveau Quotidien [Lausanne, Switzerland], issues of September 2 and 3, 1996. See: "An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is no Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers," July-August 1998 Journal, pp. 24-28.)

   

  The Victory of Elie Wiesel and Claude Lanzmann

   

  Concerning the "Holocaust" or "Shoah," Elie Wiesel and Claude Lanzmann (giving credit where it is due) have always avoided the scholarly historical method as they would the plague. In his memoir the former has written "Let the gas chambers remain closed to prying eyes, and to imagination" (All Rivers Run to the Sea, New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, p. 74), while Lanzmann has stated that, if he had been able to find suitable archival photographs for his film "Shoah," he would have "destroyed them" (David Szerman, "Shoah," Le Chroniqueur [a French Jewish community periodical], June 30, 1993, p. 38).

   

  For his part, historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has, in a way, followed their recommendations. His much-discussed 1996 work, Hitler's Willing Executioners, is a kind of moral or philosophical dissertation in which the author deliberately neglects the precept that every historian should strive to uphold: to establish the material facts before making any commentary.

   

  The Rabbi's Wrath, And His Warning

   

  For this latest book Michael Berenbaum has enrolled 54 authors under his banner. The great majority of them are Jewish, and all, including Raul Hilberg, respect the religious dogma of the "Holocaust" to the letter. I consider Hilberg to be gifted, as Arthur Butz has put it, with "a remarkable cabalistic mentality" (The Hoax of the Twentieth Century [IHR, 1976/1997], p. 7). Berenbaum has even rallied to his camp Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer, who at times has suffered from lapses of independence. In 1992, for example, Bauer suddenly rejected the importance of the Wannsee conference, declaring: "It was a meeting, but hardly a conference ... little of what was said there was executed in detail." He continued: "The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at. Wannsee was but a stage in the unfolding of the process of mass murder." ("Wannsee's importance rejected," The Canadian Jewish News, Jan. 30, 1992).

   

  But in this new book, which contains a contribution by Bauer, that gathering is referred to (p. 155) as "the eventful Wannsee Conference."

   

  In his contribution to this work, Bauer goes so far as to anathematize Arno Mayer, a professor at Princeton University who, in a book published in 1988, made no secret of his wish to put the "Holocaust" back into the sphere of History. Entitled Why Did the Heavens not Darken? (New York: Pantheon), it bore the subtitle The "Final Solution" in History, which, in the author's mind, meant "in History and not in legend or mere belief." In that book -- and this point deserves stressing -- Prof. Mayer committed a grave sin against the dogma, particularly in his treatment of the "gas chambers," of Auschwitz, and of the Einsatzgruppen. In The Holocaust and History (p. 15) Bauer dismisses Mayer in a few words, castigating his popularization of "nonsense," his "cocksure" book, and of engaging in a "subtle form of Holocaust denial." Bauer even states that Mayer "flies in the face of well-known documentation."

   

  Also in this anthology, Polish historian Franciszek Piper issues a warning to anyone who might be tempted to engage in an endeavor that, not so long ago, he himself engaged in: that of rationally analyzing the facts and techniques relating to the alleged extermination of the Jews. Thus one may read (p. 384) these words from the pen of Poland's specialist of the Auschwitz camp: "The work ahead requires sensitive attention to the tragedy of the victims and forbids reduction of genocide to a technological process." His master's voice (that of Rabbi Berenbaum) can be heard here.

   

  The Title's Meaning

   

  In choosing The Holocaust and History as the title for his new book, editor Berenbaum naturally intended the reader to understand that the "Holocaust" was a historical event. It so happens, though, that the title he selected is, from his own point of view, rather unfortunate because of its unintentionally revealing quality. In effect, the word "and" by itself shows, without his having intended it, that the "Holocaust" is one thing, and History another thing altogether. The "Holocaust" is a fiction, a dogma, a religion. History is, or at least should be, a matter of facts, reason, and science.

   

  This patchwork of texts by 55 writers (Hilberg's contribution dates from 1993) is merely an assortment of essays containing much "Holocaust" but no History. With regard to the aforementioned Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, a work co-edited by Berenbaum and published in 1994 that consists of 25 contributions, I have had occasion to say that this is rather a "Cacophony on the Auschwitz 'Death Camp'." With regard to this new work, published four years later and consisting of 55 contributions, I shall certainly not speak of cacophony. This ensemble's members are in unison; all are playing the same score. We are in a synagogue; chorus and orchestra obey, closely and strictly following Rabbi Berenbaum's baton. It is everything that one could expect in such a setting: a religious assembly, a ceremony, the celebration of a service. But it is definitely not a seminar of historians, nor a historical work.

   

  -- August 12, 1998

   

  Robert Faurisson was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in four books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal.

• (Japan, Czech, France, Italy, Spain) Revisionist Publications Around the World

   

  Revisionist Publications: Around the World

   

  Robert Faurisson

   

  Garaudy Reaches Japanese Readers

   

  In terms of global impact, especially in France and the Arab-Muslin world, one of the most important revisionist works to appear in recent years is Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne ("The Founding Myths of Israeli Policy"), a readable and well referenced work by noted French author and intellectual Roger Garaudy.

   

  In a much-publicized case, a Paris court on February 27, 1998, fined Garaudy 240,000 francs ($40,000) for statements made in his 1996 book. The octogenarian scholar was found guilty of "denying crimes against humanity" by expressing skepticism of the Holocaust extermination story, and for "racist defamation" by citing the awesome Jewish role in the Western media. Garaudy, a convert to Islam, garnered considerable support in Arab and Muslim countries for his legal battle, where the case has been widely regarded as yet another example of the hypocrisy that prevails in Europe and the United States on issues involving Jewish and Zionist interests. (For more about Garaudy and his travails, see the March-April 1998 Journal, pp. 16-18.)

   

  Garaudy's "Founding Myths" (reviewed in the March-April 1996 Journal, pp. 35-36) quickly appeared in several languages. Now a Japanese edition is available in a handsome, 400-page hardcover volume, with bibliography, source references and index. Responsible for this edition is revisionist activist Aiji Kimura, a Tokyo journalist who is the author of several books, including a critical treatment of the US-Japanese role in the Gulf War. In November 1994 he visited the IHR office in southern California, where he conducted a videotaped interview with Journal editor Mark Weber.

   

  Attractive Booklet for Czech Readers

   

  Aimed at a wide readership is a handsome, well illustrated, 52-page Czech-language booklet, Osvetim: fakta versus fikce ("Auschwitz: Facts versus Fiction"), by Rudolf Seidl. In spite of its title, it covers much more than Auschwitz. Packed with charts, diagrams and numerous good quality photographs, including several in full color, this punchy 1998 booklet is an effective introduction to the revisionist view of the Holocaust extermination story. It sells for 60 Czech koruny each, with bulk rates available. Order from: VHO, Postbus 60, 2600 Berchem 2, Belgium.

   

  Ahead of His Time

   

  The generally acknowledged founder of Holocaust revisionism was Paul Rassinier, a French educator and underground Resistance activist who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and interned until the end of the war in the Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps. His courage and suffering were later recognized with France's highest decoration awarded for Resistance activities, and he was elected to the French National Assembly as a deputy of the Socialist Party (SFIO). His memoirs of wartime camp experiences, Passage de la Ligne ("Crossing the Line") and Le Mensonge d'Ulysse ("The Lie of Ulysses"), brought heated rebuke.

   

  In 1950 the gifted French writer Albert Paraz provided a preface to an edition of Rassinier's "Ulysses' Lie." In this remarkable piece, Paraz courageously and elegantly identified with Rassinier's skepticism about the gas chamber story, even calling for an international commission of independent historians to thoroughly investigate this emotion-laden issue.

   

  Paraz' 1950 preface, out of print for many years, is once again available in a booklet published in January 1999, Préface a Mensonge d'Ulysse de Paul Rassinier ("Preface to 'The Lies of Ulysses' by Paul Rassinier"). In foreword to this new edition, Robert Faurisson commends Paraz for the "audacity of his thinking and the freedom of his tone." Comparing him to Céline, Faurisson also praises Paraz for "his generosity, his panache, his style." This 60-page, soft cover booklet is available, for 80 francs each, from: Éditions Akribeia, 45/3 route de Vourles, 69230 St.-Genis-Laval, France.

   

  Detailed Majdanek Study

   

  At the great Nuremberg trial of 1945-46, Allied officials charged that the Germans had killed one and a half million people at the Majdanek concentration camp, at Lublin in Poland. In recent decades, though, Majdanek has been little more than a footnote to the Holocaust story, and today no serious historian accepts the once supposedly proven claims of hundreds of thousands of victims there. Moreover, detailed, scholarly information about the camp has been scarce.

   

  To fill this gap, two of Europe's leading revisionist scholars -- Jürgen Graf of Switzerland and Carlo Mattogno of Italy -- have written KL Majdanek: Eine historische und technische Studie ("Majdanek Concentration Camp: A Historical and Technical Study"). This new detailed work is the fruit of two years of diligent archival work and intensive study of original documents from Eastern European archives. Among other issues, the authors examine and debunk the Majdanek "gas chambers" legend.

   

  This soft cover, German-language work of 300 pages was published in 1998. It contains charts, diagrams, facsimile reproductions of original documents, and wartime aerial photographs. There are 30 photographs (including eight in color), as well as a bibliography, copious source references, and an index. It is available, for 45 German marks each, from the publisher: Castle Hill, P.O. Box 118, Hastings, E. Sussex, TN34 3ZQ, England - UK.

   

  Auschwitz Central Construction Office

   

  Italian scholar Carlo Mattogno has written a detailed study of the central SS construction office, or Zentralbauleitung, of the Auschwitz camp complex. This agency was responsible for all construction in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including the notorious crematory facilities (with their alleged extermination "gas chambers").

   

  La "Zentralbauleitung der Waffen SS und Polizei Auschwitz," published in 1998, is based on long-suppressed German wartime documents, especially records seized by the Soviets in 1945 and hidden for decades in Moscow state archives.

   

  About half of this 215-page soft cover work consists of facsimile reproductions of original documents, including work orders, labor lists, charts and diagrams. It contains source references and a name index. It is available from: Libreria Ar, largo Dogana Regia, 84121 Salerno, Italy.

   

  German Booklet Aims at Mass Readership

   

  Germany's leading Jewish community figure, Ignatz Bubis, has called on authorities to take legal measures against an effective, information-packed, 40-page revisionist booklet, Antwort Auf die Goldhagen- und Spielberglügen ("Answer to the Goldhagen and Spielberg Lies"). By July 1998, some 40,000 copies had been distributed in Germany and Austria, making it the most widely distributed German-language revisionist publication so far. It is now in its fourth edition.

   

  Its clear, easily readable prose style, catchy illustrations and handy format (6 1/2 by 9 1/2 inches) make it well suited for a mass readership. It is available -- ten copies for 30 German marks -- from the publisher: VHO, Postfach 60, B-2600 Berchem 2, Belgium.

   

  Nuremberg Study in French

   

  Taking aim at well-entrenched myths about the Nuremberg trials is a recently published 125-page soft cover book by Mark Weber, La Face cachée de Nuremberg ("The Hidden Side of Nuremberg"). Abundantly illustrated, this is an adaptation, with much added material, of Weber's lengthy essay, "The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust," from the Summer 1992 Journal of Historical Review. This is a special 1998 issue of a new the French revisionist periodical. (See "'Alternative History' in France," in the March-April 1998 Journal, p. 30.) Selling for 125 francs each, this book is available from L'Autre Histoire, B.P. 3, 35134 Coesmes, France.

   

  An Italian Examination of the 'Faurisson Case'

   

  Italian author Cesare Saletta presents an overview of legal repression of Holocaust revisionism in various European countries, with special emphasis on the legal persecution of French scholars Robert Faurisson and Serge Thion, in a December 1997 booklet, Il Caso Faurisson e il Revisionismo Olocausto ("The Faurisson Case and Holocaust Revisionism").

   

  This 135-page soft cover book (with index) includes essays by Faurisson and Thion, as well as the much-cited 1980 essay by Jewish-American scholar Noam Chomsky, in which he defends the free speech of Holocaust revisionists. By the same publisher is a 55-page companion booklet, La repressione legale del revisionismo e l'emergere di una questione ebraica ("The Legal Repression of Revisionism and the Rise of a Jewish Question"). Both are published by: Graphos, Campetto 4, 16123 Genova, Italy.

   

  A New Look at the Gerstein 'Confession'

   

  For many years the "confession" of SS officer Kurt Gerstein has been widely cited as proof for the existence of German wartime homicidal gas chambers. The first critical and scholarly examination of this postwar "testimony" was provided by French historian Henri Roques in a much-discussed 1986 doctoral dissertation. Striking at the roots of the Holocaust story, Roques concluded in his "thesis of Nantes" that not only were Gerstein's allegations of mass killings of Jews groundless, but prominent Holocaust historians have deliberately manipulated and falsified key parts of Gerstein's tortured testimony. Roques' exposé was published in English by the IHR as The 'Confessions' of Kurt Gerstein (available from the IHR for $9.50, postpaid).

   

  Now Roques has expanded on his 1986 work with a complementary new work, Quand Alain Decaux reconte l'histoire du SS Kurt Gerstein ("When Alain Decaux recounts the history of SS [man] Kurt Gerstein"). The title of this recently published, French-language booklet refers to a work by the well-known French historian Alain Decaux. This bold 76-page booklet (with source references), written together with Vincent Reynouard, further nails the role of the Gerstein "testimony" in the Holocaust extermination legend.

   

  Revisionist Writing from Spain

   

  For some time now the most important revisionist scholar in Spain has been Enrique Aynat, an IHR Journal contributor and a member of this Journal's Editorial Advisory Committee. His publications include El Holocausto a Debate: Respuesta a César Vidal ("The Holocaust in Debate: a Response to César Vidal"), a 182-page booklet with index and source references, and Estudios sobre el 'Holocausto' ("'Holocaust' Studies"), a 175-page soft cover work.

   

  A more recent publication is a 132-page, 1997 soft cover work, Estudios sobre Auschwitz ("Auschwitz Studies"), with charts, source references, and facsimile reproductions of some original documents. It includes a lengthy statistical examination by Aynat of data on the mortality of Jews deported from France to Auschwitz in 1942, as well as a detailed essay by Jean-Marie Boisdefeu on a wartime report about Auschwitz by Belgian Resistance figure Victor Martin. Estudios sobre Auschwitz is available from: Apdo. de Correos 12.083, 46080 Valencia, Spain.

   

  Affirmation, Not Denial

   

  A reminder: Revisionists do not deny the genocide and the gas chambers. That is a misconception. Galileo didn't deny that the earth was stationary; he affirmed, at the conclusion of his research, that the earth was not stationary, but that it rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun. In the same way, the revisionists, after concluding their own research, affirm that there was no genocide and no gas chambers, and that the "final solution of the Jewish question" consisted of the removal of the Jews from Europe -- by emigration if possible, and by deportation if necessary.

   

  The revisionists strive to establish what happened; they are positive, while the exterminationists doggedly continue to tell us about things which didn't happen: their work is negative.

   

  The revisionists stand for the reconciliation of the antagonists in the recognition of what really happened.

   

  About the Author

   

  Robert Faurisson is Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar. Born in 1929, he was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in several books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal. This essay is an adaptation of a piece originally written in 1988.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  Revisionist Publications Around the World

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  January/February 1999

  Issue:

   

  Volume 18 number 1

  Location:

   

  Page 19

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• The Horned Visions of the Holocaust

   

  The Horned Visions of the "Holocaust"

   

  by Robert Faurisson

   

  16 January 1997

   

  The "Holocaust" of the Jews is a fiction. The number one historian of this fictitious "Holocaust" is the Jewish-American Raul Hilberg. Its number one witness is the Slovakian-British-Canadian Jew Rudolf Vrba. The bible of the "Holocaust" religion is The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.

   

  On examining these three sources closely, one realises that in order to try to demonstrate the reality of the "Holocaust", R. Hilberg, R. Vrba, and the authors of this Jewish encyclopedia have had recourse to silly stunts, nonsense, and twaddle that, behind a phantasma cover, serve the most sordid interests. These Jews ask us, in effect, to believe in:

   

  A military tribunal's innate knowledge in the matter of exceptional crimes purported to have been committed against the Jews; the judges of this tribunal never visited "the scene of the crime," never ordered any forensic studies, never saw or described "the crime weapon," and there was never any international investigative committee. This tribunal, as well as all those which have, for the past fifty years and more, had to try "Nazis", "collaborators" or revisionist authors, spared itself the trouble of bringing forth evidence of what it took the liberty of calling, without further ado, "facts of common knowledge" (sic) (1);

   

  The existence of mind reading or telepathy in the vastness of the German bureaucracy which, it seems, thanks to "an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus-mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy", supposedly took (one knows not where or how) all sorts of initiatives, with the aim of the physical extermination of the Jews;

   

  The spontaneous generation of a coordination of all of these exterminatory initiatives without recourse to either an order, a plan or the least instruction on the part of Adolf Hitler or of any Nazi at all (a concession has ended up being made to the revisionists: the "Wannsee minutes" had nothing to do with a plan to exterminate the Jews);

   

  The hypostatic reality of the never-shown, never-described Nazi gas chamber which, by media bludgeoning and all kinds of artifice, has been planted in people's minds to the point that they imagine that yes, indeed, they have in fact been shown this magic gas chamber, or have had it described for them;

   

  The workings of the Holy Spirit in the creation of these chemical slaughterhouses called Nazi gas chambers;

   

  The magic of said slaughterhouses' operation for, if one looks closely, they must have defied all the laws of physics and chemistry;

   

  "Poetic licence" (sic) to reinforce the truth of the testimony;

   

  The cabalistic processing of numbers, allowing a purported total of 5 to 6 million Jewish victims to stay invariable even though -- essential parts of this whole -- the numbers of Jews having died at Auschwitz or in whatever other camp have, year after year, been undergoing sometimes dizzying reductions in the official historians' estimates;

   

  The proliferation of miracles which, after the war, made it possible to present millions of European Jews as so many "miraculously" saved "living witnesses of the Holocaust" and "living proofs of the Holocaust", while these millions, who had been under the control of the Germans and survived, are in reality living proofs that Germany never had a policy of physical extermination of the Jews;

   

  The consubstantial innocence of the Jews and the consubstantial guilt of non-Jews; as innocent as the spotless lamb, the Jews were supposedly led to the slaughter by the Germans with the complicity of, or in the face of the indifference of the rest of the world, including the French, the British, the Americans, and the Soviets; consequently, by way of "indemnities" and "reparations" of all sorts, a huge swindle allows all the Jews of Israel or elsewhere, whether of the war generation or the following ones (the second and the third), to receive enormous sums of money from certain nations, and especially from the Germans, some of whom, when they have been born into this world after the year 2000 and attained taxpaying age, will have to pay their part for the crimes purportedly committed nearly a century earlier by their forbears. It is thus that, though rejecting -- in words -- the idea of "collective guilt", the Jews in practice hold the whole of the German people collectively guilty, and this from generation to generation; still better, they reckon that since the beginning of time all peoples have contracted a debt towards them, and that as a result every non-Jew is liable to Shylock for a pound of his own flesh.

  The exterminationists are illusionists.

   

  And, to borrow the phrase of the American Ingrid Rimland (Zgrams, http://www.webcom.com/ezundel/english) the exterminationists are extortionists.

   

  To forbid us, on pain of imprisonment and fines, to deny that there has been a "Holocaust" of the Jews is, in practice, to oblige us to believe in the ten stunts described above.

   

  It may seem surprising that just three years from the year 2000 so many people still accept these horned visions (2) as real, while they are worthy both of Moses on Mount Sinai and of the still-standing Golden Calf. It must be said that, for more than half a century, all means have been used to effect a certain mind-conditioning. We have been led by carrot and stick, by whip and by cudgel. We have been, as concerns the "Holocaust", turned into Pavlov dogs, followers of the Pied Piper, parrots, monkeys, circus animals. Morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night the media drum into us the tale of the sufferings of the Jews and of the non-Jews' cruelty or indifference; among the latter, an exception is made only for a few "Just", chosen as such by Israel the better to highlight the fundamental baseness of those not belonging to God's chosen people.

   

  To those who doubt the possibility of such a conditioning let us suggest a reading -- or a rereading -- of George Orwell's Animal Farm, published in 1945.(3)

   

  16 January 1997 (Translated from French)

   

  Notes

   

  "The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof" (article 21of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal). Klaus Barbie and Paul Touvier were convicted for complicity in a "policy of extermination" of which not even their lawyers, Jacques Vergs and Jacques Tremolet de Villers, demanded proof. Now the lawyers of Maurice Papon are getting ready to make the same accommodation.

  Let the reader be reminded that horned visions are extravagant inventions like that of the horned argument: "You possess what you have not lost; you have not lost any horns; therefore you have horns." These visions may not be inoffensive but indeed diabolical.

  One might also read an anonymous English author's The Fable of the Ducks and the Hens / A Dramatic Saga of Intrigue, Propaganda and Subversion, Media Concept, 1996, 21 p. (P.O.B. 62, Uckfield, East Sussex, TN22 1QL, United Kingdom; price: 5)

  This page Taken from CODOH

   

  CODOH can be reached at:

  MCD P-111, POB 439016

  San Diego CA 92143

   

  Email: CODOHmail@aol.com

   

   

• The Notin Affair -- Jewish Organizations Make the Law

  The Notin Affair: Jewish Organizations Make the Law

   

  Robert Faurisson

  Since 1990, Bernard Notin, assistant professor of economics at the University of Lyon III, has been unable to practice his profession -- in spite of French law -- because of a decision by the Jewish institutions and organizations of Lyon represented by Dr. Marc Aron, (note) as well as the Union of Jewish Students of France (Union des Etudiants Juifs de France: UEJF).

   

  No one protests this anomaly: neither Bernard Notin's colleagues, the president of his university, the national Minister of Education, the human rights organization Ligue des droits de l'homme, nor the major media. They remain silent, either because they approve this excessive display of power, or because they know these organizations are capable of unleashing at will a ruinous witch-hunt against heretics.

   

  On June 7, 1994, the national daily newspaper Le Monde felt it necessary to announce that Notin was being hired to teach at the Mohammed I University in Oujda, Morocco, at the request of the Dean of the Faculty of Economics. The UEJF responded by bringing such pressure to bear internationally that within 48 hours the Moroccan university made it known it was not planning to hire Notin.

   

  From the outset, Le Monde has been implacable toward Notin. Notably, it served as a mouthpiece for his persecutors with a January 28-29, 1990, item by Edwy Plenel entitled "Un article jugé raciste et révisionniste suscite des protestations" ("An article judged racist and revisionist incites protests").

   

  Notin's thought crime was to have authored an iconoclastic study on the role of the French media. It appeared in a specialized journal with a restricted circulation that is published with the approval of the prestigious Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), the National Center for Scientific Research. (Economies et sociétés, No. 8/ 1989 [Dec. 1989], University Press of Grenoble, pp. 117-133).

   

  In passing, the author brought up the media's treatment of the subject of homicidal gas chambers, letting it be known that he is skeptical of the existence of these chemical slaughterhouses, and citing as his reference the 1980 revisionist book by Serge Thion, Vérité historique ou vérité politique? ("Historical truth or political truth?").(note)

   

  Thus began the campaign against this 39-year-old scholar (and sole breadwinner for a family with five small children) -- a campaign that eventually would surpass in vehemence and duration anything seen thus far along these lines. Because this story has already been covered in the French journal Revue d'histoire révisionniste, I shall not deal further with it here.(note)

   

  On July 11, 1990, a Paris court sentenced Notin, on the basis of Article 1382 (on damages) to pay 25,000 francs (about $5,000) in damages to the "Movement Against Racism and For Friendship Among Peoples" (Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples: MRAP). The judgment was upheld by a decision on May 15, 1991. On appeal, the sentence was raised to 29,000 francs.

   

  On the administrative level, the National Council for Higher Education and Research (Conseil national de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche: CNESER) also decided to impose penalties, although this matter is currently pending before the Council of State.

   

  Bernard Notin tried to resume his work as a assistant professor, but Jewish organizations acted to prevent it. Each year, without fail, he writes to the president of his university formally to request a teaching assignment, along with a timetable. He receives no answer to his letters.

   

  On February 3, 1993, he was persuaded to sign a news release that amounted to a solemn public recantation. In the text, after protesting against what had been done to him ("One intends anew, illegally, and through coercion, to forbid me to teach and to exercise the profession for which the taxpayers are paying me"), he declared that he was not questioning the genocide of the Jews nor the Nazi gas chambers. He added that his purpose had never been to "rewrite history improperly," and concluded notably: "If I have caused, involuntarily, the least suffering to anyone, I ask their forgiveness."

   

  All for nothing: the ban continues to this day.

   

  Bernard Notin's final lecture was on May 2, 1990. For more than six years, the predicament of this scholar, who is now 45 years old, has constituted an anomaly in both law and reason.

   

  The Jewish organizations know quite well that no law authorizes them to impose such penalties on anyone. In showing their readiness to pressure an employer -- even a government institution -- to prevent an employee from practicing his profession, these organizations pose a threat to the livelihood of everyone who is not self-employed or independently wealthy. As for the nation's education administrators, they know that every civil servant has the right, in the exercise of his duties, to government protection.

   

  Jewish institutions and organizations, mouthpieces for the Jewish community, enjoy special privileges in France. The Notin affair demonstrates that they are in a position to dictate their own laws to the state. I do not know of any other institution, any other organization, or any other community in France capable of conducting a campaign of this kind, of persecuting a man with this ferocity, of pursuing him even in exile, and all this, if not with general approval, at least without a word of protest.(note)

   

  In France people say that "the Jews are like everyone else." In view of the Notin affair, I personally have difficulty believing it.

   

  -- June 18, 1996

   

  Notes

   

  More than anyone else, Marc Aron bears responsibility for the hardships endured by Bernard Notin for more than six years, as well as for my own travails over the past 17 years. [Editor's note: The ban against Notin is still in force in August 1997.] During the late 1970s, Dr. Aron headed the joint committee of the Jewish institutions and organizations of Lyon. An eminent member of the exclusively Jewish lodge of B'nai B'rith, he also headed the European section of the World Jewish Congress. For his role during the early 1990s, see: Emmanuel Ratier, Mystères et secrets du B'nai B'rith, la plus importante organisation juive internationale (Facta, 1993), pp. 284-287.

  See: S. Thion, "A French Scholar Responds to a Widely Acclaimed Anti-Revisionist Work About Auschwitz," July-August 1994 Journal of Historical Review, pp. 28-39.

  See, in particular, Revue d'histoire révisionniste, No. 1, pp. 143-146; No. 2, pp. 155-162; No. 3, p. 206.

  See: "Jewish Militants: Fifteen Years, and More, of Terrorism in France," The Journal of Historical Review, March-April 1996, pp. 3-13.

  For the current IHR catalog, with a complete listing of books and audio and video tapes, send one dollar to:

   

  Institute For Historical Review

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• The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Challenge

   

   

   

  The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Challenge

   

  By Robert Faurisson

  Robert Faurisson is acknowledged as Europe's leading Holocaust Revisionist. He was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as associate professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. Dr. Faurisson has addressed several IHR conferences, and many of his numerous essays and reviews on the Holocaust issue have appeared in translation in the Journal. This essay was translated by IHR editor Theodore J. O'Keefe.

   

  The question of the existence or non-existence of the Nazi gas chambers is one of considerable historical importance. If the gas chambers existed, they provide evidence that the Germans attempted to physically exterminate the Jews; on the other hand, if they didn't exist, we have no evidence of such an extermination attempt. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a leading French anti-Revisionist, is under no illusion. To those tempted to give up the controversy over the gas chambers, he has warned that to jettison the gas chambers "is to surrender in open country." (Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 21, 1984, p. 80.) One can only agree. The gas chambers are not - contrary to what Jean-Marie Le Pen once remarked - a mere footnote ("point de détail") of Second World War history. Thus, those who contest their existence are subject to judicial sanction in France and some other countries.

   

      Nor could the monumental US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which was formally dedicated on April 22, 1993, allow itself to ignore the Nazi gas chambers. The question remained: What kind of physical representation of this terrifying weapon would the new Museum provide? We now know the answer, and it is dismaying: For lack of anything better this opulent museum - which has cost American taxpayers and donors from the American Jewish community more than $150 million - has been reduced to showing us, as its only model of a homicidal gas chamber, a casting of a gas chamber at the former Majdanek camp in Poland: a gas chamber for . . . delousing. As I shall explain, even Jean-Claude Pressac, author of a 564-page work published in 1989 in cooperation with the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation of New York, was obliged to acknowledge that this room was merely a delousing chamber.

   

      This is nothing new. As early as 1945 the Americans were portraying four delousing (disinfestation) chambers in the Dachau camp (Germany) as homicidal gas chambers.

   

      Those in charge of the new Holocaust Museum in Washington have resorted to so grave an imposture, I believe, because they are forced to do so: they are not able to offer visitors a physical representation, in any form whatsoever, of one of the chambers, we are told incessantly, the Germans used to murder swarms of victims.

   

      My Challenge in Stockholm and Washington

   

      On March 17, 1992, I threw down the gauntlet to the Jewish organizations of the entire world. On that day, after arriving in Stockholm at the invitation of my friend Ahmed Rami, I issued a challenge of international scope to the Swedish media. It consisted of this nine-word sentence: "Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber!" These words were accompanied by two pages of explanation.

   

      According to my information, the Swedish media, eager to answer my challenge, immediately contacted every possible source in order to obtain photographs of Nazi gas chambers. To their consternation, they discovered that no such photographs exist, and that the facilities or rooms currently portrayed to tourists at Auschwitz and elsewhere as homicidal gas chambers have none of the characteristics of such chemical slaughterhouses. Although the Swedish media leveled innumerable personal attacks against me, my challenge was not mentioned in a single newspaper article, or in a single word on radio or television.

   

      Over the months the embarrassment would grow among those who propagate the thesis of the physical extermination of the Jews during the Second World War: hence the frenzied agitation that has gripped Jewish organizations worldwide.

   

      On April 21, 1993, I renewed my challenge in Washington, this time directing it to the officials of the Holocaust Museum that was to be dedicated there the next day, with President Clinton, several heads of state, and Elie Wiesel in attendance. Among the Museum officials I had in mind, I was thinking especially of Michael Berenbaum, its Research Institute Director.

   

      My challenge in Washington can be summed up as follows:

   

      Tomorrow the US Holocaust Memorial Museum will be dedicated in Washington. I challenge the Museum authorities to provide us a physical representation of the magical gas chamber. I have searched for 30 years for such a representation without finding it: neither at Auschwitz, nor in any other concentration camp; not in a museum, or a book; neither in a dictionary nor an encyclopedia; not in a photograph, model or documentary film.

   

      Of course I am acquainted with certain attempts at representation, but all of them are illusory. None withstands examination. In particular, when one understands the extreme dangers of using Zyklon B (a commercial insecticide) or hydrocyanic acid (HCN), one quickly realizes that the sites sometimes portrayed to tourists as homicidal gas chambers could never have served as chemical slaughterhouses without enormous danger for everyone in the area. When one understands the extreme - and inevitable - complexity of a gas chamber for the execution of a single man by hydrocyanic acid in an American penitentiary, one sees immediately that the places portrayed as Nazi "gas chambers" - where, day after day, veritable swarms of victims were supposedly killed - lack today (and lacked then) the least bit of the formidable machinery that would have been required.

   

      Apart from the matter of sealing the chambers, one of the most serious problems to solve would have been that of the entering the HCN-saturated chamber after the execution to remove the corpses, themselves saturated with the same poison. Hydrocyanic acid penetrates into the skin, the mucous membranes, and the bodily fluids. The corpse of a man who has just been killed by this powerful poison is itself a dangerous source of poisoning, and cannot be touched with bare hands. In order to enter the HCN-saturated chamber to remove the corpse, special gear is needed, as well as a gas mask with a special filter. Because physical exertion must be kept to a minimum (it accelerates respiration, reducing the filter's effectiveness), it is necessary, before entering the area, to evacuate the gas, and then neutralize it. On this matter, I refer to the documents on gas chambers used in American penitentiaries that I published in 1980.(1)

   

      I warn the officials of the US Holocaust Museum and, in particular, Mr. Berenbaum, that tomorrow, April 22, 1993, they need not offer, as proof of the existence of Nazi gas chambers, a disinfection gas chamber, a shower room, a morgue, or an air-raid shelter. I am even less interested in a section of a wall, a door, a pile of shoes, a bundle of hair, or a heap of eyeglasses. I want a portrayal of an entire Nazi gas chamber, one that gives a precise idea of its technique and operation.

   

  Evasion and Trickery

   

  I knew this challenge could not be answered because, as a matter of fact, for half a century they have been telling us about Nazi gas chambers without ever showing us one. I also fully expected that the Museum would be reduced to playing a trick of some kind. But just what kind of trick?

   

      The answer would come the next day, April 22, the date of the formal dedication. (The Museum opened to the public on April 26.) On the 22nd, I obtained a copy of a book of about 250 pages that presents itself as a sort of catalog of the new Museum. This book is by Michael Berenbaum, and is entitled The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust As Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (1993, xvi + 240 pages).

   

      On page 138 are three photographs:

   

  The first shows a Zyklon B canister and some pellets of Zyklon B, which is described as a "highly poisonous insecticide."

  The second shows "a casting of the door to the gas chamber at Majdanek . . . from the outside, SS guards could observe the killing through a small peephole."

  The third photograph shows "the inside of a Majdanek gas chamber. The blue stain is a chemical remnant of Zyklon B."(2)

   

  The first photograph proves nothing more than that the Germans used the insecticide Zyklon B. (This commercial product was used throughout the world.) The second and the third photos should be familiar to visitors of the former Majdanek camp in Poland. They will recognize the outer door and the interior door, as well as a portion of the inside of the first chamber shown to visitors there as an execution gas chamber, even though this room has all the characteristics of a delousing gas chamber. In this regard, I will not cite here my own research, including my photographs that show the entire room, including the little annex containing a stove to provide the heat, which was essential to circulate the HCN from Zyklon B. (In the second photograph described above, the intake vent for the air heated by the furnace can be seen, at hip height, on the right.) Nor shall I cite here the expert report of American gas chamber specialist Fred Leuchter, which concludes definitively that this room was a delousing gas chamber where, not human beings but, at most, typhus-bearing lice were killed.

   

  J.-C. Pressac's Admission

   

  I shall content myself here by referring to Jean-Claude Pressac, protege of the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation and author of the 1989 anti-Revisionist work Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (a misleading title, by the way). Here, then, is Pressac's opinion of the room that Berenbaum dares to portray as a homicidal gas chamber:

   

  The red-ochre bricks stained with dark blue were for him [Bernard Jouanneau, an attorney who opposed Faurisson in a 1982 court case in Paris] material and visible proof of the existence of homicidal gas chambers. The problem, for there is one, is that the gas chamber presented has all the characteristics of a DELOUSING [sic] installation. I am not saying that it was never used to kill people, for that is possible [here, Pressac is wrong. - R.F.3] but the traces of Prussian blue are an absolutely certain indication of use for delousing purposes. (p. 555.)

   

  Pressac goes on to note that the presence of a peep-hole is no proof of a homicidal gas chamber because a delousing gas chamber may be furnished with such a peep-hole. He concludes:

   

  I am sorry to say, and I am not the only one in the West, that the Majdanek homicidal and/or delousing gas chambers are still waiting for a true historian, which is mildly upsetting in view of the fact that the camp fell into the hands of the Russians intact in 1944 (p. 555.)

   

  On page 557 he presents a photograph of the exterior of the gas chamber in question and of another gas chamber located in the same building. According to the caption, this is a photograph

   

  . . . showing one of the disinfestation gas chambers thought to be a homicidal gas chamber. Between the two doors with their inspection peep-holes, the darker bricks are of Prussian blue colour, a sign of prolonged use of "Blausäure/blue acid," in other words hydrocyanic or prussic acid sold as a delousing agent under the name of "Zyklon B."

   

  It should be noted that these gas chambers were in the Bad und Desinfektion ("Bath and Disinfection") building, located right at the entrance to the camp, and in plain view.

   

      It is understandable that in his "Bibliographical Note" (pp. 224-232) Berenbaum makes no mention of Pressac's 564-page book.

   

  A New Advance for Revisionism

   

  In 1978 President Jimmy Carter established a commission charged with creating a federal government Holocaust memorial museum. He chose as its chairman Elie Wiesel, thereby providing Arthur Butz with the inspiration for a comment both accurate and sarcastic: A historian was needed, but a histrion was chosen.

   

      The choice of Berenbaum as the Museum's "scholarly" authority is of the same nature. Berenbaum is an adjunct professor of theology at Georgetown University. Where a historian was required, a theologian was chosen - which is appropriate because, for some years now, in place of the history of the "Holocaust," Jewish organizations have substituted the religion of the "Holocaust."

   

      The central pillar of this religion, as I have often said, is "the magical gas chamber that, like a mirage, is the image of nothing real."

   

      To portray this "central pillar," Museum officials selected a delousing gas chamber falsely labeled as a homicidal gas chamber. Although it was designed and built by the Germans as a facility for protecting the health of Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners, it is presented to us as an instrument for the torture and murder of these inmates. This portrayal epitomizes the deceit and the effrontery of the zealots of the "Holocaust" religion.

   

      The time has come for a little more intellectual honesty and sanity regarding the story of the Jewish people's real misfortunes during the Second World War. Visitors to the new Holocaust Museum in Washington - particularly American taxpayers, without whom it would not exist - have a right to demand an accounting from Mr. Berenbaum and his friends. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times was headlined "Poll Finds 1 Out of 3 Americans Open to Doubt There Was a Holocaust." (April 20, 1993) The doubts will increase.

   

      A few days after the Museum's formal dedication, Berenbaum revealed to a newspaper:

   

  You're surrounded by death [in the Museum]. It's like working in an emergency room or a mortuary. . . . I've ended up on an analyst's couch. (The Washington Post, April 26, 1993, p. B6.)

   

  It is not out of the question that Berenbaum will return to the analyst's couch when he grasps the grave consequences of his deception. April, 22, 1993, was supposed to be a date for the consecration of the "Holocaust" religion on American soil. In reality, this date will go down in history as marking an outstanding victory for revisionist historians.

   

      A few of the two hundred or so persons who rallied in Washington, DC, on April 22 to express opposition to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

   

      To conclude, I would like to pay tribute here to those revisionists who have contributed to the victory on this specific point:

   

  First, to Ahmed Rami, exiled in Stockholm, who allowed me to publicly launch the "Stockholm Challenge" of March 17, 1992;

  Next, to the Institute for Historical Review in southern California, which, since 1979, has, more than any institution in the world, made possible the publication of books, essays and articles on the "Holocaust" of a scholarly and often unrewarding nature, and this in spite of repression, persecution and violence; this Institute has organized eleven conferences under sometimes difficult and even dramatic conditions, and, as a matter of fact, arranged the meeting in suburban Washington, DC, on April 21 where I was able to renew my Stockholm Challenge, this time to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum;(4)

  Finally, to Ernst Zündel of Toronto, without whom "Holocaust" revisionism would probably still be struggling in obscurity.

   

  My thoughts are also of the French revisionists who have expended so much effort, among them one person in particular, whom I cannot mention without putting in danger, who could be called the mainspring of the revisionist movement in France.

   

  Notes

   

  Serge Thion, Vérité historique ou vérité politique? (Paris: 1980), pp. 301-309.

  On pages 140-144 of Berenbaum's new book, one finds naive plaster figurines that supposedly represent, in sequence, victims in the changing room, in the gas chamber, and in the crematory room of an Auschwitz-Birkenau crematory. While historical museums (such as military and war museums) routinely strive to illustrate what really happened using models that are as accurate and as graphic as possible, these figurines in Berenbaum's book are presented in a kind of ethereal setting. The captions are sullied by imprecision, errors, and absurdities, and they testify to an urgent need to revise downward the number of alleged victims of each gassing, and the number of daily cremations. Berenbaum makes discreet allusion to a model that the Polish Communists built after the war, and which is still exhibited at the Auschwitz State Museum (Block 4, second floor). I understand that a replica of this model may be displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. If so, why hasn't Berenbaum included it in his book? Might he have learned that I often use this model to illustrate the physical impossibilities of the gassing operations it is supposed to replicate? See, in particular, my video "Le Probléme des chambres à gaz" (1982), as well as my commentary, "Auschwitz en images," given at the end of the French edition of Wilhelm Stäglich's book, Le Mythe d'Auschwitz (La Vieille Taupe, 1986, pp. 492, 507). Even J.-C. Pressac is skeptical of this model. (Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, pp. 377-378). Symptomatically, though, he does not provide one of his own.

  A Zyklon B delousing gas chamber could not have been used as a homicidal gas chamber. The first can be operated relatively easily, while the second is necessarily very complicated. The conceptual difference between the two lies in the relative ease of ridding the fabric and clothes of HCN gas after the delousing, as opposed to the extreme difficulty of removing gas from the skin, mucous membranes, and bodily fluids of a corpse. In the first case, the HCN gas is removed by blowing in a large amount of hot air, which causes most of it to evaporate. Then the fabric and the clothes are beaten for some time outdoors to discharge the remaining gas. In the second case, heating or beating the corpses would not be possible. An authentic homicidal gas chamber, of the kind used in the United States to execute convicted criminals, is extremely complicated. To execute even a single person is so complicated that one can scarcely imagine the appalling sophistication the Nazi gas chambers would have required to execute not just one victim, but hundreds or even thousands at a time. Such gas chambers would have become veritable baths of poison, impossible to drain. Nobody, even wearing a gas mask, could have ever survived entering such oceans of hydrocyanic acid and making the physical effort of removing the corpses, and clean up for the next batch.

  At that meeting, I also made two additional challenges:

  First: give me the name of the person whom you consider to be the best eyewitness of gassings.

  Second: make public the documents you continue to keep secret, particularly the papers of Dr. Mengele. (There are about 30 pounds of Mengele papers, including his memoir Fiat Lux - "Let There Be Light" - which suggests that he describes there the reality of Auschwitz.)

   

   

  Reprinted by permission of The Journal of Historical Review, P.O. Box 2739, Newport Beach, California 92659, United States of America.

  Subscription rate: $40 per year.

   

  This page Taken from CODOH

   

  CODOH can be reached at:

  MCD P-111, POB 439016

  San Diego CA 92143

   

  Email: CODOHmail@aol.com

   

   

• The 'Problem of the Gas Chambers'

   

  The 'Problem of the Gas Chambers'

   

  by Robert Faurisson

   

  The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence.

   

  Article 19 of the Statutes of the International Military Tribunal

  (in reality: the Inter-allied Military Tribunal) at Nuremberg

   

  The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge, but shall take judicial notice thereof.

   

  Article 21 of the Statutes

   

  No one, not even those individuals who regard the Third Reich with nostalgia, denies the existence of concentration camps under Hitler. Everyone also recognizes that certain camps were equipped with crematory ovens: instead of being buried, the corpses were reduced to ashes. The repeated occurrence of epidemics made cremation necessary, especially for those who had died of typhus (see the photos of mass graves at Belsen et cetera). What is disputed by numerous French, British, American, and German authors is the existence of "extermination camps." This expression is used by historiographers to refer to those camps that were supposed to have been equipped with "gas chambers." Allegedly, these "gas chambers" were different from American gas chambers in that they were used to kill hundreds of men, women, and children at a time. Because the victims were chosen because of their race or religion, this is referred to as "genocide." The poison employed in this "genocide" is said to have been Zyklon B (a pesticide based upon prussic or hydrocyanic acid).

   

  Those who contest the "genocide" claim and the existence of the "gas chambers" are called Revisionists. Their argument runs approximately as follows:

   

  It suffices for both of these problems ("genocide" and "gas chambers") to apply the customary methods of historical criticism, to see that one is confronted here by two myths that are inseparable. The criminal intentions that are attributed to Hitler have never been proven. As far as the weapon for this crime is concerned, no one has actually seen it. Here one is confronted by an extraordinarily successful war and hate propaganda campaign. History is full of frauds of this kind, beginning with their religious fables of sorcery and witchcraft. What distinguishes our times from earlier epochs is the frightening power of the media and the propaganda ad nauseam which is made for what must be called "the hoax of the twentieth century." Let him beware who, after 30 years, gets the idea to expose this hoax. He will learn depending upon the situation through imprisonment, fines, assaults and insults. His career can be shattered or endangered. He will be denounced as a Nazi. Either his thesis will be ignored, or else it will be distorted. No country will be more unrelentingly ruthless toward him than Germany. 1

   

  Today however, the silence is about to be broken about those men who have dared to write responsibly that Hitler's "gas chambers" (including those of Auschwitz and Majdanek) are only a historical lie. That is a great advance.

   

  But what insults and distortions an Exterminationist historian such as Georges Wellers allowed himself when, more than ten years after Paul Rassinier's death, he decided to expose the minutest part of the arguments of this ex-inmate of a concentration camp who had had the courage to reveal the lie of the "gas chambers" in his writings!

   

  The best way in which a historian may inform himself regarding the actual claims of the disciples of Paul Rassinier is to refer to the work of American professor Dr. Arthur R. Butz entitled The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. 2

   

  For my part, I take the liberty of making only a few observations specifically for serious research-oriented historians.

   

  I call their attention to a paradox. Although the "gas chambers" are, in the view of the official historians, absolutely central to a picture of the Nazi concentration camp system (and furthermore, as proof for the totally perverse and devilish character of the German concentration camps in comparison to all previous and more recent concentration camps it ought to be meticulously shown how the Nazis proceeded to invent, construct, and operate these fearsome human slaughterhouses), one must be thoroughly astonished that in the impressive bibliography of the concentration camp literature there is not a single book, not a single brochure, not a single article, on the "gas chambers" themselves. One must not be misled by some very promising titles; rather one must ascertain the contents of these writings for oneself. I regard as "official historical writing" those publications which are written about the concentration camps by institutions or foundations that are partly or wholly financed from public funds, such as, for example, in France, the Comité d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (Committee for the History of the Second World War) and the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaire (Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center), and in Germany (Munich), the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History).

   

  One must wait until page 541 of the thesis by Olga Wormser-Migot on the system of Nazi concentration camps, before one finds a passage about the "gas chambers." However, for the reader there are still three other surprises:

   

  The passage in question covers only three pages.

  It carries the title: "The Problem of the Gas Chambers."

  The "problem" consists of trying to determine whether the "gas chambers" at Ravensbrück (Germany) and Mauthausen (Austria) really existed; the author comes to the conclusion that they did not exist; however she does not examine here the "problem" of the "gas chambers" of Auschwitz or any of the other camps, probably because in her mind they do not present a "problem." [on page 157 of her book she says that Auschwitz I had no gas chamber.]

  At this point, the reader probably wants to know why an analysis that concludes that "gas chambers" did not exist in certain camps is suddenly discontinued as soon as, for example, Auschwitz is discussed. Why, on one hand, is the critical spirit awakened, and then, on the other hand, is it allowed to collapse into lethargy? After all, as far as the "gas chamber" of Ravensbrück is concerned, we have many points of "evidence" and "undeniable eyewitness accounts," beginning with repeated and extensive eyewitness accounts by Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier or Germaine Tillion.

   

  It gets even better. Several years after the war, before both British and French tribunals, the camp officials of Ravensbrück (Suhren, Schwarzhuber and Treite) repeatedly confessed to the existence of a "gas chamber" in their camp. They even vaguely described its operation. Eventually, those who did not commit suicide were executed because of this alleged "gas chamber." The same "confessions" were given prior to their deaths by Ziereis for Mauthausen (Austria) and by Kramer for Struthof-Natzweiler (Alsace).

   

  Today, one can see the alleged "gas chamber" of Struthof-Natzweiler and in the same place one can also read the unbelievable "confession" of Kramer. This "gas chamber," which is designated as an "historical monument," is a complete fraud. The slightest amount of critical spirit will be sufficient to convince oneself that a gassing in this small room, without any sealing whatsoever, would have been a catastrophe for the executioner as well as for the people in the vicinity. In order to make this "gas chamber" (which is guaranteed to be "in its original condition") believable, someone has gone so for as to clumsily knock a hole into the thin wall with a chisel, and thereby break four tiles. The hole was so arranged that Josef Kramer would have dumped through it the mysterious "salts" (about which he could give no further details and which, when mixed with a little water, killed within one minute!). How could salts and water make such a gas? How could Kramer have prevented the gas from coming back out the hole? How could he see his victims from a hole which would have let him see no more than half the room? How did he ventilate the room before opening the rudimentary door, made from rough-cut lumber? Perhaps one must ask the civil engineering firm in Saint-Michel sur-Meurthe (Vosges), which after the war altered the place which today is presented to visitors "in its original condition"?

   

  Even long after the war, prelates, university professors, and some ordinary citizens gave eyewitness descriptions regarding the terrible reality of the "gas chambers" of Buchenwald and Dachau. With regard to Buchenwald, the "gas chamber" gradually disappeared from the minds of the people who had previously maintained that there was one in this camp.

   

  Dachau

   

  With regard to Dachau, the situation is different. After it had been firmly established for example by His Eminence Bishop Piguet, the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand that the "gas chamber" had been especially useful in gassing Polish priests,3 eventually the following official explanation came to pass:

   

  This gas chamber, whose construction had been started in 1942, was still not completed in 1945 when the camp was liberated. No one could have been gassed in it.

   

  The little room, which visitors are told is a "gas chamber," is in reality completely harmless and, while all sorts of construction plans are available for "Baracke X" (the crematorium and vicinity), one cannot determine upon what basis or technical explanation one can claim that this structure is an "unfinished gas chamber."

   

  Broszat

   

  No official historical institute has done more than the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich to make the myth of the "gas chambers" believable. Since 1972 its director has been Dr. Martin Broszat. As a member of this Institute since 1955, Dr. Broszat became famous as a result of his (partial!) publication in 1958 of the confessions that Rudolf Höss (former Commandant of Auschwitz) is supposed to have written in a communist prison before he was hanged. However, on 19 August 1960, this historian had to tell his amazed countrymen that there had never been mass gassings in the entire Old Reich (Germany's 1937 frontiers), but rather, only in a small number of selected places, especially in occupied Poland, including Auschwitz and Birkenau but not Majdanek. This startling news was given in a simple letter to the editor which was published in the weekly magazine Die Zeit (19 August 1960, page 16). The title was quite misleading and restrictive: Keine Vergasung in Dachau (No Gassing at Dachau) instead of Keine Massenvergasung im Altreich (No Mass Gassing in the Old Reich).4 In order to support this contention, Dr. Broszat provided not the slightest piece of evidence. Today [1978], eighteen years after his letter, neither he nor any of his colleagues has provided the slightest explanation for this affirmation. It would be highly interesting to learn:

   

  How does Dr. Broszat know that "gas chambers" in the Old Reich were frauds?

  How does he know that the "gas chambers" in Poland are genuine?

  Why do the "proofs," the "certainties," and the "eyewitness accounts" concerning the concentration camps in the west suddenly have no value, while the "proofs," "certainties," and "eyewitness accounts" concerning the camps in Poland Communist territory still remain true?

  As if by some tacit agreement, not a single recognized historian has raised these questions. How often in the "history of history" has one relied upon the claims of a single historian? 5

   

  German Camps in Occupied Poland

   

  Let us now examine the "gas chambers" in Poland.

   

  For proof that the "gas chambers" in Belzec or Treblinka really existed, one is asked to rely essentially upon the statement of Kurt Gerstein. This document from a member of the SS, who allegedly committed suicide in 1945 in the prison of Cherche-Midi in Paris, abounds with so many absurdities that in the eyes of historians it has for a long time already been thoroughly discredited.6 Furthermore, this statement has never been made public, not even in the documents of the Nuremberg tribunal, except in an unusable form (with truncations, falsifications, and rewritings). The actual document has never been available with its absurd appendices (French "draft" or the "supplements" in German).

   

  Regarding Majdanek, a visit to the actual site is absolutely necessary. It is even more convincing than a visit to Struthof-Natzweiler, if that is possible. Over this question I will publish additional information.

   

  With regard to Auschwitz and Birkenau, one must rely essentially on the "Memoirs" 7 of Rudolf Höss, which were prepared under the supervision of his Polish captors. At the actual site, one can only find a "reconstructed" room (Auschwitz I) and ruins (Auschwitz II or Birkenau).

   

  An execution with gas has nothing to do with a suicidal or accidental suffocation. In the case of an execution, the executioner and his team must not be exposed to the slightest danger. For their executions, the Americans employ hydrocyanic acid in a sophisticated way, and that only in a small, hermetically-sealed chamber. Afterwards, the gas is exhausted from the chamber and neutralized.

   

  For this reason, one must ask how, for example in the case of Auschwitz II or Birkenau, one could bring 2,000 people into a room measuring 210 square meters in area, and then in this highly crowded situation throw in the very strong pesticide Zyklon B, and then immediately after the deaths of the victims let a work crew without any gas masks enter the room in order to take out the bodies which had been thoroughly saturated with cyanide.

   

  Two documents8 from the German industrial archives which were registered by the Americans at Nuremberg tell us that the Zyklon B had a strong tendency to adhere to surfaces and could not be removed from an ordinary room with a strong ventilator, but only by natural aeration for almost 24 hours. Additional documents may be found only at the site in the Auschwitz Museum archives, which were never described elsewhere, but which show that this room of 210 square meters, which is today in a dilapidated condition, was only a very simple mortuary, which (in order to protect it against heat) had been located underground, and which was provided with only a single door which served as both an entrance and an exit. 9

   

  Concerning the crematoria of Auschwitz, there is just as there is generally for the entire camp an overabundance of documents and invoices down to the last penny. However, concerning the "gas chambers" there is nothing: no contract for construction, not even a study, nor an order for materials, nor a plan, nor an invoice, nor even a photograph. In a hundred war crimes trials, nothing of the sort was ever produced.

   

  Christophersen

   

  "I was in Auschwitz and I can assure you that there was no 'gas chamber' there." Only seldom does one hear defense witnesses with enough courage to pronounce this statement. They are persecuted in the courts. 10 Still today, everyone in Germany takes the risk that, if they give an eyewitness account in favor of Thies Christophersen (who wrote The Auschwitz Lie), they will be punished for '"defaming the memory of the deceased." 11

   

  Immediately after the war, the Germans, the International Red Cross and the Vatican (which was otherwise so expert as to whatever happened in Poland), as well as many others, declared in an embarrassed tone: "The 'gas chambers' we knew nothing about them!" Yes but I would put the question this way: "Can one know about things which did not even happen?"

   

  There was not a single "gas chamber" in even one of the German concentration camps; that is the truth. The nonexistence of "gas chambers" should be regarded as welcome news; to hide this news in the future would be an injustice. Just as there is no attack upon a religion if one portrays "Fatima" as a fraud, the announcement that the "gas chambers" are an historical lie is no attack upon concentration camp survivors. One is merely doing one's duty being truthful.

   

  Conclusions

   

  After 30 years of research, revisionist authors have reached the following conclusions:

   

  The Hitler "gas chambers" never existed.

  The "genocide" (or "attempted genocide") of the Jews never took place. In other words: Hitler never gave an order nor permission that anyone should be killed because of his race or religion.

  The alleged "gas chambers" and the alleged "genocide" are one and the same lie.

  This lie, which is largely of Zionist origin, has made an enormous political and financial fraud possible, whose principal beneficiary is the state of Israel.

  The principal victims of this fraud are the German people (but not the German rulers) and the entire Palestinian people.

  The enormous power of the official information services has, thus far, had the effect of ensuring the success of the lie and of censoring the freedom of expression of those who have denounced the lie.

  The participants in this lie know that its days are numbered. They distort the purpose and nature of the Revisionist research. They label as "resurgence of Nazism" or as "falsification of history" what is only a thoughtful and justified concern for historical truth.

  Supplement

   

  Two publications and an official intervention by the author:

   

  A letter to Historama, Paris, November 1975, page 10, on the expression "N.N." Originally, these initials never meant Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog), but Nomen nescio (Anonymous). ln practice it meant that certain inmates would not be permitted to receive or send mail.

  Segments of a letter to Historia, Paris, August 1977, page 132: "The Imposture of Genocide."

  On 29 January 1978 at the Colloque National de Lyon sur Eglises et Chrétiens de France dans la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (National Convention in Lyon on Churches and Christians of France during the Second World War) an intervention concerning the imposture of the "gas chambers" (see Rivarol, Paris, 16 February 1978, page 5).

  Notes

   

  Regarding the great number of vicious and insulting articles, there is a study by Hermann Langbein which appeared in Le Monde Juif (The Jewish World), April/June 1975. The title is "Coup d'oeil sur la littérature néo-nazie," ("A Glimpse at Neo-Nazi Literature"), pages 8­20. Hermann Langbein was an inmate in Auschwitz. He testified at countless trials. He holds an important position in the circles of former concentration camp inmates. One of his most recent works is entitled: Hommes et Femmes à Auschwitz (Men and Women of Auschwitz), Paris, Fayard, 1975, VIII-529 pages (Translated from Menschen in Auschwitz, Vienna, 1974.) Not one of the 30 chapters, not one of the 268 sections of this book is devoted to the "gas chambers"! Rather, one constantly sees expressions such as "selection for the gas chambers" etc. There is also a study by Georges Wellers which appeared in Le Monde Juif (op. cit.) April/June 1977. The title is "La 'Solution finale', de la question juive et la mythomanie néo-nazie" ("The "Final Solution" and Neo-Nazi Mythomania,"), pages 41­84. There is also a study by Ino Arndt and Wolfgang Scheffler in Viertelsjahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Quarterly Review for Contemporary History), which is a publication of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. The Institute's director is currently Dr. Martin Broszat. This study was published in the issue of April 1976. The title is: "Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in NS-Vernichtungslagern" (Organized Mass-Murder of Jews in Nazi Extermination Camps), pages 105­135.

  The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1979.

  Prison et Déportation (Prison and Deportation). Paris: Spes; 1947; page 77.

  Broszat's letter is reproduced in facsimile (with its English translation) in The Journal of Historical Review, May/June 1993, page 12.

  The famed Simon Wiesenthal has also admitted that "there were no extermination camps on German soil" in a letter to the editor of Books and Bookmen, page 5, April 1975. Although he later wrote in a letter dated 12 May 1986 to Professor John George of Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma, that he "could never have said such a thing," Wiesenthal reconfirmed his earlier statement in a letter to the editor published on page 14 of the European editor of Stars and Stripes dated 24 January 1993. This letter is reproduced in facsimile in The Journal for Historical Review, May/June 1993, page 10.

  See the opinion expressed by the forensic pathologist as it is reported by the Exterminationist Pierre Joffroy in his book about Kurt Gerstein: L'Espion de Dieu/La Passion de Kurt Gerstein (The Spy of God/The Passion of Kurt Gerstein), Paris, Grasset, 1969, page 262.

  Kommandant in Auschwitz/Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (Commandant of Auschwitz/Autobiographical Memoirs) by Rudolf Höss, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,1958,184p; introduction and commentary by Dr. Martin Broszat. Concerning "gassing," see pages 126 and 166. The entry of the work crew into the "gas chamber" is supposed to happen "sofort" ("immediately") as it is written on page 166.

  These two extensive documents which are of great importance were apparently not used at the trials of Gerhard Peters, former director of Degesch. They were registered as documents NI-9098 and NI-9912. They irrevocably reduce to nothing the "eyewitness testimony" of Höss regarding the "gas chambers."

  Photographs Neg. 6228 and following.

  Case of Wilhelm Stäglich, for example. See Stäglich in the Index Nominum of Butz's book (op. cit.).

  Die Auschwitz-Lüge (The Auschwitz Lie), #23 of Kritik (2341 Kälberhagen, Post Mohrkirch, West Germany), 1974. This booklet was followed by Der Auschwitz-Betrug/Das Echo auf die Auschwitz-Lüge (The Auschwitz Fraud/The Echo of the Auschwitz Lie.).

• No Light, No Smoke, No Stench, No Holes

   

  No Light, No Smoke, No Stench, No Holes

   

  by Robert Faurisson

  In addition to the phrase "No Holes, No Holocaust," one may now add: "And no light, no smoke, no stench." This is thanks to Dr. Maurice Rossel, an official of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who, in September 1944, visited the Auschwitz camp Commandant. (For more on this, see my 1980, essay, "Sur Auschwitz, un document capital de la Croix-Rouge Internationale," reprinted in the 1999 collection of my writings, Écrits révisionnistes (1974-1998), pp. 219 ff.)

   

  On the front page of the "Style" section of The Washington Post of June 25, 1999 (pp. C1, C8) appears a lengthy article by staff writer Marc Fisher that sympathetically reports on a new film by French-Jewish filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, "A Visitor from the Living." [See also: S. Thion, "Claude Lanzmann and `Shoah': The Dictatorship of Imbecility," Nov.-Dec. 1997 Journal, pp. 8-10.]

   

  An extract from the Post article about the film:

   

  Lanzmann moves in, his short, calm questions presented like invitations to a dance, with all the proper flourishes and courtesies.

   

  "Did you know you were in an extermination camp?"

   

  "I didn't know the scale it had reached," Rossel says, and for the first time, he is looking off, just slightly away.

   

  "Did you see a light glimmering?" It seems the Poles in nearly villages have told Lanzmann that they saw this light from Auschwitz, this reflection of horror.

   

  "I saw none, no smoke," Rossel says.

   

  "No stench?"

   

  "No stench."

   

  Robert Faurisson is Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar. Born in 1929, he was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in several books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal. A four-volume collection of many of his revisionist writings, Écrits Révisionnistes (1974-1998), was published in 1999.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  No Light, No Smoke, No Stench, No Holes

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  May/June 1999

  Issue:

   

  Volume 18 number 3

  Location:

   

  Page 29

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• Transcript of the Recording of a Talk Given in Stockholm on December 4th, 1992

   

  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.

   

     -------------------------

   

   

• Interview with Robert Faurisson by Phil Sanchez

   

  Interview with Robert Faurisson

   

  by Phil Sanchez

   

  Irvine,  California,  June 22, 2002

   

  Robert Faurisson,  retired professor from the University of Lyon in France,  is considered the leading "Holocaust " revisionist researcher and scholar in Europe today.  From his early writing like "The 'Problem of the Gas Chambers '", (published in France 's leading newspaper Le Monde,  which stirred up a storm of controversy) and investigation into the diary of Anne Frank,  to later assistance at the Ernst Zündel "Holocaust " trials and to Fred Leuchter forensic investigation at Auchwitz,  and on to his most recent work,  "Punishment of Germans,  by German Authorities,  for Mistreatment of Jews During World War II ",  Mr.  Faurisson has repeatedly removed the toupee from the bald face lies of the Establishment 's "Holocaust "desirers,  driving them so crazy that they have outlawed the refuting of judgement of the Nuremberg Trials (usually without citing said judgement within the anti-revisionist laws),  first in France,  and now throughout most of western Europe.  We took advantage of his attendance at the Institute of Historical Review 's 14th Conference and interviewed him.

   

  This is Phil Sanchez here having a brief interview with Robert Faurisson who is from Vichy,  France,  and he is here to speak at the 14th Conference of the Institute for Historical Review.  Here 's some questions for you Mr.  Faurisson:

   

  Q:  You have had conversations of one sort or another with numerous "Holocaust "desirers,  such as Michael Berenbaum,  Debbie Lipstadt,  Otto Frank,  Raul Hilberg,  etc. , . . . Do you have opinions about any of them being honest about their believing the "Holocaust "tales?

   

  A:  First of all,  I had a conversation with Michael Berenbaum in the U. S.  Holocaust Memorial Museum.  I remember exactly when it was on the 30th of August 1994. In 1989, Deborah Lipstadt had visited me in Vichy.  In 1977,  I had visited Otto Frank in Basel,  Switzerland,  and I had a conversation with him,  on the first day,  for five hours and,  on the second day,  for four hours.  As for Raul Hilberg,  I had no conversation with him but I met him at the Ernst Zündel trial in 1985 in Toronto,  Canada,  when questions were put to him while he was a witness for the prosecution.  Those questions were put to him by Douglas Christie,  the defense lawyer of Ernst Zündel,  but most of them had been written by myself.   It was a kind of a chance,  in a way.  It was an opportunity for me to ask questions to Raul Hilberg and for Raul Hilberg to answer,  or to try to answer,  to our questions.   Now to go to your own question:  you ask me if I had an opinion about any of them being honest or about them really believing the "Holocaust "tales.  Is that right?

   

  Q: Correct.

   

  A:  I am unable to answer your question because I do not know whether the people,  either on my side or against me,  are sincere or not. It is difficult for me to judge if someone is sincere. To judge the sincerity of someone you need perhaps weeks, months, years. It is difficult to judge. And that 's why, in fact, I am not very interested in the question of sincerity. What I am interested in is:  what this man, or this woman, is saying, is it exact, or not?I don 't say "true ";as you know, I am used to say "exact. " And take the story (I don 't say "the history " but "the story ")of the "Holocaust. " Of course, , for me,  it 's totally inexact. I say totally. And I can prove it, at least I think that I can prove it.

   

  Now for Berenbaum, Deborah Lipstadt, Otto Frank, Raul Hilberg (for Otto Frank, it wasn 't about the "Holocaust, " it was about the Anne Frank Diary, okay?), you could divide those people into two camps:  in the first camp,  we have people who are lying, perhaps because they think that it 's necessary, sometimes, for a good cause,  to lie. That 's possible. It 's possible that they are in a way sincere. That will be the first camp. Then you have the mass of those people who really believe, because they heard about it. If you take Berenbaum, Deborah Lipstadt, Raul Hilberg, you can say that they have a responsibility in saying, for instance, that there was an order to kill the Jews or that there was a plan to kill the Jews;they had a responsibility in saying that. But other people, the mass of people who believe in the "Holocaust, "they have no responsibility. They are only repeating what they have heard.

   

  I am sorry because of my poor and broken English I can not say in English what I say in French, which is that you have, on the one hand, "les menteurs, "and, on the other hand, "les bonimenteurs "(a play on words): those who lie and those who repeat lies that they have heard from others. "Boniment "means gossip. They are gossiping. Do you say that in English?To "gossip "? I don 't know.

   

  Q: That 's a funny way of putting it, the take on it .  A: Okay. So I would say the liars and the gossipers,  something like that.

   

  Q: I think that with some of them, I think that with Debbie Lipstadt, or the guy in Switzerland who recently wrote a book (Fragments)about being raised in the concentration camps and then he was proved totally false.

   

  A: Yeah, yeah.

   

  Q: I can 't remember his name.

   

  A: I remember but whatever, okay.

   

  Q: She said that, even though the book is not factual, it 's still good as "Holocaust "literature. And that 's what I 'm wondering: perhaps she did not believe it but she thought the literature is still important?I 'm wondering how you felt, maybe you didn 't speak with her long enough to have an opinion.

   

  A: At the time Deborah Lipstadt visited me, it was before Binjamin Wilkomirski (his name was Binjamin Wilkomirski, his real name being either Bruno Grosjean or Bruno Doessekker). Anyway, he was lying. And he wasn 't a Jew. So, as you know, he is being put on trial by the Jewish organizations.

   

  Q: Oh, he was put on trial?

   

  A: He is currently on trial, I think. Or it 's coming, I don 't know. So, of course, I understand very well that people, even like Hilberg or Deborah Lipstadt, could think: "Anyway, true or not, sincere or not, it serves the cause, our good cause. " But this you have everywhere;; not only the Jews are like that. You have that in the Catholic religion;you have what we call "le pieux mensonge, "the pious lie. So everybody may be like that, you see.

   

  Q: Do you know about Raul Hilberg having some sort of relationship with Norman Finkelstein?I don 't know if he is giving him information but do you think Raul Hilberg will come around to seeing the "Holocaust "in the same way the revisionists do, or is that just too far- fetched?

   

  A: I think it 's too far-fetched. What I know is that the situation of Raul Hilberg is perfectly tragic. This man is, I think, something like seventy-five today. This man in 1948 began to work on what today we call the "Holocaust. "In 1961 he published the first edition of his book (The Destruction of the European Jews). In that book he dared to say, at that time, that there were TWO orders coming from Hitler to kill the Jews. He said that there was a plan to kill the Jews, that there were instructions given to kill the Jews, and so on.  And, in 1985, came the tragedy of Raul Hilberg when he was on the witness stand. Because at that time, he had really changed his story and he was ready to publish the second edition of his book. A really different one which appeared in the middle of 1985. To give you an example of how much he changed his story, this very man who had said that there were two orders from Hitler and who was asked to show those orders was, of course,  unable to show them. And he came down with a strange theory which is this one: he said that we don 't need to suppose that there was an order, or orders, we don 't need to think that there was a plan, no. What happened was,  according to the new Hilberg, "an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus mind-reading by a far-flung bureaucracy, "meaning the German bureaucracy!Which means that it is an explanation by telepathy!This man,  supposed to be a scholar, first said that he had proofs,  and then he had to confess that there were no proofs but "an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus mind- reading by a far-flung bureaucracy. " This is a total defeat.  At one point, I remember, all those who attended this remember very well, Hilberg said, "I am at a loss. "

   

  Q: I remember reading that actually, in Michael Hoffman 's book.

   

  A: That is about Raul Hilberg. That 's the only thing that I can say. Recently he published a book, a tiny book,  the title being something like Sources of Holocaust Research: An Analysis. You should read it. Nothing.  It 's like void, totally void. You have nothing. Nothing is left. All this formidable building, hammered. What about the towers in New York?!The tower of Raul Hilberg does not exist animosité .  Q: On your run-ins with Jean-Claude Pressac: he seems to be seeking something from you. What is it that Pressac wants?

   

  A: Now, Pressac also is finished. You should know that even Berenbaum and all those people, they do not want to have anything to do anymore with Jean-Claude Pressac.  Jean-Claude Pressac is a poor guy. He was a guy of the extreme Right. I learned this a few months after meeting him for the first time. He was engaged by Klarsfeld to write an enormous book. A really silly one. The title was: Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, published in 1989. In fact you had nothing in it on the gas chambers;you had many things on the crematories and so on, the ovens, and only speculations about the gas chambers .  Q: The ventilation.

   

  A: The ventilation, yeah!(laughter)He "ventilates "very much. You see, it 's wind. It 's only wind. It 's air. A- I-R, okay. Excuse my pronunciation. I noticed that sometimes he would say that he had been first on my side. And that he then left me because he had discovered that I was wrong. Now, wait a minute. First of all, never did Pressac visit me where I live in Vichy [in the center of France ]. Second: I saw him nly at Pierre Guillaume 's house, in Paris. And he was coming and coming back,  asking me for documents and so on. I saw very quickly that this man was unbalanced, not strong at all, and that I was wasting my time. So I told him: "You see, I am tired, I am overworked. Please, Pressac, leave me. I have nothing to tell you. " But the last time he came and he said: "I would like to have a conversation with you. " I said: "Pressac, once more, I have no time. Now, if really you want to have a conversation, I want you to tape it because you keep constantly saying that you have not said what you said. So I want to catch you at your words. " And he said, "Oh no. I don 't want that. " I said:  "So, you get out!" And it was finished.

   

  Q: What about in court?

   

  A: Oh, in court. The poor guy, in 1995, came to court.  I must say that, in 1993, he had published another book.  The title in French was Les Crèmatoires d 'Auschwitz:  La Machinerie du Meurtre de Masse (The Crematories of Auschwitz: The Machinery of Mass Murder). I was sued; once more, I was on trial. I had decided with my defense lawyer to summon Pressac. I thought he would not come. And my surprise is that he came. The poor guy came. I had no right, myself, to ask him any question.  Only my defense lawyer had the right to put some questions to him. I decided that the essential question would be very short and very clear. So I said to my defense lawyer: "You have only one question to ask him, "and the question was: "Mr. Pressac, in your book,  we have sixty photos, documents, illustrations. Could you show us only one photo, document or drawing showing us a Nazi gas chamber?" Of course, there were none. There was not even one photo. You can not have a photo of something which is technically impossible.  So he went on, speaking about aeration and ventilation once more! (laughter)

   

  And suddenly, as he was NOT answering the question,  the lady --we had three judges, the presiding judge being a lady, --said: "Mr. Pressac, you say 'ventilator,  ventilator, ' but a ventilator, it 's to ventilate. " ((laughter) She was a little bit naive perhaps. I don 't know. She made Pressac understand that he was not at all addressing the question. And Pressac suddenly said: "You see, you must understand, my life is very difficult, I cannot be here and there, you must understand, I cannot. " S Pressac also was "at a loss. "Pressac also is really finished.

   

  Something else. A book appeared in 2000 written by a young lady, who came and visited me in Vichy. The book was totally against us: Histoire du Négationnisme en France (History of Holocaust Denial in France). Her name is Valérie Igounet. In it she published a long interview of Pressac. And mind you, at the end of his interview, Pressac has a nearly total revisionist position.  He now says that the dossier (meaning the dossier of the people against the revisionists) is "rotten "to the core.  "We cannot save it anymore. It 's finished. "

   

  Q: You once said that in France during World War II there were "two "Resistance movements; one against the Nazi occupation and a second one against the Communist terror. Could you, please, elaborate on the difference between the two but also go into some detail about the second?

   

  A: In France, they constantly say "la Résistance "(the Resistance). They constantly talk about "la Résistance. " Even, with the time going on, they now don 't talk anymore exactly about "Résistants "but about "Grands Résistants " It 's always a "Grand Resistance. " All those people are supposed to have been "Grand Resistants. " And this is partly a joke of mine: I ask: "Oh, you say 'Resistance '! What do you mean by 'Resistance '?"And the people answer: "Of course, Resistance against Germany?" And I say: "Okay, I see, but you know, there was another Resistance. The people on the other side than yours were convinced that THEY were also Résistants. But Résistants against Communism, against Communist terror in France. "It began in June 1941 and went until at least the Bloody Summer of 1944. You cannot imagine,  today, the power at that time of the French Communist party, and how many people they killed because those "collaborators "were, or were supposedly, on the side of the Germans. You had very sincere French people on the side of the Germans. They were not in love with Adolf Hitler or even with the German people. They thought that the big danger for Europe and for France were those Communists coming with the Red Army. They wondered where the Red Army would stop. That was their question.

   

  In June 1942, Pierre Laval, who was a kind of prime minister, with Marshall Pétain, said: "I hope that Germany will win. " I guarantee you that Pierre Laval was not at all in love with the Germans. He added: "because,  otherwise, we will have Communism all over Europe. "

   

  So, I warn you to be careful with this word of "Resistance " since, you see, most of the time people think of themselves as courageous, which is not really the case; most of the people are cowards. But they think that they are courageous. They are "courageous "because they "resist " to something. During the war, you had those people resisting to the German occupation, but you also had people resisting to the Communists who were assassinating so many French people at that time.

   

  Q: Were there trials for these murders?

   

  A: Of course not. As usual, if you were on the good side,  you got medals, respect, money; if you were on the other side, it was exactly the opposite. That 's life. You must not be vanquished, that 's all.

   

  Q: So, after France was no longer under German Occupation, there were no murder trials for murders that were committed by the Communists during the Occupation?

   

  A: We had very few of them. And once those people were sentenced --very, very few of them --they were,  how do you say that, "pardoned "?Yeah. There was an automatic amnesty, according to a decision of the government of De Gaulle. They decided that everything,  --listen to this, it 's fantastic --everything which had been done "in order to liberate France " until the First of January 1946 should be pardoned --I say "'46 "(the war,  remember, had ended on the 8th of May 1945, in Europe,  and the last town of France was liberated in December 1944). The simple fact that we had an amnesty for everything which had been done (laughter) during, let 's say, the whole of 1945, means that they kept on killing people.

   

  Q: "Reprisals "?

   

  A: "Reprisals, " yes. .

   

  Q: I don 't know if this is a question that you can answer but it was a particularly French Communist group or were they just a Soviet puppet group?

   

  A: No, a real and sincere Communism.

   

  Q: They did not want to be a puppet of the Soviet Union? They were French Communists?

   

  A: Absolute puppet but I would say sincere puppet.

   

  Q: Now, about the way laws are written and made in France. Perhaps I am mistaken, I thought that there are a number of anti-revisionist laws made specifically to deal with you;are you ever consulted for the name given to each of these laws?

   

  A: Consulted? Do you mean: Was I consulted?

   

  Q: Yeah.

   

  A: No, of course not. And, in fact we have only one specific law.

   

  Q: What is the name of it?

   

  A: We call it sometimes, "Loi Gayssot, "which is the name of a Communist, but sometimes also we call it "Loi Fabius-Gayssot. "Fabius is a very rich Jew, a Socialist but extremely rich. So, the anti-revisionist law of 1990 is a Jewish-Socialist-Communist law. Sometimes,  only among the people in the Paris courtrooms, they call it "Lex Faurissonia, "which, in rather poor Latin, means "The Faurisson law. "It is a law of the 13th of July 1990.  What is interesting is that it was published in the Journal Officiel de la République Française on the 14th of July 1990, which is the Bastille Day, and you know that the Bastille Day is supposedly the day of Liberty. So, that 's it.

   

  Let me tell you that I have been sued myself in the name of other laws. I have been sued so many times that I cannot give you even an idea about how many times.  I have been sued before 1990. Before this specific law.  For instance, a law saying that racism is forbidden.  They decided that, by denying the existence of the genocide of the Jews and the existence of the so-called Nazi gas chambers, I was committing a racist crime.  "Denying "is their word. In fact, I am not denying whatsoever. I am affirming, after researches, that there is absolutely no proof of this crime, okay. Or they would claim that I was defaming the Jews.

   

  Q: Defaming the dead?

   

  A: The dead. That 's it.

   

  Q: Is there anyone trying to remove these undemocratic laws in your country?

   

  A: It 's impossible.

   

  Q: It 's impossible?

   

  A: It 's impossible. Let me tell you something rather sad,  but I expected it. You have some extremists in France of the Right. Their names, one name is very well known Jean-Marie LePen, and the other one is Bruno Mégret.  Okay. Both of those people, a few years ago, in their program had one point which was "we want the suppression of those laws against free expression. " A law of 1972 and this one of 1990. They do not mention that anymore. They are afraid to say "We want those laws to disappear. " They don 't DARE say it anymore.  It 's still in the printed program, the old one, but for the elections, they didn 't mention that anymore, because they know that if they say that they are going to be accused by the Jewish organizations of being on the side of the "deniers. " So they are shy. They are shy.

   

  Q: Okay, here 's maybe an odd question, I 'm not sure: It has been said that in France "Holocaust " revisionism is a field embraced mostly by Leftists and former Leftists? How is this?

   

  A: My answer is that at the beginning, yes, because Paul Rassinier himself had been a Communist and then a Socialist. People like Pierre Guillaume, Serge Thion,  Gabor Tamas Rittersporn (a Jew) and other people were coming from the Left or so, a Left that you could call sometimes Leftist sometimes only Libertarian. Some of those people were even Jews, like Jean-Gabriel Cohn- Bendit, the brother of the famous Danny the Red. He was a revisionist in '79, '80, but all of those people,  except Peirre Guillaume and Serge Thion, abandoned revisionism. Sometimes they recanted even. It 's a taboo,  you see. It 's very, very difficult. T fight for revisionism,  it 's possible for a time but to fight for years and years,  it 's very difficult. It 's a kind of slow suicide.

   

  Q: Are you at liberty to discuss relationship with former Situationists and their followers? A: I will say so now you see, Situationists are like those animals, how do you call those animals of, who disappeared from the surface?

   

  Q: Dinosaurs?

   

  A: Dinosaurs. Situationists are something like dinosaurs,  so I don 't know anymore, any Situationists. There are still some. I have a name, I don 't know if I can mention him so I am not going to mention him. He is rather important and we could say that he was something of a Situationist. Mind you, some people, even very important people, very important, confidentially, and accidentally,  told me that they were on my side but of course they asked me not to mention their names. But I must say that there are very few. There are some.

   

  Q: Do you have any famous last words to end the interview with?

   

  A: People very often ask me "why do you do that?" "Why do you keep on battling?" "Why do you want other people to join you and get in this battle?" And I say that, in fact, "I do not know. " (laughter) "I do not know why. "

   

  I know someone who in 1979, when he received me at the Kennedy airport in New York, he was of German extraction and this gentleman told me, "Oh, it is wonderful what you are doing for Germany. " And I say, "Oh sir,  I am not doing it for Germany. " And he said, , "So, why are you doing that?" And I say, "I do it the same way the bird sings. " You see, (laughter), I am now 73.  (laughter) The bird has, lost his plumage. Part of his plumage, at least. And he keeps singing, he doesn 't even know why. And the minute before he dies he keeps singing. That 's the only thing I could say.

   

  I would say also that during the war I was very much against the German people. It was even inhuman because I thought that the German people --although they behaved very correctly, I saw thousands of those soldiers, and they behaved very correctly --I thought that they had to be killed. When I heard that Hamburg was so heavily bombed I thought to myself, "three thousand tons of bombs, why not six million. . . " I mean ((laughter) not six million (laughter). You see, why. . .

   

  Q: Twice as much.

   

  A: Why not twice as much. And suddenly after the war I realized that in fact they were human beings. You can be a Nazi, a Communist, a Jew, a non-Jew, and you are still a human being.

   

  So at the age of, let 's say, 17, I was profoundly disgusted by the Nuremberg Trial. Profoundly. Now I am 73 and I am as much overwhelmed and as indignant as a young man of 17. I should not be like that. (laughter) At 73 it should have stopped. It has not stopped and I don 't think that it will stop until I die. I don 't think so.

   

  Q: Well good for you.  Thank you for the interview.

   

  A: Thank you.

   

  This interview will be available on CD (and maybe cassette) later in August 2002 through:

   

  http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html

   

  read some of Mr. Faurisson 's writing visit the following:

   

  http://www.zundelsite.org/faurisson

   

  In English:  http://www.ihr.org/books/faurisson/faurissontoc.html

   

  http://aaargh.vho.org/engl/FaurisArch/FaurisArch.html

   

  In French:  http://aaargh.vho.org/fran/archFaur/archFaur.html

   

  In German:  http://aaargh.vho.org/deut/FaurissonArchiv/index.html

   

   

• The Adventure of Revisionism

   

  The Adventure of Revisionism

   

  ROBERT FAURISSON

   

  Robert Faurisson, Europe's foremost Holocaust Revisionist scholar, is a frequent _Journal_ contributor. This essay was translated by IHR editor Theodore J. O'Keefe.

  With rare exceptions, a Revisionist researcher is not an intellectual closeted in his study. Even if he were to choose a hermit's life, society would soon see to the end of his isolation.

   

  To begin with, a Revisionist must be willing to travel wherever his research requires, and to carry out investigations on the spot. And because he'll receive no help from the authorities - on the contrary - the Revisionist must learn to outwit his adversaries and overcome a hundred obstacles to achieve his goals. Life itself becomes his teacher.

   

  He must establish and cultivate contacts with fellow Revisionists around the globe, for no researcher can isolate himself from the work of others. Speaking for myself, Revisionism has brought me to many lands, in particular the United States of America, Canada and Germany, as well as Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Poland, and a few other countries. (Historical Revisionism is also growing in Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Japan, Tunisia, South Africa, Iran and Peru.)

   

  In cultivating these contacts, one discovers the ways that different mentalities - Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Latin, Arab, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and atheist - confront one of the mightiest taboos in history: the Jewish "Holocaust." Revisionism, which lays bare the taboo, thus uncovers differences in outlook as well.

   

  It reveals, too, what individuals are made of and how institutions actually function. I like to watch the face of a man or a woman, an oldster or a teenager, as he or she trembles upon hearing, for the first time, the sacrilegious words of a Revisionist. With some, the face colors and the eyes light up: curiosity is aroused. Others pale; the person who believed in his own tolerance discovers his bigotry, and the one who had easily opened his heart quickly slams it shut.

   

  Confronted by Revisionism, institutions likewise show themselves for what they are: products of circumstantial arrangements on which time has conferred an aura of respectability. The judiciary, for instance, claims to defend justice (a virtue!) or to uphold the law (a necessity), and would have us believe that, as a group, judges care for truth. But, when a judge finds himself obliged to try a Revisionist, how odd to watch as he jettisons the scruples he and his colleagues claim to honor! When faced with a Revisionist, there exists for a judge neither faith, nor law, nor right. In confronting Revisionism, the judiciary shows just how rickety it is.

   

  As for the petty little world of journalism, the media demonstrates how it, more than anyone, is careful to traffic only in authorized ideas and wares; while at the same time it fosters, through its antics, the illusion of a free circulation of ideas and opinions - not unlike jesters in a tyrant's court.

   

  The Revisionist lives dangerously. Police, judges and journalists lurk in wait for him. He may end up in prison - or the hospital. He risks economic ruin for himself and his family. Little of that matters to him. He lives, he dreams, he imagines. He feels that he is free. It's not that he cherishes illusions about the impact of his findings. These frighten everyone; they are too much in contradiction to accepted knowledge. These findings strike at two great human mysteries: the general mystery of fear, and the specific mystery of the need for belief, belief in something, no matter what.

   

  One historian, after finishing a five-volume _History of Mankind_, was once asked: "After all is said and done, what is the chief motivation of human history?" After a long hesitation, he replied: "Fear." There is no question that fear is an overwhelming factor, and that it assumes in man, more than in beast, the most striking, and sometimes the most ludicrous, forms, no less than the most deceptive disguises. In most men, but certainly not in all, the mystery of fear combines with another mystery: that is, as already indicated, the need, the desire, or the will to believe for the sake of believing. For this there is a saying in English that we lack in French: "the will to believe." Celine said: "The fury to lie and TO BELIEVE spreads like the itch." ("La rage de mentir ET DE CROIRE s'attrape comme la gale.") Before him, La Fontaine noted: "Man is frozen to truths. He is on fire for lies." ("L'homme est de glace aux verites. Il est de feu pour les mensonges.")

   

  Revisionism can correct history, but it will correct nothing of human nature. On the other hand, the future will prove the Revisionists, as writers of history, were right. There is already too much evidence to show that the progress of Revisionism is inexorable. Revisionism is destined for a place in history as "the great intellectual adventure of the end of the century."

   

  [Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box 1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic. $50 per year, foreign.]

  From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 5 (Sept./Oct. 1993):

• An Assessment of the Garaudy-Abbe Pierre Affair

   

   

  An Assessment of the Garaudy/Abbe Pierre Affair

   

  (January-October 1996)

   

  by Robert Faurisson

  1 November 1996

   

  The Garaudy affair began in January 1996 and that of Abbe Pierre in April of the same year. The two episodes, taken together, occupied an important place in the media up until Abbe Pierre's retraction, announced on July 23. Their most positive consequence is contained in two articles by historian Jacques Baynac published on September 2 and 3 in Le Nouveau Quotidien (de Lausanne) [The New Daily, Lausanne, Switzerland].

   

  It is regrettable that Roger Garaudy and Abbe Pierre did not manifest greater courage. From the time when the media tempest got underway against them in France, they began to beat a hasty retreat. Their financial means and the various support which they had enjoyed over the years in foreign lands allowed them, for a time, to take their leave of France, one for the Arab countries and the other for Italy and Switzerland. We shall not be too severe with them about this. It is important to understand how violent these storms are; even the most resilient person would take fright; all the more men of their advanced age. Up until that time, both men had known harsh trials in their lives. They knew what hate was, particularly as they themselves had practised hate against their enemies. R. Garaudy had, in effect, long considered anti-Communists, and even anti-Stalinists, as sub-humans, while Abbe Pierre had, in the course of his political activity, given proof of a remarkable lack of charity towards his adversaries. Yet, regardless, life had ended up pampering these two men. Then suddenly, in 1996, the sky fell on their heads. And, plainly, they were in the fullest sense of the word brought down to earth.

   

   

  The First Edition of R. Garaudy's Book

   

  In December 1995, Pierre Guillaume, director of the review La Vieille Taupe [The Old Mole], published R. Garaudy's Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne [The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics]. In order to avoid the fulminations of the Fabius-Gayssot law (or Lex Faurissonia), he did this with the utmost caution. The book was sold off the market as a "confidential tract reserved for Friends of La Vieille Taupe." While the entire revisionist part of the book was put together through borrowing in large measure from my own texts, my name was carefully avoided; it appeared but one time (page 119), and then only as that of a professor who had been a victim of anti-revisionist repression, but without any indication why: neither a book nor an article by this professor was cited.

   

  The book contains roughly 230 pages. The religious and political considerations make up the greater part; they might possibly offend certain followers of the Jewish religion and most Zionists, yet the pages which unleashed the ire of Jewish organisations and the media, first in France and then in most of the western world, were the 75 or so pages of revisionist inspiration which constituted the heart of the work (pages 72-147). These touched upon "the myth of justice at Nuremberg," the "Final Solution," the "testimonies," the "trials," the "crime weapon" (which is to say, the Nazi gas chambers), and "the myth of the Holocaust." On the gas chambers, the author expressed his sincere doubts "and even [his] scepticism" regarding this, the very heart of the burning subject (page 135). These 75 pages were written hastily and composed of disparate elements. The presentation was rather desultory; oversights were rife. Notably in regard to David Irving, there were also errors. For example, the author should have known that D. Irving could not serve as a valid reference either on the "Holocaust" -- which D. Irving had not studied -- nor on The Diary of Anne Frank, since he had never analysed it in the least, being so lax as to take into consideration the rumour, founded on a gross misunderstanding, according to which the book had been written by a certain Meyer Levin!

   

  Nevertheless, despite all its shortcomings, the book by R. Garaudy could not help upsetting the Jewish organisations, which already had too great a tendency to see revisionists coming out of the woodwork, and knew in him a man whose political opinions -- he had been one of the most orthodox Stalinist apparatchiks -- could in no way be qualified as "Fascist." Furthermore, R. Garaudy had also been a Protestant, then a Catholic before becoming a Moslem during the 1980s. Under all of these labels, he had shown himself a steadfast opponent of any form of racism.

   

   

   

  The Second, Revised Edition

   

  Le Canard enchainé [The Shackled Duck, a satirical leftwing weekly] and Le Monde first brought their guns to bear in January 1996. Anti-racist organisations began lodging complaints. A good part of the French and international press thereafter echoed the noises of "the Garaudy affair."

   

  On 11 March, P. Guillaume, acting on behalf of R. Garaudy, endeavoured through his usual channels to obtain a printing -- which he had announced in the newsletter of La Vieille Taupe -- of an edition of Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne, this time for public release. For reasons of which I am uncertain, the printer refused to do the job. Then, R. Garaudy decided to publish his work via samisdat (i.e. via desktop publishing).

   

  On 3 April, P. Guillaume put out a copy of this samisdat for "legal sale." Endowed with a foreword as well as an annex containing, in particular, a list of works by the same author improperly called a "bibliography," the original text had been reworked in such a manner as to mitigate its revisionist character. Yet nothing alerted the reader that this was a revised edition. Some passages had been cut out, others added, still others rewritten. On pages 119-120 of the first edition, nine paragraphs had been devoted to the policy of silence and the persecution endured by the leading revisionists; and it was there, as I said earlier, that my name appeared for a single instance with those of Arthur Butz and Wilhelm Staeglich; on pages 134-135 of the second edition, these nine paragraphs disappeared to make room for a tale of the woes, in truth quite minor, experienced by the author himself, initially in 1982-1983 for taking a position in favour of the Palestinians and then, at the beginning of 1996, for the publication of Les Mythes fondateurs... issued privately by La Vieille Taupe. The names of Butz, Staeglich and Faurisson had totally disappeared from the book. As for Serge Thion, his did not appear either in the first or the second edition, something which, for a revisionist work published by La Vieille Taupe, constituted an anomaly.

   

  In the first edition, R. Garaudy opted for the spelling "mediat(s)," with a "t" (a rallying sign of revisionist friends of La Vieille Taupe, as decreed by P. Guillaume); in the second edition, he re-established the spelling demanded by proper usage: "media(s)" [media], without the "t." Obviously, he did not want to reveal that he was on good terms with the revisionist editor.

   

   

   

  Enter Abbe Pierre

   

  On 15 April, Abbe Pierre wrote a long letter of support to his friend Garaudy ("Dearest Roger"). At first, only extracts appeared here and there, and the public would have to wait till the month of June to know the full contents (see below, Droit de réponse [Right of Reply] by R. Garaudy).

   

  The following passages from this letter seem to me to be particularly interesting:

   

   

   

  "Regarding your new book, it is impossible for me to speak about it with all the attention demanded not only by its fundamental subject, but also by the astonishing and strikingly scrupulous erudition, on which, as I have been able to note in perusing it, each premise is based. Several people around me, whose responsibilities and competence are broad and who have read it in its entirety, have been telling me of the importance of what they have gleaned from it. Everything should be done, and I shall see to it, so that in the near future true historians, with the same passion for truth as yourself, agree to debate it with you. The insults against you which I have happened to hear of are shameful.

   

  We are hearing talk of the Pope's intention in the year 2000 (will it be the same Pope?) of confessing the historical trespasses [against the Jews] which accompanied the zeal of the Christian missionaries. May [the Pope, in his future declaration] not underestimate the role played in anti-Semitism by the words "deicidal people," something which is senseless because it was for everyone, for all humans that Jesus offered himself up in ransom!

   

  [...] retain from these lines [...] the force and fidelity of my affectionate esteem and of my respect for the enormous work of your new book. To confuse it with what is called "revisionism" is an imposture and [a] veritable slander by the ignorant.

   

   

   

  It is obvious from this letter that Abbe Pierre has derived a knowledge of his friend's book only by "perusing it" and that he distinguishes himself from those "who have read it in its entirety", which is his right. We have, in effect, the right to pass judgement on a book after having merely looked it over, if we first acknowledge not having read the book in full. But the abbot appears naive or blind when he speaks of it as an "enormous work" and an undertaking totally foreign to "revisionism"; it is possible that, for him, the revisionists are nothing but a species of Nazi who deny -- who knows? -- the existence of the concentration camps. In reality the heart of the work is exclusively of revisionist inspiration.

   

  The passage devoted to a possible declaration by the Pope is significant. It proves that Abbe Pierre is far from being anti-Jewish and that one can in no way accuse him -- as some would do so often afterwards -- of being a sort of retrograde Catholic who probably had not been able to overcome the effects of teachings received in his youth which were infused with religious anti-Judaism.

   

   

   

  Abbe Pierre Centre-Stage

   

  On 2 February the newspaper La Croix [The Cross] published an article written by Michel Crépu entitled: "Terminal Garaudy" [The End of Garaudy]. Abbe Pierre was consequently incensed by this attack perpetrated against his dear friend Garaudy.

   

  At a press conference on April 18, R. Garaudy revealed, in the company of his lawyer, Mr Jacques Verges, the names of several well-known persons from whom he had obtained support, among whom figured Father Michel Lelong, the Swiss essayist Jean Ziegler, as well as Abbe Pierre. In a style all his own, Nicolas Weill reported this information in the Monde of 20 April (which appeared in Paris in the afternoon of 19 April).

   

  Immediately, I sent to Le Monde, to Liberation, and to Agence France-Presse, by fax dated 19 April, the following:

   

  PRESS RELEASE

   

  I take note in Le Monde dated 20 April of the article by Nicolas Weill entitled "L'abbé Pierre soutient les aberrations negationnistes de Roger Garaudy" [Abbe Pierre Upholds the Negationist Aberrations of Roger Garaudy]. Assuming that N. Weill is telling the truth, here are my reactions to the contents of this article:

   

  1 -- I am delighted at the fact that so many people have, for some months now, been rushing to the aid of the revisionist victory;

   

  2 -- I deplore that it has taken until 1996 for these people to begin to perceive what, since 1979, should have been, for all the world, of blinding clarity: that the alleged Jewish genocide perpetrated, notably, with the help of the alleged Nazi gas chambers, is but a historic lie. I recall that I underscored the technically impossible character of these alleged chemical slaughterhouses; yet, in Le Monde of 21 February 1979, 34 French historians came together to sign a joint declaration which was tantamount to an act of surrender. They thus pitifully replied to me: "It is not necessary to ask oneself how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible, since it happened";

   

  3 -- I anticipate that, as usual, the persons put in question by N. Weill's article will try to make out that they did not really say what they said nor really write what they wrote; I anticipate that these persons will instead give themselves over to profusions of anti-Nazism (what courage!);

   

  4 -- I find that these persons continue to beat about the bush when it comes to this subject. It is necessary to call a spade a spade: this genocide and these gas chambers are an imposture. I will add that, if I were Jewish, I would be ashamed at the thought that, for half a century, so many Jews had propagated or allowed to be propagated such an imposture, underwritten by the major media the world over.

   

  R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  On the following day and over the subsequent days as well, the five persons in question (R. Garaudy, Abbe Pierre, Jacques Verges, Father Lelong and J. Ziegler) made a hurried retreat. R. Garaudy denounced "the absolute horror of Nazism" and specified that one should not speak of the "Holocaust" because that would mean that God was responsible for the massacre of the Jews while that was something for which only the Nazis were responsible; besides, didn't the latter cause 50 million deaths? Abbe Pierre said that the number of deaths at Auschwitz had been exaggerated, since the figure of four million had been officially replaced by that of one million (the Auschwitz State Museum opted for a figure of 1,500,000), but he denounced "the negationisms and revisionisms as intellectual and moral deceptions that must be fought at all costs." J. Verges, in regard to R. Garaudy's book, declared: "To qualify this book as negationist is an imposture." Father Lelong distanced himself in turn. J. Ziegler declared that "Revisionism is an unspeakable load of crap".

   

  Abbe Pierre, all the while multiplying his acts of contrition and protestations of good will, held to propositions which irritated the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), presided over by Pierre Aidenbaum. He retained his trust in his friend R. Garaudy and wished for a colloquium bringing together persons of different opinions. He said that he was sure that, if his friend were shown proof that he was mistaken, the latter would acknowledge his error.

   

   

   

  Abbe Pierre's Fainthearted Resistance

   

  On 27 April, the weekly Le Point published a well-informed article on Revisionism and the entire affair. It cited an extract of my 19 April press release. The article ended with a sentence uttered by Abbe Pierre which had appeared in La Croix: "No longer to be able to speak a word about Jewish affairs across the millennia without being called an anti-Semite is intolerable." France's Chief Rabbi, Joseph Sitruk, suggested having a debate on the Shoah. Henri Roques and I immediately let him know publicly of our willingness to participate. The next day, the Chief Rabbi retracted his suggestion.

   

  On 29 April, Liberation published an article entitled: "L'Abbe Pierre refuse de condamner les theses negationnistes de Garaudy" [Abbe Pierre refuses to condemn Garaudy's negationist theses]. This nearly gave the old man a fit. He said of the LICRA and other groups: "They accept absolutely no dialogue, contrary to Garaudy." Someone asked him: "Aren't you shocked that a negationist like Faurisson has rejoiced over your support for Garaudy? " To which he replied: "You are the first to tell me. Of course this bothers me. [Faurisson] represents everything opposed to what I stand for, to my life." The abbot's allusion, in all likelihood, was as much to my atheism as to my revisionism. He said that at the Brussels airport he had seen, for the first time in a long while, people coming spontaneously to meet and to thank him; these people told him: "Thank you for having the courage to challenge a taboo." He added that he was "convinced that there was a sort of 'ahh!': the taboo is lifted! People will no longer let themselves be called anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic for saying that a Jew is singing out of tune!" He added: "Once the storm has passed, many average Frenchmen will say: 'He has helped us see more clearly'."

   

   

   

  The Expanded Offensive Against Abbe Pierre

   

  At first, the Catholic hierarchy declared that it did not wish to become involved in the controversy. Then, the general synod of French bishops deplored the attitude of Abbe Pierre and reaffirmed that the extermination of the Jews was an uncontestable fact; it denounced the scandal constituted by any questioning of the Shoah.

   

  R. Garaudy, in "a state of distress," implored Abbe Pierre, over the course of many telephone calls, to come to his aid.

   

  On 1 May, P. Guillaume telephoned me to make an appeal for help: R. Garaudy urgently needed a document. I answered that his client had only to ask me for the item himself. "He won't do it," P. Guillaume told me twice. I told him of my amazement at being treated in such a way and at not even having received a copy of Les Mythes fondateurs. I observed that, as he knew, this book was merely a compilation of my own writings, as concerned its revisionist side. "That's obvious," he told me. Later, on 9 May, during a broadcast on Radio Courtoisie, to a female listener who had remarked: "The relation between Faurisson and Garaudy is the relation between the robbed and the robber," he replied: "Well... everyone knows that!"

   

  On 2 May, Jean-Francois Kahn chose as title for his column in L'Evenement du Jeudi: "Comment, avec l'abbé Pierre, on sert la soupe a Le Pen et a Faurisson" [Grist to the Mill of Le Pen and Faurisson, thanks to Abbe Pierre]. The same day, the daily press announced that the LICRA had just expelled Abbe Pierre from its committee of honour.

   

  On 9 May, Jean-Luc Allouche stated in Liberation that R. Garaudy, Abbe Pierre and Faurisson "have only one aim: for ever and always to attack the legitimacy of the state of Israel." He cited an extract from my introduction, dated August 1989, to the Second Leuchter Report:

   

  "The promoters of the Holocaust, for the foreseeable future, will keep their money, their power, their capacity to produce films, to stage ceremonies, to build museums, but those films and ceremonies and museums will be more and more devoid of meaning. They will find more and more ways of oppressing the revisionists through physical attacks, press campaigns, the passing of special laws, and even murder. Fifty years after the war they will continue to prosecute all those whom they call "war criminals" in show trials. The revisionists will reply to them with historical and forensic studies, scholarly and technical books. Those books and those studies will be our stones, in this our intellectual Intifada."

   

  On 9 May, the American Joseph Sobran wrote: "If [Abbe Pierre] had denied the divinity of Christ, the press would be hailing him for his fierce independence of mind" (The Wanderer).

   

  On the 9th and 16th of May, in the weekly National Hebdo, the cartoonist Konk published two drawings which well mirrored the present situation; one depicted the guardians of official truth looking through binoculars at an encasement of concrete within which they believed that they had once and for all buried revisionism, but the block was showing cracks: it now threatened to explode and contaminate the entire world; the other showed cemetery attendants passing in front of three headstones: those of Faurisson, Garaudy, and Abbe Pierre, while whispering one to the other: "This is the buried-alive section." The agony of the censors is exactly this: despite formidable press campaigns, despite trials and physical violence, historical revisionism persists and is even gathering momentum. The conscience of the so-called elite is beginning to have doubts regarding the usefulness of the Fabius-Gayssot law, a "veritable gift for the revisionists" (sic).

   

  On 13 May, the Emmaus France and Emmaus International movements published in the national dailies, at great expense, an announcement whereby "the Emmaus movement" gave notice that "any endorsement, wherever it comes from, given to revisionist theses, is intolerable," deploring that "the man of total and noble combat" had been led "astray from the terrain that is his and ours."

   

   

   

  R. Garaudy Looks for Support

   

  R. Garaudy made it known that he had friends who were rabbis and that one of them, Rabbi Elmer Berger, 88 years old and living in Florida, "has written a text which will be a very good preface for my book once it is published in the United States" (Tribune Juive, [Jewish Tribune] 16 May). He sought refuge, as well, among his Arab friends.

   

  Francois Brigneau penned an article in National Hebdo, dated 16 May, on "Le Samiszdat de Garaudy" [Garaudy's Samisdat] where he sketched a picture of the incessant persecution suffered by writers in France afflicted with the stigma of "the extreme right." In passing, he noted:

   

  "I shall not go into the substance of the book. Mr Garaudy is not of our parish. Certain aspects of his work are unpleasant. I am thinking of the use which is made of discoveries achieved by Professor Faurisson (in particular on the story of Anne Frank), of his investigative efforts and of the entirety of his work for which he has paid so dearly, while Garaudy consecrates (in the first edition of his book) a mere three lines to him in passing... It is a bit much."

   

  On 23 May, Liberation gave its opinion of an editorial in Al-Ahram, a prestigious paper considered as the unofficial voice of the Egyptian government. This paper claimed to be proud of having welcomed R. Garaudy, author of a book under assault in France, to its columns, and underscored that "a media campaign has prohibited the latter from openly expressing his point of view." In its leader, it attacked Liberation for practising "methods of Zionist propaganda" in regard to R. Garaudy while at the same time defending the right of Salman Rushdie to attack Islam.

   

  On 31 May, R. Garaudy sent his friends a newsletter which began: "Dear friends, I thank you for the confidence you have shown me with respect to my book Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne in which you have found no trace of 'negationism.' Those who have branded me with this barbaric label either have not read my book or else have done so with deliberate ill will."

   

  The same day, Le Figaro published extracts of an interview with R. Garaudy. If journalist Elie Maréchal is to be believed here is one of the questions and its reply: "Why did you publish the first edition of your book through La Vieille Taupe (publisher of R. Faurisson) [...]? " "By necessity. But I did not know the editor. Otherwise I would never have associated myself with him." Yet, the habits of the major press establishments being what we know them to be, one may doubt whether R. Garaudy really went so far in his repudiation.

   

  On 29 May, the press announced: "Abbe Pierre has definitively left France for an Italian monastery." R. Garaudy would later go to see Abbe Pierre at the monastery of Praglia. He stated to the press that the latter had finally found the time to read his book: "This reading has comforted [Abbe Pierre]. He notes that no article appearing in the press has refuted my theses."

   

  Yet the affair was suddenly to worsen.

   

  Abbe Pierre declared to theCorriere della Serra (according to Le Figaro, 1-2 June): "The Church of France has [...] intervened so as to silence me through the pressure of the press, motivated by an international Zionist lobby." This choice of words provoked an uproar around the world.

   

  In the month of June, journalists Michel-Antoine Burnier and Cécile Romane published a tract, Le Secret de l'abbe Pierre [Abbe Pierre's Secret], issued by Mille et Une Nuits, wherein they revealed that, nearly three years earlier, on 27 March 1993, they had had a meeting with Abbe Pierre at his place of residence, in the company of the Jews Bernard Kouchner and Marek Halter. It was a matter of bringing together and fitting into shape several dialogues between Abbe Pierre and his friend B. Kouchner for the book Dieu et Les Hommes [God and Men] (Laffont, 1993). Yet Abbe Pierre had already made some most severe pronouncements before these two men on certain books of the Old Testament and on Zionism, comments which the two journalists had suppressed in their book. Censors, and proud of it, they now declared that at the time they had done their job as newspapermen in a responsible manner, something which now allowed them to give a morality lesson to Abbe Pierre and the revisionists.

   

   

   

  R. Garaudy Seeks Refuge in One-upmanship

   

  There was another tract which appeared in the month of June: Droit de Réponse/Réponse au lynchage mediatique de l'abbe Pierre et de Roger Garaudy [Right of Reply/Response to the Media Lynching of Abbe Pierre and Roger Garaudy] (samiszdat R. Garaudy). R. Garaudy, pressing his point on what he believed, what he contested, and what he refused to believe, said that his "revisionism" was simply akin to that of orthodox historians like Francois Bedarida. As for the gas chambers, he reminded the reader that no tribunal had ever sought to examine the crime weapon, that nevertheless there was the Leuchter Report as well as "the counter-expertises of Krakow and Vienna" and that he "was astounded that these reports had not been the subject of publication and open debate." He added: "Then what is it that I deny? What I deny is the right which the Zionists claim for themselves to minimise Hitler's crimes by reducing them to the indisputable persecution of the Jews. His expansionist desires caused 50 million deaths, of which 16 million Russian or Polish Slavs, as Pope John-Paul II recalled in Miami." As one can see, R. Garaudy practises in anti-Nazism a one-upmanship identical to that in which barrister J. Verges so delighted during the trial of Klaus Barbie in Lyon, in 1987; J. Verges there attacked France which, as he put it, dared allow itself to condemn the racism of K. Barbie while having itself practised a criminal racism against its black, yellow, and Arab colonial peoples.

   

  In annexes of his tract, R. Garaudy did not shy at reproducing "Le temoignage d'un pasteur protestant" [The Testimony of a Protestant Minister] (pp. 35-36), and "Le cri d'un deporte" [The Cry of A Deportee] (pp. 35-36). From Pastor Roger Parmentier, he transcribed the following sentence, without furnishing the least reservation or correction: "One calls 'negationists' the Nazis of today who wish to revise history in order to justify the Nazis of yesterday." And the pastor added: "I will never be led to believe (after reading statements by Abbe Pierre and the book by R. Garaudy) that these brothers have converted to Nazism." As for the "deportee", he wrote in the same spirit of overstatement as R. Garaudy: "Let the journalists now know at least one thing: that the great majority of deportees in the Nazi camps were not Jews, even though all the media have endorsed the thesis that only the Jews were deported and exterminated." And the deportee cited wild figures for the murder of Soviet soldiers, Gypsies, and Poles who were "exterminated."

   

  An Islamic publication took up the defence of R. Garaudy, who had meanwhile gone to find his Moslem friends abroad; it wrote: "Garaudy never calls into question the existence of the gas chambers; he has never attempted to falsify or minimise the genocide of the Jews during the Second World War. The Zionists are presenting here a false case against Garaudy, for the only thing the author contests is the number of Jews exterminated" (Le Message de l 'Islam, June 1996, page 21).

   

  P. Guillaume and R. Garaudy underwent committal proceedings relative to the first edition of Les Mythes fondateurs... Moreover, R. Garaudy underwent a similar judicial inquiry for the second edition of Les Mythes fondateurs... as well as for his Droit de réponse.

   

   

   

  The Ultra-Left In Turmoil

   

  In a small collective work published in June by the Libertarians (Libertaires et "Ultra-gauche" contre le negationnisme [Libertarians and the "Ultra-Left" Against Negationism], Editions Reflex, June 1996), confused remarks were made about -- or rather against -- those Libertarians and leftists who had, at some point in their lives, manifested sympathy for revisionism. The foreword was signed by Gilles Perrault who, with the utmost seriousness, wrote that "the negationists have received, in the Gayssot law, an invaluable present" (page 8); he denounced "the revisionist scum" (page 9). In the body of the work, P. Guillaume was subjected to being called a "liar," a "pervert," and a "bastard" (page 57), and the reader's attention was turned to the trials "which, ironically, assure the revisionists of a veritable and unexpected publicity windfall" (page 60). It should be mentioned that he also denounced "doubtful witnesses like Elie Wiesel" and that the LICRA (International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism) was accused of "misappropriation of cadavers" to the profit of Israel (page 47); he equally took issue with "the cheap novel-style concentration camp literature of Bernadac, Steiner, Gray and company which appeals to the basest of instincts in order to sell [and] has done much harm to historical research" (page 66). Disorder had thus been sown among the ranks of the Left and Ultra-Left. Didier Daeninckx, an author of detective novels, raised the banner for the great anti-revisionist purge (with allusion to the purge of "Fascists" beginning in l944) among the ranks of the Leftist intellectuals. The academic Philippe Videlier, with his strong penchant for denunciation, came back into service.

   

   

  Abbe Pierre Launches his Appeal of June 18th

   

  A poll carried out by Louis Harris for the Lyon magazine Golias on 7 and 8 June revealed that Abbe Pierre, as Liberation of 11 June had pointed out, "retained the respect of Catholics." R. Garaudy's book was selling well despite problems with its distribution. Nevertheless, in Switzerland, the book was seized and impounded from a bookseller in Montreux, Aldo Ferraglia, on orders from a female examining magistrate in Lausanne by the name of Valerie Barth. On the same occasion, the latter pushed her zeal to the point of also seizing two of my own books, which had been published in l982 and 1983 and had never been the subject of any legal proceedings, either in France or abroad; she reserved the same treatment for the book by Francois Brigneau: Mais qui est donc le professeur Faurisson? [Just Who Is Professor Faurisson, Anyway? ]; she even took the initiative of sending detectives to some bookshops so as to warn them against the sale of any revisionist writings. It just so happened that Abbe Pierre had recently left Italy for Switzerland. From "Zermatt, 18 June," he faxed to a reporter for Le Monde a 12-page text entitled: "Vivre la verite" [Living the Truth].

   

  This newspaper had exceeded itself in articles of the most venomous kind. Abbe Pierre, in principle, had the right to respond in its columns. Readers of Le Monde were able to verify, however, that day after day their paper failed to publish anything from the accused. A Le Monde journalist had in fact, with approval from his superiors, dangled before the abbot the possibility of publishing a text. The abbot set himself to work. In three days he composed the 12 typed pages of which, true to its custom of virtuous censorship, the paper published not a line. In this text, the abbot assured Le Monde that his friend Garaudy, during "50 years of dialogue [...] had never ceased to decry the horror of the crimes scientifically orchestrated by the Nazis, above all against the Jews." He said that R. Garaudy was now experiencing "the cruellest ordeal of [his] long life"; he spoke of a "veritable lynching, surprisingly uniform and simultaneous, as if on command (from whom? ) by all the media"; he said: "Without a doubt, I have never had so much trouble, and never been so slandered, insulted, or been accused of antisemitism." He gave account of his good relations with Shimon Peres and their mutual friend, Andre Chouraqui. He professed his love for the Jews whom he considered as a sort of elite, as "leaven," as he put it, while he denounced "Zionist intoxication." He did not even touch upon the contents of the book by R. Garaudy. He asserted: "As for me, at the monastery, I was able to read and annotate the incriminated book in peace. Having been able to find nothing blameworthy, and knowing myself to be scarcely knowledgeable on the subject, I asked the rectors of two of the largest Catholic universities in Europe to obligingly submit the book, translated into their language, to three scholars highly specialised in history, theology, and biblical science. Their advice would mean more to me than that of the LICRA, or that of several excellent friends who have described themselves as being 'astounded by the book'." Abbe Pierre equally made mention of the Gayssot law.

   

  Professor Albert Jacquard, a darling of the caviar-Left, sent Le Monde a letter of support for Abbe Pierre, but the paper refused its publication.

   

  Monseigneur Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris and himself of Jewish origin, stated to the weekly Tribune Juive that he had "experienced this controversy as an immense waste"; he addressed a sort of public reprimand to Abbe Pierre and disengaged the Church's responsibility. Later, on the 26th of September, during an "after dinner debate on the Shoah" at the Sorbonne, he would declare: "Negationism is the very type of lie of a man who kills his brother to flee the truth." Presently his friend Elie Wiesel would chime in: "The negationists perhaps have no soul."

   

   

  The Anti-revisionist Offensive

   

  In its June 26th issue, Le Monde announced that "anonymous hands these past evenings have put up posters along the Paris ring road asking: 'And if Abbe Pierre were right?' "

   

  On 27 June, L'Evenement du jeudi itself put up posters throughout France reproducing its cover with the title: "Holocaust/The Revisionist Victory." Obviously, the magazine deplored what it called "the revisionist victory". This was an exaggeration, for terror reigned more than ever, as the revisionists saw themselves deprived of every means of publicly expressing their arguments and of responding to the innumerable attacks of which they were the targets; as for Abbe Pierre and R. Garaudy, they sought more than ever to distance themselves from these "revisionists," whom they described, or allowed to be described, as Nazi stooges.

   

  On the same day that L'Evenement du jeudi sported its new cover, the high court of Bordeaux sentenced local bookseller Jean-Luc Lundi, father of 11 children, to one month's imprisonment (suspended) and a fine of 5,000 francs, combined with five years' probation, for exposition and sale of revisionist books. The judges ordered, besides, the destruction of the books seized.

   

  On 16 July, Georges Piscoci-Danesco, a political refugee from Romania who runs the modest Librairie du Savoir (5, rue Malebranche, 75005 Paris) in the Latin Quarter, at which revisionist works, notably R. Garaudy's, can be bought, was attacked and injured by a Betar commando, and his shop ransacked: 2,000 volumes (some quite rare) were damaged to the point of being unsaleable; the damage -- against which his insurance company would not reimburse a penny -- was estimated at 250,000 francs. The Betar enjoys the protection of the Ministry of the Interior and, as usual, the Police have done nothing to find the criminals. Over the past 15 years, Jewish militants have, with similar impunity, committed more than 50 criminal acts, at times inflicting severe harm, while not a single "anti-Semite" has touched a hair of a single Jew (see "Jewish Militants: Fifteen Years, and More, of Terrorism in France," The Journal of Historical Review, March/April 1996, pp.2-13).

   

   

   

  Abbe Pierre's Retraction

   

  On 23 July, La Croix published two texts by Abbe Pierre, dated 22 July.

   

  The first was a letter addressed to R. Garaudy. Abbe Pierre reminded his friend of the "state of distress" in which the latter found himself in April: "Dear Roger, surely you recall the state of distress you were in this past April, while, in a great number of telephone calls, you were appealing to me for assistance." He told him that at the time he personally knew nothing of "revisionism" and "negationism." He therefore did not at all suspect the "mad unleashing of emotion throughout the media" that was to befall the two of them. He told him that, for his part, he must "cease all participation in this cruel debate." He retained complete confidence in his sincerity but, "in accordance with the terms of the enclosed communiqué, my absolute and definitive decision is that, from this day forward, my name shall no longer in any way be tied to yours in regard to this book."

   

  The communiqué addressed to La Croix was the following:

   

   

   

  "Anxious to Live the Truth, free of any duress, seeing my words relating to the works of Roger Garaudy, especially the book Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne, exploited by currents that play dangerously with anti-Semitic perils, which I have fought against and which I shall always fight against, I have decided to retract my words, referring the matter entirely to the opinions of the Church experts; and, asking pardon of those whom I may have offended, I wish to leave it to God to be sole judge of the rectitude of everyone's intentions."

   

   

   

  He thus retracted his words. He confessed his sins. He begged the world's pardon and went to the point of describing himself as being "free of any duress". This was what he called, using capital letters, being "Anxious to Live the Truth." Later, he would say to Professor Léon Schwartzenberg: "I ask your pardon" (Le Figaro, 22 August). Later still, he would choose a means typical of the media to try to obtain the pardon of the Jews and a return to grace with the press. In the issue of Faits & Documents [Facts and Documents] of 15 October, Emmanuel Ratier wrote on this subject: "Abbe Pierre has truly made his techouva (Jewish penitence) regarding his support for Roger Garaudy. In association with Planet Generation Global Move, an "engaged and humanitarian" musical group, Abbe Pierre is issuing a CD with four titles: Le Grand Pardon, with pretensions of being "music for a planetary conscience against all nationalisms," also including No Escape (Abbe Pierre/Dee Nasty, father of French hip-hop) 2 Zion (King/Maja Sutra) and Kai in ze sky (King)". In its issue of 31 October through 6 November, Le Nouvel Observateur covered the story in an article entitled "Le rap du repentir" [The Rap of Repentance], wherein the magazine specified that this CD project had been conceived by the association "Les Anges pressés" [The Hurried Angels] and that it "purports to be a hip-hop clarification of the Garaudy Affair."

   

  All the same, the Jewish maximalists were declaring themselves to be wholly dissatisfied; Abbe Pierre's retraction did not convince them. The "confidence" which he held in the sincerity of his friend Garaudy left the Conseil representatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF, Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France) and the LICRA (International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism) unsettled.

   

   

   

  The Affair's Side Issues

   

  The Garaudy/Abbe Pierre affair has created the usual witch-hunt climate maintained by the media in general and the newspaper Le Monde in particular. Over the past several months, all sorts of other "affairs" of the same kind have followed on the heals of one another in France, in which the victims have been suspected of having committed the mortal sin of revisionism. Let us cite, by way of example, the case of Olivier Pernet, Professor of Philosophy in Lyon, that of Marc Sautet, a promoter of philosophy cafés, that of Raymond Boudon and Bernard Bourgeois, members of the French Society of Philosophy, that of Noelle Schulman, teacher of physical chemistry at a college in the Yvelines, district, that of the female Olympic synchronised swimmers preparing a presentation intended to evoke images of the "Holocaust" for the Games in Atlanta, and that of the Corsican weekly U Ribombu, organ of a local autonomist movement, which took sides with R. Garaudy and Abbe Pierre. Just as we have seen above, the extreme Left and Libertarian Left were seized by a frenzy of mutual attacks and self-accusations.

   

  The Fabius-Gayssot law was again questioned, save by the Communist "hard-liners" Jean-Claude Gayssot and Charles Lederman. A bevy of politicians came onto the scene, mostly anxious to insult the revisionists who were deprived, as usual, of the right to respond to the enveloping wave of attacks, calumnies, and defamation. Spokesmen for the Jewish community once again bellowed their tirades against the resurgence of the horrid beast; they expressed their anger, a sentiment in which, apparently, they enjoy living.

   

   

   

  A Positive Consequence: The Admission of Jacques Baynac

   

  Jacques Baynac, 57 years of age, is an orthodox historian, with leanings to the Left. He is the author of Ravachol et ses compagnons [Ravachol and His Companions] 1976, Mai retrouve [May (1968) Revisited] 1978, Les Socialistes révolutionnaires russes (1881-1917) [The Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries (1881-1917)] 1979, and La Révolution gorbatchévienne [The Gorbachev Revolution] 1988. A confirmed anti-revisionist from the outset, he has collaborated with historian Nadine Fresco in the columns of Le Monde, particularly to denounce P. Guillaume and me. I recall a heated exchange of words with him in Paris in October 1980.

   

  Nevertheless, on 2 and 3 September, Le Nouveau Quotidien (de Lausanne) published a lengthy and well-informed study on revisionism in the light -- if one can call it that -- of the Garaudy/Abbe Pierre affair. J. Baynac confirmed that the revisionists, whom he called "negationists," had plenty of reason to rejoice over this scandal which had "changed the atmosphere in their favour." He noted that, as for the adversaries of the revisionists, "disarray has given over to consternation," that Pierre Vidal-Naquet "is aggrieved," that Bernard-Henri Levy "is beside himself," that Pierre-André Taguieff "is frightened," and that, since the beginning of "the Faurisson affair" in 1978-1979, historians had preferred to opt out: they "have scattered." He reproached these historians with having put their faith in Jean-Claude Pressac, a suburban chemist and "amateur historian." He considered that, in order to prove the existence of the Nazi gas chambers, they had depended too heavily on witnesses, something which was "ascientific." As for scientific proof, he began by recalling the statement by Jewish-American historian Arno Mayer in 1988: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." Then, going even further, he said that it was necessary to have the frankness to recognise that on the matter of documents, traces or other material evidence proving the existence of the said gas chambers, there was quite simply... nothing! To conclude, he believed that historians should henceforth oblige themselves to explore another path: since it was decidedly impossible to prove that these gas chambers had existed, J. Baynac suggested that the historians should seek to prove the impossibility of their not having existed!

   

  For those knowledgeable on the subject, this stance was not really new. For several years, orthodox historians had made analogous comments or else behaved as if they were seeking to distance themselves from those cumbersome gas chambers. But it was probably the first time that an orthodox historian had thus made such a public and open acknowledgement (for more details, see my "An Orthodox Historian Finally Admits that there Is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers," 2 September and 3 September 1996).

   

   

   

  A Hard Lesson, Coupled with Progress

   

  Two octogenarians, who believed that they knew about life and men, discovered suddenly with the surprise of children that their past existence had actually been, on the whole, rather easy. Both of them, over the space of a few days, had had to withstand an exceptional trial: that which Jewish organisations inflict as a matter of course on individuals who have the misfortune of provoking their wrath. There is in this, on the part of these organisations, neither plot nor conspiracy, but something in the order of ancestral reflex. The media, which are devoted to them and would have to pay dearly were they to do anything contrary to their wishes, know how to mobilise against the "anti-Semites," which is to say against persons who, with some exceptions, do not hate the Jews but are hated by them. Old Testament-inspired hate is one of the most terrible that exist: restless, feverish, frantic, unbridled, it suffocates its victims by the suddenness and the duration of its violence. It is incurable because those who suffer from it cannot allow themselves to uncover the real motive and thereby to relieve, at least in part, their fury. For example, a quarrel had been carried on for months with R. Garaudy over his estimation "minimising" the number of Jews who died during the Second World War. But it was only for show. The true motive lay elsewhere; it was in the sacrilegious act of calling the gas chambers into doubt. Moreover, revealing this doubt ran the risk of bringing it on, or increasing it, among the general public. Hence the need to focus on something else.

   

  On 27 April I wrote:

   

   

   

  "I have noted the timidity, if not to say near-silence, of journalists on the subject of the gas chambers. Every one of them should have, on the spot, denounced Garaudy's profound scepticism on the matter. But such is precisely the taboo's characteristic: those whose mission it is to preserve it dare not even reveal that it has been profaned. Garaudy had penetrated into the holiest of holies and discovered that the tabernacle, reputed to contain the magic gas chamber, was empty. Mum's the word!"

   

   

   

  This observation has remained valid throughout the months that have followed.

   

  As concerns Abbe Pierre, it has been the same old tricks. There have been those who rail against his supposed anti-Semitism and against his stubbornness in supporting an old friend who has gone astray; in reality, his crime has been to call for... a debate, and to call for it with insistence and artlessness. The behaviour of this old man has thoroughly revealed to the general public, first of all, that there has been no debate; furthermore, it has placed the historians, the journalists, and the heads of Jewish organisations in the most uncomfortable of positions: that of having to concoct shabby pretexts for dismissing a debate the prospect of which clearly scares them like the plague.

   

  R. Garaudy and Abbe Pierre both have big opinions of themselves; their writings and their words exude false humility; they speak a little too much of the heart, about their heart; they readily proclaim themselves to be "smitten with the absolute," which is quite much, and state that they are animated "by the same passion for truthfulness," which is rather presumptuous. In the event, it so happens that they have seriously abused the simple truth.

   

  The sudden trial that they have had to endure towards life's end should have led them to show greater modesty. As one says in everyday language, they "snapped." R. Garaudy has had the merit of continuing his fight but he can no longer call it a fight for the whole truth since, through fear and opportunism, he has proceeded, as circumstance has required, either greatly to curtail or totally to abandon the fight for historical truth on what in his book he called the "myth of the Holocaust." As for Abbe Pierre, he has ended up abandoning all dignity. Personally, I cannot bear them any grudge because I have paid to know what it costs to confront the forces of hatred, of lies or of foolishness within the limited scope of historical research. But I regret that the Garaudy/Abbe Pierre affair has, in the final analysis, taken this course. I regret it for the two men in question and for the French revisionists, although, for revisionism itself, this affair has, despite everything, marked a new advance on the world scene regarding the search for historical truth.

   

  It is in this way that, for the first time since 1945, an orthodox historian, J. Baynac, has found himself forced to admit that there is no proof for the existence of the alleged Nazi gas chambers.

   

   

   

  Bibliography

   

  -- Roger GARAUDY, Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne [The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics], released by special issue, off the market, by the periodical La Vieille Taupe [The Old Mole], Number 2, December 1995, 240 pages.

  -- Roger GARAUDY, Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne, Roger Garaudy desk-top publishing, March 1996, 279 pages; without warning the reader, the author has appreciably modified his text so as to attenuate its revisionist character. One should compare, for example, pages 119-120 of the first edition with pages 134-135 of the second edition. There is no bibliography, apart from a "bibliography" in name only, beneath which denomination there is a list of the author's own works as well as one of studies devoted to him.

  -- Roger GARAUDY, Le Communisme et la morale [Communism and Ethics], Editions sociales, 1945, 126 pages; this tract, which opens, in the guise of a preface, with a long extract of a text by Maurice Thorez (General Secretary of the French Communist Party), allows the point to be made regarding the author's orthodox Communism in 1945.

  -- Roger GARAUDY, Parole d'homme [A Man's Word], Robert Laffont, 1975, 269 pages; this work permits an understanding of the author's personal character and his ideas in 1975.

  -- Michel-Antoine BURNIER and Cecile ROMANE, Le Secret de l'Abbe Pierre [Abbe Pierre's Secret], Mille et Une Nuits publishers, "Les petits libres" collection, Number 11, June 1996, 48 pages in-16; the authors let it be known that, in a work they published through Robert Laffont publishers in 1993, they had deemed it proper to suppress certain of Abbe Pierre's words.

  - Pierre Rabcor, Francois-Georges Lavacquerie, Serge Quadruppani, Gilles Dauve, Libertaires et "ultra-gauche" contre le négationnisme [Libertarians and "Ultra-Left" Against Negationism], with a preface by Gilles Perrault, June 1996, "Reflex," 111 pages.

  -- Pierre-André TAGUIEFF, "L'abbé Pierre et Roger Garaudy. Négationnisme, antijudaisme, antisionisme" [Abbe Pierre and Roger Garaudy. Negationism, Anti-Judaism, Anti-Zionism], Esprit, August/September 1996, pp. 205-216.

  -- Roger GARAUDY, Droit de réponse/Reponse au lynchage mediatique de l'abbé Pierre et de Roger Garaudy [Right of Reply/Response to the Media Lynching of Abbe Pierre and Roger Garaudy], Roger Garaudy Samiszdat, 1996, 38 pages.

  -- Number 47 of the fortnightly Golias Magazine (May 1996), organ of left- or extreme leftwing Catholics.

  -- La Croix, 23 July 1996; this issue carries the "Communique to La Croix" of 22 July ("I have decided to retract my words"), the text of a letter "to Roger Garaudy 22 July 1996," as well as extracts from a four-page circular, drafted in July 1996 at the abbey of Praglia, entitled "Réponse a un inconnu" ["Reply to a Stranger"]. The entirety of this text has appeared nowhere. La Croix has mollified the contents by some shrewd cuts, one of which, made without indication, is particularly dishonest. Abbe Pierre's pronouncements in regard to Garaudy's being booked for committal proceedings, following a complaint by the LICRA, and in regard to the Fabius-Gayssot law, are passed over in silence. They make up the only passage where the abbot shows any backbone, as when he writes:

  The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism has brought legal action against [Garaudy]; I am tempted to say "All the better!" Yet I have compassion for the judges who will have to rule according to the said Gayssot law, declared by Simone Veil to be a "law that weakens historical truth by attempting to give it legal status." A law against which, along with Chirac, Juppé, Deniau, Jean de Gaulle, Barre, and Balladur, the current Ministers of Justice and Interior Toubon and Debre had voted [in Parliament in 1990], along with more than 250 members of today's majority. Without a doubt, the terms of the Gayssot law are so new, and so absurd, that they place the judges in an impossible position, according to the words of Mr Toubon [21 June 1991], declaring this law to be "inapplicable."

  -- Le Nouveau Quotidien (de Lausanne), 2 and 3 September 1996; these two issues carry a lengthy study by Jacques Baynac entitled "Le débat sur les chambres a gaz" [The Debate about the Gas Chambers].

  -- Robert FAURISSON, "Un historien orthodoxe admet enfin qu'il n'y a pas de preuves des chambres a gaz nazies" [An Orthodox Historian Finally Admits that there Is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers"]; this text, dated 2 and 3 September 1996, can be found on the Internet at <http:/www.abbc.com/aaargh/fran/archFaur/RF96095.html> It deals with the above-mentioned study by J. Baynac.

  --These are carried out by an examining magistrate assigned either to furnish the prosecutor with the basis for indictment or to order the case's dismissal.

  --Hip-hop : a "musical" movement of Negro origin affecting both dance and painting.

  This page Taken from CODOH

   

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  Email: CODOHmail@aol.com

• Elie Wiesel: One More Lie

   

  Elie Wiesel: One More Lie

   

  by Robert Faurisson

  On February 7, 1996, Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and professor at Boston University, was awarded an honorary doctorate by Jules Verne University at Picardy, France. Reporting on the speech delivered by Wiesel on that occasion, the local newspaper (Le Courrier Picard, Feb. 9, 1996) informed readers:

   

  One question the public was anxious be answered: "And what do you make of the emergence of revisionist and Holocaust denying tendencies?" Wiesel responded: "Those are [the work of] virulent and vicious anti-Semites, organized and well-financed. On the day I received the Nobel Prize there were hundreds in the street demonstrating against me. Never will I afford them the dignity of a debate. These are morally sick individuals. While I am able to fight against injustice, I have no idea how to go about fighting against ugliness."

   

  Here one can see Elie Wiesel's typical phraseology, but his statement that "on the day I received the Nobel Prize there were hundreds in the street demonstrating against me" is something new, and constitutes yet one more lie by this "prominent false witness," as I have called him, or "Shoah merchant" as Pierre Vidal-Naquet (in an interview with M. Folco, in Zéro, April 1987, p. 57) has called him.

   

  As someone who was present in Oslo at the site of the award ceremony in December 1986, I am able to report that the number of protesters there was precisely zero. Three persons did show up to distribute a leaflet, printed in both Swedish and English, entitled "Elie Wiesel: A Prominent False Witness" [also available as an IHR leaflet]. All three of these persons were Frenchmen: Pierre Guillaume, Serge Thion and myself.

   

  Robert Faurisson is Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar. Born in 1929, he was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in several books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal. A four-volume collection of many of his revisionist writings, Écrits Révisionnistes (1974-1998), was published in 1999.

  The Elie Wiesel item is a translation and adaptation of a piece originally written in February 1996, and published in Rivarol, March 15, 1996, p. 2. The item about Rossel and Lanzmann is adapted from a text originally written on June 25, 1999.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  Elie Wiesel: One More Lie

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  May/June 1999

  Issue:

   

  Volume 18 number 3

  Location:

   

  Page 28

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• Falsifying the 'Gerstein Document'

  How Historian Martin Gilbert Falsifies and Invents

   

  How Historian Gilbert Falsifies and Invents

   

  Robert Faurisson

  British historian Martin Gilbert is a falsifier. While he is best known as the official biographer of Winston Churchill, he has also written several widely-lauded works on the "Holocaust." Gilbert, who is Jewish, staunchly defends the thesis of the so-called extermination of the Jews, an extermination allegedly carried out in particular by means of homicidal "gas chambers" and homicidal "gas vans." To defend this thesis he falsifies and invents.

   

  Falsifying the 'Gerstein Document'

   

  In his distortion of the "Gerstein Document" in 1979 and 1986, Gilbert showed that he is capable of falsification. The various postwar confessions of SS officer Kurt Gerstein, known collectively as the "Gerstein Document" are completely devoid of any scholarly value, as Paul Rassinier showed in the 1960s and as the studies of Henri Roques in France (with my collaboration) and Carlo Mattogno in Italy established in 1985. (See: H. Roques, The "Confessions" of Kurt Gerstein, published by the IHR.) But just like French Jewish historian Léon Poliakov, Martin Gilbert used these confessions to support his thesis. Here I will show how he did that and, for the sake of clarity here, I am adding emphasis to some of the figures mentioned.

   

  Speaking about the alleged gas chamber at Belzec, Kurt Gerstein wrote:

   

  Die Menschen stehen einander auf den Füssen, 700-800 Menschen auf 25 Quadratmetern in 45 Kubikmetern ... 750 Menschen in 45 Kubikmetern. ("The people stand on each other's feet, 700-800 people on 25 square meters in 45 cubic meters ... 750 people in 45 cubic meters.") (Source: page 5 of Nuremberg document PS-2170, as Gilbert indicates.)

   

  It is obviously impossible for 700 to 800 people to stand on a surface of 25 square meters and inside a space of 45 cubic meters. That would be the same as trying to fit 28 to 32 persons in a space that is one square meter in surface area, and 1.8 meters high. The fact that Gerstein made such a statement to the Allies, who held him as their prisoner, shows what his mental condition was. He always used these same figures, repeating them on several occasions. But Gilbert completely changed these numbers in an effort to make Gerstein's tale believable. He even changed them in one way in 1979 and in another way in 1986.

   

  In his 1979 book, Final Journey: The Fate of the Jews in Nazi Europe (New York: Mayflower Books, p. 91), here is how Gilbert quoted Gerstein: "The naked people stand on each other's feet. About seven to eight hundred people in an area of about a hundred square meters."

   

  Among other distortions, Gilbert quadrupled the surface of the gas chamber, removed the mention of the cubic meters and likewise left out the number 750. Finally, he left out the repetition by Gerstein of the mention of cubic meters. If he had retained the mention, made twice, of the 45 cubic meters, we would have had a gas chamber of around 100 square meters and of 45 cubic meters, that is to say a room containing around 700 to 800 persons standing that would have been less than a half meter high.

   

  In a 1986 work, though, Gilbert revises this, quoting Gerstein as saying: "Seven to eight hundred people in ninety-three square meters." (Source: The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p. 427. On page 864 Gilbert indicates as his source: "Kurt Gerstein, statement of May 6, 1945, Tübingen: International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, document PS-2170.")

   

  In this case, the number 25 has been replaced with the number 93. A precise figure was apparently chosen to give the impression of exactitude and rigor. Once again, all references to cubic meters have disappeared.

   

  For this reason alone we must conclude that Gilbert deliberately falsified the writings of Gerstein. He falsified them in a number of other ways as well, most notably by editing the text so as to hide other nonsensical things Gerstein said. (That's also the method used by Léon Poliakov.)

   

  Inventing 'Gassing' Figures

   

  In his effort to sustain the invented story that masses of Jews were gassed at Belzec, Treblinka and elsewhere, Gilbert engages in a deceitful manipulation of figures. In his 1981 book, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p. 26), he wrote:

   

  The deliberate attempt to destroy systematically all of Europe's Jews was unsuspected in the spring and early summer of 1942: the very period during which it was at its most intense, and during which hundreds of thousands of Jews were being gassed every day at Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka.

   

  For the moment, let's not concern ourselves with the fact that no one was ever gassed at those camps, nor in any other camp either. Instead, let us focus on Gilbert's use of figures. Let us suppose that "hundreds of thousands" means only 200,000. That would make 200,000 Jews gassed per day, and therefore 1,400,000 each week. If during the spring and the early summer we have four months, or 17 weeks -- that makes 1,400,000 a week, times 17 weeks, for a total of 23,800,000 Jews gassed in just those four small camps, and during a period of just four months!

   

  More can be said about Martin Gilbert, about his ignorance of history, his dishonesty and even his empty productivity. On December 3, 1986, I wrote to him to ask for some explanations about the way he reproduced the Gerstein texts. He never answered.

   

  -- March 4, 1987

   

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  This article is taken from The Journal for Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Subscriptions to the Journal are $40 per year (6 issues). Reproduction of this material is authorized as long as credit is given to the Institute for Historical Review.

• A Request for Additional Information on the Myth of the "Gassing" of the Serbs in the First World War

   

  A Request for Additional Information on the Myth of the "Gassing" of the Serbs in the First World War

   

  ROBERT FAURISSON

   

  The myth of the "gassing" of the Jews during the Second World War is only a recurrence--or a recycling--of a myth from the First World War: that of the "gassing" of Serbs by the Germans, the Austrians, and the Bulgarians.

   

  On March 22, 1916, the _London Daily Telegaph_ printed, on its page 7, the following article:

   

  ATROCITIES IN SERBIA

  700,000 VICTIMS

  ROME, Monday (6:45 p.m.).

   

  The Governments of the Allies have secured evidence and documents, which will shortly be published, proving that Austria and Bulgaria have been guilty of horrible crimes in Serbia, where the massacres committed were worse than those perpetrated by Turkey in Armenia.

   

  The Italian government has today published the testimony of two Italian prisoners who escaped from Austria through Serbia, and took refuge in Romania. What these two prisoners saw and learned, however, was nothing compared with the evidence supplied by the Serbians themselves, and communicated by M. Pasitch to the Italian Government and to the Pope. According to reliable information, the victims of the Austrians and Bulgarians exceeded 700,000. Whole districts, with towns and villages, have been depopulated by massacres. Women, children, and old men were shut up in the churches by the Austrians, and either stabbed with the bayonet or suffocated by means of asphyxiating gas. In one church in Belgrade 3,000 women, children, and old men were thus suffocated.

   

  Serbian refugees, not on oath, have stated that they were present at a distribution of bombs and machines for producing asphyxiating gas to the Bulgarians by the Germans and Austrians, who instructed the former how to utilize these instruments to exterminate the Serbian population. The Bulgarians used this method at Nish, Pirot, Prizrend and Negotin, the inhabitants of which places died of suffocation. Similar means were employed by the Austrians in several parts of Montenegro.

   

  On June 25, 1942 the same newspaper went on to publish, on its page 5, a comparable article under the following title:

   

  GERMANS MURDER 700,000 JEWS IN POLAND

  TRAVELLING GAS CHAMBERS

  During the First World War, Bernhard Guttmann was "correspondent and contributor to the _Frankfurter Zeitung_." On November 20, 1917 he met in Berlin with Richard von Kuhlmann, state secretary in the Foreign Office. R. von Kuhlmann informed Guttmann of his pessimism as to the progress and the outcome of the war. He complained of the behavior of the Bulgarians, who were allied to Germany and Austria:

   

  [State Secretary von Kuhlmann] reported how the Serbs are being "finished off" by them [the Bulgarians] with bureaucratic dispatch; they are brought, ostensibly to be cleaned, to delousing stations and eliminated with gas [_Schattenriss einer Generation_ (1888-1919), Stuttgart: K.F. Kohler Verlag, 1950, p. 145-146].

   

  I am seeking help from _JHR_ readers able to provide additional information on this myth from the First World War, particularly in the form of research into contemporary press reports. Information might also be sought from the cultural services of Yugoslavia's embassies, consulates, and other agencies.

   

  [Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box 1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic. $50 per year, foreign.]

  From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 11, Number 2 (Summer 1991):

• The Active Revisionism of Jean-Gabriel Cohn-Bendit

   

  The Active Revisionism of Jean-Gabriel Cohn-Bendit

   

   

   

  by Robert Faurisson [12 November 1999]

   

   

   

    Noël Mamère, a Green MP, finds himself steadily rebuked, on radio as on television, for his acquaintance with another Green, Jean-Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, the elder brother of "Danny the Red". He is censured for "Gaby" Cohn-Bendit's compromising relations, twenty years ago, with revisionists such as Pierre Guillaume, head of La Vieille Taupe ("The Old Mole"), Serge Thion, and Robert Faurisson.

  Recently, during a talk programme presented by the prominent television host Thierry Ardisson, N. Mamère, a former journalist with a ready tongue, regarded as having an answer to everything, was taken aback by this accusation. First, he muttered something or other indistinctly. He feigned ignorance. When T. Ardisson stated that Gaby Cohn-Bendit had in the past "mixed" with the revisionists and, in particular, with "Faurisson, who says that the gas chambers never existed", he asked him whether that bit of information had been verified at the proper source. Then, thinking that he had found a way to get back into line, he claimed that Gaby Cohn-Bendit, without ever making any revisionist statements, had only gone so far as to take up the defence of the revisionists and of their right to express themselves freely.

   

  N. Mamère is mistaken. Gaby Cohn-Bendit has made revisionist statements, which he might even repeat today were it not for the pressure and the press campaigns which, during an electoral contest in his region in which the Greens were participating, have recently led him to dissociate himself from the revisionists.

   

  Revisionist statements

   

  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, at the beginning of the "Faurisson Affair", his position on the subject of the Nazi gas chambers, the genocide of the Jews, and the number of European Jews who had died because of Nazism could be summed up in the following terms:

  There is reason to "doubt";

  It is fitting to "accept a debate"

  The reply made to Faurisson by thirty-four historians (among whom Fernand Braudel) is "monstrous":

  As concerns the facts (an order from Hitler to kill the Jews, gas chambers, figures...), "I am not far from thinking that the revisionists are right";

  "If one may doubt the gas chambers' existence, it is because it is supported only by the accounts of witnesses (confessions, memoirs, court testimonies) and because these accounts are contradictory in themselves and between one another, as I have shown in regard to [Johann-Paul] Kremer [SS physician at Auschwitz]";

  "Let us fight, therefore, for the destruction of the gas chambers which are shown to the tourists in those camps where it is now known that there were none, on pain of not being believed as concerns that of which we are sure. The Nazis had model camps to show to the good souls of the Red Cross; let us not go and do the inverse";

  "I will not accept that what I refuse to do, even to the Neo-Nazis, should be done to men like Rassinier or Faurisson, who I know have nothing in common with them, and the case being brought against Faurisson reminds me more of the Inquisition than of a struggle against the return of evil."

  If Gaby Cohn-Bendit did keep his distance from the revisionists, it was in writing that "without a gas chamber, without an order to exterminate, simply with an order to deport to ghettos, to camps, all of which were places of death", there had been a form of extermination comparable to that of the Red Indians by the Whites in America, the Armenians by the Turks, or the Crimean Tartars by Stalin.

   

  Freedom for the Revisionists

   

  Gaby Cohn-Bendit indeed pleaded in favour of the revisionists' freedom of expression but he did so with a strength and a self-assurance which were obviously drawn from the conviction that they had raised a real historical problem, a problem, he wrote, which "the historian cannot dismiss". For his part, he concluded that he believed less in a genocide (an unprecedented extermination, ordered, programmed, supervised), in the gas chambers, and in the six million than in a deportation which, in the event, had led to an extermination like those which History had already known.

   

  Source

   

  If N. Mamère wishes to verify at its source this summing up of the position adopted by his friend Gaby Cohn-Bendit in 1979-1981 on the "problem" of the gas chambers, the genocide, and the six million, he can refer to a collective work published in 1981 and bearing the title Intolérable Intolérance (1). Its authors, in alphabetical order, were Jean-Gabriel Cohn-Bendit (p. 12-29), Eric Delcroix (Robert Faurisson's legal counsel), Claude Karnoouh (CNRS, "National Centre for Scientific Research"), professor Vincent Monteil, and Jean-Louis Tristani (CNRS). The book presented itself as an "assemblage of texts in the form of a petition to their Honours the Judges of the Paris Court of Appeal". Coupling action with his words, Gaby Cohn-Bendit had the courage to come forward as a "voluntary participant" (with Serge Thion, Jacob Assous, Gabor Tamas Rittersporn, Pierre Guillaume, and others) beside and in support of Robert Faurisson, both in first instance and on appeal, in the case brought against the latter by a whole gathering of associations, among which the LICRA, "International League against Racism and Antisemitism". On 26 April 1983, the first chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal naturally convicted R. Faurisson for his dangerous nature, but acknowledged the seriousness of his work on "the problem of the gas chambers"; the Court held that it must, consequently, be permitted to one and all to say that the Nazi gas chambers had or had not existed. Gaby Cohn-Bendit had played a part in this victory of R. Faurisson's (2).

   

  Notes

   

  1 Published by the Editions de la Différence in 1981, this book may be obtained from P. Guillaume, BP 9805, 75224 Paris Cedex 05.

   

  2 For the terms of his disavowal of revisionism, see Gaby Cohn-Bendit, Nous sommes en marche ("We are on the March") Flammarion, 1999 [May], p. 235-245.

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• The Maurice Papon Trial

   

  The Papon Trial

   

  Robert Faurisson

  On April 2, 1998, after the longest trial in all of French history, Maurice Papon, aged 87, was found guilty of complicity in "crimes against humanity," and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment as well as ten years' privation of his civic, civil, and family rights. He was also stripped of all his decorations, particularly that of the Legion of Honor. In addition, on April 3 he was ordered to pay 4.6 million francs (about $766,000) to the plaintiffs. Papon has appealed the verdict with the superior appeals court (the "Cour de Cassation"), the decision of which will probably be known within a year's time. Meanwhile Papon is free on bail. His wife died a few days before the verdict. He is in bad health.

   

  Papon had been charged in 1997 on the basis of his activities from 1942 to 1944 as Secretary General in Bordeaux for the Gironde region. Specifically, he was charged with complicity in the wartime arrests of hundreds of Jews and in their subsequent internment at the custodial camp at Merignac, outside Bordeaux. Some of these Jews were later transferred to the camp at Drancy, in the Paris region, of whom some were deported from France, notably to Auschwitz.

   

  Mr. Papon showed great courage during this trial, which lasted six months, but he did not dare to adopt a revisionist defense strategy, which might have consisted in saying: "I cannot have been an accomplice to a crime, the extermination of the Jews, about which I had no knowledge, for the simple reason that that crime did not happen."

   

  His main lawyer, Jean-Marc Varaut, opted for a strategy that may be summed up as follows: "My client served, in spite of himself, an abject regime, that of Vichy, but he kept his hands clean." Varaut is known for having recently written a book in which he praises the Nuremberg tribunal. He maintains relations with a number of prominent political personalities, and among his clients have been several persons implicated in political and financial cases. He also stays on excellent terms with fellow members of the Bar who happen to be Jewish and, throughout the trial, preferred to be seen keeping a certain distance from his own client and, at the same time, to converse in a friendly manner with the plaintiffs' counsel.

   

  On April 5 I wrote a letter about the Papon trial and the behavior of Varaut. I addressed it to Martin Peltier, managing editor of National Hebdo, a French weekly that supports the National Front party of Jean-Marie Le Pen. I myself am apolitical. I thank Mr. Peltier for publishing my letter under the title "Histoire: la reculade de Bordeaux" ("History: Backing down in Bordeaux") in the April 9-15 issue (p. 15).

   

  Here is the text of that letter, preceded by a preface by Mr. Peltier.

   

  Preface

   

  During his recent "crimes against humanity" trial in the Bordeaux court, Maurice Papon, and more so his counsel, waived the use of an important argument for his defense: namely, that the Union générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) [the central Jewish community association], which was under the authority of the [French] government in Vichy, took part in the internment and the deportation of Jews during the Second World War, and even in the great round up at the Paris cycling arena [the "Vélodrome d'Hiver" sports stadium] on July 16, 1942. This shows quite clearly that what has since been called the "Final Solution" was then unknown, and gives one an idea of the complexity of the French government's policy toward the Jews, of their status during the German occupation, and of the responsibilities of the civil service. The text below expounds the opinion that by criminalizing "Vichy" (for tactical purposes?) attorney Jean-Marc Varaut made his client's conviction inevitable.

   

  Letter

   

  Dear Sir,

   

  The sentence passed on Maurice Papon ought not to surprise you. For six months his chief counsel, Jean-Marc Varaut, had expressed the abhorrence in which he held the "criminal" wartime government in Vichy, while at the same time describing his client, a high-ranking official of that "criminal" regime, as a perfectly innocent man. "If this were the trial of `Vichy'," he stated repeatedly, "then I would be among the plaintiffs," and this as he was defending a former high official of "Vichy"! What juror, or any other person of common sense, could accept such a contradiction?

   

  If the report in the April 2 edition of Le Monde is to be believed, the following are the terms used by this attorney, in his pleadings of March 31 alone, on the subject of "Vichy's" policy toward the Jews of Bordeaux: "repulsion," "shame," "dishonor," "horror," "disgust," "amazement," "in-comprehension." After such an onslaught as that, how could anyone expect to fight his way back? How could one get the jury to accept that a high-ranking official had been able to work for such a regime for several years without sullying himself? With hell painted in colors like those, who could be persuaded that an angel had lived there?

   

  The judges and the jury drew the conclusion that Mr. Papon must have sullied himself.

   

  They had certainly noted the efforts that J.-M. Varaut made in order physically to keep his distance from Mr. Papon, while showing a remarkable warmheartedness toward most of the plaintiffs' counsel. This was noticeable on the televised reports, and was picked up on by the newspapers. A Le Monde reporter put it in these words: "Jean-Marc Varaut likes to be seen to keep his distance from his client" (November 16-17, 1997). From his own standpoint, a Figaro journalist noted: "The barrister maintains distant and courteous relations with his client," before adding that Mr. Varaut's "consensual temperament" had allowed him "to share chambers for nine years with Mr. Roland Dumas," the one-time Socialist foreign minister (March 30, 1998).

   

  The press also taught us that Mr. Varaut dreaded the prospect of his client's closing statement (Le Monde, March 10). And for good reason! In that brief speech, Mr. Papon was clear, courageous, and frank. He told the three-judge panel and the nine members of the jury that the only possible outcomes were life imprisonment, on the one hand, or acquittal, on the other.

   

  But how could he, in those few minutes, convince the jurors? The damage had been done.

   

  During an entire six-month trial, and particularly in his summing up, J.-M. Varaut prudently avoided resorting to a good part of the solid and effective argumentation which he had announced two years previously in a Le Monde article entitled "L'affaire Papon n'est pas ce que l'on dit" ("The Papon case is not what it is said to be") (February 29, 1996). At that time he wrote:

   

  [Mr. Papon's role] was analogous to that of the delegates at Bordeaux of the Union générale des Israélites de France [UGIF] who oversaw the convoys, and a good deal smaller than that of the [Jewish] head of the Drancy camp and his officers, French Jews who were in charge of the selection, registration, and composition of the trainloads of deportees headed to the East, and who discriminated in favor of French Jews as against foreign ones!

   

  At the trial, J.-M. Varaut did not really open these two cans of worms: neither that of the UGIF and the "Brown Jews," nor that of Drancy and the running of that camp by Jews. (Robert Blum used to sign his notes, including those relating to the preparation of deportation convoys, "Lieutenant Colonel Blum, Commandant of Drancy Camp.")

   

  Varaut avoided reminding the court that the UGIF had taken part in the preparations for the big round-up at the Paris cycling arena, the Vél' d'hiv, in July 1942. In his eagerness to blacken "Vichy," he greatly minimized certain interventions on the part of the French State, namely those concerning the deportation of the Jews and the settling, in their favor, of various conflicts with the German authorities. For example, when, in the wake of several attacks on German soldiers, the Jewish community was fined one billion francs (about $250 million, in today's money), [French Head of State] Marshal Pétain and Xavier Vallat (Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs) acted immediately to have that amount covered by the national banking syndicate, against a promise of repayment by the UGIF ... over the next 99 years!

   

  Some leading figures of the Chief Rabbinate and of the Central Consistory of French Jews [the hierarchical religious organization of French Jewry, established in 1808], as well as officials of other Jewish organizations, maintained excellent relations with Marshal Pétain himself or with other high-ranking Vichy officials.

   

  In the September-December 1996 issue of [the French-Jewish journal] Le Monde Juif (p. 97), Simon Schwarzfuchs wrote:

   

  Besides, it can be considered that the diverse [French Jewish] communities were not unhappy with the role played by their rabbis during the occupation; the very great majority [of the latter] had not thought fit to leave their posts for [exile in] Spain or Switzerland, nor even to go into hiding. Religious services were held regularly wherever the numbers and the availability of the faithful warranted it. In Paris most of the big synagogues stayed open throughout the period of hostilities.

   

  After the "liberation," those Jews who ought to have been prosecuted under the [new] laws dealing with collaboration with the enemy escaped the fate reserved to most others, and had their names cleared by "intra-community tribunals," made up exclusively of [Jewish] co-religionists.

   

  [As Schwarzfuchs noted, p. 100, in his Le Monde juif article:]

   

  At that time, Leon Meiss [a senior judge of Jewish origin] had to ... take care of the moral side of the UGIF's dissolution. Intra-community tribunals were set up to hear the charges made against some of its leaders. In the end, they were all more or less rehabilitated. There was no purge within French Jewry.

   

  Varaut could have shown that his client was being tried for "crimes" infinitely less serious than those of the UGIF which, for its part, was not content with merely cooperating indirectly in the rounding-up and deportation of Jews to custodial or transit camps: indeed it went so far as to hand over Jewish children to the occupying forces for deportation (Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, IV, p. 1538).

   

  It is often said that without the French police the Germans would not have been able to carry out their policy of relocation in the East of certain Jews. But what was true of the police was even more true of many French Jews, including the "Jewish Police" of Drancy, sometimes called the "Gestapolak," a nickname designating the "MS's" or members, male or female, of the "Internal Surveillance Service," although it was composed mainly of French Jews (Maurice Rajfus, Drancy, Manya, 1991, p. 198).

   

  Varaut could even have left off writing a whole section of his pleadings. It would have been enough for him to request a loan of certain Central Consistory documents from the Hauts-de-Seine departement archives (in the Paris suburbs), or to demand the discovery of the 1944-45 "intra-community tribunals'" archives. In them he would surely have found elements of use to his client's defense, as well as ready arguments (in black and white) that he could have used in Bordeaux in 1997-98 by simply substituting within them the name of Papon for one high-ranking Jewish official or another. He might have rested his case with the questions:

   

  What sort of justice is it which allows a "crime" to be absolved on the spot, and then to be punished half a century later? Is it not a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

   

  Given his hostility to revisionism, one could hardly expect Varaut to use revisionist arguments; but why did he waive, in 1997-98, the use of an argumentation that he himself had put forth in 1996, and which the plaintiffs so dreaded hearing him use? I should be interested in knowing whether there was a precise reason for this "backing down" ...

   

  For Varaut did "back down." One of the plaintiff's counsel even mentioned it to him; the remark was reported in Le Monde, March 13:

   

  Then, [Mr. Blet] poured scorn on the defense's case, in advance: the interventions of the French authorities during the deportations? "That's revisionism!" Mr. Varaut did not bat an eyelash. The Jewish participation in running the Drancy camp? "How revolting of you!" And then, "Happily, you've backed down." Mr. Varaut nodded.

   

  Indeed Varaut has all too often "backed down" and "nodded."

   

  According to the France-Info radio network, Papon is being charged six million francs ($1 million) by his lawyers. As he has been ordered to pay another 4.6 million francs ($766,000) in damages, there may be doubts as to whether he will be able to meet that bill. Happily for Varaut, Papon's insolvency would not cause the leading [defense] attorney much grief: among his clients are several rich representatives of the Jewish community, particularly Maurice Msellatti-Casanova and his son Charles, owner of the famous Champs-Elysees restaurant "Fouquet's" (Libération, Dec. 2, 1997).

   

  Personally, despite our grave differences of opinion, I had passed on a good deal of information and documents to J.-M. Varaut, material -- conventional, non-revisionist -- fit to aid in the defense of his client (particularly, a brief article I wrote last year entitled "Maurice Papon and Yves Jouffa: A Double Standard?"). If he did not use any of it, it was deliberately so, and for reasons unknown to me.

   

  -- April 5, 1998

   

  About the author:

   

  Robert Faurisson was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in four books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  The [Maurice] Papon Trial

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  May/June 1998

  Issue:

   

  Volume 17 number 3

  Location:

   

  Page 14

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• The Detail | 1998 Follow up

   

   

   Robert FAURISSON

  20 October 1998

  Worse than Le Pen,

   

  the Revisionists Churchill, Eisenhower, and de Gaulle

   

   In my article "The Detail", of 20 December 1997, I wrote that Eisenhower, Churchill, and de Gaulle had not breathed a single word, in their extensive war memoirs, of the Nazi gas chambers. Put another way, in a mass of 7,061 pages published from 1948 to 1959 (that is to say, well after the 1939-45 conflict) these three wartime leaders, American, British, and French, had dealt with said gas chambers by ignoring them plainly and simply. Their silence can only have been deliberate.

   

               Under attack from all sides for his recidivism on "the detail", Jean Marie Le Pen has recently retorted with this statement of three sentences which has appeared in the German weekly Der Spiegel (issue no. 42, 12 October 1998, p. 163). An English translation follows:

   

        « Ich habe die Existenz der Gaskammern nie geleugnet oder verharmlost. Aber schriebe man die Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs auf tausend Seiten nieder, kämen den Gaskammern allenfalls ein paar Zeilen zu. Churchill, Eisenhower und de Gaulle haben sie in ihren Kriegs­erinnerungen mit keinem Wort erwähnt. »

   

   "I have never denied or minimised the existence of the gas chambers. But when someone writes a thousand-page  history of the Second World War, the gas chambers get, at the very most, a few lines. In their war memoirs Churchill, Eisenhower, and de Gaulle did not use one word to bring them up."

   

   

   

          This indirect translation comes through the accurate French version (apparently made by Agence France Press)  which was duly published in newspapers throughout the country. Even the provincial daily La Montagne (of Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne) ran the three sentences. The cosmopolitan – and oblique –  Le Monde, however, reproduced the statement by amputating its most substantial, its newest, and (as regards the comfort of the "right-thinking", as well as   the greater public's way of thinking) most disturbing part; it left out the end (in cauda gravissimum), where Jean Marie Le Pen pointed out that neither Churchill, Eisen­hower, nor de Gaulle had devoted even a single word to what, for his part, he called a detail.

   

          Why this silence?

   

           J. M. Le Pen could place his opponents in the most embarrassing position if he disclosed just why Churchill, Eisen­hower, de Gaulle, and a good number of other leaders amongst the Allies, including the Soviets and the Czechs, throughout their lives refrained from mentioning, either in speaking or in writing, the Nazi gas chambers (or the genocide of the Jews).

   

            The reason for this lack of any mention is that, after investigation, the Allies reckoned, from 1943 onwards, that there existed no satisfactory evidence to substantiate public claims that execution gas chambers did indeed exist: "There is insufficient evidence to justify the statement regarding execu­tion in gas chambers (1)".

   

            Talk of gas chambers in Poland had been heard for the first time towards the end of 1941. In 1942 and '43, the word had caught on somewhat, notably in Polish and Jewish circles in London. The British government thus decided to denounce the horror of these chemical slaughterhouses in a joint declaration with the Americans. Already on 17 December 1942, the Allies had issued a joint statement on "Nazi atrocities". On that day, Anthony Eden in the House of Commons and Lord Simon in the Upper House read a declaration made in the name of twelve Allied governments concerning the crimes being committed by the Germans against the Jews. In it was denounced the Germans' intention to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The words "exterminate" and "cold-blooded extermination" assuredly figured in the text, but in the context of the Jews' "being transported in   conditions of appalling horror and brutality" and, amongst the able-bodied, by a slow working to death. For the infirm, this deportation was followed by death from exposure, starvation, or even by outright deliberate slaughter in "mass executions". The innocent victims of these "bloody cruelties" numbered, according to the statement, in the "many hundreds of thousands", but there was no question at all of any gas chambers' or chemical slaughterhouses' being used within the framework of "this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination", to be designated later on as "genocide".

   

            Eight months afterwards, in August 1943, the British and the Americans were putting together a new declaration and, this time, mentioning the killings in gas chambers. Here is an extract from this draft of their joint declaration:

   

   "[In Poland] some children are killed on the spot, others are separated from their parents and either sent to Germany to be brought up as Germans or sold to German settlers or despatched with the women and old men to concentration camps, where they are now being systematically put to death in gas chambers."

   

          The emphasis on that last relative clause is mine. Three days after this draft release of 27 August 1943, the US government, at the instigation of the British, decided to "eliminate" (their word) the clause. The reason: there lacked sufficient evidence of these killings in gas chambers.

   

            Until the war's end both governments maintained that position, and that decision.

   

            To take just one example, general Eisen­hower, as late as April 1945 during the Allied take-over of the German camps, avoided any reference to these Nazi gas chambers in the speeches which he gave there. Even in his most forceful declarations (one of which is in part engraved in stone at the entrance of the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum) he steadily observed an utter silence on the subject.

   

            In numerous writings on the Shoah and in some "Holocaust museums", a certain blame is put on Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Pope Pius XII, and the International Committee of the Red Cross for the stubborn silence on the Nazi gas chambers (and the genocide of the Jews) that they all observed during the war. They are criticised for having received accounts of the matter with disbelief, or, as was the case with the Red Cross, for having had an investigator who, on the spot at Auschwitz, did not even hear talk of those gas chambers. A similar charge of revisionism could be made still more surely against the great men who, after 1945, in drafting, for instance, their war memoirs, failed to mention those gas chambers and that genocide, accounts of which were nonetheless being published in abundance (2). Those great men thus acted implicitly as revisionists.

   

            Such was the case, in France, of general de Gaulle, whereas J. M. Le Pen, for his part, has on several occasions explicitly affirmed the existence of the Nazi gas chambers. From this point of view, for Le Pen's accusers, de Gaulle should  necessarily be worse than Le Pen. One can argue that de Gaulle was a revisionist (3), just as one may argue that Churchill, Eisenhower, and quite a few others were; but it must be acknowledged that Le Pen is not.

   

   *******

   

  Notes

   

   

   

  (1)        Foreign Relations of the United States / Diplomatic Papers 1943, US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1963, vol. I, pp. 416-417 ; for the effective elimination of the mention of the gas chambers in the British-American communiqué, see "US and Britain Warn Nazi Killers", The New York Times, 30 August 1943, p. 3.

   

   

   

  (2)        The reader may recall, apart from these accounts, the assertions of the Judges at Nuremberg and the works of such historians as Léon Poliakov (1951) and Gerald Reitlinger (1953), to  say nothing of the publications of Eugen Kogon, David Rousset, Henri Michel, or Olga Wormser-Migot: the gas chambers were everywhere!

   

   

   

  (3)        On this point one may refer to an interesting analysis by Jean-Marie Boisdefeu, "De Gaulle et le génocide des juifs. Le général était-il révisionniste ?" ("De Gaulle and the Genocide of the Jews. Was the General a Revisionist?"), Akribeia (45/3, Route de Vourles, 69230 ST GENIS LAVAL, France), October 1998, pp. 241-245.

   

   ----------------------

   

  The above text is a translation of a slightly modified version of the article which appeared in the French weekly National Hebdo (5 - 11 November issue, p. 17) under the title "Pires que Le Pen : Churchill, Eisenhower et De Gaulle".

• An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: 'There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers'

   

  An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers

   

  Robert Faurisson

  Born in 1939, Jacques Baynac is a French historian who is the author of several books.1 A scholar whose sympathies lean to the left, he harbors a definite hostility toward revisionists (whom he calls "deniers"), and particularly toward revisionist writer and publisher Pierre Guillaume and myself. For years he affirmed the existence of Nazi homicidal gas chambers.

   

  In 1996, though, Baynac acknowledged in two lengthy articles published in a Swiss daily newspaper that, taking everything into account, one is forced to admit -- even if it is "as painful to say as it is to hear" -- that the well-known "testimonies" are not sufficient proof of wartime homicidal gas chambers, and that it is simply not possible to prove, scientifically, that the homicidal gas chambers actually existed.

   

  Given this lack of any direct proof, he continued, it will now be necessary to seek an indirect proof. Because one cannot prove that Nazi gas chambers existed, he goes on to write, it will instead be necessary to prove that it is impossible that they did not exist! Specifically, he writes: "If scholarly history cannot, because of the lack of documentation, establish the reality of a fact, it can, by means of documentation, establish that the unreality of this fact is itself unreal." 2

   

  Baynac made these remarkable statements in two lengthy articles published in the Swiss newspaper Le Nouveau Quotidien de Lausanne, September 2, 1996 (p. 16), and September 3, 1996 (p. 14).

   

  The Evasion of Historians

   

  In the first of these two articles, Baynac begins by deploring France's anti-revisionist "Fabius-Gayssot" law of July 13, 1990, which he says allows "the deniers' sect" to use the courts as podiums for their views. He notes that this law has been criticized by Claude Imbert of Le Point magazine, historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet (who has said: "I am ready to kill Faurisson, but not to pursue him in a court of law!"), Madeleine Rebérioux (former president of the "Human Rights League"), anti-revisionist attorney Charles Korman, and several parliamentary deputies of the Gaullist RPR party.

   

  Baynac affirms that the revisionists/deniers have plenty of reason for rejoicing, especially since the Abbé Pierre affair "changed the atmosphere" in their favor. Baynac also notes that among the anti-revisionists, "disarray has given way to consternation," that historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet "is grieved," that the prominent French-Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy "is beside himself," that Pierre-André Taguieff "is frightened," and that the front cover of an issue of the French magazine L'Événement du jeudi ("The Thursday Event") proclaimed "The Victory of the Revisionists."

   

  Baynac denounces Jorge Semprun, an intellectual and former deportee, for having irresponsibly "murdered" a book by Florent Brayard that attacks French revisionist writer Paul Rassinier. Baynac believes that among Leftists there has come into being a "paranoia," a "witch-hunt" (in the words of Jean-François Kahn), and a "disastrous chaos." He notes that Simone Veil and Dominique Jamet share his dislike of the Fabius-Gayssot law, and that "one refuses to debate" the revisionists.

   

  Baynac recalls the declaration by "34 reputable historians" published in the prominent French daily Le Monde on February 21, 1979 -- a stupefying declaration that responded to but did not answer my challenge, which had appeared earlier in the paper, calling for an explanation of how, technically, the magical Nazi gas chambers were supposed to have operated. In this regard, Baynac writes of the "evasion" of historians in general, and goes on to declare that "the historians have retreated."

   

  Neither Documents, Traces, Nor Proofs

   

  In the second of his two articles, Baynac deplores the fact that anti-revisionist historians have trusted Jean-Claude Pressac, a pharmacist and "amateur historian," who now concludes that the number of Jewish and non-Jewish dead at Auschwitz amounts "to a total of 600,000 victims." 3 Baynac derides historian François Bayrou, France's Minister of National Education, who, conscious of the difficulties in trying to prove the "Holocaust" genocide and wartime homicidal gas chambers, advocates recourse to a "less burdened" historical method. Baynac sees in this a "light historical concept."

   

  Baynac believes that Nazi gas chambers existed, but thinks that those who have tried to prove their existence have overly employed an "ascientific" methodology, rather than a "scientific" one. In this "ascientific" method, he goes on, "testimony prevails," while in the "scientific" method documents prevail. However, he adds with regret, one is able only to ascertain "the absence of documents, traces, or other material proofs." 4

   

  Baynac recalls the admission made in 1988 by Jewish-American historian Arno Mayer, who teaches at Princeton University: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." 5 Baynac goes on to say that "we do not have available indispensable elements for a normal undertaking of the historical method," and that "one must remain silent for lack of documents." He concludes with a remarkable concession: "it is necessary to recognize that the lack of traces involves the inability to directly establish the reality of the existence of homicidal gas chambers." 6 When he writes "the lack of traces," he means, as already mentioned, "the absence of documents, traces, or other material proofs."

   

  Proofs for Tomorrow?

   

  Baynac's study concludes with the suggestion, already mentioned: because it is decidedly impossible to prove that the gas chambers existed, let us try in the future to prove that these gas chambers were not able not to have existed!

   

  This is an example of admitting a present-day inadequacy while postulating an act of faith for the future. Baynac is naive. He believes that because so many historians have emphatically affirmed the reality of the "Holocaust" horrors and the homicidal gas chambers, and so many survivors have claimed to have seen them, therefore they undoubtedly existed. He does not realize that, with time, one discovers that the writing of history is full of histories that are more or less imaginary.

   

  He continues to believe in the gas chambers, just as he seems to persist in believing in Communism. Tomorrow, one will find proof for these gas chambers. Tomorrow, Communism will be true. Tomorrow, one will get a free lunch. Tomorrow, one will finally have the proof that National Socialism is the incarnation of evil and that Communism is the incarnation of good. Let's hear it for the eternal credulity of the French intelligentsia!

   

  Baynac joins, as it were, the "34 reputable historians" who, as already mentioned, in 1979 published one of the most monumental pieces of nonsense of French academic life: "It is not necessary to ask oneself how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible because it happened." Baynac thus adds his name to those of the 34 orthodox scholars who, without intending it, were obliged to agree with the revisionist historians on several important issues. This inevitably raises a question: how can judges continue to condemn revisionists for contesting a crime that, as Baynac now acknowledges, has not been proven?

   

  Embarrassing Gas Chambers

   

  It is quite clear that the "Nazi gas chambers" are ever more embarrassing for those who uphold the "Holocaust" thesis of Jewish extermination. As early as 1984, Pierre Vidal-Naquet warned friends who were already attempting to abandon the "gas chambers" that to do so would be "to capitulate in open country" 7 And in 1987 a periodical hostile to revisionism published a letter by two French-Jewish teachers, Ida Zajdel and Marc Ascione, suggesting that the Nazis had faked their confessions, and only mentioned gas chambers in order to plant "a delayed action 'bomb' against the Jews, an instrument of diversion and, why not, of blackmail." 8

   

  There are many other examples worth citing, but I will content myself here with citing just three recent ones: that of Elie Wiesel (in 1994), that of a Dutch professor of Jewish-Polish origin, Michel Korzec (in 1995), and finally, that of the Jewish-American historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (in 1996):

   

  In 1994, Wiesel wrote in his memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea: "Let the gas chambers remain closed to prying eyes, and to imagination." 9 In plain English this means: "Let's not try to see, or even imagine, a Nazi gas chamber." What follows inevitably from this is that Wiesel is quite skeptical of the alleged witnesses who, supposedly, have described what happened in the gas chambers.

  In 1995 Michel Korzec declared that too much emphasis has been put on the gas chambers and the number of gassing victims. With dialectic contortions worthy of a cabalist, he went on to argue that it was the Germans, and not the Jews, who are responsible for this error. In Korzec's view, many more Germans participated in the "mass murder" of Jews than has been assumed, and in many more places across Europe -- many more than the small number of Germans supposedly involved in gas chamber killings of Jews. 10

  In his 1996 study, Hitler's Willing Executioners, an exceedingly anti-German work, Daniel J. Goldhagen wrote: "Gassing was really epiphenomenal to the Germans' slaughter of Jews." 11 And in a 1996 interview with a major Austrian weekly news magazine he stated: "For me the industrialized annihilation of the Jews is not the central question in explaining the Holocaust ... The gas chambers are a symbol. But it is absurd to believe that the Holocaust would not have taken place without the gas chambers." 12

  So, by 1996 the gas chambers had become a symbol!

   

  A Swiss Newspaper Sets An Example

   

  In recent years I have described at various times, in samizdat essays and in interviews recorded by Ernst Zündel in Canada, this evolution by the "exterminationists" regarding the "Nazi gas chambers." In a text I wrote on September 22, 1993 (and which I intend to publish in my forthcoming book), I predicted that one day organized Jewry eventually would be obliged to give up the lie about Nazi gas chambers, while at the same time still insisting that "the Holocaust" is an irrefutable truth. Consistent with this, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, has decided not to provide any physical representation of a German homicidal gas chamber (except for a door of a delousing gas chamber and an absurd and "artistic" model). 13

   

  The two 1996 articles by Jacques Baynac in the Swiss daily paper are only a stage in this metamorphosis of official historiography. Baynac's articles confirm that, for quite some time now, historians have broken with the facade of unanimity. Step by step, historians are rejecting the simplistic conclusions of the Nuremberg Tribunal regarding gas chambers and genocide.

   

  When French judges declare that challenging the existence of Nazi gas chambers is to challenge "crimes against humanity" (which the genocide of the Jews would have been), they are correct. However, if there is no longer any proof of a specific murder weapon, logically there is no longer any proof of a specific crime. This conclusion, rather embarrassing for the judges who dare to condemn revisionism, follows inevitably from the position taken by Baynac, a position that, once again, is not in any way peculiar to him but represents a general trend in orthodox historiography. Baynac is simply saying out loud what his colleagues have been thinking in silence.

   

  In publishing these two articles by Baynac, Le Nouveau Quotidien of Lausanne, normally so hostile toward revisionism, has shown both discernment and respect for its readers. 14

   

  Jacques Baynac: "There are no proofs, yet I believe."

   

  Robert Faurisson: "There are no proofs, therefore I refuse to believe."

   

  For the first: freedom of expression.

   

  For the second: a sentence of one month to one year of prison, a fine of 2,000 to 300,000 francs, and additional penalties.

   

  Notes

   

  Among the most noteworthy of Baynac's books have been La Terreur sous Lénine ("The Terror Under Lenin," 1975), Ravachol et ses compagnons ("Ravachol and His Companions," 1976), Mai retrouvé ("May [1968] Revisited," 1978), Les Socialistes révolutionnaires russes, 1881-1917 ("The Russian Revolutionary Socialists, 1881-1917," 1979), and La Révolution gorbatchévienne ("The Gorbachev Revolution," 1988). In 1987, he published, along with historian Nadine Fresco, an anti-revisionist article in the Paris daily Le Monde entitled "Comment s'en débarrasser?" ("How Can We Get Rid of Them?" [that is, the revisionists]), June 18, 1987, p. 2.

   

  "... si l'histoire scientifique ne peut, faute de documents, établir la réalité d'un fait, elle peut, avec des documents, établir que l'irréalité de ce fait est elle-même irréelle. En établissant que l'inexistence des chambres à gaz est impossible, on liquidera définitivement la prétention du négationnisme à se poser comme une école historique ..." Le Nouveau Quotidien (Lausanne), Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14.

  La Déportation: Le Système concentrationnaire nazi ("The Deportation: The Nazi Concentration Camp System"), a work published under the direction of François Bédarida and Laurent Gervereau (BDIC, 1995), p. 196. Here Pressac estimates from 600,000 to 800,000 Auschwitz deaths,

  This is quite a drop from the figure of 9,000,000 given in the widely-viewed film "Night and Fog," or 4,000,000 as established by the Nuremberg Tribunal and as inscribed until 1990 on plaques at the monument at the Auschwitz camp site (where since 1995 the new figure is 1,500,000).

  On Pressac, see also: R. Faurisson, "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers," Spring 1991 Journal, pp. 25-66 (Part I), and Summer 1991 Journal, pp. 133-175 (Part II); Arthur R. Butz, "Some Thoughts on Pressac's Opus," May-June 1993 Journal, pp. 23-37; Serge Thion, "A French Scholar Responds to a Widely-Acclaimed Anti-Revisionist Work," July-August 1994 Journal, pp. 28 ff.; "'The Jewish World' Against Pressac," Jan.-Feb. 1996 Journal, p. 41.

  "... l'absence de documents, de traces ou d'autres preuves matérielles ..." Le Nouveau Quotidien, Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14.

  A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution" in History (New York: Pantheon, 1989), p. 362.

  "... il faut reconnaître que la manque de traces entraîne l'incapacité d'établir directement la réalité de l'existence des chambres à gaz homicides." Le Nouveau Quotidien (Lausanne), Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14.

  "Le Secret partagé" ("The Shared Secret"), Le Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 21, 1984, p. 80.

  Article 31, Jan.-Feb. 1987, p. 22.

  E. Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Memoirs (New York: Random House/ Knopf, 1995), p. 74.

  M. Korzec, "De mythe van de efficiënte massamoord" ("The Myth of Efficient Mass Murder"), Intermediair, December 15, 1995. See also: R. Faurisson, "A New Version of the Holocaust Story," March-April 1996 Journal, pp. 22-23.

  D. J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996), p. 521, n. 81. In this same book (p. 523, n. 4) Goldhagen also writes, "The imbalance of attention devoted to the gas chambers needs to be corrected."

  Profil (Vienna), September 9, 1996, p. 75: "Die industrielle Vernichtung der Juden ist für mich nicht die Kernfrage zur Erklärung des Holocaust ... Die Gaskammern sind ein Symbol. Es ist aber ein Unsinn zu glauben, daß der Holocaust ohne Gaskammern nicht stattgefunden hätte."

  During a visit to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on August 30, 1994, I met with the Museum's Research Director, Michael Berenbaum. He told me, in the presence of witnesses, that "the decision had been made not to present any physical representation of a Nazi gas chamber." See also: R. Faurisson, "The US Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Challenge," July-August 1993 Journal, pp. 14-17; "Gas Chamber Door Fraudulently Portrayed at US Holocaust Museum," September-October 1993 Journal, p. 39; and, R. Faurisson, "Auschwitz: Facts and Legend," July-August 1997 Journal, pp. 16-17.

  In the Baynac article in the September 2 issue of Le Nouveau Quotidien, p. 16, there are three minor errors: in the second column, one should read "Florent Brayard" (instead of "Florent Rassinier"); in the third column, "Jean-François Kahn" (in place of "Khan"); and, in the forth column, "Il ne faut pas se demander comment techniquement ...," instead of "Il ne faut pas se demander si techniquement ...," or, "It is not necessary to ask oneself how" (instead of "ask oneself if").

  About the author:

   

  Robert Faurisson was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in four books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal.

   

  This essay is a translation and adaptation of a text written in September 1996.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  July/August 1998

  Issue:

   

  Volume 17 number 4

  Location:

   

  Page 24

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• Australia is not for Everyone

   

  Robert FAURISSON

   

  14 May 1998

   

  Australia is not for Everyone

   

   Even for "tourism or other recreational activities," a foreigner wishing to go to Australia must apply for a visitor's visa. The conditions set forth are draconian.

   

    Section 10 of form 48, which you must complete in order to request such a visa, is a five-point declaration, to be accompanied by signature; in the last three of the points you declare:

   

   1) That you "have adequate funds to meet all costs associated with [your] visit to and from Australia";

   

  2) That you "have never had tuberculosis or any serious condition likely to endanger or be a cost to Australia";

   

  3) That you "have never been convicted of a crime or offence; been charged with an offence that is waiting [sic] legal action; been deported, refused entry or asked to leave a country; been refused entry to Australia or had a visa to Australia cancelled"; that you "do not have any outstanding debt to any Australian authority."

   

    As for the conditions: "You may NOT undertake work while in Australia. You may NOT undertake study of more than three months duration while in Australia. If you intend to study for longer than four weeks, you may be asked by the Australian mission to provide a chest x-ray."

   

    You are advised to "check that you have health insurance. Medical treatment in Australia can be very expensive. Visitors are not covered by Australia's national health insurance scheme unless they are covered by a reciprocal health care agreement."

   

    You are warned that "you must answer all questions [in the form] honestly and completely. False or misleading information may lead to refusal or cancellation of your visa, or penalties while in Australia."

   

    You are warned as well that "the Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) is authorised to collect information provided on this form under Part 2 of the Migration Act 1958: Control of Arrival and Presence of Non-Citizens. The information will be used for assessing your eligibility for a visitor visa and for other purposes relating to the administration of the Migration Act."

   

   +++++++

   

  PS: David Irving, a British citizen, cannot be allowed into Australia because he has been found guilty by a German court of making a  revisionist remark. All those convicted for revisionism are in the same boat. A holder of British and French citizenship, convicted of revisionism nearly a dozen times, awaiting trial under charges for three more revisionist offences, I obviously cannot go to Australia.

   

    Having said that, I suppose that for any case apart from revisionism the Australian DIMA, for political or other reasons, must be inclined to relax its rules a bit and grant its visas as it pleases.

   

   

• Auschwitz: Discovery and "Rediscovery"

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  16 June 1998

   Discovery and "Rediscovery"

   

    A discovery that I made in 1979 of certain accounts of Auschwitz which had appeared in Pravda in February 1945, and which I have mentioned perhaps ten times since the early 1980s in books, articles or conferences in French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian, has recently been presented in the monthly Smith's Report as a sensational and quite recent finding. Its subject is the Soviet "observations" published in the 2 February 1945 edition of Pravda.

   

  Smith's Report (June 1998, pp. 1, 3, 7)

   

   An up-to-the-minute example of how CODOH is spreading the latest word in Holocaust-busting research to other leading revisionists is given by the teamwork of the able scholar Samuel Crowell and David Irving. Crowell unearthed, translated from the Russian, and supplied notes and commentary to the first account ever published by the "liberators" of Auschwitz: a Soviet journalist's mendacious account of how the Nazi extermination "factory" really worked. Reading it makes plain why we hear so little about the liberation of Auschwitz: Pravda correspondent Boris Polevoi described a conveyor belt which dropped inmates into a flaming pit! Fans of David Irving will be pleased to know that the industrious author and tireless researcher has become increasingly proficient in the painstakingly acquired HTML coding language and was able, more or less unaided, to "translate" the Pravda article Crowell had translated from the Russian into the computerese necessary to post it on the Website. [page 1]

   

    In London, England [sic] revisionist historian David Irving posts to his Website the first dispatch from the "liberated" Auschwitz—it appeared in Pravda in 1945—as translated and with commentary by CODOH-affiliated scholar Samuel Crowell. [page 3]

   

   CODOH stands for Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. For years Bradley Smith and his team at CODOH have been making an  important contribution to the development of revisionism in American universities. We return to Smith's Report.

   

   

   

  AUSCHWITZ:

  THE FIRST REPORT!

    On February 2, 1945 Pravda, organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published an article briefly describing what Red Army troops had found on overrunning the Nazi slave labor camp at Auschwitz. The article, the first public revelation of the site's existence, is surprising for what it does not mention.

   

      [Translated and annotated by "Samuel Crowell" (nom-de-plume), May 8, 1998]

   

    THE ARGUMENT between revisionists and non-revisionists is that the record of Nazi atrocities, though no doubt based in fact, contains significant amounts of fiction. Whether fact or fiction, any atrocity claim should be placed in its proper historical context so that the researcher can understand either how the facts came to be known or how the fiction evolved in the popular mind.

   

    The first press reporting on the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp is therefore bound to be of interest to historians, regardless of how they regard the Auschwitz claims. The following article, by Boris Polevoi, was originally published on Friday, February 2, 1945, in the Soviet national paper Pravda, less than a week after the camp had been liberated (January 27,1945), and a full three months before the official Soviet report on Auschwitz (May 6,1945), known by the Exhibit-Number assigned to it at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) as USSR-08.

   

    What is most striking about this press report is that it is totally at variance with the version of Auschwitz that we have come to know, substituting the traditional atrocity record with another, completely imaginary one. That the first non-anonymous observer at the Auschwitz camp could be so far from the current narrative speaks not only to the inaccuracy of this initial report, but also to the artifice of all subsequent ones.

   

  (A photocopy of the Pravda article in translation as it appears on David Irving's Website, together with comments and footnotes by Samuel Crowell, is available for your donation. 6 pp.) [page 7 of Smith's Report]

   

  The Journal of Historical Review (July-August 1997, pp. 14-15, 19)

   

    I had published this "news" most recently less than a year before in The Journal of Historical Review. It was in an article entitled: "Auschwitz, Facts and Legend" (July-August 1997, pp. 14-19) which was the translation of a piece first published in French and Spanish on 11 January 1995. The part of it devoted to the Pravda article of 2 February 1945 (and also to those of Pravda of 1st February and of an American paper which quickly echoed the Soviet press) bore the heading "The Quandary of the Soviet Liberators". It read:

   

     Soviet forces occupied Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. What they found there was so contrary to what had been spread by propaganda that one may imagine they were left with mouths agape. Alone in its organization and in its sanitary facilities, so modern in the eyes of the Soviets, the camp was the complete opposite of an "extermination camp." Consequently, for several days the leading Soviet daily Pravda remained silent, and, for the moment, no Allied commission of inquiry was invited to determine, on the spot, the truth of Auschwitz. On the 1st of February, Pravda broke its silence, but only to put the following words in the mouth of a single prisoner: "The Hitlerites killed the children and the ill by means of gas, as well as the men and women who were unfit for work. They cremated the cadavers in special furnaces. There were twelve of these furnaces in the camp."

   

    The official Soviet paper added that the number of deaths was reckoned at "thousands and thousands" (not millions). The next day, Pravda's chief reporter, Jewish journalist Boris Polevoï, affirmed that the main method used by the Germans to exterminate their victims was...electricity: "[They utilized] an electric conveyor belt on which hundreds of persons could be electrocuted simultaneously; the dead bodies would then fall on to a belt driven slowly by a chain and in this way move on into a blast furnace."

   

    Soviet propaganda was in disarray, and in its newsreels could show only the dead or dying whom the Germans had left behind in their retreat. And, as contemporary newsreels of the camp's liberation reveal, there were also numerous live children, as well as adults in good health. Jewish propaganda then came to the aid of Soviet propaganda.

   

   

   

    In a footnote (p. 19) I added:

   

   Report by B. Polevoi, Pravda, Feb. 2, 1945, p. 4. I first learned of this article while doing research in the National Archives, Suitland (Maryland) branch, when I came across a brief report from the Washington [DC] Daily News of Feb. 2, 1945, pp. 2, 35 ("Ageless, Sexless Ghosts Rescued from Murder Mill," United Press dispatch by Henry Shapiro in Moscow), which was based, more or less, on the Pravda article.

   

   The story of that discovery

   

     I first learned of this Pravda article of 2 February 1945 in September 1979, whilst working on the case of Otto Moll, the SS man in charge of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria. It was in the prosecutor's file that I found the Washington Daily News article. Upon returning to France I did some research in Pravda's issues of 27 January 1945 (the date of Auschwitz's "liberation") and the following days, and found but two relevant pieces in the Pravdas of 1 and 2 February, respectively.

   

    A Russian émigré in Paris called Nicolas Trouchkine translated these articles into French for me; I later had his translations verified by Gabor Tamas Rittersporn, a Russian-educated French citizen of Jewish-Hungarian origin.

   

     As I have pointed out above, I mentioned and commented on the 1945 articles on a number of occasions throughout the 80s. In 1986, at a meeting in Germany, Udo Walendy asked me to send him the Pravda articles. He read Russian and intended to publish them in translation, which he did in the following year; see "Die sowietischen Entdeckungen in Auschwitz am 27. 1. 1945" (Historische Tatsache Nr 31 [October 1987], pp. 4-32). He forgot to credit me with having discovered both the Soviet and American articles concerned.

   

   Dr Myro J. Dragan, MD

   

    At the origin of the alleged 1998 discovery we have, according to David Irving (Focal Point, 1998 on the Net), the "Polish Historical Society", headed by an American of Polish-Ukranian origin, Dr Myro J. Dragan, MD of Stamford, Connecticut, who is apparently its sole member. D. Irving writes: "The Polish Historical Society is credited with re-discovering this article."

   

     This reminds me of how, in June 1996, Dr Dragan "rediscovered" what I had been saying for many years about another subject: that the four alleged 25 x 25 cm. (9 7/8 in.) openings in the roof of the Krematorium II gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau never existed. In September 1994, at a convention of the Institute for Historical Review, I had summed up my conclusions in the quip: "No holes, no   «Holocaust»."

   

    As for Dr Dragan, he had announced his so-called discovery in an essay of June 1996 entitled "The Case of Missing Zyklon B Inlets / Two most venerable icons of Holocaustianity debunked". For further information concerning Dr Dragan and his work one may contact Ernst Zündel in Toronto.

   

   

• Six Questions to John Paul II about Edith Stein

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  4 November 1998

   Six questions to John Paul II about Edith Stein

   

  (translated from the French by S. Mundi)

   

              In St Peter's Square in the Vatican, on Sunday 11 October 1998, Pope John Paul II conducted the canonisation of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein in her secular life), a Carmelite nun of Jewish origin who was born in Breslau, lower Silesia on 12 October 1896 and who, according to the official version, died at Auschwitz, upper Silesia on 9 August 1942. In the course of his homily the pope stated:

   

  Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholic Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers  (1).

   

               The end of this sentence implies that, for the pope, the Nazi gas chambers did indeed exist. Never until this time had John Paul II or any other pope before him thus taken the responsibility to assert the existence and the functioning of veritable chemical slaughterhouses in a German concentration camp. Pius XII in particular, who died in 1958, had always refrained from doing so and, like him, his contemporaries Churchill, Eisenhower, and de Gaulle refused to mention either genocide or gas chambers in the war memoirs which they wrote between 1948 and 1959.

   

              Why did John Paul II take this extraordinary initiative, and what evidence did he have at his disposal to assert the existence of those gas chambers, then to specify that Edith Stein, her sister Rosa, and numerous other Jews from Holland had met their deaths in such gas chambers at Auschwitz?

   

              Moreover, John Paul II added in the same homily:

   

   From now on, as we celebrate the memory of this new saint from year to year, we must also remember the Shoah, that cruel plan to exterminate a people, a plan to which millions of our Jewish brothers and sisters fell victim.

   

   There too, a question arises: what evidence did the pope have, on the one hand, to assert the existence of a programme aiming to eliminate the Jewish people and, on the other hand, to put forth the figure of several million victims of that programme? No historian (and particularly not Raul Hilberg) today dare claim to have found the least trace of such a plan, whether in the "Wannsee Protocol" or anywhere else; as for the millions of Jewish victims, where or when has the breakdown of Jewish losses ever been done?

   

             With these questions and a few others in mind, I have consulted, in the vast bibliography devoted to E. Stein, first a work of reference published in France in 1990, then three recent books which have come out in 1998 and, finally, quite a number of articles in various languages. I am conscious of the fact that this has been a limited inquiry. Naturally, if permission to do so were granted to revisionists, I should consult, first, the extremely rich archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS), located at Arolsen-Waldeck in Germany; unhappily these archives are kept under close supervision, notably at the behest of the State of Israel. The dossier which was put together with a view to E. Stein's beatification, then her canonisation, would also interest me but the Vatican does not allow such consultation. I am thus reduced to requesting of the Vatican authorities, and of the pope in particular, the favour of a response to the six questions put forth in my conclusion and to certain others which may be noted in the body of the present text.

   

               From the various publications which I have consulted, it emerges that in reality it is not known where, when, or how E. Stein and her sister died. Thus it seems clear that one cannot rightly state as certain that they were 1) killed, 2) in one or more gas chambers at Auschwitz, 3) on 9 August 1942 (that being the date of death sanctioned by numerous authors as well as by the pope, who has expressed his desire to make the anniversary of E. Stein's demise a day of commemoration, for the entire Roman Catholic church, of the "Shoah").

   

   The Auschwitz "calendar"

   

              According to the 1989 edition of Danuta Czech's "Auschwitz calendar of events", E. Stein, her sister Rosa, and 985 other Jews were deported from the camp of Westerbork in the Netherlands, arriving at Auschwitz on the 8th (and not the 9th) of August 1942. D. Czech would have her readers believe that of these 987 Jews, 464 were registered for work (315 men and 149 women), while the other 523 were immediately gassed (2). As always in the "calendar", this latter assertion is not supported by any evidence; thus, for that matter, a number of Jews who, as I have been able to show,  survived the war are listed by this "calendar" as having been gassed. These 523 persons, of whom D. Czech seems to have found no trace in the camp archives, may well have been set down at Cosel (a stop along the way) or, just as well, been sent directly to one of the sub-camps of the Auschwitz complex, or to any other concentration or labour camp.

   

  According to Sister Waltraud Herbstrith's book

   

             In Das Wahre Gesicht Edith Steins (published in English under the title Edith Stein, a biography), generally considered as a work of reference, Sister Waltraud Herbstrith writes:

   

  The Dutch official state journal of 16 February 1950 carried the names of all of the Jews who had been deported from Holland on 7 August [1942]. In list no. 34 one may read "Number 44074, Edith Theresia Hedwig Stein, born 12 October 1891 in Breslau [Silesia], [transported] from Echt [Netherlands], died 9 August 1942" (3).

   

   And she goes on to add:

   

   As it was acknowledged legally that no-one from that convoy had survived, the 9th of August [1942] was declared the victims' date of decease (4).

   

  It will be noted that this official journal  does not specify the date of E. Stein's death and that W. Herbstrith declares that date to be "acknowledged legally" ("gerichtnotorisch feststand"), all of which implies that no real investigation has ever been carried out; this purported date of decease is the result of speculation, as happens in France with what is known  as a "jugement déclaratif de décès" ("declaratory finding of decease") (5).

   

  According to the French weekly La Vie

   

              A passage in a recent article in La Vie (formerly La Vie catholique illustrée)  reads as follows:

   

  [E. Stein was] executed in obscure conditions, doubtless in Auschwitz, officially the 9th of August 1942 (6).

   

   It will be noted that the author of the article acknowledges that the date and place of E. Stein's death are not really known; as for the choice of the word "executed", it is abusive since, as it is unclear where and when her death occurred, it can hardly be known how it occurred.

   

   According to the book by Joachim Bouflet

   

              In his Edith Stein, philosophe crucifiée, Joachim Bouflet writes:

   

   [E. Stein was deported] to the East. To Auschwitz where she was to be gassed on arrival, the 9th of August, with her sister Rosa (7).

   

   And adds, in his "chronology":

   

   9 August 1942: gassed with her sister Rosa at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

   

   It will be noted that the author (apparently unaware that the Steins' convoy arrived at Auschwitz on the 8th of August and not the 9th) points out, on the faith of one knows not what evidence, that the "gassing" took place at Birkenau; at that date, according to the vulgate, this "gassing" could have occurred either at Auschwitz I or at a Birkenau "farm".

   

   According to the book by Bernard Molter

   

      In Edith Stein, martyre juive de confession chrétienne, Bernard Molter writes:

   

   On 7 August, the [Dutch] convoy departs. For the East. Then, silence. The great silence of Auschwitz-Birkenau where [E. Stein] is exterminated, probably upon arrival on 9 August (8).

   

   And he adds, in his "Repères biographiques" ("Important dates"):

   

   Probably on the 9th of August, she is gassed to death at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

   

   One will note that the author who, once again, seems not to know that the convoy arrived at Auschwitz on 8 August rather than 9 August, has the honesty to write that it is "probably" on that latter date that E. Stein died. As for the word "exterminated", it is all the more abusive here as such a word can be applied only to a group of persons, not to an individual. In writing: "On 7 August, the convoy departs. For the East. Then, silence", the author has brushed against reality; he ought to have stopped there and not added the next sentence.

   

   According to the book by Christian Feldmann

   

   In Edith Stein; Jüdin, Philosophin, Ordensfrau ("Edith Stein; Jewess, Philosopher, Nun") German author Christian Feldmann writes:

   

  According to the information of the Ministry of Justice [of which country?], Edith and Rosa Stein were gassed immediately after their arrival at Auschwitz, on 9 August 1942 (9).

   

   According to Bernard Dupuy's study

   

   In a study entitled "Edith Stein dans les griffes de la Gestapo/Précisions nouvelles sur son envoi en déportation" ("Edith Stein in the Clutches of the Gestapo / New Information on her Deportation"), Bernard Dupuy writes:

   

   Two hundred forty Catholic Jews [among whom E. and R. Stein], identified, arrested, and deported together would seem to have been sent to the gas chambers just after arriving at  Auschwitz-Birkenau on 9 August (10).

   

   The author, who acknowledges his debt to W. Herbstrith's work of reference and to the book by J. Bouflet, has the prudence to put that sentence in the conditional but, unlike those by whom he is inspired, he is imprudent enough to tack on the assertion that all of the Catholic Jews would seem to have been, like E. and R. Stein, gassed on 9 August [for: 8 August].

   

   A Widespread Plagiary?

   

   In short, all of these authors seem to have copied one another, or drawn on the same poor and doubtful source, and each of them, finally, adorns the traditional account with a few inventions of his own.

   

  One may consider the question whether the pope or his counsellors have not, in turn, merely repeated the same hackneyed story of the fate of E. Stein and the other Jews in her convoy without taking the trouble to verify any of it.

   

   Another Question: May E. Stein have died of Typhus ?

   

              If E. Stein did indeed arrive at Auschwitz in August 1942, may she not have perished in one of the dreadful typhoid epidemics which ravaged the camp at the time? Even the town of Auschwitz was touched by them. A number of Germans, including some SS physicians, died of typhus in the camp.

   

   Another Question: Did any members of the Stein family survive the war?

   

              The pope in his homily saluted:

   

   the many pilgrims who have come to Rome, particularly the members of the Stein family who have wanted to be with us on this joyful occasion.

   

   Admittedly, some members of her family had left Europe in time but others remained, in Breslau for instance. Thus one may read in W. Herbstrith's book:

   

   On 28 July [1942]  there came [to E. Stein's knowledge] the terrible news that Edith Stein's brothers and sisters in Breslau, the family of her brother Paul, and her sister Freida had been taken to Theresienstadt (11).

   

   It would be interesting to know the fate of these persons. Did any of them survive the war? If so, were any of their children, born after the war, in attendance at the ceremony?

   

   Were the Dutch bishops primarily responsible for this deportation?

   

               We are often told that the occupying power cynically deceived the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands: that after having assured them that converted Jews would not be affected by any coercive measures, the Germans, suddenly going back on their word, decided to deport such Jews. But is the truth perhaps altogether different? Did the Dutch Roman Catholic Church perhaps first break its explicit or implicit commitments, then adopt a resolutely provocative attitude towards the occupying forces?

   

              To reply to this grave question, let us compare passages in two of the biographies, referring first to words in C. Feldmann's book which express the anti-German point of view, then to an extract of a document in the book by W. Herbstrith, which  shows the German wartime point of view.

   

               C. Feldmann writes:

   

  On 11 July 1942, the spiritual leaders of all [Christian] denominations sent a telegram to the Commissar of the Reich, Seyss-Inquart, in which they protested against the deportation of Jewish families. — To fool everyone, the authorities of the Reich had given assurances that converted Jews were not to be affected by coercive measures. But that did not deter the Churches of the Netherlands from declaring their solidarity with the persecuted Jews. A heated protest against the deportation of Jewish families was read out on 26 July in all the churches of Holland, of all denominations. In the Catholic churches, a pastoral letter asking that all believers make a self-criticism was read out in addition to the protestation: " […] Have we not nourished feelings of impious hatred and bitterness?" The letter ended with a  prayer which was quite provocative in regard to the occupying forces […]. Such outspoken resistance to the cowing of public conscience could obviously not be tolerated. Still less so as the clergy had violated Reich Commissar Seyss-Inquart's express prohibition of the reading out in church of the protest telegram which had been addressed  to him. The Nazi occupying authorities reacted violently on 2 August […]. They arrested all Catholic Jews, priests and nuns included, 1,200 persons all told, according to some estimates (12).

   

   The reader may note that, even in the eyes of an author very favourable to the cause of the Jews and Catholics, the attitude which the bishops had adopted, in this particular case, was a deliberately provocative one. "A heated  protest …  a  prayer which was quite provocative …  Such outspoken resistance … the clergy had violated Reich Commissar Seyss-Inquart's express prohibition": such are the words chosen by C. Feldmann. But there is another point, appreciably more important, which deserves to be stressed and which raises another question: how is it that the Germans arrested the Catholic Jews without at the same time arresting the Protestant ones? How is this difference of reaction to be explained? Is there not a precise reason for this anomaly?

   

              The answer to these questions seems to lie in a German document which C. Feldmann passes over in silence and which W. Herbstrith, unfortunately, cites only in part. It emerges from this document that, for the Germans, the Catholic Church and the various Protestant denominations had been advised that they could intervene in favour of their brethren of Jewish descent but not in favour of unconverted Jews. If these churches looked after their flocks, the Germans would not take action against those among them who were of Jewish blood. A key passage reads:

   

   The Protestant authorities are not averse to this way of seeing things and have not, for their part, incited any [such] demonstration or prayer in their churches. On the contrary, the Catholic Church, this past Sunday, spoke during its services of the deportation of the Jews. This, according to its leaders, was due to the fact that the Reich Commissar's point of view had not become known everywhere in time (13).

   

   It can be seen there that, from the German authorities' standpoint, the Catholic Church had feigned ignorance of a warning, a promise, and an express prohibition which the Protestant churches, for their part, had heeded. It may well be that, in some Protestant houses of worship, the hierarchy's instructions were at times disregarded but it was the Catholic Church which, at the highest national level, chose not to take heed in the least of the occupying authorities' warning, promise, and express prohibition; it even added to its refusal an act of defiance: it had the protest telegram read out in public, along with the pastoral letter.

   

              That being the case, can it not reasonably be said that it was this   refusal to heed, this defiance on the part of the Church, which prompted Edith Stein's deportation? One may deem the Dutch Catholic Church's initiative courageous, just as one may consider bombings and assassinations, carried out by terrorists or resistance fighters, to be justified but, come the time for reprisals — inevitable in the case at hand, according to C. Feldmann himself— where are those who are primarily responsible to be found? Would not E. Stein, R. Stein, and the other Catholic Jews have been spared a deportation which, for some, resulted in death, if the Dutch Catholic Church had behaved in the same way as the Protestant churches? Without meaning to offend anybody, may one not rightfully pose that question?

   

   Why are there such discrepancies between the various translations of the homily?

   

               The Vatican and its official daily newspaper l'Osservatore Romano are known for the great care they take in rendering  papal documents into various languages. They have no shortage of expert translators. Yet, after a comparison of the different versions (English, French, German, and Italian) of the 11 October homily, two questions arise:

   

   1) How is it that a passage in the German and English versions relates that Edith and Rosa Stein were deported along with "many other Catholic Jews from the Netherlands" whereas, in the French and Italian versions, the word "Catholic" does not appear in the corresponding sentence?

   

  2) Why is the French version hebraised in the sense that, while the others mention the Lord ("der Herr", "il Signore"), it instead speaks of Yahvé?

   

   Conclusion

   

              Through the agency of l'Osservatore Romano, to which I address the present text in order that it be passed on to the proper authority in the Vatican, I hereby take the liberty, in summing up, of asking the following questions of John Paul II, in the hope of receiving a reply which I may, with his permission, duly make public:

   

  1. What evidence have you that may establish the death of Edith Stein in       an execution gas chamber at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942?

   

  2. What evidence have you of the existence of a German  government plan for the physical elimination of the Jewish  people?

   

  3. Have you ordered an investigation, particularly in conjunction with the International Tracing Service (ITS) at Arolsen-Waldeck, to determine whether, for example, Edith and Rosa Stein did not die elsewhere than at Auschwitz or did not fall victim to the typhus epidemics which, notably in 1942, ravaged the Auschwitz camp to the point of causing hundreds of deaths per day, sparing neither German guards nor SS camp physicians?

   

  4. Did any members of the Stein family who were interned by the Germans survive the war, and, if so, were any such relatives present at the canonisation ceremony at the Vatican on 11 October 1998?

   

  5. Does the primary responsibility for the German decision to deport the Catholic Jews of the Netherlands not lie with the country's wartime Roman Catholic bishops who, unlike the Protestant authorities, seem to have inspired — or at least knowingly allowed — actions which were likely to prompt such a decision?

   

  6. Why are there such serious discrepancies between the various translations of the homily which you pronounced on 11 October 1998?

   

   N.B.  The young French historian Vincent Reynouard has recently published a revisionist examination of the case of Edith Stein; see "Sur Edith Stein", ANEC Informations (BP 21, 44530 ST GILDAS DES BOIS, France), 29 October 1998, p. 3-5.

   

   NOTES

   

   1. L'Osservatore Romano, weekly English language edition, 14 October 1998, p.1.

   

  2. Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945, Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1989, p. 269.

   

  3. Waltraud Herbstrith, Das Wahre Gesicht Edith Steins ("The True Face of Edith Stein"), Aschaffenburg, Kaffke-Verlag, 1987 [1971], verbesserte Auflage [revised and corrected edition], p. 176. (Work published in English translation under the title Edith Stein, a biography, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1992 [1985].)

   

  4. Ibid.

   

  5. When the date of a deportee's death is not known, the registry office holds it to be the date on which that person is ascertained or presumed to have arrived in a given camp. In certain Jewish cemeteries in Germany there are headstones bearing mention, in their inscriptions, of the same date of death and the same camp for two or three family members; thus the observer is led to believe that these persons were simultaneously murdered in one particular camp, whereas in reality they may well have perished separately, i.e. on different dates, of different causes, in different circumstances, even in different camps.

   

  6. Jean-Pierre Manigne, "Edith Stein, juive et martyre", La Vie, 8 October 1998, p. 71.

   

  7. Joachim Bouflet, Edith Stein, philosophe crucifiée,  Presses de la Renaissance, 1998, p. 273.

   

  8. Bernard Molter, Edith Stein, martyre juive de confession chrétienne,  Paris, Cana, 1998, p. 145.

   

  9. Christian Feldmann, Edith Stein : juive, athée, moniale ("Edith Stein: Jewess, Atheist, Nun", French translation by Yvan Mudry of  Edith Stein; Jüdin, Philosophin, Ordensfrau ["Edith Stein: Jewess, Philosopher, Nun"], Freiburg, Herder, 1987 ) Paris, Saint-Augustin, 1998, p. 144.

   

  10. Bernard Dupuy,  "Edith Stein dans les griffes de la Gestapo / Précisions nouvelles sur son envoi en déportation", Istina  (Paris) no. XLIII (1998), p. 289.

   

  11. Waltraud Herbstrith, op. cit. , p. 165.

   

  12. Christian Feldmann, op. cit. , p. 138-139.

   

  13. Waltraud Herbstrith, op. cit. , p. 177.

   

   

• Peter Longerich is a Forger

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  5 December 1999

   Peter Longerich is a Forger

   

               In his 1998 book Politik der Vernichtung, Peter Longerich falsified the most important paragraphs of the "Wannsee-Protokoll" by omitting the words "bei Freilassung", which mean: upon release, or: upon liberation (Politik der Vernichtung, München, Zürich, Piper Verlag, 772 pages).

   

              See 1) The original German text; 2) Raul Hilberg's translation; 3) P. Longerich's presentation of the text.

   

              1) Unter entsprechender Leitung sollen nun im Zuge der Endlösung die Juden in geeigneter Weise im Osten zum Arbeitseinsatz kommen. In großen Arbeitskolonnen, unter Trennung der Geschlechter, werden die arbeitsfähigen Juden straßenbauend in diese Gebiete geführt, wobei zweifellos ein Großteil durch natürliche Verminderung ausfallen wird.

   

             Der allfällig endlich verbleibende Restbestand wird, da es sich bei diesem zweifellos um den widerstandsfähigsten Teil handelt, entsprechend behandelt werden müssen, da dieser, eine natürliche Auslese darstellend, bei Freilassung als Keimzelle eines neuen jüdischen Aufbaues anzusprechen ist. (Siehe die Erfahrung der Geschichte.)

   

    — Besprechungsprotokoll (20.1.1942 in Berlin), p. 7-8.

   

   

   

             2) In the course of the final solution, the Jews should be brought under appropriate direction in a suitable manner to the east for labor utilization. Separated by sex, the Jews capable of work will be led into these areas in large labor columns to build roads, whereby doubtless a large part will fall away through natural reduction.

   

             The inevitable final remainder which doubtless constitutes the toughest element will have to be dealt with appropriately, since it represents a natural selection which upon liberation  is to be regarded as a germ cell of a new Jewish development. (See the lesson of history.)

   

  — Raul Hilberg, Documents of Destruction, Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1971, p. 94.

   

   

   

             3) Heydrich trennte also deutlich das bereits angelaufene Deportationsprogramm von dem weit umfangreicheren späteren Plan ab. Über die vorgeschene »Endlösung« machte Heydrich laut Protokoll folgende Ausführungen: »Unter entsprechender Leitung sollen nun im Zuge der Endlösung die Juden in geeigneter Weise zum Arbeitseinsatz kommen. In großen Arbeitskolonnen, unter Trennung der Geschlechter, werden die arbeitsfähigen Juden straßenbauend in diese Gebiete geführt, wobei zweifellos ein Großteil durch natürliche Verminderung ausfallen wird.« Der allfällig endlich verbleibende Restbestand« werde, da »es sich bei diesem zweifellos um den widerstandsfähigsten Teil« handele, »entsprechend behandelt werden müssen«, um zu verhindern, daß hieraus wiederum eine »Keimzelle eines neuen jüdischen Aufbaues« entstünde. Zunächst sollten die Juden in »Durchgangsgettos« gebracht werden, um von hier aus weiter nach Osten transportiert zu werden.

   

    —P. Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, München, Zürich, Piper Verlag, p. 470

   

               The Germans intended to release (to liberate) those Jews who, after having worked hard with their hands, would have constituted an elite, a germ cell of a new Jewish development. This was altogether a National-Socialist and a Zionist view. "See the lesson of history" means that history shows (or is supposed to show) that, for a group or a nation, revival may come after hardship and toil.

   

              Peter Longerich saw fit to avoid "upon release" and the sentence "See the lesson of history" in order to have his reader believe that the Germans intended to kill those remaining Jews.

   

              Many among the Germans were, like Adolf Eichmann and Alois Brunner, both National-Socialist and Zionist. That is why Zionist heads collaborated with them.

   

              P. Longerich is all the more unforgivable since, in  1989, he had himself published the entire "Wannsee-Protokoll" correctly (Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden, herausgegeben von Peter Longerich unter Mitarbeit von Dieter Pohl, München, Zürich, Piper Verlag, 1989, 479 pages; see p. 87 for the two paragraphs in question).

   

   P.S.: In Die Ermordung […], P. Longerich had doctored the famous 5 June 1942 document on the "Spezialwagen", signed "Just". Since this so very strange document contains, right in the first sentence, an inexplicable "beispielsweise" ("for example"), he used a trick to lead the reader to believe that this sentence was NOT the first. The artifice consisted in putting the typographical sign […] before the first word of that opening passage (see p. 355)!

• In Lyon, the Plantin Affair

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  30 May 1999

   In Lyon, the Plantin Affair

   

              Jean Plantin, thirty-four years of age, unemployed and residing near Lyon, publishes the review Akribeia (a Greek word meaning "exactitude"). This review bears the subheading Histoire, rumeurs, légendes ("History, Rumours, Legends"), and appears twice yearly. It is not revisionist but it has the merit of examining with equal impartiality both exterminationist and revisionist publications, as well as quite diverse studies dealing with subjects of no relevance to the ongoing controversy between exterminationists and  revisionists.

   

              It so happens that, in the first issues of Akribeia, J. Plantin simply mentioned three revisionist publications whose sale, display, and advertisement are forbidden by the interior ministry. He made precisely no advertisement for them.

   

              On 13 January 1999, he was arrested at his home and taken to a Lyon police station where, for 24 hours, he was subjected to an ignominious treatment. Then, back at his house, he saw his two computers and the diskettes containing his archives seized by the arresting officers, who also turned his collection of books and documents upside down.

   

              Some journalists then set about launching "the Plantin affair", mainly in Le Journal du dimanche ("The Sunday Journal"), the local press, and the Communist Party's L'Humanité of 21 April (p. 1, 6, 7) under the headline "Filière noire pour revue brune" ("A Brown Review's Black Path"; it should be noted in passing that Akribeia's cover is of a vivid red hue).

   

              These newspapers revealed that J. Plantin had in 1990 obtained a master's degree in history for his paper entitled Paul Rassinier (1906-1967), socialiste, pacifiste et révisionniste. In the following year he earned the "diplôme d'études approfondies" ("diploma of advanced studies", known as the "DEA") with his Les Epidémies de typhus dans les camps de concentration nazis ("The Typhus epidemics in the Nazi concentration camps"). Neither of the two works exhibited a revisionist character. But suddenly, now in 1999, certain organisations, particularly Jewish ones, have made it known that they consider that fact to be immaterial and that the two professors (the first at Lyon-III, the second at Lyon-II) who oversaw J. Plantin's work were guilty of revisionism (of "negationism", as they call it).

   

  Universities in commotion

   

              At first, the professors involved, Régis Ladous and Yves Lequin, protested their good faith. Fallen prey to panic, both dodged their responsibilities. R. Ladous, for his part, went so far as to say that, if he had accorded the mention "Très bien" ("very good") to the master's paper, it was only to show his scorn for a job which, in his eyes, was, it seems, "grotesque"! Then, the professors spontaneously tendered their resignations from their posts as "DEA" directors. These resignations were immediately accepted by the presidents of their respective universities.

   

              R. Ladous had distinguished himself on 29 April 1993 by publicly endorsing the judicial ordeal imposed on his revisionist colleague Bernard Notin (who, from that moment onwards, has never been able to resume his lecture programme in economics at the University of Lyon-III). As for Y. Lequin, he presides over the committee of historians at Lyon's Centre d'histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation; he is also a member of a commission recently established by the Lyon council to investigate the wartime "despoilment of Jewish property".

   

              The local press has come out with a multitude of pieces on J. Plantin's trial, held in Lyon on 22 April, and on the two professors' resignations. It has also revealed that some groups, notably Jewish ones, are now demanding the revocation of the two degrees obtained in 1990 and 1991 by J. Plantin (master's and "DEA" in history). A committee of historians and academics are to attempt to ascertain why Lyon has become, in their view, "the French capital of negationism" (with, from 1978 to 1999, the     chain of the Faurisson, Zind, Allard, Notin, and François Robert affairs, and now, finally, that of J. Plantin [1]); they are making preparations for a one-day seminar in October 1999 to look into that question. An international symposium on the problem of what they call "negationism" is to be held next year. As of now, consideration is being given to the setting up of a system for vetting prospective students at French universities, in order to prevent any person suspected of revisionism from getting any degree whatever. The University of Lyon-II has put Bernard Comte, a religious history specialist, in charge of drafting a "detailed and exhaustive chronology of all the events, since the Faurisson affair, which have, in one manner or another, put the university into contact with negationism, whether by a showing of support or of condemnation".

   

   Invective against the young historian

   

              It was in this media-charged atmosphere that the Lyon judges were to deliberate for five weeks before handing down their verdict of guilty on 27 May: they sentenced J. Plantin to six months' imprisonment (suspended) and a fine of 10,000 francs (approximately $1,800) and ordered him to pay 39,000 francs (approximately $7,100) in damages and costs to three Jewish associations. The professional equipment seized at his house (computers and archives on diskettes) has been confiscated.

   

              J. Plantin has ten days to lodge an appeal.

   

              According to the journalists, it seems that another case against the young historian is in the offing, this time for the contents of the latest issue (no. 4) of Akribeia. For its part, the Lyon-II board of governors has decided to start the procedure for the revocation of J. Plantin's "DEA". Yet, since his "DEA" paper is no longer to be found in the university's library, and since no-one, consequently, can say anything about its substance, it is… on the basis of administrative technicalities of the degree's attribution that the revocation is to be sought! Such is the board's decision, reached by a vote of 30 in favour, none against, and eight abstaining.

   

   The behaviour of the daily Le Monde

   

              For the past several years, I have been in the habit of denouncing Le Monde's lies, particularly those regarding the subject of revisionism, to Le Monde itself. "Le Monde, journal oblique (suite)" ("Le Monde, Oblique Daily — continued") is the unvarying title which I give to the pieces in which, beside a reproduction of the article which I call into question, my observations may be read. Copies of the whole are addressed to the journalists whom I criticise and to their superiors.

   

              Experience teaches that when, for example, a revisionist or — as is the case with J. Plantin — an editor suspected of revisionism is either thrown into jail or sentenced to a heavy fine, this newspaper will deliberately pass over the fact in silence or else minimise it.

   

              On the very evening following the verdict, I sent a fax to Le Monde  in which I recapitulated all of the sanctions and orders which the court had just inflicted on J. Plantin. I concluded: "Will Le Monde have the honesty, for once, not to minimise any aspect of this judgement?"

   

              Upon reading the four-column article appearing in its May 29 issue (p. 4), I note that the paper has, for once, shown a relative honesty, but has again minimised and distorted. Minimised, first, in diminishing the amount to be paid by the young unemployed man in costs and damages from 39,000 to 30,000 francs, then, in neglecting to mention the confiscation of his professional equipment (the two computers and the archives on diskettes seized at his home) and, finally, in avoiding to recall, in its relation of the  background to the affair, the ignominious conditions of J. Plantin's spell in custody, conditions of which Le Monde  was the first to be informed, and by my own doing. In the end, it distorted in amputating a word from the title of the "DEA" paper: that word was "nazis", appearing in the expression "camps de concentration nazis". That expression and that adjective, in the given context, were far from any revisionism. For, contrary to journalistic rumour, J. Plantin has not been involved in historical revisionism. He has striven, in Akribeia, to be exact and impartial. There is his crime, his sole crime.

   

              In Lyon, a new anti-revisionist witch hunt has begun, with Le Monde taking part in it. Perhaps with a bit less venom and duplicity than usually. But it is taking part nevertheless.

   

              It must be said that Le Monde seems to have a congenital repugnance to exactitude, to akribeia  [2].

   

   J. Plantin's adventure

   

              An intellectual, trained at university in historical research, conscientious, unassuming, unselfish, engrossed in a Benedictine-like routine of labour, bereft of all financial resources, unemployed, decides one day to launch a highly erudite history periodical. He takes note of the fact that in France and in the rest of the world there exists a lively historical controversy pitting the disciples of a certain orthodoxy against those who resist that orthodoxy. He sees that between the two no public debate appears possible. A modest man, he is not one to try to create the conditions for an impossible encounter. He will simply give an account, amidst his other varied studies, of the writings or diverse contributions, here and there, of both the exterminationists and the revisionists. He will proceed with the greatest possible impartiality. He will relate what he finds. In detail. With a sometimes off-putting precision. In a neutral, if not drab language.

   

              But lightning will one day strike this adventurer of archives and libraries.

   

              There suddenly appear groups and splinter-groups which are offended, gagging with indignation. They complain to the university, the police, the courts. The evil foe must be crushed. The jobless young man will lose, to confiscation, what professional equipment he still possesses and the rich will force him to borrow in order to pay them "compensation". The researcher will be forbidden to do research. The scholar, if ever he makes another "slip", will be told to go meditate in prison. His degrees will be taken back.

   

              Soon to be arranged will be the ceremonies of atonement, ritual gatherings, crusades.

   

              J. Plantin has had a rough start. He is not yet through with the affair which bears his name.

   

   ************

   

              CONFIDENTIAL:

   

   Helping a person to pay fines and damages which have been ordered by the courts is prohibited by French law. But it remains possible to give financial aid to J. Plantin, who has lost his computers and his archives on diskettes, i.e. his professional equipment, and who, for his legal defence, has incurred heavy costs, and is certain to incur still more.

   

              In order to come to his aid one may send him, by regular post, either a cheque, a money order, or, more simply, a banknote. An acknowledgement of receipt will be addressed to all donors.

   

   –  Jean Plantin

  45/3, route de Vourles

  69230 ST GENIS LAVAL

  (France)

  Tel. : 33 - 4 78 56 36 48.

  [1] One might also cite the suspicion of revisionism of two Lyon historians: Gérard Chauvy (because of his book Aubrac, Lyon 1943 , in which he uncovered certain disagreeable facts concerning a well known résistant  couple) and Michel Bergès (following his testimony at the trial of Maurice Papon).

   

  [2] It is not "since the beginning of the 1980s" that the university of Lyon-II has experienced controversy arising from revisionism but since January 1978; as concerns me personally, I was not a "maître de conférences" there but a full professor (first forbidden from giving classes, then deprived of his chair by an unexplained administrative decision). Still other points in the Le Monde article could, in some degree, be corrected.

• Confessions of SS Men who were at Auschwitz

   

  Confessions of SS Men who were at Auschwitz

   

  ROBERT FAURISSON

  Some SS men have confessed that there were some "gas chambers" at Auschwitz or at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The three most important confessions are those of Rudolf Höss, of Pery Broad and, finally, of Professor Doctor Johann Paul Kremer. For a long time the Exterminationists have especially counted on the first of these confessions: that of Rudolf Höss, which appeared under the title Commandant of Auschwitz. I think that I noticed, on the occasion of a recent historical debate in France, that the Exterminationists seem less sure of the value of this strange testimony. On the other hand, the testimony of Johann Paul Kremer has been very useful to them. Personally, I think that the argument furnished by Kremer is in fact, from their point of view, a more valuable weapon than the absurd confession of Rudolf Höss. I must say that first the British and then the Poles made Höss speak in such a way that it is easy to destroy his testimony by simply comparing Commandant of Auschwitz with his numerous previous statements, among which I particularly recommend that of 14 March 1946 (Documents NO-1210 and D-749).

   

  I will limit myself therefore to studying what the Exterminationists themselves today seem to consider as the best of their weapons in respect to the existence and the use at Auschwitz of homicidal "gas chambers." If I add this adjective "homicidal," it is because there are, as you know, nonhomicidal gas chambers which it is impossible to use to kill men as it is said that the Germans did. All of the armies of the world have some buildings, hastily equipped, for training their recruits in the wearing of gas masks. In France, these buildings bear the name "chambre à gaz" ("gas chamber"); in Germany, they are called "Gaskammer" or "Gasraum" ("Gas Chamber" or "gas room"). There are also gas chambers for the disinfecting of clothes, for treating fruit, and the like.

   

  I will therefore speak to you at some length of the testimony of Johann Paul Kremer. You will see how, at first sight, it is troubling, and then how, if you analyze it with a little care, it constitutes a terrible fiasco for the Exterminationists. I prize the Kremer case very much. It shows how fragile are the proofs that people offer to us, to what extent they allow themselves to be easily deceived by appearances, how much the official historians have misused the texts and how it is necessary to work if you wish, in the study of texts, to distinguish between the true and the false, between the real meaning and the misinterpretation. This is what is called text and document criticism. It happens that it is my professional specialty. I am therefore going to inflict upon you, to my great regret, a course in "text and document criticism." I ask you to pardon me for the strictness of the demonstration that I am going to try to carry out in front of you.

   

  Before entering into the heart of the subject, I would like to share with you two remarks. The first comes to us from Dr. Butz. I remember that, in a letter of 18 November 1979 addressed to a British weekly (New Statesman) about a long article by Gitta Sereny (2 November 1979) he made the observation that it is quite strange to claim to base a historical thesis like that of the formidable massacres of millions of human beings on ... confessions. That claim is still harder to defend when you know that those confessions came from persons who had been conquered and that the ones who obtained those confessions were the conquerors.

   

  My second remark is to recall that, in the cases from Ravensbrück where people now know that there never was any "gassing," the British and French courts obtained confessions which were particularly detailed on the alleged 11 gassings." People speak to us about the three principal confessions of Auschwitz, but they no longer speak to us at all about the three principal confessions of Ravensbrück: that of the camp commandant, Suhren, that of his adjutant Schwarzhuber and that of the camp physician, Dr. Treite. Do you know what was the size of that "gas chamber" that never existed? Answer: nine meters by four and one half meters. Do you know where it was located? Answer: five meters away from the two crematory ovens. Do you know how many persons were gassed there? Of what nationality? On what precise dates? Do you wish to know on whose orders all of that was done, from the top to the bottom of the German military and political hierarchy? Are you interested in learning how they used a "gas capsule" (sic)? You will find the answers to these questions and to many others while reading, for example, the historian Germaine Tillion. That French woman had been interned at Ravensbrück. After returning to France, she became an official specialist in the history of the deportation. She worked at that same famous CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in Paris where Léon Poliakov also worked. Germaine Tillion enjoys in France, for reasons of which I am unaware, considerable moral credit. Her honesty is a sort of established fact. Nevertheless, several years after the war, she went before the courts to overwhelm the persons responsible for Ravensbrück with her stories about the "gas chambers." Even more than her book about the camp (Ravensbrück, Paris, Le Seuil, 1973 reprinting, 284 pages), one must read her "Reflections on the Study of the Deportation" ("Reflexions sur 1'étude de la d6portation," in the Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, July to September 1954, pp. 3-38).

   

  Germaine Tillion begins by making some remarks regarding false testimony about the deportation. She says that she has "known of numerous mentally damaged persons, halfcrooks, half-fools, exploiting an imaginary deportation." She adds that she had known of other persons who were "authentic deportees, whose sick minds had striven to go even beyond the monstrous things that they had seen or about which people had spoken to them and which had reached them." She wrote further: "There were even some publishers to print certain of these fabrications, and some more or less official compilations to use them, but these publishers and editors absolutely cannot be excused, since the most elementary inquiry would have been sufficient for them to expose the deception."

   

  While reading those lines which already date from 26 years ago, we realize that the publishers and the editors of that kind have only increased in number and that the Martin Grays and the Filip Miillers still have a good future before them. Two of the three persons who confessed at Ravensbrück were hanged, and Dr. Treite committed suicide. What is horrible is that without this he about the "gas chambers" they would perhaps have saved their lives. In regard to Suhren, Germaine Tillion wrote, on page 16, that he began by displaying a "stubborn bad faith" in the course of his two trials (one at Hamburg, by the British and one at Rastatt, by the French); she adds this terrible sentence: "But, without that gas chamber created by him, on his own initiative, two months before the collapse, he could perhaps have saved his life." In note 2 on page 17, she wrote in regard to Schwarhuber, who confessed immediately, these still more terrible lines, each word of which I ask you to ponder:

   

  According to the English investigators, from the first moment he had coolly faced his position, he judged himself lost and either to have peace (and the small privileges to which the prisoners who do not deceive the examing magistrates have a right, or else due to lassitude, indifference or to quite another reason) he took his course and held to it, without regard for himself or for his accomplices. He was not a brute (like Binder or Pflaum.); he had an intelligent expression, the appearance and behavior of a psychologically normal man.

   

  Let us leave Ravensbrück and the confession of Schwarzhuber for Auschwitz and the confession of Kremer, the other SS man who had "an intelligent expression" as well as "the appearance and the behavior of a psychologically normal man." To begin with, let us look at some extracts from his private diary written during his short stay at Auschwitz, and then at the explanations that he gave to those extracts, after the war, to his Polish jailers, explanations that he held to later on in 1960 at his trial which took place at Münster (Westphalia) and at the trial of the Auschwitz guards, in 1964, at Frankfurt-on-Main. The name of Professor Doctor Kremer should not be confused with that of Josef Kramer. The latter had high positions successively at the camp of Struthof-Natzweiler (Alsace), then at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and finally at Bergen-Belsen. In his case also there were various confessions. All are interesting to study. On the alleged homicidal "gas chamber" at Struthof, I would like to point out that the French did not wring out of him, as I until recently still believed, only a single confession but, as I have recently discovered, two totally absurd and wonderfully contradictory confessions. Of the one people sometimes speak, while the other was carefully kept hidden. I will some day speak about it, as well as about the two reports of the French Military Courts on that "gas chamber" at Struthof: the one, really childish, which concludes on the existence of "gassings"; and another one, which has disappeared from the archives of the military courts, which reaches the opposite conclusion: this report, dated 1 December 1945, was done by the eminent toxicologist, Professor Rene Fabre.

   

  1. EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF DR. JOHANN PAUL KREMER (DOCTOR AT AUSCHWITZ DURING THE SUMMER OF 1942), SELECTED AND PRESENTED BY THE OFFICIAL HISTORIANS (LEON POLIAKOV, GEORGES WELLERS, SERGE KLARSFELD,)

   

  2 September 1942: This morning, at three o'clock, I was present for the first time at a Sonderaktion. Compared to that, Dante's Inferno appears to be a comedy. It is not without reason that Auschwitz is called extermination camp. (the version of Georges Wellers, in Le Monde, 29 December 1978, p8; the author explains beforehand that a Sonderaktion is a "selection for the gas chambers.")

   

  At three o'clock in the morning, I was present for the first time at a "special action" (thus did they refer to the selection and murder in the gas chambers). In comparison with the Inferno of Dante that seemed to me almost a comedy. It is not without reason that they call Auschwitz an extermination camp.

   

  (the version of Serge Klarsfeld, in Le Mémorial de ]a Déportation des Juifs de France [Memorial to the Deportation of the Jews from France,] 1978, p. 245; the author has obviously reproduced page 48 of a book (not dated) published in Poland by the International Auschwitz Committee under the title KL Auschwitz; Arbeit Macht Frei (Concentration Camp Auschwitz / Work Makes You Free), 96 pages.)

   

  This morning at three o'clock, I was present for the first time at a "special action." In comparison, Dante's inferno appeared to me a comedy. It is not for nothing that Auschwitz is called an extermination camp.

   

  (Léon Poliakov's version, in Auschwitz, Collection Archives Gallimard/Julliard, 1973, p. 40).

   

  For this first date of 2 September, I have cited three versions. For the following dates, I will content myself with citing a single version: the official version of the State Museum of O"wiecim (Auschwitz), such as it appeared in Auschwitz vu par les SS (Auschwitz Seen by the SS), French translation, 1974. I will confine myself intentionally only to what the official historians have the habit of citing in their works and only to what, in the eyes of the authorities of the State Museum of Auschwitz, would tend to prove that Dr. Kremer had participated in the "gassings" of human beings.

   

  5 September 1942: This noon was present at a special action in the women's camp ("Moslems") - the most horrible of all horrors. Hscf. Thilo, military surgeon, is right when he said today to me we were located here in "anus mundi" [anus of the world]. In the evening at about 8p.m. another special action with a draft from Holland. Men compete to take part in such actions as they get additional rations then-1/5 litre vodka, 5 cigarettes, 100 grammes of sausage and bread. Today and tomorrow (Sunday) on duty.

   

  On the next day, Dr. Kremer said that he had had an excellent lunch. On numerous occasions, his diary contains in that way some remarks about food. Historians often cite these remarks to show the cynicism of the doctor; they say that the atrocities of the "gas chambers" do not hurt his appetite. Dr. Kremer mentions a special action of Sunday, 6 September at 8 o'clock in the evening, then on the evening of 9 September, then on the morning of 10 September, then in the night of the 23rd and on that of the 30th. He writes then:

   

  7 October 1942: Present at the 9th special action (new arrivals and women "Moslems") [ ... ]

   

  12 October 1942: [ ... ] was present at night at another special action with a draft from Holland (1600 persons).

   

  Horrible scene in front of the last bunker! This was the loth special action.

   

  18 October 1942: In wet and cold weather was on this Sunday morning present at the 11th special action (from Holland). Terrible scenes when 3 women begged to have their bare lives spared.

   

  8 November 1942: This night took part in 2 special actions in rainy and murky weather (12th and 13th) [ ... ] Another special action in the afternoon, the 14th so far, in which I had participated [ ... ]

   

  Dr. Kremer is wrong in his counting. He has forgotten that on 5 September there had been not one but two special actions, which made a total of 15 special actions for his stay at Auschwitz. This stay listed for 81 days, of which only 76 were on duty (because of a five day leave).

   

  The notes in the Polish edition say that the dates of these special actions coincide with the dates of the arrival of the convoys of deportees.

   

  2. EXTRACTS FROM THE SPONTANEOUS CONFESSIONS OF JOHANN PAUL KREMER IN THE POLISH COURT, IN 1947, SELECTED AND PRESENTED BY THE POLISH COURT

   

  Here is what one can read in KL Auschwitz seen by the SS, p. 214, note 50:

   

  In the official record of the interrogatory of 18 August 1947, Cracow, Kremer stated as follows: "On 2 September 1942, at 3 a.m. I was already assigned to take part in the action of gassing people. These mass murders took place in small cottages situated outside the Birkenau camp in a wood. These cottages were called 'bunkers' (Bunker) in the SS men's slang. All SS surgeons, on duty in the camp, took turns to participate in the gassings, which were called 'Sonderaktion' (special action-Editor's note). My part as surgeon at the gassing consisted in remaining in readiness near the bunker. I was brought there in a car. I sat in front with the driver and an SS hospital orderly (SDG) sat in the back of the car with an oxygen apparatus to revive SS men, employed in the gassing, in case any of them should succumb to the poisonous fumes. When the transport with people, who were destined for gassing, arrived at the railway ramp the SS officers selected from among the arrivals persons fit to work and the rest- old people, all children, women with children in arms and other persons not deemed fit to work-were loaded upon lorries and driven to the gas-chambers. I used to follow behind the transport till we reached the bunker [Faurisson note: the word is in the singular]. Here people. were first driven to barracks where the victims undressed and then went naked to the gas-chambers. Very often no incidents occurred, as the SS men kept people quiet, maintaining that they were to bathe and be deloused. After driving all of them into the gas-chamber the door was closed and an SS man in a gasmask threw the contents of a Cyklon tin through an opening in the side wall. Shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through that opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives [Lebenskampf]. These shouts were heard for a very short time. I should say for some minutes but I am unable to give the exact span of time."

   

  On page 215 of KL Auschwitz seen by the SS, note 51 gives another extract from the same interrogation transcript. Here is how Dr. Kremer is supposed to have explained his entry on 5 September 1942 about the "Moslem" women and the anus mundi:

   

  Particularly unpleasant had been the action of gassing emaciated women from the women's camp. Such individuals were generally called "Muselmänner" ("Moslems"). I remember taking part in the gassing of such women in daylight. I am unable to state how numerous that group had been. When I came to the bunker [Faurisson note: "bunker" is in the singular] they sat clothed on the ground. As the clothes were in fact worn out camp clothes they were not let into the barracks but undressed in the open. I could deduce from the behavior of these women that they realized what was awaiting them. They begged the SS men to be allowed to live, they wept, but all of them were driven to the gas chamber and gassed. Being an anatomist I had seen many horrors, had to do with corpses, but what I then saw was not to be compared with anything seen ever before. It was under the influence of these impressions that I had noted in my diary, under the date of 5 September 1942: "The most horrible of all horrors. Hauptsturmführer Thilo - was right saying today to me that we were located here in 'anus mundi'. I had used this expression because I could not imagine anything more sickening and more horrible."

   

  On the date of 12 October 1942, Dr. Kremer had mentioned a special action concerning 1600 persons who had come from the Netherlands: in the margin next to that mention he had written the name of Hössler, who at that time was one of the SS men responsible for the camp at Birkenau. Here is how Dr. Kremer is supposed to have explained that entry of 12 October (see page 224, note 77):

   

  In connection with the gassing action, described by me in my diary under the date 12 October 1942. 1 have to explain that circa 1600 Dutchman were then gassed. This is an approximate number which I had put down after hearing it mentioned by others. This action was conducted by SS officer Hössler. I remember how he had tried to drive the whole group into one bunker. He was successful except for one man whom it was not by any means possible to squeeze inside the bunker. This man was killed by Hössler with a pistol shot. I therefore wrote in my diary about horrible scenes in front of the last bunker and I mentioned Hössler's name in connection with this incident.

   

  For his entry of 18 October 1942, Dr. Kremer is supposed to have furnished the following explanation (see 226, note 83):

   

  During the special action, described by me in my diary under the date of 18 October 1942, three women from Holland refused to enter the gas-chamber and begged for their lives. They were young and healthy women, but their begging was of no avail. The SS men, taking part in the action, shot them on the spot.

   

  3. IN 1960, AT HIS TRIAL IN MÜNSTER, DR. KREMER PERSISTED IN THESE CLAIMS

   

  The University of Amsterdam in 1977 published its 17th volume of Justiz und NS-Verbrechen (justice and the Nazi Crimes). There we find the text of the decision rendered against Dr. Kremer on 29 November 1960. On pages 19 and 20, the court sought to describe the operation of "gassing" as well as the part that the accused was supposed to have taken personally in that operation. The court speaks of a single "gas chamber." It is a question of a farm near the Birkenau camp made up of several separate parts. An SS medical orderly went up on the roof and dumped some Zyklon through some specially fitted shafts ("durch Einwurfschächte"). He wore a gas mask. The doors of the "gas chamber" were all air tight. From outside they heard the victims cry out. And the court continued:

   

  When no more sign of life was shown, the defendant was taken back to his lodging by the Health Service car. The gas chambers were opened a short moment afterwards. (Faurisson note: I ask that you note well that the opening was made A SHORT MOMENT AFTER the death of the victims). The bodies were removed by some prisoners and were destroyed by cremation. During the events described above (Faurisson note: The court here alludes to his description of the arrival of the victims, their disrobing, etc.) the accused was seated in the Health Service car, which was stopped in the immediate vicinity of the gas chambers. Whether he had left his car and whether he had taken an active part in the murderous action could not be proved. The accused kept himself however in the car, in accordance with the mission that had been given to him, prepared for a case where something would happen to the SS man certified by the Health Service who was handling the Zyk1on B poison; he would bring him immediate help with the oxygen inhalator. He [the accused] had himself admitted that in all good faith. But that accident in reality never happened.

   

  4. IN 1964, AT THE FRANKFURT TRIAL, DR. KREMER PERSISTS STILL IN HIS CLAIMS

   

  On June 1964, Dr. Kremer, then 80 years old, appeared at the bar of the court in Frankfurt as a witness for the prosecution against the former Auschwitz guards. In order to know exactly what he said on that day, we are reduced to pages 72-73 of Hermann Langbein's book Der AuschwitzProzess / Eine Dokumentation (The Auschwitz Trial / A Documentation), Vienna, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1965, 1027 pages). What is unfortunate is that Hermann Langbein is the Secretary of the International Concentration Camp Committee and that his works all show a biased and partisan spirit. The book by Bernd Naumann says almost nothing on the deposition of Dr. Kremer (Auschwitz, Frankfurt, Athenäum Verlag, 1965, 552 pages). Therefore, here is how, according to Hermann Langbein, the deposition of Dr. Kremer went on the question of the "gas chambers"; I am reproducing the text in its entirety:

   

  Judge: Where did the gassings take place?

   

  Kremer: Some old farms had been transformed into a bunker (Faurisson note: the German text indeed gives the singular: Alte Bauernhäuser waren als Bunker ausgebaut) and provided with a sliding door for secure closing. Upstairs was located a dormer window. The people were brought in undressed. They entered quietly; only some of them balked; they were taken aside and shot. The gas was released by an SS soldier. For that he went up on a ladder.

   

  Judge: And there were some special rewards for those who participated in such an action?

   

  Kremer: Yes, that was the custom; a little schnaps and some cigarettes. They all wanted them. They allotted the goods. I myself also received such goods - this was quite automatic.

   

  Representative of Co-Plaintiff Ormond: You wrote in your diary that the SS soldiers strove with each other for service on the ramp [for the arrival of the convoys].

   

  Kremer: That is humanly quite understandable. This was war was it not, and the cigarettes and schnaps were rare. When someone was eager for cigarettes ... They collected the goods and then they took themselves to the canteen with their bottles.

   

  The testimony of Dr. Kremer on the "gassings" at Auschwitz is limited to these few questions and answers. Here, in conclusion, is the commentary of Langbein:

   

  The man who described the process of gassing with these bland and indifferent words is the former university professor Dr. Johann Paul Kremer of Mfinster. He had already been condemned in Poland and in Germany for his participation in mass murders. At Frankfurt he left the. witness stand smiling softly.

   

  5. EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY: MY EXPLANATIONS AND MY COMMENTARIES

   

  I note first that these extracts contain neither the word "gassing" nor the expression "gas chamber."

   

  The diary of Dr. Kremer was a private diary. The doctor expressed himself freely there. He frankly expressed his horror of the camp. He does not mince words. He compares what he sees to a vision from Dante. One can therefore think that, if he had seen those virtual human slaughterhouses which the "gas chambers" would have been, he would have mentioned that absolute horror. Wouldn't Dr. Kremer, as a scientist, at least have noted some precise physical details about these slaughterhouses which, in the history of science, would have been an amazing invention?

   

  But let us begin at the beginning. Did Dr. Kremer in fact write what they say that he wrote? The answer to that question is no, absolutely not. His text has been gravely distorted. This is even the work of a forger. As an example I am going to reproduce the text in the version given by Georges Wellers but I am going to insert in it, in capital letters in italic, what he has omitted and I am going to insert in place of Sonderaktion and of extermination, which are misinterpretations, the two words which fit; I will also put them in capital letters. Therefore, here is the text translated from the original German (see document NO-3408 in the National Archives):

   

  2 September 1942: This morning, at 3 o'clock, I was present OUTSIDE for the first time at a SPECIAL ACTION. Compared to that, Dante's Inferno appears TO ME ALMOST LIKE a comedy. It is not without reason that Auschwitz is called THE camp of THE ANNIHILATION!

   

  Every text must be scrupulously respected, especially when the text is supposed to serve as the basis for a shocking demonstration and for a terrible accusation. The concealing of the word OUTSIDE is very serious. Why, after having given us the indication of the time, has the indication of the place been concealed? The German text says: DRAUSSEN. Dr. Kremer was not in a closed place as a gas chamber would have been. He was "outside," "on the outside." Without doubt that detail is not very clear, and perhaps it meant "out of the camp itself," but one must not conceal that possibility.

   

  For Sonderaktion, Wellers has kept the German word; in appearance, this is evidence of scrupulousness and care; in reality, it is a clever trick. As a matter of fact, this word, at least for a French reader, has a sound that is disturbing, Germanic, barbaric, and can only conceal horrible things. But there is even more: just before citing that entry by Dr. Kremer, Wellers, in his article in Le Monde, wrote: "[Kremer] had participated in the selection for the gas chambers (Sonderaktion)." In other words, Wellers imposes on his reader the following lie: in his diary, Dr. Kremer said in so many words: "this morning at 3 o' clock I was present at a selection for the gas chambers."

   

  We see very well now that it was nothing of the kind. Dr. Kremer was contented to speak of a "special action." What is one to understand by that expression? To some people who, like me, doubt the existence of the homicidal "gas chambers" it is absurd to answer, as does Wellers, by positing their existence at once as an accepted fact. Suppose that someone does not believe in the existence of flying saucers. To such a person one could not retort that those saucers exist since, in such and such a report by the police, it is written: "A witness declares that he saw something special in the sky" - "Some witnesses noted in the sky some unusual phenomena." Therefore, for the time being, the only honest - if not very clear - translation of Sonderaktion could only be "special action." I will later come back to the probable meaning of this word about which, for the moment, we have no right to speculate.

   

  Dr. Kremer did not write next: "Compared to that, Dante's Inferno seemed to be a comedy" but: "Compared to that, Dante's Inferno seemed TO ME ALMOST LIKE a comedy." Here, the concealing of three words by Wellers is perhaps not very important, but it contributes in its modest way to doing violence to the meaning of the text, always with a view to producing the same effect. There is a shade of difference between "seemed like," in which one senses a softening, and "seemed to be," which is more affirmative. Dr. Kremer has not transformed an impression which was personal to him into an impression common to a whole human group. In some sense, he did not state: "Dante's Inferno appeared here to everyone around me like a comedy"; if he had stated that, one could suppose that he was present at an unquestionably Dantesque scene. In reality, he contented himself with a confidence of a personal kind and in effect he wrote: "Dante's Inferno here appeared TO ME, who had just arrived (that impression is personal to me, yet others can perhaps share it) ALMOST LIKE a comedy." In other words, the scene is certainly horrible for this doctor who has just arrived for the first time in his life in a concentration camp, but all the same not to the point of decreeing that Dante's Inferno is obviously a comedy to everybody in comparison with this scene.

   

  But there is something very much more serious that Georges Wellers has made the Kremer text undergo. Kremer did not say that Auschwitz was "called an extermination camp," which, in the original German, would have been: "genannt Vernichtungslager."

   

  In reality, we read in the original German:

   

  "genannt DAS Lager DER Vernichtung" ("called THE camp of THE annihilation").

   

  If Wellers had respected the presence of the two articles and if he had given to "Vernichtung" the meaning of "extermination" which is indispensible to his exterminationist thesis, he would have gotten the following phrase: "It is not without reason that Auschwitz is called the camp of the extermination." Thus constructed, the phrase sounds bizarre both in German and in French. That has to be for us the sign that a word of the text undoubtedly has been badly translated. That word, as will be seen later on, is "Vernichtung." The context will reveal to us that that word is not to be translated as "extermination" (a meaning that it can very well have in other contexts) but by "annihilation."

   

  There is here no extermination, murder, assassination, killing, nor massacre; there are not the results of an act, an action, or a will; there is nothing here about a "camp where they exterminate," there is here no "extermination camp" (an expression invented by the victors, some years after 1942, to designate camps allegedly endowed with "gas chambers"). What there is here in reality is an annihilation; men and women are reduced to wasting away; they are annihilated, reduced to nothing by the epidemics and notably by that illness whose name "typhus" (in Greek tupos) signifies precisely: torpor, stupor, a kind of lethargy, a rapid destruction of the faculties, sometimes up to the point of death. Auschwitz is not "an extermination camp" (an anachronistic expression, and we know that anachronism is one of the most reliable signs of the presence of a falsehood) but the camp, yes, indeed, the camp par excellence of general annihilation. Without doubt, just as the moment of taking his post at Auschwitz, this newcomer, Dr. Kremer, had heard his colleagues say: "You know, this camp, they call it the camp of annihilation. Look out for typhus! You yourself also take the risk of contracting it and dying from it."

   

  And, at the end of his entry for 2 September 1942, Dr. Kremer puts an exclamation point. That point indicates the doctor's emotion. If one conceals it, as does Wellers, the phrase takes on another tone: one would perhaps believe that the doctor is cruel and cynical. One would perhaps believe that Dr. Kremer coldly thought: "The Auschwitz camp is called an 'extermination camp.' So it is. It is indeed. Let us take things as they are." In reality, he is overwhelmed.

   

  Due to lack of time, I cannot devote myself to the criticism of the texts given by Léon Poliakov, by Serge Klarsfeld, by the authorities of the State Museum of Oswiecim, by the official translation of document NO-3408, etc. I would only like to point out an especially serious fact. It concerns the German courts. The court at Münster which, in 1960 tried Dr. Kremer, quite simply skipped over the word Draussen when it reproduced the entry of 2 September 1942. It piled up other serious dishonesties. Here is an example of them: to overpower Dr. Kremer, the tribunal appealed to the "Calendar of Events at Auschwitz" as it was drawn up by the Communist authorities in Poland. It is already strange that a court in the western world thus shows confidence in a document drawn up by Stalinists. But there is more. The courts have established that, for most of the convoys that arrived in the camp, the Polish in their "Calendar" indicated with extraordinary precision the number of persons "gassed." Since we know that, according to the Exterminationist standard literature the people "gassed" were not the object of any accounting, of any counting, an honest man could only be astonished to read in this "Calendar" that, from the time when Dr. Kremer was at Auschwitz, they had, on such and such a day, "gassed" 981 persons and, on another day, 1594 other persons. Also, the court at Münster cynically used a subterfuge. It reproduced in its text numerous citations of the "Calendar" and while making it clear that it was a question of this "Calendar," but ... each time that the "Calendar" uses the word "vergast" ("gassed"), the court itself substituted for that clumsy word the word "umgebracht" ("killed"). Thus the reader of the judgement at Münster is deceived. Whoever might find it suspect that they can talk to him about "981 gassed" or about "1594 gassed", easily lets them talk to him about "981 dead" or about "1594 dead."

   

  Finally, two remarks about the entries other than that of 2 September: (1) The expression anus mundi would not be appropriate, it seems to me, to scenes of "gassings" but rather to a repugnant and nauseating scene of groups of people fallen prey to disgusting diseases, to dysentery, etc. (2) When Dr. Kremer says that he was present at a special action in rainy, cold weather or in grey and rainy autumn weather, it is probable that those actions took place outside in the open air, and not in a gas chamber.

   

  6. THE TRUTH OF THE TEXTS: AUSCHWITZ AS PREY TO EPIDEMICS DURING THE SUMMER OF 1942.

   

  It is sufficient to read the diary with a minimum of good faith in order to see the evidence. Here is the complementary information that this diary gives us. I will summarize it. Dr. Kremer came to Auschwitz to replace a sick doctor there. Typhus had ravaged not only the camp, but also the German-Polish city of Auschwitz. Not only the internees

   

  struck, but also the German troops. There was typhus, malaria, dysentery, tropical heat, innumerable flies, and dust. The water was dangerous to drink. Diarrhea, vomiting, stomach aches made the atmosphere stink. The scene of people reduced to nothing by typhus was demoralizing. In that hell, Dr. Kremer himself contracted what he called "the sickness of Auschwitz." However, he underwent several vaccinations, at first against exanthematic typhus, then against abdominal typhus (a name which, in itself, would explain very well the term anus mundi). The principal bearer of typhus is the louse. On 1 September 1942, he wrote: "In the afternoon was present at the gassing of a block with Zyklon B against lice." Zyklon B is stabilized hydrocyanic acid. That product is still used today throughout the entire world. Many documents prove to us that that disinfection operation was delicate and could demand the presence of a doctor to bring help, should the occasion arise, to certified personnel charged with carrying out the gassing of a barrack and, 21 hours after the beginning of the airing out of such a barrack, testing for the disappearance of the hydrocyanic acid before permitting people to return to live in their barracks. On 10 October 1942, the situation was so serious that, for everyone, there was a quarantine of the camp. The wife of the Obersturmführer or Sturmbannführer Cäsar died of typhus. All of the city of Auschwitz was in bed, etc. It is sufficient to refer to the text of the diary. For more details of that epidemic of the year 1942, one can also consult the calendar of the Hefte von Auschwitz (year 1942). In the Anthology of the International Auschwitz Committee, Volume I, second part, page 196 (in the French edition), we read that the SS physician Dr. Popiersch, head doctor of the garrison and of the camp, had died of typhus on 24 April 1942 (four months before the arrival of Dr. Kremer). In Volume II, first part, published also in 1969, we read on page 129 and in note 14 on page 209 that the Polish physician Dr. Marian Ciepielowski of Warsaw also died of typhus while caring for the Soviet prisoners of war.

   

  The work of Dr. Kremer at Auschwitz seems to have been principally to devote himself to laboratory research, to dissections, to anatomical studies. But it was also necessary for him to be present at some corporal punishments and some executions. He was not present at the very arrival of the convoys, but, once the division between those fit for work and those not fit for work had been made, he arrived, in a car with driver, from his hotel room in Auschwitz (room #26 at the Train Station Hotel). What took place then? Did he lead people into some "gas chambers" or to disinfection? Let us see below what they claim that he said first in 1947 to the Polish communists; secondly, in 1960 to the court at Miinster; and thirdly, in 1964 to the court at Frankfurt.

   

  7. THE TRUTH OF THE TEXTS: NO "GASSING."

   

  We recall that, in his diary, on the date of 12 October 1942, Dr. Kremer wrote:

   

  [Ö] Was present at night at another special action with a draft from Holland (1600 persons). Horrible scene in front of the last bunker! This was the 10th special action.

   

  In the same manner, on 18 October he wrote:

   

  In wet and cold weather was on this Sunday morning present at the 11th special action (from Holland). Terrible scenes when 3 women begged to have their bare lives spared.

   

  These two texts are easy to interpret. The "last bunker" could only be the bunker of barracks #11; it was located at the end of the camp of Auschwitz (the original camp) and not at Birkenau or near Birkenau which is 3 km away. The executions took place in what they called the courtyard of block 11. It is there that is located the "black wall." It happened usually that persons condemned to death were transported into a concentration camp to be executed there. Such was probably the case with the three women who came from the Netherlands. I suppose that it would be easy to find their names and the motives for their condemnation either in the archives at Auschwitz or in those of the Historical Institute in Amsterdam. In either case, these three women were shot.

   

  The Polish have been terribly embarrassed by this reference to the "last bunker." By a sleight of hand they have converted this bunker which is in the singular into ... peasant farms allegedly transformed into "gas chambers" and located near Birkenau. And there the absurdities pile up. What is the doctor supposed to have done? NOTHING. He remained seated in his car, at a distance. And what did he see of a "gassing" of human beings? NOTHING. What can he tell us about what took place after the alleged "gassing"? NOTHING, since he left by car with his driver (and the medical orderly?). He is not able to talk either about the installation, nor about the processing of putting to death, nor about the personnel employed in this putting to death, nor of the precautions taken to enter into an incredibly dangerous place. It is not Dr. Kremer who will tell us how some men would be able to enter into this terrible place "A SHORT MOMENT" after the alleged victims finished crying out. It is not he who will be able to let us know by what secret means they were able to pull out some thousands of bodies saturated with cyanide lying amidst vapors of hydrocynanic acid, and all that done with bare hands (although that acid poisons by contact with the skin), without gas masks (although this gas is overwhelming), while eating and smoking (although this gas is inflammable and explosive). It is Rudolf Höss, in his spontaneous confessions to the same Polish court, who recounted all of those astonishing things. Let's be decent about this. Let us suppose that the members of the Sonderkommando (Special Detachment) nevertheless did possess some gas masks, provided with the particularly strong filter, the J filter, against hydrocyanic acid. I am afraid that we are no further ahead. I have in fact here, in front of me, a text from a technical manual of the American army, translated from the text of an American manual dating from 1943 (The Gas Mask, technical manual No. 3-205, War Department, Washington, 9 October 1941, a manual prepared under the direction of the Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. Printing Office, 1941, 144 pages.) Here is what is written on page 55 (I write the most important words in CAPITALS):

   

  It should also be remembered that a man may be overcome by the absorption of hydrocyanic gas through the skin; a concentration of 2 percent hydrocyanic acid gas being sufficient to thus overcome a man in about 10 minutes. Therefore, EVEN IF ONE WEARS A GAS MASK, exposure to concentrations of hydrocyanic gas of 1 percent by volume or greater should be made only in case of necessity and then FOR A PERIOD NO LONGER THAN 1 MINUTE AT A TIME. In general, places containing this gas should be well ventilated with fresh air before the wearer of the mask enters, thus reducing the concentration of hydrocyanic gas to low fractional percentages.

   

  The spontaneous confessions of Dr. Kremer with those closures "provided with a sliding door for secure closing" make us laugh. The total airtightness demanded by a homicidal gas chamber using hydrocyanic acid would be impossible to achieve with a sliding door. But how could Dr. Kremer, who had never left his car, describe that door as if he had seen it? And the SS man who released the gas - how did he do it? Did he release "the contents of a box of Zyklon through an opening in the wall" (version of the confession of 1947)? Or "by some shafts (Einwurfschächte)" (version of 1960)? Or indeed through a "dormer window" that he reached "above" while going up "by a ladder" (version of 1964)? Everything in these confessions is empty and vague. One can simply deduce from them with certainty two things which are quite probable:

   

  Dr. Kremer convoyed some people who were led into some barracks in order to undress (and without doubt they next went to disinfection or to the showers);

  Dr. Kremer was present at some gassings of buildings or of barracks for their disinfection by Zyklon B.

  It was while helping himself by the combining of these two real experiences that he constructed for his accusers or his accusers constructed for him the poor and absurd account of the "gas chambers." A very characteristic point of the false testimonies regarding the homicidal "gassings" is the following: the accused says that he was at a certain distance from the place of the crime; the most that one can find is a defendant who said that he had been forced to release the Zyklon through a hole in the roof of the "gas chamber" or even one who "had helped push" the victims into the "gas chamber." That ought to remind us of the unfortunates who in the Middle Ages were accused of having met the devil on such and such a day, at such and such an hour, in such and such a place. They would have been able to deny it fiercely. They would have been able to go so far as to say: "You know very well that I could not have met with the devil for one excellent reason, which is that the devil does not exist." The unfortunates would have condemned themselves by such responses. They had only one way out: to play the game of their accusers, to admit that the devil was there without doubt, but ... at the top of the hill, while they themselves, located below, heard the horrible noise (sobs, groans, cries, racket) made by the victims of the devil. It is shameful that in the middle of the 20th century there are found so many judges and also so many lawyers who will admit as evidence the bewildering confessions of so many accused persons without having ever had the least curiosity to ask them what they had really seen, seen with their own eyes, without posing to them some technical questions, without going on to some comparisons between the most obviously contradictory explanations. Unfortunately I must say in their defense that even some intelligent technicians and even some wellinformed chemists imagine that almost any small place can easily be transformed into a homicidal "gas chamber." None of those people has had the chance to visit an American gas chamber. They would understand the enormity of their error. The first Americans who thought about executing a condemned man by gas also imagined that it would be easy. It was when they tried to actually do it that they understood that they risked gassing not only the condemned man but also the governor and the employees of the penitentiary. They needed many years to perfect a nearly reliable gas chamber.

   

  As to the "special actions" of Dr. Kremer, they are easy to understand. It is simply a question of what, in the vocabulary of the French Army, is called by the pompous name of "missions extraordinaires." I believe that the American equivalent is "special assignment." A "special assignment" does not imply necessarily that there is a moving of the person. It is a question of a sudden assignment which comes to break the habitual unfolding of his duties. Dr. Kremer, for example, worked especially in the laboratory but, from time to time, he was required for extra work: reception of a convoy to be led to disinfection, sorting out the contagious or the sick in the hospital, etc. It is thus that as a good military man and as an orderly man he noted in his diary each of those tasks which were, probably, each time worth a supplementary allowance to him, as to the SS volunteers who cleaned the railroad cars at the arrival of each convoy. In any case, if Auschwitz appeared to him like a hell, it was not at all because of frightful crimes like the executions of crowds of human beings in the enclosures allegedly turned into "gas chambers," but because of the typhus, malaria, dysentery, the infernal heat, the flies, the lice, the dust. One can determine that by a slightly attentive reading of the very text of his diary. That is what I, for my part, did first. And then, one day, I fell by chance upon the proof, the material proof, that such was indeed the correct interpretation.

   

  8. TEXTUAL CONFIRMATION OF THE CORRECTNESS OF THE REVISIONIST INTREPRETATION OF THE DIARY OF DR. KREMER

   

  On page 42 of Justiz und NS-Verbrechen we learn that in the trial at Münster, in 1960, Dr. Kremer had had someone appear as a witness for his defense. That witness was a woman whose name began with G1a. (German law authorizes that, in a public document, certain names may be revealed only in abridged form.) That name was very probably that of Miss Glaser, the daughter of Dr. Kremer's housekeeper; one about whom he speaks on several occasions in his diary. The witness brought to the court some post cards and some letters that the doctor had sent to her at the time of his stay in Auschwitz. The witness said that the doctor "had not been in agreement with what took place at Auschwitz" and that he had hurried to leave the camp. Miss Gla[ser] then put into evidence a letter of 21 October 1942 that Dr. Kremer had sent to her. The content of it is of extreme importance, which apparently eluded the tribunal. It proves that, when Dr. Kremer spoke of the Auschwitz camp as a hell, it was indeed as I have said, because of the typhus and the other epidemics. Here are the very words used by the doctor in his letter:

   

  I don't really know for certain, but I expect, however, that I'll be able to be in Münster before 1 December, and thus finally turn my back on this hell of Auschwitz where, in addition to the typhoid, and so on, typhus has once again broken out stronglyÖ

   

  Here is therefore that "Dante's Inferno" from the entry of 2 September 1942! Professor of Medicine Johann Paul Kremer had seen the horrors of a formidable epidemic at Auschwitz wiping out internees and guards; he had not seen monstrous "gassing" operations, exterminating crowds of human beings.

   

  9. THE HUMAN CHARACTER OF DR. KREMER

   

  In considering his fife and reading his diary, we perceive that Dr. Kremer was absolutely not a brute, or a fanatic or a cynical human being. He was human, too human; he was a free spirit but perhaps without great courage. He had quickly become a sort of "old boy" attached above all to his profession. In the first pages of Volume XVII of Justiz und NS-Verbrechen his biography is sketched out. Johann Paul Kremer was born in 1883 near Cologne of a father who, after having been a miller, became a peasant. He did his advanced studies at the Universities of Heidelberg, Strasbourg and Berlin. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy and a doctorate in medicine. He worked in succession at the Charit6 Hospital in Berlin, at the hospital of Berlin-Neuköln, at the surgical clinic of the University of Bonn, at the anatomical institute of the same university; finally, he became a deputy lecturer at the University of Münster; he gave courses there up until 1945 (when he was 62 years old). Those courses dealt with the doctrine of heredity, sports medicine, X-rays, and especially anatomy. In 1932, at the age of 48, he joined the National-Socialist Party. In 1936, at the age of 52, he was made SS-Sturmmann (soldier of the first class). In 1941, at the age of 57, he was promoted to Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) in the Waffen-SS. He served his active duty. He was in the service only at the time of university vacations. In 1942 he spent two months at Dachau as a doctor attached to the SS hospital; he had not contact with the camp of the internees. In 1941, at the age of 57, he published a paper on heredity which seems to have brought him some worries in regard to the official authorities. In August of 1942, he was serving at the SS hospital in Prague when, suddenly, he received an assignment for Auschwitz to replace a doctor who had fallen ill there. He stayed at Auschwitz from 30 August to 18 November 1942, and then he resumed his activity at the anatomical institute of the city of Münster. He was 58 years old. He served as the president of the Discipline Commission of North Westphalia of the Union of National Socialist Doctors. In 1943, he was named Lieutenant in the reserves of the Waffen-SS. Here is how he was judged:

   

  Calm personality, correct; sure of himself, energetic; above the average in general culture; excellent understanding of his specialty. Lengthy education as surgeon and anatomist; since 1936, deputy lecturer at the Univeristy of Münster.

   

  On 12 August 1945, he was arrested at his home in Münster by the British occupying forces (the "automatic arrest" of former SS men). They seized his diary at his home. He was interned at Neuengamme, then turned over to the Poles. He was imprisoned at Stettin, then in succession in fourteen Polish prisons, then finally in the prison at Cracow. The preliminary investigation of the case was carried out by the famous judge Jan Sehn, the same one to whom we owe the interrogations of Rudolf Höss and the confession, "spontaneous" no doubt, of Rudolf Höss. In 1947, at the age of nearly 64 years, he was freed for good conduct, because of his advanced age and since he was ill. He returned to his home, at Münster. He was arrested on the order of the German court, then freed on bail. At the time he was receiving a pension of DM 70 per week. He had married in 1920, at the age of 37, but he was separated from his wife at the end of two months since she suffered from schizophrenia. He had not been able to obtain a divorce until twenty years later, in 1942. Dr. Kremer did not have any children. A housekeeper took care of him. Unless I am mistaken, he was never at the front nor did he ever fire a shot, except, without doubt, in training. He kept his diary beginning at the age of 151/2. 1 have not read the part of his diary prior to the Second World War. On 29 November 1960 Dr. Kremer, age 76, was condemned to ten years in prison but those ten years were considered as purged. In consideration of his advanced age, his civil rights were only cancelled for five years. He was condemned to pay the court costs, he was deprived of his responsibility as course attach6, deprived of his title of professor and deprived, I believe, of his two doctorates. On 4 June 1964 he came to the witness stand in the "Frankfurt Trial" to testify against the "Auschwitz guards." I doubt that this old man of 80 years thus came spontaneously to make charges against his compatriots in the hysterical atmosphere of this famous witch trial. His "spontaneous confessions" to the Polish communists were thus, to the end of his existence, to cling to his skin like the tunic of Nessus. It was thus that beginning in 1945 the existence of this professor had become a drama. Here therefore is a man who had devoted his life to relieving the sufferings of his fellow men: the drama of a war lost and then he was made officially a sort of monster who had, it seemed, suddenly devoted two and one-half months of his life to gigantic massacres of human beings according to a truly Satanical industrial method.

   

  The diary of Dr. Kremer is dull in style (at least that part that I have read) but when one considers what was the destiny of that diary and of its author, one cannot prevent oneself from thinking of it as a work which, very much more than some highly valued historical or literary testimonies, is profoundly upsetting. I think often of that old man. I think sometimes also of his tormentors. I do not know what became of Dr. Kremer. If he were still alive today, he would be 97 years old. I hope that one day a student will write a biography of this man and that to do so he will visit the city of Münster (Westphalia) where there certainly still five some people who knew-permit me to return to him his titles -Professor Doctor Johann Paul Kremer.

   

  Dr. Kremer certainly did not have National Socialist convictions. On 13 January 1943 he wrote in his diary: "There is no Aryan, Negroid, Mongoloid or Jewish science, only a true or a false one." On the same date, he furthermore wrote this:

   

  [ ... ] I had never even dreamed there existed anything like "a gagged science." By such manoeuvres, science has received a mortal blow and has been banished from the -country! The situation in Germany today is not any better than in the times when Galileo had been forced to recant and when science had been threatened by tortures and the stake. Where, for Heaven's sake, is that situation going to lead us to in the twentieth century!!! I could almost feel ashamed to be a German. And so shall I have to end my days as the victim of science and the fanatic of truth.

   

  In reality, he was to end his days as the victim of the political lie and as a poor man obliged to lie.

   

  At the date of 1 March 1943, we read in his diary:

   

  Went today to shoemaker Grevsmühl to be registered and saw there a leaflet sent him from Kattowitz by the Socialist Party of Germany. The leaflet informed that we had already liquidated 2 million Jews, by shooting or gassing.

   

  The Exterminationist historians do not use the argument that this passage of the diary seems to furnish them. On reflection, that is understandable. Every one knows well that a thousand rumors of German atrocities circulated during the war. The socialist opposition made use of them, as did all of the opponents of Hitler. In this type of tract one says anything and everything. That is the rule for that type of work. Dr. Kremer made no commentary on that pamphlet. Perhaps he believed in what the author of the tract stated. It is even probable since he took the trouble to note it. That is precisely what is interesting about this incident. Dr. Kremer must certainly not have been a very good Nazi, or otherwise his shoemaker would not have run the risk of making him read a secret pamphlet, and especially a pamphlet "which had been addressed to him." This last detail indeed proves that Dr. Kremer did not fear to confide to his diary very delicate information.

   

  On 26 July 1945, or about two and one half months after the German surrender, Dr. Kremer witnessed the distress of his fellow countrymen. That distress wrung from him nearly the same words as did the horrors of Auschwitz. I present in italic type those words in the quotation that follows:

   

  The weather is still very hot and dry. The corn ripens before its time, gnats are pestering us more and more, the foreigners* are still greatly worrying the starving, needy and homeless inhabitants. People are crowded into goods trains like cattle pushed hither and thither, while at night they try to find shelter in the stench of dirty and verminous bunkers. Quite indescribable is the fate of these poor refugees, driven into uncertainty by death, hunger and despair.

   

  *(The Polish authorities here have altered the original German text, which spoke not of "foreigners" but of "Russians, Poles and Italians.")

   

  The fact that immediately after this passage Dr. Kremer spoke about the gathering of berries does not mean that he was insensitive to the suffering of his fellow countrymen. Anyone who keeps a diary passes in this way, without transition, from the serious to the trifling. After the death of a person dear to him, Goethe noted something to the effect: "Death of Christiane!! I slept well. I feel better." And this "better" referred to health - his own health - which up until then had given him some concern. As to Kafka, I believe that I recall that on that day he had gone to the swimming pool. I am not sure of these quotations and I propose to verify them one day.

   

  10. FORCED CONFESSIONS

   

  We all know that forced confessions are common coinage, especially in time of war. The GIs in Korea, as in Vietnam, did not fail to confess "spontaneously" to the worst absurdities. People often believe that "spontaneous confessions" are a speciality of the Communist world. That ignores the fact that the French, British and Americans made great use of torture towards, for example, the conquered of the last war. As regards what the French did, I have carried out an investigation of an almost surgical precision on the summary executions in a whole small region of France at the time of the Liberation in 1944. It is absolutely impossible to have my manuscript published, given the scandal that it would cause and that would have repercussions, I can tell you, right up to the Presidency of the Republic, which is opposed (imagine it!) to the exhumation of people who were executed by units of the Maquis. Those people were sometimes tortured. But experience has also taught me that it is necessary to distrust some tales of physical torture. There are some perverted persons who take a real pleasure in inventing all sorts of stories of that kind. In The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, on pages 188-192, Dr. Butz presents a profound and suggestive analysis of forced confessions and torture. His brilliant intelligence, not to say his genius, dictates to him sometimes, as you well know, observations of such great pertinence that one is astonished and is ashamed not to have made them oneself. Here is an example of that, dealing with physical torture; it is not lacking in humor:

   

  Finally we should observe that almost none of us, certainly not this author, has ever experienced torture at the hands of professionals bent on a specific goal, and thus we might suspect, to put it quite directly, that we simply do not know what we are talking about when we discuss the possibilities of torture. (page 192)

   

  It is, I think, easy to obtain forced confessions from a man whom one holds at his mercy. Physical torture is not absolutely necessary. I mean to say that it is not absolutely necessary to strike the victim. It is sufficient sometimes to shout and to threaten. A seclusion and a prolonged isolation, as was the case with Aldo Moro, can create a feeling of panic and lead to a sort of madness. One will be prepared to sign any kind of declaration in order to get out of there. If an officer refuses a confession, he can be threatened with losing his men, and vice versa. They will threaten him with losing his wife and his children. I am sure that all physical or mental resistance can be wiped out by very simple means. For example, they will offer a prisoner conditions of lodging worthy of a decent hotel and will give him as much as he wishes to eat, but ... they will give him nothing to drink. Or indeed he will have enough to eat and to drink, but they will light his cell day and night with such power (see the example of Nürnberg) that he will no longer be able to sleep. Very quickly he will become a human rag prepared to mutter any kind of confession.

   

  One fearful effect of torture is to bring the victim closer to his torturer. The panting victim detaches himself in thought from those whom he ought to love in order to attach himself to the one whom he ought to fear and hate. He no longer wishes to have anything in common with those whose ideas he shares: he comes to hate those ideas and those people because those ideas, finally, have cost him too much suffering and those people-his friends-appear to him as a living reproach. To the contrary, there is everything to expect from the torturer. He is in possession of power, which always, in spite of everything, enjoys a certain prestige. The gods are on his side. It is he who possesses the solution to all your sufferings. The torturer is going to propose to you this solution when, if he wished, he could kill you on the spot or torture you without respite. That torturer, who proposes that you sign a simple sheet of paper on which some words are written, he is good. How can you resist him when you feel yourself to be so weak and so alone? That torturer becomes irresistible when, in place of demanding from you a confession that is precise and totally contrary to the truth, he proposes to you a sort of compromise: a vague confession based on a partial truth. In 19631965, at the Frankfurt trial, the judge of the tribunal had as his first concern not the truth, since he thought that the truth had already been completely found, but the measuring of THE DEGREE OF REPENTANCE of each of the accused! On page 512 of the book by Hermann Langbein, cited above, we see the judge show his preoccupation with discerning to what degree the accused Pery Broad had a feeling of Evil: he declared in all candor: "You see, an awarness of wrong doing plays a large part in this proceeding." How many times must the German defendants have heard that remark from the mouths of their jailers, their investigating magistrates, and especially from their lawyers! After that, how would an intelligent and sensible. man like Pery Broad refuse to tell the stupid story about an anonymous SS man whom he is supposed to have noticed one day, from a distance, in the process of releasing a mysterious liquid through the opening of the ceiling of ... the "gas chamber" of Auschwitz (the original camp)? Pery Broad probably knew that no one would come to ask him, among other questions:

   

  But how could you know that that was the ceiling of a "gas chamber" and not of a morgue? Did you enter into the place? If you did, can you tell us how it was arranged? Is it not mad on the part of the Germans to have placed a "gas chamber" just under the windows of that SS hospital and under the windows of the administrative building where you found yourself on that day? The evacuation of vapor from the hydrocyanic gas would therefore have been directed toward the SS men of the hospital or the SS men of the administration? Isn't that so?

   

  Such are the questions that the tribunal did not ask Pery Broad.

   

  It would be inhuman to reproach Pery Broad, Dr. Kremer, Rudolf Höss, and some SS men again for their absurd forced confessions. One must be astonished at the laughable number of those confessions when one thinks of the hundreds of SS men from the concentration camps who were imprisoned by the Allies. Among all those who were hanged or shot or who committed suicide, how many left confessions? A handful regarding the subject of the alleged "gas chambers." In regard to other subjects, perhaps there are more numerous confessions. I am led to believe that the Polish and the Soviets must have obtained a crowd of confessions; the SS men had to charge each other as all the men of the same lost-cause were more or less obliged to do. If there were very few confessions from the SS men concerning the "gas chambers," it was not thanks to the courage of the SS men-since, once again, it seems to me that no one can truly resist a torturer who is something of a psychologist -but quite simply because, on this subject, their torturers did not know very well what to make them state precisely. Not having any material reality on which to construct their lies about the "gas chambers" -those slaughterhouses which in fact never existed-the torturers were reduced to inventing some poor things and some stereotypes that they attributed to people like Rudolf Höss, Pery Broad and Johann Paul Kremer.

   

  11. A PRACTICAL CONCLUSION

   

  In conclusion, if, in your presence, an Exterminationist should base his thesis about the reality of the "gas chambers" of Auschwitz or of any other camp on the argument of some confessions, here, in my opinion, is the conduct to follow:

   

  Ask if he will first enumerate those confessions one by one;

  Ask him to point out the confession which, in his opinion, is the most convincing;

  Agree to read that one confession in the language (accessible for you) and in the form that, again, your questioner will freely choose;

  Compare the supposedly original text of that confession with the text that your questioner will have furnished to you;

  Decipher that text line by line and word by word, without making it say either more or less than it does say; note carefully what the author of the confession alleges that he personally saw, heard or did; a traditional trick of the German courts has consisted, as was the case for the judgement of Johann Paul Kremer at Münster in 1960, in slipping a weak confession that the accused made into a very long presentation about "gassing" in such a way that the reader believes that the whole report comes from the accused; the reader imagines that the accused made a detailed report of the events; it is nothing of the kind; it is necessary to "scour" from the text all of the contributions of the judge in order to make the judgement that the testimony is nearly as inconsistent as it is brief and vague.

  See if the confession stands up, if it is coherent, if it does not break any law of physics or of elementary chemistry; be very materialistic, as if you had to study a miracle from Lourdes; try to see the places where the action is said to have taken place; see what remains of it; some ruins can be very instructive; seek out the plans of the places or of the buildings;

  See, possibly, if the text of the confession is in the handwriting of the man who confessed; see if this text is in his mother tongue or in another language; the Allies usually made the Germans sign texts drawn up in French (Josef Kramer) or in English (Rudolf Höss) and they added in all peace of conscience that they guaranteed that this text had been translated to the accused in his own language, very faithfully (and that besides in the absence of any lawyer);

  Seek to know who obtained that confession, when and how; ask yourself the question: upon whom did the man who confessed depend for drinking, for eating and for sleeping?

  I do not think that I need to add other recommendations (for example, as to the material or documentary authenticity of the text to be studied). You understood that I am setting out a method of investigation that is elementary and not at all original. It is a routine method that one would apply automatically if it were a question of ordinary criminal matters which are exceptional by their supposed nature, very far from redoubling prudence and making appeal to a proven method, they display an incredible lightness. The good method always consists when it is a question of an inquest, of an analysis or of whatever work, of "beginning with the beginning." In fact, experience has taught me that often nothing is more difficult and less spontaneous than "to begin with the beginning." It is only after some years of research on the "gas chambers" and after having pronounced those words "gas chambers" perhaps several thousands of times that one fine day I woke up with the following question: "But in fact, what indeed can those words signify? To what material reality can they indeed relate?" To ask those questions was to very quickly find in them an answer. That answer you know: it is that the homicidal "gas chambers" of the Germans were only born in sick minds. It is time that the entire world wakes up and realizes this. Germany, in particular, ought to wake up from this frightful nightmare. It is time that a truthful history of the Second World War be written.

   

  NOTES

   

  I reproduce here the text of the entry of 2 September 1942 (Diary of Johann Paul Kremer) after the photocopy of the original as it is found in the National Archives in Washington (Doc. #NO-3408). Some Exterminationist works reproduce the photograph of this entry among other entries from the diary. But the reader has little chance to go about deciphering each word of the German handwriting of Dr. Kremer. He will be inclined to have confidence in the printed reproduction that they will propose to him, for example, in the margin; that is the case with KL Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei, edited by the International Auschwitz Committee, 96 pages (not dated). On page 48 there appears a photograph of a manuscript page of the diary on which are found three entries relating to five dates (1 through 5 September 1942). In the margin, you discover the alleged printed reproduction of the single entry of 2 September. That reproduction appears in French, English and German. In French and English the text is outrageously distorted. In German, it was very difficult to distort the text in a similar way since the photocopy of the manuscript is available to the reader. But we must have unlimited confidence that the Exterminationists will falsify texts that embarrass them. The International Auschwitz Committee has found a solution thanks to a typographical trick. After the word Sonderaktion the authors of the book have printed in the same typeface the following parenthesis, as if it were from Dr. Kremer: "So wurde die Selektion und das Vergasen genannt" ("Thus did they refer to selection and gassing"). Either the reader, as is highly probable, will not notice the difference between the manuscript text and the printed text and then will believe it to be a confidence imparted by Dr. Kremer, which will appear to him to be all the more normal since, according to an Exterminationist myth, the Nazis spent their time inventing a coded language in order to cover up their crimes; or else the reader will see the difference between the texts and then the authors will plead a simple and innocent typographical error. Serge Klarsfeld, as I said above, has used this fallacious page in his Memorial of the Deportation of the Jews from France. It is thus that historical tricks are spread and perpetuated. Here is the original manuscript text in its authentic form:

   

  Zum 1. Male draussen um 3 Uhr früh bei einer Sonderaktion zugegen. Im Vergleich hierzu erscheint mir das Dante' sche Inferno fast wie eine Komödie. Umsonst wird Auschwitz nicht das Lager der Vernichtung genannt!

   

  Finally, here is the text of the passage from the letter of 21 October 1942 addressed to Miss Gla[serl:

   

  [ ... ]Definitiven Bescheid habe ich allerdings noch nicht erwarte jedoch, dass ich vor dem 1. Dezember wieder in Münster sein kann and so endgultig dieser Hölle Auschwitz den Rükken gekehrt habe, wo ausser Fleck usw. sich nunmehr auch der Typhus mächtig bemerkbar macht...

   

  I reproduce the text with its errors in punctuation and spelling.

   

  Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 103-136.

   

  Published with permission of and courtesy to the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

  Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year.

  For the current IHR catalog, with a complete listing of books and audio and video tapes, send one dollar to:

   

  Institute For Historical Review

  Post Office Box 2739

  Newport Beach, California 92659

  email: ihr@ihr.org

   

  Back to Faurisson Books Page

• Faurisson to Lipstadt

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

  Robert FAURISSON

  10‚ rue de Normandie

  03200 Vichy

  70 32 38 96

  Vichy, 28 June 1989

   

  to Mrs Deborah LIPSTADT

  Occidental College

  Eagle Rock

  Los Angeles, California 90041

   Dear Mrs Lipstadt,

   

   I received you yesterday from noon to 6pm. I am afraid it was not worth the while.

   

   On my table, right in front of you, I had (in your dossier, which I did not open in your presence) the paper that you presented at the Oxford Conference in July 1988. In this paper you clearly say that the revisionists are liars, denying established facts by antisemitism. For you, revisionism is a subtle form of antisemitism. In California, you teach the history of antisemitism and, for you, Faurisson as well as Butz and others are some sort of antisemite that a good teacher of your kind cannot ignore. Those views are perhaps rather simple but I think that they inspired most of the questions that you put to me. You spoke very little, but enough anyway to show what you had in mind.

   

   What you had (and have) in mind is this:

   

   1. The genocide and the gas chambers are established facts;

   

  2. The revisionists deny those established facts;

   

  3. I have to find the motives of those revisionists for behaving in such a way.

   

   And you are normally prone to believe, as many people do, that the motives are essentially those of antisemitism.

   

   I agree with you that, when a person denies an established fact, there is something wrong with that person but, precisely in the case of the genocide and the gas chambers, are we facing "established facts"?

   

   Let us suppose for one minute that they are NOT established facts but only, as I kept repeating to you, religious beliefs. In that case, don't you think that the motive of those revisionists might be the most simple one that you can imagine, which is to say spontaneously: "The King is naked!"? Is it not normal, when you see that something is wrong, to say that it is wrong? As we say in French, why are you "looking for the midday sun at two o'clock"?

   

   Now, don't get me wrong! I know that in the mind of the man who shouts "The King is naked!" there might be ALSO some other feelings, impulses, passions, etc. Maybe he does not like the King, maybe he hates the courtiers, maybe he is pleased to find himself as a trouble maker but all those things are peripheral since the first, the essential and the central motive is the FACT that the king was naked.

   

   You must begin at the beginning. When Arno J. Mayer writes: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", should you not wonder if this is not true before deciding that it is untrue and before looking for the "why" of this "untruthfulness"?

   

   I noticed that you did not seem to know very much about the layout of the concentration camps and their gas chambers. As I told you, this is sadly the case of nearly all the exterminationists and of too many of the revisionists. Most of them are what I call "paper historians". They have been at school all their life and they are used to thinking that papers are more than material items. A man like Ditlieb Felderer, knowing Auschwitz better than I know Vichy, is superior to any historian as far as Auschwitz, center of the "Holocaust" question, is concerned. You should go and visit carefully those camps and those so-called gas chambers. You need one second to see in the "gas chamber" of Krema-I the ridiculous little door with its window; you need two seconds to see the ridiculous "openings" in the roof which are not at all air-tight; you need one more second to notice that the space is so limited; one second to realize that there is no heating system, no evacuation system and no trace whatsoever of it; a few seconds to see that the doors are inward-opening (!) which means that, if bodies were there, you could not even open those doors; a few seconds to see that walls had been removed in order to make the place look more important, etc. I know of nothing so stupid as those alleged gas chambers that you can visit everywhere, including Struthof-Natzweiler which you visited and Sachsenhausen which you did not visit and where you can find exactly the same type of Leichenkeller which in Birkenau is called Gas Chamber! Excuse me, I know something more stupid: it is Treblinka.

   

   I told you that my worst enemies were the Jewish organizations and I gave you many proofs of their impudent activities which aim to protect what I consider, after so much research, as a historical lie. You looked surprised. In your opinion, it seems that the Jewish organizations are not in the forefront of the repression of revisionism! Let me tell you that your surprise is surprising. Those organi- zations consider the problem of revisionism exactly as you consider it. For them, as well as for you, revisionism is a perverted form of antisemitism and, therefore, they fight against that form of antisemitism. What do you expect? That they would stop fighting antisemitism?

   

   I asked you: "Did you ever ask yourself or your students if the Jews had some responsibility in antisemitism, as Bernard Lazare dared to say?" And your answer was: "No"!!! Is it wise or scientific not to ask that kind of question?

   

   I wish FOR YOUR SAKE that the revisionists were antisemites. That would mean that they were inspired by passion. As you know, passion makes you say silly things.

   

   When you asked to come and visit me in Vichy, I immediately accepted because I believe in human contacts. But I am afraid I was wrong.

   

   

   

                          Best wishes,

   

                          R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  P.S. I told you something like three times that I do not believe in the " conspiracy theory" or, as you put it, in the "sinister conspiratorial forces" theory. I gave you my reasons and I called this theory "childish". As a matter of fact, Jews are prone to believe in that theory, which they find satisfactory when it applies to antisemitism and absurd when it is invoked by antisemites.

• Faurisson to Ludwig Bock

  Robert FAURISSON

  10, Rue de Normandie

  03200 VICHY

  Tel: 33 4 70 32 38 96

  Fax: 33 4 70 32 71 6

  18 October 1999

   

  FAX to RA Ludwig BOCK

  (00 49 62 11 56 47 76)

               Dear Mr Bock,

   

               This is to confirm what I told you on the telephone when you rang me.

   

              If my Australian friend Fredrick Töben is in jail in Germany it is for three reasons — factors for which I share responsibility.

   

              First, he became a convinced revisionist essentially by reading my own historical  material, of which he has published several articles or essays in translation in his country.

   

              Second, after visiting me for the first time in Vichy (France), he decided to investigate the alleged Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz (Poland) in exactly the way in which I had advised him to do so: essentially, to examine the remains of the so-called Nazi gas chamber of Krematorium-II in Birkenau and thus see with his own eyes that there were no holes in the roof for the alleged pouring in of Zyklon B pellets, and to remark, consequently, that no gassing operation could ever even have begun in that place, the centre of the entire "Holocaust" story. In other words, to state: No holes, no « Holocaust ».

   

              Third, it is because, after his second visit, he decided to go and put some questions to a public prosecutor in Mannheim called Heiko Klein, although he and I both knew that he might well be arrested and thrown in jail. A man deeply attached to his native land and sincerely distressed by the Niagara of lies told about Germany, F. Töben wanted to achieve something that no revisionist had yet done. I am the one who supplied him with the tools for the job in the form of the following idea:

   

   — On the one hand, we have "exterminationists" asserting that Germany committed an unprecedented crime, especially with an unprecedented weapon.

   

  — On the other hand, we have "revisionists" asserting that this is a lie, a defamation, a calumny.

  — The question is "Who are right?"

  — Where should such a question be put? Should it not be put in Germany first, the German people being, in principle, the most concerned?

  — More precisely, the question should be put to "Bonn" (in April 1999, when F. Töben last visited me, Berlin was not yet the capital of Germany), or to "Ludwigsburg", or to "Arolsen-Waldeck".

  — The trouble is that "Bonn" is interested in "political truths", not in "historical truths". "Ludwigsburg"'s job is essentially to define official truths about such or such camp. "Arolsen-Waldeck" closed down its "Historische Abteilung" in 1978 precisely because the place was being visited by people asking questions.

   

              And I said to my friend F. Töben that he should go and visit not an institution in Germany but an individual German, and, as a matter of fact, the right man in the right place was the public prosecutor Heiko Klein, the individual who seemed surest of his right to throw into jail people who did not respect the official truth about Auschwitz.

   

              I remarked to him that he would thus be the first  to go and ask an individual: "Why exactly do you throw revisionists in jail?" He would, in this way, get the answer straight from the horse's mouth. This had never yet been done by any revisionist in camera clausa, eye to eye. It would be as if, in 1610, someone visited the presiding judge who had found Galileo Galilei guilty of heresy. Should we not be keen to have the account of that man? From a historical point of view, it would today be very valuable to get an individual answer from Pontius Pilate (supposing that the story of Jesus and Pilate is not mere fiction).

   

              Of course, Heiko Klein is not a judge, only a prosecutor. Still, his power in the matter is considerable. His name will go down in history as that of a major figure in a major historical problem. Why not go and see this man, even if at risk of being put in jail? History deserves that such risks be taken, and sacrifices made, for its sake.

   

              When, on the walk back towards his car at the end of his visit, I remarked to him: "Fredrick, you know, don't you, that you may go to jail?", he replied "Yes". And I said "Good luck!", and I, for one, thought that we revisionists were lucky to have such people on our side.

   

              There you have essentially what I would say if ever I were allowed to testify in court on behalf of my friend Fredrick Töben.

   

   

   

                                                                          Yours sincerely,

   

                                                                          Robert Faurisson

• Faurisson to John Bennett:  Concerning George Ryba's Terstimony

  10, rue de Normandie

                                                                                                  03200 Vichy (France)

                                                                                                Tel.: 33 4 70 32 38 96

                                                                                                Fax: 33 4 70 32 71 64

   

  Fax to John BENNETT

  (00 61 39 34 78 617)

  and to G. MUIRDEN

  (00 61 88 332 2908)

  --VERSION NO. 2--

   

   18 May 1999

   

   On George Ryba, "Auschwitz: truth too painful to believe",

  Sydney Morning Herald, 5 May 1999, p. ?

               Concerning George Ryba's testimony on the alleged execution gas chambers in Birkenau, I have three remarks, one question, and a comment.

   

   Three remarks:

   

  1. "Later, during gassing, wires and cables were often ripped off by victims gasping for air and writhing in the agony of asphyxiation. We had to repair such damage when the still convulsive bodies were being lifted up for cremation."

   

               It is impossible to enter such a place and to work in it, either immediately or indeed for quite some time after the diffusion of hydrocyanic acid. HCN is difficult to remove by means of ventilation. It sticks to surfaces. It also  penetrates the skin. It lingers a long while. Even when wearing a gas mask equipped with a special filter ("filter J"), one must avoid all physical effort in its presence. For example, after the fumigation of a room with Zyklon B (which is in fact pellets of diatomaceous earth impregnated with HCN), when the windows must be opened to air out the premises, one must not try to force open a window if it appears to be jammed. Such exertion would quicken the breathing; the filter would not resist and one would be poisoned. Poisoning through the skin is also a possibility. In this regard, one might bear in mind the procedure (very complicated, because of the danger involved) which is carried out in the execution gas chambers of certain American penitentiaries; at the end of said procedure, a physician and two assistants, wearing special gas masks, have to be extremely cautious in lifting the body of the condemned and removing it from the chamber.

   

   2. "I was still there till about three weeks before liberation, when the SS demolition team squad were blasting away anything indicative of what had been going on in Auschwitz for nearly five years."

   

               The remains of Krematorium II show, still today, altogether plainly that the roof of  the so-called "gas chamber" had none of the four alleged regular holes for the pouring in of Zyklon B (HCN) pellets. Therefore the alleged gassing procedure could not even have been started. The room was not a "gas chamber" but rather a "Leichenkeller" (a partly below-ground mortuary).

   

   3. "My testimony withstood long and forceful cross-examination by dozens of the best German lawyers defending the Nazi elite."

   

               There is not a single example of "long and forceful cross-examination" by German lawyers on the subject of the alleged gas chambers or the alleged procedure of the gassing of camp inmates. There was no such cross-examination in 1945-1946 at  Nuremberg, nor in 1961 at the "Eichmann trial", nor in 1963-1965 at the "Frankfurt trial", nor has there been one in any other court proceedings anywhere. The existence of such gas chambers and the reality of such gassings were, at the aforementioned trials, supposedly facts of common knowledge and thus the subject of judicial notice. No-one, not even a German defendant's lawyer, dared request a forensic examination of the "crime weapon". One exception, all the same: in 1945 an examination was carried out on the alleged gas chamber of the camp at Struthof-Natzweiler in Alsace; its findings, reached on 1 December 1945, were that the room in question had not been used as an execution gas chamber.

   

   One question:  Would George Ryba kindly be more specific about his evidence? Could he cite the references of the transcripts in which we might read his testimony?

   

  A comment:  I share his opinion, according to which "it is a very human characteristic to believe what one wants to believe."

  10, rue de Normandie

                                                                                                  03200 Vichy (France)

                                                                                                Tel.: 33 4 70 32 38 96

                                                                                                Fax: 33 4 70 32 71 64

   

  Fax to John BENNETT

  (00 61 39 34 78 617)

  and to G. MUIRDEN

  (00 61 88 332 2908)

  --VERSION NO. 2--

   

   18 May 1999

   

   On George Ryba, "Auschwitz: truth too painful to believe",

  Sydney Morning Herald, 5 May 1999, p. ?

               Concerning George Ryba's testimony on the alleged execution gas chambers in Birkenau, I have three remarks, one question, and a comment.

   

   Three remarks:

   

  1. "Later, during gassing, wires and cables were often ripped off by victims gasping for air and writhing in the agony of asphyxiation. We had to repair such damage when the still convulsive bodies were being lifted up for cremation."

   

               It is impossible to enter such a place and to work in it, either immediately or indeed for quite some time after the diffusion of hydrocyanic acid. HCN is difficult to remove by means of ventilation. It sticks to surfaces. It also  penetrates the skin. It lingers a long while. Even when wearing a gas mask equipped with a special filter ("filter J"), one must avoid all physical effort in its presence. For example, after the fumigation of a room with Zyklon B (which is in fact pellets of diatomaceous earth impregnated with HCN), when the windows must be opened to air out the premises, one must not try to force open a window if it appears to be jammed. Such exertion would quicken the breathing; the filter would not resist and one would be poisoned. Poisoning through the skin is also a possibility. In this regard, one might bear in mind the procedure (very complicated, because of the danger involved) which is carried out in the execution gas chambers of certain American penitentiaries; at the end of said procedure, a physician and two assistants, wearing special gas masks, have to be extremely cautious in lifting the body of the condemned and removing it from the chamber.

   

   2. "I was still there till about three weeks before liberation, when the SS demolition team squad were blasting away anything indicative of what had been going on in Auschwitz for nearly five years."

   

               The remains of Krematorium II show, still today, altogether plainly that the roof of  the so-called "gas chamber" had none of the four alleged regular holes for the pouring in of Zyklon B (HCN) pellets. Therefore the alleged gassing procedure could not even have been started. The room was not a "gas chamber" but rather a "Leichenkeller" (a partly below-ground mortuary).

   

   3. "My testimony withstood long and forceful cross-examination by dozens of the best German lawyers defending the Nazi elite."

   

               There is not a single example of "long and forceful cross-examination" by German lawyers on the subject of the alleged gas chambers or the alleged procedure of the gassing of camp inmates. There was no such cross-examination in 1945-1946 at  Nuremberg, nor in 1961 at the "Eichmann trial", nor in 1963-1965 at the "Frankfurt trial", nor has there been one in any other court proceedings anywhere. The existence of such gas chambers and the reality of such gassings were, at the aforementioned trials, supposedly facts of common knowledge and thus the subject of judicial notice. No-one, not even a German defendant's lawyer, dared request a forensic examination of the "crime weapon". One exception, all the same: in 1945 an examination was carried out on the alleged gas chamber of the camp at Struthof-Natzweiler in Alsace; its findings, reached on 1 December 1945, were that the room in question had not been used as an execution gas chamber.

   

   One question:  Would George Ryba kindly be more specific about his evidence? Could he cite the references of the transcripts in which we might read his testimony?

   

  A comment:  I share his opinion, according to which "it is a very human characteristic to believe what one wants to believe."

• Maurice Papon and Yves Jouffa:

  A Double Standard?

  Maurice Papon and Yves Jouffa:

  A Double Standard?

   

   

  by Robert Faurisson

   

   

   

                  Maurice Papon, eighty-six years of age, stands accused of having, between July 1942 and May 1944 -- a period during which he was general secretary of the Gironde Préfecture (“governorship” of the Bordeaux département), -- participated in the sending away of 1,560 persons of Jewish origin, until then interned in the camp at Mérignac, to Drancy, whence they were to be deported to Auschwitz. He is due to appear as of 8 October 1997 before the assizes of the Gironde on charges of complicity in murder and in unlawful arrest and imprisonment, these offences having taken on the character of  “crimes against humanity”, in all clarity, and de facto , that of crimes against the Jews.

   

                    Barrister Yves Jouffa, aged seventy-seven, is the subject of a long note in Emmanuel Ratier’s Encyclopedie politique francaise  (vol. I, Faits & Documents, 1992, p. 363). According to this note, Y. Jouffa, chief of the Young Socialists in 1939, was interned at  Drancy for over a year (from 20 August 1941 to September 1942). Released by the French authorities, he was not deported, having joined the General Union of French Jews (UGIF), of which his father was treasurer, to work in an aircraft factory in the Belleville district of Paris. He is Honorary President of the Association of Former Deportees and Internees of Drancy. From 1984 to 1991 he was president of the French League of Human Rights. He has pleaded in legal proceedings against revisionist authors. In particular, he has solicited judgement against me.

   

              On 28 January 1997, on French television (TF 1), reporter Paul Amar showed, during his magazine programme “Le Monde de Lea”, an interview with M. Papon in which the latter, at one point, recalled that at the Drancy camp an important Jewish personality participated in the “sorting” of Jews bound for Auschwitz. This remark was to provoke the wrath of Daniel Schneidermann, a Le Monde  journalist and director, at the television station La Cinq,  of the programme “Arrêt sur image” (Still Photo) (Le Monde, 2/3 February, p. 39; La Cinq, 2 February, 12.30 - 1.30 PM).

   

              At first I believed that M. Papon was alluding to Robert Blum, who signed his notes (including those relating to the preparation of deportation convoys): “Lieutenant-Colonel Blum, Commandant of Drancy Camp” (Maurice Rajsfus, Drancy , Manya, 1991, pp. 234-275 ; see my article: “Le milliard des juifs... ou du Marechal Petain ?”, Rivarol ,  7  February 1997, pp. 6-7).

   

              In reality,  the allusion concerned Barrister Y. Jouffa. Did this man know that he was sending his co-religionists to what, since the war, has been referred to in the media as an “extermination camp”? And if he did not know it, who could have known it?

   

              Was Y. Jouffa released from Drancy in September 1942? For what reason and on what conditions? Did he then work in an aircraft factory in Belleville, thus for German military aviation?

   

              Did he and his father belong to the countless “Brown Jews” (an expression relaunched by M. Rajsfus) who collaborated with the occupation forces, enjoying the active -- even financial -- protection of Marshal Philippe Pétain, and who notably prepared the big rounding up of the Jews housed in the Paris cycling arena, the Vel’d’Hiv, in July 1942?

   

              Were they among all of those self-amnestied Jews who in 1944-1945 appeared before the so accommodating “intra-community tribunals” whilst an atrocious “purging” was being visited upon so many of those French people who could not claim to be Jewish?

   

   

   

  (Translated from the French. Below is the French original.)

   

   

  Maurice Papon and Yves Jouffa:

  A Double Standard?

   

   

  by Robert Faurisson

   

   

   

                  Maurice Papon, eighty-six years of age, stands accused of having, between July 1942 and May 1944 -- a period during which he was general secretary of the Gironde Préfecture (“governorship” of the Bordeaux département), -- participated in the sending away of 1,560 persons of Jewish origin, until then interned in the camp at Mérignac, to Drancy, whence they were to be deported to Auschwitz. He is due to appear as of 8 October 1997 before the assizes of the Gironde on charges of complicity in murder and in unlawful arrest and imprisonment, these offences having taken on the character of  “crimes against humanity”, in all clarity, and de facto , that of crimes against the Jews.

   

                    Barrister Yves Jouffa, aged seventy-seven, is the subject of a long note in Emmanuel Ratier’s Encyclopedie politique francaise  (vol. I, Faits & Documents, 1992, p. 363). According to this note, Y. Jouffa, chief of the Young Socialists in 1939, was interned at  Drancy for over a year (from 20 August 1941 to September 1942). Released by the French authorities, he was not deported, having joined the General Union of French Jews (UGIF), of which his father was treasurer, to work in an aircraft factory in the Belleville district of Paris. He is Honorary President of the Association of Former Deportees and Internees of Drancy. From 1984 to 1991 he was president of the French League of Human Rights. He has pleaded in legal proceedings against revisionist authors. In particular, he has solicited judgement against me.

   

              On 28 January 1997, on French television (TF 1), reporter Paul Amar showed, during his magazine programme “Le Monde de Lea”, an interview with M. Papon in which the latter, at one point, recalled that at the Drancy camp an important Jewish personality participated in the “sorting” of Jews bound for Auschwitz. This remark was to provoke the wrath of Daniel Schneidermann, a Le Monde  journalist and director, at the television station La Cinq,  of the programme “Arrêt sur image” (Still Photo) (Le Monde, 2/3 February, p. 39; La Cinq, 2 February, 12.30 - 1.30 PM).

   

              At first I believed that M. Papon was alluding to Robert Blum, who signed his notes (including those relating to the preparation of deportation convoys): “Lieutenant-Colonel Blum, Commandant of Drancy Camp” (Maurice Rajsfus, Drancy , Manya, 1991, pp. 234-275 ; see my article: “Le milliard des juifs... ou du Marechal Petain ?”, Rivarol ,  7  February 1997, pp. 6-7).

   

              In reality,  the allusion concerned Barrister Y. Jouffa. Did this man know that he was sending his co-religionists to what, since the war, has been referred to in the media as an “extermination camp”? And if he did not know it, who could have known it?

   

              Was Y. Jouffa released from Drancy in September 1942? For what reason and on what conditions? Did he then work in an aircraft factory in Belleville, thus for German military aviation?

   

              Did he and his father belong to the countless “Brown Jews” (an expression relaunched by M. Rajsfus) who collaborated with the occupation forces, enjoying the active -- even financial -- protection of Marshal Philippe Pétain, and who notably prepared the big rounding up of the Jews housed in the Paris cycling arena, the Vel’d’Hiv, in July 1942?

   

              Were they among all of those self-amnestied Jews who in 1944-1945 appeared before the so accommodating “intra-community tribunals” whilst an atrocious “purging” was being visited upon so many of those French people who could not claim to be Jewish?

   

   

   

  (Translated from the French. Below is the French original.)

   

   

•  In the Offing: a "Ministry of Defence against Revisionism"

   

  Robert FAURISSON

  19 July 1999

   In the Offing: a "Ministry of Defence against Revisionism"

   

  In view of the waning number of surviving war veterans, the relevant government agency (the Ministère des Anciens Combattants) could become a Ministry of Remembrance, i.e., to put it plainly, a ministry in charge of the defence of Jewish (and of Résistance) remembrance against historical revisionism.

   

   One may be led to think as much by an article in Le Monde (18-19 July 1999, p. 5) by Jean-Michel Aphatie and Pascale Robert-Diard entitled "Vers la création d'un ministère de la «mémoire» ?" ("Towards the creation of a Ministry of 'Remembrance'?").

   

  In the late 1970s, the springing up of the Faurisson affair and of historical revisionism (a school of thought founded in France, in 1950, by the late Paul Rassinier, a former deportee) had aroused disquiet amongst the upholders of an orthodox version of second world war history. In the early 1980s, numerous antirevisionist initiatives were launched in the political world, in the mainstream press, and in basic and higher education. In particular, an antirevisionist unit was formed within the Ministère des Anciens Combattants. This bureau's activities have   expanded steadily ever since, as it has been turning into a ministerial directorship. Today no-one can doubt that it constitutes the seed from which a future Ministry of Remembrance will eventually sprout. President Jacques Chirac (on a visit to Oradour-sur-Glane) and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (on a visit to Auschwitz), although of opposing political parties have, along with Minister of Justice Elisabeth Guigou (on a visit to the site of the wartime detention camp at Drancy, to the north of Paris), once again sworn in unison by this one-sided and well policed remembrance.

   

   

• My Answers to Shawn Johnson and her classmates

   

                                                                                                  Robert FAURISSON

                                                                                                  10, rue de Normandie

                                                                                                  03200 Vichy (France)

   

   

  3 March 1999

   

  My Answers to Shawn Johnson and her classmates

   

   

   

  Question 1: While writing, do you think of the reader's opinions?

   

   Answer: I try my best not to think of the reader's opinions on the matter which I am  addressing. I try to avoid frivolity, negligence, deliberate ignorance, and lies. I try to be exact. I try not to lay accusations against anyone unless I have hard facts and real evidence. If someone accuses on the one hand, Nazi Germany of having built and used  mass-execution gas chambers and, on the other hand, Great Britain,  the United States, Soviet Russia, the Vatican, and the International  Committee of the Red Cross of having turned a blind eye to such a  gigantic crime perpetrated over such a length of time, he must be able to bring proof, or at least such things as he considers to be proof and which I should have the right to look at and discuss. Otherwise, it is a defamation, a slander, a calumny.

   

   Question 2: What inspired you to start your revisionist work?

   

   -- One day I read a book by Paul Rassinier, Le Mensonge d'Ulysse  ("The Lie of Ulysses") published in 1950. P. Rassinier had been a leftist, a Résistant, then an inmate at the Buchenwald and Dora camps in Germany. When he returned home from those concentration camps, he was surprised to read "testimonies" about execution gas chambers in Buchenwald. He began an investigation. He discovered that those "testimonies" were  nothing but the fruit of gossip. Later on, he found that such was also the case as concerned Dachau and many other camps including Auschwitz. The meaning behind the title of his first book is this: many people tend to behave like Homer's hero in that, having endured a hundred ordeals, they are inclined to talk of their thousand ordeals, and, with the passing of time, may actually come to believe the stories that they repeat year after year.

   

              On 19 August 1960, in the German weekly Die Zeit , there appeared a letter from a Dr Martin Broszat, member of the Institute of Contemporary  History in Munich and believer in the German mass-execution gas chambers. In his letter he finally admitted that there had been no such gas chambers either in Buchenwald, Dachau, or Bergen-Belsen. I was very surprised, since I remembered that, in a film projected at the Nuremberg trial on 29 November 1945, the whole world had been shown something that was presented as such a gas chamber in  Dachau, and had been told of its functioning as such.

   

   Question 3: If the Holocaust had happened to Christians instead of to Jews,  would you feel the same way about it?

   

  -- If by the word "Holocaust" you mean that Nazi Germany 1) had a  policy of physically exterminating the Jews, 2) used execution gas chambers to that purpose, and 3) that the overall result of this policy, taking in deaths by natural causes within or without concentration  camps, was a total of 6,000,000 dead, I say that there was no "Holocaust". If by the word "Holocaust" you mean that the Jewish communities of Europe suffered considerable hardship and loss of life during the second world war, I lament such sufferings (though they did not -- and by far -- amount to 6,000,000 dead) just as I lament those endured throughout that horrible conflict by Christians, atheists, Buddhists, Shintoists, and all others: perhaps as many as 40,000,000 people were killed. The allied bombing raids on Dresden (February 1945) amounted to a real "Holocaust" (the incineration of an entire city would seem to bear a closer correspondence to the traditional, liturgical sense of the word that we are discussing here), as did the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most dreadful deportations were those of the 12-15 million German civilians, chased from their homes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1945-1946.

   

              Just or unjust, every war is a butchery, despite the heroism of countless soldiers and  ordinary citizens; at the end of it, the victor turns out simply to have  been the better, the more efficient of two butchers. It is thus  that, when hostilities have ceased, the victor should perhaps be entitled to give the vanquished a lesson in butchery but certainly not in Right and Justice, as happened in the Nuremberg trial, the Tokyo trial, and still  today, 54 years after the war, in so-called "war criminals" cases.

   

              In September 1983, at the end of my visit to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, I met Rabbi Marvin Hier; in the guest book I wrote something like: "I feel a deep respect for the TRUE sufferings of ALL the victims of World War II".

   

   Question 4: If there were no gassings, how can one account for the residue of gas found at the camps?

   

   -- Zyklon B (hydrocyanic acid) had been used since 1922, and is in fact still in  use today (although under a different name), for purposes of fumigation,  disinfestation, and delousing. In a chamber specially equipped for disinfestation one will normally note blue residues (hydrocyanic acid is also known as "blue acid", and the chambers to which you allude were sometimes called "blue chambers"). Precisely what is so interesting is that at Auschwitz-Birkenau, for example, in the rooms used for disinfestation, you will still note today such blue residues, whereas in the spaces purportedly used day in and day out   for mass-gassings, for the gassing to death of so many thousands of Jews, you will note no such residues. In 1988 an American called Fred Leuchter, specialist in the field of judicial executions in the US (notably in the use of gas chambers employing hydrocyanic acid), visited Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek (Poland), accompanied by several assistants. He inspected, on the one hand, the disinfestation gas chambers and, on the other hand, the places which are presented as execution gas chambers. He took samples which he had analysed by a laboratory upon returning to the US. The conclusion of his report was that there had been no execution gas chambers in those camps. In 1991 the German chemist Germar Rudolf, after visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau, in his own report came to the same conclusion. As for  me, I was the first (in the 70s) to state that the "Nazi gas chambers" were impossible for chemical reasons. If you are interested, I can expand a bit on this point which, after all, concerns an essential subject and is assuredly not a "point of detail" of second world war history. Have you ever asked yourself what such a gas chamber -- a building in which whole crowds of people were put to death  -- can have been? Or how one could operate it without gassing oneself in the process? While entering an ocean of hydrocyanic acid after the gassing, in order to remove the corpses, how would one avoid being overcome? And, since hydrocyanic acid can poison through the skin on simple contact, would it not be impossible to handle the poisoned corpses without poisoning oneself? Have you any idea what an American  penitentiary gas chamber, used for killing just a single individual, is like? Also, are you sure that you have made the necessary distinction between the crematoria (especially good and useful devices to have at a time of terrible typhus epidemics, as at Auschwitz), the disinfestation gas chambers (indispensable in the face of such epidemics), and the purported mass-execution gas chambers which, needless to say, would have been abominable? When presented with images of dreadfully emaciated bodies, have you ever thought that they may have been the remains of victims of such epidemics? Beware not to take the crematoria for execution gas chambers, and the dead for murdered!

   

  My Comments

   

               I appreciate the open-mindedness of Americans. In France, once I had expressed my observations on what you term the "Holocaust", I soon was no longer able to teach at my University. I used especially to lecture in "Analysis of Texts and Documents (Literature, History,             Media)" but one day my tenure was revoked without any justification  being given. Between 1978 and 1993 I was physically attacked ten  times and on at least one occasion was nearly killed. Since 1981 I have been prosecuted and convicted at least 12 times, having enormous fines to pay as a result. In France and in many other countries there are special laws -- like the 1981 Israeli law -- which forbid challenges to the "Holocaust" story. Quite a few Revisionists have been, or are now, in jail, particularly in Germany where, incidentally, three US citizens have at one time or another been locked up for revisionism: one is currently serving a five-year prison sentence there, partly for revisionism and partly for his political beliefs, which happen to be National-Socialist.

   

              Did you know that after the war the first historian to have the intuition  that the "Nazi gas chambers" had perhaps not existed was the American James Morgan Read? If you wish I can send you a copy of an article which he had published in the 30 May 1945 issue (p. 651-653) of the Chicago weekly The Christian Century , under the title "Trials for War Criminals"?

   

              Also, did you know that in their respective war memoirs which, taken together, amount to over 7,000 printed pages, general-presidents Dwight  Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle and prime minister Winston Churchill, despite plainly showing their hostility towards the Germans, never once mentioned either a physical extermination of the Jews or the "Nazi gas chambers"? Why, would you reckon, is this so?

   

   

   

                                     Best wishes,

   

   

   

                                                  R. Faurisson

   

   

   

  N.B. Perhaps you would be interested in reading two short articles which I have published in The Journal of Historical Review (JHR):

   

  -- "The Mechanics of Gassing" (JHR  , Spring 1980, p. 23-30);

   

  -- "The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz Appear to be Physically Inconceivable" (JHR  , Winter 1981, p. 311-317).

   

    If you are interested I can also explain my challenge: "Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber", and the aphorism "No holes, no «Holocaust»".

   

   

• Faurisson to Lilienthal

  Robert FAURISSON

  10, rue de Normandie

  03200 VICHY

  18 June 1993

   

  Dear Dr Lilienthal,

   

  There was a Jewish tragedy among many other tragedies during and after World War II.

   

  There was no Jewish "Genocide".

   

  You have no argument, in my opinion, for maintaining that:

   

  It seems the war between the revisionists and the exterminationists is doomed to continue as both sides refuse to understand the other side's position due to exaggerations of points of view.

   

  Either the abominable Nazi gas chambers did exist or they did not exist. There is no middle.

   

  To compare revisionists and exterminationists as you do is to compare, on the one hand, people who have no power and, on the other hand, people who have all the power.

   

  In my country I am treated as a Palestinian. My books and articles are my Intifada's stones.

   

  The Jewish World Community AS SUCH has a terrible responsibility in an enormous historical lie: its birth, its development, its upholding (upholding by force, violence, special laws, terror, blackmailing, insults, trials). The duty of individual Jews should be, in my opinion, to denounce clearly that colonialist and imperialist behavior, to face the historical problems at issue (instead of evading them by saying that those problems are not important, and such bla bla), and to say:

   

  As a Jew, I am ashamed of learning day after day what "the Jews" (= the Jewish organizations) are doing against the revisionists in Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Italy, Australia, etc. This MUST stop.

   

  On May 22, Ahmed Rami and I were attacked in Stockholm by groups of Jews, coming from France, mostly.

   

  On May 30, I was attacked by a Jew at an atheist convention.

   

  On June 8, Rene Bousquet was killed by an insane man who repeated what "the Jews" have been repeating day and night against Bousquet: "Crucify him!" "Crucify him!"

   

  The same day, a revisionist journalist, Alain Guionnet, director of _Revision_, has been thrown into jail. Now, listen, Dr Lilienthal: The French media refuse to publish the news "because it would be revisionist publicity" (a journalist of _Le Monde_, on June 17).

   

  Did we, since 1978 (beginning of the "war"), touch one hair of one Jew?

   

  Best wishes.

   

  R. Faurisson

   

  Faurisson's addition: "I received a nice answer from Dr Lilienthal; he apologized."

• Question to UNESCO on the subject of Auschwitz:

   

   

   

   

  Robert FAURISSON

   

  1 June 1998

   

  Question to UNESCO on the subject of Auschwitz:

   

   What does UNESCO intend to do now that it is aware that since 1979 it has been protecting an acknowledged fake, a precise fake of which the Auschwitz State Museum's directors are also aware?

   

            UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) is a specialized body of the UNO (United Nations Organisation) established in 1946. Its headquarters, the Palais des Nations (Palace of Nations), is in Paris (*). Its current Director General is the Spaniard Federico Mayor, whose successor might well be the Frenchman Jack Lang, former Minister of Culture and, moreover, a staunch Zionist.

   

            In 1972 the member states of UNESCO adopted a convention concerning the protection of World Heritage. In 1976 a World Heritage Committee and World Heritage Fund were created. The director of the World Heritage Centre today is the German Bernd von Droste zu Hülshof.

   

            The World Heritage Fund derives its income mainly from mandatory contributions from States Parties to a convention which determines the role of these States in the protection and preservation of cultural and natural sites.

   

            In May 1997 the States Parties numbered 149. The number of protected sites was 506. The cultural sites (for example, in France, the Versailles Palace) numbered 380 while the natural sites (for example, a certain number of national parks throughout the world) numbered 107; 19 sites were both natural and cultural (for instance, in Peru, the Inca sanctuary of Machu Picchu).

   

   

   

  1— The Auschwitz site in the "World Heritage" of UNESCO

   

             On 26 October 1979, the Auschwitz (Poland) concentration camp was listed as a Cultural Property to be protected and preserved. In the enumeration of the parts of the camp to be protected and preserved there figure textually "the gas chambers and the cremation ovens", and it is pointed out that, in this camp, "four million persons, among them a great number of Jews, were systematically starved, tortured and assassinated" (document WHC 98/15, p. 59 of the English version and p. 72 of the French).

   

            It is abnormal that in a document dated January 1998 there should appear this figure of 4,000,000. Let us recall that, until early 1990, this figure was in fact inscribed in nineteen different languages on nineteen slabs of the Auschwitz-Birkenau monument but that, following a decision of the Auschwitz State Museum authorities taken in agreement with the Polish government and the International Committee of Auschwitz, these slabs were removed in April 1990 to be replaced, five years later, in 1995, after some bitter discussions, by new ones showing the figure of 1,500,000 instead of 4,000,000, which meant a decrease of 2,500,000 of the presumed number of victims.

   

            Why do UNESCO (Mr Federico Mayor) and its World Heritage Centre (Mr Bernd von Droste zu Hülshof) stick to, in 1998, an official truth of Communist origin (see Nuremberg trial document USSR-008 setting this figure at 4,000,000) which in 1995 was revised considerably downwards by the Polish government (Mr Lech Walesa in person)?

   

            Would the reason perhaps be that the very World Heritage Convention itself expressly demands the conservation and preservation of protected sites? In that case, how were the museum authorities able, unimpaired, to undermine the preservation of the Auschwitz site by removing those nineteen slabs and, in 1995, to install new ones whose message is not the same?

   

   

   

  2—UNESCO's World Heritage Centre highlights its concern for authenticity

   

             The World Heritage Centre's primary mission is to ascertain the authenticity of a site before putting it on the list of Cultural Properties. Then, when a site is listed, it is to be conserved and preserved; thus, its authenticity is to be preserved.

   

            A UN document attests to the importance, first, of this mission, and second, of this responsibility. It was issued by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, and is entitled Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Its reference: WHC-97/2, February 1997 (WHC-97/WS/1). About forty pages long, it is divided into 139 sections. The word "authenticity" appears at least a dozen times, which suggests that authenticity is among the most important criteria employed in selecting a cultural site; the preservation of authenticity is of paramount importance for maintaining a site on the World Heritage List. Finally, as will be seen below, the "significant loss of historical authenticity" shall lead to the deletion of a property from the list.

   

   

   

  3 — UNESCO's World Heritage Centre repeatedly stresses its concern for authenticity

   

             Page after page, or section after section, the World Heritage Committee, referred to below as "the Committee", plainly shows a constant preoccupation with authenticity. I have emphasized some important words, and kept to the subject of cultural sites to the exclusion of natural ones:

   

   

  – Section 5: The Committee is fully aware that its decisions must be based on considerations which are as objective as is scientifically possible, and that any appraisal made on its behalf must be thoroughly and responsibly carried out. It recognizes that objective and well considered decisions depend upon carefully prepared criteria, thorough procedures, [and] evaluation by qualified experts and the use of expert referees.

   

   

   

  – Section 6, § V: Inscriptions of sites shall be deferred until evidence of the full commitment of the nominating government, within its means, is demonstrated.

   

                        § VI: When a property has deteriorated to the extent that it has lost those characteristics which determined its inclusion in the World Heritage List, it should be placed on the World Heritage in Danger List; subsequently the procedure concerning the possible deletion from the List will be applied.

   

   

   

  – Section 8: [...] in accordance with the criteria and conditions of authenticity or integrity [...].

   

   

   

  – Section 22: [...] the criteria and the conditions of authenticity or integrity [...].

   

   

   

  – Section 24: [...] the test of authenticity.

   

                        (b) (i): meet the test of authenticity [...] (The  Committee stressed that reconstruction is only acceptable if it is carried out on the basis of complete and detailed documentation on the original and to no extent on conjecture).

   

   

   

  – Section 27, § I:  [...] criterion of authenticity [...].

   

                           § II  [...] criterion of authenticity [...].

   

                           § III [...] their authenticity is undeniable [...].

   

   

   

  – Section 46: [Procedure for the eventual deletion of properties from the World Heritage List] The Committee adopted the following procedure for the deletion of properties from the World Heritage List [...].

   

   

   

  – Section 54: Each State Party to this Convention recognizes that the duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage [...] situated on its territory, belongs primarily to that State.

   

   

   

  – Section 56: The World Heritage Committee invites the States Parties to the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage to inform the Committee, through the UNESCO Secretariat, of their intention to undertake or to authorize in any area protected under the Convention major restorations or new constructions which may affect the World Heritage value of the property. Notice should be given as soon as possible (for instance, before drafting basic documents for specific purposes) and before making any decisions that would be difficult to reverse, so that the Committee may assist in seeking appropriate solutions to ensure that the world heritage value of the site is fully preserved.

   

   

   

  – Section 57: [...] the criteria and the conditions of authenticity/integrity.

   

   

   

  – Section 58: [...] criteria and the conditions of authenticity or integrity.

   

   

   

  – Section 61, § a: [ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) is invited to be as strict as possible in its evaluations.]

   

   

   

  – Section 64, § 2c: Authenticity/integrity.

   

   

   

  – Section 69: Systematic monitoring and reporting is [sic] the continuous process of observing the conditions of World Heritage sites with periodic reporting on its [sic] state of conservation.

   

   

   

  – Section 71: The States Parties are invited to submit to the World Heritage Committee through the World Heritage Centre, every five years, a scientific report on the state of conservation of the World Heritage sites on their territories.

   

   

   

  – Section 75: [for purposes of "reactive monitoring"] the States Parties shall submit to the Committee through the World Heritage Centre, specific reports and impact studies each time exceptional circumstances occur or work is undertaken which may have an effect on the state of conservation of the site. Reactive monitoring is foreseen in the procedures for the eventual deletion of properties from the World Heritage List [...].

   

   

   

  – Section 78, § e: [...] significant loss of historical authenticity.

   

   

   

  – Section 126: These plaques [marking the properties' World Heritage listing] are designed to inform the public of the country concerned and foreign visitors, that the site visited has a particular value which has been recognized by the international community. In other words, the site is exceptional, of interest not only to one nation, but also to the whole world.

   

   

   

  – Annex 1 [In the "model for presenting a tentative list" to be filed as application for the listing of a site, and as justification of its "outstanding universal value", there are five headings; the second of these is] Assurances of authenticity or integrity.

   

   

   

   

   

       4 — The purported gas chamber of Auschwitz I constitutes an acknowledged imposture (my article of 26 January 1998):

   

      The "Gas Chamber" of Auschwitz I

   

   

   

    Since 1948, the year of the founding by the Polish communists of the Auschwitz State Museum, millions of tourists have visited the crematorium of the main camp (Auschwitz I) with its "gas chamber" (500,000 visitors per year in the early 1990's).

   

     That crematorium and that "gas chamber" are presented by the guides as genuine, but recalcitrant visitors who put questions to the authorities have been told, since my own visits of 1975 and 1976, that it is in fact a "reconstruction" (understood to be an identical replica of the original). In reality, the whole is neither genuine nor an identical replica of the original. In 1941-42, it was the most conventional of crematoria with, especially, a cool room for the corpses and an incineration block with six ovens; in 1943-44, the six ovens were done away with and the cool room, along with other parts of the building, were transformed into an air-raid shelter with a surgical operating room serving the nearby SS hospital.

   

     I made these discoveries in 1975/1976 and published the subsequent results from 1978 to1980.

   

   

   

  • Éric Conan

   

   

   

     Fifteen years afterwards, the reporter-historian Éric Conan, although quite hostile to revisionism, published in the Express (Paris) of 19-25 January 1995 a lengthy study, "Auschwitz : la mémoire du mal" (Auschwitz: the Memory of Evil), in which he denounced the falsifications of the crematorium and its "gas chamber". Concerning this point, here are the findings of his inquiry, to certain words of which I add emphasis:

   

   

   

    In 1948, during the museum's creation, crematorium I was reconstituted in its supposed original state. Everything in it is false: the gas chamber's dimensions, the location of the doors, the openings for the pouring in of the Zyklon B, the ovens, rebuilt according to what some survivors remembered, the height of the chimney. In the late 1970's, Robert Faurisson exploited these falsifications all the better as the museum administration balked at acknowledging them (p. 68).

   

   

   

     É. Conan questioned a museum official about what he calls a "misrepresentation" and about what, according to him, Théo Klein, former president of the CRIF, the "representative council of Jewish organisations of France", calls an "artifice":

   

   

   

  Krystyna Oleksy, whose director's office, which occupies the old SS hospital, looks straight out on to crematorium I, has not resigned herself [to telling the truth about the gas chamber]: "For the time being, it is to be left 'as is', with nothing specified to the visitor. It's too complicated. We'll see to it later on."

   

   

   

     This person's reply amounts to saying: "We have lied. We are lying. And, until further notice, we shall continue to lie."

   

   

   

  • Robert Jan van Pelt and Debórah Dwork

   

   

   

     In 1996 two historians of Jewish origin, the Canadian Robert Jan van Pelt and the American Debórah Dwork, devoted a work to the history of Auschwitz, from 1270 AD (year of the town's founding) to  current times (Auschwitz / 1270 to the Present, published in London by Yale University Press, 1996, 443 pp.). They in turn state that the authorities at the Auschwitz State Museum have proceeded to make alterations, transformations, and falsifications of the Auschwitz I site as concerns both the detainees' reception building and crematorium I with its "gas chamber". The authors use the following words: "postwar obfuscation", "additions", "deletions", "suppression", "reconstruction", "largely a postwar reconstruction" (p. 363), "reconstructed", "usurpation", "re-created" (p. 364), "falsified" (p. 367), "falsifying" (p. 369).

   

     On the subject of the gas chamber they write:

   

   

   

  [After the war] four hatched openings in the roof, as if for pouring Zyklon B into the gas chamber below, were installed (p. 364).

   

   

   

     They point out that no sign calls the public's attention to any changes, on which...

   

   

   

  ...the guides remain silent [...] when they take the visitors through this building that is presumed by the tourist to be the place where it happened (ibid.).

   

   

   

  • Appeal to UNESCO

   

   

   

     The entire Auschwitz complex is registered by UNESCO as a protected world heritage site. Some countries of the Arab-Islamic world, irritated by the prosecution in France of Roger Garaudy for having called the gas chambers into question, could, if the latter were convicted on 27 February 1998, bring an action at UNESCO for the case of the emblematic "gas chamber" at Auschwitz; they might, at the same occasion, demand a forensic examination of the remains of the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau's crematorium II; the caved-in roof of this gas chamber has visibly never possessed any of the four special 25 by 25 cm (9 7/8 in.) holes which, we are told, were meant to allow the pouring in of the Zyklon B pellets. That being the case, how could an execution gassing operation simply have begun?

   

   

   

  5 —  I remind the Auschwitz State Museum that it is itself aware of this imposture (my letter of 23 February 1998):

   

   

   

  Dear Sir, Dear Madam,

    Would you please be so kind as to find attached a text of mine dated 26 January 1998, entitled " The 'Gas Chamber' of Auschwitz I"? I have included a German and an English translation along with the French original.

     This alleged "gas chamber" is a fake (in French "une imposture" and, in German, "ein Schwindel" or "ein Betrug").

     Your are well aware of this fact.

     In 1941-42, the period of the alleged gassings in the building, there existed neither "the victims' entrance door" nor "the four openings in the roof for the pouring in of Zyklon B pellets". Consequently neither the victims nor the poison gas could have got into the premises in the manner in which we are deceitfully told that they did.

     As I discovered in 1975-76, during my visits to the camp and my contacts with Messrs Jan MACHALEK and Tadeusz IWASZKO (archivist), the place had been, in 1941-42 and until August 1943, a cool room for the laying out of corpses awaiting cremation; then, as of September 1943, it had been transformed, at the price of several months' effort, into an air-raid shelter with a surgical operating room and two adjoining sickrooms serving the nearby SS hospital.

     Your present-day offices look out onto this false "gas chamber".

     My findings of 1975-76, published in 1978-80, thenceforth earned me some violent attacks, over a period of about fifteen years. Since then (since January of 1995, precisely) they have been confirmed by the French journalist and historian  Éric CONAN ("Auschwitz : la mémoire du mal", L'Express [Paris], 19-25 January 1995, particularly on page 68) and in a book published in 1996 by the Canadian-Jewish historian Robert Jan van PELT and the American historian Debórah DWORK, also of Jewish origin (Auschwitz / 1270 to the Present, London, Yale University Press, 1996, particularly on pages 363-364, 367, and 369).

     I repeat and again specify: this "gas chamber" is neither "in its original state" (the version given by the guides to your 500,000-odd visitors per year), nor "a reconstitution or a reconstruction [identical, or nearly so, to the original]" (the version of some State Museum staff members). It is in fact a fake created by the Communists in 1948.

     It was precisely in 1995 that, after five years of delay and hesitation, you decided to make a drastic revision of the estimated death toll at Auschwitz: instead of the figure of 4,000,000 inscribed on 19 slabs in 19 languages, slabs which you had dismantled in 1990, you opted for that of 1,500,000. This latter figure remains extravagant but it does represent progress on the path of truth.

     It remains for you to take another, similar step in the right direction, first by immediately closing the place called  "the gas chamber" to all visitors, then by revealing the truth about it.

   

                                      Yours sincerely,

   

                                      R. Faurisson

   

  COPY to UNESCO (Paris), with appropriate cover letter.

   

  6 — I inform UNESCO's World Heritage Centre of this acknowledged imposture (my letter of 23 February 1998):

   

    Mr President,

    Would you please be so kind as to find attached the copy of a letter which I have addressed by fax today to the director and assistant director of the Auschwitz State Museum?

     It is on the subject of the imposture, now finally acknowledged, of the purported "gas chamber" of Auschwitz I.

     The site of Auschwitz has been declared by UNESCO to be part of the world heritage (on this point you may refer to your colleague David Martell).

     I solemnly call to your attention the fact that UNESCO's responsibility would be seriously engaged if, informed of this grave imposture, it nevertheless continued to sanction it in one manner or another, particularly by silence.

     For my part I have no intention of remaining silent about a Communist lie which has lasted since 1948 (year of the State Museum's founding) and which, in the 1990s alone, has fooled roughly 500,000 visitors yearly.

   

                                    Yours respectfully,

   

                                    R. Faurisson

   

  enc: Copy of correspondence sent by fax today to the Auschwitz State Museum.

   

   

  7 — UNESCO's World Heritage Centre responds (its letter of 6 April 1998):

   

   

  Dear Sir,

      I hereby acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 23 February 1998. Your calling into question of the authenticity of the gas chambers is an insult to all the persons who lived that tragedy and lost their lives in Auschwitz or in the other concentration camps.

     That site is a symbol for humanity and commemorates all the victims of Nazism; it was put on the World Heritage List, in accordance with the guidelines for the implementation of UNESCO's World Cultural and Natural Heritage Convention, for its outstanding universal significance [his emphasis].

     Yours respectfully,

   

                                                              Bernd von Droste

                                                                    Director

                                                 UNESCO World Heritage Centre

   

  copies to:  Polish National Committee for UNESCO

                    Permanent delegation of Poland

                    Auschwitz Committee

                    Auschwitz Museum

                    BRX/EUR

   

  CONCLUSION

   

                Writing in the name of UNESCO, the German Bernd von Droste zu Hülshof has replied to me: "Your calling into question of the  authenticity of the gas chambers is an insult [...]."

  I shall take the liberty of pointing out that this "calling into question" is not peculiar to me but has also been the doing of all the personalities and historians cited above, namely Éric Conan, Théo Klein, Krystyna Oleksy, Robert Jan van Pelt, and Debórah Dwork. I might have added, for instance, the name of the French historian of Jewish origin Olga Wormser-Migot who, as early as 1968, admitted in her doctoral thesis that Auschwitz I had "no gas chamber" (Le Système concentrationnaire nazi (1933-1945), Presses Universitaires de France, 1968, p. 157); on 20 April 1991 the same historian stated in conversation: "I recall having made the remark that the Auschwitz I gas chamber was not credible."

  I shall also point out that it is not here a matter of "the calling into question of the gas chambers" (in the plural) but of the ackowledged imposture of a single purported gas chamber, that of Auschwitz I (in the singular).

  I therefore respectfully beseech the UNESCO authorities, beginning with Mr Federico Mayor and Mr Bernd von Droste zu Hülshof, to be so good as to offer a response to the question which I took the liberty of putting to them on 23 February of this year and which serves as the introduction to this article.

   

  -----------------

   

   

   

   

   *  7, place de Fontenoy 75232 Paris 07 SP; telephone: (33-1) 45 68 18 76; telecopier: (33-1) 45 68 55 70; Internet: <http://www.unesco.org/whc/>

• The Detail

   

  The Detail

   

  by Robert Faurisson

   

  On the subject of the Nazi gas chambers, Jean-Marie Le Pen recently stated: "If you take a thousand-page book on the Second World War, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or fifteen lines, and that's called a detail."

   

  He might have brought up some even harder hitting and more precise arguments, and referred to Eisenhower, Churchill, de Gaulle, Elie Wiesel, René Rémond, Daniel Goldhagen, and even the text of the Nuremberg Tribunal judgment.

   

  Eisenhower, Churchill, de Gaulle

   

  Three of the best known works on the Second World War are General Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday [Country Life Press], 1948), Winston Churchill's The Second World War (London: Cassell, 6 vols., 1948-1954), and the Mémoires de guerre of General de Gaulle (Paris: Plon, 3 vols., 1954-1959). In these three works not the least mention of Nazi gas chambers is to be found.

   

  Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; the six volumes of Churchill's Second World War total 4,448 pages; and de Gaulle's three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages. In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi "gas chambers," a "genocide" of the Jews, or of "six million" Jewish victims of the war.

   

  Elie Wiesel

   

  The same goes for the autobiographical account, Night (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960), in which Elie Wiesel relates his experience of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Moreover, in the first volume of his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea (New York: Random House/Knopf, 1995, p. 74), he writes, "Let the gas chambers remain closed to prying eyes, and to imagination."

   

  René Rémond

   

  In the third volume of his Introduction à l'histoire de notre temps ("Introduction to the History of Our Times"), René Rémond, who was then president of the commission on the history of the deportation within the Comité d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale (Committee on the History of the Second World War), made no mention whatsoever of these gas chambers (Le XXe siècle de 1914 à nos jours ["The 20th Century from 1914 to the Present"], Le Seuil, 1974). Fourteen years later, when he had become president of the Institut d'histoire du temps présent (Institute of Contemporary History), once again he made no mention of them in a 1,013-page work entitled Notre Siècle de 1918 à 1988 ("Our Century from 1916 to 1988," Paris: Fayard, 1988).

   

  Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

   

  Since March 1996, the Jewish-American historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has been treated as the darling of the media the world over, thanks to his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996, xiv-634 pp.). While he does mention Nazi gas chambers, it is for little more than to note that "their efficiency has been greatly overstated" (p. 10), and that they have always been, and wrongly, "the overwhelming focus of popular and even scholarly attention" (p. 165). Goldhagen goes as far as to declare that "gassing was really epiphenomenal to the Germans' slaughter of the Jews" (p. 533, n. 81) and that "the imbalance of attention devoted to the gas chambers needs to be corrected" (p. 535).

   

  The Nuremberg Judgment

   

  France's Fabius-Gayssot law of 1990 specifically forbids the "challenging" or "contesting" of the portions of the judgment of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg (September 30 and October 1, 1946) relating to "crimes against humanity," including the use of execution gas chambers. But it is noteworthy that, of the 84,000 words of the judgment's text (in the French version), only 520, extremely vague, are devoted to gas chambers. This is 1/160th of the entire text, or 0.62 percent. In other words, 99.38 percent of the judgment does not deal with these gas chambers.

   

  Why Such Reticence?

   

  Why were Eisenhower, Churchill, de Gaulle, Elie Wiesel, René Rémond, Daniel Goldhagen, and the Nuremberg Tribunal so reserved on the subject of the Nazi gas chambers? Of course, revisionists have explanations for this reticence that, however, the Fabius-Gayssot law forbids us to make public in France.

   

  My own explanations, which cannot be published in France without committing a crime, would include the following:

   

  The Nazi extermination gas chambers never existed.

  Eisenhower, Churchill, and de Gaulle knew or suspected that their own governments' propaganda about gas chambers was not true. (Thus, on August 30, 1943, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote to Standley, US Ambassador in Moscow: "...there is insufficient evidence to justify the statement regarding execution in gas chambers" [Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1943. US Government Printing Office, 1963, vol. 1, p. 416])

  Elie Wiesel probably now regrets that he did not mention gas chambers in his autobiographical work, Night.

  René Rémond revealed to me in November 1978 that he was "ready to follow [me] on the gas chamber matter."

  Goldhagen probably realizes that the gas chamber story is fishy, and, anyway, prefers to insist on killing methods that permit him to accuse millions of Germans of complicity in crimes, rather than emphasize a specific killing method that implies only a handful of German criminals.

  The Nuremberg Tribunal judges had nothing substantive to say about the gas chambers because they understood that no investigation had been conducted as to the specifics of the "murder weapon," and because neither the "witnesses" nor former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss had been asked hard specific questions about the gas chambers.

   

  Robert Faurisson is Europe's leading Holocaust revisionist scholar. He was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in two books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal. This essay, less the final section headed "Why Such Reticence?," was published in the New Year's Day, 1998, editions of the French periodicals Rivarol ("Avez-vous des textes?" p. 2), and, with some slight modifications, in National Hebdo ("Précisions sur le détail," p. 15).

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  The Detail

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  March/April 1998

  Issue:

   

  Volume 17 number 2

  Location:

   

  Page 19

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• Is The Diary of Anne Frank genuine?

  Is The Diary of Anne Frank genuine?

   

  by Robert Faurisson

  Is The Diary of Anne Frank genuine? For two years that question was included in the official syllabus "Text and Document Criticism," a seminar reserved for degreed students in their fourth year. The conclusion of my studies and research is that The Diary of Anne Frank is a fraud.

   

  In order to study the question posed and to find an answer to it, I have carried out the following investigations:

   

  Internal criticism: the very text of the Diary (in Dutch) contains a number of unlikely or inconceivable facts.

  A study of the premises in Amsterdam: on the one hand, the physical impossibilities and, on the other hand, the explanations made up by Anne Frank's father severely compromise him.

  Interview of the principal witness: Mr. Otto Frank.

  Bibliographical examination: some curious silences and revelations.

  A return to Amsterdam for a new investigation: the witnesses turn out to be unfavorable to Mr. Frank; the probable truth.

  The "betrayer" and the person who arrested the Franks: why has Mr. Frank wished to assure them such anonymity?

  Comparison between the Dutch and German texts: attempting to make too much of it, Mr. Frank has given himself away; he has signed a literary fraud.

  Internal criticism

   

  The first step in the investigation is to determine if the text is consistent within itself. The Diary contains an extraordinary number of inconsistencies.

   

  Let us take the example of the noises. Those in hiding, we are told, must not make the least sound. This is so much so that, if they cough, they quickly take codeine. The "enemies" could hear them. The walls are that "thin" (25 March 1943). Those "enemies" are very numerous: Lewin, who "knows the whole building well" (1 October 1942), the men from the store, the customers, the deliverymen, the agent, the cleaning woman, the night watchman Slagter, the plumbers, the "health service," the accountant, the police who conduct their searches of the premises, the neighbors both near and far, the owner, etc. It is therefore unlikely and inconceivable that Mrs. Van Daan had the habit of using the vacuum cleaner each day at 12:30 pm (5 August 1943). The vacuum cleaners of that era were, moreover, particularly noisy. I ask: "How is that conceivable?" My question is not purely formal. It is not rhetorical. Its purpose is not to show astonishment. My question is a question. It is necessary to respond to it. That question could be followed with forty other questions concerning noises. It is necessary to explain, for example, the use of an alarm clock (4 August 1943). It is necessary to explain the noisy carpentry work: the removal of a wooden step, the transformation of a door into a swinging cupboard (21 August 1942), the making of a wooden candlestick (7 December 1942). Peter splits wood in the attic in front of the open window (23 February 1944). It involved building with the wood from the attic "a few little cupboards and other odds and ends" (11 July 1942). It even involved constructing in the attic "a little compartment" for working (13 July 1943). There is a nearly constant noise from the radio, from the slammed doors, from the "resounding peal" (6 December 1943), the arguments, the shouts, the yelling, a "noise that was enough to awaken the dead." (9 November 1942). "A great din and disturbance followed I was doubled up with laughter" (10 May 1944). The episode reported on 2 September 1942 is irreconcilable with the necessity of being silent and cautious. There we see those in hiding at dinner. They chatter and laugh. Suddenly, a piercing whistle is heard. And they hear the voice of Peter who shouts through the stove pipe that he will certainly not come down. Mr. Van Daan gets up, his napkin falls and, his face þushed, he shouts: "I've had enough of this." He goes up to the attic and there, resistance and the stamping of feet. The episode reported on 10 December 1942 is of the same kind. There we see Mrs. Van Daan being looked after by the dentist Dussel. The latter touches a bad tooth with his probe. Mrs. Van Daan then lets out "incoherent cries of pain." She tries to pull the little probe away. The dentist looks at the scene, his hands on his hips. The onlookers all "roared with laughter." Anne, instead of showing the least distress in the face of these cries or this mad laughter, declares: "It was rotten of us, because I for one am quite sure that I should have screamed even louder."

   

  The remarks that I am making here in regard to noises I could repeat in regard to all of the realities of physical and mental life. The Diary even presents the peculiarity that not one aspect of the life that is lived there avoids being either unlikely, incoherent, or absurd. At the time of their arrival in their hiding place, the Franks install some curtains to hide their presence. But, to install curtains at windows which did not have them up until then, is that not the best means of drawing attention to one's arrival? Is that not particularly the case if those curtains are made of pieces of "all different shapes, quality and pattern" (11 July 1942)? In order not to betray their presence, the Franks burn their refuse. But in doing this they call attention to their presence by the smoke that escapes from the roof of a building that is supposed to be uninhabited! They make a fire for the first time on 30 October 1942, although they arrived in that place on 6 July. One asks oneself what they could have done with their refuse for the 116 days of the summer. I recall, on the other hand, that the deliveries of food are enormous. In normal conditions, the persons in hiding and their guests each day consume eight breakfasts, eight to twelve lunches and eight dinners. In nine passages of the book they allude to bad or mediocre or insufficient food. Otherwise the food is abundant and "delicious." Mr. Van Daan "takes a lot of everything" and Dussel takes "enormous helpings" of food (9 August 1943) . On the spot they make wet and dry sausages, strawberry jam, and preserves in jars. Brandy or alcohol, cognac, wines, and cigarettes do not seem to be lacking either. Coffee is so common that one does not understand why the author, enumerating (23 July 1943) what each would wish to do on the day when they would be able to leave that hiding place, says that Mrs. Frank's fondest wish would be to have a cup of coffee. On the other hand, on 3 February 1944 -- during the terrible winter of '43/'44 -- here is the inventory of the supplies available for those in hiding alone, to the exclusion of any cohabiting friend or "enemy:" 60 pounds of corn, nearly 60 pounds of beans and 10 pounds of peas, 50 cans of vegetables, 10 cans of fish, 40 cans of milk, 10 kilos of powdered milk, 3 bottles of salad oil, 4 preserving jars of butter, 4 jars of meat, 2 bottles of strawberries, 2 bottles of raspberries, 20 bottles of tomatoes, 10 pounds of rolled oats, and 8 pounds of rice. There enter, at other moments, some sacks of vegetables each weighing 25 kilos, or again a sack of 19 pounds of green peas (8 July 1944). The deliveries are made by a "nice greengrocer," and always "during the lunch hour" (11 April 1944). This is hard to believe. In a city described elsewhere as starving, how could a greengrocer leave his store, in broad daylight, with such loads to go to deliver them to a house located in a busy neighborhood? How could this greengrocer, in his own neighborhood (he was "at the corner"), avoid meeting his normal customers for whom, in that time of scarcity, he ought normally to be a person to be sought out and begged for favors? There are many other mysteries in regard to other merchandise and the manner in which it reaches the hiding place. For holidays, and for the birthdays of the persons in hiding, the gifts are plentiful: carnations, peonies, narcissuses, hyacinths, þower pots, cakes, books, sweets, cigarette lighters, jewels, shaving necessities, roulette games, etc. I would draw attention to a real feat achieved by Elli. She finds the means of offering some grapes on 23 July 1943. I repeat: some grapes, in Amsterdam, on 23 July. They even tell us the price: 5 þorins per kilo.

   

  The invention of the "swinging cupboard" is an absurdity. In fact, the part of the house which is supposed to have protected the persons in hiding existed well before their arrival. Therefore, to install a cupboard is to point out, if not someone's presence, at least a change in that part of the property. That transformation of the premises -- accompanied by the noise of the carpentry work -- could not have escaped the notice of the "enemies" and, in particular, of the cleaning woman. And this pretended "subterfuge," intended to mislead the police in case of a search, is indeed likely, to the contrary, to put them on their guard. (" a lot of houses are being searched for hidden bicycles," says Anne on 21 August 1942, and it is for that reason that the entrance door of the hiding place had been thus hidden.) The police, not finding any entrance door to the building which serves as a hiding place would have been surprised by this oddity and would have quickly discovered that someone had wanted to fool them, because they would find themselves before a residential building without an entrance!

   

  Improbabilities, incoherencies, and absurdities abound likewise in regard to the following points: the windows (open and closing), the electricity (on and off), the coal (appropriated from the common pile without the "enemies" realizing it), the openings and closings of the curtains or the camouþage, the use of the water and of the toilet, the means of doing the cooking, the movements of the cats, the moving from the front-house to the annex (and vice-versa), the behavior of the night watchman, etc. The long letter of 11 April 1944 is particularly absurd. It reports a case of burglary. Let it be said in passing that the police are there portrayed to us as stopping in front of the "swinging cupboard," in the middle of the night, under the electric light, in search of the burglars who committed the housebreaking. They rattle the "swinging cupboard." These police, accompanied by the night watchman, do not notice anything and do not seek to enter the annex! As Anne says: "God truly protected us "

   

  On 27 February 1943, they tell us that the new owner has fortunately not insisted on visiting the annex. Koophuis told him that he did not have the key with him, and that the new owner, although accompanied by an architect, did not examine his new acquisition either on that day or on any other day.

   

  When one has a whole year to choose a hiding place (see 5 July 1942), does one choose his office? Does one bring his family there? And a colleague? And the colleague's family? Do you choose a place full of "enemies" where the police and the Germans would come automatically to search for you if they do not find you at your home? Those Germans, it is true, are not very inquisitive. On 5 July 1942 (a Sunday) father Frank (unless it is Margot?!) received a summons from the SS (see the letter of 8 July 1942). That summons would not have any follow-up. Margot, sought by the SS, makes her way to the hiding place by bicycle, and on 6 June, when, according to the first of two letters dated 20 June, the Jews had had their bicycles confiscated for some time.

   

  In order to dispute the authenticity of the story, one could call upon arguments of a psychological, literary, or historical nature. I will refrain from that here. I will simply remark that the physical absurdities are so serious and numerous that they must have an effect on the psychological, literary, and historical levels.

   

  One ought not to attribute to the imagination of the author or to the richness of her personality some things that are, in reality, inconceivable. The inconceivable is "that of which the mind cannot form any likeness because the terms which designate it involve an impossibility or a contradiction": for example, a squared circle. The one who says that he has seen one squared circle, ten squared circles, one hundred squared circles does not give evidence either of a fertile imagination or of a rich personality. For, in fact, what he says means exactly nothing. He proves his poverty of imagination. That is all. The absurdities of the Diary are those of a poor imagination that develops outside of a lived experience. They are worthy of a poor novel or of a poor lie. Every personality, however poor it may be, contains what it is proper to call psychological, mental, or moral contradictions. I will refrain from demonstrating here that Anne's personality contains nothing like that. Her personality is invented and is as hard to believe as the experience that the Diary is supposed to relate. From a historical point of view, I would not be surprised if a study of the Dutch newspapers, the English radio and Dutch radio from June 1942 to August 1944 would prove fraud on the part of the real author of the diary. On 9 October 1942, Anne speaks already of Jews "being gassed" (Dutch text: "Vergassing")!

   

  A study of the premises

   

  Whoever has just read the Diary can normally only be shocked on seeing the "Anne Frank House" for the first time. He discovers a "glass house" which is visible and observable from all sides and accessible on its four sides. He discovers also that the plan of the house -- as it is reproduced in the book through the good offices of Otto Frank -- constitutes a distortion of reality. Otto Frank had taken care not to draw the ground þoor and had taken care not to tell us that the small courtyard separating the front house from the annex was only 12 feet 2 inches (3.7 meters) wide. He had especially taken care not to point out to us that this same small courtyard is common to the "Anne Frank House" (263 Prinsengracht) and to the house located to the right when you look at the façade (265 Prinsengracht). Thanks to a whole series of windows and window-doors, the people of 263 and those of 265 lived and moved about under the eyes and under the noses (cooking odors!) of their respective neighbors. The two houses are really only one. Besides, the museum today connects the two houses. Furthermore, the annex had its own entrance thanks to a door leading, from the rear, to a garden. This garden is common to 263 Prinsengracht and to the people opposite, living at 190 Keizersgracht. (When one is in the museum one very distinctly sees those people at 190 and many other addresses on Keizersgracht.) From this side (the garden side) and from the other side (the canal side) I counted two hundred windows of old houses from which people had a view of the "Anne Frank House." Even the residents of 261 Prinsengracht could have access to 263 by the roofs. It is foolish to let yourself believe in the least possibility of a really secret life in those premises. I say that while taking into account, of course, the changes made to the premises since the war. While pointing out the view on the garden, I asked ten successive visitors how Anne Frank could have lived there hidden with her family for twenty-five months. After a moment of surprise (for the visitors to the museum generally live in a sort of state of hypnosis), each of the ten successive visitors realized, in a few seconds, that it was totally impossible. The reactions were varied; with some, dismay; with others, an outburst of laughter ("My God!"). One visitor, no doubt offended, said to me: "Don't you think that it is better to leave the people to their dreams?" No one supported the thesis of the Diary in spite of some rather pitiful explanations furnished by the prospectus or by the inscriptions in the museum.

   

  The explanations are the following:

   

  The "enemies" finding themselves in one of the rooms of the front house believed that the windows which look out on the small courtyard look directly on the garden; they were unaware therefore even of the existence of an annex; and if they were unaware of that, it is because the windows were hidden by black paper, to assure the conservation of the spices stored there;

  As regards the Germans, they had never thought of the existence of an annex, "especially as this type of building was quite unknown to them";

  The smoke from the stove "did not draw their attention because at that time the part (where they were located) served as a laboratory for the small factory, where a stove likewise must have burned every day."

  The first two of these three explanations come from a 36-page booklet, without title and without date, printed by Koersen, Amsterdam. The last comes from the four-page prospectus that is available at the entrance to the museum. The content of these two publications has received the endorsement of Mr. Otto Frank. But in all three cases these explanations have not the least value. The annex was visible and obvious from a hundred aspects from the ground þoor (forbidden to visitors), from the garden, from the connecting corridors on four levels, from the two windows of the office on the courtyard, from the neighboring houses. Certain of the "enemies" even had to visit there to go to the toilet because there was nothing for that in the front house. The ground þoor of the rear house even admitted some customers of the business. As to the "small factory" which is supposed to have existed "in that period," in the very heart of that residential and commercial neighborhood, it is supposed to have remained for at least two years without emitting smoke, and then, suddenly, on 30 October 1942 it is supposed to have begun again to emit the smoke. And what smoke! Day and night! In winter as in summer, in sweltering heat or not. In the view of everyone (and, in particular, of "enemies" such as Lewin who had formerly had his chemical laboratory there), the "small factory" would have started up again! But why did Mr. Frank strain his wits to find that explanation, when, in other respects, the annex is already described as a sort of ghost-house?

   

  In conclusion on this point, I would say that, if I am not mistaken in denying any value in these "explanations," we have the right to assert:

   

  Some facts that are very important to Mr. Otto Frank remain without explanation;

  Mr. Otto Frank is capable of making up stories, even stupid and mediocre stories, exactly like the ones I have pointed out in my critical reading of the Diary. I ask that my reader remember this conclusion. He will see below what answer Mr. Frank personally made to me, in the presence of his wife.

  For the photographic documentation concerning the "Anne Frank House," see Appendix 1.

   

  Interview with Otto Frank

   

  I had made it known to Mr. Otto Frank that with my students I was preparing a study of the Diary. I had made it clear that my specialty was the criticism of texts and documents and that I needed an extended interview. Mr. Frank granted me that interview with eagerness, and it was thus that I was received at his residence in Birsfelden, a suburb of Basel, first on 24 March 1977, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., then from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and, finally, the next day, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.. Actually, on the next day the meeting place had been arranged to be in a bank in Basel. Mr. Frank was intent upon taking out of a safe deposit box, in my presence, what he called the manuscripts of his daughter. Our interview was therefore carried out on that day in part at the bank, in part on the road back toward Birsfelden and, in part, once more, at Mr. Frank's residence. All the interviews that took place at his residence were in the presence of his wife (his second wife, since the first died after being deported, from typhus it seems, as did Margot and Anne). After the first minute of our interview, I declared point blank to Mr. and Mrs. Frank that I had some doubts about the authenticity of the Diary. Mr. Frank did not show any surprise. He declared himself to be ready to furnish me all of the information I would want. I was struck, during those two days, by the extreme amiability of Mr. Frank. In spite of his age -- 88 years -- he never used the excuse of his weariness in order to shorten our interview. In the Diary, he is described as a man full of charm (see 2 March 1944). He inspires confidence. He knows how to anticipate your unexpressed desires. He adapts himself remarkably to situations. He willingly adopts an argument based on emotion. He speaks very much of tolerance and of understanding. I only once saw him lose his temper and show himself to be uncompromising and violent; that was in regard to the Zionist cause, which must seem sacred to him. It was in that manner that he declared to me that he no longer even sets foot on the soil of France because, in his opinion, France is no longer interested in anything except Arab oil and doesn't care about Israel. On only three points did Mr. Frank fail in his promise to answer my questions. It is interesting to know that those three points were the following:

   

  the address of Elli, in the Netherlands;

  the means of rediscovering the trail of the store employee called V.M. in the book (I know that he is probably named Van Maaren);

  the means of rediscovering the Austrian Karl Silberbauer who had arrested the persons in hiding on 4 August 1944.

  In regard to Elli, Mr. Frank declared to me that she was very ill and that, because she was "not very intelligent," she could not be of any help to me. As to the other two witnesses, they had had enough trouble without my going to pester them with some questions that would remind them of an unhappy past. To compensate for that, Mr. Frank recommended that I get in touch with Kraler (by his real name, Kugler), settled in Canada, and with Miep and her husband, still living in Amsterdam.

   

  In regard to the Diary itself, Mr. Frank declared to me that the basis of it was authentic. The events related were true. It was Anne, and Anne alone who had written the manuscripts of that Diary. Like every literary author, Anne perhaps had some tendencies either to exaggeration or to imaginative changes, but all within ordinary and acceptable limits, without letting the truth or the facts suffer from it. Anne's manuscripts form an important whole. What Mr. Frank had presented to the publishers was not the text of these manuscripts, the purely original text, but a text that he in person had typewritten: a "tapuscript." He had been obliged to transform the various manuscripts in this way to a single "tapuscript" for various reasons. First, the manuscripts presented some repetitions. Then, they contained some indiscretions. Then, there were passages without any interest. Finally, there were some omissions! Mr. Frank, noticing my surprise, gave me the following example (a no doubt harmless example, but are there not more serious ones that he hid from me?): Anne very much liked her uncles but in her Diary she had neglected to mention them among the persons that she cherished; therefore, Mr. Frank repaired that "omission" by mentioning those uncles in the "tapuscript." Mr. Frank said that he had changed some dates! He had likewise changed the names of the characters. It was Anne herself, it seems, who had no doubt thought of changing the names. She had envisaged the possibility of publication. Mr. Frank had discovered, on a piece of paper, the list of the real names with their equivalent false names. Anne is supposed to have thought of calling the Franks by the name of Robin. Mr. Frank had cut out of the manuscripts certain indications of the prices of things. More important, finding himself, at least for certain periods, in possession of two different versions of the text, it had been necessary for him to "combine" (the word is his) two texts into one single text. Summarizing all those transformations, Mr. Frank finally declared to me: "That was a difficult task. I did that task according to my conscience."

   

  The manuscripts that Mr. Frank presented to me as being those of his daughter form an impressive whole. I did not have the time to look at them closely. I trusted in the description of them that was given to me and I will summarize them in the following way:

   

  The first date mentioned is that of 12 June 1942; the last is that of 1 August 1944 (three days before their arrest);

  The period from 12 June 1942 to 5 December of the same year (but that date does not correspond to any printed letter); we have at our disposal a small notebook with a linen cover, with a red, white and brown plaid design (the "Scotch notebook");

  The period from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943; we do not possess any special notebook (but see below, the loose leaf sheets). This notebook is supposed to have been lost;

  The period from 2 December 1942 to 17 April 1944, then for the period from that same date of 17 April (!) to the last letter (1 August 1944); two black-bound notebooks, covered with brown paper.

  To those three notebooks and to the missing notebook is added a collection of 338 loose leaf sheets for the period 20 June 1942 to 29 March 1944. Mr. Frank said that those sheets constitute a resumption and a reshaping, by Anne herself, of letters which are contained, in an original form, in the above-mentioned notebooks: the "Scotch notebook," the missing notebook, and the first of the two black notebooks.

   

  Up to this point the total of what Anne is supposed to have written during her twenty-five months of hiding is therefore in five volumes. To that total it is appropriate to add the collection of the Stories. These stories are supposed to have been made up by Anne. The text is presented as a perfect copy. The copy can only involve, to begin with, a work of editing from a rough draft; Anne therefore must have done a lot a scribbling!

   

  I have no competence in the matter of handwriting analysis and therefore I cannot express an opinion on that matter. I can only give here my impressions. My impressions were that the "Scotch notebook" contained some photos, pictures and drawings as well as a variety of very juvenile writing styles, the confusion and fantasy of which appeared authentic. It would be necessary to look closely at the handwriting of the texts which were used by Mr. Frank in order to form the basis of the Diary. The other notebooks and the whole of the 338 loose leaf sheets are in what I would call an adult handwriting. As regards the manuscript of the Stories, it very much surprised me. One would say that it was the work of an experienced accountant and not the work of a 14-year-old child. The table of contents is presented as a list of the Stories with the date of composition, the title and the page number for each piece!

   

  Mr. Frank had a high opinion of the conclusions of the two expert reports called for, about 1960, by the prosecution in Lübeck in order to examine the case of a teacher (Lothar Stielau) who, in 1959, had expressed some doubts about the authenticity of the Diary (Case 2js 19/59, VU 10/59). Mr. Frank had registered a complaint against that teacher. The handwriting report had been entrusted to Mrs. Minna Becker. Mrs. Annemarie Hübner had been charged with attesting whether the texts printed in Dutch and German were faithful to the texts of the manuscript. The two expert reports, submitted as evidence in 1961, turned out to be favorable to Mr. Frank.

   

  But, on the other hand, what Mr. Frank did not reveal to me -- and what I had to learn after my visit, and from a German source -- is that the prosecutor in Lübeck had decided to get a third expert report. Why a third expert report? And on what point, given that, according to all appearances, the whole field possible for investigation had been explored by the handwriting expert and by Mrs. Hübner? The answer to these questions is the following: the prosecutor thought that an expert report of the kind done by Mrs. Hübner risked declaring that Lothar Stielau was right about the facts. In view of the first analyses, it was going to be impossible to declare that the Diary was dokumentarisch echt (documentarily genuine) (!). Perhaps they could have it declared literarisch echt (literarily genuine) (!). The novelist Friedrich Sieburg was going to be charged with answering that odd question.

   

  Of those three expert reports, only that of Mrs. Hübner would have really been of interest to me. On 20 January 1978, a letter from Mrs. Hübner let me hope that I would obtain a copy of her expert report. A short time afterward, when Mrs. Hübner did not respond to my letters, I had a German friend telephone her. She made it known to him that "the question was very delicate, given that a trial on the question of the Diary was presently under way in Frankfurt." She added that she had gotten in touch with Mr. Frank. According to the few elements that I possess of the content of that expert's report, it is supposed to have noted a large number of facts that were interesting from the point of view of the comparison of the texts (manuscripts, "tapuscript," Dutch text, German text). Mrs. Hübner is supposed to have mentioned there some very numerous "omissions" (Auslassungen), "additions" (Zusätze), and "interpolations" (Interpolationen). She is supposed to have spoken of the text "adapted" for the necessities of publication (überarbeitet). Furthermore, she is supposed to have gone so far as to name some persons who supposedly gave their "collaboration" (Zusammenarbeit) to Mr. Frank in his editing of the "tapuscript." Those persons are supposed to have collaborated in the drawing up of the German text, in place of contenting herself with the role of translator.

   

  In spite of those facts that she herself pointed out, Mrs. Hübner is supposed to have concluded on the authenticity of the Diary (Dutch printed text and German printed text). She is therefore supposed to have expressed the following opinion: "Those facts are not important." Now that opinion can only be her personal view. There is the whole question: Who assures us that quite another judgment could not be brought forth on the facts pointed out by the expert? And besides, to begin with, has the expert shown impartiality and a really scientific spirit in naming the facts as she has named them? What she has called, for example, "interpolations" (a word with a scientific appearance and an ambiguous significance) would others not call them "retouchings," "alterations," "insertions" (words no doubt more exact, and more precise)? In the same fashion, words such as "additions" and especially "omissions" are neutral in appearance but, in reality, they hide some confused realities: an "addition" or an "omission" can be honest or dishonest; they can change nothing important in a text or they can, to the contrary, alter it profoundly. In the particular case that interests us here, those two words have a frankly benign appearance!

   

  In any case it is impossible to consider those three expert opinions (Becker, Hübner, and Sieburg) as conclusive, because they had not been examined by a court. In fact, for some reasons of which I am unaware, Mr. Frank was to withdraw his complaint against Lothar Stielau. If my information is correct, Stielau agreed to pay 1,000 Marks of the 15,712 Marks of the cost of the proceedings begun. I suppose that Mr. Frank paid to the court of Lübeck those 1,000 Marks and that he had added to that sum 14,712 Marks for his own part. I recall that Mr. Frank told me that Lothar Stielau had, moreover, agreed to present him with his written apology. Lothar Stielau had lost his job as a teacher at the same time. Mr. Frank did not speak to me about Heinrich Buddeberg, Lothar Stielau's co-defendant. Perhaps Buddeberg himself also had to turn over 1,000 Marks and to present his apologies.

   

  I linger here on these matters of expert opinions only because in our interview Mr. Frank had himself lingered there, while not mentioning certain important facts (for example, the existence of a third expert opinion), and while presenting to me the two expert opinions as conclusive. The matter of the manuscripts did not interest me very much either. I knew that I would not have the time to examine them closely. What interested me most of all was to know how Mr. Frank would have explained to me the "unexplainable quantity of unlikely or inconceivable facts" that I had called attention to in reading the Diary. After all, what does it matter that some manuscripts, even declared authentic by some experts, contain this type of facts, if those facts could not have existed? But Mr. Frank was to show himself to be incapable of furnishing me with the least explanation. In my opinion he was expecting to see the authenticity of the Diary questioned by the usual arguments, of the psychological, literary, or historical order. He did not expect arguments of internal criticism bearing on the realities of material life: the realities which, as one knows, are stubborn. In a moment of confusion, Mr. Frank moreover declared to me: "But I had never thought about those material matters!"

   

  Before coming to some precise examples of that confession, I owe it to the truth to say that on two occasions Mr. Frank gave me good answers and those were in regard to two episodes that I have not mentioned up to now, precisely because they were to find an explanation. The first episode was incomprehensible to me because of a small omission from the French translation (I did not possess at that time the Dutch text). The second episode was incomprehensible to me because of an error that figures in all the printed texts of the Diary. Where, on the date of 8 July 1944, it is a question of the male greengrocer, the manuscript gives: "la marchande de légumes" (the female greengrocer). And that is fortunate, for a careful reader of the book knows very well that the greengrocer in question could not have delivered to those in hiding "19 pounds of green peas" (!) on 8 July 1944 for the good reason that he had been arrested 45 days before by the Germans for one of the most serious of reasons (he had had two Jews at his home). That act had set him "on the edge of an abyss" (25 May 1944). One has a hard time understanding how a greengrocer leaps from "the abyss" in order to thus deliver to some other Jews such a quantity of compromising merchandise. To tell the truth, one does not understand very much better the wife of that unfortunate man, but the fact is there, the text of the manuscript is not absurd like that of the Dutch, French, German, and English printings. The writer of the manuscript had been more careful. It remains that the error of the printed texts was perhaps not an error, but indeed a deliberate and unfortunate correction of the manuscript. We read, in fact, in the printed Dutch text: van der groenteboer om de hoek, 19 pond (cries Margot); and Anne answers; Dat is aarding van hem. In other words, Margot and Anne used the masculine on two occasions; "from the (male) greengrocer on the corner 19 pounds," Anne's answer: "That's nice of him." For my part, I would draw two other conclusions from that episode:

   

  Internal criticism bearing on the coherence of a text allows us to detect some anomalies which are revealed to be true anomalies;

  A reader of the Diary, having come to that episode of 8 July 1944, would be right to declare absurd a book in which the hero ("the nice greengrocer on the corner") leaps back out of the depths of the abyss as one would rise up from the dead.

  That greengrocer, Mr. Frank told me, was named Van der Hoeven. Deported for having harbored Jews at his home, he came back from deportation. At the time of the commemorative ceremonies, he had come back to appear at the side of Mr. Frank. I asked Mr. Frank if, after the war, some people from the neighborhood had declared to him: "We suspected the presence of people in hiding at 263 Prinsengracht." Mr. Frank clearly answered me that no one had suspected their presence, including the men of the store, including Lewin, also including Van der Hoeven. The latter supposedly helped them without knowing it!

   

  In spite of my repeated questions on this point, Mr. Frank was not able to tell me what his neighbors at No. 261 sold or made. He did not remember that there had been in his own house, at No. 263, a housekeeper described in the book as a possible "enemy." He ended by answering me that she was "very, very old" and that she only came very rarely, perhaps once a week. I said to him that she must have been astonished to suddenly see the installation of the "swinging cupboard" on the landing of the second þoor. He answered no, given that the housekeeper never came there. That answer was to provoke for the first time a kind of dispute between Mr. Frank and his wife, who was present at our interview. Beforehand, in fact, I had taken the precaution of having Mr. Frank make it clear to me that those in hiding had never done any housekeeping outside of cleaning a part of the annex. The logical conclusion of Mr. Frank's two statements therefore became: "For twenty-five months, no one had done any cleaning of the landing on the second þoor." In the face of that improbability, Mrs. Frank suddenly broke in to say to her husband: "Nonsense! No cleaning on that landing! In a factory! But there would have been dust this high!" What Mrs. Frank could have added is that the landing was supposed to have served as a passageway for the people in hiding in their comings and goings between the annex and the front house. The trail of their goings and comings would have been obvious in the midst of so much accumulated dust, even without taking into account the dust from the coal brought from downstairs. In fact, Mr. Frank could not have told the truth when he spoke in this way about a kind of phantom housekeeper for a house so vast and so dirty.

   

  On several occasions, at the beginning of our interview, Mr. Frank thus attempted to supply some explanations which, finally, did not explain anything at all and which led him, to the contrary, into some impasses. I must say here that the presence of his wife was to prove to be especially useful. Mrs. Frank, who was very well acquainted with the Diary, obviously believed up to then in the authenticity of the Diary as well as in the sincerity of her husband. Her surprise was only more striking in the face of the terrible quality of Mr. Frank's answers to my questions. For myself, I retain a painful memory of what I would call certain "realizations" by Mrs. Frank. I do not at all wish to say that Mrs. Frank today takes her husband for a liar. But I claim that Mrs. Frank was strongly conscious, at the time of our interview, of the anomalies and of the serious absurdities of the whole story of Anne Frank. Hearing the "explanations" of her husband, she came to use toward him some phrases of the following kind:

   

  "Nonsense!"

   

  "What you are saying is unbelievable!"

   

  "A vacuum cleaner! That is unbelievable! I had never noticed it!"

   

  "But you were really foolhardy!"

   

  "That was really foolhardy!"

   

  The most interesting remark that Mrs. Frank made was the following: "I am sure that the people (of the neighborhood) knew that you were there." For my part, I would say rather: "I am sure that the people of the neighborhood would have seen, heard, and smelled the presence of the persons in hiding, if there were indeed some persons hidden in that house for twenty-five months."

   

  I would take one other example of Mr. Frank's explanations. According to him, the people who worked in the front house could not see the main part of the annex because of the "masking paper on the window panes." This statement, which is found in the brochure of the "museum," was repeated to me by Mr. Frank in the presence of his wife. Without pausing at that statement, I went on to another subject: that of the consumption of electricity. I made the remark that the consumption of electricity in the house must have been considerable. Because Mr. Frank was surprised by my remark, I stated it precisely: "That consumption must have been considerable because the electric light was on all day in the office on the courtyard and in the store on the courtyard in the front house." Mr. Frank then said to me: "How is that? The electric light is not necessary in broad daylight!" I indicated to him how those rooms could not receive daylight, knowing that the windows had some "masking paper" on them. Mr. Frank then answered me that those rooms were not so very dark: a disconcerting answer which found itself in contradiction with the statement of the booklet written by Mr. Frank: "Spices must be kept in the dark " (page 27 of the 36 page booklet mentioned above on page 82). Mr. Frank then dared to add that, all the same, what one saw through those windows on the courtyard was only a wall. He specified, contrary to all evidence, that one did not see that it was the wall of a house! That detail contradicted the following passage of the same prospectus: "therefore, although you saw windows, you could not see through them, and everyone took it for granted that they overlooked the garden" (ibidem). I asked if those masked windows were nevertheless sometimes open, if only for airing out the office where they received visitors, if only in the summer, on swelteringly hot days. Mrs. Frank agreed with me on that and remarked that those windows must all the same have been open sometimes. Silence from Mr. Frank.

   

  The list of the noises left Mr. Frank, and especially Mrs. Frank, perplexed. As regards the vacuum cleaner, Mr. Frank was startled and declared to me: "But there could not have been a vacuum cleaner there." Then, in the face of my assurance that there had been one, he began to stammer. He told me that, if indeed there had been a vacuum cleaner, they must have run it in the evening, when the employees (the "enemies") had left the front house, after work. I objected that the noise of a vacuum cleaner of that era would have been so much better heard by the neighbors (the walls were "thin," 25 March 1943) as it would have occurred in empty rooms or close to empty rooms. I revealed to him that, in any case, Mrs. Van Daan, for her part, was supposed to have used that vacuum cleaner every day, regularly, at about 12:30 pm (the window probably being open). Silence from Mr. Frank, while Mrs. Frank was visibly moved. The same silence for the alarm clock, with the sometimes untimely alarm (4 August 1943). The same silence for the removal of the ashes, especially on swelteringly hot days. The same silence about the borrowing, by the persons in hiding, from the supply of coal (a rare commodity) common to the whole house. Even silence about the question of the bicycles used after their confiscation and after the prohibition of their use by Jews.

   

  A number of questions therefore remained without answers or even at first gave rise to some explanations by which Mr. Frank worsened his case. Then Mr. Frank had, as it were, a windfall: a magic formula. That formula was the following: "Mr. Faurisson, you are theoretically and scientifically right. I agree with you 100 percent What you pointed out to me was, in fact, impossible. But, in practice, it was nevertheless in that way that things happened." I pointed out to Mr. Frank that his statement troubled me. I told him that it was almost as if he agreed with me that a door could not be at the same time open and closed and as if, in spite of that, he stated that he had seen such a door. I pointed out to him, in another connection, that the words "scientifically" and "theoretically" and "in practice" were unnecessary and introduced a distinction devoid of meaning because, in any case, "theoretically," "scientifically," and "in practice" a door at the same time open and closed quite simply cannot exist. I added that I would prefer to each particular question an appropriate response or, if need be, no answer at all.

   

  Near the beginning of our interview, Mr. Frank had made, in the friendliest way in the world, a major concession, a concession announced by me above on page 83. As I began to make him understand that I found absurd the explanations that he had furnished in his prospectuses, both regarding the ignorance of the Germans about the architecture typical of Dutch houses and about the presence of smoke constantly above the roof of the annex (the "little factory"), he wanted to admit right away, without any insistence on my part, that it was a question there of pure inventions on his part. Without using, it is true, the word "inventions," he declared to me, in substance: "You are quite right. In the explanations that are given to visitors, it is necessary to simplify. That is not so serious. It is necessary to make that agreeable to visitors. This is not the scientific way of doing things. One is not always able to be scientific."

   

  That confidential remark enlightens us on what I believe to be a character trait of Mr. Frank: Mr. Frank has the sense of what pleases the public and he seeks to adapt himself to it, free to take liberties with the truth. Mr. Frank is not a man to give himself a headache. He knows that the general public is satisfied with little. The general public seeks a sort of comfort, a sort of dream, a sort of easy world where it will be brought exactly the kind of emotion that confirms it in its habits of feeling, seeing, and reasoning. That smoke above the roof could disturb the general public? What does it matter? Let's make up an explanation not necessarily probable, but simple and, if it is necessary, simple and crude. Perfection is reached if that fabrication confirms some accepted ideas or habitual feelings: for example, it is very probable that for those who love Anne Frank and who come to visit her house, the Germans are brutes aud beasts; well, they will find a confirmation of that in Mr. Frank's explanations: the Germans went so for as to be unaware of the architecture typical of the houses in Amsterdam. In a general way, Mr. Frank appeared to me, on more than one occasion, as a man devoid of finesse (but not of cunning) for whom a literary work is, in relation to reality, a form of lying contrivance, a domain where one takes liberties with the truth, a thing which "is not so serious" and which allows for writing almost anything.

   

  I asked Mr. Frank what explanations he could furnish me on the two points where he agreed that he had said nothing serious to the visitors. He could not answer me. I questioned him about the layout of the premises. I had noted some anomalies in the plan of the house, such as it is reproduced - by Mr. Frank -- in all the editions of the Diary. Those anomalies had been confirmed for me by my visit to the museum (taking account of the changes made in the premises in order to make it into a museum). It was then that once again Mr. Frank went on to be led, in the face of the physical evidence, to make some new and important concessions to me, especially, as is going to be seen in regard to the "swinging cupboard." He began by admitting that the diagram of the plan ought not to have concealed from the reader that the small courtyard which separates the front house from the annex was common to No. 263 (the Frank house) and to No. 265 (the house of their neighbors and "enemies"). It seems bizarre that, in the Diary, there was not the slightest allusion to the fact, which, for the persons in hiding, was of extreme importance. Mr. Frank then acknowledged that the diagram of the place let people believe that on the third þoor the þat roof was not accessible; but that roof was accessible by a door from the annex and it could very well have offered to the police or to the "enemies" an easy way of access into the very heart of the premises inhabited by the persons in hiding. Finally and especially, Mr. Frank conceded to me that the "swinging cupboard" did not make any sense. He recognized that his ruse could not, in any case, have prevented a search of the annex, seeing that that annex was accessible in other ways, and especially in the most natural way -- the entrance door leading out to the garden. That entrance, it is true, does not appear on the schema because the schema does not contain any drawing of the whole ground þoor. As to the museum visitors, they do not have access to this same ground þoor. That famous "swinging cupboard" thus became a particularly strange invention of "the persons in hiding." One must, in fact, think here that the making of that "swinging cupboard" was a dangerous job. The destruction of the stair steps, the assembling of that false cupboard, the change of a passageway into an apparent dead end, all that could only give warning to the "enemies." All that had of course been suggested by Kraler and carried out by Vossen (21 August 1942)!

   

  The more that my interview went on, the more the embarassment of Mr. Frank became visible. But his amiability did not fail; quite the contrary. At the end, Mr. Frank went on to use a sentimental argument, apparently clever and in a good natured tone. That argument was the following: "Yes, I agree with you, we were a little imprudent. Certain things were a little dangerous, it is necessary to recognize that. Besides, it is perhaps the reason why we were finally arrested. But do not believe, Mr. Faurisson, that the people were suspicious at that point." That curious argumentation went on to suggest to Mr. Frank sentences such as: "The people were decent!" or even: "The Dutch were good!," or even, on two occasions: "The people were good!"

   

  These sentences have only one inconvenience: they render absurd all of the "precautions" pointed out in the book. To a certain extent, they even rob the book of its meaning. The book recounts, as a matter of fact, the tragic adventure of eight persons hunted down, forced to hide, to bury themselves alive for twenty-five months in the midst of a ferociously hostile world. In those "days in the tomb" only some select few people knew of their existence and brought them help. One could say that in resorting to his last arguments, Mr. Frank tried with one hand to fill in the cracks in a work which, with the other hand, he was dismantling.

   

  On the evening of our first day of interviews, Mr. Frank handed to me his own copy, in French, of the book by Ernst Schnabel: Spur eines Kindes (French title: Sur les traces d'Anne Frank; English title: Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage). He told me that I would perhaps find in that book some answers to certain of my questions. The pages of that copy were not cut. It should be mentioned that Mr. Frank speaks and understands French, but he reads it with a little difficulty. (I should make it clear here that all our interviews took place in English, a language that Mr. Frank has mastered perfectly.) I had not yet read that book, because the strict observance of the methods proper to pure internal criticism obliges one to read nothing about a work so long as one has not yet personally gotten a clear idea of that work. During the night that preceeded our second interview, I glanced through the book. Among a dozen points that acted to confirm to me that the Diary was a fable (in spite of the fact that Schnabel made many efforts to persuade us of the contrary), I call attention to an amazing passage on page 151 of the French text. That passage concerned Mr. Vossen, the man who, it seemed, had devoted himself, as carpenter, to making the "swinging cupboard" intended to conceal the persons in hiding (Diary, 21 August 1942). "Good old Vossen" was supposed to work at 263 Prinsengracht. He kept the persons in hiding up-to-date on everything that took place in the store. But illness had forced him to retire to his home, where his daughter Elli joined him after her own work hours. On 15 June 1943, Anne spoke about him as a precious friend. But, if one believes a remark of Elli reported by Schnabel, good old Vossen was unaware of the existence of the Franks at 263 Prinsengracht! Elli recounts, in fact, that on 4 August 1944, when she returned to her residence, she informed her father of the arrest of the Franks. The French text of Schnabel says: "I was seated at the side of the bed and I had told him everything. My father very much liked Mr. Frank, whom he had known for a long time. He was not aware that the Franks had not left for Switzerland, as was claimed, but had hidden themselves on the Prinsengracht." But what is incomprehensible is that Vossen could have believed in that rumor. For nearly a year he had seen the Franks at Prinsengracht, he had spoken with them, he had helped them and he had become their friend. Then, when because of his bad health he had left his job on the Prinsengracht, his daughter Elli was able to keep him up to date on the doings of his friends, the Franks.

   

  Mr. Frank was not able to explain to me that passage from Schnabel's book. Rushing to the German and the English texts of the same work, he made a surprising discovery: the whole passage where Elli spoke with her father did indeed appear in those texts, but, lacking the sentence beginning with: "He was not aware " and ending with: " the Prinsengracht." In the French text, Elli continued: II ne dit rien. Il restait couché en silence. For comparison, here is the German text:

   

  Ich setze mich zu ihm ans Bett und habe ihm alles gesagt. Er hing sehr an Herrn Frank, denn er kannte ihn lange [passage missing]. Gesagt hat er nichts. Er hat nur dagelegen. (Anne Frank/Ein Bericht von Ernst Schnabel, Spur eines Kindes, Fischer Bucherei, 1958, 168 pages, page 115.)

   

  And here is the English text:

   

  I sat down beside his bed and told him everything. He was deeply attached to Mr. Frank, who he had known a long time [passage missing]. He said nothing. (Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, Ernst Schnabel, Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Harbrace Paperback Library, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.;1958; 181 pages; page 132.)

   

  After returning to France, it was easy for me to clear up this mystery: from many other points in the French text it became evident that there had existed two original German versions. The first version of Schnabel must have been sent in "tapuscript" to the French publishing house of Albin Michel so that from it there could be prepared a translation into French, without losing time. Thereupon Schnabel or, very probably, Mr. Frank, had gone on to do a revision of its text. He had then left out the problematical sentence about Vossen. Then Fischer published that corrected version. But in France they had done the job in double quick time and the book had already left the presses. It was too late to correct it. I note moreover a bibliographical curiosity: my copy of Sur les traces d'Anne Frank (translated from the German by Marthe Metzger, Editions Albin Michel, 1958, 205 pages) bears a reference to "18th thousand" and its date for the completion of printing was in February 1958. But the first thousand of the original German edition was in March 1958. The translation therefore did indeed appear before the original.

   

  It remains, of course, to know why Ernst Schnabel or Mr. Frank had believed it proper to proceed with that amazing correction. The fact remains that Mr. Frank showed his confusion once more in the face of this further anomaly. We took leave of each other in the most painful of atmospheres, where each token friendliness that Mr. Frank showed me embarrassed me a little more. Shortly after my return to France, I wrote to Mr. Frank to thank him for his hospitality and to ask him Elli's address. He answered me pleasantly while asking me to send him the French copy of Schnabel's book, and without speaking to me about Elli. I sent his copy back to him while again asking him for the address. No answer this time. I telephoned him at Birsfelden. He responded to me that he would not give me that address, and especially now that I had sent to Kraler (Kugler) an "idiotic" letter. I will come back to that letter.

   

  Bibliographical examination

   

  The previously mentioned book by Schnabel (Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage) has some curious omissions, while the long article, unsigned, that Der Spiegel (1 April 1959, pages 51­p;55) devoted to the diary, in the wake of the Stielau case, brings us some curious revelations. The title of that article is eloquent: "Anne Frank. Was Schrieb das Kind?" ("Anne Frank. What did the Child Write?")

   

  Ernst Schnabel openly defended Anne Frank and Otto Frank. His book is relatively rich on all that precedes and on all that follows the twenty-five months of their life at Prinsengracht. On the other hand, it is very poor concerning those twenty-five months. One would say that the direct witnesses (Miep, Elli, Kraler, Koophuis, Henk) have nothing to say on that very important period. Why do they remain silent in that way? Why have they said only some commonplace things like: "When we had our plate of soup upstairs with them at noon " (page 114)1 or: "We always had lunch together " (page 117)? Not one concrete detail, not one description, not one anecdote is there that by its preciseness would give the impression that the persons in hiding and their faithful friends regularly ate together this way at noon. Everything appears in a kind of fog. But those witnesses were questioned only thirteen years, at the most, after the arrest of the Franks, and certain of them such as Elli, Miep and Henk, were still young. I am not talking about numerous other persons whom Schnabel wrongly calls "witnesses" but who, in fact, had never known or even met the Franks. This is the case, for example, with the famous "greengrocer" (Gemüsemann). "He did not know the Franks at all" (page 82). In a general way, the impression that I derived from reading Schnabel's book is the following: this Anne Frank had really existed; she had been a little girl without great character, without strong personality, without scholarly precociousness (to the contrary even), and no one suspected her of having an aptitude for writing; that unfortunate child knew the horrors of war; she had been arrested by the Germans; she had been interned, then deported; she passed through the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau; she had been separated from her father; her mother died in the hospital at Birkenau on 6 January 1945; in approximately October of 1944 she and her sister were transferred to the camp at Bergen-Belsen; Margot died of typhus; then, in her turn, Anne, alone in the world, was also to die of typhus in March of 1945. These are some points about which the witnesses did not hesitate to talk. But with all of them one senses mistrust in the presence of the legendary Anne, who was capable of taking up the pen as we have been told, capable of keeping that diary and writing those stories, and writing "the beginning of a novel," etc. Schnabel himself writes a very revealing sentence when he declares: "My witnesses had a good deal to say about Anne as a person; they took account of the legend only with great reticence, or by tacitly ignoring it. Although they did not take issue with it by so much as a word, I had the impression that they were checking themselves. All of them read Anne's diary; they did not mention it (pages 4­p;5)." That last sentence is important "All of them had read Anne's diary; they did not mention it." Even Kraler, who sent a long letter to Schnabel from Toronto, did not make mention either of the Diary or of Anne's other writings (page 87). Kraler is the only direct witness to tell an anecdote or two about Anne; but, in a very curious way, he places these anecdotes in the period of time when the Franks still lived in their apartment on Merwedeplein, before their "disappearance" ("before they went into hiding," page 87). It is only in the corrected edition that the second anecdote is placed at Prinsengracht, even "when they were in the secret annex" (page 88). The witnesses did not wish that their names be published. The two most important witnesses (the "probable betrayer" and the Austrian policeman) were neither questioned nor even sought out. Schnabel attempts on several occasions to explain that curious failure (pages 8, 139, and all of the end of chapter ten). He goes so far as to present a sort of defense of the arresting officer! One person nevertheless does mention the Diary, but that is to draw attention to a point in it which seems bizarre to her concerning the Montessori school of which she was the director (page 40). Schnabel himself treats the Diary strangely. How to explain, indeed, the cutting that he does when he cites a passage such as that of his page 123? Quoting a long passage from the letter of 11 April 1944 in which Anne tells about the police raid in the wake of the burglary, he leaves out the sentence in which Anne gives the main reason for her distress; that reason was that the police, it appeared, went so far as to give the "swinging cupboard" some loud blows. ("This, and when the police rattled the cupboard door, were my worst moments.") Wouldn't Schnabel have thought, like any sensible man, that that passage is absurd? In any case, he tells us that he visited 263 Prinsengracht before its transformation into a museum. He did not see any "swinging cupboard" there. He writes: "The cupboard that was built against the door to disguise it has been pulled down. Nothing is left but the twisted hinges hanging beside the door." (page 74) He did not find any trace of a special camouþage, but only, in Anne's room, a yellowed piece of curtain "A tattered, yellowed remnant of curtain still hangs at the window." (page 75). Mr. Frank, it seems, marked in pencil on the wall paper, near one door, the successive heights of his daughters. Today, at the museum, the visitors can see an impeccable square of wall paper, placed under glass, where they notice the perfectly preserved pencil marks which appear to have been drawn the same day. They tell us that these pencil marks indicated the heights of Mr. Frank's children. When I saw Mr. Frank at Birsfelden, I asked him if it was not a question there of a "reconstruction." He assured me all that was authentic. But this is difficult to believe. Schnabel himself had simply seen, as a mark, an "A 42" which he interpreted thus: "Anne 1942." What is strange is that the "authentic" paper in the museum does not bear anything such as that Schnabel said that he had seen, only that mark and that the others had been destroyed or torn off ("the other marks have been stripped off " [ibidem].) Might Mr. Frank have made himself guilty here of a trick (ein Trick), such as that which he had suggested to Henk and to Miep for the photocopy of their passport?

   

  A very interesting point about Anne's story concerns the manuscripts. I regret to say that I find very unlikely the account of the discovery of those many scripts, then their passing on to Mr. Frank by his secretary Miep. The police supposedly scattered the þoor with all sorts of papers. Among those papers, Miep and Elli supposedly gathered up a "Scotch notebook" (ein rotkariertes Buch; a red plaid book) and many other writings in which they are supposed to have recognized Anne's writing. They supposedly did not read anything. They are supposed to have put all these papers aside in the large office. Then, those papers supposedly were handed over to Mr. Frank at the time of his return from Poland (pages 179­p;181.) That account does not agree at all with the account of the arrest. The arrest was made slowly, methodically, correctly, exactly like the search. The testimonies are unanimous on that point (see chapter nine). After the arrest, the police came back to the premises on several occasions; they especially interrogated Miep. The police wished to know if the Franks were in contact with other persons in hiding. The Diary, such as we know it, would have revealed, at first glance, a great deal of information valuable to the police, and would have been terribly compromising for Miep, Elli, and for all the friends of the persons in hiding. The police could have disregarded the "Scotch notebook" if, in its original condition, it consisted, as I think, only of some drawings, some photographs or notes of a harmless nature. But it would appear unlikely that they would have left there several notebooks and several hundreds of scattered pages, on which the handwriting was, at least in appearance, that of an adult. On the part of Elli and Miep, it would have been madness to gather together and to keep, especially in the office, such a mass of compromising documents. It would appear that they knew that Anne kept a diary. In a diary one is supposed to tell what happens from day to day. Consequently, Anne risked mentioning Miep and Elli in them.

   

  Regarding the book by Schnabel, Mr. Frank made a surprising revelation to me. He told me that that book, although translated into several languages, had not been translated into Dutch! The reason for the exception was that the principal witnesses living in the Netherlands said that, because of modesty as well as because of a concern for their peace and quiet, they wished that people not talk about them. In reality, Mr. Frank was mistaken or else he was deceiving me. An investigation conducted in Amsterdam at first led me to believe that Schnabel's book had not been translated into Dutch. Even the Contact publishing house replied or had several libraries or several private individuals reply that that book did not exist. I discovered then that, in a showcase at the "Anne Frank House" museum, the book by Schnabel was shown as having been translated into Dutch and published in 1970 (twelve years after its publication in Germany, in France and in the United States!) under the title of: Haar laatste Levensmaanden (Her Last Months). The book unfortunately was not to be found. I got the same responses from the libraries and from the Contact publishing house. As a result of my insistence, Contact finally replied to me that there remained with them only one archive copy. With some difficulty I got permission to consult it, and then to get a photocopy of pages 263 to 304. For, in reality, the work in question contained only an extract from Schnabel's book, reduced to 35 pages, and placed as an appendix to the text of the Diary. The comparative study of Spur eines Kindes and of its "translation" into Dutch is of the greatest interest. Of the book by Schnabel, the Dutch can only read the five last chapters (out of thirteen chapters in all). Moreover, three of those five chapters have undergone cuts of all sorts. Certain of those cuts are marked by ellipses. Others are not marked at all. The chapters thus cut up are Chapters Nine, Ten and Thirteen -- which is to say those that concern, on the one hand, the arrest and its direct results (in the Netherlands) and, on the other hand, the history of the manuscripts. When it is no longer a question of those subjects, when it is a question of the camps (which is the case in Chapters Eleven and Twelve), the original text by Schnabel is respected. Examined closely, those cuts seem to have been introduced to remove the somewhat precise details which appear in the testimonies of Koophuis, Miep, Henk, and Elli. For example, it lacks, without anything to indicate to us the existence of a cut, the essential passage where Elli tells how she told her father about the arrest of the Franks (the 13 lines of page 115 of Spur are completely absent from page 272 of Haar Laatste Levensmaanden). It is odd that the only nation for whom they have thus reserved a censored version of the life of Anne Frank is precisely that one where the adventure of Anne Frank took place. Can you imagine some revelations about Joan of Arc that would be made to all sorts of foreign nations, but would be forbidden in some way to the French people? Such a way of acting is understandable only when the editors fear that, in the country of origin, the "revelations" would have rather quickly appeared suspect. That explanation given by Mr. Frank hardly holds. Because Koophuis, Miep, Henk, and Elli find themselves named anyhow (moreover by some complete or partial pseudonyms), and because Schnabel has them make such and such remarks, one does not see how the cuts introduced into those remarks can soothe the sensitive modesty of their authors or assure them more tranquility in their life in Amsterdam. I would believe rather that the preparation of the Dutch translation gave rise to some very long and arduous bargaining among all the interested parties or, at least, between Mr. Frank and some of them, but, as the years passed, they became more cautious and more sparing with details than in their original "testimonies."

   

  The above-mentioned articles from Der Spiegel brings us, as I have said, some curious revelations. As a matter of principle I distrust journalists. They work too quickly. Here it is obvious that the journalist carried out a thorough investigation. The issue was too burning and too sensitive to be treated lightly. The conclusion of the long article could indeed be the following: While suspecting the Diary of being a forgery, Lothar Stielau perhaps proved nothing, but all the same he "ran into a really tricky problem -- the problem of the genesis of the publishing of the book" (auf ein tatsächlich heikles Problem gestossen -- das Problem der Enstehung der Buchausgabe, page 51). And it is revealed that we are very far from the text of the original manuscripts when we read in Dutch, in German, and in whatever language, the book entitled The Diary of Anne Frank. Supposing for a moment that the manuscripts are authentic, it is necessary to be aware that as a matter of fact what we read under that title, for example in Dutch (that is to say in the supposedly original language), is only the result of a whole series of operations of reorganizing and rewriting, participated in especially by Mr. Frank and some close friends, among whom were (for the Dutch text) Mr. And Mrs. Cauvern and (for the German text) Anneliese Schütz, whose pupil Anne had been.

   

  Between the original form of the book (the manuscripts) and its printed form (the Dutch edition from Contact in 1947), the text has known at least five forms in succession.

   

  between the end of May 1945 and October 1945, Mr. Frank had drawn up a sort of copy (Abschrift) from the manuscripts, in part alone, in part with the help of his secretary Isa Cauvern (the wife of Albert Cauvern, a friend of Mr. Frank; before the war, the Cauverns had welcomed the Frank children to their home for vacations).

  from October 1945 to January 1946, Mr. Frank and Isa Cauvern worked together on a new version of the copy, a typed version (Neufassung der Abschrift/Maschinengeschriebene Zweitfassung).

  at an unspecified date (the end of the winter of 1945­p;1946), that second version (typed) was submitted to Albert Cauvern; insofar as he was a radio man -- an announcer with the "De Vara" radio network in Hilversum -- he knew about rewriting manuscripts. According to his own words, he began by "tolerably changing" that version; he drew up his own text as a "man of experience" (Albert Cauvern stellt heute nicht in Abrede, dass er jene maschinengeschriebene Zweitfassung mit kundiger Hand redigiert hat: "Am Anfang habe ich ziemlich viel geändert," page 52.) A detail that is surprising for a diary: he does not fear to regroup under a single date some letters written on different dates; on a second occasion he limited himself to correcting the punctuation as well as mistakes of phrasing and grammar; all those changes and corrections were carried out on the typed text; Albert Cauvern never saw the original manuscripts.

  from the changes and corrections, Mr. Frank drew up what one can call the third typed text in the spring of 1946; he submitted the result to "three prominent experts" (drei prominente Gutachter, page 53), while letting them believe that it was a question of the complete reproduction of a manuscript, with the very understandable exception of some personal points of order; then, those three persons having apparently given their guarantee to the text, Mr. Frank went on to offer it to several publishing houses in Amsterdam which refused it; turning then, in all probability, to one of those three persons, Mrs. Anna Romein-Verschoor. He got the latter's husband, Mr. Jan Romein, Professor of History of the Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam, to write in the daily newspaper Het Parool a famous article which began with these words: "There has by chance fallen into my hands a diary (etc.)". Because the article was very laudatory, a modest Amsterdam publishing house (Contact) asked to publish that diary.

  with the agreement once concluded or in the process of being concluded, Mr. Frank went to find several "spiritual counselors" (mehrere geistliche Ratgeber), one of whom was Pastor Buskes; he granted them full authority to censor the text (raumte ihnen freiwillig Zensoren-Befugnisse ein, pages 53­p;54). And that censorship was carried out.

  But the oddities do not end there. The German text of the Diary forms the subject of interesting remarks on the part of the journalist from Der Spiegel. He writes: "One curiosity of the 'Anne Frank literature' is the translation work of Anneliese Schütz, of which Schnabel said: 'I would wish that all translations were so faithful,' but whose text very often diverges from the Dutch original" (page 54). In fact, as I will show below ("Comparing the Dutch and German texts" on page 100), the journalist is quite lenient in his criticism when he says that the German text diverges very often from what he calls the original (that is to say, without doubt, from the original printed by the Dutch). The printed German text does not have the right to be called a translation from the printed Dutch: it constitutes, properly speaking, another book by itself. But let us pass over this point. We will return to it.

   

  Anneliese Schütz, a great friend of the Franks, like them a Jewish German refugee in the Netherlands, and Anne's teacher, therefore prepared a text, in German, of the diary of her former pupil. She settled down to that work for Anne's grandmother! The latter, very aged, did not in fact read Dutch. She therefore needed a translation into German, the Franks' mother tongue. Anneliese Schütz composed her "translation" "in the perspective of the grandmother" (aus der Grossmutter-Perspektive, page 55). She took some amazing liberties. Where, according to her recollections, Anne had expressed herself better, she made her express herself better! The grandmother had the right to that! die Grossmutter habe ein Recht darauf, mehr zu erfahren -- vor allem dort, "wo Anne nach meiner Erinnerung etwas besseres gesagt hatte" (ibidem). Let it be said in passing that Anneliese Schütz is never mentioned by Anne Frank in the Diary. Are we to understand that she had lived close to Anne or that she had met her during the twenty-five months when she hid at the Prinsengracht? To the "perspective of the grandmother," which dictated certain "obligations," there was added what one can call the "commercial perspective" which dictated other obligations. As a matter of fact, when the time came to publish the Diary in Germany, Anneliese Schütz inserted some new alterations. Let us take an example that she herself mentions. The manuscript, they say, included the following sentence: " no greater hostility in the world than between the Germans and the Jews" (ibidem). Anneliese Schütz declared to the journalist of Der Spiegel: "I always told myself that a book, destined to be sold in Germany, cannot contain an expression insulting to the Germans" (ibidem). For my part, I would say that that argumentation at one and the same time of the commercial, sentimenta,l and political order is understandable when coming from a woman of Berlin Jewish origin, who had been a militant before the war in a suffragette movement and who had had to leave her own country for political reasons, but otherwise that argumentation is all the less acceptable because the "insulting" remarks have been and continue to be spread in the millions of copies of the Diary sold throughout the world in languages other than German. And I am not speaking here from the simple point of view of respect for the truth.

   

  One does not have the impression that Mr. Frank's "collaborators" in the publishing of the diary were especially pleased with their work, nor that they were especially delighted about the fuss made about that Diary. Let us take those collaborators one by one: about Isa Cauvern, we can say nothing, except that she committed suicide by throwing herself out of her window in June of 1946. Mr. Frank had just signed or was going to sign his contract for publication with Contact. The motive for that suicide is not known to us and it is at present impossible to establish a tie of some kind between that suicide and the affair of the Diary. As regards the person who wrote the preface, Anna Romein-Verschoor, she was to declare to Der Spiegel in 1959: "I was not at all suspicious enough" (Ich bin wohl nicht misstrauisch genug gewesen). Her husband had been no more suspicious. Albert Cauvern had not been able to obtain from Mr. Frank the return of the typed text on which he had worked. He had asked for that text "in memory of my wife" who died in 1946. Mr. Frank had not sent the text in question. Kurt Baschwitz, a friend of Mr. Frank, was one of the "three eminent persons" (the two others being Mr. and Mrs. Romein). In 1959, he was to plead for an "agreement" between Mr. Frank and Lothar Stielau. He recommended, on the other hand, a complete publication of the text of the manuscripts to resolve the problem. To know what the text was in reality, that solution would have been, as a matter of fact, that most suitable. Anneliese Schütz, for her part, was to show her disapproval both of the "Anne Frank Myth" and of the attitude of Mr. Frank with regard to Lothar Stielau. She was in favor of a policy of silence: the least fuss possible about Anne Frank and her diary. She went so far as to disapprove of Mr. Frank and Ernst Schnabel for Spur eines Kindes: what need was there for that book? As regards to Stielau, if he had made the remark for which Mr. Frank criticized him for, latter had only to act as if he did not hear it. That "sharp" (scharff) (ibidem) reaction by Anneliese Schütz was all the more peculiar because this woman presented herself as the "translator" of the diary into German and because Ernst Schnabel had -- but perhaps she did not know it -- pushed kindness so far as to have declared with regard to that improbable "translation": Ich wünschte, alle Übersetzungen waren so getreu (page 54) ("I would wish that all translations were so faithful").

   

  Return to Amsterdam

   

  The internal criticism of the Diary had led me to think that the Diary was a "cock and bull story," a novel, a lie. The subsequent investigations had only served to reinforce that judgment. But, if I indeed saw where the lie was, I did not see as well where the truth was. I saw indeed that the Frank family could not have lived for twenty-five months at 263 Prinsengracht in the way they claimed. But how had they lived in reality? Where? With whom? And finally, was it indeed at 263 Prinsengracht that they had been arrested?

   

  Without any illusions about the answer that he would give me, I posed those questions to Kraler (by his real name, Kugler) in a letter that I sent to him in Canada. I asked him likewise if Anne appeared to him to have been the author of the Diary and how he could explain to me why Vossen (by his real name, Voskuyl) had believed that the Franks were somewhere other than at 263 Prinsengracht, and even in Switzerland, to be precise. His response was discourteous. He sent my letter and his response to Mr. Frank. It is that letter which Mr. Frank called "idiotic" during a telephone conversation. It is, I suppose, that response which, one year later, earned Kraler a prize of $10,000.00 from an institution for having "protected Anne Frank and her family during the war, in Amsterdam" (see the Hamburger Abendblatt, 6 June 1978, page 13). Disregarding its discourtesy, the response from Kraler was not lacking in interest for me. Kraler responded to me that Vossen's suggestion concerning the presence of the Franks in Switzerland "was made to protect the family which was in hiding" (letter of 14 April 1977). He added, in regard to Anne, "there have been other greatly gifted young people, even younger than Anne." I found that the first point of this answer was precise but incomprehensible if one recalls that Vossen had, according to his own daughter, the personal feeling that the Franks were in Switzerland. As to the second point of the answer, its stereotyped character was striking coming from a man whose only difficulty ought to have been in choosing among several precise and convincing answers. Kraler, as a matter of fact, was supposed to have lived for 25 months in almost daily contact with that Anne Frank whose "diary" was an open secret, it seems, for those who knew her.

   

  Listening to Elli on 30 November 1977, then to Miep and Henk on 2 December 1977, I was struck right away with the impression that these three persons had not at all lived for 25 months in contact with the Franks and with the other persons in hiding in the manner in which this is presented to us in the Diary. On the other hand, I became convinced that Miep and Elli had at least been present at 263 Prinsengracht on 4 August 1944, at the time of the police raid. It is difficult for me to account otherwise for the insistence with which Elli and Miep avoided my questions on the 25 months, while coming back over and over again to the day of 4 August 1944. Elli, of whom I had much difficulty in finding any trace, expected neither my visit, nor the type of detailed questions I was going to put to her. Miep and Henk were expecting my visit and knew that I had seen Mr. Frank. My questions were brief, limited in number, and, with certain exceptions, I did not point out to my witnesses either their mutual contradictions or their contradictions with the Diary. Elli, full of good will, seemed to me to have a good memory of the war years and of the minor events of her daily life in those days (she was 23 years old in 1944). But, in regard to those twenty-five months, her answers to my questions were for the most part: "I do not know I do not recall I cannot explain to you " "The coal storage place? It was in the Van Daans' room." "The ashes? I suppose that the men took them down." "The night watchman Slagter? I have never heard him spoken of; after the war, we had a secretary who had that name." "Lewin? I never had anything to do with him." "The 'swinging cupboard'? You are right, it was useless, but it was a camouþage for strangers." I asked Elli to describe to me first the front house, then the annex. For the front house, she was able to give me some details; it is true that she worked there. For the annex, her answer was interesting. She declared to me that she had, all in all, spent only one night there, and that before the arrival of the eight clandestines! She added that she did not remember the premises, because she had been very nervous. But, in the Diary, Elli is supposed to have come to take almost all of her mid-day meals with the people in hiding (see 5 August 1943: Elli arrives regularly at 12:45 pm; 20 August 1943: she arrives regularly at 5:30 pm as a messenger of freedom; 2 March 1944: she does the dishes with the two families' mothers). In conclusion, I asked Elli to recall for me any detail of family life, any anecdote which does not appear in the book. She showed herself to be totally incapable of doing that.

   

  Miep and Henk were likewise incapable of furnishing me with the least detail on the life of the people in hiding. The most important sentence of their testimony was the following: "We did not know exactly how they lived." And in addition: "We were only in the annex for one weekend; we slept in the future room of Anne and Dussel." "How did the persons in hiding keep them selves warm? Perhaps with gas." "The coal storage place was downstairs in the store." "There was no vacuum cleaner." "The greengrocer did not bring anything to Prinsengracht." "'The 'swinging cupboard' had been constructed well before the arrival of the Franks" (!) "I myself, Miep, I brought the vegetables, while Elli brought the milk." "I myself, Henk, worked elsewhere than in the business, but every day I came to have lunch in the office of the girls and I came to speak to them for 15 or 20 minutes." (This point, among others, is in total contradiction with the Diary, where it is said that Henk, Miep and Elli took their lunch in the annex, with the people in hiding. See 5 August 1943.) During our entire interview, Miep gave me the impression of being almost in agony. Her gaze avoided me. When I finally let her speak to me about 4 August 1944, her attitude suddenly changed completely. It was with obvious pleasure that she began to call to mind, with a great abundance of details, the arrival of the police and its results. I noted, however, a striking disproportion in the details of the account. Those details were numerous, vivid, and obviously truthful when Miep was calling to mind what had personally happened to her with the Austrian arresting officer, Silberbauer, either that day or on the following days. But, when it was a question of the Franks and of their companions in misfortune, the details became scanty and unclear. Thus it was that Miep had seen nothing of the arrest of the persons in hiding. She had not seen them leave. She had not seen them climb into the police vehicle, because that vehicle, which she had seen through the window of her office, "was too near the wall of the house." From a distance from the other side of the canal, Henk had seen the police vehicle, but without being able to recognize the people who were entering or leaving. In regard to the manuscripts, Miep repeated to me the account that she had given to Schnabel. She told me also that Mr. Frank, after returning to the Netherlands at the end of May of 1945, lived for seven years under their roof. It was only toward the end of June or the beginning of July of 1945 that she had returned the manuscripts to him.

   

  In the wake of those two interviews my judgment became the following: These three persons must have, on the whole, told me the truth about their own lives. It is probably true that they had not been familiar with, so to speak, the annex. It is certainly true that, in the front house, life unfolded approximately as they had recounted it to me (mid-day meal taken together in the office of the secretaries; the men of the store eating in the store; small food errands made in the neighborhood, etc.). It is certainly true that a police raid took place on 4 August 1944 and that Miep had had business on that day and on the following days with a Karl Silberbauer. It is probable, on the other hand, that those three persons maintained some relations with the Frank family. In that case, why did they so obviously feel reticent to speak about it? Let us suppose, as a matter of fact, that the Franks and some other persons in hiding had really lived for 25 months in proximity to those three persons. In that case, why such a silence?

   

  The answer to these questions could be the following: the Franks and, perhaps, some other Jews did actually live in the annex of 263 Prinsengracht. But they lived there quite differently than the Diary relates. For example, they lived a life there that was no doubt cautious, but not like in a prison. They were able to live there as did so many other Jews who hid themselves either in the city, or in the countryside. They "hid themselves without hiding." Their adventure was sadly commonplace. It did not have that fantastic, absurd, and obviously deceitful character that Mr. Frank had wanted to pass off as being realistic, authentic, and true to life. After the war, just as the friends of Mr. Frank were prepared to testify on his behalf, so were they hesitant to guarantee the narrative of the Diary. Just as much as they were able to offer themselves as guarantors of the real sufferings of Mr. Frank and of his family, so did it seem difficult for them to bear witness, in addition, to imaginary sufferings. Kraler, Koophuis, Miep, Elli, and Henk showed their friendship to Mr. Frank; they publicly showed their sympathy for him as for a man full of charm and, at the same time, overwhelmed with misfortunes. Perhaps they felt þattered to be presented in the press as his companions in his days of misfortune. Perhaps certain among them accepted the idea that, when a man has suffered, he has the moral right to exaggerate somewhat the story of his sufferings. In the eyes of certain of them, the main point could have been that Mr. Frank and his family had had to suffer cruelly at the hands of the Germans; in that case the "details" of those sufferings mattered little. But kindness has its limits. Mr. Frank found only one person to guarantee his account of the existence of the Diary. That person was his former secretary and friend: Miep Van Santen (by her real name, Miep Gies). Still the testimony of Miep is strangely hesitant. Her testimony comes back to saying that after the arrest of the Franks, she had gathered up from the þoor of a room of the annex a diary, an account book, some notebooks and a certain number of loose leaf sheets. For her it was a matter of objects belonging to Anne Frank. Miep only gave that testimony in an official form thirty years after the events, on 5 June 1974, in the office of Mr. Antoun Jacob Dragt, a notary in Amsterdam. Miep added that she had made the discovery with Elli. But, on the same day, in the presence of the same notary, the latter declared that she remembered having been there when those things had been discovered but she did no more remember exactly how they had been discovered. The restraint is important and it must not have pleased Mr. Frank.

   

  Schnabel wrote (see above, page 91) that all the "witnesses" he had questioned -- including, consequently, Miep, Elli, Henk, and Koophuis - had behaved as if they had to protect themselves against the legend of Anne Frank. He added that if they all had read the Diary, they nevertheless did not mention it. That last sentence means obviously that, in each interview with a witness, it was Schnabel himself who had to take the initiative in speaking of the Diary. We know that his book had not been published in the Netherlands, except in a shortened and censored form: it is in the Netherlands that the principal "witnesses" are located. For its part, the article from Der Spiegel (see above, page 95) proves that others of Mr. Frank's "Witnesses" have ended up having the same negative reactions. The foundations of the myth of Anne Frank -- a myth that rests on the truth and authenticity of the Diary -- have not been strengthened with time: they have crumbled.

   

  Who betrayed the Franks?

   

  The "betrayer" and the person who arrested the Franks: why has Mr. Frank wanted to assure them anonymity?

   

  Since 1944, Mr. Frank and his friends knew that their alleged "betrayer" was named Van Maaren and the person who arrested them was named Silberbauer. Van Maaren was one of the employees in their store. Silberbauer was a non-commissioned officer of the Security Service (SD) in Amsterdam. In the Diary, as well as in the previously mentioned book by Schnabel, Van Maaren is called V.M. As regards Silberbauer, he is called Silberthaler in Schnabel's book. It seems that, at the time of the Liberation, Van Maaren had some trouble with the law in his country. His guilt could not be proved, Mr. Frank told me. "V.M. had had enough troubles like that and he should be left alone." Schnabel had not wanted to obtain the testimony of V.M. nor had he wanted to obtain that of the arresting officer.

   

  In 1963, the world press suddenly echoed with a startling news story: Simon Wiesenthal had just rediscovered the person who arrested the Franks. He was Karl Silberbauer, a police official in Vienna. Wiesenthal had not informed Mr. Frank about his research. The latter, questioned by journalists, declared that he had known for nearly twenty years the name of the person who arrested him. He added that that entire affair was unfortunate and that Silberbauer had only done his duty in arresting him. Miep, for her part, declared that, if she had used the pseudonym of Silberthaler to designate the arresting officer, that was only at the request of Mr. Frank; the latter had pointed out that there could, as a matter of fact, be some other persons bearing the name of Silberbauer to whom, consequently, some harm could be done: (De Heer Frank) had mij verzocht de naam Silberthaler te noemen, omdat er misschien nog meer mensen Silberbauer heetten en die zouden wij dan in diskrediet brengen (Volkskrant, 21 November 1963).

   

  There was a kind of struggle between Simon Wiesenthal and Mr. Frank. It was the latter who in a way got the best of it. As a matter of fact, Karl Silberbauer was, at the end of eleven months, reinstated in the Viennese police. A disciplinary commission, sitting behind closed doors (as is the custom), released him. The judgment in the appeal commission (Oberdisziplinarkommission) was likewise favorable to Silberbauer, as were also conclusions of a commission of inquiry of the Ministry of the Interior. Silberbauer had indeed arrested the Franks at 263 Prinsengracht, but his participation in "War crimes against the Jews or members of the Resistance" could not be proved. In June of 1978, I obtained an interview with Simon Wiesenthal in his office in Vienna. In regard to that affair, he declared to me that Mr. Frank was "crazy." In his opinion, Mr. Frank, in his concern to maintain a cult (that of his daughter), meant to spare the former Nazis, while he, Simon Wiesenthal, had only one concern: that of seeing justice done. Simon Wiesenthal did not know the real name of the store employee V.M. There again Mr. Frank had done what was necessary: the Royal Institute of Documentation (for the Second World War), directed by his friend Louis De Jong, responded, if we are to believe an Amsterdam newspaper (Trouw, 22 November 1963), that that name would not be given to Mr. Wiesenthal, even if he asked for it: deze naam zou men zelfs aan Mr. Wiesenthal niet doorgeven, wanneer deze daarom zou verzoeken.

   

  The authorities in Vienna were not able to authorize me to consult the records of the commissions of inquiry. As to Karl Silberbauer, he died in 1972. My inquiry was therefore limited to the analysis of some Dutch, German, and French newspapers from 1963 and 1964 and to the interviewing of a witness whom I believe to be well informed, honest, and possessed of a good memory. That witness begged us, my companion and myself, not to reveal his name. I have promised to say nothing about his name. I will keep my promise only half-way. The importance of his testimony is such that it seemed impossible to me to pass over it in silence. The name of that witness and his address as well as the name of my companion and his address are put down in a sealed envelope.

   

  Here is, to begin with, what I would call: "The testimony of Karl Silberbauer, collected by a Dutch journalist of the Hague Post and translated into German by a Jewish German journalist of the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland (6 December 1963, page 10)." Silberbauer recounts that at the time (4 August 1944) he had received a telephone call from an unknown person who had revealed to him that some Jews remained hidden in an office on Prinsengracht: "I then alerted eight Dutchmen of the Security Service (SD) and went with them to Prinsengracht. I saw that one of my Dutch companions tried to speak to an employee but the latter made a gesture with his thumb toward the upstairs." Silberbauer described how he entered the place where the Jews kept themselves hidden: "The people ran in all directions and packed their suitcases. One man then came toward me and presented himself as being Otto Frank. He had been, he said, a reserve officer in the German Army. To my question about the length of time that they had been in hiding, Frank had answered: 'Twenty-five months.' Seeing that I did not want to believe him, Silberbauer continued, he took the hand of a young girl who stood at his side. That must have been Anne. He placed the child against the side post of a door, which bore some marks in various places. I spoke again to Frank: 'What a pretty girl you have there!'" Silberbauer said then that he had only very much later made the connection between that arrest and what the newspapers said about the Frank family. After the war, his reading of the Diary surprised him very much. He especially did not understand how Anne could have known that the Jews were gassed: "We were all unaware," Silberbauer explained, "of what awaited the Jews. I especially do not understand how Anne in her diary could assert that the Jews were gassed." In the opinion of Silberbauer, nothing would have happened to the Franks if they had not kept themselves hidden.

   

  That exclusive interview with Silberbauer constitutes a very faithful summary, I think, of the remarks attributed by the journalists to the person who arrested the Frank family. The testimony that I announced above (page 99) confirms in general the content of the interview, with the exception that the episode of the raised thumb would be a sheer fabrication. Silberbauer supposedly noted nothing of the kind, for the good reason that he is supposed to have made his way immediately toward the annex. He did nothing but take the corridor and the stairway, without any detour toward the offices or the stores. And it is there that the testimony in question furnishes us with an important element. One will have noticed that, in his interview, the policeman does not state precisely how he had access to the place where those in hiding kept themselves. He does not mention the existence of a "swinging cupboard" (ein drehbares Regal). But my witness is quite positive: Silberbauer had never encountered anything of the kind, but a heavy wooden door like one finds at the entrance, for example, of a storehouse. The exact word was ein Holzverschlag. The policeman had simply knocked at the door and it had been opened to him. A third point of this testimony is, if possible, still more important. Karl Silberbauer said and repeated that he did not believe in the authenticity of the famous Diary, because, according to him, there had never been on the site anything that would resemble the manuscripts that Miep claimed to have found scattered about the þoor one week after 4 August 1944. The policeman had the professional habit of carrying out arrests and searches since before the war. Such a pile of documents would not have escaped his notice. (Let us add here that eight men accompanied him and that the entire operation had been conducted slowly and correctly and then the policeman, after having entrusted the key to the premises to V.M. or to another employee, had returned to the premises on three occasions.) Silberbauer, the witness asserts, had the habit of saying that Miep had not, in reality, played a great role in that whole story (whence comes the fact that they had not even arrested her). Afterwards, Miep had tried to give herself some importance, notably with that episode of the miraculous discovery of the manuscripts.

   

  The same witness declared to me, in the presence of my companion, that Silberbauer in 1963­p;1964 had drawn up an account, for the courts, of the arrest of the Franks and that those details might appear, in that account. A second witness certainly could have given me very valuable testimony on the statements of Silberbauer, but that second witness preferred to say nothing.

   

  Comparing the Dutch and German texts

   

  I have two texts in front of me. The first is in Dutch (D), while the second is in German (G). The publishers tell me that D is the original text, while G is the translation of that original text. I do not have a priori any reason to challenge their word. But scientific rigor, as well as common sense and experience, teach that it is necessary to receive the statements of publishers with caution. It happens, as a matter of fact, that there can be error or deceit on their part. A book is a piece of merchandise like any other. The label can be deceiving about the content. As a consequence, I will set aside here the labels that are proposed to me or that are imposed upon me. I will speak neither about the "original version in Dutch," nor about the "translation into German." I will temporarily suspend all judgment. I will grant a precise name to those two books only with reservations. For the moment, I will give them a name which is, at the same time, equal and neutral. I will therefore speak of "texts."

   

  I am going to describe the text D and the text G that I have before me. I am going to begin with text D, but I could, just as well, begin with text G. I insist on this last point. The order of succession that I have chosen here ought not to imply any succession in time, nor any relationship of filiation of the father/son kind between D and G.

   

  My text D is presented in this manner: Anne Frank / Het Achterhuis / Dagboekbrieven / 14 Juni 1942­p;1 Augustus 1944/1977. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Contact; Eerste druk 1947 / Vijfenvijftigste druk 1977. The author's text begins on page 22 with the photographic reproduction of a sort of dedication signed: "Anne Frank, 12 Juni 1942." On page 23 appears the first of the 169 entries which make up this "diary" to which they have given the title The Annex. The book has 273 pages. The last page of the text is page 269. I estimate the length of the text itself at about 72,500 Dutch words. I have not compared the text of that 55th edition with the text of the first edition. At the time of my investigation in Amsterdam, I received assurances from Messrs. Fred Batten and Christian Blom that no change had been made in the successive editions. Those two persons were employed by the Contact publishing house and they were involved, along with Mr. P. De Neve (deceased), in the original acceptance of the typed manuscript that Mr. Frank had deposited with an interpreter by the name of Mr. Kahn. It is this Mr. Kahn who was, in 1957, to serve as the companion and interpreter for Ernst Schnabel, when the latter came to see Elli in Amsterdam.

   

  My text G is presented in this manner: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank / 12 Juni 1942­p;1 August 1944/1977. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag / No. 77 / Ungekürzte Ausgabe/43. Auþage 1293000-1332000 / Aus dem Holländischen ubertragen von Anneliese Schütz / Holländische Original-Ausgabe, Het Achterhuis. Amsterdam: Contact. After the dedication page, the first of the entries appears on page 9. There are 175 entries. The last entry ends on page 201. I estimate the length of the text at about 77,000 German words. The book has 203 pages. This paperback was first published in March 1955. Fischer obtained the Lizenzausgabe (distribution license) from the Lambert-Schneider publishing house, in Heidelberg.

   

  I call attention to a first troubling fact. Text D has 169 entries while text G, which is presented as the translation of text D, has 175 entries.

   

  I call attention to a second troubling fact. I set out in search of the extra entries of text G. It is not six entries that I discover (175 minus 169 equals 6), but seven entries. The explanation is the following: text G does not have the entry of 6 December 1943 from text D.

   

  I point out a third troubling fact. Because the Dutch language and the German language are very close to each other, the translated text ought not to be appreciably longer than the text that is being translated. But, even if I disregard the number of words that make up the seven entries in question, I am very far from reaching a difference of approximately 4,500 (G 77,000 minus D 72,500 equals 4,500). Therefore, text G even when it has some entries in common with text D, has them under another form. Here are the figures:

   

  {table omitted]

   

  Referring to Table 1, we see that if text G had the same number of entries as text D, the discrepancy in the word count would be approximately 4,500 minus 2,930, or 1,570 words.2 In reality, as will be seen later on, this number represents only a small part of the surplus of words that text G has. But, meanwhile, in order not to seem too attached to the calculations, I am going to give some precise examples involving approximately 550 words.

   

  Among the entries that texts D and G apparently have in common, here are some entries (among many others) where text G has some extra fragments, that is to say some fragments with which the Dutch reader was never acquainted:

   

  [table omitted]

   

  Among the entries that texts D and G apparently have in common, here are some entries (among many others) where text G is missing some fragments, that is to say some fragments with which the German reader was never acquainted:

   

  [table omitted]

   

  One remarkable fact is that the fragments that are missing are very numerous and very short. For example, the letter of 20 August 1943 is cut by 19 words in text G, and those 19 words are distributed in the following manner:

   

  3 + 1 + 4 + 4 + 7 = 19

   

  I call attention to a fourth troubling fact. That fact is independent of the quantities that are extra or lacking. This fact is that some fragments of entries move somehow. For example, the entire next-to-the-last paragraph of text D of Donderdag, 27 April 1944 is found in the last paragraph of text G of Dienstag, 25 April 1944. On the 7th of January 1944, the last paragraph of text D becomes, in text G, the sixth paragraph before the end. On 27 April 1944, the next-to-the-last paragraph of text D becomes, in text G, the last paragraph of the entry of 25 April 1944.

   

  I call attention to a fifth troubling fact. It is not a question, this time, of additions, of subtractions, of transferrals, but of alterations that are the sign of inconsistencies. I mean to say this: suppose that I leave aside all the features by which texts D and G differ so obviously from one another, and suppose that I turn now toward what I would call "the remainder" (a "remainder" which, according to the publishers, ought to make up "the common stock," "the identical part"), I am surprised to find out that, from one end to the other of these two books, except with the rarest exceptions, this "remainder" is very far from being identical. As is going to be seen by the examples that follow, these inconsistencies cannot be attributed to a clumsy or whimsical translation. The same entry of 10 March 1943 gives, for text D, Bij kaarslicht (by candlelight) and, for text G, Bei Tage (By daylight); een nacht (one night) for Eines Tages (one day); Verdwenen de dieven (the robbers disappeared) for schwieg der Larm (the noise became quiet). On 13 January 1943, Anne said that she rejoiced at the prospect of buying after the war nieuwe kleren en schoenen (some new clothes and shoes); that is in text D, because in text G she speaks of neue Kleider und Bücher (of new clothes and books). On 18 May 1943, Mrs. Van Daan is als door Mouschi gebeten (as if bitten by Mouschi [the cat]); that is in text D, because in text G she is wie von einer Tarantel gestochen (as if stung by a tarantula). Depending on whether one consults D or G, a man is a "fascist" or a Riese (giant) (20 October 1942). Some "red beans and some white beans" (bruine en witte bonen) become "white beans" (weisse Bohnen) (12 March 1943). Some sandals for 6.5 þorins become some sandals without indication of price (ibidem), while "five hostages" (een stuk of 5 gijzelaars) has become "a certain number of these hostages" (eine Anzahl dieser Geiseln), and that in the same entry of 9 October 1942 where "the Germans" (Duitsers) are no more than "these Germans" (diese Deutschen) who are very specifically the Nazis (see above, page 95). On 17 November 1942, Dussel meets the Franks and the Van Daans in their hiding-place. Text D says that "Miep helped him to take off his overcoat" (Miep liet hem zijn jas uitdoen); learning that the Franks are there, "he nearly fainted from surprise" and, says Anne, he remained "silent" "as if he wanted first a little time, a moment, to read the truth on our faces" (viel hij haast fiauw van verbazing sprakeloos alsof hij eerst even goed de waarheid van onze gezichten wilde lezen); but text G says of Dussel that he "had to take off his overcoat" and describes his astonishment in this way: "he could not understand he was not able to believe his eyes" (Er musste den Mantel ausziehen kannte er es nicht fassen und wollte seinen Augen nicht trauen). A person who suffered from an eye problem and who "bathed it with camomile tea" (bette het met kamillen-the) becomes a person who "made himself some compresses" (machte Umschläge) (10 December 1942). Where "Papa" alone is waiting (Pim verwacht) it is "we" all who are waiting (Wir erwarten) (27 February 1943). Where the two cats receive their names of Moffi and Tommi, according to whether they appear boche (German) or angliche (English), "just as in politics" (Net als in de politek), text G says that they were named "according to their spiritual dispositions" (Ihren Anlagen gemäss) (12 March 1943). On 26 March 1943, some people who "were quite awake" (waren veel wakken) "were in an endless fear" (schreckten immer wieder auf), "a piece of þannel" (een lap þanel) becomes a "mattress cover" (Matratzenschoner) (1 May 1943). "To go on strike" (staken) "in many areas" (in viele gebieden) becomes: "sabotage is committed on all sides" (an allen Ecken und Enden sabotiert wird) (ibidem). A "folding bed" (harmonicabed) is encountered as a "loungechair" (Liegestuhl) (21 August 1942). The following sentence: "The gunfire no longer did anything to us, our fear had gone away" (Het kanonvuur deerde ons niet meer, onze angst was weggevaad) becomes: "and the situation, for today, was saved" (und die Situation war für heute gerettet) (18 May 1943).

   

  I had noted these few examples in inconsistencies in the course of a simple sample that did not go beyond the 54th entry of text D (18 May 1943). I decided then to initiate a much more rigorous sample, bearing on the eleven entries going from 19 July to 29 September 1943 (entries 60 to 73). To the inconsistencies, I decided to add the additions and the subtractions. The result was such that the simple enumeration of the differences noted would require several typewritten pages. I am not able to do that here. I will content myself with only a few examples here, avoiding the most striking ones because, unfortunately, the most striking are also the longest ones to cite.

   

  Entry of 19 July 1943 "parents killed" (dode ouders) becomes "parents" (Eltern);

  Entry of 23 July 1943: G has, in addition, at least 49 words plus 3 words;

  Entry of 26 July 1943: G has, in addition, four plus four words and is lacking two words: over Italie;

  Entry of 29 July 1943: G has twenty words missing and "twenty years" (twintig jaar) becomes "twenty-five years" (25 Jahren);

  Entry of 3 August 1943: this letter of 210 words in text G is completely missing in text D;

  Entry of 4 August 1943: D gives "couch" and G "loungechair." In D a þea "þoats" (drijft) in the wash water, "only in warm months or weeks" (allen in de hete maanden of weeken), while for G that þea must "lose his life" (sein Leben lassen) there, without any other detail concerning weather. D gives: "to use some cotton [soaked] in hydrogen peroxide (that serves to bleach her black moustache fuzz)" (waterstofwatjes hanteren [dient om zwarte snorharen te bleken]), while G gives simply: "and other little toiletry secrets ") (und andere kleine Toilettengehemniss ). The comparison of "like a brook falling from a mountain" (als een beekje van een berg) becomes "like a brook on the boulders" (wie ein Bächlein über die Kiesel). Some "irregular French verbs": this is what Anne thinks of in text D (aan Franse onregalmatige wekworden), but, in text G, this can only be about irregular Dutch verbs, it seems, because she says that she "dreams" (träume ich) of "irregular verbs" (von unregelmässigen Verben). Text G contents itself with: "Rrrrrrring, upstairs [sounds the Van Daans'] alarm" (Krrrrrrrr, oben der Wecker) , while D gives: "Rrrring the little alarm [sounds], which at each hour of the day (when it is wanted or sometimes also without being wanted can raise its little voice." (Trrr het wekkertje, dat op elk uur van de dag [als men er naar vraagt of soms ook sonder dat] zijn stemmetje kan verheffen);

  Entry of 5 August 1943: all of it is a description of the usual meal, from 1:15 pm to 1:45 pm, and of the things that follow, and there are important differences; besides, what is announced, by D, as "The great share-out" is announced by G as "small lunch" (De grote uitdeling/Kleiner Lunch). I underline the adjectives; the possible, but not certain, irony of D has disappeared in G. Of the three "couches" in D, there only remains one "couch" in G;

  Entry of 7 August 1943: this letter constitutes quite an interesting puzzle. A very long letter, it begins, in text G, with nine lines introducing a story of 74 lines entitled Kaatje as well as another story of 99 lines entitled Katrientje. This entry is completely absent from D. The Dutch, for their part, know of these stories only by way of a separate book entitled Stories, in which there appear, besides, some other "unedited stories" of Anne Frank;

  Entry of 9 August 1943: among many other curious things there are "some horn-rimmed glasses" (een hoornen bril) which become "some dark horn-rimmed glasses" (eine dunkle Hornbrille) in text G;

  Entry of 10 August 1943: the "war material" of D becomes the "guns" (Kanonen) of G. The sentence concerning the bell in the Westertoren is entirely different. And, especially, G has an episode of 140 words that does not appear in D. Anne, who has received some new shoes, tells there about a series of misadventures that had happened to her on that same day: she had pricked her right thumb with a large needle; she had bumped her head against the door of the cupboard; because of the noise caused, she received a "scolding" (Ruffel); she was not able to soothe her forehead because it was necessary not to turn on the water; she had a large bruise over her right eye; she had stubbed her toe on the vacuum cleaner; her foot became infected, it is all swollen. Result: Anne cannot put on her pretty new shoes. (You will have noticed here the presence of a vacuum cleaner in a place where silence would have had to be necessary constantly);

  Entry of 18 August 1943: among nine differences, we see some "beans" (bonen) turn into "green peas" (Erbsen);

  Entry of 20 August 1943: I will mention only one example of a difference; it concerns the bread; the narrative is appreciably different, and for text D, this bread is located in two successive places: at first the steel cupboard of the office looking out on the street (in the front house), then, the kitchen cupboard of the annex (stalen kast, Voorkantoor/Keukenkast), while G only mentions the first location, without being precise about the second; the unfortunate thing is that the first location mentioned by D is a simple cupboard located in the office looking out on the courtyard: the office of Kraler, and not that of Koophuis ("the bread, which is put in Kraler's room for us every day")! (About the respective offices of Kraler and of Koophuis, see the entry of 9 July 1942.) There is here a serious material contradiction between the two texts, with changes of words, of sentences, etc.;

  Entry of 23 August 1943: among other curious things, "to read or to study" (lesen of leren) becomes "to read or to write" (lesen oder schreiben), "Dickens and the dictionary" (Dickens en het woordenbook) becomes only "Dickens", some "bolsters" (peluwen) turn into "eiderdown pillows" (Plumeaus) (in Dutch, "eider-down pillows" would be said as eiderdons or dekbed);

  Entry of 10 September 1943: among five differences, I notice that the broadcast, so eagerly awaited each day, from Radio Oranje (the Voice of Holland from overseas) begins at 8:15 pm for D and at 8:00 pm for G;

  Entry of 16 September 1943: "ten valerianes" (tien valeriaantjes) become "ten of the small white pills" (zehn von den kleinen weissen Pillen). "A long face and a drooping mouth" (een uitgestreken gezicht en neerhangende mond) became "a tight-lipped mouth with worry lines" (einen zusammengekniffennen Mund und Sorgenfalten). The winter compared to a fearful obstacle, a "biting winter" which is there like a "heavy block of stone" (het grote rotsblok, dat winter heet), is no more than a simple winter (dem Winter). An "overcoat" (jas) becomes "hat and cane" (Hut und Stock). A sentence of 24 words, claiming to describe a picturesque scene, finds itself reduced to five German words. On the other hand, six Dutch words become 13 German words with a very different meaning;

  Entry of 29 September 1943: "a grumbling father" (een mopperenden vader) becomes "the father who is not in agreement with her choice" (den Vater, der nicht mit ihrer Wahl einverstanden ist). "Energetically" (energiek) becomes ganz kalt und ruhig (in a quite cold and quiet manner), etc.

  I think that it is useless to pursue such an enumeration. It is not exaggerated to say that the first entry of the collection gives us the tone of the whole. In that short letter, the Dutch learn that, for her birthday, Anne received "a little plant" (een plantje). The Germans have the privilege of learning that that plant was "a cactus" (eine Kaktee). In return, the Dutch knew that Anne received "two peony branches," while the Germans must content themselves with knowing that there were "some peony branches" (einige Zweige Pfingstrosen). The Dutch have the right to the following sentence: "such were, that morning, the children of Flora who sat on my table" (dat waren die ochtend de kinderen van Flora, die op mijn tafel stonden). In the German text, the table has disappeared, as well as "the childen of Flora" (a curious, hackneyed phrase from the pen of a child of thirteen; one would have expected it rather from an adult seeking laboriously and artlessly to "decorate" his style). The Germans simply have the right to: "These were the first þowers offered by way of greetings" (Das waren die ersten Blumengrüsse). The Dutch learn that Anne, on that day, will offer to her teachers and to her classmates "some butter cakes" (boterkoekjes). The Germans have the right to some "candy" (Bonbons). The "chocolate," present for the Dutch, will disappear for the Germans. More surprising: a book that Anne will be able to buy for herself with the money that has just been given to her on that Sunday 14 June 1942, becomes, in the German text, a book that she has already bought for herself (zodat ik me kan kopen/habe ich mir gekauft).

   

  On the other hand, the last entry of the collection is identical in the two texts. That confirms for us, if there were need for it, that the German translator -- if one must speak about "translation" -- was quite capable of respecting the Dutch text. But it is too evident now that one cannot speak of translation, nor even of "adaptation." Is it to translate, is it to "adapt" to put day for night (10 March 1943)? Books for shoes (13 January 1943)? Candy for butter cakes (14 June 1942}? Giant for fascist (20 October 1942)? Is "candles" translated by "day" and "cats" by "tarantula"? "To þoat" by "to die"? "Large" by "small" (4 August 1943)? Only magicians can change an overcoat into a hat and a cane. With Mrs. Anneliese Schütz and Mr. Frank, the table disappears (14 June 1942) and the stairway steals away (the Dutch entry of 16 September 1943 mentions a very peculiar stairway, which would have led directly to the persons in hiding: die direct naar boven leidt). The bread storage place changes its location. What is behind is encountered again in front (Kraler's office). Numbers appear and disappear. Hours change. Faces change. Events multiply or disappear. Beings as well as things are subject to eclipses and to sudden changes. Anne, one could say, emerges from her tomb in order to come to lengthen one of her narratives or to shorten it; sometimes she writes another or even reduces it to nothingness.

   

  Ten years after her death, Anne's text continues to change. In 1955, the Fischer publishing house publishes her Diary. as a pocket-book under a "discreetly" reworked form. The reader could especially compare the following entries:

   

  9 July 1942: Hineingekommen gemalt war (25 words) replaced by: Neben gemalt war (41 words). The appearance of a door!

  11 July 1942: bange replaced by besorgt;

  21 September 1942: gerügt replaced by gescholten and drei Westen changing itself into drei Wolljacken;

  27 September 1942: mit Margot bin ich nicht mehr so intim becomes: mit Margot verstehe mich nicht sehr gut;

  28 September 1942: bestürzt replaced by erschüttert;

  7 November 1942: ohne den Hergang zu kennen becomes: ohne zu wissen, worum es ging and Er ist mein Ideal becomes: Er ist mein leuchtendes Vorbild. That last change of the text is not lacking in þavor, if one knows that it is a question here of Anne's father. Mr. Frank is no longer an "ideal" for his daughter, but "a shining model"! Another change: 'und das Ärgste ist becomes: und am schlimmsten ist;

  7 August 1943: I pointed out above (see page 104) this very long letter that contains two stories. I suppose that these stories existed in the manuscript which had been reserved for them and that they had been wrongly inserted into the Diary. In that case, one asks oneself who wrote the nine lines of introduction, where Anne asks her correspondent especially if she believes that her stories are going to please children.

  These last changes were made from one German text to another German text. They could therefore not have the excuse of a clumsy or whimsical translation. They prove that the Diary's author -- the term that I ordinarily use for the person responsible for the text that I am reading -- was still alive in 1955. In the same way, in discovering the German text of 1950 (Lambert-Schneider edition), I discovered that the author of the Diary (an especially prolific author) was still alive in 1950. That author could not have been Anne Frank, who, as we know, died in 1945.

   

  In any comparisons of the texts, I have followed the official chronological order. I have shown how the text printed in Dutch (1947) clashed with the first printed German text (1950), which, in its turn, underwent some strange metamorphosis in the second printed German text (1955). But, scientifically speaking, nothing proves that the chronological order of publication reþects the chronological order of composition. For example, there could have been some manuscript in German which preceded the putting together of the Dutch manuscripts. It could be that the model or the "first edition" outline had been written in German. It could be that afterwards that model or that outline, after having given birth to a text translated into Dutch, had also given birth to an entirely rewritten German text. It could be that, for several years, some very different texts had thus lived in symbiosis. That phenomenon is called the phenomenon of contamination. It is nevertheless clear that Mr. Frank cannot make that argument about the contamination of the texts, because there exists, according to him, one single text: that of the Dutch manuscripts. For certain periods of the twenty-five months at the Prinsengracht, it is possible that the different manuscripts of the Diary offer us some variant readings; still, those variant readings could not provide us with the innumerable absurdities and inconsistencies that we have seen. For other periods, such as that of an entire year (from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943), when, according to Mr. Frank's own admission, we have at our disposal only one version, there ought not to exist the slightest variant reading, not the slightest disagreement between text D and text G. It is for that reason that I chose from that period the largest number of my examples of inconsistencies.

   

  I have noticed, in my samplings, neither more nor fewer inconsistencies for that period than for the other periods. In a uniform way, text D presents us an Anne Frank who has, if not the traits, at least fits the stereotype of the young adolescent, while text G offers us the stereotype of the adolescent already near, in certain respects, to being a mature woman. There are, in text G, some passages that are incompatible with the corresponding passages of text D, and even formally incompatible with the entire substance of all of text D. There we reach the height of the intolerable in the manipulation of texts. Here is, for example, the letter of 5 January 1944. Anne confesses that before her time in hiding, that is to say, before the age of thirteen, she had happened, while spending the night at the home of a girlfriend, to feel the need to kiss her: " I had a strong desire to kiss her, and I did do so " (een sterke behoefte had haar te zoenen en dat ik dat ook gedaan her). In text G there appears a girl of thirteen who is appreciably more knowing. Here, Anne asked her comrade for a night if, as a token of their friendship, they could feel each others breasts. But the comrade refused. And Anne, who appears to have practice in the matter, adds: "I still found it pleasant to kiss her and I did it" (fragte ich sie, ob wir als Beweis unserer Freundschaft uns gegenseitig die Brüste befühlen wollten, aber sie weigerte sich. Ich fand es immer sch...n, sie zu küssen, und habe es auch getan). On the sexual feelings of Anne, I recommend likewise the comparative reading of texts D and G for 7 January 1944.

   

  It is astonishing that the Dutch reader had been deprived of so many revelations reserved by Mr. Frank and Anneliese Schütz for Anne's grandmother, who was so "aged" (see above, page 95). What of the revelations again in text G on musical tastes or on musical knowledge that the Dutch did not have the right to know (for what reason, after all?)! Text G of the letter of 9 June 1944 reserves for us the sole rights to a dissertation of 200 words on the life of Liszt (treated, by a very feminist Anne, as a "petticoat chaser"/Schürzenjäger), of Beethoven, Wagner, Chopin, Rossini, Mendelssohn. Many other names are mentioned: Hector Berlioz, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac The entry of 20 February 1944 (220 words) is absent from text D. It contains however some elements of very great importance from many points of view. Dussel has the habit of whistling das Violin-Konzert von Beethoven; the use of time on Sundays is revealed to us; it must be recognized that one point, at least, about that use of time is more than troubling: Mr. Frank in overalls, on his knees, brushing the carpet with such enthusiasm that the entire room is filled with clouds of dust (Vater liegt im Overall auf den Knien und bürstet den Teppich mit solchem Elan, dass das ganze Zimmer in Staubwolken gehüllt ist). In addition to the noise that such an operation would cause in a place where even at night, when the neighbors are not there, it is necessary not to cough, it is obvious that the scene is described by someone who could not have seen it: a carpet is never brushed in that way on the þoor of a room, in the very place where it became dusty. In the entry of 3 November 1943, a fragment of 120 words, which is missing in text D, reveals to us another case of the carpet being brushed each evening by Anne in the Ofenluft (the air from the stove), and that because the vacuum cleaner (der Staubsauger) ist kaputt (that famous vacuum cleaner which, according to Mr. Frank, could not have existed; see above, page 88). Concerning Anne's knowledge or ideas on the subject of historical or political events, one will make some discoveries in the entries of 6 June, 13 June and 27 June 1944. On Peter's character one will find some revelations in the entry of 11 May 1944. That entry of 400 words does not exist in text D. But nevertheless, in text D, we find a letter at that date of 11 May; however, the corresponding text is dated, in text G, on 12 May! Peter defies his mother while calling her "the old lady" (Komm mit, Alte!). Nothing like the Peter of text D!

   

  It would be interesting to subject each of the principal characters of text D and of text G to analysis by psychologists or psychiatrists. Anne, in particular, would appear under some profoundly contradictory character traits. But this is purely hypothetical. I think that in fact those analysts would see that Anne has no more real consistency than a total invention of unrelated facets. The few so-called descriptions of Anne that I have been able to find have especially convinced me that their authors have read the Diary very superficially. It is true that the dullness of their descriptions could be explained by the dullness of the subject described. One stereotype calls for another, as one lie calls for another.

   

  The language and the style of text D strive to be characteristic of a young adolescent, innocent and awkward. The language and the style of text G strive to be characteristic of an adolescent already close, in certain respects, to being a woman. That is evident simply from the parts of the texts that I have mentioned -- parts that I did not choose, however, with a view to studying the language and the style of the two Anne Franks.

   

  Mr. Frank has indulged in some storytelling. That is easily established when one sees how he has transformed the printed German text of 1950 (Lambert-Schneider) in order to make from it the text printed by Fischer (1955). It was on that occasion, in particular, that he made his daughter Anne say that her father is her "ideal" (1950 version); then, after thinking it over, that he is her "shining model" (1955 version). This inclination for storytelling did not come to Mr. Frank all at once. He had, we are told by one of Anne's former teachers, the harmless idiosyncrasy of composing stories and poems with his daughter ("Sometimes she told me stories and poems which she had made up together with him ," Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, page 41). That happened about 1940. Anne was eleven years old and her father was 51. In 1942, Mr. Frank, a former banker in Frankfurt and a former merchant and businessman in Amsterdam, took a forced retirement at the age of 53. I do not think that his inclination for writing had disappeared then during his long days of inactivity. In any case, the Diary hardly gives us any information about what Mr. Frank did with his days. But what does it matter! Mr. Frank is a storyteller who has given himself away. The drama of storytellers is that they add more to their stories. They never stop retouching, reworking, cutting out, correcting. By doing this they end up incurring the distrust of certain people. And it is child's play for those people to prove the storytelling. It is very easy to confound Mr. Frank. It is sufficient to have at hand text D and one of the two different versions of text G. It is enough to remind him that he had declared in writing to the Dutch: "I guarantee to you that here, on such and such a date, Anne wrote: day or shoes or butter cakes or fascist or large," while to the Germans he has gone on to declare in writing regarding the same places and the same dates: "I guarantee to you that Anne wrote: night or books or candy or giant or small." If Mr. Frank told the truth in the first case, he told a story in the second case. And vice-versa. He has told a story either here, or there. Or again -- and this is the most probable - he has made up the story here and there. In any case, one could never claim that Mr. Frank, in this affair of the Diary, is a man who has told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

   

  The Diary cannot be in any way authentic. Consultation with allegedly authentic manuscripts is unnecessary. As a matter of fact, no manuscript in the world could certify that Anne Frank succeeded in the miraculous feat of writing two words at the same time and -- what is more -- two words with incompatible meanings, and -- even more -- two complete texts at the same time, which are most of the time totally contradictory. It is well understood that every printed text can have a critical apparatus with its variant readings, its explanatory notes, its indications of the existence of possible interpolations, etc. But I have already said (see above, page 106) that where one has at one's disposal only one manuscript, there are no longer any possible variant readings (barring specific cases: difficulties in deciphering a word, errors in preceding editions, etc.). And when one has at one's disposal several manuscripts (two, at the most, for certain periods of the Diary; perhaps three in some very limited cases), it is sufficient to eliminate those periods and those cases in order to confine oneself strictly to the periods and to the cases where it is necessary to be contented with a single manuscript (here, the period from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943).

   

  To the hypothesis, henceforth inconceivable, according to which there would exist an authentic manuscript, I say that none of the printed texts can claim to reproduce the text of the manuscript. The following table establishes, in fact, that the Fischer edition of 1955 comes in the eighth position in the order of succession of the varying forms of the Diary. To understand this table, refer especially to the discussion starting on page 93.

   

  ('Official') Chronological table of successive forms of the text of the Diary

   

  The manuscript of Anne Frank;

  Copy by Otto Frank, then by Otto Frank and Isa Cauvern;

  New version of the copy by Otto Frank and Isa Cauvern;

  New-new version of the copy by Albert Cauvern;

  New-new-new version by Otto Frank;

  New-new-new-new version by Otto Frank and the "Censors";

  Contact edition (1947);

  Lambert Schneider edition (1950), radically different from the preceding one, and even incompatible with it;

  Fischer edition (1955) taking up again the preceding one in a "discreetly" (?) reworked and retouched form.

  One could, of course, claim that 5was perhaps only a very faithful copy of 4. The same for 7in relation to 6. That would be to suppose that Mr. Frank, who reworked this text constantly, had suddenly refrained from doing it at the moment of recopying text 4without any witness, and at the moment of the probable correction of the printer's proofs for 7. Personally, I maintain these nine stages as a minimum to which it is necessary indeed to add one, two or three "copies" for text 8.

   

  The only interest in a study of the manuscripts allegedly by Anne Frank would be to bring to light some elements still more crushing for Mr. Frank: for example, some letters or fragments of letters that have never been published (the reasons for nonpublication should be inquired into closely, without trusting in the reasons given by Mr. Frank, which always have a very suspicious sentimental coloring); for example also, some very changeable names for Anne's "correspondents" (the idea of showing her always addressing herself to the same "dear Kitty" seems to be a belated idea), etc.

   

  The reasoning which would consist of claiming that in the Diary there would exist nevertheless a basis of truth would be a reasoning without value. First, because it would be necessary to know that truth or to be able to distinguish it in the jumble of the obvious fictions; the lie is, most often, only the art of adapting the truth. Then, because a work of the mind (as, for example, the editing of a "diary") is not defined by a basis, but by a unity of forms: the forms of a written expression, the forms which an individual has given to it once and for all, for better or for worse.

   

  The reasoning which would consist of saying that there have only been some hundreds of changes between such and such form of the Diary is fallacious. The word "changes" is too vague. It allows, according to the taste of each person, all sorts of condemnations or, especially, all sorts of excuses. Furthermore, a change can involve, as we have seen, a single word or a text of 1,600 words!

   

  For my part, I have called attention to several hundreds of changes, only between the Dutch text and either of the two texts -- which differ from each other -- that have been published in Germany. I call those changes: additions, subtractions, transferences, and alterations (by substitutions of one word for another, of one group of words of another -- these words and these groups of words being incompatible with each other, even if indeed, by the rarest exception, the meaning could be maintained). The whole of these changes must affect approximately 25,000 [3] words of the Fischer text which itself must be 77,000 words (that is, in any case, the number which I take for a base).

   

  The French translation of Het Achterhuis can be called a "translation" in spite of the absence of one of the 169 entries of the Dutch Contact edition and notwithstanding indeed some weaknesses and also some bizarre things which lead one to think that there still could be some troublesome discoveries to be made. (Journal de Anne Frank, Het Achterhuis, translated from the Dutch by T. Caren and Suzanne Lombard, Calmann-Levy, 1950, printed 5 January 1974, 320 pages.) The Lambert Schneider edition cannot in any event be presented as a translation. As to the Fischer edition, it cannot call itself a reproduction of the Lambert Schneider edition, nor a translation of Het Achterhuis.

   

  That impressive ensemble of additions, subtractions, transferences, alterations; those fictions of Mr. Frank; those dishonesties of the editors; those interventions of outsiders, friends of Mr. Frank, the existence of two such different books presented as one and the same Diary of Anne Frank -- all these reveal a work which cannot, in any way, retain the prestige attached to an authentic testimony. The inconsistencies of the various texts are of all kinds. They concern the language and the style, the length and the form of the pieces that make up the Diary, the number and the kind of anecdotes reported, the description of the premises, the mention of material realities, the dialogues, the ideas exchanged, the tastes expressed; they concern the very personalities of the principal characters, to begin with the personality of Anne Frank, a personality which gives the impression of living in a world of pure fiction.

   

  While offering himself as personal guarantor of the authenticity of this work, which is only fiction, Mr. Frank, who has besides obviously intervened at all stages of the genesis of the book, has signed what it is appropriate to call a literary fraud. The Diary of Anne Frank is to be placed on the already crowded shelf of false memoirs. Our post-war period has been fertile in works or writings of this kind. Among those false, apocryphal, or suspicious works (either entirely, or by insertions of foreign elements) one can mention: the various "testimonies" of Rudolf H...ss, Kurt Gerstein, Miklos Nyiszli, Emmanuel Ringelblum, the memoirs of Eva Braun, Adolf Eichmann, Walter Schellenberg, but also the document entitled: "Prayer of John XXIII for the Jews." One must mention especially the false diaries fabricated by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and denounced by the French historian Michel Borwicz, of Polish Jewish origin; among those diaries could appear that of one Therese Hescheles, age thirteen.[4]

   

  l would take care not to forget that one of the most celebrated forgeries was fabricated against the Jews: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I ask that people not misunderstand the direction that I have given to my research on the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank. Even if my personal conviction is that the work comes from Mr. Frank; even if I think that at the rate of two letters per day, three months would have been enough for him to prepare the first version of his clumsy fiction; even if I think that he did not believe that his work would know such an immense success (which, at the same time, would risk causing its terrible faults to become evident); even if I think that one can then find many extenuating circumstances for him; even if I have the conviction that he did not at all seek to make up a vast hoax, but that he found himself dragged along by circumstances to guarantee all the extraordinarily brilliant results of a humble and banal undertaking -- in spite of all that, the truth obliges me to say that The Diary of Anne Frank is only a simple literary fraud.

   

  French editor's postscript (1980)

   

  The report that you have just read was not destined for publication. In the mind of Professor Faurisson, it only constituted one piece, among others, of a work that he intended to devote to The Diary of Anne Frank.

   

  We publish it today -- in spite of the reticence of its author who, for his part, would have hoped for a more extended publication including some elements which are still being worked on because the French press and the foreign press have created an uproar about the professor's opinion on the Diary of Anne Frank. The public itself may feel the need to judge these pieces. We have thus wished to put the essential part of these pieces at its disposal. You can thus make for yourself your own judgments on Faurisson's methods of work and on the results to which they had led him by August of 1978.

   

  This report, in the exact form [5] (see next page) under which we publish it, already has an official existence. It was in August of 1978 that it was sent, in its German version, to the lawyer Jürgen Rieger to be presented as evidence at a court in Hamburg. Mr. Rieger was and still remains today the defender of Ernst Remer, subjected to a trial for having publicly expressed his doubts on the authenticity of the Diary.

   

  The court, after having heard the parties and having begun to examine the basis of the litigation, decided, to everyone's surprise, to adjourn any new session sine die.

   

  According to the usual scenario, from the time the trial opened the press dictated to the court the conduct to follow. The Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt went into the front lines of the battle and in a long open letter vigorously took a position in favor of Mr. Frank. For this political party, the cause was judged in advance, and the authenticity of the Diary had been proved a long time ago.

   

  The court in question, in spite of the efforts of Mr. Rieger to start the trial once more, has never rendered its judgment. The German press deplored the fact that Mr. Otto Frank still had to wait for "justice to be done." Still, this refusal to judge constitutes progress. In a similar case, Professor Faurisson had drawn up a five-page report summarizing his research and his conclusions about the "gas chambers." That statement was signed and the signature was notarized. The professor had gone so far as to cite the text of the Journal officiel of the French Republic establishing that a legalization of signature in France was valid in West Germany. A waste of effort: in the reasons presented for the condemnation, the Court decreed that "Faurisson" was only a pseudonym. For the same reason it refused the testimony of the American professor Arthur R. Butz. Justice is equal for all, subject to the exceptio diabolica.

   

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• The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz Appear to be Physically Inconceivable

   

  The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz Appear to be Physically Inconceivable

   

  Dr. ROBERT FAURISSON

  Zyklon B is a hydrocyanic acid that is given off by evaporation.

   

  It is used for the disinfection of ships, silos and dwellings as well as for the destruction of pests.

   

  It is still manufactured today in Frankfurt-on-Main. It is sold in Western Europe, in Eastern Europe, in the United States and nearly everwhere in the world.

   

  Hydrocyanic gas is highly poisonous and very dangerous. One milligram per kilogram of body weight is sufficient to kill a man. In a closed place it will poison a man in several seconds and will kill him in several minutes. A man can lose consciousness and die by absorbing the gas through the skin.

   

  This gas sticks to surfaces. It sticks not only to the skin and to the mucous membranes to the point of penetrating them, but it also sticks to wood, to plaster, to paint, and to cement, and it penetrates them. In an ordinary place where these materials are encountered, the gas cannot be ventilated after use; it is necessary to be contented with a natural airing-out process, which lasts nearly 24 hours.

   

  Only specialized personnel, having gone through a period of instruction and having been awarded a diploma, can use this product or gas. They must wear gas masks with special filtering cartridges for hydrocyanic acid.

   

  The preparations necessary for the gassing of a place, for example a dwelling place, are long and meticulous, especially in order to obtain a good air-tightness.

   

  The granules of Zyklon from which the hydrocyanic gas is released are not thrown at random, are not scattered by chance. This would be too dangerous later on. It is necessary to assure a calculated distribution. The granules are set down on display napkins.

   

  When the gas is thought to have ended its destructive work, it is necessary that specialized personnel enter the place in order to open everything that would permit a natural airing-out. This is the most critical moment. The airing-out presents the greatest danger for participants as well as for non-participants. It is therefore necessary to proceed with it with special prudence and always while wearing gas masks. As a rule it is necessary to air out the place in such a way as to be able to reach the open air as soon as possible and in such a way that the gas will be evacuated from a side where every risk for non-participants is excluded.

   

  The airing-out lasts at least twenty hours.

   

  At the end of twenty hours, the specialized personnel come back into the place, while still wearing their masks. If it is possible, they raise the temperature of the place to 15 degrees centigrade. They leave, returning at the end of an hour, still with their masks, in order to go on to a test for the disappearance of the gas. If the test is favorable, the place is declared to be accessible without wearing a gas mask. But, if it is a question of a dwelling place, people will not be able to sleep in the place for the first night and the windows ought still to remain open during that first night. Mattresses, bed rolls and cushions must be beaten or shaken for at least an hour because they are impregnated with gas.

   

  This gas is inflammable and explosive; there must not be any naked flame in the vicinity and, most definitely, it is necessary not to smoke.

   

  In a more general way, in order to enter a place where there is some hydrocyanic gas, it is necessary always to wear a gas mask with a particularly strong filter cartridge; two cases then present themselves: - either the masked man will be exposed to concentrations lower than 1 percent in volume of hydrocyanic gas; - or he will be exposed to concentrations equal to or higher that 1 percent.

   

  In the first case, he will be able to devote himself to some light work; for example, he will be able to open windows that are easy to open, but on condition that after each step he goes outside in order to remove his mask there and to breathe the open air for at least ten minutes. In the second case, the exposure of the man to those concentrations must be tolerated only in case of necessity and for a period of time not to exceed one minute.

   

  This gas can be used in pressurized fumigation chambers. It is used in the United States for the execution of a person condemned to death in the gas chamber. One must see one of these chambers and be acquainted with the process of their use in order to realize the extent to which it is difficult and dangerous to use hydrocyanic gas in order to kill a single man.

   

  During the First World War, combat gasses had been used, but with very many disappointments and with nearly as much danger for one's own troops as for the enemy, so true is it that gas is the least controllable of all weapons. Many suicidal or accidental poisonings are there to prove it. But since the end of the war some Americans who wished for a more humane method of putting condemned prisoners to death, believed that nothing would be at the same time more humane and easier than to use a powerful gas to put the man to sleep until death would result. It was when they wanted to put their idea into practice that they realized the difficulties. The first execution of a condemned man by hydrocyanic gas took place in the penitentiary at Carson City in 1924; it narrowly missed turning into a catastrophe for the entourage. It was necessary to wait until 1936/1938 in order to obtain more reliable gas chambers. But even today, this method of execution remains critical for the executioners and for the entourage.

   

  The small cockpit called a gas chamber is made entirely of glass and steel in order to avoid having the gas stick too much to the surfaces or penetrate them. The glass and steel are very thick for various technical reasons and especially in order that a vacuum can be created in the cockpit with a view to assuring it a good air-tightness; but a vacuum thus created brings some risks of implosion. The construction is thus very strong.

   

  Once the condemned person is killed by the emission of the gas the real difficulties begin. It is in effect necessary to enter into a place which, for the moment, is full of deadly gas and it is necessary there to handle a corpse impregnated with that gas.

   

  The gas is not evacuated toward a chimney in the direction of the air outside; this would be too dangerous. In fact, it is driven back in the direction of a mixer where it is neutralized by a chemical base (ammonia). The acid thus gives way to a salt which will be washed away with a great deal of water. Nevertheless, the place still remains dangerous for a long time, as does the corpse. For the doctor and his aides who will have to enter the place and drag out the body, some precautions remain necessary. They will wait until a warning product (phenolphthaline) signals them that the deadly gas has been neutralized, at least for the most part. They will wear masks with special filtering cartridges. They will be wearing gloves and rubber aprons. They will wash the corpse very carefully with a jet, particularly in the mouth and in all of the folds of the body.

   

  Beforehand, the simple preparation of the gas chamber for an execution will have required two days of work for two specialized men. The machinery is relatively important.

   

  To use hydrocyanic gas to kill only one man is thus much more complicated and dangerous than one would generally imagine.

   

  One must not confuse the complicated gas chambers which the use of this dangerous gas demands, with the rudimentary buildings that all the armies in the world use to train recruits in the wearing of gas masks with ordinary filter cartridges. These places are also called gas chambers. The gas used is relatively not very poisonous and is ventilated easily; the air-tightness of such buildings is quite relative.

   

  When one knows all this, one is quite surprised at reading the testimonies or confessions about the use that the Germans are supposed to have made of Zyklon B to execute not one man at a time but hundreds or thousands of human beings at a time. The most complete of those testimonies or confessions is that of the first of three successive commandants of Auschwitz: Rudolf Höss (whose name must not be confused with that of Rudolf Hess, the prisoner of Spandau). Rudolf Höss is supposed to have drawn up for his jailers and for his communist judges a confession whose text is supposed to have been reproduced in 1958, or eleven years later, in its original language by Dr. Martin Broszat, a member of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. That confession is known to the general public under the title Commandant of Auschwitz. First on page 166 , then on page 126 of the German edition of the book one learns this:

   

  A half hour after having released the gas (i.e. Zyklon B), they would open the door (of the gas chamber where there are several thousands of victims) and would start the apparatus for airing it out. They would begin immediately to take out the bodies.

   

  He goes on to say that this tremendous job of taking out thousands of bodies, from which they removed the gold teeth or cut the hair, was carried out by resigned and indifferent people who during all that time did not cease to smoke and to eat.

   

  That description is surprising. If those people smoked and ate, they were not even wearing gas masks. How could they smoke in a place with vapors from an inflammable and explosive gas? How could all of that be done near the doors of the crematory ovens in which they were burning thousands of bodies? How could they enter into a gas chamber still full of gas to handle those bodies that were full of gas, and that immediately after the opening of the door? How could they devote themselves to such a gigantic job for some hours when specialists, equipped with masks, can only remain in such an atmosphere for several minutes and on condition that they only devote themselves to efforts that do not go beyond the effort required to open windows that are easy to open? How could they, with bare hands, extract teeth and cut hair when one knows that, in an American gas chamber, the first concern of the doctor who enters into the cockpit with mask involves tousling the hair of the corpse with his rubber-gloved hands in order to expel from it the molecules of hydrocyanic gas which have remained in the hair of that corpse in spite of all of the precautions taken? Who are these beings endowed with supernatural powers? From what world do these tremendous creatures come? Do they belong to our world which is ruled by inflexible, known laws of the physicist, the doctor, the chemist, the toxicologist? Or do they indeed belong to the world of the imagination where all those laws, even the law of gravity, are overcome by magic or disappear by enchantment?

   

  If Rudolf Höss still lived, we would be able to pose these questions to him. Unfortunately, after his confession to the communists he was hanged. It remains for us therefore to pose these questions to other persons who have born witness before the courts and who say they have seen these "gas chambers" functioning. No court has yet posed questions of this type, for example, to a Dov Paisikovic or to a Filip Müller. Fortunately, what the judges have not done, an American historical institute did on 3 September 1979 at Los Angeles. The Institute for Historical Review (PO Box 1306, Torrance, California, 90505) has even promised a reward of $50,000.00. But, for nearly a year, no candidate has made himself known, not even Filip Müller, who lives in West Germany (68 Mannheim, Hochofenstrasse 31). His book, recently published in German, in English and in American and in French does not bring any element of an answer to the questions posed. In truth, furthermore, it accumlates still more mysteries and the affair becomes inextricable.

   

  Sources

   

  On Zyklon, see the Nürnberg documents NI-9098 and, especially, NI-9912.

   

  On the necessary gas mask, see a work of the French Army, translated from an American Army manual: The Gas Mask, Technical Manual No. 3-205, translated from the American, TM 3-205 (1-2), War Department, Washington, 22 September 1943, a manual drawn up under the direction of the Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943, 154pp. See, in particular, p55.

   

  On the testimony attributed to Rudolf Höss, see: Kommandant in Auschwitz, Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Martin Broszat, 1958, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt.

   

  On Filip Müller, see: Sonderbehandlung, Drei Jahre in den Krematorien und Gaskammern von Auschwitz, Deutsche Bearbeitung von Helmut Freitag, Miinchen, Verlag Steinhausen, 1979, 287pp. Translated into American: Eyewitness Auschwitz, Three Years in the Gas Chambers, Literary Collaboration of Helmut Freitag, foreword by Yehuda Bauer Stein and Day, 1979, 180pp. Translated into the French: Trois ans dons une chambre à gaz d' Auschwitz: Le Témoignage de l'un des seuls rescapés des commandos spéciaux, Pygmalion./Gérard Watelet, 1980, 252pp, with a preface by Claude Lanzman.

   

  Additional

   

  I keep at the disposal of every witness or of every court a study which ends with the following question: "What proof is there demonstrating the existence of 'gassing' at Auschwitz which did not already demonstrate the existence of 'gassing' at Dachau?"

   

  We know today that there was never any "gassing" at Dachau, but for many years they presented a host of proofs and testimonies thanks to which they claimed to demonstrate the reality of those "gassings." It seemed to me to be a good idea to refer back to the proofs and testimonies proving that there had been some "gassings" at Ravensbrück where we likewise know that there were none. My conclusion is the following: between on the one hand the documents about Dachau (or about Ravensbrück) and, on the other hand, the documents about Auschwitz, there is no difference in quality, but only in quantity. On those first "gas chambers" or on the first "gassings," they have made up stories only during some 15 years, while on the others they have made up stories for 35 years. In one case as in the other we are not lacking either official documents or details to the nearest centimeter.

   

  Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 312-317.

   

  Published with permission of and courtesy to the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

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• The Gas Chambers: Truth or Lie?

   

  The Gas Chambers: Truth or Lie?

   

  Questions by Antonio Pitamitz To Robert Faurisson (Storia Illustrata, August 1979)

  Translated by Vivian Bird

  Expanded, Reviewed, Corrected by Dr. Robert Faurisson

   

  QUESTION 1: Monsieur Faurisson, for some time now in France - and not only in France - you have found yoursellf at the center of a bitter controversy resulting from certain things which you have asserted on the subject of what is still one of the most somber pages in the history of the Second World War. We refer to the extermination of the Jews on the part of the Nazis. In particular, one of your assertions appears as dogmatic as it is incredible. Is it true that you deny that the gas chambers ever existed?

   

  ANSWER 1:

   

  I assert, in fact, that these famous alleged homicidal "gas chambers" are nothing but a tall story of wartime. This invention of wartime propaganda is comparable to the widespread legends of the First World War about "Teutonic barbarism." The Germans were then already accused (in the First World War) of completely imaginary crimes; of Belgian children with hands cut off; crucified Canadians; corpses turned into soap.[1] The Germans, I suppose, said similar things about the French.

   

  German concentration camps did really exist but the whole world knows that they were not original or unique to the Germans. Crematorium ovens have also existed in certain of these camps, but incineration is no more offensive or criminal than burial. The crematorium ovens even constitute progress from the sanitary point of view where there was a risk of epidemics. Typhus ravaged the whole of wartime Europe. The majority of corpses which are shown to us in photos are clearly the corpses of typhus victims. These photos illustrate the fact that the internees-and sometimes the guards-died of typhus. They prove nothing other than this. To exploit the fact that the Germans at times used crematorium ovens is not very honest. In asserting this one counts on the repulsion or feeling of unease and disquiet felt by people accustomed to burial and not to incineration. Imagine an oceanic population accustomed to burning its dead. Tell such a people that you bury your own and you will appear a kind of savage. Perhaps they would even suspect that in Europe persons "more or less alive" are placed in the earth! One displays one's complete dishonesty when in the same way, one presents as homicidal "gas chambers" the fumigation chambers (autoclaves) which were in reality used for the disinfecting of garments by gas. This never clearly formulated accusation has now been almost totally abandoned, but in certain museums or in certain books we are still confronted with a photo of one of these autoclaves, sited at Dachau, with an American soldier in front, about to decipher the time-table for gassings.[2]

   

  Another form of gassing really existed in the German camps: this is the fumigation of buildings by gas to exterminate vermin. For this purpose the renowned Zyklon B was used, around which a fantastic legend has been built up. Zyklon B, whose license goes back to 1922,[3] is still used today, notably for the disinfecting of furniture, of barracks, of silos, of ships, but also for the destruction of fox burrows or of pests of all kinds.[4] It is very dangerous to handle for, as the letter "B" indicates, it is "Blausaure" ("blue" acid or prussic acid or hydrocyanic acid). In passing, it is worth noting that the Soviets, misunderstanding the significance of this letter, accused the Germans of having killed deportees with Zyklon A and with Zyklon B![5]

   

  But let us turn to the alleged homicidal "gas chambers." Until, the year 1960 1 still believed in the reality of these human abattoirs where, using industrial methods, the Germans would have killed internees in industrial quantities.

   

  Then I learned that certain authors regarded the reality of these "gas chambers" as contestable; among them Paul Rassimer, who had been deported to Buchenwald and then to Dora. These authors ended up by forming a group of historians describing themselves as Revisionists. I studied their arguments. Of course, I also studied the arguments of the official historians. The latter believed in the reality of extermination in the "gas chambers." They are, if one wishes to so describe them, the "Exterminationists."[6] For many years I minutely examined the arguments of one and another. I went to Auschwitz, to Majdanek, and to Struthof. I have searched, in vain, for a single person capable of telling me: "I have been interned in such a camp and I have seen there, with my own eyes, a building which was undoubtedly a gas chamber." I have read many books and documents. For many years, I have studied the archives of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC) at Paris. Obviously, I took a special interest in the so-called "war crimes" cases.

   

  I have devoted very special attention to what has been presented to me as being "admissions" on the part of the SS or of Germans generally. I am not going to enumerate for you here the names of all the specialists whom I have consulted. Strangely enough, it only took a few minutes of conversation before these "specialists" in question would declare to me: "Now, you must know, I am not a specialist on gas chambers. " And an even more curious thing: there does not exist to this day any book, nor even any article from the Exterminationist school on the subject of the "gas chambers." I know that perhaps certain titles can be quoted to me, but these titles are deceptive.[7] In reality, in the formidable mountain of writings devoted to the German camps, there exists nothing which concerns their sine qua non: the "gas chambers!" No Exterminationist has written on the "gas chambers." The most one can say is that Georges Wellers, of the CDJC, attempted to address this subject in an attempt to plead for partial acceptance of the veracity of the Gerstein document, about the Belzec[8] "gas chambers."

   

  On the other hand, the Revisionists have written quite a lot about the "gas chambers" to say that their existence was dubious, or to affirm frankly that their existence was impossible. My personal opinion is joined to the latter. The existence of the "gas chambers" is completely impossible. My reasons are primarily those which the Revisionists have accumulated in their publications. Next, there are those proofs which I have discovered myself.

   

  I have thought it necessary to start at the beginning. You know that in general it takes a long time to perceive that one actually ought to have begun at the beginning. I realized that all of us would talk of the "gas chambers" as if we knew the sense of these words.

   

  Among all those who make statements, speeches or use sentences in which the expression "gas chamber" appears, how many of those people actually know what they are talking about? It has not taken me very long to realize that many people commit one of the most glaring errors. These people imagine a "gas chamber" as being similar to a mere bedroom under the door of which a household gas is released. These people forget that an execution by gas is by definition profoundly different from a simple suicidal or accidental asphyxiation. In the case of an execution, one must carefully avoid all risk of illness, poisoning or death for the executioner and his crew. Such a risk is to be avoided before, during and after the execution. The technical difficulties implied herein are considerable. I was most anxious to know how domestic minks were gassed, how foxes were gassed in foxholes, and how in the U.S. a person who was sentenced to death was executed by gassing. I have found that, in the vast majority of cases, hydrocyanic acid was used for such purposes. This was precisely the same gas which the Germans used to fumigate their barracks. It was also with this gas that they allegedly killed groups of individuals as well as great masses of people. I have therefore studied this gas. I wanted to know its use in Germany and in France. I have reviewed ministerial documents governing the use of this highly toxic product. I had the good fortune of discovering some documents on Zyklon B and hydrocyanic acid which had been gathered by the Allies in the German industrial archives at Nürnberg.

   

  Then, with greater scrutiny I re-examined certain statements and confessions which had been made in German and Allied courts concerning the use of Zyklon B for putting prisoners to death, and I was shocked. And now, you in turn will also be shocked. I will first read to you the statement or confession of Rudolf Höss. Then, I will tell you the results of my research, purely physical, on hydrocyanic acid and Zyklon B. (Please bear in mind R. Höss was one of the three successive commanding officers at Auschwitz; all three of whom were detained and interrogated by the Allies. Only Höss left a confession, for which we are indebted to his Polish jailers.[9])

   

  In this confession, the description of the actual gassing is remarkably short and vague. However, it is essential to realize that all those others who claim to have been present at this sort of an operation are also vague and brief and that their statements are full of contradictions on certain points. Rudolf Höss writes, "Half an hour after having released the gas, the door would be opened and the fan turned on. The bodies immediately began to be removed."[10] I call your attention to the word "immediately"; in German the word is sofort. Höss then adds that the crew in charge of handling and removing 2,000 bodies from the "gas chamber" and transporting them to the crematory ovens did so while "eating or smoking"; therefore, if I understand correctly, these duties were all performed without gas masks. Such a description runs counter to all common sense. It implies that it is possible to enter an area saturated with hydrocyanic acid without taking any precautionary measures in the barehanded handling of 2,000 cyanided cadavers which were probably still contaminated with the fatal gas. The hair (which was supposedly clipped after the operation) was undoubtedly impregnated with the gas. The mucous membranes would have been impregnated also. Air pockets between the bodies which were supposedly heaped one on top of the other would have been filled with the gas. What kind of superpowerful fan is able to instantly disperse so much gas drifting through the air and hidden in air pockets? Even if such a fan had existed, it would have been necessary to perform a test for the detection of any remaining hydrocyanic acid and to develop a procedure for informing the crew that the fan had actually fulfilled its function and that the room was safe. Now, it is abundantly clear from Höss' description that the fan in question must have been endowed with magical powers in order to be able to disperse all of the gas with such flawless performance so that there was no cause for concern or need for verification of the absence of the gas!

   

  What mere common sense suggested is now confirmed by the technical documents concerning Zyklon B and its usage.[11] In order to fumigate a barrack, the Germans were constrained by numerous precautionary measures: specially trained teams which were licensed only after an internship at a Zyklon B manufacturing plant; special materials including especially the "J" filters which when used in gas masks were capable of protecting an individual under the most rigorous toxic conditions; evacuations of all surrounding barracks; warnings posted in several languages and bearing a skull and cross-bones; a meticulous examination of the site to be fumigated in order to locate and seal any fissures or openings; the sealing of any chimneys or airshafts and the removal of keys from doors. The cans of Zyklon B were opened at the site itself. After the gas had apparently killed all the vermin, the most critical operation would begin: this was the ventilation of the site. Sentries were to be stationed at a certain distance from all doors and windows, their backs to the wind, in order to prevent the approach of all persons. The specially trained crew equipped with gas masks would then enter the building and unclog the chimneys and cracks, and open the windows. This operation completed, they had to go outside again, remove their masks and breathe freely for ten minutes. They had to put their masks on again to re-enter the building and perform the next step. Once all of this work was completed, it was still necessary to wait TWENTY hours. Actually, because Zyklon B was "difficult to ventilate, since it adheres strongly to surfaces," the dispersion of the gas required a long natural ventilation. This was especially important when great volumes of the gas were employed as in the case of a barrack containing more than one floor. (When Zyklon B was used in an autoclave with a total volume of only 10 cubic meters, ventilation (forced or artificially) was still necessary.) After twenty hours had elapsed, the crew would return with their masks on. They would then verify by means of a paper test (the paper would turn blue in the presence of hydrocyanic acid) as to whether or not the site was indeed again fit for human habitation. And so we see that a site which had been gassed was not safely accessible until a minimum of 21 hours had elapsed. As far as French legislation is concerned, the minimum is set at 24 hours.[12]

   

  It becomes, therefore, apparent that in the absence of a magical fan capable of instantly expelling a gas that is "difficult to ventilate, since it adheres strongly to surfaces," the "human slaughterhouse" called a "gas chamber" would have been inaccessible for nearly a full day. its walls, floors, ceiling would have retained portions of a gas which was highly poisonous to man. And what about the bodies? These cadavers could have been nothing less than saturated with the gas, just as the cushions, mattresses and blankets discussed in the same technical document on the use of Zyklon B would have been saturated also. These mattresses, etc., had to be taken out of doors to be aired and beaten for an hour under dry atmospheric conditions and for two hours when the weather was humid. When this was accomplished, these items were then heaped together and beaten again if the paper test revealed any further presence of hydrocyanic acid.

   

  Hydrocyanic acid is both inflammable and explosive. How could it then have been used in close proximity to the entrance of crematory ovens? How could one have entered the "gas chamber" while smoking?

   

  I have not yet even touched upon the subject of the superabundance of technical and physical impossibilities which become apparent upon an actual examination of the site and the dimensions of the supposed "gas chambers" at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Moreover, just as an inquisitive fact-finder of the Polish museum may discover, these chambers were in reality nothing more than "cold storage rooms" (mortuaries) and were typical of such rooms both in lay-out as well as size. The supposed "gas chamber" of Krema II at Birkenau, of which there remains only a ruin, was in fact a morgue, located below ground in order to protect it from heat and measuring 30 meters in length and 7 meters down the center to allow for the movement of wagons). The door, the passageways, the freight lift (which measured only 2.10 meters by 1.35 meters) which led to the crematory chamber were all of Lilliputian dimensions in comparison to the insinuations of Höss's account.[13] According to Höss, the gas chamber could easily accommodate 2,000 standing victims, but had a capacity of 3,000. Can you imagine that? Three thousand people crammed into a space of 210 square meters. In other words, to make a comparison, 286 people standing in a room measuring 5 meters by 4 meters! Do not be deceived into believing that before their retreat the Germans blew up the "gas chambers" and crematory ovens to conceal any trace of their alleged crimes. If one wishes to obliterate all trace of an installation which would be intrinsically quite sophisticated, it must be scrupulously dismantled from top to bottom so that there remains not one shred of incriminating evidence. Destruction by means of demolition would have been ingenuous. If explosives had been employed, mere removal of the concrete blocks would still have left this or that telltale sign. As a matter of fact, Poles of the present day Auschwitz museum have reconstructed the remains of some "Kremas" (meaning, in reality, reconstructions of crematoria and supposed "gas chambers"). However, all of the artefacts shown to tourists attest to the existence of crematory ovens rather than to anything else.[14] If it was the Germans who dynamited those installations (as an army often does in retreat) it was precisely because those installations concealed nothing suspicious. In Majdanek, on the other hand, they left intact installations which were dubbed "gas chambers" after the war.

   

  In the U.S.A. the first execution by gassing took place on 8 February 1924 in the prison of Carson City, Nevada. Two hours after the execution, poison traces were still to be found in the grounds of the prison. Mr. Dickerson, warden of the prison, declared that as far as the condemned man was concerned, the method of execution was certainly the most humane so far used. But he added that he would reject this method in the future because of the danger to the witnesses.[15] Recently, on 22 October 1979, Jesse Bishop was executed by gas at the same prison.

   

  The real gas chambers, such as those created in 1924 and developed by the Americans around 1936-1938 offer some idea of the inherent complexity of such a method of execution.[16] The Americans, for one thing, only gas one prisoner at a time normally (some gas chambers exist, however, which are equipped with two seats for the execution of two brothers, for example). The prisoner is totally immobilized. He is poisoned by the hydrocyanic acid (actually by the dropping of sodium cyanide pellets into a container of sulfuric acid and distilled water which results in release of hydrocyanic acid gas). Within approximately 40 seconds, the prisoner dozes off, and in a few minutes he dies. Apparently, the gas causes no discomfort. As in the case of Zyklon B, it is the dispersion of the gas which causes problems. Natural ventilation for 24 hours is not possible in this case. Obviously, the location of the site of execution precludes such ventilation without seriously endangering the guards as well as other prison inmates. What, then, is the best course of action with a gas which poses such difficult problems of ventilation? The solution is to transform the acidic vapors into a solid salt which can then be flushed out with water. For this purpose, ammonia vapors which are basic are used to react with the acid vapors to form the salt by chemical reaction. When the hydrocyanic acid has all but vanished, a warning signal would alert the attending physician and his aides who are located on the opposite side of a glass barrier. The warning signal is phenolphtalein. It is arranged in containers located at various places in the chamber and turns from pink to purple in the absence of hydrocyanic acid. Once the absence of the poison is indicated and once an arrangement of fans draws the ammonia fumes out through an exhaust vent, the physician and his assistants enter the chamber wearing gas masks. Rubber gloves are used to protect the hands. The doctor ruffles through the convict's hair so as to brush out any residual hydrocyanic acid. Only after a full hour has elapsed since the death, can the doctor and his assistants enter the chamber. The convict's body is washed very carefully and the room is hosed down. The ammonia gas has by this time been expelled via a high chimney stack above the prison. Because of the danger to guards who are normally stationed in the prison watch towers, in some prisons the guards are required to leave their post during such an execution. I will just mention the other requirements for a completely air-tight gas chamber such as the need for locks, "Herculite" glass barriers of considerable thickness (because of the risk of implosion since a vacuum has to be made) a vacuum system, mercury valves, etc.

   

  A gassing is not an improvisation. If the Germans had decided to gas millions of people, a complete overhaul of some very formidable machinery would have been absolutely essential. A general order, instructions, studies, commands and plans would surely have been necessary also. Such items have never been found. Meetings of experts would have been necessary: of architects, chemists, doctors, and experts in a wide range of technical fields. Disbursements and allocations of funds would have been necessary. Had this occurred in a state such as the Third Reich, a wealth of evidence would surely have survived. We know, for example, down to the pfennig the cost of the kennel at Auschwitz and of the bay trees which were ordered for the nurseries. Orders for projects would have been issued. Auschwitz and Birkenau would not have been camps where so much coming and going would have been allowed. In fact, it was because of all this to-ing and fro-ing, and in order to prevent any increase in escapes, that it was found necessary for registration numbers to be tattooed onto prisoners' arms.[17] Civilian workers and engineers would not have been permitted to mingle with the inmates. Passes would not have been granted to Germans in the camp, and their family members would not have had visiting rights. Above all, the prisoners who had served their sentences would not have been released and permitted to return to their respective countries: that well guarded secret among historians was revealed to us several years ago in an article by Louis De Jong, Director of the Institute of World War II History of Amsterdam.[18]

   

  Moreover, in the United States the recent publication of aerial photographs of Auschwitz deals a death blow to the extermination fable: even in the summer of 1944 at the height of the influx of Hungarian Jews, there is no indication of any human pyre or throng of prisoners near the crematorium (but an open gate and a landscaped area are clearly visible) and there is no suspicious smoke (although the smoke stacks of the crematoria reportedly spewed forth flames continuously that were visible from a distance of several kilometers both day and night).[19]

   

  I will conclude with a comment on what I regard as the criterion of false evidence regarding the gas chambers. I have noticed that all of these statements, vague and inconsistent as they are, concur on at least one point: the crew responsible for removing the bodies from the "gas chambers" entered the site either "immediately" or a "few moments" after the deaths of the victims. I contend that this point alone constitutes the cornerstone of the false evidence, because this is a physical impossibility. If you encounter a person who believes in the existence of the "gas chambers," ask him how, in his opinion, the thousands of cadavers were removed to make room for the next batch.

   

  QUESTION 2: How can you assert this, after all that has been said and written during the past 35 years? After all that the survivors of the camps have recounted? After the cases brought against war criminals? After Nürnberg? Upon what proofs and upon what documents do you base your assertions?

   

  ANSWER 2:

   

  Many historical errors have lasted more than 35 years. What certain "survivors" have recounted does indeed constitute evidence, but it is evidence among others. Testimony evidence alone is not proof. In particular, the "evidence" presented at the "war crimes" trials ought to be examined with special caution. Unless I am mistaken, not a sole witness in 35 years has ever been prosecuted for perjury; a fact which amounts to giving a watertight guarantee to everyone desirous of providing evidence of "war crimes." Furthermore, this also explains the fact that earlier tribunals have "established" the existence of "gas chambers" in parts of Germany where it has now been finally and firmly established that there were none (for example, throughout the entire territory of the Old Reich).

   

  The judgements pronounced at Nürnberg have only a relative value. The vanquished were judged by their victors. There was not the least possibility of appeal. Articles 19 and 21 of the Statutes of this political tribunal cynically gave it the right of not having to have solid proof, they even validated hearsay evidence.[20] All the other trials for "war crimes" have, as a result, been inspired by the legislation at Nürnberg. The trials of witches and sorcerers through the centuries used to proceed in such a manner.

   

  There have existed, at least at first glance, "proofs" and "witnesses" of gassing at Oranienburg, at Buchenwald, at Bergen-Belsen, at Dachau, at Ravensbrück, and at Mauthausen. Professors, priests, Catholics, Jews, Communists, have all attested to the existence of "gas chambers" in these camps, and of their use for killing internees. To take only one example: Mgr. Piguet, Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, has written that Polish priests have passed through the "gas chambers" of Dachau.[21] But since 1960 it has been officially recognized that no one was ever gassed at Dachau.[22]

   

  But even more outrageous: there have been many cases where those in charge in certain camps have confessed to the

   

  existence and the functioning of homocidal "gas chambers" where it has since been revealed by investigation that none ever existed. As far as Ravensbrück is concerned, the commandant of the camp (Suhren), his deputy (Schwarzhuber), and the camp doctor (Dr. Treite), have all admitted to the existence of a "gas chamber" and have even described, in a vague fashion, its operation.[23] They were executed or they committed suicide.

   

  The same scenario existed for the commandant Ziereis at Mauthausen who, in 1945, on his death bed, is reported to have also made such confessions.[24]

   

  One should not immediately assume that the admissions of the Ravensbrück administrators were extorted from them by the Russians or by the Poles. It was actually the judicial apparatus of Britain and of France which obtained these confessions. An even more disturbing factor is that the "confessions" were extracted several years after the war's end. The necessary pressure continued to be applied to such unfortunates right up until as late as 1950, when a man like Schwarzhuber collaborated with his interrogators, or his judges, or his bench magistrates.

   

  No serious historian pretends any longer that people were gassed in any camp anywhere in the Old Reich. Today, allegations are only made about certain camps situated in Poland. 19 August 1960 constituted an important date in the history of the myth of the "gas chambers." On this day, the newspaper Die Zeit published a letter which was entitled "No gassing at Dachau."[25] From the content of the letter, a better title would have been "No gassing anywhere in the Old Reich"; (Germany with its 1937 frontiers.) This letter emanated from Dr. Martin Broszat, director since 1972 of the Institute of Contemporary History at Munich. This Dr. Broszat is a convinced anti-Nazi. He belongs to the group of Exterminationist historians. He believes in the authenticity of the "confessions" of Rudolf Hoss, which he published in 1958 (but with serious cuts of the text in the passages where Hoss had exaggerated "a little too much"-probably obeying the suggestions of his Polish jailers.[26] In brief, Dr. Broszat admitted on 19 August 1960 that gassing had never existed in the whole of the Old Reich. He added, using a confused expression, that there had been gassing "above all"(?) at some chosen points in Poland, for instance Auschwitz.[27]

   

  All the official historians, as far as I know, have concluded by agreeing with Dr. Broszat. I deplore the fact that Dr. Broszat has contented himself with only a letter. A scientific paper was necessary, and detailed explanations were indispensable. It was necessary to explain to us why the proof, the evidence, and the confessions-all of which were considered unimpeachable up to that point-had suddenly lost all of their value. We are still waiting for the explanations of Dr. Broszat after nearly 20 years.[28] They would be valuable to us in determining if the proof, the evidence, and the confessions which we possess on the gassings at Auschwitz or Treblinka[29] are more valuable than the proof, evidence, and confessions which we possess on the faked gassings of Buchenwald or of Ravensbrück. In the meantime, it is extremely curious that the evidence collected (mainly) by the French, British and American tribunals should suddenly lose all its value in this way, while the evidence collected by the Polish and Soviet tribunals should preserve its value on the same subject!

   

  In 1968, it was the turn of the "gas chamber" at Mauthausen (in Austria) to be declared mythical by an Exterminationist historian: Olga Wormser-Migot, in her thesis on The Nazi Concentration Camp System, in particular the section titled "The problem of the gas chambers."[30] Let us retain this heading; for according to the admissions of the Exterminationist historians themselves, there does exist a "PROBLEM of the gas chambers!"

   

  In regard to the false confessions, I one day asked the Exterminationist historian Joseph Billig (attached to the CDJC) how he could, for his part, explain them. Here is his reply: They were, so he said, "psychotic phenomena!" For my part, I have an explanation to offer about these alleged "psychotic phenomena" as well as about the "schizoid apathy" of Höss on the day of his depositions before the Nürnberg Tribunal. Höss had been tortured by his British jailers.[31] He had been "interrogated with a riding whip and primed with alcohol." Likewise at the Dachau Trial, the Americans-as revealed in particular by the Van Roden Commission of inquiry-had abominably tortured other German accused.[32]

   

  But torture more often than not is useless. The procedures of intimidation are numerous. The massive universal condemnation which was brought to bear on the accused Nazis still retains its potency today. When "Anathema resounds with a religious unanimity as dignified as in the great mediaeval communions" there is nothing one can do against it, especially if the lawyers come into play, and impress upon the defendants that concessions are necessary. I well remember my own hatred of the Germans during the war, and just after its end. It was an incandescent hatred which I believed was voluntary. But with the passing of time, I perceived that it was not in fact mine but had been breathed into me. My hatred stemmed from the British radio, from the propaganda of Hollywood, and from the Stalinist press. I myself would have been merciless toward any German who should have told me that he had been a guard at some camp, and that he had not seen any of the massacres which the entire world talked about. If I had been his judge, then I would have considered it my duty to force him to "confess."

   

  For 35 years this scenario involving German defendants has been comparable to that against witches and sorcerers of the Middle Ages. Let us consider for a moment the incredible courage which would be needed for one of these accused witches to dare to say to her tribunal: "The best proof that I have not had dealings with the Devil is simply that the Devil does not exist." Most of the time, those so-called witches could not believe the facts they were blamed for, but they would go along with, or pretend to go along with, their accusing-judges' belief in the Devil. (Accusing-judges during the French Revolution were at one and the same time judge and prosecutor.) In the same way, Dr. Dürrfeld, who had been an engineer at Auschwitz, initially told his judges that he personally had never suspected the existence of "gas chambers" in the camp; then later, joining the fashionable belief, he declared to the tribunal his indignation at "this brand of infamy for the German people."[33]

   

  The witch would use deceit with her judges, just as the Germans, even today during the "Majdanek" trial in Düsseldorf, deceive their judges too. For example, the witch might admit that the Devil had been there on such and such a day, but that he was at the top of a hill while she herself had remained at the foot of the hill. Likewise, a German defendant endeavors to demonstrate that he himself had nothing to do with the "gas chambers." Sometimes, he even goes so far as to say that he assisted in pushing people into the "gas chamber" or even that he was ordered to pour a product through a trap in the ceiling under threat of execution if he disobeyed.[34] Thus, he often gives the impression of sidestepping the issue. His accusers think: "Here again is one who seeks to get out of his predicament. They are extraordinary, these Germans! They almost never saw or heard anything!" The truth, however, is that they neither saw nor knew anything concerning what it was wished they should say in the matter of gassing.[35] Any reproach should be directed at the accusers, not at the defendants who are caught up in the only defense strategy left open to them. The lawyers have a grave responsibility for the adoption of this strategy. I do not speak of those lawyers who, like nearly everyone, believe that the "gas chambers" existed. I speak of those who know or suspect that they are confronted with an enormous lie. They prefer not to raise this question, either in their own interests or in their clients' interests. Eichmann's lawyer did not believe in the existence of the "gas chambers" but that did not prevent him from deliberately avoiding opening this can of worms at the trial in Jerusalem.[36] One cannot reproach him for this. I understand that the statute of this tribunal allowed for the dismissal of the defense lawyer if he should present any argument which fitted the term "intolerable" or a term approximating this.

   

  An old resort of lawyers, a resort necessitated on occasion by the needs of the defense, is to plead the seeming truth rather than the actual truth. The truth is sometimes too difficult to gain acceptance into the judges' minds. One has to be contented with pragmatism. An example admirably demonstrates this. It is recounted by Maitre Albert Naud, the lawyer representing Lucien Léger, whom the entire French press regarded as the perpetrator of an abominable crime. Lucien Léger protested his innocence. He chose Mailtre Naud as his lawyer. The lawyer went to see him in prison. He said to him: "Léger, be serious! If you want me to be your lawyer, we are going to plead guilty." A bargain was struck. Léger saved his head. Some years later, Maitre Naud became convinced that Léger was innocent. He developed an enormous complex because he had forced Léger to plead guilty. He summoned all of his powers to obtain a retrial.[37] Too late. Naud died. And Léger, if he is innocent, will probably pay until the end of his days for the abominable attitude of the press and the blindness of his lawyer.

   

  A tribunal has no capacity for determining historical truth. Even historians have very often the utmost trouble in distinguishing the factual truth on a point of history. The independence of the judges is necessarily very relative. Judges read newspapers just like everyone else. They keep informed, at least in part, through the radio or television. Reviews and books present to them, as to all of us, "documents" or "photographs" of Nazi atrocities. Unless they are especially skilled in the critical appraisal of this kind of document or photos, they tend to fall into the more blatant traps of the media-orchestrated propaganda. Simultaneously, the judges are concerned to bring about respect for public order, public morality, certain norms, usages and beliefs, even, of public life. All of this, without counting the anxiety of ever seeing their name vilified in the press, can only be conducive to judgements in matters of "war crimes" which the historian himself is not obliged to accept as his own.

   

  Justice has been itself judged. At no time during this kind of trial has justice considered asking for an expert's report about the weapon of the crime. When they are suspected of being instruments of a crime, items such as a knife, a rope, or a revolver, are all subject to expert forensic appraisal. Yet, those objects have nothing mysterious about them. But in the case of the "gas chambers" there has not been a single forensic appraisal in 35 years! There is certainly talk of an appraisal supposedly made by the Soviets, but in every case the text of it seems to have remained secret.

   

  For one and a half years, at the Frankfurt trial of 1963-65, a German tribunal conducted the affair called "the Auschwitz guards trial," without ordering any expert forensic appraisal of the actual device used for the crime. The same happened at the Majdanek trial at Düsseldorf and, just after the war, for the Struthof trial in France. This absence of forensic expertise is even less excusable when one considers that not one judge, not one prosecutor, not one lawyer, possessed any experience on the nature and the functioning of these extraordinary "human abattoirs." At Struthof and Majdanek these "chambers" are, however, still represented as being an original fixture: therefore it would suffice to examine the "instrument of the crime" on the spot.

   

  At Auschwitz things are less clear. At the principal camp (Auschwitz 1) tourists are led to believe that the "gas chamber" is authentic, but when the museum authorities are pressed with questions, they beat a retreat and talk of a "replica" (which is nothing other than downright deceit, easily proved as such from certain archive documents). At the Birkenau annex (Auschwitz II) one is only shown the ruins of the "gas chambers." But even there forensic examination is perfectly possible. To an archaeologist even a few meager indices sometimes suffice in order to reveal the nature and the purpose of an encampment inhabited for several centuries. To give you some idea of the complacent attitude taken by the lawyers at the trial in Frankfurt, even to the extent of agreeing with the accusations in advance(!), I would tell you that one of these lawyers even had his photograph taken by the press in the process of lifting a trapdoor (sic!) of the pretended "gas chamber" at the principal camp at Auschwitz.[38] Ten years after the trial I asked this lawyer what had caused him to consider the building in question a "gas chamber." His written reply was more than evasive. It resembled the reply which has been made to me by the authorities of the Dachau Museum. I asked the Dachau people in writing upon what documents did they base their confirmation that a certain piece of camp equipment was an unfinished "gas chamber." In effect, I was surprised to learn that it could be determined that an unfinished structure was destined to become, once completed, a thing which no one had ever seen in his life. One day I will publish my correspondence with these authorities as well as with the officials of the International Dachau Committee at Brussels.

   

  You ask me upon what proofs and upon what documents I base my declaration that the "gas chambers" never existed. I believe that I have already largely replied to this question. I would add that a good part of these proofs and documents are those of the accusers.[39] It suffices to re-read through the texts of the prosecution in order to perceive that the accusation bordered on the opposite of the result which it wanted to establish. The basic texts are the 42 volumes of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), the 15 volumes of the Nürnberg Military Tribunal (NMT), the 19 volumes published by the University of Amsterdam, the stenographic transcripts of the Eichmann trial, various verbal proceedings relating to interrogations, the works of Hilberg, of Reitlinger, of Adler, of Langbein, of Olga Wormser-Migot, the Encyclopedia judaica, the Memorial by Klarsfeld (very interesting for the list of fake gassings), the publications of different institutes. I have, above all, worked a great deal at the CDJC of Paris. But I was hounded at the beginning of 1978, on the initiative, in particular, of Georges Wellers, because it was known at what conclusions I had already arrived in regard to the "gas chambers" and "genocide." The CDJC is a semi-public body. It receives public money. Nonetheless, it arrogates to itself the right to hound those who do not think as it requires. And it says so!

   

  QUESTION 3: You have gone so far as to deny any deliberate intention on the part of Hitler to exterminate the Jews. And lastly, in the course of a debate on Swiss-Italian television, you have said: "Hitler never had a single person killed because they were Jewish." What exactly do you mean to say with this phrase?

   

  ANSWER 3:

   

  I say exactly this: "Hitler never ordered nor admitted that anyone should be killed on account of his race or his religion."

   

  This phrase is perhaps shocking to certain people, but I truly believe it. Hitler was anti-Jewish and racist. His racism was, moreover, not opposed to fostering admiration for the Arabs and Hindus. He was hostile to colonialism. On 7 February 1945 he declared to his entourage: "The Whites have carried to these (colonial) people the worst that they could carry: the plagues of the world: materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism, and syphilis. Moreover, since what these people possessed on their own was superior to anything we could give them, they have remained themselves... The sole result of the activity of the colonizers is: they have everywhere aroused hatred."[40]

   

  Hitler became hostile to the Jews rather late. Before saying and repeating that the Jews are "the grand masters of the lie"[41] he had been rather favorable toward them. He writes in Mein Kampf. "They were persecuted (on account of their beliefs) as I believed, often making my dislike of unfavorable assertions about them almost reach the point of repugnance."

   

  Personally, I know Hitler rather poorly, and he interests me no more than Napoleon Bonaparte. If he raved, then I do not see why we ourselves should rave about him. Let us make efforts to speak of Hitler with the same sang-froid with which one used to speak of Amenophis Akhenaton. Between Hitler and the Jews there was an inexpiable war. It is evident that each holds the other responsible for this conflict. In the person of Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Jewish Congress (and future president of the state of Israel), the international Jewish community declared war on Germany on 5 September 193.[42] Hitherto, as early as 1934, the hostility of the international Jewish community had been manifested by the exigencies of the economic boycott against Nazi Germany.[43] Obviously it had been motivated by retaliation against the measures taken by Hitler against the German Jews. This deadly chain of events, on the part of both sides, was to lead to the world war. Hitler said: "The Jews and the Allies wish for our annihilation, but it is they who will be destroyed," while the Allies and the Jews said: "Hitler and the Nazis and their allies wish for our destruction, but it is they who will be destroyed." The two hostile camps during the whole course of the war thus intoxicated themselves in belligerent and fanatical proclamations. The enemy became a beast to be slaughtered. Think, in the same fashion, of the words of the Marseillaise: "Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillions!" ("Let our soil be drenched by their impure blood!")

   

  Moreover, the Allies waged a pitiless war against the Nazis, and 35 years after the war's end, still pursue a kind of "Nazi hunt." But in the same way as the Allies never actually decreed that a civilian National Socialist, whether he be a man, woman or child, should be killed solely on a basis of their National Socialism, in the same way it must also be said that Hitler - in spite of all the antipathy he had toward the Jews - never decreed that all Jews, or even one Jew, should be killed on the sole and unique basis of their Jewishness. Although, in the case of reprisals against "partisans" or "terrorists" when the Germans selected their hostages for execution, it was better to be neither a Jew, nor a Communist, nor a common-law criminal, but in that particular case it was a familiar aspect of hostage-taking (to kill the more expendable hostages) just as had been practiced everywhere throughout the ages.

   

  Hitler had a proportion of the European Jews interned, but in no way does internment mean "extermination." There has been neither "genocide" nor "Holocaust." Every concentration camp is a pitiful sight, and a horror, irrespective of whether it is a German, Russian, British, French, American, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese or Cuban camp. There are of course degrees in this pity or this horror, and it is certain that in times of war, of famine, of epidemics, a concentration camp becomes even more horrible. But nothing in the case which concerns us here permits us to say that there were deliberate camps of extermination, i.e. camps where people would have been placed to be killed.

   

  The Exterminationists pretend that in the summer of 1941, Hitler gave the order to exterminate the Jews. But no one has ever seen this order. On the other hand, there exist neither specific conversations of Hitler nor measures taken by his armies, which imply that such an order could not have been given. On 24 July 1942, in a restricted gathering, Hitler recalled that the Jews had declared war on him through the intermediary of Chaim Weizmann, and said that after the war he would close the towns to the Jews, one after the other. His precise words were: "... if the Jewish dregs did not decamp and if they do not emigrate to Madagascar or to some other national Jewish homeland."[44] For my own part, I would like to know just how one can reconcile this talk in a circle of confidants with any "definitive order of extermination" supposedly given one year previously (summer 1941).

   

  Even in July 1944, on the eastern front where the German soldiers were engaged in a ferocious war against the partisans (Jews or non-Jews, Russians or Communists, Ukrainians, etc.) the army gave the most draconian orders that no German soldier should participate in any excesses against the civilian population, Jews included. Otherwise, they would be court-martialled[45]. Such excesses were to be absolutely suppressed. Hitler called for a merciless struggle in the fight, especially against the partisans, including, if it were necessary, against women and children mingling with the partisans or who were apparent accomplices of the partisans. He had evidently not rejected the practice of taking hostages (neither had the Allies, of course). But he did not go beyond that measure. The day our media decide to break with certain taboos and devote to the war crimes of the Allies even one thousandth of the time which they devote to the war crimes of the vanquished, on that day there will be astonishment among the naive public. The "crimes" of Hitler will then take on their correct proportions in a proper historical perspective. There is indeed little talk about Dresden and Katyn. But I say that Dresden and Katyn are small matters when compared to the deportations the Allies inflicted on the German minorities in the eastern territories. It is true that officially it was not a matter of "deportations" but of ... "displacement" (e.g. "displaced persons"). And I wonder if the champions of all the "war criminals" have not been the British with their delivery to the Soviets of their Russian internees?[46]

   

  QUESTION 4: What is your conception and what is your definition of genocide?

   

  ANSWER 4:

   

  I describe "genocide" as the act of killing a man on account of his race. Hitler no more committed "genocide" than Napoleon, Stalin, Churchill or Mao. Roosevelt interned American citizens of Japanese extraction in concentration camps. That was not "genocide."

   

  Hitler treated the civilian Jews as the representatives of a belligerent enemy minority. It is regrettably common to treat this type of civilian as dangerous, or potentially dangerous. In fact, with good war logic, Hitler would have been lead to intern all the Jews who had fallen into his hands. He is very far from having done this, and without doubt this was not on account of any humanitarian motives, but for reasons of practicality. In certain parts of Europe he made his enemies wear a distinctive sign: the Star of David (beginning September 1941 in Germany, and June 1942 in the northern zone of France). The wearers of the star were not free to move about, except during certain hours. They were like prisoners of war on supervised parole. Hitler preoccupied himself perhaps less with the Jewish question than with ensuring the security of the German soldier. The average German trooper would have been incapable of distinguishing Jews from non-Jews. The Star of David identified them.

   

  The Jews were suspected of passing information (many of them spoke German), of engaging in espionage, of trafficking in arms, of terrorism, and of black-marketeering. It was necessary to avoid all contact between the Jew and the German soldier. For example, on the Paris metro Jews wearing the Star of David were only allowed to ride in the last of the five cars, and a German soldier himself had no right to enter this car.[47] I am not a specialist on these questions but I believe that this kind of measure was dictated by reasons of military security as much as by reasons of deliberate humiliation. In places where there were large concentrations of Jews it was virtually impossible to keep them under surveillance (except through the intermediary of the Jewish ghetto police), and the Germans feared an insurrection similar to that which took place in the Warsaw ghetto, where a strategically dangerous uprising took place in April 1943. With stupefaction, the Germans discovered then that the Jews had constructed 700 blockhouses.[48] They suppressed the insurrection and transferred the survivors to transit camps, work camps, and concentration camps. The Jews experienced tragedy there.

   

  I know that it is sometimes argued that children of 6 to 15 years of age could not constitute a danger, and should not have been subjected to the restrictive measures. But to convince us of the contrary there exist today sufficient accounts and memoirs by Jews telling us of their childhood when they committed all sorts of illicit activities or resistance to the Germans.

   

  It is necessary to distinguish between what is real and what is fantasy in the representation which is made that the Jews allowed themselves to be slaughtered like sheep. Did the non-Jews resist as much as it is said? Did the Jews resist as little as it is said? The factor which increases the problem is that too many of our judgements are based on a false premise: that of the "genocide" against the Jews. Obviously, if this "genocide" had existed, then one would perhaps regard the Jews as cowards; this is apparently the reproach which young Israelis make against their fathers. But if, as the Revisionists claim, "genocide" is nothing other than a legend, then the reproach of cowardice no longer has a foundation.

   

  QUESTION 5: If there had not been a deliberate intention on the part of Hitler to carry out genocide, then why Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and the other extermination camps? They existed; they have been a reality. Not only Jews have been imprisoned and died there, but also "politicals," gypsies, Slaves, homosexuals; that is to say, all those "deviants" whom Nazi racism condemned. Why were these camps organized? To what ultimate purpose?

   

  ANSWER 5:

   

  A camp can only be qualified as an "extermination" camp if people are exterminated there. It is so true, that, according to the nomenclature created by the official historians, only those camps where (it is pretended) there existed "gas chambers" can be termed "extermination" camps. These camps have never existed. The horrible epidemic of typhus at Bergen-Belsen did not transform this camp (for a great part without barbed-wire) into an extermination camp. Those dead are not the result of a crime except the crime of war itself, and of human folly. The Allies share with the Germans a grave responsibility for the frightful chaos in which Europe, its towns, its refugee camps, and its internee camps, were found at the end of the war. The Allies have distributed a large number of photographs showing the mass graves of Bergen-Belsen. However, thousands of the internees died of typhus after the entry of the British into Bergen-Belsen. At the time the British did not succeed any more than the Germans before them, in ending this terrible epidemic. Would it have been more honest to treat the British as criminals?

   

  The first Nazi concentration camps were conceived for internment and for re-education (sic!) of the political opponents to Hitler. Propaganda asserted that these camps, open to numerous visits, constituted an advance on prisons where common-law criminals stagnated. Jews were interned there only in so far as they were Communists, Social Democrats, etc. The Jews were placed in the concentration camps only during the war, above all from 1942 onward. Those Jews who had been interned in 1938 as a reprisal for the assassination of von Rath by a Jew had been for the most part set free after only a few months.

   

  Before the war, Hitler had attempted-with a certain amount of success-to promote the exodus of the Jews. The idea was the creation of a Jewish national homeland outside Europe. The "Madagascar project" was conceived as a Jewish homeland under German protection.[49] The initial plans provided, as a matter of priority, drainage works, banking systems, etc. But the war prevented the realization of this project.[50] It would have required too many ships. Little Germany-from the aspect of the map of the world-was engaged with Japan and a few allies in a formidable struggle against giants. The principal concern for Germany was to win the war. A secondary aim was to find a solution to the Jewish problem, a definitive solution; a "final" solution, a "total" solution, to a problem which, in a certain manner, was as old as the Jewish people themselves.[51] This provisional solution, because of the war, was largely going to consist of "driving back toward the East" the Jews in the camps.

   

  Auschwitz was first and foremost a very important complex in Upper Silesia composed of three main camps and 39 sub-camps scattered over the whole of one region. The mining, industrial, agricultural operations, and the researches there, were considerable: coal mines (some with French capital), petro-chemicals, armaments, explosives, synthetics, artificial rubber, cattle-breeding, fish farms, etc. At Auschwitz there were free laborers as well as internees, and prisoners condemned to life imprisonment as well as prisoners interned for a shorter time. In Auschwitz-II or Birkenau camp, there was the distressing spectacle of numerous persons unskilled for any work and stagnating on the spot. Among them were the gypsies, who with few exceptions were not put to work. Numerous gypsy children were born at Auschwitz.[52] It seems that only the nomadic gypsies were interned. This does not seem to have been done for racial reasons, but on account of their nomadism and possible "delinquency." I recall that in France even the Resistance had come to regard the gypsies with suspicion, and had suspected them of espionage, of collecting secret information, and of black market activities.[53] It would be interesting to determine how many gypsy troupes continued to wander around Europe during the war.

   

  As for the homosexuals - classified as delinquents - they were, like many other "delinquents," removed from prison or sent directly to the camps to work there. German legislation, like much other legislation of that epoch, repressed homosexuality. As for the Slavs, those of them who were in the camps were not there because they were Slavs, but as political internees, prisoners of war, etc., as well as other Europeans. At Auschwitz there were even British PoWs, taken prisoner at Tobruk.

   

  The essential pre-occupation of the Germans at the end of 1942 was to put to work all these internees (with the exception of those unable to work, and, it seems, the gypsies) to win the war. At Auschwitz there even existed courses of professional training for the young from 12 to 15 years old, in masonry, for example.[54] The Germans responsible for the deportation of foreigners to the camps insisted upon obtaining the largest possible number of those "capable of work." The foreign governments, for their part, insisted that families should not be separated and that the old and the children should join the convoys. Neither the Jews nor anyone else had any knowledge whatever of leaving for an "extermination" camp, if one is to believe testimonies such as those of Georges Wellers in L'Etoile Jaune à Pheure de Vichy.[55] They had good reason. This "massacre" was happily nothing but a propaganda invention of the war. Besides, it is difficult to conceive that Germany, dramatically short of locomotives, of wagons, of coal, of qualified personnel, and of soldiers, could have laid on such a system of convoys to the "abattoirs." These convoys, I recall, seemed to have had a priority even over the convoys of war materiel.[56] Production, above all, skilled production was what pre-occupied the Germans more than anything in this matter.

   

  QUESTION 6: You have specialized in the literary criticism of texts and documents, but you have made this particular problem your preferred terrain of historical research. Why? What do you wish to say when you continue to assert that there has been a conspiracy of silence concerning the problem of the gas chambers and the extermination of the Jews? Why should a conspiracy of silence exist, and organized by whom?

   

  ANSWER 6:

   

  For me, the critical appraisal of texts and documents aims at establishing the degree of authenticity and veracity of what one reads. One searches therein to distinguish between the true and the false, sense and nonsense, and so on. I suppose that this awareness was destined to guide me to the detection of certain historical fakes, and in particular, to the detection of what in a few years would appear to every historian as a monumental forgery.

   

  The result of the conspiracy of silence surrounding the Revisionist works is that these works are for the most part '6samizdat" ("underground literature").[57] In regard to the authors who do succeed in breaking the wall of silence, they are treated as Nazis, which in turn ostracises them to an intellectual ghetto. The procedures utilized against the non-conformist historians or individuals range from pure criminality to judicial prosecutions, without forgetting the disgusting conduct of the police. All sorts of lobbies are active in attempting to establish a dominant atmosphere or terror. I am aware of that personally. I can no longer teach at the university. My life has become difficult. I am up against enormous power-blocs. Some young people support me. The light will eventually shine through. Some Jews are on my side; they themselves wish to denounce deception and persecution.

   

  I believe rather less in conspiracies and rather more in the force of conformity. The victors of the last war needed to make us believe in the intrinsic evil of the vanquished. Soviets and Westerners, whatever their differences, had found common ground of agreement there. Hollywood and the apparatus of Stalinist propaganda have conjugated their efforts. What a fracas of propaganda! The principal beneficiaries of the operation have been the state of Israel and international Zionism. The principal victims have been the German people - but not its leaders - and the Palestinian people as a whole. But today there is dissension in the air. Zionists and Poles already present us with a divergent version of Auschwitz.

   

  QUESTION 7: You dispute a very large part of the methods which the official historians have applied in this historical research. In your opinion, this chapter in 20th Century history has not been written in the right way. Why, then? And why would those historians have done so?

   

  ANSWER 7:

   

  The official historians have been lacking in their obligations. They have not observed in this matter the routine methods of historical criticism. They have followed the general current, i.e. that which is sponsored by the media. They have allowed themselves to be absorbed by the system. An official historian such as Professor Hellmut Diwald saw the terrible vexation confronting him when he risked simply writing a phrase saying that "genocide" in spite of the abundant literature dedicated to it, is an affair which in essentials "is not yet well elucidated." Under the pressure of the German Jewish organizations, the second edition of his History of the Germans was issued as "re-cast and improved" (sic!) where it was necessary. The courage of Paul Rassinier consisted in having precisely applied the routine methods of historical criticism. In a way he has said to his accusers: "Show me your proof." "Does your document offer guarantees of authenticity?" "Are you sure that this expression, that this phrase, has in fact the meaning which you attribute?" "Where do your figures come from?" "How have you reached these statistics?" "Where does the caption of this photo come from?" "Who says to me that this old woman and this child in this picture are really 'on the road to the gas chambers'?" "Does this pile of shoes signify that people were gassed in this camp or that many of those detained there were in fact employed in making shoes?" "Where is the manuscript of this extraordinary testimony which ought to have only one form and which is published in many, contradictory forms, even by one and the same historian?" And so on, and so on.

   

  Paul Rassinier, modest professor of history and geography, has given a remarkable lesson of clairvoyance and of probity to his eminent colleagues of the university. A genuine revolutionary, a genuine member of the Resistance, a genuine deportee, this man loved the truth in the manner it is necessary to love it: fiercely and above anything else. He has denounced what he calls "the lie of Ulysses." Ulysses, as we know, experienced a hundred trials during exile but, returning home, he recounted a thousand. We know that man finds it difficult not to make up yarns. He is often fond of stories of hunting, fishing, love, and wealth. But above all he is fascinated by stories of atrocities.

   

  The American author Arthur R. Butz has written a book on The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. This book provokes disarray among the Exterminationists. The demonstration is unavoidable. The German edition has been placed on the list of "works dangerous to young people," and steps are now being taken to have it banned altogether in West Germany.[58] The German Wilhelm Stäglich has published Der Auschwitz Mythos (The Auschwitz Myth). The Swedish group Jewish Information has published Auschwitz Exit. A Jew has written Revisionist works: J. G. Burg in Germany. In very recent times, the extreme left review La Guerre Sociale (The Class War) has published a study entitled "From exploitation in the camps to the exploitation of the camps".[59] In Britain, in the United States, in Germany (in this particular country the persecution of Revisionists is merciless), in Australia, in Belgium, in Spain, in France, almost in every part of the world, voices are raised demanding that this absurd war propaganda be finally renounced.

   

  I even know - although I cannot give here their names - of official historians who have awakened from this nightmare. Perhaps they wish to decide to renounce the delights which the Revisionist historian David Irving calls "incest among historians." This figurative expression illustrates the practice which consists of delighting in reassessing what other historians have affirmed and of not reviving the subject except by subtle outbidding. It is instructive to participate in a congress of historians dealing with Nazism. What strange communion in respect of a taboo! Misfortune to those who wish to disturb the expiatory ceremony by the expression of a non-official theme: derision and censure.[60]

   

  QUESTION 8: Are you an anti-Semite? What is your assessment of Nazism?

   

  ANSWER 8:

   

  I am not anti-Semitic. One must avoid imagining anti-Semites everywhere. Those Jews who denounce the imposture of "genocide" are like Catholics who say Fatima is an imposture (where thousands of witnesses are supposed to have seen the sun dance). The truth, or its research, cannot be anti-Semitic. In fact Nazism was the dictatorship of a Führer. It died with the Führer on 30 April 1945. My enemy is vanquished. Do not count on me to spit upon his corpse. As long as I am a man, I will not accept that the German people should be defamed by attributing to them crimes which are without precedent in human history. And above all, I will not accept that the German people are so thoroughly "reeducated" that they are the first to believe in these crimes, and deprecate themselves even more than their leaders require of them. In my capacity as an historian, I merely state that Adenauer, Brandt and Schmidt repeat the lessons they have learned from the conquerors of the West, while their homologs in East Germany repeat the lessons taught them by their conquerors from the East. It is realpolitik, I suppose.

   

  QUESTION 9: You deny also that the number of victims-six million-is credible. But even if the number of victims had been less, does this change anything in the fact that there was genocide? And would the number of victims matter, in fact?

   

  ANSWER 9:

   

  The six million is equivalent to a population of a country like Switzerland. No one at the Nürnberg Trial had the tiniest scrap of evidence capable of backing up such a figure. It was on the morning of 14 December 1945 that the American prosecutor Walsh attempted to insinuate the acceptance of this figure by means of presenting an affidavit by witness Wilhelm Höttl. That very afternoon he was forced to beat a retreat by the intervention of the lawyer Kauffmann, who decisively demanded the appearance of this witness so that he could be cross-examined in regard to this figure. The sad fact is that the press and the historians have retained this figure as if the tribunal had totally believed it.[61]

   

  My estimation is as follows: First, the number of Jews exterminated by the Nazis (or: "victims of genocide") is happily equivalent to zero. Second, the number of Europeans killed by acts of war (often by atrocious acts of war) could be in the order of 40 millions; among them the proportion of European Jews could be somewhere in the order of one million, but more likely, several hundred thousands if one does not count those Jews fighting in the uniforms of military allies - I insist on the fact that, as far as I am concerned, it is an estimate without proper scientific character. Moreover, I have good enough reason to think that the figure of the dead at Auschwitz (Jews and non-Jews) amounts to around 50,000 and not to 4 million, as has been pretended for a long time. (This was before the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich decided to content themselves with one million as the accepted figure.)

   

  As to the number of dead in all the concentration camps from 1933 to 1945, I think that it ought to be 200,000 or, at the most, 360,000. One day I will cite my sources, but today I assert that, if one employs computers, one can without doubt quickly establish the real number of dead. The deportees were indexed in files by many authorities. They left behind much evidence.

   

  QUESTION 10: Do you realize that you can contribute this toward a "rehabilitation" of Nazism?

   

  ANSWER 10:

   

  Is it rehabilitating Nero if it is said that we do not possess any proof that he set Rome on fire? What one must concern oneself with rehabilitating or re-establishing is the truth! (Or at least, whenever it is possible.) The historian ought not to preoccupy himself with how Peter or Paul is going to react. What is important for me is to make my contribution to a truthful history of the Second World War. If an old Nazi happened to say to me that the pretended "gas chambers" and the pretended "genocide" of the Jews constitute one and the same unique historical lie, I would agree with him as much as if he had told me that two and two make four. I would not go further, and I would leave him to his political ideas.

   

  Neo-Nazism is to a large extent an invention of the media who even sell a kind of Hollywood sex-shop Nazism. This is also the case with the imaginary "Odessa File" or the Nazi colonies in South America. Or the fairy-tale re-appearances of Hitler or Bormann. A lot of money is made through these inventions. In Germany, I believe that those whom their political adversaries classify as "Neo-Nazi" form 0.7 percent of the electorate. We live in a fantasmagoria, in a sort of Nazism without Nazis. About this subject, I would refer to the pertinent analyses of Gilbert Comte which appeared in Le Monde 29 and 30 May 1979. Since nothing happens by accident in this world, it is plain that an examination of this "media hype" reveals a complex play of interests, passions, and conflicts, all on a planetary scale. The state of Israel has a vital interest in the maintenance of this fantasmagoria, which contributed so much to its creation in 1948. Even a state such as the French republic has an interest in masking the reality of all of this, thanks to upholding in everyone's mind a vigilance against the worst enemy who ever existed: the well-known vile beast of Nazism, a beast which died 35 years ago and against which it is permitted to let off steam. Consequently you have those perpetual expiatory ceremonies, those condemnations to eternal flames, this necessity of vengeance, of chastisement, of denunciation without any limit of time, of place, or of person.

   

  QUESTION 11: Don't you think that to treat the problem of Jewish genocide in such a manner is a way to discredit the memories upon which the widespread conviction is principally based that anti-Semitism is the worst of all the racism practiced in the course of the 20th Century? Memories which are discredited in fact serve nothing.

   

  ANSWER 11:

   

  Anti-Semitism is not the worst kind of racism, but a good way of making us believe that it is, is to convince us that "genocide" was practiced against the Jews. However, the Zionists have gone too far. They should have listened to those who counselled against the principle of "financial reparations" imposed on Germany in the name, particularly, of "genocide." Unfortunately, Ben Gurion for the state of Israel and Nahum Goldmann, acting at the same time for Israel and the Diaspora, wished to draw a gigantic financial profit from the whole affair. Adenauer was a party to it. That gives the imposture of "genocide" an even more outrageous coloration. Read the stupefying interview of Nahum Goldmann which appeared in number 624 of Nouvel Observateur (25-29 October 1976).[62] One has rarely seen a man so elated and happy at having succeeded in a splendid financial-political operation.

   

  QUESTION 12: In the course of your dispute with all those who contest this thesis, you have also asserted that a good part of what the public knows is only a legend and that this legend has been rendered possible thanks to the indiscriminate use of the mass media. What exactly do you wish to say by this?

   

  ANSWER 12:

   

  This point is grave and fascinating. The responsibility of the media in all of this is overwhelming. For 35 years, on five continents, this legend of "genocide" and "gas chambers" has been presented to us as a truth. Countless millions of people have been abused in this way . It makes one dizzy. What a lesson for those who believe in the quality of diverse and contradictory information! It has needed the heroic struggle of some individuals, of some non-conformist spirits in order to make a rupture in "official" truth. I could write a long study on the methods used by the French newspapers and television in order to stifle information. The courts help them in this, and also the public authorities as a whole. journalists are afraid that in the near future a data bank of information will be installed. This information would result in a classification of news items, which they would scarcely have means to control. But I have some advice for them. If they wish to know what a risk they are running of being deceived, let them look to the past, and-for some of them at their own past. If they wish to know how lies may look in the future, let them study the way in which the most remarkable lie of all time has been jealously guarded. When Louis XIV lied, his lies scarcely reached beyond a few provinces. Today, lies can take on veritable Hollywoodian dimensions. A "docudrama" like Holocaust is the crowning of an edifice. It was not conceivable in the years which followed the war, and which were indeed full of hatred. It has needed thirty years of intoxication. A drug as strong as Holocaust cannot be administered except to patients already long impregnated with other drugs of the same kind and which automatically require even more virulent drugs. But the overdose has produced some salutory effects through the spectacle of our addiction. Some sane reactions have been noticed. I am thinking in particular of the quite remarkable reactions by the "liberated Jew" Michel Rachline in an issue of Le Figaro (3 March 1979).

   

  The non-existence of the "gas chambers" and of "genocide" is good news. Man, although still capable of many horrors, did not bring about these. And even better: millions of men who have been presented to us as accomplices of a monstrous crime or as cowards or as liars have been in fact decent individuals. I have already said that the Jews accused by their children of being driven like sheep into the abattoirs by the Germans do not in fact merit the accusation. I would add that the defendants at Nürnberg and at a thousand other trials were actually telling the truth when they declared to their accusing judges that they did not know of these terrifying massacres. The Vatican and the Red Cross told the truth when they humbly confessed the same ignorance. The Americans, the British, the Swiss, the Swedes, and all those peoples or governments whom the extremist Jews accused of "having done nothing" no longer have any need to show sinful repentance. The most unfortunate result of this gigantic imposture has been, and will still remain for some time to come, the bad conscience which the extremist Jews created among the western peoples, and in particular among the German people. Above all, I do not wish to give the impression that I am in the least making an apology for Nazism. I would even argue that I am capable of presenting a caustically critical analysis of this type of ideology. But I shall not present this analysis so long as the Exterminationists continue to wear us to death with this fake Nazism which continues to be denounced by the majority of official historians. These people, in attacking a Nazism which never existed, give the impression that they are incapable of attacking the reality of Nazism. They make me think of those people who imagine evil as a Devil with his tenterhooks, his pales, and his ovens. In reality, evil, as we well know, is inherent in the life-styles which man has created. So long as we take on mythical forms of evil, genuine evil will continue to be fighting fit. Our society is disconcerted. The medieval Devil has been re-invented right in the middle of the Twentieth Century. People are combating an imaginary enemy. They have better to do. An effort at analysis is necessary. We should open our eyes and recognize what the mass media have made us into. We should unmask that which lobbies, powers and governments seek to mask everywhere.

   

  Footnotes

   

  This absurd legend (consult an anatomist, a chemist, any kind of specialist about it) has been revived but without any great success, in the course of the Second World War. Gitta Sereny makes mention of it in her book Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, London, Andre Deutsch, 1974, 380pp. She says in a footnote of page 141 "The universally accepted story that the corpses were used to make soap and fertilizer is finally refuted by the generally very reliable Ludwigsburg Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crimes." She adds: "The authority has found after considerable research that only one experiment was made, with 'a few corpses from a concentration camp. When it proved impractical, the idea was apparently abandoned.' " The authority she talks about is "die Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltangen zur Aufk1drung NS-Verbrechen." It operates at Ludwigsburg under the direction of Adalbert Rtickerl, a convinced Exterminationist. It would be interesting to get proof of "that only one experiment." Most of the time, when a big lie is revealed, the liars or their sympathizers say that there was only a mistake, and they then put forward to us a little he. I suppose that "that only one experiment" could be one of these little lies.

  In The Journal of Historical Review of Summer 1980, Ditlieb Felderer makes some interesting remarks about "human soap." He says: "Immediately after liberation, in Polticeni, a Romanian town, the district rabbi ordered all soaps to be collected which had the letters RIF written on them. With much weeping and wailing, while the rabbi muttered his Kaddisch prayer, the soaps were then buried in a cemetery. The news report about this incident was later published in the Polish press, and was picked up in books such as F. C. Weiskopf's Elend und Grösse unserer Tage, 1950. The letters RIF actually stand for "Reichsstelle fur Industrielle Fettsversorgung," a German Government outlet which oversaw the production of soap and detergent products. These letters were, however, twisted by the Exterminationists to mean 'Pure Jewish Fat' (Rein Judisches Fett)." The article was previously printed in Auschwitz Exit, which is obtainable from Ditlieb Felderer, Marknadsvagen 289, S-I 83, 34 Taby, Sweden.

  If one must believe Pierre joffroy, "bars of Jewish soap" are today found buried in the Jewish cemetery at Haifa, Israel. Pierre joffroy, in an article about Anne Frank, stated:

  these four bars of "Jewish soap" manufactured from corpses in the extermination camps and which, discovered in Germany, were wrapped in a shroud, in 1948, and piously buried according to the rites in a corner of a Haifa cemetery (Israel).

  Paris-Match, No. 395, 3 November 1956, p. 93.

   

  In 1943, representatives of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (founded in Moscow in 1942) toured the United States in order to raise political, and-above all-material, aid from the U.S.A. for the USSR. The two month trip raised more than two million dollars. Big meetings were held in many American cities. "At each of the meetings, (Salomon) Mikhoels showed the public a bar of soap made out of Jewish flesh, and taken from a concentration camp." ("A chacune des réunions qui se tenaient, Mikhoels [qui était un prodigieux acteur] montrait au public une savormette faite avec de la chair humaine juive et remenée d'un camp de concentration"; Gérard Israel, Jid/Les Juifs en URSS, Paris, Editions Spéciale, (Jean-Claude Lattès), 1971, p. 203). I acknowledge Mark Weber, from Arlington, Virginia, for presenting me with this information.

   

  Study this U.S. Army photo which has been spread allover the world and which Arthur R. Butz reproduces on page 191 of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, Institute for Historical Review, 1979.

  " ( ... ) für die Degesch vom 20. Juni ab vom Reichspatentamt patentiert." (Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Amsterdam, University Press, vol. XIU (1975), p. 137).

  "Un gaz contre les renards" ("A gas against foxes"), Le Quotithen de Paris, 2 September 1977. See also a review devoted to hunting: Le Saint-Hubert, April 1979, pp. 180-181, "Methodes de réduction de la population vulpine" ("Méthods of reducing the fox population").

  I cannot actually provide definitive proof of what I put forward here. I have discovered this point in the archives of the CDJC in Paris, where I have been refused admittance since January 1978, on account of my historical findings.

  This expression seems to have been created by the Swedish research group based at Täby and headed by Ditlieb Felderer. See note 1 on their work and on the lie of Auschwitz entitled Auschwitz Exit.

  Among deceptive titles one can cite that of Pierre Serge Choumoff, Les Chambres à gaz de Mauthausen (The Gas Chambers of Mauthausen), Amicale des Déportés et Familles de Disparus du Camp de Concentration de Mauthausen (Association of Mauthausen Victims), 31 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris 5e, 1971, 96 pp.

  Georges Wellers, "La 'Solution Finale de la Question Juive' et la mythomanie n6o-nazie" ("The 'Final Solution' of the Jewish Question and the neo-Nazi Mythomania"), Le Monde Juif, No. 86 April-June 1977, pp. 41-84. Translated into English, this article carries the title, "Reply to the Neo-Nazi Falsification of Historical Facts Concerning the Holocaust"; it is reproduced on pages 105162 of a work published in 1978 by the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation of New York, with the title: The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania, XVIII-215 pp.

  The camp at Auschwitz had three successive commandants: Rüdolf Höss, Arthur Liehehenschel and Richard Baer. The first had been interrogated by the British, and then by the Poles, who executed him. The second was executed by the Poles. The third died suddenly in prison when the famous "Auschwitz Trial" at Frankfurt (1963-65) was in preparation. On their own, the Poles seem to have interrogated and passed judgement on 617 persons (Nazis or allies of the Nazis) in connection with the question of Auschwitz. This figure is given by Hermann Langbein on page 993 of Der Auschwitz Prozess (The Auschwitz Trial), Europa Verlag, Vienna, 1965, 2 vols. On their part, the French, the British, and the Americans have often interrogated or passed judgement on former Auschwitz guards. It is surprising that there has emanated such a derisory amount of information on the pretended massacres in "gas chambers" from such an enormous number of interrogations and trials. To my knowledge there has been no mention of "admissions," or even of any kind of information, on the part of Liebehenschel or Baer on the "gas chambers." The true "Gas Chambers Trial" of Auschwitz has been-one can never repeat it enough-that of the architects Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl at Vienna (Austria) in 1972. This trial, launched by Simon Wiesenthal and presented as a sensational affair, very quickly became a fiasco for the prosecution. The two men having been charged with having "constructed and repaired gas chambers and crematorium ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau," revealed, I suppose, as established technicians, that even if they had constructed or had had constructed the crematoria ovens, they most certainly had not designed plans of "gas chambers" but only for the morgues which flanked these crematoria ovens. The two architects were acquitted.

  Kommandant in Auschwitz / Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (Commandant of Auschwitz / Autobiographical Notes) by Rudolf Höss, introduction and commentary by Martin Broszat, 1958, Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart. It is on page 166 of this book, in the part of the confession which Höss had drawn up in November 1946, where the following passage is found: "Eine halbe Stunde nach den Einwurf des Gasses wurde die Tür geöffnet und die Entlüftungsanlage eingeschaltet. Es wurde sofort mit dem Herausziehen der Leichen begonnen." ("Half an hour after the gas had been thrown in, the door was opened and the ventilating apparatus switched on. The removal of the bodies was begun immediately.") And it is on page 126 of the book, in the excerpt dated February 1947, that it is said that the squad charged with the responsibility of removing the corpses from the "gas chambers" did this labor "mit einer stumpfer Gleichmütigkeit" ("with a gloomy indifference") as if it were a matter of some kind of everyday chore ("als wenn es irgend etwas Alltäglisches wäre"). Höss is supposed to have added: "Beim Leichenschleppen assen sie oder rauchten." That is to say: "While pulling out [the cadavers] they used to eat or smoke." For Höss, moreover, they would not cease eating. They would eat when pulling the cadavers out of the chambers, when extracting the gold teeth, when cutting off the hair, when dragging them toward the furnaces or pits. Höss even adds this outrageous remark: "At the pits they used to keep the fire going. They would pour accumulated molten fat over the new cadavers, and they would poke around in the mountains of burning bodies to create a flue."

  Höss does not reveal to us how the fat managed not to be burnt itself (corpses cannot be spit-roasted as if they were chickens, but they are reduced to bones and ashes in heaps piled up on the ground or in the form of pyres). He does not tell us how the men could approach these formidable pyres to collect the streams of fat (!), neither does he tell us how they could get close enough to poke around in these mountains of bodies to effect a flue. The absurdity of this "pouring accumulated fat" ("das Übergiessen des angesammelten Fettes") is moreover so evident that the French translator of the book presented by Martin Broszat has quite discreetly omitted to translate those five German words (Rudolf Höss, Le Commandant d'Auschwitz parle (The Commandant of Auschwitz Speaks), translated from German to French by Constantin de Grunwald, Paris, Julliard, 1959, printing of 15 March 1970, p. 212. Filip Müller has written Sonderbehandlung, translated as Eyewitness Auschwitz / Three Years in the Gas Chambers, New York, Stein & Day, 1979, XIV-180 pp. From page 132 to 142 he accumulates the most astonishing stories about boiling human fat running like water, collecting pans for the fat, sizzling fat scooped out with buckets on a long curved rod and poured all over the pit, the SS guard Moll flinging live babies into the boiling human fat, and so on.

  For the various trials generally called "Nürnberg Trials" the Americans have perused many technical documents concerning Zyklon B. If they had read these documents carefully, and if they had-as I did myself- continued further research in certain technical tomes in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, they would have become aware of the incredible number of technical impossibilities contained in the German "gas chamber" evidence. One day I will devote a study to four specific documents which, in my opinion, completely destroy the legend of the "gas chambers." Those four documents are: first, two documents recorded by the Americans for the Nürnberg Trials, and then, two technical studies signed by Gerhard Peters; all of which one may consult at the Washington Library of Congress. I recall that Gerhard Peters was, during the war, the temporary director of the firm DEGESCH (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Schädlingsbekämpfung: German Company for Pest Control) which controlled in particular the distribution of Zyklon B. After the war, Gerhard Peters was to be brought before the courts many times by his own compatriots. He said he had never heard during the war about any homicidal use of Zyklon B.

  Nürnberg documents (documents with the prefix NI, which means Nuremberg, Industrialists):

  NI-9098, recorded only on 25 July 1947: a brochure entitled Acht Vorträge aus dem Arbeitgebiet der DEGESCH (Eight lectures on aspects of DEGESCH's Field of Operation) and printed in 1942 for private usage. At the end of this brochure, page 47, there appears a descriptive table on each of the eight gases distributed by the firm. At point number 7 of the description one reads for Zyklon B: "Lüftbarkeit: wegen starken Haftvermögens des Gases an Oberflächen erschwert und langwierig." ("Ventilation Properties: complicated and long to ventilate since the gas adheres strongly to surfaces.")

  NI-9912, recorded only on 21 August 1947: a public notice entitled Richtlinien fur die Anwendung von Blausäure (Zyklon) zur Ungeziefervertilgung (Entwesung) (Directives for the use of Prussic Acid (Zyklon) for the Destruction of Vermin (Disinfestation).). This document is of capital importance. Better than any other it shows at what point the handling of Zyklon B can only be done by trained personnel. The time required for the product to destroy vermin ranges from 6 hours in hot times, to 32 hours during cold periods. The normal duration is 16 hours. This long duration is explained undoubtedly by the composition of Zyklon. Zyklon is prussic acid, or hydrocyanic acid, absorbed by a support of diatomite. The gas is released slowly because of the nature of its support. This slowness is such that one cannot understand how on earth the Germans could have chosen a gas such as Zyklon in order to liquidate masses of human beings. It would have been easier for them to have utilized hydrocyanic acid in its liquid form. They had at their disposal significant quantities of this acid in the laboratories of the IG-Farben plant at Auschwitz, where they tried to make synthetic rubber. It is from document NI-9912 that I draw the information concerning the employment of Zyklon B for the fumigation of a barracks, the duration of aeration (at least 21 hours), et cetera.

  Documents at the Library of Congress. These concern two technical studies written by Gerhard Peters and both were published in Sammlung Chemischer & Chemisch-technischer Vorträge, the first in 1933 in Neue Folge, Heft 20, and the other in Neue Folge, Heft 47a in 1942, (review edited by Ferdinand Enke at Stuttgart). Here are the titles, followed by the Library of Congress reference:

   

  "Blausäure zur Schädlingsbekämpfung" (QD1, S2, n.f., hft.20, 1933), 75pp.

  "Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe in der Schädlingsbekämpfung" (QD1, S2, n.f., hft.47a, 1942), 143pp. It should be said in passing that it is admirable that this review which was published during the war in Germany should have arrived safely also during the war at the Library of Congress in Washington! The 1942 issue bears the Washington registration date of ... 1 April 1944!

  French regulations concerning the use of hydrocyanic acid are as strict as the German. See the decree 50-1290 of 18 October 1950 from the Ministry of Public Health, Paris.

  The plan which allows us to give these dimensions to the nearest centimeter is found in the archives of the State Museum of Oswiecim (Auschwitz). The reference number of this photo of the plan is Neg. 519. The plans of the "Kremas" (crematoria) IV and V are even more interesting than those of Kremas II and III. They prove, in effect, that the three structures abusively described as "gas chambers" were in fact inoffensive premises, complete with ordinary doors and windows. The sole means for the SS to "throw in the Zyklon" into these places "from the exterior" would have been the following scenario: The SS would have had to have requested their victims-piled up in hundreds or thousands in a space of only 2 36m2 -to open the windows for them to "throw in the Zyklon" after which the victims would carefully close the windows again, and abstain from smashing the window panes, until death ensued.78 It is perfectly easy to understand why the Polish Communist authorities are so reluctant to display these plans; they prefer to rely on the Ht5ss "confessions" with no supporting topographical data.

  These interesting remains of the crematoria can be seen behind a large glass in the back room which, in the exhibition block No. 24, is devoted to the Kremas.

  These details of the first execution by toxic gas were published in the Belgian Le Soir of 9 February 1974, under the rubric "50 Years Ago": a reprint of an article from the 9 February 1924 edition of the same paper.

  The summary which I give here of an execution by hydrocyanic acid is inspired by an inquiry which an American lawyer kindly conducted for me on six penitentiaries and on a firm manufacturing gas chambers. The penitentiaries are as follows: San Quentin, California; Jefferson City, Missouri; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Raleigh, North Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; and Florence, Arizona. The firm is Eaton Metal Products Company of Denver, Colorado. It is obvious that there are variations in the method from one penitentiary to another. I have personally obtained authorization to visit one of these gas chambers. The "Gas Chamber Procedure Sheet" reveals that the simple preparation of the chamber for an execution demands two days' work for two employees, occupying eight hours work per day each. Once the chamber is ready, the operation itself goes through 47 stages. This procedure sheet comes nowhere near describing the complications of each of the 47 tasks. Let us take as an example: "Empty Chamber (Body Removed)." In actuality, these words signify the following: the doctor and his two assistants must, after waiting the stipulated time, enter the room wearing gas masks, rubber aprons and rubber gloves; the doctor must tousle the hair of the dead man to expel the molecules of hydrocyanic acid which may have remained there; the two assistants must carefully wash the body with a hose; they must in particular wash the mouth and all the other apertures of the body; they must not forget to carefully wash the bend of the elbows and the bend of the knees. just a glance at one of these small gas chambers, constructed in order to kill a single condemned man, renders ridiculous those premises of stone wood, and plaster which are represented as being former German "gas chambers." If the American gas chambers are made exclusively of steel and glass, then it is for reasons of good sense and for reasons more specifically technical. The first reason is that the acid has a tendency to adhere to the surface and even to penetrate certain materials, so therefore it is necessary to avoid such materials. The second reason is that, when the ventilators empty the chamber of air, there is a risk of implosion, so therefore the structure has remarkably thick walls of steel and glass. The very heavy steel door can only be closed with a handwheel.

  The Polish Communists themselves recognize that the tattooing had as its aim the hindering of flight, and the facilitating of identifying captured escapees. See: Contribution à l'histoire du KL-Auschwitz, Musée d'Etat d'Auschwitz, 1968, p16 and p99.

  Louis De Jong, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, 1969, Heft 1, ppl-16: "Die Niederlande und Auschwitz" (The Netherlands & Auschwitz ... ). Sensitive to the delicate nature of these kinds of revelations, the director of the review, H. Rothfels, explains in a foreword the reason why he has consented to publish this study. The reason is that Louis De Jong, not being a German, could not possibly be suspected of being an apologist for National Socialism; on the contrary, as director of an official institute like that in Amsterdam, he had given all desirable pledges of his seriousness. This preface gives some idea of the situation in which German historians find themselves. There are certain truths which they cannot utter without being suspected of being apologists for Nazism. It is also important to note that Mr. Louis De Jong is even less suspect because he is of Jewish origin.

  These aerial photographs have been revealed to the general public by Dino A. Brugioni and Robert G. Poirer in a pamphlet entitled The Holocaust Revisited. Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, Washington, DC, ST 79-10001, 19pp. The booklet is somewhat curious in that it was researched in the authors' free time, not during CIA time, and this is the reason why the authors cannot enter into any correspondence regarding the contents! The two authors offer an interesting example of blindness. They attempt at all costs to adapt the photographic reality with what they believe to have been the reality of Auschwitz, according to three Exterminationist works. There is a spectacular contradiction between the photos and the commentaries which they attach.

  Article 19 of the Statue of the International Military Tribunal states: "The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence [ ... ]." Article 21 states: "The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof [ ... ]. "

  Prison et déportation, Paris, Spes, 1947, p77.

  The pretended "gas chamber" of Dachau today bears the following inscription worded in five languages (German, English, French, Italian, Russian):

  GASKAMMER getarnt als "Brausebad" - war nicht in Betrieb

  GAS CHAMBER disguised as a "shower room" - never used

  CHAMBRE A GAZ "chambre de douche" camouflée - ne fut jamais utilisée

  I have asked Frau Barbara Distel, director of the Dachau Museum, and Dr. Guerisse, president of the International Committee of Dachau, headquartered at Brussels, what induced them to describe an incomplete premises as a "gas chamber"; because one wonders how it is possible to know that an unfinished building is due to become, once achieved, something no one has ever seen in his life! Equally, I wished to ascertain if expert technical, scientific, forensic, or legal opinions were consulted about these premises. On this second point the reply was in the negative. On the first point I received no reply at all. Does not every visitor to Dachau have the right to have clarification there and then? Has not every German the right to demand proof from his accusers, in support of their terrible accusation? For it is indeed a terrible accusation to suggest that such and such a person had constructed an abominable instrument with the intention of killing human beings in a sort of human abattoir.

  See "Réflexions sur 1'étude de la déportation" (Reflections on the Study of Deportation") by Germaine Tillion, in the special issue entitled "Le Système concentrationnaire allemand 1940-1944" ("The German Concentration Camp System 1940-1944") of the Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (Review of WWII History) of July 1954. Consult pages 16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 26, and especially note 2 of page 17, note 2 of page 18 and note 1 of page 20.

  Document of Nürnberg "Paris/Storey" PS-3870: declaration under oath of policeman Hans Marsalek. According to the policeman, the conditions under which Ziereis had admitted the existence and functioning of a "gas chamber" at Mauthausen ought to be reflected upon. The "interrogation" was in fact a pure and simple torture session which lasted from six to eight hours until Ziereis gave up the ghost. The policeman himself stated that he had conducted the interrogation of the commandant for six to eight hours during the night of 22/23 May 1945. He said that Franz Ziereis was gravely wounded; that three bullets had passed through his body and that he knew he was going to die. Today in the museum of Mauthausen one can see a photo taken by flash and which shows Ziereis still alive, while seated near him an internee listens to his words. There are other people in the photo at the bedside of the dying man: possibly General Seibel, commander of the 11th American armored division; and the former doctor of the internees, the deportee Dr. Koszeinski, were there, as the policeman affirmed. That a divisional general and a professional doctor have admitted participating in this torture session reflects greatly on the mentality of those who prized having a "Nazi" in their hands: a "Nazi" is not a man, but a sort of malevolent beast. One can be sure that all the commandants of all the camps were thus regarded. Therefore, the "admissions" which they made or are said to have made are not astonishing. Most of these "admissions" are "Depositions Under Oath" or "Statements" written in English, signed by an Allied officer, who adds: "I hereby certify that I have accurately translated this deposition from English into German to the said deponent                                              [here the name of the German interrogatee is inserted] and that he [the German] fully agrees the contents thereof." See document D-746(a), D-749(b), etc.

  "Keine Vergasung in Dachau" ("No Gassing in Dachau"), letter by Dr. Martin Broszat, Die Zeit, 19 August 1960, p16 (in the German edition). In the U.S.A. edition: 26 August 1960, p14.

  See the words, which I quote above, in my note 10. Dr. Martin Broszat explains in note 1 of page 167 why he does not give the continuation of Höss's text. He says that, in this sequence, Höss delivers to us "completely confused data," ("völlig abwegige Angaben") that he passes off information "which definitely could not be taken seriously" ("müssen these Mitteilungen als gänzlich unzuverlässig gelten"). Dr. Broszat gives an example of one of these aberrations, but he is careful to choose one of the least distorted of them. Fifteen years after the publication of his book, the Poles, in their turn, gave what it is convenient to call the text of Höss's confessions. And it is here that, for once, one perceives that the "aberrations" were multiplied under the pen of Höss. In order to get some idea, one must refer to the following work: KL-Auschwitz in den Augen der SS (Auschwitz Concentration Camp As Seen By the SS) Auschwitz Museum, Cracow, 1973, ppl35-136. Dr. Broszat has been disqualified in the eyes of all serious historians by his publishing the "Höss Confessions." With just a little attention and honesty, Broszat ought to have concluded that this "confession" is a mass of absurdities and aberrations, which can only have been dictated to Höss by his Polish Stalinist jailers.

  The expression employed by Dr. Broszat is "above all" ("vor allem"). This rather embarrassed expression seems to me to have been used because Broszat did not wish to make pronouncements on the authenticity or otherwise of the "gas chambers" which are neither in Poland nor in the Old Reich, i.e. Mauthausen in Austria, and Struthof in Alsace.

  In an all too familiar fashion with this subject matter, Dr. Broszat looked perhaps as if he attempted to back-pedal on his original courageous statement of 19 August 1960. He has written, or has had written by his Institute staff, letters or articles where he appears on the surface to retract his Die Zeit statement. In reality, in studying the texts closely, one gets the impression that Dr. Broszat is merely paying lip service to any retraction, and is still sticking to what he wrote in 1960. See the following texts:

  Reply of Frau Dr. S. Noller on 26 October 1967 to Paris-Match journalist Pierre Joffroy. This reply is published in part in the book by Pierre Serge Choumoff (pp. 73-74) which I mentioned in note 7.

  Preface by Dr. Broszat to a study by Frau Dr. Ino Arndt and Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler which appeared in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte April 1976 and entitled: "Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in NS-Vernichtungslagern" ("Organized Mass Murder of Jews in Nazi Extermination Camps"), pp. 105-135; preface: pp. 105-112).

  Reply of Frau Dr. Ino Arndt on 25 November 1977 to Professor Egon G. L. Rieder. This reply was published by MUT-Verlag, January 1979. (Address: 3901 Asendorf, West Germany).

  On Treblinka, as well as on Belzec, Sobibor and Chelmno, see NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse (Nazi Extermination Camps Reflected in German Courts), by Adalbert Rückerl, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, original edition 1977. Adalbert Rückerl and the Exterminationists are not lucky with Treblinka. They say that in Treblinka there were "gas chambers." Many books give some details about them. As a matter of fact, all those people forget the Nürnberg document PS-3311: according to this "Certificate" of 5 December 1945, the mass killing was done by suffocation in steam-filled chambers!

  Le Système concentrationnaire nazi (1933-1945) (The Nazi Concentration Camp System (1933-1945), thesis, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968, pp. 541-544.

  Höss had been tortured. It is from the Poles themselves that we know this. They authorized him to say this in his confession. There might have been several motives for this authorization on the part of instructing judge Jan Sehn. As Höss indulged in praises of the kindness of his jailers at Cracow, it may well be that Sehn wished to give us the idea that, if Höss had previously come out with absurdities because of his torture by the British, then on this occasion, in Cracow prison, he was expressing himself with complete freedom. In his "ingenuousness" in admitting everything they wanted to his British torturers, Höss had gone so far as to speak of the "extermination camp" of "Wolzek near to Lublin." However, Wolzek never existed, neither near to Lublin nor anywhere in Poland. Höss, however, cited this mythical camp in document NO-1210 of 14 March 1946, then in document PS-3868 of 5 April 1946, and also in document NI-034 of 20 May 1946. Out of terrible embarrassment, an attempt has been made to pretend that Belzec is this "Wolzec camp," which is in itself absurd, since in document PS-3868 Höss precisely states that there were "three other extermination camps in the General Government: Belzek (sic), Treblinka, and Wolzek" ("drei weitere Vernichtungslager in Generalgouvernment: Belzek, Treblinka und Wolzek"). This absurd solution ("Wolzek is Belzec"!) has been imposed by the "Bible" of the Exterminationists' research: The Holocaust / The Nuremberg Evidence (Part One: Documents) edited by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and at the YIVO Institute in New York, 1976 (see p. 544). A solution even less acceptable has been proposed by the attorney Adalbert Rückerl in note 5 of pages 37/38 of the work which I quote above in my note 29. This lawyer has no qualms about saying that Wolzek is in reality ... Sobibor! It would be endless work to quote all the aberrations contained in the papers that the British military justice made Höss sign. To take only one other example here, Höss said that there was situated at Treblinka an installation for gassing by "gasmobiles" (mobile gas-trucks, or gas-vans) which he later sited at Chelmno! The British made him say "Treblinka" (NO-1210 & PS-3868) whereas the Poles made him say "Culmhof" (NO-4498B). However, the distance as the crowflies is nearly 250km between Treblinka, which is to the east of Warsaw, and Kulmhof (or Culmhof or Chelmno-on-Ner), which is to the north-west of Warsaw. Therefore, Jan Sehn authorized his prisoner to enlighten us at the manner in which he had been treated before enjoying the comforts of Cracow prison. The British seriously mishandled him, Höss says, even up to the point where he was forced to sign a statement, the contents of which he did not understand. He begins by writing this in his confession to the Poles at Cracow: "Es würde mir übel zugesetzt durch die Field-Security-Police" ("I was ill-treated by the Field Security Police"). And then he adds: "Unter schlagenden Beweisen kam meine erste Vernehmung zustande. Was in dem Protokoll drin steht, weiss ich nicht, obwohl ich es unterschrieben habe. Doch Alkohol und Peitsche waren auch fur mich zuviel." ("My first interrogation took place under duress. I do not know what was recorded in the statement, even though I signed it. Because, alcohol and the whip were too much, even for me.")

  Höss adds that, after being transferred some days later to Minden-on-Weser to the main interrogation center in the British zone, he was subjected to even more brutal treatment on the part of the British attorney; a major. ("Dort wurde mir noch mehr zugesetz durch den 1. englischen Staatsanwalt; einem Major.") He said that the regime of the prison corresponded to the attitude of the Major. For three weeks he was not allowed to wash or shave. For three weeks he was kept in handcuffs. After transfer to Nürnberg, his stay under house arrest had the effect upon him of a stay in a sanitarium; an ideal stay in comparison with what he had experienced. But the interrogations, conducted exclusively by Jews, were terrible, not from a physical, but from a psychological aspect. His interrogators left him in no doubt as to the fate which awaited him, namely in eastern Europe. After his transfer to Poland, he experienced anew more terrible trials, but suddenly the attorney appeared and henceforth Höss was treated with surprisingly kind attention ("anständig und entgegenkommend.") All these details can be found on pages 143-147 of Kommandant in Auschwitz (see my note 10 above). What Höss has not mentioned is the result of these physical and spiritual tortures undergone before his delivery to the Poles. On 5 April 1946, ten days before his appearance at the Nürnberg trial, a stupefying affidavit had been extorted from him, which he had signed even though it was not in his mother tongue, but in ... ENGLISH! It is document PS-3868. Before the Tribunal, on 15 April 1946, American attorney Amen read out the text of the affidavit, in front of Höss. The declarations regarding Auschwitz made a sensation. As for Höss himself, he impressed everyone by his "apathy" (sic). His responses were for the most part restricted to a "yes" when Colonel Amen asked him if everything that he had read was accurate. This "apathy" was described by the observers as "schizoid" or an approximation thereof. These observers - all of them antipathetic to Höss - could not imagine how much the adjective "schizoid," which in the mind was insulting, was in fact accurate and reflected a terrible reality, for Höss was in a dual condition; he was "two men at one time," slandered, stupefied, divided into two or nearly so: "schizoid" is an accurate adjective as one could find to describe a man tortured physically and psychologically, and who, as he said in his confession, himself wondered why on earth he had been brought before this formidable tribunal. It is necessary to read the text of the dialog between Colonel Amen and the witness Höss dated 25 April 1946, in volume XI p. 425ff of the main trial at Nürnberg (IMT). References are to the French edition.

  Concerning the tortures systematically inflicted by the Americans on their German prisoners, one would to well to refer to the book by A.R. Butz (The Hoax of the Twentieth Century) in the passages concerning justice Gordon Simpson or judge Charles F. Wennersturm. I also recommend one of the finest books ever written in favor of the rights of man: Manstein, His Campaign and his Trial (London, Collins, 1951) by Sir Reginald Paget, and endowed with an outstanding preface by Lord Hankey. On page 109 the author mentions that the American Simpson/Van Roden/Laurenzen commission of inquiry had reported "among other things, that of the 139 cases they had investigated, 137 (German soldiers and officers) had had their testicles permanently destroyed by kicks received from the American War Crimes Investigation team."

  Dr. Engineer Dürrfeld was the temporary director of the Buna factory at Auschwitz. In document NI-034 Höss was attributed with saying that Dr. Dürrfeld was aware of the gassing of human beings at Birkenau and that he had spoken of it to his colleagues. However in document NI-11046, Dr. Dürrfeld replied: "It is a sorry fact that I heard of (these gassings) first through the radio and through the newspaper reports. I must say that it is a brand of infamy for the German people, that I must say." See also document NI-9542 for Otto Ambros or document NI-11631 for Kurt Rosenbaum. These men confirmed that they had never known anything about the "gassings" despite the fact that they were well placed in order to know everything which took place at Auschwitz. Inmates also had the courage to write that they had never seen any "gas chambers" at Auschwitz or Birkenau, although they were located close to the place where these "chambers" were supposed to be. This is the case for Benedikt Kautsky, the Austrian Social Democrat, of Jewish origin. He lived in various concentration camps, as well as Auschwitz, for nearly seven years. His mother died at Birkenau on 8 December 1944 at the age of 80. In Teufel und Verdammte (Devil and Damned) Vienna, Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung (Vienna People's Press), 1948, he writes, (p3l6), that he has not personally seen those "gas chambers" in the camp. However, this admission does not prevent him from later providing a kind of description of that which he had never seen! He does that on the word of those who "have seen."

  I make allusion here to certain of the defendants at the Frankfurt Trial (1963-1965); a trial which Hermann Langbein purports to give an account of in his Der Auschwitz Prozess, a book which I previously cited in note 9. Franz Hofmann would have employed the expression "assisting to push"; but curiously he employed the plural: "we have [ ... ] pushed together" ("haben wir [. ] mitgeschoben") (p. 241). Hans Stark is supposed to have helped a hospital attendant to discharge gas through an aperture in the roof of the "gas chamber"; but Stark is confused, very vague, and the president of the court gives the impression before all of making Stark recite a text (p. 439).

  One ought to devote the greatest possible attention to volume 42 which is the last of the volumes of the documents of the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg. This volume opens with the very long document (153 pages) PS-862. It is a summary presented by the British colonel Airey Neave (who was eventually himself murdered in 1979 by the Irish Republican Army). Neave had been charged with summarizing a host of investigations carried out in Allied prisoner of war camps. He states what is also reported in the document "Politische Leiter 54" (p. 348): the 26,674 former political directors interrogated have declared that it was only after the capitulation in May 1945 that they first heard of the extermination of the Jews in the camps termed (by the Allies) "extermination camps." ("Sie von einer Vernichtung von Juden in sog. Vernichtungslagern erst nach der Kapitulation in Mai 1945 Kenntnis erhielten.")

  In private correspondence, Dr. Robert Servatius, who was a defense lawyer at the Nürnberg IMT (1945-1946) and who defended Adolf Eichmarm at the "Trial in Jerusalem" (1961), has written to me of "the persons pretended to have been gassed" ("der in Auschwitz angeblich vergasten Personen") in his letter dated 21 June 1974 and of "the pretended gassing" ("der behaupteten Vergasung") in his letter dated 22 February 1975. This world-famous lawyer summarizes in one succinct phrase the reason why German defense counsel take great care not to raise the question of the "gas chambers" before a tribunal: it seems, he says, "that for the defense, the problem of the existence of the gas chambers faded into the background, compared with the question of the participation of their clients in the pretended gassing." ("Anachenend[??? Webmaster] ist die Frage der Existenz von Gaskammern für die Verteidiger züruckgetreten gegenüber der Frage der Beteiligung ihrer Mandaten an der behaupteten Vergasung.") It cannot be put better. In response to one of my questions about Eichmann, the lawyer specified that Eichmann had declared (to whom? the response is not clear on this point) that he had never seen a gas chamber and that he had never been told about any. (Letter of 22 February 1975.) The stenograph transcripts of the trial (which can be consulted in several languages at the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaire in Paris) prove that Eichmann had apparently known nothing about these "gas chambers" except what he had read of them in prison in Höss's "confession" (see the session of 19 April 1961, pages JI-MJ to 02-RM).

  It was on French television that M. Albert Naud, visibly moved, made this impromtu declaration (Channel 2, "L'huile sur le feu" ("Oil on the Fire") broadcast by Philippe Bouvard, October 1976).

  This complacent lawyer was Anton Reiners of Frankfurt am Main.

  Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1961 & 1967; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 2nd edition, London, Vallentine-Mitchell, 1968; H. G. Adler, Der Verwaltete Mensch, Tübingen, Mohr (Siebeck), 1974; Hermann Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, Vienna, Europa Verlag, 1974; Olga Wormser-Migot, Le Système concentrationaire nazie (1933-1945), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1968; Serge Klarsfeld, Le Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France, Klarsfeld Foundation, BP 137-16, 75763 Paris Cedex 16, 1978.

  Extract from what the Germans call the "Bormann Diaries" ("Bormann Vermercke"). The final part of these "Bormann Diaries" has been published in France under the title of Le Testament politique de Hitler (The Political Testament of Hitler), French version and preface by Francois Genoud, Paris, Arthème Fayard, 1959, pp. 71-72.

  "Dass sie deshalb [wegen ihrer Konfession] verfolgt worden waren, wie ich glaubte, liess manchmal meine Abneigung gegenüber ungünstigen Äusserungen über sie fast zum Abscheu werden" (Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Munich, NSDAP, 1942, p. 55). "Die grossen Meister der Lüge" ("The great masters of the lie"): these are Schopenhauer's words, revived by Hitler (p. 253 of Mein Kampf, ibid.).

  Declaration published in the Jewish Chronicle, London, of 8 September 1939, pl.

  Daily Express, London, 24 March 1933, pl.

  "Nach Beendigung des Krieges werde er [Hitler] sich rigoros auf den Standpunkt stellen, dass er Stadt für Stadt zusammenschlage, wenn nicht die Drecksjuden rauskämen und nach Madagaskar oder einem sonstigen jüdischen Nationalstaat abwanderten." ("After the ending of the war, he [Hitler] would rigorously adopt the standpoint that he would demolish town after town, if the Jewish dregs did not decamp and emigrate to Madagascar or to some other national Jewish homeland.") See Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche in Führerhauptquartier (Hitler's Table Talk at the Führer's HQ), published by Percy Henry Schramm ( ... ), Stuttgart, 1963, p. 471.

  Texts and facts abound which prove that the German authorities forbade and punished these excesses, even when Jews were the victims. I will quote only one text and two facts. This text is of General von Roques dated 29 July 1944, on the Russian front (document NOKW-1620). As to facts, they are reported in document NOKW-501. Here is the first fact: in the spring of 1944, at Budapest, a lieutenant killed a Jewess who wished to denounce him for having stolen some of her property, along with some of his men. A German military tribunal condemned the officer to death and he was executed, while several of his men and NCOs were condemned to long terms in prison. Here is the second fact: near to Rostov, USSR, two soldiers were condemned to death by a German military tribunal (and executed?) for having killed the only Jewish inhabitant of a village. One finds these examples and many other facts of the same genre in the 42nd and final volume of the IMT Nürnberg transcripts. Unfortunately, this volume is ignored by just about everyone. It is particularly ignored by the judiciary who permit the invoking of "what happened at Nürnberg' but do not, however, pay sufficient attention to re-reading the actual documentation produced by the CONQUERORS passing judgement on the VANQUISHED. The historian can allow this superficiality even less when he realizes that these same conquerors have committed two very grave injustices: 1. They were the ones who sorted the captured German documents, without allowing any access by the defense; 2. They have selected out of this and other selections when they published the 42 volumes, without including some of the documentary evidence deposited by the defense. It is vitally important to realize that even today - 35 years after the war - the Allies still maintain in secret an impressive quantity of German documents, out of which they have already selected those items which, in their eyes, could show Germany in a bad light. Imagine the mountain of "war crimes" which could be adjudicated with such procedures by an "International Military Tribunal" if it was the CONQUERED being able to judge their CONQUERORS!

  But to return to the question of "excesses" or of "war crimes," I would suggest that the German army, and in particular the Waffen-SS, were certainly very tough both in combat and in the '4mopping-up" operations against the partisans, but they showed themselves to be in a certain way much less threatening toward civilian non-combatants than other armies. In principle, the more disciplined and controlled an army is, the less the civilian population ought to fear excesses of all kinds. Using this rule of thumb, it would follow that bands of partisans -whatever sympathy can be felt for their cause-are nearly always more of a threat to the civilians.

  This was described as "Operation Keelhaul." See Julius Epstein, Operation Keelhaul, Devin-Adair, 1973; Nikolai Tolstoy, The Secret Betrayal 1944-1947, Scribners, 1977; Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, IHR, 1979, pp248-249. The term "keelhaul" speaks for itself; this English verb signifies "inflicting the punishment of hauling the victim from one side to the other of a ship, by causing him to pass under the keel."

  I must mention that during the same period, and without any military necessity, our American and South African allies rigorously applied segregation against Blacks (which was denounced sometimes in the French "collaborationist" newspapers).

  Speech made at Posen on 6 October 1943, published on page 169 of Discours secrets de Heinrich Himmler, Paris Gallimard, 1978. This is the French translation of "secret" talks from 1933-1945, together with other speeches. The German edition: Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, Propylaen Propylaen Verlag, 1974. This work should be approached with caution, particularly its French edition.

  The text of the "Madagaskar Projekt" is little known. It can however be found at the CDJC in Paris. It bears number 172 of the Israeli police (General Headquarters, 6th bureau). it seems that this document was only brought to light in 1961 on the occasion of the Eichmann Trial. It is composed of a letter from Theodor Dannecker, dated 15 August 1940, addressed to Legation Secretary Rademacher, and of the report itself which seems to be, moreover, a draft unsigned and undated. The reference number at the CDJC is DXII-172.

  See the letter of reference of Rademacher to ambassador Bielfeld dated 10 February 1942 (document NG-5770).

  "Total Solution" ("Gesamtlösung") and "Final Solution" ("Endlösung") are the two interchangeable terms employed by Göring in his famous letter of 31 July 1941 addressed to Reinhard Heydrich. The Exterminationists have expatiated interminably upon this very short letter (document PS-710) and, in particular, upon these two words used by Göring. They have all the more speculated on this text since they have - at least for some of them - cynically cut short the first half of his first phrase where a clear and neat explanation is provided of the sense which Göring wished to give to these words. These words in fact imply EMIGRATION or EVACUATION ("Auswanderung oder Evakuierung"). Gerald Reitlinger indulges himself in quoting in full the little letter except for the beginning of it where the reader finds three suspension points instead of "Auswanderung oder Evakuierung"! The reader of Reitlinger thus sees that the beginning of the phrase is missing and he therefore believes that there is certainly nothing important about the absent fragment! It is indeed difficult to act more dishonestly than Reitlinger (see Gerald Reitlinger, Die Endlösung (The Final Solution), translated from English into German by J. W. Brugel, 4th edition revised and corrected, Berlin, Colloquium Verlag, 1961, p92). One will find the text, unmutilated, on page 12 of the remarkable work by Wilhelm Stäglich: Der Auschwitz Mythos / Legende oder Wirklichkeit (The Auschwitz Myth / Legend or Truth), Tübingen, Grabert Verlag, 1979. Wilhelm Stäglich is this former judge at Hamburg who has suffered incessant persecution since 1973 because of his Revisionist convictions.

  Mention is made of these births in the "Kalendarium" of Hefte von Auschwitz (Pages of Auschwitz), edited by the State Museum at Oswiecim (Auschwitz), in particular in volumes 7 and 8. The Germans maintained a register of all births, including Jews. They kept a record of everything. Every surgical operation, for example, was noted, with the name of the inmate, his registration number, the object and the result of the operation (in Latin), the date, and the signature of the surgeon. At the crematoria, the extraction of a tooth from a corpse was made the object of an incident report ("Meldung"). This last point, on its own, renders absurd the legend of largescale massacres with extraction of teeth on a quasi-industrial scale.

  I have personally made a thorough inquiry regarding the summary executions carried out by the Resistance in a small region of France. I was surprised to find that the gypsy community has paid a heavy tribute in dead: not as a result of deeds by the Germans, but by the Resistance. This inquiry cannot actually be published in France.

  On the existence of a vocational school for masons, see for example the evidence of Franz Hofmann in Hermann Langbein's work Der Auschwitz Prozess, p. 236. Concerning the team of apprentices ("Lehrlings-Kommandos) see the evidence of detainee Curt Posener in document NI-9808.

  Georges Wellers, l'Etoile jaune à l'heure de Vichy / De Drancy à Auschwitz, (The Yellow Star under the Vichy Era / From Drancy [Transit Camp] to Auschwitz), Paris, Fayard 1973, pp. V, 4, 5, 7.

  The distance from Drancy (near Paris) to Auschwitz (1,250km) was covered, in general, in two days.

  I can only refer here to the cases of Maurice Bardèche, Paul Rassinier, Manfred Roeder, Thies Christophersen, Wilhelm Stäglich, J.G. Burg (a Jew), Hellmut Diwald, Udo Walendy, Arthur R. Butz, and to my own case. No persecution is overlooked: imprisonment, physical violence, fines, arson, careers destroyed, incredibly unjust legal decisions, pure lies, enforced exile. Not one association defending freedom of expression, not one single group of writers, has raised the least protest at the stupefying proceedings of the Springer group in regard to either David Irving or to the university professor Hellmut Diwald. In this field of persecution, Germany is incontestably to the fore. France occupies second place, and South Africa is not far behind.

  This decision dates from 17 May 1979 (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften ("X-ratings Board") decision No. 2765). The expert selected was the attorney Adalbert Rückerl (the man who said that when one reads "Wolzek" one must understand "Sobibor"; see my footnote 31). The latter was both a judge and judged, since he was devoted his life and certain of his works to defending a thesis (that of Exterminationism) which Dr. Butz considers, like myself, to be erroneous. The text of the judgement is 55 pages long. Within a few years this text may well emerge as a monument to historical inconsistency. The president of the tribunal was Rudolf Stefen. Professor Konrad Jentsch represented Art ("Kunst"); the writer Bernhard Ohsam Literature; Gunther Roland the teachers ("Lehrerschaft"); the prelate Dir. Dr. Hermann the Church; etc.

  La Guerre Sociale (Class War), No. 3, June 1979, pp. 9-31; BP 88, 75623 Paris Cedex 13. In charge of publication: J. Benhamou.

  This was my case on 29 January 1978 at the national discussion on "Churches and Christians in France during WWII."

  Among the 42 columes of the (truncated) accounts of the IMT at Nürnberg, see vol. III, pp. 574-575 of the French edition, and read document PS-2738 (affidavit of Wilhelm Höttl).

  Pages 120-122, 125, 128, 136, 141, 149, 157, under the title of "Nahum Goldmann: au nom d'Israël" ("Nahum Goldmann: in the name of Israel"). Nahum Goldmann says that those colossal reparations "constituted an extraordinary innovation in the matter of international rights." They were not in accordance with the German constitution. He dictated his conditions to Adenauer in 1950. He obtained DM 80 billion; that is 10 to 14 times more than the sum he first expected. He says, "Without the German reparations ( ... ) the state of Israel would not have the half of its present infrastructure (1978); every train in Israel is German, the ships are German, as well as electricity, a big part of industry ... without mentioning the individual pensions paid to the survivors ( .... ). In certain years, the amount of the money that Israel received from Germany would exceed the total amount of money collected from international Jewry- multiplying it by two or three times."

  The young German taxpayer of 1979, who has no responsibility in the war of 1939-1945, pays of course his share.

  Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 319-373.

   

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• An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers

   

  An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers

   

  Robert Faurisson

  Born in 1939, Jacques Baynac is a French historian who is the author of several books.1 A scholar whose sympathies lean to the left, he harbors a definite hostility toward revisionists (whom he calls "deniers"), and particularly toward revisionist writer and publisher Pierre Guillaume and myself. For years he affirmed the existence of Nazi homicidal gas chambers.

   

  In 1996, though, Baynac acknowledged in two lengthy articles published in a Swiss daily newspaper that, taking everything into account, one is forced to admit -- even if it is "as painful to say as it is to hear" -- that the well-known "testimonies" are not sufficient proof of wartime homicidal gas chambers, and that it is simply not possible to prove, scientifically, that the homicidal gas chambers actually existed.

   

  Given this lack of any direct proof, he continued, it will now be necessary to seek an indirect proof. Because one cannot prove that Nazi gas chambers existed, he goes on to write, it will instead be necessary to prove that it is impossible that they did not exist! Specifically, he writes: "If scholarly history cannot, because of the lack of documentation, establish the reality of a fact, it can, by means of documentation, establish that the unreality of this fact is itself unreal." 2

   

  Baynac made these remarkable statements in two lengthy articles published in the Swiss newspaper Le Nouveau Quotidien de Lausanne, September 2, 1996 (p. 16), and September 3, 1996 (p. 14).

   

  The Evasion of Historians

   

  In the first of these two articles, Baynac begins by deploring France's anti-revisionist "Fabius-Gayssot" law of July 13, 1990, which he says allows "the deniers' sect" to use the courts as podiums for their views. He notes that this law has been criticized by Claude Imbert of Le Point magazine, historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet (who has said: "I am ready to kill Faurisson, but not to pursue him in a court of law!"), Madeleine Rebérioux (former president of the "Human Rights League"), anti-revisionist attorney Charles Korman, and several parliamentary deputies of the Gaullist RPR party.

   

  Baynac affirms that the revisionists/deniers have plenty of reason for rejoicing, especially since the Abbé Pierre affair "changed the atmosphere" in their favor. Baynac also notes that among the anti-revisionists, "disarray has given way to consternation," that historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet "is grieved," that the prominent French-Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy "is beside himself," that Pierre-André Taguieff "is frightened," and that the front cover of an issue of the French magazine L'Événement du jeudi ("The Thursday Event") proclaimed "The Victory of the Revisionists."

   

  Baynac denounces Jorge Semprun, an intellectual and former deportee, for having irresponsibly "murdered" a book by Florent Brayard that attacks French revisionist writer Paul Rassinier. Baynac believes that among Leftists there has come into being a "paranoia," a "witch-hunt" (in the words of Jean-François Kahn), and a "disastrous chaos." He notes that Simone Veil and Dominique Jamet share his dislike of the Fabius-Gayssot law, and that "one refuses to debate" the revisionists.

   

  Baynac recalls the declaration by "34 reputable historians" published in the prominent French daily Le Monde on February 21, 1979 -- a stupefying declaration that responded to but did not answer my challenge, which had appeared earlier in the paper, calling for an explanation of how, technically, the magical Nazi gas chambers were supposed to have operated. In this regard, Baynac writes of the "evasion" of historians in general, and goes on to declare that "the historians have retreated."

   

  Neither Documents, Traces, Nor Proofs

   

  In the second of his two articles, Baynac deplores the fact that anti-revisionist historians have trusted Jean-Claude Pressac, a pharmacist and "amateur historian," who now concludes that the number of Jewish and non-Jewish dead at Auschwitz amounts "to a total of 600,000 victims." 3 Baynac derides historian François Bayrou, France's Minister of National Education, who, conscious of the difficulties in trying to prove the "Holocaust" genocide and wartime homicidal gas chambers, advocates recourse to a "less burdened" historical method. Baynac sees in this a "light historical concept."

   

  Baynac believes that Nazi gas chambers existed, but thinks that those who have tried to prove their existence have overly employed an "ascientific" methodology, rather than a "scientific" one. In this "ascientific" method, he goes on, "testimony prevails," while in the "scientific" method documents prevail. However, he adds with regret, one is able only to ascertain "the absence of documents, traces, or other material proofs." 4

   

  Baynac recalls the admission made in 1988 by Jewish-American historian Arno Mayer, who teaches at Princeton University: "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." 5 Baynac goes on to say that "we do not have available indispensable elements for a normal undertaking of the historical method," and that "one must remain silent for lack of documents." He concludes with a remarkable concession: "it is necessary to recognize that the lack of traces involves the inability to directly establish the reality of the existence of homicidal gas chambers." 6 When he writes "the lack of traces," he means, as already mentioned, "the absence of documents, traces, or other material proofs."

   

  Proofs for Tomorrow?

   

  Baynac's study concludes with the suggestion, already mentioned: because it is decidedly impossible to prove that the gas chambers existed, let us try in the future to prove that these gas chambers were not able not to have existed!

   

  This is an example of admitting a present-day inadequacy while postulating an act of faith for the future. Baynac is naive. He believes that because so many historians have emphatically affirmed the reality of the "Holocaust" horrors and the homicidal gas chambers, and so many survivors have claimed to have seen them, therefore they undoubtedly existed. He does not realize that, with time, one discovers that the writing of history is full of histories that are more or less imaginary.

   

  He continues to believe in the gas chambers, just as he seems to persist in believing in Communism. Tomorrow, one will find proof for these gas chambers. Tomorrow, Communism will be true. Tomorrow, one will get a free lunch. Tomorrow, one will finally have the proof that National Socialism is the incarnation of evil and that Communism is the incarnation of good. Let's hear it for the eternal credulity of the French intelligentsia!

   

  Baynac joins, as it were, the "34 reputable historians" who, as already mentioned, in 1979 published one of the most monumental pieces of nonsense of French academic life: "It is not necessary to ask oneself how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible because it happened." Baynac thus adds his name to those of the 34 orthodox scholars who, without intending it, were obliged to agree with the revisionist historians on several important issues. This inevitably raises a question: how can judges continue to condemn revisionists for contesting a crime that, as Baynac now acknowledges, has not been proven?

   

  Embarrassing Gas Chambers

   

  It is quite clear that the "Nazi gas chambers" are ever more embarrassing for those who uphold the "Holocaust" thesis of Jewish extermination. As early as 1984, Pierre Vidal-Naquet warned friends who were already attempting to abandon the "gas chambers" that to do so would be "to capitulate in open country" 7 And in 1987 a periodical hostile to revisionism published a letter by two French-Jewish teachers, Ida Zajdel and Marc Ascione, suggesting that the Nazis had faked their confessions, and only mentioned gas chambers in order to plant "a delayed action 'bomb' against the Jews, an instrument of diversion and, why not, of blackmail." 8

   

  There are many other examples worth citing, but I will content myself here with citing just three recent ones: that of Elie Wiesel (in 1994), that of a Dutch professor of Jewish-Polish origin, Michel Korzec (in 1995), and finally, that of the Jewish-American historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (in 1996):

   

  In 1994, Wiesel wrote in his memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea: "Let the gas chambers remain closed to prying eyes, and to imagination." 9 In plain English this means: "Let's not try to see, or even imagine, a Nazi gas chamber." What follows inevitably from this is that Wiesel is quite skeptical of the alleged witnesses who, supposedly, have described what happened in the gas chambers.

  In 1995 Michel Korzec declared that too much emphasis has been put on the gas chambers and the number of gassing victims. With dialectic contortions worthy of a cabalist, he went on to argue that it was the Germans, and not the Jews, who are responsible for this error. In Korzec's view, many more Germans participated in the "mass murder" of Jews than has been assumed, and in many more places across Europe -- many more than the small number of Germans supposedly involved in gas chamber killings of Jews. 10

  In his 1996 study, Hitler's Willing Executioners, an exceedingly anti-German work, Daniel J. Goldhagen wrote: "Gassing was really epiphenomenal to the Germans' slaughter of Jews." 11 And in a 1996 interview with a major Austrian weekly news magazine he stated: "For me the industrialized annihilation of the Jews is not the central question in explaining the Holocaust ... The gas chambers are a symbol. But it is absurd to believe that the Holocaust would not have taken place without the gas chambers." 12

  So, by 1996 the gas chambers had become a symbol!

   

  A Swiss Newspaper Sets An Example

   

  In recent years I have described at various times, in samizdat essays and in interviews recorded by Ernst Zündel in Canada, this evolution by the "exterminationists" regarding the "Nazi gas chambers." In a text I wrote on September 22, 1993 (and which I intend to publish in my forthcoming book), I predicted that one day organized Jewry eventually would be obliged to give up the lie about Nazi gas chambers, while at the same time still insisting that "the Holocaust" is an irrefutable truth. Consistent with this, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, has decided not to provide any physical representation of a German homicidal gas chamber (except for a door of a delousing gas chamber and an absurd and "artistic" model). 13

   

  The two 1996 articles by Jacques Baynac in the Swiss daily paper are only a stage in this metamorphosis of official historiography. Baynac's articles confirm that, for quite some time now, historians have broken with the facade of unanimity. Step by step, historians are rejecting the simplistic conclusions of the Nuremberg Tribunal regarding gas chambers and genocide.

   

  When French judges declare that challenging the existence of Nazi gas chambers is to challenge "crimes against humanity" (which the genocide of the Jews would have been), they are correct. However, if there is no longer any proof of a specific murder weapon, logically there is no longer any proof of a specific crime. This conclusion, rather embarrassing for the judges who dare to condemn revisionism, follows inevitably from the position taken by Baynac, a position that, once again, is not in any way peculiar to him but represents a general trend in orthodox historiography. Baynac is simply saying out loud what his colleagues have been thinking in silence.

   

  In publishing these two articles by Baynac, Le Nouveau Quotidien of Lausanne, normally so hostile toward revisionism, has shown both discernment and respect for its readers. 14

   

  Jacques Baynac: "There are no proofs, yet I believe."

   

  Robert Faurisson: "There are no proofs, therefore I refuse to believe."

   

  For the first: freedom of expression.

   

  For the second: a sentence of one month to one year of prison, a fine of 2,000 to 300,000 francs, and additional penalties.

   

  Notes

   

  Among the most noteworthy of Baynac's books have been La Terreur sous Lénine ("The Terror Under Lenin," 1975), Ravachol et ses compagnons ("Ravachol and His Companions," 1976), Mai retrouvé ("May [1968] Revisited," 1978), Les Socialistes révolutionnaires russes, 1881-1917 ("The Russian Revolutionary Socialists, 1881-1917," 1979), and La Révolution gorbatchévienne ("The Gorbachev Revolution," 1988). In 1987, he published, along with historian Nadine Fresco, an anti-revisionist article in the Paris daily Le Monde entitled "Comment s'en débarrasser?" ("How Can We Get Rid of Them?" [that is, the revisionists]), June 18, 1987, p. 2.

   

  "... si l'histoire scientifique ne peut, faute de documents, établir la réalité d'un fait, elle peut, avec des documents, établir que l'irréalité de ce fait est elle-même irréelle. En établissant que l'inexistence des chambres à gaz est impossible, on liquidera définitivement la prétention du négationnisme à se poser comme une école historique ..." Le Nouveau Quotidien (Lausanne), Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14.

  La Déportation: Le Système concentrationnaire nazi ("The Deportation: The Nazi Concentration Camp System"), a work published under the direction of François Bédarida and Laurent Gervereau (BDIC, 1995), p. 196. Here Pressac estimates from 600,000 to 800,000 Auschwitz deaths,

  This is quite a drop from the figure of 9,000,000 given in the widely-viewed film "Night and Fog," or 4,000,000 as established by the Nuremberg Tribunal and as inscribed until 1990 on plaques at the monument at the Auschwitz camp site (where since 1995 the new figure is 1,500,000).

  On Pressac, see also: R. Faurisson, "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers," Spring 1991 Journal, pp. 25-66 (Part I), and Summer 1991 Journal, pp. 133-175 (Part II); Arthur R. Butz, "Some Thoughts on Pressac's Opus," May-June 1993 Journal, pp. 23-37; Serge Thion, "A French Scholar Responds to a Widely-Acclaimed Anti-Revisionist Work," July-August 1994 Journal, pp. 28 ff.; "'The Jewish World' Against Pressac," Jan.-Feb. 1996 Journal, p. 41.

  "... l'absence de documents, de traces ou d'autres preuves matérielles ..." Le Nouveau Quotidien, Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14.

  A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution" in History (New York: Pantheon, 1989), p. 362.

  "... il faut reconnaître que la manque de traces entraîne l'incapacité d'établir directement la réalité de l'existence des chambres à gaz homicides." Le Nouveau Quotidien (Lausanne), Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14.

  "Le Secret partagé" ("The Shared Secret"), Le Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 21, 1984, p. 80.

  Article 31, Jan.-Feb. 1987, p. 22.

  E. Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Memoirs (New York: Random House/ Knopf, 1995), p. 74.

  M. Korzec, "De mythe van de efficiënte massamoord" ("The Myth of Efficient Mass Murder"), Intermediair, December 15, 1995. See also: R. Faurisson, "A New Version of the Holocaust Story," March-April 1996 Journal, pp. 22-23.

  D. J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996), p. 521, n. 81. In this same book (p. 523, n. 4) Goldhagen also writes, "The imbalance of attention devoted to the gas chambers needs to be corrected."

  Profil (Vienna), September 9, 1996, p. 75: "Die industrielle Vernichtung der Juden ist für mich nicht die Kernfrage zur Erklärung des Holocaust ... Die Gaskammern sind ein Symbol. Es ist aber ein Unsinn zu glauben, daß der Holocaust ohne Gaskammern nicht stattgefunden hätte."

  During a visit to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on August 30, 1994, I met with the Museum's Research Director, Michael Berenbaum. He told me, in the presence of witnesses, that "the decision had been made not to present any physical representation of a Nazi gas chamber." See also: R. Faurisson, "The US Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Challenge," July-August 1993 Journal, pp. 14-17; "Gas Chamber Door Fraudulently Portrayed at US Holocaust Museum," September-October 1993 Journal, p. 39; and, R. Faurisson, "Auschwitz: Facts and Legend," July-August 1997 Journal, pp. 16-17.

  In the Baynac article in the September 2 issue of Le Nouveau Quotidien, p. 16, there are three minor errors: in the second column, one should read "Florent Brayard" (instead of "Florent Rassinier"); in the third column, "Jean-François Kahn" (in place of "Khan"); and, in the forth column, "Il ne faut pas se demander comment techniquement ...," instead of "Il ne faut pas se demander si techniquement ...," or, "It is not necessary to ask oneself how" (instead of "ask oneself if").

  About the author:

   

  Robert Faurisson was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as a professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. He was a specialist of text and document analysis. His writings on the Holocaust issue have appeared in four books and numerous scholarly articles, many of which have been published in this Journal.

   

  This essay is a translation and adaptation of a text written in September 1996.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  An Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  July/August 1998

  Issue:

   

  Volume 17 number 4

  Location:

   

  Page 24

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

• The Mechanics of Gassing

   

  The Mechanics of Gassing

   

  by Robert Faurisson

  Among all those who make statements, speeches or use sentences in which the expression "gas chamber" appears, how many of those people actually know what they are talking about? It has not taken me very long to realize that many people commit one of the most glaring errors. These people imagine a "gas chamber" as being similar to a mere bedroom under the door of which a household gas is released. These people forget that an execution by gas is by definition profoundly different from a simple suicidal or accidental asphyxiation. In the case of an execution, one must carefully avoid all risk of illness, poisoning or death for the executioner and his crew. Such a risk is to be avoided before, during and after the execution. The technical difficulties implied herein are considerable. I was most anxious to know how domestic minks were gassed, how foxes were gassed in foxholes, and how in the US a person who was sentenced to death was executed by gassing. I have found that, in the vast majority of cases, hydrocyanic acid was used for such purposes. This was precisely the same gas which the Germans used to fumigate their barracks. It was also with this gas that they allegedly killed groups of individuals as well as great masses of people. I have therefore studied this gas. I wanted to know its use in Germany and in France. I have reviewed ministerial documents governing the use of this highly toxic product. I had the good fortune of discovering some documents on Zyklon B and hydrocyanic acid which had been gathered by the Allies in the German industrial archives at Nuremberg.

   

  Then, with greater scrutiny I re-examined certain statements and confessions which had been made in German and Allied courts concerning the use of Zyklon B for putting prisoners to death, and I was shocked. And now, you in turn will also be shocked. I will first read to you the statement or confession of Rudolf Höss. Then, I will tell you the results of my research, purely physical, on hydrocyanic acid and Zyklon B. (Please bear in mind R. Höss was one of the three successive commanding officers at Auschwitz; all three of whom were detained and interrogated by the Allies. Only Höss left a confession, for which we are indebted to his Polish jailers.)

   

  In this confession, the description of the actual gassing is remarkably short and vague. However, it is essential to realize that all those others who claim to have been present at this sort of an operation are also vague and brief and that their statements are full of contradictions on certain points. Rudolf Höss writes, "Half an hour after having released the gas, we would open the door and turn on the fan. We would immediately begin to remove the bodies." I call your attention to the word "immediately"; in German the word is "sofort." Höss then adds that the crew in charge of handling and removing 2,000 bodies from the "gas chamber" and transporting them to the crematory ovens did so while "eating or smoking"; therefore, if I understand correctly, these duties were all performed without gas masks. Such a description runs counter to all common sense. It implies that it is possible to enter an area saturated with hydrocyanic acid without taking any precautionary measures in the barehanded handling of 2,000 cyanided cadavers which were probably still contaminated with the fatal gas. The hair (which was supposedly clipped after the operation) was undoubtedly impregnated with the gas. The mucous membranes would have been impregnated also. Air pockets between the bodies which were supposedly heaped one of on top of the other would have been filled with the gas. What kind of superpowerful fan is able to instantly disperse so much gas drifting through the air and hidden in air pockets? Even if such a fan had existed, it would have been necessary to perform a test for the detection of any remaining hydrocyanic acid and to develop a procedure for informing the crew that the fan had actually fulfilled its function and that the room was safe. Now, it is abundantly clear from Höss's description that the fan in question must have been endowed with magical powers in order to be able to disperse all of the gas with such flawless performance so that there was no cause for concern or need for verification of the absence of the gas!

   

  What mere common sense suggested is now confirmed by the technical documents concerning Zyklon B and its usage. In order to fumigate a barrack, the Germans were constrained by numerous precautionary measures: specially trained teams which were licensed only after an internship at a Zyklon B manufacturing plant; special materials including especially the "J" filters which when used in gas masks were capable of protecting an individual under the most rigorous toxic conditions; evacuations of all surrounding barracks; warnings posted in several languages and bearing a skull and cross-bones; a meticulous examination of the site to be fumigated in order to locate and seal any fissures or openings; the sealing of any chimneys or airshafts and the removal of keys from doors. The cans of Zyklon B were opened at the site itself. After the gas had apparently killed all the vermin, the most critical operation would begin: this was the ventilation of the site. Sentries were to be stationed at a certain distance from all doors and windows, their backs to the wind, in order to prevent the approach of all persons. The specially trained crew equipped with gas masks would then enter the building and unclog the chimneys and cracks, and open the windows. This operation completed, they had to go outside again, remove their masks and breathe freely for ten minutes. They had to put their masks on again to re-enter the building and perform the next step. Once all of this work was completed, it was still necessary to wait TWENTY hours. Actually, because Zyklon B was "difficult to ventilate, since it adheres strongly to surfaces," the dispersion of the gas required a long natural ventilation. This was especially important when great volumes of the gas were employed as in the case of a barrack containing more than one floor. (When Zyklon B was used in an autoclave with a total volume of only 10 cubic meters, ventilation (forced or artificially) was still necessary.) After twenty hours had elapsed, the crew would return with their masks on. They would then verify by means of a paper test (the paper would turn blue in the presence of hydrocyanic acid) as to whether or not the site was indeed again fit for human habitation. And so we see that a site which had been gassed was not safely accessible until a minimum of 21 hours had elapsed. As far as French legislation is concerned, the minimum is set at 24 hours.

   

  It becomes, therefore, apparent that in the absence of a magical fan capable of instantly expelling a gas that is "difficult to ventilate, since it adheres strongly to surfaces," the "human slaughterhouse" called a "gas chamber" would have been inaccessible for nearly a full day. Its walls, floors, ceiling would have retained portions of a gas which was highly poisonous to man. And what about the bodies? These cadavers could have been nothing less than saturated with the gas, just as the cushions, mattresses and blankets discussed in the same technical document on the use of Zyklon B would have been saturated also. These mattresses, etc., had to be taken out of doors to be aired and beaten for an hour under dry atmospheric conditions and for two hours when the weather was humid. When this was accomplished, these items were then heaped together and beaten again if the paper test revealed any further presence of hydrocyanic acid.

   

  Hydrocyanic acid is both inflammable and explosive. How could it then have been used in close proximity to the entrance of crematory ovens? How could one have entered the "gas chamber" while smoking?

   

  I have not yet even touched upon the subject of the superabundance of technical and physical impossibilities which become apparent upon an actual examination of the site and the dimensions of the supposed "gas chambers" at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Moreover, just as an inquisitive fact-finder of the Polish museum may discover, these chambers were in reality nothing more than "cold storage rooms" (mortuaries) and were typical of such rooms both in lay-out as well as size. The supposed "gas chamber" of Krema II at Birkenau, of which there remains only a ruin, was in fact a morgue, located below ground in order to protect it from heat and measuring 30 meters in length and 7 meters in width (two meters on either side for cadavers and 3 meters down the centre to allow for the movement of wagons). The door, the passageways, the freight lift (which measured only 2.10 meters by 1.35 meters) which led to the crematory chamber were all of Lilliputian dimensions in comparison to the insinuations of Höss's account. According to Höss, the gas chamber could easily accommodate 2,000 standing victims, but had a capacity of 3,000. Can you imagine that? Three thousand people crammed into a space of 210 square meters. In other words, to make a comparison, 286 people standing in a room measuring 5 meters by 4 meters! Do not be deceived into believing that before their retreat the Germans blew up the "gas chambers" and crematory ovens to conceal any trace of their alleged crimes. If one wishes to obliterate all trace of an installation which would be intrinsically quite sophisticated, it must be scrupulously dismantled from top to bottom so that there remains not one shred of incriminating evidence. Destruction by means of demolition would have been ingenuous [meaning "naive", testified Faurisson]. If explosives had been employed, mere removal of the concrete blocks would still have left this or that telltale sign. As a matter of fact, Poles of the present day Auschwitz museum have reconstructed the remains of some "Kremas" (meaning, in reality, reconstructions of crematoria and supposed "gas chamber"). However, all of the artifacts shown to tourists attest to the existence of crematory ovens rather than to anything else.

   

  The real gas chambers, such as those created in 1924 and developed by the Americans around 1936- 1938 offer some idea of the inherent complexity of such a method of execution. The Americans, for one thing, only gas one prisoner at a time normally (some gas chambers exist, however, which are equipped with two seats for the execution of two brothers, for example). The prisoner is totally immobilized. He is poisoned by the hydrocyanic acid (actually by the dropping of sodium cyanide pellets into a container of sulfuric acid and distilled water which results in release of hydrocyanic acid gas). Within approximately 40 seconds, the prisoner dozes off, and in a few minutes he dies. Apparently, the gas causes no discomfort. As in the case of Zyklon B, it is the dispersion of the gas which causes problems. Natural ventilation for 24 hours is not possible in this case. Obviously, the location of the site of execution precludes such ventilation without seriously endangering the guards as well as other prison inmates. What, then, is the best course of action with a gas which poses such difficult problems of ventilation? The solution is to transform the acidic vapors into a solid salt which can then be flushed out with water. For this purpose, ammonia vapors which are basic are used to react with the acid vapors to form the salt by chemical reaction. When the hydrocyanic acid has all but vanished, a warning signal would alert the attending physician and his aides who are located on the opposite side of a glass barrier. The warning signal is phenolphtalein. It is arranged in containers located at various places in the chamber and turns from pink to purple in the absence of hydrocyanic acid. Once the absence of the poison is indicated and once an arrangement of fans draws the ammonia fumes out through an exhaust vent, the physician and his assistants enter the chamber wearing gas masks. Rubber gloves are used to protect the hands. The doctor ruffles through the convict's hair so as to brush out any residual hydrocyanic acid. Only after a full hour has elapsed may a guard enter the chamber. The convict's body is then washed very carefully and the room is hosed down. The ammonia gas has by this time been expelled via a high chimney stack above the prison. Because of the danger to guards who are normally stationed in the prison watch towers, in some prisons the guards are required to leave their post during such an execution. I will just mention the other requirements for a completely air-tight gas chamber such as the need for locks, "Herculite" glass barriers of considerable thickness (because of the risk of implosion since a vacuum has to be made), a vacuum system, mercury valves, etc.

   

  A gassing is not an improvisation. If the Germans had decided to gas millions of people, a complete overhaul of some very formidable machinery would have been absolutely essential. A general order, instructions, studies, commands and plans would surely have been necessary also. Such items have never been found. Meetings of experts would have been necessary: of architects, chemists, doctors, and experts in a wide range of technical fields. Disbursements and allocations of funds would have been necessary. Had this occurred in a state such as the Third Reich, a wealth of evidence would surely have survived. We know, for example, down to the pfennig, the cost of the kennel at Auschwitz and of the bay trees which were ordered for the nurseries. Orders for projects would have been issued. Civilian workers and engineers would not have been permitted to mingle with the inmates. Passes would not have been granted to Germans in the camp, and their family members would not have had visiting rights. Above all, the prisoners who had served their sentences would not have been released and permitted to return to their respective countries: that well guarded secret among historians was revealed to us several years ago in an article by Louis De Jong, Director of the Institute of World War II History of Amsterdam. Moreover, in the United States the recent publication of aerial photographs of Auschwitz deals a death blow to the extermination fable: even in the summer of 1944 at the height of the influx of Hungarian Jews, there is no indication of any human pyre or throng of prisoners near the crematorium (but an open gate and a landscaped area are clearly visible) and there is no suspicious smoke (although the smoke stacks of the crematoria reportedly spewed forth and flames continuously that were visible from a distance of several kilometers both day and night).

   

  I will conclude with a comment on what I regard as the criterion of false evidence regarding the gas chambers. I have noticed that all of these statements, vague and inconsistent as they are, concur on at least one point: the crew responsible for removing the bodies from the "Gas chamber" entered the site either "immediately" or a "few moments" after the deaths of the victims. I contend that this point alone constitutes the cornerstone of the false evidence, because this is a physical impossibility. If you encounter a person who believes in the existence of the "gas chambers," ask him how, in his opinion, the thousands of cadavers were removed to make room for the next batch. Note: Due to the pressure of time, we regret that Dr. Faurisson's article is published here without footnotes or references. This was because Dr. Faurisson wishes both the references and their translation to be scrupulously accurate. The references and notes will be published at a later date. Readers who wish to study the U.S. prison "Gas Chamber Procedure Check Sheet" should refer to The Spotlight newspaper (300 Independence Avenue., South-East, Washington, D.C. 20003) of 24 December 1979.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  The Mechanics of Gassing

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  Spring 1980

  Issue:

   

  Volume 1 number 1

  Location:

   

  Page 23

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.

   

  Back to Faurisson Books Page

• Three Letters from Dr. Robert Faurisson to Le Monde

   

  S. Mundi

  8 May 2000

   Three Letters from Professor Faurisson

  to Le Monde (1978-1979)

               In the last days of the year 1978 the Faurisson affair exploded in France, an affair which, it may be said, had been smouldering since 1974 with the first attacks on the Professor in the French press for his revisionists views. The spark which set off this explosion on 29 December 1978 was the appearance in the national daily Le Monde of a text by Robert Faurisson entitled "Le 'problème des chambres à gaz' ou la rumeur d'Auschwitz". In the same issue, that piece was accompanied by a set of antirevisionist articles amounting to a veritable barrage fire. Since the law provides for a "right of reply", the Professor was able to answer that assault publicly by a letter printed in the Monde of 16 January 1979. Several weeks later, on 21 February, his opponents were offered the opportunity by the same paper to publish other pieces, among which a solemn "historians' declaration" bearing thirty-four signatures. That text was drafted by Léon Poliakov and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Its conclusion was disturbing. In reply to R. Faurisson, who had asked how the homicidal gassings imputed to the Germans of the Third Reich had been possible on the concrete, technical level (especially considering, on the one hand, the nature of Zyklon B ­— which is a pesticide —, the difficulties of ventilation when using hydrogen cyanide gas and the layout of the rooms presumed to have served as chemical slaughterhouses, and, on the other hand, the draconian safety measures which must be taken by the personnel of American penitentiaries for the execution of a single convict by means of the same hydrogen cyanide gas), the thirty-four historians had this to say:

   

   It must not be asked how, technically, such mass-murder was possible. It was technically possible, since it happened. That is the requisite starting point of any historical inquiry on this subject. It is incumbent upon us to state this truth plainly and simply: there is not, there cannot be any debate on the existence of the gas chambers.

   

                Did not such a conclusion amount to surrender on the part of L. Poliakov, P. Vidal-Naquet and the other signatories?

   

               Still, Faurisson, once again, on 23 February, finding himself under fierce attack in the columns of the Monde, sent another "right of reply" piece to the daily which we entitle below: "One proof… one single proof". Le Monde, doubtless alarmed at the size to which the affair was growing, refused to publish this text while at the same time inviting the Professor's adversaries to carry on with their own offensive.

   

               These three pieces are a landmark in the history of revisionism. Yet, although their existence is, assuredly, known of abroad, they seem not to have been published in any language besides French, except in English and German, and then only partially and with serious flaws in translation.

   

              Over the twenty-odd years which separate us from these short writings of 1978-1979, Faurisson has been impelled to broaden his historical publication in assorted works, studies and articles published in several languages. It goes without saying that, on such or such a point, he may have had occasion to revise the three texts offered here in English. For example, in the German word "Vergasungskeller", he would today see rather a "gassing cellar", that is, a basement room which housed the equipment for the disinfecting fumigation (even though, as he points out, this question of meaning can still not be decided with certainty, and will go unresolved for as long as researchers remain in the dark about which part of crematorium II of Auschwitz-Birkenau this precise compartment actually matches).

   

               But, apart from these minor points, the body of the three texts has retained its full worth and, reread more than twenty years on, it presents itself as the summing up, in extremely compact form, of what Faurisson and other revisionists in his wake have been able to publish on the "problem of the gas chambers" and on certain essential aspects of the alleged "Holocaust" of the Jews.

   

               Finally, it may be said in passing, those who are well acquainted with the revisionism dossier will have noticed that there were, unhappily, instances in the 1990s where purported discoveries were trumpeted by other revisionists, but which were already to be found in these three pieces by Robert Faurisson from 1978-1979. The case of a discovery allegedly made by the young Jewish-American revisionist David Cole in particular comes to mind in this regard. In 1992, this latter was to make quite some fuss over the fact that a young female Polish guide, while showing tourists the Auschwitz I "gas chamber", declared it to be "in its original state" whereas, for his part, a museum official stated that the room visited was "very similar" to the original one. Yet, in his letter published on 16 January 1979 and, afterwards, distributed in English by a friend of Cole's, Faurisson had already pointed out that contradiction (see the text's first paragraph and first footnote). Let us add, moreover, that the room was not at all "very similar" to an original "gas chamber": its exposition as such amounted to an outright hoax, as a certain number of persons in authority were eventually to admit, among whom, in 1994, the assistant director of the museum (see the article by Eric Conan, "Auschwitz : la mémoire du mal", L'Express, 19 January 1995, p. 68).

   

               It is thus with a certain sense of satisfaction that we at last make available in a legitimate English version these three letters from the late 70s whose content is essential to a sound understanding of the present-day "Holocaust" revisionist adventure.

   

   *******

   

   Robert FAURISSON

   

   Three Letters to Le Monde (1978 - 1979)

   

  Le Monde, 29 December 1978, p. 8

   

   

   

  "The Problem of the Gas Chambers [1]" or "The Rumour of Auschwitz"

   

               No one questions the use of crematoria in certain German camps. The mere frequency of epidemics throughout Europe at war demanded the cremation, for example, of the bodies of typhus victims (see photographs).

   

              It is the existence of "gas chambers", veritable slaughterhouses for humans, which is called into question. Since 1945, the questioning has been growing. The mass media are aware of this fact.

   

              In 1945, the official historiography affirmed that the "gas chambers" had been used in the former (pre-1938) Reich as well as in Austria, in Alsace as well as in Poland. Fifteen years later, in 1960, it revised its judgement: "gas chambers" had operated, "first and foremost" (?), only in Poland [2]. This drastic revision of 1960 reduced to naught a thousand "testimonies", a thousand "proofs" of alleged gassings at Oranienburg, at Buchenwald, at Bergen-Belsen, at Dachau, at Ravensbrück, at Mauthausen. Appearing before British or French judicial bodies, the heads of Ravensbrück camp (Suhren, Schwarzhuber, Dr Treite) had admitted the existence of a "gas chamber" whose functioning they had even, in a vague manner, described. A comparable scenario had been acted out by Ziereis, of Mauthausen, or by Kramer, of Struthof. After the deaths of the condemned men, it was discovered that those gassings had never taken place. Flimsiness of testimonies and confessions!

   

              The "gas chambers" of Poland — as will surely be admitted in time — had no more reality about them. It is to the Polish and Soviet judicial bodies that we owe most of our information on them (see, for instance, the horrifying confession of R. Höss: Commandant of Auschwitz).

   

              Today's visitor to Auschwitz or Majdanek discovers, in the way of "gas chambers", facilities in which any gassings would have spelt catastrophe for the gassers and their entourage. A collective execution by gas, supposing that it were practicable, could not at all be likened either to a suicidal or to an accidental gassing. In order to gas a single convict at a time, with his wrists and ankles shackled, the Americans employ a special gas [hydrogen cyanide] within a small space, from which, after its use, it is extracted and subsequently neutralised. So then, how could two thousand people (and even three thousand) be held in an enclosure of 210 square metres (!), at Auschwitz, for example, to have a common and powerful insecticide called Zyklon B poured onto them (!); finally, just after the victims' death, how could a team be sent, without gas masks, into that place saturated with hydrogen cyanide, in order to remove the corpses infused with cyanide? Some too little-known documents [3] show, moreover: 1) That the structure in question, which the Germans are said to have blown up shortly before their departure, was nothing but a typical morgue (Leichenkeller), built underground (to protect it from the warmth of the air) and fitted with a single small door for entry and exit; 2) That the Zyklon B could not be evacuated by a rapid ventilation and that it needed at least twenty-one hours to evaporate. Whereas thousands of documents on the Auschwitz crematoria (including invoices precise to the last Pfennig) are in our possession, neither a directive to build, nor a study, nor an order of material, nor a blueprint, nor a bill, nor any photograph is attested as regards the "gas chambers", which, we are told, adjoined those crematoria. At a hundred trials (Jerusalem, Frankfurt, etc.), no evidence has been produced.

   

              "I was at Auschwitz. There were no 'gas chambers' there." Those who dare bear witness on behalf of the accused by pronouncing that sentence are hardly listened to. They are prosecuted. Still in 1978, anyone in Germany who speaks out in favour of Thies Christophersen, author of Die Auschwitz-Lüge ("The Auschwitz Lie"), risks a conviction for "offending the memory of the dead".

   

             After the war, the International Red Cross (which had investigated "the rumour of Auschwitz") [4], the Vatican (which had been quite well informed about Poland), the Nazis, the collabos, all declared, along with many others: "The 'gas chambers'? We did not know." But how can one know of things which have not existed?

   

              Nazism is dead and gone, together with its Führer. There remains today the truth. Let us dare to tell it publicly. The non-existence of the "gas chambers" is good news for humanity. Good news which it would be wrong to keep hidden any        longer [5].

   

   ********

   

   Le Monde, 16 January 1979, p. 13

   

   A letter from Mr Faurisson

   

               Until 1960, I believed in the reality of those gigantic massacres in “gas chambers”. Then, upon reading Paul Rassinier, a wartime résistant and deportee who had written Le Mensonge d’Ulysse, I began to have doubts. After fourteen years of personal reflexion, then four years of sustained research, I became certain, as have twenty other revisionist authors, that I had before me a historical lie. I have visited and revisited Auschwitz and Birkenau where the authorities exhibit a "reconstituted gas chamber 1” together with remains said to be those of "crematoria with gas chambers". At Struthof (Alsace) and at Majdanek (Poland), I have examined the buildings presented as "gas chambers in their original state". I have analysed thousands of documents, particularly at the Paris Centre de documentation juive contemporaine: archives, transcripts, photographs, written testimonies. I have tirelessly pursued specialists and historians with my questions. I have tried to find, but in vain, a single deportee who could prove to me that he had really seen, with his own eyes, a "gas chamber". I especially did not want an illusory abundance of evidence; I was willing to settle for one proof, one single proof. I have never found that proof. What I have found, on the contrary, is much false evidence, worthy of the witchcraft trials, dishonouring the judges who have admitted it. And then I have found silence, embarrassment, hostility, leading in the end to slander, insults, physical blows.

   

              The retorts recently prompted by my brief piece on "The Rumour of Auschwitz" are those which I have read more than once in eighteen years of research. I do not call into question the sincerity of their authors, but I will say that they are teeming with errors long since pointed out by the likes of Rassinier, Scheidl and Butz.

   

              For example, in the letter of 29 January 1943 (bearing the regular mention "Secret") which is quoted to me, Vergasung does not signify "gassing", but rather "carburetion". Vergasungskeller designates the room, below ground, in which the "gaseous" mixture which fed the crematory oven was prepared. This oven and others like it were supplied by the firm Topf & Sons, of Erfurt (Doc. NO-4473).

   

               Begasung designated the gassing of clothing in autoclaves. If the gas used was Zyklon B - "B [lausäure] preparation" that is, Prussic acid or hydrogen cyanide - then "blue gas chambers" were mentioned. Nothing to do with the purported "slaughterhouse-gas chambers"!

   

              The Diary of physician Johann Paul Kremer must be cited correctly. It will thus be seen that, if he speaks of the horrors of Auschwitz, it is in allusion to the horrors of the typhus epidemic of September-October 1942. On 3 October he was to write: "At Auschwitz, whole streets have been annihilated by typhus." He himself would contract what is called "the Auschwitz disease". Germans died of it. The sorting of the sick and the well was the "selection", or one of the forms of "special action", carried out by doctors. This sorting was done either inside the buildings or outdoors. Never did Kremer write that Auschwitz was a Vernichtungslager, i.e. in the terminology invented by the Allies after the war, an "extermination camp" (by which is to be understood: a camp equipped with a "gas chamber"). In reality, he wrote: "It is not for nothing that Auschwitz is called the annihilation camp (das Lager der Vernichtung)." In the etymological sense of the word, typhus annihilates those whom it strikes. Another serious translation error: under the date of 2 September 1942, Kremer's manuscript reads: "At three a.m. today I was, for the first time, in attendance during a special action outdoors." Historians and judges traditionally suppress the word "outdoors" (draussen) to have Kremer appear to say that the action in question took place in a "gas chamber". Finally, the horrid scenes before the "last Bunker" (i.e. in the yard of Bunker 11) are executions of the condemned, executions which the physician was obliged to attend. Among the condemned      were to be found three women who had arrived in a convoy from Holland: they were shot 2.

   

              The "Krema" buildings of Birkenau were perfectly visible 3 to all. A good number of plans and photographs prove this, and they prove as well the thorough material impossibility that these "Kremas" could have contained "gas chambers".

   

              If, as regards Auschwitz, someone quotes to me, yet another time,   confessions, memoirs, or miraculously unearthed manuscripts (with which I am already acquainted), I shall ask to be shown in what way the imprecise precision of their information differs from the imprecise precision of the information in all the documents which led the Allied military tribunals to rule that there were "gas chambers" where, in the end, it has since been acknowledged that there were none: for example, in the whole of the former Reich!

   

              In my article I cited the industrial documents NI-9098 and 9912. One should read these before countering what I say with the "testimonies" of Pery Broad and R. Höss or (why not?) the "confessions" made by J. P. Kremer after the war. These documents establish that Zyklon B was not in the category of gasses considered susceptible to ventilation; its makers had to agree that it was "difficult to remove by ventilation since it sticks to surfaces". For the carrying out of a chemical test proving the disappearance of the gas from its confines, a room infused with cyanide by Zyklon B fumigation can be entered only by someone wearing a gas mask fitted with a "J" filter – the very strongest – after approximately twenty hours 4. Mattresses and blankets must be beaten in the open air for between one and two hours. Nevertheless, Höss wrote 5: "Half an hour after the start of gassing, the door was opened and the ventilation device turned on. Immediately [the team] began removing the bodies." Immediately (sofort)! And he goes on to add that this team, assigned to handle two thousand cyanide-infused corpses, entered the place (which was still full of gas, was it not?) and took them out "eating and smoking [as they went about it]", that is, if I understand rightly, without any gas masks. This is impossible. All the testimonies, as vague or conflicting as they may be about the rest 6, agree at least on this point: the squad opened the chamber, either immediately or "shortly following" the victims' demise. I say that this point, in itself, makes up the touchstone of the false testimony.

   

              In Alsace, the Struthof camp's "gas chamber" is interesting to visit. The confession of Joseph Kramer can be read on the spot. It was through a "hole" (sic) that Kramer used to pour a “certain quantity of hydrogen cyanide salts", then, "a certain quantity of water", a mixture giving off a gas which killed in about one minute. The "hole" which is seen today was made in so sloppy a manner, with a chisel, that four faience tiles were broken. Kramer used a "funnel with a tap". I see neither how he could keep the gas from spattering back out of this crude hole, nor how he could thus willingly allow that gas, leaving the chimney, to spread towards the windows of his own house. Moving on to an adjacent room, I should like to have an explanation of this business of the corpses preserved by Professor Hirt in "vats of formalin" which are, in fact, nothing other than vats for sauerkraut and potatoes, with simple, non-airtight wooden lids.

   

              The most commonplace weapon, if suspected of having killed or wounded someone, is subjected to forensic examination. It will be noted with some surprise that these prodigious criminal weapons that are the “gas chambers” have never been subjected to any official examination (whether legal, scientific, or archaeological) whose report may be examined 7.

   

              If, to the general misfortune, the Germans had won the war, I suppose that their concentration camps would have been presented to us as re-education camps. By contesting that presentation of the facts, I should doubtless have found myself accused of being an objective ally of “Judeo-Marxism”. I am neither objectively nor subjectively a Judeo-Marxist or a neo-Nazi. I feel admiration for those Frenchmen who courageously struggled against Nazism. They defended the right cause. If today I state that the “gas chambers” did not exist, it is because the difficult duty to be truthful obliges me to say so.

   

                   [In accordance with the law of 29 July 1881, we hereby publish Mr Faurisson’s text. Any response directed against him or his statements would in its turn offer him a new right of reply.

   

                  Nonetheless, we do not consider the case opened by Darquier de Pellepoix’s declarations to be closed.] *

   

  * Louis Darquier de Pellepoix (1897-1980) was head of the Vichy government's Commissariat général des affaires juives ("General Office for Jewish Affairs") from May 1942 to February 1944. With the advent of "Liberation" and the subsequent Épuration (purge), he fled to Spain, where he lived until his death. In 1978, some French journalists, besieged with letters from Professor Faurisson and sensing that an "affaire Faurisson", which had been lying quiet like live coals since July 1974, threatened eventually to flare up, decided to make a firebreak. One Philippe Ganier-Raymond, a journalist and part-time swindler (previously held liable by a Paris court, with the aid of Faurisson, for literary fraud concerning a text written by Céline), got in on the act. In October of 1978, in the weekly L'Express, he published an alleged interview with Darquier de Pellepoix in which the latter was quoted as stating that at Auschwitz only lice had been gassed. Thanks to this subterfuge, Faurisson ended up seeming, a few weeks afterwards, like the twin of a wartime collaborator. [S. Mundi.]

   

   “Right to Reply” letter of 26 February 1979, refused publication by Le Monde, regarding pieces appearing in its editions of 21 February 1979 (p. 23) and 23 February 1979 (p. 40).

   

   One proof…one single proof

   

               In a long declaration, thirty-four French historians have recently let us know that it is of course "natural" to ask oneself all sorts of questions about the Second World War, but that, nonetheless, "there is not, there cannot be, any debate on the existence of the gas chambers".

   

              For my part, I remark that there is a debate on the existence or the non-existence of the "gas chambers", and believe that this debate is a legitimate one. It has for a long time pitted a few specialists of the school of revisionist historians against a few specialists of the official history. This debate opened, in a way, in 1960 when Dr Martin Broszat, representing the very official Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, had to make a huge concession to the revisionist Paul Rassinier: he was obliged to acknowledge that in spite of an alleged over-abundance of evidence, documents, testimonies and confessions (all of them reliable), there had never existed a single "gas chamber" in any of the concentration camps in the former Reich. In 1968, the discussion was revived, on the official side, by Olga Wormser-Migot who, in the face of a veritable storm of protest, dared to speak, in her thesis, of what she then termed "the problem of the gas chambers". Since 1974, this debate has little by little become a public one in Western Europe and in the English-speaking world at large (including, just recently, Australia!). The French press can no longer ignore this, lest it practise a form of censorship.

   

              This debate is already richly instructive. An attentive reader of Le Monde will have learned much just from a perusal of the 21 February 1979 issue, where a whole page was exclusively devoted to a rendering of the official history's arguments. To begin, the reader will have learned that, in certain camps, fake "gas chambers" are presented to "pilgrims and tourists" (the only pity is that he is not told the names of those camps). Then, he will have learned that the figure for Auschwitz of three million dead is "surely an exaggeration", news which will have come as a surprise if he recalls that the official figure is four million. He will have noted that, in places where the German archives are declared to be "silent" 1, there is a tendency to interpret them. He will have seen that, where Third Reich documents are "apparently innocuous", they are interpreted to the point, for example, of saying that "to treat accordingly" signifies… "to gas". He will have noted that the orders of Himmler either to build or to destroy the "gas chambers" are not in the least precise, the fact being that such orders apparently never existed. He will have learned that the "document" of the SS engineer Gerstein is deemed "unquestionable", not in its entirety but "for the most part". With still a bit of attention, he will have noted that, according to the passages of the document which those in charge care to quote to him, there were from 700 to 800 persons in a "gas chamber" whose area was about 25 square metres, with a ceiling of 1.8 metres, which gives us from 28 to 32 persons standing in the space of each square metre! In the list of the thirty-four historians, he will perhaps have noticed that there is but a single specialist of the history of the camps. In the bibliography list, he will have twice come across the name of Olga Wormser-Migot for secondary works but not for her thesis, doubtless considered dangerous; and he will not have found any book or any article devoted to the "gas chambers", for the good reason that, on the official side, there are none, either in French or in any foreign language (in this regard, beware of certain deceptive titles!).

   

              The Le Monde reader is told of an account of the "final solution to the Jewish problem" dated 20 January 1942. One may well wonder why the text of this account is not called by its name, as is normally the case: "Wannsee Protocol". I observe that, for some time, it has been realised that these strange minutes (for the word "Protocol" is a misnomer) are full of oddities and that they lack any guaranty of genuineness. They were typed on ordinary paper, with no indication of place or date of edition, no indication of point of origin, no official letterhead, no reference, no signature. That said, I think that the meeting of 20 January 1942 did take place and that it dealt with "the solution, at last, of the Jewish problem", which is to say that, as their emigration to Madagascar had been made impossible by the war, it was decided to expel the Jewish populations to the East of Europe.

   

              Whoever bases any accusation at all on the Gerstein "document" (PS-1553) shows, by so doing, proof of an inability to find a solid argument in favour of the "gas chambers'" existence. Not even the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal cared to exploit this text which had emerged from its archives. Other tribunals, it is true, have been content to use it. The confession by R. Höss is worth no more. I shall not go back over the matter of this "admission" drafted under the surveillance of his Polish and Soviet jailers. The least effort of analysis shows its fabricated nature; on this point I refer the reader to the works of Paul Rassinier and, in particular, to his study of the Eichmann trial (Le Véritable Procès Eichmann). As for Kremer's diary, written during the war, it is genuine, but certain meanings are abusively coaxed out of some passages, or indeed the text is twisted in order to have us think that Kremer is speaking of the horrors of the "gas chambers" where, in reality, he describes the horrors of a typhus epidemic. After the war Kremer, indeed, did confess what he was led to confess, in accordance with all the stereotypes of the confession specialists. I am rebuked for having hidden this confession. I have not hidden it. I have expressly mentioned the existence of these "admissions". I have not analysed the text because, quite simply, my opponents have felicitously refrained from presenting it to me as evidence of the existence of "gas chambers" at Auschwitz! When Kremer speaks of three women being shot, I am willing to believe him. It could happen, I think, that a convoy of 1,710 persons contain three who were to be shot on arrival, at Auschwitz. But when Kremer, after the war, tells us that the incident involved women who had refused to enter the "gas chamber", I believe none of it. I need only go back to what he claimed to have seen of an alleged gassing operation, observed from his car. Kremer is among those people according to whom the reopening of the "gas chamber" was carried out "a moment" after the victims' death 2. I have already shown that this is a material impossibility. And then, I note that, in an attempt to explain a confession, Kremer's, another confession is relied upon, that (as chance would have it) of Höss. The disturbing point is that these two confessions, both obtained by Polish military justice, contradict one another much more than they uphold one another. One should take a close look at their respective descriptions both of the victims and the surroundings, and of the executioners and the mode of execution.

   

              I do not understand the reply made in regard to Zyklon B. Used in a "gas chamber", it would have stuck to the ceiling, to the floor, to the four walls and would have perfused the victims’ bodies and their mucous for at least twenty hours. The members of the Sonderkommando (in fact, the crematorium team) charged with the task, it is said, of taking the bodies out of the “gas chamber” half an hour after the pouring in (?) of the Zyklon B, would have been instantly asphyxiated. And the Germans could hardly have scoffed at that, for the job would thus not have been done and no new batch of victims could have been brought to the spot.

   

              One must not confuse a suicidal or accidental asphyxiation with an execution by gassing. In the latter case, those carrying out the job must avoid the least risk. Thus, the Americans, in order to gas a single prisoner at a time, use a complicated procedure in a small and hermetically sealed space. All movements are begun on the outside. The condemned man has his wrists and ankles bound and his head immobilised. After his death, the gas is extracted and neutralised and the guards must wait more than an hour before entering the little enclosure. A “gas chamber” is not a bedroom.

   

              For four years I have expressed the wish to debate publicly, with anyone whom the other side may care to name, “the problem of the gas chambers”. I am answered with court writs. But the witchcraft trials, like the witch-hunts, never proved anything. I know of a way to move the debate forward. Instead of repeating ad nauseam that there exists an overabundance of evidence to prove the existence of the "gas chambers" (let us be reminded of what this supposed overabundance was worth for the former Reich's — mythical — "gas chambers"), I suggest, in order to begin at the beginning, that my adversaries provide me with a proof, one single clear-cut proof of the actual existence of a "gas chamber", of a single "gas chamber". Then we shall examine that "proof" together, in public.

   

                                                                                                                              R. Faurisson

   

  [1] The phrase is that of Olga Wormser-Migot (Le Système concentrationnaire nazi, thesis published by the Presses Universitaires de France, 1968).

   

  [2]  “Keine Vergassung in Dachau”, by Dr Martin Broszat, director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich (Die Zeit, 19 August 1960, p. 16).

   

  [3] On the one hand, photos from the Auschwitz Museum (negatives 519 and 6228), and, on the other hand, papers from the Nuremberg trial (NI-9098 and NI-9912).

   

  [4] See The Work of the ICRC for Civilian Detainees in German Concentration Camps from 1939-1945,  International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, 1975 [French edition 1946] reproducing in part (I have a copy of the full confidential text) document No. 9925: “Visit by an ICRC delegate to the Commandant of Auschwitz Camp (September 1944)”, p. 76-77 [French edition, p. 91-92]. A crucial sentence of this document was deftly truncated of three words in the book by Marc Hillel, Les Archives de l'espoir ("The Archives of Hope"), Fayard, 1977, p. 257, and the most important sentence ("The inmates themselves said nothing [about a gas chamber]”) was simply left out.

   

  [5] Among the score of authors who refute the existence of the "gas chambers", I shall cite Paul Rassinier, wartime deportee (Le Véritable Procès Eichmann, les Sept Couleurs, 1962, distributed by Maurice Bardèche, 5, rue Rataud, 75005 Paris) and, especially, the American A. R. Butz for his remarkable book on The Hoax of the 20th Century, 1976, distributed by the Historical Review Press, 23 Ellerker Gardens, Richmond, Surrey TWJO 6AA, (U.K.).

   

  1 Presented to tourists as being in its original state.

   

  2 Auschwitz vu par les SS, Museum of Oswiecim edition, 1974, p. 238, n. 85 [the English edition, KL Auschwitz seen by the SS, had been published in 1972.]

   

  3 A football pitch "was located beside the Birkenau crematoria" (Tadeus Borowski, in the words of H. Langbein, Hommes et femmes à Auschwitz, Fayard, 1975, p. 129) [German edition: Menschen in Auschwitz, Vienna, Europa Verlag, 1972.]

   

  4 French regulations concerning the use of hydrogen cyanide are as draconian as the German: see the Ministry of Public Health decree no. 50-1290 of 18 October 1950.

   

  5 Kommandant in Auschwitz, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1958, p. 126 and 166

   

  6 Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, University Press Amsterdam, t. XIII (1975), p. 134-135.

   

  7 The general gullibility is easily satisfied: it is enough to show us a door fitted with a peephole and catch-bolted and there we have it: a “gas chamber”!

   

  1 The fact that some deportees were not registered at Auschwitz, as could well be expected, does not signify that those deportees disappeared or that they were “gassed”. For more details on this point, see S. Klarsfeld, Le Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France , Paris, 1978, p. 10 and 12.

   

  2 Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, University Press Amsterdam, tome XVII (1977), p. 20.

• Jean-Claude Pressac's New Auschwitz Book

   

  Jean-Claude Pressac's New Auschwitz Book

   

  A Brief Response to a Widely-Acclaimed Rebuttal of Holocaust Revisionism

   

  Robert Faurisson

  During the last several months, quite a lot of attention has been devoted to a new book on "The Crematories of Auschwitz" by French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac. Published in late September by France's National Center for Scientific Research, it supposedly provides definitive proof that the "Holocaust deniers" are wrong. An Associated Press article that has appeared in a number of American newspapers, for example, tells readers that, according to "Holocaust experts," the new book "will provide irrefutable proof to combat those who claim the Holocaust ... didn't happen." Pressac himself says that his 210-page work provides "the definitive rebuttal of revisionist theories."

   

  Such talk is a mark of progress. It confirms that a genuine debate about the supposed extermination gas chambers is underway. It further shows that the tempo of this debate is now being set by the revisionist skeptics, and that the defenders of the orthodox Holocaust story now feel obliged to respond to specific revisionist arguments. In the following essay, Dr. Faurisson provides a brief, preliminary critique of Pressac's new book, which itself is largely an effort to discredit the French revisionist scholar's meticulous research and findings. Much more about Pressac's book -- by Faurisson and others -- will appear in forthcoming issues of the Journal.

   

  In 1989, French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac published in English a massive book deceptively entitled Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. In my review of this book (published in the spring and summer 1991 issues of the Journal), I noted that it contains hundreds of details about the camp itself, the crematoria buildings, the ovens, the typhus epidemics, the disinfestation gas chambers (with Zyklon B or by other means), and even many details about the private life of the author.

   

  Nothing About Execution Gas Chambers

   

  But as I pointed out, there is nothing in this 564-page book about the alleged execution gas chambers, except what Pressac himself called, instead of "proofs," only "beginnings of proofs" or "criminal traces." The mountain had given birth to a mouse and, as a matter of fact, the mouse was Revisionist, because many of Pressac's statements were revisionist.

   

  My Unanswered Challenge

   

  Since 1978, I have repeated a challenge:

   

  Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber! Stop giving me words. Stop showing me a building, a door, a wall or, sometimes, only hair or shoes. I need a full picture of one of those fantastic chemical slaughterhouses. I need a physical representation of the extraordinary weapon of an unprecedented crime. If you dare to say that what tourists are shown in some camps is, or was, such a gas chamber, come on and say it ...

   

  This challenge has never been answered. In Washington, DC, the "Holocaust" memorial museum shows visitors the door of something that Pressac himself describes in his 1989 book (pp. 555-557) as a non-homicidal disinfestation gas chamber in Majdanek. Pressac did not answer my challenge in 1989. Does he answer it in his new book, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse ("The Crematoria of Auschwitz: The Machinery of Mass Killing")? The answer is definitely No.

   

  One (Phony) Proof

   

  Pressac's new book is, in essence, nothing but a summary of his 1989 English-language work. Of the 60 documents he cites, none really pertain to execution gas chambers, except one that Pressac describes as a proof (not more than one) of the existence of one execution gas chamber in Auschwitz. In fact, it is a simple letter, a commercial letter, with no mention of secrecy, from the German firm of Topf and Sons to the Auschwitz construction office ("Bauleitung"). It is about hydrocyanic acid (HCN) gas detectors in one of the crematoria. The engineer who signed the letter says that they have tried in vain to get from five different firms the ten required gas detectors and that, if they ever do, they will tell the construction office. Pressac contends that HCN gas detectors are of no use in a crematory except, if, in this case, it was used as an execution gas chamber.

   

  This is an inadmissible conclusion. Zyklon B (which is essentially HCN) is a commercial pest control agent that has been used since 1922 in countries around the world. In Auschwitz it was used extensively in the disinfestation of all infected premises, especially to combat typhus. In the mortuaries of the crematoria there were plenty of infected corpses. These places sometimes needed fumigation. In 1980, I published a German document (classified by Allied officials as Nuremberg document NI-9912) about the fumigation process with Zyklon B: The word for fumigation was Vergasung ("gassing"), and the word for gas detector was "Gasrestnachweisgerät." This was quite common. In Auschwitz poison gas was used to kill lice, not people.

   

  800,000 Dead?

   

  In a famous 1955 film, "Night and Fog" ("Nuit et Brouillard"), which is shown in every school in France (and many in the United States), the figure of the dead in Auschwitz is said to have been nine million. The Nuremberg Tribunal established that it had been four million (Doc. USSR-008). On the Auschwitz-Birkenau monument it was also four million but, in 1990, they chiseled out this figure. In his 1989 English-language book, Pressac wrote (p. 553) that it was between one million and a million and a half. Now, in 1993, in his new French-language book, he says 775,000 dead, rounded out to 800,000. (Among those, he maintains, 630,000 Jews were gassed.) The actual figure of Auschwitz deaths between 1939 and 1945 is probably closer to 150,000, mostly because of epidemics, starvation and overwork.

   

  Lanzmann Incensed

   

  Claude Lanzmann, maker of the Holocaust film "Shoah," is incensed at Pressac. He says that the entire contents of this new book are already "tremendously well known," except for the gas detector document that, he adds, certainly will not convince the revisionists. He says that revisionism is a catastrophe, in both the common sense of the word as well as in the philosophical sense, that is, a change of era. He thinks that Pressac is in fact a revisionist who uses the material and physical arguments of a Faurisson. (See Le Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 30.)

   

  An Expert Report

   

  Pressac is in fact a con artist. This I showed in my 1991 review, and this I will show in a review that is to appear in a forthcoming issue of The Journal of Historical Review. But the value of Pressac's book is that the believers in the "Holocaust," at least in France, finally acknowledge that this "Holocaust" must now be treated as a scholarly or scientific matter. We only have to take them at their word, and to say:

   

  "Okay! Let's begin at the beginning. We need an expert report about the weapon of the crime. If you think that Fred Leuchter is wrong in his forensic expert report -- as well as Germar Rudolf, Walter Lüftl and the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow (what about your silence on this?) -- there is an obvious solution: produce your own expert report, or commission an international committee to do so. In this way you will answer our challenge: you will show us or draw us a Nazi gas chamber."

   

  About the Author

   

  Robert Faurisson, Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar, is a frequent Journal contributor.

   

  Bibliographic information

   

  Author:

   

  Faurisson, Robert

  Title:

   

  Jean-Claude Pressac's new Auschwitz book (review)

  Source:

   

  The Journal for Historical Review (http://www.ihr.org)

  Date:

   

  January/February 1994

  Issue:

   

  Volume 14 number 1

  Location:

   

  Page 23

  ISSN:

   

  0195-6752

  Attribution: "Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year."

  Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.