[January 1998]
Professor Robert Faurisson responds to Jeremy Jones' statement
of 25 November 1997
"Jeremy Jones makes two accusations against the short, 3
November 1997, witness statement that I wrote on behalf of Dr
Fredrick Toben. The first accusation is that I misrepresented
the Arno Mayer quote:
"Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable."
The second is that I presented material which is in no way relevant
to the case.
A. Mayer's quote
I did not misrepresent A. Mayer's quote. I never hide the fact
that, in spite of this remarkable 14-word sentence, the author
claims that the Nazi gas chambers did exist; All the authors that
I mentioned, without exception, claim that the genocide of the
Jews and/or the Nazi gas chambers existed. And, if I mentioned
them, it was precisely for that reason. In a way I said: "Look!
Even those people bring water to the revisionist mill." I
did not quote one revisionist author. I mentioned or quoted Raul
Hilberg, a declaration signed by 34 French academics, Jean-Claude
Pressac, Arno Mayer, Eric Conan and Jacques Baynac.
I specified that the title of A. Mayer's book was The `Final
Solution' in History, which obviously means that A. Mayer
belongs to the group of historians who believe that "Final
Solution" was an euphemism for "Extermination",
whereas, in fact, the Germans used to talk about a "territoriale
Endlösung", which is a "territorial final solution"
of the Jewish problem ( resettlement of Jews in a territory of
their own).
What I quoted was the first and significant sentence of a long
paragraph. To date (1988), no Jewish historian of the establishment
( A. Mayer is a Princeton professor of European history) had ever
written that sources for the study of the Nazi gas chambers were
at once rare and unreliable. Before that those sources were at
once countless and reliable. In 1988, it came as a surprise that
such a prestigious academic could say that he was believing in
something for the study of which sources were, according in his
own words, at once rare and unreliable.
Other quotes of A. Mayer
If I had more space I could have quoted many other parts of A.
Mayer's book. Let's contend with only three quotes:
1. "But gradually, even if unwittingly, this cult of remembrance has become overly sectarian" (p.16);
2. "Besides, from 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably overall, more Jews were killed by so-called `natural' causes than by `unnatural' ones" (p.365);
3. "All in all, how many bodies were cremated in Auschwitz? How many died there all told? What was the national, religions and ethnic breakdown of this commonwealth of victims? How many of them were condemned to die a `natural' death and how many were deliberately slaughtered? And what was the proportion of Jews among those murdered in cold blood - among these gassed? We have simply no answers to those questions at this time" (p.366).
I could quote many of A. Mayer's nearly revisionist views about
the Einsatzgruppen; about the alleged genocidal purpose of the
Wannsee Conference; about Hitler himself, and I could underscore
the fact that this historian avoided mentioning the alleged `confessions'
of Rudolf Höss; the so-called "confessions" of
Kurt Gerstein; and the preposterous `Report' of Rudolf Vrba and
Alfred Wetzler (The Auschwitz Protocols published in November
1944 by the Executive Office of President Roosevelt).
One quote of J. Jones
But let's simply have a look at J. Jones' quote of A Mayer's book.
Let's look at what he accuses me of having forgotten. In that
quote, we can see that, according to the Princeton professor,
there are no traceS of the
alleged murderous activities and instruments of a gigantic murder
of the Jews. He dares to say that the reason for the absence of
traces is that the SS operatives dutifully eliminated those traces
but we see that he offers no proof whatsoever thereof. He adds
that we have no written orders and, once more, offers no
proof thereof. In passing, notice that "no written order"
is here a substitute for "no orders at all" since, if
we had other orders than written ones, the professor would have
told us. He then writes that we have no bones and no
ashes of the victims and, likewise, he contends that care
was taken to dispose of those bones and ashes. In fact, let's
recall that bones and ashes of cremated bodies were found but
none of those mountains of bones and ashes that should have been
there if really an industrial extermination of Jews had taken
place.
Then, after conceding that we have no hard evidence consisting
of orders to kill the Jews, no physical traces of huge numbers
of murdered victims, A. Mayer goes on saying that we have only
words! Those are the words of people testifying after the
war: either Germans or Jews. Moreover, this testimony,
he warns us, must be screened carefully. As for diaries,
they are rare, and authentic documentS also are said to
be rare.
Of course, A. Mayer adds, that, some time in the future, we may
get something like additional evidence, private journals and official
papers, archives from the Soviets and new information possibly
brought by excavations. But the words he uses are revealing; words
such as "may", "are likely", "may well".
"may also", tend to show that A. Mayer counts on a problematic
future to compensate such a disappointing present.
His book was published in 1988. The irony is that what happened
after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the - relative - opening
of the archives, brought exactly the contrary of what A. Mayer
expected. In 1990, with the agreement of at least some Jewish
representatives, the Auschwitz National Museum had to remove the
inscription of the Auschwitz-Birkenau monument which purported
in 19 different languages that 4,000,000 people had died at the
camp. After a very long discussion it was decided , five years
later, that the new figure would be 1,500,000 which is much more
than, for instance, Jean-Claude Pressac believes ( from 600,000
to 800,000) and even far more than, hopefully, it will be revealed
one day if the International Tracing Service archives held in
Arolsen-Waldeck (Germany) are opened to every searcher.
As for the Sterbebücher (death books) found in Moscow
and Auschwitz, they confirm that the revisionists were right when
they were saying that the deaths were carefully registered by
the Germans, even the deaths of young children; of the elderly;
and of "Mosaic" origin who, according to the legend,
should have been immediately gassed on their arrival, without
being registered.
Jones' misrepresentations
J. Jones does not hesitate to tamper with a text of A. Mayer
which is embarrassing for him.
A. Mayer writes:
"In the meantime, there is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities and errors in the existing sources. These cannot be ignored, although it must be emphasized strongly that such defects are altogether insufficient to put in question the use of gas chambers in the mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz" (p. 363).
J. Jones was obviously embarrassed by the facts 1. that the sources
were at once rare and unreliable, and 2 that there were, in those
existing sources, many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors.
He also was upset by the fact that A. Mayer insisted in saying
that these cannot be ignored and that he called them "defects".
So, J. Jones decided to rewrite the text; he found a way not to
mention the many contradictions, ambiguities and errors; he found
also a way to ignore what could not be ignored, and he simply
erased the "defects". The result is that, according
to rewriter J. Jones, A. Mayer is supposed to have written:
"it must be emphasized strongly" that this situation is "altogether insufficient to put in question the use of gas chambers in the mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz".
One has to admire especially here the way J. Jones stopped his
quote after "strongly", replaced "such defects'
by "this situation" and continued his quote.
for the second quote about the absurd performances that A. Mayer
attributes to the Auschwitz crematories: "provided they operated
at full capacity and around the clock", J. Jones forgets
to tell us that, in the next paragraph, A Mayer corrects himself.
This paragraph begins with: "But many questions remain open"
and finishes with : "We have simply no answers to these questions
at this time" ( p.366, as already quoted by me).
My material is relevant
My material is relevant to the case since, in my `witness
statement', my material came exclusively from authors who, like
J. Jones, claim -- without bringing any proof - that the genocide
of the Jews and the Nazi gas chambers did exist.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Adelaide Institude Newsletter nummer 67, january 1998,
on-line.
First displayed on aaargh: 17 April 2001.
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