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First Part of this Chapter

What The Faurisson Affair Really Is

The affair we are dealing with started in 1974 in quite a curious manner: the 17th of July a letter appeared in Le Canard enchaine addressed three months earlier by Faurisson to Dr. Kubovy, the director of Center of Jewish Documentation in Tel Aviv. Here is the text of the letter where the passages truncated by le Canard are restored:

May I ask your feeling, your personal feeling about a particularly delicate point of contemporary history: Do the Hitlerian gas chambers seem to you as having been a myth or a reality? Would you be kind enough to eventually specify in your reply, what credit, according to you, should be given to the "Gerstein Document," to the confession of R. Hoess, to Nyiszli's testimony (should we say Nyiszli-Kramer?), and, in general, on what is written on this subject concerning Auschwitz, on the Zyklon B gas, on the acronym "N.N." ("Nacht und Nebel" or "Nomen Nescio"), and on the concept of the "final solution"? Has your opinion about the possibility of existence of these chambers changed since 1945 or is it the same today as it was twenty-nine years ago? Until now, I have not been able to discover photographs of gas chambers that seem to offer some degree of authenticity. Neither the Center of Jewish Documentation in Paris, nor the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich have been able to supply me with any. Do you have any knowledge of photographs to be added to the file of this question? I thank you in advance for your reply and maybe for your help. Please be assured of my highest consideration.

Le Canard picked up this letter from Tribune juive Hebdo (June 14, 1974), which had picked it up from the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth (May 26, 1974), where it had ended up, the addressee having passed away. This was a letter similar to that which Faurisson had sent to several dozen people, historians and known specialists around the world.

Since June 25, the University board (Sorbonne nouvelle-Censier) where Faurisson teaches, has been talking about it. The letter had been written on University stationary.

The publication in the weekly Tribune juive of an article signed by Faurisson and which contains inadmissible doubts concerning the Nazi concentration camps, was referred to the president [Mr. Las Vergnas]. This article was written on our university (centre Censer) stationary. Therefore, the president requests that he be authorized to send to this newspaper, in the name of the board, a total disclaimer of our colleagues allegations, since they implicate the reputation of our university. The board unanimously approved.

Robert Faurisson points out:

[...] that a letter is presented here twice as an article. A letter published without its author's consent is presented as an article submitted by him to the newspaper. Questions on the existence of gas chambers become doubts about the existence of concentration camps; then, these doubts are, in turn, described as allegations. These doubts, declared inadmissible, and these allegations requiring a total disclaimer, would implicate the reputation of the university.

-- Since when is a person condemned without being permitted to defend himself (at least as an "invited observer," which was the case of the colleague who "referred this matter to the president")?

-- Since when are a president and his board qualified to judge a professor's research about which they only have a truncated letter?

-- Since when does the university contest the right to doubt and to research?

He posted these remarks at Censier in order to respond to circulating rumors and other harmful displays. His name is followed by "standing member of S.N.E. Sup," which would soon cause him to be excluded from this union, for his membership "would lead to the belief that the questions posed by Faurisson and what he presents as of an exclusively scientific nature, may have the endorsement of the S.N.E. Sup; for years a campaign is being waged to determine degrees in horror among Nazi crimes, while attempts at rehabilitating Hitlerism are developing, opening the door to political exploitation, the S.N.E. Sup. obviously refuses the least endorsement. The committee considers that the use of the acronym S.N.E. Sup. in this context is morally damaging to the union (11)".

Let's limit ourselves to three remarks: one has to be particularly simpleminded not to realize that there has been degrees in horror. Next, nobody suspects a faculty union of endorsing the research of its members. The S.N.E. Sup. is not exactly a scholarly society. The only function of this little jesuitism is to justify its abandonment of a longtime member in need of its support. The third point is interesting because it resurfaced in 1974, as in 1979, as it had resurfaced twenty years earlier, and hopefully will not resurface twenty years from now: the so-called "campaign to rehabilitate Hitlerism."

This is obviously a permanent campaign for those who participated in the enterprise (not all, there are repentants, too) and others, younger, who live in the nostalgia of the good Adolf. Since 1945, this campaign has never known other than pitiful failures. There is less protest against the rehabilitation campaigns of other criminal tyrannies, like that of the French royal family (see the recent gesticulations of the Count of Paris -- who pretends to be the Pretender to the throne...) or of Mr. Bonaparte, on the occasion of his bicentennial anniversary, celebrated by the French State at the expense of taxpayers. That the Fuehrer's birth be celebrated in two hundred years by an eventual German State, seems probable to me, the same causes produce the same effects. The fact of glorifying the "liberticide" dictator of the 18th of Brumaire does not imply ipso facto that our political regime resembles that of the famous precursor of Bokassa. We wish the same for the Germans of the XXII century. In addition, those who wish to rehabilitate Hitler, or Petain, or Louis XVI or Trotsky say so openly. For their enterprise would never make any sense if they do not admit their goal loud and clear. Therefore, it is important not to have a wrong adversary and to stop this little permanent blackmail. It can, however, silence only those who precisely worry about being mixed up with the openly declared partisans of Hitlerism whose purpose is quite different.

Following this hijacking of correspondence, Faurisson was, not unexpectedly, showered with abuse and various threats (letters, phone calls, graffiti on his house, in a typically anti-nazi style: "Faurisson, you will die like a beast").

This was the starting point of a longlasting dispute between Faurisson and the Lyon II university administration where he had been teaching since 1974. He had reasons to think that hostile rumors generated by the publicity around his research topics had the effect of preventing his normal career development at the university. He had the ingeniousness to be offended. A long judicial procedure resulted in a judgment against the plaintiff in Council of State in October, 1978. The atmosphere at Lyon University was obviously somewhat affected and that he could not count on other than some rare and discrete support in facing hostile colleagues.

This did not prevent the author of the "Ajax method" from continuing to work. It is the reading of books by Paul Rassinier, a former deportee, that led him to this trail. We will talk later about Rassinier and the unbelievable slanders he was subjected to. Before his death in 1967, he wished that young researchers would take up the torch and contribute to shine more light on this painful period of the war and the deportation.

Faurisson built up a file, sent letters in all directions requesting documentation, assiduously visited reading rooms, like that of the Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris, seeked the opinions of professionals in gas usage and cremation, traveled to Austria and Poland armed with a tape measure and a camera, questioned witnesses and archivists, and analyzed the texts. He drew conclusions. He tried to published them. Here is where nothing worked anymore.

In a letter published under "the right to reply," he briefly describes his approach&nbsp(12):

Until 1960, I believed in the reality of these gigantic massacres in "gas chambers. Then, after reading Paul Rassinier, former deportee, resistant and author of Lies of Ulysses, I began to have doubts. After fourteen years of personal reflection and four years of relentless inquiries, I acquired the certainty, like twenty other revisionist authors, that I am confronted with a historic lie. I visited and revisited Auschwitz and Birkenau, where we are presented with a "reconstituted gas chamber"(presented to tourists as being the original) and ruins of so-called "crematoria with gas chambers." At Stuthof (Alsace) and at Majdanek (Poland), I examined the locations presented as "gas chambers in their original state." I analysed thousands of documents at the Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Paris: archives, stenograms, photographs, written testimonies. I tirelessly questioned specialists and historians. I searched but in vain for a single former deportee capable of proving to me that he had really seen with his own eyes one "gas chamber." I did not want an illusory abundance of proofs; I was ready to be content with one proof, a single proof. This proof, I never found. What I found instead were many false proofs, worthy of witchcraft trials and dishonor to the magistrates who satisfied themselves with them. And then, I found silence, embarrassment, hostility and finally, slander, insults and blows.

At the same time that Faurisson was "tirelessly questioning specialists and historians," he initiated a sort of guerilla warfare with the press, especially le Monde, in order to publish his views, and this since 1966, without any success. Here is a symptomatic example: Faurisson sent to Charlotte Delbo a letter similar to that which he sent to Dr. Kubovy, and which surfaced in le Canard enchaine. Charlotte Delbo, a writer and author of several stories on the deportation (13), sent it to le Monde together with some commentary. More correct than le Canard, le Monde asked Faurisson the authorization to publish this private letter -- and he refused. It was, nevertheless, published with Charlotte Delbo's commentary, but Faurisson's name disappeared. The allusion was transparent to anyone who read le Canard enchaine at that time. The headline of the article is "Demythify or Falsify (14)":

"Do the Hitlerian gas chambers seem to you to have been a myth or a reality? (...) Has your opinion on the possibility of the existence of gas chambers changed since 1945, or is it today what it had been twenty-nine years ago? So far, I have not been able to discover photographs of gas chambers that seem to have any degree of authenticity. Neither the Centre of Jewish Documentation in Paris, nor the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte of Munich has been able to supply me with any. Would you have any knowledge of photographs to add to the file of this question? I thank you in advance for your reply, and maybe for your help."

These may be considered strange questions when addressed to a witness like myself. Yet, they were addressed to me in a letter that I received recently.

Doubtless, this letter would deserve no more than a shrug, a pitiful gesture (poor, mentally sick person) or an ironic response (what, Sir, would you subject all history to doubt, up to the invention of Niepce? Would you deny the Saint-Barthelemy, the fall of la Bastille and the battle of Waterloo because a Paris-Match reporter was not there?) Yes, this letter would doubtless deserve nothing but that, had it not been written on a faculty of Humanities stationary and had the name of the signatory not been followed by his title, associate professor.

Here is a professor who sought documentation for only a contrario proof, proof against the truth, and he hopes that I would help him find these proofs. After all, how to suppose that R. Hoess, whose autobiography (The Auschwitz commander speaks) was published, and would have considered it his duty, even though it was painful to him, to focus his eye on the porthole of the gas chamber every time a batch went through it? Was it to give ammunition to the charge while he quibbled about the numbers: two million, eight hundred thousand of gassed Jews, according to him, rather than the four million figure upheld by the tribunal?

Do the gas chambers seem to me to have been a myth or a reality&nbsp?... The question overwhelms me. So we would have struggled with the last energy to get out of Auschwitz, we would have struggled under such terrible conditions that our survival is a miracle, our will to survive was sustained by the will to be able to speak the unspeakable, we would have survived so that we would testify and keep the promise that we had made there: to say what it was like, and today, we are asked if the gas chambers were a myth?

No sir, the row of enormous chimneys from which thick black smoke came out, day and night, is not a survivors' invention. True, a photograph shows no difference between these chimneys and those of blast ovens, but the smell? The odor of burned flesh? The odor is not retained in the photography. Similarly, a photograph of a gas chamber shows a rather unremarkable shed. But I saw Jews from all of Europe flood into Auschwitz, where I arrived on January 27, 1943, whole populations that the S.S. were pushing toward this shed, and where they disappeared forever. Excuse me, Mister, at Birkenau, I was deprived of everything, even of a camera.

My opinion on the possibility of the existence of gas chambers? This is not an opinion that I have, it is the certainty to have seen them. And that this certainty could have changed in twenty-nine years... What a question! I was young enough then, so as not to be at the age of senility today.

Fortunately, I had a time margin. That I have to use this time margin to protest against a perverted mind drives me to despair.

To be there! To have gotten there! The nostalgic style that uses Nazism for an aesthetic purpose, romanticizes Hitlerism, gives it a double fascination, is more than a fashion unleashed by satiated and bored intellectuals with limited imagination. The danger is more serious. History is revised in order to revise its lessons. The truth is being erased so that a rebirth of fascism would not appear as a mortal threat. Weren't these S.S. beautiful in their uniforms, viril, passionate in love and invested with their supreme power: to inflict death? Isn't he a hero, this handsome S.S., a model to be offered to young people looking for an aim in life? Yes, the enterprise is more serious than it seems. Let an Auschwitz survivor request that we think about it.

Faurisson, feeling implicated (and who wouldn't be?) sent a reply where he said in particular:

Would gas chambers have functioned "somewhere in Poland and particularly at Auschwitz-Birkenau"? Mme. Delbo claims to have seen one. But what did she really see? She does not tell us. She blends crematory ovens (where corpses are burned) with gas chambers (where supposedly up to ten thousand people a day were killed). She says Hoess admits that he focused his eye on the porthole of the gas chamber. As for me, I read in the work she cites (Le Commandant d'Auschwitz parle, Julliard, 1970, p. 288) that Hoess looked at the interior of the gas chamber "through the keyhole of the door." This absurdity, added to a hundred others of the same sort, makes the "Confession" of Hoess a document of the same value as the confessions in the Moscow and Prague trials, or as is the case here, of the Warsaw trial. However, Hoess's manuscript is in fact unavailable and the circulating versions of it are gravely contradictory.

It is troubling that those detained at Auschwitz-Birkenau longer than three years maintain that they never saw a gas chamber there. Such is the case of Benedikt Kautsky, a Jewish deportee and leader of the Austrian Social-Democratic party. Nothing conveys that the "special actions" crudely related in the diary of the Auschwitz surgeon, Johann-Paul Kramer (Cahiers d'Auschwitz no.13, 1971) were gassings. Finally, a question: Didn't the International Red Cross conduct a thorough inquiry, in September 1944, of prisoners of all categories, and hasn't it concluded the past and present nonexistence of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, reported by the English radio?

The deportees died of hunger, cold, sickness, epidemics and maltreatment. They were sometimes shot or hanged. They were sometimes victims of allied bombings. They were decimated by unceasing transfers. Do the more abominable and perfectly demonic gas chambers have to be added to these horrors? I no longer think so. But the doubt does not prohibit research; on the contrary.

Pierre Vianson-Ponte, replies to this in a letter:

"Since you were not named, you have no right to reply. As to the initial letter, it was addressed to Mrs. Delbo and a letter, as you know, belongs to the addressee. Furthermore, it does not seem desirable to us to reopen a debate with no apparent outcome. Only new and important facts would justify that we inform our readers." (August 26, 1974)

Faurisson is not put off so easily. In a letter of June 20, 1975 to Jacques Fauvet, he proposes to explain:

The total number of prisoners who passed through Auschwitz, Birkenau and their sub-camps in the east is at most 500,000 (see, Hommes et femmes a Auschwitz, Hermann Langbein, Fayard, 1975, pp. 51-61). In the first confession that the Poles extorted from Hoess, he said that he had killed 1,500,000 people (see J'ai tue seulement 1,500,000 personnes, ed. de l'Amicale des deportes d'Auschwitz, F.N.D.I.R.P., s.d., 1947 [?].) In his second confession, the number is 3 million (see "Les ames automatisees," Leon Poliakov, Evidences, no.7, Janvier 1950, p. 28). In 1975, the Television Channel TF1, June 18 at 13:10 gave the number of 4 million dead, according to the official truth of our time... In its evening broadcast at 20:30, the figure becomes 4.5 million dead. As for Max Gallo, the figures he gives in l'Express of June 16, p. 70, is 5 million victims.

These figures pretend to account for those gassed who were not "registered." Yet, the existence of seven gas chambers in Auschwitz suspected by many historians and lawyers of different nationalities, is frankly no longer tenable. This began to appear at the Frankfort trial (1963-1965). Today, even a Hermann Langbein avoids any development on these chambers, though they form the core of the "genocide" enterprise.

Do the journalists of le Monde care about being updated on the latest work concerning a historical topic so frequently treated in your newspaper (see the statements contained in the "Bulletin du jour" of June 10, 1975) and, in this case, would they grant me an interview where I could talk about my work on Nazism as seen by le Monde?

To which Jacques Fauvet replies with the simple sentence: "Concerning the gas chambers, are you sure that the Germans did not destroy them in order to erase the traces of their crimes?" (June 24, 1975)

Three months later, Faurisson was up in arms against a review given by Jean-Marc Theolleyre, of a book by Hermann Langein on Auschwitz (15). The least that can be said about this letter is that he does not try to cajole in order to convince:

May I ask you once more when will your newspaper decide to stop inflating the most "henaurmous" wimp of contemporary history: the so-called Hitlerian "gas chambers"?

The aforementioned article constitutes a second offense. Your journalist devotes 167 lines to the book of Hermann Langbein, Hommes et femmes a Auschwitz. It's just hot air which gives the impression that he did not read the book. (He writes Kapo, while the author takes the trouble to explain that the correct spelling of the word is Capo.) He never alludes to the main point: H. Langbein, a specialist known for his writings on Auschwitz since 1949, and a kind of professional witness in trials against "war criminals" (in the losers' camp), exhibits in his latest work a frightening discretion concerning the cornerstone, the keystone of the "extermination" edifice, namely, the famous "gas chambers" of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Not one of the thirty chapters deals with them! Better, not one section out of 268! According to a traditional method, the text is sprinkled with terms like "selection" (in the sense of selection for "extermination") and the verb "to gas" is encountered wittingly, but nothing on the basics. H. Langbein, remarkably put in his place by Paul Rassinier (whom he tried to lecture to at the "Frankfort trial," prohibited to the latter), ended up by not responding, just like the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte: "Zum Komplizierten Problem der Gaskammern." Too bad! Nowhere in the world is there a book or a study devoted to these so-called "gas chambers." On the other hand, H. Langbein proves unintentionally, in twenty places in his text (about the hospital, about births, about the training schools for children in prison...) that the extermination theory is untenable.

Do the specialists of le Monde keep abreast of current affairs? Do they read the ever growing number of studies and testimonies about the "lie" or the "swindle" of Auschwitz? Do they know the statistics of S.I.R. (D-3548 Arolsen in Germany), issued by a biased organization? Do they know that the Diary of Anne Frank is a setup by Meyer Levin (16)? Do they remember the alleged "Gerstein Document"? And the book of Miklos Nyisli (quoted by Langbein as if it were authentic)?

J.M. Theolleyre replies courteously, recalls that at Buchenwald, where he was interned, the custom was to write Kapo, and ends as follows: "I refer you to page 293 of Langbein's book. I read in it the following which is not by Langbein but by Hoess, commander of Auschwitz: 'I had to keep my cool when the mothers went to the gas chamber with laughing or crying children.'" (Letter of October 8, 1975). But this correspondence remained private. Faurisson remained unpublishable.

The following episode took on larger proportions: on the occasion of the release in French of a revisionist brochure (very probably translated, printed and distributed by people of the extreme right), Pierre Viansson-Ponte published the following chronicle (July 17-18, 1977):

There is a brochure in the mail. Its big headline on red background is the question: "Did six million really die?" And above, by way of signature: "Historical Fact No.1".

The presentation and printing are carefully done, the text -- 36 pages of large format -- is very tight and dense. The back of the document shows that it was published in England prior to its translation into French by a "Historical Review Press" located in Richmond, Surrey, and that its author is a writer by the name of Richard E. Harwood, "specialist in the political and diplomatic aspects of the Second World War," and who "currently works at the University of London."

It was soon found out that this brochure is fairly widely distributed, free, of course, and sent to a list of individuals, particularly journalists and writers whose names and addresses were, it seems, taken from different phone books. And doubtless, it was sent too to other categories of addressees.

"Did six million really die?" Six million dead: the figure is known. We soon guess who these dead are: the six million Jews, victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis. However, we still hesitate to understand. Who would dare maintain that these six million victims are not "really" dead? None, really. This would be too enormous.

Well, yes! The only aim of the brochure is to "prove" that the Nazis did not exterminate six million Jews between 1939 and 1945, but only, at the most, "a few thousand." Still, those were not massacred, shot, executed, gased, burned, assassinated. They were victims, for the most part, of the typhus epidemic and other sicknesses that swept Germany during the last months of the war. Or they were decimated by hunger, epidemics and famine, whose responsibility falls entirely on the Allies, who crushed the Reich with their bombs.

Without undertaking to analyse in a detailed manner this insane "proof," let us summarize it: Since 1933, the Jews had "declared war" on Hitler, who had to defend himself against this internal enemy. He first "encouraged" Jewish emigration to neutral countries and to the United States, so that by 1939, there remained, in Germany, Austria and the European countries that were to be invaded by the German army, only three million Jews instead of the nine million ten years earlier. How, under these conditions, would it have been possible to kill six million? Furthermore, already in 1948, they were more numerous than in 1939.

Thus, we read in substance, that Hitler tried to find them a national home to "settle" in. He thought of Palestine, but the English refused. Then the war prevented him from pursuing the realisation of this project. Then in 1940, he thought about Madagascar, but France, even though defeated and occupied, did not want to talk about it. Then he decided to make the Jews "participate" in the German war effort by "settling" them in the East, in occupied Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia.

Hence, the concentration camps, the transfer of the Jews to the East, constituting what was called the "final solution" of the Jewish question. These camps were nothing but production centers, well organized and well kept. It is true that people there were compelled to work, but they were well treated, well nourished and well taken care of -- except possibly in some of these camps towards the end of the war. None of them contained "gas chambers" or veritable crematory ovens. Nothing but lies and slanders are all the fabricated tales, rigged photographs, books and films that represent these camps as places of extermination, torture and death.

The proof: a swirl of quotations mingle incoherently: the International Red Cross, the newspaper Die Tat of Zurich, January 19, 1955, etc. It comes out that "300,000 people died in prisons and concentration camps between 1939 and 1945, victims of racial or religious political persecutions." Yet, "all these victims were not Jewish." Thus, the brochure reaches "the most precise estimate."

The proof seems methodical. It is packed with numbers, supported by quotations from known, unknown, obscure or imaginary authors. The testimonies that run counter to this thesis are heavily refuted: Thus, all the confessions of Nazis, for example, were extorted by torture, systematically practiced by the Allied after the defeat of the Reich. There is a mass of impressive references, obviously unverifiable, and those that exceptionally may be, are crudely rigged. As is classic in matters of propaganda, the harder it is to make assertions acceptable, the more categorically they are proffered and the more obstinately repeated. Then comes a minute detail of trompe- l'oeil which is supposed to authenticate the improbable.

An example: The brochure refers to the "eminent American historian, Harry Elmer Barnes" (?) who basically wrote in Rampart Journal (??) during the summer of 1967 -- but the "quotation" is obviously given in quotes -- "that there was no systematic extermination in the `death camps'". Is there still any doubt? A little farther, here is a proof: "Berta Shirotschin (???) worked in the procurement service of the Dachau camp during all the war years. She said that until the beginning of 1945, and despite increasing privations in Germany, all working prisoners received their second breakfast regularly at 10 o'clock every morning. Yes, you read it: a second breakfast every morning.

All this seems so stupid, so fantastic, so hideously nonsensical, so ignominious that one is tempted to throw away this dirty brochure, repressing a sick feeling and thinking about it no more. Well, that would be a mistake!

In fact, one would like to believe that such incredible allegations can be taken seriously only by a reader blinded by racial hatred or foolish enough to swallow these outlandish enormities. However, the brochure is written and presented in such a way as to impress an ignorant person, truly very silly, maybe, but after all, the clientele of charlatans, quacks, and crooks of all shades is quite large in this century of enlightenment, that some reserve must be exercised concerning the gullibility and critical mind of our contemporaries.

But especially a "document" like this risks finding a certain audience -- large, which is normal -- among the very young readers, to the extent that they are naturally inclined to doubt the official history such as it is taught, to jump readily to the opposite of established views that we try to make them accept as truths. Lie, lie, something will always pass...

Thirty-two years have passed. Heads of families who were not yet born when the allied armies advanced into German territories revealing the horrors of deportation and extermination camps -- today, they have children eight, ten and twelve years of age. If these children read such brochures, and if their parents are not up to immediately establishing the facts and straightening out the judgments, then what will be the outcome? At best, a lot of skepticism about Hitlerian atrocities that will build up the resistance of their minds leading them to consider as excessive, or at least partially unjustifiable, all the denunciations of tortures, massacres and oppression of all sorts. At worst, a conviction that the lie is universal and permanent, that nothing must be believed -- especially history -- and that people are forever fooled, yesterday as today, and doubtless, tomorrow.

Faurisson jumps immediately to the occasion and writes a critique of the critique: "How does the journalist, Pierre Viansson-Ponte work?":

"The lie": such is the heading that Mr. Viansson-Ponte gives to his review of an English brochure (translated into French) where the true existence of both the Hitlerian "gas chambers" and the "genocide" of the Jews are denied.

The edition of this brochure in French has a clumsy heading and a misspelled word: six millions de morts le sont-ils reel[l]ement? The journalist says that it was published by "a `Historical Review Press,' located at Richmond in Surrey and that its author is a writer by the name of Richard E. Harwood."

The review is on page 13 of le Monde, dated July 17-18, 1977. It consists of 15 paragraphs.

Paragraph 1. The journalist says that this brochure "is marked by way of signature, Historical Fact No. 1."

Remark: This is not a signature, this format is to herald the heading! The signature appears on page 3a: "Richard E. Harwood."

Paragraph 2. The journalist does not give the reader a reference that would allow him to obtain the brochure, to read it and to form his own opinion of it. This reference is all the more called for that, even in the journalist's opinion, this publisher is not known. It is "a `Historical Review Press'" (see above).

Complementary remark: Here is the address of "H.R.P.": 23, Ellerker Gardens, Richmond, Surrey, TW10 6AA, England. (Address indicated in the brochure itself.)

Paragraph 3. The journalist says that "this brochure is fairly widely distributed, for free, of course."

Remark: The journalist does not explain the meaning of this "of course."

Paragraph 4. The journalist says that "six million Jews were victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis." He adds that to deny it would really be "too enormous."

Remark: This number, this "genocide," this "enormity," the journalist states as obvious facts that do not allow any discussion.

Paragraph 5. The journalist says that, for R.E. Harwood, "between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis did not at all exterminate six million Jews, but at most "several thousand."

Remark: In fact, as the journalist states in the next sentence, R.E.H. says that no Jew was a victim of a will of extermination. As to the number of Jewish losses (like we say, for example, "Allied losses," or "German civilian losses") during the Second World War, R.E.H. gives only confused and contradictory estimates. Comparing, p. 8a, two American statistics, one from 1938 and the other from 1948, he concludes that these statistics allow a number only "in the thousands." But on p. 34a, he seems to put the losses around one million when he cites a maximum of 1.2 million calculated by Rassinier on the one hand, and on the other, 896,892 dead, found -- pretends R.E.H. -- by Raul Hilberg. Finally, on page 35, he estimates 300,000 the number of "persons who died in prisons and concentration camps between 1939 and 1945, victims of political, racial or religious persecutions." He adds that "all these victims were not Jewish." It is worth noting that R.E.H. attributes this statistic to the International Red Cross and that he refers the reader to Die Tat, of January 19, 1955 (Zurich). But once facts are verified, if it appears as possible that this figure comes from IRC, itmust be said the Die Tat does not say explicitly so and that the figure of 300,000 concerns German victims including German Jews. (Remark concerning this figure: this figure is considerably exaggerated. The number confirmed by a process of registration -- namely, to a historian, the only number of "victims of National-Socialist persecutions" that can be taken into account -- amounted in December 1976 to 357,190 of which about 51,000 were from the camps and sub-camps of Auschwitz. See Service international de recherches, D-3548 Arolsen, Exhibit presented by A. de Coquatrix, director of S.I.R. at the Vienna Conference, April 12, 1977, 11 pages.)

(Footnotes at the end of the third part).

This text is the second chapter (1/3) of the second part of the unpublished English translation of Verite historique ou verite politique / Le dossier de l'affaire Faurisson / La question des chambres à gaz, published in Paris in April 1980 by the publishing house La Vieille Taupe (= the Old Mole). ISBN 2-903279-02-0. Copyright © 1978 by La Vieille Taupe. The book is still on sale and may be ordered from the publisher, BP 98-05, 75224 Paris cedex 05, France. We believe it costs 150 F (around 30-35 US$)

The original French text is available at <http://www.aaargh-international.org/fran/histo/SF/SF3.html>

ARTICLE 19. <Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.>The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, in Paris.

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