My name is Robert Faurisson. I am a professor from France. I am specialised in text and document criticism.
Today
I would like to talk to you about a book published in Swedish. This book
is by Peter Englund. And its title, Det Eviga Hatet: Om
Nynazism, Antisemitism och Radio Islam, means “The eternal
hatred: On neo-Nazism, anti-semitism and Radio Islam”. It has been
published this year [1993]. I myself do not read Swedish: somebody sent
me a translation. And we’re going to suppose that the translation is
exact. But please remember that it’s only a translation.
I am going to criticise Mr Englund very strongly. This historian thinks that it is possible to answer the revisionism challenge. He thinks that the Nazi gas chambers really existed and that it is quite possible to bring forth evidence of the existence of those terrible weapons. The only way to answer our challenge would be, in my mind, to show us or to draw us such a weapon. Mr Englund does not show us, does not draw us any of those gas chambers. But that is what he claims. He claims that if you read carefully what has been written on the “extermination camps” as we are told (“extermination camps” means camps where the Jews were put to be exterminated), you can easily have an idea of what it looked like. And he goes so far as to say that he, Mr Peter Englund, is able to describe for us one such camp. And even a particular day in this camp. This day is the 18th of August 1942. The camp is Belzec. Not to be confused with Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen is near Hamburg and was liberated by the British. Belzec is situated in southeast Poland, near the Russian border.
Peter Englund, in part of his book, tells us: I am going to show you what happened on that very day, in that very camp. But there is something disturbing. It’s the beginning of his statements. Because first, he confesses that there is no physical evidence. And as you perhaps know, we in revisionism, we are very interested in physics, chemistry, topography, in technical questions. We are, as we say, materialistic. We want to see the things or to have those things reconstructed. But in a scientific way. So it’s really unfortunate that there is no physical evidence of such an extraordinary thing. But this is what he has to say. He says that not a trace is left of Belzec. The camp was demolished, etc, etc. He also says that there is no documentary evidence. That all papers were destroyed. You must understand that for Mr Englund, if there is no physical evidence and if there is no documentary evidence, it’s because the Germans are guilty. They destroyed everything. Which is really a surprise.
But we are going to proceed as if Mr Englund were quite right. And we are going to say: Oh, here we have a man who is going to tell us what exactly happened one day in one place. Although he has no physical evidence, no documentary evidence. What does he have? He has only what he calls testimony evidence. He has what he calls witnesses. Unfortunately, if you have no physical evidence and no documentary evidence, it’s very difficult for you to see the worth of any testimony. You need something material to check what a so-called witness is saying.
But anyway, let’s go and see. So, thus far we see that the author will not bring us any hard evidence. Physical traces of the place. Where the alleged crime was committed. Physical elements of the crime weapon. Paper documents about this place. This weapon, this crime. But only testimonies of what he calls eye witnesses.
So let’s see what those eye witnesses are supposed to be. Firstly, Mr Englund has said, and he indeed is right in saying, in reminding us that memory is deceiving. This is said on page 101. So my question is: How is Mr Englund going to proceed in order not to be deceived by something that is sometimes deceiving? And there is no answer. We don’t know how this Swedish historian checked those testimonies and how he decided: this is a good eyewitness, this is not a good eyewitness. He should have done that. Moreover, he has said of course “there are contradictions, obscure details and what must be sheer errors in the sources that I have used”. And he also says “I still consider a great number of details to be unclear and worth discussing. But there is no doubt, in spite of the different question of details.” And he gives what he calls some examples of those details. Now, if I am right, Mr Englund says “All of what I’m going to tell you is true. But in some details there might be sheer error or things that are obscure or contradicted by someone”.
So I would first say something on the choice of this word, “details”. I think that a real scientist has no right to say “details”. Because “details” implies a value judgement. It’s an opinion. Because what for you, for him I mean, could be a detail, might perhaps be for other people something more than a detail. And even when you say you implied an unimportant detail. In other words, in this apparently innocent word there is a double implication. The detail that he gives are some examples. So, how did he choose those examples? Maybe we don’t know. He chooses pointless and trifling examples instead of more serious examples.
Now regarding the first eyewitness, whose name is given, the German Kurt Gerstein, he says that in the testimonies of that man there are certain problems. And he gives only one example. He talks of Kurt Gerstein, especially his unreasonable statement that almost 800 persons were put in a gas chamber of 25 square metres. And of course this will mean almost 32 people in one square metre. But I would say “Is it unreasonable for an eyewitness to say that he has seen such a thing?” There is the word unreasonable: is that what one could call one detail? How many details of that calibre are there? What is the reader going to do with this sort of detail later on, when Mr Englund tells us the entire story of what he calls the mass gassings in Belzec, which took place till mid-December 1942? This is on page 100.
So if I try to arrive at the total of his own criticisms of those testimonies, I see that Mr Englund has to say, all the same, that there were certain problems. That something was unreasonable. That there were contradictions. That there were obscure details. Sheer errors. That something was unclear. He also says, in footnote 55, an absurdity, which might be seen as an error of thought. Probably also a mistake.
So, if I understand we have to be very careful with those witnesses. My question is: Has Mr Englund been as prudent as he says that we have to be? One question: How many witnesses is he evoking? And I could say, 16. Which is very many. And I am going to give you the complete list of those witnesses. So not only his witness no. 1, which is Kurt Gerstein, but and also Dr Pfannenstiel, but listen: Franz Stangel, Josef Jeklain, Oscar Degelman, Wilhelm Kornides, Adolf Eichmann, Frans Schomell, Josef Oberase, Rudolf Höss (who had been kommandant of the famous Auschwitz camp), August Becker, August Effner, two Poles, Stanislav Bodenowitz, Jan Karski, and also one Swede: Karl-Inge Vendell.
At no point are we given what exactly those people said about Belzec. Either from having served in the camp – which was the case of the Germans, or at least for some of those Germans – or from having seen it from the outside, the Poles, or from having got intelligence information on it. Which seems to be the case of the Swede. And the author says something else: he says that he has also used, as far as the Polish witnesses are concerned, a book written by the Communists in 1947. And this is disturbing. Because we have to be extremely prudent with what the Communists have published. We don’t know how they chose their witnesses. Or whether there were also sheer errors, mistakes, contradictions and so on.
So this is what we have. But Mr Englund uses a rather bad method, I should say. He has done something else which is extremely serious and I am going to criticise him very strongly. Let us take an example. His witness, the eyewitness number 1. This is the German Kurt Gerstein. But we revisionists know Kurt Gerstein very well. We have written many things about this witness, so-called witness. And this is what, surprisingly, happened with Mr Englund. In fact, Kurt Gerstein said in a statement that in the Belzec gas chamber there were 700-800 people in 25 square metres, 45 cubic metres. Which means 28-32 people in one square metre with a height of 1.8 metre. Because the people were not piled up one on top of the other. They were standing on their feet. So this is an impossible story. But my question is: How is it that, on page 119, Mr Englund reproduces, supposedly produces what Gerstein had stated, put in his mouth the words “700-800 people, about 6 persons per square metre”. 6. You understand, 6. Mr Englund reconciled the 25 square metres and the 45 cubic metres with the number of persons. He totally changed the story.
Let me give you another example. Kurt Gerstein said that in Belzec there was a mountain of clothing 30 to 40 metres high. Which means 10-12 storeys. Peter Englund, instead of reproducing this, which is so stupid – because how could you pile up items of clothing to a height of 10-12 storeys? It’s totally impossible. Mr Englund says that Kurt Gerstein had written not “a mountain 30 to 40 metres high” but rather “a gigantic mountain”. He replaced “30 to 40 metres high” by “gigantic”. So, if you read this, what is the meaning of “gigantic” for you? You are left with your imagination. And I could give you plenty of examples of the rewriting by Mr Englund of the text of his number 1 witness.
Let me tell you what it reminds me of. In the seventeenth century our king, Louis XIV, had a son and that son was called the dauphin (“dolphin”). And when the king decided that his son would have to learn Latin, his son was not given original Latin texts. Because, as you perhaps know, in original Latin texts you may have some, I would say, strong passages that a child shouldn’t read. So special books were printed for the “dolphin”. And they were called books “for the use of the dolphin”. This was the name given to the expurgated version of the classical Latin texts that Louis XIV had printed for his son’s use. But French people today use this expurgated version, this version “for the use of the dolphin”, as if it were the original. This text which has been transformed or falsified. So this is exactly what Mr Englund did.
He did something else, too. He hid the fact that there were many different versions of the gassings in Belzec. In the Gerstein version we are supposed to believe that the people were killed by the gas of a diesel motor’s exhaust. It is really stupid because diesel exhaust has very little carbon monoxide (CO) and very much carbon dioxide (CO2), and the gas that really kills is CO.
But anyway, what Mr Englund did not say is that, for many so-called witnesses, people in Belzec were killed, for instance, by electricity. It was the version at the big Nuremberg trial. The most widely promoted version of the Belzec story was that in this camp Jews were killed by electricity. Those testimonies, so-called, are ignored or not mentioned by Mr Englund. Why? Why doesn’t he also mention that?
For Leib Langfus, in a book written by Ber Mark and republished in 1982 [in French under the title Des voix dans la nuit : la résistance juive à Auschwitz-Birkenau], two methods were used in this camp to kill the Jews. Excuse me, but believe me, the first method was suffocation by shit [sic]. The Jews were supposed to have been put in pits, individual pits and the other Jews had to relieve themselves on their fellow Jews. And a Jew in the pit was killed by shit. The second method was electricity.
How is it that Mr Peter Englund has not mentioned the version of the man called Stefan Szende? He was a Jew. This version was first published in Sweden. And this extraordinary version says that the Jews were put into a very big room on a metallic platform. And the metallic platform would go down. Water would come in. And when the water was up to the Jews’ legs an electric current was turned on. And the Jews were electrocuted. Then the metallic platform would rise up and the electricity would be turned on once more. And this platform would get red-hot and the Jews would be burned. And even incinerated. This is the version of Szende published in Sweden in 1944. Mr Englund does not say anything about it.
According to the international military tribunal at Nuremberg (1945-1946), the only version is killing by electricity. The Soviet and British prosecutions mention it in document from the Polish government in London. And this was “the truth” in Nuremberg. Why does Peter Englund not mention this? And what about the absence of cross-examination of Dr Hans Frank? He was accused. He said that during the war he’d heard a rumour about Belzec. Then he visited the place. And according to what he said at Nuremberg he didn’t see anything wrong. Perhaps Dr Frank was lying. But we have to mention this. In the Oberhause version the story of the killing is that first Zyklon B was used and then the exhaust of a Diesel motor. And this does not fit at all with the Gerstein version, which said first “diesel motor” and then “possible use of Zyklon B”.
If you look in the Encyclopaedia Judaica published in 1971 and the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust published in 1990 you can see what they say about Belzec in the articles “Belzec”. Now listen, first: “The absence of survivors and the paucity of German documents referring to Belzec make a detailed history of the camp impossible”. So, according to the Encyclopaedia Judaica‘s editors, who have studied all the books and articles that have been published on Belzec, it’s impossible to write a detailed history of the camp. How could Peter Englund suddenly discover the possibility of writing a history of this camp so detailed that he is able to give this story of one day of the entire history of this camp? This day being the 18th of August, 1942. The Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust says: “Apart from this one source”, meaning the Reder source – which has absolutely no value, but anyway – “Apart from this one source information on Belzec has been difficult to come by compared with evidence on the other extermination camps”. Now this is not correct at all, about the other “extermination camps”. But never mind this, for the moment. This one source is Rudolf Reder’s booklet. That sentence was written by Itzac Rad, in that Encyclopaedia. But Mr Englund knows the name Itzac Rad. Because he mentions him, in a footnote I think. So how is it that Mr Rad, who of course mentions Gerstein in his book, does not mention him at the end of the article “Belzec”?
Among the people named by Peter Englund, you will certainly remember the name Kornides. But go and see what Kornides wrote. Kornides, in fact, said that he was on a train. And that from the train he saw the camp of Belzec. But he couldn’t see what was inside the camp. He said that he couldn’t see anything. So how could it be, how could Kornides be considered an eyewitness? This so-called eyewitness said: “I did not see”. So he is certainly not an eyewitness.
About Franz Stangl: do you know that, in fact, Franz Stangl didn’t see anything precise about Belzec? And you should read very carefully the book that Gitta Sereny Honeyman wrote about Stangl. The title is Into that Darkness. I myself asked Gitta Sereny: “But how is it that you didn’t ask any questions about the mechanics of the gassing in this camp?” And she replied: “But of course he would have denied that there were gas chambers.” So how could he be an eyewitness, considering that in this book by Gitta Sereny Honeyman Stangl doesn’t say anything about it?
Why does Mr Englund hide the fact that the revisionists have written very much about Gerstein, Pfannenstihl, Reder? If Peter Englund had wanted to demonstrate that the revisionists are wrong he should not have contented himself with vague accusations against revisionism. He should have laid precise accusations about the way Faurisson, Mattogno and many others treat the matter of Belzec. Why does Peter Englund not even mention those revisionists works about Gerstein or Belzec?
How is it that Mr Englund says nothing about what Raul Hilberg has said on Gerstein? Now, Raul Hilberg is what we call the pope of exterminations. He is the most important “Holocaust” historian. The number one historian of the so-called Holocaust. He wrote his famous book with the title The Destruction of the European Jews. But when Mr Hilberg, at a trial in Toronto in 1985, was cross-examined, it was a total disaster for him. And especially about Gerstein. He had to totally retreat from his position about Gerstein. And I would like to know how Peter Englund would have answered the questions I put, through the lawyer, to Raul Hilberg in that cross-examination. I will try to give you in few minutes some of the statement that Raul Hilberg had to make about Gerstein.
Among the eyewitnesses mentioned by Peter Englund there is Jan Karski. But never, ever are we told that according to Jan Karski in 1944, the Jews at Belzec were killed not by diesel motor fumes, not by electricity, not by shit but by quicklime. Yes, quicklime in a train. That is, surprisingly, in 1987. Because of the pressure put on him by the revisionists Jan Karsiki said in an interview that Belzec was a transit camp. “It was after the war that I learned that it was a death camp. I could not see the gas chambers.” So how could he be an eyewitness? In a book from 1987 you can see what he had to say about many witnesses mentioned by Peter Englund.
And coming to Rudolf Höss, he in fact was never in Belzec. He mentioned the camp of Belzec once. And he said Belzec and Wolzec in 1941. But you must know that in 1941 there were no “extermination camps”, as they say of Belzec. And that Wolzek never existed.
As for Eichmann, he said at his trial that he had never seen a gas chamber. Maybe it was a lie. But Mr Englund has no right to say that Eichmann was an eyewitness to Belzec.
Quite recently the revisionist Jürgen Graf – he is Swiss, he’s a professor – has put an end to the Belzec story by just placing side by side the witnesses’ different versions. His book was published in 1990 in German, in 1993 in French.
Now to begin with, in what Peter Englund writes, there is no physical representation of the camp or of the gas chambers. What appears on pages 107 and 117 comes out of the blue. There is an attempt at illustration – very vague – of what a witness said or is supposed to have said. A drawing or a very vague drawing or a sketch is no proof whatsoever. In fact, this drawing or this sketch is a kind of illustration of what Gerstein said. It’s not proof that Gerstein was right. Let me make it a little clearer. Gerstein wrote something about Belzec. Then some people tried to make a drawing from that. So the drawing does not prove anything about the truth of what Gerstein said. It is only a very big illustration.
I would have many other things to say. And you see, I am a professor, fortunately. And in my life I have very often had to grade the essays of my students. I’ve wanted to put a grade on what Mr Englund has written. You must know that in France the grades run from 0, when it is very bad, to 20 when it’s very good. And let me tell you that I’ve given a grade to Mr Peter Englund. A grade is, of course, a judgment. So let me tell you first the grade: it is 2 out of 20. And this is my judgment: This work by Mr Peter Englund is a pious attempt, as a novelist would make. A nonsensical story, in order to present it as a sensible and valuable piece of history. That attempt demanded considerable transformation of an original text. And concealment of documents. Especially of the Nuremberg trial, documents pertaining to Belzec. Mr Peter Englund ignores or conceals the existence of encyclopaedias, books and articles. Of both revisionists and non-revisionists. On the matter, he pretends to deal as an historian concerned solely with historical sources. I repeat: my grade would be 2 on the 0 to 20 scale.
I would like to add something about professor Raul Hilberg, the author, as I’ve told you, of The destruction of the European Jews. First published in 1961. And then in 1985. A new version, in 3 volumes. At the trial of Ernst Zündel in 1985 in Toronto, Canada, Raul Hilberg testified against Zündel, who is a revisionist. And I was in charge of helping the defence lawyer of Ernst Zündel, his name being Douglas Christie. And we had prepared some questions for Mr Hilberg, who’d arrived very, very sure of himself. And he was really defeated by the cross-examinations. So defeated that he refused in 1988 to come back for the second trial.
We asked Mr Hilberg: “So, in your book you are quoting Gerstein”. And immediately he tried to say: “Oh but Gerstein is not very important”. And we said: “Now, do you know how many times you’ve quoted Gerstein?” He had quoted him 23 times.
So, Gerstein was really witness number 1, until 1985. His testimonies were totally destroyed in a thesis presented in France by Henri Roques. And I’m going to read you some samples of the answers of Raul Hilberg when he was cross-examined by Douglas Christie on Gerstein. These are quotations taken from the transcript of the trial.
This is Raul Hilberg talking: “I would put Gerstein’s statement PS-1553 as one that one must be most careful about. Parts are corroborated; others are pure nonsense.” Second quotation: “Gerstein, apparently, was a very excitable person. He was capable of all kinds of statements which he, indeed, made not only in the affidavit but its context.” Now, suggestion of Douglas Christie: Gerstein wasn’t totally sane. Answer from Raul Hilberg: “I am not a judge of sanity, but I would be careful about what he said.” Something more from Raul Hilberg: “[Gerstein] was capable, in his excitement, of adding imagination to fact. There is no question of that.” Question from Douglas Christie to Raul Hilberg: “And we know that Gerstein’s statement that Hitler was there in Belzec on that day to be a totally false statement. Right?” Answer from Hilberg: “Exactly.” From Hilberg: “Well, in the reproductions of his statements, I eliminated anything that seemed not to be plausible or credible, certainly.”
Now let me make a commentary about this. This is exactly what Mr Peter Englund did. This is the “For the use of the dolphin”-way of freely writing text.
Something else from Hilberg about another statement: “Well, parts of it are true, and other parts of it are sheer exaggerations, manifest, obvious exaggeration.” Another thing: “Gerstein was somewhat given to great excitability” And: “I would not characterise him as totally rational, no, but that is of no value because I am not an expert on rationality.” Question from the defence lawyer: “A very strange mind prone to exaggeration?” Answer from Raul Hilberg: “Yes.” And somewhere else Hilberg says: “It is a far-out statement.” And he also says: “… in the use of such affidavits, one must be extraordinary careful.”
So this is what Raul Hilberg says about the number 1 witness, and I would say the only witness of Mr Englund. I would like now to treat another question, related, all the same, to all this. It is the question of the so-called eyewitnesses. We are prone to believe that, about the gas chamber, we have many witnesses. Now, do you know that in fact we have exactly 0 witness? Because what is a witness? It’s not somebody coming and saying that he is a witness. It is somebody who has been cross-examined in a court about what he claims to have seen. And the cross-examination is a very difficult trial for those people. And, for something like half a century, do you know that not one witness has been cross-examined on the precise facts of the gassings? I have to correct myself. This happened only once. It was precisely in 1985 at the famous first Zündel trial in Toronto, Canada. For the first time a so-called witness was really cross-examined. His name was Doctor Rudolf Vrba. He was at the origin of the story of gassings in Auschwitz. And we were successful enough to see him on the witness-stand. And to ask him some questions. Vrba, this man, was asked questions on a statement he had made in 1944. When he was on the witness-stand he confirmed his statement about gassings in Auschwitz. And he said that every word was true, exact. But when the time of cross-examinations came he had to confess that, in fact, he had invented many things. And he said that he had used “poetic licence”. He even said it in Latin. He said “licencia poetarum”. The licence of poets. And it was a terrible thing for him. When he went away the man was totally destroyed.
So you see, the best possible witness was Rudolf Vrba. And he had to confess that, in fact, he had lied. And the same thing for the best possible historian, Raul Hilberg.
This is why I insist always very much on this trial of 1985. Because for the first time the best possible historian and the best possible witness were interrogated and it was a disaster for the historian Raul Hilberg and for the witness Rudulf Vrba.
But I would have many other things to say about the testimonies. Sometimes in courts, in French courts, I see some Jew coming to me and saying: “Now, Mr Faurisson, how dare you say that the gas chambers never existed? I was myself in Auschwitz. See my tattoo number.” And every time I say: “Now look me in the eyes. And answer my questions. If you maintain that the gas chambers existed. That the gassing operations existed. Please describe. Don’t be vague. Describe.” And every time the answer is: “Oh, but if I had been present there I wouldn’t be alive today to talk to you.” And my common answer about this is that there we have a liar. A man or a woman who’s trying to impress me. It’s a bit like the story of the fisherman who says: “This morning I caught a 200-pound fish. And if you don’t believe me I’ll show you the place.” But I am not interested in the place. I am interested in the extraordinary fish.
The witness who is very often quoted nowadays is Elie Wiesel. You should read the book by Elie Wiesel. His book was published first in French. The title being Night. Now, know that if you read this book carefully you’ll learn this: when he was 15-16 years old he was in the death-camp, the extermination-camp with his father. And at the end, when the Russians were approaching Auschwitz, he was left, and his father also was left, with a choice given by the Germans: “Either you stay in Auschwitz or you come with us into Germany.” So my question to this extraordinary witness, Elie Wiesel, would be: “Would you please explain to me how it is that having, according to your own words, the choice between waiting for the Russians, liberators, or going away with the Germans, exterminators – how is it that you chose to go with the German exterminators? What is this?” And do you know that, in this book, never does he mention gas chambers? He says that people were killed by fire in Auschwitz. They were burned in pits. No question of gas chamber.
Another man sometimes mentioned as a so called eyewitness is Primo Levi, an Italian Jew. He wrote a rather interesting book in 1947. And in this book you will notice that 5 times he used the words “gas chamber”, in the singular, not the plural, singular. And he said that he himself had not seen any gas chamber. That he learned of the existence of the gas chambers after the war. And that in Auschwitz people used to talk about the gas chamber. But nobody had seen it. So Primo Levi cannot be an eye-witness. According to what he said himself.
Strangely enough, in 1976 he published, he republished his texts of 1947. And he added a preface. And in his preface, he used 11 times, I think, the words “gas chambers”, plural. And this time he spoke about those gas chambers exactly as if he had been an eyewitness. So this is a damned lie. And you should know that we have witness of everything like that. And in the experience, just recently, of the John Demjanjuk trial: there were testimonies of the man called Eliahu Rosenberg who, in 1947, had written that he’d witnessed the death of a man whom he called Ivan the Terrible. And then afterwards, at the trial in Jerusalem, he said: Demjanjuk is that man.
So there are so many contradictions, so many lies that we have to be very careful. What is the best way to judge, to check a testimony? It is to have what we call material evidence, hard evidence. Let me take an example of the value that we can give to testimonies, on the one hand, and to hard evidence on the other. If somebody says: “Oh, this man, this very day drank two litres of wines, schnaps and so on.” If you have five or six witnesses stating this and if, on the other hand, you have an expertise showing that, in fact, there was no trace of alcohol in the blood of this person, accused of having drunk so much, what do you expect the judge will do? He will say: “I do not care about the five witness. I have to care about the hard evidence, the result of the alcohol test.”
And this is what we have to do in this vast problem of the gas chambers. We have to ask and ask and ask for hard evidence. And we don’t have any hard evidence. Because, simply, I can tell you those so-called gas chambers are a total physical and chemical impossibility. But I am not going to demonstrate it right now. I think that the next time I have the opportunity to talk to you I’ll say something about a book that is making, in France, a big hullabaloo, as we say. It’s a book by a pharmacist called Jean-Claude Pressac. The title, strangely, is “The crematoria of Auschwitz”. And we are told by the journalists and by Pressac himself in an interview that he is presenting now, only now, the proof that there were homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. And if you read the book, this is really a falsehood. Already in 1989 Pressac had published a big fat book in English. The title was Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. We revisionists have written many things about this big fat book, things in which you will find the evidence that in Auschwitz you certainly had crematoria, ovens, gassing for disinfestation, all sorts of buildings, all sorts of barracks, a hospital and so on. And things about Zyklon B which was a product for disinfestation. But there is not the slightest proof of the existence of even one gas chamber at Auschwitz. In his 1989 book with this strange title Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, even Pressac doesn’t say that he has found proof. He says that he’s found pieces of proof, traces, criminal traces. So Pressac wants to intimidate you by saying: “You see, if I take one quarter of a proof, plus one quarter of a proof, plus one half of a proof I have one proof.” I am sorry. A quarter of a proof is not a proof. Half a proof is not a proof.
So, in this book you don’t have anything. And in the new book, the little book published this year in France, you have nothing more. You have demonstrations that there were crematory ovens. Of course there were crematory ovens. The Germans really needed them, specially because in Auschwitz you had so many typhus epidemics. And there was no question of burying the dead, because the water-table was so high in the Auschwitz region. And if you put dead bodies in this watery ground everything would be infected. So there were at Auschwitz ovens, there were gas chambers for disinfestation. But there was no homicidal gas chamber. We had said this for many, many years and we finally got an expertise from a man called Fred Leuchter, then from a man called Germar Rudolf, then from a man called Walter Lüftl. And if you want to say anything about Auschwitz you have to begin by reading those expertises. What’s strange is that we had to wait such a long time to have an expert-report on a weapon that nobody had ever seen.
Make this little experiment. If you want to know what a table, a chair, a locomotive, an atomic weapon, anything, is. Either you can see it or you can go and see in books, encyclopaedias, photos, descriptions, explanations of the technique and operation of such things as atomic weapons. But when it comes to this extraordinary weapon invented by the Germans in the 1940s, I mean the German, the Nazi gas chamber, you won’t find anything, nothing at all. And this is why I come back constantly to the challenge I made in Stockholm on the 17th of March 1992, when I said to those journalists who wanted to ask me questions, I said: I have no questions to answer. I have a statement to make and I have even a challenge to make. Which is: “Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber. And afterwards we’ll discuss the matter.” This is the beginning. But as everyone knows, it is very difficult to begin at the beginning. At least sometimes.
So, this was what I had to say about Mr Peter Englund, and also about, generally speaking, the testimonies of “the Holocaust”.
