Genocide By Telepathy, Hilberg
Explains
By Robert Faurisson
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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 is 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..
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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.
Reprinted from
The
Journal of Historical Review,
(January/February 1999)
The Journal of Historical Review:
P.O. Box 2739 , Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Subscription: $40 per
year (domestic).
