Robert Faurisson
Interview in Radio Islam1991-04-14
My name is Robert Faurisson. I am 62 years old. I am a University professor in France and a revisionist.
First, my best regards to the listeners of Radio Islam and especially to Ahmed Rami.
Ahmed Rami has asked me seven questions about Holocaust revisionism.
First question: What is revisionism?
2. What about the gas chambers?
3. What about the genocide?
4. What about the six million figure?
5. What about the witnesses?
6. What about two revisionists: one in Canada – Ernst Zündel (Z ü n d e l) – and one in the USA – Fred Leuchter (L e u c h t e r)?
Now the last question – what about my recent trial in Paris – March 21-22? The decision will be handed down on the 18th of April.
I am going to try to answer these seven questions.
First question – what is revisionism?
Revisionism means to revise a generally accepted fact. For example, a generally accepted fact was, in the past, that the Earth was flat and the Sun went around the Earth. Now, people who had the idea of revising this accepted truth found that the Earth was round. And that the Earth went around the sun. Other examples: Nero set fire to Rome. This is false. Napoleon set fire to Moscow. This is false. Another example: during the First World War the Germans were supposed to have cut off the hands of Belgian babies, or the Bulgarians, allied with Germany, were supposed to have gassed the Serbs in gas chambers. This is false. In the Second World War gassing was supposed to have been a German crime. This was decided by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945-46. In fact it was a Soviet lie. Another example: gassings were supposed to have happened in Dachau, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen. But in 1960 the historians decided – we don’t know exactly why – that in fact there were no gassings in Dachau, Buchenwald or Bergen-Belsen, but still they maintain that there were gas chambers and gassings in Auschwitz and other places. And now a quite recent example of revisionism: to show how necessary our revisionism is, look at what’s been said by journalists about Romania – Timisoara – or the Gulf war.
The first real revisionist was a Frenchman called Paul Rassinier (R a s s i n i e r). He was a Socialist, a résistant and he was deported to Buchenwald. But when he came back he discovered that so many strange stories were being told about this camp and other camps and he thought that he had to check and doublecheck. And he said: “We have no right to exaggerate and to lie, not even against people we hate. Truth must prevail.” And he discovered that – yes, deportation had existed for the Jews; for example, concentration camps, yes, had existed. Gas chambers for disinfestation (killing of disease-carrying lice), yes; gas-chambers for killing people, no. He saw that the figure of six million Jewish people killed was a nonsense. And he said that we had to find the real figure of dead and of killed – Jews and non-Jews. He also said that Zyklon B was used for disinfestation and crematoria were used to incinerate dead bodies. Today there are revisionists all over the world.
Second question – the gas-chambers:
People usually think that any room could be a homicidal gas-chamber. This is a complete mistake. Especially if the gas used is Zyklon B or hydrocyanic acid. People confuse suicide by gas or accidental death by gas with execution by gas. If you wish to gas yourself, it can be rather easy but you may cause a terrible accident. Among all weapons gas is the most difficult to handle. If you wish to kill someone with gas, you do not want to kill yourself. Go and visit an American gas chamber in a penitentiary: they execute only one man at a time. In order to execute only one person you need extraordinary precautions. Air-tightness is a real problem. The most difficult problem arises with HCN or Zyklon B because it sticks strongly to surfaces and especially to the body. You need a very strong door for your gas chamber. Special tools are needed to neutralise the gas after the execution. A doctor and two men enter the gas chamber wearing special gas masks and have to clean the body carefully because the body itself is poisoned.
The execution of 2,000 people at a time with Zyklon B at Auschwitz is a ridiculous story, especially with the members of the Sonderkommando supposed to have entered the chambers afterwards smoking and eating, which means without gas masks. Now, Zyklon B is also explosive. There are many reasons for saying that the alleged German homicidal gas chamber was impossible for physical reasons, chemical reasons, topographical reasons, architectural reasons and so on.
3. What about the genocide?
This is the third question. My answer is: there was absolutely no policy for a physical destruction of the European jews. No order, no plan, no budget, no instructions and no weapons. The so called “final solution” was a territorial solution. The so called “Wannsee Protocol” says expressly that after the war the surviving Jews will be released and that there will be a Jewish revival. At a time the Germans contemplated Madagascar as a place for the “final solution”. But with the war it became impossible, so they decided to isolate the Jews as much as possible, as enemies of Germany, in concentration camps, transit camps and so on, but not extermination camps.
4th question – the six million figure:
At the Nuremberg trial we were told that six million jews had been killed. This figure is preposterous. In 1979 it was accepted by historians that this figure was symbolic, which means false. In fact, many Jews died during the war and many survived. Look at all those organisations of survivors! The question is, what is meant by “many”? This question should be answered by the people accusing Germany. I think it is possible to answer it. Provided that we could work in Germany in a place called Arolsen, at the international Tracing Service. But we are not allowed to go there and do research. Let me give you an example. Until April 1990 we were told that four million people, 90 % being Jews, had been killed at Auschwitz. This was even inscribed in 19 languages on a big monument at Birkenau. But in April 1990 the Auschwitz museum authorities decided to take off those inscriptions because this figure, the official figure, at the Nuremberg trial was an exaggeration. They now say “perhaps one million”. This is a revision. This is revisionism. But it is not enough. In fact, I think, I have good reasons to think, that at Auschwitz perhaps 150,000 people died, I say died – not “were killed” – some were killed of course. And they died especially from typhus.
5th question – the witnesses:
Many people say, “But what about the witnesses?” My first observation would be to say that there are witnesses of everything – even of flying saucers. Every Jew having survived Auschwitz is a living proof that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp. Many survivors believe this story of the gas chambers, of course. Some Jews, some, said that they had seen gassings, but they never underwent a cross examination on the precise fact of those alleged gassings. The first time one of them was cross examined on the fact, it was in Toronto in 1985 at the first Zündel trial. And believe me, it was a disaster for those self-proclaiming witnesses. The famous Rudolf Vrba said that his testimony about Auschwitz, his written testimony, was a poetic rendering and even said, in latin, licentia poetarum. There is not one witness of those gassings.
6th question – what about Ernst Zündel and Fred Leuchter?
Ernst Zündel is a German. He lives in Toronto. He has done more than anyone else for revisionism. He was prosecuted in court, like so many revisionists all over the world. He was convicted. But, his two long trials, in 1985 and in 1988, were a revelation. They revealed that the Jewish professor, Raul Hilberg, the number one of the Holocaust historians, was totally incompetent. He had never visited a camp, he knew nothing about the so called gas chambers. He had mentioned orders from Hitler to kill the Jews but, asked to show those orders, he had to confess that they did not exist, etc, etc.
In 1988, Ernst Zündel sent Fred Leuchter, a specialist from Boston of execution gas chambers in American penitentiaries, to Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek. Fred Leuchter wrote a 193 page report, including chemical analyses of samples taken in those camps and analysed by an American lab. The result is that there are ample proofs of the existence of disinfestation gas-chambers in those camps, but no proof whatsoever that the rooms supposed to have been homicidal gas chambers were actually such homicidal gas chambers.
Recently – now this is a scoop that I revealed in Brussels last month – we have learnt that the Auschwitz museum authorities had ordered a counter-expertise of the Leuchter report from a forensic expert in Krakow, Poland. And the result is a confirmation of what Leuchter had said.
7th question – my recent trial:
I have already had many trials over these twelve years. But I don’t care. I care only for truth. Recently a law was established in France imposing a prison sentence of from one month to one year and a fine of from 2,000 to 300,000 francs on anyone who disputes the crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal. And this is why I was prosecuted. So I did something very simple. I brought into the courtroom the 42 volumes of the Nuremberg trial. And I said to the judges: “Here you have 25,000 pages. Please, find in them one proof, only one proof, of the existence of one gas chamber, only one gas chamber. And now find one proof, just one proof, of the existence of a genocide, which means a plan to exterminate, physically, the Jews.” And I knew that they could not find even one example, one proof, because the Nuremberg trial didn’t even attempt to prove this. It was taken as proved. So I do not care. I shall continue. I shall say that this great lie of the gas chambers, it’s a very old lie of 75 years. Because already in 1916, 1917 the Bulgarians were supposed to have put the Serbs into gas chambers to gas them. In 1920 it was acknowledged that this was a lie. But in the 40’s some people took this old lie and made a kind of recycling of it and said the Germans gassed the jews. I do not want to propagate this lie, and I don’t care if people call me bad names like antisemite, Nazi and so on. I am absolutely not an antisemite, Nazi and so on.
My conclusion would be: I am optimistic for revisionism but I am pessimistic for revisionists because life is going to be harder and harder for us. But I consider that revisionism is the big intellectual adventure of the end of this century. And I congratulate Ahmed Rami and anyone in Sweden or elsewhere for their action against the great lie and for truth, freedom and justice.
April 14, 1991