The Man, the Scientist, and his Method of ‘Exactitude’
By Fredrick Töben
Robert Faurisson
By Fredrick TöbenThe Revisionist, No 1, 2004
Introduction
When I was asked to contribute towards the Robert Faurisson Festschrift, I recalled my own student days during the 1970s in Germany where I had regularly come across such publications. The German word Schrift means writing or a piece of correspondence. The word Fest has become part of the English language, and few English speakers would not have heard of the Oktoberfest where festivity and celebration goes hand-in-hand with inebriation, a celebration, a commemoration of life in its totality.
However, a Festschrift attempts to balance both the inevitable passionate life-affirming Dionysian intoxication with the Apollonian sense for order and beauty. It is hoped that a picture of Robert Faurisson, the object of this written exercise, will emerge and be transported beyond the temptations of despair, the doom and gloom that so easily befalls revisionists. There are men and women who for decades have been in this struggle against historical falsifications and who justifiably may feel somewhat despondent about not achieving that final victory in their lifetime. It is hoped that the following will clarify what kind of victory can be expected, and that the battle cry will rise towards an affirmation of love of life that transcends resignation and defeat.
Hence, the other meaning of the word fest comes to mind: to be firm, hard, solid, unwavering, to hold on to one’s belief in face of adversity, persecution, in defeat even. How appropriate this sense of the word is when writing about Robert Faurisson will, I hope, become clear in my following reflections.
I well remember meeting Robert Faurisson personally for the first time in 1997 when, before my first trip to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, my niece and I briefly stopped in Paris, there to meet Serge Thion and Robert’s sister, Yvonne Schleiter. Having made our first acquaintance with the two pillars that have been towering giants of support for Faurisson, we then journeyed on by train to Vichy to meet the man himself.
Before taking us on a tour of his home town, Robert invited us for lunch. As we entered the restaurant, he excused himself surprisingly and asked us to wait inside the entrance. Where was he off to? Surely, I thought, this is some strange French mannerism befitting an absent-minded professor who had been struck by some thought that propelled him to leave us standing near the doorway.
Surely, I thought, this is an example of French rationalism that is good on presenting analytic word pictures, an approach Ingrid Zündel would refer to as producing "itsy-bitsy, picky-picky news." Rationalism on its own, like British empiricism on its own, has problems offering us a synthetic whole. In contrast, German idealism enables us to extricate ourselves from this swamp of particulars and to develop a holistic worldview where the practical (body) and theoretical (mind) are synthesized, united into a somewhat consistent whole.
My example of the dinner table is instructive here. While, for example, English and German tables have side plates for bread, the French dispense with such and place the bread – the French rolls – on the tablecloth next to the main plate. The bread crumbs are free to fall anywhere. Yvonne Schleiter showed me how in cultured households the bread crumb problem is solved: a little ornate brush scoop, often gold enameled, cleans it all. So, the rationalist mindset is here concretized, as it moves from bread to breadcrumb removal, but cannot synthesize and think of a side plate that would also solve the problem of bread crumb practicality (empiricism) and neatness (idealism).
My musings passed the time as we stood there in the restaurant waiting for Robert’s return. A few minutes later a smiling Robert emerged from somewhere within the body of the filled restaurant saying: "It’s alright to eat here. The toilets are clean."
Exactitude
I was impressed by this incident because it indicated to me that Robert Faurisson had achieved a balance between mind and body where neither the intellectual nor bodily functions are separated. This balance is sadly lacking within some of those who call themselves intellectuals. It was clear to me that Robert Faurisson demanded standards of physical cleanliness. I already knew that he demanded mental cleanliness where accuracy and precision guarded against committing errors, where exactitude is the guiding principle that seeks out fact and truth.
These two words are so maligned in current academic endeavors, more so in various legal spheres where matters ‘Holocaust’ are litigated. In Australia, in Europe, in Canada, in particular, truth is no defense in legal proceedings, and a reference to factual events emerging out of scientific research is irrelevant. Such is the state of mind that attempts to uphold a lie with brutal legal force.
I thus had no difficulty in wholeheartedly embracing Faurisson’s approach to the ‘Holocaust.’ The German word Gründlichkeit comes to mind that describes the process Faurisson himself called ‘exactitude.’ Or, as Faurisson puts it:
"Sometimes also I would say in French that what I was seeking was ‘la vérité mais au sens de vérité verifiable.’ A play on words difficult to render in English." (Faurisson to Countess, Sept. 28, 2003)
Robert Countess prefers ‘exactitude’ over the use of ‘revisionism,’ as the latter has too much baggage attached to it. For example, the Communist/Marxist ideology branded and vilified any dissenter a ‘revisionist,’ and this was then enough for a dissenter to be sent to the GULag (acronym of Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovikh Lagerey, or the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps). My preference is still for ‘revisionism’ because it is merely a method, an heuristic principle used by any thinking person who attempts to construct/create a world view that is not merely derivative and copied.
Faurisson, the man, attempts to lead by example, and hence his love of tennis and skiing where, if one wishes to achieve a certain standard of proficiency in these sports, body and mind need to work together as one.
In earlier years of our association, Faurisson had once chastised me for a certain slackness that he noted in my approach to collecting newspaper articles. I must admit that although I have a solid German-Austrian heritage, my having lived for over 50 years in Australia has rubbed off on me. As my English professor at Stuttgart University, Dr. Lothar Fietz, reminded me, in Australia we are rather pastoral, and without too many intellectual structures in the mind! That was the perception of a cultured German who generalized from having met a person who had been raised on a farm in Australia, and concluded therefrom that all Australians are like that. The fact is that most Australians are urban, not necessarily urbane, dwellers.
Once I had sent Faurisson an item quoting the source but forgetting to cite the date. I was informed in no uncertain terms that I was wasting his time, and mine. It didn’t happen again because even then I noticed impatience in Faurisson’s voice. I tried to rationalize this away by thinking how wearisome it must be for Faurisson to welcome newcomers to the field of revisionism. Those few individuals in the world who develop a moral cause to embrace ‘Holocaust’ revisionism become anxious newcomers whose only formal qualifications for this particular field of enquiry are an innate sense of truth and justice.
The ‘Holocaust’ Lie
This impatience with individuals who do not measure up to his set standards befell others who have sent Faurisson items.
Emphasizing the word ‘Holocaust’ is a Faurisson habit that I have adopted so as to indicate that, when we speak of the alleged German-Jewish holocaust, this event is not a given, not a factuality, not an historically undisputed fact. Far from it, because it also indicates that, what has been claimed to be a unique historical event, the ‘Holocaust’ is anything but unique. Perhaps as a hoax, yes!
In 1994, I entered the Australian revisionist scene on a full-time basis where John Bennett had reigned supreme. He had been there in California with Faurisson, Butz, Zündel, Smith, and others, when in 1979 Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review. Bennett, ever the lawyer, has been playing it safe, claiming that "the extent of the Holocaust has been exaggerated." He would not go beyond that point, which at that time was considered serious enough for him to be defamed and vilified in the media, in particular in the Jewish press.
Faurisson went beyond this pussy-footing approach, and gained prominence by claiming that "the ‘Holocaust’ is a lie!" He formulated his uncompromising stance thus:
"Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber! Stop giving me words. Stop showing me a building, a door, a wall or, sometimes, only hair or shoes. I need a full picture of one of those fantastic chemical slaughterhouses. I need a physical representation of the extraordinary weapon of an unprecedented crime. If you dare to say that what tourists are shown in some camps is, or was, such a gas chamber, come on and say it…"
I liked this approach, this clearly expressed attitude of mind that demanded proof of what was being claimed. On Faurisson’s part there was no awe, no deferential stance, and no acceptance of the message that Jews were indeed the victims of a massive injustice of oppression and murder, a most heinous crime. Ever the analyst, the scientist who brushed aside biased emotional subjectivity, Faurisson still passionately asks for proof that would substantiate claims made about an alleged horrendous event. It did not win Faurisson any prize for popularity. But his moral and intellectual integrity is intact!
During the 1980s and early 1990s, I continued to interact with both individuals who ‘believed’ in the ‘Holocaust’ and with those who had the courage to question aspects of it. I then realized that I was hitting the so-called establishment brick wall where Jewish academics, such as Melbourne’s Dr. Paul Gardner, invited me to stop questioning the factuality of the ‘Holocaust’ because "it did happen." In various published letters-to-the-editor in our local newspaper, Gardner et al. wished to suppress an open debate on the issue. Sydney’s Professor Konrad Kwiet, another one of Australia’s ‘Holocaust’ experts, advised me that this "thing is bigger than both of us, so let it be."
Yet, I also now knew Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich, Ernst Zündel, Dr. Robert Faurisson, Professor Dr. Arthur Butz, and Adelaide locals such as Werner Fischer and Christopher Steele, who vigorously presented convincing arguments against the view that this ‘Holocaust’ topic was off-limits, beyond open discussion.
In 1983, The League of Rights mounted a successful challenge against the ‘Holocaust’ lobby by staging in Adelaide an exhibition at the Constitutional Museum. It was a brilliantly conceived plan to stage such a public exhibition, which visually illustrated the skepticism about the orthodox version of the ‘Holocaust.’ The curator of the museum refused to be intimidated by the objections to the exhibition, and so for one month the whole argument against the homicidal gassing story was aired in Adelaide.
Werner Fischer, that unapologetic member of the former SS, had sown the seeds that sprang from Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. The pleasure for many then to meet Butz in person in Adelaide attending Adelaide Institute’s 1998 International Revisionist Symposium was immense.
All the more disappointing, of course, that Robert Faurisson could not make it to Australia for that conference on account of his numerous ‘convictions’ against him in France for claiming that this whole ‘Holocaust’ business is one big lie.
Asking Questions
It is against this background of revisionist warriors that legitimizes my personal questioning of the orthodox ‘Holocaust’ view. Why should I not continue to question the factuality and the veracity of the claims made by some alleged ‘survivor’? Why should my mental processes be switched off, and why should my mind by-pass ‘Holocaust’ matters when on a daily basis through all media outlets we are saturated with one-sided atrocity stories about the ‘Holocaust’?
Worse still, why pull back from investigating physical structures, analyzing and testing survivor claims, when all I am given as a reason to desist is that there is no debate about the ‘Holocaust.’ That’s blocking open inquiry, something I find quite disagreeable because by depriving my mind of vital information there is thus no possibility of my reaching a balanced view of an extremely contentious historical matter.
During the early 1990s, as the revisionist argument became more well known through the uncensored Internet, the countering argument used was that "everyone believes in it", and that "denying the Holocaust is like believing the moon is made of cheese or believing in a flat earth theory." Faurisson called such responses ‘not serious,’ and he implored revisionists to be serious and not get lost in ‘busy work.’
This flat-earth statement was Professor Deborah Lipstadt’s favorite response whenever she had to deflect difficult questions. However, an academic who does not offer reasons for an expressed view on matters withdraws from an open discussion on a contentious historical issue, thereby adopting an absolutist attitude and interpretation of an event that is far from settled. My experience tells me that there is a raging ‘Holocaust’ debate, and the existence of the revisionist movement attests to that, and to much more. One significant example of character assassination and of an academic witch-trial comes from New Zealand. Academic Dr. Joel Hayward fell foul of the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ lobby because of his 1993 MA thesis wherein he claims the revisionist argument stands up to intellectual and academic rigor. In 2000, after the Irving-Lipstadt London defamation trial, Hayward recanted, claiming that new evidence emerging from that trial convinced him that he had ‘stuffed up’ in his MA conclusion. To date he, like Lipstadt, have not delivered the goods on the Faurisson challenge: "Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chambers!" Any academic is free to change his views on matters, especially if new information has become available to him. However, there is such a thing as intellectual integrity, and any change of view needs to be rationally justified with evidence provided of the material that led to a change of view. Although I have asked Hayward for such material, on which his change of mind is based, it has not been forthcoming. Need I wonder why?
Overcoming censorship
The main public media outlets monopolize the flow of information to the extent that revisionism and revisionists had great difficulty getting their arguments aired in public. Thus, all the more importance fell on individual revisionists to keep the momentum going. Robert Faurisson is one such individual who has the courage to swim against the stream of popular opinion.
Faurisson’s greatest exposure in the world press occurred during the Zündel Toronto trials of 1985 and 1988, where he and others conceived the plan that resulted in Fred Leuchter producing his sensational forensic reports about the Auschwitz crematoria, among others.
Further, the advent of the Internet enabled somewhat isolated revisionists to communicate world-wide in an instant and independent of any form of censorship. The moral well-being of revisionists has certainly been enhanced by this new medium that permits anyone to ask difficult questions and to oppose those individuals whose sole task, so it seems, is to block open enquiry.
In 1974, philosopher Karl Popper related to me how this blocking mechanism had been used on him by Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge where Wittgenstein had invited Popper as a guest speaker to a seminar. Wittgenstein introduced Popper to the audience by stating that, according to his philosophy of language, all that is needed to solve problems is correct language use. Popper responded by saying that first we need to accept that there are problems that need to be solved. He thus asked Wittgenstein what happens to moral problems in language analysis. Wittgenstein responded, "There are no moral problems!" because correct language analysis eliminates them. Wittgenstein picked up a fire poker and waved it at Popper who responded:
"What about the moral problem when a host threatens his visitor with a fire poker?"
It is not quite clear what happened, but Popper informed me that Wittgenstein stormed out of the room. During the early 1990s, a Wittgenstein devotee, Dr. Graeme Marshall of Melbourne University’s philosophy department, advised me that the whole incident was not as dramatic as Popper makes out it was. Of course, what happened in this incident is significant, because Popper brought back the moral imperative as a legitimate adjunct of scientific inquiry, if not itself the object of study and reflection.
Scribbling on the Wall in France:
Faurisson is Right!Faurisson’s scientific ideal of an open enquiry is augmented by his principle of ‘exactitude,’ that dialectically-tinged rational and restless approach, which will not tolerate inexactness, fabrications, and outright lying, far less any form of censorship in matters ‘Holocaust.’ It does not please those who wish to censor any public debate on the topic, and all the more surprising it was for me to learn that even self-confessed skeptics, such as America’s Michael Shermer, are believers when it comes to matters ‘Holocaust.’
Australia’s leading self-proclaimed atheist and some-time Marxist, broadcaster Philip Adams, is a ‘Holocaust’ believer, and like organized skeptics the world over, Adams has opted to embrace the concept ‘Holocaust denialism’ as a term that appears effectively to deflect any critical analysis of the issue, even when the absurdity of claims made does not stand up to any critical analysis.
The question needs to be asked: What right have I to make such pronouncements, such statements about individuals who uphold the orthodox view of the ‘Holocaust’? I respond stating that my tertiary training rests, among other things, on a study and comparison of Karl Popper’s theory of falsification and C.S. Peirce’s principle of fallibilism. This alone eminently qualifies me to study any aspect of the ‘Holocaust’ orthodoxy. Briefly, C. S. Peirce developed the logical form of abduction, thus making scientific hypothesizing a formal matter. This also enabled Peirce to deny intuition, on which Cartesianism-French Rationalism (innate ideas) and British Empiricism (sense data) based their dyadic, subject-object, theory of cognition.
No Holes, No Holocaust
Professor Robert Faurisson, born in 1929, lectured in modern and contemporary French literature at the Sorbonne and the University of Lyon, specializing at the latter in the ‘Analysis of texts and documents (literature, history, media)’.
In the 1970s, he demonstrated the radical impossibility, on physical and chemical grounds, of the existence and operation of the alleged Nazi gas chambers. He was the first in the world to publish the plans of the buildings at Auschwitz abusively presented still today as having served for putting inmates to death by gassing.
In 1988, thanks to an investigation commissioned by the German-Canadian Ernst Zündel, the professor’s findings were confirmed by the American Fred Leuchter, designer of the gas chambers used in several United States prisons and author of a report on the alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek. In the early 1990s, the conclusions of the famous ‘Leuchter Report’ were, in turn, confirmed by the German chemist Germar Rudolf, a graduate of the Max Planck Institute, as well as by the Austrian chemists Walter Lüftl, president of the board of engineers of Austria, and Wolfgang Fröhlich, a specialist in disinfection gas chambers.
As a consequence of their findings, Robert Faurisson, Ernst Zündel, Fred Leuchter, Germar Rudolf, Walter Lüftl and Wolfgang Fröhlich have all paid a substantial toll to the prevailing judicial and extra-judicial repression. Like a number of other ‘revisionists’ they have, according to circumstances, had the experience of seeing their careers ruined, of being physically assaulted and injured, convicted in the law courts, fined, imprisoned, exiled. At present, Wolfgang Fröhlich is in jail in Vienna and Ernst Zündel is being held in Toronto in a high-security cell, in judicial and physical conditions worthy of ‘Guantanamo Bay’.
And so to assist me in my personal quest to clarify the issues that arise out of this ‘Holocaust’ controversy, out of this gross distortion of world history, I adopted Faurisson’s concise formulations: "No Holes, No Holocaust" and "The Holocaust is a lie."
Suddenly, the eminent Australian ‘Holocaust’ scholar, John Bennett, became irrelevant in the Australian media, and I became the most notorious Australian ‘Holocaust’ denier. I must have done something right, because Faurisson’s statement that the whole ‘Holocaust’ enterprise is a lie propelled me into the public battle for truth and justice. The result of all this is that I now operate under a gag-order imposed by the Federal Court of Australia on September 17, 2002, and confirmed on appeal on June 27, 2003. I am now not permitted to dispute the six million alleged Jewish deaths, the existence of the homicidal gas chambers, or to doubt the ‘Holocaust’ itself. Thanks for that present, Robert!
In 1994, when a group of individuals formed the Adelaide Institute, Faurisson was there for us in the background, as were Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich and Professor Dr. Arthur Butz with their respective publications, Der Auschwitz Mythos and The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Ernst Zündel was also there powering away from Toronto at the ‘Holocaust’ orthodoxy and having victoriously survived the 1985 and 1988 Toronto ‘Holocaust’ trials, at the same time increasing his media outreach programs by flooding the world with revisionist material. Zündel’s 1992 victory against the ‘Holocaust’ liars occurred when Canada’s Supreme Court struck out a law, under which he had been persecuted since 1985. When he left Canada to live with his wife Ingrid in Tennessee, USA, little did we then anticipate Zündel would again face the wrath of Canada’s Jewish-inspired judiciary. In January 2003, I visited Ernst and Ingrid Zündel at their home, and seven days later, on February 5, he was arrested at his home, then deported from the US to Toronto, Canada, where he has been in a detention center ever since. But that is another story.
When Professor Deborah Lipstadt visited Australia in 1994, she proved to be quite a sensation, claiming on ABC TV’s Lateline that Jean-Claude Pressac had proved in his 1989 book Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambersthat crematorium II at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) had a ventilation system that explained how the Zyklon B was extracted after the gassings took place. My associates and I were mortified, but then calmed ourselves by adhering to our own principles of seeking the truth of an allegation. Were this 1994 Lipstadt revelation factually true that the gas chamber’s existence had been proven as a physical fact, then we would simply have to publicize this fact, that indeed Auschwitz did have homicidal gas chambers that operated and killed millions of people.
Together with Adelaide Institute’s then South Australian Associate, David Brockschmidt, I traveled to Melbourne personally to meet and to hear Professor Lipstadt address this issue. She advised us that the blueprints of the homicidal gas chambers are there in Pressac’s book and that the matter is now closed. She signed her book with "May Truth Prevail!" Later, together with Adelaide Institute’s assistant director, Geoff Muirden, I viewed the Pressac book at the University of Melbourne’s library where a copy was kept under lock and key. The book did not convince me of anything at all. It was not enough merely to look at such plans because they did not out of themselves reveal anything at all, certainly not that homicidal gas chambers had existed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. And that is where Faurisson’s approach comes in handy: a plan should not need an extensive commentary to prove what it is supposed to represent. That’s Faurisson’s meaning of the term ‘busy work’!
As regards the Lipstadt claims, Faurisson calmed our frayed nerves by advising that the story keeps on changing, that Pressac is not to be trusted as he knows him quite well, and that the fellow is in league with the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ promoters of France, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, who funded the Pressac enterprise.
In April 1999, I met Pressac, who passed away in September 2003, and he modified his claims somewhat, stating that Topf & Söhne who built the cremation ovens for Auschwitz had the capacity also to build homicidal gas chambers. After all, the firm was a world leader in grain drying techniques and in crematoria designs. No wonder that after the war the firm lost that position because of the induced ‘Holocaust’ guilt that paralyses normal healthy human activities and then twists them into perversions of submissive slave-like behavior, from which unhealthy mental attitudes flow. That alone justifies for anyone actively to oppose anything that the ‘Holocaust’ lobby promotes. The pathetic German slave-like adherence to this ‘Holocaust’ dogma, as legally reinforced through German penal law paragraph 130 et al., is having tragic consequences, as Günter Deckert, Germar Rudolf, Udo Walendy, Hans Schmidt, et al., know so well. The English edition of The Rudolf Report appeared in 2003, and to date its 1993 forensic results stand firm.
Pressac said to me he never claimed that gassings occurred, but rather that it was possible for gassings to have occurred at Auschwitz. A Jewish group in Italy was working on a CD that simulated that possibility. To date I have not heard what success this group achieved. At the time of my visiting Pressac on March 31, 1999, this Jewish Italian group had reached the point of walking through the undressing chamber at crematorium II and was standing in front of the actual alleged homicidal gas chamber. I don’t know whether they ever got inside or not.
Pressac also informed me that he had to think about surviving in France. What bothered Pressac was that Klarsfeld had become so aggressive towards him – symbolically spitting at him through the telephone just because he would not endorse Klarsfeld’s six million Jewish deaths claim and Klarsfeld was angry at Pressac’s own ‘Holocaust’ definition. Pressac maintained that a "massive massacre" took place but not a ‘Holocaust,’ and one should get away from using that term when speaking about this period of history.
I also had the distinct feeling that Pressac was rather sad at having lost Faurisson as a contact point within the revisionist scene, and so he was happy that at least Carlo Mattogno remained on speaking terms with him.
De-Commissioning Crematorium I
Two years later a newcomer to the ‘Holocaust’ scene, Robert Jan van Pelt, together with Deborah Dwork, published a book: Auschwitz: From 1270 to the Present. Much to my delight I noted at pages 363f. it is admitted that crematorium I at Auschwitz-Stammlager had been de-commissioned, i.e., the alleged homicidal gas chamber shown had been ‘re-constructed’ after the war, and that a mortuary was turned into an air raid shelter but never into a homicidal gas chamber. Dwork and van Pelt explain it almost in poetic language when they talk about crematorium I ‘symbolically’ representing what happened at crematorium II in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Pressac informed me that he is angry with van Pelt and Dwork because in writing their book they based it on Pressac’s own research. They, in effect, ‘stole’ his work, so Pressac claimed.
It took another seven years for the Auschwitz Museum publicly to admit that crematorium I was indeed a ‘re-construction,’ which its administrators did on the museum’s website in 2003 (see online at www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl/html/ eng/zwiedzanie/krematorium_1.html).
Vichy
And while the ‘Holocaust’ orthodoxy whittles away its own foundations, it is Robert Faurisson et al. who continue to face the French legal system that prevents anyone from questioning any of the 1945-46 Nuremberg Military Tribunal’s legal findings. It is not easy for a devoted husband, father, and grandfather to endure such burdens alone, isolated in Vichy. Thanks to the advances in communication technology, especially the Internet, Faurisson is not alone anymore.
As stated above, in 1998 we had Robert Faurisson attend via video Adelaide Institute’s 1998 International Revisionist Symposium. In this video, Faurisson elaborated how Vichy is not Vichy but Vichy-Auschwitz, so according to Serge and Beate Klarsfeld in a two volume book of that same title dealing with so-called ‘Holocaust’ denial, wherein the claim is made that Marshall Pétain, who resided during the war in Vichy, had sent Jews to their death at Auschwitz.
Faurisson takes us on a video tour of Vichy and explains how the history of his city has been falsified. He visits three sites within a radius of a few hundred meters and explains how the factual things that happened there are now presented from a distorted Jewish view of local history, and Faurisson reminds us it is forbidden to speak the truth in France about such historical events.
World War One Memorial: "Every war is butchery," Faurisson says, "and it is good for the victor and bad for the vanquished. 20 years after the end of World War One, the Munich Agreement was signed by Adolf Hitler for Germany, Benito Mussolini for Italy, Edouard Deladier for France, and Neville Chamberlain for the United Kingdom. Today we are told this agreement is a disgrace – but was it? After the World War One butchery, was it a disgrace trying to avoid another war?"
The March 19, 2003, invasion of Iraq comes to mind and how the French Foreign Minister gave a spirited reason why France should not join the Anglo-American-Zionist-Forces, the ‘coalition of the willing.’ Perhaps the French foreign minister is all too conversant with history and specifically with Robert Faurisson’s claims about the Hitler WMDs – the homicidal gas chambers – that have not been found though the believers have had over sixty years to look for them.
On July 10, 1940, 569 members of Parliament gave powers to Marshall Pétain, 20 abstentions, and 80 against. Today there is one plaque that states that 80 members of Parliament who voted against Pétain saved the honor of the French people!
"DANS CETTE SALLE LE 10 JUILLET 1940
80 parlementaires ont par leur vote affirmé leur attachement à la République, leur amour de la liberté et leur foi dans la victoire. Ainsi s’acheva la IIIe République"What is not stated on the plaque is that 60 countries – including the USA and the Soviet Union – sent ambassadors to Vichy, France.
Hotel du Parc: There is no sign that Marshall Pétain lived there in simple style until August 17, 1944, when he was arrested by the Germans and taken to Germany. The little space where he lived is closed and no visit is possible. During the 1960s, a man was arrested for placing a little poster there saying that Marshall Pétain lived there 1940-44. Now there is a plaque placed by Klarsfeld:
"This is the place where Pétain decided to send the Jews to their death at Auschwitz."
So, Faurisson concludes: "Vichy—Auschwitz."
In September 1989, Robert Faurisson was bashed in the park by three young Jewish thugs. A young man fishing at the nearby river heard the cries and saved Faurisson. Later the young man said he was sorry that he saved Faurisson.
It is comforting to know that the French lobby, which for decades has had Faurisson firmly in its sight, is doomed to failure, though that is not for lack of trying. Yet Faurisson’s knowledge, his meticulousness, his impressive archive about matters ‘Holocaust’ remains unchallenged by anything offered by those who uphold the ‘Holocaust’ dogma.
French Academics Capitulate
For example in 1979, a group of academics moved against Robert’s sometime lonely fight against the propagation of lies surrounding the ‘Holocaust,’ in particular the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. In the renowned Paris newspaper, Le Monde, P. Vidal-Naquet, Léon Poliakov, and 32 academics proclaimed on February 21, 1979:
"One may not ask how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible since it took place. Such is the obligatory starting point required for any historical enquiry into this subject. This truth we simply want to bring back into memory: there is not, and there may not be, any debate on the existence of the gas chambers."
In this instance one may safely refer to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788-1860) much-quoted words that shed light on where the ‘Holocaust’ orthodoxy finds itself:
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, then it is violently opposed, and finally it is accepted as self-evident."
The fact that French academics have (again) adopted such a dead-end position to historical enquiry is shameful for a nation that prides itself in carrying on the Cartesian tradition. I place the word ‘again’ in parenthesis because what these French academics express is perhaps a variant of how René Descartes (1596-1650) reacted when he felt the pressure to conform. Although known as the founder of modern thought, Descartes withdrew his 1634 completed major work Le Monde from publication. Galileo Galilee (1564-1642) had just been condemned for his works that supported the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system as did Le Monde, and so Descartes played it safe.
Robert Faurisson has not compromised his stance against the pressure exerted upon him by Jews in France, far from it. He continues to oppose superstition and champions rationality because he has fully embraced Voltaire’s tradition of challenging orthodox opinions. Like Voltaire, Faurisson does not bemoan his persecution.
For revisionists who still fear the prospects of legal and social persecution at the hands of academics, political authorities, and the media it may comfort to know that Voltaire (1694-1778) spent eleven months in the infamous Bastille, exile in Holland, England, Prussia, finally to settle in Switzerland because his home country France would not have him.
One may well conclude that Voltaire’s reluctance in accepting hypotheses and theories without any empirical input stems from his time spent in England. There John Locke (1632-1704) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727) were firing up the empirical minds of those who wished to learn more about the physical world, about the universe. They in turn were influenced by Johannes Keppler (1571-1630) who utilized Tycho Brahe’s (1546-1601) astronomical calculations and found planetary motion was elliptical, unlike Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) who still adhered to the dogma of circularity of planetary motion.
Likewise with Robert Faurisson’s background and experience. He can claim half British parentage with a Scottish mother, and so knows full-well the value of empirical investigations. At the end of the 1970s, it was his fingers that ran over the internal structure of the cremation ovens in crematorium I to discover there simply was no soot remnant. This physical test, among other things, led him to conclude that what had been sold as an authentic cremation oven was in fact a post-World War Two reconstruction.
Two decades later, at his 2000 London defamation trial against Professor Deborah Lipstadt, David Irving "tried to bring up the rebuilding of Krema I, and Judge Gray said ‘we are not interested here in what happened after the war’, which rather stumped me and I dropped the subject." (Irving in an email to Töben dated, October 26, 2003)
Busy Work and Definite Results
Faurisson always advises newcomers to revisionism to remain simple and not to get lost in busy work, as was the case with Charles Provan. At the 13th IHR Revisionist Conference, revisionists were surprised to learn that the Auschwitz Museum had given Provan permission to make a detailed study of crematorium II’s roof, the object of Faurisson’s "No Holes, No Holocaust". Of course, Provan’s detailed study remains just that, busy work, and his conclusion, that gassings occurred there, remains irrelevant.
It has not replaced the pioneering Leuchter work or Germar Rudolf’s The Rudolf Report. Nor has it been embraced by the upholders of the ‘Holocaust’ orthodoxy, who all too often have had to disown works that claim to support the gassing lie, such as Australia’s Donald Watt’s 1995 Stoker. Published by Simon & Schuster, it is sub-titled: The Story Of An Australian Soldier Who Survived Auschwitz-Birkenau. The ploy to sell such nonsense as fact, as an historically accurate autobiography, badly misfired. On the back cover, one sentence illustrates how the ‘Holocaust’ lobby, through its feverish mind, attempted to hood-wink the world:
"Only now, 50 years after the end of World War II, has Don Watt managed to come to terms with his war-time experiences – an ordeal that he had mentioned to no one, not even his immediate family – and reveal the full story."
Adelaide Institute was there, ready to refute the book’s factual content as a fabrication, and this may have caused orthodox ‘Holocaust’ historians to disown Watt even before any criticism emerged from the ‘Holocaust’ disbelievers. Thanks to Faurisson and his methodical approach to the topic, we were able to stand firm and claim the book is pure fiction. It reminded us so much of Schindler’s List, that 1994 film based on the novel Schindler’s Ark, written by Australian Thomas Keneally. Initially, it too was sold as historical fact until proven to be fiction. The fact that the film was screened on prime time commercial television in Australia without any commercial breaks at all raised concerns as to what its function was in indoctrinating gullible minds with historical propaganda and outright lies. Many who viewed the film did not immediately recognize the anti-German hatred that dripped from it.
The fact that Fritjof Meyer has now de-commissioned Auschwitz-Birkenau as a homicidal gas chamber site, as did van Pelt in 1996 with Auschwitz-Stammlager, highlights the irrelevance of so much of what Faurisson recognized as mere busy work. Meyer published his sensational claims in the May 2002 edition of the magazine Osteuropa. Relocating the homicidal gas chambers, the actual murder weapon – Faurisson calls it a huge chemical slaughterhouse – outside of the Auschwitz concentration camp perimeters into two (entirely fictional) farm houses and reducing the total number of gassed to around 350,000 Jewish deaths is a worry for the orthodox ‘Holocaust’ historians.
Although the world media has not run the Fritjof Meyer concessions, revisionists have done their best to disseminate the news. As Faurisson stated to Ingrid Zündel in an email of October 2, 2003:
"In fact, the revisionist community reacted quickly and strongly to F. Meyer’s article as published in Osteuropa of May 2002. First the exchange of emails and letters was abundant; to take only one personal example, I sent Ernst [Zündel] a letter about it on August 14, 2002. Then many articles were published. Nation-Europa published three articles in September 2002, November-December 2002, and January 2003. Mark Weber published an article in The Journal of Historical Review dated May-August 2002 (in fact November). Germar Rudolf mentioned or commented the F. Meyer story in three articles (Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, C. Mattogno) under the general title of ‘The Dwindling Death Toll’ in The Revisionist of February 2003 [and in Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung of December 2002]. Quite a few other revisionists, like Fredrick Töben, Bob Countess, Serge Thion, or semi-revisionists like David Irving discussed the matter on the Web or elsewhere."
This huge concession to the revisionists made by Fritjof Meyer can be likened to the concession made by Dr Martin Broszat, of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, exactly 42 years earlier. In a letter to the German newspaper Die Zeit, Broszat stated that in the Dachau concentration camp near Munich no one was gassed, something that contradicted what had become ‘common knowledge’ amongst historians, but to this day is not known by the general public. In 2003, Dachau received a multi-million Euro face-lift that also saw the removal of the nonsensical sign, which stated that a certain room was a gas chamber but that it had never been used as such. How this new ‘investment’ in Dachau’s refurbishment will influence the general ‘Holocaust’ industry in Germany needs to be carefully watched.
Lex Faurissonia
The claim that Dachau had a gas chamber derives from a film shown during the 1945-46 Nuremberg International Military Tribunal trial. It was an American ‘propaganda’ film that showed a man standing in the alleged gas chamber, relating his story. This was admitted as evidence, and to this day stands as an historical ‘fact’ protected by French law.
Slowly, albeit too slowly, the orthodox ‘Holocaust’ historians have been forced to admit that their original ‘Holocaust’ story is not based on physical facts, that it is in Faurisson’s words an outright ‘lie’ protected by law. Faurisson could not accept that this period of history be excised from rational thought and that it be replaced by the superstition of the ‘Holy Writ of Nuremberg.’ At the 1985 Toronto Zündel trial, well-known ‘Holocaust’ historian Raul Hilberg attempted to explain how such a massive enterprise of killing millions of people – without a Hitler order, without a plan and budget, without a murder weapon – could be executed by claiming it was done by an "incredible meeting of minds."
Faurisson agrees that it is incredible and unbelievable, and that is why he refuses to believe in the ‘Holocaust.’ He continues his fight against superstition and against the French Jewish community that continues to incite against him. On July 14, 1990, the French parliament enacted the Fabius-Gayssot law on the pretext to stem the rising tide of racism and anti-Semitism. It outlaws contesting the Nuremberg trial’s ‘crimes against humanity,’ and the law is now commonly referred to as Lex Faurissonia. Nonchalantly Faurisson relates how one may receive a one month or a one year jail term, or a 300,000 F fine, then smiles and adds: "So, be careful in France."
The Future
That the revisionist enterprise will never end is a given fact, because any thinking person is a revisionist. A pre-requisite for any effective thinking activity is a free flow of information. Any censorship of such a flow of information will automatically have a stifling effect upon the brain’s development. The problem faced by revisionists is the inordinate efforts undertaken by the upholders of the ‘Holocaust’ lie to stifle any open debate on the topic.
Civil libertarians often quote Voltaire in order to overcome blatant censorship and free speech restrictions: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". This now famous quote has itself been subjected to scrutiny, and Robert Faurisson points out in his Foreword to my book Where Truth Is No Defence, I Want To Break Free, 2001:
"In reality, a London author called Stephen G Tallentyre (real name Evelyn B Hall) in The Friends of Voltaire (1906) wrote on the subject of the attitude taken by Voltaire in case of an intense disagreement with an adversary: ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it was his attitude now’."
Faurisson says that the future of revisionism is clear:
"We shall never win because Voltaire never won his battle against superstition because it is a never-ending fight between reason and faith. However, if we never win, then also we never lose, and that is the real adventure – a dangerous intellectual adventure – especially in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, etc."
In another email to Ingrid Zündel of October 21, 2003, Robert Faurisson clarifies his viewpoint on how revisionists are fighting an up-hill battle:
"Dear Ingrid,
You might be interested in reading the above article that a Sven Felix Kellerhof published on 28 August 2002 […] in Die Welt with the title: ‘Linksliberaler Kronzeuge für Holocaust-Leugner’ [liberal crown witness for Holocaust deniers].
You will see that, if that date is correct, already more than a year ago, Kellerhof had been stating that revisionists were trying to ‘push’ Fritjof Mayer’s article (as published in the May 2002 issue of Osteuropa).
There you have one more evidence that, as I told you, we revisionists quickly reacted to that article of F. Mayer. Now, even if a mainstream newspaper had not mentioned it, it would not have been our fault. I could give you so many examples of discoveries that we made, that we published and that the mainstream media did not mention for years and years. Was it our fault? To take but one example, what I said in 1978 about the hoax of the so-called ‘gas chamber’ in Auschwitz I was finally admitted by an orthodox historian in a mainstream publication only in 1995. I had to wait 17 years and, during those 17 years, I kept repeating myself again and again on the issue. Now see: the essay of that orthodox historian was hardly noticed! That’s our fate. ‘Habent sua fata libelli’: our writings, as well as our desperate actions, have their own destiny.
Do you realize that in fact Paul Rassinier, who died in 1967, had already said EVERYTHING of the essentials? Is it his fault if, for nearly half a century after his death, he is still so unsuccessful with the mainstream media? And what about Ernst? Is it surprising that we cannot swim up the Niagara Falls?
Best wishes. RF"
In an earlier email of October 11, 2003, Faurisson’s gloomy prediction emerges:
"I am fighting day and night for revisionism though revisionism is collapsing. Yvonne, Jean Plantin, and Vincent Reynouard are doing the same in France.
In Switzerland, Louis-René Berclaz, Philippe Brennenstuhl, and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz are doing the same. The three of them received recently a prison sentence. Amaudruz, 83, who already was in prison for 3 months, will go back to prison for 3 months again. Plantin is supposed to go to prison and Reynouard also perhaps. And what about Rudolf, Weber, Graf, Mattogno, Zündel, etc.?
Now I must admit that, if you make the total of the people fighting for revisionism all over the world, that total nowadays is ridiculous. That’s why I say that revisionism is collapsing. I gave my reasons why and I am not going to repeat myself.
Best wishes. RF"
The powerful Jewish lobby in France is doing what its counterparts in other countries are doing – attempting to implement world-wide legal gag orders that endeavor to stifle open debate on the ‘Holocaust.’ Although effective in many European countries, in Canada, and in Australia, it has not yet had total world-wide success. For example in South Africa in 2002, a Muslim community radio station, Radio 786, succeeded in fending off a charge of ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘Holocaust denial-hate speech’ leveled against it for having broadcast a talk by a London-based Muslim cleric who stated that the six million Jewish deaths claim is an exaggeration and that there were no homicidal gas chambers.
The above case from South Africa also indicates how fear is lost when information increases our stock of knowledge. The impetus from South Africa is a hopeful signal that the battle will be fought in our law courts, but not only there. The fight is on at all levels of human cultural endeavor.
Conclusion
Befitting the whole ‘Holocaust’ controversy, a new impetus for action has arisen in the country that is allegedly responsible for perpetrating this ‘massive massacre’ upon the Jewish people – Germany. Horst Mahler has taken it one stage further by forming an association of those individuals who have been charged with ‘Holocaust denial’ and have been sentenced by a ‘legal’ system to prison terms, as I and others were in Germany, to a fine, as is the case in France, or to non-criminal sentence such as a gag-order, as in my case in Australia.
Instead of writing a conclusion to my deliberations on Robert Faurisson, it is perhaps more interesting to let Robert speak for himself. He has summed up the Revisionist situation in a form that has made him one of the world’s most eminent revisionists. The following is his response to what Horst Mahler is attempting to do from within the heartland where ‘Holocaust’ hysteria still flourishes, Germany:
"Robert FAURISSON
2 October 2003
Letter to Horst Mahler
Dear Herr Mahler,
As soon as I learned of the existence of your ‘League for the Rehabilitation of Persons Persecuted for Disputing the Holocaust ‘ (Verein für die Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten) I applied for membership and sent you a financial contribution.
Your initiative is ingenious, and I wish it every success. I urge all revisionists to support this undertaking.
You have invited me to your first meeting, which will take place on November 9. The date is well chosen, for it marks the anniversary of the fall of a tyranny that one might have thought would last forever. The place, Vlotho on the Weser river, is equally well chosen, for it is associated with the name of our friend Udo Walendy, who has fought so hard and so long for the reestablishment of historical truth and, at the same time, for the cause of his German fatherland.
I would love to attend this meeting, but I think that the German police might immediately arrest me there. Anyway, I have too much work to do, and cannot go on vacation, even if it were to be spent in a German prison.
With regard to freedom of historical research, I have no confidence in the French police or the French administration of justice. I have even less confidence in the German police and administration of justice. Frankly speaking, nowadays there is no country in the world that offers a safe haven for revisionists. Even China, Japan and Russia serve Mammon or else fear him, and so serve him. The United States of America, in spite of its First Amendment, as well as Canada, have just recently shown, in the cruel treatment of Ernst Zündel, to what depths of iniquity they can descend to please Mammon. Ernst Zündel is a heroic figure of the German nation, an exceptional man whom one cannot fail to admire when one really knows him.
In 1999, I published in French a four-volume work of more than two thousand pages, consisting of some of my writings of 1974-1998. It commences with an ‘In Memoriam’ note in which I mention, among the dead, Franz Scheidl, Helmut Diwald and Reinhold Elstner. With regard to the last named, I recall that on April 15, 1995, he committed suicide in Munich by burning himself to protest the ‘Niagara of lies’ against his people. The final words in that ‘In Memoriam’ note are these:
‘May [my book] also be read as a homage for the true suffering of all victims of the 1939-1945 war, regardless of whether the victims belonged to the camp of the victors, who are praised to the skies, or to that of the defeated, whom have been humiliated and insulted ceaselessly for nearly half a century.’
Remember that these words are from 1998. During the past five years the situation has only worsened. The Niagara of lies has broadened and strengthened. We do not have the right to fold our arms and quietly contemplate the extent of the damage caused. We must act and react.
That is what you are trying to do.
Along with everyone else, I do not know how successful this effort might be, but I want to join with you in it, regardless of whatever differences of opinion or outlook there may be among those of us who fight for a common cause.
In December 1980, I summarized the result of my historical research in one sentence of 60 French words. Before pronouncing that sentence on Europe 1 radio, I gave this warning: ‘Caution! None of these words has been inspired by political sympathy or antipathy.’ Here is the sentence:
‘The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews constitute one and the same historical lie, which has made possible a gigantic financial-political swindle, the principal beneficiaries of which are the State of Israel and international Zionism, and whose principal victims are the German people – but not their leaders – and the entire Palestinian people.’
In my view, that sentence, now 23 years old, requires no changes.
I have been accused of being anti-Jewish. In reality I wish the Jews no harm. What I demand is the right to speak of the Jews just as freely as I speak, for example, of the Germans. And I ask that the Jews be deprived of the right to harm me, whether physically (between 1978 and 1993, I was attacked ten times by Jews), or by means of a special law that they finally got enacted on July 13, 1990, and which in France is known as the ‘Fabius-Gayssot Law’, the ‘Faurisson Law’, or the ‘Anti-revisionist Law’.
It is outrageous that out of the billions of events that constitute the history of mankind, one single event, called by Jews the ‘Holocaust’ or the ‘Shoah’, must not be questioned – on pain of imprisonment, fines, orders to pay damages and the costs of publications of judgments, the exclusion from one’s profession, and so forth. This is an enormous special privilege, and we demand the abolition of that privilege.
This is a goal that is plain, clear and of narrow scope.
Revisionism, in my view, is not, and must not be, a matter of ideology, but instead one of method by which to attain the greatest degree of exactitude.
What I seek is historical exactitude and, thus, the abolition of anything that obstructs the free striving towards that exactitude.
My best wishes are with you.
Professor (ret.) Robert FAURISSON"
Fredrick Töben, Australian citizen, born 1944 in Jaderberg, North Germany, into a farmer’s family. In 1954, his parents and their four children emigrated to Australia, where the parents continued farming. Studies at University of Melbourne (BA 1970), Australia, Victoria University of Wellington (BA 1968), New Zealand, Universities of Heidelberg, Stuttgart, and Tübingen, (Dr. phil. Stgt. 1977), University of Rhodesia (Grad. Cert. Ed. 1978). 1967-97 Secondary/tertiary teaching: Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Zimbabwe, Nigeria. Subjects: English, German, Sociology, Philosophy. 1983-93 Director: Toben International Pty Ltd, import-export. Since 1985, publisher under the imprint of Peace Books. Author of various papers and books on education, with two specifically on revisionism: Where Truth Is No Defence, I Want To Break Free (2001); Fight or Flight: The Personal Face of Revisionism (2003). Since 1994, Director of Adelaide Institute, Australia. April to November 1999: imprisoned in Mannheim, Germany, for ‘Holocaust’ denial. For more information see www.adelaideinstitute.org.
Texts by Robert Faurisson:
- Introduction to Écrits Révisionnistes (1974-1998)
- Elie Wiesel - A Prominent False Witness
- The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum - A Challenge
- How Many Deaths at Auschwitz?
- How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Hoess
- Paying Tribute to Jewish Power - 'Ah, How Sweet It Is To Be Jewish ...'
- Faurisson about Rami in jail
- Ahmed Rami's interview with Robert Faurisson 1.
- Ahmed Rami's interview with Robert Faurisson 2.
- From a video with Faurisson
- Recording in Stockholm, May 22, 1993
- Lecture about a book written by Swedish "academic" Peter Englund 1993
- "Genocide By Telepathy", Hilberg Explains
- Talk given in Stockholm on December 4th, 1992
