The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Challenge
By Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson is acknowledged as Europe's leading
Holocaust Revisionist. He was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and
served as associate professor at the University of Lyon in France
from 1974 until 1990. Dr. Faurisson has addressed several IHR
conferences, and many of his numerous essays and reviews on the
Holocaust issue have appeared in translation in the Journal. This
essay was translated by IHR editor Theodore J. O'Keefe.
The question of the existence or non-existence of the Nazi gas
chambers is one of considerable historical importance. If the gas
chambers existed, they provide evidence that the Germans attempted to
physically exterminate the Jews; on the other hand, if they didn't
exist, we have no evidence of such an extermination attempt. Pierre
Vidal-Naquet, a leading French anti-Revisionist, is under no
illusion. To those tempted to give up the controversy over the gas
chambers, he has warned that to jettison the gas chambers "is to
surrender in open country." (Nouvel Observateur, Sept.
21, 1984, p. 80.) One can only agree. The gas chambers are not -
contrary to what Jean-Marie Le Pen once remarked - a mere footnote
("point de détail") of Second World War history. Thus, those
who contest their existence are subject to judicial sanction in
France and some other countries.
Nor could the monumental US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
DC, which was formally dedicated on April 22, 1993, allow itself to
ignore the Nazi gas chambers. The question remained: What kind of
physical representation of this terrifying weapon would the new
Museum provide? We now know the answer, and it is dismaying: For lack
of anything better this opulent museum - which has cost American
taxpayers and donors from the American Jewish community more than
$150 million - has been reduced to showing us, as its only model of a
homicidal gas chamber, a casting of a gas chamber at the former
Majdanek camp in Poland: a gas chamber for . . . delousing. As I
shall explain, even Jean-Claude Pressac, author of a 564-page work
published in 1989 in cooperation with the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
of New York, was obliged to acknowledge that this room was merely a
delousing chamber.
This is nothing new. As early as 1945 the Americans were portraying
four delousing (disinfestation) chambers in the Dachau camp (Germany)
as homicidal gas chambers.
Those in charge of the new Holocaust Museum in Washington have
resorted to so grave an imposture, I believe, because they are forced
to do so: they are not able to offer visitors a physical
representation, in any form whatsoever, of one of the chambers, we
are told incessantly, the Germans used to murder swarms of
victims.
My Challenge in Stockholm and Washington
On March 17, 1992, I threw down the gauntlet to the Jewish
organizations of the entire world. On that day, after arriving in
Stockholm at the invitation of my friend Ahmed Rami, I issued a
challenge of international scope to the Swedish media. It consisted
of this nine-word sentence: "Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber!"
These words were accompanied by two pages of explanation.
According to my information, the Swedish media, eager to answer my
challenge, immediately contacted every possible source in order to
obtain photographs of Nazi gas chambers. To their consternation, they
discovered that no such photographs exist, and that the facilities or
rooms currently portrayed to tourists at Auschwitz and elsewhere as
homicidal gas chambers have none of the characteristics of such
chemical slaughterhouses. Although the Swedish media leveled
innumerable personal attacks against me, my challenge was not
mentioned in a single newspaper article, or in a single word on radio
or television.
Over the months the embarrassment would grow among those who
propagate the thesis of the physical extermination of the Jews during
the Second World War: hence the frenzied agitation that has gripped
Jewish organizations worldwide.
On April 21, 1993, I renewed my challenge in Washington, this time
directing it to the officials of the Holocaust Museum that was to be
dedicated there the next day, with President Clinton, several heads
of state, and Elie Wiesel in attendance. Among the Museum officials I
had in mind, I was thinking especially of Michael Berenbaum, its
Research Institute Director.
My challenge in Washington can be summed up as follows:
Tomorrow the US Holocaust Memorial Museum will be dedicated in
Washington. I challenge the Museum authorities to provide us a
physical representation of the magical gas chamber. I have searched
for 30 years for such a representation without finding it: neither at
Auschwitz, nor in any other concentration camp; not in a museum, or a
book; neither in a dictionary nor an encyclopedia; not in a
photograph, model or documentary film.
Of course I am acquainted with certain attempts at representation,
but all of them are illusory. None withstands examination. In
particular, when one understands the extreme dangers of using Zyklon
B (a commercial insecticide) or hydrocyanic acid (HCN), one quickly
realizes that the sites sometimes portrayed to tourists as homicidal
gas chambers could never have served as chemical slaughterhouses
without enormous danger for everyone in the area. When one
understands the extreme - and inevitable - complexity of a gas
chamber for the execution of a single man by hydrocyanic acid in an
American penitentiary, one sees immediately that the places portrayed
as Nazi "gas chambers" - where, day after day, veritable swarms of
victims were supposedly killed - lack today (and lacked then) the
least bit of the formidable machinery that would have been
required.
Apart from the matter of sealing the chambers, one of the most
serious problems to solve would have been that of the entering the
HCN-saturated chamber after the execution to remove the corpses,
themselves saturated with the same poison. Hydrocyanic acid
penetrates into the skin, the mucous membranes, and the bodily
fluids. The corpse of a man who has just been killed by this powerful
poison is itself a dangerous source of poisoning, and cannot be
touched with bare hands. In order to enter the HCN-saturated chamber
to remove the corpse, special gear is needed, as well as a gas mask
with a special filter. Because physical exertion must be kept to a
minimum (it accelerates respiration, reducing the filter's
effectiveness), it is necessary, before entering the area, to
evacuate the gas, and then neutralize it. On this matter, I refer to
the documents on gas chambers used in American penitentiaries that I
published in 1980.(1)
I warn the officials of the US Holocaust Museum and, in particular,
Mr. Berenbaum, that tomorrow, April 22, 1993, they need not offer, as
proof of the existence of Nazi gas chambers, a disinfection gas
chamber, a shower room, a morgue, or an air-raid shelter. I am even
less interested in a section of a wall, a door, a pile of shoes, a
bundle of hair, or a heap of eyeglasses. I want a portrayal of an
entire Nazi gas chamber, one that gives a precise idea of its
technique and operation.
Evasion and Trickery
I knew this challenge could not be answered because, as a matter of
fact, for half a century they have been telling us about Nazi gas
chambers without ever showing us one. I also fully expected that the
Museum would be reduced to playing a trick of some kind. But just
what kind of trick?
The answer would come the next day, April 22, the date of the formal
dedication. (The Museum opened to the public on April 26.) On the
22nd, I obtained a copy of a book of about 250 pages that presents
itself as a sort of catalog of the new Museum. This book is by
Michael Berenbaum, and is entitled The World Must Know: The
History of the Holocaust As Told in the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum (1993, xvi + 240 pages).
On page 138 are three photographs:
- The first shows a Zyklon B canister and some pellets of Zyklon
B, which is described as a "highly poisonous insecticide."
- The second shows "a casting of the door to the gas chamber at
Majdanek . . . from the outside, SS guards could observe the
killing through a small peephole."
- The third photograph shows "the inside of a Majdanek gas
chamber. The blue stain is a chemical remnant of Zyklon
B."(2)
The first photograph proves nothing more than that the Germans used
the insecticide Zyklon B. (This commercial product was used
throughout the world.) The second and the third photos should be
familiar to visitors of the former Majdanek camp in Poland. They will
recognize the outer door and the interior door, as well as a portion
of the inside of the first chamber shown to visitors there as an
execution gas chamber, even though this room has all the
characteristics of a delousing gas chamber. In this regard, I will
not cite here my own research, including my photographs that show the
entire room, including the little annex containing a stove to provide
the heat, which was essential to circulate the HCN from Zyklon B. (In
the second photograph described above, the intake vent for the air
heated by the furnace can be seen, at hip height, on the right.) Nor
shall I cite here the expert report of American gas chamber
specialist Fred Leuchter, which concludes definitively that this room
was a delousing gas chamber where, not human beings but, at most,
typhus-bearing lice were killed.
J.-C. Pressac's Admission
I shall content myself here by referring to Jean-Claude Pressac,
protege of the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation and author of the 1989
anti-Revisionist work Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the
Gas Chambers (a misleading title, by the way). Here, then, is
Pressac's opinion of the room that Berenbaum dares to portray as a
homicidal gas chamber:
The red-ochre bricks stained with dark blue were for him
[Bernard Jouanneau, an attorney who opposed Faurisson in a
1982 court case in Paris] material and visible proof of the
existence of homicidal gas chambers. The problem, for there is
one, is that the gas chamber presented has all the characteristics
of a DELOUSING [sic] installation. I am not saying that it
was never used to kill people, for that is possible [here,
Pressac is wrong. - R.F.3] but the traces of Prussian blue are
an absolutely certain indication of use for delousing purposes.
(p. 555.)
Pressac goes on to note that the presence of a peep-hole is no
proof of a homicidal gas chamber because a delousing gas chamber may
be furnished with such a peep-hole. He concludes:
I am sorry to say, and I am not the only one in the West,
that the Majdanek homicidal and/or delousing gas chambers are
still waiting for a true historian, which is mildly upsetting in
view of the fact that the camp fell into the hands of the Russians
intact in 1944 (p. 555.)
On page 557 he presents a photograph of the exterior of the gas
chamber in question and of another gas chamber located in the same
building. According to the caption, this is a photograph
. . . showing one of the disinfestation gas chambers
thought to be a homicidal gas chamber. Between the two doors with
their inspection peep-holes, the darker bricks are of Prussian
blue colour, a sign of prolonged use of "Blausäure/blue
acid," in other words hydrocyanic or prussic acid sold as a
delousing agent under the name of "Zyklon B."
It should be noted that these gas chambers were in the Bad und
Desinfektion ("Bath and Disinfection") building, located right at
the entrance to the camp, and in plain view.
It is understandable that in his "Bibliographical Note" (pp. 224-232)
Berenbaum makes no mention of Pressac's 564-page book.
A New Advance for Revisionism
In 1978 President Jimmy Carter established a commission charged with
creating a federal government Holocaust memorial museum. He chose as
its chairman Elie Wiesel, thereby providing Arthur Butz with the
inspiration for a comment both accurate and sarcastic: A historian
was needed, but a histrion was chosen.
The choice of Berenbaum as the Museum's "scholarly" authority is of
the same nature. Berenbaum is an adjunct professor of theology at
Georgetown University. Where a historian was required, a theologian
was chosen - which is appropriate because, for some years now, in
place of the history of the "Holocaust," Jewish organizations have
substituted the religion of the "Holocaust."
The central pillar of this religion, as I have often said, is "the
magical gas chamber that, like a mirage, is the image of nothing
real."
To portray this "central pillar," Museum officials selected a
delousing gas chamber falsely labeled as a homicidal gas chamber.
Although it was designed and built by the Germans as a facility for
protecting the health of Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners, it is
presented to us as an instrument for the torture and murder of these
inmates. This portrayal epitomizes the deceit and the effrontery of
the zealots of the "Holocaust" religion.
The time has come for a little more intellectual honesty and sanity
regarding the story of the Jewish people's real misfortunes during
the Second World War. Visitors to the new Holocaust Museum in
Washington - particularly American taxpayers, without whom it would
not exist - have a right to demand an accounting from Mr. Berenbaum
and his friends. A recent article in the Los Angeles
Times was headlined "Poll Finds 1 Out of 3 Americans Open to
Doubt There Was a Holocaust." (April 20, 1993) The doubts will
increase.
A few days after the Museum's formal dedication, Berenbaum revealed
to a newspaper:
You're surrounded by death [in the Museum]. It's
like working in an emergency room or a mortuary. . . . I've ended
up on an analyst's couch. (The Washington Post, April
26, 1993, p. B6.)
It is not out of the question that Berenbaum will return to the
analyst's couch when he grasps the grave consequences of his
deception. April, 22, 1993, was supposed to be a date for the
consecration of the "Holocaust" religion on American soil. In
reality, this date will go down in history as marking an outstanding
victory for revisionist historians.
A few of the two hundred or so persons who rallied in Washington, DC,
on April 22 to express opposition to the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
To conclude, I would like to pay tribute here to those revisionists
who have contributed to the victory on this specific point:
- First, to Ahmed Rami, exiled in Stockholm, who allowed me to
publicly launch the "Stockholm Challenge" of March 17, 1992;
- Next, to the Institute
for Historical Review in southern California, which, since
1979, has, more than any institution in the world, made possible
the publication of books, essays and articles on the "Holocaust"
of a scholarly and often unrewarding nature, and this in spite of
repression, persecution and violence; this Institute has organized
eleven conferences under sometimes difficult and even dramatic
conditions, and, as a matter of fact, arranged the meeting in
suburban Washington, DC, on April 21 where I was able to renew my
Stockholm Challenge, this time to the US Holocaust Memorial
Museum;(4)
- Finally, to Ernst Zuendel of Toronto, without whom "Holocaust"
revisionism would probably still be struggling in obscurity.
My thoughts are also of the French revisionists who have expended so
much effort, among them one person in particular, whom I cannot
mention without putting in danger, who could be called the mainspring
of the revisionist movement in France.
Notes
(1) Serge Thion, Vérité historique ou
vérité politique? (Paris: 1980), pp.
301-309.
(2) On pages 140-144 of Berenbaum's new book, one finds naive plaster
figurines that supposedly represent, in sequence, victims in the
changing room, in the gas chamber, and in the crematory room of an
Auschwitz-Birkenau crematory. While historical museums (such as
military and war museums) routinely strive to illustrate what really
happened using models that are as accurate and as graphic as
possible, these figurines in Berenbaum's book are presented in a kind
of ethereal setting. The captions are sullied by imprecision, errors,
and absurdities, and they testify to an urgent need to revise
downward the number of alleged victims of each gassing, and the
number of daily cremations. Berenbaum makes discreet allusion to a
model that the Polish Communists built after the war, and which is
still exhibited at the Auschwitz State Museum (Block 4, second
floor). I understand that a replica of this model may be displayed at
the Holocaust Museum in Washington. If so, why hasn't Berenbaum
included it in his book? Might he have learned that I often use this
model to illustrate the physical impossibilities of the gassing
operations it is supposed to replicate? See, in particular, my video
"Le Probléme des chambres à gaz" (1982), as well as my
commentary, "Auschwitz en images," given at the end of the French
edition of Wilhelm Stäglich's book, Le Mythe d'Auschwitz
(La Vieille Taupe, 1986, pp. 492, 507). Even J.-C. Pressac is
skeptical of this model. (Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of
the Gas Chambers, pp. 377-378). Symptomatically, though, he
does not provide one of his own.
(3) A Zyklon B delousing gas chamber could not have been used as a
homicidal gas chamber. The first can be operated relatively easily,
while the second is necessarily very complicated. The conceptual
difference between the two lies in the relative ease of ridding the
fabric and clothes of HCN gas after the delousing, as opposed to the
extreme difficulty of removing gas from the skin, mucous membranes,
and bodily fluids of a corpse. In the first case, the HCN gas is
removed by blowing in a large amount of hot air, which causes most of
it to evaporate. Then the fabric and the clothes are beaten for some
time outdoors to discharge the remaining gas. In the second case,
heating or beating the corpses would not be possible. An authentic
homicidal gas chamber, of the kind used in the United States to
execute convicted criminals, is extremely complicated. To execute
even a single person is so complicated that one can scarcely imagine
the appalling sophistication the Nazi gas chambers would have
required to execute not just one victim, but hundreds or even
thousands at a time. Such gas chambers would have become veritable
baths of poison, impossible to drain. Nobody, even wearing a gas
mask, could have ever survived entering such oceans of hydrocyanic
acid and making the physical effort of removing the corpses, and
clean up for the next batch.
(4) At that meeting, I also made two additional challenges:
First: give me the name of the person whom you consider to be the
best eyewitness of gassings.
Second: make public the documents you continue to keep secret,
particularly the papers of Dr. Mengele. (There are about 30 pounds of
Mengele papers, including his memoir Fiat Lux - "Let
There Be Light" - which suggests that he describes there the reality
of Auschwitz.)
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