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From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!uw-beaver!news.tek.com!uunet!techbook!dgannon Mon Apr 5 11:12:55 PDT 1993
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. '93):
French Court Orders Heavy Penalties Against
Faurisson for Holocaust Views
New French Legal Assault Against Revisionists
and Freedom of Speech
On December 9, 1992, the Paris Court of Appeal (Eleventh Department)
rejected Professor Robert Faurisson's appeal of an April 1991 conviction on
a charge of "contesting the crimes against humanity" because of remarks
against the Holocaust story he made in a magazine interview.
The appeal court imposed penalties of 187,000 francs (nearly $40,000 at
current exchange rates) on EACH of the two defendants in the case: Dr.
Faurisson and magazine publisher Patrice Boizeau. Each was ordered to pay
30,000 francs in fines, and 157,000 francs in "damages" to eleven
Jewish-Zionist and other organizations. In addition, each must, of course,
bear the legal costs of his defense.
In the interview, published in the September 1990 issue of _Le Choc du
Mois_ ("The Shock of the Month"), the French professor commented on the
extraordinary Fabius-Gayssot law of July 1990 that expressly forbids
"contesting the crimes against humanity" as defined by the victors of the
Second World War and punished by the International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg. In practice, this law applies only to those who call into
question alleged crimes against Jews, and particularly persons who contest
the orthodox Holocaust extermination story.
Sometimes referred to as the "Lex Faurissonia," this law was enacted to
criminalize, above all, the work of Dr. Faurisson -- Europe's leading
Revisionist scholar and a good friend of the IHR.
In his 1990 _Le Choc du Mois_ interview, Faurisson had stated that he
would continue, regardless of the recently-promulgated law, to proclaim the
results of his research:
* There was no German order or plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
* No homicidal gas chambers ever existed in the concentration camps of
the Third Reich. The supposed extermination gas chambers, as
described by alleged eyewitnesses and perpetrators, could not have
existed for physical, topographical, and architectural reasons.
* The familiar figure of six million Jewish victims is absurd.
In April 1991, a Paris criminal court ordered Faurisson to pay a penalty
of 250,000 francs (of which 100,000 was suspended), and the publisher of
_Le Choc de Mois_ to pay a penalty of 180,000 francs. (See the _IHR
Newsletter_, May 1991, pp. 1-2, and May 1992, pp. 2-3.)
In the December 1992 decision, the three-judge appeal court (Francoise
Simon presiding) imposed a total penalty of 374,000 francs on the two
defendants, none of which was suspended. Throughout Faurisson's entire
testimony, which lasted nearly two hours, Judge Simon ostentatiously
averted her gaze from him. She also forbade Faurisson from reading
documents, including a portion of the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal
(the ostensible basis for the law in question).
But that's not the worst of it. In addition to the fines totalling
nearly $80,000 in this single case (not to mention their considerable legal
expenses), Faurisson and the magazine face two NEW cases based on the same
1990 interview. As Faurisson has ruefully explained, it's as if someone
accused of having stolen a bicycle were to stand trial three times: first
for the theft of the bike, then for stealing the wheels, and finally for
taking the handle bars. This sort of double and triple jeopardy is
normally rejected by French jurisprudence no less than it is in America:
but because it involves the most sacred icon of our age, the legal
situation is anything but normal.
Finally, on January 12, Faurisson received a summons for yet another
trial. He is being sued because of a fragment of a sentence in a review by
him published in the weekly _Rivarol_, April 10, 1992.
Not surprisingly, French newspapers and television have generally
ignored or minimized the appeal court's December decision against Faurisson
and the magazine.
Faurisson has decided not to appeal the December decision to a higher
tribunal, citing the cost of such an appeal because he believes that even
should his conviction be overturned he would likely be re-tried on the same
charges (and incur further legal expenses), to obtain a verdict that would
probably be no different from the first.
At the same time, though, Faurisson remains steadfast in his
determination to carry on the fight for the historical truth about the
alleged gas chambers, and for the freedom to write and speak that truth in
France.
An expression of this continued dedication -- and of the growth of
Holocaust Revisionism -- is a rather lengthy and remarkably fair interview
with Faurisson published November 11 in the Italian daily _Corriere della
Sera_. In his replies to the paper's respectful questions, the French
scholar provided a clear and concise summary of the Revisionist view.
"Worse than Stalinist Law"
The Paris court's December ruling is of historic significance. For the
first time a university professor has been EXPRESSLY punished by a judicial
body for having made public his research on a subject on which it is
EXPRESSLY forbidden by law to contest the official version.
Over the centuries thousands of professors and other scholars have
suffered terribly for having affronted the ruling orthodoxy with their
findings. It is to be noted, however, that until now such men and women
have been punished on indirect and hypocritical legal grounds. They have
been accused, for instance, of attacking religious faith, of endangering
the national interest or of undermining a political ideology. Sometimes --
as has also been the case with Faurisson -- they have been condemned for
"defaming" this or that person or group, for "inciting to racial hatred,"
or for causing "personal damage." In the late 1940s, for example, French
professor Maurice Bardeche was thrown into prison on the pretext that he
"apologized for [Nazi] crimes."
In Germany, which does not have a SPECIFIC law against Revisionism,
courts have punished Revisionists on the basis of a law that makes it a
crime to "defame the memory of the dead."
France's Fabius-Gayssot law is free of any such hypocrisy. With perfect
cynicism, the "Lex Faurissonia" establishes historiographical dogma. Not
even Stalin ever proclaimed a comparable law. When, for instance, the
Soviet dictator persecuted the opponents of a quack biologist Lysenko (who
was also a member of the Soviet commission that "established" that the
Germans killed four million people at Auschwitz), it was not in the name of
a specific Soviet law declaring Lysenko's theories to be correct, nor was
there ever such a Soviet law. The Fabius-Gayssot law is not Stalinist: it
is worse.
Other Victims
Professor Faurisson is not the only victim of the legal campaign in
France against Holocaust Revisionists. (See also the _IHR Newsletter),
July-August 1992, pp. 5-6.) Among other recent cases involving such
dangerous "thought criminals" have been:
-- In February 1992, a Paris court of appeal ordered Francois Brigneau and
Roland Gaucher to pay a fine of 76,000 francs ($15,200) for having
published in a weekly periodical a 60-word statement by Faurisson in 1980
refuting the Holocaust gas chamber and extermination story.
-- In April 1992, the appeals court in Caen (Normandy) upheld convictions
against Vincent Reynouard, a 23-year-old chemical engineer, and Remi
Pontier, a computer science engineer, for distributing leaflets and
stickers that question the existence of extermination gas chambers in Third
Reich concentration camps. Reynouard and Pontier thus became the first
persons to be convicted under the Fabius-Gayssot law.
-- In June 1992, a court in Nice convicted two young men for having put
stickers on a secondary school building that read "Faurisson is right: Gas
chambers = rubbish." Fabrice Robert, a 20-year-old university history
student, was ordered to pay a fine of 10,000 francs ($2,000), and Pierre
Gauzere, a 26-year-old automobile worker, was fined 20,000 francs ($4,000).
Each defendant was also ordered to pay a total of 10,000 francs to four
organizations. Finally, the "civic rights" of the two young men were
suspended for five years. (Among other things, this means that neither can
hold any government job, including teacher or post office employee, or work
in any government-affiliated agency or business.) This case is being
appealed.
-- In April 1992, Philippe Costa, a 31-year-old engineer, and Laurent
Gentel, a 24-year-old law student, appeared in a court in Fontainebleau
(near Paris) for having distributed a leaflet advertising audio cassettes
of a presentation by Faurisson on the gas chamber issue. The judge in the
case declared that no one would be permitted even to mention the words "gas
chamber" during the trial, which meant that the defendants could not
explain their reasons for distributing the leaflet. They have been ordered
to pay penalties of 29,000 francs. The verdict is being appealed.
-- In mid-December, a court in Amiens ordered Revisionist publisher and
writer Pierre Guillaume, and the periodical _Nationalisme et Republique_,
to pay 103,000 francs for publishing a very cautiously worded article about
the Holocaust issue. In addition, Guillaume has been ordered to pay 58,000
francs for having published a translation of an "open letter" by IHR editor
Mark Weber (reprinted from the Summer 1988 _Journal_). Guillaume faces a
third trial for having published copies of an article by Pierre Marais, a
retired auto technician. Marais himself faces two trials: one for this
article and another for a technical study he wrote.
-- Bernard Notin, a professor of economics at a university in Lyon, has
faced numerous difficulties in recent years for mentioning, in passing, in
an article that the gas chamber story is not clear. As a result of
pressure from Jewish Zionist organizations, and in particular the group
headed by Serge Klarsfeld, he was relieved of his teaching duties.
Although it was recently decided to permit him to resume teaching, it is
not clear if this will actually happen. When he was asked during a
television interview if he is a Revisionist, he replied: "I will not answer
because I do not want to give vile little magistrates the opportunity to
assassinate me."
[Photograph captioned, "Dr. Robert Faurisson addresses the Tenth IHR
Conference, 1990.]
Jewish-Zionist groups are upset that persons charged under the
Fabius-Gayssot law have been able to articulately explain in court
precisely why they reject the Holocaust extermination story.
Accordingly, an attorney and spokesman for the virulently
anti-Revisionist "International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism"
(LICRA) recently proposed a revision of the law that would forbid a
defendant in a Fabius-Gayssot case from explaining his Revisionist views in
court, or even from repeating in court the "offending" statement.
So goes it for Revisionists iin "douce France" ("sweet, gentle France").
In Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Sweden laws similar to the
Fabius-Gayssot law are in effect: a troubling portent of the "new Europe."
Media Hypocrisy
France's Fabius-Gayssot law, and similar legal measures in other
countries, would be universally condemned as intolerable restrictions of
free speech and academic expression if they involved any issue other than
the Holocaust.
Hardly a word about any of these latest French blows against civil
rights and free speech has appeared in the American media, which is
normally so quick to sniff out every real or imagined violation of civil
rights in China, Burma or South Africa.
Such laws and measures are not only chilling manifestations of the power
and bigotry of the international Holocaust lobby, they also strikingly
point up the bad faith and desperate fear of the lobby in the face of
steady Revisionist advances. Historical truth does not need laws to defend
itself.
___________________________________________________________________________
Faurisson Needs Our Help
In France -- as here in the United States -- our traditional enemies have
used litigation in their ongoing campaign to destroy Holocaust Revisionism.
Nowhere is the legal situation worse for Revisionists than in France, where
a special law allows private associations, individuals, and the state to
target men and women like our brave colleague, Robert Faurisson.
As Europe's leading Holocaust Revisionist scholar and activist, Dr.
Faurisson has been the target of judicial and criminal repression since
1979. He has suffered eight physical attacks, including the beating that
nearly killed him on September 16, 1989. Now Faurisson, who must support
himself and his wife from a single source of income (his now-reduced salary
as a professor), must bear the burden of court-ordered penalties (about
$37,000), as well as the costs of his legal defense in this and other cases
stemming from his commitment to finding and publicizing the historical
truth about the "gas chambers."
Rober Faurisson's fight is your fight. No less than our American
forefathers who signed this country's declaration of independent nationhood
in the summer of 1776, Faurisson has pledged his life, his fortune, and his
sacred honor so that your children and your children's children will live
free from the bane of an imposed pseudo-religion.
Once more, Robert Faurisson needs your support. Help brighten his
spring with your generous contributions for his legal expenses so that we
American Revisionists can say, in word and in deed, "Faurisson, we are
here!" (Note: French law does not permit individuals to assist in paying
fines.)
Please address your contributions for Professor Faurisson's legal
defense to:
Robert Faurisson
10, Rue de Normandie
03200 Vichy
France
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
___________________________________________________________
| |
| For 300-9600 bps (3 lines w/V.32) call: (503) 232-5783 |
| For 14400 bps (2 lines w/V.32bis) call: (503) 232-6566 |
|___________________________________________________________|
Sysop: Maynard "the Main Nerd"
[end of file]
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail Thu May 20 21:03:59 PDT 1993
Article: 14504 of alt.conspiracy
Xref: oneb alt.discrimination:6394 alt.conspiracy:14504 talk.politics.misc:79520 soc.misc:1133
Path: oneb!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail
From: dgannon@techbook.techbook.com (Dan Gannon)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,alt.conspiracy,talk.politics.misc,soc.misc
Subject: No Gas Chambers at Auschwitz -- Defiant Historian's Fine Tripled!
Followup-To: soc.history
Date: 20 May 1993 16:42:28 -0700
Organization: TECHbooks - Public Access
Lines: 252
Message-ID: <1th514$hp4@techbook.techbook.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: techbook.techbook.com
Summary: 2 articles (newest one first)
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. '93):
Irving Conviction in Germany Upheld, Fine Tripled
Historian Ordered to Pay $18,000 for "Gas Chamber" Remarks
David Irving has been ordered by a German court to pay $30,000 marks (about
$18,000) for telling an audience that the "gas chamber" at Auschwitz shown
to hundreds of thousands of tourists annually is a phony postwar
reconstruction ("Attrappen").
On January 13 a Munich court rejected Irving's appeal of a 1992
conviction, and then tripled the original fine. Last May the best-selling
British historian was ordered to pay 10,000 marks (about $6,000) after a
lower court convicted him of remarks made at a Munich meeting in 1990.
(See the _IHR Newsletter_, July-August 1992, pp. 3-4.)
The appeals court judge in the January case -- like his counterpart in
the May trial -- rejected a bid by Irving's attorneys to introduce
documents, witnesses (including Auschwitz State Museum Curator Dr. Piper)
and other evidence showing that what the historian had said in the 1990
meeting is, in fact, the truth. The judge justified his refusal to permit
the defense to present its case by declaring that the wartime extermination
of the Jews has been sufficiently proved by historians.
Irving attorney Dr. Schaller said that he would appeal this "outrageous"
verdict to the highest possible level, even though he sees little prospect
for success. In spite of the new ruling, Irving defiantly repeated his
view outside the court building: "There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
I will not change my opinion."
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
___________________________________________________________
| |
| For 300-9600 bps (3 lines w/V.32) call: (503) 232-5783 |
| For 14400 bps (2 lines w/V.32bis) call: (503) 232-6566 |
|___________________________________________________________|
Sysop: Maynard "the Main Nerd"
[end of article]
From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail Tue Jun 15 19:28:09 PDT 1993
Article: 2519 of alt.revisionism
Xref: oneb soc.history:12589 alt.censorship:10851 alt.activism:22533 alt.revisionism:2519
Path: oneb!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail
From: dgannon@techbook.techbook.com (Dan Gannon)
Newsgroups: soc.history,alt.censorship,alt.activism,alt.revisionism
Subject: The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers
Date: 15 Jun 1993 03:55:28 -0700
Organization: TECHbooks - Public Access
Lines: 1079
Message-ID: <1vk9r0$jma@techbook.techbook.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: techbook.techbook.com
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. 1993):
The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers
David Irving
(Presented at the Eleventh IHR Conference, October 1992)
Twice this year I've come under the scrutiny of journalists, entirely
through no doing of my own. The first occasion was my acquisition of the
Eichmann papers, about which I'll be speaking shortly. The second occasion
was in regard to the papers of Dr. Joseph Goebbels. I'll show you the
Goebbels papers first because these have aroused enormous interest. It
came about like this:
The Goebbels Diaries
On May 6th, 1992, while I was researching at the archives of the
Institute of Contemporary History in Munich -- once again, "illegally" on
German soil -- a good friend whom I've known for thirty years lunched with
me and said, "David, I've been working in the Moscow state secret archives,
and I've found the glass plates on which are microfilmed the ENTIRE diaries
of Dr. Joseph Goebbels."
At this, of course, my ears pricked up because any historian worth his
salt will tell you that the published Goebbels diaries are complete except
for everything that matters. Few of the most important portions have been
published so far: the November 1938 KRISTALLNACHT ("Night of broken
glass"), the 1934 Rohm purge ("Night of the long knives"), the outbreak of
the war in 1939, the Pearl Harbor attack, you name it -- it is not in the
published volumes that came out in the 1950s, the 1970s or the 1980s. They
hadn't got everything that mattered. We thought this was because the
Soviets were holding onto the good stuff, to sell it for really top dollar
later on. But that was not the case. It was just the typical Communist,
Marxist-Leninist chaos. They didn't know themselves what they had.
The diaries were recorded on Agfa glass plates stored in boxes: here are
my color photographs of one of the original boxes. You can see the
handwriting on it of Dr. Richard Otte, Goebbel's own secretary, which my
source immediately recognized. Historians of the period all knew that
during the final weeks of the war, Goebbels feared that his priceless
diaries might be burned to a frizzle in some thoughtless British air raid.
So he took the precaution of having them microfilmed on these glass plates,
which at that time was a totally new system. We knew that these glass
plates existed somewhere, and we've been looking for them. Actually, we
couldn't just look for them because no one knew where to look. But if you
stumbled across them, you'd know what they are, rather like the diaries of
Admiral Canaris.
___________________________________________________________________________
DAVID IRVING, acknowledged by _The Times_ of London as "one of Britain's
foremost historians," is the author of more than two dozen published works
on 20th-century history, including _Hess: The Missing Years_, _Uprising:
Hungary 1956_, _Hitler's War_, _Churchill's War_ and _Goring: A Biography_
(all available from the IHR). Irving has addressed four IHR conferences.
___________________________________________________________________________
So in Munich 1992 my source stumbled across these boxes in the Moscow
archives, and recognized them for what they were. (You'll notice that I
don't mention this person's name, because I don't want to get him or her
into any trouble.)
My source's own institute, the Institute of Contemporary History
(Institut fur Zeitgeschichte) in Munich -- my deadliest enemies now --
refused to finance a further expedition for my source to go back to Moscow
to purchase these 1,600 glass plates.
There are 92 boxes of these glass plates. Ninety-two boxes, just
loosely bundled up with string. The glass plates are not in very good
condition. They've got fragments of glass splinters between them and
they're often badly scratched. But they are entirely legible.
My source suggested that I raise the money to visit Moscow to get hold
of these glass plates. I contacted my American publisher, Avon Books, and
for ten days they acted very enthusiastic. I estimated that I'd need about
$20,000 in order to buy the glass plates outright from the Russian
archivists. They need money so badly just to keep the archives running,
they have to sell off the family silver bit by bit, so to speak. I thought
that $20,000 was a very reasonable price.
Suddenly, though, the bubble popped. Word came down from the upper
levels at Avon books that they wouldn't finance my trip to Moscow to get
these plates. They feared that it involved "bribing" Russian officials, or
something unethical. So next I approached my British publishers, Macmillan
London, Ltd., and within two hours received the same answer. Perhaps it
was decided that they wouldn't help provide David Irving with this scoop.
So I approached the _Sunday Times_, which is Britain's biggest, most
serious, and most respected newspaper. They immediately agreed to finance
an initial expedition to Moscow for me to have a look at these glass
plates. A week later, I returned to London having not only looked at the
plates, but having copied hundreds of pages from them -- everything that
mattered except for a few gaps.
When I then reached an agreement with the _Sunday Times_, they insisted
that I not breathe a word to anyone about this arrangement. As _Sunday
Times_ editor Andrew Neil told me, "Irving, my staff are not happy that we
are doing this deal with you." I replied, "Well, you've got no choice,
have you? Because it's my project."
If you read the newspaper accounts afterwards, you get the impression
that this was the _Sunday Times_' project, and that they had picked me for
it because I'm the only person who can read Goebbels' handwriting. Well,
later, when the big fight started, they were hoist by their own petard
because the fight in Britain became horrendous and hairy. [See the _IHR
Newsletter_, Oct. 1992, p. 5.]
The Controversy Begins
If, perversely, you wanted to upset the Jewish community in Britain,
what would you do? The first thing I would do is go out to all the Jewish
ghettos in London, like Stamford Hill or Golders Green, and I would put up
60-foot-long posters in the Nazi colors with 15-foot swastikas, a
photograph of Dr. Goebbels, and the slogan running right across in gothic
script: WHEN WE DEPART, LET THE EARTH TREMBLE. This is precisely what the
_Sunday Times_ did to advertise their David Irving series!
The Jewish community frantically organized ten-man-strong gangs to go
out and deface these posters. But as fast as they desecrated, the _Sunday
Times_ went 'round renewing them. This went on for a week until finally
the community concerned, our traditional enemies, brought their traditional
pressures to bear on the _Sunday Times_. As Mark Weber mentioned, they
themselves admitted this pressure, not only from the English community, but
the American Jewish community as well, because the _Sunday Times_ is
particularly vulnerable. Much of their finance comes from their American
bnaking system, and much of the advertising in Britain is dependent on this
particular community. The community left Andrew Neil, the editor, with no
doubt at all of their displeasure. He told me at the height of this crisis
that he had never been through such a nightmare in his life.
In consequence of this pressure the _Sunday Times_ had to turn the
entire campaign around against me, their own contributor, and try to
pretend that it was THEIR material, and that they were obliged to call me
in because I was the only person who could read the handwriting. Let me
just show you what the glass pages produce. Dr. Goebbels' diaries were
recorded in miniature on glass plates; this is the contact print of one of
the glass plates. As you see, it's fifty pages of the diaries in
handwriting, very, very small. The first week I was there I had no easy
means of reading them because there was no microfilm reader in Moscow. But
by chance I had a tiny little 12x magnifying glass with me, as large as my
fingernail, and with that I could read those glass plates for the next
week.
Some of them we borrowed, with the permission of the archivist, and had
them blown up to produce these photographs. You can see later on, those of
you who read German, that Dr. Goebbels' handwriting is truly illegible. It
took me two years to learn to read it. When the _Sunday Times_ said,
"Irving is one of the three people in the world who can read Goebbels'
handwriting," our rivals scoffed and said, "That's utter baloney, any
German of that generation can read his handwriting." So I sent pages of
the diary to these rival journalists, and I said, "I'll pay you a thousand
pounds if, within two weeks, you can supply me with a transcript of one
page with fewer than 50 percent errors." Not one of them took me up on it.
The _Daily Mail_, a rival of the _Sunday Times_, thought they'd scooped us
by paying 20,000 pounds to purchase a few pages of the diary from the
Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, who were determined to spite
me. The _Daily Mail_ took their precious pages and hurried off back to
London to get to work on them, only to find to their horror that their
people could not read the pages they'd paid 20,000 pounds for! I had some
happy moments during that July of 1992, as you can believe.
[Photograph captioned, "Joseph Goebbels (right) with armaments minister
Albert Speer (left) and labor leader Robert Ley at a mass meeting in Berlin
in 1943 to honor outstanding workers."]
Mark [Weber] mentioned the publicity that surrounded this affair, and
it's true: during those two weeks alone, I collected two thousand press
clippings from around the world. It was exactly the same back in January
whent he Eichmann papers scandal broke. You see, when I was in Argentina
in October [1991] delivering lectures in English and Spanish to audiences
down there, one of those odd strokes of luck happened. When you're an
internationally known historian, or when you're notorious, people come up
to you and ask, "Are you interested in this?"
Thus, an American autograph collector wrote to me a few weeks ago
saying, "I've got Heinrich Himmler's 1939 diary. Would you like to have a
look at it?" This kind of thing happens.
The Eichmann Memoirs
If you go to London at present, around the West End where I live you'll
find every parking meter, every lamppost, every traffic standard, every
traffic light have got stickers on them saying "Smash David Irving," "Stop
Irving," or "Irving Speaks, Rostock Burns." Behind this is a group that
calls itself CAFE, the Committee Against Fascism in Europe, which the
_Daily Express_ tells me is in fact a front for the Mossad. They've gone
'round putting up these stickers all over the West End of London
advertising mass-meetings outside my home, and very kindly giving my
address.
I'm grateful to them because recently I got a letter from a Greek
publisher saying, "Mr. Irving, I've been trying for a year to contact you
through your publishers so that I can make an offer for the rights to your
Adolf Hitler biography, and your publishers were unwilling to let us have
your address. As I was in London shopping a few days ago, I happened to
notice a sticker on which your opponents put your address, so I am happy
now to make an offer on your book." This is what happens.
So, being notorious has its advantages. When I was in Argentina, in
October [1991], a man who had written me vaguely a couple of years before,
mentioning papers that he thought I ought to see, came up to me at the end
of one meeting. The next day he came back and gave me two bulky brown-
paper parcels which turned out to contain the writings of Adolf Eichmann
when he was in hiding in Argentina in the late 1950s. Adolf Eichmann, of
course, is now the man with whom the public most associates what they call
the "Holocaust."
I hate that word. It's a word I don't like using. People say to me,
"Mr. Irving, do you believe in the Holocaust? Do you deny the Holocaust?"
I say that I mistrust words with a capital letter. They look like a
trademark, don't they? Like Tylenol or something. We don't trust them; no
matter how much advertising they put into Tylenol. And so it is with that
word "Holocaust." You get the impression that it is a neatly packaged,
highly promoted operation, and you don't trust it.
Eichmann was born on the 19th of March, 1906. As an SS Lieutenant
Colonel (OBERSTURMBANNFUHRER), he was a specialist of the Jewish question.
He looked upon the Jews with that same mixture of admiration and fear
shared by most of the non-Jewish population around the world.
He went to Palestine in 1937 after he was made an officer in the SS, and
he actually (we have his own record of this) entered into negotiations
with leading Zionist underground fighters in Palestine, some of whom went
on after the war to become members of the cabinet of Israeli leader David
Ben-Gurion. None of this was admitted by them at the time, but of course
the records are there in the files of the SS in the National Archives in
Washington.
Eichmann was head of department IV B 4 of the Reich Security Main Office
(RIECHSSICHERHEITSHAUPTAMT or RSHA). This was the desk of the Gestapo
assigned to deal with Jewish matters. Eichmann came under Heinrich Muller
(head of the Gestapo), who came under Reinhard Heydrich (the chief of the
RSHA) [and after January 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner], who came under
Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsfuhrer SS), who came under Hitler.
Actually, Himmler was much farther under Hitler than you would imagine
from subsequent historical propaganda. Relations between Himmler and
Hilter were not close. They seldom saw each other; Himmler was a bit of a
loose cannon who operated very much at arm's length from Hitler. He took
his own decisions and acted as he wanted. Hitler couldn't be bothered with
much that Himmler was up to. I think there was a certain lack of affinity
between the two, and this became increasingly evident as the war went on.
This is also indicated by Eichmann's own writings.
To the governments of the foreign countries from where Jews were being
deported, Eichmann denied that the Jews were being killed. But from his
papers we can surmise that he know or suspected different.
These Eichmann papers -- the 600 pages which were handed to me in
Argentina -- are all typescript on very, very flimsy paper -- what you
Americans call onion skin paper -- legal size. I am guessing that many,
many carbon copies had been made. We know that they originated with the
collaboration of a Flemish journalist named Willem Sassens von Hildewor who
was also in hiding in Argentina. Sassens was a very dubious character. I
think he's still alive in Argentina, but he's gone into hiding because he
fears for his life, and probably with some justification because there's
good reason to suspect that he turned over the bulk of these papers --
which he dressed up for the purpose -- to _Life_ magazine, in 1959 or 1960,
and when _Life_ magazine published them they were the direct cause of
Eichmann's capture and kidnapping by the Israelis in the following year.
So Sassens is a very dubious character. As we know from von
Woltersdorf, an eyewitness who lives in Germany now and wrote me a very
long letter after the scandal broke (he was present during a lot of these
taping sessions with Eichmann), Sassens persuaded Eichmann to talk at very
great length on tape recordings. Altogether there were either 67 or 72
tape recordings. Because they were recorded in the 1950s, the tape
recorder was a primitive reel-to-reel model. The tapes, once used, would
then be erased and reused, so unfortunately, very few of the original tapes
survive.
The surviving original tapes are now in the custody of Dieter Eichmann,
a son of Eichmann, who lives near Lake Constance [in southern Germany]. As
a result of the scandal that arose over my discovery of these Eichmann
papers, I tried to protect Dieter Eichmann from embarrassment by the
newspapers: I told journalists I wasn't going to reveal where they could
find him because I didn't feel that it was right for his family to be
molested by newspapermen. Eventually, though, I did put one journalist in
contact with Dieter Eichmann, a journalist with the Swiss weekly _Die
Weltwoche_. In the space of a few days _Die Weltwoche_, a wealthy Swiss
weekly newspaper, did a deal with Dieter Eichmann where they purchased all
these surviving tape recordings and all the surviving papers, and _Die
Weltwoche_ now has all the rights. I next received a letter from _Die
Weltwoche_'s lawyers warning me not to make use of any of the material I
had.
Sassens had taped the conversations with Eichmann in the 1950s. They
are verbatim transcripts, which makes them very useful, and as such they
differ greatly from the books that were published by Eichmann in 1985 --
_Ich, Adolf Eichmann_ (the German edition), or _Yo, Adolfo Eichmann_ (the
Spanish-language version) -- because those books contain no transcripts of
conversations. They contain just a mildly edited text of what Sassens
himself put together.
The transcripts themselves are very interesting because Eichmann got
very irritated with Sassens, and constantly interrupted him: "I can't see
what you're getting at," and "You're very thick," and "why do you keep
asking me about who was giving me the orders? How was I supposed to know?"
And this kind of thing. It's the "back-chat" which was interesting in the
dialogues.
In January 1992 I donated all these original papers to the Federal
Archives [Bundesarchiv] in Koblenz. In fact, I turned them over even
before I read them myself, because obviously they are a historical source
of very substantial importance to anybody investigating the "Holocaust."
Since 1965, I've made a practice of turning over my private papers and my
research papers to the German Federal Archives, both because they are such
a huge volume of paper, and so that other historians can use them. For a
time I turned over papers to the Institute of Contemporary History in
Munich, where they have a collection called "The Irving Collection." But I
changed that three years ago, after a professor with the Institute, Helmuth
Auerbach, decided to write a letter behind my back, on Institute
letterhead, denouncing me to the German public prosecutor! I decided no
longer to deposit papers in their archives, and until they apologize and
retract that libelous letter, they can say goodbye to receiving any of the
rest of my collection. Consequently, all my subsequent papers have gone to
the German Federal Archives.
I didn't have time to open those brown packages until Christmas-time.
Christmas in London is an endlessly boring, tedious, and desolate festival,
so I decided to enliven my festival by reading Adolf Eichmann's papers.
I started reading on Christmas eve, and I carried on through Christmas
day. I decided very rapidly that I couldn't continue reading the originals
because they are so flimsy that I might damage them. So I decided to copy
them, which I had to do page by page because they are so flimsy. It took
me all Christmas day, but I ended up with a much better set than the
originals I eventually donated to the archives.
Thus I began reading them in earnest about January 2nd or 3rd. Each
evening, at the end of the rest of my day's work, I would read 30 or 40
pages of these transcripts.
"David Irving Recants"
Entirely by chance on Friday, January 10, a journalist with _The
Observer_ (one of the other serious British Sunday papers, and a great
rival of the _Sunday Times_) telephoned me to ask me for a quotation about
an event coming up the following week in London. On January 20 there was
going to be a big Jewish Holocaust seminar at the Wiener Library in London.
The Wiener Library had issued a press release dealing with certain casualty
figures, and a statement had been issued by Yehuda Bauer of Israel's Yad
Vashem institute, who was going to take part in the meeting. Had I any
comments? It was just a routine journalist's call. I make this point
because I'm not a publicity seeker, and I don't go out of my way to seek
publicity. Publicity's a nuisance, and believe me, I long ago ceased to
believe that journalists are going to do me any favors at all. They're
not.
When this journalist telephoned me, I said, "I can't tell you my own
impression about these figures, but what I will tell you is that Adolf
Eichmann himself said that [Auschwitz commandant] Rudolf Hoss' figures were
grossly inflated, and that Eichmann thought that Hoss was an outrageous
liar."
"How do you know this?" he responded.
"Well," I said, "nobody else knows this, but as of two months ago I've
gotten ahold of all of Adolf Eichmann's private papers. They were donated
to me by a mutual friend in Argentina who didn't know what to do with them,
and he thought they were safest in my hands. I've donated the originals to
the German archives, and I'm busy researching through them now." By that
time I'd read three quarters of them, I think.
Well, the journalist flipped. "You mean to say that you've had Adolf
Eichmann's diaries?" he asked.
"No," I replied, "not his diaries, just his memoirs and everything he
dictated and his conversations, it's all pure gold."
Then he asked, "Have you reached any new conclusions?"
I responded: "There's one sentence that has given me cause for thought."
(I'll speak about this later on.) And the journalist then wrote an article
that appeared the following day in _The Observer_, and which was picked up
that same day by the _Sunday Telegraph_ under the headline, "Historian
Recants." [See the _IHR Newsletter_, Feb. 1992, pp. 3-4.]
Okay, that's the kind of harmless thing newspapers do, and the following
morning they're wrapping fish and chips. But in this case, the following
morning it was wrapping fish and chips all the way around the world. As
the globe spun, as the sun rose in the east and sank in the west, so my fax
machine churned out press clippings from all my agents and sources and
friends, in New Zealand, in Australia, in South Africa, in Europe, then on
the east coast of the United States, then across Canada, then finally to
the west coast, then down in Hawaii, in China, in Hong Kong -- right around
the world. That one _Observer_ article had instantaneously been spread:
"David Irving Recants."
It was interesting to see that my original statement, whatever I was
supposed to have recanted, had not gone around the world with the speed of
light, had not been splashed [on newspaper front pages], and yet my
"recanting" was sufficiently newsworthy to have gone around the world, and
been given this tremendous publicity splash.
Too late, the Jewish community realized that they had scored an immense
"own goal" (what Americans call a "fumble"), because the phone then began
ringing with calls from television and radio stations around the world,
wanting live interviews and telephone interviews. Would I go to the
studios to do a satellite interview with Sydney? And of course, every time
I did I said, "Well, Eichmann says he witnessed mass shootings in Russia,
but Eichmann's papers are quite plain: there's no mention at all of gas
chambers." So I was able to get the message across.
At this, our traditional enemies went berserk. In a very impressive
example of damage control, they then called out the fire brigades to spread
the following message: "What David Irving has published is not new. David
Irving has found nothing that the accepted, academic, reliable, decent,
serious professional historians haven't always known all along. The
Eichmann papers are not new. We have always known about these papers.
There is nothing in David Irving's find that merits serious consideration."
To which I said, "How do you know? The papers that I have donated to
the federal archives in Germany are subject to an embargo by me which
prevents anybody else from seeing them, and nobody HAS seen them, except me
and the archive [officials] in Germany. So how do you know that what I
have is what you lot have known all along?" An interesting point!
"Oh, well, it's quite obvious, isn't it?" they said, and then went into
a kind of damage control on the damage control. But it was too late,
because the point was very obvious: I had the papers, and they hadn't.
The Institute of Contemporary History of Munich also announced that what
I had was nothing new, that it was well known, and that didn't David Irving
realize that Adolf Eichmann's book had been published in 1985?
I said that not only did I know that Eichmann's book was published in
1985, I was the person who engineered it. After no other publisher in the
world would touch Eichmann's book, I personally organized contacts between
Eichmann's son, who had those manuscripts, and Druffel Verlag [a publisher
in Germany], so that at least the manuscripts got some kind of airing.
So of course I knew about the book, but what I had was totally
different: I had the transcripts of the conversations, which had never been
published.
The line of defense of the Jewish community was that what I had was not
all that serious; and, please, no further publicity. This made me begin to
wonder. What was it they didn't want published? Why was it, I asked
myself, that when the Eichmann memoirs came out in 1985, first of all,
nobody was willing to publish them except Druffel Verlag in Germany, and
Planeta in Argentina, but no mainstream publisher in Europe or the United
States? Here, after all, are the memoirs of "the biggest mass-murderer of
all time," apparently, and yet for some reason they're being swept under
the carpet.
And why was it that our traditional enemies had gone into this frantic
damage control exercise when, of all people, David Irving had got control
of the original transcripts and had put them in the archives?
Martin Gilbert, my deadly rival and enemy, the Churchill biographer in
Britain, said, "For many years Mr. Irving has denied these facts about the
Holocaust and now he makes a virtue of finding them."
But I didn't say the first, and I didn't say the second. What I do say
now is: can we analyze these papers, these transcripts, which are
disorganized and not indexed, and in rather an untidy mess -- can we
analyze them in some way, and ask ourselves why it is that they were swept
under the carpet in 1985, and why people were so anxious that the press
should pay no attention to the papers that had been given to me in
Argentina in 1991?
Eichmann on the Holocaust
Well, here are some of the contents. First of all, Adolf Eichmann is
quite plain throughout these papers that the word ENDLOSUNG, or "final
solution," meant only one thing to him, and that was Madagascar. When he
addressed his mind to the "final solution of the Jewish problem" in the
late 1930s and early 1940s, it was quite plain to him that it was only a
plan to sweep all the Jews of Europe aboard boats and transport them lock,
stock and barrel down to Madagascar, where they would be on an island where
they couldn't bother any of their neighbors and where none of their
neighbors could bother them. I've always said and I say it here again --
even though I risk making a few enemies -- that I think that would have
been an ideal solution to a perennial world tragedy.
The second interesting thing that emerges from Eichmann's own papers is
that he's chewing over in his mind -- he's frightfully repetitive -- he
keeps on coming back, again and again, in his manuscripts and in these
conversations to who was behind it, and what was behind it. What was
behind the "Holocaust" (if we can use that word loosely here now)? He
keeps coming back to the appalling thought: Did THEY manage to use US? Did
the Zionists use the Nazis to further their own ends? Was the Holocaust
something that they themselves inflicted on their own body, in order to
bring about their Zionist cause in the long run?
This was Eichmann's theory, at the end of his life (effectively, because
a year or two later he was kidnapped and a year after that he was at the
end of a rope in Israel). "Did THEY manage to use US?" He keeps on coming
back to it, and every time he comes back to it, it becomes more and more
plausible to him. And perhaps this is the reason why the Eichmann papers
were not supposed to see the light of day.
Thirdly, when he's justifying the cruelty of what he himself has seen --
and in a minute I'll go into some of the detail about what he saw -- he
says, "But compared to what they were doing to us at that time, this was
nothing. Compared to what they were planning to do with us, this was
nothing." He said, "I remember in Berlin an air raid... [and] afterwards
going through the streets past a house that had collapsed, and hearing the
screams of an elderly couple who had been trapped by falling debris, and
the woman pleading to be put out of her misery by anybody with a gun." He
said, "When you hear screams like that, you never forget them for the rest
of your life." He describes that two or three times in his memoirs.
[Photograph captioned, "SS officer Adolf Eichmann".]
Now, that's not justification. One crime doesn't justify another crime,
that's plain. But this is in the memoirs. He also says, "Besides, we had
by this time already learned of the Jews' plans for Germany." He mentions
explicitly the book by Theodore Kaufman, _Germany Must Perish_. This is
most interesting, because in the Goebbels diaries of August 1941 (which
have also not yet been published), Goebbels also mentions Kaufman's book as
justification.
This book, published in the United States by a deranged American Jew,
presents a crazy plan for liquidating millions of Germans after the war.
It was published in August 1941, and is referred to by Goebbels a few weeks
before he introduced the plan for Jews to wear a yellow star. You can see
a logical sequence of events, and Eichmann refers to this book as being one
reason why, in his own mind, he can justify to himself the crimes that he
was seeing committed.
He even mentions as mitigation the Morgenthau plan; but of course here
you've got to be careful, because the Morgenthau plan wasn't initialed by
Churchill and Roosevelt until mid-September 1944, only a few weeks before
Himmler ordered Auschwitz closed down. So, that's an anachronism.
Eichmann's mind is rather confused and muddled by the time he's writing or
dictating all this in the mid-1950s. (We know it's the mid-1950s, because
he mentions things like, "Why was it a crime for us to invade Poland, when
it isn't a crime for them to do what they're doing now in Suez?" So it
must have been around 1956 that he's dictating these passages.)
Round about 1958, he gets hold of the "memoirs" of the "memoirs" of
Rudolf Hoss, which were published by the Institute of Contemporary History
in Munich in that year. Hoss wrote these "memoirs" while he was in Krakow,
in Polish captivity. They've always been a problem -- let's be frank about
this -- they've been a problem to Revisionists.
Eichmann's comments on the Hoss memoirs are annihilating. Reading where
Rudolf Hoss is saying that two and a half million Jews have been liquidated
at Auschwitz, the camp where he was commandant, Eichmann comments, "Where
does Hoss believe that he got these two and a half million Jews? Not from
me. Because to have liquidated two and a half million decrepit, elderly,
unworkable Jews, I must have had to feed to him three, four, five, six or
seven million Jews in that space of time, and from the transport point of
view alone this would have been totally impossible."
You see, the memoirs of Eichmann are very useful in this respect. He
was the transport specialist whose job it was to round up the Jews in
Hungary and Slovakia and ship them off to Germany for forced labor and for
dissipation to the other labor camps. He knew that shipping off millions
of Jews wasn't something you do at the snap of your fingers: you had to
have conferences with the railway officials and with the road officials,
and with the guards and with everybody else who was going to be involved in
all this. You had to provide the food for the transports which were going
to be on the rails for four or five or six days. All this had to be
prepared and planned with typical German bureaucracy and method, and that
took meetings and conferences. And Eichmann said, "If you're going to ship
five or six million Jews across Europe to Auschwitz at that time, let me
tell you how many trains that would have taken," and he worked out how many
trains it would have taken, because he knew.
"You're not only going to have trains going that way full of Jews, but
you're going to have empty trains coming back. And you're going to have to
have a circulation time, a time where they're unloading at one end, a time
where they're loading at the other end... You're going to need so many
thousands of wagons" of rolling stock. He worked out exactly how much
rolling stock would have been needed, in these memoirs, and he said, "This
alone proves that Rudolf Hoss was talking through his hat. These figures
are totally fantastic, and what the hell is Hoss up to?" That is a brief,
lurid summary of what Eichmann writes as he's sitting in what he believes
to be safety in the underground in Argentina, reading these memoirs of
Hoss, published in 1958.
Two years later, of course, Eichmann is kinapped, so it's during those
two years that Eichmann is writing this. He mentions also in these memoirs
how he received an indirect approach from Nahum Goldmann. Nahum Goldmann
was one of the great Zionist leaders of the postwar era. Born in Lithuania
and living for many years in Germany, he was the person who negotiated with
Konrad Adenauer the billions of German marks which subsequently went to
Israel. Eichmann mentions in these memoirs what purported to be an
indirect approach from Goldmann, pleading with him to back up the six
million figure. Anything he could do to support the six million figure,
because the Zionists needed it. You are beginning to suspect, now, why
these Eichmann memoirs should not be published.
Eichmann inspected Auschwitz. He went to Auschwitz several times, as he
recounts in his memoirs. He describes being met by Rudolf Hoss, the
commandant, and he describes several grisly scenes. He describes going
past an open pit where bodies were being burned, and he says it was an
infernal sight, the likes of which he would never forget. He describes how
the commandant, Hoss, tells him that they are doing these things on
Himmler's orders and that it is a sacred task that has been imposed on the
SS.
Eichmann describes many things, but what he does not once mention during
this vivid description of his visit to Auschwitz is "gas chambers." He
doesn't mention gas chambers, he just mentions the disposal of bodies in
open pits by fire, and the comments to him by Commandant Hoss.
I find that a very significant omission because, let's face it, in these
papers Eichmann is not exactly being modest about what he's seen. He
describes how in July 1941 (if you piece together the months and the dates)
he is summoned to Berlin to visit Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich
Security Main Office (RSHA). Heydrich utters to him the fateful words,
"Ich komme vom Reichsfuhrer SS. Der Fuhrer hat den Befehl zur physischen
Vernichtung der Juden gegeben." ("I've come from the Reichsfuhrer SS
[Himmler]. The Fuhrer has given the order for the physical destruction of
the Jews.")
Did Hitler Know?
That, of course -- given in quotation marks in the manuscript -- is what
gave me pause for thought. I've always said, "Hitler wasn't involved,
whatever happened -- Hitler gave no orders, there's no proof of it." Here
we have Eichmann writing something very specific indeed. What is the
explanation?
Well, if you look just at that sentence, we can say that you've only got
to change one or two words and you get a completely different meaning. If
it wasn't "The Fuhrer has ordered the PHYSISCHE VERNICHTUNG [physical
destruction] of the Jews," but rather "die Ausrottung des Judentums,"
you've only changed the words by a fraction and yet you've got a totally
different meaning. You get something which is much more similar to Adolf
Hitler's public utterances and speeches. AUSROTTUNG DES JUDENTUMS, the
destruction of Judaism, is something totally different. You don't do that
by gas chambers and the machine gun, any more than destroying Christianity
or destroying usury can be done by the gas chamber and the bullet. They're
different concepts.
So why should Eichmann have written this and not that? By 1958, he is
well aware that since Hoss' memoirs have been published and Eichmann is
mentioned on 20 or 30 pages, the hue and cry are on. They're out looking
for him. He knows his days may be numbered. Although I'm not sure that --
given his German, scrupulous, bureaucratic mind -- he's not doing this
consciously, the mind has wonderful synthetic and analytic functions; the
mind has a habit of suppressing, distorting, and embellishing in a manner
which the owner of that mind would wish. And I'm sure that Adolf
Eichmann's mind is already lying awake at night, feverishly looking for
extenuating circumstances. What more extenuating circumstances would there
be for an Adolf Eichmann than that the Fuhrer had "ordered the physical
destruction of the Jews"? Eichmann may well have adapted the sentence that
Reinhard Heydrich actually uttered to him.
It's immaterial, one way or the other, because we must never overlook
one basic fact: this is a POSTWAR document, and any historian can now
confirm that nowhere in all the archives of the world has yet been found
one WARTIME document referring to a Fuhrer's order to destroy the Jews, or
for that matter, one wartime document referring to gas chambers or
gassings. All the documents that refer to Fuhrer orders and gas chambers
are POSTWAR documents; statements by people in the dock at Nuremberg,
memoirs written by the commandant at Krakow in Poland, and the like. You
can't overlook this basic watershed between wartime and postwar documents.
If there's no wartime document that says there was a Fuhrer order, if no
wartime document talks of gas chambers, then there has to be some
explanation for that. That's why I say I think I'm entitled to believe
that Adolf Eichmann's mind is synthesizing here. He is looking
unconsciously for extenuating circumstances which will perhaps get him off
the hook, literally, when the time comes.
Eichmann and Hoffmann
He doesn't try to avoid describing what he's seen. He describes the
pits in Auschwitz, he describes the crematoria, just the same as Albert
Hoffmann. Four or five years ago, while going through the records of the
Naional Archives in Suitland, Maryland, I came across the interrogation
report of Albert Hoffmann, who was the deputy Gauleiter of Silesia, the Gau
where Auschwitz was situated. I thought he was an unimportant man, because
I didn't realize he was in Silesia, but the British, interrogating
Hoffmann, asked him if he'd ever visited a concentration camp. Hoffmann's
reply was, "Yes, I've visited two concentration camps in my life, one at
Dachau in 1936, which was organized, clean, decent and disciplined, and the
prisoners were well fed. Then again," he said, "in 1941 (or 1942: I think,
in fact, in both years), I visited Auschwitz concentration campwith my
Gauleiter, Bracht, and with the Reichsfuhrer SS, Heinrich Himmler."
Hoffmann went on, "Auschwitz was totally different from Dachau. The
scenes I saw there beggar description. Brutality on the worst possible
scale. I saw prisoners being beaten, I saw cadavers being cremated in the
crematorium..."
You think, "Well, this is it." You read on, thinking now you've got it,
but then Hoffmann adds, "...but what Allied propaganda is now claiming,
that is totally untrue."
So again, rather like Eichmann, you've got somebody who is prepared to
describe to a degree what he has actually seen, which, God knows, isn't
exactly decent, but he will not go the final yard and say "gas chambers."
Neither Adolf Eichmann nor Albert Hoffmann -- eyewitnesses -- describes
having seen the gas chambers. So why does Hoss describe the gas chambers?
I'll come back to Hoss and his papers in a minute.
Eichmann Remembers
What else is there in the Eichmann papers? Well, he describes how,
after Heydrich called him to Berlin and uttered this fateful sentence about
the Fuhrer having given the order, Heydrich said that Himmler has ordered
Odilo Globocnik to carry out this task, and that Himmler had actually
ordered that the Russian anti-tank ditches were to be used for disposing of
the bodies. Heydrich orders Eichmann to go out and check what Globocnik is
doing.
Rationalizing, Eichmann says, "From this I assume that the conversation
with Heydrich must have been sometime in the late summer of 1941 because
that would have to be after the double battle of Minsk and Bialystok,"
because that's where the anti-tank ditches were. Eichmann then says, "I
went out to Minsk, and I saw myself the mass shootings going on."
Now you probably know that I'm a Revisionist to a degree, but I'm not a
Revisionist to the extent that I say that there were no murders of Jews. I
think we have to accept that there were My Lai-type massacres where SS
officers -- the Einsatzkommandos -- did machine-gun hundreds if not
thousands of Jews into pits. On the Eastern Front, at Riga, at Minsk, and
at other locatios, this kind of thing DID happen.
Eichmann himself -- and I wasn't surprised to find it in his papers --
actually witnessed this. He went to see one at Minsk, and being a proper
SS officer went right to the front to make sure that everything was being
carried out. He got so close, in fact, that he saw with his very own eyes
how the victims were being made to go into the pits and stand there waiting
to be shot. (We've all heard these descriptions of it, and I've seen some
terrible descriptions from sources that *I* find credible.) He says he saw
that one woman was holding a little child in her arms, petrified, and she
held the child out to him, and he writes in his memoirs: "I was a parent
too, and I instinctively stepped forward as though to take the child. But
at that very moment the salvo of shots rang out. Both were killed only a
few feet away from me. The child's brains were spattered over my leather
greatcoat, and my driver had to clean the mess off."
I don't know why he recounted that kind of detail in his memoirs. It's
an ugly piece of circumstantial evidence. But it lends credibility and
authenticity to the descriptions, what a writer calls verisimilitude. It
didn't surprise me. He also describes -- and I have to say this being an
honest historian -- going to another location a few weeks later and being
driven around in a bus; then being told by the bus driver to look through a
peep hole into the back of the bus where he saw a number of prisoners being
gassed by the exhaust fumes. So I accept that this kind of experiment was
made on a very limited scale, but that it was rapidly abandoned as being a
totally inefficient way of killing people. But, I don't accept that the
gas chambers existed, and this is well known. I've seen no evidence at all
that gas chambers existed.
In these papers we see Eichmann loyally standing up for his superiors,
Himmler and Heydrich. He's constantly wondering where the order came from,
if there was an order. On one occasion he goes so far, and in a rather
paranoid way, to say if there was such an order then it could only have
come from outside Germany, and why. Which is bringing us back on that
other track of "were we duped by the Zionists in some way?"
Eichmann constantly ravages the memoirs of Rudolf Hoss, as I mentioned.
This is again another reason "not to publish" the Eichmann memoirs, and not
to grant them any credence, because for our opponents the Hoss memoirs are
a keystone of the Holocaust legend. Eichmann describes the refusal of the
government of Slovakia, and other countries where he operated, to intercede
on behalf of their Jewish people. They were glad to get clean of them.
And that again is something these people wouldn't have wanted to be
published.
He also describes an odd case in Theresienstadt. He describes how one
of the girls on a train-load of Jews who were being shipped off to
Auschwitz protested loudly and vociferously that she wasn't Jewish. Giving
her the benefit of the doubt, she was unloaded at one station and taken to
Theresienstadt (which was a PROMINENTENLAGER for the Jews in
Czechoslovakia). But here the Jewish leader of the camp protested noisily
about having a non-Jew foisted upon them. This again is a rather ugly
depiction of the way that man behaves unto man.
Jews for Trucks
But most lethal of all, and I suppose taking up more than 50 percent of
the volume of the Eichmann papers, is the description by Eichmann of his
negotiations with the Zionists in 1944. After the German invasion of
Hungary, Eichmann was sent there to round up the Jews and ship them off.
Two Zionist leaders came forward, Joel Brand and Reszo Kasztner [Kastner],
and offered to deal with him -- to trade with him -- to rescue the Jews of
Hungary and Slovakia, whereby the Germans could keep the Jewish "mob" (and
in fact, they offered, the Jewish community in Hungary would be glad to
help round them up) if in return Eichmann would guarantee to spare 20,000
of the fittest, the best, the Jewish elite, the toughest ones who were
needed in the new Zionist state of Israel.
Eichmann describes these conferences in great detail. He has almost
total recall. His descriptions reveal all the cunning and cynicism of the
Zionist leaders at that time, at that stage of the war [1944] in a manner
which, I think, the Jewish community today would find deeply distressing.
This, I think, is why the Eichmann memoirs had to be suppressed, because of
the detail. Kasztner was subsequently assassinated in Israel, years later.
There is no doubt about what happened because, working in the archives,
I've come across records relating to the British end of these negotiations,
which eventually became the famous "Jews-for-trucks" deal. In this, Brand
was sent out to negotiate with the British in Turkey, in Palestine, and
Egypt; and the deal being that in return for thousands of Jews the world
community was to provide the Germans with trucks and motor equipment for
fighting on the Russian front. (Not on the western front, of course: the
deal had to be the trucks would only be used on the Russian front.) In
return, the SS agreed to release a number of Jews. Eichmann was the person
handling this deal in Hungary for Germany, and Brand and Kasztner were
handling the deal for the Zionists.
It's a fascinating story; perhaps one day I'll write a book about it.
In the British archives I've now located all the records relating to the
British end of these deals, as well as all the letters between Brand and
Kasztner and the Jewish agency and the Zionist leaders in Palestine, which
were intercepted by British postal censorship. It's a fascinating, but
deeply ugly, story. It certainly wouldn't win any friends if I do it.
[Photograph captioned, "David Irving makes a point at an IHR conference."]
In the introduction to his papers, Eichmann writes that he is not a
murderer: He does regard himself, rather ruefully, as being an accomplice
to murder, because he helped round up the Jews who were then shipped off to
a fate that he could only surmise. You would have to accept, of course,
that what he is writing in his memoirs by the mid-1950s is no longer just
the pure product of his recollection but also, to a certain extent, a
symbiosis of his memories with what he has read in Rudolf Hoss' memoirs,
and in _The Final Solution_ by Gerald Reitlinger, which he has also read.
Eichmann on Hoss
Eichmann's memoirs are an important element of the refutation of the
Holocaust story. I have saved this for the end: Because I'm notorious, and
because my name is on stickers around London, ("Irving speaks and Rostock
burns"), purely by chance another man came and visited me in London only a
few weeks ago, and he unwrapped an envelope, and inside the envelope was a
book. I recognized it because it's a well-known book that we all have
consulted. It was a copy of the original German edition of the memoirs of
Rudolf Hoss, _Kommandant in Auschwitz_, published in 1958 by the Institute
of Contemporary History in Munich.
He said, "I bought this book in a German flea market only a few months
ago and I want to ask you how much is it worth."
I said, "How much did you pay for it?"
He said, "No, no, no, look. It's got handwriting all over it."
Here are some pages of it, and you can see the handwriting -- it's got
hand-written marginal notes all over it. Says one note here, "That is a
lying distortion of the facts." THE HANDWRITING IS EICHMANN'S. The book
is Adolf Eichmann's OWN copy of the Rudolf Hoss memoirs! I don't know how
much money this man wanted for it. I'm not a rich man, but I've got his
address; one day, perhaps, I'll make him an offer for it.
Everywhere in that book Eichmann has written his own comments. Rudolf
Hoss writes, "I had a private meeting alone with Adolf Eichmann, and we
discussed the Eichmann program." Eichmann crosses this out: "A shameless
lie. I was never alone with Hoss." So those of us who always doubted the
integrity of the Hoss memoirs -- we wondered why Hoss should have written
these things -- here in Eichmann's own handwriting we've got yet one more
piece of proof that the Hoss memoirs are untrustworthy as a source.
The Truth Gets Out
I wrote a letter last week to [the weekly] _Die Zeit_ in Germany, which
has devoted two pages to, first of all, the Auschwitz controversy
[September 18] and, a week later [September 25], the Leuchter Report. I
wrote in that letter, "A swine [EIN HUNDSFOTT] is the historian who relies
only on the Hoss memoirs now!" We knew we couldn't rely on them. Bit by
bit, you see, the truth does come out.
You can ban historians. You can have them arrested, you can fine them
$10,000, you can make life hell for them. But one thing is quite plain:
you can't declare the truth to be a prohibited person. The truth gets out.
Thank you very much.
Questions
Q: What do we know about the people who are responsible for the
massacres of Jews by firing squad in Minsk and other areas? How high did
the responsibility go?
A: First of all, let me say a little about the source which convinced
me on that, and I know that Professor Faurisson disagrees with me on this:
A number of German prisoners were held in British captivity in rooms that
were bugged; there were hidden microphones in each room. And there are
transcripts of those conversations. In one particular case, General Walter
Bruns described to his pals in most appalling detail a massacre he himself
saw near Riga on November 30, 1941. I'm not going to read that one out
here. I'm going to read one out to show you how UNRELIABLE these people
sometimes are. Here's a prisoner of war in a conversation on December 20,
1944, a man called Obergefreiter Till, who was captured in August 1944. He
claimed to have been guarding the railway at Auschwitz in July 1943 when a
trainload of Greek Jews arrived.
Till said, "The SS man kicked a Jewish woman who was highly pregnant.
He kicked her right in the stomach and knocked her down. And the unborn
baby came almost out. He took hold of it and pulled it out, threw it down
on the ground, and told the woman to get up. He put that child on the
truck that was standing there to take away the dead people to be burned."
The British officer asked, "The child was dead, of course?"
Till said, "Yes, and the woman could not get up. She was hardly
dressed, and he grabbed her by her breast -- he wanted to pull her up --
and he just ripped her skin and everything out of her breasts. There was a
captain there from the army, I think his name was Captain Klug. He went
after that SS guy, he took him by the shoulder, turned him around, and
said, 'Are you crazy to do something like that? Aren't you ashamed of
yourself?'" -- and so on.
This is the kind of rubbish that these diseased minds invented
sometimes. So you've got to be very careful when you use these
eyewitnesses. Obviously that's a totally phony account: The man invented
the whole story. But disordered, diseased minds invent stories like that,
particularly when they are being interrogated.
But other reports, unfortunately, have the ring of authenticity. Most
of these SS officers -- the gangsters that carried out the mass shootings
-- were, I think, acting from the meanest of motives. There was a
particular SS officer in Riga who was described in the report by Bruns, in
which Bruns said, "The difficulty for us was how to decide to draw what we
had seen to the Fuhrer's attention." And eventually they sent a lieutenant
down the road, and got HIM to write what he saw, and they sent this report
(signed by the lieutenant) up to the Fuhrer's headquarters through Canaris.
And two days later the order comes back from Hitler, "These mass shootings
have got to stop at once." So Hitler intervened to stop it. Which again
fits in with my theory that Hitler was in the dark that this kind of mass
crime was going on. I suspect that the SS officer concerned [Altemeyer]
was only 23 or 24. That was the age of the gangs that were carrying out
these kinds of crimes. Rather like [US Army] Lt. Calley in My Lai. I
don't know why those people do that kind of thing.
Q: Some years ago in Germany I read an article about Adolf Eichmann,
that he was born Adolf Eich, a Jew.
A: Well, I think that this is a pretty far-fetched story, but he
certainly had sympathies for the Jews. He was a great admirer of the Jews
and in his own memoirs he describes himself as being more of a Zionist than
an SS officer, for what it is worth.
Q: [Professor Robert Faurisson] About Eichmann, may I ask you if you
read the transcripts of Avner Less, the instructing magistrate [in fact,
3,564 pages]?
A: No, I haven't.
Q: [Faurisson] And did you read the transcript of the Jerusalem trial
[of Adolf Eichmann]?
A: No, I didn't.
Q: [Faurisson] Maybe we have answers to your questions. You said that
the Jews didn't want the memoirs to be too well known. Perhaps it is
because all you have told us supports what Eichmann said in those
transcripts. The memoirs are in fact a confirmation of what Eichmann
thought was true.
I have something to add about the personality of Eichmann: he was
extremely naive. For example, when Eichmann is asked a question about the
gas chambers he doesn't say "gas chambers," he says, "Oh yeah, Hoss told me
about the murder installations," things like that. And then he says, "Now,
wait a minute. I don't remember the circumstances. Maybe I read that, or
maybe somebody told me that... this is possible." He was very
impressionable, the poor man, even before being taken to Jerusalem. He was
impressed by Poliakov and all those stupid people.
A: You're right; the character of Eichmann is very important. He was
pliable, he was easily impressed, he was complacent, and anxious to please.
Q: [Faurisson] Absolutely. I agree totally with this. It's very
important to understand Eichmann. Now, for Hoss we have so many proofs
that Hoss didn't say those things, didn't write those things. When he
said, for example, three million people died in Auschwitz -- two million
and a half in gas chambers, and 500,000 for other reasons -- we know from
Moritz von Schirmeister that in the car taking Hoss from Minden to
Nuremberg, Hoss said, "Certainly I signed a statement that I killed two and
a half million Jews. But I could just as well have said that it was five
million Jews. There are certain methods by which any confession can be
obtained, whether it is true or not." [See _The Journal of Historical
Review_, Winter 1986-87, p. 399.] To set the record straight, I don't know
any Revisionist who says that there were no massacres, because there is no
war without massacres, especially on the Russian front where you had Jews,
and partisans, women, and children all mixed together.
A: It's important to say this because we are called Holocaust deniers,
and the television screens show you the mass graves and all the rest of it,
which we don't deny.
Q: [Faurisson] We CERTAINTLY DON'T deny it. Right at the beginning of
the Toronto trial [of Ernst Zundel] we said, "This is what we assume, and
this is what we contest." And we assume that there were massacres and
hostages and reprisals and so on.
Now, on to another subject. Do you remember the conversation we had at
your home, when I said I realize that General Bruns said that there were
massacres and things like that, but at first he doesn't say that he has
seen them himself?
Second, you see that two or three pages later in the transcript there is
a very interesting document from the British interrogators saying who Bruns
was. First he had been punished, in December 1944 or January 1945, by the
Germans themselves. Then he said that he was very willing to COLLABORATE
with the British. Finally, didn't you say to me that, yes, in fact Bruns
at a trial had said that he had not seen these massacres?
A: Yes, but I still stand by the validity of these eavesdropping
reports. They are, I think, primary sources of the most fundamental
quality. Two years after this conversation, which was in April 1945, Bruns
went into the dock in Nuremberg and swore on a stack of Bibles that he had
seen nothing, he had only heard reports and rumors. But if you read the
conversation in which he describes what he has seen, there is one
particular passage where he says "I can never forget the appallingly
disgusting remarks the men with the guns were making as they were shooting
the people -- calling out things: 'Look at that Jewish beauty.' I can see
her now in my mind's eye, a beautiful girl about 20 with a flame-red
dress." When you read things like that you know the man's not making it
up.
Q: [Faurisson] Now, Mr. Irving, I have so trained myself in reading
testimonies that I can tell you that, in my personal estimation, this story
of the dress and so on is quite typical of inventions. Maybe I'm wrong,
but don't you think that if you tell us that Bruns said in April 1945, "I
attended [witnessed] this," (and he doesn't even say "I attended this"),
that you should add that two years later he said that he had not attended?
I think we should note both sides of the story.
A: Oh, yes, I think it's important. But this is just proof of how
people lie when they get in the witness box.
Q: [Faurisson] It could be that, but we don't know: We need both. Now
about the text. It's not a conversation taken on the microphone. As Ernst
Zundel said so well, do you know what the microphones were like in 1945, in
Germany? They were huge and you had to shout into them. Do you think that
the British had microphones in the bushes everywhere?
A: Yes, that's why we won the war. We had the better equipment.
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
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From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!vanbc.wimsey.com!deep.rsoft.bc.ca!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail Sat Jul 31 18:54:16 PDT 1993
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. 1993):
[From the REVIEWS section:]
A Powerful Indictment of
America's Failed Racial Policy
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS: THE FAILURE OF RACE RELATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY
AMERICA, by Jared Taylor. New York: Caroll & Graf, 1992. Hardcover. 416
pages. Notes. Index. ISBN: 0-88184-866-2. (Available from the IHR for
$22.95, plus $2 shipping.)
Reviewed by Charles Stanwood
During the 1950s and 1960s, America's black civil rights leaders, with
support from liberal politicians and the most influential molders of public
opinion, pressed hard for "non-discrimination" in voting, education,
housing, and employment opportunity. Equal opportunity, it was argued,
would inevitably lead to equal social-economic results. Upholding the
standard of a "color-blind" constitution, this movement succeeded in
anchoring its demands in law, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the 1968 Open Housing Act.
When equal opportunity failed to bring the hoped-for results, America's
political and cultural leaders abandoned their original goal of color-blind
"non-discrimination." Armed with new state and federal laws, key court
decisions and a network of administrative guidelines and regulations, they
instead fashioned a new social order based on racial preferences for
non-whites and proportional distribution of benefits among ethnic (and now
gender and linguistic) groups. New theories of "compensatory justice" have
been invoked to provide a philosophical gloss for this revolution in
policy.
Moreover, as author Jared Taylor graphically relates in this meticulously
documented, closely argued and powerfully written review of the lamentable
state of race relations in America, a system of "prevailing taboos" has
been allowed to evolve, a dangerous consequence of which is that honest and
intelligent discussion of race and related issues has largely been
proscribed.
Boldly defying this proscription, Taylor has produced the first book in
decades issued by a mainstream publisher that forthrightly confronts the
profound failure of America's racial policy. In his introduction to this
damning indictment, the author sets the tone of _Paved with Good
Intentions_:
Race is the great American dilemma. This has always been so, and is
likely to remain so... In our multicultural society, race lurks just
below the surface of much that is not explicitly racial... Race is the
fearful question that looms behind every social problem in America.
Almost from its opening pages this book casts doubt on the basic
assumptions about race and society that have driven social policy for
decades. In attempting to show how mistaken assumptions begot mistaken
policy, it has been necessary to show just how miserably those policies
have failed.
___________________________________________________________________________
Charles Stanwood is the pen name of an educator who holds a Ph.D. in
History. He has taught at the college level at institutions in the West
and Midwest. Author, co-author, and contributor to nine books and
monographs, his articles and reviews have appeared in a wide range of
scholarly American periodicals.
___________________________________________________________________________
In the pages that follow, Taylor spares no words in portraying the harsh
reality. "Hideous things are happening in our country," he writes.
"Millions of Americans -- many of them black -- live in conditions of
violence and squalor that would shame the rulers of Third World nations."
What's worse, he goes on, in spite of billions of dollars and countless
pledges by platoons of politicians, conditions have actually deteriorated
in recent decades. A large proportion of America's black population is
much worse off today than it was during the pre-civil rights era. Over the
past 40 years, the lifting of social or institutional restraints on blacks
has coincided with a drastic worsening of their condition.
Grim Figures
Citing an impressive -- even numbing -- array of facts and figures,
_Paved With Good Intentions_ thoroughly documents the extent of this
deterioration, and the yawning gap between black and white America. A few
examples:
* While blacks make up only twelve percent of the population, they commit
60 percent of the murders and over half of all rapes and robberies.
* One of four black men in their twenties is either in jail, on parole,
or on probation. In Washington, DC, 85 percent of black males were
arrested during their lifetime.
* Black babies are twice as likely to die in their first year as white
infants.
* Blacks are more than four and a half times more likely than whites to
be on public assistance.
* Over the last four decades, the institution of marriage has virtually
disappeared among blacks. In 1950, when discriminatory "Jim Crow" laws
prevailed in many states, 52 percent of black children were living with
both parents. By the 1980s, this figure had fallen to just six percent.
Two-thirds of all black children are now born out of wedlock. (The rate
for whites is 19 percent.)
* Around a billion dollars a year is spent treating gun-shot wounds in
America's inner cities. Blacks are ten times more likely than whites to
require emergency-room treatment for the effects of cocaine abuse.
* Between 1985 and 1990, the rate of syphilis infection among blacks
increased by 150 percent, while it decreased by half among whites.
Nationwide, blacks are fifty times more likely to have syphilis than are
whites.
* AIDS is increasingly becoming a disease of blacks and Hispanics. By
the end of 1991, blacks were 3.6 times more likely than whites to have the
disease. Hispanics were 2.9 times more likely. In some inner-city areas,
health conditions now mirror those prevailing in many parts of Africa.
* Black men between the ages of 15 and 24 are now nearly nine times as
likely to kill each other as are whites of the same age, and homicide has
become the leading cause of death for black men between ages 15 and 44. In
Harlem, there are so many killings that a black man living there is less
likely to reach age 65 than is a man living in Bangladesh.
[Photograph captioned, "Jared Taylor".]
Interracial crime rates show a similarly stark asymmetry. When whites
commit crimes of violence, they choose black victims 2.4 percent of the
time. In contrast, blacks select white victims in over half of the crimes
they commit. Blacks are 325 times more likely to engage in gang attacks on
whites than whites are to take part in pack assaults against blacks.
Interracial rape is overwhelmingly black on white. Analysis of recent
crime statistics reveals that black men rape white women 30 times more
often than white men rape black women.
"Hate Crimes"
Even in the special case of "hate crimes" -- a new category invented in
the late 1980s to track "abuse" of ethnic and gender groups, and which was
supposed to disclose widespread discrimination against blacks, Hispanics,
Asians, and homosexuals by white males -- whites are victimized much more
often than are blacks. Observes Taylor: "The fact that blacks are far
more likely to commit 'hate crimes' than whites is a fact for which there
is simply no room in the conventional view of how American society works."
Institutional Hypocrisy
A good portion of this book is devoted to the hypocritical double
standard on matters of race that has taken root in our society. "There are
now many things that whites may not do but that are tolerated and even
encouraged among blacks," he writes. "We have double standards in
politics, in school, at work, in the press, even in our speech. Many
Americans are reluctant to acknowledge these double standards."
The author details how the national news media deliberately distorts
reality by failing accurately to report black-on-white crimes. The
relatively rare instances of racially motivated white-on-black crime are
often seized upon and sensationally blown out of all proportion. On the
other hand, crime against whites is largely ignored or vastly
under-reported. This may help explain why whites have not organized
protests, or sought revenge, for attacks against co-racialists committed by
blacks and other non-whites.
"...One of the most striking -- and destructive -- examples of the way
the media handle news about race was the Rodney King affair," Taylor
contends. "It is not an exaggeration to say that the coverage of this
incident was so slanted as to be a major cause of the riots that later
rocked Los Angeles."
America's entertainment media engages in anti-white racist stereotyping.
On telvision and in motion pictures, blacks are rarely portrayed as bad
guys, while white businessmen are routinely depicted as villains.
School textbooks similarly reinforce the notion that wicked whites are
responsible for black poverty and lawlessness. They present a racially
skewed picture of America, Taylor writes, one that exaggerates non-white
contributions to society while playing down those of whites.
Whereas whites are forbidden to think in terms of racial identity,
"blacks are encouraged to identify with their racial 'brothers,' to promote
'black consciousness,' and to see themselves as a group defined clearly by
race." One consequence of this is that black jurors are less and less
likely to convict black defendants, even in cases where the evidence
against the accused is overwhelming. This is especially true in cases
where the victims of crime are white.
"Many whites," Taylor contends, "thunder against the faintest trace of
white racism, while they ignore the blatant racial excesses of blacks.
They have convinced themselves that blacks cannot get ahead without
handouts and special treatment. By exempting blacks from individual
responsibility, they treat them as vassals."
Predictably, black-white relations have deteriorated, and whatever sense
of community may have existed in the past seems largely to have evaporated.
The sometimes euphoric confidence of the 1960s about the future of race
relations in the US has given way to a national mood approaching despair.
All this has become possible, concludes Taylor, because "whites have
stripped themselves of collective racial consciousness. They do not see
themselves along racial lines."
White Racism to Blame?
The familiar explanation for black failure -- repeated endlessly in
motion pictures, newspapers, magazines, and by political and educational
leaders -- is lingering white racism. As Taylor stresses:
Americans are so accustomed to hearing -- and repeating -- this view
that they scarcely bother to think what it means. It means,
essentially, that white people, not blacks, are responsible for black
behavior. It implies that blacks are helpless and cannot make progress
unless whites transform themselves.
Do blacks drop out of school? Teachers are insensitive to their needs.
Do black women have children out of wedlock? Slavery broke up the
black family. Are blacks more likely than whites to commit crimes?
Oppression and poverty explain it. Are ghetto blacks unemployed?
White businesses are prejudiced against them. Are blacks more likely
to be drug addicts? They are frustrated by white society... There is
scarcely any form of failure that cannot, in some way, be laid at the
feet of racist white people.
This kind of thinking denies that blacks should be expected to take
responsibility for their own actions. More subtly, it suggests that
they cannot do so.
Taylor marshals an army of facts to explode the myth that whites are to
blame for the problems that plague black America. In fact, he documents,
blacks and whites with similar backgrounds and educational levels are doing
about equally well. Although the general public is unaware of these facts,
studies reveal that black women, for example, earn more than white women
with equal qualifications. Blacks holding doctoral degrees make as much or
more than comparably educated whites. Young black couples who manage to
remain married have family incomes almost identical to those of white
couples. In families where both spouses are college educated and both
work, black families generally make more than white families.
In the area of criminal justice, the comparison is instructive. Contrary
to what the public has been led to believe, black police officers are "more
active disciplinarians" who are "more likely to make arrests." In fact,
Taylor goes on, "black policemen are more likely to shoot blacks than white
policemen are," and black judges often deal out harsher sentences to black
criminals than do their white counterparts.
The figures on the death penalty do not support often-repeated charges of
"institutional racism." Whites convicted of murder are more likely to
receive the death penalty than black murderers. Whites who kill other
whites are more likely to be executed than are blacks who kill whites.
Virtually every study comparing like groups of blacks and whites has
arrived at similar findings.
"Affirmative Action"
The two long chapters devoted to a discussion of "affirmative action" are
among the best in this outstanding book. Although this ambiguous term
first cropped up in a 1961 executive order by President Kennedy, it was the
Nixon administration that really institutionalized "affirmative action"
policies. The author reveals that after "equal opportunity" legislation
failed to lead to equal results, the elites in control of government, big
business and education agreed to lower standards and devised a race-based
point system. In every sector of American life, whites -- and especially
white males -- are officially discriminated against. "'Civil rights' now
means special treatment for blacks, the meaning of 'equal opportunity' has
been neatly reversed, and 'affirmative action' is a euphemism for
officially sanctioned racial discrimination." Today, writes Taylor,
"essentially any non-white can get preference, including recent
immigrants." Nowhere is this more true than on the campuses of our
colleges and universities, where preferential treatment for non-whites has
become the operating norm.
"Sensitivity training" designed to defuse white resentment against
manifestly unfair practices in access, hiring, and promotion is now
obligatory in government, business, and education. While blacks are openly
encouraged to act in their own interests, "whites, on the other hand, are
expected to support, or at least remain silent about, a system that
discriminates against them." As the author goes on to note, "one of the
great, unwritten rules of race relations in America today" is that
"affirmative action has lowered employment and admission standards for
non-whites all across America, but everyone must pretend not to have
noticed."
High Price
The United States is paying a frightfully heavy price for all this. For
example, Taylor discovered that only 14 percent of Fortune 500 companies
confess that they now hire new personnel strictly on the basis of merit.
The author cites report after report documenting how less-qualified blacks
are being admitted to, and graduated by, colleges and graduate schools --
including medical and law schools -- and then hired by police and fire
departments, other governmental agencies, and private business firms.
Around half of the "black middle class" is employed by government. Those
in business serve often as affirmative action/equal opportunity
APPARATCHIKS, or they are carried along, with white co-workers taking up
the slack (though without extra compensation). The double standard
prevailing throughout American education should be regarded as a national
scandal. All this has undoubtedly affected the morale of conscientious and
hardworking Americans, who are understandably ever more cynical about the
nation's political and cultural institutions and leaders.
If not white racism, what then accounts for the disparity in black-white
performance and lifestyle, and the calamitous state of black America? The
answer, Taylor explains, "is that the black populaiton is not identical to
the white population."
While carefully avoiding exploration of the thorny and highly
emotion-charged question of racial differences, he does muse at one point:
If whites are not holding blacks down, it might mean that they [blacks]
have arisen as far as their inherent limitations permit. The
possibility of black inferiority is the unacknowledged goblin that
lurks in the background of every attempt to explain black failure.
Part of the shrillness with which white racism is denounced stems from
the belief that any letup in the struggle against it might leave room
for a theory that is too dangerous to be contemplated.
Courage to Face Facts Needed
Given the grim reality of racial relations in America, what, then, is to
be done?
"The first step in halting black decline," Taylor insists, "is to throw
out the deadly equation of Black Failure = White Guilt. Black shakedown
artists and white guilt mongers alike must be exposed as the dangerous
frauds they are."
Secondly, he argues, the reproduction of the underclass (white as well as
black) should no longer be subsidized by society's productive element. At
a minimum, he recommends that the government should provide free
contraceptives and abortions for poor women, and require some welfare
recipients to use the Norplant contraceptive device, which prevents
pregnancy for up to five years. Here Taylor echoes the arguments made
against "legal theft" by the brilliant 19th-century French political
economist, Frederic Bastiat.
In any case, Taylor argues, only by confronting the true dimensions of a
failed policy can we hope to resolve the many daunting problems that are
its consequence. He writes:
One hundred thirty years ago, this nation very nearly tore itself apart
because of race. It could do so again. Policies based on white guilt
and reverse racism have failed. Policies based on the denial of
individual responsibility have failed. We must have the courage to
admit that they have failed, and forge new policies that will succeed.
For producing this wise, disturbing and even enraging examination of the
most crucial issue facing our nation, Jared Taylor deserves the thanks of
every American who cares about the future. (The book's New York publisher,
Carroll & Graf, likewise deserves praise for its courage in daring to issue
this bold volume, and for committing substantial funds to promote it.)
If any single book can re-open an honest debate on race relations in
America, and motivate concerned and thoughtful (but now silent) Americans,
it is _Paved with Good Intentions_.
___________________________________________________________________________
Taylor's _Paved with Good Intentions_ is available from the IHR for $22.95,
plus $3 shipping. Please see the following ad.
___________________________________________________________________________
A BOLD BLOW AGAINST THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS:
The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America
by Jared Taylor
"Timely, powerful, breathtaking. This is a painful book to read, yet hard
to put down. Its impact is profound. Let us hope that this important book
does not itself become another victim of the conspiracy of silence, and
that it gains the attention it deserves."
--Richard J. Herrnstein, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
THERE IS NO MORE COMPELLING ISSUE confronting Americans today than that of
race. And yet there is no other issue in which the gap between private
beliefs and public discussion is wider. Many Americans have succumbed to
the notion that it is somehow wrong to be forthright about questions of
race; that decent, intelligent people should not candidly discuss what's
wrong; that the only acceptable debate must take place in an arena
circumscribed by taboos.
Jared Taylor wants to reopen this debate. He believes that unless we
can be forthright about race issues, unless we can ask the right questions
and receive honest answers, we have little chance of solving the problem.
And if we don't solve the problem, the race situation can only worsen.
This is the most important book about race relations in America to be
published in a generation. It unflinchingly explores the failed
consequences of laws and regulations that have turned the ideal of equal
opportunity on its head, and it suggests approaches to festering social
problems that today appear to be beyond our ability to remedy, or even
grasp.
_Paved With Good Intentions_ boldly argues that as long as whites are
held chiefly responsible for the situation of blacks, policies such as
affirmative action and quotas, perceived to penalize one group to reward
another, will only make matters worse.
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS:
The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America
by Jared Taylor
Cloth, 416 pages, Notes, Index
$22.95 + $3 shipping
AVAILABLE FROM
Institute for Historical Review
P.O. Box 2739
Newport Beach, CA 92659
[end of text]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
___________________________________________________________
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[end of file]
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400, N81)
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From: dgannon@techbook.techbook.com (Dan Gannon)
Newsgroups: soc.history,alt.censorship,alt.activism,alt.revisionism,alt.discrimination,alt.conspiracy,soc.ethics,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast
Subject: "A Jewish Revisionist's Visit to Auschwitz", by David Cole
Date: 7 Aug 1993 00:17:43 -0700
Organization: TECHbooks - Public Access
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>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. 1993):
"We're Loud, We're Proud, and Best of All, We're Right!"
A JEWISH REVISIONIST'S VISIT TO AUSCHWITZ
David Cole
(Presented at the Eleventh IHR Conference, October 1992)
When I decided last September to take a well-deserved vacation, I thought,
what better destination than Europe. After all, as a Revisionist, I'd
always felt it my duty to see the concentration camps in person. My
girl-friend, though, said that she'd like to go to Europe to visit
Euro-Disney, the new Disneyland theme park in France. So I thought for a
while about where to go: Auschwitz or Euro-Disney. And as I looked around,
and saw the miserable state of the world and this country, the political
and social malaise and depression, I realized that if I did take a
vacation, I wanted to go to a place as far away from reality as possible: a
fantasy land of wondrous fairy tales. So, of course, I chose Auschwitz.
Now that I've gone through the Auschwitz main camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Majdanek, Mauthausen, and Dachau, I feel even more secure in my position as
a Revisionist that there exists no convincing evidence that Jews or anyone
else were taken EN MASSE into gas chambers and killed by the Nazis at these
camps. In fact, the remains that I inspected at the camp sites seem, in
many different ways, to directly contradict these claims.
I returned to the United States with more than 25 hours of video footage
from the camps. At Majdanek I uncovered obvious tampering with the
buildings exhibited as gas chambers. This evidence was discovered when my
attractive camerawoman busted a lock and got us into a room that is not
open to tourists. There we were able to view several items in their
original state, most notably the doors, which were clearly constructed to
latch from both the outside AND the inside.
___________________________________________________________________________
DAVID COLE was raised and educated in Los Angeles, where he lives and
works. Because of his support for Holocaust Revisionism, he was assaulted
during a meeting at the University of California at Los Angeles on January
22, 1992, by thugs of the Jewish Defense League, who hit him in the face
and bloodied his nose. JDL leader Irv Rubin also tried to push Cole down a
flight of stairs. In April 1992 he appeared -- along with _Journal_ editor
Mark Weber -- as a guest on the Montel Williams Show, a nationally
syndicated television program, to present the Revisionist view of the
Holocaust story.
___________________________________________________________________________
The high point of my visit, though, was my interview with Dr. Franciszek
Piper, Senior Curator of the Polish government's Auschwitz State Museum.
He has worked there for more than 26 years. On tape, he admits that the
so-called gas chamber in Crematory Building (Krema) I, which is shown to
half a million visitors a year as a genuine homicidal gas chamber, is in
fact a reconstruction -- even down to the holes cut into the ceiling.
Piper also admits that walls were knocked down and bathroom facilities
removed. He went on to tell us that the remains of the "white cottage,"
supposed site of the first preliminary gassings at Birkenau, are also
reconstructed. This was hardly news to me. Even a quick examination of
the remains of the "white cottage" shows that the bricks are not connected
in any way, but are simply laid on top of each other like children's
building blocks.
Piper has no problems with the _Leuchter Report_. He told me that he
agrees with Leuchter's findings regarding traces of ferro-ferric-cyanide in
the walls of Crematory Buildings (Kremas) I, II and III. So what is his
explanation for this lack of traces in the supposed homicidal gas chambers
when, by contrast, there are significant traces in the non-homicidal
delousing chambers? He told me that the amount of hydrogen cyanide (from
Zyklon) supposedly used by Germans to kill people -- unlike the amount
needed to kill lice in delousing chambers -- was not enough to leave blue
(ferro-ferric-cyanide) staining, or appreciable traces.
This argument has problems, though. For one thing, the supposed
homicidal gas chambers at Majdanek (which in reality were non-homicidal
delousing chambers) have abundant blue staining. So according to Piper's
"Holocaust logic," gassing people in Auschwitz did not leave blue stains,
but gassing people at Majdanek did. Talk about a Magic Kingdom! As we
spoke, I half expected to see Piper's nose grow as long as Pinocchio's!
The importance of Piper's revelations is obvious. The burden of proof
has now shifted decisively to the Exterminationist side. For example,
Piper's admission that the four holes in the ceiling of Crematory Building
(Krema) I were put in after the war makes ludicrous the oft-repeated claim
of Auschwitz tourists that "Now I've seen the gas chambers with my own two
eyes." Now that the often-made claims about Krema I in its present state
are no longer valid, can the Exterminationists produce ANY evidence -- a
photograph, document, plan or order -- showing that the supposed gas
chamber there was EVER used to kill people as alleged? Most likely not,
but what else is new? We've never been asked to accept the Holocaust story
on anything but faith, and for me, that's not good enough.
[Photograph captioned, "David Cole at Auschwitz speaking with tour guide
Alicia. Empty cans of Zyklon B are in the background."]
On the issue of the Holocaust -- and perhaps uniquely on this issue --
we are told: "Close the books, there will be no more learning, no more
discussion, no more questions. Not only will no questions be tolerated,
but anyone who dares to ask such questions will be slandered and viciously
attacked."
Now, as someone who believes that part of being human is to learn
something new every day, I respond: "How dare you tell me there will be no
more learning?" The establishment that maintains the Holocaust story on
life support admits that there is no direct proof of homicidal gassings.
No order, no document, no pictures, only "eyewitnesses."
And what of these eyewitnesses? The Holocaust lobby insists that this
is convincing evidence. But what kind of evidence is this? In some
European countries, a person who denies the gas chambers can be jailed,
fined, or physically attacked. He might lose his job, his standing in the
community, maybe even his life. Something similar has happened in Canada.
In the United States, he might be attacked and vilified. And if he says
that he comes by his knowledge from first-hand experience -- in other words
from helping to run the camps during the war years -- then he might easily
find himself deported to Israel or eastern Europe, where he might be
sentenced to death or at least stripped of his US citizenship and denied
due process.
In other words, we only hear of eyewitnesses from one side because
witnesses from the other side have been strong-armed into silence. This is
governmental coercion of the worst kind, and on a worldwide scale no less.
One kind of eyewitness is encouraged, the other kind if warned that his
words might lead to deportation, imprisonment, loss of livelihood,
property, and even life. Some great victory for the Holocaust lobby: The
game has been fixed!
Let people speak! If for no one else, I demand this for my own sake. I
want to know what happened during World War Two, and yet how can I if those
who might have firsthand knowledge are told: "Speak only the official line,
or suffer the consequences." I insist on my human right to learn.
There are those who say, "Okay, so maybe the Holocaust is a bit
exaggerated, but do we really want to destabilize society by openly talking
about all this, possibly encouraging hostility against Jews?" This raises
an important philosophical question: Do you believe mankind to be so
inherently cruel and stupid that people must be lied to in order to make
them behave? If so, then the lies you tell them are only a small bandage
to cover up a much greater evil: Lack of confidence in mankind's ability to
handle the truth. And if you truly believe that people cannot handle the
truth, but instead need a "Big Brother" to handle it for them, then surely
democracy is the most dangerous thing on earth.
Of course, I understand that people can be cruel and stupid, but I also
believe in the human ability to learn, and to grow with each new piece of
knowledge. Rather than censor information that we subjectively perceive to
be "dangerous," we should teach our children to think critically, to remain
open-minded, and to look for truth rather than cling to emotionally
appealing falsehoods.
And that is just about all we can do: teach our children and hope for
the best, realizing that people cannot be programmed like robots. Eighty
years of failed Communism should have taught us that. To use the power of
the state to force men to be what the state defines as "good" creates a
world far more hellish than the one that is supposedly being prevented. I
would rather live in a world where people are free to be cruel and stupid
than one in which "goodness" is enforced at gun point.
Keep in mind also that truth, objective truth, does not need threats and
intimidation to prevail. We Holocaust Revisionists are often likened to
those who said that the earth was flat. But just the reverse is true: It
is the other side that acts like a Holy Inquisition, institutionalizing one
viewpoint and punishing heretics. Remember: We only accepted that the
earth is round after the debate was opened. And since then, the
round-earth adherents have not needed false news laws, hate crimes laws,
and libel or slander laws to protect the truthfulness of their view.
Likewise, all we ask is that the Holocaust story either stand or fall
according to the evidence -- or lack of it.
While we Holocaust Revisionists sit on a wealth of wonderfully heretical
information, can we get it out to the general public? Can we "mainstream"
Holocaust Revisionism before it's too late, that is to say, before all
those who have firsthand information of what really happened die off
entirely?
As a Jew, it would be wrong for me not to mention the issue of Jewish
influence. Influence is a very strange thing. People spend so much time
and energy to acquire it, and then an equal amount of time and energy
denying they have it. Jewish influence does exist. If it didn't, why
would billions of dollars be spent annually by Jewish lobbying groups?
That money isn't to pay for dance lessons for Senators and Congressmen, of
course, it's for influence. Jews must come to terms with the fact that
they are not only a powerful and influential group, but have
responsibilities that come with that -- particularly the responsibility not
to abuse power, or, more specifically, to avoid abusing people with that
power.
It is a testament to the strength of Revisionist research and
scholarship, and to Revisionist tenacity, that all the Jewish influence in
the world has not erased this movement. Despite the best efforts of our
most clever and determined adversaries, Revisionist books are still read,
and the Institute for Historical Review continues to function.
But how much progress are we really making in getting our message to the
public? Unfortunately, we've been making only tiny, pussycat steps. I am
not a patient man. Every day, I fool myself into thinking that I can be
patient -- I can't. I don't want to be a guerrilla fighter of the
political underground for the rest of my life. The time has come, indeed
has never been better, to take Revisionist scholarship to the rest of the
world, and if the powers that be try to stop us, we either go around them
or, if necessary, we go right through them.
TWO MORE YEARS! That's my new motto. In two years' time, Holocaust
Revisionism should be in the mainstream, squarely in the public eye.
I am sure that we will eventually succeed in getting out our message.
Information can be suppressed for just so long. But that's not enough for
me. It's not enough that fellow Revisionists recognize Professor
Faurisson's scholarship for the brilliant work it is. I want it to be
WIDELY recognized as such, and in his lifetime!
So let's make a concerted effort. Mindful of the recent Jewish New
Year, I hereby make a Jewish New Year's resolution: Two more years! No
more sitting in the back of the ideological bus. We're loud, we're proud,
and best of all, we're right!
[end of article]
___________________________________________________________________________
The VHS videotape, "David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper," is
available from the IHR for $49, plus $2.50 shipping. One hour running
time. PAL format $59. Audio cassette of the video soundtrack, $9.95.
Printed transcript free with video. Printed transcript $15 separately.
California residents add 7.75% sales tax.
Institute for Historical Review
P.O. Box 2739 * Newport Beach, CA 92659
___________________________________________________________________________
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
___________________________________________________________
| |
| For 300-9600 bps (3 lines w/V.32) call: (503) 232-5783 |
| For 14400 bps (2 lines w/V.32bis) call: (503) 232-6566 |
|___________________________________________________________|
Sysop: Maynard "the Main Nerd"
[end of file]
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400, N81)
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From: dgannon@techbook.techbook.com (Dan Gannon)
Newsgroups: soc.history,alt.censorship,alt.activism,alt.revisionism,alt.discrimination,alt.conspiracy,alt.politics.correct,alt.journalism.criticism,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Legal Persecution of Revisionists Worse Than Stalinist Law!
Date: 20 Sep 1993 12:31:50 -0700
Organization: TECHbooks - Public Access
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Summary: Posted to help answer questions recently asked about this topic.
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. '93):
French Court Orders Heavy Penalties Against
Faurisson for Holocaust Views
New French Legal Assault Against Revisionists
and Freedom of Speech
On December 9, 1992, the Paris Court of Appeal (Eleventh Department)
rejected Professor Robert Faurisson's appeal of an April 1991 conviction on
a charge of "contesting the crimes against humanity" because of remarks
against the Holocaust story he made in a magazine interview.
The appeal court imposed penalties of 187,000 francs (nearly $40,000 at
current exchange rates) on EACH of the two defendants in the case: Dr.
Faurisson and magazine publisher Patrice Boizeau. Each was ordered to pay
30,000 francs in fines, and 157,000 francs in "damages" to eleven
Jewish-Zionist and other organizations. In addition, each must, of course,
bear the legal costs of his defense.
In the interview, published in the September 1990 issue of _Le Choc du
Mois_ ("The Shock of the Month"), the French professor commented on the
extraordinary Fabius-Gayssot law of July 1990 that expressly forbids
"contesting the crimes against humanity" as defined by the victors of the
Second World War and punished by the International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg. In practice, this law applies only to those who call into
question alleged crimes against Jews, and particularly persons who contest
the orthodox Holocaust extermination story.
Sometimes referred to as the "Lex Faurissonia," this law was enacted to
criminalize, above all, the work of Dr. Faurisson -- Europe's leading
Revisionist scholar and a good friend of the IHR.
In his 1990 _Le Choc du Mois_ interview, Faurisson had stated that he
would continue, regardless of the recently-promulgated law, to proclaim the
results of his research:
* There was no German order or plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
* No homicidal gas chambers ever existed in the concentration camps of
the Third Reich. The supposed extermination gas chambers, as
described by alleged eyewitnesses and perpetrators, could not have
existed for physical, topographical, and architectural reasons.
* The familiar figure of six million Jewish victims is absurd.
In April 1991, a Paris criminal court ordered Faurisson to pay a penalty
of 250,000 francs (of which 100,000 was suspended), and the publisher of
_Le Choc de Mois_ to pay a penalty of 180,000 francs. (See the _IHR
Newsletter_, May 1991, pp. 1-2, and May 1992, pp. 2-3.)
In the December 1992 decision, the three-judge appeal court (Francoise
Simon presiding) imposed a total penalty of 374,000 francs on the two
defendants, none of which was suspended. Throughout Faurisson's entire
testimony, which lasted nearly two hours, Judge Simon ostentatiously
averted her gaze from him. She also forbade Faurisson from reading
documents, including a portion of the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal
(the ostensible basis for the law in question).
But that's not the worst of it. In addition to the fines totalling
nearly $80,000 in this single case (not to mention their considerable legal
expenses), Faurisson and the magazine face two NEW cases based on the same
1990 interview. As Faurisson has ruefully explained, it's as if someone
accused of having stolen a bicycle were to stand trial three times: first
for the theft of the bike, then for stealing the wheels, and finally for
taking the handle bars. This sort of double and triple jeopardy is
normally rejected by French jurisprudence no less than it is in America:
but because it involves the most sacred icon of our age, the legal
situation is anything but normal.
Finally, on January 12, Faurisson received a summons for yet another
trial. He is being sued because of a fragment of a sentence in a review by
him published in the weekly _Rivarol_, April 10, 1992.
Not surprisingly, French newspapers and television have generally
ignored or minimized the appeal court's December decision against Faurisson
and the magazine.
Faurisson has decided not to appeal the December decision to a higher
tribunal, citing the cost of such an appeal because he believes that even
should his conviction be overturned he would likely be re-tried on the same
charges (and incur further legal expenses), to obtain a verdict that would
probably be no different from the first.
At the same time, though, Faurisson remains steadfast in his
determination to carry on the fight for the historical truth about the
alleged gas chambers, and for the freedom to write and speak that truth in
France.
An expression of this continued dedication -- and of the growth of
Holocaust Revisionism -- is a rather lengthy and remarkably fair interview
with Faurisson published November 11 in the Italian daily _Corriere della
Sera_. In his replies to the paper's respectful questions, the French
scholar provided a clear and concise summary of the Revisionist view.
"Worse than Stalinist Law"
The Paris court's December ruling is of historic significance. For the
first time a university professor has been EXPRESSLY punished by a judicial
body for having made public his research on a subject on which it is
EXPRESSLY forbidden by law to contest the official version.
Over the centuries thousands of professors and other scholars have
suffered terribly for having affronted the ruling orthodoxy with their
findings. It is to be noted, however, that until now such men and women
have been punished on indirect and hypocritical legal grounds. They have
been accused, for instance, of attacking religious faith, of endangering
the national interest or of undermining a political ideology. Sometimes --
as has also been the case with Faurisson -- they have been condemned for
"defaming" this or that person or group, for "inciting to racial hatred,"
or for causing "personal damage." In the late 1940s, for example, French
professor Maurice Bardeche was thrown into prison on the pretext that he
"apologized for [Nazi] crimes."
In Germany, which does not have a SPECIFIC law against Revisionism,
courts have punished Revisionists on the basis of a law that makes it a
crime to "defame the memory of the dead."
France's Fabius-Gayssot law is free of any such hypocrisy. With perfect
cynicism, the "Lex Faurissonia" establishes historiographical dogma. Not
even Stalin ever proclaimed a comparable law. When, for instance, the
Soviet dictator persecuted the opponents of a quack biologist Lysenko (who
was also a member of the Soviet commission that "established" that the
Germans killed four million people at Auschwitz), it was not in the name of
a specific Soviet law declaring Lysenko's theories to be correct, nor was
there ever such a Soviet law. The Fabius-Gayssot law is not Stalinist: it
is worse.
Other Victims
Professor Faurisson is not the only victim of the legal campaign in
France against Holocaust Revisionists. (See also the _IHR Newsletter),
July-August 1992, pp. 5-6.) Among other recent cases involving such
dangerous "thought criminals" have been:
-- In February 1992, a Paris court of appeal ordered Francois Brigneau and
Roland Gaucher to pay a fine of 76,000 francs ($15,200) for having
published in a weekly periodical a 60-word statement by Faurisson in 1980
refuting the Holocaust gas chamber and extermination story.
-- In April 1992, the appeals court in Caen (Normandy) upheld convictions
against Vincent Reynouard, a 23-year-old chemical engineer, and Remi
Pontier, a computer science engineer, for distributing leaflets and
stickers that question the existence of extermination gas chambers in Third
Reich concentration camps. Reynouard and Pontier thus became the first
persons to be convicted under the Fabius-Gayssot law.
-- In June 1992, a court in Nice convicted two young men for having put
stickers on a secondary school building that read "Faurisson is right: Gas
chambers = rubbish." Fabrice Robert, a 20-year-old university history
student, was ordered to pay a fine of 10,000 francs ($2,000), and Pierre
Gauzere, a 26-year-old automobile worker, was fined 20,000 francs ($4,000).
Each defendant was also ordered to pay a total of 10,000 francs to four
organizations. Finally, the "civic rights" of the two young men were
suspended for five years. (Among other things, this means that neither can
hold any government job, including teacher or post office employee, or work
in any government-affiliated agency or business.) This case is being
appealed.
-- In April 1992, Philippe Costa, a 31-year-old engineer, and Laurent
Gentel, a 24-year-old law student, appeared in a court in Fontainebleau
(near Paris) for having distributed a leaflet advertising audio cassettes
of a presentation by Faurisson on the gas chamber issue. The judge in the
case declared that no one would be permitted even to mention the words "gas
chamber" during the trial, which meant that the defendants could not
explain their reasons for distributing the leaflet. They have been ordered
to pay penalties of 29,000 francs. The verdict is being appealed.
-- In mid-December, a court in Amiens ordered Revisionist publisher and
writer Pierre Guillaume, and the periodical _Nationalisme et Republique_,
to pay 103,000 francs for publishing a very cautiously worded article about
the Holocaust issue. In addition, Guillaume has been ordered to pay 58,000
francs for having published a translation of an "open letter" by IHR editor
Mark Weber (reprinted from the Summer 1988 _Journal_). Guillaume faces a
third trial for having published copies of an article by Pierre Marais, a
retired auto technician. Marais himself faces two trials: one for this
article and another for a technical study he wrote.
-- Bernard Notin, a professor of economics at a university in Lyon, has
faced numerous difficulties in recent years for mentioning, in passing, in
an article that the gas chamber story is not clear. As a result of
pressure from Jewish Zionist organizations, and in particular the group
headed by Serge Klarsfeld, he was relieved of his teaching duties.
Although it was recently decided to permit him to resume teaching, it is
not clear if this will actually happen. When he was asked during a
television interview if he is a Revisionist, he replied: "I will not answer
because I do not want to give vile little magistrates the opportunity to
assassinate me."
[Photograph captioned, "Dr. Robert Faurisson addresses the Tenth IHR
Conference, 1990.]
Jewish-Zionist groups are upset that persons charged under the
Fabius-Gayssot law have been able to articulately explain in court
precisely why they reject the Holocaust extermination story.
Accordingly, an attorney and spokesman for the virulently
anti-Revisionist "International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism"
(LICRA) recently proposed a revision of the law that would forbid a
defendant in a Fabius-Gayssot case from explaining his Revisionist views in
court, or even from repeating in court the "offending" statement.
So goes it for Revisionists iin "douce France" ("sweet, gentle France").
In Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Sweden laws similar to the
Fabius-Gayssot law are in effect: a troubling portent of the "new Europe."
Media Hypocrisy
France's Fabius-Gayssot law, and similar legal measures in other
countries, would be universally condemned as intolerable restrictions of
free speech and academic expression if they involved any issue other than
the Holocaust.
Hardly a word about any of these latest French blows against civil
rights and free speech has appeared in the American media, which is
normally so quick to sniff out every real or imagined violation of civil
rights in China, Burma or South Africa.
Such laws and measures are not only chilling manifestations of the power
and bigotry of the international Holocaust lobby, they also strikingly
point up the bad faith and desperate fear of the lobby in the face of
steady Revisionist advances. Historical truth does not need laws to defend
itself.
___________________________________________________________________________
Faurisson Needs Our Help
In France -- as here in the United States -- our traditional enemies have
used litigation in their ongoing campaign to destroy Holocaust Revisionism.
Nowhere is the legal situation worse for Revisionists than in France, where
a special law allows private associations, individuals, and the state to
target men and women like our brave colleague, Robert Faurisson.
As Europe's leading Holocaust Revisionist scholar and activist, Dr.
Faurisson has been the target of judicial and criminal repression since
1979. He has suffered eight physical attacks, including the beating that
nearly killed him on September 16, 1989. Now Faurisson, who must support
himself and his wife from a single source of income (his now-reduced salary
as a professor), must bear the burden of court-ordered penalties (about
$37,000), as well as the costs of his legal defense in this and other cases
stemming from his commitment to finding and publicizing the historical
truth about the "gas chambers."
Robert Faurisson's fight is your fight. No less than our American
forefathers who signed this country's declaration of independent nationhood
in the summer of 1776, Faurisson has pledged his life, his fortune, and his
sacred honor so that your children and your children's children will live
free from the bane of an imposed pseudo-religion.
Once more, Robert Faurisson needs your support. Help brighten his
spring with your generous contributions for his legal expenses so that we
American Revisionists can say, in word and in deed, "Faurisson, we are
here!" (Note: French law does not permit individuals to assist in paying
fines.)
Please address your contributions for Professor Faurisson's legal
defense to:
Robert Faurisson
10, Rue de Normandie
03200 Vichy
France
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
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