2. Archives
3. IHR
4. JHR Volume 21

My Revisionist Method

Robert Faurisson

I'm not accustomed to receiving compliments and congratulations in my country, douce France.1 Only a few days ago, in Le Figaro [May 26, 2000], one Gérard Slama wrote that I was “the past master at the art of blackmailing scientific truth.” Recently, on the front page of Le Monde des Lettres [March 24, 2000], I read the following characterization of me by Pierre Vidal-Naquet:2 “In the presence of the lie, of which Faurisson is the purest expression, one feels a kind of peculiarly philosophical giddiness.” I hope that you will not feel giddy.

Yet there is also good news from France, in particular, the publication of a book by a young lady named Valérie Igounet. Her Histoire du négationnisme en France3 (Paris: Le Seuil, 2000), which is seven hundred pages long, grew out of a doctoral thesis. It is totally against us revisionists — but we are quoted so often that one could say the book is a good introduction for a layman who would like to know what revisionists have to say. Perhaps she should be prosecuted for that.

The book ends with an astonishing interview with Holocaust researcher Jean-Claude Pressac. As you know, he is the darling of the Klarsfelds, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, and their like. But what is he saying here? Surprisingly enough, he seems to be more or less abandoning exterminationism. Pressac states that the exterminationist position is “rotten” [in French, pourri]. “There are too many lies” — not Jewish lies, according to Pressac, but Communist lies. He asks, “Can things be put right?,” and answers: “It is too late.” Pressac declares that there is no longer any future for the “official certainties.”

Perhaps we have converted Pressac. If so, perhaps it’s because in May 1995 I asked the court to order Pressac to testify at one of my many trials. Foolishly enough, he came. I was barred from questioning him, so I coached my attorney. I wanted to simplify things for him, so I told him: “You need to ask him only two questions.” The first: “You recently published a book called Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz: La Machinerie du Meurtre de Masse4 that contained sixty illustrations: photos, drawings, etc. Can you show us a photo or a drawing of a gas chamber?” Pressac of course could not. Then he was asked, “What is a gas chamber? Please describe one.” Pressac, as usual, talked at length about ventilation and ventilators. He so lost his way that the presiding judge, a lady, tried to help him out, observing, “But, Mr. Pressac, a ventilator is supposed to ventilate.” I can tell you because I had a good seat (under the circumstances). I could see that Pressac was about to cry. He said to the three judges, “You must understand that I have only one life. You must understand that I am alone in my battle.” So, you see, some things are changing. Now, directly to my lecture.

I know that those of you who have attended previous IHR conferences would be disappointed if a Faurisson lecture were not in three parts. This one will be in three parts. The first part will be on my revisionist method in literature, for I was a revisionist in literature before I was a historical revisionist. Perhaps you will be a little bewildered, especially those of you who don’t know French literature. Have no fear: I'll make it easy. Second, my revisionist method in history — and not only on “the Holocaust.” In the third part, I'll suggest several new investigations, investigations I can no longer undertake, but which might be carried out by a new generation of revisionists. I will suggest new types and methods of research into, first, the Anne Frank diary; second, the Einsatzgruppen problem; next, the fate of children in Auschwitz; fourth, the “brown Jews,” as we in France refer to those Jews who collaborated with the Germans during the war; and fifth, the writing and publication of a counter-guide to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

My Revisionist Method

Revisionism is not an ideology. It is a method of working. It is the process of checking, and double-checking, views which are generally accepted. One may revise in any field, in physics, in history, wherever, but there are different ways of practicing the revisionist method. Your revisionist method depends on you, your character, and your education. I won’t tell you that mine is the best possible method, but I shall try to describe my method, for which I had special training, and a special education.

I have searched for adjectives to describe this method. Here is what I have found: it is a method that is classical, direct, bold, daring, and severe — very severe. It is matter of fact. Sometimes I use the expression “nuts and bolts revisionism.” My method rejects big words. Be simple, which is so difficult. Go directly to the center of the center of the question, and try first to bring me the pudding. I don’t want words. I'm going to taste the pudding, but first, bring me the pudding — meaning no intellectual pretensions and no pedantry.

You may have noticed that I have used the word “method.” I didn’t say “methodology.” In December 1998 I testified in Toronto at the trial of my dearest friend, Ernst Zündel. A Jewish lawyer asked me, “The professor who testified on Ernst Zündel and his writings explained his methodology to us. What is your methodology, Mr. Faurisson?” My answer was, “I have none.” You should have seen the lawyer’s smile. He was so pleased. Here we had a professor — but he had no methodology! I said, “I have only a method. I believe I have noticed that, very often, people use the word 'methodology' as a pretentious substitute for method.” When I returned to France, I opened my cherished American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. I looked up “methodology,” and there I found, in a usage note: “Increasingly used as a pretentious substitute for method.” I sent a photocopy to the lawyer, and to both the judges (an odd trial that has two judges!).

My method is difficult, and risky — sometimes even physically — for it requires that sometimes I must enter places where I am unwelcome, and ask some hard questions. Employing my revisionist method may earn you a slap in the face or a trip to jail. But you can’t be bashful when investigating historical problems. You can’t limit yourself to paper and archives — something which is very easy to do.

At times you have to confront people face to face, as I did Anne Frank’s father in his home, or Michael Berenbaum in his office at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Berenbaum has recently written the foreword to a very weighty book, a copy of which a friend of Ernst Zündel has given me. I'm holding it up for the camera: The Holocaust Chronicle.5 Listen: the sound of emptiness.

Berenbaum’s problem is that he’s writing books which are thicker and thicker — and while they demand more and more muscles, they require less and less brains. Try to find a gas chamber in here! There are hundreds of photos. Here is one, you will observe, that shows two walls. It is the Dachau gas chamber, “never used” (as has been admitted since1960 and is stated on a placard at the Dachau museum) except that, elsewhere in the book (on page 609), we are told that it was used, just a little bit ("… relatively few of the inmates of Dachau were gassed"). Here’s another one, another photo, of the Belzec gas chamber. But … oops! It’s really a picture of the gas chamber in Auschwitz I, which, as we now know, is a fake.

My Revisionist Method in Literature

I began to study Latin in 1939, when I was ten years old. When I was twelve, I began the study of Greek. I think that it was then that I began to be a revisionist. I'll tell you why. I loved Latin and Greek, but mastering them was very demanding. To translate Latin into French or English is difficult; translating Greek into French or English is more so; but most difficult of all is to translate French or English into either Latin or Greek.

Translating French into Latin and Greek taught me a painful truth: we are unable to read even our own languages carefully. We think that we can, yet we cannot. It is only when one is forced to translate his own language into another that he realizes that he has not been reading with care. Reading carefully is something that is very difficult to do. I believe that if you really want to understand something, you should put it into a language that is quite different from your own: Latin, or Greek, or Hebrew, or Chinese. Thanks to my study of Latin and Greek, I had much practice at this.

When I began teaching French literature, I had difficulty at first. In France, the practice is to assign one’s students a short text to explain and to comment on. Instructors are required to provide several questions to aid the students in understanding the text. I, too, did this, at the beginning. I obeyed. One day it dawned on me that the questions were distracting my students from concentrating on the careful reading of the text itself, and I decided that I would no longer assign them the questions. I would ask them only to explain the text, and tell them not to comment on it.

My method of teaching literature was not without its perils for my students. I would tell them: “When you study a text, strive to understand its meaning. Read carefully. And now I will tell you something difficult: to accept at the start that there is either one meaning, or there is no meaning. Do not confuse meaning with commentary.” I taught them a kind of technique. I would say “You must read the text, and forget the author. The author of every text will be auctor ignotus” [author unknown]. This way, you will have no preconceptions. Beware the title: the author uses it to influence you. It is just as if the author said, “This is pure orange juice,” and you tested it, and it wasn’t pure orange juice. And I told my classes to treat poetry exactly as if it were prose, which is almost a crime in France.

In France, as you know, we have a very sophisticated intelligentsia. They have devised all manner of theories, one of which is this: When it comes to poetry which is complex, like that of Gérard de Nerval, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Apollinaire, and Paul Valéry, one must not try to understand it. Given my nature, however, I wanted to understand their poetry, line by line, word by word. I would sometimes spend (or waste) weeks on a short text — a difficult text — by Gérard de Nerval. Perhaps my method was good, because I often got results.

In the 1960s I made a name for myself in French literature. I had a wonderful life. I once wrote that my life was in four parts: The first one was my family — my wife, my three children — and the pleasures of life. The second was my profession, teaching. The third was my research in literature. The fourth part, as you can imagine, was my historical research. Perhaps I should have stopped at the third part, and not ventured into this troublesome fourth part, but I became a revisionist in history, as well.

My Revisionist Method in History

I shall discuss my method in history at more length. I began by using a very precise method of interrogation to investigate the “Bloody Summer” of 1944, which in France we call the “Big Purge” ("L'Épuration"). As with my approach to poetry, I tried to concentrate my efforts, focusing on a small area of France. I sought to study the question of the executions carried out by the maquis (or French resistance). It was difficult and dangerous work. I had to find and question men who had been on the firing squads, and ask them, “Why did you take part? How were you able to?” It is a very trying way of working. You need to go see the sites where the executions took place. You have to get the names of the firing squad right. At that time, in the sixties, people were very afraid, especially of the Communists. But I investigated executions by the resistance, and I wrote about my findings.6 You must remember that we are told that during the war there were “resistants” in France. We hear of “resistants” and “collaborators.” I say that there were two kinds of resistants during the war: resistants to the German occupation, and resistants to Communist terror.

I now come to the “Holocaust.” How did I proceed? I had heard people say that there were gas chambers. Others said, even back then, that there had been no gas chambers. What method of revising history was in accord with my nature, myself? It was to say: “Very well, I see that people are arguing over whether the gas chambers existed, but, a simple question, please: 'What is a Nazi gas chamber? I need to see one.'”

So I went to Paris, to the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine. I remember the archivist asking me what I wanted. I told him, “A photo of a Nazi gas chamber.” The man said “We have many books.” I said, “A photo.” He continued, “We have many testimonies.” I said, “A photo.” “We have many documents.” I said, “A photo.” Then he summoned Mrs. Imbert (I remember her name): “Come in. This gentleman wants a photo of a Nazi gas chamber.” I swear to you she said, “We have many testimonies.” The archivist, exasperated, told her, “But this gentleman wants a photo.” I was told to sit down. I sat there for sixty minutes. That poor woman rifled the shelves, opening book after book without success. At last she brought me a photo known to everybody, of the helmeted American soldier standing in front of the disinfestation gas chambers in Dachau, and similar pictures. I thought to myself, “There’s a problem here.”

My method’s directness lies in going to the center of the center: even a Jewish documentation center. The so-called Jewish Documentation Center in Paris had a file called “Extermination Gassings.” I said, “I'm in luck! The most substantial of the accusations against Germany must be in here. I'll start with the strongest ones.” Well, I went through the strongest accusations of gassing, and I found precisely nothing.

I decided to visit the places said to have had gas chambers. First I visited Struthof-Natzweiler, near Strasbourg, and I discovered that the “gas chamber” there was not a gas chamber at all, despite prominent signs that read: “Gas Chamber.” No sooner had I published the results of my inquiry than the “gas chamber” was closed to the public. Try and visit it! The “Gas Chamber” signs are still up, but visitors are told, “We cannot let you see it because there have been instances of vandalism,” which is untrue (and in any case hardly an acceptable explanation).

When I visited Majdanek, I headed immediately to the site where the gas chamber is supposed to have been. This building still bears a prominent sign, put up by the German authorities who ran the camp, which reads: “Bad und Desinfektion [bath and disinfection].” I thought to myself, “Inside this building I will either find 'Bad und Desinfektion,' period, or 'Bad und Desinfektion' and something else suspicious.” What I found was nothing more than “Bad und Desinfektion,” including something quite characteristic: a little stove, close to the so-called “gas chamber,” for disinfection (for heating the air to speed the delousing process) and, in the middle of the door, a place for a thermometer. As you see, my method is not too dissimilar from the way the police investigate a crime.

I visited Auschwitz, Treblinka, and similar places. In each of them I found a disappearing gas chamber. No sooner than I drew near, the gas chamber would vanish. I would never put questions to the guides. As we all know, these poor people are reciting a lesson. Each time I visited a camp, I would ask to speak to an expert, from whom I would then request an explanation of the missing gas chamber. I never received one.

As a result I published an article in the newspaper Le Monde on December 29, 1978, and a letter there on January 16, 1979. I asked simple questions (always be simple): How was it possible to enter a gas chamber to collect the bodies, because that would have been like entering an ocean of hydrocyanic acid? How could the workers have handled the bodies, because touching even the skin could poison them? What about the physical exertion in removing the bodies — we know that one must not strain even to open a window in a place that has just been disinfected with hydrocyanic acid, because breathing faster will increase the chance of being poisoned?” All I asked was: “How could that be done? Tell me. Give me an explanation that makes sense technically.” Do you know how Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Léon Poliakov, and thirty-two other historians answered my questions? They had a marvelous response, which they published in Le Monde on February 21, 1979. They wrote, “One must not ask how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was possible technically because it took place.”

Perhaps I should have left off, should have said: “Very well, they can’t answer me. I'll just wait for their answer.” I don’t know why I kept on battling and battling. I was the first to publish the plans of the alleged gas chambers. It was the other side that should have published them.

On January 19, 1995, I had the shock of my life — and I've had many. When I opened the weekly magazine L'Express, I found a long article by Eric Conan, a historian who is totally against us. It was titled “Auschwitz: La Mémoire du Mal” ["Auschwitz: The Memory of Evil"]. There, on page 68, I read these words on the gas chamber in Auschwitz I: “Everything in it is false.” Conan wrote in the same article about what he himself calls “falsifications": “It was easy for Faurisson to say that, all the more so because the authorities of the museum balked at responding to him.” So, there it was. All along it was I who was supposed to have been the falsifier. The exterminationists were supposed to be telling the truth. Then, in 1995, an orthodox historian declares: “Faurisson was right,” but adds, in effect: “So what?”

Visiting a site can yield another effective argument, one that, surprisingly, not even Fred Leuchter advanced. If you wish to show that the output claimed for the German ovens was impossible technically, you can do something simple. You don’t need to write two hundred pages. Just go and see a crematory. Find out the output of today’s crematory ovens, and compare that output with those alleged for Auschwitz, nearly sixty years ago. You can do the same thing to investigate a gas chamber. Go and visit an American gas chamber. Why not do it, you Americans? You would see how complicated it is to gas just one person. Now, of course, we know that certain aspects of a formal execution are something of a luxury. Just imagine how it was in 1924, when, for the first time, an execution by gas was carried out in the United States. You will see how awfully complicated a gassing needs to be, even today. You need only juxtapose an actual gas chamber at an American penitentiary, on the one hand, with a so-called Nazi gas chamber, on the other. You'll see that conducting a gassing in the alleged gas chambers of the Nazis would have been impossible.

Confrontation

Not only do you need to inspect the sites, you have to talk to people. Just as I did, you've got to go where the danger is. In 1994 I dropped in on Michael Berenbaum, at that time research director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. After I had toured the exhibit with two American friends, I phoned Michael Berenbaum from the lobby. I told him over the phone, “My name is Robert Faurisson. I would like to visit you.” Berenbaum answered unhesitatingly: “It’s a quarter to four. That means that at a quarter past four you will be in my office.” It was as if he had been waiting all year for me!

As I entered his office, I saw not only Berenbaum, but two gentlemen on a sofa. They were the directors of the museum. I was flanked left and right by my own witnesses. Berenbaum asked, “So, what are your questions?” I told him, “Downstairs, in the guest book, I wrote 'I have visited this place on August 30, 1994. [I love dates.] I have not found an answer to my challenge: 'Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber.'” (Although I knew there was a mock-up of a gas chamber in the museum, I wanted to hear Berenbaum tell me that it was a good mock-up. I knew he wouldn’t.) He asked me, “Why should I answer your questions? Whom do you have on your side? Ernst Zündel. Bradley Smith. You should know that in the past year we have had two million visitors. So, who are you?” I said “You must answer my question in the guest book.” He replied, “I don’t see why.” Suddenly I had an inspiration. I told him, “Yes, you are obliged to answer, because you are making an accusation against the Germans.” For the first time in his life, I think, Berenbaum realized that he was accusing Germany simply by saying that the gas chambers had existed. I thought he was going to slap me in the face. Berenbaum became enraged, and for a minute I thought he would call security. I seem to recall that he stopped the tape recorder — and for the next hour I tortured the poor man.

A revisionist needs to be just a little bit sadistic. He must come back and say “Is this the tooth that hurts you?” “Yes.” “Really? This one?” That’s the way I've tried to conduct all my investigations.

Keep It Simple …

When I was revising in literature, my model was Jean-François Champollion, the man who in 1822 deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics. Champollion didn’t rely on big words or grand theories. He simply tried, word by word, to understand. Do you know that before Champollion’s success, there were many professors able to talk about those texts that they didn’t understand? Of course, their explanations were always sublime. This text was an “invocation to the gods,” that one to “the souls of whomever or whatever,” and the like. After Champollion had deciphered the ancient Egyptian writing system, such texts would often turn out to be in reality lists of so many cows, so many goats, so many sheep. That’s the way intellectuals come to work: always big ideas, always philosophy. I hate philosophy. I hate it because in fact I do not understand it.

My model for revisionism in history would be Sherlock Holmes. Like him, one must be courageous. And like Holmes, one must be very brief and to the point. That is how I came up with my saying, “No holes, no holocaust,” of which you have heard. Surprisingly, perhaps, I first stated that at our 1994 conference. I remember that nobody reacted at the time. No one seemed to understand, perhaps because of my poor English. Then, two or three years later, revisionists such as Dr. Robert Countess began pointing out, “But we have to be careful. Your formulation is very short.” I can understand that objection. When something is very short, maybe it’s too short. Complicated things, it seems, cannot be put in few words. I can well understand why people are careful and standoffish, but sometimes brevity is a good thing.

I think “No holes, no holocaust” was a good saying. Here’s how I explain it. When you have a very big problem, you know that you cannot grasp the whole of it. That would be impossible. It’s just too big. What must you do, then? You must go, courageously, to the center of the center of the core of it. The center of the “Holocaust” is Auschwitz. Auschwitz is its capital. Thus, we have a big circle which is “H,” “Holocaust,” then, inside it, a smaller circle: “A,” as in “Auschwitz.” Now, what is the center of Auschwitz? It is “C,” the crematoria, each supposed to have contained a gas chamber to kill people. What is the center of “C"? It can only be the one crematorium that is claimed to be relatively intact, without being a “reconstruction.” Today that is crematorium number two, at Auschwitz-Birkenau.To be sure, it was dynamited by the Germans (or possibly the Russians — it doesn’t matter). Our opponents say: “This is the place.” We have to travel, then, to crematorium II, and, once there, we must seek the very epicenter of the “Holocaust": the holes in the roof of the alleged gas chamber in crematorium II. For it is these holes through which the SS men are supposed to have dropped the Zyklon B pellets. Go to crematorium II. Search for those holes. You will not find a single one.

Yesterday Charles Provan gave me this pamphlet.7 He’s revising my revisionism, which is quite a good thing. Now I'm going to revise his revising of my revisionism. I'm sorry, but I haven’t finished reading it, so I must be careful. But I'm going to give you my first impressions. I told Mr. Provan that I would say something about it.

I think that it’s a good work. First, it is short. Unlike Berenbaum’s books, it doesn’t require strong muscles to hold it. So far as I can tell, it’s well done. It is precise. Clearly some hard work went into it. Yet there is a bad mistake in the method of this study. To put it simply, you mustn’t mix up the testimony with what you find on the site, that is, the physical evidence.

You began, Mr. Provan, with the testimony. But instead of separating the physical evidence for the supposed holes from the testimony, in your evaluation of the testimony you talk about what we are supposed to find at the location. That’s mixing things up. To make a comparison, instead of bringing oil, then vinegar, to make vinaigrette, you first brought the vinaigrette, and here you are working very hard to try to distinguish oil from vinegar, which is too difficult, you see? More on that later. But Charles Provan has done real work, and we have to take it seriously.

Revisionist Methods for the Future

Now, on the revisionist method for a new generation. I must say that I was quite moved, when I arrived here, to see Germar Rudolf and Jürgen Graf working very hard together. This is the new generation. One of them, Germar Rudolf, is in exile. What a shame, far from his homeland, far from his career, his wife, and his two children! Jürgen Graf, from Switzerland, has been sentenced to jail for fifteen months. Isn’t that a shame? But you should have seen the two of them. They were working joyfully, and working very hard. It is to people like this that I shall now speak, and outline several ideas for future investigations.

Let me begin with the Anne Frank diary. Perhaps you will remember that I visited Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, in Basel, Switzerland in the 1970s. Like all conmen, he was quite charming, very charming indeed. Sometimes you'll hear people say, “But he was so charming. How could he have been a conman?” Conmen are always charming!

So I went to see Otto Frank. I like to look people in the eye. I told him that I had serious doubts about the authenticity of the Anne Frank diary. He said “That’s quite all right. I am ready to answer your questions.” I was fortunate that his (second) wife was present. (As you will see, she is important to the story.) Frank had said that he was prepared for my questions, but he was a bit like Michael Shermer, who interviewed me in 1994. Perhaps Otto Frank thought, as did Shermer, “Ah, a French intellectual. It’s going to be very intellectual, with considerations on the psychology of a young girl, on the interaction among eight people living hidden in the same place, on political opinions about the Jews at that time, and so on.”

Well, here I came, with my nuts and bolts revisionism. I said “Mr. Frank, you couldn’t make any noise, even during the night. If you had to cough, you took codeine. There were eight of you in those tiny rooms, surrounded by other rooms occupied by 'enemies,' in Amsterdam for two years. 'Enemies' were listening.” “Yes,” he agreed. “How is it, then, that sometimes the young man, Peter, is splitting wood in the attic to show off his strength to Anne? Can you imagine the noise? Peter even makes furniture, and every morning the alarm clock rings. There’s the radio, the screams as the dentist [one of the eight] works on his patients, and so forth. How do you explain all that?” He had no explanation.

Next I asked him, “What about the garbage?” Listen to the French intellectual! “What about the garbage? You say that it was burned in the stove.” “Yes.” “But you moved in on June 12. You say you lit the stove for the first time on, I think, the twelfth or the fifteenth of October. So, during the summer, what about the garbage, and later what about the smoke? You were living in a place that was supposed to be unoccupied. But smoke, especially at night, means that someone is there. Take a look at smoke during the night.” Otto Frank had no answer.

I asked the poor man many such questions. His wife would say, “Amazing! Yes, how did you manage?” Or, “How can that have been?” Suddenly, he told her, in German, “Maul zu [Shut up]!” I continued, and all at once Otto Frank had a stroke of genius. He told me “Mr. Faurisson, I agree with you a hundred percent. Scientifically, theoretically, it is impossible, but so it happened.”

I told him, “Mr. Frank, you're making things difficult for me. If you'll agree with me that a door cannot be both open and shut at the same time, then we have no need for 'theoretically,' 'scientifically,' but if you go on to tell me that you have seen such a door with your own eyes, I'm going to have trouble with that. Please answer my questions.” Of course, there was no answer.

The next day he brought me to a bank. It was the first time I had ever been in the vault of a Swiss bank, or of any bank. I saw the impressive safe deposit boxes, in which one can store money, jewelry, manuscripts. Otto Frank took out the manuscripts. He said, “See, here they are.” We went back to his house to look at them. I said “Mr. Frank, I am not a handwriting specialist. I'm not interested in the manuscripts. What I want is for you to explain the story to me so that it holds up — but you can’t.” When I returned home from Basel, I drafted a report on the question of the diary, and made it available to a German friend who was having difficulties with the German courts for having expressed doubts about the authenticity of the diary.

A German judge ordered an analysis of the handwriting of the “Anne Frank” manuscripts. Here we revisionists must be careful. I often hear people say, “They discovered handwriting with a ball-point pen.” Be careful! The report was totally inadequate. It concluded that everything in the manuscripts was written by the same hand. Remember that. The report stated that there was handwriting in ink from a ball-point pen, but it gave no specifics. We can’t tell how much of it, in how many places, and so on. Therefore, be cautious about that German report.

Otto Heinrich Frank died in 1980. In 1986 a “critical edition” of the supposed diaries of Anne Frank was published in Amsterdam.8 Over the next six years a German edition, a French edition, and an English edition appeared. Each of the four was nearly as thick as The Holocaust Chronicle (with Berenbaum’s foreword), which I've showed you. People thought “Ah, this is the answer to Faurisson.” The book even says so: “This is the answer to Faurisson.”

Well, you should read what the editors say about Otto Frank. They all but call him a liar. I was right! At the end of this “critical edition” they write that Otto Frank ought never to have claimed that what he published was the actual diary of Anne Frank. Nevertheless, this “scholarly edition” is just a big bluff. They show you handwriting throughout, and they say “You see, it’s the same.” I don’t see that it’s the same, but I'm not a specialist, so I have to be careful. But my question wasn’t about the handwriting. My question was: “Can you explain all the problems I have with the story?” Instead of answering me, at the beginning of the book one of the editors summarized his version of what I had written. It was obviously a caricature. Had I said stupid things, of course, they would have reported my exact words.

I advise you to be careful. The question of the handwriting of Anne Frank is what you call a “red herring.” I would like someone who is able, and who is familiar with Dutch and German, to make a comparison by computer between the Anne Frank diary as it was published — the popular edition — and the new popular edition, edited by a woman named Mirjam Pressler. I myself had discovered two or three different Anne Franks. Now, if one were to make this kind of comparison today, I think we would be up to eight or ten Anne Franks.

Now, regarding the Einsatzgruppen: I think that this is the most important of my suggestions for future research. I would like to see work done on the specific topic of those Germans who were executed by the German army for killing Jews. Yes, in Marinka, a place in Russia, the mayor of the city killed one Jewish woman. He was court-martialed by the German army, condemned to death, and executed. I have many such examples.

Field Marshals List, von Kuechler, von Manstein; General Otto Dessloch; Field Marshall von Kleist; General Kittel: each of these men ordered the execution of a German soldier, officer, or civil servant who had killed one or more Jews. How was that possible if there was a policy to exterminate physically the Jews? In my opinion, they should plant trees for von Manstein, List, von Kuechler, von Kleist, and Kittel on the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles in Jerusalem. And why not one for Adolf Hitler? Hitler ordered the execution of persons who had killed Jews. This is the type of question that we revisionists should be researching.

I have no time to talk about the “brown Jews,” the Jewish children at Auschwitz, and what I would call the “Counter Guide to the Holocaust Memorial Museum,” a revisionist guided tour of the Museum.

Perhaps you have heard of my pessimism. I want to say a few words about that. For reasons I have no time to get into, I am rather pessimistic. Let me explain. On my first visit to this country, in 1979, my friend Gene Brugger greeted me at Kennedy Airport. Yesterday he reminded me that I was carrying a copy of Arthur Butz’s Hoax and a tennis racquet. Gene, who is of German extraction, had a question for me. He said, “You are French. Why are you doing this for the Germans?” He tells me I answered, “It’s not on behalf of the Germans. A bird sings. It can’t help but sing, because that is in its nature. The bird can’t help it. So, even a pessimistic bird must sing.”

The other day, as I was leaving France, I received a phone call from Adrien, one of my grandchildren. He said “So, you are going away.” I answered yes. “Where are you going?” “To the United States.” “Why?” “I have work to do.” He is very gentle with me, my grandson. He told me, “Now, grandfather, you should stop. You work day and night. You are very old. Very soon, you are going to die.”

As you can see, I am still alive and well. And, although I am an old bird, I think that I am going to continue to sing.

Notes

1. "Douce” meaning gentle, or clement, from France’s post-revolutionary traditions of openness to dissent and affording refuge for other countries' political and intellectual dissidents. [Ed.]
   
2. Professor Vidal-Naquet is a noted historian of ancient Greece, and one France’s most vociferous defenders of the Holocaust claim. [Ed.]
   
3. Valérie Igounet, Histoire du négationnisme en France [History of Denialism in France] (Paris: Le Seuil, 2000).
   
4. Jean-Claude Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz: La Machinerie du Meurtre de Masse [The Crematoria of Auschwitz: The Machinery of Mass Murder] (Paris: CNRS éditions, 1993).
   
5. Michael Berenbaum, introduction to The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures, ed. David Aretha, pub. Louis Weber (Lincolnwood, Ill.: Publications International, 2000).
   
6. See Robert Faurisson’s “A Dry Chronicle of the Purge: Summary Executions in Certain Communes of Charente Limousine,” in the Journal of Historical Review 12, no. 1 (Spring 1992), pp. 5-30. [Ed.]
   
7. Charles D. Provan, No Holes? No Holocaust? A Study of the Holes in the Roof of Leichenkeller 1 of Krematorium 2 at Birkenau (Monongahela, Penn.: n.p., 2000). Also on-line at: http://www.revisingrevisionism.com/
   
8. The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition, prepared by the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stromm, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans and B. M. Mooyart (New York: Doubleday), 1989.

About the Author

Robert Faurisson is Europe’s foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar. Born in 1929, educated at the Sorbonne, Professor Faurisson taught at the University of Lyon from 1974 until 1990. Specializing in close textual analysis, Faurisson won widespread acclaim for his studies of texts by Rimbaud and Lautréamont. After years of private research and study, Faurisson revealed his skepticism of the “Holocaust” gas chambers in articles published in 1978 and 1979 in the French daily Le Monde. He has written numerous articles on all aspects of the “Holocaust,” many of which have appeared in this journal. A four-volume collection of many of his revisionist writings, Écrits Révisionnistes (1974-1998), was published in 1999.

This essay is adapted from his address, May 29, 2000, at the 13th IHR Conference, Irvine, California.