Robert Faurisson

Robert Faurisson (born January 25, 1929 in Shepperton, Surrey) is a French Holocaust denier, who was formerly a professor of literature at the University of Lyon. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles, published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, as well as various letters he has sent to French newspapers (especially Le Monde), which deny various aspects of the Holocaust, including the existence of homicidal gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps, the reality of the systematic killing of European Jews using gas during World War II, the authenticity of The Diary of Anne Frank, and the veracity of Elie Wiesel's accounts of his wartime suffering.^[1]

Faurisson was fined for defamation by a French court in 1983, for the maliciousness of his revisionist writings, which were found to violate hate speech laws.^[1] Shortly after the passing of the Gayssot Law in 1990, Faurisson was convicted of Holocaust denial.^[2] A defense of Faurisson's freedom of speech by Noam Chomsky, who penned an introduction to one of Faurisson's revisionist works, sparked further international controversy.^[2]

Theories

Holocaust denial

Faurisson has said that, like most Frenchmen of that era, he had anti-German sentiments during and immediately following World War II, but after reading the works of fellow Frenchmen Paul Rassinier and Maurice Bardèche, he began to question the Holocaust. Faurisson states that over the years he studied the Holocaust extensively, in the late 1970s came to the conclusion that much of it was a hoax. Since then he has written numerous letters to newspapers, published several books, and written many articles for Holocaust denial journals questioning the occurrence of the Holocaust.

As core arguments, Faurisson claims that to be feasible the Nazi gas chambers would have needed perfect hermetic sealing, a special introduction and distribution system for the gas, an elaborate ventilation system to eliminate the gas from the chambers after the mass murders, a system to neutralize the exhausted gases, and, separately, an expertly constructed device to eliminate the gas which would adhere to the bodies, making further handling lethal. These arguments were refuted in the book Les Crématoires d’Auschwitz, written in 1993 by a former supporter of Faurisson, Jean-Claude Pressac, who had familiarised himself with the installations at Auschwitz while searching for evidence to support Faurisson's arguments. Faurisson has attacked the book in writing numerous times since its publication.

Faurisson counts among his acquaintances and friends a number of Holocaust deniers, including the German-Canadian Ernst Zündel, Swedish Ditlieb Felderer and Moroccan expatriate Ahmed Rami.^[3] Christopher Hitchens has described Faurisson's goal as "the rehabilitation, in pseudo scholarly form, of the Third Reich"^[4][5]. Faurisson claims to be apolitical and an atheist.^{[citation needed]}

Anne Frank's diary

In 1991 Faurisson, in collaboration with Siegfried Verbeke, published the Dutch-language brochure Het "Dagboek" van Anne Frank. Een kritische benadering ("The 'Diary' of Anne Frank - A Critical Evaluation"), which claimed that the diary of Anne Frank is a forgery, contending that the original handwritten manuscript cannot be that of a child.^{[citation needed]} The claim overlooks the forensic investigation of the manuscripts undertaken by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation which analysed the material composition of the original notebooks as well as the ink and handwriting within them. The handwriting was found to be consistent with supplementary examples of Anne Frank's script in school reports, postmarked greetings cards, and a signed statement in Anne Frank's hand in the archives of the Amsterdam police department recording the theft of her bicycle. The paper, ink and glue in the original manuscripts were also determined to be consistent with materials available in the Netherlands during the period in which the diary was written.

Controversies

In the early to mid 1980s, the American intellectual Noam Chomsky drew much criticism for defending Faurisson's right to publish his claims on the grounds of freedom of speech, signing a petition in which Faurisson was described as "a respected professor", and saying in an essay that, based on incomplete reading, he had seen "no evidence to support [the] conclusion" that Faurisson was anti-Semitic.

In September 1989, Faurisson was beaten severely by unknown assailants who called themselves "The Sons of the Memory of the Jews".^[1]

In 1991, Faurisson was removed from his university chair on the basis of his views under the Gayssot Act, a French statute passed in 1990 that prohibited Holocaust denial. He challenged the statute as a violation of international law at the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Human Rights Committee. The Human Rights Committee upheld the Gayssot Act as necessary to counter possible anti-Semitism. Further trials followed, among them one in connection with a publication on the website of the "Association des anciens amateurs de récits de guerre et d'Holocauste" (AAARGH) in 1998, of which he was absolved due to lack of evidence of his authorship.

Faurisson was charged again in a trial on July 11, 2006. He was accused of denying the Holocaust in an interview with the Iranian television station "Sahar 1" in February 2005. On October 3, 2006 he was given a three-month probationary sentence and fined €7,500 for this offence. In December 2006 Faurisson gave a speech at the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, which was sponsored by the government of Iran. He repeated his theories about gas chambers and said that for the past 32 years he has been waiting for someone to show him just one of those chambers.

Since late 2008, Faurisson has become close to the far right comedian and political activist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, appearing with him publicly on stage and in video, and celebrating his 80th birthday in his theater.^{[6] [7] [8] [9] [10]}

References

External links

• Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran, The New York Times
• Quand le négationnisme s'invite à l'université, by Didier Daeninckx, amnistia.net, March 20, 2000 (French)
• French Holocaust Denier on Ban of Al-Manar: 'The Big Lie of the Alleged Holocaust ... is the Shield of Jewish Tyranny... Destroy it', Faurisson in an interview to Iran's Mehr News Agency (MNA) about France's decision to ban Al-Manar TV, intelligence.org.il / MEMRI
• Robert Faurisson Archive, CODOH's Archive of Faurisson's works
• nizkor.org, Nizkor Project's entries on Faurrison
• holocaust-history.org, Holocaust History Project's entries on Faurrison