Dr. Faurisson Interviewed in Tehran

Monday, December 18, 2006 11:43 PM

This past Saturday, December 16th, the New York Times reported that "Jacques Chirac, the French president, on Friday ordered an investigation into statements by a retired French professor, Robert Faurisson, at the Tehran conference. Mr. Faurisson, who has been convicted before for denying the Holocaust, said in a speech at the conference that the Holocaust was a myth created to justify the occupation of Palestine, meaning the creation of Israel." Below is an interview (abbreviated) which Professor Faurisson gave to the Tehran Times on December 13th, the day after the conference. It speaks for itself. My emphasis in red.

To me, the essential problem with the Holocaust is two-fold. (1) While it is routinely repeated as a fact beyond dispute that six million Jews were killed in German concentration camps, nevertheless at the same time (2) the Holocaust has now evolved and expanded so that it implicitly indicates a larger reality beyond the six million figure, to wit, all persecution and all hardship inflicted upon the Jews during the Third Reich. Therefore, anyone who "denies" the Holocaust must necessarily be out of his mind or a "racist" or a Nazi who condones such persecution, irrespective of the validity of six million figure.

But no one has ever denied that the Third Reich was an anti-Jewish regime and that Jews suffered grievously because of it. Faurisson himself says below: "...I never said the concentration camps did not exist. I never said that there were no deportations. I never said that there were no Jewish hostages shot or things like that. Of course I say the deportations happened, the concentration camps existed, but there were no extermination camps."

Professor Faurisson advances one major contention, about which he is implacable and certain: there were no gas chambers in the concentration camps, including at Auschwitz, used for killing inmates. Other investigators, Americans and Germans, have arrived at similar conclusions, after looking at the evidence or lack thereof. I am talking about engineers and scientists. If Faurisson's views are so obviously nuts, so clearly incorrect, like asserting that the earth is flat, then why all the hysteria on the part of Western governments, Israel, and the media in general?

Is it really necessary to throw Faurisson into jail because of it? Normally, a crime has not been committed when a statement is absurd, because a person has a right to free speech and is entitled to be wrong. But in Germany, France, Austria and I think Switzerland it is a crime, punishable by imprisonment and fines, when anyone does not agree with the authorized version of certain aspects of World War II and European history. We are talking about Orwellian thought crimes, pure and simple. This is an amazing phenomenon, not seen in Europe since the Inquisition.

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Holocaust is West’s last taboo:
Professor Robert Faurisson

TEHRAN - Robert Faurisson is a revisionist scholar from France who attended the Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision conference in Tehran from December 11 to 12. Following is the text of an interview with Faurisson conducted by the Tehran Times at the daily’s offices on December 13, 2006.

Q: What is your opinion about the Tehran conference?

A: This conference is a big and nice surprise. I had never thought that there could be such a thing. I was really pessimistic. When for the first time I heard that President Ahmadinejad said that the Holocaust was a myth, I was so surprised. I wondered if Iran would exist anymore. I thought that the U.S. or Western countries would try to destroy this country because the belief in the Holocaust is the central pillar of the West and the world. To say that it is a myth is something extremely dangerous. I, as a researcher, might say that it is a myth, but for the head of a state it is extremely dangerous. But he did it.

Can I say something more? I think that the year 2006 will be counted in history as a very important year because a country called Iran said no to Bush and yes to revisionists. It is marvelous.

Q: Could you elaborate on what you mean by the word myth? People use the word in a lot of different ways. Some mean it did not happen at all and some mean that some aspects of it happened.

A: President Ahmadinejad has used the right word. The alleged Holocaust of the Jews is a myth. That is a belief maintained by credulity or ignorance. It does not mean that the people who believe it are liars. They are not liars, but they are believers.

Q: You are an expert in text and document analysis. What kind of information did you find in the documents from World War II that made you doubt some aspects of the Holocaust?

A: My work was the work of a policeman, not the work of a professor. I was told there was a crime, an enormous crime. So I said I want to see the weapon of the crime, and I want to see the place. I went to Auschwitz, Dachau, Saxenhausen… and places like that. And I asked a very simple question. I said show me a gas chamber. They told me there is a fantastic weapon, and I said, OK, show me.

In Auschwitz they said this is a gas chamber. And I looked at it like a policeman. And I said, sorry, this cannot be a gas chamber, for very simple reasons. Because they said that the Germans used Zyklon B. Zyklon B is a product invented in 1920 and it is still used today to kill lice. But Zyklon B is hydrocyanic acid, it is very dangerous. And they say that the Germans would put 2000 Jews in this place. Two thousand people in this place, it is already impossible.

But anyway, they would put Jews in this place, and then in the roof there were four holes, and the Germans would go on the roof and would dump pellets of Zyklon B (in the holes) and then the Jews were dead. They say that a team, a group of Jews, would come in, very gently, eating, smoking, taking the dead bodies out to the crematoria, to burn them.

And I said, stop, impossible! Impossible because hydrocyanic acid is something which sticks to the walls, to the roof, to the ground, and it penetrates the same way in the bodies, it goes in the mouth, everywhere, on the skin. So, first you cannot enter this place even if you switch on the ventilation because it sticks very strongly. You cannot get rid of it. And you cannot touch the body of someone who has been killed by this gas. You cannot touch it. And remember, they were eating and smoking. Eating means no gas mask. And smoking is impossible because it is explosive. So as it is told, it is impossible. I acted like a policeman.

I went to the U.S. to visit a gas chamber. To execute one man, it is horribly complicated, horribly complicated, because it is too dangerous. If you see a gas chamber in the U.S., to kill one person, first you see a door in iron fit like this, sealed perfectly, because you don’t want the gas to leak. And then, when the man is dead, it is extremely dangerous to go inside. So you have special fans, pushing the poison out, with a very strong vacuum. Then the gas is sent to a kind of tank to neutralize the gas. The gas which is supposed to be neutralized with sodium ammonia is sent up in a very high chimney.

On the day of the execution, the guards are not allowed to go up to the towers because even this gas could be very poisonous. And you have to wait something like one hour, and the doctor and two people with boots, gloves, and gas masks with a special filter, a very strong one, go inside the place and try to wash the body, and they have to wash it thoroughly. Still the body is dangerous. You have to wait and wait. On the day of the execution, in spite of all those precautions, the body remains dangerous. And the day after, you still have the smell. It is fantastic, it is everywhere. To kill one man!

**

At the beginning, in 1917, during World War I, many Americans thought of the electric chair, “That’s too cruel. We are going to invent something. We are going to use gas. The people will be there, you will put gas in, the people will go to sleep, we’ll go inside, we’ll take the body (out), and finished!” No! The engineers had to work five years, I think, to create one gas chamber and it was used for the first time in 1924 in Carson City, Nevada. They executed a man, but it was nearly a catastrophe. So you see, people think it is very easy.


The Jews invented the story, I’m sorry, of the Zyklon B. They could have taken perhaps other gases, but they took this one, because when you got into the camps, you found cans of Zyklon B. It is a stupid story. It is as if I come here, I see a knife, and I say, “Oh, this is the proof that Faurisson is a murderer!” A can of Zyklon B is the same thing. It was to protect health. I could also explain to you the technicalities of Zyklon B applied to this, to cloth. It is totally different, because this is dead, this is living. But, too many technicalities. It is technically impossible.

So I published this in the daily Le Monde. And I said if you people say that it is technically possible, come, explain to me. And I got their answer. I had to wait six weeks. Thirty-four professors -- you know what professors are -- signed a big declaration, and I’m going to quote exactly what they said, I’m not going to change a word, so this is the answer of 34 professors, this was on February 21, 1979: “It must not be asked how technically such a mass murder was possible. It was technically possible since it happened.” Professor silliness! Which means clearly: “Faurisson, we are not able to explain”; because if they had an explanation, they would have given it.

And I said show me a gas chamber. And I went to Auschwitz; they said this is a gas chamber. And I said, no, no, it is impossible. First, you have three doors, which triples the difficulty of getting it sealed. In Auschwitz the gas chamber had a short door with glass on the upper part of the door. The door opened inward, and the dead bodies were there, you could not open the door. It is silliness. It is such a silly story. It is humiliating for people to believe that. I said this at the end of the 1970s…

I was insulted, I was kicked out of the university, I had I don’t how many court cases. I was ruined. No more money for myself, for my wife, for my children. I was insulted day and night and for years and years.

And in 1995, one day, opening a magazine called L’Express, there was a very long article written by a man called Eric Conan. And this man is against us.

And he had written a book about the Holocaust. So I was reading this, and suddenly, on page 68, I thought I would fall off my chair, I read this. He said about the gas chamber in Auschwitz, the emblematic gas chamber, which has been visited up to now by 25 to 30 million tourists. They say that at the Auschwitz Museum. He said exactly this: “Everything in it is false.” And he said: “In the late 1970s, Robert Faurisson exploited these falsifications all the better as the museum administration balked at acknowledging them.” So Faurisson exploited those falsifications, and it was easy for him because the people at the Auschwitz museum didn’t want to answer him. So it was easy.

Let me tell you one thing. So, Eric Conan went to visit a lady who was a manager of the Holocaust Museum, and he said, “How is it? It’s false. You cannot keep it like that. You have to tell the visitors.”

Q: So he acknowledged and confirmed the falsifications that you discovered?

A: More than that. He said everything is false. And then he went to see this lady, and the lady answered, “No. We are not going to explain. It would be too difficult. So we’ll leave it as it is.” Which means: “We have lied, we are lying, and we are going to continue to lie.”

Q: Why are Israelis and most other Jews so sensitive about the Holocaust, and why are countries like the United States and some other countries which pay reparations even more sensitive about this issue?

A: It’s because the Holocaust is weapon number one of the state of Israel. It’s the sword and the shield of the state of Israel and… Jewry, all together. It’s their weapon number one. They need it. Because after the war, in 1947, the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, the Dutch Empire, everywhere the colonies were crumbling, disappearing. And you had an artificial creation of a colony of Jews in Palestine.

Q: At the very time of decolonization, at the beginning of decolonization.

A: Yes. So, it’s very strange. And the explanation is this. It’s only because the Jews would say, “Our sufferings were exceptional. So, for an exceptional evil, you need an exceptional remedy.” That’s why, to answer your question, the United States and the Jews all over the world, not only the Zionists, they need this myth. It’s vital for them.

Q: Those who support the Holocaust claim that they have been paying lots of money to the survivors of the Holocaust, but on the other hand, the survivors, the Jews, claim that this is just a registration, there is no money. How’s that?

A: You have on the one hand Jews, on the other hand you have Jewish organizations. Organizations like the World Jewish Congress with Mr. Edgar M. Bronfman. So Edgar Bronfman comes and says to Switzerland, to Germany, and to Austria, you have to pay. And they paid. And Mr. Bronfman takes the money. According to many Jews it seems that many of them, or perhaps a few of them, do not receive any money.

Q: In the press you are being very harshly criticized. People are taking your words out of context. Can you clarify your position? You are not denying every single aspect of this. You are basically saying that the gas chambers didn’t exist, but you are not denying that some Jews were in concentration camps and some of them died of various causes such as illness or overwork in these concentration camps?

A: Of course… I never said the concentration camps did not exist. I never said that there were no deportations. I never said that there were no Jewish hostages shot or things like that. Of course. I say the deportations happened, the concentration camps existed, but there were no extermination camps.

Q: In your opinion, how many Jews were killed?

A: We do not know. But we could know. There is a place in Germany, in Arolsen, called the International Tracing Service. [Comment: this was featured on CBS "60 Minutes" Sunday night.] And in 1978, when the revisionists came, they closed their historical section they had in German. This was a place where you had kilometers and kilometers of documents. But, for clarification, you should hear my 60-word sentence. It’s 60 words in French. I said I should put it in one sentence.

“The alleged declared Nazi gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews form one and the same historical lie which has permitted the gigantic political and financial swindle whose main beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism and whose main victims are the German people, but not their leaders, and the Palestinian people in their entirety.”

Now when I say historical lie, it does not mean that the people who are repeating it are liars. They are repeating something that they think is right.

Q: The Tehran Holocaust conference has created a firestorm of controversy throughout the world. Do you think you will be in danger when you go back to your country?

A: Yes, and we know already that yesterday (December 12) they said that I should be arrested on my arrival in France. But, of course, I am going back in spite of the danger. I’m not sure if I will be arrested, but I will certainly be prosecuted, because remember what happened quite recently with the Sahar television network. But I don’t care! I had so many trials. I know that automatically I will be sentenced…

Here in this country I feel free. I can discuss with you. In France it is absolutely impossible. In France if a newspaper would say, “We have received Faurisson”… the Jews would say, “Bad for you.” They say you have no right to dispute the Holocaust. Even you don’t have the right to look as if you are disputing the Holocaust. You should not even give the appearance (of disputing the Holocaust).

**

Q: It’s like the Spanish Inquisition?


A: Oh, yes. And you don’t need to touch the people. It’s not prison, it’s not finances, it’s not that. It’s the fact that you cannot go in the street -- like my wife -- because in the street they say, “Hah! She’s the wife of the man who says that concentration camps did not exist.”

Q: So the person becomes an outcast in society?

A: Of course, but I don’t care. My wife cares, of course! My eldest son cares very much. Every time that I go through this kind of ordeal, I think of the Palestinians. And I say I have no right to complain.

**

Q: Would you like to say a few last words?


A: The fact that President Ahmadinejad said this is so important that, of course, it is an encouragement for me. But when I receive a piece of good news, I am waiting for a bad one. I think that on Friday (December 15) it will be the bad news.

Q: You mean like trouble from the government of France or…

A: Or Jewish force. I have been attacked physically ten times, twice I nearly died.

Do you know that there is one question that I cannot answer? It seems that I can answer any question, but there is one that I cannot answer. It is when people come to me and say, “Robert, you might be right, but perhaps you should not speak your mind because Robert, don’t you have a wife, don’t you have children? It seems that you are forgetting your wife and your children.” My father used to say the first duty of a man is to protect his wife and his children. And I don’t know what to answer. What would you answer?

But a soldier does not choose this. He has to go. It’s an order. But nobody orders me to do this. How is it that Galileo Galilei did what he did? You are a student or an adult or an old man and you read books, and you say, “Oh wonderful, this man was so brave.” And we have our heroes. But when you meet a man like me, who is a little man compared to those people in courageousness, you say, “He’s a fool.” Because you are a coward! And seeing someone who is courageous, you feel humiliated.