The Holocaust Story

If the Holocaust was an event in history, it should be open to the routine critical examination to which all other historical events are open. Those who feel it right to argue against the “unique monstrosity” of the Germans should be free to do so. No one should be imprisoned for thought crimes. Contrary to how Hollywood and the Israeli-Firsters have it, the Holocaust story is not about Jews. It’s about Jews and Germans together, inseparable, for all time to come.

Monday, January 30, 2006

IRAN INVITES TONY BLAIR TO SPEAK AT UPCOMING HOLOCAUST CONFERENCE.


Mr. Blair is a very busy man. If he cannot present his paper himself at the upcoming Holocaust conference in Tehran, perhaps he can send Jack straw to read it for him.

Turkish Daily News
30 January 2006

TEHRAN - AFP
Iran on Sunday invited British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Tehran to take part in a planned conference on the Holocaust, branded a "myth" by the Islamic republic's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "It would be good for Mr. Blair to participate in the Holocaust seminar in Tehran," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

"He can also contribute with an article. If he wants to defend the Holocaust in that article, he can do so. We will give him the time to read out his article so others can hear his point of view," Asefi said, adding the conference was slated to take place in "the coming spring."

A British Embassy spokesman in Tehran declined to speculate on whether the PM would be willing to attend, but promised that "if we get a formal invitation, obviously we'll pass it on to No. 10," in reference to the prime minister's London residence at 10 Downing Street. Blair has already lashed out at the planned Holocaust meeting as "shocking, ridiculous, stupid," and said Ahmadinejad "should come and see the evidence of the Holocaust himself in the countries of Europe."

Read original news release

Friday, January 27, 2006

IRAN MISSION TO UN: MORE STUDY NEED TO PROVE NAZI HOLOCAUST


In tthese brief opening words of a Haaretz corresnpondent, claiming to quote an Iranian document, we have the core of the issue spread out before us in the simplest terms. The exploitation of Jewish suffering to excuse Jewish greed for Palestinian land, and the U.S. collaboration with the German State in imprisoning revisionist publishers--that is, those who are willing to apply rigorous scrutiny to the Holocaust question. With this collarboration, Americans are helping shove the whole mess into the hands of our ambitious and careless new Persian capo.

Iran mission to UN: More study needed to prove Nazi Holocaust

By Shlomo Shamir (New York), Haaretz Correspondent, and AP

In an official response to a global commemoration of the Holocaust, the Iranian mission to the United Nations dispatched a letter to the General Assembly president last week which called for "scientific scrutiny and rigor" to determine the veracity of the Nazi genocide against European Jewry.The Iranian document, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, accuses Israel of "routinely attempt[ing] to exploit the suffering of the Jewish people in the past as a cover for its crimes being perpetrated against Palestinians in the occupied territories, including massacres, demolition of houses, properties and farmland as well as acts of state terrorism."

In the letter, the Iranians urge the international community "not [to] allow Israel to manipulate humanitarian sentiments to pursue its illegitimate goals."

Read more

Thursday, January 26, 2006

HOLOCAUST DENIAL WIDESPREAD IN RUSSIA

Jewish Telegrapahic Agency

Report: Holocaust denial widespread in Russia

Holocaust denial is a widespread phenomenon in Russia, especially on the Internet, a report said.
At least four Russian Web sites are devoted to Holocaust denial, according to the report published on the eve of international Holocaust Memorial Day.

According to the report, by the Moscow-based Holocaust Foundation and the Moscow Bureau on Human Rights, one of the Web sites, www.revisio.msk.ru, contains 400 pieces of Holocaust revisionist writings and video clips. Holocaust-denying books are also widely available at Russian book stores, the study said.

In a related development, human rights and Jewish activists have called on federal authorities to designate Jan. 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day in Russia. There has been no reaction from officials.

Original report

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

IRANIAN NEWS AGENCY INTERVIEWS PROFESSOR ARTHUR BUTZ

Revisionists only deny one aspect of Holocaust story: Butz

TEHRAN, Jan. 25 (MNA) -- In the wake of the international uproar that arose in response to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s contention that the Holocaust is a myth, the Mehr News Agency spoke with Arthur R. Butz, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, about his views on the issue. Following is the text of an interview of Butz conducted on December 26:

In 1976 I published a book entitled "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century", in which I argued:

1. The alleged slaughter of millions of Jews by the Germans, during World War II, did not happen.

Read more

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

HOLOCAUST HISTORIAN GÖTZ ALY

A wonderful day for the West. Western journalists and academics, having given up on the ideal of intellectual freedom, now have Muslim journalists forwarding the idea that there should be an open debate on historical issues, including the the Holocaust story. If the Holocaust is not an historical issue, what is it? A fantasy?


SPIEGEL ONLINE: Critics from Iran, for example from the Union of Muslim Journalists, have accused western countries of limiting freedom of opinion by having laws against denying the Holocaust. With this conference they want to offer historians "a free and democratic platform."

Aly: As an historian I regard laws which forbid someone from denying anything as complete nonsense. In the same way that I believe that the law in Turkey which says the Armenian genocide never happened, is absurd. Laws against denying the Holocaust don't do anything anyway. You are always going to have a few crazy people who ignore the facts.

Read more

Sunday, January 22, 2006

IRVING: "[HITLER] IS LIKE THE CURATE'S EGG..."

Sunday January 22, 2006
The Observer

As darkness descends upon the thick walls of Vienna's ancient Josefstadt courthouse, the adjacent prison compound comes to life. Shouts and cries echo across the inner courtyard as the inmates talk to each other in a plethora of languages. The elderly Englishman in Block C looks up briefly from the stack of papers that is lying on the small wooden table in front of him and listens before he resumes his writing.

'I'm writing my memoirs - about 20 pages each day,' David Irving tells me the next morning when I visit him in the Viennese prison that has been his home since the Austrian police arrested him in November last year on charges of denying the Holocaust.

I had been sitting in a squalid little waiting room for an hour together with large families arguing with each other and teenage mothers pushing prams around. One of their relatives is behind bars for threatening to kill his wife, another has been arrested for drug offences. 'If only all the inmates were as well behaved as he is,' a prison guard sighed when I asked him about Irving. No, I think, as my number comes up and I enter the high security meeting room, you wouldn't normally expect an historian and writer among the thieves, pimps and drug dealers held here.

Read more

Saturday, January 21, 2006

"IT ALL BEGINS AT NIGHTFALL, JUST LIKE IN THE JUNGLE"

DAVID IRVING: THE SWASTIKA WIELDING PROVOCATEUR
Source: Der Spiegal (1-18-06)

British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving, arrested last month in Austria where his views are illegal, is busy preparing his trial in a Vienna prison. Could this be the eccentric Hitler admirer's final act of provocation?

At night, when the pale winter sun has slipped behind the rooftops of Vienna's Josefstadt district, a jungle comes to life in the prison yard at the city's old Imperial-era prison. "That's when they start yelling from the windows and talking to one another," says David Irving, "it all begins at nightfall, just like in the jungle."

Read more

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

WORKING LIKE BEAVERS TO PROTECT THE HOLOCAUST STORY FROM FOLK LIKE US



The Berlin Declaration and the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia's Working Definition of Anti-Semitism

[Excerpts. It's a substantial document.] Read more

The OSCE participating States commit to:
Strive to ensure that their legal systems foster a safe environment free from anti-Semitic harassment, violence or discrimination in all fields of life;

Promote remembrance of and, as appropriate, education about the tragedy of the Holocaust [this is a good].

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust) [this will be a crime].

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust [this will be a crime].

Anti-Semitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law (for example, denial of the Holocaust or distribution of anti-Semitic materials in some countries) [this will be a crime].

It will also provide thematic pages with information on key issues such as Holocaust education and anti-Semitism [this will be a good], freedom of religion or belief, hate crimes and violence; international standards and instruments;

It is reasonable to assume that the ODIHR task force on Holocaust and post-Holocaust education will eventually begin channeling its knowledge and experience into educational systems [a great good].

It is reasonable to assume that the ODIHR task force on Holocaust and post-Holocaust education will eventually begin channeling its knowledge and experience into educational systems [a very great good, so long as it is under the control of the State].

Monday, January 16, 2006

TEHRAN FACES BACKLASH OVER CONFERENCE TO QUESTION THE HOLOCAUST

Describing the Holocaust as a question that had to be cleared up by scholars, he [the Iranian president Mr Ahmadinejad] added:

"My question was very clear. On the pretext of the killing of Jews in Europe, are they supporting the aggression and massacres [of Israel]? They will not intimidate me. Instead they have to answer me. If you started this killing of the Jews, you have to make amends yourself. This is very clear. It's based on laws and legal considerations. If you committed a mistake or a crime, why should others pay for it? Those who murdered [the Jews] should permit them to go back to their own fatherlands. That should be the end of it. You shouldn't say that nobody is permitted to say anything about this."
Read more

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Majdanek Victims Enumerated

This next story is an amazing admission especially in light of the recent incarcerations of David Irving, Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zuendel, Siegfried Verbeke and others. The official Web-site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum has published this article showing that the number of victims at the Majdanek concentration camp is now estimated at 78,000.

Despite the Museum's claim that the ususal estimate for Majdanek victims has been from 235,000 to 360,000 it is frequently a much higher number that is given. For example Lucy Dawidowicz in her "The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945" gives the number of 1,380,000 (p.200) The Saturday Evening Post in an article entitled, "Here the Nazi Butchers Wasted Nothing" published on October 28, 1944 estimated 1,000,000 corpses.

The revisionist position was recently published in a volume by Jurgen Graf and Carlo Mattogno, "Concentration Camp Majdanek: A Historical and Technical Study." This volume was published by Germar Rudolf's Theses & Dissertations Press in November 2004. Mattogno and Graf write, "Therefore taking all this into account, the total number of deaths in Majdanek from the time of its establishment to the day of its liberation on July 23, 1944 was approximately 42,200 (p.79). Therefore, assuming the new estimate as the correct one, Lucy Dawidowicz was off by 1,302,000 while the book published by Germar Rudolf was off by 35,800. That puts the revisionists off by 45% and the exterminationists off by 1669%.

Could someone remind me why Germar Rudolf is in prison?

Free the Revisionist Thought-Criminals Now!!!


Majdanek Victims Enumerated

Paweł P. Reszka, Lublin, Gazeta Wyborcza / 2005/12/23, 13:09


Changes in the history textbooks? Lublin scholar Tomasz Kranz has established that the Nazis murdered 78,000 people at the Majdanek concentration camp—several times fewer than previous estimates

Two figures of the number of Majdanek victims have usually been in use—360,000 or 235,000. Kranz, director of the Research Department of the State Museum at Majdanek, asserts that approximately 59,000 Jews and 19,000 people of other ethnic backgrounds, mostly Poles and Byelorussians, died there. Kranz published his estimate in the latest edition of the journal Zeszyty Majdanka.

The figure of 360,000 victims appears in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, the Britannica Polish edition, and the Polish Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN. In all three cases, the source is a 1948 publication by Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz, a judge who was a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland.

The second figure, of 235,000, comes from a 1992 article by Dr. Czesaw Rajca, now retired from the Majdanek museum staff. Rajca’s estimate appears in the Wikipedia internet encyclopedia and in the exhibit at the Majdanek Museum.

Rajca said that he “established that estimate on the basis of calculations by historians as published by the museum in the 1991 monograph on the camp. The people doing the research did not have access to all the sources, including some in Germany. Nor did I use all the records available in the museum archives, because they are fragmentary, and they will not be useful in analyzing the mortality figures at Majdanek until the data they contain is entered in the computers.”

Rajca emphasized that he had “not yet read Tomasz Kranz’s article, but, at first glance, his figures for the number of people killed in the camp seem incredibly low.”

Kranz claims to have examined all available sources, including the extant fragments of the camp death book, the death registry, the notifications of prisoner deaths that the Nazis sent to parishes in Lublin, testimony at their trial in Dusseldorf in the late 1970s and early 1980s by SS men garrisoned at Majdanek, and accounts by surviving prisoners.

Before it went to press, Kranz’s article was read by most of the Majdanek museum staff and discussed at a special meeting. No one raised any objections. “The findings are highly authoritative,” said Prof. Zygmunt Mańkowski, chairman of the Majdanek Museum board. “However, we do not know the definitive number of prisoners who passed through the camp or the number of those whose deaths the camp administration did not register. It cannot be ruled out that new documents will come to light that alter Kranz’s findings. This must be borne in mind, and his calculations accepted with a certain caution.”

Majdanek museum director Edward Balawejder recommended that guides inform the visitors to whom they show the camp about the new calculations as to the number of victims, but also tell them that research is still underway to determine how many prisoners passed through the camp.

“78,000 deaths over the course of three years is a crime on an enormous scale, and not only in comparison with other camps like Buchenwald, where about 56,000 people died over eight years,” said Kranz. “It must be remembered, however, that the number of victims only gives an idea about the scale of genocide; it does not convey the measureless pain and suffering experienced by the people imprisoned and murdered at Majdanek.”

Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau Original Story

LIPSTADT: IRVING SHOULD BE FREE


Stephen Smith, chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust [says] “Behind the words sits a devious ideological intent. ... It is incitement to genocide." Bradley Smith asks: "If revisionist arguments are an incitement to genocide, which is one of the many apologies that the Holocaust Industry uses to morally legitimate its censorship and imprisonment of those who question it, what is intellectual freedom an incitement to? "

The Jewish academic who defeated the notorious British historian David Irving in court has called for him to be released by Austria where he is being held on Holocaust denial charges.

Professor Deborah Lipstadt, whose successful defence of a High Court action brought by Irving saw him branded an anti-semite by Mr Justice Gray, claimed prosecuting him would give him much-needed publicity.

Read more

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Pierre Vidal-Naquet wants to strangle, crush, kill Faurisson

Robert FAURISSON January 6, 2006

The whole back page of today’s French daily Libération is devoted to Pierre Vidal-Naquet.

The article is by Judith Rueff and headed “L’antimythe” (“The antimyth”). Above the heading: “Pierre Vidal-Naquet, aged 75, historian and Hellenist. Fierce opponent of torture during the war in Algeria, he has never since stopped fighting all falsifications”.

Extracts of the article: “His job of historian is to demystify […]. Let him look into Atlantis (‘my best book and doubtless the last’), to decrypt the Platonic invention of the lost continent and see in it a portent of National-Socialist madness. Same thing when he morally crushes Faurisson and the deniers of the Nazi genocide. ‘One of the things in my life that I take pride in’ ”.

On the paper’s website (http://www.liberation.fr/) a single short audio segment of the interview may be heard, and it is devoted to me and the “negationists”, that is, the revisionists.

Extracts of the recording: “Faurisson was an absolutely hateful and abject being”. “If I had got Faurisson in my hands, I wouldn’t have hesitated to strangle him”. On the subject of the “negationists”, P. Vidal-Naquet declares: “They have to be fought and crushed like cockroaches [...]. The one who’s really killed them is me; everyone recognises it, including them, and it’s one of the things in my life that I take pride in”.

The day before yesterday, January 4 (p. 9), the writer of an article entitled “Libération contre Faurisson” announced that Eric de Rothschild’s newspaper was bringing charges against me because “in the December 6th issue of the Holocaust denial publication Dubitando, close to Robert Faurisson,” there appeared the copy of an article, by the same Judith Rueff, devoted to Simon Wiesenthal.

However, I am not in charge of that little review — which, incidentally, is quite well put together — and have nothing to do with its circulation. Without asking my permission, Dubitando publishes articles by me and other revisionists that have probably been picked up on the Internet.

NB: On Jewish violence see Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Political Assassinations by Jews / A Rhetorical Device for Justice, State University of New York, 1993, XX-527 p., and Robert Faurisson, “Jewish Militants: Fifteen Years, and More, of Terrorism in France” [written in June 1995], The Journal of Historical Review, March-April 1996, p. 2-13.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Europe must embrace true free speech

Brendan O'Neill writing in the Christian Science Monitor makes a good case for freedom of speech. He is also correct in his call for challenging authorities in Austria for their persecution of David Irving for what is essentially a thoughtcrime. Mr. O'Neill neglects to mention other European nations who lock up researchers and writers who dare to challenge any aspect of the orthodox-Holocaust story. O'Neill did enough digging to discover Irving's provocative comment about Ted Kennedy but not enough to really understand Irving's viewpoint on the Nazi Holocaust.

O'Neill's article does demonstrate the damage that Irving did to his reputation and credibility by making such shocking comments as he did about Kennedy. A review of Irving's many works will show that Irving never "denied" the Holocaust in whole, but rather questioned specific parts of it-- most significantly the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Irving wrote in his Closing Statement of his case against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt that a judgment in his favor, "does not mean that the Holocaust never happened; it means only that in England today discussion is still permitted."

Unfortunately even discussion in Austria and Germany today is not permitted. Such conditions breed hatred, contempt, and fear. The anti-Revisionist laws today in Europe prevent an honest inquiry into the truth of the Holocaust and also prevent a proper reconcilation between Jews and Germans. Beyond that we see the damage that such laws have wrought throughout the Islamic world.

Europe must embrace true free speech

By Brendan O'Neill Thu Dec 29, 3:00 AM ET

LONDON - In Europe, five years into the 21st century, two writers face trial and imprisonment for something they said or wrote. Both could be incarcerated, not for physically harming another person or for damaging property, but for uttering words that European states deem offensive.

Yet only one has been defended by the international literati, who have described the attempt to curtail his freedom of speech as an act of "anachronistic brutality." The other writer's plight has been ignored; worse, many liberals have supported the campaign to punish him for expressing outrageous views.

As such, the two cases cast a harsh light on the debate about free speech in Europe: They suggest we Europeans have a partial, picky attitude to freedom of expression, and thus do not understand the real meaning of this fundamental liberty.

The writers are Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist, and David Irving, a British historian.

They could not be more different. Mr. Pamuk is an internationally acclaimed author whose work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He is currently being charged in Turkey for "denigrating Turkishness." His "crime," for which he faces up to three years behind bars, was to question Ankara's official line on the mass killing of Armenians by Turks during World War I and to call for a more upfront analysis of those terrible events.

Mr. Irving, by contrast, is a historian who denies the truth of the Nazi Holocaust. His words are vile and deeply offensive. He once claimed that "more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz."
He is currently in prison in Vienna, Austria, where he was arrested in November for two speeches he made in that country more than 15 years ago in which he allegedly said there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. Holocaust denial is a crime in Austria, and if Irving is found guilty at his trial in February he could be jailed for up to 10 years.

Pamuk's plight has become a cause célèbre; Irving's has not. European politicians and writers have descended on Ankara to protest the trial of Pamuk and to chastise Turkey for behaving like a "dictatorial regime." Irving, meanwhile, has been left to languish in his Viennese cell. No well-known liberal voice has demanded that he be freed. Rather, as one news report put it, the arrest of Irving in Austria - "a country still coming to grips with its Nazi-ruled past" - has won the state "praise worldwide."

At first glance, these different responses might appear sensible. Pamuk's words are worth hearing; Irving's are not. Pamuk is a great novelist; Irving was described by a judge in a libel trial here in London in 2000 as "an anti-Semite and an active Holocaust denier." Who needs to hear his weasel words?

And yet, if we truly believe in freedom of speech, then we must defend Irving as vigorously as we defend Pamuk.

This is not about what either author said - it is about whether they should have the right to say it, and we the right to hear it. Freedom of speech cannot mean freedom for views we find acceptable but not for views we find abhorrent. It must mean freedom for all speech - the freedom to think, say, and write what we please, and the freedom of everyone else to challenge, pick apart, and, if necessary, trash our arguments.

Indeed, the true test of one's commitment to free speech is whether we can defend those with whom we disagree, even those we despise. As the US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, if you believe in free thought then you must defend freedom not only for "those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate."

If we were to have freedom of speech in Europe for novelists we admire but not for historians we despise, then we would not have freedom of speech at all. We would only have privileged speech, officially sanctioned speech, the right to say and hear certain things but not others. If free speech is to mean anything in modern Europe, then Irving must have it as well as Pamuk.
This is not to say that Irving should be left alone to spread his poisonous rubbish about the Holocaust. On the contrary: It is only by having open and free debate that views such as his can be effectively challenged and dismantled. Suppressing such views only allows them to fester, or worse, grants them the moral authority of martyrdom. We need free speech precisely to deal with the likes of David Irving.

Let us stop seeing free speech as dangerous, and view it instead as a positive, something that allows us to clarify ideas and which enriches public debate. Both Austria and Turkey should be challenged for denigrating this essential freedom.

Original Story

'Irving? Let the guy go home'


In a recent BBC story, Prof. Deborah Lipstadt has actually come out in favor of releasing David Irving from prison in Austria. Irving has been imprisoned for violation of Austrian thoughtcrimes back in 1989. I do applaud Lipstadt's comment that Holocaust "denial" should not be a crime. This article goes wrong with a typical media slant including the foolish statement that David Irving has suggested that "the Holocaust didn't happen." Readers should see through this media-lie which paints Holocaust revisionists as madmen. In fact David Irving stated in his closing statement during his case against Penguin Books Ltd. and Deborah Lipstadt, "I always have accepted that Adolf Hitler, as head of state and government, was responsible for the Holocaust."

The article also falsely suggests that Holocaust revisionists are Nazi sympathizers. Again, many revisionists are proponents of free speech and free historical inquiry and have little patience for Nazi ideology. Lipstadt also repeats her mantra that Holocaust "deniers" should not be debated because "they are not historians, they are liars." Of course, the good professor is not a historian either. She is a professor of religious studies. Perhaps she should leave such matters to historians -- but alas for that very comment, Bruno Gollnisch may be imprisoned in France as we have recently discovered.



'Irving? Let the guy go home'

By Brendan O'Neill

David Irving, the infamous British war historian, is today sitting in an Austrian jail, accused of denying the Nazi Holocaust. So why is an American Jewish academic who dramatically crushed Irving in the British courts saying he should be released?

When you ask Professor Deborah Lipstadt for her thoughts on David Irving's forthcoming trial, the very last thing you expect her to say is: "Let the guy go home. He has spent enough time in prison."

Lipstadt, the American Jewish academic who exposes Holocaust deniers is not exactly David Irving's greatest fan.

But five years after she famously defended her own reputation in the High Court, and in doing so shredded Irving's, she is arguing that the Austrian authorities should probably let him go, saying the far-right will find a martyr if he goes to jail.

David Irving, 67, who made his name as a World War II historian, became infamous for suggesting that the Holocaust didn't happen.

But in November last year he was arrested in Austria for two speeches he made in 1989, during which he allegedly claimed there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Gas chambers

It is a crime in Austria to minimise the atrocities of the Third Reich and the historian faces up to 10 years imprisonment if found guilty. Speaking after the arrest, Irving's lawyer said the historian no longer denies that gas chambers existed in Nazi death camps.

Yet Lipstadt, arguably the best-known warrior against Holocaust denial, believes that the best outcome would be for Irving to be let go.

"I would not want to see him spend more time in jail," she says.

"I am uncomfortable with imprisoning people for speech. Let him go and let him fade from everyone's radar screens."

Irving said his reputation as an historian had been 'vandalised' If there were to be a film of Deborah Lipstadt and David Irving, they would be presented as nothing less than arch enemies, fighting to the last - as they indeed did in the High Court.

Lipstadt has spent years exposing the arguments of Nazi sympathisers. She warns historians must "remain ever vigilant" against those who say the Holocaust was a hoax, "so that the precious tools of our trade and our society - truth and reason - can prevail".

The showdown came in January 2000 when she stood accused of libel for describing Irving in a book as "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial"; he accused her of "vandalising" his legitimacy as an historian.

The 32-day trial became a legal debate on the history of the Nazis - and the nature of truth itself.

Mr Justice Gray witheringly described Irving as anti-Semitic, racist and a Holocaust denier who had "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".
Irving had comprehensively lost not just his money, but his reputation.

Much to the annoyance of those who have fought against him, Irving is still invited to speak both in Europe and the USA. And Lipstadt raises questions about both free speech, and the publicity Irving stands to gain at his impending trial.

"Generally, I don't think Holocaust denial should be a crime," she says. "I am a free speech person, I am against censorship."

"I don't find these laws efficacious. I think they turn Holocaust denial into forbidden fruit, and make it more attractive to people who want to toy with the system or challenge the system.

"We don't have laws against other kinds of spoken craziness. If you're a medical quack and you hurt someone, there's a law against that.

"But if you're a medical quack and you stand on the street corner preaching that you have an elixir that cures cancer and saves lives, no one throws you in jail."

Holocaust deniers spread conspiracy theories such as that Anne Frank's Diary was a hoax, and that the gas chambers were secretly built after the war.

But whether free speech should include the freedom to say such things has been the subject of furious debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Nine European countries have laws against Holocaust denial - and supporters argue that this is the one issue that crosses the line because it is offensive to both the dead and the survivors.

Democracy

In the UK, the free speech debate has focused on religious hatred: the government says it will outlaw incitement to hatred of believers. Opponents of the measure, including comic actor Rowan Atkinson, say it's an attack on free speech.

However, in the case of the Holocaust, Lipstadt says she recognises a case for laws in the lands that formed the heart of the Third Reich.

"Germany and Austria are not so far past the Third Reich. So I can understand that the swastika symbol, Mein Kampf, Holocaust denial, being a neo-Nazi and all the rest have a certain potency there that they would not have in the United States," she says.

"And Austria is a democracy. If the citizens of Austria were against these laws, they could change them. Austria and Germany are different, but I would not support those laws being instituted elsewhere."

Lipstadt says the reason she is generally opposed to outlawing Holocaust denial is not because she fails to recognise how deeply offensive it is but because such laws tend to turn cranks into martyrs.

"I am not interested in debating with Holocaust deniers," she says. "You wouldn't ask a scientist to debate with someone who thinks the Earth is flat. They are not historians, they are liars. Debating them would be nonsensical.

"But we also should not allow them to become martyrs. Nothing is served by having David Irving in a jail cell, except that he has become an international news issue.

"Let him go home and let him continue talking to six people in a basement.

"Let him fade into obscurity where he belongs."

Original Story

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Agence France Presse

December 12, 2005

France: Call by 19 Historians for the Repeal of Several Statutory Clauses


[Emphasis in bold by Robert Faurisson.]


Paris — In a text sent today to the AFP headed “Liberté pour l’histoire!” (Freedom for history!), nineteen leading historians have come out for the repeal of several statutory clauses concerning “events of the past”, legislation that, according to them, is “unworthy of a democratic regime”.

They refer to articles of the laws of July 13, 1990 (editor’s note: aiming to punish any racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic act [as well as any manifestation of “Holocaust” revisionism]), January 29, 2001 (editor’s note: relating to the acknowledgement of the 1915 Armenian genocide), May 21, 2001 (editor’s note: aiming to acknowledge the slave trade as a crime against humanity) and February 23, 2005.

The last mentioned law’s controversial article 4 (in favour of repatriated French citizens) stipulates that “the school curricula shall recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in North Africa”.

The text is signed by Jean-Pierre Azéma, Elisabeth Badinter, Jean-Jacques Becker, Françoise Chandernagor, Alain Decaux, Marc Ferro, Jacques Julliard, Jean Leclant, Pierre Milza, Pierre Nora, Mona Ozouf, Jean-Claude Perrot, Antoine Prost, René Rémond, Maurice Vaïsse, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Paul Veyne, Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Michel Winock [most of whom are on the political left and several of whom are of Jewish origin].

“Moved by the ever more frequent political interventions in the assessment of events of the past and by the legal proceedings affecting historians and thinkers, we see fit to recall the following principles”, they write.

According to them, “history is not a religion. The historian accepts no dogma, respects no prohibition, knows no taboos. History is not morality. The historian’s role is not to exalt or to condemn: he explains. History is not the slave of current affairs. The historian does not stick contemporary ideological outlines onto the past and does not bring today’s sensitivity into the events of former times”.

“History is not remembrance”, they continue. “The historian, in a scientific procedure, collects people’s memories, compares them with each other, confronts them with documents, objects, traces, and establishes the facts. History takes remembrance into account, it does not amount merely to remembrance. History is not a juridical object. In a free country, it is the job neither of Parliament nor of the judicial authorities to define the historical truth. The State’s policy, albeit motivated by the best intentions, is not the policy of history”.

“It is in violation of these principles that clauses of successive laws — notably those of July 13, 1990, January 29, 2001, May 21, 2001 and February 23, 2005 — have restricted the historian’s freedom, have told him, on pain of sanctions, what he must look for and what he must find, have prescribed him his methods and set down limits. We call for the repeal of these legislative provisions that are unworthy of a democratic regime”, they conclude.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006


REVISIONIST GEORGES THEIL HEAVILY SENTENCED IN LYON

Robert Faurisson

January 4, 2006

Today, January 3, by decision of the high court of Lyon (6th chamber, where press-related cases are heard; presiding judge: Fernand Schir), Georges Theil, a former elected official from the Front National, has been found guilty, under the Fabius-Gayssot Act (July 13, 1990), of a revisionist “questioning”. Before a reporter’s camera he had uttered some words on the technical impossibility of the Nazi gas chambers’ existence and operation.

He is sentenced to the following:

Six months’ imprisonment without remission;
€10,000 fine;
Payment of the cost of having extracts of the judgement published in the dailies Libération and Le Progrès (Lyon);
Remittance of €3,000 to each of the eleven plaintiffs;
Remittance of €1,000 to each of the eleven plaintiffs to cover their legal costs;
Payment of €90 in procedural fees.
G. Theil, through the intermediary of his Counsel, Maître Eric Delcroix, is to lodge an appeal.

I shall recall that on October 5, 2005, by decision of the high court of Limoges, François Cassasus-Builhé presiding, the same G. Theil had been convicted on the same grounds for having sent to a few persons a copy of the little book that he published in 2002, under the name Gilbert Dubreuil, entitled: Un cas d’insoumission / Comment on devient révisionniste (“A Case of Insubmission / On becoming a revisionist”).

He was then sentenced to the following:

Six months’ imprisonment without remission;
Five years’ prohibition of standing for public office;
Payment of the cost of having extracts of the judgement published in the dailies Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Populaire du Centre and L'Echo de la Haute-Vienne;
Confiscation of the objects under seal (that is, the computers, books and documents previously seized at his house by the police);
Payment to each of the various plaintiffs of the following sums: €7,000 and €350 plus €1 and €350 plus €1,000 and €350 plus €1,000 and €350 plus €1 and another €350;
Payment of €90 in procedural fees.

G. Theil has begun remitting large sums to the plaintiffs. He has, in this case as well, lodged an appeal through the intermediary of Maître E. Delcroix. That action will be heard on February 3, 2006 at the court of appeal of Limoges.
I should like to point out that the cost of court-ordered publication of judgements in a certain number of newspapers can be quite heavy. As for the various expenses entailed by the preparation and hearing of these cases, I know that they have been considerable.

I have learnt, just this instant, that the text of the Schir decision is said to be one of exceptional length for such a case: 48 pages.

Address: Georges Theil, BP 50-38, F 38821 GRENOBLE CEDEX 2 (France).
Email address: gmtheva@yahoo.fr