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Iran. Faurisson. Interview (Tehran, December 13, 2006)
Interview with Professor Robert Faurisson at the Guest House of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Hello Professor Faurisson, and thank you for granting me this interview.
Hello. It’s I who thank you for your willingness to put questions.
Professor, may I ask what your reasons were for deciding to take part in
this conference in Tehran on the Holocaust on December 11th and 12th,
2006?
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Professor Dr. Robert Faurisson, speaking at the
first free, state organised, holoaust conference in the world.
Teheran, Dec. 12., 2006 |
It’s because I know of no other country, no place where a conference on
this subject could welcome me. Even in the United States the holding of
such a conference would be risky; to begin with, upon arrival on American
territory any foreign revisionist could well find himself being sent
straight back to where he’d come from. In France, any similar gathering
would be out of the question. I don’t see a single European country that
would tolerate a public conference or debate on the “Holocaust”. In
Germany, your country, the prohibition of any form of revisionism is
draconian. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are merciless. Furthermore,
it may be that in other parts of the world some countries are indifferent
to the matter. Thus it was an altogether unexpected bit of luck that Iran
should offer to host an international seminar on the “Holocaust” that, for
once, would be open to all comers. It was not actually a revisionist
conference but, as indicated by the title (“Review of the Holocaust:
Global Vision”), a new look at the “Holocaust” from a comprehensive
viewpoint and not a biased or fragmentary one. I didn’t think this could
come about in my lifetime.
What goal have you been looking to achieve in coming here?
I want to make public what the mainstream media of the Western world
stubbornly conceal. When those media speak of revisionists, it’s to insult
us or ascribe to us ideas that we’ve never expressed. For example, they
readily assert that the revisionists are people who claim the German
concentration camps never existed. That’s putting sheer nonsense in our
mouths. Unhappily the nonsensical assertion, amongst the French in any
case, is widespread. On this score, the French in general have the idea
that the revisionists are lunatics who go so far as to deny the obvious
and this is why, coining a barbarism, they call us “négationnistes” (“denialists”).
Have you the impression, at the end of this gathering, that you’ve
achieved your goal?
In part. The world has been able to note that we exist and that we can
conduct ourselves peaceably and courteously with people who don’t share
our convictions. Time was wanting for any real debate. And then I suppose
the media will relate virtually nothing of the content of our papers.
They’ll keep silent about our arguments and discoveries. To obtain a real
debate we’ll need a new conference, on condition that our opponents don’t
shy away from taking part. I must say that, for an instant, I was able to
have the beginnings of a public confrontation with a professor who was
hostile to revisionism, and that this confrontation turned dramatically to
our advantage. I’ll tell you about it a bit later on, if you like.
Most gladly.
There’ve been, above all, the echoes made by this conference throughout
the world. It has provoked vehement protests, starting yesterday in
Washington with a statement by White House spokesman Sean McCormack
denouncing an Iranian regime that “perversely seeks to call the historical
fact of those [Nazi] atrocities into question and provide a platform for
hatred”. Then it was in Brasilia that a government had its say in the
matter with an official protest. Then in England. Then, at the UN, Kofi
Annan gave tongue. The Vatican as well. According to all these authorities,
there are no grounds for asking oneself questions about the “Holocaust” of
the Jews. The “Holocaust” took place and that’s that.
But I’ve promised you that example of the beginnings of a public
confrontation. Here it is. That match of yesterday pitted me against an
Iranian professor from Shiraz University, who also teaches at the
University of the State of Washington (USA); his name is Gholam Vatandoust.
At one point in his presentation he dared to say that the “Holocaust” was
“fully documented”, that is, wholly confirmed by valid documentation. Then,
after his talk, when the audience was able to put questions, I asked this
professor to name me a document, and I insisted on the fact that I didn’t
care to hear about a set of documents; I wanted just one. He started
answering by saying how Churchill, in his memoirs, had denounced the Nazi
atrocities. I pointed out that never had Churchill mentioned the “gas
chambers” and that such was the case as well with Eisenhower, de Gaulle
and others of their stature. I reminded him that what I was waiting for
was the designation of a document. I had him note that Winston Churchill,
in the remarks alluded to, was a politician expressing his sentiments.
However, I was not looking to know anyone’s sentiments, be they even those
of a personality like Churchill. At that point, the Iranian professor
believed he’d come up with another argument. He told me it would be enough
to accompany him to the American National Archives, where I should find
documents. This wasn’t an answer since, again, I was demanding to hear of
but one document. Just then the situation reminded me of the story of the
angler and the big fish. An angler boasts of recently making an
extraordinary haul, a truly miraculous catch, and, when I ask to see the
fish, retorts: “How’s that? Are you calling my word into doubt? If you’re
a doubting Thomas and won’t grant me your trust, I can show you the place
where I caught that fish.” Obviously my reply will be that the place
doesn’t interest me: the fish does. Let him show me it! Thus, “Show me or
draw me a Nazi gas chamber!” That’s what I’ve been asking for ages.
I told this professor that I was familiar with those National Archives.
I’d even consulted them at three different places: in Washington proper,
then, not far from there, in Suitland and at the opulent installation of
College Park. In short, I was getting no answer to my request. The man
made three more vague attempts, all equally futile, and part of the
audience, noticing how decidedly unable he was to respond, interrupted the
verbal jousting with laughter and applause. This morning I had the
occasion to meet him. I found much humbler than yesterday and he exhibited
a lively curiosity about an argument that he seemed to be just discovering.
We exchanged addresses and perhaps our discussion will continue. I also
had two brief talks in private with one of the six anti-Zionist rabbis
who’d come to take part in the proceedings: he was from Britain and
appeared surprised but not shocked by the findings of revisionist research.
Finally, I had a short and cordial exchange with an Austrian chief rabbi.
It seems that another participant, Viktor Nadein-Rayevsky of the Russian
Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International
Relations, said at some point: “Faurisson demands documents, but some very
important events have occurred which haven’t left any documents. In these
cases, no document can be produced.” I’d like to know what these “very
important events” can be to which no document attests!
I think he was talking about the Khmer Rouge.
Perhaps. But then, I’m very sorry! We possess a large number of documents
or alleged documents on the subject. I’ll recall here the meaning of the
term “document”. In general, a document is something written, but it may
also be a material object. “Document” comes from a Latin verb signifying
“that which tells, which teaches you something”. A knife on a table, a
chair, a room, a building can all have the value of a document. It is
altogether normal that, for example, a great mind such as Fustel de
Coulanges (1830-1889), who, for us French, is the founder of scientific
history, should have adopted a motto like “No documents, no history”.
I’ve just given you the example of two speakers who disputed what the
revisionists have concluded after completing their research work. I insist
on this. People are quick to call us “négateurs” (at least the word is
French) or “négationnistes” (a lapse into barbarism). These two words mean
that revisionists are persons who deny obvious facts. They would seem, in
a way, to be inspired by the Devil. As in Goethe’s phrase, we revisionists
would be partisans of “the spirit that ever denies”, wouldn’t we? In
reality, we deny nothing at all; simply, after completing our research
work, we challenge certain affirmations and come forth with our own
findings. Galileo “denied” nothing but, at the end of his labours, he
stated that a certain idea, generally admitted, was wrong and that another
idea was right.
Can you sum up the substance of your own contribution to the conference?
My talk was on “the victories of revisionism”, in other words the
concessions that the antirevisionists have over the years been forced to
make to us. I recommend that people consult the text itself, which I
entitled simply “The Victories of Revisionism” and in which I provide a
selection of twenty instances of such victories. They run from 1950 to
2004, and some of them are quite dramatic. Unfortunately the general
public know nothing of it all because we have no access to the media.
An example, if you please, of these victories?
I could cite the case of Jean-Claude Pressac. For years, that protégé of
the Klarsfeld couple had presumed to state he’d discovered proof of the
“Nazi gas chambers’” existence. A book of his, in 1993-1994, was laden
with praise throughout the big media. In 1994 I replied with a booklet
that earned me new criminal proceedings. Happily I got Pressac subpoenaed
to appear at the trial. This was in May 1995, in Paris. His collapse under
examination was spectacular. He never got back up again. To her credit,
Valérie Igounet, a French historian hostile to revisionism, reproduced in
her 2000 book Histoire du négationnisme en France a sort of act of
surrender signed by Pressac. The latter, in effect, had ended up admitting
that the dossier on the German concentration camps was “rotten” — his word,
that — with too many lies. He even added that a definitively “rotten”
dossier had been got up around wartime suffering that was all too real and
— in his own phrase — that dossier was “bound for the rubbish bins of
history”.
Surprising! What became of Pressac?
His Jewish friends, of course, disowned him. He died in 2003, aged 59. The
media’s silence was total. Pressac is one of the host of people who have
proved unable to take up the challenge I launched back in the 1970s. At
that time I’d demonstrated how the case for the existence of the alleged
Nazi gas chambers ran into some radical impossibilities. The Leuchter
Report and the Rudolf Report, not to mention a few other reports or views
expressed by men of science, subsequently confirmed my demonstration.
Here, in Tehran, you began your talk with a word of warning about the
photographs said to be of Nazi atrocities. Why?
Because people’s minds are steeped in them. In the business of lying
propaganda nothing’s more simple and effective than the use of photographs.
You don’t even need any complicated montages. It’s enough to show images
of the sick, the dying or the dead and, in relation to these, speak of the
killed, the murdered or the slaughtered. Ordinary decent folk will be
taken in. They’ll feel revulsion, indignation, anger. They’ll no longer
see what’s in front of them (the dead) but only what’s been put into their
minds (the killed). They’ll become fixated on it. They won’t take time to
think things over. In the area of false massacres the procedure stays
unchanged. The alleged massacres at Auschwitz are, from this point of view,
comparable, relatively speaking, to all the alleged massacres that may be
conveniently blamed on the defeated side of any conflict, be it at
Andersonville (alleged extermination camp of the American Civil War),
Timosoara (Romania) or Kuwait City. Corpses of women and children will do
the trick especially well.
It’s the procedure that, in 1945, was resorted to by the Americans and the
British, on the one hand, and by the Soviets on the other hand. Teams of
photographers or cameramen enter such or such German camp at the moment of
its liberation. The first step is to have everything photographed or
filmed. The second is to set aside for later use, after selection, only
the most pitiful or revolting images, notably from the hospital barracks
or their vicinity; pains will particularly have been taken to get images
of the typhus-sufferers, veritable walking skeletons. The third step is to
prepare commentary that will lead the public to believe the German
commandants and guards had purposely reduced those poor wretches to such a
state, as they were quite simply carrying out a policy of physical
extermination of the detainees. Exceptions aside, the photographs of some
very large groups of healthy-looking inmates, jubilant at being freed,
will be hidden away. It will not be revealed that, in these camps, there
could well exist for the benefit or use of the inmates, as was the case at
Auschwitz, vast kitchens and all sorts of sanitary, medical, dental or
surgical facilities, bakeries, post offices, workshops, places for
artistic or musical recreation whose mere presence renders implausible, at
the least, the existence of any intent whatsoever on the part of the
Germans to exterminate those inmates. On the contrary, with the
propagandists, a scalpel will fraudulently be shown as proof that people
were killed or tortured; a disinfection gas chamber will become proof that
people, and not vermin, were gassed; a can of Zyklon-B, a disinfection or
anti-infestation substance (Entseuchung, Entwesung) that was, accordingly,
used to preserve lives against certain deadly diseases or epidemics, will
become proof that the Germans employed it to suppress human life. The real
horrors of all those camps were the overcrowding, the close quarters and
the violence incidental to detention in such circumstances (“men are like
apples: the more they’re heaped on top of each other, the more they rot”),
the prison violence, the hunger, the harsh weather, the diseases, the
epidemics. Revisionist author and activist Paul Rassinier told of all this
very well indeed. Thus, at times, many inmates were going through hell.
You brought up, in particular, the British propaganda about Bergen-Belsen…
Yes. Winston Churchill’s compatriots achieved quite some feat there. It’s
what I call the “Bergen-Belsen bulldozer job”. In April 1945, that camp,
overcrowded, ravaged by epidemics coming from the East, famished, deprived
of water in recent days due to the Anglo-American bombing raids, had
become a veritable den of infection. For this reason the Germans sent out
a delegation to Montgomery’s approaching troops to warn them of the state
of things there (and probably of the risks for everyone, including the
civilian population, should the internees all be immediately released
without any screening). The British agreed to cooperate with the
Wehrmacht, but not with the SS, in order to attempt to remedy the
situation. Then they saw fit to open the numerous common graves, count the
bodies and finally, pile those bodies into great, deep ditches. To push
all the corpses towards the ditches they used a bulldozer. In a film shot
on site we are shown the bulldozer in action. A selection of these images
has been passed on to posterity, notably thanks to the documentary (documendaciary?)
Night and Fog (1955). Millions of viewers have believed that here they’ve
seen proof of the Germans’ killing their captives, day after day, on an
industrial scale. Very rare indeed must be those who’ve been able to make
out that the bulldozer driver is a British soldier and not a German
soldier. In 1978 a book published in South Africa with the aim of
thwarting any revision of the “Holocaust” presented a still photo of the
bulldozer and the bodies but not without “cutting off” the driver’s head:
the obvious intent was to have us believe the driver was German.
Moreover, with time, in the minds of some, amongst whom Maurice Druon of
the Académie française, “that” bulldozer, in the singular, has, of course,
become “those” bulldozers. One could go on and on listing the very crudest
procedures of this propaganda rooted in atrocity stories. Thus it is that
we’re cunningly shown piles of shoes and eyeglasses or heaps of hair as if
they were evidence that the people they came from were gassed; here the
propagandists are sure to avoid reminding us that, in a Europe subjected
to blockade and reduced to general penury, nothing was thrown away:
everything was recovered and recycled, including hair, which served a
particular purpose in the textile industry. There were countless workshops
recycling leather, glass, metal or wood, both in the camps and in the
towns and villages. The “suitcase job” is also worth noting. A very
well-known photograph shows us, at Auschwitz, suitcases carefully stacked
and presented as the pieces of luggage on which each doomed owner had
taken the trouble to write his or her name and address before being sent
to the gas chamber. However, a close look shows that the names and
addresses are all written in the same hand and with the same white
substance. Consequently, here it is a question, in reality, of a task
performed at the entrance of every detention centre: new prisoners’
belongings are tagged and registered by the prison clerks. Thus had Marcel
Bloch-Dassault, long after the war, been able to receive from Germany the
wallet confiscated from him upon entry at Buchenwald. One evening he could
be seen, on French television, exhibiting that wallet, opening it and
taking out the four-leaf clover that was in it at his arrival in the camp.
That said, there’s no doubt the German authorities must have drawn from
the vast stores and confiscated effects to distribute some of them to the
civilian population ravaged by the bombings and deprived of everything. |
