Ecrits révisionnistes (1974-1998) BY ROBERT FAURISSON Chapter 19: JEWISH ORGANISATIONS IMPOSE AN APOSTLES CREED OF THE HOLOCAUST

My book, as will be seen, deals little with the Jewish question.

If, over so long a period, I doggedly pursued this historical inquiry without giving much thought to the Jewish question as such, it was because, to my mind, the latter was of only secondary importance. Were I to dwell on it I might risk being thrown off the essential course: for I was seeking, first and foremost, to determine, respectively, the real and the mythical components in the story of the so-called Holocaust or Shoah; it was therefore far more important for me to establish the actual facts than to try to uncover the responsibilities.

And yet, in spite of myself, two things made me forgo this reticence: the attitude of numerous Jews towards my work and the aggressive manner in which they served notice on me to state my position regarding the subject which grips so many of them: the Jewish question.

When, in the early 1960s, I approached what Olga Wormser-Migot was to call in her 1968 doctoral thesis the problem of the gas chambers, I knew beforehand what sort of consequences such an undertaking might bring about. Paul Rassiniers example was there to warn me that I could expect grave repercussions. I nonetheless decided to go ahead with it, to keep within the framework of research of a wholly scientific nature, and to publish my results. I also chose to leave to the potential adversary any responsibility for recourse to coercion or perhaps even physical violence should the matter ever escape from the confines of academic controversy.

And that was precisely what was to happen. Using a metaphor, I could say that the frail door behind which I drafted my revisionist writings abruptly gave way, one day, to the pushing and shoving of a loud mob of protesters. I was bound then to remark that, in their entirety or quasi-entirety, these troublemakers were sons and daughters of Israel. The Jews had barged into my life. I suddenly found them to be not as I had known them hitherto, that is, as individuals to be distinguished one from the other, but as mutually inseparable elements of a group particularly united in hatred and, to use their own word, in anger. Frenzied and frothy-mouthed, in a tone at once moaning and threatening, they came to trumpet in my ears that my work outraged them, that my conclusions were false, and that I must imperatively show allegiance to their own version of the history of the second world war. This kosher version places the Jews at the centre of that war as its victims second to none, while in fact the conflict caused probably close to forty million deaths. For them, their slaughter is unique in world history. I was warned that unless I complied I should see my career ruined. Soon afterwards I was to be brought to court. Then, by way of the media, the Grand Sanhedrin made up of the priests, doctors, and other worthies of Jewish Law enforcement launched a virulent campaign against me, advocating hatred and violence. I shall not dwell on the insults, physical assaults, and court cases which have been its interminable aftermath.

The heads of these organisations readily call me a Nazi, which I am not. As comparisons go, Palestinian seems more befitting in view of my standing with them, for they have treated me like one, and I have come to believe that the Jews in their Diaspora behave towards those who displease them much as their brethren may be seen to behave in Palestine. My writings are, in a sense, the stones of my Intifada. Frankly speaking, I find no essential difference between the behaviour of Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem Zionist leaders and that of Jewish leaders in Paris or New York: the same harshness, the same spirit of conquest and domination, the same insistence on privileges, all against a constant background of blackmail, of pressure accompanied by complaints and moaning. Such is the case in todays world. Has it been different in that of other times? Were the Jewish people as unhappy in past centuries as they tend to claim? Have they suffered as much from wars, foreign and civil, as have other human communities? Have they experienced as much hardship and misery? Have they really had no responsibility for the hostile reactions of which they so willingly complain? On this point, Bernard Lazare wrote:

If this hostility, even repugnance, had been brought to bear on the Jews only at one time and in one country, it would be easy to explain the limited causes of such anger; but this race has been, on the contrary, faced with the hatred of all the peoples amongst whom it has settled. Therefore, since the Jews foes have belonged to the most diverse races, races inhabiting lands quite distant from one another, living under different laws and governed by opposing principles, having neither the same ways nor customs, and, animated by various ways of thinking, being unable to judge all things in the same manner, the general causes of antisemitism must always have lain in Israel itself and not amongst those who have fought against it. This is not to assert that the Jews persecutors have always had right on their side, nor that they have not resorted to all the excesses which keen hatred may carry with it, but merely to postulate that at least some of the time the Jews have brought their ills upon themselves(57).

B. Lazare, who was not in the least hostile to his co-religionists quite the opposite, in fact had the frankness to recall, in several passages in his book, how skilful the Jews had been, all throughout their history (and thus as far back as Greco-Roman antiquity), in obtaining privileges. He noted that, among those of the poor who converted to Judaism, many were attracted by the privileges granted to the Jews(58).

I trust that here I shall be allowed a remark in confidence.

In my capacity as an erstwhile Latinist, a defendant prosecuted in court by Jewish organisations, a university professor prevented from giving his lectures by Jewish demonstrations, and, finally, as an author forbidden to publish because of certain Chief Rabbinate decisions which have been ratified by the French Republic, it has occurred to me that I may compare my experiences with those of some illustrious predecessors. It is thus that my thoughts turn to the Roman aristocrat Lucius Flaccus. In 59 BC, Cicero had occasion to defend him, notably against his Jewish accusers; the description of the influence, power, and methods of the Jews in Rome which the brilliant orator then gave in the praetorium leads me to think that, if he were to come back to this world, in the late twentieth century, to defend a revisionist, he would not, as it were, have to change one word on that subject in the text of his pleadings known as Pro Flacco.

Having taught at the Sorbonne, my thoughts also turn to my predecessor Henri Labroue, author of a work entitled Voltaire antijuif. Late in 1942, in the middle of the German occupation, a time when we are expected to believe that the Jews and their supporters remained as discreet as possible, he had to abandon his lectures on the history of Judaism. Let us quote present day Sorbonne luminary André Kaspi: A chair of the history of Judaism was created at the Sorbonne as from the autumn term of 1942 and bestowed on Henri Labroue. The first courses gave rise to displays of hostility and to incidents which led to the programmes cancellation(59).

But today, dozens of great authors of world literature, including Shakespeare, Voltaire, Hugo, and Zola (the partisan of Captain Dreyfus also wrote L'Argent) would find themselves in court, sued and prosecuted by Jewish organisations. Among the great names in French politics, even the Socialist and pacifist Jean Jaurès would be in the dock of disgrace.

Such considerations might earn me the label antisemitic or antijewish. I reject those epithets which I see as trite insults. I wish no harm on any Jew. On the other hand, I find the behaviour of most of the associations, organisations, and pressure groups which claim to represent Jewish interests or Jewish remembrance to be loathsome.

The heads of those various associations, organisations, or groups obviously have the greatest difficulty in understanding that one may act out of simple intellectual curiosity. If I myself have devoted a good part of my life to revisionism, first in the field of literary studies, then in that of historical research, I have done so not in the least as a result of some invidious calculation, or in the service of an antijewish plot, but in heeding an impulse as natural as that which makes the birds sing and the leaves grow, and makes men in the darkness strive after light.