Joseph Bellringer - Fred Leuchter's "Indiscretion"

At the present time, there are no “Holocaust denial” laws in the United States of America, although attempts have been repeatedly made behind the scenes by Jewish organizations and individuals to try and penalize “deniers” by various means. When one ventures into the arena of “Holocaust denial,” unpleasant consequences invariably ensue.

Against those whose opinions and evidence challenge the conclusions of mainstream historians, smear, electronic harassment, loss of employment, denunciations to employers, character assassination and poison pen letters are the usual methods employed by determined groups and individuals seeking to squelch free speech and open debate. In some rare cases, outright violence has been used in an attempt to put “deniers” out of business.

For example, on July 4, 1984, arsonists set fire to the warehouse of the Institute for Historical Review, resulting in an estimated $400,000 worth of damage.[1] The suspected arsonists were former members of the Jewish Defense League, whose leader at the time, Irv Rubin, was later arrested and accused of conspiring to bomb a Los Angeles mosque in December 2001. The 56-year-old Rubin and his associate, 59-year-old Earl Kugel, were subsequently arrested and arraigned on a charge of conspiracy to bomb private and government property. In November 2002, Rubin, who was said to be despondent and terrified over the prospect of an upcoming trial, allegedly committed suicide by slitting his own throat and plummeting off a twenty-foot balcony in the Los Angeles County jail. His accomplice, Earl Kugel, pled guilty and was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment in a federal prison, where he was subsequently killed by a fellow inmate.

Fred A. Leuchter author of four technical reports on the "gas chambers" of World War II standing in front of "Old Smokey" the electric chair of the Tennessee state prison at Nashville. Photo taken at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington D.C., May, 2008.

Revisionists in the United States and Canada have in fact been subjected to a multiplicity of various underhanded stratagems designed to discourage them from publicizing or otherwise disseminating their beliefs and bring them into public contempt. Although to date no Senate or House Committee has been formed to address the issue of “Holocaust denial,” the harassment of revisionists recalls to mind an unpleasant form of intolerance usually associated with the McCarthy Era, when blacklisted communists and communist sympathizers were the subject of publicly aired House and Senate investigations.

Perhaps the most pronounced example of such pressure tactics in America concerns the case of Fred Leuchter, whose personal life and professional career were shattered as a result of his fateful forensic examination of Auschwitz and Majdanek in February 1988.

Leuchter’s ordeal began in January 1988, when he was contacted by members of Ernst Zündel’s defense team. In an effort to prepare the best possible defense for Zündel, who was charged with disseminating ‘false news’ in Canada, Robert Faurisson reasoned that the most obvious place to look for a qualified witness on the operation of homicidal gas chambers would be the United States, where condemned criminals were still subject in a number of states to execution in gas chambers.

Attorneys for Zündel thereafter contacted various prison officials in the United States in the hope of enlisting an expert’s testimony on the operation of homicidal gas chambers. William M. Armontrout, Warden at the Missouri State Penitentiary, replied to their letter of enquiry on January 13, 1988, recommending Fred A. Leuchter as the most qualified expert in this field. In this letter, Armontrout stated,


“I have considerable knowledge in that area, however, I suggest you contact Mr. Fred A. Luechter [sic]. [...] Mr. Luechter [sic] is an engineer specializing in gas chambers and executions. He is well versed in all areas and is the only consultant in the United States that I know of.”[2]

Zündel’s attorneys confirmed the fact that Leuchter had worked as a consultant in the manufacture and use of execution equipment for a period of nine years and was the only qualified expert in this field in the United States.

When later asked to explain why he decided to undertake this assignment, Leuchter stated,


“I testified in Canada for two reasons: First, the trial was an issue of freedom of speech and freedom of belief. As an American, one who supports the Bill of Rights, I believe that Mr. Zündel has the right to believe and say what he chooses. I have this right in the United States. Secondly, Mr. Zündel was not on trial for a misdemeanor. This was a major felony. He could have faced up to 25 years [sic] in prison for printing a document stating that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. I believe that any man, no matter what he had done, has a right to a fair trial, and the best possible defense that he can muster. I, unfortunately, was the only expert in the world who could provide that defense. There was no one else.”[3]

In spite of the malicious claims of his detractors, Fred Leuchter’s professional credentials were impeccable and his expertise has been repeatedly confirmed by reputable sources such as The Atlantic Monthly, (Feb. 1990), referring to Fred Leuchter as


“the nation’s only commercial supplier of execution equipment…A trained and accomplished engineer, he is versed in all types of execution equipment. He makes lethal-injection machines, gas chambers, and gallows, as well as electrocution systems…”

A five-page article in the New York Times (October 13, 1990), described Leuchter as “The nation’s leading adviser on capital punishment.”

In his book America’s Capital Punishment Industry, film director and author Stephen Trombley confirms the fact that Fred Leuchter is


“America’s first and foremost supplier of execution hardware. His products include electric chairs, gas chambers, gallows, and lethal injection machines. He offers design, construction, installation, staff training and maintenance.”[4 ]

In fact, Fred Leuchter had also designed and built the first electronic sextant and developed a unique, compact and inexpensive optical drum sector encoder for use with surveying and measuring instruments. He designed and worked on astro trackers utilized in the on-board guidance systems of ICBMs and was trained in reading and interpreting aerial photographs. Leuchter also held a research medical license from both state and federal governments, and had supplied the necessary drugs for use in execution support programs.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his accomplishments, Leuchter was targeted for public vilification, stigmatized, driven from his home, divested of his property and denied his fundamental right to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” In fact, no American in recent memory has been as vilified as Fred Leuchter, simply due to the reason that, upon completing his investigation of the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz, he concluded that the facilities could not possibly have been used as homicidal gas chambers.

Leuchter submitted samples taken from the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek to Alpha Analytical Laboratories, a top forensic laboratory in Massachusetts in order to test them for cyanide residues. The samples were analyzed to determine the total iron and total cyanide content. Each sample received an identification number. The results of the tests were startling, in that they revealed little or no actual presence of cyanide compounds in most of the samples submitted.

After receiving the results of the test, Leuchter prepared a monograph, thereafter known as the Leuchter Report, combining his personal knowledge of gas chamber facilities and their operation in the United States with the information he had garnered from his onsite inspection of Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek.

In Leuchter’s professional view, the facilities allegedly used to gas over one million people at Auschwitz were crude, inefficient, rudimentary and unsafe.

Leuchter’s conclusions were later confirmed by a number of independent researchers, such as professional engineer Walter Lüftl of Austria and Germar Rudolf, formerly associated with the prestigious Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Dr. William B. Lindsey, a retired American chemist who was employed for 33 years by the DuPont Corporation, actually anticipated Leuchter’s testimony in the first Zündel trial in 1985. Based upon his own investigation of the site at Auschwitz, Lindsey declared under oath:


“I have come to the conclusion that no one was willfully or purposefully killed with Zyklon B in this manner. I consider it absolutely impossible.”[5]

A subsequent examination conducted by the Krakow Forensic Institute on behalf of the Auschwitz Main Museum undertaken in September 1990, paralleled the findings contained in the Leuchter Report. This fact is especially pertinent since their report was ostensibly undertaken to refute Leuchter’s conclusions.

With the Zündel trial behind him, Leuchter’s first thought was to return to his normal profession and carry on business as usual. Unbeknownst to Leuchter, his life was to be changed forever. Leuchter’s ‘indiscretion’ had set into motion powerful forces determined to discredit not only his conclusions regarding Auschwitz, but to discredit the man himself and ruin his life.

Fred Leuchter later remarked:


“Because I was somewhat naive at the time, I was not aware that by so testifying I was offending the organized world Jewish community. By providing final, definitive proof that there were no execution gas chambers utilized for genocidal purposes by the Germans at these wartime camps, I established the simple fact that the Holocaust story is not true. What I did not know was that anyone expressing such beliefs is guilty of a capital crime: that of thinking and telling the unspeakable truth about the greatest lie of the age.

“I would have to pay for this crime. While I innocently told the truth in Toronto, plans were made, and subsequently implemented, for a major effort to destroy me. If I could be destroyed and discredited – so the reasoning went – no one would accept my professional findings, no matter how truthful.”[6 ]

Leuchter’s apprehensions proved to be well-founded over time. As details of these behind-the-scenes machinations slowly emerged, Leuchter discovered that:


“…An insidious plot was being fomented by various Jewish groups, mainly the Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice, headed by Shelly Shapiro and based in Latham, New York, and its parent organization, the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, headed by Beate Klarsfeld and based in Paris. Additionally, the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith joined, forming a rather unholy and anti-American trinity.”[7]

The Klarsfeld Foundation solicited the talents of French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac in an attempt to controvert the information contained in the Leuchter Report. The foundation provided funding and opened all necessary doors to assist and support Pressac’s assignment - doors which are routinely closed to revisionist researchers.

To his utter dismay, Leuchter uncovered a web of deceit and subversion which was intended to permanently destroy his life and career. The methods used by Leuchter’s detractors was five-pronged:

Political threats to prison officials with whom Leuchter conducted business
Vilification by private contacts and in the television and newspapers
Work behind the scenes to push for legislation to prevent Leuchter from practicing his profession
Incitement to prosecute Leuchter for attempting to practice his profession
Dissemination of malicious gossip, smears and character assassination, both openly and privately.

Sometime in late 1988, Jewish organizations began contacting prison officials and other Department of Corrections officials in states where capital punishment was still mandated by law. Their objective was to put Leuchter out of business and besmirch his character. Veiled threats of a political nature were made to prison officials should they unwisely opt to sign a business contract with Leuchter in the future.

Leuchter described these well-orchestrated attempts to destroy him as follows:


“I have been vilified both privately and publicly in all forms of the media. My clients have been cajoled and threatened into not dealing with me. High-level law enforcement officials, acting for personal reasons, have lied about me and have prevented clients from dealing with me. My person and reputation have been defiled by lies and innuendo. My family and I have been repeatedly threatened.”

“Behind this campaign to punish me and suppress the truth about the gas chambers, have been several Jewish organizations, which have publicly vowed to silence me by destroying my ability to make a living.”

“I was charged with practicing as an engineer without a license. In point of fact, a license is not required in Massachusetts, or any other state, unless the engineer is involved in construction of buildings, and is certifying compliance with specifications. There is also a statutory exemption for engineers who do not deal with the general public…Owing to the successful conspiracy of these Jewish groups, I am completely out of business, unable to find work to feed my family. In spite of everything, though, I am still here, and I am still telling the truth. Furthermore, I intend to continue to tell the truth. If the organized Jewish community wants to stop me, it will have to try much harder.”[8 ]

Leuchter attempted to carry on business as usual, but noticed a definite decline in new contracts. In 1990, Leuchter was contacted by a writer working for Atlantic magazine. The reporter asked for Leuchter’s input with respect to execution equipment in the United States and Leuchter’s efforts to make executions more humane by replacing antiquated equipment with modern equipment. No mention was made at the time of either the Zündel trial or the Leuchter Report, but shortly after the article was published, irate complaints began to pour in, primarily from the Jewish community.

As a result of this article, Leuchter was asked to appear on Prime Time Live ABC News. At the time of the interview, Leuchter was informed by personnel at ABC News that prison officials at locations where the interview was taped had been contacted and threatened with political consequences if the interview was allowed to continue.

Shortly thereafter, ABC News received similar threats, but to their credit, they refused to back down, and even went so far as to inform Leuchter that these groups were determined to interfere with his livelihood as an engineer.

The smear campaign took its toll as increasing numbers of prison officials refused to conduct business with Leuchter. Prison officials no longer answered his telephone calls, and old friends became ominously silent whenever the subject of conducting previous business as usual was raised.

There were international repercussions as well.

When Leuchter attempted to speak at public meetings in Germany and Great Britain, he was detained and arrested. Held under "investigative detention" in Germany for several weeks,[9] he and his wife were also harassed and detained in Great Britain in an attempt to deprive him of his right to speak his opinion relative to homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Unable to bear the public humiliation and notoriety any longer, Leuchter’s wife Carolyn, despondent and ill, subsequently filed for divorce and left him.

To Leuchter’s utter consternation, he discovered that legislation had been introduced that was specifically designed to put him out of business for good in the State of Massachusetts. The primary individual responsible for the legislation, Eric Redock, appeared on television as a representative of Amnesty International, and used the occasion to launch an attack upon Fred Leuchter, avowing that it was his intention as well as of those whom he represents, to “put Fred Leuchter out of business.”[10]

In perhaps the most devious development connected with this sordid affair, Leuchter was invited to appear on Channel 2 Boston, ostensibly to “discuss inadequate execution equipment in use across America.” Thoroughly hoodwinked, Leuchter agreed to appear on the program, having been led to believe that the request was legitimate and innocuous, only to be confronted on the air at the last moment with Shelly Shapiro and Beate Klarsfeld, who proceeded to smear Mr. Leuchter as a “Nazi.” Leuchter was not given an opportunity to reply to his detractors.

Shortly after this televised episode, Leuchter was contacted by the Engineering Board of the State of Massachusetts following a formal complaint filed by Shelly Shapiro’s Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice, organization. Details of the complaint were withheld from Leuchter until such time as the matter was resolved in court, but the board added ominously that Leuchter would have to cease practicing his profession in the State of Massachusetts or face criminal charges.

Leuchter appeared in court and attempted to have the complaint thrown out as malicious prosecution, but when the clerk received word that the complaint had been filed by the Holocaust Survivors and Friends of Justice organization, the matter was handed over to a judge. Ultimately, Leuchter was legally proscribed from ever practicing his profession in the State of Massachusetts, where he resides.

In the meanwhile, Leuchter continued to suffer a devastating loss of business throughout the United States, as contracts were broken under various pretexts.

Ed Carnes, former assistant Attorney General for the State of Alabama, generated a memorandum which he sent to all capital-punishment states warning that Leuchter was dangerous and should not be dealt with because he held “unorthodox’ views on executions. Carnes portrayed Leuchter as an avaricious con-man. Since Leuchter’s views on executions in the United States were widely known to be humane, it only seems reasonable to suggest that Carnes could only have been alluding to Leuchter’s “unorthodox” views regarding the alleged executions at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In Illinois, Representative Ellis Levin (D), Chicago, averred that to allow Leuchter to continue working for the state “would be an affront to the Jewish community.”[11] Mr. Levin failed to explain the correlation between the Jewish community and the execution of condemned criminals in America or how Leuchter’s recognized expertise in this field should negatively impact the Jewish community. In fact, Leuchter later posited that their interference in his right to pursue his profession resulted in a number of botched executions due to antiquated execution machinery.

The Chicago Sun-Times newspaper chimed in with the rising criticism directed at Mr. Leuchter and remarked that “the state [of Illinois] cut its ties with him over statements that Nazi gas chambers, including those at Auschwitz, could not have been used for executing Jews.”[12]

Chi niente sa, di niente dubita. (Who knows nothing, doubts nothing -Ed.)

They too, failed to provide a convincing explanation as to why Leuchter’s published conclusions with respect to Auschwitz were erroneous or somehow disqualify him from practicing his profession in the United States.

The general consensus of the media seemed to be: Never mind whether The Leuchter Report is accurate; he wrote it, therefore he must be punished.

Such reactions to The Leuchter Report underscore the irrational nature of the attack upon its author. Instead of focusing attention upon the technological and scientific evidence contained in the report, hostile critics pressed for their pound of flesh; as if it were better that no Jews at all had survived the Holocaust, - evincing an incomprehensible desire to seek or perpetuate a belief that millions perished even if they didn’t.

Accentuating their role in the ruination of Leuchter’s career, the Klarsfeld Foundation and the Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice organization subsequently published a book entitled, Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial: The End of the Leuchter Report.[13]

The title was pretentious and absurd, and focused far too much energy in attempting to personally discredit the man responsible for writing it by means of character assassination. Beate Klarsfeld, in her self-appointed role as Censor deputatus, perhaps best summed up the intention which prompted the publication when she remarked that Leuchter “has to understand that in denying the Holocaust, he cannot remain unpunished.”[14]
Leuchter Becomes “Mr. Death”

In 1998, Fred Leuchter was contacted by film director Errol Morris, who expressed his interest in filming his story, allowing Leuchter an opportunity to respond to his detractors, which he did in the following terms:


“Of course I'm not an anti-Semite. I have a lot of friends that are Jewish. I've lost Jewish friends, too, because of what's happened. I bear no ill will to any Jews any place, whether they're in the United States or abroad. I bear a great deal of ill will to those people that have come after me, those people who have persecuted and prosecuted me, but that's got nothing to do with them being Jewish. That only has to do with the fact that they've been interfering with my right to live, think, breathe, and earn a living.... They've expressed their unquestioned intent of destroying me simply because I testified in Canada, not because I have any other affiliation with any anti-Semitic organization, not because I'm affiliated with any Nazi or neo-Nazi organization.”

When, toward the end of the film, Morris asks Leuchter, "Have you ever thought that you might be wrong, or do you think that you could make a mistake,?" Leuchter replies:


“No, I'm past that. When I attempted to turn those facilities into gas execution facilities and was unable to, I made a decision at that point that I wasn't wrong. And perhaps that's why I did it. At least it cleared my mind, so I know that I left no stone unturned. I did everything possible to substantiate and prove the existence of the gas chambers, and I was unable to.”

Morris was later accused of re-editing the film after it received positive reviews at the Sundance Film Festival. In a review of the film, Greg Raven of the Institute for Historical Review, wrote:


“Leuchter comes across just as straightforward and guileless on film as he is in real life. As a result, some viewers of earlier versions at the Sundance Festival, the Toronto Film Festival and Harvard University began to question the Holocaust extermination stories they'd been told, while others suspected that Morris himself might have been converted to Holocaust revisionism. At the eleventh hour, Morris re-edited the film in an effort to emphasize his anti-revisionist point of view. Character assassination aside, the question remains as to whether or not Leuchter's findings regarding the alleged Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau are correct.” [15]

In a terse critique of Morris’s film, Robert Faurisson commented:


“Fred Leuchter is described in words as a sort of technician of death administered in four ways: electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, and gassing. But while Morris takes care to illustrate the first three methods of execution with numerous images, he carefully avoids showing even one image of an American penitentiary gas chamber. And he is right to do so, for the mere representation of the imposing door of such a chamber would…be enough to let the attentive viewer grasp that the putting to death of one man by gassing with hydrocyanic acid calls for extensive safety measures and a highly sophisticated technique.”[16]

The orchestrated campaign to destroy Fred Leuchter was successful.

Libeled, slandered, deprived of his livelihood, his marriage in shambles, the man who was recognized as the foremost American expert on the design and functioning of gas chambers and execution hardware used in the United States; the man confirmed by the warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary, who testified under oath that he had consulted with Leuchter in the design, maintenance and operation of the Missouri gas chamber; the man who “ to the best of his knowledge, was the only such consultant in the United States… …now works as a bus driver.

Bowed, but not broken, Fred Leuchter remains optimistically confident that The Leuchter Report will stand the test of time and that truth will ultimately prevail. In the words of Fred Leuchter,


“I have been vilified by the caretakers of the Holocaust dogma whose desperate tactics prove the failure of their arguments. My livelihood has been destroyed, my character has been impugned and my life turned upside down. But I will not bend the knee. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Time and reason will vindicate The Leuchter Report.”[17]


Notes:
[1] "Arsonists Devastate Revisionist Publisher: Thoughtcrime 07/04/84." Online: node/307 See also the IHR Newsletter October 1984, No. 28.
[2] Barbara Kulaszka, Did Six Million Really Die? – Report of the Evidence in the Canadian “False News” Trial of Ernst Zündel– 1988, (Toronto: Samisdat Pub. Ltd., 1992), p. 502.
[3] Greg Raven, “Flawed Documentary of Execution Expert,” Journal of Historical Review Vol. 18, No. 5/6, September/December 1999, p. 63. Online: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n5p62_Raven.html
[4] Mark Weber, “Probing Look at Capital Punishment Industry Affirms Expertise of Auschwitz Investigator Leuchter,” Journal of Historical Review Vol. 17, No. 2, March / April 1998, pp. 34ff. See also, Stephen Trombley, The Execution Protocol: Inside America's Capital Punishment Industry, (New York: Anchor Books, 1992).
[5] The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Feb. 12, 1985, p. M3.
[6] Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., “Is there Life after Persecution? – The Botched Execution of Fred Leuchter,” presented at the eleventh IHR Conference, 1992. Journal of Historical Review Vol. 12, No. 4, Winter, 1992-93, pp. 429-444. Online: http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/12/4/Leuchter429-444.html
[7] Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., “Witch Hunt in Boston,” Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, Winter 1990-91, pp. 453-460. Online: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p453_Leuchter.html
[8] “Germans Want to Try Leuchter - If He Would Only Let Them, ” The Week in Germany, 23 September 1994. Online: http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Leuchter/WeekinGermany230994.html
[9] Leuchter, “Is There Life after Persecution?,” op cit., pp. 430-33.
[10] Leuchter, “Witch Hunt in Boston,” op.cit., p. 74.
[11] Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, August 17, 1990.
[12] Mark Weber, “Fred Leuchter: Courageous Defender of the Truth,” Journal of Historical Review Vol. 12, No. 4, Winter, 1992-93, p. 423. Online: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p421_Weber.html
[13] Shelly Shapiro, ed., Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial: The End of the Leuchter Report, (New York: The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, and Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice, 1990), p. 11.
[14] Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch, Detroit Jewish News, March 1, 1991.
[15] Greg Raven, op. cit..
[16] Robert Faurisson, “Mr. Death,” Letters to the Editor, Journal for Historical Review Vol. 19, No. 6, November/ December 2000, p. 55.
[17] Mark Weber “Courageous Defender of Historical Truth,” op. cit., p. 428.

Joseph Bellringer - Quo Vadis, Revisionism?

The late Joseph Bellinger had intended the current article to be a chapter in a book that remained unpublished at the time of his death, The Prohibition of “Holocaust Denial.” — Ed.[1]

Over the past twenty-five years, throughout much of the western world, historical revisionism has sustained ever-harsher assaults on freedom of conscience and expression aimed directly at it. Explicitly anti-Holocaust-denial criminal statutes impose the consequences: question the Holocaust, go to jail. Unrepentant revisionists convicted under these oppressive laws can expect to serve lengthy sentences and appeals in most cases are routinely denied.

As of October 2008, fourteen countries had enacted laws either specifically prohibiting and punishing “Holocaust denial” or expressions of “racism.” These countries are Israel, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Spain, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Penalties range from the draconian 20 years in Austria (in “severe” cases) to up to one year under Belgium’s “Law against Racism.” Moreover, courts have ordered the public display of the verdict and its publication in one or more newspapers at the expense of the offender, and/or the forfeiture of the offender’s civil rights for up to 5 years.

In Austria, if the offense is considered to be a minor infringement, a specified administrative fine is applicable.

In the Czech Republic, denial of communist genocides and crimes against humanity are equally punishable under Article 261a, Penal Code. Poland’s Article 55 Law of the Institute of National Remembrance is similar to that of the Czech Republic and concerns National Socialist or communist crimes perpetrated between September 1, 1939 and December 31, 1989 against Poles or Polish citizens.

Denmark’s “Anti-Racism” law is not applied to “Holocaust denial” cases, while in the Netherlands, cases relative to “Holocaust denial” are routinely applied by the courts under Articles 137c and 137e of the Penal Code.

In Luxembourg the court may order the forfeiture of the convict’s civil rights and a ban on all teaching activities, for 5 to 10 years.
Holocaust Heresy

On November 1, 2000, French historian and sociologist Serge Thion, fifty-eight years of age and father of three was summarily dismissed from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique [CNRS] without salary or severance pay as a result of his scholarly revisionist writings.

Five days later, the University of Lyons II instituted dismissal proceedings against revisionist scholar and publisher Jean Plantin to revoke his advanced studies degree. The final decision in the matter was left to France’s Jewish Education Minister, Jack Lang. Lang also happens to be a major figure in the French Socialist Party. The University shamelessly joined in the fray and announced that they hoped to strip Plantin of his master’s degree.

Similarly, in 2000, Jean-Louis Berger, 53, a French literature instructor at Lemberg High school in eastern France, was sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment and a fine of $20,000 for merely telling his class of 15-year-olds “Concentration camps were in fact labor camps. Gas chambers were used only to kill lice. There were no six million dead in the camps but only one million.”

Berger’s defense was that he had spoken as a “free man.” The fact that he had innocently attended a revisionist meeting in Paris earlier that year was used as a basis to secure conviction, and proves that the government went to great lengths to spy on him. The proceeds from his fine were doled out to the voracious LICRA and the family of one of his students who complained.[2]

Heeding perhaps the call of sanity, justice and reason in the midst of such madness, Swiss Justice Minister Christoph Blocher announced his determination on October 6, 2006 to revise Switzerland’s anti-racism law. “I want people to be able to express themselves in Switzerland,” the minister stated, “even if their opinion doesn’t appeal to everyone.”[3]

During the course of a recent visit to Turkey, the justice minister had remarked that the 1994 anti-racism law, including sections aimed at squelching revisionist opinions, “gave him a headache.” The minister’s avowed intention unleashed a torrent of adverse criticism, prompting Pascal Couchepin, Swiss Minister of the Interior, to remark that the minister’s comments were “unacceptable.” Couchepin offered no intelligent reasons in support of that opinion.

The enlightened Swiss minister enunciated his profound belief that freedom of expression is more important than protecting the sensibilities of hostile minority groups, and that Swiss law should serve as a beacon to other nations. The minister said, “I do not want that an opinion cannot be uttered only because someone will be offended by it,” and added that the definition of genocide is a question which must be decided by historians.[4]

Nevertheless, opposition to such enlightened views is becoming increasingly more apparent, even in Switzerland, and to date no resolution has yet been adopted by either the Swiss parliament or via referendum that would repeal or revise the oppressive law.

Similarly, in Hungary Ibolya David, Hungary’s Justice Minister, rejected a proposal from the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities in May 2001 for a law that would make Holocaust denial illegal. “Such a law would be unconstitutional,” the minister stated, basing her decision on “numerous professional opinions” within the Justice Ministry.[5]

Nevertheless, the Jewish community vowed to press the matter further.

The voice of sanity reigned again in Denmark, when on July 15, 2002 the Socialist People’s Party MP, Pernille Frahm, refused to acquiesce in a law outlawing Holocaust denial throughout the European Union, commenting that “One should be very careful about outlawing political matters that have nothing to do with racism.”[6]

The proposed European Union law against Holocaust denial was based upon the following criteria:


Offenses concerning racism and xenophobia.

Public incitement to violence or hatred for a racist or xenophobic purpose or to any other racist or xenophobic behavior which may cause substantial damage to individuals or groups concerned;

Public insults or threats towards individuals or groups for a racist or xenophobic purpose;

Public condoning for a racist or xenophobic purpose of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal court;

Public denial or trivialization of the crimes defined in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal appended to the London Agreement of 8 April 1945 in a manner liable to disturb the public peace;

Public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material containing expressions of racism and xenophobia;

Directing, supporting of, or participating in the activities of a racist or xenophobic group, with the intention of contributing to the organization’s criminal activities.

In January 2000, British Home Office Minister Michael O’Brien informed reporters that the British government rejected plans to enact Holocaust denial legislation supported by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Jewish groups reacted with dismay and dissatisfaction, complaining that the country’s “anti-racism” laws failed to result in a sufficient number of prosecutions and convictions.[7]

Operating on the dictum that the “squeaky wheel gets the grease,” a number of Jewish organizations have repeatedly urged and subsequently applauded the successful suppression and prosecution of “deniers.”

Deborah Lipstadt, who was hired to teach Holocaust history at the Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University closely affiliated with the Vatican, candidly wrote, “David Irving’s arrest and three-year jail sentence for having denied the Holocaust has been met with a chorus of cheers in the Jewish community.”[8]

Deborah Lipstadt was right. Jewish organizations do generally applaud the prosecution of people who express dissident opinions concerning the Holocaust. For example, Shimon Samuels, the international relations director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, expressed his satisfaction that the rising prosecutions of revisionists were part of an overall trend in Europe to try and atone for the Holocaust.

Shimon’s approbation, however, hardly addresses the issue of how the prosecution of “deniers” offers effective atonement for what did or did not occur during the Holocaust. Shimon stressed the point of view that “Unlike in America, there is not much difference in Europe between hate speech and hate crime. And there seems to be a new willingness to use those laws when it comes to Holocaust denial.”[9]

A heretic of an earlier time, Galileo Galilei was forced by the Inquisition in 1633 to retract his belief that the Earth moves around the Sun – or face a sentence of death.
Source: Ottavio Leoni [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
International Thought Crime

Israel may have assumed the lead in enacting Holocaust denial legislation when the nation enacted a “Global Holocaust Deniers” bill in the Knesset on July 20, 2004. This unprecedented law outlawed “Holocaust denial” even if committed overseas or outside of Israeli territory and was passed by unanimous vote. In theory, the law would enable the state of Israel to demand the extradition of any individual overseas for “Holocaust denial.”

The bill was drafted by Knesset member Aryeh Eldad of the National Union party as a counterthrust against former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas for a doctoral dissertation he had authored twenty years prior in which he estimated that less than one million Jews had perished at the hands of the Nazis.[10]

In effect, the bill provides for any Holocaust denier to be prosecuted in Israel. Eldad has reasoned, “What I want is that if a Holocaust denier publishes a book in England, he will be considered a criminal in Israel.” Apparently there will be no amnesty for such deniers even if they should change their opinions. “Once a denier, always a denier.”[11]

Justice Minister Tommy Lapid seconded that denying the Holocaust “is a neo-Nazi crime. Anyone involved in this belongs to the group of criminals whom our arm must reach anywhere in the world…We will not hunt them, but they should know that they are on our list of criminals. I am very satisfied and happy that this will be entering our law books.”[12]

French National Front leader Bruno Gollnisch, who serves as a professor of Japanese civilization and Japanese law at Lyons University III, faced similar travails as Jean Le Pen when he remarked that the existence of Nazi gas chambers was a matter of legitimate debate for historians. Gollnisch stated, “There isn’t a serious historian around who totally sticks by the conclusions of the Nuremberg Trials. I’m not questioning the existence of concentration camps, but on the number of deaths, historians can discuss it. As to whether gas chambers existed, that’s up to the historians to determine.”[13]

The Jewish Press reported that the simple remarks “could see Gollnisch removed from his post as a professor at the University of Lyon III, while the European Parliament could sanction Gollnisch, who is also a member of the legislative body.”

The article went on to report that the University “provided shelter for a far-right kernel,” of academics among its staff, apparently supporting the notion that left or far-left academics are the only people who should be employed at universities.

Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary-general of the European Jewish Congress, opined that Gollnisch’s comments proved that “this man, who calls himself a scholar, is totally ignorant of history,” alleging without proof that Gollnisch’s comments were “not academic, but politically and ideologically based.”[14]

Joining the campaign to stifle Gollnisch, the Paris-based International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, [LICRA] demanded that the European Parliament take action against Gollnisch. In a letter to Josep Borrell, parliament president, LICRA President Patrick Graubert urged the parliament to enforce sanctions against Gollnisch “for his revisionist comments which place in doubt the historical veracity of the existence of the gas chambers.”[15]

Borrell hardly needed encouragement, and quickly joined in with the chorus of those demanding Gollnicsh be held legally liable for his statements. Borrell grunted, “I hope you will be held accountable for your slanders by the courts.”[16]

In 1991, Gollnisch had already aroused the ire of the left when he publicly called for “respect for freedom of expression for educators who exercise a critical perspective towards the history of the Second World War.”[17]

The so-called “far-right-harboring University of Lyons III” took pains to distance itself from Gollnisch’s remarks and called upon France’s minister of education to initiate disciplinary proceedings.

Upon being informed of these facts, Gollnisch commented, “I don’t know if I am going to be chased out of my chair in Japanese civilization and law or even put in prison for this phrase, but I assume responsibility for it.” Gollnisch adamantly refused to issue an apology for his statements and criticized the “thought police and the considerable interests who want to prevent this debate,” adding that “It was in the interests of the State of Israel to have endless discussions about reparations.”[18]
Genocide Envy

A recent trend has emerged in which various ethnic groups seek equal status and recognition under laws prohibiting the denial of genocide. Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) registered their displeasure over such attempts based upon their belief that such recognition will “diminish the uniqueness of the Holocaust.”

A controversy was ignited in the United States in August 2007 when the ADL voiced its opposition to a Congressional resolution put forward by Representative Adam Schiff of California to officially recognize the Armenian genocide. The ADL had consistently lobbied against adoption of the resolution.

Abraham Foxman, then director of the ADL, referred to the resolution as "counterproductive" and expressed concerns as to the possible negative effect the legislation would have on Jews living in Turkey.[19]

Rather ironically, leading representatives of the Armenian community in Boston accused the ADL of “genocide denial.”[20] Armenian National Committee representative Grace Kehetian Kulegian lambasted the ADL for preaching “tolerance” while practicing “divisiveness and denial.”[21]

John Walsh, a commentator for Counterpunch Magazine, was even more explicit in his criticisms of the ADL and its controversial director, writing that


…the ADL has long denied that the Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923 amounted to genocide. Turkey is of course an ally and arms purchaser of Israel's, but the denial antedates this alliance. A good friend of mine, an Israeli expatriate, tells me that when he went to school in Israel, mention of the Armenian genocide was verboten so as not to detract from the "uniqueness" of the Jewish genocide under the Nazis and to maintain a "monopoly on suffering," as he puts it. Shoah business does not like the competition.[22]

In an effort to defuse the situation and maintain cordial relations with Turkey, the Israeli embassy in Ankara proffered that the Jewish state acknowledges the "horrible events" and the "terrible suffering" the Armenians endured, but urged Jews not to take sides.[23]

Israeli President Shimon Peres phoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to assure him of Israel’s desire to maintain close bilateral ties.

Within days, Mr. Foxman and the ADL reconsidered their position and called upon the mediation of Elie Wiesel to smooth over the dispute. According to John Walsh,


Upon reflection and with the help of that great humanitarian, Elie Wiesel, who seems to be acting as a kind of Jewish Billy Graham and who has never acknowledged the injustice done the Palestinians, Foxman [now] thinks that it was a genocide after all. (Of course according to their newspaper ad of several days back this means that the national ADL is now abandoning Turkish Jewry to a horrible fate.)[24]

Elie Wiesel had momentarily saved the day.

Nearly a year earlier, on October 12, 2006, France passed the “Armenian Genocide Law” - an act that was strongly denounced by the Turkish government. This legislation now makes it a crime in France to deny that the Ottoman Turks massacred an estimated 1.2 million Armenian Christians during the years 1915-1917.

The five-hundred-thousand-strong Armenian community in France had pressed for the bill. Patrick Devedijian, an Armenian politician in France, appealed to the “Holocaust” to justify the imposition of the law, remarking, “Imagine for a second that Germany today denied the Holocaust. It is totally unacceptable.”[25]

Jewish groups tend to concur with such analogies, since they lend legitimacy to their own position. This fact was not lost on legal minds including Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, who, in unison with Massachusetts State Representative Rachel Kaprielian, used the controversy as a opportunity to buttress the foundations of “the Holocaust Industry.” Dershowitz and Kaprielian wrote,


For any organization or official to believe that there are differing sides to the Armenian Genocide is as much an outrage as it would be for Germany to say that the work of Jewish scholars, witnesses, and victim testimonies represented merely the 'Jewish side' of the Holocaust.[26]

In a rather amazing admission, Jonathan Sarna, a professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University, proclaimed, “There’s a huge irony here. The Armenian community is using all the strategies we invented to deal with Holocaust denial.”[27]

Highly critical of the passage of this new law was Timothy Garton Ash of the Guardian, who wrote,


What a magnificent blow for truth, justice and humanity the French national assembly has struck…Vive la France! But let this be only a beginning in a brave new chapter of European history. Let the British parliament now make it a crime to deny that it was Russians who murdered Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. Let the Turkish parliament make it a crime to deny that France used torture against insurgents in Algeria… No one can legislate historical truth. In so far as historical truth can be established at all, it must be found by unfettered historical research, with historians arguing over the evidence and the facts, testing and disputing each other’s claims, without fear of prosecution or persecution.

Far from creating new legally enforced taboos about history, national identity and religion, we should be dismantling those that still remain on our statute books. Those European countries that have them should repeal not only their blasphemy laws but also their laws on Holocaust denial. Otherwise the charge of double standards is impossible to refute. What’s sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander.[28]

Ash was likewise critical of French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levi, whom he charged with having gone “through some impressive intellectual contortions to explain why he opposed any laws restricting criticism of religion but supported those on Holocaust denial. It was one thing, he argued, to question a religious belief, quite another to deny a historical fact. But this won’t wash. Historical facts are established precisely by their being disputed and tested against the evidence. Without the process of contention – up to and including the revisionist extreme of outright denial – we would never discover which facts are truly hard…Only when we are prepared to allow our own most sacred cows to be poked in the eye can we credibly demand that Islamists, Turks and others do the same. This is a time not for erecting taboos but for dismantling them. We must practice what we preach.”[29]

Ironically, some European nations today practice and preach a message radically different from Mr. Ash’s enlightened point of view. Few countries evince more energy in prosecuting “deniers” than France. Sadly, today’s France is no longer the France of Voltaire, who famously wrote:


One man cannot say to another: ‘Believe what I believe, and what you can not believe, or you shall perish…Believe, or I detest thee; believe or I shall do thee all the harm I can…Monster, you do not share my beliefs, you shall be a thing of horror to your neighbors, your city, and your province.’[30]
Limiting Free Speech

The number of prominent individuals prosecuted for thought crime is steadily increasing. On January 3, 2006, Georges Theil, 65 years old and a former elected official from the British National Front, was found guilty of “Crimes against humanity for denying the Holocaust,” (!) under the Fabius-Gayssot Act of July 13, 1990. Theil had dared to publicly question the existence and operation of Nazi gas chambers when, during the course of a television program, he referred to Nazi gas chambers as “a fantasy.” Theil was subsequently sentenced to six months' imprisonment without parole, saddled with the substantial costs of publishing the verdict in two newspapers, and ordered to pay a $12,000 fine along with a remittance of $4,800 to each of the eleven plaintiffs who lodged a complaint against him. An additional remittance of $4,800 to each of the plaintiffs to recover their court costs, and a payment of €90 to cover procedural fees was also imposed by the court.[31]

In July 2006, Robert Faurisson stood trial for comments he made on Iranian television early in 2005. Judgment was rendered three months later, when Faurisson was sentenced to three months’ suspended imprisonment and ordered to pay a fine of €7500. In addition he was ordered to pay €1 in damages and €1500 in legal expenses to each of the three organizations that brought charges against him. Such organizations routinely abuse the justice system by filing harassing lawsuits designed to exhaust and financially cripple their perceived opponents.

Arguments advanced in support of enacting Holocaust denial laws are invariably weak and unconvincing. For example, Robert A. Kahn, author of the book Holocaust Denial and the Law: A Comparative Study, advanced the following arguments in defense of Holocaust denial laws, proclaiming that even in the United States, “freedom of speech is not unlimited.” According to Kahn:


One of the most important restrictions on speech applies to what the Supreme Court refers to as “true threats.” This category includes acts such as threatening the life of the president, as well as burning a cross with intent to intimidate another.

Kahn argues that “both of these policies are relevant to the Holocaust denial context.” Seeking to provide a rational argument for Germany’s rigid prosecution of “deniers,” he writes,


Just as Americans view a threat on the president’s life as a serious national security matter, Germans view Holocaust denial as a veiled attempt to rehabilitate the Nazis, a serious concern given the country’s past. This is why Germans ban not only Holocaust denial but also the swastika, the Nazi salute and the singing of the first verse of ‘Deutschland über alles.’

Kahn’s argument is poorly reasoned and emotive, for Germany’s national anthem dates back to 1841 and was not adopted as the anthem of the NSDAP.[32]

Kahn asserts that nations are sensitive about “speech that denies crimes committed in its name,” but the crimes of the Zionist government are blatantly omitted from Kahn’s thesis, and one is tempted to suspect that Kahn may very well “deny” them.

Specifically referring to “deniers,” Kahn claims that revisionist arguments and scientific evidence are “insulting to groups,” yet the purpose of historical inquiry is not based upon concerning itself with people’s feelings and sensitivities, but what can be historically and scientifically documented and proved. The psychiatrist’s couch remains the best venue for addressing people’s feelings and emotional hurts.

Kahn proclaims “when the Germans or French (Kahn omits all mention of Israel) decide to ban Holocaust denial, they do so in the context of a history of restricting speech that insults groups. This tradition stretches back to the early 20th century when it was illegal to insult the military, judges and large property owners.”

Kahn raises issues that contradict each other and are ultimately irrelevant. By the same token, one may also argue that it constitutes a grievous insult to the German people and their descendants if they are wrongfully accused of heinous crimes, which they in fact never committed or approved of. Thus, Kahn’s points may be argued either way.

Kahn cites the case of Beauharnais v. Illinois [1952] as proof that the United States Supreme Court held that group-libel laws were constitutional. The case in question was a rather late decision of the Supreme Court in 1952 under Felix Frankfurter.

The Court upheld an Illinois law making it illegal to publish or exhibit any writing or picture portraying the "depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed or religion." In rendering his opinion, Frankfurter argued that the speech conducted by the defendant breached libel, which he reasoned to be outside the protection of the 1st and 14th Amendments.

However, Kahn fails to supply the evidence in support of the suggestion that revisionists are willfully libeling anyone. Moreover, the criterion obviously does not apply to revisionist historians and application of the law would appear to be one-sided, as revisionists are libeled, smeared and lumped in the same group as “anti-Semites” or “hate mongers,” and no one protests in their defense. Thus, it may be argued that revisionists are denied equal standing under the law.

Kahn appears to be more concerned with the “symbolic” or deterrent or psychological effect Holocaust denial laws may have in dissuading prospective revisionists from publicly airing their views. Thus, the objective in such a case would serve to intimidate individuals from freely expressing their opinions because they are objectionable to specific parties.

In fact, Kahn applauds the Soviet-style show trials and the rough justice directed against revisionists in Europe, and lauds the news blackout with respect to the trials.

One is also struck by the author’s repeated polemical attacks upon the “right wing.” By way of contrast, one will search in vain for any similar criticism of the left. This leaves the reader with the impression that a social stigma ought to be attached to right-wing ideologues. Thus, one can easily arrive at the distinct conclusion that the right wing is being singled out as a criminal enterprise or conspiracy against the rest of mankind. Such absolutes nearly always constitute an imminent danger to our basic human rights and civil liberties in general.

Kahn triumphantly proclaims that “Holocaust denial laws” are a “signal that society has taken a stand against hate” and “does not depend on imprisoning deniers.”

Yet, if Holocaust denial laws do not “depend on imprisoning deniers,” Kahn must explain why so many individuals are languishing behind bars throughout Europe for precisely that reason. Even granting the possibility that Kahn is correct, what practical difference does it make whether the accused are imprisoned, calumniated, slandered, libeled, mischaracterized and dehumanized? All characterizations inevitably lead to the same inevitable denouement: contempt for the offender and ostracism from mainstream society.

Kahn wisely sidesteps the issue of whether the United States ought to adopt laws proscribing Holocaust denial, but it is clear that he has no solid objections to upholding the status quo in those countries that do.[33]

In fact, the media frequently and irresponsibly refers to historical revisionists as “neo-Nazis.” On September 9, 2003, a Belgian court convicted Siegfried Verbeke of minimizing the Holocaust after distributing pamphlets. Stripped of his civil rights for 10 years and sentenced to one-year suspended prison term, Verbeke, a 63-year-old Belgian of German extraction, remained unrepentant and confirmed to the press that he stuck “one hundred percent” to his views. “Three centuries ago people were burned at the stake, so a one year prison sentence is not that bad,” he asserted.

The Belgian court asserted that Verbeke had shown no respect for the victims of the Nazi extermination of six million European Jews.

Attorney Paul Quirijnen, an attorney representing Belgium’s official “anti-racism” center, which had instituted proceedings against Verbeke under a law banning Holocaust denial, grumbled, “There is a limit, which I call tolerance,” adding that “the historical truth” could not be denied.[34]

Yet, if the Holocaust believed in by Paul Quirijinen is ‘the truth,” why does it require punitive laws to compel belief? What historical ‘truth’ is so sacred that it cannot ever be called into question or revised? What sort of “truth” necessitates harsh punishments in cases of non-compliance?

Ernst Zündel’s appeal was rejected by the German Federal Court in Mannheim on September 12, 2007. The appeals court upheld trial judge Ulrich Meinerzhagen, who in rendering his judgment declared, “It is of absolutely no relevance whether the Holocaust happened or not. Denying it is a punishable offense. That is the only thing that matters to the court.”

In the fallout following the Zündel trial, the Mannheim state attorney’s office filed charges against Zündel’s defense team, notably Juergen Rieger and Sylvia Stoltz for “incitement of the masses.” According to a statement issued by the prosecutor’s office, Zündel’s attorneys repeatedly disputed and played down the alleged genocide of Jews in World War Two. The state attorney’s office is seeking their disbarment.

In April 2007, after six years of discussion and negotiations, the European Union approved criminal measures against “Holocaust denial.” Representatives from the 27-nation bloc agreed to impose jail sentences upon those who deny or trivialize the Holocaust.

The controversial proposal calls for the courts to impose a sentence of three years’ imprisonment for those who “deny genocide.”

Supporters of the legislation proclaimed that the rules would “aim to penalize anyone who incited to hatred or violence, and anyone who publicly condoned, denied or grossly trivialized crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

Naturally revisionists of other histories are exempt from the list of those who might be exposed to public hatred and contempt. When a number of Baltic nations demanded that those who denied major Soviet atrocities should be included on the list, their proposal was rejected. Thus the alleged genocide of the Jews during the Second World War is the only genocide referred to under the new rules, which will still require the ratification of national parliaments as well as the European Parliament.”[35]

In Australia, revisionist Frederick Töben, director of the Adelaide Foundation, faced troubles of a legal nature after being denounced by Jeremy Jones, the former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Newspapers gloated that Töben was unable to find a lawyer to defend him against allegations that he has “raised serious doubt about the Holocaust.”[36]

During the course of a night hearing, Jones importuned the Federal Court to jail Dr. Töben for allegedly breaching a four-year-old court order because his website suggested “it is unlikely that there were homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz.”[37]

Dr. Töben had previously spent seven months in a German prison in 1999 on a bogus charge of “inciting racism.”

Dr. Töben had served as one of the keynote speakers at the so-called “Holocaust denial” conference hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran in 2006.

On its website, the United States White House issued a statement condemning the conference:


The United States condemns the conference on the Holocaust convoked by the Iranian regime on Monday in Tehran. While people around the world mark International Human Rights Week and renew the solemn pledges of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was drafted in the wake of the atrocities of World War II, the Iranian regime perversely seeks to call the historical fact of those atrocities into question and provide a platform for hatred. The gathering of Holocaust deniers in Tehran is an affront to the entire civilized world, as well as to the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and mutual respect. The United States will continue to support those in Iran and elsewhere who seek to promote human rights and dignity, and will stand with them in their efforts to overcome oppression, injustice, and tyranny.[38]

The White House’s platitudinous statement betrayed a smugness and air of moral superiority vis-á-vis hypocritical references to “tolerance, mutual respect” and “human rights and dignity” while seeking to deny these rights to the attendees of the conference.

Neither does the White House statement nor the sentiments expressed therein accord with the disgraceful manner in which the President of Iran was treated during his recent visit to Columbia University, where he was characterized by University President Lee Bollinger as a “petty and cruel dictator,”…brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”[39]

In response to these gibes, the Iranian President stated,


In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment and don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty.[40]

The subject of the Holocaust was naturally raised by Bollinger, who remarked,


…you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers. For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda. This makes you, quite simply, ridiculous.

Bollinger’s comments imply that “dangerous propaganda,” in the form of “Holocaust heresy,” ought to be suppressed and President Ahmadinejad receive public censure for upholding the democratic principle whereby all people should be allowed an opportunity to freely express their opinions without fear of retribution by the government.

Particularly discomfiting to critics of the Tehran Conference was the fact that a number of Orthodox Jews also participated at the function. Austrian Rabbi Moishe Ayra Friedman used the occasion to lament the fact that the Holocaust was being used to legitimize the suffering of other peoples and that he wanted to break the taboo on discussing it. The enlightened Rabbi remarked that the main thing “was not Jewish suffering in the past but the use of the Holocaust as a “tool of commercial, military and media power.”[41]

The spirit of intolerance that today characterizes much of Europe has seeped by steady increments into mainstream academic institutions in the United States. For example, DePaul University recently said “Sayonara, Professor” to Norman Finkelstein, the controversial author of The Holocaust Industry and a consistent critic of Zionist policies.

In an astounding statement loaded with irony and hypocrisy, Dean Chuck Suchar attempted to justify Finkelstein’s dismissal on grounds that his teachings conflict with “Depaul’s Vincentian Values,” which include respect for the opinions of others…![42]

Finkelstein, who is Jewish, has long criticized the way Jews have handled the Holocaust and has called leaders of American-Jewish groups "Holocaust mongers." His views led the university to cancel Finkelstein's only course, "Equality in Social Justice," a week before fall classes began. According to the Chicago Tribune, Dean Chuck Suchar found Finkelstein's teachings to be conflicting with "DePaul's Vincentian Values" which include respect for the opinions of others—leading us to wonder why the university doesn't respect his.[43]

Another flagrant example of intolerance occurred at Georgetown University in 2007, when Bruce Leichty, an immigration lawyer who has defended Ernst Zündel, was escorted off campus by security guards for passing out leaflets to members of the German Lawyers Association.[44]

A thought-provoking article penned by Gerard Alexander, a scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, identified a specific methodology at work in Europe, which he perceived as the “greatest erosion of democratic practice in the world’s advanced democracies since 1945.”[45]

Citing three disturbing trends used to stifle free speech, Alexander notes that archaic anti-Nazi laws are being adopted in nations where no threat of Nazism is present. Moreover, cleverly formulated laws provide provisions to sanction any speech determined by the powers that be to “incite hatred” against groups based upon religion, race or ethnicity. Third, the laws themselves are interpreted “so loosely that they chill not just extremist views but mainstream ones too.”[46]

Alexander underscores the fact that since 1945, the extremely marginalized right wing has never posed any serious threat to Germany or Austria, and has never garnered more than five percent of the popular vote in regional elections.

Nevertheless, anti-Nazi legislation in Germany and Austria has dramatically increased— a fact that Alexander describes as “unfortunate,” because “anti-Nazi laws gradually expanded to cover other historical events.”

Alexander cites the case of the eminent Princeton historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, who was asked in an interview with Le Monde about the mass murder of Armenians in Turkey during World War I. While conceding that terrible massacres had indeed occurred, Lewis questioned whether genocide was really intended as part of a preconceived plan undertaken by the Turkish government.

Lewis’s comments fell foul of France’s controversial genocide laws, which prohibit denial of “crimes against humanity.” Several activist groups filed a formal complaint against Lewis, who was subsequently found guilty of not being “objective enough” in regard to historical events that the European parliament had officially certified as genocide.

Thus, the State arrogates to itself the authority to dictate compulsion of belief on pain of punishment, presuming to dictate to individuals what they may or may not believe on the basis of pre-approved “politically correct” content. Genocide laws are being used as a deterrent to compel historians to parrot the politically correct interpretation of certain historical events or else suffer dire consequences.

Alexander notes with evident alarm that,


…a stream of rules now prohibits the broadcast, including online, of any program or ad that incites ‘hatred based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation’ or – crucially – is offensive to religious or political beliefs.[47]

These rules are frequently employed by governments to disband political parties of which they disapprove.

In the context of modern society, it is no longer the provenance of any Church or religion to punish “blasphemy” and “heresy”; it is now up to the State.

Much of the responsibility for this sordid state of affairs appears to rest with organizations referred to by Alexander as the “antiracism industry,” which would include such organizations as LICRA or MRAP [Movement against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples in France, and the Muslim Union of Italy, which routinely file complaints and suits and often serve as the direct beneficiaries when fines are imposed.

Alexander asserts “the real danger posed by Europe’s speech laws is not so much guilty verdicts, as an insidious chilling of political debate, as people censor themselves in order to avoid legal charges and the stigma and expense they bring.”

Europe’s speech laws are written and applied in ways that leave activists on the political left free to whitewash the crimes of leftist regimes while inciting contempt and hatred against the usual betes noires of the left.

Alexander notes with some degree of concern that “Socialist and extreme-left political parties have played central roles in the design of free speech laws and sends an important signal to the broader culture when Hitler is the symbol of evil while Stalin and Mao are given a pass, and when, in effect, Pat Buchanan’s ideas risk indictment while Michael Moore’s are protected.”[48]

The perceived ultimate targets of such laws are religious bodies, moderates and conservatives, who are with increasing frequency denounced and reviled as “bigoted” and/or “racist.”

In underlining the inherent danger in such laws and policies, Alexander writes,


Laws against any speech that causes “offense” are biased because they have the insidious effect of conflating bigoted speech and constructive criticism, two kinds of speech that should be sharply distinguished from each other. The result is the stigmatization of certain kinds of thinking about social problems and public policy that American conservatives, moderates, and even many liberals recognize as a legitimate part of serious debate. These speech laws will not ultimately silence extremists—whose careers will not end if they are called bigots and who often seek out controversy—but they can silence reasonable people who do not want that label and do not want a scandal.[49]

These laws are in fact the fruits of a deliberately cultivated policy designed to suppress a human being’s most inalienable possession and right: our reason and the right to freely express our opinions without fear of government repression.

Alexander supports the suggestion adopted by Human Rights Watch, which “insists that governments should ban speech only when it ‘constitutes imminent incitement’ to violence and other unlawful acts and urges reform of these laws, including repeal of Holocaust denial laws.”

As laws restricting freedom of speech continue to proliferate, it is only inevitable that a backlash must ensue as enlightened individuals question the authority and disinterestedness of the State, even while recognizing that the true value of a democracy does not lie in extending the right of expression to government-approved opinions but in granting the same right of expression to all citizens – especially those who express unpopular or controversial opinions.

Where is revisionism going? Perhaps this question can best be answered by recalling the case of Galileo Galilei, who was forced by the Inquisition in 1633 to retract his heretical belief that the Earth moves around the Sun – or face a sentence of death. On the occasion of his recantation, Galileo is said to have muttered the words, “Eppur si muove!”

In a similar manner, revisionists, the heretics of our modern age, may recite in unison with the spirit of Galileo,

“Still, it moves.”



Notes:
[1] Latin: "Where are you going?" A well-known religious usage of this phrase comes from the apocryphal “Acts of Peter.” Peter is fleeing Rome where he faces likely crucifixion. Along the way, he meets a risen Jesus. Peter asks Jesus "Quo vadis?," to which Jesus replies, "Romam vado iterum crucifigi" ("I am going to Rome to be crucified again"). Peter thereby gains the courage to continue his ministry and return to Rome where he is martyred by being crucified upside-down.-Ed.
[2] Jewish Chronicle, June 6, 2000.
[3] “Blocher insists on revised anti-racism law,” Swissinfo, October 6, 2006.
[4] “Swiss Minister wants to legalize Genocide deniers,” European Jewish Press, October 10, 2007.
[5] www.ita.org/story.asp?story=7608
[6] www.cphpost.periskop.dk/default.asp?id=23060
[7] “Holocaust Denial Law Rejected by Home Office,” Forward, January 28, 2000, page 2.
[8] “History-not censorship, is the greatest weapon,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Volume 58, No. 22, February 24, 2006.
[9] “Europe Seen Cracking Down on Holocaust Revisionists,” Marc Perelman, Jewish Forward, New York, November 25, 2005, online: http://forward.com/articles/2320/europe-seen-cracking-down-on-holocaust-revisionist/
[10] “Global Holocaust-deniers bill passed in Knesset,” The Jerusalem Post, Tuesday, July 20, 2004.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] “French Politico: Gas Chambers Debatable,” The Jewish Press, Friday, October 22, 2004.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] “ADL Local Leader Fired on Armenian Issue,” Boston Globe, August 18, 2007.
[20] “Boston Armenians: ADL guilty of genocide denial,” The Jerusalem Post, September 2, 2007.
[21] Ibid.
[22] “Abe Foxman’s Genocidal Denial Road Show,” Counterpunch, August 22, 2007.
[23] “US Jewish Group retracts stance on Armenian Genocide,” European Jewish Press, August 25, 2007.
[24] Op. Cit.: “Abe Foxman’s Genocidal Road Show.”
[25] “US Jewish group retracts stance on Armenian genocide.”
www.english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/85507186-88CE-4653-8EBA=21114E4FCCi.htm
[26] “Under Pressure, ADL admits: Turks’ Armenian Massacre Was Genocide,”Haaretz, August 27, 2007. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896179.html
[27] “Armenian Genocide Debate Exposes Rifts at ADL,” Jewish Daily Forward, August 22, 2007.
[28] “This is the moment for Europe to dismantle taboos, not erect them….Far from criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide, we should decriminalize denial of the Holocaust.,” The Guardian, October 19, 2006.
[29] Op. cit. “This is the moment for Europe to Dismantle Taboos.” The Guardian, October 19, 2006.
[30] Voltaire, “Essay on Tolerance.” Online: http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/90.html
[31] “Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Forward, Jan. 6, 2006, p. 8.
[32] The anthem of the National Socialist Party was the “Horst Wessel Lied.”
[33] Robert A. Kahn, Jewish Week, “Why Europeans Criminalize Holocaust Denial,” March 3, 2006.
[34] Online: www.metroradio.com.hk/news/english/20030909212728.htm
[35] “German Academics: Stop treating Israel as special.” www.jnewswire.com/article/1383
[36] “Holocaust disputer can’t find a lawyer.” www.theaustraliannews.com.au/stiry/0.20867.21072034-5006787.00.html
[37] Ibid.
[38] “Statement on Holocaust Denial Conference Sponsored by Iranian Regime,” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061212.html
[39] “Facing scorn, President of Iran Is Defiant to his Critics,” The New York Times, September 24, 2007.
[40] Ibid.
[41] “Why Are Jews at the Holocaust Denial Conference?,” BBC News, December 16, 2006.
[42] “Editorial – Professor Fired for Controversial Views,” The Pitt News, August 29, 2007.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Bruce Leichty, “Angry Germans Oust Zundel Lawyer from Georgetown Law School Campus.” Online: http://www.zundelsite.org/assets/001404.html
[45] “Illiberal Europe,” American Enterprise Institute. www.Aei.org/publications/pubID.24592/pub_detail.asp
[46] Ibid.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid.

Joseph Bellringer - Criminalizing Conscience

On 20 October 2013, Joseph Bellinger passed away. The current article was intended to be a chapter in a book that remained unpublished at the time of his death, The Prohibition of “Holocaust Denial.” We are currently in the process of editing various chapters from this work to prepare them for publication in future issues of Inconvenient History. — Ed.

In Germany and Austria, Holocaust “denial”[1] and “hate” laws are basically an amplification and extension of Lycurgan Allied occupation policies dating back to 1945, whereby published literature or public behavior deemed to be reminiscent of National Socialist propaganda was prohibited by law, commencing with a ban on all National Socialist symbols and gestures, or distribution of “Nazi propaganda.” Article 86 of the German Criminal Code prohibits dissemination of the propaganda of unconstitutional organizations:


Whoever…distributes, produces for distribution rights within this area, keeps in supply or imports into this area, propaganda:
of a political party which has been held unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court, or of a political party or association, concerning which an unappealable determination has been made that it is a substitute organization of such a political party, or
of an association which has been unappealably prohibited because its activities are directed against the constitutional system of government or the concept of international understanding, or concerning which an unappealable determination has been made that it is a substitute organization of such prohibited association…
of a government, organization or institution outside of the territorial area of application of this law which is active in pursuing the objectives of one of the parties indicated in Numbers 1 and 2; or
propaganda, the contents of which is designed to further the aspirations of a former National Socialist organization

shall be punished by up to three years imprisonment or by fine.

Holocaust “denial” was later substantively incorporated into these laws and interpreted as a continuation of “Nazi propaganda.”

In 1985, German legislators appended Article 130 to the German Penal Code. The law ostensibly dealt with incitement to racial hatred, and contains no specific reference to “Holocaust denial” per se, yet “deniers” fell within the scope of this legislation, as it loosely interpreted “Holocaust denial” as an insult to the personal honor of Jewish people and prescribed that any person who denied, trivialized or expressed approval of, in public or in an assembly crimes attributed to the National Socialist regime, was liable to prosecution. The law was indisputably political in nature and stipulated that individuals who took umbrage at legally proscribed statements were entitled to register a complaint and file charges against persons or organizations that had given offense. For those convicted of violating it, the law decreed a prison term of up to one year in prison for any person unfortunate enough to run afoul of the new legislation.

In the run up to the enactment of Article 130, Jewish pressure groups had been actively campaigning to influence passage of this and similar legislation. In April 1982, just one year after Israel’s criminalization of Holocaust denial, Dr. Stephen Roth, the director of the Institute of Jewish Affairs, (hereafter referred to as the IJA), an affiliated agency of the World Jewish Congress situated in London, England, resolutely pressed the British government to introduce legislation criminalizing Holocaust denial in Great Britain. These determined Jewish groups were highly motivated, organized, and well financed, with connections reaching into the highest echelons of government.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence, MP, spoke out in favor of Holocaust denial legislation, equating Holocaust revisionists with neo-Nazi propagandists. During the course of a public press conference which took place at IJA’s London headquarters, Lawrence, coincidentally a member of the latter’s policy planning panel, exclaimed,


The radical right-wing elements realize that the strongest motive of the resistance to their movements and ideas is the memory of the Nazi horrors. They want these wiped off the slate of history, be it by distortion or falsification.[2]

Lawrence concomitantly expressed his personal revulsion towards Professor Arthur Butz of Northwestern University, who had authored the controversial groundbreaking book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, which questions the scope and extent of National Socialist Germany’s persecution of the Jews and disputes the claims of homicidal gas chambers in the concentration camps.

In conjunction with Mr. Lawrence’s public statements, the IJA had drafted a report underlining Jewish disquietude over the worldwide impact of Holocaust revisionism and set forth the Institute’s proposals to the British government on how best to counter and stifle the expanding influence of revisionist historians. Conspicuously ignoring Israel’s precedent in first outlawing Holocaust denial, Dr. Roth sagaciously redirected attention toward the West German Ministry of Justice, which was proposing to amend the German Criminal Code to make it a punishable offense to “deny the facts of a committed or attempted genocide or to make it appear harmless.”[3] Whereupon Dr. Roth blithely suggested, “This is a major initiative which we in this country should emulate.”[4]

In March 1982, one month prior to the above-described press conference, the IJA officially released a “research report” dealing with the problem of Holocaust denial. The report predictably opens with a reference to “the political dangers inherent in the denial of the Holocaust, and the boost thus given to neo-Nazi propaganda…” and proffers detailed suggestions as to how “the law can deal with these problems.”[5]

The report advances certain propositions that cannot, prima facie, be accepted as inerrantly accurate, and provides an interesting study in the methodology employed by pressure groups to influence legislators and orchestrate the flow of public opinion.

The document states “whenever the denial of the Holocaust is accompanied by the accusation that Jews or Zionists invented the story for their own ulterior motives, such statements could and should be dealt with by laws against incitement to racial hatred.”[6] The report protests that current laws are wholly inadequate to punish offenders for thought crimes and cites the Federal Republic of Germany, rather than Israel, as setting a proper precedent other governments should emulate. The striking irony of Jewish pressure groups based in England advocating punitive laws to prosecute German citizens for thought crimes was apparently lost on the compilers of the report.

The appendix to this publication lists “54 books” which the IJA claims “falsifies the horrible truth of Nazi crimes.”[7] The titles and authors listed in the report are of unique interest to the continued development of this book’s [The Prohibition of “Holocaust Denial” - Ed.] theme, in that a significant number of individuals cited were later prosecuted under hastily improvised Holocaust denial laws in France and Germany. Thus, the recommendations contained in this early report, initially drafted in Great Britain, may be regarded as a blueprint designed to encourage the future prosecution of Holocaust revisionists. Among the numerous individuals and titles mentioned in the report may be found:


Thies Christopherson, Die Auschwitz-Lüge (The Auschwitz Lie)

Robert Faurisson, Mémoire en defénse contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire. La question des chambres à gaz (Memoir in Defense Against the Accusation that I am Falsifying History: The Question of the Gas Chambers)

Richard Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last

Paul Rassinier, Le mensonge d'Ulysse (The Lie of Odysseus)

Wilhelm Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos - Legende oder Wiklichkeit? Eine Kritische Bestandsaufnahne (The Auschwitz Myth-Legend or Truth? A Critical Assessment)

Udo Walendy, Bild 'Dokumente' für die Geschichtschreibung (Picture ‘Documents’ for Historiography)

Arguing the thesis that the Holocaust is unique in history, the redactors advance the proposition that Holocaust denial must be regarded as a crime in a moral sense, “because it is offensive to survivors of the Holocaust and indeed to all Jews and other groups whose members were victims of the Nazis. It is also a crime politically, 

because it gives aid to the neo-Nazi movements.”[8]

In 1982 a court in Stuttgart, Germany, ordered the seizure of all copies of "Der Auschwitz Mythos" (The Auschwitz Myth) by Wilhelm Stäglich, a former German judge. Photo of the first German edition from 1979.

Whether the statement of the IJA is well-founded or not is irrelevant to the fact that freedom of expression without fear of persecution is normally considered to be a fundamental right in modern civilized nations. This fact notwithstanding, critical commentators who have gone on record favoring Holocaust denial laws generally evince no compunction whatsoever when advocating limitations on freedom of speech whenever the latter disagrees with their own opinions or agenda. Moreover, the law as currently formulated and interpreted primarily focuses attention on only one tragic historical event to the exclusion of all others: National Socialist Germany’s persecution of the Jews. As such, the law trespasses over and into the realm of historical dogmatism and political correctness. It lends credence to the suggestion that Jews alone have suffered unique persecution and historical tragedies over and above all other people of the earth, necessitating special laws for their continued protection. The law attempts to coerce recusant historians to conform to the mainstream version of history or else suffer dire legal consequences. As such, these laws seek to place a muzzle on the conscience of humanity. Holocaust denial laws, then, are fundamentally flawed as they are based upon a dangerous form of legal coercion curtailing responsible freedom of expression. This fact alone demonstrates the palpable weaknesses inherent in such laws, and this vulnerability has not gone unnoticed or unexploited by other offended or ignored ethnic groups, which have attempted to jump on the Holocaust bandwagon demanding equal status under the law, thereby creating a quandary for courts and legislative bodies alike.

Another school of thought believes that education in the form of indoctrination is a preferable response to Holocaust denial, yet in effect both groups seek to rely on the arbitrary power of the State to enforce compliance of belief in the mainstream version of the Holocaust. Both groups evidently support the notion that the end justifies the means. In contradistinction to these opinions, many civil libertarians favor the more civilized process of unrestricted investigative research and open debate over government sponsored programs of indoctrination.

Ten years would elapse before the recommendations suggested by the IJA gathered enough momentum to enlist the support of British legislators. In 1996, the British Labour Party responded with unconcealed enthusiasm to Dr. Roth’s earlier recommendations and announced that if they were elected, they would make Holocaust denial a criminal offense in Great Britain. The London Jewish Chronicle candidly reported that the Labour Party’s decision came about as a direct result of a “lengthy campaign” conducted by Jewish groups such as the Board of Deputies and the Holocaust Education Trust.[9] In spite of these solemn assurances by the British Labour Party, passage and enforcement of the proposed law would ultimately prove to be legally problematic.

Early efforts to criminalize Holocaust denial were to meet with greater success on the European mainland, where sympathetic German and French legislators, reluctant to offend Jewish sensibilities, enacted restrictive legislation intended to punish individuals for expressing doubts about the Holocaust. As early as 1979, the German courts perceived Holocaust denial as a prosecutable offense, declaring,


It is part of the personal consciousness (Selbstverstaendnis) of the persecuted to be considered as belonging to a group that stands out because of the persecution suffered and to whom all other citizens bear a moral responsibility. This consciousness of being victims of persecution is a matter of their personal dignity. Respect for that consciousness is the guarantee against the repetition of similar discrimination in the future and an essential condition which makes their life in Germany possible. Whoever tries to deny the truth of the past events denies to every Jew the respect to which he is entitled.[10]

In prosecuting cases of Holocaust denial, German judges are bound to uphold the strict letter of the law, which often becomes problematical. According to Article 130, an individual may become liable if prosecutors determine that their statements constitute “agitation of the people” which German legislation defines as follows-


(1) Whoever, in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace:
incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or
assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population,

shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to five years.

(2) Whoever:
with respect to writings…which incite hatred against segments of the population or a national, racial or religious group, or one characterized by its folk customs, which call for violent or arbitrary measures against them, or which assault the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming segments of the population or a previously indicated group:
disseminates them;
publicly displays, posts, presents, or otherwise makes them accessible;
offers, gives or makes accessible to a person under eighteen years;
produces, obtains, supplies, stocks, offers, announces, commends, undertakes to import or export them, in order to use them or copies obtained from them within the meaning of numbers a through c or facilitate such use by another; or
disseminates a presentation of the content indicated in number 1 by radio, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.[11]

Although the Holocaust is not specifically mentioned, it seems self-evident that the law was drafted in respect to the latter. Although the law has been applied to various criminal offences in respect to “hate” crimes, it is elastic enough to encompass thought crimes. Yet practically speaking, interpretation of the law is largely left to the discretion of the courts.

One striking fact that presented a challenge to the integrity of the courts was the fact that Holocaust revisionism simply did not appear to fall under the strict provisions stipulated in the laws, in that scholarly revisionist writings do not constitute incitement to violence nor do they prompt reasonable people to commit hate crimes. Neither do scholarly revisionist writings “assault the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming any segment of the population,” although determined critics endeavor by diverse means to apply this criterion to accused revisionists.

In fact, none of the criteria described in the law and its various sub-divisions appears to apply to historical revisionists or homicidal-gas-chamber negationists. By and large, many people categorized for convenience’s sake as “Holocaust deniers” are in fact Holocaust agnostics. Their antagonists, the “Holocaust True Believers,” have elevated belief in the Holocaust to the level of a devout religious dogma. Within this murky world of skepticism versus faith, the Doubting Thomases of revisionism insistently demand, “Unless I see... I will not believe,” while the true believers rejoin, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”[12]

Questioning or revising an historical event is not a matter for courts or legislative assemblies to decide. Indeed, in rendering verdicts against accused “deniers,” most courts simply take “judicial notice” of the judgment rendered by the legally questionable International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, conducted under the auspices of the victorious allies. In fact, it was neither international, nor military, nor a Tribunal in the strict sense, for it served as both judge and aggrieved party to the cases over which it pronounced judgment. Historical disputes involving the existence or non-existence of homicidal gas chambers in the concentration camps must be placed before the bar of history and forensic specialists, chemists, scientists and criminologists rather than before the courts. If arbitrary laws seek to prosecute historical revisionists, then certain criteria as described in the law must be proved. As they now stand, Holocaust denial laws appear to deliberately conflate the process of generating controversy with “disturbing the public peace.” Moreover, the laws are based upon a flagrant double standard, for they are arbitrarily applied only to one specific group of individuals: those deemed to be Holocaust deniers.

The interests of justice demand that the law should be limited to clearly defined acts of violence or acts of specific incitement to commit crimes of violence. Clearly, Holocaust revisionism does not fit the criteria and thus the prosecution of Holocaust revisionists enters into the realm of interdicted thought crimes. No individual should be prosecuted on the basis of his or her personal beliefs or expressions of opinion. The highest obligation of the law is in fact to uphold and defend the right of individuals to speak their opinion freely, without fear of persecution.

In their zeal to prosecute the heretics and agnostics who publicly questioned the use of homicidal gas chambers in the concentration camps, it was necessary for German courts and prosecutors to rely on old legislation dating back to the Third Reich.

For example, in 1982 a court in Stuttgart, Germany ordered the seizure of all copies of the book, Der Auschwitz Mythos (The Auschwitz Myth)[13]authored by Wilhelm Stäglich, a former German judge. The book had originally been published in 1979, but evidently acting on the basis of repeated complaints, the German prosecutor’s office applied for the book to be banned on the ground that, by “denying the Nazi mass murder of Jews during the Second World War, it was inciting hatred against Jews.”[14]

Stäglich interpreted matters differently. On the basis of his experience and expertise serving as a judge in the Superior Court, Stäglich thoroughly scrutinized the evidence relating to homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz concentration camp and arrived at the conclusion that mass murder on the scale claimed at Nuremberg was technically and logistically impossible. Exasperated and unable to charge Stäglich under laws enacted by the Federal Republic of Germany, prosecutors eventually discovered a legal precedent to charge him under provisions contained in an old law enacted during the Third Reich era. As a consequence, the former German judge was deprived of his doctorate, his book confiscated and banned, and all existing copies were consigned to the flames. The printing plates were ordered destroyed by the court.

Significantly, during the course of this trial, the prosecution was under no obligation to explain or demonstrate how the book was “inciting hatred against Jews.” If anything, Stäglich’s book incited hatred against himself.

Nevertheless, the court, in rendering its opinion, stated that Stäglich had deliberately ignored evidence proving the fact of genocide against the Jews. Neither did the court stipulate precisely what evidence was supposedly ignored, nor did they offer an explanation as to why Stäglich was legally obligated to accept such evidence. Obviously, Stäglich himself was contesting the past evidentiary record, but for the court, the reality of the mainstream version of the Holocaust was beyond debate and indisputable. As will be seen, the latter is a charge frequently leveled against revisionists prosecuted for Holocaust denial. Accused of irresponsibly distorting the facts, Stäglich and his publisher were only able to escape personal punishment due to the fact that prosecutions for publishing offences could only be initiated within six months of the date of publication. Nevertheless, Stäglich’s person and reputation were assailed and censured in the press.

Ironically, article 344 of German law, entitled “Prosecution of the Innocent,” also seemingly provides for the prosecution of government officials who maliciously prosecute individuals, but this legal safeguard is denied to accused “heretics” such as Wilhelm Stäglich.

Within Germany one of the primary instigators clamoring for Holocaust denial laws as well as censorship and repression of right-wing political parties was the ubiquitous Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland). Founded on 19 July 1950, the Council served as an umbrella organization for dozens of other Jewish associations. Describing itself as a federation of German Jews organizing numerous Jewish organizations throughout Germany, the Central Council monitors public statements, right- and left-wing political parties and other activities deemed to be anti-Semitic or otherwise antagonistic or detrimental to Jewish interests.

From its inception, the Council astutely maintained its offices in the German capital, first in Bonn, and subsequently relocating to Berlin so as to keep its finger on the pulse of the nation and influence legislators. The Central Council of Jews was also magnanimously subsidized by the German government. In effect, Council members were encouraged to spy on suspect individuals and organizations and denounce them to the authorities. The German government’s generous financial and unqualified moral support served as an incentive to council members to pursue their activities with unrestricted tenacity.

Interestingly, the Central Council of Jews in Germany was not even composed of German Jews, but Jews from Poland, who poured into Germany by the tens of thousands as illegal aliens during the post-war period.

From its inauspicious beginnings, the Central Council has been tainted by numerous allegations of fiscal corruption. During the administration of Werner Naumann, the first president of the Central Council, scandals involving “financial irregularities” were rife.

Under the subsequent leadership of Ignatz Bubis, the organization extended its influence by snooping and interfering in nearly every facet of German public life. The highly controversial Bubis was among the first to advocate harsh penalties for Holocaust deniers and called upon the German nation to preserve the “memory of the Holocaust.” Over the years, Bubis himself was beset and dogged by numerous scandals involving financial irregularities, speculation, and swindling, and drew the ire of both the left and right wing in Germany. Due to his perceived lack of ethics, Bubis was satirized by German playwright and film director Werner Fassbinder in his play, Trash, the City and Death, which debuted in the city of Frankfurt in 1985. Having caught wind of the play’s theme, Bubis was irate over Fassbinder’s depiction of him as a modern Shylock and countered by hijacking the stage with a number of his cohorts, forcibly preventing the play from opening.[15]

Following the death of Bubis in 1999, the Council split into two factions, both clamoring for equal financial support from the German government. In an attempt to extend its influence the Council established a close network with other Jewish organizations around the world. All of these organizations were to act together to pursue a common agenda that specifically targeted Holocaust denial and perceived manifestations of anti-Semitism.

The great nation of France, the land of “liberty, equality and brotherhood” was the second western European nation to enact laws designed to punish Holocaust denial. In May 1986 Jewish organizations, acting in concert with the nation’s chief rabbi, Rene-Samuel Sirat, called for enactment of a law to punish Holocaust deniers and assorted agnostics. Under the tutelage of Rabbi Sirat, a number of Jewish academics, among them the prominent anti-revisionist author, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Holocaust activists Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, and Georges Wellers, a former Auschwitz inmate and editor of Le Monde Juif, vociferously clamored for a bill in imitation of Israel’s anti-denial law.[16]

In spite of the most intense lobbying efforts, the law failed to be ratified until four years later, when a Socialist-Communist coalition government under the regime of President Francois Mitterand approved a Holocaust denial bill in July, 1990.[17]

It is perhaps fitting that France, once a bastion of progressive social thought and intellectual enlightenment, from whose sons and daughters arose such inimitable geniuses as Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Rene Descartes, would also serve as the nation from whose womb arose the earliest outspoken proponents of Second World War historical revisionism in the persons of Paul Rassinier and Maurice Bardèche.

Conversely, as early as 1948 French citizens were also being targeted for prosecution in respect to thought crimes, which the government sought to justify on grounds of “attempting to justify a crime, racial discrimination against Jews, incitement to racial hatred, publication of material deemed injurious to youth, or personal injury.” Maurice Bardèche, an early French revisionist, was charged with “justifying crimes” after publishing his second book Nuremberg, or the Promised Land in 1948.

Paul Rassinier was a former communist and concentration camp survivor, arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for his resistance activities, which included smuggling Jews into Switzerland. Rassinier spent the last two years of the war first in Buchenwald and thereafter transferred to the underground labor camp at Dora.

In 1948, Rassinier published Le Passage de la ligne (Crossing the Line), which was the first in a series of books that purported to show that the claims of many self-described concentration camp survivors were in fact grossly exaggerated. Rassinier denounced the brutal camp overseers, or kapos, rather than the SS staff, as being primarily responsible for the many cruelties inflicted on inmates in the camps.

Rassinier was also among the earliest proponents to claim that the Zionists purposefully latched onto the persecution of the Jews in order to provide a favorable political and moral climate for establishing the state of Israel at the expense of the indigenous population. In his Le Drame des Juifs européens (The Drama of European Jewry),[18] which was published in 1964, Rassinier advanced the thesis that the widely circulated stories of homicidal gas chambers reputedly used by the National Socialists to murder millions of Jews were stories deliberately nurtured and embellished by opportunistic Zionist propagandists as a political bludgeon to legitimate the illegal seizure of Palestine.

Rassinier’s groundbreaking work was virtually ignored by mainstream historians in France and suppressed for decades, but On December 29, 1978 and on January 16, 1979, Robert Faurisson, a professor of classical literature and an expert in textual analysis, published two articles in Le Monde openly proclaiming his rejection of homicidal gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps.[19] French Jews branded Faurisson’s essay, which relied upon original wartime documents, as offensively provocative and responded angrily to his revisionist conclusions.

In the pandemonium following the publication of his article, eight organizatons and two newspapers collectively brought civil and criminal lawsuits against Faurisson, provoking a storm of public controversy.

France had previously enacted a law against racial discrimination in 1972, and on the basis of this law Faurisson was accused of “falsification of history in the matter of the gas chambers.” The Paris Court of Appeals rendered a decision in April 1973, declaring him innocent of falsification of history, but found him guilty of “reducing his research to malevolent slogans,” and “personal injury.” As such, Faurisson was ordered to pay a small fine.

On the issue of whether Faurisson’s claims and methodology were valid or not, the first chamber of the Paris Court of Appeals paid tribute to the quality of his research, concluding that in his essay on the “problem of the gas chambers” there was no trace of rashness, or negligence, or of his having deliberately overlooked anything, nor any trace of a lie and that, as a consequence, he was entitled to claim that the gas chambers never existed.

The Court sagaciously focused on Faurisson’s inviolable right to freedom of speech as long as his opinions were expressed responsibly and without malevolence. In its final summation, the Court prudently proclaimed that “the value of the conclusions defended by Faurisson rests therefore solely with the appraisal of experts, historians and the public.”

Professor Faurisson was subsequently forced out of his position at the University of Lyons in central France.

The verdict and judgment did not sit well with Faurisson’s detractors, who responded with new strategies aimed at influencing French lawmakers. Subsequently, a parliamentary initiative designed to outlaw any public expression of criticism or questioning of the Holocaust was introduced before the French Assembly.

The two individuals most responsible for the passage of the July 1990 law were Communist Minister of Transport Jean Claude Gayssot and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, who announced his candidacy for the French Presidency in 2007. Fabius, of Jewish heritage, is a millionaire and a Socialist. In 1990 he served as president of France’s National Assembly. The Holocaust denial law was named after its two creators.

The ratification of such ominous legislation constituted an anachronistic throwback to the dark ages and a nadir in the history of the French Republic. Enlightened academics, jurists and concerned civil libertarians protested the ratification of this law in the same nation that proclaimed the “Rights of Man” in 1789. Interestingly, the French declaration on the rights of man preceded the emancipation of the Jews by Napoleon I in 1807-1811. It is perhaps an ironic twist of fate that the descendants of those people graciously granted full civil rights and liberties, including the right to free expression as equal citizens of France under Napoleon I, willfully served as the primary catalyst among those seeking to deprive their fellow citizens of theirs.



Notes:
[1] The term “Holocaust denial” is a pejorative. The terms “deny” and “denial” are super-charged with the psychological meaning. “Denial” generally means the refusal to accept a past or present reality. For Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust, the term has an even sinister meaning. Lipstadt charges that “denial” involves camouflaging true goals – essentially fascism and anti-Semitism with a specific ideological and or political agenda. –Ed. For more on this subject see Richard Widmann, “Denial?” online at: http://revblog.codoh.com/2012/06/denial/#more-1835
[2] “IJA wants Holocaust Denial Law,” London Jewish Chronicle, April 23, 1982.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] “Research Report: Making the Denial of the Holocaust a Law,” Institute of Jewish Affairs, March 1982, No. 1, p. 1.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid., p. 2.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Jewish Forward, October 11, 1996, p. 3.
[10] Bernard Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London, 1996), p. 129.
[11] English Translation of Section 130: Volksverhetzung. Online: http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/StGB.htm#130
[12] This is a reference to John 20:25-29 when Jesus's disciple Thomas expresses doubt about the resurrection.
[13] This book was later published with the title, Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence by the Institute for Historical Review.
[14] “German Book Seized,” London Jewish Chronicle, May 21, 1982, p. 5.
[15] “Jewish Protestors Halt Fassbinder Play's Debut,” New York Times, Nov. 1, 1985. Online: http://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/01/theater/jewish-protesters-halt-fassbinder-play-s-debut.html
[16] Bulletin de l’Agence telegraphique juive, June 2, 1986, p. 1, 3.
[17] See Jesse Aitken, “The French anti-revisionist law.” Online: https://codoh.com/library/document/688
[18] Many of the works of Rassinier including Crossing the Line and The Drama of European Jewry were translated into English and published in an anthology, The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses by the Institute for Historical Review in various editions beginning in 1978.
[19] For more on this matter, see Robert Faurisson, “On the Publication of ‘The Problem of the Gas Chambers’ by Le Monde.” Online:http://inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2013/volume_5/number_4/
on_the_publication_of_the_problem_of_the_gas_chambers.php