The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: people/f/faurisson.robert/faurissons-research


From dkeren@world.std.com Mon Apr  8 20:17:30 PDT 1996
Article: 30261 of alt.revisionism
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!imci2!news.internetMCI.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!world!dkeren
From: dkeren@world.std.com (Daniel Keren)
Subject: Faurisson's 'Historical Research'
Message-ID: 
Organization: The World, Public Access Internet, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 21:23:44 GMT
Lines: 65

      Summary: A "leading revisionist scholar" in action;
       Faurisson's extreme dishonesty and deceitfulness
      ---------------------------------------------------

Robert Faurisson is considered by Holocaust-deniers as, perhaps,
the "leading revisionist" worldwide (he used to share this title
with David Irving, but now that Irving stated that 4 million Jews
died in the Holocaust, his status in the "revisionist" community
is not that clear).

A truly astounding examples of Faurisson's tactic of lies and
deceit is demonstrated in his piece titled "The 'Problem of the 
Gas Chambers'", posted here by the tireless Marc Lemire.

In this piece, Faurisson "surveys" the gas chambers in the
various camps, and tries to "prove" there is not sufficient
evidence that they existed. 

On two of the worst death camps, Treblinka and Belzec, Faurisson
writes:

# For proof that the "gas chambers" in Belzec or Treblinka really
# existed, one is asked to rely essentially upon the statement of 
# Kurt Gerstein.

That's about it; Faurisson goes on to state that Gerstein's
testimony cannot be trusted. But that's not the point.

Who was Kurt Gerstein? He was an SS-officer, who saw Belzec and
Treblinka just one time. He wasn't stationed in them. He visited
them once, and saw a gassing operation. His testimony is accurate
on the whole, although it is definitely emotional; also, he 
overestimated the number of people who were pushed into a single 
gas chamber. 

So what does "leading revisionist" Faurisson do? Very simple. He
"forgets" all other evidence to what happened in these camps:
documents, physical remains, and numerous other testimonies, for
instance those given by SS-men who served in these camps for a
long time and, of course, provided a far more accurate and detailed
picture than Gerstein. SS-men like Stangl, who commanded Treblinka;
Franz, his deputy; and others (Mentz, Matthes, Lambert, Oberhauser,
Suchomel, Horn, etc).

By not mentioning all these witnesses, and focusing on Gerstein,
Faurisson is being extremely dishonest. First, he is lying when
he states that "one is asked to rely essentially upon the statement 
of Kurt Gerstein"; there is a far greater body of evidence. Second,
not only does Faurisson mention only one witness among many, he
also - intentionally, obviously - chooses one that saw the camps
only once and, as a result, gave a testimony which is less accurate
than the testimony of those who spent a lot of time in the camps.

Faurisson's work is not "historical research". It is a miserable
collection of outright lies, omissions, and misinterpretations,
of which the above is a spectacular, but in no way unique,
example.


-Danny Keren.

-- 
Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood.

-Lu Xun.



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