Robert Faurisson is acknowledged as Europe's leading Holocaust Revisionist. He was educated at the Paris Sorbonne, and served as associate professor at the University of Lyon in France from 1974 until 1990. Dr. Faurisson has addressed several IHR conferences, and many of his numerous essays and reviews on the Holocaust issue have appeared in translation in the Journal. This essay was translated by IHR editor Theodore J. O'Keefe.
The question of the existence or non-existence of the Nazi gas chambers
is one of considerable historical importance. If the gas chambers existed,
they provide evidence that the Germans attempted to physically exterminate
the Jews; on the other hand, if they didn't exist, we have no evidence of
such an extermination attempt. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a leading French anti-Revisionist,
is under no illusion. To those tempted to give up the controversy over the
gas chambers, he has warned that to jettison the gas chambers "is to
surrender in open country." (Nouvel Observateur, Sept.
21, 1984, p. 80.) One can only agree. The gas chambers are not - contrary
to what Jean-Marie Le Pen once remarked - a mere footnote ("point de
détail") of Second World War history. Thus, those who contest
their existence are subject to judicial sanction in France and some other
countries.
Nor could the monumental US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC,
which was formally dedicated on April 22, 1993, allow itself to ignore the
Nazi gas chambers. The question remained: What kind of physical representation
of this terrifying weapon would the new Museum provide? We now know the
answer, and it is dismaying: For lack of anything better this opulent museum
- which has cost American taxpayers and donors from the American Jewish
community more than $150 million - has been reduced to showing us, as its
only model of a homicidal gas chamber, a casting of a gas chamber at the
former Majdanek camp in Poland: a gas chamber for . . . delousing. As I
shall explain, even Jean-Claude Pressac, author of a 564-page work published
in 1989 in cooperation with the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation of New York,
was obliged to acknowledge that this room was merely a delousing chamber.
This is nothing new. As early as 1945 the Americans were portraying four
delousing (disinfestation) chambers in the Dachau camp (Germany) as homicidal
gas chambers.
Those in charge of the new Holocaust Museum in Washington have resorted
to so grave an imposture, I believe, because they are forced to do so: they
are not able to offer visitors a physical representation, in any form whatsoever,
of one of the chambers, we are told incessantly, the Germans used to murder
swarms of victims.
My Challenge in Stockholm and Washington
On March 17, 1992, I threw down the gauntlet to the Jewish organizations
of the entire world. On that day, after arriving in Stockholm at the invitation
of my friend Ahmed Rami, I issued a challenge of international scope to
the Swedish media. It consisted of this nine-word sentence: "Show me
or draw me a Nazi gas chamber!" These words were accompanied by two
pages of explanation.
According to my information, the Swedish media, eager to answer my challenge,
immediately contacted every possible source in order to obtain photographs
of Nazi gas chambers. To their consternation, they discovered that no such
photographs exist, and that the facilities or rooms currently portrayed
to tourists at Auschwitz and elsewhere as homicidal gas chambers have none
of the characteristics of such chemical slaughterhouses. Although the Swedish
media leveled innumerable personal attacks against me, my challenge was
not mentioned in a single newspaper article, or in a single word on radio
or television.
Over the months the embarrassment would grow among those who propagate the
thesis of the physical extermination of the Jews during the Second World
War: hence the frenzied agitation that has gripped Jewish organizations
worldwide.
On April 21, 1993, I renewed my challenge in Washington, this time directing
it to the officials of the Holocaust Museum that was to be dedicated there
the next day, with President Clinton, several heads of state, and Elie Wiesel
in attendance. Among the Museum officials I had in mind, I was thinking
especially of Michael Berenbaum, its Research Institute Director.
My challenge in Washington can be summed up as follows:
Tomorrow the US Holocaust Memorial Museum will be dedicated in Washington.
I challenge the Museum authorities to provide us a physical representation
of the magical gas chamber. I have searched for 30 years for such a representation
without finding it: neither at Auschwitz, nor in any other concentration
camp; not in a museum, or a book; neither in a dictionary nor an encyclopedia;
not in a photograph, model or documentary film.
Of course I am acquainted with certain attempts at representation, but all
of them are illusory. None withstands examination. In particular, when one
understands the extreme dangers of using Zyklon B (a commercial insecticide)
or hydrocyanic acid (HCN), one quickly realizes that the sites sometimes
portrayed to tourists as homicidal gas chambers could never have served
as chemical slaughterhouses without enormous danger for everyone in the
area. When one understands the extreme - and inevitable - complexity of
a gas chamber for the execution of a single man by hydrocyanic acid in an
American penitentiary, one sees immediately that the places portrayed as
Nazi "gas chambers" - where, day after day, veritable swarms of
victims were supposedly killed - lack today (and lacked then) the least
bit of the formidable machinery that would have been required.
Apart from the matter of sealing the chambers, one of the most serious problems
to solve would have been that of the entering the HCN-saturated chamber
after the execution to remove the corpses, themselves saturated with the
same poison. Hydrocyanic acid penetrates into the skin, the mucous membranes,
and the bodily fluids. The corpse of a man who has just been killed by this
powerful poison is itself a dangerous source of poisoning, and cannot be
touched with bare hands. In order to enter the HCN-saturated chamber to
remove the corpse, special gear is needed, as well as a gas mask with a
special filter. Because physical exertion must be kept to a minimum (it
accelerates respiration, reducing the filter's effectiveness), it is necessary,
before entering the area, to evacuate the gas, and then neutralize it. On
this matter, I refer to the documents on gas chambers used in American penitentiaries
that I published in 1980.(1)
I warn the officials of the US Holocaust Museum and, in particular, Mr.
Berenbaum, that tomorrow, April 22, 1993, they need not offer, as proof
of the existence of Nazi gas chambers, a disinfection gas chamber, a shower
room, a morgue, or an air-raid shelter. I am even less interested in a section
of a wall, a door, a pile of shoes, a bundle of hair, or a heap of eyeglasses.
I want a portrayal of an entire Nazi gas chamber, one that gives a precise
idea of its technique and operation.
Evasion and Trickery
I knew this challenge could not be answered because, as a matter of fact,
for half a century they have been telling us about Nazi gas chambers without
ever showing us one. I also fully expected that the Museum would be reduced
to playing a trick of some kind. But just what kind of trick?
The answer would come the next day, April 22, the date of the formal dedication.
(The Museum opened to the public on April 26.) On the 22nd, I obtained a
copy of a book of about 250 pages that presents itself as a sort of catalog
of the new Museum. This book is by Michael Berenbaum, and is entitled The
World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust As Told in the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum (1993, xvi + 240 pages).
On page 138 are three photographs:
The red-ochre bricks stained with dark blue were for him [Bernard Jouanneau, an attorney who opposed Faurisson in a 1982 court case in Paris] material and visible proof of the existence of homicidal gas chambers. The problem, for there is one, is that the gas chamber presented has all the characteristics of a DELOUSING [sic] installation. I am not saying that it was never used to kill people, for that is possible [here, Pressac is wrong. - R.F.3] but the traces of Prussian blue are an absolutely certain indication of use for delousing purposes. (p. 555.)Pressac goes on to note that the presence of a peep-hole is no proof of a homicidal gas chamber because a delousing gas chamber may be furnished with such a peep-hole. He concludes:
I am sorry to say, and I am not the only one in the West, that the Majdanek homicidal and/or delousing gas chambers are still waiting for a true historian, which is mildly upsetting in view of the fact that the camp fell into the hands of the Russians intact in 1944 (p. 555.)On page 557 he presents a photograph of the exterior of the gas chamber in question and of another gas chamber located in the same building. According to the caption, this is a photograph
. . . showing one of the disinfestation gas chambers thought to be a homicidal gas chamber. Between the two doors with their inspection peep-holes, the darker bricks are of Prussian blue colour, a sign of prolonged use of "Blausäure/blue acid," in other words hydrocyanic or prussic acid sold as a delousing agent under the name of "Zyklon B."It should be noted that these gas chambers were in the Bad und Desinfektion ("Bath and Disinfection") building, located right at the entrance to the camp, and in plain view.
You're surrounded by death [in the Museum]. It's like working in an emergency room or a mortuary. . . . I've ended up on an analyst's couch. (The Washington Post, April 26, 1993, p. B6.)It is not out of the question that Berenbaum will return to the analyst's couch when he grasps the grave consequences of his deception. April, 22, 1993, was supposed to be a date for the consecration of the "Holocaust" religion on American soil. In reality, this date will go down in history as marking an outstanding victory for revisionist historians.