Robert Faurisson

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Robert Faurisson (born January 25, 1929 in Shepperton , Surrey , England , † October 21, 2018 in Vichy ) was a French literary scholar and neo-Nazi . He was one of the best-known negationists and Holocaust deniers who denied the use of gas chambers in the National Socialist extermination camps for the murder of concentration camp prisoners, as well as the systematic extermination of Jews and other groups in general .

Life

In October 1973 Faurisson was appointed " Maître de conférences " at the University of Lyon 2 . He taught literature there from 1974 to 1979 and published books on Lautréamont (1971), Arthur Rimbaud (1972) and Gérard de Nerval (1977). In literary studies, Faurisson's idiosyncratic and provocative interpretations were mostly rejected; The Lautréamont expert Guy Laflèche has subjected Faurisson's interpretation of Lautréamont to a devastating criticism and has shown him to be arbitrary and twisting interpretations.

From 1974 Faurisson published numerous brochures and articles in which he denied the Holocaust. The places of publication were revisionist organs, such as the French Annales d'histoire révisioniste and the American Journal of Historical Review as well as the Internet.

Faurisson became known to a wider audience through the publication of three letters to the editor, which appeared in the French daily Le Monde in December 1978 and January and February 1979 , in which he claimed that the gas chambers in the extermination camps were never used and the existence of the denied systematic extermination of Jews. In Germany, his views were first made known in the 1978 (and banned) book “There were no gas chambers”.

Because of the violent polemics that he sparked and in view of the threats against him, Faurisson was transferred from Lyon to Vichy to the central French institution for distance learning, where he worked as a professor from 1979. In 1990 he resigned from civil service. His jaw was broken in one of several physical attacks on him in 1989.

Following the passage of the Loi Gayssot (1990), a French law that criminalized denial of the Holocaust, Faurisson was convicted in 1991 of violating that law. Faurisson's complaint filed on December 9, 1992 for violation of his right to freedom of expression before the United Nations Human Rights Committee was rejected on November 8, 1996. The committee ruled that the restriction on freedom of expression created by the ban on Holocaust denial is covered by Article 19, Paragraph 3a of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights . That paragraph allows the restriction of freedom of expression, insofar as this is necessary for "respecting the rights or reputation of others". The UN Human Rights Committee confirmed this view in July 2011 with reference to the judgment in the Faurisson case.

Other Holocaust denial charges and trials followed:

  • In connection with a publication on the website of the " Association des anciens amateurs de récits de guerre et d'holocauste " in 1998, a complaint was made against him; for lack of evidence to support his authorship, Faurisson was acquitted.
  • On October 3, 2006, he was sentenced to three months probation and a fine of 7,500 euros for an interview with the Iranian television station "Sahar 1" in February 2005.
  • After attending the 2006 Holocaust Denial Conference in Iran , the Paris Public Prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation against him for what he said during the event.

Since the end of 2008, the repeated appearance of Faurisson together with the cabaret artist and political activist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala , who has already been convicted on several occasions for anti-Semitic remarks, has caused a sensation. During an event on December 26, 2008 in M'bala M'balas Theater, Faurisson was awarded a "medal" for nonconformity, which was presented to him by an assistant disguised as a concentration camp inmate and wearing a Jewish star. On January 9, 2009, M'bala M'bala celebrated his 80th birthday in front of a gathering of Holocaust deniers, right-wing extremists and Islamists. Shortly afterwards, a video with anti-Semitic and negationist statements by the two like-minded comrades became known.

theses

Faurisson was influenced by the works of the two earliest Holocaust deniers in France, Paul Rassinier and Maurice Bardèche (brother-in-law of Robert Brasillach , who was executed as a collaborator in France ). His key experience reading to one in 1960 in which, according to its own information Time published letter to the editor of the historian Martin Broszat have been, where it noted that in the gas chamber of Dachau Concentration Camp no prisoners were gassed. In the course of time and after having dealt with the topic for a long time, he said he was convinced by the much more far-reaching claims of the Holocaust deniers.

The main argument he cited was that perfect sealing, a special pipe system, complex ventilation and other devices to remove traces of poisonous gas would have been required for the operation of the gas chambers. This thesis was refuted in his book Die Krematorien von Auschwitz (German 1994) by Faurisson's former follower Jean-Claude Pressac , who, while searching for evidence for these theses, had familiarized himself with the preserved facilities in Auschwitz , which Faurisson has repeatedly published in Publications attacked.

In 1991, Faurisson claimed in a brochure written with Siegfried Verbeke (Het "Dagboek" van Anne Frank. Een kritische benadering) that Anne Frank's diary was a forgery, since the handwriting of the manuscripts that has survived is not that of a child. Because of the falsity of this claim, distribution of this brochure has been banned in the Netherlands.

Politically, Faurisson presented himself as a representative of an "apolitical" position. However, his critics, among them the French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet , classify him as a right-wing extremist and anti-Semite . Faurisson rejected charges of anti-Semitism, despite receiving numerous convictions for Holocaust denial. In interviews with Arab magazines and television stations, he has repeatedly stated that the fight against Israel and the denial of the Holocaust are part of a joint project; The content of a speech intended for a revisionist conference in Beirut in December 2001 was also identical .

Activities and contacts

Faurisson had close contacts with Holocaust deniers around the world. In 1988 he acted as an expert witness for the defendant in the Canadian state trial against Ernst Zündel . He has also been a speaker at events of the American Institute for Historical Review , whose stated intention is to infiltrate history with revisionist theses.

In 2003 he was a founding member of the right-wing extremist " Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted for Contesting the Holocaust ".

Some contacts between Faurisson and respected writers who were not or are not considered sympathetic to the views he represented have caused a stir:

  • Noam Chomsky signed in the fall of 1979 - after verbal attacks on Faurisson after the publication of his letters to the editor in Le Monde - a petition in favor of Faurissons, which campaigned for the right of free expression also for Holocaust deniers. He also defended this right in a statement that he made available to the initiators of the petition, Pierre Guillaume and Serge Thion . They printed this in 1980 as a foreword to a justification by Faurissons, which caused further sensation and serious accusations Chomsky - u. a. by Pierre Vidal-Naquet - entered.
  • In 1987 Faurisson published two letters by the well-known philosopher Jean Beaufret in his magazine “Annales d'histoire révisionniste”, dated November 22, 1978 and January 18, 1979. The science historian and Heidegger biographer Hugo Ott said that Beaufret had “dealt with the 'Research' identified by Faurisson and, as it were, authorized. "

Publications

  • Mémoire en dèfense: contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire - La question des chambres à gaz , La vielle Taupe, Paris 1980, Bibliothèque Nationale de France # 11902377.
  • Écrits révisionnistes, 1974-1998 . 4 vols. Without location: Self-published, 1999. Available in some German state libraries, the books were anonymously sent to libraries worldwide from the United States.
  • I searched - and found the truth: the revisionist thesis of a French researcher. Critique-Verlag von Thies Christophersen , Mohrkirch 1982, ISBN 3-88037-038-9 , another publisher Courier du Continent, Lausanne 1982 ISBN 3-88037-038-9 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Le négationniste Robert Faurisson est mort à Vichy , accessed on October 22, 2018
  2. ↑ Jürg Altwegg: Noam Chomsky and the reality of the gas chambers. Time online , November 21, 2012
  3. ↑ on page 100 Taboos: Indes. Journal for Politics and Society 2014, Issue 2 , Franz Walter, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , July 16, 2014 - 144 pages
  4. ↑ on page 117 Anti-Semitism and other hostilities: Interactions of Resentments by Katharina Rauschenberger, Werner Konitzer, Campus-Verlag , November 12, 2015 - 197 pages
  5. ↑ Guy Laflèche, Édition critique interactive des Chants de Maldoror du comte de Lautréamont par Isidore Ducasse ( Memento of January 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ L'obstiné you négateur génocide , Le Monde, September 19 1989th
  7. ↑ UN Human Rights Committee, 58th meeting, October 21 to November 8, 1996: Communication No 550/1993 ( English , French ; accessed on February 4, 2013)
  8. ↑ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of December 19, 1966 (German version; PDF; 79 kB)
  9. ^ UN Human Rights Committee, 102nd session, Geneva, July 11-29, 2011: General comment No. 34 - Article 19: Freedoms of opinion and expression (PDF; 213 kB), paragraph 49 (p. 12); Retrieved February 4, 2013
  10. ^ The négationniste Robert Faurisson a été condamné à trois mois de prison avec sursis . In: Le Monde, October 3, 2006.
  11. ^ Le Point, magazine: REGARDEZ - Dieudonné-Faurisson: ouverture d'une enquête préliminaire . In: Le Point.fr .
  12. ↑ Les étranges amitiés de Dieudonné , Le Monde , February 24, 2009.
  13. ^ Jean-Claude Pressac: The crematoria of Auschwitz. The technique of mass murder . Piper, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-492-12193-4 .
  14. ^ Anne Frank House - Online Department: Ten questions on the authenticity of the diary of Anne Frank point 8 (PDF; 166 kB).
  15. ^ Pierre Vidal-Naquet: De Faurisson et de Chomsky
  16. ^ Faurisson se compare à l'ultra-collaborationniste antisémite Henri Labroue . In: phdn.org .
  17. ^ Robert Faurisson: The Leaders of the Arab States should Quit their Silence on the Imposture of the "Holocaust" . Written for the Beirut Conference on Revisionism and Zionism. In: The Revisionist . Codoh Series, No. 3, 2001.
  18. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report for Berlin 2004, page 223 ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.0 MB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlin.de
  19. ↑ Noam Chomsky: Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression , foreword to: Faurisson: Mémoire en défense. Contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire. - La question des chambres à gaz . La Vieille Taupe, Paris 1980. There is a report by Pierre Guillaume on the circumstances of the publication: Droit et Histoire . La Vieille Taupe, Paris 1986, pp. 152-172: “Une Mise au Point”.
  20. ↑ Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927-1961 , Cornell University Press 2007, p. 205
  21. ↑ Hugo Ott: Biographical reasons for Heidegger's "Mentality of Tornness" in Peter Kemper (Ed.): Martin Heidegger - Fascination and Scare: The Political Dimension of a Philosophy . Campus Verlag 1990, p. 29; Hugo Ott u. Allan Blunden: Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , Harpers Collins, 1993, 8: “They express support for the work that Faurisson is doing, and encourage him to persevere with the same line of research. It was essentially the same line that he (Beaufret) had taken (he writes): but instead of putting his views in writing he had chosen to confine himself to the spoken word, to avoid being hounded by the mob. "; Richard Wolin: The French Heidegger Debate , New German Critique, 45, 1988, 149: “Beaufret seems to have had a hidden agenda: he was a covert supporter of Robert Faurisson, the French historian who denies the existence of the gas-chambers specifically and the Holocaust in general. "
  22. ↑ L'Association des Professionnels de l'Information et de la Documentation, listes, débat: écrits révisionnistes .
personal data
SURNAME Faurisson, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French literary scholar, professor of literature, revisionist (Holocaust denier)
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Shepperton , Surrey , England
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 2018
Place of death Vichy