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Iran. Faurisson. Interview (Tehran, December 13, 2006)
Interview with Professor Robert Faurisson at the Guest House of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Wasn’t it at Bergen-Belsen that Anne Frank and her sister Margot died?
Yes, in late February or early March of 1945. They died of typhus. Still
long after the war the official truth had it that that they’d been gassed
at Auschwitz, a camp where they effectively spent some time before their
transfer to Bergen-Belsen. Their fate makes them deserving of pity. But a
good deal more pitiable still was the fate of the German civilian
populations killed or burned alive by the Anglo-American bomber squadrons.
A German man had the idea, after the war, to consult a book with the
register of those killed in the bombing of the city of Würzburg in the
night of March 24, 1945 alone; in that list of more than 5,000 he noted, I
think, 128 women or girls bearing the Christian name Anne or a closely
associated one. There’s hardly much talk of those women or girls
systematically killed solely for being German, is there?
Do you think that the National Socialist regime committed crimes against
the European Jews?
That regime did not pursue, with regard to the Jews, any criminal policy.
That said, some crimes were indeed committed, especially in wartime, and
they were what are generally called “excesses”. Crimes of this kind were
either against Jews as individuals or against Jews taken in groups, for
instance, in the course of a military operation or indeed during reprisals.
Still, if one looks closely, nothing should distinguish those crimes from
the odious acts that the victors perpetrated against, for example, Germans
or Japanese. I am now going to insist on a fact that’s important and that
even the revisionists don’t exploit enough. We have proof, we’ve had it
ever since the Nuremberg trial, that soldiers, officers and functionaries,
tried by the military tribunals or courts martial of the Third Reich, were,
during the war, sentenced to death and executed for the murder of a single
Jewish man or woman. One day in the Ukrainian town of Marinka, the mayor,
who happened to be a “Volksdeutscher”, an ethnic German, and who had been
appointed mayor probably because he spoke German, killed a local Jewess.
Brought before a military tribunal, he was condemned to death and shot.
I’ll come back to his case.
We have the example of a young German lieutenant in Budapest who, upon
entering a Jewish woman’s house with his men, saw a radio set — forbidden
to Jews — and wanted to take it away, along with some jewellery. With the
woman threatening to go to the police, he ended up killing her.
Court-martialled, he was sentenced to death and executed. As for the
soldiers who’d accompanied him, they were given heavy prison terms.
Were they from the Wehrmacht or the SS?
They were from an air-defence unit. But, you know, this distinction made
between the Wehrmacht and the SS is valid in certain cases and not at all
so in others. For example, when in military action, they were on the same
footing. But anyhow, if there had existed any order whatsoever to kill all
the Jews simply because they were Jews, the Reich authorities wouldn’t
have gone and shot someone who, breeching discipline, had killed a Jew or
a Jewess.
According to you, are these few examples sufficient evidence for one to
say that the whole Wehrmacht and the whole SS conducted themselves in such
a manner?
Can a German order to kill the Jews — and I am saying to kill — have
existed? It’s ruled out if I can, as I’m doing here, present you with even
just a single case of a German military tribunal trying and condemning to
death a single person, then having that person executed for the murder of
a single Jew. I haven’t been speaking of “sufficient evidence” but of
evidence. A piece of evidence is an element that one may take into
consideration in order, at the end of proceedings, to hand down a decision.
The judge has before him a set of evidence or testimonies and he draws his
conclusions therefrom. Let’s begin at the beginning, that is with cases
like those I’ve brought up here or with the one, which comes to mind just
now, of a Luftwaffe man who, in southern France, was sentenced to death
for “excesses” against a Jewish woman.
I personally experienced the German occupation. In 1939 I was ten years
old and in 1945, when the Germans left France, I was fifteen.
Where did you live?
First, up until July 1943, in Marseille, then in Paris. Never ever could
someone, catching sight of a Jew, have picked up a weapon and killed him
with impunity. The consequences for the murderer would have been extremely
grave.
It so happens that, since 1957, I’ve lived in Vichy. One night in August
1941 a little bomb went off in front of the gate of the synagogue, without
injuring anyone. The culprits were found the next day: they were a certain
number of young Doriotistes, French supporters of collaboration with
Germany in the fight against “Judeo-Bolshevism”. They were quickly tried
and convicted. I’ve found the text of the court decision. And, thanks to
someone who, during the war, was in the police, I’ve learnt that one of
the young participants in the “attack”, a “pupille de la nation”, that is,
the son of a serviceman who died in the First World War, was so badly
beaten inside Vichy police station that he subsequently died. Never during
the entire war could a Frenchman have allowed himself to strike a Jew in
the street. A Jew as such was of course considered by the State as a
potentially dangerous citizen. He was living under a sort of probation. He
might have good reason to keep on his guard. His movements and rights were
subject to severe restrictions, but there was no lack of Jews who, all
during the German occupation, continued to go about their business in
plain view of everyone, even running their shops or practicing their
trades. Still in Vichy, Marshall and Mrs Pétain’s regular chemist was a
Jew by the name of Maurice Benhamou, and the kosher butcher’s in the rue
Bardiaux seems to have stayed open throughout the Occupation. In May 1944
in Lyon an American bombing raid left a number of people dead. Amongst the
services held for these victims was an ecumenical ceremony led by the
Cardinal-Archbishop, with an imam and a rabbi by his side. But this does
not, of course, cancel out the fact that in Vichy, Lyon and in all the
rest of the country the Jews could experience deportation, and either
return or not return afterwards.
Here you’re speaking of France?
Yes, of France under the Occupation.
And in the East, do you think things were the same?
If you have any specific cases, do present them. You’re German. I should
readily invite any German to read an extraordinary document on the
day-to-day life, during the whole war, of certain Jews in the very heart
of the Third Reich. It’s the memoirs of Victor Klemperer. I possess all
three versions: German, French and English. I like to compare the
different versions of a book. In the case at hand, the most interesting
version is the French one; instead of stopping at June 1945, it continues
on to December of that year and contains a letter of January 1947 in which
the author, quite obviously under the influence of the propaganda that had
been about since the war’s end, piles up lies and exaggerations on what
he’d really lived through and which he’d so accurately described, day
after day, in his memoirs proper.
Victor Klemperer, a Dresden Jew, is married to an Aryan woman. Very
anti-Nazi, he recounts his torments. I’ll tell you the summit of those
torments: being Jewish, he had to wear the Jewish star in public and he
did a grand total of eight days in prison, in June 1941, for having broken
the Civil Defence rules after curfew. He spent the eight days in the cells
of Dresden police headquarters, where, he tells us, he was treated quite
correctly. In his book he constantly stresses how the Germans he’s met on
the tram, in the street, at the grocer’s, far indeed from ill-treating him
or coming across antagonistic, have by and large shown themselves to be
considerate and helpful. Vogel the grocer keeps coffee, a precious
commodity at the time, aside for him. Civil servants are agreeable and
polite. “Passers-by sympathised with the star bearers”. He has several
“favourable experiences with the star […] There is no doubt that the
people feel the persecution of the Jews to be a sin”. That said, he takes
delight in Germany’s military disasters and in the bombing raids and is
sad to note that it seems impossible to shatter the civilians’ morale.
These memoirs (at least 5,000 typewritten pages) amount to a scathing
refutation of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s thesis claiming that “ordinary
Germans”, by their anti-Semitism, contributed to what is called “the
Holocaust”.
You talk there of France, of Germany, but if one goes further eastward,
it’s Poland, the Generalgouvernement, and then, in regard to that country
and Russia, the “Einsatzgrupen” have to be discussed. What do you say here?
It’s above all in Russia that those police units operated. The war in the
East was a savage one. The Soviet State had not signed on to the Geneva
and Hague conventions and the Germans found themselves up against a
partisan war. At the Soviet end there were no rights, no law. Thus could
the Germans, when there’d been a group of partisans in a village, be led
to destroy everything in it, even if there were women and children. German
soldiers’ safety was the paramount concern. With Germany at war, what
German wife, what father or mother would have agreed that a husband or son
should be liable to be killed by an individual in civilian dress shooting
from behind, then slipping away? In such moments there inevitably came
about instances of military savagery, acts as are displayed in similar
circumstances by all the armies of the world.
Coming back to my personal experience in France, I was able to see at work
first the French soldier, then the German soldier, the Italian soldier,
and, finally, the Canadian soldier, the British soldier and the American
soldier. I, who, during the war, was so anti-German, must admit that I
only ever saw extremely correct Germans; I can even mention some startling
cases. When, afterwards, I saw the Americans arrive, I thought it was
wonderful. Sure enough, many of them were likeable and well-behaved but
there were also, amongst the American soldiers, NCOs and officers, some
real louts. And then, on another score, I was especially distressed on
seeing the horrors of the Big Purge. But here I’m getting off the subject.
You wanted to talk about the “Kommissarbefehl”, the “Einsatzgruppen” and
Babi Yar.
Yes, three parts of one same subject. We’re told that there existed a
“Kommissarbefehl”, described as an order to kill systematically the Soviet
political commissars who oversaw the troops, and here the occasion is
seized to add that the “Einsatzgruppen’s” task was to kill the Jews. It’s
false. First of all, there never existed any “Kommissarbefehl” as such.
Some historians have acquired a habit of designating by this term a set of
documents concerning the sorting of prisoners or of certain civilians just
behind the front. The Einsatzgruppen, established at the time of the
Anschluss in 1938, were assigned the job of this sorting. On the immense
Russian front, they were a mere 3,000 (three thousand), drivers and clerks
included. At the outset of the military campaign, they were given rigorous
instructions. People should read these instructions. They amount to saying
that, as the rules of war are unknown to the Soviets, a strict sorting of
prisoners will be in order. Certain captives will have to be executed
forthwith because they are not soldiers but fanaticised political
commissars who cannot be left in prisoner-of-war camps; others will
perhaps be useful to Germany. One document, labelled USSR-014 at the
Nuremberg trial, spells out eight categories of suspect persons who must,
after sorting, be separated (Aussonderung) from the military or civilian
prisoners. It’s interesting to note that the Jews are mentioned in eighth
(and last) place; it’s specified in this order of October 29, 1941, that
only a category of Jews is concerned. I quote: “8) Soviet Russian and
Jewish intellectuals, insofar as they are professional revolutionaries or
political activists, authors, editors, Komintern officials etc.”. With
their customary dishonesty, the officials in charge of summarising the
documents presumed to write that “those affected” “are above all Soviet
commissars and other leading personalities, also Jews and members of the
intelligentsia”; in their résumé they go so far as to write of
“directives… for the ‘purging’ by special commandos of the prisoner-of-war
camps”, whereas, let me repeat, for this document, it’s a matter of “sorting”.
When the troops advance and take a town, the Einsatzgruppen, a kind of
military police in the field, will have to try to check the identity of
prisoners and civilians. This doesn’t mean that these people are going to
be killed. Only some of them will be slated for execution. On the other
side, with the Communists, no bones were made about executions. Therefore
in first place came the political commissars. Neither here nor elsewhere
did there exist any order to kill the Jews.
Then, if I understand you correctly, these instructions didn’t specify
that all the political commissars were to be executed, even though the
said commissars were mentioned first.
That’s right. Often, it seems, those commissars were Jews; however, even
in their case, there was a sorting to be carried out. But you’ll
understand well enough that, in practice, this meant there were prisoners
that one had the right, in effect, to execute in contravention of the laws
of war. Also, as you’re perhaps aware, the German military commanders did
not want to act like the Red Army and, in the end, refused to follow
through with the harshest provisions of the orders in question.
As for Babi Yar, no material investigation of the type carried out at
Katyn during the war has been made there; nothing has surfaced to support
the accounts generally heard on the subject, which seem implausible. I’ll
come back to Babi Yar.
You wanted to add something about that town in the Ukraine, Marinka.
Yes, but first, at risk of surprising you, I give you notice that for a
brief moment we’re going to leave the realm of history for that of fiction.
Here is the drama that I imagine.
The German mayor of Marinka, recently sentenced to death for killing a
Jewish woman, is going to be shot by firing squad. He is in a prison cell
awaiting execution. It is night. He is in the throes of death. Just now, a
man appears at the cell door and addresses him as follows: “You are a
German whom German soldiers, in a short while, are going to shoot because
you’ve killed a Jewess. However, be advised that, in a few years’ time,
Germany will have been flattened. Her conquerors will prove ruthless.
They’ll make a clean sweep of everything you’ve learnt and believed.
They’ll make up a lie-ridden history of this war. They’ll impose the
winners’ version. This new official historical truth, forced upon Germany
and propagated nearly everywhere else in the world as well, will be that,
during this war, Germans had every licence to do what you’ve done. Yes,
its promoters will go so far as to claim that the Germans spent the better
part of their time hunting down, torturing and slaughtering the Jews.
They’ll state that Hitler had given the order to murder all the European
Jews. They’ll add that, in order to succeed in a task of such colossal
proportions, he’d had weapons of mass destruction built, weapons so
diabolical that after the war not a trace will be found of them.
Television sets, still so rare today in 1942, will be in every home;
morning, noon, afternoon, evening and night, year in year out, they’ll be
spreading this universal neo-truth that will be taught in the primary and
secondary schools, the universities and even in the catechism, to your
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A bit everywhere
monuments will be put up and ceremonies instituted in honour of the new
religion. The few who dare to dispute this dogma will be taken to court,
thrown into prison, outlawed from society. And do you know who the most
fervent apostles of this new creed will be, a creed of what will be called
‘the Holocaust of the Jews’? Don’t go searching! It will be the Germans
themselves. In the very firing squad that’s going to shoot you there are
perhaps some men who’ll survive the war and who, once they’ve got back
home, will start believing the lie of ‘the Holocaust’. In any case, their
children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren will believe
it.” The mayor of Marinka will receive this message as an overwhelming
shock. Indeed, he’ll go out of his mind as a result, and it’s a madman
that they’ll be leading to the stake.
Such is the tragedy I imagine. I see in it the story line of a stage play
or film to be made. This tragedy is that of Germany, whose very soul has
been harried to death with the “Holocaust”.
Let’s leave fiction and come back to history. I’d like to dwell a little
on the case of Babi Yar. Currently, certain Jewish organisations, sensing
that the myth of the gas chambers is taking in water all around, are
trying a diversion, asking us to turn our attention away from the alleged
gas chambers and gas vans and towards the “Einsatzgruppen”. This is, for
example, what a French Jewish personality like Jacques Attali has recently
done in writing “The vast majority of Jews slain were killed by the
individual weapons of German soldiers and policemen, between 1940 and
1942, and not by the death-works that were put into place afterwards”.
Employing a brand new phrase, these Jews call this the “Shoah by bullets”!
This “Shoah by bullets” is now summoned to replace the “Shoah by gas”. |
