Father Patrick Desbois is one hell of a prankster

The myth of the Nazi gas chambers was in such a bad way that a substitute or simulation had to be found. The “mass graves in the Ukraine” will do the trick for the time being, at least on the media level. But these alleged “mass graves” have not been dug open and never will be! Our hoaxers will have to be taken at their word. And so we’re being given the gas chamber deal all over again: no evidence and nothing but hair-raising tales in the style of Filip Müller or Shlomo Venezia.

The people claiming to have discovered the “mass graves” have not, in reality, carried out any excavations, hence no inventory of remains, no verification, forensic studies or physical or material certifications of the standard, compulsory kind made in the inquest following the discovery, anywhere, of even a single corpse or skeleton. No police or justice official has been to any of the sites to do any examination whatsoever. Credence will have to be lent to the statements of representatives of two Jewish associations who presume to tell us that if those procedures, albeit normal and routine ones, haven’t been followed, it’s because the Jewish religion forbids such “desecration” of Jewish bodies!

These associations have merely gone about gathering “testimonies” which, afterwards, they’ve sorted through in line with criteria not revealed to the trusting public, but which are known to all the specialists of the “comm.-biz” and “story-telling” (the art of “getting up a good story” as, for example, when the neo-cons want to launch a war). Ukrainian villagers, mustered for the occasion, are filmed giving their accounts from which, subsequently, only choice bits will be picked in order to obtain tidy, well-formatted narratives (good stories to tell), neat disposal being made of any contradictions or precise points that might be checked on and thus, possibly, refuted. In the spectacle of this “witness parade” the viewer-voyeur will not learn anything real but will be bathed in the emotion, the anger, the whining and the horror of vaudeville-hall monstrosities and Dracula stories: a real Jacuzzi of comfort. He’ll enjoy the gentle warmth of a mixture of hatred and goodness, deftly blended. He’ll hate those Nazi “bastards” capable of senseless exploits of evil and, simultaneously, he’ll feel suffused with a particular goodness, the goodness felt in feeling oneself to be good, not all alone off to one side, where your goodness is liable to go unnoticed, but good together with others, lots of others, amidst a community whose members all admire each other and pat themselves on the back for being so good and compassion-laden. From his emotion Jacuzzi, the viewer-voyeur will gaze at the TV screen and find the usual fare, what his psyche has grown accustomed to. He won’t want any other. Above all, the menu of the Shoah soap opera mustn’t vary. Always the same camera shots, the same colours, the same hackneyed expressions and the same refrains of the propaganda of war and hatred. A drug! People want it and ask for more. Take care not to disappoint the customers! They’ve become addicted. The dose is going to need strengthening: we’ve got to out-match Claude Lanzmann.

But, coming back to those alleged “mass graves”, how is the value of testimony to be assessed if the material reality of the facts hasn’t been established beforehand? How will it be determined whether, at such or such place, so much as a single corpse lies buried? How will the number of victims be set? How can it be affirmed that they were Jews? And Jews killed by the Germans? The mere fact that, apparently, spent German cartridges are to be found in the vicinity of the supposed location of a supposed mass grave proves nothing. Who’s going to prove to us that those cartridges were found at that spot? And isn’t the land of Russia and the Ukraine littered all over with used bullets from the German, Soviet and other armies’ weapons? Actually, it has been proved by real investigations, diggings and forensic studies that the 4,410 Polish officers duly ascertained to have been executed, with a bullet to the back of the head, by the Soviets in Katyn forest in 1940 were all killed with bullets supplied by the German war industry to the Soviet Union within the framework of the Germano-Soviet pact. Have there not, these last few years in Russia and the Ukraine, been uncovered a number of common graves which, after scientific examination, all prove to contain victims of the Tcheka, the NKVD and the NKGB, except for a few containing the remains of men of Napoleon’s army, the study of which, nearly two centuries after their burial, has established that they died of typhus?

Some months ago, in a long private interview, Professor Robert Faurisson had the occasion to bring up the myth which, today more than ever, can be seen developing round the Einsatzgruppen, Babi Yar and the “Holocaust by bullets in the Ukraine”, thanks in particular to Father Patrick Desbois, that friend of Élie Wiesel, of the late Cardinal Lustiger and of Mgr Vingt-Trois. Below is a passage from that interview where, after clarifying a few things about the Einsatzgruppen and Babi Yar, the professor went on to speak about Patrick Desbois.

These days, in the Ukraine, there’s a Roman Catholic priest who’s been getting a lot of attention, father Patrick Desbois, a Frenchman and great friend of the Jews. His speciality consists in travelling the length and breadth of the land in search of “mass Jewish graves”. He has the good Ukrainian peasants of a given area informed that he’ll soon be calling at such or such locale and that he intends to garner testimonies about the slaughters of Jews by the Germans during the war. It’s wholly in the inhabitants’ interest to be able to boast that the environs actually possess such mass graves over which, afterwards, may be erected monuments that may in turn attract the odd foreign tourist. The “witnesses” get together and prepare a story. The priest then pays his visit and has his photograph taken with the country-folk as they point towards some spot or other. One may, to begin with, be astonished at the age of certain witnesses photographed thus far: they are quite plainly below the necessary age, which would normally be about 80. But there’s something more astonishing still: these supposed mass graves will not be dug open; no disinterment or any material verification will be carried out, all under the admirable pretence that the Jewish religion prohibits the touching of Jewish corpses; however, it’s enough to look in the Encyclopedia Judaica (1978) at the entry “Autopsies [plural] and Dissection [singular]” to see that there is no such prohibition at all. Only at a single location, Busk outside Lvov, have fifteen common graves been dug open, but none of the skeletons found there were examined and the sites were all covered over with a thick layer of concrete, meaning no authentication will be very possible in future! A curious way of respecting a body in accordance with Jewish law! The historian will thus have to be satisfied with what father Desbois, a clever man, tells us the witnesses told him. Hence, unverified numbers of unfound and unshown victims will be added up and, at the end, we shall be told that the Ukraine contains so many mass graves with so many Jewish victims. And all this under the seal of the respective representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, the “Yahad-in-Unum” association and “Zaka”, a group presenting itself as “dedicated individuals determined […] to accord the proper respect for the dead in accordance with Jewish law, heritage and tradition”. As at Auschwitz, tourism will stand some chance of thriving.

We’ve been told that Professor Faurisson himself has visited the exhibition at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris on the “Mass shootings of Jews in Ukraine 1941-1944 / The Holocaust by bullets”, and that he caused some anxiety by asking a woman in charge the simplest of questions: “How is it known that there are mass Jewish graves there?” He was unable to get any answer. Perhaps the question can be put to Father Desbois, who’s now busy giving courses at the Sorbonne on his “mass graves”. Holocaust here, Holocaust there! Decidedly, “There’s no business like Shoah business”. Father Patrick is one hell of a prankster!

October 22, 2007