Reply to Jeremy Jones (Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council)
Professor Robert Faurisson replies to
Jeremy Jones’s statement of 25 November 1997
Jeremy Jones makes two accusations against the short witness statement of 3 November 1997 that I wrote on behalf of Dr Fredrick Töben. The first accusation is that I misrepresented the Arno Mayer quote:
“Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable.”
The second is that I presented material that was in no way relevant to the case.
Arno Mayer’s quote
I did not misrepresent Arno Mayer’s quote. I never hide the fact that, in spite of this remarkable 14-word sentence, the author claims that the Nazi gas chambers did exist; all the authors whom I mentioned, without exception, claim that the genocide of the Jews and/or the Nazi gas chambers existed. And, if I mentioned them, it was precisely for that reason. In a way I said: “Look! Even those people bring water to the revisionist mill.” I did not quote one revisionist author. I mentioned or quoted Raul Hilberg, a declaration signed by 34 French academics, then Jean-Claude Pressac, Arno Mayer, Eric Conan and Jacques Baynac.
I specified that the title of A. Mayer’s book was The “Final Solution” in History, which obviously means that A. Mayer belongs to the group of historians who believe that “Final Solution” was an euphemism for “Extermination”, whereas, in fact, the Germans used to talk about a territoriale Endlösung, which is a “territorial final solution” of the Jewish problem (resettlement of Jews in a territory of their own).
What I quoted was the first and significant sentence of a long paragraph. To date (1988), no Jewish historian of the establishment (A. Mayer is professor of European history at Princeton) had ever written that sources for the study of the Nazi gas chambers were at once rare and unreliable. Before then, those sources were at once countless and reliable. In 1988 it came as a surprise that such a prestigious academic could say that he believed in something for the study of which the sources were, in his own words, at once rare and unreliable.
Other quotes of A. Mayer
If I had more space I could quote many other parts of A. Mayer’s book. Let’s be content with only three quotes:
1. But gradually, even if unwittingly, this cult of remembrance has become overly sectarian (p. 16);
2. Besides, from 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably overall, more Jews were killed by so-called “natural” causes than by “unnatural” ones (p. 365);
3. All in all, how many bodies were cremated in Auschwitz? How many died there all told? What was the national, religions and ethnic breakdown of this commonwealth of victims? How many of them were condemned to die a “natural” death and how many were deliberately slaughtered? And what was the proportion of Jews among those murdered in cold blood – among these gassed? We have simply no answers to those questions at this time (p. 366).
I could quote many of A. Mayer’s nearly revisionist views about the Einsatzgruppen; about the alleged genocidal purpose of the Wannsee Conference; about Hitler himself, and I could underscore the fact that this historian avoided mentioning the alleged “confessions” of Rudolf Höss; the so-called “confessions” of Kurt Gerstein; and the preposterous “Report” of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler (the “Auschwitz Protocols” published in Washington in November 1944 by the executive office of the President).
One quote of J. Jones
But let’s simply have a look at J. Jones’s quote of A Mayer’s book. Let’s look at what he accuses me of having forgotten. In that quote, we can see that, according to the Princeton professor, there are no traces of the alleged murderous activities and instruments of a gigantic murder of the Jews. He dares to say that the reason for the absence of traces is that the SS operatives dutifully eliminated those traces but we see that he offers no proof whatsoever thereof. He adds that we have no written orders and, once more, offers no proof thereof. In passing, notice that “no written order” is here a substitute for “no orders at all” since, if we had orders other than written ones, the professor would have told us. He then writes that we have no bones and no ashes of the victims and, likewise, he contends that care was taken to dispose of those bones and ashes. In fact, let’s recall that bones and ashes of cremated bodies were found but none of those mountains of bones and ashes that should have been there if really an industrial extermination of Jews had taken place.
Then, after conceding that we have no hard evidence consisting of orders to kill the Jews, no physical traces of huge numbers of murder victims, A. Mayer goes on saying that we have only words! Those are the words of people testifying after the war: either Germans or Jews. Moreover, this testimony, he warns us, must be screened carefully. As for diaries, they are rare, and authentic documents are also said to be rare.
Of course, A. Mayer adds that, some time in the future, we may get something like additional evidence, private journals and official papers, archives from the Soviets and new information possibly brought by excavations. But the words he uses are revealing; words such as “may”, “are likely”, “may well”, “may also”, tend to show that A. Mayer counts on a problematic future to compensate such a disappointing present.
His book was published in 1988. The irony is that what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the – relative – opening of the archives, brought exactly the contrary of what A. Mayer expected. In 1990, with the agreement of at least some Jewish representatives, the Auschwitz National Museum had to remove the inscription of the Auschwitz-Birkenau monument which purported in 19 different languages that 4,000,000 people had died at the camp. After a very long discussion it was decided, five years later, that the new figure would be 1,500,000 which is much more than, for instance, Jean-Claude Pressac believes (from 600,000 to 800,000) and even far more than, one may hope, will be revealed one day if the International Tracing Service archives held in Arolsen-Waldeck (Germany) are opened to every researcher.
As for the Sterbebücher (death books) found in Moscow and Auschwitz, they confirm that the revisionists were right in saying that the deaths were carefully registered by the Germans, even the deaths of young children; of the elderly; and those of “Mosaic” origin who, according to the legend, should have been immediately gassed on arrival, without being registered.
Jones’s misrepresentations
J. Jones does not hesitate to tamper with a text of A. Mayer that is embarrassing for him.
A. Mayer writes:
In the meantime, there is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities and errors in the existing sources. These cannot be ignored, although it must be emphasised strongly that such defects are altogether insufficient to put in question the use of gas chambers in the mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz (p. 363).
J. Jones was obviously embarrassed by the facts: 1) that the sources were at once rare and unreliable, and 2) that there were, in those existing sources, many contradictions, ambiguities and errors. He also was upset by the fact that A. Mayer insisted in saying that these cannot be ignored and that he called them “defects”. So, J. Jones decided to rewrite the text; he found a way not to mention the many contradictions, ambiguities and errors; he found also a way to ignore what could not be ignored, and he simply erased the “defects”. The result is that, according to rewriter J. Jones, A. Mayer is supposed to have written:
it must be emphasised strongly that this situation is altogether insufficient to put in question the use of gas chambers in the mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz.
One has to admire especially here the way in which Jones stopped his quote at “strongly”, replaced “such defects” by “this situation” and continued his quote.
As for the second quote about the absurd performances that Mayer attributes to the Auschwitz crematoria: “provided they operated at full capacity and around the clock”, Jones forgets to tell us that, in the next paragraph, Mayer corrects himself. This paragraph begins with: “But many questions remain open” and finishes with: “We have simply no answers to these questions at this time” (p. 366, as already quoted by me).
My material is relevant
My material is relevant to the case since, in my “witness statement”, my material came exclusively from authors who, like Jones, claim – without bringing any proof – that the genocide of the Jews and the Nazi gas chambers did exist.
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