Reply to Fredrick Töben on the subject of Charles Provan

On May 29, 2000, after the conclusion of our Thirteenth International Revisionist Conference, I had, on his request, a conversation with Charles Provan on the subject of his forty-page text: “A Study of the Holes”. Our exchange was recorded on tape by his friend John Sack. I then asked Ch. Provan to make a summing up, in the presence of Ernst Zündel and other witnesses, of our conversation.

Before these witnesses he honestly acknowledged having committed the serious errors of method for which I had found fault with him. He said that with his two sons and a friend he had had only one day to look for those renowned holes. He admitted that the holes had not been found after all, that the photographs (numbers 2, 6 and 8) which were supposed to represent the Zyklon-B vents were by no means satisfactory, and that he would have to return to Birkenau to carry out a new examination using better methods.

I must say that our conversation was held in the friendliest of terms. In my opinion, Ch. Provan is mistaken but, first of all, he has the forthrightness to speak “face to face”, and his study proves that before criticising the revisionists he makes the effort of reading them carefully. He has even read their most recent writings, and that is rare.

I could go into the details of our talk and show Ch. Provan’s grave errors but it now seems largely useless to do so.

That said, the photos speak for themselves. Ch. Provan was looking for the four alleged 10-inch by 10-inch Zyklon B holes, situated along a single central line of the roof of the “gas chamber”. These are the holes to whose existence the German engineer Schultz had “confessed” in his statement to the Soviet military justice authorities (see “Protokole des Todes”; Der Spiegel, 40/1993, p. 162). Ch. Provan told us that he had found three of them, the fourth being impossible to make out given the building’s ruined state. For him, they were the holes numbered 2, 6 and 8. But one need only refer to the photos: nothing in the photos, absolutely nothing, corresponds to any 10-inch square openings, even if it is accepted that an explosion may have so distorted the roof as to make them unrecognisable.

I wish Ch. Provan good luck in his new investigation at Birkenau.

P.S. : Immediately after our commendable little talk I had a rather lively discussion with John Sack, in Ch. Provan’s presence. Its liveliness may have given some the impression that I was quarrelling with Ch. Provan. That, most assuredly, was not the case.

June 19, 2000