Witnesses to the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz[*]
Robert Faurisson
Eyewitness testimony must always be verified. There are two essential
means of verifying such testimony in criminal cases: confronting the
account with the material elements (in particular, with expertise as
to the crime weapon), and the detailed cross-examination of the
witness on what he/she purports to have seen. Thus, in the proceedings
where it had been a question of the homicidal gas chambers of
Auschwitz, no judge nor any attorney was able to claim any kind of
expertise regarding the weapon of the crime; moreover, no lawyer ever
cross-examined the witnesses by asking them to describe with precision
even one of these chemical slaughter-houses. That is, up until 1985.
When witnesses that year were finally cross-examined on these subjects
during the first Zundel trial in Toronto, their rout was total.
Because of this resounding set-back and by reason of other calamities
previous to or following 1985, the defenders of the thesis of Jewish
extermination have begun to abandon a history of Auschwitz primarily
founded on testimonies and are obliging themselves, at the present
time, to replace it with a scientific basis, or, at least, one which
appears scientific, founded on factual research and proofs. The
'testimonial history' of Auschwitz in the manner of Elie Wiesel and
Claude Lanzmann is discredited. Its time has passed. It remains for
the exterminationists to attempt to work like the Revisionists on the
facts and the evidence.
In the present study, 'gas chambers' are intended to mean homicidal
gas chambers, or 'Nazi gas chambers.' By 'Auschwitz', it is necessary
to understand this as Auschwitz I or Auschwitz Stammlager, as well as
Auschwitz II or Birkenau. Finally, by 'gas chamber witnesses', I am
indiscriminately designating those who claim to have participated in a
homicidal gassing operation at these locations and those who are
content to say they either saw or perceived a homicidal gas chamber
there. In sum, by 'witnesses', I mean those whom one usually
designates as such, whether it is a matter of judicial witnesses or
media witnesses; the first have expressed themselves under oath in the
docket of a legal proceeding, while the second have given testimony in
books, magazine articles, films, on television or the radio. It so
happens certain witnesses have alternately been of both the judicial
and media types.
This study is devoid of any psychological or sociological
consideration for the Auschwitz gas chamber testimonies, as well as
any consideration along the lines of what is physical, chemical,
topographical, architectural, documentary, and historical by which
these testimonies are unacceptable. It aims above all to make evident
a point which the Revisionists have so far not mentioned but which is
nonetheless of prime importance: up until 1985, no judicial witness of
these gas chambers had been cross-examined on the material nature of
the facts reported. When, in Toronto, at the first Zundel trial in
1985, I was able to cause such witnesses to be cross-examined, they
collapsed; since this date, there are no longer any gas chamber
witnesses presented in court except perhaps at the trial of Demjanjuk
in Israel where, there again, the witnesses revealed themselves as
false.[1]
To begin, I will digress upon the grievous causes by which, since
1983, Simone Veil[2] was led to recognize that there existed no
witnesses of the gas chambers.
- The Thesis of Simone Veil
After the end of the war, the illusion that there were innumerable
witnesses to the Auschwitz gas chambers was gradually accepted. By the
end of the 1970s, with the arrival of historical revisionism into the
media arena, particularly in France, it began to occur to certain
individuals that these witnesses were perhaps not as numerous as one
had believed. It is thus that, during the preparations for a major
trial in which Jewish organizations had intended against me during the
early 1980s, their lawyers and in particular, Robert Badinter, the
future Minister of Justice, experienced severe difficulties uncovering
evidence and witnesses. With staff in hand in the manner of the
pilgrim, they were obliged to go to Poland and to Israel so as to
bring back, if possible, that which they could not find in France. All
for naught!
My first trial took place in 1981, followed by the appeal in 1983. Not
one single witness took the risk of appearing in court. On April 26,
1983, the Paris Court of Appeal rendered its verdict. Naturally, I was
found guilty, as one might have expected, for "harm to others" which
is in fact to say for harm caused to Jews for the exposition of my
theses in the mainstream press. Yet the court coupled this verdict
with remarks sufficient to cause my adversaries a fair degree of
consternation. My work was judged to be serious and yet dangerous. It
was dangerous because, in the opinion of the judges, it appeared I
allowed other persons the possibility of exploiting my discoveries for
reprehensible ends! All the while, this same work was serious in the
sense that, in the opinion of the court, one could uncover neither
negligence, frivolousness, willful ignorance, nor lies - and this
contrary to what had been affirmed by the adversarial party, which had
accused me of "causing harm to others by falsification of
history." (sic)
On the subject of testimonies, the court went so far as to pronounce:
"The researches of Mr. Faurisson have dealt with the existence of the
gas chambers which, to believe multiple testimonies, would have been
used during the Second World War to systematically put to death a
portion of those persons deported by the German authorities." (my
emphasis)
The court perfectly summarized what it called my "logical thread" and
my "reasoning" by specifying that, for me,
"[...] the existence of the gas chambers, such as usually described
since 1945, conflict with an absolute impossibility, which suffices by
itself to invalidate all the existing testimonies or, at the least, to
stamp them with suspicion." (my emphasis)
Finally, the court, drawing a practical conclusion from these
considerations, decreed the right of every Frenchman not to believe in
the evidence and witnesses of the gas chambers. It stated:
"The value of the conclusions defended by Mr. Faurisson [as to the
problem of the gas chambers] rests therefore upon the sole
appreciation of the experts, the historians and the public."
Two weeks later, Simone Veil publicly reacted to this judicial
decision - upsetting for her and her co-religionists - with a
declaration of extreme importance. She admitted the absence of proofs,
of traces and even witnesses of the gas chambers, but added this
absence was easily explained because:
"Everyone knows [she asserts] that the Nazis destroyed these gas
chambers and systematically eradicated all the witnesses."
To begin with, "everyone knows" is not an argument worthy of a jurist.
Furthermore, Simone Veil, believing perhaps to be getting out from
behind the eight-ball, made her case only worse; in effect, in order
to uphold what she was claiming, it would have been necessary for her
to prove not only that the gas chambers had existed but that the
'Nazis' had destroyed them and that they liquidated all the witnesses:
a vast criminal undertaking about which one wonders on what order,
when, with whom and by what means the Germans would have carried it
out in greatest secrecy.
But what does it matter? We shall take note of this concession by S.
Veil: there is neither proof, nor traces, nor witnesses to the gas
chambers. It so happens that, in trying to reassure her circle, S.
Veil clothed this surprising concession with conventional parlance.
Here is, therefore, in her own words, what she confided in an
interview-event for France-Soir Magazine (May 7, 1983, p. 47), of
which the title was: "Simone Veil's warning in regard to Hitler's
diaries: 'We risk banalizing genocide'":
"What strikes me nowadays is the paradox of the situation: someone
publishes a diary attributed to Hitler by sheer dint of publicity and
a great deal of money without, it seems, taking very great precautions
to assure himself of its authenticity, yet, at the same time, in the
course of a trial brought against Faurisson for having denied the
existence of the gas chambers, those lodging the complaint are obliged
to apply a formal proof about the reality of the gas chambers. Yet
everyone knows that the Nazis destroyed these gas chambers and
systematically eradicated all the witnesses."
A choice so full of consequences as that of S. Veil is not to be
explained solely by the disaster of April 26, 1983, but by an entire
series of events which, for her, made 1982 a dark year in terms of the
history of the gas chambers and the credibility of witnesses. I will
recall here but three of these events:
On April 21, 1982, historians, politicians and former
deportees founded an association in Paris having as its objective the
research of evidence for the existence and operation of the gas
chambers (ASSAG: Association pour l'=E9tude des assassinats par gaz sous
le r=E9gime national-socialist; Association for the study of killings by
gas under the national-socialist regime); one year later, this
association had still not discovered any proof [this is still the case
today, since, envisioned according to its own statutes for a "duration
limited to the realization of its objective", this association has not
disbanded];In May, 1982, the Minister for Veterans' Affairs launched a
noteworthy "Deportation Exposition, 1933-1945" in Paris; this
exposition was supposed to continue by touring throughout France; I
immediately sent out a text in which I demonstrated the fallacious
character of this exposition: no evidence - except fraudulent evidence
nor any precise testimony for the existence of 'Nazi gas chambers'
was able to be shown to visitors; additionally, Ms. Jacobs, the person
responsible for this initiative by the Ministry, took it upon herself
to immediately cancel this would-be vagabond exposition;- From June 29 to July 2, 1982, an international symposium was
held at the Sorbonne on "Nazi Germany and the extermination of the
Jews". This colloquium had been announced as a decisive reply to the
revisionist offensive in France; while it was supposed to have
concluded with a resounding press conference, in reality, it was
totally different. The first day of the proceedings, we distributed in
the Sorbonne's entrance hall recent copies of my Response to Pierre
Vidal-Naquet (not without risk to ourselves).[3] The colloquium was
carried out behind closed doors and in a turbulent atmosphere.
Finally, during the press conference, the two colloquium organizers,
historians Francois Furet and Raymond Aron, weren't even mentioning
the words 'gas chamber(s).'
- From June 29 to July 2, 1982, an international symposium was
I often say it's on this date of July 2, 1982, that the myth of the
'Nazi gas chambers' and their associated witnesses died or entered
their final death throes, at least on the level of historical
research. At the very heart of the Sorbonne, one had thus
disconcertingly discovered the absence of any solid proof and any
witness worthy of trust. Notwithstanding, one had previously trumpeted
that this colloquium would put an end to "the ineptitude of Faurisson"
by bringing forth a mass of evidence and testimonies. Such a silence
after all that fanfare was truly eloquent.
To follow http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndwitness.html
[*] This chapter was translated from the French original by Daniel D.
Desjardins.
[1] Cf. E. Loftus, K. Ketcham, Witness for defense, St. Martin's
Press, New York 1991, as well as the contribution of A. Neumaier in
this volume (editor's note).
[2] S. Veil, maiden name Jacob, former President of the European
Parliament, was interned in the concentration camp of Auschwitz in
WWII, especially in subcamp Bobzek.
[3] R. Faurisson, R=E9ponse =E0 Pierre Vidal-Naquet, La Vieille Taupe,
Paris 1982; Engl.: "Response to a Paper Historian", The Journal of
Historical Review, Spring 1986, pp. 21-72.