COMMENTS
Erika Apfelbaum
FORGETTING THE PAST*
The sequence of events
OnJune 1 and 2,1981, a somewhat unusual trial took place
in Paris when a civil suit was brought before the court by two
antiracist organizations, LICRA (International League Against
Racism and Anti-Semitism) and MRAP (Movement Against
Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples). Backed by several
other organizations of former deportees, children of deportees, and
members of the Resistance, they took Robert Faurisson, a professor
at the University of Lyon II, to court, charging him with willfully
distorting history. Faurisson had claimed that the gas chambers
never had existed for the purpose of killing Jews, and that the
Holocaust never took place.
Faurisson is the French representative of a small, but
increasingly vocal group which has been attempting to get inter–
national recognition as an alternative historical school. Their efforts
have focused on rewriting the history of the Holocaust and denying
its existence - this has earned them the label "no-Holocaust revi–
sionists." In France, the name of Faurisson and the revisionist inter–
pretation first sprang into public view in late 1978. Darquier de
Pellepoix, the former Commissioner of Jewish Affairs in the Vichy
regime, had declared in an interview in the newsmagazine
L'Express
(November 4, 1978) that "only lice had been gassed in Auschwitz."
There was considerable discussion of this in the media, and on
December 28, 1978, the daily newspaper
Le Monde
published an article
• Ian Lubek, University of Guelph, Canada, assisted in the translation of this
article.
