COMMENTS
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(December 17, 1980) on a program with a wide audience. He
claimed to be able to summarize his position in about sixty words:
"The alleged myth of the gas chambers and the alleged genocide of
the Jews are one and the same historical lie which has made an enor–
mous political and financial fraud possible . Its principle beneficiaries
are the State of Israel and international Zionism, while the principle
victims are the German people (but not the German rulers) and the
entire Palestinian people." This declaration went far beyond the
bounds of scholarly debate about historical facts which Faurisson
constantly claimed he wished to initiate. Faurisson accused the Jews
of a major swindle. In a shocking reversal of roles, the Jewish
community was suddenly accused of being the perpetrators of the
crimes of which they had been in fact the victims. "Have Cambodian
or Algerian victims ever been labelled executioners?" asked MRAP's
lawyer, Rappoport , during the third trial. MRAP, in conjunction
with LICRA, this time brought suit against Faurisson under the
penal code - specifically the law of 1972 against incitation to racial
hatred. This trial, conducted like the previous civil case in the
absence of Faurisson, took place on June 24 and 25, 1981.
Faurisson's fallacies
Faurisson's argument could fill an anthology oflogical fallacies.
Basically the technique is to start from an apparent factual contra–
diction which is then cited as proof of the "no-Holocaust" hypothesis,
while no further effort is made to gather additional information that
could account for this contradiction. A few examples may suffice.
According to documents, Simone Veil (nee Jacob), the current
president of the parliament of the European Economic Community,
had been deported to Auschwitz in 1944 on transport number 71
from France. Usually, on arrival at Auschwitz, records were kept
only for those "entering" the camp; no lists of names exist for those
who were sent directly from the transport trains to the gas chambers.
Therefore, since none of the women from transport number 71 had
been registered on arrival, it was believed for some time that they
had all immediately been gassed. Faurisson uses the fact that
Simone Veil is alive today as an illustration of his argument that
there is no evidence of gassing. He does not even attempt to explore
other possibilities, such as disruptions in the German bureaucratic
practices at a late stage of the war.
It
is well known that the Nazis
made systematic use of such euphemistic expressions as "final
solution," "shower bath," "special action" to conceal their deeds. For
