Newsletter No 278

                                                                                                           ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                                     February 2006
                                                                        No 278

17 January 2006 - Fredrick Töben comments on Germar Rudolf’s Imprisonment at Stammheim, Germany

1. It has to be remembered that the German judiciary is not aloof and apart from the public, as is often the case within Common Law countries. In Common Law countries the judges’ role is to arbitrate between two competing counsels, one for the prosecution and one for the defence. This is the adversarial system of justice, and the prime example of how such system works at its worse was shown to the world when O J Simpson was put on trial for murder – and won because he could afford to pay millions to mount an elaborate defence.

2. I am reminded how Professor Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, mounted a multi-million dollar defence against David Irving’s libel action against Lipstadt. Irving had no chance of successfully running such a prosecution case on his own. Justice Gray had to weigh up each argument presented to him and then make a decision as to who was best at presenting his case. Judges are loathe to find in favour of legally unrepresented litigants because usually from such presentations no firm case law can emerge. I personally once ran my own appeal in a court and won - but then that case remained an unreported appeal case.

3. The German-European system of justice is known as the inquisitorial system whereby judges actively engage in the process of finding the truth of a matter. This means that when an individual is on remand the judge assigned to the case is responsible for censoring all in- and outgoing mail.

4. High profile prisoners on remand such as Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf - and David Irving in Austria – who receive dozens of pieces of mail a week present a work-problem for judges.

5. It does not help in any way to protest at the long delay in mail delivery because often the judge has only one assistant who personally has to take a prisoner’s mail to the post office. When I was in Mannheim prison in 1999 I initially sulked when my judge, Klaus Kern, advised me that he was imposing a limit upon my outgoing mail. He explained to me that he simply did not have the time to post all my outgoing letters, nor did he have the time to censor all incoming letters. A couple of times I was handed unopened letters wherein individuals had enclosed money. I used such notes as birthday presents for fellow prisoners. Though I was never advised formally it was not permitted to have actual physical money in prison. Going shopping at the prison supermarket was a mere signature affair – the total sum being deducted from your prison account.

6. Once an accused becomes a sentenced prisoner the situation eases and incoming mail is generally uncensored and always handed out immediately. Although Germar Rudolf is a sentenced prisoner at Stammheim, Stuttgart, his situation is more involved than Ernst Zündel’s case which is set down to begin again at Mannheim on February 2006.

7. In addition to being a sentenced prisoner, Germar is also on remand for a forthcoming trial at Mannheim. His current 14-month imprisonment stems from a sentence imposed on him by a Stuttgart court during the 1990s.

8. Once he has served this sentence, he is faced with further charges stemming from his having operated his Internet website in the USA, and thereon spreading the Revisionist message. Again, the 2000 appeal in my own case created world legal history when the Karlsruhe court ruled that German law does grip overseas and can pursue anyone anywhere in the world for spreading the Revisionist message via the Internet. The argument that German law should limit itself to Germany only was rejected on grounds that the ‘crime’ is committed wherever the Internet is accessed. Such mindset refused to accept the more logical personal volition argument that Internet access is an activity that an individual engages in voluntarily – the pull-downloading argument.

9. Internet traffic is not ‘pushing’ material into an individual’s mind because an individual must actively look for material. Spam emails seem to water down this argument somewhat whereby unsolicited material is received. But this is certainly not the case with websites, though there is that flimsy excuse used in the Federal Court of Australia case against me where it was stated that students browsing or Googling accidentally stumble on to Adelaide Institute’s website and are then ‘upset and offended’ by the material they find there.

10. This reminds me of the elderly lady who rushes into the local police station to complain about a man doing ‘dirty things’. When asked where, she replied that it was in her home. An officer accompanied her to her home and found no-one there. She then beckoned him to accompany her to the bathroom, asked him to stand on a chair, then to look out the small window, across the road and into the neighbour’s home where “a man was doing dirty things”.

Germar’s constraints

11. State Public Prosecutor, Andreas Großmann, with whom I spoke per telephone today to confirm some of the matters mentioned herein - Germany 49 + 6212922334 - advised that Germar’s mail is being censored by Amtsgericht Judge Reemer at Mannheim. This means that any mail sent to Germar at Stammheim is re-directed to Mannheim, and then forwarded on to him at Stammheim, Stuttgart.

12. Germar is also not permitted to receive or to make any telephone calls, though I think he can communicate with his lawyer per phone.

13. He can receive only two half-hour visits per month, and these are controlled by the State Prosecutor’s Office - Staatsanwaltschaft - at Stuttgart.

14. Germar is permitted to receive unlimited mail, and stamps or international postal coupons can be enclosed in letters.

15. Within one 12-month period Germar is permitted to receive only three packets – one of choice, one for Easter and one for Christmas. Any other packets are returned to the sender. This imposed limitation makes it imperative that his family has precedent over anyone else sending packets to Germar.

16. Germar can receive any number of books, periodicals or newspapers – but they have to be sent directly to him from the publishers.

17. He can play CDs if he has bought himself a player in the prison supermarket.

18. As a prisoner on remand he is permitted to spend 150 Euro per month in the prison supermarket.

19. Germar does not wish to have any money transferred to his prison bank account.

20. The above is controlled by the prison administration - JVA-Zentrale Stuttgart: Germany 49+711 8022.

Concluding remark

Germar is coping as well as can be expected, and he sends his regards to all those who have sent him letters of encouragement. Write to him: Germar Rudolf, Asperger Str 60, D-70439 Stuttgart, Germany.

______________________________________________________

From: Michael Walsh

5 January 2006

Dear Ernst,

I hope this letter finds you in good spirits. However, it must be difficult being in prison, especially over Christmas and New Year! I too spent time in prison for my political beliefs and I too was incarcerated over Christ’s birthday.

I think it is doubly hard for political prisoners because other prisoners know they deserve their loss of freedom; there is some solace in making amends.

But the political prisoner knows that he is in reality the prisoner of time and government. In a more sane society you and mutual comrades would be feted. Yes, there is quite a difference between the two types of prisoner. Take heart from the fact that even in my short lifespan the gaolers have been gaoled and the persecuted have become revered leaders of their people.

On a day to day basis I feel the pulse of world-life; I have the strong feeling that it may be better to be gaoled than to be scared.

Believe me, Ernst, such is the change in professional opinion that our oppressors are themselves very frightened people. When people are frightened they behave irrationally, like gaoling their critics – and that is the first sign of a crumbling system. Even Lipstadt is saying the gaoling of Irving is a mistake and that people should not be gaoled for expressing opinion.

This is body language for a growing awareness that they know they are making mistakes and they know they will pay the price themselves: what they are doing is indefensible. It will be interesting to see how witch finders tomorrow will attempt to justify the reasons for depriving people of their God-given freedom in order that they themselves may avoid the punishment they have been freely handing out.

It won’t take too long. I was fond of saying that Jesus Christ was reviled for several hundred years after his being crucified. And now there’s nowhere in the world (except one) where, in public or in private His name isn’t revered. Many thanks go to His disciples, His numerous acolytes, His believers, those who kept their faith even when suffering unpopularity or worse.

But, it doesn’t necessarily take a long time for events to bring about change; tsunamis even of political change can happen overnight. Look at what has happened in Eastern Europe in months rather than years; and all because of a ship workers strike in Danzig and then a demonstration in Leipzig; that is how vulnerable our gaolers are, and they know it.

I am reminded of the fall of Romania’s President Ceausescu. There he strutted, puffed up with his own importance and invulnerability, on the balcony overlooking the vast square before government buildings. Glowing like a peacock, surrounded by his lickspittle entourage as before them, many thousands of workers, hanging on to his every word – or where they?

I remember so well, though the liberal media only showed the clip once. (how many times would they have shown it had this documented the fall of a real leader of the people?) A lone voice in the throng called ‘Out! Out, Out, Out!’ Who was that solitary man who by this small act of defiance brought a huge Communist country and eventually its evil empire to its knees? What a hero!

His cry was taken up by several others, then more joined in. The change of expression and fear that flooded across the faces of Stalin’s henchmen was as striking as it was absurd. Within minutes thousands were chanting ‘Out, Out Out!’ as the erstwhile hapless dictators in minutes became fugitives from justice.

The scenes that followed must have sent a chill through every ‘equally democratic’ opportunist’s heart. Fast moving events; a popular rejection of cant and hypocrisy exposed Ceausescu and his family as horrible little runts; opportunist market traders, small time crooks when knocked from their pedestal. Their eyes darted here and there, like trapped rats looking for a place to run to, but the boltholes were sealed. Shortly after they were shot down like dogs.

You’re a good man, Ernst; you are good in the eyes of God which is the most important thing. You are respected and loved by your bigger family out here, watching over you and other gaoled comrades. Now, think on, dear friend; who would you rather be? Would it be Ernst Zundel or would it be a certain Comrade Ceausescu taking the podium on a fateful day?

There you are then! I thought that might be your answer.

Ernst! I was always told that when you find yourself in a hole – you stop digging. Good advice but it isn’t being taken by those who persecute you. You know why? Because they are scared and they are desperate.

As I say that always brings over-reaction and irrational behaviour. And there you have it, the case for the(ir) defence . . . but you know, that could be equally futile.

Reminds me of the pragmatism of Bonaparte Napoleon. Riding in his carriage through a tumultuous gathering of tens of thousands in Paris, an aide turned to him and said: “Look how the thousands adore you.”

The French leader turned and dryly observed: “And, as many more would come to see me guillotined.”

Oddly enough, my mother told me that story and she, bless her, until Budapest was a Communist, and a lifelong pacifist much adored by the vintage-swilling trendy lefties and ‘liberals’. So you see, even the inner echelons are in no doubt as to the power of change.

God speed you to freedom, Ernst.

Michael.

-----------------------

Von Michael Walsh

5. Januar 2006

Lieber Ernst,

Hoffentlich bist Du guten Mutes beim Empfang dieses Briefes. Es muß insbesondere über Weihnachten und Neujahr bedrücked sein, im Gefängnis zu sitzen. Auch ich wurde einst um die Weihnachtszeit wegen meiner politischen Anschauung inkarzeriert und mußte Zeit im Gefängnis absitzen.

Meiner Ansicht nach ist dies doppelt schwer für politische Gefangene, da andere Gefangene wissen, daß ihre Freiheitsberaubung gerechtfertigt ist, was ihnen einigen Trost gibt. Der politische Häftling ist sich jedoch bewußt, daß er in Wirklichkeit der Gefangene des Staates und einer politischen Zeitströmung ist. Genau hierin liegt der beträchtliche Unterschied zwischen dem einen Gefangentypus und dem anderen. Doch darf ich Dir ans Herz legen, daß sogar während der kurzen Zeitspanne meines Lebens, die Inhaftierer zu Inhaftierten mutierten und die von ihnen Verfolgten zu hochgeachteten Führern ihres Volkes emporstiegen.

Tagtäglich fühle ich den Puls des Weltgeschehens und empfinde zunehmend, daß es besser ist inhaftiert zu sein, als sich fürchten zu müssen.

Ernst, Du kannst mir glauben, daß sich selbst unsere Unterdrücker in hohem Grade fürchten. Solche Verlautbarungen entspringen fachmännischen

Wissens. Wenn sich die Leute fürchten, ist ihre Verhaltensweise irrational. Dies zeigt sich ganz offensichtlich, wenn sie ihre Kritiker inhaftieren. Das ist das erste Zeichen eines zerbröckelnden Systems. Sogar Lipstadt [ jüd.Kontrahentin im Prozess D. Irvings. Anmerk. d. Übersetzerin] sagt, daß die Inhaftierung von D. Irving ein Fehler war und daß Menschen nicht wegen ihrer Meinung inkarzeriert werden sollten.

In dieser Aussage manifestiert sich ein zunehmendes Bewußtsein, daß sie um ihre Fehler wissen, sowie, daß sie eines Tages selbst den Preis dafür errichten müssen, denn ihr Tun ist nicht zu entschuldigen. Interessant wird sein, wie die Hexenverfolger von morgen versuchen werden sich zu gerechtfertigen dafür, daß sie Menschen ihre Freiheit verwehrt haben.

Es wird nicht mehr lange dauern. Als Beispiel ist Jesum Christum zu nennen, der noch einige hundert Jahre nach seiner Kreuzigung verunglimpft wurde. Und heute wird er nahezu weltweit verehrt. Dank seiner Apostel, seiner Bewunderer, der Gläubigen, die an ihm festhielten, trotz Verfolgung oder Schlimmerem.

Ein Wandel der Dinge muß nicht unbedingt lange dauern; politische Tsunami können über Nacht geschehen. Man bedenke, was im Osten Europas in wenigen Monaten - nicht in Jahren! - geschehen konnte und das wegen eines Arbeiterstreiks in Danzig und einer Demonstration in Leipzig. So verwundbar sind unsere Inhaftierer... und sie wissen es.

Das erinnert mich an den Sturz Ceausescus, des [damaligen] Präsidenten Rumäniens. Wie der doch da auf dem Balkon herumstolzierte, aufgeplustert von seiner eigenen Wichtigkeit und Unverwundbarkeit, wie er herabblickte auf den Staatsplatz, gleich einem schillernden Pfau, umringt von seinen Speichelleckern und vor ihnen harrten die Tausenden der Arbeiter, die an jedem Wort von ihm hingen - oder vielleicht doch nicht?

Ich erinnere mich so gut daran, obwohl die liberalen Medien den Ausschnitt nur ein einziges Mal zeigten. (Wie oft hätten sie diesen gezeigt, wäre der Sturz eines wirklichen Volksführers dokumentiert worden?) Da rief in der Menschenmenge eine einsame Stimme 'Raus! Raus, Raus, Raus!' Wer war dieser einsame Mann, der durch diese unscheinbare Handlung des Widerstandes die riesige kommunistische Maschinerie eines Landes und schließlich C. böses Reich auf die Knie brachte? Welch ein Held!

Sein Ruf wurde von anderen aufgenommen, dann stimmten weitere mit ein. Die Veränderung im Ausdruck der Visagen der stalinistischen Häscher war verblüffend bis absurd. Binnen weniger Minuten ertönte der Schrei aus tausend Kehlen: 'Raus! Raus!, Raus!' und die zunächst unschlüssigen Diktatoren wurden in wenigen Minuten flüchtige Rechtsbrecher.

Die darauffolgenden Szenen müssen jeden "demokratischen Opportunisten" bis ins Mark getroffen haben. Die weiteren Abläufe verliefen rasend schnell. Das Volksaufbegehren exponierte Ceausescu sowie seine Familie als widerliche kleine Biester, als opportunistische Händler und Betrüger, deren gehetzte Blicke von einem Ende zum andern flogen wie gefangene Ratten, die einen Ort suchen an den sie flitzen können. Doch es gab kein Entrinnen mehr. Kurz darauf wurden sie wie Hunde niedergeschossen.

Du, Ernst, bist ein wahrer, ein guter Mensch. Gott liebt Dich und das ist am wichtigsten. Du wirst respektiert und geliebt von Deiner Weltfamilie, die über Dich und andere inhaftierte Kameraden Wacht hält und Deine Inhaftierer beobachtet. Denk mal, lieber Freund, wer Du lieber sein wolltest, Ernst Zündel oder ein gewisser Ceausescu, den eines schönen Tages sein Schicksal ereilt?

Siehst Du! Ich wußte Deine Antwort im Voraus!

Ernst, mir hat man oft gesagt: wenn Du Dich in einem Loch befindest, höre mit graben auf. Ein guter Ratschlag, doch der wird von denen, die Dich verfolgen nicht wahrgenommen. Und weißt Du weshalb? Weil sie Angst haben und desparat sind.

Ich sagte weiter oben, daß Angst eine Überreaktion sowie irrationale Handlungsweise zur Folge hat. Und das ist hinsichtlich ihrer [der] Verteidigung ebenso der Fall ..aber Du weißt ja, daß auch diese gleichermaßen vergeblich sein könnte.

Das alles erinnert mich auch an den Pragmatismus des Bonaparte Napoleon, der in Paris in seiner Kutsche durch eine große Menschenmenge fuhr und dem einer seiner Untergebenen zuraunte: "Sieh an, wie die Tausenden Eurer Gnaden entgegenjubeln." Daraufhin soll der franz. Herrscher nüchtern erwidert haben: "Und eine weitaus größere Menge käme, mich unter der Guillotine zu sehen."

Merkwürdigerweise erzählte mir meine Mutter diese Geschichte, die bis Budapest [ich denke, er meint den ungar. Aufstand 1956 Anmerk. der Übersetzerin] Kommunistin und Pazifistin war, bewundert von den Linken und "Liberalen'.

Kein Zweifel besteht, daß die Herrschenden um die Veränderung der Machtverhältnisse wissen.

Möge Dich Gott schnellstens in die Freiheit entsenden, Ernst.

Michael.

JVA Mannheim, Herzogenriedstr. 111

D-68169 MANNHEIM

Germany

6 January 2006

Dear …

… As to letters - one Christmas letter, which came just a few days before Christmas, was confiscated. I do not know its content - it was signed R.F. During the second week of Christmas, 31 letters or pieces of mail were received at the prison in one day! I was given 11 pieces, most of which were greeting cards. Only two were what I call substantial letters, one from my brother and one from Ingrid, my brave wife - the rest were just two, three words, a few sentences at most, Christmas greetings, New Year's wishes. All enclosures of any mentally stimulating or interesting nature are rigorously withheld from me. That tells me more about the German mind-set than could a thousand treatises about the state of human freedom in my pitiful homeland!

Here is my answer, emphatically stated: Whatever else you do, do not come to Germany, not under any illusion of safe conduct! This entity, and its population, has had 60 years to free itself from its mental shackles. [The Germans] are not in this situation for lack of knowing what the facts are - they are, to one degree or another, wilfully blind out of cowardice, not out of ignorance of the facts! More truth will not make me, or them, more free - it will only make them more afraid, increasing their cowardice exponentially! Fear and cowardice have their own rules. Fearful people are in a labyrinth of terror, usually of their own making!

The Americans have a very deep, meaningful saying: «The coward dies a thousand deaths - the brave man only once.»! I have often wondered about my own people, out of whose [midst] I was born. Why this fear? How can one explain the heroism of these people in war - and their abject and continued cowardice when confronting the facts of their own history?

I have no degree in psychology, I have no files here and no medical books to prove my theory, but I am sure that there must be a medical condition called «Schuld-und-Sühne Complex». [Transl. : A craving for guilt and redemption.] Like any such affliction - like gambling addiction, alcoholism, drug dependency - the patient first has to admit that he has a problem - if he does not, all therapies will fail. No amount of sacrifice [on my part] for decades, almost a half century, has generated a ground-swell of meaningful self-liberation - I am afraid that to expect any change in this situation would be a cruel self-delusion.

How do I know? How can I be so sure? That's easy to answer. I was afflicted by the same condition. I also know how difficult it is to heal oneself through auto-detoxification or self-deprogramming. I remember what terrible withdrawal symptoms I had to cope with - and, yes, I had numerous relapses along the way. And I was young - my «Weltbild», my picture of the world and history, was not yet very deeply engrained, as it would be with others who by now have had 61 years of this incessant bombardment with only one version of an event, to which ever fewer remaining eyewitnesses exist. Our witnesses, that is!

I want you to understand that I will not discuss the topics that will activate a Pavlovian response because I want you to receive this letter. All letters are highly scrutinized, analyzed and mined; all are combed for things I may express, which then will be used in court against me. But one thing is really already clear - a spin-off side effect to my persecution has started, unforeseen by my pursuers! It surprises even me in its scope - and especially in its intensity. That is far more important and far more fundamental, and that spin-off side effect is [the scrutiny of] the legitimacy of the system - never mind the legitimacy of the process [in my court case] being employed!

Internationally, very few people outside a very, very narrow specialty in international law, paid much attention to the «footnote of history» as J. M. Le Pen would say, of just how this entity came into being, who were its fathers, mothers. (We know the midwives) This «footnote in history» is one of the founding myths [of post-war Germany] which is now suddenly being examined - in the full light of the publicity of [my court] proceedings. It's almost like future doctors sitting in an amphit theater watching a forensic pathologist or a professor of anatomy dissect a corpse or cadaver - this time a state - to see what its background and political history are! And that process was very rarely discussed or examined by a larger public - now it is!

That's the last thing these forces [in the background] would have liked to take place - for it is an issue which is fraught with a comet's tail of judicial, legal, political and diplomatic implications. Compared to that problem, the other issue is peripheral. It really has been settled in 1988 [with the Leuchter Report].

So I am looking forward with interest as to how this «wild card» in the game will be dealt with. This surprise spin-off result is a bit like a steel ball in one of the old American arcade pin ball machines. Once the lever is pulled, the ball becomes unpredictable as to where it will hit, what bells and lights it will set off, as it winds itself through that confined [court room] where the action will take place!

Suddenly, what [used to be] an obscure topic of a few specialists in international law and international affairs becomes the subject of heated discussions on websites the world over. Tens of millions of visitors to websites like rense.com, whatreallyhappened.com and others are awash in a debate everybody thought had been settled a long, long time ago!

This debate is [our] victory! And my role in all this is to be quietly sitting in the eye of the hurricane and watch in amazement as the fireworks go off all around me!

Amazing development!

That's a short overview of what's up! My own fate is of peripheral interest only to Ingrid, me, and my friends. There are few variables possible, because [the outcome] is really only a matter of routine performance to a foregone conclusion. But since I had no illusions, only the naive and the uninformed will be surprised. I am not, and will not be!

That brings me to the comments coming out of Iran in the last few weeks and months. I was utterly stunned, but not by what was allegedly said. What surprised me far more was the absolutely, out of all proportions to the content, reaction in the Western world. Nowhere else!

Please note - nowhere that I am aware of did anybody say anything, much less do anything, to rein in their friend or ally, Iran. Putin's Russia, a big arms supplier and trading partner, did not say a peep! China, which has signed an enormously big oil exploration resources agreement with Iran, worth between 35 to $50 billion, said nothing, not a word of criticism. Neither did India, Pakistan, any Arab (Moslem) country, Africa, or Latin America.

I think the deafening silence from around the world from the most populous states and regions to the Iranian leader's outburst spoke very loudly. In politics it is very often not as important what the facts of any issue are - far more important is the perception of the facts!

«In politics», Charles de Gaulle was fond in saying, «Nations know no friends - only interests.»

The erosion of the old world order is accelerating. New power centers, new super-powers with vast populations are forming. They could not care less about a «footnote to history», a mere blip on the radar screen of their ambitions! Oil is an interest of great importance. So are markets for arms and industrial goods. Of what worth, real worth, or strategic value are the temper tantrums of a spoiled beggar client state on a small sliver of rocks and dust in that area of the world?

I was, and am, like the biblical Samson!

_____________

Fredrick Töben comments: This letter was sent through the email list by Ingrid Zündel. Anyone who writes to Ernst should realize that the authorities meticulously record the name of all letter writers.

It is therefore silly for anyone reproducing Ernst’s letters for an email list to delete any names mentioned in full by Ernst. The authorities know all the names and addresses of those who have corresponded with Ernst.

The names of writers who give their full names in letters addressed to Ernst Zündel deserve to be mentioned when correspondence is made public – any correspondence going in and out of any prison is public knowledge!

Note by Robert Faurisson: With some delay, on January 4, 2006 I discovered that on November 10, 2005 our friend Ahmed Rami, who has resided in Sweden since 1973, had ended up winning a surprising victory there. This victory is of great significance when one recalls that some years ago, the Swedish justice system sent him to prison for his revisionist opinions.

Whilst held in a first prison, he successfully developed his ideas with both inmates and guards to such an extent that the authorities transferred him to another, smaller institution, where the result was the same.

With his origins in the Moroccan Atlas, Ahmed Rami, who does not roar but whose voice is as soft as it is persuasive, has, in my opinion, the courage attributed to a lion.

Account in three points as follows.

___________________________

1. On November 10, 2005 a debate on the subject of Radio Islam and Ahmed Rami was held in the Swedish Parliament. The Jewish members had criticized the Government for having "abdicated" before Ahmed Rami´s anti-Jewish media activities in Sweden. Speaking for the Government, the Justice and Interior Minister, Thomas Bodström, gave them the following answer:

"[In a state under the rule of law] it is not up to me or the members of Parliament to charge or try Ahmed Rami. That is a matter for the public prosecutor. But the latter has not been able to find any evidence showing that Ahmed Rami has broken Swedish law."

The minister added:

"Swedish law does not forbid the questioning or the denying of the Holocaust."

(http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?nid=101&bet=2005/06:27).

2. Another extract from Minister Bodström’s speech (in Swedish, English and German):

The original in Swedish:

Det gäller till exempel frågan huruvida det ska vara förbjudet att påstå att Förintelsen inte ägde rum. Vi har haft en total enighet i Sverige om att detta inte är någonting som vi ska förbjuda. Om man nu kommer till en annan åsikt får man gärna framföra det i det sammanhanget. Vi har möjlighet att påverka här i riksdagen och väcka en motion men naturligtvis också att påverka det arbete som sker i EU. Än så länge har vi sett en enighet i detta. Jag tror att det är ganska klokt att bemöta sådana fullständigt felaktiga påståenden med en bra diskussion. Man behöver inte vara det minsta rädd för att förlora en sådan diskussion. Jag betvivlar starkt att det skulle behöva bevisas i ett brottmål i Sverige att Förintelsen har ägt rum eller inte när det faktiskt inte är brottsligt att påstå vare sig det ena eller det andra."

English Translation:

"It is, for example, a question of whether it should be forbidden to maintain that the Holocaust did not take place. We have come to a complete agreement in Sweden that this is something we should not forbid. If someone arrives at another opinion, he is quite free to state it in this context. We have the possibility of exerting an influence here in Parliament by introducing a bill but, of course, also by influencing the work done in the European Union. So far we have seen a consensus on this point. I have been of the opinion that it is wisest to confront such completely erroneous statements with a good argument. One need not be the least bit afraid of losing in such a debate. I very much doubt that it need be proved in criminal proceedings in Sweden whether or not the Holocaust took place when in fact neither of the two assertions constitutes an offence."

German Translation:

« Dies gilt beispielsweise für die Frage, inwiefern es verboten sein soll, zu behaupten, der Holocaust habe nicht stattgefunden. In Schweden haben wir völlige Einigkeit darüber erreicht, dass dies nichts ist, was wir verbieten sollten. Wenn man nun zu einer anderen Meinung kommt, so darf man das in diesem Zusammenhang gerne vorbringen. Wir haben die Möglichkeit, hier im Reichstag Einfluss auszuüben und einen Antrag einzureichen, aber natürlich auch die Arbeit zu beeinflussen, die in der EU verrichtet wird. Bisher haben wir gesehen, dass hierüber Einigkeit herrscht. Ich glaubte, es ist das Klügste [wörtlich: „ziemlich klug“], solche vollkommen falsche Behauptungen mit einer guten Diskussion zu beantworten. Man braucht sich nicht im geringsten zu fürchten, eine solche Diskussion zu verlieren. Ich bezweifle stark, dass es nötig ist, in Schweden bei einem Gerichtsverfahren zu beweisen, dass der Holocaust stattgefunden hat oder nicht, da es in der Tat kein Verbrechen ist, sei es das eine oder das andere zu behaupten. »

3. Ahmed Rami tells us that this debate took place in Parliament due to the great number of Jewish complaints — to Swedish judicial authorities — demanding to have Ahmed Rami tried in a Swedish court of law or by an international public tribunal. This demand had been expressed in Morocco by Robert Assaraf, a head of the Jewish community there. In an article published by Jeune Afrique, Assaraf wrote that “on his Radio Islam and during a debate on Al-Jazeera, Ahmed Rami dared to demand for Moroccans the same rights as the Jews in Morocco have".

Five years ago, the same Robert Assaraf had the impudence to declare:

"Shouldn’t Morocco’s Jews, who are dispersed throughout the world, be mobilized today in order to bring Ahmed Rami to trial?"

(“Maroc: de l’islamisme à l’antisémitisme” [“Morocco: from Islamism to anti-Semitism”], Jeune Afrique, March 7-13, 2000).

Islamism, Ahmed Rami claims, is the only political movement that the Jews can neither buy, nor infiltrate, nor break. In Morocco, the Jews draw immense benefits from the present regime, which they control totally. In consequence these privileged ones dread those who want to bring down the regime and replace it with a democratic regime controlled by the Moroccan people.

Furthermore, one may read at

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=254315:

"Sweden, where the famous Ahmed Rami, of Radio Islam, operates, is not in arrears. The general atmosphere can be summed up by a staggering article by Katarina Mazetti in Ordfront Magasin, a passage of which reads: "Maybe it’s time to stop making efforts to send our young Swedes to Auschwitz so that they learn of the consequences of racism and ethnic cleansing. Maybe we should rather suggest that they go, at Christmastime, to Bethlehem, so that they can see what the grandchildren of the victims of Auschwitz do when they apply themselves to ethnic cleansing."

Links to the transcript of this debate published on the Swedish Parliament web site:

http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?nid=101&bet=2005/06:27

http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?nid=63&dtyp=i&rm=2005/06&nr=62

http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?nid=63&dtyp=i&rm=2005/06&nr=68

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In France, the Fabius-Gayssot Act of July 13, 1990 forbids the questioning of the existence “of crimes against humanity” as defined and punished, just after the war, by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (1945-1946). This prohibition, which targets the revisionists, is all the more improper as the orthodox authors, for their part, have carried out considerable revisions and questionings in the field. For a brief look into the matter, here are but fifteen examples of their own revising and questioning. Each one of them is followed by a remark of mine.

1. In 1951 Léon Poliakov wrote on the subject of the “programme to exterminate the Jews of Europe”: “No document remains, perhaps none has ever existed” (Bréviaire de la haine, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1974 [1951], p. 171; English version: Harvest of Hate, New York, Holocaust Library, 1979, revised and expanded edition).

Remark: what right can there be to forbid the questioning of a history that “perhaps” rests on no documents?

2. In 1960 Martin Broszat, member of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, wrote: “Neither at Dachau, nor at Bergen-Belsen, nor at Buchenwald were any Jews or other detainees gassed” (“Keine Vergasung in Dachau”, Die Zeit, August 19, 1960, p. 16). However, at the Nuremberg trial, a film showing the alleged Dachau gas chamber was projected and there are numerous testimonies of alleged homicidal gassings in the three aforementioned camps. Today, at Dachau, a sign indicates in five languages that the “gas chamber” was never used. It is impossible to know on what criteria the decision was taken, in 1960, thus to revise the history of those camps and not to revise, on the precise point of the gas chamber, the history of the other camps.

Remark: what right can there be to forbid the questioning of such a fluctuating, arbitrary history?

3. In 1968 Olga Wormser-Migot, in her thesis on Le Système concentrationnaire nazi, 1933-1945, (Paris, Presses universitaires de France), gave an ample exposition of what she called “the problem of the gas chambers” (p. 541-544). She voiced her scepticism as to the worth of some well-known witnesses’ accounts attesting to the existence of gas chambers in camps such as Mauthausen or Ravensbrück. On Auschwitz-I she was certain: that camp where, still today, tourists visit an alleged gas chamber “had no gas chamber”.

Remark: in light of the fact that the testimonies about other camps are no different from the testimonies about these three camps, one may well ask: what right can there be to have forbidden, since 1990, a questioning that was still allowed in 1968?

4. In 1979 thirty-four French historians signed a lengthy declaration in reply to my technical arguments aiming to demonstrate that the allegation of the existence and functioning of the Nazi gas chambers ran up against some radical material impossibilities (notably, the impossibility for a group of men to enter, “whilst smoking and eating”, a room that was flooded with hydrogen cyanide and touch, handle and take out, using all their strength, thousands of bodies suffused with that poison). Drafted by Léon Poliakov and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, that declaration concluded: “It must not be asked how, technically, such a mass-murder was possible. It was technically possible, since it happened” (Le Monde, February 21, 1979, p. 23).

Remark: if thirty-four historians have found themselves unable to explain how a crime of this dimension was perpetrated, why should anyone not have the right to question the very reality of that crime?

5. In 1982 Raul Hilberg, going back altogether on his 1961 argument, stated that the process of “destruction of the European Jews” had, after all, gone on without a plan, without any organisation, centralisation, project or budget, but thanks to “an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus-mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy” (Newsday, New York, February 23, 1983, p. II/3). He would confirm this explanation under oath at the first Zündel trial in Toronto on January 16, 1985 (verbatim transcript, p. 848); he would confirm it anew but with other words in the profoundly revised version of his work The Destruction of the European Jews, New York, Holmes & Meier, 1985, p. 53, 55, 62).

Remark: what right can there be to forbid the questioning of what the Number One historian of the Jewish genocide himself deems “unbelievable”? Must the unbelievable be believed? Must one believe in mind reading, particularly within a vast bureaucratic structure and, still more particularly, within the bureaucracy of the Third Reich? How does the process described by this prestigious historian differ from the workings of the Holy Spirit?

6. Still in 1982, an association was founded in Paris for “the study of murders by gassing under the National Socialist regime” (the “ASSAG”), “with a view to seeking and verifying elements of proof of the use of poison gasses in Europe by the officials of the National Socialist regime to kill persons of various nationalities, to contributing to the publication of this evidence, to making, to that purpose, all useful contacts on the national and international level”. Article 2 of the association’s charter stipulates: “The Association shall last as long as shall be necessary to attain the objectives set forth in Article 1.” However, this association, founded on April 21, 1982 by fourteen persons, amongst whom Germaine Tillion, Georges Wellers, Geneviève Anthonioz née de Gaulle, barrister Bernard Jouanneau and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, has, in nearly a quarter of a century, never published anything and, to this day in 2005, remains in existence. In the event that it be said, wrongly, that the group has produced a book entitled Chambres à gaz, secret d’État (Gas chambers, State secret), it will be fitting to recall that the book in question is in fact the French translation of a work first published in German by Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein and Adalbert Rückerl and in which there featured a few contributions by a few members of the “ASSAG” (Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1984; English translation published as Nazi Mass Murder: a documentary history of the use of poison gas, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994). The title alone gives an idea of the contents: instead of proof, supported by photographs of gas chambers, drawings, sketches, forensic reports on the crime weapon, the reader finds only speculations based on what is called “evidence” (éléments de preuve, “elements of proof”, not proof), and this because, we are told, those gas chambers had constituted the biggest possible secret, a “State secret”.

Remark: what right can there be to forbid the questioning of evidence (let alone proof) brought forth by an association which, as shown by the very fact of its existence yet today in 2005, has still not attained the objective for which it was founded, nearly a quarter of a century ago?

7. In Paris on April 26, 1983, the long lawsuit against me for “personal injury through falsification of history”, begun, notably by Jewish organisations, in 1979, came to an end. The first chamber of the Paris court of appeal, civil division section A, presided by judge Grégoire, held that there could be found in the professor’s writings on the gas chambers no trace of rashness, no trace of negligence, no trace of his having deliberately overlooked anything, nor any trace of a lie and that, as a consequence, “the appraisal of the value of the findings [on the gas chambers] defended by Mr Faurisson is a matter, therefore, solely for experts, historians and the public.”

Remark: how can judges, in good conscience, punish those who in their turn today pursue my questioning on “the problem of the gas chambers” (an expression used by the court of appeal in 1983)?

8. Still in 1983, Simone Veil declared on the subject of the gas chambers: “In the course of a case brought against Faurisson for having denied the existence of the gas chambers, those who bring the case are compelled to provide formal proof of the gas chambers’ reality. However, everyone knows that the Nazis destroyed those gas chambers and systematically did away with all the witnesses” (France-Soir Magazine, May 7, 1983, p. 47).

Remark: if neither the crime weapon nor any testimonies are to be found, have people not the right to question the reality of this crime? What must be said of the places presented to millions of deceived visitors as being gas chambers? What is one to think of the individuals who present themselves as witnesses or miraculous survivors of the gas chambers?

9. In 1986, Michel de Boüard, himself deported during the war as a résistant, professor of history and Dean of letters at the University of Caen, member of the Institut de France and former head of the Commission d’histoire de la déportation within the official Comité d’histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale, affirmed that, all told, “the dossier is rotten”. He specified that the dossier of the history of the German concentration camp system was “rotten” because, in his own words, of “a huge amount of made-up stories, inexactitudes stubbornly repeated — particularly where numbers are concerned — amalgamations and generalisations”. Alluding to the revisionists’ studies, he added that there were “on the other side, very carefully done critical studies demonstrating the inanity of those exaggerations” (Ouest France of August 2^nd and 3^rd, 1986, p. 6).

Remark: if a dossier is “rotten”, has one not the right and even the duty to question it?

10. In 1988 Arno Mayer wrote on the subject of the Nazi gas chambers: “Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable” (The “Final Solution” in History, New York, Pantheon Books, p. 362).

Remark: what right can there be to forbid the questioning of historical sources of such rarity? Must the historian trust what is admittedly unreliable?

11. In 1989 Philippe Burrin, positing as a principle, with no demonstration, the reality of the gas chambers and the genocide, attempted to determine at what date and by whom the decision to exterminate physically the Jews of Europe had been taken. He did not succeed any more than all his “intentionalist” or “functionalist” colleagues (Hitler et les juifs / Genèse d’un génocide, Paris, Seuil; English version: Hitler and the Jews: the Genesis of the Holocaust, London, Edward Arnold, 1994). He noted what he called the absence of traces and “the stubborn erasure of the trace of anyone’s passing through” (p. 9). He bemoaned “the large gaps in the documentation. There subsists no document bearing an extermination order signed by Hitler”. In all likelihood, the orders were given verbally. […] here the traces are not only few and far between, but difficult to interpret” (p. 13).

Remark: if a historian can produce no documents to such effect, signed by Hitler or anyone else, but only what he calls “traces”, few in number at that and sparse and difficult to interpret, what right can there be to forbid the questioning of the general argument that the historian persists in defending?

12. In 1992 Yehuda Bauer, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, stated at an international conference on the genocide of the Jews held in London: “The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency release published as “Wannsee’s importance rejected”, Canadian Jewish News, January 30, 1992, p. 8)

Remark: apart from the fact that the “minutes” of the Berlin-Wannsee meeting of January 20, 1942 prove that the Germans envisaged a “territorial final solution [eine territoriale Endlösung (doc. NG-2586, p. 4)] of the Jewish question” leading in the end to a “Jewish renewal” in a territory to be determined, does not Yehuda Bauer’s quite belated declaration confirm that this major point of the official version of Jewish genocide always needed questioning? The extermination of the Jews was decided neither at Wannsee nor anywhere else; the expression “extermination camps” is but an invention of American war propaganda and there are examples proving that, during the war, the killing of a single Jewish man or woman exposed the perpetrator, whether soldier or civilian, member of the SS or not, to German military justice proceedings and the possibility of being shot by firing squad (in sixty years, never has a single orthodox historian provided an explanation for such facts).

13. In 1995 French historian Eric Conan, co-author with Henry Rousso of Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas (Paris, Gallimard, 2001 [1994, 1996]; English edition: Vichy: an ever-present past, Hanover, New Hampshire and London, University Press of New England, 1998), wrote that in the late 1970s I had been right after all to certify that the gas chamber thus far visited by millions of tourists at Auschwitz (500,000 each year) was completely fake. According to E. Conan “Everything in it is false […]. In the late 1970s, Robert Faurisson exploited these falsifications all the better as the [Auschwitz] museum administration balked at acknowledging them”. Conan went on: “[Some people], like Théo Klein [former president of the CRIF, the ‘representative council of Jewish organisations of France’], prefer that it be left in its present state, while explaining the misrepresentation to the public: ‘History is what it is; it suffices to tell it, even when it is not simple, rather than to add artifice to artifice’”. Conan then related a staggering remark by Krystyna Oleksy, deputy director of the Auschwitz National Museum, who, for her part, could not bring herself to explain the misrepresentation to the public: “For the time being, [the room in question] is to be left ‘as is’, with nothing specified to the visitor. It’s too complicated. We’ll see to it later on” (“Auschwitz: la mémoire du mal” [“Auschwitz: the remembrance of evil”], L’Express, January 19-25, 1995, p. 68).

Remark: do these words of a Polish official not mean: "We have lied, we are lying and, until further notice, we shall continue to lie"? In any inquiry on the subject of the gas chambers, is it not appropriate to start by calling into doubt their existence and thus to question what one is shown or told about them by reputedly reliable authorities? It is noteworthy that in 2001 the fallacious character of this Potemkin village gas chamber was finally to be acknowledged in a French booklet accompanying two CD-Roms entitled Le Négationnisme; written by Jean-Marc Turine and Valérie Igounet, it was prefaced by Simone Veil (Radio France-INA, Vincennes, Frémeaux & Associés, 2001, p. 27-28).

14. In 1996 the leftwing French historian Jacques Baynac, a staunch antirevisionist since 1978, admitted, after due consideration, that there was no evidence of the Nazi gas chambers’ existence. One could not fail to note, wrote Baynac, “the absence of documents, traces or other material evidence” (Le Nouveau Quotidien de Lausanne, September 2, 1996, p. 16, and September 3, 1996, p. 14).

Remark: all in all, J. Baynac says: “There is no evidence but I believe”, whereas a revisionist thinks “There is no evidence and so I refuse to believe and I question”; is one to be punished for not having the faith?

15. In 2000, at the end of her book Histoire du négationnisme en France (Paris, Gallimard), Valérie Igounet published a long text by Jean-Claude Pressac wherein the latter, taking up the words of professor Michel de Boüard, stated that the dossier on the concentration camp system was “rotten”, and irredeemably so. He wrote: “The current form, however triumphant, of the presentation of the camp universe is doomed”. He finished by surmising that all that had been invented around sufferings that were too real was bound “for the rubbish bins of history” (p. 651-652). In 1993-1994, that protégé of Serge Klarsfeld and Michael Berenbaum had been acclaimed worldwide as an extraordinary researcher who, in his book on Les Crématoires d’Auschwitz, la machinerie du meurtre de masse (Paris, CNRS éditions, 1993; English title: The Auschwitz Crematories. The Machinery of Mass Murder), had, it appeared, felled the hydra of revisionism. Here, in V. Igounet’s book, he is seen signing his act of surrender.

Remark: if a dossier is irredeemably rotten and if so many of its components are bound for the rubbish bins of history, how can judges be expected to punish the questioning of it?

I, for one, have been convicted many times for having questioned the official version. My court convictions date from both before and after the Fabius-Gayssot Act’s appearance on the statute books. Nonetheless, over the years, the more I have re-offended, the lighter the sentences have become; sometimes, at the end, the examining magistrate has even decided to dismiss the charges, or the trial court or the court of appeal has pronounced an acquittal. It has reached the point where, although I have been prosecuted — unsuccessfully — for not having left a duty copy of my four-volume work of over 2000 pages, produced in 1999 and entitled Ecrits révisionnistes (1974-1998), at the Ministry of the Interior’s copyright bureau, the book’s contents themselves have earned me no prosecution. In the years since, I have not been taken to court for any of my revisionist publications. (Still, curiously, the hunt has just re-opened with an action brought by the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel [CSA,“radio and television supervisory council”], which denounced me earlier this year for having given a revisionist interview over the telephone to an Iranian television station: the trial is scheduled for June 20, 2006 in Paris).

G. Wellers and P. Vidal-Naquet were indignant at the Paris court of appeal’s decision of April 26, 1983. The former wrote: “The court admitted that Faurisson was well documented, which is false. It is astonishing that the court should fall for that” (Le Droit de vivre, June-July 1987, p. 13). The latter wrote that the Paris court “recognised the seriousness of Faurisson's work — which is quite outrageous — and finally found him guilty only of having acted malevolently by summarising his theses as slogans.” (Les Assassins de la mémoire, Paris, La Découverte, 1987, p. 182; here quoted the English translation: Assassins of Memory, New York, Columbia University Press, 1992, consultable at http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92b). In 1986, gathered round French chief rabbi Sirat, those historians recommended the introduction of a specifically anti-revisionist law (Bulletin quotidien de l’Agence télégraphique juive, June 2, 1986, p. 1, 3). The Socialist Laurent Fabius and the Communist Jean-Claude Gayssot fulfilled their wishes in creating a law designed both to gag the revisionists and tie the hands of the judges.

But the right to do historical research has no truck with fetters and muzzles.

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