Robert Faurisson


Robert Faurisson was a British-born French academic who became best known for Holocaust denial. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, and by letters to French newspapers, especially Le Monde, which contradicted the history of the Holocaust by denying the existence of gas chambers in Nazi death camps, the systematic killing of European Jews using gas during the Second World War, and the authenticity of The Diary of Anne Frank. After the passing of the Gayssot Act against Holocaust denial in 1990, Faurisson was prosecuted and fined, and in 1991 he was dismissed from his academic post.

Early life and education

Faurisson is believed to be one of seven children born in Shepperton, Middlesex, England to a French father and a Scottish mother.
He studied French, Latin and Greek literature, and passed the agrégation in 1956. He became a high school teacher at Vichy, while working on a PhD thesis about the poet Lautréamont. He obtained his doctorate in 1972. He then became a lecturer, and then professor of French literature at the University of Lyon between 1973 and 1990.
In Vichy, as a young teacher, he gained attention when he published an interpretation of Rimbaud's as an erotic text. Around 1960, he developed political sympathies for the colonialist cause in Algeria, and was arrested in the belief he was a member of the "OAS", a terrorist organisation.

Holocaust denial

In 1974, Faurisson contacted Yad Vashem with a lengthy letter detailing a variety of arguments which he claimed demonstrated that there had been no genocide of Jews during World War II. These assertions were based on his own interpretation of archival records and his skepticism about the assertions and testimony of various historical figures, including Nazi officials such as Rudolf Höss.
He became involved with the Institute for Historical Review during the 1970s, lecturing and publishing prolifically. He twice testified in defense of Canadian-German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, and his testimony has been associated with laying the groundwork for the "Leuchter Report", an influential Holocaust-denial publication. Faurisson's activism garnered him several dedicated critics, including the Jewish French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet.

''The Diary of Anne Frank''

In 1978, Faurisson authored a French-language text, "The Diary of Anne Frank Is It Authentic?". It appeared in Dutch-language translation in 1985, with the modified title, "The Diary of Anne Frank A Forgery". The text questioned the credibility of various elements in The Diary of Anne Frank.
The website of the historian Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust Denial on Trial, argues that Faurisson's treatise ignored details within Anne Frank's account that explain the aspects he deemed implausible, as well as observable details within the Anne Frank House.
Faurisson interviewed Otto Frank in researching the piece, though much of what Faurisson asserted Frank had said was later contradicted by Frank himself. Faurisson's writing on the subject first came into the spotlight during a court case between Otto Frank and Heinz Roth, a publishing-house owner responsible for the circulation of various neo-Nazi writings, including several publications impugning the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary; Faurisson's writing on the subject was entered into the court record as an expert opinion in defense of Roth. The 1978 finding of the court was that Roth must refrain from publishing any further reading material claiming the diary was a fraud.

Faurisson affair

One of Faurisson's works, Mémoire en défense, was published in 1980, prefaced by an essay by Noam Chomsky. While Chomsky had given general approval for his essay to be reproduced by others, it was included without his knowledge. Chomsky's piece was a general defense of freedom of speech, including that of Faurisson. Chomsky stated that "I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust...I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work," and considered Faurisson as a "relatively apolitical liberal of some sort". Chomsky was accused of supporting Faurisson, rather than defending his right to speech, the first of which accusations Chomsky denied. Noting he had described the Holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history", Chomsky argued that his views were "diametrically opposed" to those of Faurisson on the subject.

Legal and other consequences

Faurisson was fined by a French court in 1983, for having declared that "Hitler never ordered nor permitted that anyone be killed by reason of his race or religion."
In September 1989, Faurisson was beaten by unknown assailants claiming to be "The Sons of the Memory of the Jews", an organization about which nothing has been discovered either before or since the incident. Faurisson had been walking his dog in a park in Vichy and was kicked and punched by three young men, breaking his jaw.
Shortly after the Gayssot Act—a statute that prohibited Holocaust denial—was enacted in 1990, Faurisson was convicted of Holocaust denial in a French court. In 1991, Faurisson was removed from his university chair under the Gayssot Act on the basis of his denialist views. He challenged the statute as a violation of international law, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, at the Human Rights Committee. Faurisson filed a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1993; in 1996, the Committee rejected Faurisson's claim that France's prosecution of him was a violation of the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee upheld the Gayssot Act as "serv the respect of the Jewish community to live free from fear of an atmosphere of anti-semitism" and necessary "to serve the struggle against racism and anti-semitism".
He challenged the statute as Faurisson was charged again in a trial on 11 July 2006. He was accused of denying the Holocaust in an interview with the Iranian television station "Sahar 1" in February 2005. On 3 October 2006, he was given a three-month probationary sentence and fined €7,500 for this offence.

Later life

In December 2006, Faurisson gave a speech at the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, which was sponsored by the government of Iran.
Beginning in late 2008, Faurisson became close to the comedian and political activist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, appearing with him publicly on stage and in video, and celebrating his 80th birthday in his theater. Dieudonné awarded Robert Faurisson an "insolent outcast" prize. The award was presented by one of Dieudonné's assistants, Jacky, dressed in a concentration camp uniform with a yellow badge. This earned Dieudonné a court conviction.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad granted Faurisson an award for "courage" in Tehran, Iran on 2 February 2012.

Publications