As a preliminary to our analysis of the first chapter V.P. dedicates to revisionism, we will be content to notice that he elected as model of behaviour with revisionists... a SS doctor in Auschwitz. The SS are known for their immaculate academic behaviour and this appel to the uppermost enemy against revisionism is no indication that V.P. is failing short of models, just a reminder of his broadmindedness, which we will need when we come to his treatment of Rassinier...
The chapter VII (part four) of Van Pelt's (V.P.) report, entitled "Auschwitz and Holocaust Denial", begins with a general introduction on historical revisionism as such and states why the term, in V.P.'s opinion, cannot be applied to dissident scholars of World War Two. The first sentence reads so:
Then, V.P. dedicates ten pages to a Frenchman, Rassinier, whom he introduces in the following words:
Farther, he writes:
His ten page analysis of Rassinier's work (seven books) end by:
Our critic will follow three line: first, Rassinier wrote before "the memory and image of Auschwitz has become central in the discourse of the Holocaust" and V.P.prevents the Court from learning it, inducing it to believe he is a laterday revisionist. Secondly, we will show that Rassinier's personality, life and action are essential to a proper understanding not only of his work, but also of the revisionist approach of the history of WWII. Thirdly, that V.P.did not read Rassinier and gives a false account of his work when he states that "This is what Rassinier had to say about Auschwitz. It will have become clear that it cannot pass even the most superficial examination. Rassinier did not have either the accuracy, nor the logic, nor the honesty required of a researcher. One could go on, but I assume that the foregoing discussions will have amply demonstrated the worthless nature of Rassinier 's scholarship". Then we will endeavour to demonstrate that V.P. distorts the real nature of Rasinier's research and completely miss his point: Auschwitz was not the central focus of his work because it" ecame central in the discourse of the Holocaust" because of his work and only as an inadequate answer and endeavour to annihilate it.
I. Rassinier, his life and his work
Far from being a Holocaust denier, dishonest and mad, despising "the memory and image of Auschwitz [that] has become central in the discourse of the Holocaust", Rassinier contributed to the constitution of our actual knowledge, imperfect though it may be, of World War Two, and that it is only by ignoring who he was and what he did that V.P. can count him among the Holocaust deniers. We will first relate his life (1906-1967), then show how V.P. endeavours to convey a false idea of him, of his work and contribution to history
First, we find that no attention can be granted to Rassinier if no detail of his biography is known. And the few following lines will help understand why it is necessary for V.P. "not [to] consider why and how he became to be convinced that the Holocaust was a Hoax".
Paul Rassinier (1906-1967), was a schoolmaster of the prestigious category known in French as "instituteurs de lIIe République", people whose dedication, as well as very sound knowledge of what they had to teach their pupils, are generally acclaimed. Furthermore, he became an active member of the communist party in 1922 (he was then sixteen years old) where he joined the opposition; he was excluded in 1932 and then joined the socialist party (under his firt name of SFIO French section of the Workers' International association), which, in 1920, had separating from the marxists-leninists, and had kept the old name of SFIO, a reminder of the common marxist origin. Rassinier belonged to a marginal plateforme, the pacifists who were heirs to the Zimmerwald movement of the II International and to Jaurès' principles (Jaurès was one of the leaders, maybe the most prestigious one, of the French Workers' movement and one of the active founders of the SFIO in 1905; he was pacifist to the end and he was murdered by a nationalist, a few days before the declaration of war of 1914; at that moment, July 1914, he was the last barrier between France and the war). t; the As such, Rassinier was almost seized by the anti-pacifist repression during the autumn 1939.
He finally decided to join the Resistance (though as a pacifist, he recoiled from any violent action and kept to administrative work) and was a co-founder of the well-known group Libé-Nord; his activities were mainly the fabrication of false documents for the Jews and contributions to the clandestine journal La quatrième république. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, he was tortured during several days and finally deported to Dora then to Buchenwald. When he came back, after the liberation of Buchenwald by the Allied powers, he was a complete wreck (the Gestapo kicks had completely destroyed of his kidneys). However, he resumed his political activities as a SFIO leader and became a member of the Second assemblée constituante in 1946 (he was not a deputy in his own right but as a substitute for the designated deputé); he was later barred by communist opposition. Invalid at 105%, he had to retire from the Education nationale and, though he was partly bed-ridden, he dedicated himself to his political activities. In spite of his Résistant's "interlude", he was, more than ever, a pacifist and now he knew why: 25 million victims of the war, a far cry from the 11 million of 1914-1918.
From 1947 on, he felt and astonishment and a growing anger reading the "accounts" of his former co-inmates in Dora and Buchenwald, where some testified to have seen gas chambers; each time he wrote to the author or the journal and counfounded the liars. He finally published his opwn account of his nineteen months in Dora and Buchenwald, entitled Passage de la ligne; he added to it an analysis of the main reporters of camp life in 1950. The addition was published together with Passage de la ligne, as Le Mensonge d'Ulysse.
Its is now clear that Rassinier was no historian, nor did he pretend to be one or act as such. He never pretended to be anybody else than a schoolmaster: in a letter to Eugen Kogon, he wrote that "Jusqu'à la date de mon arrestation par la Gestapo, j'ai enseigné dans les cours complémentaires de la ville de Belfort, académie de Besançon (Doubs). Mon état de santé ne m'ayant pas permis de rejoindre mon poste, à mon retour du camp de concentration, j'ai été mis à la retraite par anticipation à la date du 1er octobre 1950. "(Letter to Pr Eugen Kogon, May 5, 1960). (Up to my arrestation by Gestapo, I was a schoolmaster and I taught the elder pupils in Belfort, academical division of Besançon (department of Doubs). As I was to ill to resume my duties, I retired before due time in october 1950.) He was a (hardly)survivor, a political activist and public figure, he was a trained publicist (he wrote indefatigably in the party newspapers before and after the war) but he wrote as an actor, not as an objective scholar; he did not have any academic education, he received all his education through the SFIO and his self-teaching. But at time wore on, and his situation completely reversed, he finally became an historian at the end of his life, when he was entirely bed-ridden; he then published two books L'Opération vicaire. Le rôle de Pie XII devant l'Histoire (1965) and Les responsables de la seconde guerre mondiale (1967) which appeared a few weeks before his death.
Rassinier's thesis on what happened in the camps and the reason why the reports so much differed from his own experience, was born not only of his experience as political activist and a deportee, but also as a reader of the reports on the camps: he thought that when the war began, the mass of inmates were communists. When the deportation of foreign opponents and Jews began, the SS delegated the inner daily administration of the camps to the communists, who were experienced inmates and firm supporters of a steel discipline. The SS themselves supervised the communist organization, known as Häftlingsführung (inmate administration or government). The communist rule was hard, particumarly with their opponents; Rassinier, as former communist, belonged to their ranks in his full right, s he was very well acquainted with what he relates. He never relented his attacks against the communists, though til 1947, they governed everywhere in Europe after the war. As for the minor reports on the camps, he attributed them to what he called "Ulysses' lie, namely the lies that Ulysses and his friends felt compelled to relate on their return, because they thought the strict report of their real adventure would fail to communicate to their listeners the essence of their experience which is a very human and very forgivable lie.
What happened then was unheard of in a democratic country: Rassinier, though his book first won him applause from the left and his own party, soon was excluded from the SFIO ( though the members of his own platform stayed his friends forever; those still living were at his burial) A trial was initiated by three associations (respectively deportees, interned and victims of German occupation); they wanted to have the book seized and mashed (we no longer bunr book in France), and the author condemned to a heavy fine and heavier still damages (as he was already ruined by his deportation and, as a Gestapo cruely tortured victim, unable to work , the intention is particularly spicy); after three years and many adventures, Rassinier finally won and the book circulation went on. At this point, Rassinier's had won the hatred of the deportees in general, confirmed the old hatred the communists had of him (excluded from PC in 1932), and kept the friendship and esteem of his former friends, who vainly tried to have him reintegrated into the SFIO in 1951; Guy Mollet's opposition won the day.
Several reeditions appeared, with and without Rassinier's agreement. Some are unauthorized versions. But Rassinier did not retire from the scene: during the fifties, he repeatedly answered every new testimony he thought was false. But his main activities were, as before the war, peace and the defence of it at all costs. His next book, published in 1953, was Le discours de la dernière chance, Introduction à une doctrine de la paix (La Voie de la Paix, 1953), suivi par Candasse ou le huitième péché capital, (L'Amitié par le livre, 1955), Le Parlement aux mains des banques (A contre-courant, 1955), L'Équivoque révolutionnaire (Défense de l'homme, 1962) where he analyses the general situation of Europe and the world and explains, how, in his opinion, it will be possible to bar the incoming war (the reconciliation with Germany, which later became the main character of de Gaulle's politics, until the actual reconciliation took place in 1963, seemed one of the inevitable fact to him, as well as the socio-economic revolution he had been ). His interest for the then being-written legend of World War Two never relented and in the spring of 1960, he made a series of lectures in Germany (some of them were banned by the German government).
Meanwhile, his pugnacy renewed by the then coming-on Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, followed by Hilberg's Destruction of European Jews, then by Hochhut's drama The Deputy (Der Stellwertreter), played all over the Western world, he published a number of books, Ulysse trahi par les siens, (Paris, Librarie française, 1961), Le Véritable Procès Eichmann ou les vainqueurs incorrigibles, (Paris, Les Sept Couleurs, 1962) Le Drame des juifs européens,(Paris, Les Sept Couleurs, 1964) L'Opération vicaire. Le rôle de Pie XII devant l'Histoire, and, finally, his only real book as a historian, Les responsables de la seconde guerre mondiale (1967).
What emerges from each and every book he ever wrote is his unrelenting opposition to communism superseded only by his hatred for war: in Le discours de la dernière chance, he wrote that had he not been arrested by Gestapo, the communist Résistance movement would have seized and killed him. Anyway, he says, I would rather have bolchevism than war. ("Condamné à mort par la résistance communiste sous l'occupation et n'ayant échappé à ses mitraillettes que parce que les Allemands m'ont déporté à temps, destiné à la corde ou à la balle dans la nuque en cas d'invasion russe, je n'en pense pas moins que la guerre est un mal pire que le bolchevisme.") He considered bolchevism and stalinism a very base treason of all revolutionary principles and revolution was his life, remember he joined the communist party at 16.
All his life, Rassinier was a pacifist and a left-wing thinker. But from 1951 on, apart from his very straightened circle of friends, everybrody shrank away from him; for instance, he was not able to find a lawyer for his trial in 1951 (though every man has a right to be defended) and was compelled to turn to extreme-right wing circles, where he found people ready to acknowledge him, defend him and publish his work. So that for the last seventeen years of his life, Rassinier counted more friends in the extreme-right than in the left (maybe because the extreme-right was far more numerous than the extreme-left). Its has been made a permanent stain on his name and memory (though one should wonder why, in a world of free speech and thought, one is not allowed to have extreme-right friends). Books have been recently written to blacken his name (Florent Brayard, Comment l'idée vint à M. Rassinier, Paris, 1996, et Nadine Fresco, Fabricxation d'un antisémite, Paris, 1999) but the truth remains that he was a member of the socialist party, as such acting substitute member of the Constituent Assembly in 1946, resistant, tortured, deported and reduced to slave labour by the Nazis for 19 months, survivor and witness, as well as any other who did not have his record.
So now we can turn to V.P.'s report and makes justice of all the V.P.'s accusations. We will deal shortly with the accusation of disrespectfullness against "Claude Vaillant-Couturier": (for someone so eager to prove the inaccuracy of a scholar, V.P. instantly disappoints us: the Christian name of this very well-known figure of French public life was Marie-Claude and not Claude). Now we know who was Rassinier, we wil say that when "labelling her a "communist" and conveniently ignoring that she was a member of the Constituent Assembly and a Chevalier in the Legion d'Honneur.", Rassinier was simply speaking of a colleague, who was nothing more than he; he was bound to know she was member of this Assembly, since he was one too. As a communist she has been his co-activist; furthermore, she was the wife of Paul Vaillan-Couturier, member of Parliament several times during the Third Republic, member of the Central Committee of Communist Party, director of official newspaper of the Communist Party, L'Humanité, founded by Jaurès (who was killed there in 1914); as Rassinier was a true follower of Jaurès as a pacifist-communist, he had reasons of his own, certainly, to be distrustful of Mrs V.-C. The husband's connections might not have been foreign to the wife Légion d'honneur.
This detail being taken care of, the general atmosphre of V.P.is now well demonstrated: if you do not know who was Rassinier, you are duly scandalized; if you are in the know, "this is another story"...
As vp qualifies Rassinier a very poor scholar, it is surprising that he cites him only in translation, when every scholar cites first the original, event he did use a translation. And the translation chosen is not a comprehensive one; it is a compilation made without any authorization from the Rassinier estate (his widow is still living). This compilation contains several chapter of Le Mensonge d'Ulysse, in a very late edition (mid-sixties), which contains additions that we have been unable to identify; and unfortunately V.P., maybe fortuitously, quotes one of these additions. So that his unscholarly use of a translation immediately jumps to our attention. Apart from this incomplete edition of Le Mensonge, the compilation contains Le Drame des juifs européens and several appendices chosen at random.
We can hardly accept V.P.'s allegation that the passages he quotes constitutes the whole contribution of Rassinier to Auschwitz: how could he know it?
This introduction of Rassinier without any biographical detail and bibliographical incomplete references, focusing on the american compilation of 1978, certainly aim at deceiving the Court on an essential matter: the period of Rassinier's work. The only dates V.P. introduces for it are those of the publication of the three books contained in the compilation, with an error (Passage de la ligne was published in 1948, not 1949). As the bibliographical references for those books lack entirely, except for the dates between brackets, while the description of the compilation is complte with title, translator's first name and name, publishers, town of publication, and year, the reader who scans rapidly the footnote, not attempting to find there any essential element of the debate, will jump immediately to the "1978" date and probably ignore the real publication date.
By this device V.P.completes the deceipt he undertook in organizing his chapter - the first on "Holocaust denial" - as he did: first he speaks of A. Butz, whose book was published in 1972, then he deals at length with a critic of denial before coming to his critic of deniers, beginning with Rassinier. But as he has previously dealt at length with Butz, as if we were the first authority in "denial", the reader feels that Rassinier is a disciple of Butz.
This a-chronological exposition of the question is not fortuitous. In fact, it is necessary to the main argument of the Van Pelt's Report, which is that Auschwitz is the center of everything in the extermination of the Jews, that it became so during the summer of 1942 and that the main aim of revisionism ("Holocaust" "denial") is to devonstruct the legend built upon it.
But the thorough reader of Rassinier, one who, for instance, would read his books from the very first to the very last, would understand at once that this exposition is nothing more than an interpretation of facts impressed upon him by Van Pelt through his ignorance of the totality of Rassinier's books
First of all, and unlike what V.P.writes, the whole bulk of Rassinier's research on Auschwitz does not consist in the four quotations he keeps coming back to during the ten pages he dedicates to Rassinier's seven books.
The first vooks by Rassinier did not have Auschwitz as their main focus because they deal with the eyewitnesses' reports which were being published in hte f!irst post-war years. And the main reports did not throw any particular light upon Auschwitz. Passage de la ligne had nothing to do with Auschwitz, since it was an eyewitness report of what happened inthe camps where Rassinier was an inmate, i.e. Dora and Buchenwald in 1942-1944: shall we use this fact against him and reproach him with not reporting what he did not see (as Mr Vrba, who relates what happened in gs chambers, while he was never there (Van Pelt's testimony, day 11th, p. 102)? The second book, Le Mensonge d'Ulysse deals with: first chapter, general characterization of the littérature concentrationnaire. 2d chapter: three former inmates of Dora and Buchemwald, contemporaries of Rassinier. 3 L.-M. Chauffier, Neuengamme; 4th ch., David Rousset et Eugen Kogon, Rassinier parle des camps en général, non de camps particuliers: il s'agit surtout de buchemwald, mais aussi un peu de Birkenau et le problème central est la sélection et les chambres à gaz, destinées on ne sait à quoi, et les exécutions dans des voitures, témoignage d'un sous-lieutenant à un lieutenant. ch. V, Eugen Kogon, planqué à Buchemwald. So Rassinier speaks of Birkenau, but Birkenau in a time when it was not considered central in the mass of eyewitnesses'reports, when it was, to say the least, peripheral.
So it seems that Rassinier was not interested in Auschwitz... because no one was! The great majority of existing eyewitnesses' reports came from former inmates of other camps and no-one thought that Auschwitz had a particular meaning in the general concentration camps organization. The gas chambers Rassinier quoted in his analysis of these reports are supposed to be found in Birkenau (PR always uses this name, and never writes "Auschwitz"), but also at Buchemwald, or Dora. He relentlessly testified against their existence in Buchenwald and Dora, met with a lot of "reporters", as V.P.sarcastically mentions, without bothering to register them because he did not work as an historian, but as a sharer in a general experience which he wanted to be be reminded as exactly as possible; once a false eyewitness has owned his lie, his interest vanished, as his aim was fulfilled: the false report would not be kept. Let us add at this point that the gas chambers are a rumor among other supplices deportees pretended to have seen. Rassinier feels it his duty to point a liar when he can testify against him: and, as it is, he can swear that nobody ever collected tatoos or human skin for lampshades in the camps he knew, unlike what was reported at the time by Birin or Renard.
But V.P. does not quote these first books of Rassinier, except for once, but as he chose his quotation out of the 1978, compilation, the phrase he mentions does not exist in the authorized editions of Le Mensonge d'Ulysse (which has been regularly republished since his first edition in 1950, and as late as 1998) and no scholar would ever take it into consideration. He probably never read them (or any other by Rassinier) though it is a very strange behaviour for one who pretends to disprove revisionism as a whole. We cannot imagine that as a scholar, as well as as a Dutch, he does not read French. So we cannot only refer his ignorance to a willingness not to know.
For instance, he would have learned, had he read the books:
Here are some extracts from this first books, which explain Rassinier
Just after the extract V.P.quotes, (which is not in the original), he could have quoted this much more interesting remarks, which concludes the chapter where R explains why he set to work, after keeping silent out of decency, fir three years:
In 1960, Rassinier, who had been working on the subject of the camps for over ten years, which had believed that their archeological study would progress with time, went to Germany on a lecture tour (some of these lectures were forbidden by the authorities) where he delivered his conclusion on the matter, under the name of Historical Truth or Political Truth? It was in April. The Eichmann trial was in preparation in Jerusalem. Then, in August, a controversy which had began in Die Zeit, a famous German newspaper, was brutally interrupted by a letter from Dr Martin Broszat, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München: the had been no gas chambers in Dachau or in any other camp of the pre-1937 Germany.
So, Rassinier thought, his objective was fulfilled; the legends of the gas chambers of Dachau, Dora, Buchemwald, and others, which he had fought relentlessly, were eventually acknowledged as such by one of the official historical research center for the subject. He thought - maybe wrongly - that this admission was a direct consequence of his work, and particularly of his lecture tour of the spring and he wrote it. And as far as we know, he was the only one witness to contend the reports about these gas chambers.
The letter to Die Zeit contained a second, interesting part, and that is how began "the way the memory and image of Auschwitz has become central in the discourse of the Holocaust". Farther on, we read in this text: "Les exterminations massives de juifs par les gaz ont commencé en 1941-1942 et seulement en peu d'endroits de la Pologne occupée, au moyen d'installations techniques prévues à cette fin, mais en aucun cas sur le territoire allemand : à Auschwitz-Birkenau, à Sobibor-sur-Bug, à Treblinka, Chelmno et Belzec."
We say it began there for nobody ever paid any attention to the three other camps mentioned in the letter. Previsouly (as if preparing for the bomb this letter was), the same Martin broszat had published the "confessions of Rudolf Höss, one of the commandants of Auschwitz during the period now known as crucial of its part in the "Final Solution". For Rassinier, who had been the main witness for the defence of Dachau, Buchemwald, etc., what happened was that
So, V.P. 1°. does not cite all the books Rassinier dedicated to the World War Two (with, once more, a minor error in the title of the first book, which is Passage de la ligne and not Le Passage...); 2° does not give any bibliographical reference except for the year of parution, with, once more, an error: Passage de la ligne was published in 1948, not 1949). This is the first intimation that Rassinier was an exact contemporary to the war, a witness (no intimation that he ever was actually engaged in it, and to which extent) and not a historian. The passage about Rassinier immediately follows a brief analysis of Butz who wrote his book in... 1972!which induces the reader to think that Rassinier wrote after Butz. And the sentence, to which the footnote is appended, denounces Rassinier as a believer in the "Holocaust Hoax", an expression Rassinier, far from assuming it, never heard of. this French titles, followed by the year between brackets, is the first intimation that Rassinier is not a contemporary and that when he wrote his first two books, the war was not history, not even a memory, it was actually still there: the destructions, the ration cards were everywhere in France, the deportees had just come back, there was still hope of more returns...; 3° does not give any idea of the content of the enumerated books: the first one, a brief volume of souvenirs from a deportee; the second one, a critical essay about the camps former inmates' souvenirs - Rassinier's colleagues, the third, a appendix to the first ones, which V.P. omits to say have been finally published in one volume;
Among them the unauthorized versions are the American compilation of 1978, Debunking the Holocaust, to which V.P. constantly refers in his report, "The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses, transl. Adam Robbins (Costa Mesa:The Institute for Historical Review,1978). Officially designated "the only authorized edition available in the English language" (footnote 6, pp.248-249 of the report). This book was published in 1978, eleven years after Rassinier's death but his wife did not consent to this publication: the book is a very strange compilation of the amputated Mensonge d'Ulyssse, in a very late edition we have been unable to identify, followed by Le Drame des juifs européens (The Drama of European Jews) and several texts compiled without any known justification. Apparently, V.P. does not read French, so he was not able to read any of the seven books written by Rassinier on the subject of World War Two, and of which none deals with denying the Holocaust and for very good reasons: the word holocaust is never used in French, except to designate the sacrifices some ancient religions used to consecrate to their gods (when they birned out the sacrificed aniamls' body, instead of burning a small part of them and keeping the rest for the priests and the temples' personnel). Nowadays, some use it, but without acknowledgement from the historians: Annette Wievorka explains, for instance, that she prefers "genocide" and that the word generally ised by French Jews is the Hebrew word shoah (catastroph), devoid of any religious connotation). As for "denying", here is what Rassinier himself wrote in Le Véritable Procès Eichmann (1961):
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