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4.2.12
WC: 191694

Chapter 9: The Right to Falsify History: Holocaust Denial and Academic Freedom

In some European countries, (particularly Germany, Austria and France), it is a crime to deny the
Holocaust. In other countries, such as Turkey, it is a crime to claim that the Turks engaged in
genocide against the Armenians, even though it is an historical fact recognized by scholars around
the world.

Under our First Amendment, no one can be punished either for denying or proclaiming that an
historical event occurred.

Several years ago I became embroiled in a heated controversy with Professor Noam Chomsky
over the issue of Holocaust denial and the proper role of a civil libertarian in defending the right
of Holocaust deniers, without defending the substance of their claims.

In the 1970s a Frenchman named Robert Faurisson, who was an obscure lecturer on French
literature at the University of Lyon, began to dabble in Holocaust denial. He wrote a book—and
gave talks—in which he mocked Holocaust victims and survivors as perpetrators of a hoax. The
Holocaust, according to Faurisson, “never took place.” The “Hitler gas chambers” never existed.
“The Jews” bear “responsibility” for World War II. Hitler acted reasonably and in self-defense
when he rounded up the Jews and put them in “labor camps,” not death camps. The “massive lie”
about genocide was a deliberate concoction begun by “American Zionists”—in context he
obviously means Jews. The principal beneficiary of this hoax is “Israel,” which has encouraged
this “enormous political and financial fraud.” The principal victims of this “fraud” have been “the
German people” and the “Palestinian people.” Faurisson also called the diary of Anne Frank a
“forgery.”

Following the publication of Faurisson’s book, the lecturer received threats from irate survivors.
The University of Lyon, claiming that it could not guarantee his safety, suspended him for a
semester.

Chomsky sprang to Faurisson’s defense, not only on the issue of free speech, but on the merits of
his “scholarship” and of his “character.” Chomsky signed a petition that characterized Faurisson’s
falsifications of history as “findings” and said that they were based on “extensive historical
research.”

I too defended Faurisson’s right to express his views, but I also checked his “historical research”
and found it to be entirely faked. He made up phony diary entries, omitted others that disproved

50 For example, Faurisson relies on an entry, dated October 18, 1942, from the diary of SS doctor
Johann-Paul Kremer written during the three months he spent at Auschwitz in 1942. An eminent
scholar checked Faurisson’s use of the entry, and demonstrated that Faurisson’s “research” was
fraudulent. The diary entry read: “This Sunday morning in cold and humid weather I was present
at the 11th special action (Dutch). Atrocious scenes with three women who begged us to let them
live.”

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