Paul Rassinier
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Paul Rassinier..... was arrested by the Gestapo in
October 1943 and deported to Germany, where he was held prisoner until the end
of the war in Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps......Rassinier
was profoundly distressed by the many lies and myths about the concentration
camps that were being circulated. He wrote:
"Then one day I realized that a
false picture of the German camps had been created and that the problem of the
concentration camps was a universal one, not just one that could be disposed of
by placing it on the doorstep of the National Socialists. The deportees — many
of whom were Communists — had been largely responsible for leading international
political thinking to such an erroneous conclusion. I suddenly felt that by
remaining silent I was an accomplice to a dangerous influence."
Rassinier became increasingly skeptical of the reports of systematic
killings of Jews in gas chambers:
"With regard to gas chambers, the
almost endless procession of false witnesses and of falsified documents to which
I have invited the reader's attention during this long study, proves,
nevertheless, only one thing: never at any moment did the responsible
authorities of the Third Reich intend to order — or, in fact, order — the
extermination of the Jews in this or any other manner. Did such exterminations
take place without orders? This question has haunted me for 15 years."
The number of Jews who perished in Europe during the
war years, he concluded, could not have been more than about 1.6 million.
Paul
Rassinier
Books
The Holocaust Story
and the Lies of Ulysses by Paul Rassinier
The Real Eichmann Trial
(.PDF) by Paul Rassinier
Quotes re
Rassinier
Weber had read Did Six Million Really Die? several times. He believed that
the thesis of the book, that there was no German policy or programme to
exterminate the Jews of Europe during the Second World War, was accurate
notwithstanding that the booklet contained statements that were not completely
accurate. Harwood had relied heavily in the booklet on the writings of Paul
Rassinier, a French historian who was the pioneer of Holocaust revisionism.
Rassinier was a French socialist who had been arrested by the Germans and sent
to Dora and Buchenwald concentration camps during the war because he helped Jews
in France to escape to Switzerland. He did not have a very pleasant time in the
camps, said Weber. When he returned to France at the end of the war, he was
given medals by the French government and became a member of the French National
Assembly. He was very shocked and distressed, however, about many of the wild
and exaggerated stories that were being told in France right after the war about
things he had personal knowledge of at Buchenwald and Dora. He later wrote a
series of books about his experiences and the entire question of the Jews during
the Second World War, including a book on the Adolf Eichmann trial. (23-5727 to
5730) Weber believed that Rassinier's work overall was credible and was
especially valuable and reliable when he was talking about his own personal
experiences at Buchenwald and Dora. He did not, however, have as much access to
information as historians did today. As more and more information became
accessible, historians were able to write about the subject with greater and
greater accuracy. (23-5731) [Mark Weber]
The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel -- 1988