- Amaudruz Jailed In Switzerland For Holocaust Doubts
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- On Monday morning, January 13, Gaston-Armand Amaudruz
was jailed in Switzerland for having expressed doubts about the existence
of homicidal gas chambers in World War II German concentration camps, and
for saying that he did not believe the figure of six million wartime Jewish
dead. The publicist and retired teacher, who is 82 and in poor health,
is to be held for three months in a special "high security" prison.
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- Robert Faurisson, a prominent European revisionist scholar,
immediately informed Robert Ménard, founder of "Reporters Without
Borders," of Amaudruz' jailing. Ménard is author of a recently
published work, La Censure des Bien-Pensants ("Censorship of the Right-Thinking"),
which defends the right of revisionists to express their views, while dismissing
them as entirely wrong.
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- French revisionist writer Jean Plantin, publisher of
the scholarly journal Tabou, may go to prison on January 22, reports Prof.
Faurisson.
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- On April 10, 2000, a Swiss court sentenced Amaudruz to
one year in prison for expressing doubts about German wartime homicidal
gas chambers. He was found guilty of violating the country's "anti-racism"
law, which makes it a crime to "deny, grossly minimize or seek to
justify genocide or other crimes against humanity." He had broken
the law, the court ruled, through his distribution of revisionist books,
and for two articles in 1995 issues of his newsletter, Courrier du Continent.
In one of the offending items he had written: "For my part, I maintain
my position: I don't believe in the gas chambers. Let the exterminationists
provide the proof and I will believe it. But as I've been waiting for this
proof for decades, I don't believe I will see it soon."
-
- In addition to the non-suspended prison sentence, the
criminal court in Lausanne ordered Amaudruz to pay a fine of 1,000 Swiss
francs (about $600) to each of four civil parties in the case: the Swiss
Federation of Jewish Communities, the Paris-based International League
Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), the Association of Sons and Daughters
of Deported Jews of France, and a Jewish concentration camp survivor. Amaudruz
was also ordered to pay the trial costs, as well as the costs of publishing
a notice of the court's judgment in three daily newspapers and in an official
gazette.
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- Shortly before the beginning of the April 2000 trial
began, Amaudruz published a defiant article, "Vive le révisionnisme!,"
in his Courrier newsletter. He wrote:
-
- Revisionism exists to call into question our "certainties,"
even the
-
-
- most seemingly solid ones. This methodology, very familiar
to scientists, applies to all fields of knowledge.
-
- In several countries there is an untouchable dogma: the
"Six Million" and the "gas chambers"... In Switzerland,
Section 261 of the criminal code... supposedly meant to suppress "racial
discrimination," does not define the offense, thereby leaving the
definition up to the judges, who can condemn or acquit the accused as they
see fit, or on the basis of received instructions. And just what in the
world does disputing the Six Million figure have to do with "racial
discrimination"?...
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- As one who has been indicted for revisionism, I repeat:
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- - The Six Million figure is impossible.
-
- - I do not believe in the gas chambers, because there
is no proof for them.
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- My trial is a political trial; the verdict is based exclusively
on the appropriateness of considerations of the moment.
-
- I prefer to obey my conscience rather than an immoral
and criminal law, and I hold to my conviction. Long live revisionism!
<<
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- For more on the April 2000 case, see "Switzerland:
Prison Term for 'Holocaust Denial'," in the March-April 2000 Journal
of Historical Review. Posted at: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n2p58_Swiss.html
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- Amaudruz, born in Lausanne in December 1920, is author
of three books, holds a certificate of political science and social sciences,
and for a time worked as a language teacher. Already as a 28-year-old he
questioned claims of wartime German homicidal gas chambers in his book,
Ubu Justicier au Premier Procès de Nuremberg (Paris, 1949).
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- Since 1946 he has been editor and publisher of Courrier
du Continent, a French-language newsletter with a circulation of about
400 that is issued ten times yearly.
-
- Amaudruz is not the first person to be punished under
the country's Anti-Racism Law. In July 1998, a Swiss court punished two
revisionists, Jürgen Graf and Gerhard Förster, with fines and
prison terms for writing and publishing allegedly anti-Jewish books.
-
- (See: "Swiss Court Punishes Two Revisionists,"
July-August 1998 Journal of Historical Review. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n4p-2.html
)
-
- -- Mark Weber weber@ihr.org Institute for Historical
Review www.IHR.org
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