Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Supplement 1: The International Holocaust Controversy
pornographic matter goes on the list, the practical effect is to ban it, for the law
specifies that listed literature may not be advertised or sold to private parties by
mail. It can still be sold in bookstores, subject to certain restrictions, but with the
exception of the Diwald book the literature that has been discussed here had never
been stocked by regular bookstores in Germany anyway.
Late 1978 marked the beginning of an obviously systematic campaign in West
Germany to put much of the literature I have told you about on the list of youthmenacing
literature. The first was the German translation of the Harwood booklet,
and the German translation of my book, entitled Der Jahrhundertbetrug, went
onto the list in May 1979. 494 There is also a move against the Stäglich book that is
too recent to discuss further here. Such developments in the official area in Germany,
together with developments in the unofficial area, such as the Diwald affair,
answer conclusively the question of why even Germans concede the reality
of the “exterminations.” The system that we set up there after the Second World
War gives them no other choice.
Almost simultaneously with these events in Germany, things were happening
in France. In late October 1978, l’Express, a magazine comparable to Newsweek,
published an interview with Louis Darquier de Péllepoix, who had been commissioner
for Jewish affairs in the Vichy government during the German occupation
and who has lived in Spain since the war. Darquier’s generally unrepentant attitude
– plus his claim that the only creatures gassed at Auschwitz had been lice –
set off a French uproar virtually coincident with the one around Diwald on the
other side of the Rhine. Most significantly for our interests, the spotlight then
turned on Robert Faurisson, who was then teaching at the University of Lyon-2
and who had been almost forgotten since the relatively minor flap when he was at
the Sorbonne in 1974. The disorders on the part of some of the students led to
Faurisson’s suspension from his teaching duties, a suspension that is still in effect,
but another result of all their attention to Faurisson’s supposedly outrageous views
was that Le Monde, the French equivalent of the New York Times, saw itself obligated,
much against its wishes, to give him space in which to express these views.
It is true that Le Monde gave the other side much more space, but an important
barrier had been broken, at least in France, and I am told that today there are a lot
of questions being openly asked in that country whose expression would have
been inconceivable only a year ago. 495
As a consequence of the publicity in France, Faurisson was able to participate
in a three hour debate on Italian-language Swiss television on April 17, 1979. I
am told that the program generated enormous interest, that most impartial observers
thought Faurisson had won the debate, and that the whole thing was rebroadcast
on May 6. As a result of the television debate, a long interview with Faurisson
was published in the August 1979 and following issues of the Italian magazine
Storia Illustrata; this interview is by far the most instructive material on the
494
495
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 16, 1979, p. 23; New York Times, May 22, 1979, p. A13.
Le Monde, November 22, 1978, p. 42; December 16, 1978, p. 12; December 29, 1978, p. 8; January
10, 1979, p. 11; January 16, 1979, p. 13; February 3, 1979, p. 10; February 21, 1979, p. 23;
March 8, 1979, p. 31.
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