Robert
FAURISSON
6 September2004
In May of 2002
Fritjof Meyer, editor-in-chief of the magazine Der Spiegel, published in the monthly Osteuropa, whose editorial commission is
headed by Rita Süssmith, former president of the Bundestag, an article (p.
631-641) entitled “Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz. Neue Erkenntnisse durch
neue Archivfunde” (“The number of victims of Auschwitz. New figures through the
discovery of new archives”). Rejecting the figure of 4,000,000 victims (the
official one until 1990) and that of 1,500,000 (no less official, but steadily
revised since 1995), he boldly proposed the “presumed” figure of 510,000 dead,
of whom “probably” 356,000 killed by gassing. He stated that this “genocide” had
“most likely” been perpetrated “predominantly”(überwiegend) outside the camp, in the
“White Farm” or “Bunker I” and the “Red Farm” or “Bunker I”. For the guardians of the
holocaustic faith this latter assertion contravened the dogma holding that the
gassings had been carried out, very predominantly, in the four great crematories
of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
From July 2002
revisionist publications announced this spectacular revision coming from an
author who in his study had condemned what is called Nazi barbarism. In November
The Journal of Historical Review
presented an account by Mark Weber on pages 24-28 of its issue dated
May-August of that year. In February 2003 the first issue of Germar Rudolf’s The Revisionist carried an essay on the
subject by Carlo Mattogno (p. 30-37). In Germany itself, the review Nation und Europa launched and maintained a long
revisionist campaign on the theme of F. Meyer’s “revisionism”. Wieland Körner
dealt with the matter in a brief work entitled Die neue Sicht von Auschwitz (“The New
View of Auschwitz”), January 2004, Durchblick-Bücher, PF 33 04 04, D 28334
Bremen.
Some orthodox
authors indeed found it necessary to break the silence at their end. In Die Welt of 28 August 2002 Sven Felix
Kellerhof opened fire by bemoaning the fact that a “key witness of the liberal
left” had lost his way and gone to the aid of the “Holocaust deniers”. There
followed a controversy, with F. Meyer protesting his good intentions and
“antifascist” convictions. In turn Franciszek Piper, the Polish communist and
former curator of the Auschwitz Museum, entered the fray. F. Meyer made a
rejoinder. The affair began to grow nasty. Certain revisionists cleverly forced
the German judicial authorities to explain their failure to prosecute F. Meyer.
Their answer: the author had doubtless come forth with reduced figures but he
had done so without minimising the gravity of the crime (for the full text of
the Lüneberg public prosecutor’s reply, see Recht und Wahrheit, n° 11 & 12, p.
16-17, published in Tenerife).
Eventually,
with the business nonetheless taking a more and more irksome turn for him, the
editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel
preferred to throw in the towel. In a short piece dated 12 February he stated
that, in view of the profit that the revisionists had garnered from his article
and their intention in future to persist in “instrumentalising” his arguments,
he preferred to withdraw from the public debate. In closing, he called for a
mobilisation against fascists wherever they might be. He confided his decision
to the “Information Service against Rightwing Extremism” (Informationsdienst gegen
Rechtsextremismus) directed by Albrecht Kolthoff who, for his part, in a
text of 23 February, said that, although he understood F. Meyer’s decision, he
lamented it.
(http://www.idgr.de/texte/geschichte/ns-verbrechen/fritjof-meyer/meyer-040212.php).