Holocaust Revisionist Jailed in Switzerland
ThoughtCrime: 04/10/00
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”
George Orwell
A Swiss court on Monday gave a one-year prison sentence to a 79 year old Holocaust revisionist for having argued that the Nazis did not use gas chambers for mass murder and for having said that the extermination of 6 million Jews was “impossible.”
Although nothing in this case dealt with matters of race, Gaston-Armand Amaudruz was found guilty of “racial discrimination” in a three-day trial last week on charges stemming from 24 books and an article which argued that there is no physical proof that the Nazis used gas chambers for mass murder.
In the article in Amaudruz's magazine, Le Courrier du Continent, he said: “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 today's Switzerland as in most of Europe, the thoughtpolice monitor and persecute such beliefs.
In sentencing Amaudruz, the court in Lausanne said that he had dedicated his life to racist activity and showed few signs of remorse. The court also noted that in the latest edition of Amaudruz's publication, he wrote, “Long live revisionism!”
Amaudruz was charged under Switzerland's “big brother-like” 1995 anti-racism law, which outlaws belittling the Holocaust and makes it a crime to “deny, grossly minimize or seek to justify genocide or other crimes against humanity.”
The prosecution sought a 15-month prison term, while the defense argued for a fine or suspended sentence. Amaudruz was ordered to pay court costs and damages of $610 each to four civil parties to the case – the Association of Sons and Daughters of Deported Jews of France, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, and a concentration camp survivor.
The Swiss Federation is said to have welcomed the ruling as a signal that Holocaust revisionists “must reckon with a clear punishment.” Many Americans are unaware of the limitations on freedom of speech throughout Europe today.
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