A Black November for Revisionists

On November 1, 2000, French historian and sociologist Serge Thion, 58 and a father of three, was dismissed from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), without salary or severance pay. [Thion is the author of numerous scholarly articles and several books, including Vérité historique ou vérité politique?, a collection of revisionist essays published in Paris in 1980. He is also a contributor to this Journal.]

On November 6, the University of Lyon 2 began proceedings against Jean Plantin, 35, to revoke his diplôme d’études approfondies (DEA, “advanced studies degree”), obtained in 1991. France’s Education Minister, Jack Lang, will make the final decision in the matter. (Lang, who is Jewish and a major Socialist party figure, has been a promoter, along with Laurent Fabius, also Jewish, of the anti-revisionist “Fabius-Gayssot law” of July 13, 1990.) On November 24 the teaching staff of the history department of the University of Lyon 3 let it be known that they are in favor of an identical course of action that, they hope, will strip Plantin of the master’s degree conferred by their faculty in 1990. [Plantin is editor of the scholarly revisionist journal Akribeia, and director of a small publishing center of the same name, which has issued French editions of several revisionist works, including Arthur Ponsonby’s Falsehood in Wartime and, most recently, Ralph Keeling’s Gruesome Harvest. See “Scholarly French Journal Strives for ‘Exactitude’,” Nov.-Dec. 1998 Journal.]

On November 17, Vincent Reynouard, a 31-year-old father of three small children, was dismissed from his position as a teacher of mathematics and science. Having been forced to leave a similar job at a state secondary school, he had just obtained this position in a Roman Catholic establishment run by a priest. Certain colleagues, who had heard his name on the “France-Culture” radio network, were either alarmed or angered by his presence among them. They all demanded that he be sacked.

On November 20, the Paris tribunal de grande instance (“high court”) ordered the director of the giant American Internet firm Yahoo! to impose several forms of censorship in France and, in particular, to remove from its search engines links to revisionist web sites.

Outside of France as well, repression against revisionists is growing steadily more severe. In Germany on May 23, Münster university professor Werner Pfeifenberger was driven to suicide. [See “German Professor, Accused of Revisionism, Commits Suicide,” May-June 2000 Journal.] Also in Münster, Erhard Kemper, age 73, is once again in prison. His request for leave to go to the bedside of his wife, who is terminally ill with cancer and almost completely immobilized, was rejected on November 24 by unanimous decision of the judges.

Udo Walendy, 73, has been in prison for 28 months for having published dissident historical writings on the Holocaust issue. His request for normal release upon serving two-thirds of his sentence was recently rejected on the grounds that he is unlikely to change his views on history. Walendy suffers from a serious eye ailment. [See “Dissident German Historian Punished for Revisionist Writings,” July-August 1998 Journal.]

In France, Henri Lewcowicz, who is half-Jewish, said in a radio talk show broadcast with Jean-Marie Le Pen that the Nazi gas chambers are a hoax. On September 7 in Paris, he was sentenced to, among other things, undergo a psychiatric examination that could lead to mandatory hospitalization.

On December 4, Jean-Louis Berger, a teacher of French and Latin at a secondary school near Metz (Lorraine), 55 years of age and the father of three, appeared before a disciplinary board. He will likely be expelled from the teaching profession, without salary or severance pay.

In Austria, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the hunt for revisionists is intensifying.

In the mainstream media, not a single voice is raised in defense of the persecuted.

Last minute news: On December 8 the Internet servers for the revisionist web sites “Radio Islam” (which receives some 90,000 visits per day) and “aaargh” (with about 7,000 visits per day) has definitively shut down the two sites. It will be some time before new addresses are known.

In Paris a 35-year-old man has been arrested for putting on the Internet allegedly anti-Jewish, and probably revisionist, material. His arrest was made possible through a recently created French police agency, the Brigade des affaires sanitaires et des libertés publiques (BASLP, “Health Affairs and Public Liberties Brigade”). The French Interior Ministry bureau responsible for censorship is called the “Public Liberties Office.” (Le Journal du dimanche, Dec. 10, 2000)

In Nantes a teacher has been suspended for revisionism. (Details about the case, including the teacher’s name, are not yet known.)

I cannot recommend strongly enough that those who have the means to do so come to the financial aid of any of the four latest French victims of anti-revisionist repression:

• Jean-Louis Berger, 146, Rue de Leitzelthal, 57230 Philippsbourg, France
• Jean Plantin, 45/3, Route de Vourles, 69230 St. Genis Laval, France
• Vincent Reynouard, 107, Chaussée de Vleurgatt, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
• Serge Thion, 1, Aubray, 91780 Chalo Saint Mars, France

– December 13, 2000