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A Careless Editorial Decision by Smith Compromises both Faurisson and Cole

By Bradley R. Smith ∙ October 1, 1995

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Issue 26 of Smith's Report ran a letter by Robert Faurisson in which he wrote: “About David Cole’s text on the highly likely’ allegation that Jews were gassed at Struthof [see SR25] : Cole did not give us one word on Professor Rene Fabre’s testimony! Not one word on Pressac’s allusions to it in his Struthof Album!”

Cole replied with a 700-word letter of disbelief. “Faurisson says I did not give 'one word’ on Professor Fabre’s testimony. Agreed; I did not write one word.’ I wrote two hundred ninety one (291) words! That’s right; 291 words, nearly one and a half columns, dealing only with Professor Fabre’s testimony. I mean, it’s right there, in black and white, in my Struthof essay.”

Well, as a matter of fact, it is right there. I know why I published Cole’s original article, but why did I publish Faurisson’s demonstrably inaccurate comment on it? For that matter, why did Faurisson write it?

I suppose I know why I published it. I was too careless and allowed myself to be too distracted by other matters to go back to re-read Cole’s article to make sure Faurisson was right. I recall at the time thinking I should, that I half recalled that Cole did mention Fabre in his article. In the event, I printed an observation about Cole’s work that was not only wrong, but one he feels is damaging to him.

At the same time, I compromised Faurisson as well. His assertion about Cole not mentioning Fabre is too inattentive to the facts to have been done consciously, in my view. Everyone makes a careless oversight like this one sometime in his life and afterwards you wish you had taken an extra moment to reflect on what you were writing or saying.

I’m not going to print the full text of Cole’s letter.

It contains charges with implications so broad that the furor they would cause could not possibly be handled in this newsletter. That doesn’t mean I believe they should not be aired. I’ll talk to Cole about airing them, and I’ll try to talk to Faurisson about it. I don’t like what’s coming down the pike, but it’s coming.

If I can not publish Cole in full in SR, I have to do it someplace else. That’s what it means to have an open debate. I’ll post Cole’s most recent letter, as well as some other stuff, in response to Faurisson on the CODOH Website. When it gets up there anyone will be able to download it and print it out, including myself.

  • Bradley R. Smith

    Bradley R. Smith was born in Los Angeles on February 18, 1930. At 18 he joined the army and in 1951 served with the infantry in Korea where he was twice wounded. After three decades of a variety of professional activities, it suddenly hit him: In 1979 he read a leaflet by Professor Robert Faurisson, "The Problem of the Gas Chambers." Then, Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century did it for him. He understood from the beginning that he would address the censorship, the suppression of independent thought, the taboo against publishing and debating revisionist arguments—not the arguments themselves. That has remained his position. In 1989, Smith founded Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) dedicated to defending free speech and free inquiry into the Holocaust question. He handed over CODOH's helm in late 2014. He passed away on his 86th birthday, February 18, 2016. Read a series of obituaries here.

Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, no. 26, September 1995, p. 5
Other contributors to this document: n/a
Editor’s comments: n/a

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