Reynouard, Vicent

Vincent Reynouard, born in 1969, is a French historian specializing in the Second World War who has been punished for violating France’s controversial “Gayssot” law by expressing dissident views about twentieth century history.

Reynouard studied in Caen, Normandy, and graduated as a chemical engineer. He then taught mathematics at professional secondary schools. However, in 1997 he was fired for political reasons by the French Education Minister, after the discovery of revisionist texts on the hard disk of the computer which he used at school. Since then Reynouard has survived on his writings as a historian.

Married in 1991, he and his wife are the parents of eight children.

Reynouard is the author of several dozen essays or brochures on diverse subjects, mostly dealing with World War II. He is the author of a book about the Oradour-sur-Glane “massacre,” a clash in a French village in June 1944 between German SS troops and French Resistance fighters in which 640 civilians died.

He has become known for the revisionist history periodicalSans Concession. He has been responsible for the French-language operations of VHO, an independent revisionist history center that publishes in Dutch, German, French and other languages.

Reynouard is a traditionalist Catholic who is sympathetic to the legacy of Third Reich Germany and National Socialism.

Reynouard has repeatedly been a victim of legal persecution for his writings. On several occasions he has been prosecuted and convicted for “thought crimes.”

On October 8, 1992, a court in Caen, France, sentenced him to one month in prison (suspended), and fined him 5,000 francs (about $850) for violating the French “Gayssot” law that makes it a crime to “contest” or dispute certain “crimes against humanity,” as defined by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal (IMT) of 1945-46. Specifically, he was punished for having sent to 24 secondary school pupils anonymous letters along with copies of writings that dispute claims of gas chamber killings during World War II.

In June 2004 Reynouard was sentenced to two years in prison for having produced and distributed a videocassette on the tragedy of Oradour-sur-Glane that allegedly approved war crimes. However that ruling was later overturned by another court. An earlier confiscation of his research papers was validated.

On November 8, 2007, a court in Saverne (Lower Rhine), France, sentenced Reynouard to one year in prison and to pay a fine of 10,000 euros (about $13,000) for “contesting crimes against humanity” by writing and distributing a 16-page brochure entitled “The Holocaust: What They Hide from You.” He was also ordered to pay 3,000 euros to the anti-racist association LICRA. He appealed the sentence.

On June 25, 2008, the Court of Appeals in Colmar (Alsace) upheld the one-year prison sentence and ordered Reynouard to pay a total of 60,000 euros, which included a fine of 20,000 euros, damages, and the cost of publishing a notice with extracts from this judgment in the “Official Journal of the French Republic,” as well as in the prominent French daily newspaperLe Monde, and the Alsace dailyDernières Nouvelles d'Alsace.

Meanwhile, Reynouard fled with his family to neighboring Belgium.

In June 2008, a court in Brussels, Belgium, declared Reynouard and Belgium publisher Siegfried Verbeke guilty of “disputing crimes against humanity” for having written and published “Holocaust denial” literature. The two men were sentenced to one year imprisonment and to pay a fine of 25,000 euros, as well as damages and various other costs.