I am not a Jew and I was at one time a “revisionist”
February 20, 2019 7:49 AM   Subscribe

In 1980, Robert Faurisson, the late father figure of Holocaust revisionism, sent fellow denier Jean-Claude Pressac, a Nazism-obsessed pharmacist, to the archives of the Auschwitz Museum. Faurisson wanted him to find proof of his theories, but Pressac, immersed in the archives of the SS Construction management Office, found instead irrefutable proof of the use of the gas chambers as a tool of mass murder. Breaking with Faurisson, Pressac kept on investigating and eventually published in 1989 Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (also), an extensive, meticulously researched monography. In the postface, Pressac chronicles the tormented path that led him from being a "travelling companion" of revisionism to being an authoritative Holocaust historian. He later worked on Russian archives until his death in 2003.

From the postface:
Technically, I wanted to know exactly how the “mills” of Auschwitz were organized and the details of their inner workings. I must admit that I scarcely gave a thought to the victims, not even knowing that the majority of them were women and children. Jews, apparently. What did it matter, I knew none and a good deal of the literature available up to 1945 stated in all manner of ways that they should be thrown out because they, the “cosmopolitans”, were destroying our “old France” that belonged to us, Chauvinist French patriots. As I was working on Birkenau, I was obliged to meet these famous Jews. In the end, it was not the Hoess autobiography or the archive documents, the drawings, the original photographs or the ruins of the Krematorium that turned my initial ideas inside out, but the modest and simple testimony of Mr. Zylbermine, as he told me his story in detail during a whole afternoon. For him, it was very painful. As for me, I could never be the same again. He succeeded in injecting his memories, which I now carry in myself. I had the impression of lifting the lid of the cauldron of Hell, a thing I am in no hurry to do again.

As this NYT article shows, Pressac's insistence on relying on documentary proof while discounting testimonies rubbed people the wrong way, including some survivors. He seems to have been abrasive with anyone his disagreed with, butted heads with or disparaged fellow historians, was not exactly humble, and remains to this day a controversial figure. As writes Nicole Lapierre, Pressac's work was "groundbreaking as it was among the first to highlight the technical dimension of the genocide" but offered a "limited view when historical approaches should include both the proven truth and the experienced truth".
posted by elgilito (10 comments total) 61 users marked this as a favorite
 
Great post.
posted by JamesBay at 7:53 AM on February 20, 2019


This is good.
posted by dazed_one at 11:00 AM on February 20, 2019


What a story. Sometimes, facts can really change people's minds.
posted by Termite at 12:49 PM on February 20, 2019 [3 favorites]


And cherry-picked facts and partial information can convince people that they're onto some hidden truth.
posted by trig at 1:51 PM on February 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


The postface was a fascinating read, thanks.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:07 PM on February 20, 2019


Throughout, the book's tone of the book is dry. Human emotion has virtually no place in the book. At one point, Mr. Pressac describes the death process in production-line terms: receipt of raw material (live human bodies), followed by the transformation process (the gas chambers), stocking and final use (cremation).

"Look," he said, "I am not going to cry like a baby before the Auschwitz crematoria. I wanted proof; I found it. As for the nature of evil, the fact is that most people obey."


The 1993 NYT article is great as well. Thanks for sharing this.
posted by subdee at 4:01 PM on February 20, 2019 [2 favorites]


The digital copy is hard to parse and read, it certainly is not enjoyablee by any stretch, but there is some facts worth appreciating that I’m glad that are cataloged for posterity. Among them, this far anyway, amidst his great efforts to, at length, discuss the differentiation between the actual delousing rooms and the homicidal gas chambers is this passage:

The walls were impregnated with warm hydrocyanic acid for at least 12 hours a day, which was to bring about in situ the formation of a dye, "Prussian blue" or potassium iron (III) hexacyanoferrate (II), whose composition varied according to the conditions of formation, The bluish coloring of the walls, was not visible at the liberation of the camp, but appeared in subsequent years, under the influence of various physico-chemical factors which have not been studied. The "blue wall" phenomenon makes it possible now to distinguish visually, empirically, but with absolute certainty, between delousing gas chambers, where the phenomenon is present, and homicidal gas chambers where it is not. Without additional heat the too brief contact of nevertheless high concentrations of hydrocyanic acid with the walls of the homicidal installations was not able to provoke a development of the reaction appreciable enough to be visible.


Math proofs and molar mass chemistry facts and figures precede this segment as it should. This author has my thanks. The work is a service to the victims.
posted by RolandOfEld at 4:47 PM on February 20, 2019 [4 favorites]


Oh my, page 54 is the first long form firsthand account. Buckle up.
posted by RolandOfEld at 4:56 PM on February 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


So, basically, the opposite of the story of Fred Leuchter.
posted by belarius at 7:08 PM on February 20, 2019


What a story. Sometimes, facts can really change people's minds.

So, basically, the opposite of the story of Fred Leuchter.


It is really good to realise that there are some objective facts out there, and that we can actually see that "Yes, you looked as objectively as possible, collected the facts, and reached the truth."

Seeing someone transformed from wrong to right through study, good for him and useful for posterity.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:22 PM on February 20, 2019 [5 favorites]


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