Preface
by Beate and Serge
KLARSFELD |
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| A scientific rebuttal of
those who deny the gas chambers |
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Jean Claude Pressac deserves our praise: he has become one
of the rare researchers who specialize in the field of gas chambers
extermination technique, this in spite of the fact that he is not a Jew and was
very nearly a revisionist.
After eight years at the la Flèche
Military School, J C Pressac chose. instead of becoming an officer, to break
with the army and study pharmacy.
As a newly established pharmacist, he
decided at the age of about thirty to write a work of historical fiction
describing the universe that would have resulted from a German victory in the
second world war.
J-C Pressac went to Germany and Poland to get the
necessary background for his novel, and discovered the world of the
concentration camps and the mechanisms by which the Jews were exterminated. He
was able to overcome his initial doubts thanks to his rational and scientific
training, to resist the advances of Faurisson and his clique and listen only to
the call of truth. This was a demanding and difficult path to follow, for in
his case it was not only a matter of a comparative study of the testimonies of
victims and executioners to determine the points of convergence or
contradiction concerning the gas chambers: J C Pressac's original and eminently
logical approach was to go to Auschwitz, working in the archives and inspecting
the site, as often as was necessary — a total of over three months in
about fifteen visits between 1979 and 1987 – in order to thoroughly master
his subject.
It is now almost ten years that we have been cooperating
with Jean Claude Pressac. 1n 1980, in fact, we found the original album of
photographs that an SS man had taken of the arrival of Hungarian Jews at
Auschwitz in 1944, an album that had been brought back by a deportee, Lili
Jacob, when the camps were liberated. The complete Auschwitz
Album was published for the first time by our Foundation in August
1980. 'The following year a version for a wider public was produced by Random
House. But as soon as our version was published, J C Pressac had contacted us
to study the original photographs, whose quality was better than that of the
published version. When Le Seuil decided to produce a French version of the
Random House edition, we put them in touch with J C Pressac and he was able to
considerably enrich the French edition with his pertinent commentaries and an
annex containing a number of photographs and explanations concerning
Krematorien II, III, IV and V. This was published in 1983.
The
previous year, 1982, in issue 107 of Le Monde Juif. the journal
of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine de Paris, directed by
Georges Wellers whose works are references on the subject, Jean Claude Pressac
had published art important article entitled Les Krematorien IV et V de
Birkenau et leurs chambres à gas. Then, in 1985, when Editions
Gallimard and Le Seuil jointly published) L'Allemagne Nazie et le
Génocide Juif a fundamental work containing the proceedings of
the Colloquium held in July /982 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes et Sciences
Sociales J C Pressac’s detailed contribution Etude et
Réalisation des Krematorien IV et V d'Auschwitz Birkenau formed
an integral part of it. The same year, 1985. our Foundation published in
English a work by Jean Claude Pressac entitled The Struthof
Albums. |
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“We decided in fact to publish a study, for
the fortieth anniversary of Hitler’s defeat, devoted to the terrifying
episode of the assassination of 87 Jews, including 30 women, for the purpose of
constituting a collection of skulls and skeletons to be kept at the Institute
of Anatomy of a large German university. Because they were Jewish, these men
and women were selected, asphyxiated, dismembered and carved up by men of
science. Racist science. We asked Jean Claude Pressac to study, in particular,
how these Jewish victims were gassed at Struthof. near Strasbourg
....”
“The record is a terrible one, but the world must
confront it, for it exemplifies the horror of the Jewish condition during the
Nazi period. Those things that happened must be known. They cannot and must not
be forgotten. Such is the main ambition of the publications we have
undertaken.” |
| Meanwhile, in 1983, we had asked J C Pressac to write a
reference work with all the available drawings and photographs, devoted to the
technique and operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This
initiative on our part was by no means exceptional because already in 1978 we
had published in English a very detailed work entitled The Holocaust and
the Neo Nazi Mythomania, containing three parts: The Launching of
the Final Solution by Dr Joseph Billig. The Existence of Gas
Chambers and The Number of Victims and the Korherr Report
by Georges Wellers. In our introduction to this work, the first
published by our Foundation, we explained our approach. which ten years later
remains the same: |
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“We have taken the initiative not only for
the conception of this book, its edition and publication, but also for its
distribution. Our objective is to provide people of good faith with the precise
facts which incontestably refute the lies of the Neo Nazi propaganda relevant
to the Holocaust.
“Those propagandists who seek to rehabilitate
Nazism are perfectly aware that what marks it indelibly is the infamous
genocide of the Jewish people. They take advantage of the credibility of the
public and the more or less unconscious desire of the latter that this
nightmarish mass murder had never taken place. That is why the Neo Nazis have
during recent years launched an offensive which has had a certain success.
Their principal themes are the following: that Hitler was not responsible for
the “final solution,” that the gas chambers as a means of
exterminating the Jews never existed, that the number of Jewish victims has
been very considerably exaggerated.
“This propaganda is
internationally coordinated, and the most virulent of these Neo Nazi
publications appear in the major languages. In the following pages, we shall
give striking examples of this propaganda which seeks to weaken the cause of
the Jews in general as well as that of Israel. |
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