Institute for Historical Review

The Myth of the Six Million -- Appendix 4

Paul Rassinier: Historical Revisionist

BY HERBERT C. ROSEMAN

THE RECENT DEATH of Paul Rassinier, French historian and geographer left a gap that few can fill. A lifelong pacifist, Paul Rassinier's scholarship took him where few others dared venture-the study of World War II atrocities.

Paul Rassinier's main appointment was as professor of history and geography in the College d'enseignement general at Belfort, Academic de Besancon, 1933-1943. In the Second World War Rassinier engaged in pacifist work until arrested by the Gestapo on October 30, 1943. Rassinier was a member of the French Resistance from the moment of German occupation, which was the reason for his arrest and subsequent deportation and confinement in the German concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dora, 1943-f945 which so ruined his health that he could not resume teaching. After the war's end Rassinier was given the Medaille de la Resistance, and Reconnaissance Française. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies, Rassinier was defeated in November, 1946 largely through the machinations of the Communists.

Rassinier then embarked on his remarkable and little-known series of volumes depicting life in the German concentration camps and a systematic and statistical analysis of German war atrocities. Rassinier's record, both personal and ideological proves that nobody could be less inclined emotionally or intellectually to defend Hitler and National Socialism. Further, he had always opposed vigorously in France and elsewhere and especially in Germany after 1933 the seeds of anti-Semitism. In all his writings Rassinier attempts no "whitewash" of the Germans. As a historical revisionist, in the tradition of Harry Elmer Barnes, Charles A. Beard, Herman Hesse, Frederick Bausman, his aim is simply "keeping the record straight."

Rassinier's most important works were: Le Mensonge d'Ulysse (The Lie of Ulysses), 1950, on his personal concentration camp experience; Ulysse trahi par les Siens (Ulysses Betrayed by His Fellows), 1960, on the exaggerations of French propagandists and impostors relative to the German concentration camps. Paul Rassinier's last published works, completing a monumental task, were Le Véritable Procès Eichmann (1962) and Le Drame des Juifs European (1964) wherein Rassinier attempts to refute the myth of German diabolism and Le Vicaire, a devastating critique of Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy.

The chief merit of Rassinier's work is exploding the myth of German "wickedness." Rassinier recognizes that the seeds of war are inherent in our iniquitous economic system as he explains briefly and succinctly in his introduction to the unpublished collection of his works.

Machinations of Vested Interests

Rassinier thoroughly exposes the machinations of financial oligarchies, propagandists, politicians both racist and Zionist, various vested interests in sowing the seeds of hatred and war. Viewed in this light the destruction of a large portion of European Jewry becomes doubly tragic because the search for historical truth and accuracy becomes well-nigh impenetrable and the diligent searcher becomes lost in a fog of partisan propaganda.

The system which sets German against Jew, Jew against German, Negro against White, White against Negro will result in atrocity of one sort or another be it in "peace" or war. A system that allows power to accumulate in the hands of central banking systems and their bloodsucking proclivities, a system that places the compounding of interest above human life will provide the frame work for Hiroshimas, Buchenwalds, and Dresdens. "Man's inhumanity to man will continue."

Paul Rassinier's writings are not for squeamish liberals or dogmatic conservatives. They are not pleasant reading or easy reading. The prospective reader should also be warned that Rassinier was not a trained historian and 100% statistical accuracy cannot be guaranteed. On the other hand Paul Rassinier's work if published in the English version will be the most important book of its kind in at least a decade and the most controversial.