France - Le Pen: Auschwitz didn't have gas chambers

Agence France-Presse (excerpt) ^ | April 25, 2008

[HAL9000]

Le Pen: Auschwitz didn't have gas chambers

Extreme right-wing leader repeats claim that no Jews were gassed or burned at Nazi death camps, says Auschwitz inmates worked as laborers for factory

Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen sparked a chorus of outrage in France on Friday by repeating an incendiary claim that the Nazi gas chambers were a "detail of history."

Anti-racism and Jewish groups threatened immediate legal action against the National Front chief - who already holds several similar convictions - after he made the comments in a magazine interview.

"I said the gas chambers were a detail of the history of World War II: that, to me, seems so obvious," the 79-year-old Le Pen told Bretons magazine.

Le Pen was fined 1.2 million francs ($290,000) for making the initial remarks in a radio interview in 1987.

When the Bretons journalist told him that the Nazis "deported people to camps simply to kill them," Le Pen replied: "But that is what you believe. I don't feel obliged to adhere to that view."

"I observe that in Auschwitz there was the IG Farben factory, there were 80,000 laborers working there. As far as I know they were not gassed, anyway, nor burned."

~ snip ~

[FARS]

After a search on FR I found nothing on this having come across it on Conflict & Terror on Terror News at AntiMullah. I thought the more recent hingts of spine being shown by France worth a mention. Though they still have the holocaust deniers and useless apologists for hate.

Full Story on this and other Conflict & Terror Briefs have a look at:

http://terrornewsbriefs.blogspot.com/2008/04/conflict-terror.html

China condemns Paris honor to Dalai Lama

China condemned on Tuesday Paris’s decision to make the Dalai Lama an honorary citizen, warning that the gesture had damaged ties with France just as both nations were seeking to ease bad blood over protests. Relations between France and China were strained by Tibet protests that disrupted the passage of the Beijing Olympic Games torch through Paris earlier this month.

[VOA]

When I first saw the hair and shoes, seriously I went into shock;
it was as if a horse had kicked me in the stomach.

The view of the camps hits even hardened folks.
IIRC, it's been said that when Gen. Patton went with Eisenhower
on a "see for ourselves" tour of some of the camps, Patton simply
refused to visit some of the more ghastly locations.
He told Eisenhower that he didn't think he could handle some of
the scenes without becoming overwhelmed/nauseated.

[potlatch]

How I wish!
Lol, thought you wrote an hour ago you were doing something in email!!

[LucyT]

I’m not surprised, lol. Your’s too.

[devolve]

.

I’ll do the email thing in a bit

[potlatch]

Don’t worry about it.

[LucyT]

The view of the camps hits even hardened folks.

Yes. I understand; after seeing hair, shoes, and skin covered items everyone was silent while we toured the remainder of the camp. No one spoke until after we departed.

For those who were there when the war ended, how did they cope with the unspeakable horror they saw. I've seen photos in old Life Magazines...

[wastedyears]

I wish people would tell China to shove it.

[justiceseeker93]

Yet I still have a problem with the French government criminalizing free speech, as absurd as the content of that speech surely is.

To an American, criminalizing even absurd hate speech (except in cases where it may trigger imminent violence) is wrong, because it violates the First Amendment. But criminalization of hate speech very much the norm in Western Europe, and even in Canada, so I've heard. Germany, for historical reasons, probably comes down as hard or harder on hate speech than any other country in the West.

[Mike Darancette]

Extreme right-wing leader repeats claim that no Jews were gassed or burned at Nazi death camps, says Auschwitz inmates worked as laborers for factory.

What a loon.

[1035rep]

Thanks for the ping FARS!

[sonic109]

As far as I know they were not gassed, anyway, nor burned.”
Well , he did say “ as far as I know”. I guess he don’t know sh*t about what happened. A self confessed moron it seems.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thanks for the ping.

[knighthawk]

Le Pen doesn’t have a brain either

[M. Espinola]

Le Shmuck!

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

----------------------------

The arguement often made, yes, but he's good on immigration.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Couple of points - LePen is and always has been about xenophobia - hatred and distrust of immigrants coupled with hatred and distrust of Jews. France has a long history of anti-semitism and LePen merely taps into this reservoir. It obviously goes at least as far back as Dreyfus, but in reality much farther back than that.

[netmilsmom]

What an idiot. That’s all I can say.

[BroJoeK]

""As far as I know they were not gassed, anyway, nor burned.”

Well , he did say “ as far as I know”. I guess he don’t know sh*t about what happened. A self confessed moron it seems."

Agreed

Imho, deniers base much of their argument on the fact that most people do not know the differences between Nazi single purpose death camps (of which there were five), "work camps" (of which there were hundreds), and Auschwitz -- the largest of them all, and the only "dual purpose" camp.

Very few Jews survived the five single purpose death camps. Nearly all sent there were killed immediately -- in gas chambers, with Zyklon-B or carbon monoxide (for all his brutality, Stalin had no equivalent to Nazi death camps. After all, why go through the bother of gassings, when you could simply release your prisoners -- out into the arctic cold).

Many Jews survived the hundreds of various sized "work camps." Some of these camps did have small gas chambers, but no credible evidence shows they were used for industrial scale mass murder.

Auschwitz was the only camp built "dual purpose" for both work and mass murder.

Typical denier arguments point to work camps such as Dachau, and say, "see, no gas chamber murder here..."

Or they point to Auschwitz survivors and say, in effect, "why weren't you gassed too?"