Impartiality in Holocaust Study Is Too Dangerous to Jewish Interests

By Andrew Diamond

PARIS, Dec. 26 (JTA) — French Jews have won an important victory in their struggle against Holocaust deniers.

On Dec. 20, a coalition of five Jewish organizations — including the Union of French Jewish Students, or UEJF; the League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, known as LICRA; and Memory 2000 — reached an agreement with France’s most popular encyclopedia about its use of the work of Robert Faurisson, the father of French Holocaust denial. […]

According to the arrangement, Quid will remove Faurisson’s account of the number of Jewish deaths at Auschwitz from all future print editions and from its Internet site. […]

In addition to these revisions, Quid also must publicize the agreement by posting announcements in its 100 most important points of sale and in advertisements in the daily Le Figaro and in Le Monde de l’Education, a publication aimed at teachers and educational administrators. […]

More recently, an alliance of seven Jewish organizations sought to legally force French Internet providers to prevent users from accessing the American neo-Nazi Web portal front14.org, which supplies links to over three hundred neo-Nazi and xenophobic Web sites. […]

Aim and the rest of his group were especially pleased about removing Faurisson’s theories. The Lyon chapter of the organization has led the charge over the last year to investigate the influence of extremist scholars at the University of Lyon, where Faurisson served as professor.

Several weeks ago, the Ministry of Education yielded to their pressure by assigning an outside scholar to render a judgment on the situation.