Court rules against denier

A Paris court ruled that a former French Cabinet minister did not defame Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson by calling him a “forger of history.” According to Monday’s judgment by the 17th Correctional Court, Faurisson’s multiple convictions for denying the Holocaust justified that description of Faurisson by former Justice Minister Robert Badinter on the Arte TV channel last year. Faurisson had accused Badinter of defamation. Faurisson argued that this exact term did not appear in a July 1981 court decision that condemned his claims that there were no gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. But Deputy Prosecutor Francois Cordier argued that Faurisson’s reasoning, historical analysis and conclusions were meant to deny historical facts related to the World War II and the extermination of the Jews. “You, the court, will be saying today that all these children, all these women, all these old men, all those who were arrested, deported, exterminated just because they were Jews, Gypsies or mentally ill, they will remain in our collective memory, which serves them as their one and only burial place,” Cordier said. A final judgment is due May 21.