Persecuted Swiss
Revisionist Scholar Finds Refuge in Iran
Dec.
24, 2000. A prominent Swiss revisionist author who fled his homeland rather
than serve a 15-month prison sentence for "Holocaust denial" has been
welcomed in Iran.
Rather
than begin serving the politically-motivated prison term that was to commence
in October of 2000, former Swiss school teacher Jürgen Graf is staying in the Iranian capital city of Tehran at the invitation
of a group of Iranian scholars and university professors who are sympathetic to
World War Two revisionism. (Contrary to some reports, he has not been given
political asylum in Iran,
nor has he requested it.)
Graf
has written an 80-page overview of the history and impact of World War Two
revisionism that is being translated into Persian and Arabic for distribution
to scholars, journalists and religious and political leaders. Graf will also be
giving lectures at Iranian universities. He is learning Persian (Farsi) in an
intensive study course [Graf is fluent in 18 languages].
Graf
arrived in Iran on November
17, 2000, concluding a journey that had taken him to Poland,
Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. He is impressed with the
hospitality and helpfulness of his hosts, as well as with the orderliness,
cleanliness and sense of security in the Iranian capital.
At
the conclusion of his thought crime trial in July 1998, a court in the Swiss
town of Baden
sentenced Graf to 15 months imprisonment and imposed a heavy fine because of
his revisionist writings. Born in 1951, Graf is an educator, researcher and
author of several books, including "Holocaust
on the Stand," which has appeared in more than half a dozen languages.
In March 1993, following publication of the 112-page German edition, he was
summarily dismissed from his post as a secondary school teacher of Latin and
French.
In
December 1994 the French-language edition, "L'Holocauste
au scanner," was banned in France by order of the country's
Interior Ministry. Some 200,000
copies of an expanded edition of this work have been published and distributed
in Russia
under the title "The Myth of the
Holocaust."
In
recent years Graf has examined the sites of numerous wartime German camps, and
has carried out historical research at archives in Poland,
Russia,
and other countries. During the coming months he intends to bring out, in
collaboration with Carlo Mattogno and Richard Krege, a book about Treblinka,
the wartime German camp in Poland where, it is widely alleged, more than
750,000 Jews were killed between July 1942 and April 1943.
In
several countries, including Germany,
France, occupied Palestine, Austria
and Switzerland,
it is a crime publicly to dispute standard "Holocaust" claims that
six million Jews were systematically killed during World War II, most of them
in gas chambers. Numerous writers
and publishers have been fined or imprisoned for "Holocaust denial." These one-sided thought crime laws are
the result of a well-organized campaign by the World Jewish Congress and other
powerful Jewish organizations.
Awareness
of the importance of World War Two atrocity propaganda as a key tool of Israeli
and Zionist interests is growing throughout the Muslim world. This was
manifest, for example, during the 1998 show trial in Paris of the prominent French-Muslim scholar Roger Garaudy, who was fined $40,000
for writing the book, "The Founding
Myths of Modern Israel," which presents compelling evidence refuting
the orthodox gas chamber story and other historical legends.
Religious
and political leaders, scholars and journalists in Egypt,
Lebanon, Iran and other
countries expressed support for Garaudy and WWII revisionism. In Iran, 600
journalists and 160 members of parliament signed petitions backing Garaudy, and
during a visit to the country, he was received by the nation's chief of state,
Ayatollah Khamenei, who congratulated the French scholar.
Iran's
official radio voice to the world, IRIB, has in recent years expressed support
for World War Two revisionism by broadcasting sympathetic interviews with
leading revisionist scholars and activists. Several interviews with revisionist
historian Mark Weber have been aired
on the English-language service, and similar interviews have been broadcast
with Ernst Zündel in German and
with Ahmed Rami in Arabic. IRIB
short-wave reaches millions of listeners in the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
An
editorial on WWII history in the English-language Iranian paper "Kayhan International," Dec.
6, 1999, commented sympathetically on revisionism, and criticized German
government persecution of Dr. Fredrick
Töben and others who dispute homicidal gas chamber claims. The paper
called Töben an "Australian historian of German origin who is known
for his authoritative research... He was jailed and he was fined for having
exposed the fabrications of the gas chambers where, Zionist propaganda says,
six million Jews perished..."
The
paper referred to the "preposterous figure of six million," and
praised revisionist scholars for their "courageous research and
highlighting of facts of the Second World War."
On
May 1, 2000, the Iranian embassy in Vienna
granted refuge to an Austrian engineer, Wolfgang
Fröhlich, who had been hounded for expressing dissident views on
history. At Graf's 1998 trial, Fröhlich had testified that, for technical
reasons, mass gassings with Zyklon could not have been carried out in the German
wartime camps as alleged. In his request for asylum, he
reported that he had been offered $5 million to repudiate his expert testimony
in the Graf trial, and instead state that mass killings with Zyklon
could somehow have happened as claimed.
The
warm welcome being given to Jürgen Graf in Iran is not only a dramatic
expression of support for intellectual freedom and human rights, it further
refutes the often-made claim that World War Two revisionism has no significant
public or scholarly support.
--Via
Orest Slepokura