[This letter was written from Edinburgh Prison in May 2023 and published in French at Vincent’s blog. It is also now available in German translation. Vincent Reynouard remains in Edinburgh Prison pending his appeal against extradition, scheduled to be heard in January 2024.]
Mr President,
I am writing to you from Edinburgh prison, in Great Britain, where I have been detained since November 10th 2022. On June 8, 2023, the Scottish courts will rule on my extradition which France is requesting in order to have me serve a prison sentence to which I was sentenced in June 2015. [Eventually this ruling was delayed until October 2023 and it is now subject to appeal.]
What crime have I committed that I am still being hunted after more than seven years? Did I rob a bank, massively evade taxes, rape or kill? No, I broadcast a revisionist video on YouTube – you would say: “negationist” – in which I denounced the political indoctrination of youth in the name of the “duty to remember”. I specifically exposed the untruths they are taught about Auschwitz. For this presentation of less than an hour, the French courts sentenced me to one year in prison. I then fled to England.
As revisionism is not an offence in the United Kingdom, in order to obtain my extradition, the French authorities did not hesitate to lie: they issued a European arrest warrant claiming that I had been convicted of “racism/xenophobia”, an offence which makes extradition automatic. Scottish justice sensing the manoeuvre, Paris had to issue a second arrest warrant, based on three charges filed against me, including one for “public incitement to hatred”.
In a video released in 2020, I allegedly preached anti-Judaism. To claim this, the judicial authorities extracted 31 seconds from a 45-minute presentation! I responded to a viewer who said that the extermination of the Jews would be a “necessary evil”. After emphasising that a “necessary evil” was a moral contradiction, I explained why exterminating the Jews would serve no purpose, as they only reflect disfunctions from which our societies suffer and for which we are primarily responsible. The 31 seconds extracted summarise this opinion: they cannot constitute a call to hatred of Jews.
Watching the entire video confirms this. I also note that in thirty years of activism, I had never been prosecuted under the so-called “anti-racist” law. For a very simple reason: I am not “racist” in the sense given to this word today (a “racist” would advocate racial hatred). Furthermore, I declare myself Jewish-indifferent. In other words: I have neither sympathy nor antipathy for this race composed – like all races – of very different people.
These abusive prosecutions for “public incitement to hatred” are a new manoeuvre attempted by the French authorities which are working hard to obtain my extradition. The end goal is to throw me in prison and keep me there as long as possible in order to silence me.
What an admission, Mr. President! I could not hope, from your authorities, for a more resounding recognition of the value and importance of my work. Indeed, let’s compare the forces involved:
- on the one hand, France has multiple memorial museums: the Shoah Memorial in Paris, the Deportation Museum in Lyon, the Caen Memorial, the Oradour Memory Center in Oradour-sur-Glane, without counting the dozens of “memory books” throughout the country, to which are added school programmes (the Shoah in primary, middle and high school), “educational trips” to Struthof, Oradour or Auschwitz, the “transmitters of memory”, the films, the broadcasts, the books, the witnesses in schools, because the “duty of memory” benefits from thousands of contributors – all in conformity with the official history – and from funding which reached millions of euros.
- in front of this, a man almost alone, who has no subsidies, only donations from his limited audience (two or three thousand people at most); who, for a living, gives private lessons; he distributes his work on his own account and sells his works sparsely, because no publisher agrees to publish his research; who, kicked out of all the major sharing platforms, publishes his videos in the catacombs of the Internet — namely, a Gab channel and a blog in the United States of America.
These are the elements present, which we could depict as follows: facing an immense choir singing at the top of their lungs accompanied by a deafening orchestra, a lone man, equipped with a paltry paper cone as a makeshift megaphone. However, for the French authorities, this is still too much: this lone man must be silenced by seizing him at all costs and throwing him in prison! A first arrest warrant was not enough, so they issued a second one after filing three additional complaints. Yes, really, I could not hope for more dazzling recognition of the value and importance of my work.
You will undoubtedly allege, Mr. President, that the repression against me has a completely different cause: my theses, you will say, offend the victims and can lead certain fragile elements of the population to perpetrate “racist” acts. I would answer that this is false, for two reasons.
- I have never denied the terrible tragedy experienced by the people present in Oradour-sur-Glane on Saturday June 10, 1944. I have never denied the drama that was the hasty deportation, in the middle of the war, of millions of people, including women, children, the elderly, the weak and the disabled. Although the excavations carried out over the past twenty-five years in the Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmno camps have not led to the discovery of gas chambers, they have, however, contributed to the discovery of numerous improvised mass graves. I have never disputed the existence of these pits. They contain the bodies of tens of thousands of Jews who died on the trains or euthanised upon arrival, because they were injured, sick or too weakened to go further east. Numerous stories corroborate these material findings. In several videos, I have cited them, without contesting or rejecting them. Added to this are the living conditions in the overcrowded and sometimes poorly supplied ghettos in Poland or in the East: they caused numerous victims that I have also mentioned. Finally come all the deportees who died in the last months of the war when, in a Germany devastated by bombings, the situation inside the camps deteriorated (overpopulation, lack of medicine, insufficient supplies). The terrible photos taken at the liberation of Buchenwald, Dachau, Vaihingen or Bergen-Belsen, I have shown them on multiple occasions, without ever calling them montages. No one, therefore, can honestly claim that I would offend the memory of the victims by denying their death or the terrible circumstances of their death.
- as for leading certain people to commit “racist” acts, my answer will be simple: in the thirty years that I have been disseminating my work, no aggressive act has been denounced, for which I have have been shown to be the inspiration.
However, let’s go further. Yes, let’s admit that my presentations could lead a handful of fragile people to perpetrate “racist” violence. Should we therefore deprive the entire population of certain historical truths by sanctioning their public dissemination? Certainly not!
However, I can already hear your reply, Mr. President: “A country of freedom of research, France will never prohibit the dissemination of scientifically established truths. With the denialists, however, it is not a question of truths, but of lies refuted by reliable witnesses and a cohort of accredited historians. You are very presumptuous, Mr. Reynouard, to claim to be correct and that these people are wrong.”
In reality, I am no more proud than an investigator convinced of having solved a case despite the denials of the accused and their lawyers. For what? Because from Oradour to Auschwitz, I adopted the traditional methods used in criminal investigations.
- I went to the site to examine the scene of the alleged crime;
- I carried out material observations in order to understand what could have happened;
- I verified the stories collected (testimonies and confessions) by confronting them with material findings and analyzing their internal consistency;
- I supplemented my research with the study of useful documents. In summary, I have established the materiality of the facts.
Am I wrong in my conclusions? Let us debate it fairly, with each party being able to freely express themselves and place their documents on the table. I am ready for this confrontation on equal terms. I even ask for it.
You will object to me that one cannot debate History with a person devoid of any training as a historian. Should I conclude from this, Mr. President, that a non-historian cannot intervene in a question of History? Thirty years ago, however, in 1993, the CNRS published a work entitled: The Crematoria of Auschwitz. The machinery of mass murder.
The press praised its author, affirming that he definitively refuted revisionist theses. However its author, Jean-Claude Pressac, was… a pharmacist by profession. Even more revealing: the man considered until his death as the number one expert on the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, was not a historian by training either. I could also cite Robert Jan Von Pelt, Jean-Jacques Fouché or Guy Pauchou (for Oradour). Proof that non-historians can intervene in questions of History.
Some of my opponents — Gilles Karmasyn for example — claim to refute me, but without ever accepting the debate. They are comparable to boxers who, alone in the ring, would throw punches into the air before raising their arms and shouting: “I won! He is knocked out.” To anyone who is surprised at the absence of the adversary, they respond: “Let’s see! You don’t box with a non-boxer.” Pretending that we do not debate history with a non-historian is a pitiful evasion.
Of course, I have no training in this matter, but in Auschwitz and Oradour, the SS are accused of having massacred innocent people. These are therefore criminal matters. The fact that the alleged murders were allegedly committed in the past does not change the nature of the question, and therefore does not change the methods of investigation. Now, I repeat, I apply these methods scrupulously.
Do you want proof? Here it is: in Birkenau, the SS allegedly set up homicidal gas chambers in four large crematoria. The deadliest — 400,000 alleged victims — were found in Krema II. The SS are said to have poured Zykon B through four square holes in the roof. The deadly pellets would supposedly have fallen along four mesh columns firmly attached to the floor and ceiling. Although the crematory was dynamited, the partially collapsed roof remains. Having inspected it from above and below, I saw no trace of any introductory orifice or of a mesh column attachment. Nothing.
Certainly, in 2004, three independent researchers (Messrs. Keren, McCarthy and Mazal) claimed to have located three of the four holes; but the Auschwitz Museum authorities never dared to invoke their study. Seven years later, moreover, the director of the Museum prefaced a Historical Guide to Auschwitz in which the two authors warned that it was vain to search for the exact location of these ghostly orifices. Since then, nothing has changed.
In the event of a debate with a historian, I would first bring the discussion to this subject. I would suggest that we go to the site together, looking for the alleged holes as well as traces of the mesh columns. I would take advantage of our presence on the site to ask my opponent if he can show me blue marks on the wall or on the ceiling of the “gas chamber”.
In the spring of 1943, in fact (date of the start of mass gassings in the crematoria according to the official chronology), the structure had just been built. Consequently, the masonry was alkaline. The hydrocyanic acid allegedly used by the SS for mass gassing would have partially penetrated into the damp materials (bricks, plaster, concrete). It would have broken down there to form a pigment based on ferrocyanides: Prussian Blue.
Very stable, resistant to light rays and bad weather, the walls and ceiling of the room presented as having served as a gas chamber should still contain them today. We should therefore see more or less large blue traces. However, the historian would be unable to show me a single one. Would he claim that this pigment cannot form in an unheated room? I would show him otherwise. On the original plans of the crematory, this room is designated as a morgue. Everything shows that it was used for this purpose, without ever having been converted into a homicidal gas chamber.
“No Holes, No Holocaust”, Professor Faurisson had repeated since 1994. He was right, because without these holes, the 400,000 alleged victims of this gas chamber are imaginary. All the testimonies and confessions will not change anything.
Anti-revisionists ask us: “if the millions of Jews were not exterminated, then where were they in 1945?” Sorry, but that reverses the burden of proof. It is up to the anti-revisionists to demonstrate that the Jews were systematically exterminated, among whom three million died in gas chambers.
According to official history, Auschwitz-Birkenau was the centre of this extermination by gas (nearly a million victims). The Krema II gas chamber would have been the deadliest (40% of those asphyxiated). It is therefore that which must be examined first. Where are the Zyklon B introduction ports? Historians, show them to us, so we can discuss them. And where are the blue marks? It is true that a background in chemistry is necessary to understand the importance of their absence. Holder of a degree in organic chemistry, I am therefore better placed than a historian to conclude.
The same is true in Oradour. The Waffen SS are accused of having massacred several hundred women and children in the village church. They allegedly tried to suffocate them before machine-gunning them, then setting fire to the building. The widespread fire would have transformed the holy place into a crematorium, and many bodies would have been reduced to ashes. In this matter, notions of heat diffusion, radiation and resistance of materials prove necessary.
My studies having led me to study these subjects, I put my knowledge to good use to assess the church. This expertise is the subject of an entire chapter of my book published in December 2022: Oradour, the cry of the victims. I conclude that the official story is false: the women and children died in explosions that shook the entire building. How did I come to this conclusion? As follows:
- The preservation of the wooden furniture (the confessional in the Chapel of the Virgin and the altar of the Chapel of Saint-Joseph) denies the thesis of a widespread fire;
- The partial melting of the bells (parts completely melted, others intact to the point of still showing the patterns engraved there) demonstrates that the destructive event was very rapid and very brief, in a word, an explosion;
- Observation of the blows to the thin brass sphere under the ridge cross confirms that the destructive phenomenon was accompanied by a powerful blast.
Added to this is the condition of the bodies found in the church or nearby: they are not charred, but shredded, with their clothes intact, as after a bombing.
Finally come the stories told by the woman presented as the only survivor of the church, Marguerite Rouffanche. A few weeks after the tragedy, twice in November 1944, then once in January 1953 (at the Waffen SS trial) and once again in 1969 (for television), she testified. The comparative study of the different versions reveals insurmountable contradictions and obvious material impossibilities.
- At the end of June 1944, Madame Rouffanche affirmed that the massacre of the church had started with a “box” brought by two Waffen SS. The device did not explode, it only released thick black smoke.
- A few months later, however, the vaults of the nave of the church collapsed, indicating that the building had been severely shaken. To explain it, it was necessary to invoke an explosion: on November 16, 1944, Madame Rouffanche therefore made a 180-degree turn and claimed that the “box” had been the site of a “small detonation”.
- However, this was insufficient to explain the shaking of this fortified building. Two weeks later, “the sole survivor” changed her version again: she alleged that the device had exploded strongly. This testimony became the official account, published everywhere, while that of November 16 would remain hidden from view, in military archives closed to the public.
To the contradictions are added manifest impossibilities. In particular, Madame Rouffanche’s flight from the church, by climbing up to a stained glass window then jumping four meters high onto a steeply inclined plane without causing the slightest injury, an impossible feat for a woman of 46 years.
In the Oradour affair, everything betrays the clumsily improvised lie. Based on material findings, documents and ignored testimonies, I affirm that a clandestine ammunition depot was located under the attic of the church, above the vaults.
Under what circumstances was it set on fire? As long as military archives are closed to independent researchers, no certain answer can be put forward. However, assuming that, having discovered it, the Waffen SS blew it up to kill the women and children, in 1944, the fact would have been revealed: Oradour-sur-Glane would have been presented as a heroic village in its resistance to the Occupier, victim of abominable revenge by the “Nazis”. This is why I remain convinced that the Waffen SS bear no direct responsibility for the outbreak of the church tragedy.
Having discovered that the building was used by the local Resistance (which hid allied pilots who fell in France and were supported by the “Comet Escape Line” escape network), my thesis is as follows.
On June 10, 1944, resistance fighters took refuge in the church, with their ammunition. Indeed, the Waffen SS having surrounded the village, it was impossible to flee. Denounced by two collaborators living in the town (see the testimony of Mathieu Borie finally published in its entirety), they blew up the ammunition depot in order to cover their escape through a side door which opened onto the exit from the town. They had not anticipated that the explosions would propagate to the bell tower, causing the destruction of the vault weakened by the presence of the oculus. The superheated gases spread throughout the nave, carrying debris which mutilated those present.
At Oradour, as at Auschwitz, my material findings are undeniable, my analyses are meticulous, and my arguments are rational. Far from any ideological consideration, I remain on the ground of facts. Hence this desire and this determination to silence me, the other reasons given being vague pretexts.
Will France succeed in having me extradited? Perhaps, but it is too late: I distributed my work on the Internet and I was barely able – before my arrest on November 10, 2022 – to finish my work on Oradour. It has been on sale since last January.
About thirty years ago, as a very young revisionist, I was invited to the Faurisson house. One morning, I was chatting in the work room; I emphasized that our adversaries had financial and repressive means. Professor Faurisson was washing in the adjoining bathroom. At these words, he half-opened the door and, sticking his head in, said: “Yes, but we sleep peacefully.”
It was true then, it remains true today: in my cell in Edinburgh, I sleep peacefully, because having sowed seeds of historical truth, I have fulfilled my duty. From now on, my personal destiny no longer has any importance. The France that you represent can insist on having me extradited and imprisoned. When we take stock of the forces present, this determination appears as an admission: the admission that I am right and that my work is important. Yes, really, I sleep peacefully, and the more your henchmen try, the quieter I will sleep.
Please believe, Mr. President, in the expression of my chosen sentiments.
Vincent Reynouard
