PARIS—French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson died Sunday at the age of 89 years of a heart attack after returning from a conference in the U.K.
Graduate of letters and former lecturer in contemporary literature at the University of Lyon-II, Robert Faurisson has been convicted several times for challenging crimes against humanity.
In particular, he claimed that gas chambers during the Second World War had never existed and challenged the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank.
“The Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson is dead, but his filthy ‘theses’ are still alive,” the Shoah Foundation reacted on Twitter. “The fight for historical truth continues against the counterfeiters of history,” it added.
Faurisson had lost many lawsuits for defamation, brought against those who described him as a “liar” or a “forger of the history “, as was the case of former French Justice Minister Robert Badinter, in a 2007 court decision.
He was sentenced three times in 1981 for defaming a CNRS researcher and for racial defamation after denying the Holocaust at the microphone of a radio station.
On October 25, a criminal court was to give judgment against Robert Faurisson, prosecuted for denying crimes against humanity in three texts published in 2013 and 2014 on his website.
Deportation historian Serge Klarsfeld reacted on Monday to the death of Robert Faurisson, who according to him has “rendered a great service involuntarily” by allowing the Holocaust to be “one of the best-known events in the world” . “He was one of the pioneers of Holocaust denial. What he wrote was for me repellent, annoying, painful, “he said.
“The Holocaust deniers have rendered a great service involuntarily: they have made the Jewish world and the scientific world understand that a great deal of academic work is needed throughout the Western world in order to be able to write each page of the Shoah in a very precise way,” said Serge Klarsfeld, president of the Association of Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees in France.