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Assassins of Memory
"Assassins of Memory" is a passionate and painstaking look at one of the more curious realities of recent French cultural the prominence accorded to the phenomenon of "revisionism". An attempt on the part of a tiny group of fanatics, often masquerading as scholars and researchers, to deny the existence of the gas chambers and horrors of Hitler's genocidal policies, revisionism is quietly gaining adherents. The movement has been most visible in France in the past decade, particularly because of the trial of Klaus Barbie and the writings of Robert Faurisson. Revisionists are more prevalent and are gaining followers in other countries, including the United States, where the "Journal of Historical Review" is devoted to revisionist thought and where a current presidential candidate has expressed what could be described as revisionist ideas. "Assassins of Memory" exposes revisionism for the deeply perverse enterprise it is, laying bare the mechanisms of lies and manipulations on which it is sustained. More than this, it asks searching questions about the underlying causes of revisionism and its influences and diffusion in France and elsewhere. The book is particularly illuminating on the role the American linguist Noam Chomsky has played as writer of a preface to one of the movement's more influential tracts. Underlying Vidal-Naquet's argument is the is it acceptable for people to spread evil ideas, or should they be suppressed?
205 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
103 books41 followersPierre Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 1969.
Vidal-Naquet was a specialist in the study of Ancient Greece, but was also interested (and deeply involved) in contemporary history, particularly the Algerian War (1954–62), during which he opposed the use of torture by the French Army, as well as Jewish history. Having participated with Michel Foucault and Jean-Marie Domenach in the founding of the Groupe d'information sur les prisons (GIP), one of the first French new social movements, he criticized negationism. Vidal-Naquet, who never abandoned his fascination with Antiquity, was also a supporter of Middle East peace efforts.
Vidal-Naquet was a specialist in the study of Ancient Greece, but was also interested (and deeply involved) in contemporary history, particularly the Algerian War (1954–62), during which he opposed the use of torture by the French Army, as well as Jewish history. Having participated with Michel Foucault and Jean-Marie Domenach in the founding of the Groupe d'information sur les prisons (GIP), one of the first French new social movements, he criticized negationism. Vidal-Naquet, who never abandoned his fascination with Antiquity, was also a supporter of Middle East peace efforts.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 24, 2008
Every time I read this book, concerning the denials of the holocaust, most notably by the monstrous Robert Faurrisson in Le Monde Newspaper (France), 1979, I am enraged and want to find the deniers and make them understand. But alas, since I cannot, and no one can, this book serves as a witness to folly, to the sheer ignorance, and to the destructive dememorialization of such a horrible event, so that we might remember, so that we can at least attempt to stop the madness that is genocide.
August 8, 2024
A FRENCH HISTORIAN CRITIQUES RASSINIER, FAURISSON, ETC.
French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet wrote in the Preface to this 1987 book, “This short book was born of an observation: for about two years now the ‘revisionist’ effort… has taken on alarming proportions. A quite small but remarkably energetic sect has devoted all its efforts and a variety of means---political tracts, fables, comic books, allegedly scholarly articles, a specialized journal---to destroying not the truth… but a general awareness of the truth… The five texts gathered in this volume were written between June 1980 and June 1987. The first four have already been published… The fifth, ‘Assassins of Memory’… had not appeared before. Why this title[?]… The assassins of memory chose their target well: they are intent on striking a community in the thousand painful fibers that connect it to its own past. They have launched against it a global accusation of mendacity and fraud. I am part of that community… But it is not my intention to reply to that global accusation on grounds of sentiment. What is at stake here is not feeling, but truth… I have thus imposed on myself the following rule: one can and should enter into discussion CONCERNING the ‘revisionists'; one can analyze their texts… raise the question of why and in what manner they surfaced. But one should not enter into debate WITH the ‘revisionists.’ … I have nothing to reply to them and will not do so. Such is the price to be paid for intellectual coherence.” (Pg. xiii-xxv)
He states in the first essay, “it is absolutely impossible to debate with [Robert] Faurisson. Such a debate, which he persists in calling for, is excluded because his way of arguing… makes discussion futile. It is also true that attempting to debate would amount to accepting the unacceptable premise of two ‘historical schools’---one ‘revisionist’ and the other ‘exterminationist.’ There would be [on one side] … the ‘advocates of the existence of lethal “gas chambers”…' When one knows how the ‘revisionists’ work, the idea has something obscene about it.” (Pg. 2)
He observes, “The contribution of that [revisionist] literature concerns, for the most part, not the history of the war of 1939-1945, but the study of contemporary mentalities, above all since the 1960s. One of the very rare bits of information to be derived from [Serge] Thion’s book, for example, besides his bibliographies, is Faurisson’s demonstration that Anne Frank’s Diary, as it was first published, is, if not a ‘literary hoax,’ at the least a document that has been tampered with… Thion, who is for once lucid, notes as much: ‘This does not diminish in any way the tragic fate she [Anne Frank] knew.’ (On the scale of Hitler’s genocide, that modification is equivalent in importance to a comma.” (Pg. 17)
He argues, “In order to save, on paper, the majority of these [Polish] Jews from extermination, [Paul] Rassinier makes use of a single source… It happens that this source is worth nothing at all… Bergelson was a writer who belonged to a Jewish committee created by the Soviet authorities precisely for propaganda purposes, and for targeting American Jews in particular. After the war, his mission accomplished, he was executed. Rassinier does not mention this, and NOT FOR A MOMENT does he wonder how Bergelson might have been informed and how the Red Army, surprised and trapped, would have been able to save so many Jews. It did save, to be sure, a few. How many? We do not know.” (Pg. 36-37)
He points out, “Auschwitz was… a great industrial center… But no one has ever explained why babies were slated to go there, and no one has ever told us what became of those babies. The absolute inability of the ‘revisionists’ to tell us where those who were not registered in the camp (and whose names nonetheless appeared on the convoy lists) went is proof of the mendacious character of their affirmations.” (Pg. 43)
About the revisionist argument that the deaths in the camps were due to typhus, he states, “It comes up against a series of absolutely decisive objections: 1. There is not a single passage in the Diary which [physician Johann Paul] Kremer speaks about typhus… 2. One is hard put to understand why typhus outbreaks would necessarily coincide with arrivals from outside the camp. 3. It is hard to understand why an execution… and also everything concerning typhus, should suddenly take on a tragic aspect when connected with a special action…” (Pg. 49)
He asks, “Ought one to refute Butz? It would be possible, of course, and even easy, assuming one knew the archives, but it would be long and tedious… To demolish a discourse takes time and space. When a fictitious account is well prepared, it does not contain elements allowing one to destroy it on strictly internal grounds.” (Pg. 51)
He states in the second essay [‘On Faurisson and Chomsky’], “Faurisson’s book is centered on the diary of the SS physician J.P. Kremer… Faurisson is unable, and for good reason, to supply a single argument, a single response on this subject. I… will repeat it: his interpretation is a deliberate falsehood, in the full sense of the term. If one day it becomes necessary to analyze the rest of his lies and his falsifications, I shall do so, but such an operation seems to me to be of little interest and would be futile in the face of the sect whose prophet he has now become.” (Pg. 65)
He states, “with the exception of the quite limited case of the ‘Diary of Anne Frank,’ Faurisson does not set out after the truth but after falsehoods.” (Pg. 69-70)
In the fourth essay [‘Theses on Revisionism’], he notes, “although Poland… [is] not normally known for any excessive tenderness toward either the Jews or the communists… there has not been a single Pole who has come forth to contribute anything to the revisionist cause.” (Pg. 95)
He asserts that “If [a historian] is shown that there was no gas chamber functioning at Dachau, that ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ … raises problems of … authenticity, or that Krema I, that of the Auschwitz camp, was reconstructed after the war by the Poles, he is prepared to yield.” (Pg. 97)
This book will be of great interest to those seeking critiques of Holocaust revisionists.
French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet wrote in the Preface to this 1987 book, “This short book was born of an observation: for about two years now the ‘revisionist’ effort… has taken on alarming proportions. A quite small but remarkably energetic sect has devoted all its efforts and a variety of means---political tracts, fables, comic books, allegedly scholarly articles, a specialized journal---to destroying not the truth… but a general awareness of the truth… The five texts gathered in this volume were written between June 1980 and June 1987. The first four have already been published… The fifth, ‘Assassins of Memory’… had not appeared before. Why this title[?]… The assassins of memory chose their target well: they are intent on striking a community in the thousand painful fibers that connect it to its own past. They have launched against it a global accusation of mendacity and fraud. I am part of that community… But it is not my intention to reply to that global accusation on grounds of sentiment. What is at stake here is not feeling, but truth… I have thus imposed on myself the following rule: one can and should enter into discussion CONCERNING the ‘revisionists'; one can analyze their texts… raise the question of why and in what manner they surfaced. But one should not enter into debate WITH the ‘revisionists.’ … I have nothing to reply to them and will not do so. Such is the price to be paid for intellectual coherence.” (Pg. xiii-xxv)
He states in the first essay, “it is absolutely impossible to debate with [Robert] Faurisson. Such a debate, which he persists in calling for, is excluded because his way of arguing… makes discussion futile. It is also true that attempting to debate would amount to accepting the unacceptable premise of two ‘historical schools’---one ‘revisionist’ and the other ‘exterminationist.’ There would be [on one side] … the ‘advocates of the existence of lethal “gas chambers”…' When one knows how the ‘revisionists’ work, the idea has something obscene about it.” (Pg. 2)
He observes, “The contribution of that [revisionist] literature concerns, for the most part, not the history of the war of 1939-1945, but the study of contemporary mentalities, above all since the 1960s. One of the very rare bits of information to be derived from [Serge] Thion’s book, for example, besides his bibliographies, is Faurisson’s demonstration that Anne Frank’s Diary, as it was first published, is, if not a ‘literary hoax,’ at the least a document that has been tampered with… Thion, who is for once lucid, notes as much: ‘This does not diminish in any way the tragic fate she [Anne Frank] knew.’ (On the scale of Hitler’s genocide, that modification is equivalent in importance to a comma.” (Pg. 17)
He argues, “In order to save, on paper, the majority of these [Polish] Jews from extermination, [Paul] Rassinier makes use of a single source… It happens that this source is worth nothing at all… Bergelson was a writer who belonged to a Jewish committee created by the Soviet authorities precisely for propaganda purposes, and for targeting American Jews in particular. After the war, his mission accomplished, he was executed. Rassinier does not mention this, and NOT FOR A MOMENT does he wonder how Bergelson might have been informed and how the Red Army, surprised and trapped, would have been able to save so many Jews. It did save, to be sure, a few. How many? We do not know.” (Pg. 36-37)
He points out, “Auschwitz was… a great industrial center… But no one has ever explained why babies were slated to go there, and no one has ever told us what became of those babies. The absolute inability of the ‘revisionists’ to tell us where those who were not registered in the camp (and whose names nonetheless appeared on the convoy lists) went is proof of the mendacious character of their affirmations.” (Pg. 43)
About the revisionist argument that the deaths in the camps were due to typhus, he states, “It comes up against a series of absolutely decisive objections: 1. There is not a single passage in the Diary which [physician Johann Paul] Kremer speaks about typhus… 2. One is hard put to understand why typhus outbreaks would necessarily coincide with arrivals from outside the camp. 3. It is hard to understand why an execution… and also everything concerning typhus, should suddenly take on a tragic aspect when connected with a special action…” (Pg. 49)
He asks, “Ought one to refute Butz? It would be possible, of course, and even easy, assuming one knew the archives, but it would be long and tedious… To demolish a discourse takes time and space. When a fictitious account is well prepared, it does not contain elements allowing one to destroy it on strictly internal grounds.” (Pg. 51)
He states in the second essay [‘On Faurisson and Chomsky’], “Faurisson’s book is centered on the diary of the SS physician J.P. Kremer… Faurisson is unable, and for good reason, to supply a single argument, a single response on this subject. I… will repeat it: his interpretation is a deliberate falsehood, in the full sense of the term. If one day it becomes necessary to analyze the rest of his lies and his falsifications, I shall do so, but such an operation seems to me to be of little interest and would be futile in the face of the sect whose prophet he has now become.” (Pg. 65)
He states, “with the exception of the quite limited case of the ‘Diary of Anne Frank,’ Faurisson does not set out after the truth but after falsehoods.” (Pg. 69-70)
In the fourth essay [‘Theses on Revisionism’], he notes, “although Poland… [is] not normally known for any excessive tenderness toward either the Jews or the communists… there has not been a single Pole who has come forth to contribute anything to the revisionist cause.” (Pg. 95)
He asserts that “If [a historian] is shown that there was no gas chamber functioning at Dachau, that ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ … raises problems of … authenticity, or that Krema I, that of the Auschwitz camp, was reconstructed after the war by the Poles, he is prepared to yield.” (Pg. 97)
This book will be of great interest to those seeking critiques of Holocaust revisionists.
Read
September 10, 2023This book is dedicated to the writer's mother who was killed at Auschwitz. Linguistic legacies of the Dreyfus Affair are the words intellectual and revisionist. "At the end of the nineteenth century the term [revivionism] referred to the movement pressing for a judicial review or reopening of the Dreyfus case. "
This book ends with poetry by E.S.Discipolo:
Todo es igual!
Nada es mejor!
Lo mismo un burro
Que un gran professor!
Vidal Naquest's dilemma is that in addressing or responding to the deniers of the Holocaust, he is thereby obliged to imply that their argument has any credance whatsoever.
This book ends with poetry by E.S.Discipolo:
Todo es igual!
Nada es mejor!
Lo mismo un burro
Que un gran professor!
Vidal Naquest's dilemma is that in addressing or responding to the deniers of the Holocaust, he is thereby obliged to imply that their argument has any credance whatsoever.
Want to read
April 14, 2008I'm still a novice when it comes to the work of the French classicist Pierre Vidal-Naquet, but I've recebtly been reading a great deal about him and I've finally jumped in and ordered "Assassins of Memory" which I am very much looking forward to reading.
Vidal Naquet is widely known for the subtlety and depth of his thought and it is terribly enticing to read the works of a genius who is writing about a subject which has actually shaped his life (PVN was hidden for two years in his grandmothers house while his parents were cruelly murdered at Auschwitz).
Vidal Naquet is widely known for the subtlety and depth of his thought and it is terribly enticing to read the works of a genius who is writing about a subject which has actually shaped his life (PVN was hidden for two years in his grandmothers house while his parents were cruelly murdered at Auschwitz).
January 17, 2017
This is a profoundly important book, confronting directly the intersection of truth and politics. If one wanted a contemporary payoff for Nietzsche's On the Use and Abuse of History for Life one could note hope for a better example as the one set here by Vidal-Naquet.
April 19, 2019
The definitive statement on revisionism. Unfortunately it didn't stop the jerks from spreading their nauseating ideas.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews