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France launches inquiry into holocaust doubter
French prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into comments by a leading far-right politician who questioned whether the Nazis used gas chambers in the Holocaust, judicial sources said yesterday. Justice Minister Dominique Perben called for the inquiry after Bruno Gollnisch, a professor of Japanese at the University of Lyon, questioned how the gas chambers were used in the war time slaughter of Jews and how many Jews were killed. "I want to reiterate that I think the comments made by Mr Gollnisch are absolutely unacceptable and intolerable," Perben said. Gollnisch, a European deputy who is also the No 2 man in the National Front party of extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, said on Monday he recognised gas chambers had existed. But he said he thought historians still had to decide whether they were actually used to kill Jews. He also called for an open debate about whether the total of Jews killed in the Holocaust was six million as stated. France's anti-racism laws have made denying the Holocaust a crime, punishable by fines and even prison. Gollnisch would be summoned before a judge soon, the judicial sources said. On Monday, Gollnisch said serious historians no longer accepted all the judgments of the post-war Nuremberg Trials of leading Nazis as being fair. "I don't know if I will lose my chair as professor of Japanese or even be put into prison for saying that, but I stand by it," he said. Gollnisch, who studied law and political science at Kyoto University in Japan, holds a chair for Japanese language and civilisation at the Lyon university named after Jean Moulin — the hero of the French Resistance murdered by the Nazis in 1943. Reuters jh NZP Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-10-16 |
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