SOURCE: "The Denial of the Dead," translated by Audri Durchslag, in Dissent, Vol. 28, No. 4, Fall, 1981, pp. 467-83.

In the following essay, which was originally published in French in 1980, Fresco offers an analysis of the Holocaust denial writings of Robert Faurisson.

Had he been able to attend the meeting of the First Civil Court on June 1, 1981, at the Palais de Justice in Paris, Hitler would undoubtedly have been overjoyed. Close to 40 years after the masterful—albeit incomplete—realization of his attempt to annihilate the life of the Jews, there were new zealots at work to annihilate the death of the Jews. In effect, the court was called upon to pass judgment on works of a new evangelist (literally, bearer of good news), Robert Faurisson. Faurisson had first been heard from two and a half years earlier with an article in Le Monde that concluded with the following words: "The...