Today Georges Theil, accompanied by his barrister, Eric Delcroix, answered the summons of the “Juge d’application des peines” in Grenoble concerning Mr Theil’s six month prison sentence handed down by the Lyon court of appeal in the spring of 2006. In accordance with the rules of procedure the chief public prosecutor of Grenoble, known for his firmness against revisionism, was also present at this hearing in chambers.
After an exchange of information with the judge about his personal situation, Mr Theil particularly explained that he was currently assisting other persons in drafting autobiographical accounts using their own documentary data as source bases. The judge then seemed to show a keen interest in any possible political activity on Mr Theil’s part; Mr Theil responded by saying that he hadn’t had an active role in any political party since the end of his term as regional councillor in 2004.
The public prosecutor wanted to see Mr Theil make something of an act of contrition for the intellectual undertaking associated with the facts for which he had been charged and tried; in short, he asked him whether he sincerely regretted having violated the (Gayssot) law, whether he acknowledged the justness of his conviction and whether he grasped the link between the magnanimous easing of penalty proposed (electronic tagging instead of imprisonment) and the anticipated acknowledgement of his “guilt”.
After reminding the prosecutor that his own grandfather’s death in the First World War and his father’s death in the Second had naturally driven him to examine in detail both the causes of the 20th century’s great conflicts and the manner and circumstances in which they were waged, Mr Theil stated that his undertaking had been one of an exercise of freedom of research and expression: he deemed it imperative that questions be put in the face of certain presentations of facts which, today, are the subject of controversy, albeit hitherto they were alleged to be proved beyond doubt. And he cited the case of the Dachau camp, presented for about twenty years after the 1939-1945 war as one of the great German killing centres and where now the visitor, when approaching precisely the alleged killing installation (“gas chamber”), comes up against a sign reading “… never used”. Finally he pointed out the strangeness if not the deceptiveness in reckoning that whoever took a very close interest in the former German concentration camps was to be classified — at minimum — as a dubious National Socialist sympathiser, whereas research work on the universe of the Gulag did not lead to any cataloguing of those involved therein as being “crypto-communists” or “nostalgic for Bolshevism”!
The prosecutor then stated that, obviously, Mr Theil thus showed no repentance (sic). And that, consequently, his office was requesting that Theil not benefit from a mitigation of sanction (electronic tagging) but instead be “dealt with” in a prison.
To be noted here is the religious word “repentance” expressly employed by the prosecutor, rather than a more lay term like “regrets” or “sincere apologies”. This shows — as if there were any need — that revisionism is indeed a “sin” against the “holocaustic creed” which has now become the official religion, permeating the very organs of the State, which in principle are, like the judiciary, independent and free of any religious notion.
Decision expected on January 8, 2008.