French PhD Doctorate in Holocaust Denial Revoked
Posted By richards on May 19, 2011
http://www.archive.org/details/TheconfessionsOfKurtGerstein
What historians are saying about the Roques thesis...
...from now on researchers will have to take his work into account...
—Alain Decaux, member, Académie Française
Had I been a member of the jury, I would probably have given a grade of "Very good" to Mr. Roques' thesis.
—Michel de Bouard, Institut de France
This is the exposé which shattered the myth of Pope Pius XII's complicity in the Holocaust, and struck at the very roots of the Holocaust story's credibility by challenging the "confessions" of SS officer Kurt Gerstein. Author Henri Roques' doctoral thesis made world headlines in 1986, when for the first time in the history of French academe a duly awarded doctorate was revoked by state fiat.
For the first time, the accusations of Kurt Gerstein—the enigmatic, twisted Third Reich functionary who claimed to have witnessed mass gassings of Jews in 1942—are here subjected to thorough critical review. Roques' stunning conclusion: not only are Gerstein's allegations of a mass extermination of Jews and a Roman Catholic cover-up of the slaughter groundless, but postwar academics have deliberately manipulated and falsified key parts of Gerstein's tortured testimony.
An indispensable resource for scholar and layman alike, The 'Confessions' of Kurt Gerstein provides transcripts and translations of an unprecedented six versions of Gerstein's story, as well as photocopies of the originals; a searching examination of both the authenticity and credibility of the "confessions"; and numerous documents and records which have never before been published. Henri Roques' thesis is sure to become a classic, not only of meticulous scholarly detective work but of the liberating power of free inquiry in the time-honored Western tradition.
Henri Roques is the first man in the nearly eight-century history of French universities to have his doctorate "revoked" by government order. In 1979, toward the end of his career as an agricultural engineer, Roques, then an amateur in history, was spurred by an intemperate criticism of the work of French Revisionist Robert Faurisson to undertake a critical study of the Gerstein statements and their use in the historiography of the alleged Jewish Holocaust. Roques' careful thesis, which was awarded high marks and for which he was awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Nantes in 1986, was then cancelled by decree of French education minister Alain Devaquet. Roques, 69 years old, now lives in retirement in a suburb of Paris.
