Questioned Holocaust, historian badly beaten

Reuter

CLERMONT-FERRAND, France -- A leading French revisionist historian who denies that millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust was recovering from surgery yesterday after a savage beating.

Robert Faurisson, 60, suffered a broken jaw and ribs and severe head injuries in the attack by three youths while he was walking his dog in the town of Vichy.

A hospital spokesman in Clermont-Ferrand, the central French city where he was transferred for surgery, said Mr. Faurisson's condition was stable.

"He was conscious, but he couldn't speak," said a fire fighter who gave Mr. Faurisson first aid. "His jaw was smashed. They destroyed his face."

A previously unknown group, The Sons of the Memory of the Jews, took responsibility for the attack, saying those who deny the Holocaust should "beware."

Veteran Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld said they were not surprised by the attack. "Someone who has provoked the Jewish community for years should expect this sort of thing [a vicious, near-fatal beating]," Serge Klarsfeld said.