November 16, 1999 Author of Holocaust Book Tried The Associated Press WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- A history professor who published a book suggesting that Nazi Germany did not have a comprehensive plan for exterminating Jews insisted he was innocent at a trial that opened Tuesday. Dariusz Ratajczak, 37, said he merely summarized opinions of historians who deny the Holocaust and that his own views are not in line with all the opinions in his book, "Dangerous Themes." "Historical revisionism is a historical and social fact," the PAP news agency quoted Ratajczak as saying in his opening statement to the court in the southwestern city of Opole. "A historian must not close his eyes to it." "My only intention was to present the problem ... without author's commentary," he said. Prosecutors accuse Ratajczak of violating a law banning public denial of Nazi and communist crimes. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison. Ratajczak asserts in his book, which he published in March [1999] at his own expense, that gas chambers at Nazi death camps were intended to kill lice on prisoners. He also says that that 3 million Jews died in the Holocaust, not 6 million as almost all historians say, and that the Nazis had no uniform plan to exterminate Jews. According to excerpts reprinted in newspapers, the book calls testimony from eyewitnesses "useless" and describes researchers of Nazi crimes as "followers of the religion of Holocaust" who impose on others "a false image of the past." Only a few hundred copies of the book were printed. They were sold in university bookstores. Ratajczak was suspended from his position at the Historical Institute of the University of Opole after a commission investigating Nazi crimes in Poland complained to prosecutors about his book.