The Day of the Dead by Nigel Roth

A few years ago, two men died on the very same day. One was the bravest of men, acknowledged for leading the Norwegian force that thwarted the German nuclear weapons development program, and in the process saved all of civilization from the Nazis.

The other was Robert Faurisson, a man who was as far from a hero as anyone could get.

Born in Middlesex, England, this bastion of denial began life as a school teacher in Vichy, in the historical province of Bourbonnais, and later became Professor of Literature at the University of Lyon.

Faurisson, whose real surname was Aitken, appears to have followed in the footsteps of two of his most confusing poetic idols – Lautremont and Rimbaud – both of whom seemed to give up on actually doing anything useful at around the age of twenty-five.

In 1974, when he was forty-five, Faurisson began his campaign to convince the world that the Holocaust was a made-up historical fib. He believed unswervingly that Algeria belonged to France, but not that any Jews died in gas chambers in World War Two. He also believed that Yad Vashem would be the ideal place to send his first denial letter, as if the Jews would suddenly agree with his bizarre claim, and waste a good monument.

And, so began, as is the case with madmen and loonies who find a platform from which to spew vitriol, his long descent into indecency, and ours into having to deal with his abject stupidity.

Soon after the Yad Vashem letter, Faurisson became both the poster boy for the Institute of Historical Review, a murder of pseudo-literate anti-Semites, and a devoted supporter of the Nazi Ernst Zundal, who died in 2017, not surprisingly in a place called Bad Wildbad.

He also threw his weight behind Fred Leuchter, a former execution method specialist, who stole b