Gas chamber thesis ‘properly argued’

Press, 19 June 1986, Page 10

Gas chamber thesis ‘properly argued’

NZPA-AFP Paris France’s most senior university authority has strongly criticised a doctorate awarded to a 66-year-old former engineer for a thesis arguing that the German concentration camps did not have gas chambers. The thesis had led to the awarding of a doctorate with the citation “tres bien” (very good — the highest of three grades) to Henri Roques, described in a press report today as the former head of a French neo-fascist party. The history and civilisation committee of the Upper University Council, which is charged with supervising the quality of university work, said that

“this work can now be cited as a scientific reference and lead to more work aiming to deny the existence of gas chambers used for mass exterminations in the Nazi German concentration camps”. Dr Roques’ thesis was based on contradictory statements by Kurt Gerstein, a well-placed Nazi officer who surrendered to the French Army in April, 1945. The thesis, appraised by an academic jury at the University of Nantes, western France, in June last year, was entitled: “The Confessions of Kurt Gerstein: a Comparative Study of the Various Versions.” The dean of the university, Paul Malvy, said he was "horrified” at the

contents of the work but said that after ordering an internal inquiry the thesis was found to be valid on the grounds that it had been properly argued. The Minister in charge of universities, Alain Devaquet, said that a similar incident would never arise, implicitly acknowledging that Dr Roques could not be stripped of his degree. The independent Leftwing daily, “Liberation,” said that in the 1950 s Dr Roques had been secre-tary-general of the farRight Phalange Party, under the name of Henri Jalin. The Phalange Party was the first neo-fascist group to be fonnally constituted after the war.