PARIS (AFP-EJP)--- French Holocaust denier Robert has told a Paris court he believes that the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis in WWII is a "historical lie".

Faurisson, who has been condemned several times for revisionism, made the statement before a Paris court where he is suing former French Justice Minister, Robert Badinter, for defamation for having said that he "falsified history".

The trial has been postponed until April.

During the hearing on March 13, the 77-year-old Faurisson, a retired literature professor, maintained that the "alleged Hitlerian gas chambers and the alleged genocide of Jews formed the same historical lie".

The president of the court recalled the fact that Faurisson has been already condemned for the similar statements.

Faurisson attacked Badinter for having defamed him last November in a television program when he said that "the last trial he pleaded before being minister was that against Faurisson". "I obtained his condemnation for being a falsifier of history," Badinter then said.
He was refering to a judgment in July 1981 when Faurisson was condemned for having declared that "Hitler never ordered someone to be killed because of his race or his religion".

Claims reiterated

Badinter reiterated Monday what he previously said. "You are a falsifier of history and this is the reality,” he told Faurisson.

His voice trembling, he mentioned the deportation of his uncle and of his grandmother and his father, "when I was 15-year-old".

"They all were exterminated in Nazi camps". I have been twice to Poland "to say kaddish (the Jewish memorial prayer) for the memory of my father".

"Negationism is one of the worst falsifying undertakings of history. Suddenly, it would mean that there are no more deaths, there are no more killers, that Jews died for nothing, by accident," Badinter said at the court hearing.

"I will fight against you and people like you, until the end of my life, until my last breath," he told Faurisson.

In an unusal move, Badinter’s lawyer obtained permission for the trial to be filmed. Several renowned historians, including Annette Wievorka, are attending the trial. "Faurisson is a falsifyer and an anti-Semite," she said.

Last October, Faurisson was given a three-month suspended jail term for Holocaust denial over remarks he made on Iranian television.

In December, French President Jacques Chirac ordered a probe into Faurisson’s comments made when he attended, along with other revisionists, an Iranian conference in Tehran aimed at denying the Holocaust.