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July 27, 2001/Av 7, 5761, Vol. 53, No.42
French Jews oppose Holocaust deniers
ANDREW DIAMOND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
PARIS - French student groups and anti-racist organizations are trying to draw attention to a university long known as a breeding ground for Holocaust denial and other far-right activities.
If they succeed, student leaders say, they will deliver a severe blow to the far-right in France.
The University Jean Moulin is named for a heroic leader of the French Resistance who was tortured and executed during the Nazi occupation. But in an ironic twist, the school, also called Lyon-III, has come to be known among French students as the "fascist university."
That reputation grew out of events dating back to 1981, when a group of scholars with strong ties to far-right elements in France and Italy created the Institute for Indo-European Studies at the university.
From the outset, one of the scholars' main goals was to pursue what is known in France as "negationnisme" - Holocaust denial.
For a few years, the products of their labor remained buried in obscure right-wing journals.
In 1985, however, the institute found itself mired in controversy when one of its founding members, Jean-Paul Allard, served on a doctoral committee that granted highest distinction to a thesis denying the existence of gas chambers in Polish concentration camps.
The Ministry of Education nullified the dissertation the following year but Allard, a professor of German at Lyon-III, walked away from the affair unscathed.
Now, as his retirement nears, Allard is again coming under fire.
Over the past several months, a series of protests by a coalition of student groups at Lyon-III have managed to focus public attention on Allard and his colleagues.
Last February, members of the National Union of French Students - Independent and Democratic, the Union of Jewish Students of France and a local student organization called Hippocampe drew national attention to the situation at Lyon-III by occupying a research building there.
Carrying banners juxtaposing Moulin and the French Resistance's Gaullist cross with Allard and the Nazi swastika, the organizers denounced Holocaust denial and demanded sanctions against Allard.
The student groups were supported by anti-racist organizations such as the League of Human Rights and SOS Racism. Their actions prompted the university's president, Gilles Guyot, to take action.
Late last month, following a request from Guyot's office, two professors who in 1990 approved with honors a thesis attempting to disprove the Holocaust changed their evaluation of the work to "unacceptable."
Guyot subsequently announced that the matter was closed, but student groups did not agree. They have asked France's Ministry of Education to appoint an independent commission to examine right-wing influence at Lyon-III.
The ministry hasn't decided whether to act, but newspaper accounts in Le Monde and Liberation about the situation in Lyon have created the momentum for change.
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