Dear Mrs Armita Jones,

I’ve read on the American Historical Association web site the letter that you have addressed to President Dmitri Medvedev on the 17th of June, 2009, a letter in which you expressed the anxiety of the AHA about the recent creation of a commission “to fight against attempts at falsifications of history to Russia’s detriment”.

As the president of the French association “Liberté pour l’Histoire”, I am anxious to let you know how much we appreciate this letter and how much we are sensitive to the constant solidarity of the AHA towards our positions.

As long as France is concerned, it seems that the problem of the so-called “memorial laws” has been solved, at least for the time being. A special report, published last November, one month after LPH launched its “Appel de Blois”, recommends that, in the future, the French Parliament refrains from any interference in the qualification of past events.

Nevertheless, you are right to worry about the “framework-decision” adopted by the European Commission on the 28th of November, 2008. It indeed aims at generalizing to the whole of the European Union the French “Gayssot law” of July, 13th, 1990, which criminalizes the negation of the Holocaust. But the framework-decision goes even further: it establishes new offences, such as “banalization” and “complicity in banalization” of all “war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides”.

Our action has led the European Commission to decide that the framework-decision should be accompanied by a mechanism called an “option” which allows the countries that adopt it to acknowledge as “war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides” only those that have previously been qualified as such by an international tribunal, such as the Nuremberg Tribunal. This allows in practice to limit the application of this new charge to contemporary crimes, the only ones, in fact, open to adjudication either by an ad hoc international tribunal or by the new International Criminal Court; it also allows to avoid retroactive and automatic penalization of all “historical laws” already adopted and not yet matched by a penalty arsenal.

“Liberté pour l’Histoire” is an association whose positions are immediately known by all historians within France. But this is not the case in the other European countries, which don’t have such a structure. Moreover, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a French association to undertake actions towards each concerned ministry of the European Union so that, in turn, they adopt the option. To my knowledge, only France has done so, so far.

In the context of the 21st International Congress of Historical Sciences that will be held next year in Amsterdam (22-28th of August), I have been invited to deliver a contribution on the matter of the “memorial laws” in Europe. I intend to use this tribune to launch, on behalf of “Liberté pour l’Histoire”, a public appeal urging all countries in the Union to adopt the option mechanism. I’ll definitely keep you informed of any promotion of this action program.

In the name of “Liberté pour l’Histoire” as well as in my own, I forcefully thank you for what you have already done and for what further action you may take in the future

Pierre Nora,
President of "Liberté pour l'Histoire"