Lipstadt at Houston Jewish Book & Arts Fair (Nov. 3)

Prof. Lipstadt will be discussing History on Trial on Thursday, November 3, at the Houston JCC's Jewish Book and Arts Fair:

Deborah Lipstadt
8:00 P.M.
History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving

Deborah Lipstadt, an acclaimed author, professor, and media commentator on Jewish matters, is also an expert on the Holocaust denial movement. When she called David Irving, a well-known writer on World War II, a Holocaust denier, he sued her and her publisher, Penguin UK, for libel in a London courtroom. Five years later, Lipstadt won a resounding victory. This book, a riveting chronicle of that legal battle, is also an inspiring personal story of perseverance and the definitive account of the trial that tested the standards of historical and judicial truths.

Other Venues for Nov. 8 "Conversation with Deborah Lipstadt"

As noted in the previous post, New York's 92nd Street Y will be broadcasting this event to other venues. Here is the full list of locations and participating organizations:

Abington, Pennsylvania: Old York Road Temple - Beth Am
Albuquerque, New Mexico: JCC of Greater Albuquerque
Dayton, Ohio: Dayton Jewish Community Center
Irvine, California: Merage Jewish Community Center of Orange County
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Naples, Florida: Temple Shalom
New York, New York: Jewish Home and Hospital Life Care System
Omaha, Nebraska: Jewish Community Center of Omaha
Reading, Pennsylvania: Jewish Community Center of Reading
Utica, New York: Jewish Community Federation of the Mohawk Valley
Winnipeg, Manitoba: Rose & Max Rady JCC

If you plan to be at the 92nd Street Y for this event, you may purchase your tickets online.

"Conversation with Deborah Lipstadt" Satellite Broadcast (Nov. 8)

Prof. Lipstadt will be discussing History on Trial at New York's 92nd Street YMHA on Tuesday, Nov. 8:

HISTORY — HISTORY ON TRIAL: A CONVERSATION WITH DEBORAH LIPSTADT

History on Trial is Deborah Lipstadt's chronicle of her legal battle with Holocaust denier David Irving, a sensational libel case that The Daily Telegraph of London proclaimed did "for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations." Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. She is also the author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. DR. MARGOT KREBS, chair of the English department at the Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, facilitates the discussion.

This event will be broadcast via Live from NY's 92nd Street Y, the Y's satellite broadcast program, to other participating venues, including Naples, FL. Temple Shalom.

Irving touts "brilliance of his failed defense" to atheists

In July of this year, Irving was invited to address a small group of atheists in Alabama. The Southern Poverty Law Center's Fall 2005 Intelligence Report notes:

Strange Bedfellows
Disgraced Holocaust denier hosted by Alabama atheist

David Irving, a writer whose Holocaust denial activities caused a British judge to label him "a right-wing, pro-Nazi polemicist," has been repeatedly hosted by the largest neo-Nazi group in America. David Duke, the famous former Klan leader, has organized talks and book sales for him. Others who've tried to help Irving sell his wares — the judge called them "deliberate" falsifications designed to slander Jews and hold Hitler up as a hero — include a host of other white supremacists.

And then there is Larry Darby.

Darby is not your typical host for Holocaust deniers. He is president of the Alabama-based, nonprofit Atheist Law Center. The bespectacled Darby is normally a lonely voice in supremely conservative Alabama, arguing against religion in all forms.

But in early July, Darby hosted Irving — who he described as "an expert on World War Two, the Nazi era and the erosion ... of free speech" — and about a dozen atheists at a meeting in the Holiday Inn of Prattville, Ala. Most of those who attended seemed to know little about Irving's background. Others, who heard about the appearance by e-mail, expressed their shock privately.

[...]

For his part, Irving told those who assembled in Prattville of the case that ruined his career as a purported historian. Irving had sued Deborah Lipstadt, a well-known Holocaust scholar who had accused him of pro-Nazi sympathies and false reporting in his books. At the conclusion of a hugely publicized libel trial in London, the court found that Lipstadt was justified in her published criticisms.

In Prattville, Irving emphasized the brilliance of his failed defense, and complained about how he'd been ordered to pay some $5 million in court costs for Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books. Darby — whose ad for the Irving event said that Lipstadt's defense was funded "by the usual enemies of Free Speech" (Jewish groups helped pay for the defense) — listened without comment.

[...]

Christopher Browning to speak on Holocaust Denial in the Courtroom

Prof. Christopher Browning, who was one of the expert witnesses for the defense during the trial, will deliver the Holocaust Memorial Lecture at Washington University in St. Louis on Nov. 9:

Scholar Christopher Browning talks on Holocaust Denial in the Courtroom for the Assembly Series

By Mary Kastens

Oct. 17, 2005 — Considered by many to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust, Christopher Browning will present the Holocaust Memorial Lecture titled "Holocaust Denial in the Courtroom: The Historian as Expert Witness" at 11 a.m., Nov. 9 in Graham Chapel as part of the Assembly Series. His talk will touch on his experience as an expert witness in recent famous court cases involving Holocaust deniers.

How ordinary Germans came to accept the wholesale massacre of Jews is a central theme in Browning's pioneering scholarship of the Holocaust. The exhaustive research he conducted is evident in his definitive account, The Origins of the Final Solution: September 1939 to March 1942. This research was sponsored by Israel's Holocaust Museum as part of a multi-volume series about the Nazi era and the development of the Final Solution.

Browning's approach sets him apart because he does not see the Final Solution as a master plan established by Hitler alone at the beginning of the Nazi era, but rather as a series of decisions made by many people that evolved over a period of time. In a February 2004 interview in The Atlantic Monthly, he said, "The various perpetrators who became involved in the Final Solution and their decision-making processes were not unique." He says the Holocaust was not a mystical event that we cannot understand. It was a coming together of common factors and ordinary people.

He is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has been an expert witness at various trials of accused Nazi criminals in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as in the "Holocaust Denial" trials of Ernst Zundel in Toronto (1988) and Irving vs. Lipstadt in London (2000).

The event is free and open to the public. Graham Chapel is located north of Mallinckrodt Center on the Washington University Hilltop campus.

For more information, call (314) 935-4620 or visit the Assembly Series Web page (http://assemblyseries.wustl.edu).

Lipstadt at University of Maine (Oct. 16)

On Sunday, Oct. 16, Prof. Lipstadt will address the participants at the groundbreaking ceremony for a Holocaust Education Resource Center at the University of Maine:

Groundbreaking set for Holocaust center

By DAN McGILLVRAY
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA -- A scholar who has researched the Holocaust and human rights issues will speak Sunday at the University of Maine at Augusta.

Deborah Lipstadt is director of an institute in Emory University that is devoted to Jewish studies. Earlier this year her book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving was published.

"She will probably talk for about 45 minutes and then have a question and answer (period)," said Sharon Nichols, executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine.

Lipstadt, who teaches at Emory University in Atlanta, will be the featured speaker at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Michael Klahr Holocaust Education Resource Center that will be built on the University of Maine at Augusta campus.

Work on the building will start next spring, said Nichols.
[...]

The ceremony Sunday begins at 1 p.m. with a lecture in Jewett Hall Auditorium by Professor Phillip Silver of the University of Maine. From 2 to 4 p.m., Silver and his wife, Professor Noreen Silver, who also teaches music at UMaine, will conduct a cello-piano duo in the auditorium. The price is $10 and tickets are available at the door.

The outdoor groundbreaking begins at 4:15 p.m.

Lipstadt begins her speech at 5 p.m. She is expected to talk about her 6-year legal battle in London with David Irving. He had accused Lipstadt of saying that he denied the Holocaust in Europe. In the end, a judge concluded that Irving was a Holocaust denier, a falsifier of history, and a racist.

Historians estimate that approximately 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and collaborators

After Lipstadt concludes her address at 6 p.m., a social reception hour will be held until 7 p.m.