David Irving Gets it Wrong: Again ... What a Hoot

A Google alert just popped up on my computer. It brought me to "Fiery Cross" website which is clearly associated with the KKK. [The picture at left appears on the website.]

The site carries a post from David Irving's website entitled:

Lipstadt: Am I my brother's keeper?

Irving begins with a discussion [quite exaggerated of course] of the Bruges affair. He then goes on to identify Marc Kalmann as my brother. Here's what Irving has to say:

Kalmann is the brother of Atlanta Professor Deborah Lipstadt, and she has gone straight into brother-denial. (Don’t ask us how they come to use different family names: I remember once interviewing Julius Streicher’s son, also a Streicher, for Hard Copy (US television), and him retorting, “We are not the sort of people who change our names.")

Changing names is the kind of things that the Lipstadt’s of this world do more often than others.

He "proves" his point by quoting the post sent to me by Kalmann's brother.

What a joke. Irving can't figure out that I was quoting the brother NOT identifying Marc Kalmann as my brother.

Attempting to paint me as frightened that this news of "my brother", i.e. Marc Kalmann might emerge and

come to my ears, Deborah Lipstadt has rushed to her damage-control panel, groped in the darkness of her own delirium for the button marked “DENIAL!” but pushed the one marked “PANIC” by mistake. The Internet is awash with fun at her expense.

He closes his post by thanking his many friends who brought this to his attention.

Someone must have pointed out to David Irving his colossal mistake because when you go to his website the post is gone. www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Lipstadt/brother_Marc_Kalmann.html

My thanks to the KKK site for capturing it.

What a hoot. Irving [and his friends] can't even read documents he is not trying to lie about.

UK Schools Drop Teaching the Holocaust: A False Story Continues to Make the Rounds

Why do smart people believe utterly incomprehensible things?

The false charge about the Bruges cafe was crazy but had glimmers of plausibility [maybe the waiter acted out.... but would a waiter who acted in that way be employed in such a prestigious place???].

But the rumor that continues to drive me nuts is the crazy one about the UK or, depending which version of this idiocy you have received, the University of Kentucky [some dimwit saw UK and thought it meant the University] dropping all teaching of the Holocaust because it would offend Muslims. For previous blogs on this topic see here

In the past 24 hours a number of smart people have asked me about this rumor. One doubted it was true. The others believed it to be fact.

While I don't doubt that there are teachers in certain school districts in the UK who tip toe around this topic because they are sitting in front of class full of students who have been told it did not happen or who have just been raised to hate Jews.

But to believe that the UK, whose leader, Churchill, rallied the world to fight when only the English Channel stood between Hitler and his country and whose forces liberated camps where they encountered survivors who looked more like cadavers than people, would drop the teaching of this topic..... that's too much.

Last night we had Leon Wieseltier here at Emory. [He spoke on Jews' perspectives on Messianism and was first rate.] A small group of us chatted about this and someone said: "People believe this because they want it to be true. " In some preverse way, that's true.

We sometimes fall into a mindset that convinces us that the world is so against us that the UK or the Univ of Kentucky, take your pick, would do this.

There are hateful people out there. There are people who hate Jews specifically. Among them are those who would wish to do great harm to Jews.

They are out there. There is, therefore, no need to create false enemies in places and situations where there are none.

Fighting real boogey people [a contradiction in terms?] is hard enough.... let's not spend our time on false ones.

The "Incident" at Bruges: Word from "Victim"'s Brother and Some Lessons to be Learned

People have posted comments on the Bruges story in different places on this blog. For those of you who have missed it click here. [Be sure to click on the comments at each post, especially at "About the Blog."]

[Here's a quick summary: Marc Kalmann, who describes himself as a Professor and says he was born in Auschwitz 3 days before it was liberated, says he was in Bruges and tried to have a cup of coffee in a famous cafe on the square. When the waiter saw his kippah he threw him out and said "we don't serve Jews here." Sometime later Kalmann went to the police to report the incident and they would not take a report in English. The story is all over the internet.]

This morning I received the following email from someone who says he is Mr. Kalmann's brother. I believe it is legitimate because it is loving and yet cautionary about the story at the same time.

It is posted at "About this Blog" and I have cut and pasted it below:

Let me quickly shed some light on Marc Kalmann, my brother. He was born in 1948 in Amsterdam and not in Auschwitz in 1945. He lives in the Netherlands and is fluent in Dutch. He lived in the USA for 22 years and was sometimes employed as a teacher of languages at community colleges. He liked the title professor and has used it since. He tends to believe his own fantasies. I love him but I am concerned that his fantasies take over his world. And through the magic of the Internet it is taking the world by storm. I wanted to set some part of the record straight. I have no knowledge of what did or did not happen at the restaurant in Bruges.

February 20, 2008 3:43 AM

To buttress the brother's comments. See Esther's blog about another incident concerning Mr. Kalmann which seemed to have morphed into an antisemitic charge.

My guess -- and it is only that -- is that Professor Kalmann, as he calls himself, had some incident at this cafe over a cup of coffee [which probably did cost an arm and a leg] and it is possible that some antisemitic crack was made. This morphed into the story that "we don't serve Jews here" and that the Bruges police refused to do anything about it.

What happened at the police station is hard to know. Was there a problem with the filing of the story? [Supposedly the police refused to file the report in English.] Does Kalmann speak Flemish or French? He does speak Dutch. Who knows?


So What Can We Learn from This?

It seems pretty clear that it did not happen as originally reported. Which is a lesson to all those who originally reported this story. Even if they are a Jewish media outlet they are obligated to investigate and not simply take the story as told by the "victim."

Maybe it's because of my work on Holocasut denial, but I feel so strongly that, when it comes to antisemitism and other prejudices, if you embellish the truth or, even worse, make a story up you are doing great damage to those who tell the truth.

How long will it be before they too are dismissed as not being truthful?

Sometimes a story can be a fabrication and sometimes it can be an aggrandizement of the truth , sometimes it can be inflated, and sometimes it can be absolute fact.

It is also worth remembering that:

• Sometimes a woman or a "minority" can be fired from a job because they are incompetent and not because of racism, sexism, or any other ism.
• Sometimes a Jew can be attacked because it is a random act of violence and not because they are a Jew.
• Sometimes a woman or a racial or religious minority member can be passed over for a promotion because there really is someone -- read White (usually Anglo-Saxon) male -- who is far far better qualified.
• And sometimes these things can happen because there is rampant racism, sexism, and antseimitism alive and well in this world.

It's critically important to know when to make a charge of prejudice and when not. And, in this day and age of the internet, it's even more important to know when to believe what you hear and when to be skeptical and ask more questions.

JTA and Haaretz [Among Others] Owe Us an Explanation on Supposed Antisemitic Incident in Belgium

Last week I posted a comment about an apparent antisemitic incident in Bruges, Belgium. It reported that an American professor had been thrown out of a famous cafe because he wore a kippah.

To add insult to injury, when he went to the police to report the incident the police refused to take the report in English.

Then serious question began to be raised about exactly what happened. The cafe owner said that this was NOT how the incident proceeded but that there had been a dispute about the cost of the cup of coffee.

I had some questions about the incident and expressed my reservations but still posted it without checking further. My mistake.

Then an energetic correspondent, Dan, began to barrage me with emails which are posted here both at the original story [which is no longer there] and at "About this Blog" suggesting I check further. He was right.

A number of sites, have removed the post. Others including YeshivahWorld News have posted the response of the cafe. The cafe argues that it was about the price of the coffee. If so, then the man could not have been thrown out, since he obviously was served the coffee.

This morning I checked and the original story is all over the internet.

Since both JTA and Haaretz were the prime English language sources for this story, they should be doing some checking and, if not true, issue a retraction.

There are enough real incidents of antisemitism around that we do not need to be reacting to incidents which are not real.

More Disturbing News from the European Scene: Jewish Tourist Ejected from Brussels Cafe for Being Jewish

Updated: 2/18-19
Story removed because it seems that this incident did not happen as originally reported. I had some doubts and had written,
"If this report is accurate, then it is extremely disturbing. " Then later in the post I wrote, "the Belgium incident, if it happened as reported, occurred in a well known and prestigious place."

Thanks to a very energetic correspondent, Dan, who sent me this information. For more of Dan's legwork go to "About this Blog" under my picture above or click here. Quite impressive on his part. I should have followed up on my suspicions. I am glad he did.

About This Blog

Deborah Lipstadt’s Blog began when my book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving was published. While I intended this blog to be a place to post reviews and comments on the book, I also used it to track the controversy that emerged right after publication when C-SPAN's Book TV refused to let me appear unless I agreed either to appear with David Irving or to have him appear immediately after I did, that is, back-to-back.

Since then, this blog has morphed into far more. I now address issues of antisemitism, Holocaust denial, politically correct idiocies, and free speech particularly as it pertains to Holocaust and genocide denial. While this blog gives me a chance to comment on these issues as they arise, it also saves me from having to answer the same questions numerous times. And though I aim to keep this blog focused on these issues, occasionally I write about something that cries out for comment. Other times, because something is so mind-boggling, it needs no comment.

I treat the items that I post as somewhere between email* and op-ed columns. This means that I try not to let typos or spelling errors creep in. However, the postings are not as polished as I try to make my op-ed columns. Sometimes, due to the pressure of time and/or my desire to get something posted rapidly, a mistake will pass me by. I apologize for that.

Regarding comments: I post most of the comments that come my way. I do not post items that come from deniers or antisemites. I feel no need to make this blog a soapbox for them. Nor do I post unabashed or even slightly abashed attempts to use this blog to advertise other blogs, particularly those with no connection to the topics under consideration.

I created this blog under the tutelage and at the urging of my blogmother, London's Sasha Frieze, whose observations on life can be found at Sashinka. During the early months, particularly during the whirlwind of the C-SPAN controversy, I simply could not have maintained it without the help of Hilary Ostrov who stepped forward to volunteer invaluable technical assistance. Tamar Orvell helped me take this blog into its latest incarnation. My photo is by Jillian Edelstein. And my friends at the Starbucks on LaVista and Briarcliff Roads, in Atlanta, continue to provide hospitality, friendship, and strong coffee. Their early morning camaraderie is essential to my work.

* I do not correct tpyos in email. That would destroy the prupose of email.