Monday, March 21, 2005
Lipstadt Scheduled for The O'Reilly Factor (Mar. 21/05)
No More Comments: A Sad Policy Change
Then the antisemites, deniers, and kooks came out of the woodwork. They began to post long email message, most of them filled with drivel trying to prove all sorts of absurd things, e.g. Irving is not a denier and he did not lose the lawsuit.
I stopped commenting and left it some stalwarts to engage these people.
Yesterday, I put a stop to the whole thing. I decided that I don't have to provide a platform for these people. Some people told me that they learned a lot from reading their comments. "I knew these people were out there," one person wrote me, "but I never saw them 'up close and personal.' Ugh."
There are, sadly, many places on the Internet to see them "up close." But no longer on this blog site.
Los Angeles Times review of History on Trial
A strike against those who deny the Holocaust
History on Trial My Day in Court With David Irving
Deborah E. Lipstadt Ecco: 346 pp., $25.95
By Edmund Fawcett
Edmund Fawcett, the former literary editor for the Economist, is a contributor to several publications, including the (London) Times Literary Supplement.
March 20, 2005
Toward the end of his libel suit against fellow historian Deborah E. Lipstadt, David Irving made a telling and hilarious slip. His case for defamation, heard in London, was that by calling him a Holocaust denier and falsifier of facts she had traduced his reputation as a scholar of Nazi Germany and World War II. He had chosen to represent himself and was closing out an emotional summation. Bowing slightly to the judge, Irving addressed him, not in the normal way as "my lord," but as "mein führer." The packed courtroom froze for an instant then burst into riotous laughter. An intricate battle of grim documentary citations had morphed into "The Producers." Clownishly, Irving seemed to be admitting that he had lost.
Britain's libel laws are notoriously favorable to plaintiffs. In practice, defendants must show "justification," which means proving that the rude things they have said are true. The 1993 book Irving cited in his original complaint, Lipstadt's "Denying the Holocaust," made two principal claims about him. The first — that Irving denied the Holocaust and vindicated Hitler — was the lesser problem for her. In copious published writings and in speeches to neo-fascist audiences around the globe, he had belittled the extent of Nazi persecution and — somewhat contradictorily — denied Hitler's personal responsibility for genocide. Lipstadt's second charge was that the British author twisted the record knowingly and wrote not as a disinterested historian but as an ideologically motivated anti-Semite. Just by sniffing Irving's language on his website or riffling a few pages of his work most people could agree without more ado. Proving it in court to a scrupulous judge — this was a bench trial, with no jury — was another matter.
Lipstadt's highly readable book chronicles the two-month trial virtually day by day, making lively and pointed use of the court transcript. The Emory University professor writes with a campaigner's passion, but also with humor about herself, as, for example, when she wrestles with her prejudice that clever Englishmen are emotionally dead fish.
Her book opens in 1995, when Irving served his complaint, and ends in April 2000 when the judge gave his ruling. Despite its grave subject, "History on Trial" reads like a well-paced courtroom procedural. Even readers who know or guess the outcome can enjoy the book as the righteous struggling against the wicked.
Lipstadt gathered a powerful defense team: Anthony Julius, a London lawyer and author of a study on anti-Semitism in T.S. Eliot's poetry, supervised strategy. Richard Rampton, a gun-for-hire who had recently won damages for McDonald's in a libel suit against London Greenpeace, argued for her in court. To Lipstadt and Julius, it was important that Irving not only lose, but be seen to lose badly. The case was a cause for them from the start. She believes it also became one for Rampton, particularly after he visited Auschwitz to prepare for trial.
Lipstadt's British publisher and co-defendant, Penguin Books, stood behind her when she refused Irving's early offer to settle in return for the withdrawal of her book and an apology. Penguin had braved censorship laws with "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and death threats over "The Satanic Verses." It was not going to back down before Irving — and, like most prominent British publishing concerns, it had libel insurance.
The defense's central problem, as Lipstadt puts it, was that they had no smoking gun. There was and could be no killer evidence that he was propagandist first and historian second. Indeed, a shelf's worth of widely praised military histories by him suggested the opposite. Furthermore, Irving could always play the underdog. A onetime steelworker, poor and self-taught, he had turned himself into a researcher who mined archives across Europe. He had regrettable views, to be sure. Hadn't many scholars? Reputable historians have said as much of him in print.
The defense first asked Cambridge historian Richard Evans to assess Irving's oeuvre. Evans' 700-page report, which was put into evidence and became the core of his own book on the trial, "Lying About History," proved devastating. Evans found a pattern of transcription errors, twisted or elliptical quotations and slipperiness with dates. The errors tended to buttress the argument that Irving had prejudices. Rampton skillfully exploited this gold mine. With dry patience he exposed Irving's distortions, keeping careful count of the plaintiff's ever lamer excuses — "I was tired," "I was stressed," "I forgot."
Judge Charles Gray's 335-page ruling was a comprehensive defeat and disgrace for Irving. Gray found that in writing of Hitler and the Holocaust, far from offering objective history, Irving had repeatedly "perverted" the record and falsified the facts to bring them into line with an anti-Semitic and racist agenda. There could, in addition, be no serious doubt that gas chambers existed at Auschwitz or that these operated on a "substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews," both facts that Irving had repeatedly and often contemptuously denied. Holocaust denial is not a crime in Britain, as it is in some European countries. But Gray's ruling, twice confirmed on appeal, removed a layer of legal protection from Irving and others who make similar assertions: People could now publicly call them liars and scoundrels without fear of the libel courts.
Perhaps wisely, Lipstadt ends there. Her book is compelling enough as the self-contained story of a gripping and important trial. It is not an essay on the political uses and abuses of the Holocaust, on the obligations of historians to objective truth or on the appropriate limits, if any, to the freedom of speech, though no reader can put it down without wondering about all those things.
In closing, she notes the persistence of Holocaust denial in many forms and in many countries — a reminder of how much it matters that there be victories like hers. •
C-SPAN Homepage Featured Links
Saturday, March 19, 2005
History on Trial reviewed in Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1111116047741&p=1006953079969
Reviewed by Dan Markel
By Deborah E. Lipstadt
Harper Collins
368pp., $25.95
Until only a few years ago, a veneer of respectability attached in some scholarly circles to the historical writings of David Irving. Famous historians such as Sir John Keegan and Professor Gordon Craig viewed Irving's works as indispensable to understanding the full nature of World War II.
Nonetheless, Irving's statement that "more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz," among others, frustrated, if not outraged, all but the community of Holocaust-deniers in which Irving had ensconced himself.
In 1993, Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt wrote Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, a book in which, among other things, she accused Irving of writing nothing more than gussied-up anti-Semitic pap that sought to deny the truth of Hitler's involvement in the plan to murder European Jewry.
Shortly thereafter, Irving sued Lipstadt and Penguin, her publisher in England, under England's libel laws.
This choice of venue was both significant and unsurprising because, unlike the United States, England places the burden of proof upon defendants.
Moreover, England, unlike the United States, did not require a public figure like Irving to prove that Lipstadt made her allegedly defamatory statements with "actual malice." Thus, while a suit against Lipstadt would likely not have even surfaced in America, it required incredible labor on the defendant's part in England.
As Lipstadt's lawyer, Anthony Julius, described the task, the defense had to show that Irving "subordinated the truth to spread anti-Semitism and engender sympathy for the Third Reich."
Although Lipstadt's account of the trial focuses on the many falsehoods underlying Irving's works, she begins with a gripping narrative of her own journey into academia and the origins of this lawsuit.
THE DAUGHTER of modern Orthodox parents, Lipstadt grew up in New York's Upper West Side. Prior to graduate school, she travelled to Israel in 1966 to study at Hebrew University.
Despondent that, at that time (on account of Jordan's closure of the border to Jewish tourists) she was unable to visit Jerusalem's Old City, Lipstadt trekked to Greece to obtain a new passport from the American Embassy there.
She eliminated all traces of the Israeli origins of her trip, and sojourned from there to Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan to the Old City.
Upon her return to Israel through the Mandelbaum Gate, the Israeli border guards remarked that Lipstadt had guts, but maybe no sechel (intelligence).
Five years later, after starting her graduate work at Brandeis, Lipstadt again entered the lion's den, travelling to the Soviet Union in 1972 to meet Jewish refuseniks and help prepare the groundwork for their possible emigration to Israel.
This time, upon the KGB's confrontation with accusations of "spreading lies about the Soviet regime," Lipstadt wisely accepted their "invitation" to leave the country.
These two tales of youthful pluck and pragmatism serve as windows into Lipstadt's ultimate decision to fight the Irving libel accusations rather than save five years of time, emotional toil and expense by simply issuing a retraction and apology.
With the commendable support of her university, her publisher, and philanthropists from around the world, Lipstadt assembled a first-rate team of historians and advocates to show the forensic basis for Irving's deliberate distortions of the historical record. (To that end, interested persons may find an array of relevant materials on the Holocaust Denial on Trial website: www.hdot.org.)
History on Trial not only captures the excitement and occasional despair of the team's ordeal in preparing for and enduring the 10-week trial. It also trenchantly exposes the implications of the team's victory for historians and their readers.
Lipstadt's book, then, functions as far more than a mere "case for the Holocaust." It serves as an introduction to the historian's craft and the kinds of disputes in which reasonable historians engage.
For example, at the outset Lipstadt makes plain that various aspects of the Holocaust are the subject of legitimate and competing historical interpretations, and that it was not her goal, either in her scholarship or at the trial, to shut down rivalling understandings, say, of whether Hitler wanted to take power to eliminate European Jewry or whether Nazi officers in the East "initiated the murders" of the Jews for functional reasons – murders which were subsequently ratified by Hitler's approval.
While one might think this admonition is overcautious, it turns out that this reminder was vitally important because certain well-known historians improperly chastised Lipstadt about the purported "chilling effect" inflicted by her hard-fought victory.
Their concern is arrant tripe. After all, it was Irving who brought suit against Lipstadt and her publisher; Lipstadt never sought to silence Irving.
She simply published her views, which undermined Irving's denials of the Holocaust's nature and scope, and showed that his rendition of history was no more than distortions in service to an extremist ideology.
Indeed, the more limited nature of Lipstadt's ambition is what enabled two vigorous free-speech advocates – Anthony Lewis (formerly of the New York Times), and Harvard Law School's Alan Dershowitz – to write an introduction and afterword, respectively, on Lipstadt's behalf.
In any event, Lipstadt's memoir of her experience as a defendant is one of the best general-interest books I've read in years. It is not only instructive, provocative and riveting – it is inspiring. History on Trial has earned a well-deserved place in every home that cares about truth, and about the courage to speak it.
The writer is a lawyer in Washington D.C. His writing can be found at www.danmarkel.com.
More on Wire Coverage of C-SPAN issue
And speaking of headlines ... unlike a few of the papers picking up the AP article yesterday - in which they referred to an "Alleged Holocaust Denier" - Idaho's Spokesman-Review headline got right to the heart of the matter:
Program's Holocaust 'balance' angers historians
Petition to C-Span over 'Book TV' plan says 'Falsehoods cannot "balance" the truth'
"C-SPAN's Mistake" - Lipstadt on History News Network
C-Span's position is best defended as a matter of general principle: when a court case is being discussed, it is best (if possible) to allow both sides to speak, even if one side has lost (i.e., Irving's), even if the losing side deserves to have lost, and even if it deserves execration.
In this instance, I don't believe their position is defensible. The record of the trial speaks for itself - and certainly with more truth than Irving can be counted on to provide. Not to mention that if Irving's alleged correspondence on this matter can be believed, he's already had the opportunity to present his "side" to the C-SPAN audience. And, it would seem, C-SPAN certainly had no interest in "balance" at that time!
L.A. Times weighs in on C-SPAN
C-SPAN Hit for Plan to Air Holocaust Revisionist's Views
C-SPAN was hit with a barrage of criticism this week when it became public that the producers of the weekend program "Book TV" wanted to air a lecture by David Irving along with one by Lipstadt, a professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta. More than 200 historians nationwide signed a petition opposing the cable network's decision to put Irving on the program.
"He personifies Holocaust denial," said Harvard legal expert Alan M. Dershowitz, who introduced Lipstadt when she spoke to a packed room Wednesday at Harvard Hillel, a Jewish organization associated with Harvard University.
"This is not about free speech. He can stand on a street corner and rant and rave, but C-SPAN ought to let him sell his poison elsewhere. They shouldn't create a debate where one doesn't exist."
[…]
"We specifically approached this as historians," [Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington] said. "This is a matter of historical fact, not interpretation." Medoff said that since the first petition was sent to C-SPAN, at least 100 more
historians internationally have signed on.
C-SPAN has not responded to the petition, and Medoff said he hoped that the television executives would publicly apologize rather than allow the controversy to quietly disappear.
"There is an important lesson learned from all this, that historians are united in regarding Holocaust deniers as bigots and frauds, and it is wrong for television to give Holocaust deniers air time," Medoff said.
Lipstadt, meanwhile, is getting some benefit from the controversy in the form of publicity about her book. She is scheduled to be interviewed by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly on Monday night, and she said she would still be "thrilled" to appear on C-SPAN's "Book TV," without Irving.
Friday, March 18, 2005
One Line Says it All
This is BookTV, not Court TV. If they were interviewing Herman Melville,
would they put the whale/Moby Dick on for balance?
The Impact of the NY Times Story on the CSpan controversy
I also wrote a summary of the situation for History News Network at George Mason University which we will post here later. [The "We" is really the unbelievably generous Hilary Ostrov, who has helped me keep my head above water.]
Even the broadcast media has weighed in. MSNBC wanted me to appear on Scarborough Country with a representative from CSpan. [I keep typing CSpam, could that be a Freudian slip?] I happily agreed. I am anxious to be in communication with them.
CSpan declined. MSNBC decided not to do the story.
I guess they wanted balance.
AP Wire and bloggers weigh in on the C-Span issue
Most of the headlines got it right: "Historians irked by C-Span program"; however, in later postings this appears as: "Historians irked by C-Span's plans to air alleged Holocaust denier". Alleged??!
If you do a Google search for "C-Span + Lipstadt" you will see that this matter has been the topic of discussion on many blogs including Little Green Footballs, Solomonia and Blogcritics.org
Letter to C-SPAN from American Jewish Committee
March 16, 2005
Brian Lamb, Chairman and CEO
C-SPAN
400 North Capitol Street, NW, Suite 650
Washington, DC 20001
Dear Mr. Lamb:
I was stunned to learn that C-SPAN planned to show David Irving as "balance" to its proposed coverage of a lecture by Deborah Lipstadt at Harvard.
My talks have been covered a few times over the years by C-SPAN. If recollection serves me correctly, I was on twice regarding the militia movement in the mid 1990s. If someone had proposed bringing one of the racist leaders of the militia movement on as "balance," I would have surely refused. It's not that I couldn't expose their failings - but rather the appearance of a reasoned disagreement would have given them an undeserved credibility regardless of what was said. Plus, I had no desire to give them an audience.
My reluctance to appear with militia members is magnified tenfold when it comes to Holocaust deniers, about whom I have also written. Holocaust denial is not quirkiness or confusion or "another point of view," but hatred which abuses history as a vehicle. It is not about the Holocaust, but about Jews just as the medieval claim about Jews poisoning wells was about Jews, rather than about water quality.
David Irving has been found by a judge to be a pro-Nazi polemicist, a racist, an antisemite. He is a liar who twists history like a pretzel. I 'm sure you're aware of his quip about more women dying in Teddy Kennedy 's car than in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Maybe you're not aware that he used to recite ditties to his daughter, such as "I am a Baby Aryan, Not Jewish or Sectarian, I have no plans to marry an, Ape or Rastafarian." Or that he helped edit David Duke's hateful book. Or that during his trial he referred to blacks and whites as being of different "species."
C-SPAN should find better ways to use its programming than to provide an audience for such a bigot, and it certainly should not show Mr. Irving as "balance" to anyone.
Sincerely,
Ken Stern
Specialist on Antisemitism and Extremism
C-SPAN Storm continues
C-Span's Plan to Cover Talk on Holocaust Is Criticized
More than 200 historians at colleges nationwide sent a petition to C-Span yesterday to protest its plan to accompany its coverage of a lecture by Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University, with a speech by David Irving, who has argued that Hitler was not fully responsible for the mass murder of Jews.
"Falsifiers of history cannot 'balance' histories," said the petition, delivered to Connie Doebele, the executive producer at C-Span who planned the coverage. "Falsehoods cannot 'balance' the truth."
[...]
"If C-Span broadcasts a lecture by David Irving, it will provide publicity and legitimacy to Holocaust-denial, which is nothing more than a mask for anti-Jewish bigotry," the petition said.
Although the petition was sent to C-Span yesterday, many more academics are still signing on, so another set of signatures may go to the network next week, said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman institute.
"I've never before heard of a television network offering free time to a Holocaust denier," Dr. Medoff said, "so it was surprising and it may be unprecedented. I think once C-Span realizes the depth of public concern and the strong opposition of the academic community, they will reconsider."
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a similar article which begins:
Emory scholar tells C-SPAN 'no thanks'
An Emory University scholar who was sued by an author who denied the Holocaust is now at the center of a national storm involving the C-SPAN television network.
On March 16, The Jewish Press Online noted that:
C-SPAN Falls Over The Edge
C-SPAN often teeters on the brink of self-parody, particularly when the hosts of its morning discussion program, “Washington Journal,” stare impassively at the camera while yet another crazed caller recites chapter and verse of the latest conspiracy theories involving the Trilateral Commission or the Bush family’s Nazi/Saudi/Zionist/ KGB/CIA ties (choose one or more and don’t think twice about any seeming contradictions).
Formed in 1979 as, in the words of its mission statement, “a private, non-profit company...by the cable television industry as a public service....to provide public access to the political process,” C-SPAN is deadly serious about maintaining a reputation for non-partisanship — to the point even of allowing viewers to disseminate, unchallenged, all manner of unsubstantiated charges and outright lies.
But the ideal of non-partisanship, admirable when it comes to covering Congress and political conventions, can become something else entirely when used to provide respectability to lunatic-fringe ideologues who insist that a copiously documented, relatively recent historical event never really happened. And this is where C-SPAN has at last fallen over the brink and become a parody of it own sanctimoniousness.
Israel's Arutz Sheva has also weighed in with a brief piece focusing on the petition.
C-SPAN, "Balance" and Irving
You already covered from start to finish a talk I gave in Washington DC about three years back. You (C-SPAN) also filmed a lengthy interview with me at the BookExpo in New York's Jacob Javits Center in about 2002. You were kind enough to broadcast that interview several times.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/05/03/Lipstadt_CSpan.html
I haven't confirmed this with C-SPAN, nor have I confirmed the actual content of the very enthusiastic emails from C-SPAN (although, considering the source - and his creative writing abilities - one should probably do so); however, if true, I have to wonder which historian they invited to provide "balance" to Irving's performances. I do know they didn't invite me.
CSpan story in New York Times and Atlanta Constitution
CSpan would have just be recycling ideas that have been declared by 3 different courts to be false.
One last thougt: In essence this has nothing to do with David Irving. It has to do with Holocaust deniers in general. They are liars and fabricators and we should not force them into a so-called debate. It could not be a debate because they play fast and furious with the truth.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Some thoughts on C-Span's statement to the press
Statement from C-SPAN
"Book TV was interested in Deborah Lipstadt's new book about her British libel trial. Our interest in covering David Irving was to hear the plaintiff's story of the trial. Since Professor Lipstadt has closed her book discussions to our cameras, we are still discussing how to cover this book and we don't have an immediate timetable."
Peggy Keegan
C-SPAN
202 626 8797
202 236 1236
More on the C-SPAN Storm
March 17, 2005: "Fairness" at C-SPAN
I am a great C-SPAN admirer and supporter of free speech, but the network's BOOKS division's choice of notorious Holocaust denier David Irving as a "counter-balance" to Deborah Lipstadt, who was appearing in conjunction with her new book "History on Trial," is on the edge of mind-boggling. Okay, it is mind-boggling ...
In their March 16 communique, Honest Reporting also weighed in:
C-SPAN's Shaky Balance
The cable network insists on granting air time to a notorious Holocaust denier.
Yesterday (3/15), leaders from more than 40 nations gathered in Jerusalem to dedicate a new, expanded Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.
Yet at the very time that this monument to Nazi evil was inaugurated, the American cable network C-SPAN planned to give a notorious Holocaust denier a broad audience to promote his ideology that the murder of six million Jews never occurred. This, in the name of 'journalistic balance'. ...
ADL letter to C-SPAN
BOOK TV on C-SPAN2
400 No. Capitol Street, Suite 650
Washington, DC 20001
We are dismayed by the lack of moral clarity in your misguided attempt to create a "balance" between the Professor Deborah Lipstadt, author of the new book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving and the rank anti-Semitic Holocaust denial espoused by David Irving.
C-SPAN has a proud and noble history of bringing government and civic affairs directly to the American people unobstructed by commercial or ideological motives. We have admired C-SPAN's steadfast commitment to present different points of view, from sometimes controversial sources, even though viewers might be offended by the subject matter.
However, in the case of Mr. Irving, you have simply gone too far. You owe Professor Lipstadt an apology for your actions and you owe the American public a full and complete explanation of the dangers to democracy of legitimizing Holocaust Denial
Anti-Defamation League
The CSpan Storm
Rumor has it that CSpan may have decided to drop the idea of screening Irving's presentation in Atlanta [which they filmed]. Maybe by now they have had a chance to watch it and they saw what Irivng said.
According to two different people who were there the meeting was attended by perhaps 35 to 40 people, if that. The following is a report from one of the attendees:
All appeared to be affluent and well-dressed but almost all of them were older and apparently Irving’s devoted followers. There were two limousines out front. One very long white stretch limo and another regular black limo. [The Landmark Diner is a family restaurant and not a limousine-type venue.]
Irving had informed attendees in the letter he sent out a few days before that CSpan would be there and laid down rules: “No t-shirts with slogans, no emblems, and no leaflets; and I know I can rely on you to show due propriety in behavior and in any questions you ask in the discussion at the end.”
The low attendance appeared to cause Irving some anxiety. He looked tired and kept scanning the participants as if counting head. By 7 pm (dinner time) the room was only loosely 2/3 thirds full. This meeting featured free complimentary champagne and a buffet with shrimp, beef bourguignon, fish, chicken, pasta, rice, salad, steamed vegetables and a special dessert. The cost was $25. It was catered.
Irving paid little attention to his book table where he usually makes good money on sale of his own books and tapes and the resale of other materials. Irving didn’t circulate around the room shaking hands and visiting each table [as he often does], but huddled with several older men at the center table from 6 pm to 7 pm.
On the book table he featured his newly reprinted Hitler’s War (2002), newly reprinted Nuremberg: The Last Battle, several videos of himself or in programs in which he took part. Irving has produced a DVD (with a VHS version) of his book Hitler’s War, which he had for sale for $40 each. The DVD was professional produced by a Lamancha Productions. Irving told the person who described the meeting to me that the newest version of his Dresden book is due out in just three weeks with the Goebbels biography following soon after.
Irving also had pictures of himself and his family there for people to pick up and others he intended to use in his talk.
C-SPAN had two cameras set up, with numerous sound boards and lights. There were about 4 people there from C-SPAN. The attendees were warned by CSpan that if they didn’t want to be on camera they needed to move to the back of the room by the bar and behind the cameras. Some people did.[DEL: I would guess that this is one of the first times CSpan prefaced a filming with this kind of announcement. ]
In fact, before Irving did begin to speak he requested that everyone come forward and fill the empty chairs at the front tables so that it would look full for the cameras. I ate dinner and sat with two gentlemen. One was a book dealer from Tucker, Georgia who features Irving books on his website and E-Bay. He was going to pick up 30 books from Irving for resale that night. Irving thanked us all for coming and compared his situation to that of Mozart’s who relied on the patronage of courts and kings to support him while he worked. So, too, we supported him in his work.
Irving showed us the pictures of his family including one of his father whom he extolled as a war hero and for whom he proclaimed great pride. He also showed pictures of Jessica (his daughter) as a baby and now as a 12 year old and her mother, Bente.
Irving then segued into a discussion of the long history of his ‘persecution’ by the ‘Traditional Enemies of the Truth’ (TEOTT), that is, the Jews. According to Irving, it began in 1963 (!) when he published his first book on the bombing of Dresden. He claimed that all the reviews of the book proclaimed it to be superior and a real bombshell. It was a best seller. In all the hundreds of reviews there was just one that trashed it: it was clearly written by a man (whose name I didn’t catch) who he insinuated therefore had to be a member of the Traditional Enemy of the Truth. Irving proclaimed that this proved that his enemies had targeted him all the way back to 1963, recognizing him as a threat to their picture of the Holocaust even at that early stage. The TEOTT have been persecuting him ever since.
Dr. Lipstadt was the person who was chosen to finally bring him down with her book, Denying the Holocaust, which was published by Penguin UK in England in 1995.
Irving then told a story about his first contact with Dr. Lipstadt at DeKalb Community College in Georgia in 1994. He claimed she spoke to a packed room and the people had clearly been dragooned to be there. He sat in the back quietly listening to her talk about him disparagingly. At the end he then stood up and introduced himself as David Irving and the historian in question and challenged her to show any proof that Hitler knew about or ordered the Holocaust. He said that one black man turned around in his seat and said to him, “Man, this is finally going to get interesting.” (He did it in an accent.) He explained how he then waved $1,000 in the air and offered to give it to anyone who could prove there was a Hitler order. (This is a long time stunt of his.) At DeKalb Community College Irving dug money out of his own pocket and waved it at the current crowd to make his point. Then he claimed that Dr. Lipstadt had turned and whispered to someone behind her and security came and immediately evicted him.[DEL: What I actually said to the security officials was: "DON'T throw him out. Don't make him a martyr.]
That Irving said proved that Dr. Lipstadt had refused to debate him from the beginning. Then he went into a long explanation of how Dr. Lipstadt was a coward for not testifying at the trial even though he did admit that he believed her lawyers had made the decision. He had just been waiting to get her up on the stand and question her on her views of Judaism, and race, and intermarriage. He claimed that he would have demolished her and that he pretty much lost the trial right there because she would not testify so he could destroy her on the stand.
Irving claims that he knew nothing of Dr. Lipstadt’s book Denying the Holocaust until it was published in England in 1995 and people began calling and writing him about being a ‘Holocaust denier.’ He claims that he then hunted it down and read it for himself. He listed all the things Dr. Lipstadt wrote about him in quick order (he was a denier, he had stolen plates from Moscow and damaged them, and that he consorted with right-wing extremists including Hamas and Hezbollah). He claimed that she was funded by Yad Vashem and others who were out to get him. He cited a letter from Dr. Yehuda Bauer to “Debbie” noting that she hadn’t talked about Irving in her manuscript and she should put him in. Then “Debbie” feverishly went to work at the behest of her paymasters to collect her “sources” (which according to him were only newspaper clippings). He claimed that she never called him and if she had he could have set her straight in 15 seconds. (The implication: the whole trial was her fault.) In fact, Irving stated that Dr. Lipstadt was solely responsible for getting his Goebbels biography removed from St. Martin’s list, forcing him to publish it himself later. He also mentioned in suit against Gitta Sereny and the Observer for writing about his Goebbels book. Irving stated that he was just waiting for Dr. Lipstadt to publish her current book in England and he would immediately sue.
Irving stated that in an interview with Deutsche-Welle just two days ago, Dr. Lipstadt had stated that her lawyers “had set out to destabilize him” (direct quote from Irving) before the trial in an attempt to get him to toss in his hat. Then he produced the picture of the wreath that was sent to his daughter Josephine’s funeral service. The funeral directors (they had buried Lord Nelson so he knew they were good folk) called afterward and told him an expensive wreath had arrived and what did he want to do with it? He told to funeral directors to deliver it. It was huge, expensive, and made of white lilies. There was a card attached that implied that her death (she was disabled and died after a very long illness) was a “mercy killing.” It was signed by Philip Bouhler. He explained that Philip Bouhler had been the head of the euthanasia program in Germany that murdered disabled and undesirable people. Irving was visibly distressed, his voice rose and he shook the picture of the card as he read what it said to the audience. He said he had tracked down the florist and found that the clerk had written the card because the person who sent it said he had injured his wrist in a skiing accident and couldn’t write the card. He claims the florist shop turned out to be 100 yards from Dr. Lipstadt’s attorney’s office (Mishcon de Reya). To him that was proof that it had been sent by her attorneys to “destabilize him.” He mentioned the “destabilization” issue at least three times.
Irving then moved on to the general history of the action. Hecast himself in the role of the underdog who had no choice but to finally pursue and confront his long-time persecutors, the TEOTT, now spearheaded by Dr. Lipstadt. He also ran down Anthony Julius as just a lawyer out for money.
Irving noted how quickly Dr. Lipstadt had assembled massive financial resources. She found funding with Stephen Spielberg and a host Jewish financiers—one called Trevor Chinn who he called as “big as crook as Marc Rich.” He also mentioned a Maxwell Clark. (?) Irving was very angry at how much the expert witnesses had been paid and he insinuated that the defense did it on purpose just to ring up the bills to impossible heights. When Irving started discussing the costs of the trial they rose alarmingly over the course of the talk. In the beginning of the speech they started at $2 million, later in the speech they became $5 million, still later $7 million and in the last 15 minutes $12 million.
Irving seems to hate Richard Evans (one of the expert witnesses in the trial). Evans had disassembled Irving’s historiographical skills in his expert witness report. Irving described Evans’ performance in court with dripping contempt and stated that Evans lied when he claimed he was neutral on Irving. Irving pointed out that expert witnesses are supposed to make up their reports without being beholden to either side, but in this case they clearly were because of the amount of money they were paid. He described Professor Evans’ conduct in court as contemptuous of him and showed the audience how he stood with his hands in his pockets with his back turned to him.
Interestingly, he praised Robert Jan van Pelt as a fine gentleman, disliked the Judge (who he claimed had started writing the Judgment one month into the trial), and found Mr. Rampton to be very competent. He said he had the choice of hiring an attorney and trying to get him up to speed as an historian or having as historian (himself) as a lawyer. He claimed he was the only one who could understand the complexities. At that point, he mentioned how the judge praised him having a fine mind and as having performed as well as any attorney. He was plainly very pleased with this praise.
Irving described how Dr. Lipstadt’s side had four benches full of attorneys and helpers (40 or more) and he was on the other side with just one person.[DEL: Actually at tops we had about 20 people working on the case. Not a small number, but not 40 people. Of course, I have learned that it is best not to depend on Irving for accurate numbers.]
He claimed that everyday he worked into the wee hours (up until 3 am) preparing for the next day and was always behind. He claimed he didn’t even have a chance to read the expert witness reports and often went into court without having read the pages he was going to cover that day. (However, in the matter of the Evans Report, Irving posted that report on his website months in advance of the trial.) He claimed that he had help from around the world by email preparing his defense daily (from what he called the ‘antipodes’).
Irving said that in her book Dr. Lipstadt had not called him a racist or an antisemite but that these matters were part of the trial. He claimed that he was no a racist, just a patriot of the England of his father’s day.
Irving then moved on to Auschwitz. He said that he believed that some 200,000 people had died there, which is a higher figure than he usually admits. He said that the numbers of people murdered had Auschwitz had been lowered dramatically over the years by the Auschwitz Museum’s own authorities and they weren’t considered deniers. But someone like him who questioned anything about the trademarked Holocaust was an out and out denier. He went into detail about what the gas chambers really were—they were air raid shelters. He waved around pictures of pages of a German book that he said was current during the war years and which described the architectural standards for air raid shelters. He claimed that the gas tight doors (which are clearly ordered in the surviving primary documents) were simply an air raid shelter requirement as written right in that book; that the modified door swing (originally into the room but then changed to open out) was also a requirement; and that a peep hole was also required.
Then he made a sarcastic remark about the peep holes: “Why,” he asked, “would anyone want a peep hole in a door just to look in at dead bodies?” Everyone laughed. Irving insisted that there was no proof these buildings were gas chambers and reiterated that there was NOT ONE SINGLE PROOF OF EVIDENCE that they ever were. He recalled how he has stated time and again that if they could prove there were gas chambers he would have backed down and called it all off. All of these matters were dealt with at trial and the idea that they were air raid shelters was discredited.
Irving also mentioned the bombing of Dresden again as proof that the Allies had also committed wartime atrocities and insisted that the death toll was over 130,000. This is despite the fact that at trial the document he bases these figures on was clearly proved to be a forgery. The figure is probably 25,000 or so, which is bad enough. But despite all evidence to the contrary he continues to insist on higher death tolls.
Irving moved on to the aftermath of the trial. He spoke about Dr. Lipstadt’s vindictive attempt to keep his possessions from him which were taken in the bankruptcy. He complained that she wanted to keep from his all his original and valuable papers he had collected and which constituted his work product—the loss of which would be crippling.
[DEL: We only wanted those papers that were of some value. He owed me and my defense fund over a million dollars and we wanted to sell these papers to a library or archive in order to recoup some of our costs. Eventually, as I describe in the book, I gave up the fight because the costs were too high.]
Irving concluded by remarking that he was embattled but unbowed. He had endured all manner of calumnies at the hands of his enemies and he was still fighting. In the last five minutes, he got quite impassioned over his victimization. Then he did something surprising: in front of the C-Span cameras he announced straight out that the Jews had tried to destroy him but they had failed. Irving and most deniers never refer to their “tormenters” straight out; they use code words such as Traditional Enemies of the Truth. I was very surprised when he said it straight out in front of cameras. I think this might have been a slip of the tongue as he was getting a little carried away in the summary.
Irving wrapped up to enthusiastic applause. C-Span announced a 10 minute break and then questions.
I got the clear impression this was gathering was meant to be a triumphant return to the lair of the beast—complete with expensive champagne and catered food. It was to be a celebration of sorts. The low attendance was therefore disconcerting and disappointing.
