History on Trial reviewed in Jerusalem Post

History on Trial: My Day In Court With David Irving

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

UPI appear to have précised the NYT article. The story appears in India's New Kerala News. They got the headline right, too: C-Span's Holocaust denier piece protested

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

Here's the link to the article Prof. Lipstadt mentioned yesterday. The discussion there is interesting. One of the comments:

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

Here are some excerpts from the L.A. Times article that Prof. Lipstadt mentioned yesterday:

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.

One Line Says it All

From my sister:
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

It's been an unbelievable day. As you can see from an earlier post both the AP and UP picked up the story. I did a number of interviews, including one with the LA Times, which admitted that it was playing "catch up" with the New York Times. They may have been playing catch up, but they did a great interview. Haven't seen the story yet.

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

AP did a bylined article on the petition which first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. Many other media outlets throughout the US, some in Canada, and even in India have picked up this article!

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

The AJC have issued a press release on this; here is the full text of their letter to C-SPAN

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

As I mentioned earlier, the New York Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution have both published stories on this. Here are some excerpts. First the NYT:

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

A reader has forwarded the following excerpt from Irving's correspondence with C-SPAN:

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

The story broke in this morning's NYTimes and Atlanta Constitution. I will post the stories shortly. While I have made a point of not answering the comments, I can't resist pointing out to some of Irving's defenders that all the claims he is putting out to prove the Holocaust did not happen were proven in court to be total distortions, lies, and fabrications [the judge's words].

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.

Some thoughts on C-Span's statement to the press

Methinks that CSpan has been inundated with protests. Last week, when they told me that they were intending to put Irving on by himself if I refused to appear [where's the balance in that?], I said: "You will do great damage to C-Span." The producer, Amy Roach, said to me: "We don't have advertisers, so we are not subject to pressure." I quickly told her I was not talking about exherting pressure. I was talking about their credibility. Amy did not seemed worried and assured me that everyone with whom they spoke told them it was a great idea to air both me and Irving.

Statement from C-SPAN

C-Span Book TV has released the following statement to the media. It was sent to me by a journalist with the Atlanta Constitution

"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

As the comment from David Thompson noted, other bloggers are weighing in on this. Author Roger L. Simon writes:

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

C-SPAN on Holocaust Denier

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

People have asked for an update. I have watched and been quite amazed by the reaction. While Jewish groups and individuals have weighed in strongly, my academic colleagues have also made their voices heard. The David Wyman Institute has circulated a petition to be signed by historians and academics [see previous post] and, as of this morning, I am told it has well over 200 signitures.

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.

Update on CSpan, the Harvard presentation, and splitting hairs

It's late and I have just returned from the Harvard presentation. CSpan did not show up but they did call Alan Dershowitz last night to try to convince him that he, as a great supporter of the First Amendment and free press, could not possibly support me in my decision to keep them out of the Harvard presentation. Dershowitz said he fully supported me.

He asked if they would put a slavery denier on. They said no. Why then, he asked, were they putting on a Holocaust denier. They said they were not putting Irving on to talk about Holocaust denial. He was to speak about the trial. [This is slipping hairs in the extreme, given that the trial was about Holocaust denial.]

But the story gets even worse. CSpan seemed completely unaware that at his talk in Atlanta -- at which they had a camera crew filming -- Irving engaged in repeated Holocaust denial. For example, he denied that gas chambers could have been gas chambers to kill humans. When he did his audience laughed appreciatively.

Obviously CSpan has not even screened Irving's presentation, they very presentation they are fighting so hard to broadcast.

In any case, the Harvard presentation went very well. Dershowitz was exceptionally complimentary of my work and my stance. The questions were first rate. The crowd a good size. It would have been a perfect CSpan event.... But, that was not to be.

Good night

Wyman Institute Condemns C-Span Broadcast of Holocaust-Denier

PHILADELPHIA, March 15 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies today sent the following letter to C-SPAN regarding the cable television channel's plan to broadcast a lecture by Holocaust-denier David Irving:

March 15, 2005

Connie Doebele, Executive Producer, Book TV, C-SPAN 2 or booktv@c-span.org

Dear Ms. Doebele:

On behalf of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, I am writing to express our opposition to your reported decision to broadcast a lecture by Holocaust-denier David Irving, to "balance" your intended broadcast of a lecture by Holocaust historian Prof. Deborah Lipstadt.

We support Prof. Lipstadt's refusal to participate in this project. Falsifiers of history cannot "balance" historians. Falsehoods cannot "balance" the truth. Justice Charles Gray of the British Royal High Court of Justice, in his verdict on April 11, 2000 dismissing Irving's libel suit against Prof. Lipstadt, concluded that Irving "is antisemitic and racist" and ruled: "Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."

Just a few weeks ago, we concluded Black History Month. Presumably C-SPAN did not consider broadcasting a program about Black history that would be "balanced" by a program featuring someone denying that African-Americans were enslaved. C-SPAN should not broadcast statements that it knows to be false, nor provide a platform for falsifiers of history, whether about the Holocaust, African-American history, or any other subject.

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies recently issued its second annual report on Holocaust-denial around the world. It found that Holocaust-denial is a real and growing problem, and continues to be actively promoted in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere, and in some cases enjoys government sponsorship. 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.

We strongly urge you to cancel your planned broadcast of the Irving lecture, and to proceed with your original plan to broadcast Prof. Lipstadt's forthcoming lecture at Harvard University.

Cordially,

Rafael Medoff, Ph.D.

Director, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies

------

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, located on the campus of Gratz College (near Philadelphia), is a research and education institute focusing on America's response to the Holocaust. It is named in honor of the eminent historian and author of the 1984 best-seller The Abandonment of the Jews, the most important and influential book concerning the U.S. response to the Nazi genocide.

The Institute's Advisory Committee includes Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, Members of Congress, and other luminaries.

The Institute's Academic Council includes more than 50 leading professors of the Holocaust, American history, and Jewish history.

The Institute's Arts & Letters Council, chaired by Cynthia Ozick, includes prominent artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers.

(A complete list is available upon request.)

© 2005 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

Balance of the Absurd

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35346-2005Mar14.html

C-SPAN's Balance of the Absurd

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, March 15, 2005; Page A23

You will not be seeing Deborah Lipstadt on C-SPAN. The Holocaust scholar at Emory University has a new book out ("History on Trial"), and an upcoming lecture of hers at Harvard was scheduled to be televised on the public affairs cable outlet. The book is about a libel case brought against her in Britain by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, trivializer and prevaricator who is, by solemn ruling of the very court that heard his lawsuit, "anti-Semitic and racist." No matter. C-SPAN wanted Irving to "balance" Lipstadt.

The word balance is not in quotes for emphasis. It was invoked repeatedly by C-SPAN producers who seemed convinced that they had chosen the most noble of all journalistic causes: fairness. "We want to balance it [Lipstadt's lecture] by covering him," said Amy Roach, a producer for C-SPAN's Book TV. Her boss, Connie Doebele, put it another way. "You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN," she told me. "We work very, very hard at this. We ask ourselves, 'Is there an opposing view of this?' "

As luck would have it, there was. To Lipstadt's statements about the Holocaust, there was Irving's rebuttal that it never happened—no systematic killing of Jews, no Final Solution and, while many people died at Auschwitz of disease and the occasional act of brutality, there were no gas chambers there. "More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz," Irving once said.

For obvious reasons, Lipstadt cited Irving in her 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust," which was also published in Britain. Irving sued her for libel. Under Britain's libel laws, Lipstadt had to prove the truth of what she wrote, which, after a lengthy trial, she did in spades. Her lawyer's opening statement—"My Lord, Mr. Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar."—ultimately became the judgment of the court itself. In matters of intellectual integrity, Irving is an underachiever.

Once, this was not all that apparent. By dint of maniacal industry, Irving had turned himself into an admired writer on Nazi Germany. He mined the archives for material that others appeared to have overlooked. Some of it was genuine; some of it was false. Increasingly, though, his books gave off the whiff of anti-Semitism and a certain admiration of Hitler. When Richard J. Evans, a Cambridge University historian (and one of Lipstadt's expert witnesses), carefully examined Irving's work, he found it a stew of misrepresentations, falsifications and outright quackery. Irving was authoritatively exposed: a propagandist hiding behind seemingly scholarly footnotes.

This is the man C-SPAN turned to for "balance." It told Lipstadt that since it was going to air her lecture, it would do one of Irving's, too. As luck would have it, he was appearing March 12 at the Landmark Diner in Atlanta. C-SPAN was there for this momentous event—although Irving's advance warning that cameras would be present apparently held down attendance. (His people seem to prefer anonymity—or, in the old days, sheets.) Lipstadt was in effect being told that if she wanted to promote her book on C-SPAN (an important venue) she would also have to promote Irving. If she was to get a TV audience, then so would he.

C-SPAN's cockeyed version of fairness—it told Lipstadt that it had bent over backward to ensure its coverage of the presidential election was fair and balanced—is so mindless that I thought for a moment its producers and I could not be talking about the same thing. This is the "Crossfire" mentality reduced to absurdity, if that's possible. For a book on the evils of slavery, would it counter with someone who thinks it was a benign institution? Why does it feel there is another side to the Holocaust or to Irving's assertion that he was libeled? He was not. He was described to a T.

In the end, Lipstadt had to choose between promoting her own book—a terrific read, by the way—and giving Irving the audience of his dreams and a status equal to her own. C-SPAN said it was only seeking fairness, but it was asking Lipstadt to balance truth with a lie or history with fiction. On this occasion, at least, Irving did what he could not do with his libel suit: silence Lipstadt. He may still appear on C-SPAN, but Lipstadt will not—a victory for "balance" that only the truly unbalanced could applaud.

cohenr@washpost.com

Lipstadt interviewed by The Book Guys

3-10-05-

Deborah Lipstadt discusses history, Holocaust denial, British vs. US libel law and David Irving, convicted denier and liar ...

Lipstadt is interviewed by Allan Stypeck and Mike Cuthbert, "The Book Guys".

http://www.bookguys.com/archives.htm

(Scroll down the page to item #0510)

3/16 Lipstadt and Alan Dershowitz at Harvard Hillel

"History on Trial" with Deborah Lipstadt and Alan Dershowitz

7 p.m.

Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, is the author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory and a new book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving [Ecco 2005]. The book is Lipstadt's account of the 2000 trial that attracted international attention in which she mounted a defense against Holocaust denier, David Irving, who sued her for libel for calling him a denier. Irving suffered a resounding loss. Alan Dershowitz, who wrote the afterword to the book, will respond to Lipstadt.

Harvard Hillel, 52 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge

Lipstadt presentation at UTD

The UTD Mercury - News
Issue: 2/14/05

Lipstadt retells legal struggle with 'Holocaust denier' Irving

By Tahir Mahmood

Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt recounted her legal battle with historian David Irving to a full audience in the Conference Center auditorium Feb. 6.

The Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Lipstadt's legal troubles began when she labeled Irving a "Holocaust denier" in her 1993 book "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." Irving sued her for libel when the book was published in England, commencing a long five-year legal fight in the courtroom, described in Lipstadt's new book "History on Trial: My Day in Court with Holocaust Denier David Irving."

Lipstadt's lecture was part of the Burton E. Einspruch Holocaust Lecture series, sponsored by the Holocaust Studies Program at UTD.

Lipstadt began the lecture with comic flair by turning off her cell phone on stage.

She then described how her legal battles with Irving ensued after she described Irving's written histories as mostly right-wing and sympathetic to Nazi Germany.

When Irving filed suit in England, Lipstadt refused to settle the suit and apologize.

"How could I apologize to him?" Lipstadt said. "In England, I had to prove that what I wrote was not libel. I wanted a trial that proved Lipstadt was right when she called David Irving a denier."

Lipstadt said she assembled a "Dream Team of historians" to testify on her behalf.

"Things reversed to make him look like he was on the defensive," she said.

Approximately 3,000 pages of evidence were presented to support her case. In one of his diaries, Lipstadt said he wrote God makes people of another race of a different species, and he referred to himself as a "baby Aryan."

The judge found in Lipstadt's favor.

"Let me close by sharing with you the verdict, which was a slam dunk," Lipstadt said. "The judge called Irving fallacious, absurd, undeniably racist and an anti-Semitic racist.

Many faculty and students in the audience responded positively to Lipstadt's lecture.

"She's absolutely fantastic," said Vincent Cirillo, professor of biology at UTD. "I am glad she had the courage to do this. She is a scholar in the Temple Shalom in Dallas, where she conducts religious services like closing of the Sabbath."

Zsuzsanna Ozsvath, director of the Holocaust Studies Program and literary studies professor at UTD, shared in the enthusiastic response at the end of the lecture.

"She is capable of melding together the intellectual side of historical research with deeply emotional understanding," Ozsvath said.

Some students were so interested they said they plan to read her new book.

"Professor Deborah Lipstadt gave an extraordinary lecture and it was very informative," said Melody Sadjadi, a doctoral student in literary studies. "I look forward to reading her new book."

Lipstadt interviewed in DW-World (Deutsche Welle)

10.03.2005

Dealing a Blow to Holocaust Deniers

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1513920,00.html

Deborah Lipstadt never took the stand during the landmark libel case she won against British Holocaust denier David Irving. Now, five years on, the US historian tells the story of her six-year legal battle in a new book.

In "History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving," Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt recounts her legal battle with David Irving, the widely-read World War II writer, and a man she called "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial" in her acclaimed 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." Following the book's publication, Irving accused Lipstadt of damaging his reputation as a historian. But by the end of the ensuing libel trial -- in which Irving defended himself -- his reputation was thoroughly skewered. Justice Charles Gray condemned Irving, saying that he had "persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence," and called him an "active Holocaust denier…anti-Semitic and racist." While in Berlin to present her latest book, Lipstadt spoke about her court victory in a DW-WORLD interview.

DW-WORLD: Six years of your life, a lot of effort, expense and emotion went into this libel case brought against you by David Irving (photo). Was it worth it?

Deborah Lipstadt: I think it was. First of all, I had no choice. British libel law places the onus on the defendant, so that you're essentially, from an American perspective, guilty until proven innocent. If I hadn't fought, he would've won by default. He could have said that his version of the Holocaust -- which is that there was no central program to kill the Jews, no Hitler involvement, no gas chambers and in which the survivors are all liars and psychopaths -- was telling the truth. If you look back now, any time David Irving is mentioned, his name is followed by some version of the adjectives "Holocaust denier," "racist" or "anti-Semite." He's no longer reviewed in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, or the Times Literary Supplement, for example, so I think in that sense it was "worth it."

A lot of people might be tempted to label Holocaust deniers as extremists that don't need to be taken seriously. Your trial showed that this isn't the case, as Irving was well-respected in some circles. How prevalent is the threat posed to history by Holocaust deniers now?

It's a little hard to judge because with the Internet, geographical borders become amorphous or porous. I don't think the threat is really prevalent. I think the deniers have been dealt a very serious blow. The main source for Holocaust denial today is in the Arab world, where it is very prevalent, and is almost gross in its lack of sophistication. But I don't think in Europe it's a major issue, because essentially, as a result of the trial, we laid waste to virtually every Holocaust denial argument as they stood through 2001/2002.

In Germany though, there is a debate going on, not about outright denial, perhaps, but about revisionism as we saw recently with the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden. In the run-up to that anniversary, the far-right NPD party tried to cast that event as a "bombing Holocaust" against Germans. Are you at all worried about the situation in Germany?

I am worried, not about denial, but about relativism. I'm worried about things like the Flick collection being brought to Berlin, I'm worried about Dresden. Ironically, it's David Irving who is responsible for the feeling that Dresden was such a crime, because his book was one of the first books on the topic early in the 1960s. In the trial, we found that he tremendously exaggerated the number of victims. There were even Germans who were writing to him back then, trying to correct him and saying that his numbers were way out of whack. He just ignored their comments. Dresden was a tragedy. It's a tragedy anytime people die, particularly civilians in a war, but inflating the horror of it was in order to make what I call immoral equivalencies. It was in order for him to say, "Well yes, maybe 80,000 people died at Auschwitz from war-related privations" -- which is not true, they were murdered and it was more than 80,000 -- "but a quarter of a million people died in one day and one night of bombing in Dresden, now that's a real tragedy."

David Irving defended himself in court, so you heard plenty from him. You did not take the stand -- why was that?

First of all, I wasn't obligated to take the stand. I offered to. I continuously told my lawyers that I was more than willing to take the stand, that I could hold my own against this guy. But the standard operating procedure in libel trials is not to put the author on the stand. The author is being sued for what they wrote. So my book was at issue. We had to prove that what I wrote in my book was correct, and there was nothing I could add by taking the stand. Though I do have to say that for me, someone for whom keeping quiet is an unnatural act, it was terribly difficult to restrain myself and listen to a man who was spewing anti-Semitism and racism.

That's where your latest book comes in.

The book is my voice at long last coming out, and it really follows three strands. It follows our legal strategy, the historical issues -- how does this man twist the truth, how does he play with the documents, and so on -- and the third strand is the personal. There was a very heavy personal element, first of all in terms of the disruption to my life, but that's the least of it. The most striking personal element was the encounter with survivors and children of survivors and veterans. People would stop me as I walked into the courtroom in the morning and put pieces of paper in my hand with lists of victims' names, and they would say, this is my evidence. There was a day when Irving was trying to argue that the Allies were responsible for the people who were found in the concentration camps in Germany who looked like cadavers at the end of the war, because the Allies had bombed the pharmaceuticals factories and the infrastructure so the Germans couldn't get food and medicine to the camps. At the end of that day, an older man walked up to me. He had a cane, but he still had a sort of military bearing, very ramrod straight. He said, "Madam, I was in the British forces that liberated the camps. It's awful to hear that man blame it on us. Get the bastard, madam, get the bastard."

Deanne Corbett interviewed Deborah Lipstadt

History on Trial reviewed in The Columbus Dispatch

Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)

March 6, 2005

NONFICTION HISTORY ON TRIAL

LIBEL BATTLE UNCOVERS MISSTEPS OF HISTORIAN

Margaret Quamme

In the fall of 1995, Deborah Lipstadt, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta and author of Denying the Holocaust , received a letter informing her that she had been threatened with libel for a few paragraphs she had written in that book about British historian David Irving.

She tossed the letter onto a pile on her desk, and a few weeks later, asked a research assistant to spend a little time tracing the sources of her arguments and refuting Irving's claims.

But the matter didn't end there.

By January 2000, Lipstadt was in London for the start of a 10-week libel trial. History on Trial reconstructs the events of that trial and of the months and years that led up to it.

Throughout the trial, her lawyers would not allow Lipstadt, who describes herself as "feisty and combative," to testify. Hard though it was for her to be "a spectator—observing but not participating—in a drama where my work and reputation were on the line," she mostly managed to keep her mouth shut and devoted her energy to taking copious notes on the trial, which she brings to vivid life in the book.

Lipstadt's defense—she was eventually acquitted—ended up costing more than $1 million. Her publisher contributed to her defense fund, and her university helped, but she was still left with an overwhelming financial burden.

One of the first individuals to offer help was Les Wexner, with whose Wexner Heritage Foundation Lipstadt was involved. He also motivated other people to contribute to the defense fund.

History on Trial is a compelling introduction to the British legal system, where the burden of proof is on the defendant. To clear her name, Lipstadt's legal team had to prove that "Irving had lied about the Holocaust and had done so out of anti-Semitic motives."

Although she confesses that before the trial most of her legal knowledge "was gleaned from television's Law & Order ," Lipstadt caught on fast, and she clearly defines the differences between British and American courts.

She paints thumbnail sketches of many of the individuals who entered into the courtroom drama, but the most memorable are the antagonists, Lipstadt's barrister, Richard Rampton, and Irving, who represented himself in court.

The contrast between the sharp but subdued Rampton, who occasionally appears to be napping, and the theatrical Irving, who elicits a hummed Twilight Zone theme from a member of the court audience when he addresses the judge as "mein Fuhrer," engages the reader.

But beneath the courtroom theatrics lies a deeper drama: the battle for the truth about a period of history receding into the past as those who experienced it dwindle in number.

Lipstadt's lawyers pointed out how in his books, Irving omitted a word here, mistranslated another there, decided that a subject would "bore" his readers and slipped changes into successive versions.

Himmler's diary, for example, records that Hitler asked that one trainload of Jews not be deported. Irving repeatedly translated the term as trainloads and used the passage as evidence that Hitler had forbidden all deportation of Jews.

In quoting a German general about Hitler's involvement in the execution of 5,000 Jews in Riga, Latvia, Irving cut the testimony in half: What Irving had done was include the first half of Hitler's orders that the mass shootings "must stop"—but he omitted the second half of the orders, which instructed that the executions be carried out more discreetly.

None of these transgressions is earth-shattering, but the cumulative effect is to erase the experience of millions of people.

3/20 Lipstadt at Museum of Jewish Heritage, Battery Park, NYC

Sunday, March 20, 2005, 2:30 P.M.

History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving
With Professor Deborah Lipstadt, Emory University

Deborah Lipstadt discusses her six-year legal battle with Holocaust denier David Irving, who sued her for libel in Britain. Though Lipstadt's courtroom victory exposed in meticulous detail how deniers pervert and distort the historical record, Irving's ideas have paved the way for the emergence of increasingly vocal Holocaust denial.

Free with suggested donation Advance reservations recommended

Phone: Call 1.646.437.4202

In Person: Visit the Museum Box Office at 36 Battery Place, Battery Park City, New York.

Museum of Jewish Heritage
A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
36 Battery PlaceNew York, NY 10280

General Information1.646.437.4200

History on Trial reviewed in Baltimore Sun

Editor's Choice

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/booksmags/bal-bk.editors06mar06,1,5639899.story?coll=bal-society-utility&ctrack=1&cset=true

Holocaust denier's day in court has chilling implication

By Michael Ollove

Sun Book Editor

March 6, 2005

History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving

By Deborah E. Lipstadt. Ecco, 346 pages. $25.95.

I have not been inclined to take Holocaust deniers seriously. I've tended to consign them to the category of crackpots, anti-Semites and extremists - revolting, certainly, but, I thought, so fringe as to be barely tethered to this Earth. Better, I told myself, to focus my worrying on those who seemed to represent a more imminent threat.

Nowadays, I'm not so sure. Reality seems to be losing its luster. Not long before the November election, 40 percent of Americans still believed Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. Even more surprising, creationists have elbowed their way back into public life. Reborn as techno-hip "Intelligent Designers," they are needling public schools into granting equivalency between notions of evidence and belief. Is the Age of Reason something to be nostalgic about?

The current subversion of fact by ideology makes History on Trial, historian Deborah Lipstadt's account of her legal torment during the late 1990's at the hands of the notorious Holocaust denier David Irving, especially resonant. Whether the Holocaust occurred would not strike most civilized people as worthy of reasonable conversation, let alone something that would occupy a British court at the dawn of the 21st century.

The case was prompted by the 1993 publication of Lipstadt's first book, a scholarly study of Holocaust denial. In it, Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University, asserted that Irving's pronouncements about the Holocaust (he said it didn't happen) and Hitler (if it did happen Der Fuhrer knew nothing about it), were built on willful distortions, crass manipulations of evidence, and anti-Semitism. Nothing unusual there for a Holocaust denier. But, Lipstadt observed in that book, because Irving had also written some well-regarded histories of World War II, he was accorded a measure of credibility, which, in her view, made Irving the most dangerous Holocaust denier of all.

Irving took umbrage (although it is not clear why, given his long outspokenness on the subject), and he sued Lipstadt for defamation in his native Great Britain. History on Trial is Lipstadt's chronicle of her long ordeal to defend herself against this bizarre, preening, repugnant character.

At first blush, Irving's suit struck many, including Lipstadt, as preposterous. By then, Irving was already a notorious figure who once spouted to an audience that "more women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz," who dismissed the Holocaust as a Hollywood legend, who taunted survivors with an obscene acronym and accused them of cashing in.

Yet, not only did Irving's case progress, but in a reflexive even-handedness, some media reports sized it up as battle between differing views of history. Certain scholars (among them, the esteemed military historian Sir John Keegan) even criticized Lipstadt, complaining she was trying to prevent Irving from merely expressing a contrary, if outlandish version of history (ignoring that it was Irving who had dragged Lipstadt into court, not vice versa).

But the case was not about historic interpretation at all; it ultimately concerned standards of historic research - and the cynical abuses thereof. Irving was no historian; he was a charlatan, a deceiver, a liar who used the veneer of scholarship to propagate his anti-Semitic ideology.

The bulk of History is given over to Lipstadt's rendering of the three-month trial in 2000. Not surprisingly, she is a sympathetic, mostly appealing heroine, even if she demonstrates the self-righteousness that lawsuits inevitably accentuate in their participants.

Despite Lipstadt's understandable apprehension about what was at risk (even though many sympathizers stepped forward to fill a defense fund on her behalf), the showdown is hardly the tension-filled drama that the first third of her book promises. It's not just that Irving, who insisted on representing himself, is a clownish presence in the courtroom, emerging neither as a heavyweight of legal argument or a compelling inquisitor. In truth, once the trial begins, Lipstadt's legal team and its impressive historian witnesses slice through his claims like thoroughbreds through the fog.

The perverse fascination in History lies in seeing the tricks of the contortionist revealed, the lengths to which a pernicious man will go to subvert truth. Using faulty translations and dubious testimony (including those from the Nazi perpetrators), minimizing evidence contrary to his purposes and misstating facts and dates (even after learning of their fallacy), Irving stooped to any means to refute the existence of the Holocaust and to distance poor, misunderstood Adolph Hitler from it.

How much succor scoundrels like Irving have given to ever-strengthening neo-Nazi movements (with whom he freely associated, both here and in Europe) and to extremists in the Muslim world, can only be imagined and feared. The outcome of the trial was a matter of surpassing concern (not least of all to Holocaust survivors, understandably anxious about that coming day when they will no longer be here to bear witness). But no matter what the result, History offers less cause for optimism than its plucky author may have intended. The case preoccupied and diverted Lipstadt for nearly six years at a cost of well over $1 million, all to establish what might have been considered evident in the first place. One can't help fretting about what happens when lesser truths come under assault.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

Review of History on Trial in Fulton County Daily Report

Monday, February 28, 2005

A Tale of Fighting Holocaust Denial

Steven H. Pollak
spollak@amlaw.com

At one point, a prominent Jewish lawyer in London approached Emory University professor Deborah E. Lipstadt and urged her to settle the libel case brought by a powerful author who denies the Holocaust ever happened.

Lipstadt, who recounts the incident in her new book “History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving,” began mulling over the absurd calculations of such a settlement: Would she ask the plaintiff to accept four million Jews killed? Three million? One set of gas chambers? Two?

Before she could think of a response, her attorney, Anthony Julius of Mishcon de Reya in London, stepped in and said, “We will not negotiate with an anti-Semite on historical truth.”

Lipstadt then did something she rarely does: She stayed quiet.

“I said nothing but felt exceptionally well-represented,” Lipstadt wrote.

Lipstadt, the Dorot professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of the Rabbi Donald Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University, has just published a chronicle of her six-year legal battle with David Irving. A well-known British writer of books on the Third Reich and World War II, Irving routinely says things such as “more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz.”

The author of more than 20 history books on WWII, Irving became notorious for his assertion that the Holocaust never happened. Such a claim might have been dismissed without attracting attention outside extremist circles, except for Irving’s reputation as a popular historian. Given Irving’s high profile as an author and historian, Lipstadt felt compelled as a scholar to include his dubious claims in her 1993 book, “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.”

Irving responded by suing Lipstadt for libel, claiming the book undermined his professional reputation. Though Lipstadt had to take the suit seriously because of the nature of British libel law, it also gave her the opportunity to debunk the theories of Holocaust revisionists in a public forum.

Irving’s libel case against Lipstadt and her British publisher, Penguin Books, culminated in 2000 with a three-month bench trial and a ruling for Lipstadt in London’s High Court of Justice. The litigation finally concluded in July 2004, when the Emory professor decided not to continue efforts to recover her legal expenses.

At trial, Lipstadt and her legal team delivered a stunning blow to Irving’s reputation. In a decision that made front-page news on both sides of the Atlantic, Judge Charles Gray said it was “incontrovertible that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier” and went on to call the plaintiff a “racist” and an “anti-Semite.”

No Friendly Competition

The new book, Lipstadt’s third, is more than a retelling of the case. It brings the trial to life by weaving personal insight and observations with a meticulous recounting of the trial and explanation of legal strategy.

In one aside, Lipstadt described how at the end of the trial when the judge finished reading the stinging decision, Irving stood, stretched out his hand to opposing counsel and said, “Well done, well done.”

It was “as if he had just been bested in a rugby match,” Lipstadt wrote.

The trial, however, was no friendly competition.

In the 1993 book at issue, Lipstadt described Irving as a “dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial” and said he had been “accused of skewing documents and misrepresenting data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions, particularly those that exonerate Hitler.” She also said Irving frequently associated with anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and other extremists.

Irving, who represented himself at trial, claimed the 1993 book and subsequent remarks by Lipstadt in the press ruined his reputation and caused publishers to retreat from book deals. In particular, Irving wanted to hold Lipstadt responsible for St. Martin’s Press’ backing away from a contract in 1996 to publish his biography of Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels.

In an e-mail to the Daily Report, Irving said he did not wish to comment on Lipstadt’s latest book because he had not read it.

“I have no real comment on the Lipstadt book, and it would be impertinent of me to offer any as I have not read it and cannot do so until it arrives in the UK, when no doubt I and others in this jurisdiction will scrutinise it most closely,” he wrote.

British vs. American

Unlike the American system, British libel law places the onus of proof on the defendant—in this case, Lipstadt.

Therefore, once Irving initiated the suit, the Emory professor had to demonstrate that her published words were true. Lipstadt said the other legal defenses—that Irving misinterpreted her words or that they were not defamatory—were not options. After all, she agreed that Irving had not misinterpreted her allegation that he was a “denier, Hitler partisan and right-wing ideologue.”

In another contrast to American law, British courts do not distinguish between private and public figures.

On these shores, Irving probably would have been considered a public figure and therefore would have had to prove not only that Lipstadt’s words were false but also that her actions involved “actual malice” as discussed in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).

Julius, who served as the architect of Lipstadt’s defense, was already known to much of the British public as Princess Diana’s lawyer. Lipstadt knew of Julius through his book on anti-Semitism in T.S. Eliot’s writings. (The book was a dissertation for a doctoral degree in literary theory Julius earned while working full-time as a lawyer.) James Libson, another Mishcon litigator, assisted Julius in the case.

Lipstadt and her lawyers opted for what was described in the book as the “atom bomb defense” of British libel law: They would claim that Lipstadt was justified in what she wrote because “the words at issue were true, even if they were defamatory.”

In yet another distinction from the American system, the British courts do not grant audiences to solicitors such as Julius and Libson except under rare circumstances. Instead, solicitors must rely on a barrister to present their case to the judge.

For their voice in the courtroom, Lipstadt’s team chose Richard Rampton, an Oxford educated barrister whose earlier work earned him the honored title of Queen’s Counsel.

Rampton also has the distinction of being the barrister who argued the longest civil trial in English legal history (313 days in court over about three years). In that case, Rampton represented McDonald’s in its libel suit against two amateur activists who had been distributing pamphlets portraying the restaurant chain as an enemy of the environment, a promoter of unhealthy lifestyles and a greedy capitalist enterprise.

A pair of Atlanta attorneys appear briefly in “History on Trial”: Kilpatrick Stockton’s Joseph M. Beck helped Lipstadt ensure that she complied with discovery, and Greenberg Traurig’s David N. Minkin discussed the implication of Penguin UK’s counsel inquiring about the indemnification clause of the contract Lipstadt signed with the book’s American publisher.

“When I told my lawyer, David Minkin, that Penguin was asking about the indemnification clause, his eyes opened wide and face grew taut,” Lipstadt wrote. “He seemed to be trying to mask his concerns, but the tension in his voice came through clearly as he explained that Penguin might be contemplating shifting the financial burden of the case to my shoulders.”

To Lipstadt’s relief, Penguin stood by her.

Denying Death

The defense team marshaled an array of experts to prove that Irving manipulated, misrepresented and mistranslated works from a variety of sources—all in an unsuccessful bid to disprove the Holocaust.

On one point—the existence of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau—Irving remained firm in his belief that no one was gassed to death in the now-destroyed rooms. He suggested on the witness stand that the gas chamber at Birkenau had been a morgue where the Nazis used Zyklon B to delouse corpses.

But as Rampton grilled him in court and shot holes in that theory, Irving proposed that the room also could have been an air raid shelter for SS guards.

“Now it is an air raid shelter, is it?” Rampton asked.

The barrister then demanded to know why the Nazis would build a bomb shelter several miles from the SS guards’ barracks. According to Lipstadt, the distance is two miles.

“If this is for the SS, this air raid shelter, it is a terribly long way from the SS barracks, is it not?” Rampton asked. “They would all be dead before they ever got there if there was a bombing raid. Have you thought about that?”

Irving stood by his claims, even after the defense team presented reams of other gas-chamber evidence, including accounts from death-camp inmates and SS guards, architectural blueprints, aerial photos and corroborating post-war sketches done by an inmate. The defense also found numerous instances where Irving’s footnotes and sources did not confirm the things he wrote and said.

Why did Irving appear eager to twist the facts? Lipstadt and her legal team pointed to his political affiliations with extremists and said he used his writing to further those views.

Although Irving discounted his association with extremists, his affinity for Nazis came through when he addressed the judge as “mein Fuhrer” during closing arguments.

In his e-mail to the Daily Report, Irving was unrepentant.

“I am not a whinger, and I find this loud and endless whining about The Holocaust and its ‘survivors’ (i.e. people to whom relatively little happened, in comparison with, say, the survivors of Dresden, Hiroshima, or Coventry, or of Iwo Jima for that matter) unattractive; no, not a whinger,” he wrote, using an informal British term for “whiner.” “I am a fighter, and I shall fight on,” he added.

The legal drama in “History on Trial” was alternately comical, sad, absurd and compelling. However, one of the book’s more pointed lawyer moments came not in the courtroom, but at a lunch in Rampton’s office during the second week of the trial.

As the legal team munched on crustless white bread, egg salad and salmon sandwiches, Lipstadt gained insight into a life in the law when she told Rampton about a young paralegal who earlier said she felt like she was “making a difference” at the start of her legal career by working on this case. After the trial, the paralegal told Lipstadt, commercial cases will seem so petty.

Rampton, who had been nursing a glass of French Burgundy, eyed Lipstadt with a quizzical look and said, “But Deborah, that’s true for all of us.”

Little kids ask David Irving to teach them about the Holocaust

I was going through some old emails and found that about two years ago someone had sent me to Irving's website to see how a 13 year old American girl had turned to him with questions about the Holocaust. I had recently been asked whether I thought deniers were really a danger. They have failed miserably at convincing many people of their views. [More people believe Elvis is alive than believe the Holocaust did not happen.] However, they continue to ply their wares, motivated as they are, or so it seems to me, by hatred, antisemitism, and philo-Nazism.

For Irving as teacher of 13 year olds see:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/Auschwitz/Melanie040503.html

Daily News Tribune on Lipstadt Presentation

Brandeis grad returns to tell tale of rebuffing 'Holocaust denier'

http://www.dailynewstribune.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=51634

By Mark Benson / Daily News Correspondent

Thursday, March 3, 2005

WALTHAM -- Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar, enthralled the audience yesterday inside Brandeis University's Shapiro Campus Center with her clear arguments and passionate voice stating that the horrors of World War II were real and worth remembering.
"History can be interpreted. We can debate the start of World War II and what caused it, but not whether it existed. World War II happened," said Lipstadt. She is a 1976 Brandeis doctorate degree recipient who was invited to give the keynote speech for Truth at Stake, a conference sponsored by the Fisher-Bernstein Institute for Jewish Philanthropy and Leadership.
"The Holocaust deniers want the debate to be about two versions of history. It isn't," continued Lipstadt, who spoke about her successful defense against libel charges by David Irving, a British military historian who took action against Lipstadt for labeling him a "Holocaust denier." "This is about truth and lies, not about versions of history."
Lipstadt's defense of historical truth began years before the libel trial. In 1993, Lipstadt deconstructed Irving's claims about the "Legend of the Holocaust" in her book, "Denying the Holocaust."
Audience members lined up to ask Lipstadt to sign copies of her 2005 memoir, "History on Trial," her first-hand account of her experiences with Irving and the libel suit.
"You can't fight every battle, but there are some battles you can't walk away from," said Lipstadt to Brandeis student Stuart Klammer as she wrote him a personal note on the inside cover of his copy of "History on Trial."
Dorit Ingber, a Brandeis student involved in running the Truth at Stake conference, asked Lipstadt to sign her conference T-shirt.
Lipstadt laughed, then agreed to do it.
"I feel like a rock star!" said Lipstadt, a popular professor at Atlanta's Emory University.
During Lipstadt's hour-long speech yesterday, she cited historical inaccuracies Irving made, including Irving's characterization that in mid-1943, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler took action against Jews concentrated in Budapest, Hungary, because 50,000 Jews in a Warsaw, Poland, ghetto had just staged an uprising against Nazi rule.
"The concern Irving attributes to Hitler about Jews in Budapest and its connection to the Jewish uprising in Warsaw is odd, since the uprising hadn't happened yet," Lipstadt said.
During her libel trial, Lipstadt never said a word. On the advice of counsel, Lipstadt did not testify on her own behalf, nor did she speak to the media.
"For me, not talking is an unnatural act. I love to talk," said Lipstadt, drawing laughter from the audience in the first floor foyer of Shapiro, as Antony Polonsky, Brandeis professor of Holocaust studies, stood by her side. "I begged them to let me talk."
Yet, by deciding not to settle Irving's suit, Lipstadt put her scholarship to the test in a court hearing, confident she would be vindicated.
She was. Judge Charles Gray validated Lipstadt's right to call Irving a Holocaust denier, stating that "no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt" that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, given the consistency of the voluminous information in records and eyewitness accounts available to scholars today.
"She is gutsy in the fact that in this particular episode in her life, she stood up for the truth, which is why she is one of our profiles in leadership," said Amy Sales, Leadership Institute director and an organizer of yesterday's conference.
"There are people around the world who don't believe there was a Holocaust, that six million people did die," said Masha Lokshin of the Brandeis Center for Modern Jewish Studies, a conference co-sponsor.
In a spirit of open inquiry, Lipstadt still invited the audience to look at Irving's side.
"You can go to his Web site to read his arguments, but if you click a particular button, you'll donate (to his cause), so be careful," Lipstadt said, smiling.
Later in her speech, Lipstadt said historians have refuted all arguments by Holocaust deniers up to the year 2001, but this work continues.
"If David Irving had won, then my mother would have been a victim a second time," Lipstadt read from a letter she got from the daughter of an Auschwitz victim after Lipstadt won her libel case.
"Taking care of the dead is the most genuine act of loving kindness," Lipstadt said.
Lipstadt's Web log is located at www.lipstadt.blogspot.com.

Emory Wheel on Lipstadt Presentation

http://www.emorywheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/25/421e04f24cee0

Prof confronts case with Holocaust denier

By Jessica Rudish
Contributing Writer
The Emory Wheel

February 25, 2005

Five years after defending herself against a libel suit by British Holocaust denier David Irving, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies Deborah Lipstadt used sarcasm and jokes to elicit laughter as she recalled the experience.

Lipstadt published her latest book on Holocaust denial earlier this month.

History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving focuses not on the history of Jews in World War II, as did her last scholarly work, but on her own personal history in a battle to air the truth.

Speaking to a crowd of about 70 people in the Woodruff Library Jones Room on Wednesday, Lipstadt related her intensely personal experience of the trial.

“I think it’s the story of a professor, well known, but not on a world stage, suddenly being thrown into a very public defense of her own work,” Lipstadt said before the event.

In her latest release, Lipstadt chronicles her legal encounter with Irving, a man she called one of the most dangerous Holocaust deniers in her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

Because he so clearly seemed to be a Holocaust denier — he said that the Holocaust was a legend and that Adolf Hitler was the German Jews’ best friend — and because she had dedicated only a few hundred words to him in her book, she thought the matter would be quickly resolved.

As a result, she did not take the lawsuit seriously and laughed when she heard about it.

“I thought the whole thing was stupid,” she said. “Very quickly I learned otherwise, that this was a very serious thing.”

She was in for a rude awakening, because Irving filed suit in London against both Lipstadt and her United Kingdom publisher, Penguin Books Ltd., and the trial began in January 2000. Unlike in America, British libel laws place the burden of proof on the defendant, not the plaintiff, making Lipstadt’s case more difficult to defend.

Lipstadt searched for various ways to prove her case, finally coming to one conclusion: she had to discredit Irving as a historian.

“I didn’t want this to become a ‘Did the Holocaust happen?’ trial, but a ‘Deborah Lipstadt told the truth’ trial,” she said.

She set out to reveal the falsifications in Irving’s works, including his 1977 book Hitler’s War, in order to show that he is a Holocaust denier.

By following his footnotes and checking their accuracy, it was revealed that many of the facts in his books were purposely misleading and falsified, even when describing nonHolocaust-related events, she said.

Lipstadt said his description of the Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany toward the end of the war claimed that the Allies killed hundreds of thousands of people, when the actual figures are closer to 20,000 or 30,000.

As an example of the dangers posed by Irving’s writings, Lipstadt pointed to Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which drew from Irving’s work on Dresden.

“That’s how lies and distortions enter the public arena,” she said.

Although she had to face the four-month trial and three subsequent appeals, Lipstadt felt it was worth it.

“The trial devastated deniers’ arguments as they stood until the year 2001,” she said. “It just laid waste to them.”

Although mostly faculty and staff, some Emory students came to hear Lipstadt’s presentation, including College sophomore Joanna Green, who was encouraged by a Holocaust survivor to research deniers in high school.

“I want to get a book signed by her so that I can give it to a Holocaust survivor,” she said. “That’s what began my inquiry into this subject.”

Lipstadt must still face Irving in yet another legal battle, scheduled to take place in two weeks in London. Irving is suing her for the cost of the trial, something the court ordered him to pay her.