About a week later, Guttenplan called to inquire about our reaction to the article. Anthony minced no words. “Deborah thought it was awful. So did I.” Shortly thereafter Guttenplan contacted me to acknowledge that I had “grounds” for being angry with him. He claimed historians were frightened, because of Irving’s litigious reputation, to be quoted on the record. Therefore, the article ended up favoring Irving. His first draft, he contended, had more accurately reflected my position. However, his editor at the Times, Patricia Cohen, considered it too partisan and engaged, which he interpreted as a demand for more balance. He told me that acceding to her request, and in conjunction with his attempt, “as two Jews trying to be fair,” he could see how some readers might think he ultimately bent too far.13 I was amazed that he was willing to self-censor because he was a Jew and that he attributed the same sentiments to his editor at the paper.
The incident reminded me that what seemed so obvious to me about the essence of this case was not readily evident to others, even if they were reporting on it for the New York Times.
FOUR
OUR OBJECTIVE CHANGES
“A knotted web of distortions, suppressions and manipulations became evident in every single instance which we examined.” This was how Richard Evans described, in the opening pages of his expert report, his foray through Irving’s writings on the Holocaust. In the next paragraph, Evans admitted that he had been caught unaware: “I was not prepared for the sheer depths of duplicity which I encountered in Irving’s treatment of the historical sources, nor for the way in which this dishonesty permeated his entire written and spoken output. It is as all pervasive in his early work as it is in his later publications. . . . His numerous mistakes . . . are calculated and deliberate.” Evans and his researchers, Nik and Thomas, who by the time Evans submitted his report in the summer of 1999, had worked on the case for eighteen months, far longer than anyone ever assumed would be necessary, did not have to balance Irving’s distortions against his use of legitimate methods of historical inquiry. They did not have to do so because they found distortions in “every single instance [they] examined.” After detailing numerous examples of Irving’s historical malfeasance regarding the Holocaust and the bombing of Dresden, Evans wrote: “If we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian . . . Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history . . . in order to further his own political purposes.” Evans concluded that “not one of [Irving’s] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history.”1
As I completed his 740-page report, I thought back to our dinner a year earlier when Evans had so summarily dismissed my suggestion that he tell the court that David Irving is no historian. He had not thought it efficacious to argue that the author of over twenty books on history was not a historian. The encounter with the evidence, however, resulted in Evans’s striking about-face and the devastating critique of Irving’s work that followed. Evans didn’t allow his personal or popular opinion to skew objective information facing him. And this, I reminded myself, is how real historians operate.
Almost giddy with excitement, I dashed off a congratulatory email to Evans with a copy to James. Concerned about sounding like a breathless American, I adopted what I imagined was proper British restraint. “Congratulations on the report. It is quite good.” James quickly responded, “What don’t you like about Evans’s report?” “Nothing,” I responded. After a few emails the mystery was resolved. My use of “quite” had in British parlance, damned the report with faint praise. I quickly rectified the situation with a short email: “A stunning historiographic work.”
Later, as I crossed the Emory campus, I met my colleague Mel Konner and jubilantly told him that Evans thought Irving was no historian. He was surprised—not about Evans’s conclusions—but by my excitement: “You knew Irving wasn’t a credible historian when you wrote your book.” I felt chastised and even a little naive. Mel was right. Evans had only confirmed what I had long known to be the case. I fumbled for an explanation. “When I first met Evans he suspected that my evaluation of Irving was hyperbolic. Now, after having done the research, he knows I’m right.”
My explanation was plausible but not sufficient. I realized that Evans’s report constituted a validation of sorts, a subjective response to scholars who dismissed Irving’s Holocaust denial as unfortunate quirkiness. Evans’s findings also confirmed that settling or ignoring Irving’s charges, as some urged, was not an option.
On a more personal level, Evans’s report came at a most opportune moment. I felt overwhelmed by the havoc this fight was inflicting on me. I had set my new research aside, filing away the reams of archival material I had collected. My repeated rushed trips to London left me perennially exhausted. Despite repeated reassurances from Herb Friedman, who was still raising money for the defense fund, that I not worry, I was deeply concerned that we would not have enough funds to fight this to the end. I worried about leaving my elderly mother while I spent four months in London. Moreover, increasing numbers of survivors kept telling me, “We are counting on you to protect our history.” I thought their reactions were overstated. Even if I lost, their history would not be decimated. No one person or group of people could do that. Nonetheless, I found their comments a heavy responsibility. They kept me awake at night. All I could think of was that, because of the vagaries of the British libel system, we might lose. Simply put, I was tired, nervous, and frightened, and Evans’s report—in addition to being a great research work—was the boost I needed and it came just at the moment I needed it.
I forced myself to ignore the doubters and wrap my mind around the many colleagues and friends who were unquestionably in my corner. Many people were contributing to the defense fund without even being asked. Emory University—both the administration and my colleagues—continued to offer unbridled support. I had told a colleague that I was planning to use my regularly scheduled sabbatical leave for the trial. She pointed out that the two concepts—sabbatical and trial—were counterintuitive and urged me to request a paid leave. When I mentioned this to the provost, she immediately agreed: “Sabbaticals are not for being on trial. We will treat it as if you are teaching your regular courses, except your venue is a British courtroom.” In September, as courses were being scheduled for the spring semester, she called again. “Can you find someone to teach your courses on the Holocaust while you’re in London?” She explained that the university administration felt it was not sufficient to just support me. “If your courses are not offered,” she continued, “it would be a sort of victory for Irving, depriving students of a chance to study this material.” When I called colleagues at other universities to look for candidates, they were amazed. “Your provost offered without your asking? Unbelievable,” a friend exclaimed.
And of course, my legal team continued to be the bedrock of support. On the eve of Yom Kippur, Anthony called to wish me well. Paraphrasing the traditional Jewish greeting, he said with a note of solemnity in his voice, “May you be inscribed in both the Heavenly and Earthly Books of Judgment during the coming year.”
A few weeks later, Irving sent a settlement offer. His terms were simple. Penguin and I would each have to pay £500 to a charity for the handicapped, withdraw my book from circulation, and publicly apologize. I instantaneously told Anthony to reject it. “The only settlement I’ll accept is his acknowledgment that he had no grounds to bring this case because everything I said was true. And there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell we are going to get that,” I told Anthony.
While I knew that I would never settle, I feared that Penguin might be tempted. Legal costs had skyrocketed. A three- to four-month trial, which is what the lawyers anticipated, would push the bills into the stratosphere. Penguin’s insurer was paying the bill
s, but at some point they might pull the plug. While we waited for Penguin’s decision, Rampton called to tell me that he would represent me if Penguin dropped out and would do so pro bono if necessary. Shortly thereafter Penguin informed Rampton that they were resolute in their determination to fight the case.
I wondered if the settlement offer might indicate that Irving was contemplating dropping the case. If he did so, he could save face by claiming that he could not compete with the formidable forces—a multinational corporation and a putative international Jewish conspiracy—arraigned against him. On his website he described me as the “gold-tipped spearhead of the enemies of the truth, who hired her . . . to destroy me, my reputation, and my legitimacy as an historian.”2 When I asked James about the chances of Irving settling, he said with a look of disgust, “I’ve given up trying to figure out what this guy will do.” As we spoke, I realized my hopes had changed. For the past three years we had mounted an aggressive defense, in part, to convince him to drop the case. Every one of my daily conversations with James or Anthony would, inevitably, contain the question, “Any word on his dropping the case?” Now, as the trial was poised to begin, I found myself hoping he would not. We had gleaned a wealth of damning information from his discovery. If he abandoned the case, it would have to remain private. I could never reveal the antisemitic and racist comments he had made in his diaries and speeches. James also began to talk about his growing ambivalence. “I always try to keep my clients out of court. Trials are unpredictable and expensive. Somehow this feels different.” It would also be horrible, he acknowledged, to have access to this damning material and not be able to make it public.
NOVEMBER 1999: GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL
The final pretrial hearing was scheduled for early November 1999. Anthony, who had kept me away from previous hearings, called to tell me to come. The hearing would be before Judge Charles Gray, who would preside in our case. Anthony felt it worthwhile for me to see Judge Gray in action and for him to see that I took this matter seriously enough to come from the United States. The hearing was held in a traditional courtroom, the kind made famous by a host of British dramas. By chance, Irving and I entered the courtroom from opposite sides and ended up facing each other in the well of the courtroom. For a second, I had visions of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Instead, without acknowledging each other’s presence, we each took our seats at large wooden tables, which were but a few feet from one another.
A barrel-chested man, who is well over six feet tall, Irving has a full, almost bouffant, head of graying hair, dark sharp eyes, rough features, a ruddy, rather blotchy complexion, and unbelievably large hands. Most people look small when they stand next to him. His thick eyebrows spike upward in little peaks at the far edges of his eyes, giving him a rather forbidding look. He wore a dark blue, pin-striped three-piece suit and white shirt. He carried a plastic shopping bag full of books and papers. A few minutes later Judge Gray entered and took his seat. A tall slim man, with tinted glasses, a square jaw, and salt-and-pepper hair, Gray wore a double-breasted conservative dark gray suit, court regalia such as wigs and robes having been dispensed with for these hearings. Before being appointed to the bench Judge Gray had been a QC specializing in libel law. Rampton speculated that he had been assigned to this trial because the court authorities knew the media would be watching closely.
As soon as we began, Irving handed Judge Gray a list of items he would be raising in this hearing. Irving appeared to me—a total novice—to be familiar with courtroom procedure. He self-assuredly delineated his objections to our evidence. Evans’s report should not be admitted because it sought to define a historian when there was no objective standard for doing so. Rampton responded that Evans’s report addressed standards of historiography. There was a modus operandi to which all historians adhere and that, Rampton stressed, does not include lying and falsification of documents. Judge Gray rejected Irving’s request.
Irving then challenged Chris Browning’s report. In the chaos of managing over one hundred linear feet of documents, a paralegal had inadvertently sent Irving the penultimate copy of Browning’s report. Shortly thereafter, she corrected her mistake and sent him the final copy. Irving noticed that in this version Browning had deleted references to certain documents. Irving contended that this proved that Browning had “manipulated documents” and was “guilty of precisely the malfeasance of which I am accused.”3 When Judge Gray decided that this argument was best left for the trial, Irving declared, “Good. Christopher Browning should suffer the humiliation of being asked about this in the witness box.” Irving then turned to Rampton and said, “I must commend the defense on the quality of these expert reports.” It seemed strange to hear him praising reports—two of which he had just tried to have thrown out—that devastated his claims about the Holocaust. I recalled the Hollywood aphorism: I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right.
Irving next complained that, in my role as the “willing executioner” of an international Jewish campaign, I had falsely claimed in my book that he had been invited to a conference in Stockholm along with Louis Farrakhan and representatives of the Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. After my book was published I learned that this report was indeed false. In our pretrial submission to the court we did not address this charge, indicating that we did not intend to contest it.
Judge Gray told Irving that it was common in libel cases for the defense not to defend every defamatory statement. Irving was, however, not prepared to let this matter pass. “To be called a rotten historian is one thing; to be called a terrorist is quite another. This charge puts my life in danger. The Israeli secret service has a habit of sticking hypodermic needles filled with nerve gas in the neck of its enemies. People who appear at conferences with representatives of organizations they dislike are their enemies.” When the judge again explained that it was our prerogative to ignore this matter, Irving turned to Rampton and issued his own warning. “If the defense does not plead to this, they are the architects of their own misfortune.” Completely unfazed by this, Rampton shrugged. I, however, was unnerved. James saw and counseled me not to worry. The situation was akin, he explained, to my having written Irving was a pickpocket, arsonist, and murderer. “If you’re wrong about the lesser charge but correct about the other, far more serious, charges, it should not really harm us. The court will be likely to find in your favor. Maybe Irving did not attend this conference, but he has interacted with many other dubious types. Therefore, his presence at this particular conference is probably immaterial.” I knew James was trying to ease my concerns, but all I heard were his qualifications: “it should not really harm us. . . . likely find in your favor. . . . probably immaterial.” After the hearing we gathered around the large table in Rampton’s chambers. “My instincts tell me we are going to go to trial,” he soberly said. I felt a surge of adrenaline, then, reflecting on what lay ahead, a terrible sense of foreboding.
Prior to returning to Atlanta, Anthony counseled me to prepare for a trial that would last at least four months, maybe five. Not looking forward to such an extended period of hotel life, particularly in the hotels I had been frequenting, I began to look for a place to live. Just as I was beginning my trek, James called to tell me that the owner of the Athenaeum, a five-star hotel within walking distance of Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park, had heard about my case. Touched by the fight I was waging, he urged me to consider renting one of the hotel’s apartments. Housed in a quiet row of Edwardian town houses, the one-bedroom apartments—with their postage-sized kitchens—were beautifully furnished. I would have use of all the hotel’s facilities. “As long as you vacate the premises by July, the time of Wimbledon—our high season—we’ll be delighted to offer you an apartment at a highly discounted rate,” Sally, the hotel’s manager explained. I accepted on the spot and reassured her, “If we’re still in trial in July, you can carry me out feet first.” It was comforting to know that I would be able to return
to comfortable surroundings after court each day.
FINAL PREPARATIONS
Back in Atlanta, friends offered any help and support they could think of. One agreed to look after my house. Another would call my mother every day to talk about the trial. People were so anxious for an assignment that I sometimes invented one. When I assigned one friend to water my plants, she declared, “Now I feel that I’m part of the effort to defeat him.” I was scheduled to leave on a Saturday evening. At synagogue that morning, a colleague pointed out that the weekly Torah portion was from Exodus: “God instructs Moses to ‘Go to Pharaoh’ and tell him ‘Let my people go.’ You go tell David Irving to let our people and our history alone.”
I arrived in London early Sunday morning. At the airport I picked up the Sunday Times to read on the way into London from the airport. I opened the paper to find a long article on the trial. Irving predicted a complete victory. As soon as I reached my apartment, I called James. Dispensing with niceties, I asked how Irving could predict victory, given what our experts had found. Did he have something up his sleeve? James told me to turn to the front page. It showed former MP, Jonathan Aitken, emerging from jail after serving a sentence for perjury. Aitken had sued the Guardian for reporting that he accepted lavish gifts from Saudi Arabia while a cabinet minister. Prior to his trial, Aitken boldly predicted that he would not only be vindicated but that his trial would “cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth.” Aitken’s problem was that the Guardian was correct. He lost his libel case and, to compound matters, lied under oath. He ended up being sentenced for perjury.
The next day I joined Penguin’s general counsels, Helena Peacock and Cicely Engel, at a small Kensington restaurant. Spending the final pretrial moments with them seemed particularly fitting. In 1995, they had first informed me that Irving was thinking of suing. Cicely told me that when Irving offered to settle, Rampton said, “You must not settle. If you do, none of us will be safe in our beds.” I found it remarkable that Rampton put it that way. He could have said, “You must not settle because of the need to fight prejudice and protect minorities.” But, he said “none of us,” indicating that for him this case was about more than addressing Jewish concerns.
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