“Many Holocaust denial groups have fallen upon hard times. Some have closed up shop.”
The arena in which Holocaust denial thrives is the Arab/Muslim world. According to MEMRI, the organization which translates articles in the Arab press, in 2003 a top Hamas activist referred in the organization’s weekly to the “myth of the ‘gas chambers’” and complained that “David Irving was sued” because of his Holocaust denial (MEMRI, “Special Dispatch—Palestinian/Arab Antisemitism,” August 27, 2003). In December 2004 two well-known Holocaust deniers were interviewed by Iran’s Mehr News Agency. Robert Faurisson spoke of the “big lie of the alleged Holocaust” and the Australian Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben decried the “Holocaust lie” and called for a “Holocaust exposé” (New York Sun, January 24, 2005). And of course, the president of Iran has denied the Holocaust.
“This trial was not about money and bankrupting David Irving. It was about history and defending me against libel charges.”
Does it bother you that you’re unlikely to recoup any of the money you and your supporters spent on your defense?
In the UK, loser is supposed to pay costs. But it would have been such a costly process that it seemed wiser to abandon the effort. Remember, this trial was not about money and bankrupting Irving. It was about history and defending me against libel charges. Though I would have liked to repay my supporters.
Do you worry that, as survivors of the Holocaust die off, deniers will successfully attack the history of the Holocaust?
Holocaust survivors worry about this. I also used to as well. However, now I am more sanguine. Obviously, the person who can say “this is my story, this is what happened to me” has a unique potency. We shall desperately miss them when they are gone. Nonetheless we won this victory without calling survivors. We relied on documents, material evidence, and testimony given at trials in the immediate postwar period. My victory should reassure survivors that deniers’ threats can be addressed by relying on the historical record.
C-SPAN’s Book TV wanted to put you on and then follow your appearance with one by David Irving. What happened?
C-SPAN’s Book TV wanted to tape a speech I was to give at Harvard. I was looking forward to presenting my book to an audience of bibliophiles. Then I learned that C-SPAN intended to “balance” (their word) my presentation with one by Irving. This would have created a debate between us that I have long refused to have. I cannot imagine them “balancing” an appearance by a specialist on African American history with someone who says slavery is a myth.
When I protested, C-SPAN said that they broadcast “all sorts of opinions” (Holocaust denial is an “opinion”?). When I observed that the court declared Irving a liar, a senior C-SPAN producer responded:“We broadcast liars all the time. We put on members of Congress.” I said that if they insisted on this “balance” they could not cover my talk. (Obviously, if they wanted to broadcast a talk by Irving at some other time that was their right.)
Frustrated, I was about to hang up when I added—almost as an afterthought—that I assumed that if I did not appear they would not broadcast Irving. “No,” the producer said, “we plan to broadcast him in any case.” I was too flabbergasted to ask the obvious: “Where’s the balance in that?”
“C-SPAN’s Book TV wanted to tape a speech I was to give at Harvard. I was looking forward to presenting my book. . . . Then I learned that C-SPAN intended to ‘balance’ (their word) my presentation with one by Irving.”
Hundreds of historians and social scientists signed a petition circulated by the David Wyman Institute condemning C-SPAN. C-SPAN admitted it received thousands of e-mails and letters, virtually all of them condemning their decision. Articles appeared in dozens of other papers. I even appeared on The O’Reilly Factor. People were incredulous, particularly since this is a network that does not have a policy of presenting two sides of an issue. Why did they insist on “balance,” particularly when “the other side” had been judged to be a liar and falsifier of history? Ultimately, I am more disturbed by C-SPAN’s stance than by Holocaust deniers.
“People were incredulous, particularly since this is a network that does not have a policy of presenting two sides of an issue.”
In November 2005 Austrian police arrested David Irving on an outstanding 1989 warrant for having given speeches denying the Holocaust. What is your reaction to this?
While I am generally opposed to outlawing Holocaust denial, I understand that Holocaust denial has a different resonance in Germany and Austria. Before Irving’s February 2006 trial, I called on the Austrians to release him. He should not be a martyr on the altar of free speech. After my trial, Irving was left deflated. Many people thought he looked silly. That’s why I call the last chapter “The Court Jester.” The only court sentence I want for him is obscurity.
Irving’s lawyer says he intends to recant his denial of gas chambers and plead guilty. What’s this about?
In September 2005 Irving was still claiming that gas chambers were a scientific impossibility. Now his lawyer says it was evidence he saw in Moscow archives that convinced him there were gas chambers. What caused this volte-face? Had he even been in Moscow since the trial? If this is based on his 1990s research in Moscow, why did he insist during the trial that gas chambers were a myth? It makes no sense. Irving seems to think he can say whatever he wants and no one will know he is fabricating.
“In general, things have returned to normal. I am back doing what I love best—teaching and writing.”
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust and wants to convene a conference to “investigate” the Holocaust. What’s your reaction?
Such a conference will surely raise many of the deniers’ familiar arguments that we demolished in my trial. Some people have dismissed him as crazy. I say crazy like a fox. This enhances his stature in Iran and the Muslim world, as do his calls for Israel’s destruction. It does not, of course, say much for his audience if Holocaust denial and destruction of another state wins him support. In contrast to most deniers, he has the potential to cause real damage. He may soon have his finger on the “button.” That’s not a reassuring thought.
Has your life changed since the trial?
I certainly have a “higher” profile and more name recognition. Many people look to me to speak out on the denial of other genocides, such as the Armenian, or on current genocides, such as in Sudan. I try to use my voice as efficaciously as possible. In general, things have returned to normal. I am back doing what I love best—teaching and writing.
Read on
Cold
On the 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz
IN LATE DECEMBER 2004 I received a call from the White House Presidential Personnel Office asking if I would be part of a small American delegation representing the president and the nation at the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The dates fell smack at the beginning of the semester. I am loath to miss classes. Nonetheless, I decided that this merited the absence, and my dean agreed.
The delegation, which was being led by Vice President Dick Cheney, included: Elie Wiesel; United States Representative Tom Lantos and his wife, Annette, both Holocaust survivors; Fred Schwartz, who had spearheaded the rebuilding of a synagogue in the town of Auschwitz; and Feliks Bruks, a Polish American who had been imprisoned by the Nazis in three concentration camps. When I asked the White House official why I had been included, she explained that it was because of my work, especially my legal travails exposing Holocaust deniers.
“We boarded a Gulfstream jet that seemed like it might have seated forty, but was configured for ten passengers and six crew members. From the outside it looked like a miniature Air Force One.”
So that was how I found myself in the distinguished visitors lounge at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Tuesday, January 25. We boarded a Gulfstream jet that seemed like it might have seated forty, but was configured for ten passengers and six crew members. From the outside it look
ed like a miniature Air Force One, with the words United States of America emblazoned on the side. When we landed in a blinding snowstorm in Kraków, a convoy of police cars, limos, SUVs, and vans moved forward across the tarmac to greet us. The American ambassador to Poland, Victor Ashe, emerged from a car and thanked us for coming. Our luggage was unloaded and placed on a truck that preceded us to the hotel. By the time I entered my room the luggage was waiting for me. It was all very heady and quite unlike my life as a professor.
“What could the statesmen say, surrounded by camp survivors, in the shadow, literally, of the gas chambers?”
But these sybaritic pleasures were severely tempered by the reason for our visit. While I sat in the “control room,” a hotel suite that had been turned into an office, dealing with my e-mail, behind me State Department officials vigorously debated the most efficient way to get us to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the following day’s ceremony. After listening for a while, I turned around and observed that there was something surreal about discussing how to get to the death camp, the largest “cemetery” in the world, punctually. We laughed uncomfortably.
The next day we sat for three long hours in the falling snow listening to orations and participating in the commemoration. After a while the speeches, many by heads of state, began to morph one into another. What could the statesmen say, surrounded by camp survivors, in the shadow, literally, of the gas chambers? I was reminded of Adorno’s pronouncement that “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” It seemed to me that on a day such as this prose fared little better, except for the words of those who had actually experienced the camps.
I tuned out the speakers and began to reflect on those survivors’writings, which were very much with me because I had just finished teaching a course on memoirs of the Holocaust. In Still Alive, Ruth Kluger describes watching an SS guard preening on the other side of the barbed wire with a walking stick that had a loaf of bread stuck to the end. He tormented the starving prisoners by dragging the bread in the mud. Watching the bread destroyed in the dirt hit Kluger “like a blow in the diaphragm because it was such a crudely sarcastic expression of undifferentiated hatred.”
Primo Levi describes a similar experience in Survival in Auschwitz. During his first days at the camp he saw a large icicle hanging outside his window. Driven by thirst he reached out and grabbed it only to have a “large heavy guard prowling outside” brutally snatch it away. “Warum?” Levi asked. The guard replied: “Hier ist kein warum.” Here there is no why.
Sitting there in my four layers of clothing, heavy socks, special boots, earmuffs, and hat, and nursing a cup of hot coffee which our minders had kindly provided us, I was thrust back to the final days of the camp. The Germans, unwilling to let 60,000 surviving Jews fall into the hands of the Red Army, forced them to march through the snow toward Germany, where they were put in concentration camps.
In Speak You Also, Paul Steinberg recalled that as the march began he knew that “one thing is certain: In the days to come, many will die just when their wildest dreams are about to come true. And that will be the cruelest blow of all.” And Steinberg was correct. So many people died that the trek entered history as a “death march.”
“Sitting there in my four layers of clothing, heavy socks, special boots, earmuffs, and hat, and nursing a cup of hot coffee I was thrust back to the final days of the camp.”
In the final chapter of his memoir Levi describes in detail the situation at Auschwitz during the days before the arrival of the Red Army. Levi, left behind in Auschwitz’s so-called hospital, saw the camp decompose. “No more water, or electricity, broken windows and doors slamming in the wind. . . . Ragged, decrepit, skeleton-like patients . . . dragged themselves everywhere on the frozen soil, like an invasion of worms.”
“And then, without explaining why, I stood up in silent tribute not just to Sómogyi, but to the countless, nameless others who had died there.”
Levi attributed his survival during those difficult last days to the friendship and support of a small group of men who were fellow hospital patients. Their only goal, he told Philip Roth years later, was to save “the lives of our sick comrades.” On the night of January 26 one of them died. Levi and his friends were too cold and exhausted to bury him. There was nothing to do but go back to sleep and wait for the next day. “The Russians arrived while Charles and I were carrying Sómogyi a little distance outside. He was very light. We overturned the stretcher on the gray snow. Charles took off his beret. I regretted not having a beret.”
Sixty years later, as darkness fell over Auschwitz, I turned to one of the members of our delegation and said: “It’s really cold. I regret not having worn another layer of clothing.” Suddenly Levi’s words came cascading back on me. I was embarrassed. And then, without explaining why, I stood up in silent tribute not just to Sómogyi, but to the countless, nameless others who had died there or those (like Elie Wiesel’s father) who died soon after the death march. I also stood for people like Levi, who survived but bore the terrible wounds of the place for the rest of their lives.
Despite the sharp wind I took off my hat. After all, I had one.
This essay originally appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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PRAISE FOR DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT AND
DENIAL (HISTORY ON TRIAL)
“A well-paced, expertly detailed, and fascinating account of the trial process. . . . Lipstadt’s steadfastness, which can be seen throughout this book, stood her and historical truth well.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Deborah E. Lipstadt is writing for us. And for the ages.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A fascinating and meritorious work of legal—and moral—history.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[A] powerful account. . . . No one who cares about historical truth, freedom of speech, or the Holocaust will avoid a sense of triumph.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Lipstadt gives a detailed account of the trial that never loses its suspense, readability, or momentum. Or humor.”
—Salon.com
“A compelling book, History on Trial is memoir and courtroom drama, a work of historical and legal import.”
—Jewish Week
“Fascinating. . . . Drawing on her journals, as well as on transcripts of the trial, [Lipstadt] takes us into the moment and produces a courtroom drama as enthralling as any fictional one. . . . Even if you know what happened, Lipstadt keeps you engaged with how it happened.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Ms. Lipstadt’s account of her journey from uncertainty and despair to triumph is immensely readable. . . . Fast-moving, shrewd, and often unexpectedly droll. . . . History on Trial restores one’s faith in the power of good scholarship.”
—Washington Times
“Compelling. . . . [Lipstadt] clearly defines the differences between British and American courts. . . . 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.”
—Columbus Dispatch
“[Irving-Lipstadt] was no ordinary libel case, but possibly the most important Holocaust-related trial since Adolf Eichmann was tried in Israel in 1961.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Compelling. . . . Lipstadt’s vigorous account is a window into a Jewish community still grappling with the loss of more than six million souls.”
—Newsweek International
“Lipstadt proves to have the keen eye of a journalist . . . [and] she writes with a novelist’s sense of plot. . . . Fascinating reading.”
—Los Angeles Jewish Journal
“The forensic details will appeal to those who like a good detective story. . . . Irving’s provocative testimony is often absurdly entertaining, and a reader can comfortably laugh
at his claims because they were regularly rebutted by Lipstadt’s attorneys.”
—Corporate Counsel
“[A] sensational read. . . . Like her namesake from the book of Judges, Lipstadt can rightly be considered a latter-day Jewish heroine of truly biblical proportions. . . . By utterly destroying the credibility of Irving, the most prominent and well respected of Holocaust ‘revisionists,’ Lipstadt may not have crushed the Holocaust-denial movement, but she certainly dealt it a devastating blow.”
—The Australian Jewish News
“Deborah Lipstadt’s absorbing narrative of an event that has reverberated throughout the world will be read with interest and gratitude by future generations of students and teachers.”
—Elie Wiesel
“In History on Trial, Deborah Lipstadt explores how David Irving’s fraudulent use of texts coupled with his antisemitic zeal yielded historical views and narratives that falsified the history of the Holocaust in order to rehabilitate the perpetrators and blame the victims. In Lipstadt’s vivid prose, we are brought into a British courtroom where the scene unfolds in a dramatic trial that demonstrates why it is essential for history’s moral parameters to remain firm in the face of revisionists and deniers. This is an essential book.”
—Peter Balakian, author of The Burning Tigris
“Riveting. Shocking. Painful. Essential reading.”
—Maurice Sendak
“A London courtroom was the scene of a titanic struggle between the forces of historical distortion and those who upheld the truth about the Holocaust; this book, by the defender of that truth, is a powerful tribute to the vigilance, persistence, and integrity of its author and of all those who stood with her in the legal and humanistic battle.”
—Sir Martin Gilbert, author of Churchill: A Life
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