History On Trial

by Lipstadt, Deborah E.

• ISBN13: 9780060593766
• ISBN10: 0060593768
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-12
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

In 1993, Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish Studies at Emory University, published the first comprehensive history of the Holocaust denial movement. In this critically acclaimed account, Lipstadt called David Irving -- a prolific, respected, and well-known writer on World War II who had, over the years, made controversial statements about Hitler and the Jews -- one of the most dangerous spokespersons of the denial movement. A year later, when Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin UK, for libel in a London courtroom, the media spotlight fell on Deborah Lipstadt and, by extension, on the historiography of the Holocaust. Five years later, when David Irving lost his case after an intense ten-week trial, Lipstadt's resounding victory was proclaimed on front pages of newspapers worldwide. The implications of the trial, however, were far from over. History on Trial is Deborah Lipstadt's personal, riveting chronicle of the legal battle with Irving, in which she went from a relatively quiet existence as a professor at an American university to being a defendant in a sensational libel case. This blow-by-blow account reveals how Lipstadt raised $1.5 million for her defense, which included a first-rate team of solicitors, historians, and experts, among them Anthony Julius, a literary scholar who is better known as the late Princess Diana's divorce lawyer. Lipstadt describes how in forced silence she endured Irving's relentless provocations, including his claims that more people died in Senator Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, that survivors tattooed numbers on their arms to make money, and that nonwhite people are a different "species." She also reveals how her lawyers gained access to Irving's personal papers, which exposed his association with neo-Nazi extremists in Germany, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and the National Alliance, which wants to transform America into an "Aryan society." In the course of the trial, Lipstadt's legal team stripped away Irving's mask of respectability through exposing the prejudice, extremism, and distortion of history that defined his work, even his once highly regarded account of the Dresden bombing. Part history, part edge-of-your-seat courtroom drama, History on Trial goes beyond the historiography of World War II and the Holocaust to reveal the intricate way in which extremism and deliberate historical distortions gain widespread legitimacy and help generate hatred. An inspiring personal story of perseverance and unexpected limelight, here is the definitive account of the trial that tested the standards for historical and judicial truths, a trial that the Daily Telegraph of London proclaimed did "for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations."

Author Biography

Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Anthony Lewis
Note to the Reader	xv
Prologue: The Letter	xvii
THE PRELUDE
A Personal and Scholarly Odyssey	3	(24)
The Defense Strategy	27	(24)
Auschwitz: A Forensic Tour	51	(16)
Our Objective Changes	67	(10)
THE TRIAL
``All Rise!''	77	(10)
Irving in the Box: Not a Denier but a Victim	87	(12)
The Chain of Documents	99	(10)
The Holocaust: Random Killings or Systematic Genocide?	109	(18)
Queues and Gas Chamber Controversies	127	(24)
An American Professor	151	(10)
Exonerating Hitler, Excoriating the Allies	161	(12)
Fighting Words	173	(12)
Revolting Calculations	185	(14)
Lying about Hitler	199	(12)
The Diary of Anne Frank: A Novel?	211	(12)
Our German Contingent	223	(10)
Cavorting with Thugs or Guilt by Association?	233	(10)
One-Person Gas Chambers and White People's Polkas	243	(12)
The Final Scene	255	(12)
THE AFTERMATH
Judgment Day: Phone Chains, Psalms, and Sleepless Survivors	267	(18)
Enormous Thanks	285	(6)
The ``Jester's Costume''	291	(12)
Afterword	303	(4)
Alan Dershowitz
Acknowledgments	307	(4)
Notes	311	(18)
Index	329

Excerpts

History on Trial
My Day in Court with David Irving

Chapter One

A Personal and Scholarly Odyssey

"No, I am not a child of Holocaust survivors."

Ever since I began teaching about the Holocaust I have beenasked about my background. Some questioners seemed surprised by myresponse. Why else would I be interested in the topic? Others, however,felt that my personal distance from the event allowed a more scholarlyperspective.

My father left Germany before the Third Reich and my mother wasborn in Canada. Growing up on Manhattan's Upper West Side, I had knownmany "refugees." No one called them survivors. Some had emigrated in the1930s, leaving behind a comfortable middle-class existence. Others cameafter the war. My father helped many of them when they arrived in NewYork. He attempted to bring his five sisters to the United States but could notdo so. They survived in other countries and came to New York in the postwarperiod. As a young child, I remember sensing that these Central EuropeanJewish homes, with their heavy, dark furniture and steaming cups oftea accompanied by delicate homemade strudel and other distinctly Europeanpastries, were different from those of my American schoolmates.

My parents' Modern Orthodox home was shaped by a dedication toJewish tradition together with an appreciation for the surrounding secularsociety. One was as likely to find on our living room table a book on Jewishlore as a book on Rembrandt. My brother, sister, and I all attended Jewish schools. When I was in first grade, my parents decided to move from Manhattanto the suburbs. They chose Far Rockaway, a beachside community inQueens, because they admired the local rabbi, Emanuel Rackman, and decidedthat this was the man they wanted as a spiritual leader and a rolemodel for their children. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he combinedknowledge of Judaism with the contemporary world. His well-crafted muscularsermons, delivered without notes, covered a wide range of topics -- everything from the weekly Torah portion to Arnold Toynbee. Shortly afterthe fall of Stalin, during a period of Khrushchev-style perestroika, he traveledwith a group of American rabbis to the Soviet Union. On the Shabbat of hisreturn my father suggested that I stay in the synagogue during the sermon -- a time that we children generally ran all over the expansive lawn in front ofthe building. "It will be memorable," he assured me. Though I was not quitesure what "memorable" meant, I knew the trip had been something important.I did not grasp all that Rabbi Rackman said, but I understood that hehad made contact with a group of Jews who were not free to live as we did,and he said that we could not forget them.

A believer in intra- and interreligious dialogue, long before it was invogue, Rackman reached out to people both within the Jewish communityand outside of it. Right-wing religious Jews attacked him for his attempts todemonstrate how one could -- and should -- draw upon the best in both traditionalJudaism and the secular world. I remember how my father wouldseethe at these attacks and stress how important it was for Rabbi Rackman'sideas not to be silenced. Long before I knew precisely what a role modelwas, I knew that I wanted to be like him.

Though synagogue attendance and observance of Jewish rituals set therhythm of our home, we were very much part of the broader world. In additionto ensuring that my siblings and I received an intensive Jewish education,my parents exposed us to theater, museums, art, and politics. Even afterwe had moved to the suburbs my mother would often take us into Manhattanon Sundays to see exhibits, attend the special youth symphonies at NewYork's Ninety-second Street YMHA, watch parades, climb the rocks in CentralPark, and even tour visiting aircraft carriers. My parents encouraged adegree of independence in us. When I was twelve and wanted to go into thecity to see a movie at Radio City Music Hall or visit a museum, they encouragedit. The problem was finding a classmate whose parents did not think it a totally reckless excursion. I usually managed to find an intrepid soul. I soonlearned to navigate my way through the city.

By middle school I had gained a reputation, particularly with my teachersat the Jewish day school I attended, as a feisty and combative student.When teachers did something that I did not consider fair, I would challengethem -- often not very diplomatically. Invariably, my mother would appear inthe principal's office to defend my actions and plead my case. I had the impressionthat, although she did not appreciate these school visits, she admiredmy gumption. I knew that I had been named Deborah because sheloved the biblical character. When I was still quite young she had describedhow Deborah led her people in battle and dispensed justice. I liked the notionthat I was named after such a person. When my mother admonishedme for getting in trouble, I told her I was just emulating Deborah.

My mother was a free spirit. It was not unusual for her to announce:"There's a wonderful Van Gogh exhibit at the Guggenheim. Ditch school.Let's go." And I did. Despite -- or possibly because -- neither my father normother had been able to attend college, they became intense autodidacts,continually attending classes and lectures. I remember spirited discussions around our Shabbat table about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, J. D. Salinger'sFranny and Zooey, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, civil rights, the 1968 NewYork City teachers' strike, and the war in Vietnam, which we uniformlyopposed. My mother and I marched in Harlem in solidarity with theBirmingham-Salem civil rights protestors ...

History on Trial
My Day in Court with David Irving. Copyright © by Deborah Lipstadt. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

---

Excerpted from History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving by Deborah E. Lipstadt
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.