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David Irving vs. Deborah Lipstadt Libel Trial in London England
Part Eight: April 11 - April 21, 2000
Dates and sources are listed at the end of each respective report
Historian David Irving has admitted he cannot afford to cover the bills for his disastrous libel case defeat, but has vowed to fight on.
Speaking after Mr Justice Gray, the judge in the High Court libel action delivered a damning 333-page judgment, branding him a Holocaust denier, falsifier of history, a racist and an anti-Semite, Irving remained totally unrepentant.
Speaking from his large apartment in Mayfair, central London, the 62-year-old was highly emotional and admitted he felt "tired. Very tired."
He said he would appeal against the judgment, although it is unclear how he can afford to do so. The bill for costs is already estimated to run to more than £2million (US$3.7 million).
"I would describe the judgment in two words - firstly, indescribable, and secondly, perverse," he said.
He refused to talk about how the potentially crippling costs of losing the libel action could affect him.
"Why is everyone talking about money? I'm not interested in money. It is all about reputation."
But when asked if he had sufficient funds to cover the bills, Irving answered simply: "No." He remained unabashed: "I am not at all anti-Semitic. It is not anti-Semitic to be critical of the Jews."
"But the leaders of the Jewish communities around the world have used the most horrific methods to try and destroy me. They had bottomless pockets to afford justice and say go ahead and destroy that bastard - which they just did."
"At the end, I suppose, it is my own fault for having explained myself inadequately clearly," he said.
Irving remained ambiguous about his views on race: "My own feelings about race are precisely the same as 95% of the people of my generation. That is all I will say."
"If the British soldiers on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 could look forward to the end of the century and see what England has become, they would not have bothered to advance another 40 yards up the beach," he added.
He also claimed he was not bitter, saying: "Some people are vindictive, but that is not in my nature. I am a Christian through and through."
Source: The Guardian, April 11, 2000
U.S. Scholar Is Victorious In Holocaust Libel Trial
David Irving, a British historian who sought to chronicle World War II from Adolf Hitler's point of view, lost his long libel battle today (April 11) as a High Court judge ruled he had "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence" when he wrote that the Nazi leader was unaware of the Holocaust.
In a lengthy opinion, Justice Charles Gray said that American scholar Deborah Lipstadt was "substantially justified" in describing Irving as "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial."
Lipstadt--a professor of Jewish studies at Emory University who coined the term "Holocaust denial"--has charged that Irving is a "Hitler partisan . . . a racist, and an antisemite" who provided a "crucial degree of respectability" to neo-Nazis and others seeking to deny the Nazi effort to exterminate Europe's Jews. Gray ruled today that each element of Lipstadt's description was "substantially accurate."
A prolific author who was once praised for his research by leading historians, Irving is now shunned by his former publishers. He sued Lipstadt and her publisher under Britain's plaintiff-friendly libel laws in an attempt to restore his academic reputation; instead, he now stands humiliated by the verdict and liable for the defendants' court costs, about $3 million. "There's no way I can pay the costs, because I have no money," he said today.
Standing alone at a bus stop in the rain after hearing the verdict, Irving, 62, said he was "defeated but unbowed." "No publisher will touch me after this," he said, adding that he intends to publish his own books from now on. "I am higher-profile now than I was" before the trial, he went on, "and I think the negative sign in front of the profile will be erased over time."
Lipstadt, 52, said after the verdict that she had challenged Irving because "the truth has to be kept alive."
"As [Holocaust] survivors die off and there are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses," Lipstadt said tearfully, "there won't be people to tell the story in the first person, and it will be easier to deny it."
This libel case was initially expected to put the Holocaust itself on trial, but Irving told the court in his opening statement that "no person . . . can deny that the tragedy actually happened." So the courtroom battle dealt mainly with the reasons why Irving and his once respected books are now so widely vilified. Irving claimed he was the victim of an "international conspiracy" led by Lipstadt because he "dared to write history that challenged the politically correct point of view." Irving has sought to show that the number of Jews who died in Nazi hands was "far smaller" than the widely accepted figure of 6 million and that "there was no industry-scale gassing of Jews."
Gray said in his ruling that "as a military historian, Irving has much to commend him." But after listening to testimony from some of the world's leading historians, Gray said, he concluded that Irving's treatment of Hitler and his role in the Holocaust could "not be called history."
Reading his opinion in a packed courtroom this morning--with several Holocaust survivors in attendance--the bewigged judge said Irving's sympathetic portrayal of Hitler in such books as "Hitler's War" in 1977 amounts to "distortion and manipulation."
"He has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favorable light, principally in relation to his attitude toward and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews," Gray declared.
The judge said Irving overstated any evidence that might suggest Hitler was innocent of the slaughter and ignored documents or testimony that demonstrated the dictator's involvement in the "Final Solution"--the Nazi euphemism for the destruction of the Jews. "This falsification of the historical record was deliberate," Gray said, "motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs."
The judge dug deeply into Irving's contention that Jews were not killed in gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp, in Nazi-occupied Poland. "In common I suspect with most other people," Gray said, "I had supposed the evidence of mass extermination of Jews in the gas chambers at Auschwitz was compelling. I have, however, set aside this preconception."
While some of the evidence on Auschwitz is "variable," the judge said, a review of documents, photographs and eyewitness testimony led him to conclude that "no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that . . . gas chambers at Auschwitz . . . operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews."
Irving asked the judge for "leave to appeal," but permission was denied on grounds that the key issues in the case were all factual and therefore not matters of law for an appellate court. Without the trial judge's permission to appeal, Irving will find it nearly impossible to take the case to a higher court here.
Lipstadt's 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust," which contains sharp attacks on Irving and his work, has been printed around the world. Publication of a Penguin Books edition here gave Irving the opportunity he had sought to sue Lipstadt in a British court. In a reverse of the American system, libel law here forces the defendant to prove the truth of any challenged statement, but even the legal presumptions in his favor failed to win the day for Irving.
"David Irving's career as a historian is over," said a statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based organization representing Nazi victims. "Today's decision definitely places Irving . . . as a leading apologist for those who seek to whitewash the most heinous crime in human history."
Irving said he will continue to present his views on his Web site. Lipstadt said this is no surprise to her. "There will always be haters," she said after the verdict. "The neo-Nazis will read this [verdict], and they'll say, 'Yech.' They'll just dismiss it.
"This nightmare is not over," she added. "You just have to fight each new battle."
Source: Washington Post, April 12, 2000; Page A18
Spielberg helped fund defeat of 'racist Holocaust-denier' Irving
"Schindler's List" director Steven Spielberg is understood to have been a key financial backer of the American academic who this week delivered a body blow to Holocaust-denial by defeating David Irving's High Court libel action.
Mr Spielberg -- who used the movie's earnings to set up a foundation to record memories of the Shoah -- was said by informed sources to be among a small group of prominent American Jews who helped fund Professor Deborah Lipstadt's defence.
Source: Jewish Chronicle, April 14, 2000
A good historian; a terrible thinker: David Irving is admired only when he writes sense
by Sir John Keegan
The news that David Irving has lost his libel case against Deborah Lipstadt -- the U.S. academic who accused him of denying the existence of the Holocaust -- will send a tremor through the community of 20th-century historians.
For more than a year now, the gossip between them has been about whether he would lose or not, a subject on which all hedged bets. "It depends whether the judge goes for Holocaust denial or slurs on his reputation," was the general view. "If the first he'll lose, if the second he might get away with it."
What this insider talk meant was that Irving might well persuade the judge of the unfairness of Lipstadt's accusations in her 1993 book of his bad historical method. That was what he cared about and he would no doubt argue his case well. If, however, her accusation that Irving's version of the Holocaust was so untruthful as to outweigh his merits as an otherwise objective historian, then he would get no damages and have to pay enormous costs.
As the trial date drew nearer, talk turned to the question of who had been asked to give evidence. Eventually I was. I -- like others I knew - declined. Earlier experiences had persuaded me that nothing but trouble comes of taking sides over Irving. Decide against him, and his associates accuse one of prejudice. On this occasion I was accused of cowardice. Decide for him, and the smears start. I have written complimentary reviews of Irving's work as a military historian to find myself posted on the Internet as a Nazi sympathizer.
Refusal did not get me off the hook. Last autumn, Irving told me he intended t subpoena me and in January the summons appeared. To it was attached a check for £50, thus making it an enforceable court instrument. I had to appear, like it or not.
In practice, the appearance was painless. Irving very decently gave me the chance at the outset to state that I was not present willingly. He allowed me to explain why without interruption. There was no jury to unsettle one, the parties having agreed to leave it all to the judge, a distinguished former libel QC, Charles Gray.
The judge was relaxed but a master of the material. All I had to do was answer Irving's questions. They were about my opinion of him as a historian. He had quotations from favorable reviews of his work I had written. Could such opinions, he asked, in effect, be consistent with the contrary opinions of other historians?
In a sense this was the central question, which would recur throughout the hearing. Lipstadt's case was that the bad in Irving was so bad that it robbed all he wrote of value. Irving's case was that, if some historians of reputation praised parts of his work, the praise extended to all his work. Both positions are, of course, highly artificial.
Fortunately, I did not have to give my opinion of Lipstadt's work. It was easy, however, to say that a reviewer is at liberty to pick and choose. I had praised, and would praise again, I said, Irving's extraordinary ability to describe and analyze Hitler's conduct of military operations, which was his main occupation during the Second World War. That did not imply endorsement of Irving's view that Hitler did not "know" about the Holocaust until October, 1943. That view was "perverse," I said.
What did I mean? I meant, I said, that it defied reason, or common sense. Would it not, however, be the most extraordinary historical revelation of the war, Irving asked, if it could be shown that he did not know about the Holocaust? This was a curious moment. I suddenly recognized that Irving believed Hitler's ignorance could be demonstrated.
I stepped down but stayed to watch the rest of the morning's proceedings. Irving's performance was impressive. He is a large, strong, handsome man, excellently dressed, with the appearance of a leading QC. He performs as well as a QC also, asking, in a firm but courteous voice, precise questions that demonstrate his detailed knowledge of an enormous body of material.
There it was all around us, hundreds of box files holding thousands of pages telling in millions of words what had been done and suffered in Hitler's Europe. Irving knows the material paragraph by paragraph. His skill as an archivist cannot be contested.
Unfortunately for him, the judge has decided that all-consuming knowledge of a vast body of material does not excuse faults in interpreting it. Irving, the judge said, "repeatedly makes assertions about the Holocaust which are unsupported by or contrary to the historical record."
This is the part of the judgment that will hurt. Irving, perhaps because he left London University without taking a degree, is acutely concerned to be recognized as an academic historian among others. It is not enough for him to receive compliments from professors about his skill in uncovering lost documents or finding forgotten survivors of Hitler's court. Those are the sorts of things journalists do. He wants to be praised for his source notes, for his exegesis, for his bibliographies, for what historians call "the apparatus."
As a result, his books positively clank and groan under the weight of apparatus. Very good it is, too. Irving, never confident enough to believe what he reads about himself, really is admired by some of those whose approval he seeks. Unfortunately for him, he is admired only when he writes sense. When he writes nonsense, a small but disabling element in his work, he sacrifices all admiration and incurs blame mixed with incredulity.
There is an answer. It is that there are really two Irvings. There is Irving the researcher and most of Irving the writer, who sticks to the facts and makes eloquent sense of them. Then there is Irving the thinker, who lets insecurities, imagined slights and youthful resentments bubble up from within him to cloud his mind. It is as if he becomes possessed by the desire to shock and confound the respectable ranks of academe, to write the unprintable and to speak the unutterable. Like many who seek to shock, he may not really believe what he says and probably feels astounded when taken seriously.
He has, in short, many of the qualities of the most creative historians. He is certainly never dull. Lipstadt, by contrast, seems as dull as only the self-righteously politically correct can be. Few other historians had ever heard of her before this case. Most will not want to hear from her again. Irving, if he will only learn from this case, still has much that is interesting to tell us.
Source: National Post | April 14, 2000
History
Brooding on the case of David Irving, I found myself admiring (it is not yet illegal, I think, to say this) his prodigious self-confidence and his heroic folly. He must have known perfectly well from the outset that he could not win his case against such odds. It would have been to defy one of the most powerful of contemporary taboos.
However villainous Irving may be, his villainy is not the issue here. The issue is the right of historians to examine and interpret all those innumerable events that have come to be known collectively as "the Holocaust" as freely as they would examine and interpret any other historical events; that is, the right of historians, including Irving, to carry out historical research and publish the results, without being tied to a foregone conclusion.
Moreover, however unacceptable Irving's opinions may be, it is a strange sort of country that can consign him to outer darkness while conferring the Order of Merit on another historian, the Marxist Eric Hobsbawm, an only partly and unwillingly repentant apologist for the Soviet Union, a system of tyranny whose victims far outnumbered those of Nazi Germany.
Source: Peter Simple | The Daily Telegraph | April 21, 2000
Excerpts from Sir Charles Gray's Summary Verdict, April 11, 2000
Justice Gray on "Antisemitism": "I have more sympathy for Irving's argument that Jews are not immune from his criticism. He said that he was simply expressing legitimate criticisms of them. Irving gave as an example what he claimed was his justified criticism of the Jews for suppressing his freedom of expression. Another legitimate ground of criticism might be the manner in which Jews in certain parts of the world appear to exploit the Holocaust. I agree that Jews are as open to criticism as anyone else."
Justice Gray on racism: "I accept that Irving is not obsessed with race. He has certainly not condoned or excused racist violence or thuggery."
Justice Gray on gas chambers: "[Irving] is right to point out that the contemporaneous documents, such as drawings, plans, correspondence with contractors and the like, yield little clear evidence of the existence of gas chambers designed to kill humans. Such isolated references to the use of gas as are to be found amongst these documents can be explained by the need to fumigate clothes so as to reduce the incidence of diseases such as typhus. The quantities of Zyklon-B delivered to the camp may arguably be explained by the need to fumigate clothes and other objects."
Justice Gray on David Irving: "As a military historian, Irving has much to commend him. For his works of military history Irving has undertaken thorough and painstaking research into the archives. He has discovered and disclosed to historians and others many documents which, but for his efforts, might have remained unnoticed for years."
Justice Gray on Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books: "But there are certain defamatory imputations which I have found to be defamatory of Irving but which have not been proved to be true. The Defendants made no attempt to prove the truth of Lipstadt's claim that Irving was scheduled to speak at an anti-Zionist conference in Sweden in 1992, which was also to be attended by various representatives of terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hammas. Nor did they seek to justify Lipstadt's claim that Irving has a self-portrait by Hitler hanging over his desk. Furthermore the Defendants have, as I have held, failed in their attempt to justify the defamatory imputations made against Irving in relation to the Goebbels diaries in the Moscow archive."
Source: Summary Verdict, April 11, 2000
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