I – 13 – fighting the Holocaust Denial

Holocaust Denial –

When J. said my father didn’t believe it, that meant she didn’t have to believe it either.

In 1995, the American historian and Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt was sued by the British writer David Irving, who posed as a historian and published countless works in which he claimed that the Holocaust had not taken place, and that the gas chambers were merely air-raid shelters, and the shafts into which Zyklon B was thrown were merely ventilation shafts, sued her to prove the statements she made in her book *Denying the Holocaust* (1993), in which she described David Irving as “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.”

Under English law, Lipstadt had to prove that Irving was lying. And she did. She prevailed. The trial took place in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, and was decided in her favor in April 2000. The enormous effort required under the law to prove that a liar is lying is well documented in this trial. It took a team of lawyers and historians who studied Irving’s publications to prove the distortions and fabrications in his writings, which were primarily found in the footnotes of his works. The trial was expensive, required a great deal of expertise, and lasted five years.