Denying the Holocaust
Encyclopedia
Deborah Lipstadt
Deborah Esther Lipstadt, Ph.D. is an American historian and author of the book Denying the Holocaust and The Eichmann Trial. She is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University...
which led to a libel action when David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
objected to Lipstadt calling him a Holocaust denier
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
, see Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt
Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt
David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt is a case in English law, relating to Holocaust denial. It ruled that the claim that such denial is a deliberate distortion of evidence is substantially true, and therefore not libellous....
. The book gives a detailed and perceptive explanation of how people came to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Deborah Lipstadt claims that after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in France Maurice Bardèche
Maurice Bardèche
Maurice Bardèche was a French essayist, literary and art critic, journalist, and one of the leading exponents of Neo-Fascism in post-World War II Europe...
(who incidentally supported those French people who collaborated with Hitler and condemned the resistance) and Paul Rassinier (a survivor of Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
who it has been controversially claimed might have developed Stockholm syndrome
Stockholm syndrome
In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is an apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them...
) denied outright that the Holocaust ever happened, as did various Nazi sympathizers in America. According to Lipstadt Austin App
Austin App
Austin Joseph App was a controversial German-American professor of medieval English literature who taught at the University of Scranton and La Salle University. App defended Germans and Nazi Germany vehemently...
, a professor of English at La Salle College
La Salle College
La Salle College is a boys' secondary school in Hong Kong. It was established by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a Roman Catholic religious teaching order founded by St...
and the University of Scranton
University of Scranton
The University of Scranton is a private, co-educational Catholic and Jesuit university, located in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the northeast region of the state. The school was founded in 1888 by Most Rev. William O'Hara, the first Bishop of Scranton, as St. Thomas College. It was elevated to a...
first put out several notions that later Holocaust deniers followed. Basically, App tried to deny that the Holocaust happened, that gas chambers existed, that innocent Jews were killed, and tried to claim that defeated Germany was compelled to agree with the allies.
Lipstadt sees Holocaust denial as "purely anti-Semitic diatribe"; she outlines the history of Holocaust denial, claims that it is increasing and should not be disregarded. Holocaust deniers were originally a “Lunatic fringe” and could be seen as harmless cranks but are now more numerous and influential than before.
Lipstadt gives very many examples of allegations that six million Jews were not killed but only a few thousand died of disease. This has been widely refuted; for example, the English
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
stated that "Holocaust denial is a tissue of lies"http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml. Lipstadt shows that tens of thousands of witnesses of the Holocaust are still alive and there is conclusive documentary evidence for it. The Holocaust was clearly historical truth and calling it a Zionist conspiracy slanders the Jewish people. Lipstadt claims that distorting history in this way risks undermining the western tradition of objective scholarship i.e. the scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
and make distorting history for political purposes appear legitimate.
She accuses groups like the Institute for Historical Review
Institute for Historical Review
The Institute for Historical Review , founded in 1978, is an American organization that describes itself as a "public-interest educational, research and publishing center dedicated to promoting greater public awareness of history." Critics have accused it of being an antisemitic "pseudo-scholarly...
and people like David Duke
David Duke
David Ernest Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992, and in the Democratic presidential primaries in...
of spreading lies about the Holocaust. Lipstadt claims this is now an international movement where Holocaust deniers call themselves 'research centres', for example, and produce what they say are independent publications to make themselves look more scientific than they are. In Lipstadt’s opinion current value relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
helps Holocaust denial to thrive.
This book was the cause of the libel suit Irving v. Penguin Books and Lipstadt, when David Irving
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
sued Lipstadt claiming unsuccessfully that she had libelled him in this book.