Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt
Encyclopedia
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.
In 1998, the British author David Irving
filed suit against American author Deborah Lipstadt
and her publisher Penguin Books
in an English court, claiming that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book Denying the Holocaust
. Lipstadt had accused him of deliberately misrepresenting evidence to conform to his ideological viewpoint. English libel law puts the burden of proof on the defence, meaning that it was up to Lipstadt and her publisher to prove that her claims were substantially true.
Lipstadt hired British lawyer Anthony Julius
while Penguin hired libel experts Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman of media firm Davenport Lyons. Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans
was hired by the defence to serve as an expert witness. Evans spent two years examining Irving's work, and presented evidence of Irving's misrepresentations, including evidence that Irving had knowingly used forged documents as source material. Upon mutual agreement, the case was argued as a bench trial
before Mr. Justice Charles Gray, who produced a written judgment 333 pages long in favour of the defendants, in which he detailed Irving's systematic distortion of the historical record of World War II
.
In 1993, Free Press
published Professor Deborah Lipstadt
's book Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
. In it she described and condemned the phenomenon of Holocaust denial
, and referred to David Irving
as being a prominent holocaust denier. To illustrate using one of the passages referred to in Irving's complaint:
In November 1994, Irving had his first encounter with Lipstadt at DeKalb College in Atlanta, where Lipstadt was lecturing on Holocaust denial. Irving stormed into the lecture hall, did his best to disrupt Lipstadt's lecture by challenging her to a debate, waved about a large amount of money in his hands, and announced he had $1,000 to give right here and now to the first person who could find a written order from Hitler for the Holocaust. Lipstadt ignored Irving, despite his repeated attempts to draw her into a debate. After Lipstadt's lecture had ended, Irving announced that Lipstadt's refusal to debate him or produce a written order from Hitler for the Holocaust despite his promise to pay $1,000 on the spot proved that her criticism of him in Denying the Holocaust
was invalid, and he proceeded to hand out free copies of his Göring
biography to Lipstadt's students.
, whose division Plume
had published a British edition of her book. At the same time, Irving also sued Holocaust historian Gitta Sereny for libel for an article she had written about him entitled "Spin Time for Hitler" in The Observer newspaper on April 21, 1996, although the case did not go to court. In letters of October 25 and October 28, 1997, Irving threatened to sue John Lukacs
for libel if he published his book, The Hitler of History without removing certain passages highly critical of Irving's work. The American edition of The Hitler of History was published in 1997 with the allegedly libelous passages included, but because of Irving's legal threats, no British edition of The Hitler of History was published until 2001. When the latter was published, as a result of the threat of legal action by Irving, the passages containing the criticism of Irving’s historical methods were expunged by the publisher, to the disappointment of many reviewers.
In her book, Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier, falsifier, and bigot, and said that he manipulated and distorted real documents. Irving claimed to have been libelled under the grounds that Lipstadt had called him a Holocaust denier when in his opinion there was no Holocaust to deny, as well as suggestions that he had falsified evidence or deliberately misinterpreted it. Though the author was American, Irving filed his suit in the English High Court, where the burden of proof in libel cases is on the defendant, unlike the U.S. where the burden is on the plaintiff. He was able to file the lawsuit in the UK because the book was published there (before 1996, if Irving had wished to sue Lipstadt, he would have had to launch his legal action in an American court; British libel law applies only to alleged acts of libel committed in Britain). As explained by the trial judge, Mr Justice Gray:
, a public figure
who claims to have been libelled must prove that the statements in question are defamatory, that they are false, and that they were made with actual malice
. Furthermore, reliance on reliable sources
(even if they prove false) is a valid defence. In contrast, English libel law requires only that the claimant show that the statements are defamatory. The burden of proof falls on the defendant to prove that the statements were substantially true, and reliance on sources is irrelevant.
The statements made by Lipstadt were clearly defamatory, and the defence could not claim that they were misinterpreted. Therefore, if the defence could not prove the defamatory content of her words to be true, they would be found guilty of libel. Lipstadt feared that such a verdict would confer legitimacy upon Irving's claims, and so felt compelled to defend herself. Of this situation, one commentator, who had initially expressed the opinion that Irving "could have been ignored", later wrote "Lipstadt had no choice but to defend herself in court."
In order to succeed with a justification defence, the defence would need to prove as substantially true all of the defamatory claims made by Lipstadt against Irving. The judge understood these claims to be:
to present her case. Penguin hired Davenport Lyons
libel specialists Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman. Together they briefed the libel barrister, Richard Rampton
QC
. Penguin also instructed Heather Rogers as junior barrister. Penguin knew that they were going to have to dig deep to defend Irving's claims. Lipstadt's claims would need to be backed up by some heavyweight experts and Penguin would foot the bill. They retained Professor Richard J. Evans
, historian and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University
, as their lead witness. As an expert witness, Evans was expected to prepare a report, and to be cross-examined. Also working as expert witnesses were the American Holocaust historian Christopher Browning
, the German historian Peter Longerich
, the Dutch architectural expert Robert Jan van Pelt
, and the Political Science Professor Hajo Funke of the Free University of Berlin.
The legal strategy had three prongs:
Pelt, Browning, and Longerich were assigned to the first prong. Funke wrote a report for the second. Evans focused on the third.
The lawyers for Lipstadt (Mishcon de Reya
) and Penguin (Davenport Lyons) worked closely together for the most part agreeing on the way to deal with the claim. One minor blip came when Penguin and their lawyers Davenport Lyons were keen that the information provided by the experts they had instructed be incorporated in an amended defence (which Heather Rogers drafted). Initially Mishcon were unpersuaded but Davenport Lyons were insistent, feeling that the amended document provided a clear statement of the strong evidence against Irving. The decision was eventually left to Richard Rampton and Heather Rogers as they would be presenting the case and both were in favour of amending. Mishcon relented.
In court it was van Pelt's and Evans' testimony that would hit home hardest. It was obvious that Irving would try to undermine Evans who had been highly critical of his scholarship but Irving was equally keen to try to undermine van Pelt whose report went to some of the issues at the heart of holocaust denial, demolishing some of the deniers' arguments about Auschwitz Birkenau. Irving barely made a dent when cross-examining van Pelt and Evans, however.
Evans had the help of two graduate students, Thomas Skelton-Robinson and Nik Wachsmann, to do the research he required. Evans and his two students took 18 months to write their 740-page report, finishing it in the summer of 1999.
During the trial, Evans was cross-examined by Irving. The cross-examination of Evans by Irving was noted for the high degree of personal antagonism between the two men. Such was the degree of antagonism that Irving challenged Evans on very minor points, such as Evans doubting that a 1938 German plebiscite which the Nazi regime received 98.8% of the vote was fair or not. A subject that much engaged Irving and Evans in a debate was a 1942 memo by the Chief of the Reich Chancellory Hans Lammers
to the Reich Justice Minister Franz Schlegelberger
in which Lammers wrote that Hitler ordered him to put the "Jewish Question" on the "back-burner" until after the war. Evans chose to accept the interpretation of the memo put forward by Eberhard Jäckel
in the 1970s; Irving chose to interpret the memo literally, and taunted Evans, saying "[i]t is a terrible problem, is it not, that we are faced with this tantalizing plate of crumbs and morsels of what should have provided the final smoking gun, and nowhere the whole way through the archives do we find even one item that we do not have to interpret or read between the lines of, but we do have in the same chain of evidence documents which... quite clearly specifically show Hitler intervening in the other sense?". In response, Evans stated "No, I do not accept that at all. It is because you want to interpret euphemism
s as being literal and that is what the whole problem is. Every time there is an euphemism, Mr. Irving... or a camouflage piece of statement or language about Madagascar
, you want to treat it as the literal truth, because it serves your purpose of trying to exculpate Hitler. That is part of... the way you manipulate and distort the documents".
Evans later described in 2001 to the Canadian columnist Robert Fulford his impression of Irving after being cross-examined by him as "He [Irving] was a bit like a dim student who didn't listen. If he didn't get the answer he wanted, he just repeated the question."
order proves the alleged non-occurrence of the Holocaust by arguing that although no such order was ever written down, Hitler had almost certainly made statements to his leading subordinates indicating his wishes in regards to the Jews of Europe during the war, thus rendering the need for a written order irrelevant. Browning testified that several leading experts on Nazi Germany believe that there was no written Führer order for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, but no historian doubts the reality of the Holocaust. Browning went on to assert that Irving was attempting to falsely equate doubts about the existence of a written Führer order with doubts about the Holocaust. Browning used to support his thesis the example of Hitler’s secret speech to his Gauleiter
s on December 12, 1941, in which Hitler strongly alluded to genocide as the “Final Solution”. Browning testified that the Madagascar Plan
of 1940-41 was "fantastic" and "bizarre", but countered Irving's suggestion that this proves the alleged impossibility of the Holocaust by stating: "...I do think they took it seriously. It is fantastic, but of course, Auschwitz is fantastic, too". Browning testified that the Madagascar Plan was not "Hitler's pipe dream" as Irving claimed, and that "I would not call it a pipe dream, because I think, if England had surrendered, they would have tried to do it. They would have to tried to implement it just as they tried to implement the Lublin reservation plan [Browning was referring to the Nisko Plan
here] and just as they tried and succeeded in implementing the death camp plans." Browning categorically rejected Irving’s claim that there was no reliable statistical information on the size of the pre-war Jewish population in Europe or on the killing processes, and argued that the only reason historians debate whether five or six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust is due to a lack of access to archives in the former Soviet Union. Likewise, Browning argued that it is possible to become soaked in human blood after shooting people at close range based on his research for his 1992 book Ordinary Men, and dismissed Irving’s argument that accounts of German personnel being soaked in blood were improbable because it is not possible to have a blood splattered uniform after shooting people at close range. Browning responded to Irving's claim that because Browning had done work for the Yad Vashem
center in Jerusalem that made him an "Israeli agent" and thereby compromised his scholarly abilities by stating: "If that was the case, then since I had been at the [US] Holocaust Museum, I would also have been an agent of the American government, and since I have received scholarships in Germany, I would be an agent of the German government, so I must be a very duplicitous fellow to be able to follow these regimes." Irving seemed anxious for Browning’s approval, and Browning later recalled that Irving behaved like the two of them were on "a joint journey of exploration and discovery."
, an architectural historian, was engaged by the defence as an expert witness. He prepared a 700-page report, in which he examined the evidence for the existence of the gas chambers
at Auschwitz. He also defended himself on cross-examination.
Irving floundered against van Pelt's deep knowledge of the mechanics of Auschwitz Birkenau. Rampton and van Pelt had bonded on a trip to Auschwitz with Rogers and Bateman and they had spent hours talking through Irving's claims. Van Pelt took the three lawyers and Deborah Lipstadt around Birkenau showing them how Irving's claims were false and the mistake he had made about the physical layout.
He later adapted the report he wrote into book form.
, an evolutionary psychologist
, to testify on his behalf. Irving made much of the statement by the American historian Arno J. Mayer
, who Irving went to pains to point out was both a Marxist and a man who would have been considered Jewish in Nazi racial theory, in his 1988 book Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, that most of the people who died at Auschwitz were the victims of disease rather than murder. In response, Peter Longerich argued that Mayer did not deny the Holocaust in his book, and that he was simply wrong about more Jews dying of "natural" as opposed to "unnatural" causes of death at Auschwitz.
Irving also subpoenaed the diplomatic historian Donald Cameron Watt and the military historian John Keegan
to testify in his case against Lipstadt; both men had refused an earlier offer to testify for Irving on their own and appeared to be very reluctant on the stand. Rather than focus on the defence's evidence against him, or on whether or not Lipstadt had defamed him, Irving seemed to focus mainly on his "right to free speech". In his closing statement, Irving claimed to have been a victim of an international, mostly Jewish, conspiracy for more than three decades.
The written judgment came out to 333 pages. Following an introduction and a discussion of the complaint, more than three-quarters of the written judgment is devoted to an analysis of all the evidence that was presented. Only then does the judge get to his findings on the evidence.
The judge deems that "in the course of his prolonged cross-examination, Evans justified each and every one of the criticisms on which the Defendants have chosen to rely." On the issue of Auschwitz, the judge states "My conclusion is that the various categories of evidence do 'converge' in the manner suggested by the Defendants... Having considered the various arguments advanced by Irving to assail the effect of the convergent evidence relied upon by the Defendants, it is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews," and "it follows that it is my conclusion that Irving's denials of these propositions were contrary to the evidence." Furthermore, "the allegation that Irving is a racist is also established."
Ultimately, the judge ruled that the defence succeeded in proving everything they claimed in trial but for two assertions: that Irving had broken an agreement with the Moscow archives and mishandled the glass plates containing Goebbel's diaries, and that he hung a portrait of Hitler above his desk. However, the judge pointed out that "the charges against Irving that have been proved to be true are of sufficient gravity" that those two claims mentioned above would "not have any material affect on Irving's reputation." The judge decided this in accordance with section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952
, which states that a justification defence can succeed despite the failure to prove minor assertions.
The judge summarized his findings as follows:
. On July 20, 2001, his application for appeal was denied by Lord Justices Malcolm Pill
, Mantell, and Richard Buxton.
in 2002.
to the charge of denying the Holocaust in Austria
, where Holocaust denial is a crime and where an arrest warrant was issued based on speeches he made in 1989. Irving knew that the warrant had been issued and that he was banned from Austria, but chose to go to Austria anyway. After he was arrested, Irving claimed in his plea that he changed his opinions on the Holocaust, "I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann
papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews." Upon hearing of Irving's sentence, Lipstadt said, "I am not happy when censorship
wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth."
Some saw the case as a vindication of the UK's strict libel laws. Others noted that Justice Gray "indicated that he did not 'regard it as being a part' of his function 'as the trial judge to make findings of fact as to what did and what did not occur during the Nazi regime in Germany', but he then spent hundreds of pages arguing about his position on such issues," claiming that it was the overly-strict libel laws that forced a judge to determine historical fact.
's Nova
, entitled "Holocaust on Trial", focused on the case. Produced concurrently with the actual trial, the program's production staff frequently visited the courtroom. As video cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, the events in the trial were re-enacted for television. Irving was played by British actor John Castle
. A team of historians were employed to gather the material necessary for the episode. The program was almost completed when the verdict for the real trial was handed down.
The rights to adapt the story of the trial into a movie have been optioned by Participant Media. A script is being written by Max Borenstein
.
English law
English law is the legal system of England and Wales, and is the basis of common law legal systems used in most Commonwealth countries and the United States except Louisiana...
, relating to Holocaust denial
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...
. It ruled that the claim that such denial is a deliberate distortion of evidence is substantially true, and therefore not libellous.
In 1998, the British author 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...
filed suit against American author Deborah Lipstadt
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...
and her publisher Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in an English court, claiming that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book Denying the Holocaust
Denying the Holocaust
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory is a 1993 book by Deborah Lipstadt which led to a libel action when David Irving objected to Lipstadt calling him a Holocaust denier, see Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt. The book gives a detailed and perceptive explanation of how...
. Lipstadt had accused him of deliberately misrepresenting evidence to conform to his ideological viewpoint. English libel law puts the burden of proof on the defence, meaning that it was up to Lipstadt and her publisher to prove that her claims were substantially true.
Lipstadt hired British lawyer Anthony Julius
Anthony Julius
Anthony Julius is a prominent British lawyer and academic, best known for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales, Deborah Lipstadt and more recently Heather Mills...
while Penguin hired libel experts Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman of media firm Davenport Lyons. Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans
Richard J. Evans
Richard John Evans is a British academic and historian, prominently known for his history of Germany.-Life:Evans was born in London, of Welsh parentage, and is now Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and President of Wolfson College...
was hired by the defence to serve as an expert witness. Evans spent two years examining Irving's work, and presented evidence of Irving's misrepresentations, including evidence that Irving had knowingly used forged documents as source material. Upon mutual agreement, the case was argued as a bench trial
Bench trial
A bench trial is a trial held before a judge sitting without a jury. The term is chiefly used in common law jurisdictions to describe exceptions from jury trial, as most other legal systems do not use juries to any great extent....
before Mr. Justice Charles Gray, who produced a written judgment 333 pages long in favour of the defendants, in which he detailed Irving's systematic distortion of the historical record of 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...
.
History
Free Press (publisher)
Free Press is a book publishing imprint of Simon and Schuster. It was founded by Jeremiah Kaplan and Charles Liebman in 1947 and was devoted to sociology and religion titles. It was headquartered in Glencoe, Illinois, where it was known as The Free Press of Glencoe...
published Professor Deborah Lipstadt
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...
's book Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
Denying the Holocaust
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory is a 1993 book by Deborah Lipstadt which led to a libel action when David Irving objected to Lipstadt calling him a Holocaust denier, see Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt. The book gives a detailed and perceptive explanation of how...
. In it she described and condemned the phenomenon of Holocaust denial
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...
, and referred to 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...
as being a prominent holocaust denier. To illustrate using one of the passages referred to in Irving's complaint:
In November 1994, Irving had his first encounter with Lipstadt at DeKalb College in Atlanta, where Lipstadt was lecturing on Holocaust denial. Irving stormed into the lecture hall, did his best to disrupt Lipstadt's lecture by challenging her to a debate, waved about a large amount of money in his hands, and announced he had $1,000 to give right here and now to the first person who could find a written order from Hitler for the Holocaust. Lipstadt ignored Irving, despite his repeated attempts to draw her into a debate. After Lipstadt's lecture had ended, Irving announced that Lipstadt's refusal to debate him or produce a written order from Hitler for the Holocaust despite his promise to pay $1,000 on the spot proved that her criticism of him in Denying the Holocaust
Denying the Holocaust
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory is a 1993 book by Deborah Lipstadt which led to a libel action when David Irving objected to Lipstadt calling him a Holocaust denier, see Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt. The book gives a detailed and perceptive explanation of how...
was invalid, and he proceeded to hand out free copies of his Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
biography to Lipstadt's students.
Libel suits
On September 5, 1996, Irving filed a libel suit concerning Lipstadt's book in English court. He named in his suit Lipstadt and Penguin BooksPenguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
, whose division Plume
Plume (publishing)
Plume is a publishing company in the United States, founded in 1970 as the trade paperback imprint of New American Library. Today it is a division of Penguin Group, with a backlist of approximately 700 titles....
had published a British edition of her book. At the same time, Irving also sued Holocaust historian Gitta Sereny for libel for an article she had written about him entitled "Spin Time for Hitler" in The Observer newspaper on April 21, 1996, although the case did not go to court. In letters of October 25 and October 28, 1997, Irving threatened to sue John Lukacs
John Lukacs
John Adalbert Lukacs is a Hungarian-born American historian who has written more than thirty books, including Five Days in London, May 1940 and A New Republic...
for libel if he published his book, The Hitler of History without removing certain passages highly critical of Irving's work. The American edition of The Hitler of History was published in 1997 with the allegedly libelous passages included, but because of Irving's legal threats, no British edition of The Hitler of History was published until 2001. When the latter was published, as a result of the threat of legal action by Irving, the passages containing the criticism of Irving’s historical methods were expunged by the publisher, to the disappointment of many reviewers.
In her book, Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier, falsifier, and bigot, and said that he manipulated and distorted real documents. Irving claimed to have been libelled under the grounds that Lipstadt had called him a Holocaust denier when in his opinion there was no Holocaust to deny, as well as suggestions that he had falsified evidence or deliberately misinterpreted it. Though the author was American, Irving filed his suit in the English High Court, where the burden of proof in libel cases is on the defendant, unlike the U.S. where the burden is on the plaintiff. He was able to file the lawsuit in the UK because the book was published there (before 1996, if Irving had wished to sue Lipstadt, he would have had to launch his legal action in an American court; British libel law applies only to alleged acts of libel committed in Britain). As explained by the trial judge, Mr Justice Gray:
4.7 ... the burden of proving the defence of justification rests upon the publishers. Defamatory words are presumed under English law to be untrue. It is not incumbent on defendants to prove the truth of every detail of the defamatory words published: what has to be proved is the substantial truth of the defamatory imputations published about the claimant. As it is sometimes expressed, what must be proved is the truth of the sting of the defamatory charges made.Irving approached Penguin and offered to drop them from his lawsuit if they would pull the book from publication in the UK, deny all of Lipstadt's conclusions and make a charitable donation in the name of Irving's daughter (who is disabled); he made clear he would not settle the lawsuit with Professor Lipstadt if Penguin settled with him. The publisher rejected his terms and the case went to trial.
Legal issues
That Irving filed his lawsuit in English court rather than American, gave him the upper hand by shifting the burden of proof. Under American libel lawUnited States defamation law
The origins of United States defamation law pre-date the American Revolution; one famous 1734 case involving John Peter Zenger established some precedent that the truth should be an absolute defense against libel charges. Though the First Amendment of the U.S...
, a public figure
Public figure
Public figure is a legal term applied in the context of defamation actions as well as invasion of privacy. A public figure cannot base a lawsuit on incorrect harmful statements unless there is proof that the writer or publisher acted with actual malice...
who claims to have been libelled must prove that the statements in question are defamatory, that they are false, and that they were made with actual malice
Actual malice
Actual malice in United States law is a condition required to establish libel against public officials or public figures and is defined as "knowledge that the information was false" or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." Reckless disregard does not...
. Furthermore, reliance on reliable sources
Reliable Sources
Reliable Sources is a weekly show on CNN, focusing on analysis of the American news media. It was initially created to cover the media's coverage of the Persian Gulf War, but has since also covered the media's coverage of the Valerie Plame affair, the War in Iraq, the outing of Mark Felt as Deep...
(even if they prove false) is a valid defence. In contrast, English libel law requires only that the claimant show that the statements are defamatory. The burden of proof falls on the defendant to prove that the statements were substantially true, and reliance on sources is irrelevant.
The statements made by Lipstadt were clearly defamatory, and the defence could not claim that they were misinterpreted. Therefore, if the defence could not prove the defamatory content of her words to be true, they would be found guilty of libel. Lipstadt feared that such a verdict would confer legitimacy upon Irving's claims, and so felt compelled to defend herself. Of this situation, one commentator, who had initially expressed the opinion that Irving "could have been ignored", later wrote "Lipstadt had no choice but to defend herself in court."
In order to succeed with a justification defence, the defence would need to prove as substantially true all of the defamatory claims made by Lipstadt against Irving. The judge understood these claims to be:
Defence
Lipstadt hired the British solicitor Anthony JuliusAnthony Julius
Anthony Julius is a prominent British lawyer and academic, best known for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales, Deborah Lipstadt and more recently Heather Mills...
to present her case. Penguin hired Davenport Lyons
Davenport Lyons
Davenport Lyons is a London-based law firm who provide legal advice and services across various fields. Although most of their work concerns corporate acquisitions, in 2007 their actions against file sharers became news in the United Kingdom...
libel specialists Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman. Together they briefed the libel barrister, Richard Rampton
Richard Rampton
Richard Rampton QC is a leading British libel lawyer. He has been involved in several high profile cases, with his defence of Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books against David Irving among the most famous. In Irving v. Penguin Books and Lipstadt, he represented them against false accusations of...
QC
Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...
. Penguin also instructed Heather Rogers as junior barrister. Penguin knew that they were going to have to dig deep to defend Irving's claims. Lipstadt's claims would need to be backed up by some heavyweight experts and Penguin would foot the bill. They retained Professor Richard J. Evans
Richard J. Evans
Richard John Evans is a British academic and historian, prominently known for his history of Germany.-Life:Evans was born in London, of Welsh parentage, and is now Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and President of Wolfson College...
, historian and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, as their lead witness. As an expert witness, Evans was expected to prepare a report, and to be cross-examined. Also working as expert witnesses were the American Holocaust historian Christopher Browning
Christopher Browning
Christopher Robert Browning is an American historian of the Holocaust.-Education:Browning received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1968 and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1975. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University from 1974 to 1999, eventually becoming...
, the German historian Peter Longerich
Peter Longerich
Professor Peter Longerich is a German historian.In 2002-03, Professor Longerich was the third holder of the Visiting Chair at the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt. In 2003-04, he was J.B...
, the Dutch architectural expert Robert Jan van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt is an author, architectural historian, professor at the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto in Ontario and a Holocaust scholar. One of the world's leading experts on Auschwitz, he regularly speaks on Holocaust related topics, through which he has come to address...
, and the Political Science Professor Hajo Funke of the Free University of Berlin.
The legal strategy had three prongs:
- Provide evidence that the Holocaust happened, with a specific focus on the evidence for: the existence and use of gas chambers; and a coordinated Nazi plan, directed by Hitler, for the extermination of Jews. The goal was not to prove the holocaust, but to show that any reasonable and fair-minded historian would not doubt it, and that Irving must therefore not be reasonable or fair-minded.
- Document Irving's political views and associations with extremist, neo-Nazi groups.
- Examine Irving's work to see whether Irving did indeed falsify the historical record, as Lipstadt had claimed he did.
Pelt, Browning, and Longerich were assigned to the first prong. Funke wrote a report for the second. Evans focused on the third.
The lawyers for Lipstadt (Mishcon de Reya
Mishcon de Reya
Mishcon de Reya is an international law firm with offices in London offering a range of legal and advocacy services for businesses and individuals...
) and Penguin (Davenport Lyons) worked closely together for the most part agreeing on the way to deal with the claim. One minor blip came when Penguin and their lawyers Davenport Lyons were keen that the information provided by the experts they had instructed be incorporated in an amended defence (which Heather Rogers drafted). Initially Mishcon were unpersuaded but Davenport Lyons were insistent, feeling that the amended document provided a clear statement of the strong evidence against Irving. The decision was eventually left to Richard Rampton and Heather Rogers as they would be presenting the case and both were in favour of amending. Mishcon relented.
In court it was van Pelt's and Evans' testimony that would hit home hardest. It was obvious that Irving would try to undermine Evans who had been highly critical of his scholarship but Irving was equally keen to try to undermine van Pelt whose report went to some of the issues at the heart of holocaust denial, demolishing some of the deniers' arguments about Auschwitz Birkenau. Irving barely made a dent when cross-examining van Pelt and Evans, however.
Evans had the help of two graduate students, Thomas Skelton-Robinson and Nik Wachsmann, to do the research he required. Evans and his two students took 18 months to write their 740-page report, finishing it in the summer of 1999.
Settlement offers
A short time later, Irving privately approached Penguin and offered to drop them from his lawsuit if they would pull the book from publication in the UK, deny all of Lipstadt's conclusions and make a charitable donation of £500 in the name of Irving's daughter (who is disabled). He made it clear that he would not settle with Lipstadt if Penguin settled with him. Bays and Bateman made clear that the publisher rejected his terms. Three weeks later, Irving officially offered to settle with both parties, the terms being that the book be withdrawn from circulation, and both parties apologize and (each) make a £500 donation. Lipstadt instructed her lawyers to reject the offer.Evans
Evans and his two assistants spent more than two years examining Irving's work. This research found that Irving had misrepresented historical evidence to support his prejudices. In his report and testimony, Evans suggested that in his view, Irving had knowingly used forged documents as sources, and that for this reason, Irving could not be regarded as a historian. His conclusions were that"Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about. ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian".
Hans Lammers
Dr.jur. Hans Heinrich Lammers was a German jurist and prominent Nazi politician. From 1933 until 1945 he served as head of the Reich Chancellery under Adolf Hitler....
to the Reich Justice Minister Franz Schlegelberger
Franz Schlegelberger
Louis Rudolph Franz Schlegelberger was State Secretary in the German Reich Ministry of Justice and served awhile as Justice Minister during the Third Reich. He was the highest-ranking defendant at the Judges' Trial in Nuremberg.- Early life :Schlegelberger was born into a Protestant salesman's...
in which Lammers wrote that Hitler ordered him to put the "Jewish Question" on the "back-burner" until after the war. Evans chose to accept the interpretation of the memo put forward by Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.-Career:...
in the 1970s; Irving chose to interpret the memo literally, and taunted Evans, saying "[i]t is a terrible problem, is it not, that we are faced with this tantalizing plate of crumbs and morsels of what should have provided the final smoking gun, and nowhere the whole way through the archives do we find even one item that we do not have to interpret or read between the lines of, but we do have in the same chain of evidence documents which... quite clearly specifically show Hitler intervening in the other sense?". In response, Evans stated "No, I do not accept that at all. It is because you want to interpret euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
s as being literal and that is what the whole problem is. Every time there is an euphemism, Mr. Irving... or a camouflage piece of statement or language about Madagascar
Madagascar Plan
The Madagascar Plan was a suggested policy of the Nazi government of Germany to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.-Origins:The evacuation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept...
, you want to treat it as the literal truth, because it serves your purpose of trying to exculpate Hitler. That is part of... the way you manipulate and distort the documents".
Evans later described in 2001 to the Canadian columnist Robert Fulford his impression of Irving after being cross-examined by him as "He [Irving] was a bit like a dim student who didn't listen. If he didn't get the answer he wanted, he just repeated the question."
Longerich
Longerich testified to the meaning of the often euphemistic language used by German officials during the war regarding the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, and argued that from 1941 onwards, the term “resettlement in the East” was a metaphor for deportation to the death camps. During his exchanges with Irving, Longerich insisted quite firmly that the term “resettlement” was only a euphemism for extermination and nothing more, and used the Posen speech given by Himmler in October 1943 as a proof of the genocidal policy of the German state. Irving by contrast argued for a literal interpretation of the phrase “resettlement in the East”.Browning
During his testimony and a cross-examination by Irving, Browning countered Irving’s suggestion that the last chapter of the Holocaust has yet to be written (implying there were grounds for doubting the reality of the Holocaust) by replying: "We are still discovering things about the Roman Empire. There is no last chapter in history." Browning countered Irving’s argument that the lack of a written FührerFührer
Führer , alternatively spelled Fuehrer in both English and German when the umlaut is not available, is a German title meaning leader or guide now most associated with Adolf Hitler, who modelled it on Benito Mussolini's title il Duce, as well as with Georg von Schönerer, whose followers also...
order proves the alleged non-occurrence of the Holocaust by arguing that although no such order was ever written down, Hitler had almost certainly made statements to his leading subordinates indicating his wishes in regards to the Jews of Europe during the war, thus rendering the need for a written order irrelevant. Browning testified that several leading experts on Nazi Germany believe that there was no written Führer order for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, but no historian doubts the reality of the Holocaust. Browning went on to assert that Irving was attempting to falsely equate doubts about the existence of a written Führer order with doubts about the Holocaust. Browning used to support his thesis the example of Hitler’s secret speech to his Gauleiter
Gauleiter
A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...
s on December 12, 1941, in which Hitler strongly alluded to genocide as the “Final Solution”. Browning testified that the Madagascar Plan
Madagascar Plan
The Madagascar Plan was a suggested policy of the Nazi government of Germany to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.-Origins:The evacuation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept...
of 1940-41 was "fantastic" and "bizarre", but countered Irving's suggestion that this proves the alleged impossibility of the Holocaust by stating: "...I do think they took it seriously. It is fantastic, but of course, Auschwitz is fantastic, too". Browning testified that the Madagascar Plan was not "Hitler's pipe dream" as Irving claimed, and that "I would not call it a pipe dream, because I think, if England had surrendered, they would have tried to do it. They would have to tried to implement it just as they tried to implement the Lublin reservation plan [Browning was referring to the Nisko Plan
Nisko Plan
The Nisko Plan, also Lublin Plan or Nisko-Lublin Plan , was developed in September 1939 by the Nazi German Schutzstaffel as a "territorial solution to the Jewish Question"...
here] and just as they tried and succeeded in implementing the death camp plans." Browning categorically rejected Irving’s claim that there was no reliable statistical information on the size of the pre-war Jewish population in Europe or on the killing processes, and argued that the only reason historians debate whether five or six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust is due to a lack of access to archives in the former Soviet Union. Likewise, Browning argued that it is possible to become soaked in human blood after shooting people at close range based on his research for his 1992 book Ordinary Men, and dismissed Irving’s argument that accounts of German personnel being soaked in blood were improbable because it is not possible to have a blood splattered uniform after shooting people at close range. Browning responded to Irving's claim that because Browning had done work for the Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
center in Jerusalem that made him an "Israeli agent" and thereby compromised his scholarly abilities by stating: "If that was the case, then since I had been at the [US] Holocaust Museum, I would also have been an agent of the American government, and since I have received scholarships in Germany, I would be an agent of the German government, so I must be a very duplicitous fellow to be able to follow these regimes." Irving seemed anxious for Browning’s approval, and Browning later recalled that Irving behaved like the two of them were on "a joint journey of exploration and discovery."
Pelt
Robert Jan van PeltRobert Jan van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt is an author, architectural historian, professor at the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto in Ontario and a Holocaust scholar. One of the world's leading experts on Auschwitz, he regularly speaks on Holocaust related topics, through which he has come to address...
, an architectural historian, was engaged by the defence as an expert witness. He prepared a 700-page report, in which he examined the evidence for the existence of the gas chambers
Gas Chambers
Gas Chambers is a fast, hollow and shallow point break type of wave. Being that it is a high performance wave it is well suited for the average to pro level surfer. Gas Chambers is located on the North Shore of Oahu about a 1/4 of a mile north of Ehukai Beach Park and 1/2 a mile west of Sunset...
at Auschwitz. He also defended himself on cross-examination.
Irving floundered against van Pelt's deep knowledge of the mechanics of Auschwitz Birkenau. Rampton and van Pelt had bonded on a trip to Auschwitz with Rogers and Bateman and they had spent hours talking through Irving's claims. Van Pelt took the three lawyers and Deborah Lipstadt around Birkenau showing them how Irving's claims were false and the mistake he had made about the physical layout.
He later adapted the report he wrote into book form.
Claimant
In the trial, Irving represented himself. He called the American Kevin B. MacDonaldKevin B. MacDonald
Kevin B. MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, best known for his use of evolutionary psychology to inform his study of Judaism as being a "group evolutionary strategy."...
, an evolutionary psychologist
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
, to testify on his behalf. Irving made much of the statement by the American historian Arno J. Mayer
Arno J. Mayer
Arno Joseph Mayer is a United States Marxist historian originally from Luxembourg, who specializes in modern Europe, diplomatic history, and the Holocaust, and is currently Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus, at Princeton University.-Early life and academic career:Mayer was born into a...
, who Irving went to pains to point out was both a Marxist and a man who would have been considered Jewish in Nazi racial theory, in his 1988 book Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, that most of the people who died at Auschwitz were the victims of disease rather than murder. In response, Peter Longerich argued that Mayer did not deny the Holocaust in his book, and that he was simply wrong about more Jews dying of "natural" as opposed to "unnatural" causes of death at Auschwitz.
Irving also subpoenaed the diplomatic historian Donald Cameron Watt and the military historian John Keegan
John Keegan
Sir John Keegan OBE FRSL is a British military historian, lecturer, writer and journalist. He has published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime, and intelligence warfare, as well as the psychology of battle.-Life and career:John...
to testify in his case against Lipstadt; both men had refused an earlier offer to testify for Irving on their own and appeared to be very reluctant on the stand. Rather than focus on the defence's evidence against him, or on whether or not Lipstadt had defamed him, Irving seemed to focus mainly on his "right to free speech". In his closing statement, Irving claimed to have been a victim of an international, mostly Jewish, conspiracy for more than three decades.
Ruling
The judgment was presented on 11 April 2000, although the lawyers received the decision 24 hours earlier. To the large crowd assembled, the judge read portions of his written judgment.The written judgment came out to 333 pages. Following an introduction and a discussion of the complaint, more than three-quarters of the written judgment is devoted to an analysis of all the evidence that was presented. Only then does the judge get to his findings on the evidence.
The judge deems that "in the course of his prolonged cross-examination, Evans justified each and every one of the criticisms on which the Defendants have chosen to rely." On the issue of Auschwitz, the judge states "My conclusion is that the various categories of evidence do 'converge' in the manner suggested by the Defendants... Having considered the various arguments advanced by Irving to assail the effect of the convergent evidence relied upon by the Defendants, it is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews," and "it follows that it is my conclusion that Irving's denials of these propositions were contrary to the evidence." Furthermore, "the allegation that Irving is a racist is also established."
Ultimately, the judge ruled that the defence succeeded in proving everything they claimed in trial but for two assertions: that Irving had broken an agreement with the Moscow archives and mishandled the glass plates containing Goebbel's diaries, and that he hung a portrait of Hitler above his desk. However, the judge pointed out that "the charges against Irving that have been proved to be true are of sufficient gravity" that those two claims mentioned above would "not have any material affect on Irving's reputation." The judge decided this in accordance with section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952
Defamation Act 1952
The Defamation Act 1952 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.This Act implemented recommendations contained in the Report of the Porter Committee...
, which states that a justification defence can succeed despite the failure to prove minor assertions.
The judge summarized his findings as follows:
Appeal
Irving subsequently appealed to the Civil Division of the Court of AppealCourt of Appeal of England and Wales
The Court of Appeal of England and Wales is the second most senior court in the English legal system, with only the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom above it...
. On July 20, 2001, his application for appeal was denied by Lord Justices Malcolm Pill
Malcolm Pill
Sir Malcolm Thomas Pill is the longest-serving Lord Justice of Appeal, and the most senior member of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales who does not head a division of that court or of the High Court....
, Mantell, and Richard Buxton.
Bankruptcy
In light of the evidence presented at the trial, a number of Irving's works that had previously escaped serious scrutiny were brought to public attention. He was also liable to pay all of the substantial costs of the trial, which ruined him financially and subsequently forced him into bankruptcyBankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
in 2002.
2006 arrest
In 2006, Irving pleaded guiltyGuilty
Guilty commonly refers to the feeling of guilt, an experience that occurs when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard.Guilty or The Guilty may also refer to:-Law:*Guilty plea, a formal admission of legal culpability...
to the charge of denying the Holocaust in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, where Holocaust denial is a crime and where an arrest warrant was issued based on speeches he made in 1989. Irving knew that the warrant had been issued and that he was banned from Austria, but chose to go to Austria anyway. After he was arrested, Irving claimed in his plea that he changed his opinions on the Holocaust, "I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews." Upon hearing of Irving's sentence, Lipstadt said, "I am not happy when censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth."
Media response
The situation was often referred to by the media as "history on trial." The response to the verdict was overwhelmingly positive.Some saw the case as a vindication of the UK's strict libel laws. Others noted that Justice Gray "indicated that he did not 'regard it as being a part' of his function 'as the trial judge to make findings of fact as to what did and what did not occur during the Nazi regime in Germany', but he then spent hundreds of pages arguing about his position on such issues," claiming that it was the overly-strict libel laws that forced a judge to determine historical fact.
Portrayal
In 2001, an episode of PBSPublic Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
's Nova
NOVA (TV series)
Nova is a popular science television series from the U.S. produced by WGBH Boston. It can be seen on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries...
, entitled "Holocaust on Trial", focused on the case. Produced concurrently with the actual trial, the program's production staff frequently visited the courtroom. As video cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, the events in the trial were re-enacted for television. Irving was played by British actor John Castle
John Castle
John Castle is an English actor. Castle has acted in theatre, film and television. He is well known for his role as Postumus in the 1976 BBC television adaptation of I, Claudius and for playing Geoffrey in the 1968 film, The Lion in Winter. He also played Dr...
. A team of historians were employed to gather the material necessary for the episode. The program was almost completed when the verdict for the real trial was handed down.
The rights to adapt the story of the trial into a movie have been optioned by Participant Media. A script is being written by Max Borenstein
Max Borenstein
Max Borenstein is an American film writer and director.-Career:Borenstein wrote, edited, and directed the 2003 film Swordswallowers and Thin Men while a senior at Yale University. The film starred Peter Cellini, Zoe Kazan, Fran Kranz and Graham Norris, and featured Army Wives star Sally Pressman...
.
See also
- Defamation
- English defamation lawEnglish defamation lawModern libel and slander laws, as implemented in many Commonwealth nations as well as in the United States and in the Republic of Ireland, are originally descended from English defamation law...
- Libel tourismLibel tourismLibel tourism is a term first coined by Geoffrey Robertson to describe forum shopping for libel suits. It particularly refers to the practice of pursuing a case in England and Wales, in preference to other jurisdictions, such as the United States, which provide more extensive defences for those...
, the idea that plaintiffs choose to file libel suits in jurisdictions thought more likely to give a favourable result. - 'Funding Evil' libel case, a case where an American writer was sued for libel in English Court, despite the fact that the book was not published there.
- English defamation law
- The HolocaustThe HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
- Nuremberg TrialsNuremberg TrialsThe Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, the series of war crime tribunals that followed World War II. - Eichmann trial, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who had escaped and was not present at the Nuremberg Trials.
- Nuremberg Trials
- Holocaust denialHolocaust denialHolocaust 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...
- Genocide denialGenocide denialGenocide denial occurs when an act of genocide is met with attempts to deny the occurrence and minimize the scale or death toll. The most well-known type is Holocaust denial, but its definition can extend to any genocide that has been minimized or met with excessive skepticism.Where there is near...
- Laws against Holocaust denialLaws against Holocaust denialHolocaust denial is illegal in a number of European countries. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalize genocide denial. In addition, the European Union has issued a directive to combat racism and xenophobia, which makes provision for member states criminalising Holocaust denial, with...
- R. v. ZündelR. v. ZundelR. v. Zundel [1992] 2 S.C.R. 731 is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision where the Court struck down the provision in the Criminal Code of Canada that prohibited publication of false information or news on the basis that it violated the freedom of expression provision under section 2 of the...
, a Canadian case in which a holocaust denier was convicted under reporting false news. Upon appeal the law was overturned on free speech grounds. - R. v. KeegstraR. v. KeegstraR. v. Keegstra, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 697 is a landmark freedom of expression decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where the Court upheld the Criminal Code of Canada provision prohibiting the wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group as constitutional under the freedom of expression...
, another Canadian case, in which a conviction of an openly anti-semitic teacher who denied the Holocaust in class, was upheld under hate crime law, regardless of free speech.
- Genocide denial
External links
- Holocaust Denial On Trial: Holocaust Denial and the 2000 Libel Trial in the U.K., a project of The Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory UniversityEmory UniversityEmory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
. - Nova Online | Holocaust on Trial, the companion website to an episode of PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
's NOVANOVA (TV series)Nova is a popular science television series from the U.S. produced by WGBH Boston. It can be seen on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries...
which focused on, and featured re-enactments of the case. - Evil Takes the Stand, a five page feature by Salon.com about the case.
- The Irving libel trial, a special report on the case by The Guardian
- Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Deborah Lipstadt from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Mr. Rampton's Closing Remarks