Mr Irving writes: YES, A BLOOMSBURY bistro. I can never forget that on the
evening after burying my oldest daughter one sad day three
months before the trial began, I received an unexpected
anonymous wreath, with a card attached to it that dripped
with hatred. It read in effect "your daughter had it
coming to her, you Nazi, she was disabled". The actual coded
wording (below) was "This was indeed a merciful death
[Gnadentod]," signed "Philip Bouhler and friends" --
Bouhler was the Nazi in charge of the mercy-killing of the
disabled in Hitler's Germany; he killed himself in 1945. The flowers and card had been purchased
that day at the little Bloomsbury Florists store, just a
hundred yards or so from Mishcon's law offices. Who other
than I would have known about my daughter's tragic loss of
her limbs, her brain damage, and about Philip Bouhler, I
wondered. Penguin Books' law firm, Davenport Lyons,
had heard about the death, and although my opponents in this
action they had sent me a heartfelt letter of sympathy,
which is the way English folks do these things. After the trial, a gloating Lipstadt told
an Israeli audience: "My lawyers did all they could to
destabilize Irving in the weeks before the trial." They
nearly succeeded. |