Wednesday, June 20, 2001

Historian Branded for Holocaust Views

By SUE LEEMAN,
Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) - Historian David Irving, who has questioned the extent of the Holocaust, sought permission Wednesday to appeal a court ruling in which a judge branded him an anti-Semite and an apologist for Hitler.

Irving's attorney, Adrian Davies, said the ruling last year by High Court Judge Charles Gray was contrary to the weight of evidence, and that Irving would argue in an appeal that the judgment was unjust.

"Nowhere in the entire core of Mr. Irving's work, in an authorial life of nearly 40 years ... has he said anything which remotely began to suggest that he thought the Nazis did a jolly good thing - or even an excusable thing - in rounding up all the Jews in Eastern Europe and putting them into camps," Davies told the three appellate judges.

Gray rejected a libel suit Irving brought against American academic Deborah Lipstadt who, in a 1994 book, accused Irving of playing down the horrors of the Holocaust.

The judge ruled that Irving, who has been banned from Germany, Canada and Australia, had indeed "misrepresented and distorted" historical evidence and that he was "anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

Gray said Irving had, for his own ideological reasons, deliberately misrepresented historical evidence and portrayed Hitler in a favorable light.

The 63-year-old Briton had sued Lipstadt and her publishers, Penguin, over her book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," saying it destroyed his livelihood and generated feelings of hatred against him.

Irving, the author of nearly 30 books including "Hitler's War," insists he does not deny that Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths.

He claimed that after publication of Lipstadt's book, his academic work was increasingly shunned by publishers and agents.

Gray ordered Irving to pay Lipstadt and Penguin's legal costs, estimated at $2.78 million. Irving has funded the appeal with the help of contributions from supporters, including some in the United States.

Lipstadt, who holds the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, was at the hearing but offered no comment Wednesday.

The hearing continues Thursday and is expected to last five days.