DJC Irving
- v -
Penguin Books
Ltd and Deborah
Lipstadt |  In
1993 American scholar Deborah
Lipstadt published
Denying
the
Holocaust,
product of a research contract
funded by an Israeli agency.
British writer David Irving
claims
that it libels him. This is her
Defence (which follows closely
the Defence pleaded by her U.K.
publisher, Penguin Books
Ltd).
| 
Press
buttons for the corresponding
Replies
|
|
All
hyperlinks and illustrations are added by this
Website and are not part of the original
document | Index
to this documentParticulars: | 1996.--I.--N. In the High Court of
Justice QUEEN'S BENCH
DIVISION Between DAVID JOHN CAWDELL
IRVING Plaintiff and PENGUIN BOOKS
LIMITED First
Defendants DEBORAH E.
LIPSTADT Second
Defendant [...]
DEFENCE OF THE SECOND
DEFENDANT
1.  It
is admitted that the Plaintiff is a well-known
writer, and the author of a biography "Goebbels,
Mastermind of the Third Reich" (hereinafter
referred to as "the Goebbels book"). It is denied
that the Plaintiff is an historian. Save as
aforesaid, paragraph 1 of the Statement of Claim is
not admitted.  2. Paragraph 2 of the Statement of Claim is
admitted. 3. It is
admitted that the Second Defendant is the author of
a book entitled DENYING THE
HOLOCAUST, sub-titled The Growing Assault on
Truth and Memory (the Work), which the First
Defendants published within the jurisdiction of
this Honourable Court in about July 1994. The
Second Defendant occupies the Dorot Chair in Modern
Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in
Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Save as aforesaid, the
Second Defendant declines to plead to paragraphs 3
to 7 inclusive of the Statement of Claim, and those
parts thereafter of the Statement of Claim which
concern the other Defendants to this action. | 4. It is
admitted that in the Work, the First Defendants
published the words (as footnoted but with
different numbering) set out in paragraph 8 of the
Statement of Claim. The said words formed but part
of the Work, to the whole of which the Second
Defendant will refer to put the said words into
their proper context. It is denied the said words
referred to the Plaintiffs save where he was
expressly referred to by name. Save as aforesaid,
paragraph 8 of the Statement of Claim is
denied.5. It is
denied that the said words, whether in their
natural and ordinary meaning, or by way of innuendo
bore or were understood to bear the meanings
pleaded in paragraph 9 of the Statement of
Claim.6. Further,
or in the alternative, the said words are true in
substance and in fact. The meanings the Second
Defendant will justify are : (i) that the Plaintiff has on
numerous occasions (in the manner hereinafter
particularised) denied the Holocaust, the
deliberate planned extermination of Europe's
Jewish population by the Nazis, and denied that
gas chambers were used by the Nazis as a means
of carrying out that
extermination; (ii) that the Plaintiff holds extremist
views, and has allied himself with others who do
so, including individuals such as Dr. Robert
Faurisson, and Ernst Zundel; (iii) that the Plaintiff, driven by his
obsession with Hitler, distorts, manipulates and
falsifies history in order to put Hitler in a
more favourable light, thereby demonstrating a
lack of the detachment, rationality and judgment
necessary for an historian; (iv) that there are grounds to suspect
that the Plaintiff had removed certain
microfiches of Goebbels' diaries contained in
the Moscow archives, from the said archives
without permission; and that the Plaintiff lied
and/or exaggerated the position with regard to
the unpublished diaries on microfiche of
Goebbels contained in the Moscow archives, and
used by him in the Goebbels book; (v) that in all the premises, the Plaintiff
is discredited as an historian and user of
source material, and there was an increased risk
that the Plaintiff would for his own purposes,
distort, and manipulate the contents of the said
microfiches in pursuance of his said
obsession. | | P A R T I C U L A R
S Meaning (i) - (iii)(v):
The Holocaust and the Gas Chambers
(1) The
Plaintiff has publicly claimed as follows : (i) "There were no gas chambers at
Auschwitz.... by logical deduction that were no
gas chambers anywhere in Germany... But this is
not an important issue. I am not a Holocaust
Historian. About 100,000 people died in
Auschwitz in three years. If we must assume
generously that a quarter of them were murdered
then we must remember that the British killed
50,000 Germans in one night when they raided
Hamburg...."(ii) "Auschwitz was not an extermination camp
and the Holocaust was a propaganda hoax by the
British... That question [the Holocaust]
is still wide open. I still maintain Auschwitz
was not an extermination camp. There were no gas
chambers there, I think they were a figment of
British wartime propaganda..." (iii) "I also predict that one year from now
[1992], the Holocaust will be
discredited. That prediction is lethal because
of the vested interests involved in the
Holocaust industry. As I said to the Jewish
Chronicle, if a year from now the gas chamber
legend collapses, what will that mean for
Israel? Israel is drawing millions of dollars
each year from the German taxpayer, provided by
the German government as reparation for the gas
chambers. It is also drawing millions a year
from American taxpayers who put up with it
because of the way the Israelis or Jews have
suffered. No one is going to like it when they
find out that for 50 years they have been
believing a legend based on baloney". (iv) "I do not think there were any gas
chambers or any Master Plan. It's just a myth
and at last that myth is being exploded."  (v)
"Why dignify something (the Holocaust) with even
a footnote that has not happened" (when dealing
with the new edition of "Hitler's War", written
by the Plaintiff and published by the
Plaintiff's own imprint, Focal Point in November
1991);
(vi) "The gas chambers were erected in Poland
for the tourists". (2) The said claims were variously false and/or
misleading in that: (i) The Nazis established Concentration
Camps proper (camps in which persons were
imprisoned without regard to the accepted norms
of arrest and detention), throughout the Third
Reich and the Nazi Occupied Territories: for
example, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck and
Bergen-Belsen; Return
to top 
| Index
to this Case
| Plaintiff's
Claim | (ii) The systematic mass murder of the
Jews began in about June 1941, when the Germans
invaded the Soviet Union. In the first place,
carried out primarily by the SS Einsatzgruppen,
hundreds of thousands of Jews were shot to
death;(iii) After an experiment on Soviet prisoners
of war in the main camp of Auschwitz on 3
September 1941 in which 600 of them were
murdered using Zyklon B gas, extermination camps
in Poland at Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka,
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek were used and/or
established with (save for the latter two, which
were also labour camps) the sole purpose of
murdering every person brought to them,
irrespective of age or sex; (iv) Chelmo was put into use in December
1941. The victims were killed using gas vans.
About 320,000 persons were murdered there; (v) Auschwitz-Birkenau began operating as an
extermination camp in March 1942. At its height,
it had 4 gas chambers in use, using Zyklon B.
Over 1 million Jews were murdered there, as were
tens of thousands of gypsies and Soviet
prisoners of war, until it was closed in
November 1944; (vi) Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were
established as part of Aktion Reinhard (headed
by Globocnik), the murder operation principally
aimed at the Jews of the General Government in
Poland, and used carbon monoxide gas generated
by a diesel or gas engine. About 600,000 Jews
were murdered at Belzec, whilst it operated
between March and December 1942; between about
250,000 and 500,000 Jews were murdered at
Sobibor during its operation between April 1942
and October 1943; and between about 870,000 and
1.1 million Jews were murdered at Treblinka
between July 1942 and August 1943. (vii) The Holocaust, the deliberate planned
extermination of Europe's Jewish population by
the Nazis, resulted in the murder of millions of
Jews in extermination camps as set out above.
About a further 2 million Jews were killed in
Russia, elsewhere in Poland and in other
European countries. (3) On 5
May 1992, the Plaintiff was found guilty by the
District Court of Munich of defamation in
conjunction with the offence of denigrating the
memory of deceased persons. The facts upon which
the said conviction was based were as follows. On
21 April 1990, at a meeting attended by about 800
people of the Deutsches Jugendbildungeswerk at the
restaurant Lowenbraukeller on Stiglmaierplatz in
Munich, the Plaintiff said (inter alia): "We now know, and I need mention this
here only by way of footnote, that there were
never any gas chambers at Auschwitz.... We now
believe that, just as the gas chambers which the
Americans built here in Dachau in the days
following the end of the war, were a sham, the
gas chambers which can now be seen by tourists
in Auschwitz were built by the authorities in
Poland following the Second World War...For this
the German tax payers have had to pay about 16
billion Deutschmarks as a penalty for
Auschwitz... For a sham". | (4) On 14
January 1994, the 25th Criminal Chamber of the
Regional Court of Munich upheld the said conviction
of the Plaintiff, and increased his fine (to 200.00
DM for 150 days). During the course of his appeal
the Plaintiff claimed that his researches had
revealed no evidence of the gassing of the Jews in
Auschwitz and scientific opinions had proved the
impracticability of gassing. During the course of
its judgment upholding the Plaintiff's conviction
as aforesaid, the Regional Court further found that
(as was the fact): "Anyone denying the gassing and
murdering of Jews in the `Third Reich' defames
every Jews and slanders the memory of all Jews
gassed in Auschwitz. By calling the mass gassing
of Jews in Auschwitz an invention, the Accused
[the Plaintiff] denies the Jews the
inhumane fate to which they were subjected in
the `Third Reich' purely on account of their
origins...He knew that the so-called Auschwitz
lie would be assessed as defamation and
prosecuted...The Accused is seeking only
superficially to paint a picture at variance
with established research and in truth is
clearly seeking to deny the mass murder of the
Jewish people in the Third Reich...The Accused
can only reach his conviction by failing to heed
the historical fact of the gassing of the Jews
in Auschwitz...and by relying on a few
revisionist outsiders and pseudo natural history
propaganda magazines apologetic to the
National-Socialist cause. Had the Accused
applied his endeavours in an unprejudiced
manner, not marked by any ideology of the Right,
he would always have been in a position to
assess accurately the numerous historical
sources and witnesses...To the extent that the
Accused is relying on his belief, the Criminal
Chamber has not taken this into account to
reduce the fine...since the gassing of the Jews
in Auschwitz is such a publicly known historical
fact that only people - like the Accused - who
refuse to acknowledge this dreadful truth are
able to arrive at such a belief.To the detriment of the Accused it has to be
said that a denial of the fate of the Jews in
Auschwitz represents a massive insult to Jewish
people and a grave defamation of those who died.
The Criminal Chamber has also appraised as
aggravating the fact that the Accused from his
own testimony disseminated the so-called
Auschwitz lie even subsequent to the events at
issue here.... there is a risk of the generation
which did not experience as direct contemporary
witness the situation prevailing during the
National Socialist period and the persecution of
the Jews accepting this line of thinking without
questioning it... It also had to be taken into
account that the Accused as a writer and
historian is also in a position to give the
impression that his thoughts are backed up by
scientific evidence. There is the risk that by
giving voice in this way he will be used by
revisionists of the neo Nazi movement as a
historical-scientific signboard and thereby
introduce above all uncritical young people not
versed in history to his ideas...." (5)The Institute
of Historical Review ("the IHR") is an ultra-right
wing, pseudo academic organisation which is the
centre of revisionist activities and publications,
and which attracts neo Nazis, anti-semites and
racists. The IHR is part of a network that includes
the Liberty Lobby which publishes Spotlight, a
journal devoted to the Jewish conspiracy theory,
and the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust.
The IHR holds an annual revisionist conference,
devoted to the promulgation of the view inter alia
that there was no Holocaust. On its editorial board
was Ditlieb Felderer, an Austrian resident of
Sweden, publisher of the vitriolic anti-semitic
publication "Jewish Information Bulletin", who in
1983 was sentenced to 10 months in prison for
distributing hate material (he had sent leaders of
the European Jewish community pieces of fat and
locks of hair with a letter asking them if they
could identify the contents as Hungarian Jews
gassed at Auschwitz). | (i) In September 1983, the Plaintiff
(described by the IHR as "noted British
revisionist historian"), lectured to the Fifth
said conference. Amongst his fellow speakers was
Dr Robert Faurisson, author of numerous
revisionist works, and sued (according to IHR
literature advertising the conference) for
defamation for speaking "independently on the
Six Million/Gas Chambers thesis". Dr Faurisson
was in fact convicted by the French courts for
the libel of denying the Holocaust. Dr Faurisson
has claimed the "so-called gassing" of the Jews
was a "gigantic politico-financial swindle whose
beneficiaries are the state of Israel and
international Zionism" and whose chief victims
were the German people and the Palestinians. He
has further claimed that the Nazi decree making
it mandatory for Jews to wear a yellow star was
a measure to ensure the safety of German
soldiers because Jews engaged in espionage,
terrorism, black market operations and arms
trafficking; and that Jewish children were
required to wear the yellow star from the age of
6, because they too were engaged in illicit or
resistance activities against the Germans;(ii) In February 1989, the Plaintiff lectured
to the Ninth said conference. Amongst his fellow
speakers were Fred Leuchter, a self-styled
engineer, who published a report purporting to
prove that the gas chambers at Auschwitz and
Majdenek were never used to gas people, speaking
on "The 'Gas Chambers' at Auschwitz...", and
Carlo Mattogno, speaking on "The First Auschwitz
Gassings: Genesis of a Myth". At the said
conference the Plaintiff said: "They [the Exterminationists] have
realised that they are way out of line with the
Auschwitz story, and they are frantically
engaged in damage control at present. They're
pulling their entire army of liars back from the
main battlefront, into the second line, because
all the artillery that's coming down on the
front line now is making it too dangerous for
them". Return
to top
| Index
to this Case
|
Plaintiff's
Claim | 
|
|