OVEMBER
11, 1994 (Friday) Atlanta
(Georgia) -- Fort Lauderdale -- Key West
(Florida) Rose
at 7:30 A.M. Breakfast on Marietta Square,
but cafe was nasty and food more so. Drove
with M. to De Kalb college auditorium at
9:10 A.M. We
bumped into Deborah Lipstadt as I
struggled to carry in the two packages of
(72) Macmillan
GÖRING
paperbacks. Found we were the first to
arrive; she was engrossed in girl talk
with the organisers, so we were not
recognised. I tucked myself away in an
exit corridor until after she began, then
slipped in at the back. M.
had set up his video camera
inconspicuously on a tripod to one side of
the auditorium. About 150 students
attended. Lipstadt clearly was totally
unaware that I was there. In her speech
she made several ugly references to me as,
somebody, "not really a historian," whose
several books had been published but had
earned no respect from other historians,
in fact Irving was "not a respectable
historian" at all. Earlier she had talked
of Mark Weber in the same terms, of
Willis Carto and -- pandering to
the sizeable Black section of the audience
-- of David Duke and his "white
sheet and cone-head". She
talked of the eye witnesses to the
Holocaust at length, though not in detail,
and of the mounds of documents which exist
to disprove the revisionists -- though she
refuses to call those people that; she
calls them "deniers" and is proud to have
coined the term Holocaust denier, she
said. In particular she said that among
the documents which refute the "deniers"
is a "blueprint
of a gas chamber complete with the
openings through which the S.S. tipped the
pellets of cyanide."
Most
of her speech, in fact seventy five
percent, was empty vapourings on the level
of: "These
guys are denying the Holocaust. I won't
debate them. I refuse to. Would you
debate somebody who said the Earth was
flat? Would you debate somebody who
said sexual abuse of children was good?
There is no debate." She
returned to the child abuse theme at least
five times in her meandering
talk&emdash;prompting me to consider
asking a supplementary question when the
time came whether by her obsession with
Sexual Abuse as a child she was trying
unconsciously to tell us something about
her own childhood. Question
time came. D. -- without our having
discussed this -- asked the first
question: would Ms Lipstadt explain why
she is so disrespectful of David Irving,
given that he has such a record
of literary accomplishments? She evaded
direct answer, suspecting that D. was a
hostile; in fact as soon as she deduced
that he was not there to flatter her she
snapped at him "Get to a Question or sit
down"&emdash;or words to that effect.
I
then politely put up my hand. Invited to
speak, I boomed in my very English, very
loud voice to her: "Professor
Lipstadt, I am right in believing you
are not a historian, you are a
professor of religion?" She
answered that she was a professor of
religion but (something special else) in
history too. I then waded in with verbal
fists flying: "I
am the David Irving to whom you have
made such disparaging reference in your
speech. Given that I have had thirty
years experience in the archives, that
I have published some thirty books in
the leading publishing houses of the
world, including The Viking Press,
William Morrow, E P Dutton, and Avon in
this country, what gives you the right
to go around the world, to Australia
and New Zealand" (which visits she had
mentioned proudly in her speech)
"blackening my name as though my
opinions are of no consequence?"
She
was livid and shouted at me to sit down or
ask a question. Still booming I continued:
"You
have just told an outright lie to these
students. You are trying to gull
gullible students into believing that
there are mounds of documents proving
the Holocaust. You referred
specifically to one, a
'blueprint
of a gas chamber'
which you have, complete with
'the
holes through which pellets were
inserted'.
I have here" -- holding up my right
hand stuffed with $20 bills -- "a
thousand dollars for you if you can
produce to this audience, now or at any
time in the future, this document about
which you have just lied to them.
One thousand dollars!"  What
followed was uproar. A pleasing "silent
gasp" had gone round as I began speaking
and the students realised who I was, in
their midst. I then challenged her on
those world tours: "Why don't you tell the
audience who hired you to go around
Australia and New Zealand! Who paid your
fees?" She spluttered that she hadn't
received any fee. I pressed on
remorselessly: "Why don't you tell the
students who paid your air fares to
Australia and all around that continent,
and who paid all your expenses. Because if
you won't tell them, I will." (I did not
however: I could see adult staff running
this way and that, obviously setting
things in motion. Time to keep powder
dry.)
 A
Black sitting next to M., ten rows ahead
of me and to the right, with his video
camera running, chuckled, "Man, this is
turning into fun." I called out, "I have
here two packets of my books" (holding
GÖRING
aloft) "which I am happy to give to all
the students free, so they can see just
who I am and which of us is lying." One or
two students were hostile, but most were
suddenly alert and awake. I unrolled the
Auschwitz aerial photograph, and said:
"You talk of documents.
I have a document here. An aerial
photograph of Auschwitz." As Lipstadt
began screaming into the microphone, I
tried to make the point that the picture
had no trace of the "two thousand tons of
coke" that the cremations (to which
Rudolf Höss "confessed") would
have needed every day. I am not sure that
students got this point in the mounting
turmoil however.
An
armed security man had now arrived,
brought in by the organisers, and he came
to tell me that if I would not agree to be
silent, I would have to leave. I stood up
and said loudly, "So:
Professor Lipstadt not only refuses to
discuss with us, she has Security
called to prevent any discussion."
D.
motioned to me to sit down (he afterwards
said I would probably have been arrested
and held, so he was right). There were no
serious questions after that. Lipstadt was
livid with the outcome. The students were
dazed. Several times I wagged the bundle
of $20 bills aloft, as she was speaking,
and hissed: "One thousand dollars
…!" Then
came the test: would they take the bait?
If the first student refused to touch the
book, then all would. But a Black
man walking past had accepted a copy of
the book from me; he shortly returned,
even as La Lipstadt was speaking, to ask
for an autograph. I gave him one, and four
more books to hand out. That "seeded" the
audience nicely. As the students filed
out, I was mobbed by students asking for a
copy. Victory! "I've
only got seventy," I said loudly, "so
there are not enough for everybody."
Beneath Lipstadt's anguished gaze the
students then formed another line, to get
their copies of the book autographed by
me. Sweet victory. Then students came to
me with copies of the printed invitation
to autograph: I did so -- they were blank,
which meant that either they had not asked
Lipstadt for her autograph, or she would
have to sign after me. Total Victory!
Revenge! Ho,
ho. M. had videoed the entire ninety
minutes, getting her on long focus and
capturing my interventions too. Outside, I
took a seat on a ledge, signed books, and
lectured the students on the Holocaust.
One, looking like a junky, was hostile but
I treated even him with courtesy and
patience. Another, Mia Daniels, was
a journalist for the De Kalb
Collegian. I could see she was not
writing down the favourable points I made.
They learn young. The German department
head (a woman) asked for a book, but I was
empty-handed by then. Fortunately: those
packets weighed a ton. Shortly,
the woman organiser bustled over to ask
who had video'd the event, and did we have
a "release" signed by Lipstadt permitting
this? M. handed her his card and intimated
that the video was needed for legal
reasons, in case Lipstadt libelled me or
in case I was falsely accused of libelling
her. The card read
...
ATTORNEY AT LAW. Woman
organiser blenched and
withdrew. It
had not come cheap: what with the air
fares, the car rental, and near on a
thousand dollars' worth of books donated
to the audience. In victory mood off to
the Marietta Club for luncheon. Then with
M. to a computer shop -- picked up a new
mouse for the Mac, and Bodoni typeface --
then caught the 5:30 P.M. Valujet flight
back to Fort Lauderdale. Landed at 7:30
P.M.; at 7:49 P.M. I was in the car,
headed south on the turnpike. At 11:55
P.M. I was back in Key West. Not since
April 1983 and the day of the
Hitler
Diaries fiasco;
not indeed since June 1977 and David
Frost's failed television attempt to
demolish
HITLER'S
WAR,
has success smelt so sweet, and been (in
my view) so richly deserved. November
12, 1994 (Saturday)
Key West, Florida Wrote
this letter to Mia Daniels at the DeKalb
Collegian newspaper: Dear Mia,-- it was very
pleasant and interesting talking with
you yesterday about the Lipstadt
lecture and my dissenting views. I have
no idea what you wrote, if anything at
all; but I am enclosing a (slightly
better) copy of the
GÖRING
biography, published by
Macmillan Ltd in London. This was very
well received (my most recent book),
and I'm also attaching a few of the
voices
that were published about it around
the world.I get the impression that there is a
lot of interest in your college about
this topic, and you might like to
mention in the Collegian that I
willing to return at any time to talk
at length about my views on the matter,
which I will back up with documents and
photographs, if invited by a properly
constituted student or college body.
Unlike La Lipstadt I would also be
happy to hear the opposing viewpoint
and to encourage a discussion on the
matter.  |
write to David Irving