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Lipstadt Libel action some traditional enemies of Free Speech: Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai Brith, USA Australian Government Australian B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission Board of Deputies of British Jews Center for Democratic Renewal, Atlanta Canadian Jewish Congress Canadian League of Human Rights of the B’nai Brith Coalition for Human Dignity, Oregon Community Security Trust of Board of Deputies German Government Jewish Telegraph
Agency Searchlight and Gerald Gable Simon Wiesenthal Center Surfwatch Internet censorship Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2000; 3:12 p.m. EST Holocaust Book Libel Trial Underway LONDON — A book that claimed a historian distorted aspects of the Holocaust generated “waves of hatred” against him and threatened his livelihood, he told England’s High Court on Tuesday.
David Irving is suing Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for libel over the 1994 book ” Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory ,” which claims he has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers to exterminate the Jews, holds extremist views and distorts history. Penguin and Lipstadt, who holds the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, deny any libel.
Irving, 62, has outraged Jews by saying the Holocaust has been exaggerated and by challenging the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths under Adolf Hitler’s regime. He also claims Hitler knew nothing about the extermination of Europe’s Jews until 1943.
But Irving, who is representing himself, said in his opening statement Tuesday that he would show that “far from being a Holocaust denier,” he had repeatedly drawn attention to major aspects of the Holocaust.
“The word ‘denier’ is particularly evil, because no person in full command of his mental faculties, and with even the slightest understanding of what happened in World War II, can deny that the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates,” he said. Being branded a Holocaust denier, “is a verbal Yellow Star,” he said, referring to the symbol the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
Irving, the author of ” Hitler’s War ” and ” Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich ,” said Lipstadt and her publisher were part of “an organized international endeavor” to destroy his career.
He said he once earned more than $160,000 a year in royalties from his writing and had always looked on his books as his pension fund and a legacy for his four children. “By virtue of the activities of the defendants I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me,” Irving said.
“Such is the nature of the odium that has been generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants.” “In short, my ‘pension’ has vanished,” he added. Irving has addressed neo-Nazi groups in Austria and Germany, and in 1988 testified in Toronto on behalf of Ernst Zundel , a Canadian on trial for denying the Holocaust occurred.
In 1992, German authorities fined him for claiming British intelligence had spread the “propaganda” that the Germans were using gas chambers to kill millions of Jews and other so-called undesirables. He is banned from Germany, Canada and Australia. Under Britain’s libel law, a claimant needs to prove that his reputation has been damaged. Truth is not necessarily a defense. The case, which is being heard without a jury, is expected to last 12 weeks. ©