Irving v Lipstadt: Trial Documents (German language)

David Irving v Penguin & LipstadtDJC Irving – v – Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah LipstadtIn 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 RepliesAll hyperlinks and illustrations are added by this Website and are not part of the original documentIndex to this documentParticulars:Meaning (i) – (iii)(v): The Holocaust and the Gas ChambersMeaning (i) – (iii)(v): “Hitler’s War”Meaning (i) – (iii): The Goebbels’ bookMeaning (i)-(iii): DresdenMeaning (i)-(iii): General SikorskiMeaning (iv)-(v): The

Moscow archives1996.–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 DEFENDANT1. 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; |