David Irving Legal Actions (June 2002)

Van Pelt was an expert witness for the defence in the 2000 Libel Action DJC Irving v Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt witness statements (index) Browning, Christopher Evans, Richard Longerich, Peter Van Pelt, Robert Jan the verbatim Day 1: Jan 11, 2000 Day 2: Jan 12, 2000 Day 3: Jan 13, 2000 Day 4: Jan 17, 2000 Day 5: Jan 18, 2000 Day 6: Jan 19, 2000 Day 7: Jan 20, 2000 Day 8: Jan 24, 2000 Day 9: Jan 25, 2000 Day 10: Jan 26, 2000 Day 11: Jan 28, 2000 Day 12: Jan 31, 2000 Day 13: Feb 1,

2000 Day 14: Feb 2, 2000 Day 15: Feb 3, 2000 Day 16: Feb 7, 2000 Day 17: Feb 8, 2000 Day 18: Feb 10, 2000 Day 19: Feb 14, 2000 Day 20: Feb 15, 2000 Day 21: Feb 16, 2000 Day 22: Feb 17, 2000 Day 23: Feb 21, 2000 Day 24: Feb 23, 2000 Day 25: Feb 24, 2000 Day 26: Feb 28, 2000 Day 27: Feb 29, 2000 Day 28: Mar 1, 2000 Day 29: Mar 2, 2000 Day 30: Mar 6, 2000 Day 31: Mar 14, 2000 Day 32: Mar 15, 2000 Prize Day etc., as available Review: Robert Jan van Pelt : The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the

Irving Trial Indiana UP, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2002 Reviewed by “Samuel Crowell” (pseudonym, an academic in Prennsylvania) 1. Introduction When the British historian David Irving brought Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books to court for libel in early 2000, the defense submitted a number of expert opinions by historians in order to buttress the claim that Irving was a “Holocaust denier.”

Christopher Browning wrote a brief but very professional discussion of the Reinhardt camps, and Robert Jan van Pelt , of the University of Canada at Waterloo, contributed a huge and diffuse opus concerning the Auschwitz concentration camp. The present book is a revised version of that text. It must be admitted that in the revision Professor van Pelt’s book has been much improved.

Gone are the “geometric progressions” of epistemology, gone too are the quotations from “Penguin Island” and “Alice and Wonderland” that gave us an Auschwitz embellished with whimsy. The most famous passages, concerning the “moral certainty” of his opinion, along with the assertion that the holes in the roof of the basement of Crematorium II had been filled in prior to being blown up, are now hard to find.

Nevertheless, while we might point to various changes in the successive drafts, it must be granted that this is an important book. First, because this book represents the first serious attempt to discuss the arguments of revisionists, and second, because the arguments, while incomplete, are thorough, handled with civility, and touch upon the writings of a number of authors, including Faurisson, Butz, Staeglich, Rudolf , and even myself.

Indeed, the only significant omission is Carlo Mattogno , perhaps due to the fact that Mattogno’s authoritative analyses of crematoria operation are not easily refuted.

Since van Pelt indicates that he structured his original report on the basis of my “Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes”, (p. 138) and since that structure is largely intact, I will take the opportunity to phrase my review of van Pelt’s book in terms of the issues of particular importance to me, recognizing that others will find their own points of departure. 2.

Background Notwithstanding the fact that van Pelt considers my work to have “raised negationist discourse to a new level” (140), it must be said at the outset that the aim of my longish essay was not by any means to offer a comprehensive rebuttal of the mass gassing claim, but rather merely provide a synoptic review of the problem.

In fact, the main purpose “The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes” was to attempt to write a brief polemic that would attempt to show that the revisionist interpretation was possible, and since possible, an unworthy candidate for censorship. Indeed, developing strategies for overcoming the taboo surrounding the Holocaust as well as the existing censorship laws has been the unspoken hallmark of all my revisionist writings.

Although “Sherlock” began as a brief polemic, I can accept the charge that it became more substantial as it grew in size, although errors still remain. Even so, while it may be a decent survey of the problem, it makes no claims to comprehensiveness and cannot be legitimately criticized on that account. Indeed, many features still indicate its primarily polemical and rhetorical origin. Its fanciful title was chosen to attract a British audience, at a time when censorship beckoned there.

It was deliberately plotted to surprise the reader. And it was constructed to provide support to the two main revisionist conceptions that must be true if there were no homicidal gassings in World War Two. First, that the manifold testimonies can be shown to be interconnected and to go