lie wreath (Lipstadt: lie wreath)

Mr Irving writes:

YES, A BLOOMSBURY bistro. I can never forget that on the evening after burying my oldest daughter one sad day three months before the trial began, I received an unexpected anonymous wreath, with a card attached to it that dripped with hatred. It read in effect “your daughter had it coming to her, you Nazi, she was disabled”.

The actual coded wording (below) was “This was indeed a merciful death
[Gnadentod],” signed “Philip Bouhler and friends” —
Bouhler was the Nazi in charge of the mercy-killing of the disabled in Hitler’s Germany; he killed himself in 1945. The flowers and card had been purchased that day at the little Bloomsbury Florists store, just a hundred yards or so from Mishcon’s law offices.

Who other than I would have known about my daughter’s tragic loss of her limbs, her brain damage, and about Philip Bouhler, I wondered. Penguin Books’ law firm, Davenport Lyons, had heard about the death, and although my opponents in this action they had sent me a heartfelt letter of sympathy, which is the way English folks do these things. After the trial, a gloating Lipstadt told an Israeli audience: “My lawyers did all they could to destabilize Irving in the weeks before the

trial.” They nearly succeeded.