PEOPLE have asked for an update. I have watched
and been quite amazed by the reaction. While Jewish
groups and individuals have weighed in strongly, my
academic colleagues have also made their voices
heard. The David Wyman Institute has circulated
a petition to be signed by historians and
academics [. . .] and, as of this
morning, I am told it has well over 200
signatures.
According to two different people who were there
the meeting was attended by perhaps 35 to 40
people, if that. The following is a report from one
of the attendees:
"ALL appeared to be affluent and
well-dressed but almost all of them were older
and apparently Irving's devoted followers. There
were two limousines out front. One very long
white stretch limo and another regular black
limo. (The Landmark Diner is a family restaurant
and not a limousine-type venue.)Irving had informed attendees in the letter
he sent out a few days before that C-Span would
be there and laid down rules: No t-shirts with
slogans, no emblems, and no leaflets; and I know
I can rely on you to show due propriety in
behavior and in any questions you ask in the
discussion at the end.
The low attendance appeared to cause Irving
some anxiety. He looked tired and kept scanning
the participants as if counting head. By 7 pm
(dinner time) the room was only loosely 2/3
thirds full. This meeting featured free
complimentary champagne and a buffet with
shrimp, beef bourguignon, fish, chicken, pasta,
rice, salad, steamed vegetables and a special
dessert. The cost was $25. It was catered.
Irving paid little attention to his book
table where he usually makes good money on sale
of his own books and tapes and the resale of
other materials. Irving didn't circulate around
the room shaking hands and visiting each table
[as he often does], but huddled with
several older men at the center table from 6 pm
to 7 pm.
On the book table he featured his newly
reprinted Hitlers
War (2002), newly reprinted Nuremberg:
The Last Battle, several videos of himself
or in programs in which he took part. Irving has
produced a DVD (with a VHS version) of his book
Hitlers War, which he had for sale for $40 each.
The DVD was professional produced by a Lamancha
Productions. Irving told the person who
described the meeting to me that the newest
version of his Dresden book is due out in just
three weeks with the Goebbels biography
following soon after.
Irving
also had pictures of himself and his family
there for people to pick up and others he
intended to use in his talk.
C-SPAN had two cameras set up, with numerous
sound boards and lights. There were about 4
people there from C-SPAN. The attendees were
warned by C-Span that if they didn't want to be
on camera they needed to move to the back of the
room by the bar and behind the cameras. Some
people did.
[DEL: I would guess that this
is one of the first times C-Span prefaced a
filming with this kind of announcement.
]
In fact, before Irving did begin to speak he
requested that everyone come forward and fill
the empty chairs at the front tables so that it
would look full for the cameras. I ate dinner
and sat with two gentlemen. One was a
book dealer from Tucker, Georgia who
features Irving books on his website and E-Bay.
He was going to pick up 30 books from Irving for
resale that night. Irving thanked us all for
coming and compared his situation to that of
Mozart's who relied on the patronage of
courts and kings to support him while he worked.
So, too, we supported him in his work.
Irving
showed us the pictures of his family including
one of his father whom he extolled as a war hero
and for whom he proclaimed great pride. He also
showed pictures of Jessica (his daughter) as a
baby and now as a 12 year old and her mother,
Bente.
Irving then segued into a discussion of the
long history of his persecution by the Traditional
Enemies of the Truth (TEOTT), that is, the
Jews. According to Irving, it began in 1963 (!)
when he published his first book
on the bombing of Dresden. He claimed that
all the reviews
of the book proclaimed it to be superior and
a real bombshell. It was a best seller.
In all the hundreds of reviews there was just
one that trashed it: it was clearly written by a
man (whose name I didn't catch)
[Website: Arthur
Pottersman of The Daily Mirror, furnished
with a dossier on Irving by the Board of
Deputies of British Jews] who he
insinuated therefore had to be a member of the
Traditional Enemy of the Truth. Irving
proclaimed that this proved that his enemies had
targeted him all the way back to 1963,
recognizing him as a threat to their picture of
the Holocaust even at that early stage. The
TEOTT have been persecuting him ever since.
Dr. Lipstadt was the person who was chosen to
finally bring him down with her book, Denying
the Holocaust, which was published by
Penguin UK in England in 1995.
Irving then told a story about his first
contact with Dr. Lipstadt at DeKalb Community
College in Georgia in 1994. He claimed she spoke
to a packed room and the people had clearly been
dragooned to be there. He sat in the back
quietly listening to her talk about him
disparagingly.
At the end he then stood up and introduced
himself as David Irving and the historian
in question and challenged her to show any proof
that Hitler knew about or ordered the Holocaust.
He said that one Black man turned around in his
seat and said to him, "Man, this is finally
going to get interesting!" (He did it in an
accent.)
He explained how he then waved $1,000 in the
air and offered to give it to anyone who could
prove there was a Hitler order. (This is a long
time stunt of his.) At DeKalb Community College
Irving dug money out of his own pocket and waved
it at the current crowd to make his point. Then
he claimed that Dr. Lipstadt had turned and
whispered to someone behind her and security
came and immediately evicted him.
[DEL: What I actually said to
the security officials was: "DON'T throw him
out. Don't make him a martyr.]
That Irving said proved that Dr. Lipstadt had
refused to debate him from the beginning. Then
he went into a long explanation of how Dr.
Lipstadt was a coward for not testifying
at
the trial even though he did admit that he
believed her lawyers had made the decision. He
had just been waiting to get her up on the stand
and question her on her views of Judaism, and
race, and intermarriage. He claimed that he
would have demolished her and that he pretty
much lost the trial right there because she
would not testify so he could destroy her on the
stand.
Irving claims that he knew nothing of Dr.
Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust
until it was published in England in 1995 and
people began calling and writing him about being
a Holocaust denier. He claims that he then
hunted it down and read it for himself. He
listed all the things Dr. Lipstadt wrote about
him in quick order (he was a denier, he had
stolen plates from Moscow and damaged them, and
that he consorted with right-wing extremists
including Hamas and Hezbollah). He claimed that
she was funded by Yad Vashem and others who were
out to get him.
He cited a letter from Dr. Yehuda
Bauer to Debbie noting that she hadn't
talked about Irving in her manuscript and she
should put him in. Then Debbie feverishly went
to work at the behest of her paymasters to
collect her sources (which according to him were
only newspaper clippings). He claimed that she
never called him and if she had he could have
set her straight in 15 seconds. (The
implication: the whole trial was her fault.)
In
fact, Irving stated that Dr. Lipstadt was solely
responsible for getting his Goebbels
biography removed from St.
Martins list, forcing him to publish it
himself later. He also mentioned in suit against
Gitta Sereny and The Observer for
writing about his Goebbels book. Irving stated
that he was just waiting for Dr. Lipstadt to
publish her current book in England and he would
immediately sue.
IRVING stated that in an interview with Deutsche
Welle just two days ago, Dr. Lipstadt had stated
that her lawyers had set out to "destabilize
him" (direct quote from Irving) before the trial
in an attempt to get him to toss in his hat.
Then he produced the picture of the wreath
that was sent to his daughter Josephine's
funeral service. The funeral directors (they had
buried Lord Nelson, so he knew they were
good folk) called afterward and told him an
expensive wreath had arrived and what did he
want to do with it?
He told to funeral directors to deliver it.
It was huge, expensive, and made of white
lilies. There was a card attached that implied
that her death (she was disabled and died after
a very long illness) was a mercy killing. It was
signed by "Philip Bouhler." He explained that
Philip Bouhler had been the head of the
euthanasia program in Germany that murdered
disabled and undesirable people.
Irving was visibly distressed, his voice rose
and he shook the picture of the card as he read
what it said to the audience. He said he had
tracked down the florist, and found that the
clerk had written the card, because the person
who sent it said he had injured his wrist in a
skiing accident and couldn't write the card. He
claims the florist shop turned out to be 100
yards from Dr. Lipstadt's attorney's office
(Mishcon de Reya). To him that was proof that it
had been sent by her attorneys to destabilize
him. He mentioned the destabilization issue at
least three times.
Irving
then moved on to the general history of the
action. He cast himself in the role of the
underdog who had no choice but to finally pursue
and confront his long-time persecutors, the
TEOTT, now spearheaded by Dr. Lipstadt. He also
ran down Anthony Julius as just a lawyer
out for money.
Irving noted how quickly Dr. Lipstadt had
assembled massive financial resources. She found
funding with Stephen Spielberg and a host Jewish
financiers -- one
called Trevor Chinn who he called as
big as crook as Marc
Rich. He also mentioned a Maxwell Clark.
(?) [Website note:
Robert Maxwell, aka Jan Hoch]
Irving was very angry at how much the
expert
witnesses had been paid and he insinuated
that the defense did it on purpose just to ring
up the bills to impossible heights. When Irving
started discussing the costs of the trial they
rose alarmingly over the course of the talk. In
the beginning of the speech they started at $2
million [Website:
Lipstadt's costs], later in the
speech they became $5 million, still later $7
million and in the last 15 minutes $12 million
[Website: overall
including appeals].
Irving seems to hate Richard
Evans (one of the expert witnesses in
the trial). Evans had disassembled Irvings
historiographical skills in his expert witness
report. Irving described Evans' performance in
court with dripping contempt and stated that
Evans
lied when he claimed he was neutral on
Irving.
Irving pointed out that expert witnesses are
supposed to make up their reports without being
beholden to either side, but in this case they
clearly were because of the amount of money they
were paid. He described Professor Evans' conduct
in court as contemptuous of him and showed the
audience how he stood with his hands in his
pockets with his back turned to him.
Interestingly, he praised Robert
Jan van Pelt as a fine gentleman,
disliked the Judge (who he claimed had started
writing the Judgment one month into the
trial), and found Mr. [Richard]
Rampton [Lipstadt's
counsel] to be very competent.
He said he had the choice -- of hiring an
attorney and trying to get him up to speed as an
historian, or having as historian (himself) as a
lawyer. He claimed he was the only one who could
understand the complexities. At that point, he
mentioned how the judge praised him having a
fine mind and as having performed as well as any
attorney. He was plainly very pleased with this
praise.
Irving described how Dr. Lipstadt's side had
four benches full of attorneys and helpers (40
or more) and he was on the other side with just
one person.
[DEL: Actually at tops we had
about 20 people working on the case. Not a
small number, but not 40 people. Of course, I
have learned that it is best not to depend on
Irving for accurate numbers.]
He claimed that everyday he worked into the
wee hours (up until 3 am) preparing for the next
day and was always behind. He claimed he didn't
even have a chance to read the expert witness
reports and often went into court without having
read the pages he was going to cover that day.
(However, in the matter of the Evans Report,
Irving posted that report on his website months
in advance of the trial.)
He claimed that he had help from around the
world by email preparing his defense daily (from
what he called The Antipodes).
Irving said that in her book Dr. Lipstadt had
not called him a racist or an antisemite but
that these matters were part of the trial. He
claimed that he was not a racist, just a patriot
of the England of his father's day.
IRVING then moved on to Auschwitz.
He said that he believed that some 200,000
people had died there, which is a higher figure
than he usually admits. He said that the numbers
of people murdered had Auschwitz had been
lowered dramatically over the years by the
Auschwitz Museum's own authorities -- and they
weren't considered deniers. But someone like him
who questioned anything about the trademarked
Holocaust was an out and out denier.
He
went into detail about what the gas chambers
really were -- they were air
raid shelters. He waved around pictures of
pages of a German book
[Website:
Neufert] that he said was
current during the war years and which described
the architectural standards for air raid
shelters.
He claimed that the gas tight doors (which
are clearly ordered in the surviving primary
documents) were simply an air raid shelter
requirement as written right in that book; that
the modified door swing (originally into the
room but then changed to open out) was also a
requirement [Website:
see Neufert, below, lines
2-3]; and that a peep hole was
also required.
I got the clear impression this was gathering
was meant to be a triumphant return to the lair of
the beast complete with expensive champagne and
catered food. It was to be a celebration of sorts.
The low attendance was therefore disconcerting and
disappointing."
write to David
Irving