[images and captions added by this website] TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT July 5, 2005 Irving holocaust court case Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons         TONY JONES: At the beginning of the year 2000, 55 years after the end of World War II, the Jewish holocaust was effectively put on trial in Britain's High Court. Historian David Irving claimed an American academic Deborah Lipstadt had defamed him by calling him a holocaust denier. Mr Irving was a proponent of the view that the numbers of Jews killed by the Nazis had been greatly inflated. He lost the case and was bankrupted as a result. The author at the centre of the trial says she doesn't feel like a hero as a result, but historians say the case has significant implications. We'll hear from Deborah Lipstadt in a moment, but first Hamish Fitzsimmons has this report. HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: For many survivors of the Holocaust, like this woman, Deborah Lipstadt became something of a reluctant hero when she defended a libel claim brought by the British historian David Irving in 2000. PROFESSOR DEBORAH LIPSTADT, HOLOCAUST HISTORIAN: I did not feel as if I was anyone's great hero. Five years earlier, David Irving had told the New York Times that I had been the one to be taken out of the line to be shot, fully expecting me to, quote, "Crack up and cop out". Irving may well have been surprised when I fought back in the way that I did, ultimately giving far better than I got. HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Mr Irving claimed that in about 300 words of her book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt had defamed him by saying he was a Holocaust denier and twisted facts to suit his arguments. Mr Irving has long been identified with the far-right view of the holocaust, which argues the numbers of Jews killed by the Nazis has been exaggerated and perhaps didn't even happen. DAVID IRVING, HISTORIAN: It never occurs to you to look in a mirror and say, "Why am I disliked. "What is it the rest of humanity doesn't like "about the Jewish people?" HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Deborah Lipstadt's new book deals with the trial and its aftermath. It was a case, she says, simply about backing her original claims. PROFESSOR DEBORAH LIPSTADT: The case was about proving that the man is a liar, proving that I told the truth. The man is a Holocaust denier. He lies about history, that he is an anti-Semite and a racist as the judge determined, that was my objective. HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: To defend her case, Professor Lipstadt's lawyers advised her not to testify on her own behalf nor to speak to the media outside the court. Instead they assembled what she describes as a "dream team" of historians to go through David Irving's work to prove she was correct. This meant the defence had to prove that the Holocaust had taken place. DR DIRK MOSES, HISTORIAN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY: History was effectively on trial, because as I said, the defendants had to prove, essentially, that Irving's propositions were false, which in effect meant that they had to show that what he denied had happened, had happened. HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Britain's High Court found in favour of Professor Lipstadt and her publisher and in a scathing judgement, Mr Justice Gray found of Irving: "He is an active Holocaust denier. That he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism." Historians say the Irving-Lipstadt case has had significant ramifications for the study of the Holocaust by forcing a detailed re-examination of the original sources. DR DIRK MOSES: So how do we construe or infer the intention of the Holocaust to Hitler and his policy makers who worked with him? Well, there are lots of smaller documents, if you like, documents which which deal with particular aspects of a campaign of a camp of executions in Poland in 1941, which put together show the unfolding of a policy over the course of several years. HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Though the Irving-Lipstadt case didn't set out to put the Holocaust on trial, that's effectively what happened. It ended with the David Irving's reputation in tatters, but it didn't end the question about freedom of speech and whether people have a right to deny the Holocaust. Hamish Fitzsimmons, Lateline. © 2005 ABC      Dennis Roddy of The Pittsbugh Post-Gazette calls Deborah Lipstadt The woman who defended history   Our index on Lipstadt's attempt to silence C-Span POSTSCRIPT: Barnes and Noble website have at present just one (anonymous) review of the Lipstadt Book: A reviewer, A neutral observer, April 6, 2005, 1 out of 5 stars Hmmmm!! Lipstadt would not have survived a cross examination by Irving. Try reading the trial transcript. Irving IS a racist (equivalent to many Israelis, Japanese, uhh, let's see, Latvians, Patagonians, Iroquois, etc). It is a common trait amongst all human beings, and indeed other primates. Irving is also a holocaust revisionist ... not a holocaust denier (so far so fair. Reputable people agree that the six million were in fact 4.5 million, or 5.1 million, or 3.5 million, and agree that many survivors were, in fact, liars (Elie Wiesel comes to mind)). Correcting the details is not a crime. But Irving's ability to unearth WW II documents is unparalleled (yes shame, shame that he is also a racist like so many Hutus and Tutsis and Arabs and Jews). Lipstadt on the other hand, is an extreme lightweight who never dared engage in intellectual debate unless she had the advantage of keyboard courage, or a highly paid professional historian or lawyer to speak for her.