Denial [Movie Tie-in]

by Deborah E. Lipstadt

  In one of the stranger parts of the article, Keegan waxed rhapsodic about Irving’s appearance. “He is a large, strong, handsome man, excellently dressed, with the appearance of a leading QC,” who asked his questions in “a firm but courteous voice.” Irving, he declared, “is certainly never dull.” Keegan then turned to me. “Prof Lipstadt, by contrast, seems as dull as only the self-righteously politically correct can be. Few other historians had ever heard of her before this case. Most will not want to hear from her again. Mr Irving, if he will only learn from this case, still has much that is interesting to tell us.”26 The hotel concierge, who noticed me reading the column, said in a stage whisper as he walked by, “Sir John seems besotted with Mr Irving.” Then, possibly reacting to the concerned look on my face, he added, “And we at the Athenaeum know you are certainly not dull.” A bellman, who was walking by, added, “That’s right.”

  Thinking about how Watt and Keegan had leapt to Irving’s defense, I wondered if this was not an expression of England’s “Old Boys” network, a network that would certainly have more sympathy with someone who attended one of England’s more prestigious private schools and looked like a “leading QC” than with an American who also happened to be both a woman and an openly identifying Jew.

  My ruminations were interrupted by the arrival of a car from the BBC. The driver peered at me, looked down at the front page of the morning paper, and then looked back at me. Apparently reassured that it was the same person, he emerged from the car, rushed to open the door for me to enter and said, “Madam, someone should have done it to that bloke long ago.”

  When I reached the BBC studio, all the morning papers were on the table in the waiting area. It was only then that I realized that the trial was the lead headline in every single British daily as well as many foreign papers.

  THE GUARDIAN:

  “Irving: Confined to History as a Racist Liar”

  THE INDEPENDENT:

  “Racist. Antisemite. Holocaust Denier. How History Will Judge David Irving” “David Irving lost his case—and we can celebrate a victory for free speech”

  THE LONDON TIMES:

  “Racist who twisted the truth” “David Irving’s reputation as an historian is demolished”

  Numerous editorials hailed the judgment. The New York Times declared that the verdict put an end to the pretense that Irving was anything but “a self-promoting apologist for Hitler.”27 The London Times said that “history has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory.”28 The Sydney Morning Herald editorialized that Judge Gray’s finding that Irving was an “active Holocaust denier, that he is antisemitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism” confirmed Irving’s “real reputation.” Neal Ascherson, in the Observer, described Judge Gray’s judgment as “one of the most crushing judgments ever dumped over an English plaintiff.”29 The Fort Worth Star Telegram, adopting a bit of a down-home Texas style, declared: “Good man, that Judge.” The Economist expressed the hope that “although Mr Irving will go on talking and writing, fewer and fewer people will be listening.”30 The Irish Times believed the judgment “blunt . . . to the point . . . entirely justified and much to be welcomed.”31 Even Helen Darville, the Australian whose true identity had been uncovered by other reporters during the trial and who had written two flattering pieces about Irving, now declared that Irving had been “seduced by Hitler,” and dismissed his views on Hitler and the Holocaust as “bunk.”32

  That afternoon, as I crossed Piccadilly Circus, a driver leaned out of his car window, hoisted his thumb in the air, and yelled, “Bravo!” This time I smiled, an unambiguous smile.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ENORMOUS THANKS

  An avalanche of messages, phone calls, letters, and emails continued to pour in over the next few weeks. Once again, it was the communiqués from survivors and their children that left me feeling particularly unnerved. Their praise was so effusive and their thanks so personal. It seemed to transcend anything I had done. I had fought a good fight, but their accolades seemed out of scale.

  Dear Professor Lipstadt

  You do not know me and we will probably never meet. . . . My mother was killed in Auschwitz. If David Irving had won my mother would have been a victim a second time! So too would everybody else who perished there. I loved my mother very much and have not seen her since April 14, 1939 when I was 14 years old. She was killed on October 23, 1944. Gratefully yours, Anne Bertolina (née Hannelore Josias)

  This letter landed on my desk at a time when my eighty-five-year-old mother was ailing. When I reached the line “I loved my mother very much,” I choked up. As a daughter who also loves her mother very much, I could only imagine what it meant to be separated from her at age fourteen and then to learn of her terrible fate. I wanted to tell Anne Bertolina that even if, by some mishap, David Irving had won, her mother would not have been a victim a second time. He had the power to do great mischief, but he did not have the power to do that.

  A few days later I flew to Los Angeles to give a talk at the synagogue with which I had been affiliated for over fifteen years. The emotions in this room were palpable, but they paled compared to what happened later in the evening when, as I was taking off my jacket, I found a card that someone must have slipped in my pocket after the lecture. On the back was the following note:

  Thank you. I was inmate #193061 in Auschwitz and helped to dismantle the gas chambers and crematoria. Ernie Regan.

  When I found that note, I sat looking at it for a long time. It was a stark reminder of both the gas chambers, which Irving had so gleefully denied, and the many people who had been touched—whether it was logical or not that they should be—by this effort.

  But not all the letters were from victims. Some came from people with a more ancillary connection to the tragedy.

  Dear Professor Lipstadt:

  My husband served with Patton and on a Sunday entered the “camps” at Dachau. . . . He was a hardened combat veteran as were the 3 others who went in with him. They broke down in tears. He recalled an inmate pointing at him and screaming in Yiddish. He had not realized his dog tags, on which he had a tiny Bar Mitzvah mezuzah hanging, were visible. “Du bist ein Yid?” the inmate asked. [Are you a Jew?] When my husband said, “Yes” he was Jewish, more yelling and others gathered. They couldn’t believe a free Jew walked the face of the earth, let alone a Jewish soldier! It took him 28 years to tell me this (in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem). He’d buried the memories of what he’d seen that deep. . . . Cordially, Marion Lieberman.

  While many of the letters came from Jews, there were correspondents who made a point of identifying themselves as non-Jews.

  Dear Professor Lipstadt:

  British justice is a bit long winded and unemotional: like the mills of god, it may grind slowly but, on occasion, it can grind exceedingly fine. I was a boy during the war, but one thing is ineradicably engraved upon my mind. Not the bombing, which had long ceased, but the memory of sitting in a cinema with my mother and sister, weeping together with the rest of the audience, as we saw the first dreadful newsreel pictures of the liberation of Belsen.

  Fair-haired and light-eyed, Christian, Goy and stranger, I may be, but I cannot understand how that dreadful creature persuaded some of our children that their parents and grandparents are either liars or fools. There are still plenty of us who will remember until we die, including those who, unlike me, were there.

  Sincerely, Ray Waters

  Many survivors perceived my fight as protecting them from what has been called a “double dying.”1 I tried to tell these survivors that, even if we had lost, their memories would not have been threatened and that they were giving me far more credit than I deserved. But they were reluctant to hear this. Their accolades left me feeling strangely uncomfortable. Some grew quite angry with me when I asked them not to thank me. “I must,” one Dutch survivor declared, “my parents would want me to.”

  I was not the only one who experienc
ed emotional turmoil after the trial. A few days after the verdict I asked Rampton what it was like to work on this case. Without hesitating, he said, “A privilege.” Shortly thereafter he wrote me to tell me that the emotional aftermath was more complicated than he had thought it would be.

  I had hoped to be basking in a glowing success and satisfaction. In fact, the aftermath has been, for me, an amalgam of anger and regret. Anger that we (you) were ever brought to what was, in truth, a false confirmation (though it was unavoidable and necessary). Regret that I no longer have daily contact with all the company of friends that the case drew together. A bit as war veterans might feel, I suspect.

  Laura Tyler talked about how she had changed. “I have a sense of enormous pride that at such a young age I have done something that is so important to many others. I made a difference.” Anthony, ever his iconoclastic self, insisted that “winning this trial was not that important.” That is what he said. But after having worked with him for close to five years, I did not quite believe him. He had devoted countless hours to it and he was very proud of the job he and his cohorts had done. Moreover, in my journal I found that early in our fight Anthony had said, “This could well be the most important case I will ever handle.” When I challenged him about this, he admitted that he was reacting to some of the posttrial media reports that seemed to draw Irving as a truly significant figure and, consequently, our unequivocal victory equally significant. David Irving was not important; defeating him and demonstrating the bankruptcy of his ideas was.

  A few weeks after the trial, James came to Washington to accept an award from the American Jewish Committee in recognition of the work he and Anthony had done for the case. As we walked near the tidal basin enjoying the cherry blossoms, he mused about the “extraordinary” aspects of this case. Even during the biggest commercial litigation cases, rarely does such a large team remain together for such an extended period of time. More than the team distinguished this case for James. “I always advocate for my clients and care about their legal problems, but it is rare to have a case that is quite so close to one’s heart and in which justice is so central.” In virtually every other legal altercation, there was some accommodation that could be reached between the sides. “Not this time,” James continued. “Here there was an absolute difference between right and wrong. We could wholeheartedly be on the side of the angels.”

  Though I had heard from survivors throughout the trial, only now, in the throes of victory, did I fully understand the extent to which they had been with me. Now my victory was their victory. In some sense it was more theirs than it was mine. While it was my work that had been vindicated, it was their pain, memories, and experiences that, they believed—whether it was logical to do so or not—had been saved from defeat.

  Over the next few months there was one email to which I kept returning.

  Friday, April 14, 2000 4:32:32 PM

  From: paola.castagno

  Subject: YOU ARE THE GREAT WINNER!

  To: dlipsta@emory.edu

  Dear Miss Lipstadt,

  My name is Paola Castagno, I’m italian, I’m 28 years old and fortunatly i didn’t new the II World War.*

  I red on an italian newsparer that you won agaist David Irving.

  My grandfather Aldo rimained 8 mounth in Auschwitz (like Disneyland).

  When he came back in Italy he weighted 34 kilos (for 1.82 mt high).

  He died 3 year ago. I remember that he cried, thinking Holocaust, after 40 years.

  He didn’t say me nothing about this. So I write to thank you enormously.

  I know that also my Grandfather thank you for your courage and that you speak about truth. Bey my graet hero!!!

  Paola Castagno

  NB: I’m sorry for my English

  I did not feel as if I was anybody’s “great hero.” Five years earlier David Irving had “taken me out of the line to be shot.” Fully expecting me to “crack up and cop out,” Irving may well have been surprised when I fought back as I did, ultimately giving far better than I got. I fought to defend myself, to preserve my belief in freedom of expression, and to defeat a man who lied about history and expressed deeply contemptuous views of Jews and other minorities.

  For a long time after the court battle was over, I felt pain when I thought of the many people who had watched Irving ravage their memories. I could not fathom what it felt like to have one’s experiences not just denied, but deprecated and ridiculed. However, I felt not just pain, but also a certain sense of privilege. I was reminded of the fact that Jewish tradition highly values acts of loving-kindness, including visiting the sick, sheltering the needy, feeding the hungry, and welcoming the stranger. There is, however, one act of loving-kindness that supersedes all the others because it cannot be reciprocated. Taking care of the dead is called hesed shel emet, the most genuine act of loving-kindness, because it is then that we most closely emulate God’s kindness to humans, which also cannot be reciprocated. For five years I had the privilege to do hesed shel emet, to stand up for those who did not survive or who could not stand up for themselves. Being able to do that was thanks enough.

  I did not choose this field of research in order to perform this act of hesed. I did not write my book on deniers expecting to engage in this act. I did not choose this fight. But now, as I look back, I am filled with gratitude. If someone had to be taken out of the line to fight this battle, I feel gratified to have been the one.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE “JESTER’S COSTUME”

  I soon discovered that this case was not yet over. Not surprisingly, Irving chose to appeal the judgment. The lawyers assured me that, given Judge Gray’s sweeping decision, there was little likelihood of a reversal and this would be a relatively straightforward matter. Consequently, I was quite sanguine about the process. Once again my expectations proved dramatically wrong.

  In England one must secure “leave” or permission to appeal. Irving’s first request was made to Judge Gray, who rejected it because his decision had been rooted in history and there was no issue of law to be contested. He also ordered Irving to repay our costs and stipulated that the first installment of £150,000 be paid immediately. In the fall of 2000, Irving—who now had lawyers to represent him—submitted a written request to the Court of Appeal. Irving argued that the trial had been held in an intimidating atmosphere of hysterical press hostility and that Judge Gray’s findings contradicted the “weight of the evidence.” The expert witnesses, Irving contended, were motivated by bias, large fees, and, in the case of Evans, personal hatred. Shortly thereafter Irving began depicting Evans on his website as a rose-carrying skunk with demurely blinking eyes.1

  In December 2000, Appeal Court judge Stephen Sedley ruled that, in light of my having called Irving a falsifier of history and a bigot, a “heavy burden” had been placed on the defense and we had fully met that burden. Irving’s mistakes were not “casual misreadings of evidence” but “sedulous misinterpretations.” Sedley supported Gray’s “damning and justifiable finding” about Irving’s “misreading of evidence” and wrote that Irving, having “played for high stakes,” had lost conclusively. His request to appeal was, yet again, rejected.

  Shortly after Judge Sedley’s ruling, Irving profiled him on his website. He claimed that the firm to which Sedley had belonged prior to being elevated to the bench had been founded by “a clandestine leader of the Communist Party.” According to Irving a significant number of the members of this firm are “evidently Jewish.” Judge Sedley, he suggested, might be acting on his “religious instincts” more than the dictates of the law.2

  In view of Judge Sedley’s unrelenting affirmation of Gray’s decision, I thought that Irving might cut his losses, rather than risk having yet another court rule against him. Once again I was wrong. Irving requested an oral hearing, arguing that he had new evidence that had been unavailable to him during the trial. He submitted four hundred pages of evidence, including a report by Germar Scheerer, a well-known Holocaust denier w
ho sometimes used the name Rudolf. It argued that the gas chambers were an impossibility. This, apparently, was the startling “new” information on Auschwitz that Irving had dramatically promised would be introduced at the trial but never was. Irving also submitted an affidavit by a Zoe Polanska Palmer, a former prisoner at Auschwitz, who claimed that she never saw anything that looked like a gas chamber or any chimneys belching smoke. The Court of Appeal agreed to hear Irving’s claim and a hearing was scheduled for June 2001.

  I returned to London to consult with the lawyers. We agreed that we should adhere to the modus operandi we had during the trial and treat this material in a comprehensive fashion. Rampton, Anthony, James, and Heather decided to send it to van Pelt for analysis. Van Pelt wrote a very lengthy response on all the historical and technological arguments in Rudolf’s report. Feeling that we needed a chemist to respond to Rudolf’s arguments, van Pelt then contacted Richard Green, a Stanford Ph.D. in physical chemistry and a consultant to the United States Army on defending personnel against chemical weapons, and asked him to prepare a report addressing Rudolf’s claims.

  Green was also an active member of the Holocaust History Project (THHP), a group of researchers who had banded together under the leadership of Harry Mazal, an engineer and expert in computer science, to methodically debunk Holocaust deniers. During the preceding two years Mazal and other THHP members had made a number of exploratory visits to Auschwitz, where they carefully examined the remains of the roof of crema 2. Using computer modeling and mathematical analysis, they found what they believed to be three of the four holes. Van Pelt asked a professional engineer to review these findings. He found them so compelling that we appended both Green’s analysis and the THHP’s report on the holes to van Pelt’s second report and submitted it to the Court of Appeal.