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May 11, 2007
Throw cold water on racism
Lipstadt describes her day in court with Holocaust denier Irving.
REBECA KUROPATWA
Holocaust deniers should not be debated, according to historian
Deborah Lipstadt. "That," she said, "would be like
trying to nail a glob of jelly to the wall. Deniers are liars. You
can't have a debate with someone who is just going to lie and make
things up at will."
Lipstadt is director of the Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish
Studies and Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies
at Emory University in Atlanta. She is also the recipient of the
2005 Al Chemin Award for exemplifying the protection of the First
Amendment in the United States.
But what she's best known for is her legal victory over David Irving,
who sued Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in
a British court, after Lipstadt cited him in her book Denying
the Holocaust. Lipstadt won as defendant, in 2000, against Irving.
Lipstadt's defence team was led by renowned British Jewish lawyer
Anthony Julius – and her win was described by Daily Telegraph
as having "done for the new century what the Nuremburg Tribunals
and the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations." The judge
deemed Irving to be a Holocaust denier, a falsifier of history,
a racist, an anti-Semite and a liar.
At the second annual Sol and Florence Kanee Distinguished Lecture
series in Winnipeg April 30, Lipstadt spoke about the legal, historical
and personal aspects of her experience in court with Irving.
She began by painting a picture of Irving, noting that when a female
Holocaust survivor in Melbourne went on the radio to challenge him,
his response to her was, "How much money have you made from
having that number tattooed on your arm?"
Lipstadt noted that,under British law, the burden was on her to
prove that what she was saying about Irving was true, instead of
on Irving to prove that what he was saying was not a lie. "So,
if I walked away," she said, "he would have won by default.
This [going to trial] is something I had to do."
During the trial, a Holocaust survivor approached Lipstadt. "A
small, elderly woman pushed her way up to me, thrust her arm in
front of me, rolled her sleeve up to her elbow, and pointed at the
numbers tattooed on her arm. 'You are fighting for us,' she said.
'You are our witness.' "
Once the trial was over, and Lipstadt was leaving the courtroom,
this same woman came up to her and said thank you. Once again, Lipstadt
recalled, the woman "turned a fleeting moment into a more profound
one."
Asked why she thought Irving pursued her, Lipstadt replied, "When
he writes these things, he convinces himself that they are true,
even though he made them up. This is also a man who has, up until
now, gotten away with bullying. He had never been in a courtroom
where someone would say, 'Sir, you can't say that.' So he thought
he could bully his way through the courtroom and get away with it.
He went after me, in particular, seeing an American from 'across
the pond,' a woman and a Jew. He thought I would never fight back,
I was too far away to bother or that I would be frightened. It was
all just too tempting for him, and he thought the way the laws are
in England would stand to his benefit. It was partly delusional,
partly hubris. They broke the mould on hubris with him."
Lipstadt also offered advice on what can be done to counter those
like Irving on a daily basis.
"Whenever you hear anyone, anywhere, making some sort of prejudicial,
derogatory, hate-filled saying," she suggested, "just
be willing to be the cold water at the party and say, 'That's not
funny, that's racist.' "
Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.
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