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Sept. 14, 2007
Lipstadt launches CJA
Aid recipients speak of impact on their lives.
PAT JOHNSON
Deborah Lipstadt laughed when she was notified that David Irving
was suing her for libel because she called a notorious Holocaust
denier a Holocaust denier. Her flippant response was premature.
The case, Lipstadt told a rapt audience at the opening of Vancouver's
Combined Jewish Appeal campaign Sept. 6, would consume six years
of her life.
Lipstadt, a historian at Atlanta's Emory University, called Irving
"one of the most dangerous spokesmen for Holocaust denial."
This distinction, she said, was due to Irving's comparative legitimacy
as a scholar. While most Holocaust deniers inhabit the far-flung
reaches of the Internet, Irving had published 30 books and was a
scholar of aspects of Second World War German military history.
In the end, the judge "laid waste" to Irving's reputation
and vindicated Lipstadt – and historical truth – unreservedly.
But the allegation of libel, the trial and its aftermath were fraught
with emotion and pain for Lipstadt, her allies and the countless
Holocaust survivors and their families who followed the case closely.
The pressure was enormous, she acknowledged, with survivors approaching
her and reminding her of the magnitude of her obligation to defend
historical truth and the sanctity of memory.
Irving, a British citizen, has called the Holocaust "a legend"
and has claimed that more people had died "in Senator Kennedy's
car at Chappaquiddick" than at Auschwitz, Lipstadt said. Irving
has also asserted that the cadaverous inmates liberated from the
camps by Allied forces were emaciated not because of deliberate
Nazi starvation policies, but because Allied bombing cut off supplies
to the camps.
Lipstadt's 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, in which she
made the statement about Irving, was published in the United Kingdom
in 1996. Lipstadt believes Irving was waiting for her book to be
published in the United Kingdom, where libel laws, unlike those
in North America, place the burden of proof on the defendant, rather
than on the plaintiff. Lipstadt said she was unable to remain in
the United States and ignore the case, because to have done so would
have resulted in a default judgment for Irving, tacitly implying
that he was not, as Lipstadt had alleged, a Holocaust denier.
Lipstadt said she and her legal team were determined to fight the
case as vigorously as any commercial suit, refusing to assume that
the veracity of the Holocaust would be self-evident to the judge.
At the same time, she said, they were determined to prevent the
case from devolving into a "Did the Holocaust happen?"
trial. For this reason, the defence did not call any Holocaust survivors
to testify, because they would have appeared to be "witnesses
of fact," implying that the historical authenticity of the
Holocaust itself was on trial. Also, Irving was his own legal counsel
and Lipstadt refused to submit the survivors to potential cross-examination
by him.
The case, Lipstadt said, had to be about whether her assertion –
that Irving is a Holocaust denier – was correct.
Lipstadt's legal team pored over Irving's academic work, tracing
his most outlandish assertions back to the sources upon which they
were ostensibly based. In doing so, they revealed that, as the judge
would ultimately conclude, "Irving has for his own ideological
reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated
historical evidence ... that 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."
In her lecture, Lipstadt described examples of Irving's manipulations,
which were often based on kernels of fact, but were decontextualized,
chronologically inverted to draw invalid conclusions or otherwise
dishonestly presented.
"We won a tremendous victory," Lipstadt said to the audience
at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue.
The keynote address helped launch this year's CJA campaign. Garry
Zlotnik, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver,
said the campaign already has commitments of $2 million, putting
the fund-raiser more than 25 per cent toward its goal.
Lana Marks Pulver, who is leading the women's division, spoke of
her participation in Federation missions to the former Soviet Union,
Israel and Ethiopia, where she saw the progress CJA money was achieving.
And, giving the audience a firsthand account of the work federated
dollars have done over the years, Vancouverite Janucz Benisz spoke
of his arrival in Canada as a Holocaust orphan and how the Jewish
communal organizations raised him to successful adulthood. No records
or trace of his mother's family survived the Shoah. On his father's
side, of which 22 family members were alive in 1944, there were
only four remaining in 1945, and Benisz was the only child.
"No young boy should ever see the horrors I witnessed,"
Benisz said.
He spent three years in an orphanage before being sent to Canada
in a group of 17 orphans.
"Almost immediately, the Jewish Family Service [Agency] became
my surrogate family," he said. He went through a series of
foster homes, repeatedly returned by families who could not cope
with a boy who awakened screaming nightly.
In 1950, he broke his leg, which proved a turning point. Unable
to attend school, where he was not flourishing, having been thrown
into an English environment with no preparation, he began being
taught by a tutor paid for by JFSA. The results were immediate.
He soon grasped the language, mastered the subjects and skipped
Grade 6.
"For seven years, the Family Services looked after my every
need," said Benisz. "I owe it, and people like you, everything."
In introducing the keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Krell noted that
some people told him before the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
opened a decade ago that it was time to move beyond the memory of
that terrible time.
"Some in our community simply did not make the connection,"
he said, even as our own country was experiencing brushfires of
Holocaust denial from Doug Collins, Ernst Zundel, Malcolm Ross and
others.
Craig Diamond, CJA campaign chair, said this year's funds will support
grants to local agencies to improve security, social services and
housing initiatives and local education, as well as national and
overseas initiatives. The $7.5 million goal, Diamond said, is "ambitious,
but achievable." Last year, the B.C. Jewish community raised
$10.5 million, including a $3.7 million Israel emergency campaign
to rebuild war-torn northern Israel.
Pat Johnson is, among other things, director of development
and communications for the Vancouver Hillel Foundation.
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