The Holocaust Denial

The denial of the Holocaust has no more credibility than the assertion that the earth is flat. Yet there are those who insist that the death of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a powerful Zionist conspiracy. Sixty years ago, such notions were the province of pseudohistorians who argued that Hitler never meant to kill the Jews, and that only a few hundred thousand died in the camps from disease; they also argued that the Allied bombings of Dresden and other cities were worse than any Nazi offense, and that the Germans were the “true victims” of World War II. For years, those who made such claims were dismissed as harmless cranks operating on the lunatic fringe. But as time goes on, they have begun to gain a hearing in respectable arenas, and now, in the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt shows how—despite tens of thousands of living witnesses and vast amounts of documentary evidence—this irrational idea not only has continued to gain adherents but has become an international movement, with organized chapters, “independent” research centers, and official publications that promote a “revisionist” view of recent history. Lipstadt shows how Holocaust denial thrives in the current atmosphere of value-relativism, and argues that this chilling attack on the factual record not only threatens Jews but undermines the very tenets of objective scholarship that support our faith in historical knowledge. Thus the movement has an unsuspected power to dramatically alter the way that truth and meaning are transmitted from one generation to another.

Now a major motion picture starring Rachel Weisz, Timothy Spall and Tom Wilkinson. “A compelling book: memoir and courtroom drama, a work of historical and legal import. ” -- Jewish Week Deborah Lipstadt, author of the groundbreaking Denying the Holocaust, chronicles her six-year legal battle with controversial British World War II historian David Irving that culminated in a sensational 2000 trial in London In her acclaimed 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called putative World War II historian David Irving “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial”, a conclusion that she reached by examining his cunning manipulations of evidence, partisanship to Hitler, persistent exoneration of the Third Reich, and his confirmed celebrity among swelling ranks of anti-Semitic organizations internationally. In 1994, Irving filed a libel lawsuit, not in the U.S. courtroom—where the onus of proof lies on the plaintiff, but in the UK—where the onus of proof lies on the defendant. At stake were not only the reputations of two historians, but the record of history itself. The four-month trial took place in London in 2000 and drew international attention. With the help of a first-rate team of solicitors and historians and the support of her UK publisher, Penguin, Lipstadt won, her victory proclaimed on the front page of major newspapers around the world. Part history, part real life courtroom drama, Denial is Lipstadt’s riveting, blow-by-blow account of the trial that tested the standards of historical and judicial truths and resulted in a formal denunciation of the infamous Holocaust denier. Originally published as History on Trial.

Denying History takes a bold and in-depth look at those who say the Holocaust never happened and explores the motivations behind such claims. While most commentators have dismissed the Holocaust deniers as antisemitic neo-Nazi thugs who do not deserve a response, historians Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman have immersed themselves in the minds and culture of these Holocaust "revisionists." In the process, they show how we can be certain that the Holocaust happened and, for that matter, how we can confirm any historical event. This edition is expanded with a new chapter and epilogue examining current, shockingly mainstream revisionism.

This book provides a detailed analysis of one of the most prominent and widespread international phenomena to which criminal justice systems has been applied: the expression of revisionist views relating to mass atrocities and the outright denial of their existence. Denial poses challenges to more than one academic discipline: to historians, the gradual disappearance of the generation of eyewitnesses raises the question of how to keep alive the memory of the events, and the fact that negationism is often offered in the guise of historical 'revisionist scholarship' also means that there is need for the identification of parameters which can be applied to the office of the 'genuine' historian. Legal academics and practitioners as well as political scientists are faced with the difficulty of evaluating methods to deal with denial and must in this regard identify the limits of freedom of speech, but also the need to preserve the rights of victims. Beyond that, the question arises whether the law can ever be an effective option for dealing with revisionist statements and the revisionist movement. In this regard, Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective breaks new ground: exploring the background of revisionism, the specific methods devised by individual States to counter this phenomenon, and the rationale for their strategies. Bringing together authors whose expertise relates to the history of the Holocaust, genocide studies, international criminal law and social anthropology, the book offers insights into the history of revisionism and its varying contexts, but also provides a thought-provoking engagement with the challenging questions attached to its treatment in law and politics.

From 1978-1996 Holocaust denial emerged as a major concern for the liberal democracies of Europe and North America. This period also saw the first prosecutions of Holocaust deniers. But these prosecutions often ran into trouble. Holocaust Denial and the Law relates how courts in four countries (Canada, France, Germany and the United States) resolved the dilemmas posed by Holocaust-denial litigation. It also describes how, in the United States, student editors had to decide whether to run ads denying the Holocaust. The book concludes that a given country's resolution of these dilemmas turns on its specific legal traditions and historical experiences.

Holocaust Denial. The Politics of Perfidy provides a graphic and compelling global panorama of past and present variations on this toxic phenomenon. The volume examines right and left wing French negationism, post-Communist Holocaust deniers in Eastern-Europe, the spread of denial to Australia, Canada, South-Africa and even to Japan. Leading scholarly experts also explore the close connection between Holocaust denial, global conspiracy theories, antisemitism and radical anti-Zionism – especially in Iran and the Arab world.

In her acclaimed 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called putative WWII historian David Irving "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." A prolific author of books on Nazi Germany who has claimed that more people died in Ted Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Irving responded by filing a libel lawsuit in the United Kingdom -- where the burden of proof lies on the defendant, not on the plaintiff. At stake were not only the reputations of two historians but the record of history itself.