The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Europe Limited
Press Association Newsfile

February 3, 2000, Thursday 08:03 AM Eastern Time

BLACKS 'DIFFERENT BUT NOT INFERIOR' SAYS IRVING

BY: Jan Colley and Cathy Gordon, PA News

Historian David Irving today denied that it was racist to say that it made
him feel "queasy" to see black people playing cricket for England.

"Blacks are different from us but not inferior," the 62-year-old author of
Hitler's War told the High Court in London.

Mr Irving added that in an interview with an Australian journalist, he also
said that it was a pity that England had to have blacks in the team and that
they were better than "we whites".

"I say it's a pity because I am English," he told Richard Rampton QC,
defending American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in a libel
action brought by Mr Irving over claims that he is a "Holocaust denier".

Asked by Mr Rampton when the Irvings first arrived in this country, the
author put them as far back as Robert the Bruce in the 14th century.

Mr Rampton said that the Irvings were then Normans - "beastly foreigners".

Asked if origins really mattered, Mr Irving said that someone like him, born
in the England of 1938 and imbued with all its values, regretted what had
happened to "our country".

Mr Rampton: "And that is characteristic of people who might properly and
legitimately be called racist"

Mr Irving: "Or patriotic. Patriotism is respecting the country that was
handed down to you by your fathers.

"I don't think there is anything despicable or disreputable about patriotism
- respect and love for the country that I grew up in, the England I was born
into."

He said that he felt sorry that "my England" was unable to produce enough
good cricketers.

"I'm saying it's regrettable that blacks and people of certain races are
superior athletes to whites.

"If this is a racist attitude, then so be it. It's a recognition that some
people are different at different things.

"You may wish to legislate it away or describe it as despicable but it's a
recognition of how things are."

Mr Rampton: "You would like it if this country was a pure white Aryan race
of people who went back as far as Robert the Bruce."

Mr Irving said that it was "just an old-fashioned attitude" to want to go
back to the England of "Jack Warner and no chewing gum on the pavement".

He added that 90% of Englishmen of his vintage probably thought much the same.

Mr Irving is seeking damages over a 1994 book, Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which he says has generated waves of
hatred against him.

The defendants, who deny libel, claim that Mr Irving is a "liar and
falsifier of history".

==

Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Europe Limited Press Association Newsfile
February 3, 2000, Thursday

BLACKS 'DIFFERENT BUT NOT INFERIOR' SAYS IRVING

Jan Colley and Cathy Gordon, PA News

Historian David Irving today denied that it was racist to say that it made
him feel "queasy" to see black people playing cricket for England.

"Blacks are different from us but not inferior," the 62-year-old author of
Hitler's War told the High Court in London.

Mr Irving added that in an interview with an Australian journalist, he also
said that it was a pity that England had to have blacks in the team and that
they were better than "we whites".

"I say it's a pity because I am English," he told Richard Rampton QC,
defending American academic Deborah Lipstadt  and Penguin Books in a libel
action brought by Mr Irving over claims that he is a "Holocaust denier".

Asked by Mr Rampton when the Irvings first arrived in this country, the
author put them as far back as Robert the Bruce in the 14th century.

Mr Rampton said that the Irvings were then Normans - "beastly foreigners".

Asked if origins really mattered, Mr Irving said that someone like him, born
in the England of 1938 and imbued with all its values, regretted what had
happened to "our country".

Mr Rampton: "And that is characteristic of people who might properly and
legitimately be called racist"

Mr Irving: "Or patriotic. Patriotism is respecting the country that was
handed down to you by your fathers.

"I don't think there is anything despicable or disreputable about patriotism
- respect and love for the country that I grew up in, the England I was born
into."

He said that he felt sorry that "my England" was unable to produce enough
good cricketers.

"I'm saying it's regrettable that blacks and people of certain races are
superior athletes to whites.

"If this is a racist attitude, then so be it. It's a recognition that some
people are different at different things.

"You may wish to legislate it away or describe it as despicable but it's a
recognition of how things are."

Mr Rampton: "You would like it if this country was a pure white Aryan race
of people who went back as far as Robert the Bruce."

Mr Irving said that it was "just an old-fashioned attitude" to want to go
back to the England of "Jack Warner and no chewing gum on the pavement".

He added that 90% of Englishmen of his vintage probably thought much the same.

Mr Irving is seeking damages over a 1994 book, Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which he says has generated waves of
hatred against him.

The defendants, who deny libel, claim that Mr Irving is a "liar and
falsifier of history".

Copyright 2000 Telegraph Group Limited THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February
03, 2000, Thursday

Irving 'sang racist poem to daughter in her pram'

By Sandra Laville

DAVID Irving, the historian, was accused in the High Court yesterday of
being a perverted racist who taught his daughter a "poisonous" poem about
children of other races.

The verse, which he wrote in a personal diary, was labelled a "racist ditty"
by the defence QC, who said Mr Irving sang it to his nine-month-old daughter
when "half-breed" children were wheeled by in prams.

Richard Rampton, defending Deborah Lipstadt,  an American academic, and
Penguin Books, produced the entry from September 1994, as he cross-examined
Mr Irving.

The verse read:

I am a Baby Aryan

Not Jewish or Sectarian

I have no plans to marry an

Ape or Rastafarian.

In an increasingly heated exchange Mr Rampton asked: "Racist, Mr Irving?
Anti-Semitic, Mr Irving?"

Mr Irving replied: "I don't think so."

Mr Rampton: "Teaching your little child this kind of poison?"

Mr Irving: "Do you think a nine-month-old can understand?"

To laughter in the courtroom, Mr Rampton said that when he was six months
old the only kind of ditty he sang was "pussy's in the apple tree until she
thinks it's time for tea".

"The poor little child is being taught a racist ditty by her perverted
racist father," he said.

Mr Irving replied: "I am not a racist."

The historian and author of Hitler's War is suing Prof Lipstadt  and Penguin
Books for libel over a claim in her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing
Assault on Truth and Memory, that he is a "Holocaust denier" who falsified
history. The defendants deny libel.

Mr Irving, 62, who is representing himself, told the court that he had
employed "coloured people and ethnic minorities" and that Mr Rampton's legal
team did not employ "one such person". But Mr Justice Gray, who is hearing
the trial without a jury, told Mr Irving the comment was "not helpful".

Mr Rampton went on to refer to speeches made by Mr Irving.

In September 1992, he told his audience: "For a transitional period I'd be
prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman
reading the important news to us, followed by a lady reading all the less
important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news
about the muggings and the drug busts . . ."

"Are you not appalled by that?" Mr Rampton said.

"Not in the least," replied Mr Irving.

Addressing a meeting of the National Alliance, a Right-wing organisation in
America in October 1995, Mr Irving referred to the "legend" of the
Holocaust, the court heard.

Asked why he had told the audience he found the Holocaust "boring", Mr
Irving said: "What other expression is there for the fact that it's all they
[Jews] go on about now."

Referring to his suggestion that a survivor may have faked her Auschwitz
tattoo, Mr Irving said his comments were not anti-Semitic but were critical
of those Jewish survivors who turned "their suffering into profit". The case
continues.

Copyright 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London) February 3,
2000

Irving taught his nine-month-old daughter racist ditty, libel trial told

The historian David Irving was yesterday accused in the high court holocaust
libel trial of being a racist. Mr Irving, who is seeking damages over claims
that he is a 'holocaust denier', rejected the allegation.

The accusation was made during cross-examination of the 62-year-old author
of Hitler's War by Richard Rampton QC, defending the Ameri can academi,
Deborah Lipstadt  and Penguin Books.

Mr Rampton, questioning Mr Irving on his various 'utterances both in public
and private on the subject of Jews, blacks etc', accused him of teaching his
daughter aged nine months a 'racist ditty' when he took her out for a walk.

The QC read out a September 1994 extract from Mr Irv ing's personal diaries
in which the historian referred to a poem he had sung to his daughter when
'half -breed children' were wheeled past:

'I am a Baby Aryan,

'Not Jewish or Sectarian.

'I have no plans to marry-an

'Ape or Rastafarian.'

Mr Rampton asked: 'Racist, Mr Irving? Anti-Semitic, Mr Irving?'

Mr Irving, who is represent ing himself, replied: 'I don't think so.'

Mr Rampton: 'Teaching your little child this kind of poison?' Mr Irving: 'Do
you think a nine-month-old can understand . . .' Mr Rampton: 'The poor
little child is being taught a racist ditty by her perverted racist father.'

Mr Irving replied firmly: 'I am not a racist.'

The author is suing Profes sor Lipstadt  and Penguin Books over her 1994
book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which
he says has generated hatred against him.

The defendants, who deny libel, have accused him of being a liar and a
falisfier of history.

Mr Rampton also referred to a speech made by Mr Irving in September 1992.
The author had said: 'For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be
prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman
reading the important news to us, followed by a lady reading all the less
important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news
about the muggings and the drug busts . . .'

Mr Rampton, who said the rest was lost in laughter and applause, asked Mr
Irving: 'Are you not appalled by that?' Mr Irving replied: 'Not in the
least.' It was the same kind of speech, he said, which would be given by a
stand-up comic at the end of Brighton pier.

The court was shown a video of Mr Irving addressing a meeting of the
rightwing American organisation the National Alliance, in Tampa, Florida, in
October, 1995, in which he talked of the 'leg end' of the holocaust. Mr
Rampton said that Mr Irving had spoken at eight National Alliance events
between 1990 and 1998.

Mr Irving said that he had no association with the alliance, had no idea
what it was and had not attended events which 'to his knowledge' had been
organised by it.

The hearing was adjourned until today.

Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Limited The Times (London) February 3, 2000,
Thursday

Diary reveals Irving's ode to Aryans

Michael Horsnell

SIR TREVOR McDONALD, the black ITN newscaster, should be restricted to
reading news about muggings and drug busts, according to the Hitler
historian David Irving.

His words were quoted back at him in court yesterday as he faced allegations
of unvarnished racism. He agreed that in a speech to the Clarendon Club, he
had yearned for the old days when newsreaders wore dinner jackets on air. He
had said: "For a transitional period, I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC
should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us,
followed by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor
McDonald giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts."

Mr Irving, who is suing the American academic Deborah Lipstadt  for libel
over a book in which she describes him as a "holocaust denier", was taken
through a passage from his private diary by her counsel, Richard Rampton,
QC. It concerned a day when he took his baby daughter Jessica out for a walk
near their home in London. According to the diary, he had been singing her a
ditty beginning "My name is Baby Jessica" when "half-breed" children were
wheeled past them in their prams, and he changed the words to something more
"scurrilous" which began: "I am a Baby Aryan."

Mr Irving agreed that he had recorded the ditties in his diary on September
17, 1994, after returning from the walk with his "fine little lady" of a
daughter. But on a day of heated exchanges with Mr Rampton, he denied a
suggestion that the diary entry was one of many examples of his alleged
racism. Mr Irving said that what he had written was a private response to a
smear in the magazine Searchlight in which he said that his family was
described as a "perfect Aryan family".

Mr Irving was obliged to hand over his diaries before the hearing as part of
the normal exchange of documents.

Irving's diary, page 6

IRVING'S 'DITTY'

I am a Baby Aryan

Not Jewish or Sectarian

I have no plans to marry an

Ape or Rastafarian.

Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Limited The Times (London) Irving is accused
of 'unvarnished' racism

Michael Horsnell

THE Hitler historian David Irving was accused of "unvarnished racism" at his
High Court libel trial yesterday as he was taken through his private diary,
which he never thought anyone else would read.

Millions of words, both unpublished and contained in speeches he made to
right-wing audiences, came under scrutiny along with damaging allegations
made about how he had poisoned his daughter's mind with racism. He was also
cross-examined about a book he published in which he attacked the Jews for
their greed.

He agreed that in July 1997 he wrote in A Radical's Diary: "They clammer
'Ours! Ours! Ours!' when hoards of gold are uncovered. And then when
anti-Semitism increases and the inevitable mindless pogroms occur, they ask
with genuine surprise 'Why us?'"

In a series of heated exchanges with Richard Rampton, QC, he was taken
through a series of utterances he has made about the Jews, but denied that
he is a racist.

Mr Irving, 62, who said he strongly objected to the "kind of excerpting"
exercise on which Mr Rampton embarked, was taken through an interview he had
given to the journalist Errol Morris on November 8, 1998, in which he
analysed anti-Semitism and suggested that money lay at its root. The
historian, who has denied that Jews were exterminated in the concentration
camp gas chambers during the Second World War, said that the Jewish
community had only to be called liars for their accusers to be thrown into
jail. He said: "The question which would concern me, if I was a Jew, is not
who pulled the trigger, but why? Why are we disliked? Is it something we are
doing?

"You people are disliked on a global scale. You have been disliked for 3,000
years and yet you never seem to ask what is at the root of this dislike ...
no sooner do you arrive as a people in a new country, then within 50 years
you are already being disliked all over again.

"Now, what is it? And I don't know the answer to this. Is it built into our
microchip?"

He questioned whether it could be because non-Jews did not like the way they
looked or whether it was down to envy because they were more successful. "It
was not just a 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' dislike but on a 'visceral,
guts-wrenching, murderous level, that no sooner do we arrive than we are
being massacred, and beaten, and brutalised and imprisoned, until we have to
move on somewhere else." He added: "I would say that they're a clever race.
I would say that as a race they are better at making money than I am. That's
a racist remark, of course. But they appear to be better at making money
than I am. If I was going to be crude, I would say not only are they better
at making money, but they are greedy."

Asked about such remarks by Mr Rampton, Mr Irving said: "In my own clumsy
way I am trying to find out why we don't like them. It's a very coherent
expression of the antiSemitic tragedy. I am putting myself in the skin of a
person asking questions about a clever people." Mr Irving is suing Deborah
Lipstadt,  an American academic, and Penguin Books, over her book Denying
the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, in which she claims
that he is a denier of the Holocaust.

Mr Rampton, for the defence, put the question: "Every time there is a pogrom
or gassing or machinegunning into a pit it's entirely the Jews' fault
because some of them are very good at playing the piano and making money?"

Mr Irving: "That's a childish over-simplification." Mr Irving, who is
representing himself, said: "I am not a racist. I haven't seen a single
coloured person on your team behind you." The historian, who said he
employed people regardless of their race, was reprimanded by Mr Justice Grey
when he twice repeated the accusation. The High Court was shown a video of
Mr Irving addressing the National Alliance, a right-wing American
organisation, in Tampa, Florida, in October 1995 in which he spoke of what
he called the "legend of the Holocaust".

Mr Irving denied any association with the NA but it was put to him he had
spoken at eight of their events between 1990 and 1998.

Asked why he had said in his Tampa speech that he found the Holocaust story
"boring", Mr Irving said: "I think 95 per cent of the thinking public find
the Holocaust boring by now but don't say it because it's politically
incorrect. What other expression is there for the fact that it's all the
Jews go on about now? There have been the most incredible episodes in Jewish
history but all you hear of in films and so on of late is the Holocaust."

Asked to account for a suggestion that a Holocaust survivor may have faked
her Auschwitz tattoo, Mr Irving said that Jewish people were not immune from
criticism. The hearing continues.

Copyright 2000 The Press Association Limited Press Association Newsfile
February 2, 2000, Wednesday

I'M NO RACIST, IRVING TELLS LIBEL TRIAL

Cathy Gordon and Jan Colley, PA News

Historian David Irving was today accused in the High Court Holocaust libel
trial of being a "racist".

Mr Irving, who is seeking damages over claims that he is a 'Holocaust
denier', rejected the allegation.

The accusation was made during cross-examination of the 62-year-old author
of Hitler's War by Mr Richard Rampton QC, defending American academic
Deborah Lipstadt  and Penguin Books in the case at London's Law Courts.

Mr Rampton, questioning Mr Irving on his various "utterances both in public
and private on the subject of Jews, blacks etc", accused him of teaching his
nine-month old daughter a "racist ditty" when he took her out for a walk.

The QC read out a September 1994 extract from Mr Irving's personal diaries
in which the historian referred to a poem he had sung to his daughter when
"half-breed children" were wheeled past:

"I am a Baby Aryan,

"Not Jewish or Sectarian.

"I have no plans to marry-an

"Ape or Rastafarian."

Mr Rampton asked: "Racist, Mr Irving? Anti-Semitic, Mr Irving?"

Mr Irving, who is representing himself, replied: "I don't think so."

Mr Rampton: "Teaching your little child this kind of poison?"

Mr Irving: "Do you think a nine-month old can understand ..."

To laughter in the packed courtroom, Mr Rampton commented that when he was
six months old the only kind of ditty he sang was "pussy's in the apple tree
until she thinks it's time for tea".

Mr Rampton said: "The poor little child is being taught a racist ditty by
her perverted racist father."

Mr Irving replied firmly: "I am not a racist."

He said he had employed "coloured people and ethnic minorities" on his staff
and said that Mr Rampton's defence team did not employ "one such person".

Mr Justice Gray, who is hearing the lengthy trial without a jury, intervened
after Mr Irving repeated the comment and told him it was "not helpful".

The author is suing Professor Lipstadt  and Penguin Books over her 1994 book
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which he
says has generated waves of hatred against him.

The defendants, who deny libel, have accused him of being a liar and a
falisfier of history.

He said the author told the audience: "For the time being, for a
transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a
dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us, followed by a
lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving
us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts ..."

Mr Rampton, who said the rest was lost in laughter and applause, asked Mr
Irving: "Are you not appalled by that?"

Mr Irving replied: "Not in the least."

He said it was the same kind of speech which would be given by a stand-up
comic at the end of Brighton pier.

"Even a black audience would not find that offensive, believe me," he
commented.

The court was shown a video of Mr Irving addressing a meeting of the
right-wing American organisation, the National Alliance, in Tampa, Florida,
in October 1995, in which he talked of the "legend" of the Holocaust.

Mr Rampton said that Mr Irving had spoken at eight NA events between 1990
and 1998.

Mr Irving said that he had no association with the NA, had no idea what they
were and had not attended events which "to his knowledge" had been organised
by them.

Asked why he had said in his Tampa speech that he found the whole Holocaust
story "boring", Mr Irving said: "I think 95% of the thinking public find the
Holocaust boring by now but don't say it because it's politically incorrect."

He added: "What other expression is there for the fact that it's all they
(Jews) go on about now ...

"There have been the most incredible episodes in Jewish history but all you
hear of in films and so on of late is the Holocaust - and people are
thoroughly bored by it."

Mr Irving said that he based his view on people he spoke to from all walks
of life.

Referring to a suggestion in his speech that a Holocaust survivor may have
faked her Auschwitz tattoo, Mr Irving said that the Jewish people were not
"immune from criticism".

He said that his comments were not anti-Semitic but were critical of those
Jewish survivors who turned "their suffering into profit".

"Those who suffered most, died ... they didn't get a bent nickel."

Mr Rampton referred Mr Irving to comments he made about an incident in July
1992 when a crowd opposed to his views had to be held back from his family
home for two days behind barricades.

Mr Irving was quoted as saying that "the whole rabble" were made up of "all
the scum of humanity ... the homosexuals, the gypsies, the lesbians, the
Jews, the criminals, the communists, the left-wing extremists..."

Mr Rampton said that he was sure Mr Irving was under pressure at the time,
perhaps a little frightened and angry.

Mr Irving said that he was not easily frightened but he did get angry about
such "nightmare" events.

"I would use exactly the same phrase now."

Mr Rampton said that when a man was angry or under stress, his mask might slip.

Mr Irving said that the words he used were a literal description of those
outside his home waving placards saying "Gas Irving".

Mr Rampton said: "This is the plain language of a plain unvarnished racist,
isn't it?"

Mr Irving: "On the contrary. It is the language of someone who can see the
evidence with his own eyes ... people being held back by the forces of law
and order."

He added that an example of the "conditions of terror" he was then living
under was that a wire rope was attached to his daughter's Moses basket so
that she could be lowered from a window if the house was set on fire.

The hearing was adjourned until tomorrow.

Copyright 2000 AAP Information Services Pty. Ltd. AAP NEWSFEED February 1,
2000, Tuesday

UK: Irving plans renewed bid for Australia visa

Irving Second Nightlead    By Trevor Marshallsea and Max Blenkin

LONDON, Feb 1 AAP - Controversial British historian David Irving today said
Prime Minister John Howard would have to change Australia's immigration laws
to bar him from the country again.

After Mr Howard said his government was still determined to keep the
Holocaust revisionist out because he was an undesirable, Mr Irving said he
was stiabout two months to change the law again," Mr Irving told AAP.

Mr Irving, denied entry to Australia on four previous occasions, announced
he would make a new bid after learning his youngest daughter Beatrice, who
lives in Brisbane, had acquired Australian citizenship.

He said he had strong legal advice the government could not bar him from
visiting a family member who was an Australian citizen.

Asked if he was confident of success if he took his fresh application to
court, Mr Irving said: "I think so, yes. It will be out of his (Mr Howard's)
hands. It will be in the hands of a totally different tribunal if he does
refuse me."

Mr Irving, who rejects claims he is a Holocaust denier, said changes made to
the Immigration Act under the Howard government - to make "bad character" a
sufficient reason to refuse a visa - had been made with him in mind.

The condition had been used only twice - to block visits by himself and
Gerry Adams, president of the IRA's political wing Sinn Fein, who was
eventually allowed entry last year.

"Gerry Adams, an IRA terrorist, has since been let into Australia, so his
character is evidently considered good enough by the Australians and John
Howard," said Mr Irving, 62.

He said Australia had also recently "welcomed with open arms" alleged Nazi
war criminal Konrad Kalejs.

"Yet there's something still about historians they don't like," he said.

Mr Howard said Mr Irving remained an undesirable.

"We have a view that because of his record he should not come to Australia,"
he told reporters in Dubbo in central western NSW.

Mr Irving has been convicted under German law for denying the magnitude of
the holocaust and subsequently refused entry for speaking tours in Canada,
Australia and other countries.

In 1996, the former Labor government refused him a business visa on grounds
of his conviction in Germany.

Government sources said any application from Mr Irving for a visitor visa
would be considered on its merits and all relevant matters taken into
consideration.

"An application for a visitor's visa does not give any extra rights. It is
not a rubber stamp for automatic entry," Mr Howard said.

It is possible Mr Irving may argue to be reunited with his daughter on
compassionate grounds, since her sister Josephine Tucker fell to her death
from her London flat last September.

Mr Irving declined to say whether he would apply for a tourist or business
visa or what his intentions would be in Australia.

But he said he was not planning a speaking tour at this stage.

"Let's cross that bridge when we get to it," he said.

A scholar of World War II and prolific author, Mr Irving has attracted
worldwide controversy for disputing Nazi Germany was responsible for the
systematic murder of six million Jews and others or that Adolf Hitler was
personally culpable.

He is suing American academic Deborah Lipstadt  and publisher Penguin Books
for libel damages for being called a "Holocaust denier".

Earlier today, Mr Irving told ABC Radio: "I have a lot of friends in
Australia. I would like to shake a lot of hands of a lot of people who have
given me a lot of support over the last few years ever since the ban was
first engineered under the Keating government.

"We all know who was behind that. I would like to come and speak a few blunt
words to the people who opposed me at those times and shake the hands of
those who supported me."

Copyright 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London) February 1,
2000

Author not anti-Semite, court told

A Judaism authority yesterday told the Holocaust libel trial at the high
court in London that he did not consider historian David Irving to be
anti-Semitic.

Author Kevin MacDonald, professor of psychology at California state
university, was giving evidence on Mr Irving's behalf during his damages
action against American academic Deborah Lipstadt  and Penguin Books over a
claim that he is a 'Holocaust denier'.

Mr Irving, 62, the author of Hitler's War, asked Prof MacDonald, who has
written books on Judaism and anti-Semitism: 'Do you consider me to be an
anti -Semite?'

Prof MacDonald replied: 'I do not consider you to be an anti-Semite. I have
had quite a few discussions with you and you almost never men tioned Jews,
never in the general negative way.'

Mr Irving has denied an allegation by the defendants that he has made
statements 'designed to feed the virulent anti-Semitism' still present
throughout the world.

The case continues

Copyright 2000 The Press Association Limited Press Association Newsfile
February 1, 2000, Tuesday

HISTORIAN ACCUSED OF EXAGGERATION OVER DRESDEN TOLL

Cathy Gordon, PA News

Historian David Irving was accused in the High Court today of having a
"gigantic appetite for distortion and exaggeration".

The allegation was made by the QC representing American academic Deborah
Lipstadt  and Penguin books, who are being sued for libel by Mr Irving over
claims that he is a "Holocaust denier".

Richard Rampton QC, cross-examining the 62-year-old author of Hitler's War,
said he had exaggerated the number of dead in the World War Two Allied
bombing of Dresden "for your own base political purposes".

Mr Irving, who is representing himself, rejected the accusation. He said of
the 1945 bombings: "It was a war crime. There is no way round it. I am
deeply ashamed of what we did."

He is seeking damages against Prof Lipstadt  and Penguin Books over her 1994
book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which
he says has generated waves of hatred against him.

The defendants, who deny libel, claim that Mr Irving is a "liar and
falsifier of history".

Mr Rampton told the packed London court and Mr Justice Gray, who is hearing
the lengthy case without a jury, that his cross-examination of Mr Irving on
the topic of Dresden was not to establish what had happened, or the death
toll, but to investigate his "bona fides as an historian".

Mr Irving, whose first book was The Destruction of Dresden, was questioned
by Mr Rampton about a document he had obtained during a visit to the German
city in November 1964, which put the number of dead at 202,040 with an
expected final toll of 250,000.

Counsel pointed out that at the time Mr Irving wrote that he was personally
in no doubt about the document's general authenticity and that it was of
some importance to determine whether it was genuine and, if it was genuine,
whether the 202,040 figure was an accurate or true detail "or whether it was
deliberately falsified at the time".

Mr Irving agreed with Mr Rampton - who told the court the document turned
out to be fake - that he knew from the beginning that there was doubt about
the figures.

He also agreed that he thought the document was genuine at that time, but
that the 202,040 figure might be suspect.

Counsel said Mr Irving's doubts "seemed to have evaporated" by the time he
wrote in December 1964 to the Provost of Coventry Cathedral suggesting he
use the text of the "sensational" document in an exhibition planned to raise
funds for the "DresdenCoventry link".

The court heard that Mr Irving had written that the casualties mentioned in
the document "have a shattering impact", telling the Provost: "I am myself
in no doubt as to the authenticity of the document."

Mr Irving said that he had been carrying out "proper inquiries" into the
figures.

Mr Rampton said he accepted that at the time Mr Irving did not know the
document was a fake, but emphasised the doubts he had expressed about the
reliability of the figures.

Mr Irving said he now estimated the number of dead at Dresden to be between
60,000 and 100,000.

Mr Rampton, who pointed out that other estimates included those of between
25,000 and 30,000 dead, said Mr Irving's figures were "pie-in-the-sky".

He said: "I suggest that your figures are fantasy. The reason you have done
it is you want to make a false equivalence between the numbers of people who
died in Dresden and the number of people killed by the SS in Auschwitz."

Mr Irving said that was not true.

The hearing continues tomorrow.

==

Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
The Washington Times
February 03, 2000

Neo-Nazis have short memories;
But the rest of us shouldn't have

BY: Suzanne Fields; THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Dateline: Washington, DC

What a curious people we've become. In the midst of an explosion of learning
and knowledge, some of us nevertheless try to rewrite history with a
boldness the old Russian communists no doubt envy.

If history embarrasses, wipe it out. If there aren't any facts to support an
argument, make 'em up. If certain facts make someone, or a group of people,
uncomfortable, change 'em.

Blowing the whistle on such shoddy enterprise can be costly. Deborah
Lipstadt, a history scholar at Emory University in Atlanta, is learning that
in a London court room. She and her British publisher, Penguin Books, are
defending themselves against the charge that she libeled David Irving, 62,
the author of "Hitler's War" and other books on Nazi Germany and World War
II, when she accused him of being a Holocaust denier. A casual reader of Mr.
Irving's ideas might easily agree that that's what he is.

Mr. Irving writes that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, that "only"
100,000 Jews died at Auschwitz (most of them from natural causes like
typhus), that Hitler was let down by his subordinates and suggests that on
the whole Der Fuhrer wasn't such a bad chap. If Hitler had known what was
going on, Mr. Irving writes, he would have shaped up a "totally ramshackle
operation."

Miss Lipstadt catalogued some of Mr. Irving's assertions in a book of her
own, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." She
describes him as "a falsifier of history," of being a "Hitler partisan."

American newspapers are paying little attention, which is unfortunate
because it's a chilling reminder of continuing anti-Semitism. (The best
coverage I've found is in Slate, the online magazine, in which Judith
Shulevitz debates those who lend prestige to David Irving.)

The stakes are high because libel law in England is much tougher than libel
law in the United States. Deborah Lipstadt must prove beyond a reasonable
doubt that what she said was true. Most legal observers in London think she
will prevail, but it's no foregone conclusion. David Irving says he doesn't
deny the Holocaust so much as to "redefine" it.

He has a lot of data in his head, enabling him to confuse others with
half-lies and half-truths. He argues that Hitler did not know anything about
a plot to kill the Jews until 1943, that no document identifies him as
ordering the Final Solution, or linking him to the extermination goals. Had
Hitler known, the Nazis would have been more competent killers, but he had
lost control over those who carried out the murder of Jews.

"If the killing had been systematic, it would have been done with more
efficient means," he told the court. "It was a totally ramshackle operation,
a total lack of system." (In "Hitler's War," he wrote that the diary of Anne
Frank was a forgery, and his German publisher later apologized to the Frank
family for printing it and paid compensation.)

Neo-Nazi movements are increasingly visible in certain nations of the
European Union. Fourteen leaders of the Union threatened to isolate Austria
if the Freedom Party of Joerg Haider succeeds in becoming part of the
coalition government. Mr. Haider has praised the Waffen SS and policies of
the Third Reich and made the ritual apologies. Not since Kurt Waldheim,
president of Austria for six years (1986-1992) was revealed to have been
compliant with Nazi villainy in mass deportations of Jews has Austria seemed
so threatening to democracy and decency. Jews in Brussels protested at the
Austrian Embassy by wearing yellow stars of David.

Over the weekend, hundreds of neo-Nazis in Berlin, commemorating the 67th
anniversary of the Nazi assumption of power, marched through the Brandenburg
Gate for the first time since World War II, protesting the erection of a
monument to the Holocaust dead. An equal number of Berliners protested the
protesters.

Only this week the world learned of another Nazi atrocity, this one in
Russia, 55 years ago. Nazi SS guards massacred thousands of Jews, including
women and children, who had survived a brutal 25-mile death march. Auschwitz
had been liberated only four days before.

Deborah Lipstadt does not worry that the Holocaust will be forgotten as long
as survivors are alive to tell their story. "To me this is not a clear and
present danger," she says. "To me this is a clear and future danger."

Suzanne Fields, a columnist for The Washington Times, is nationally
syndicated. Her column appears here Monday and Thursday.

GRAPHIC: Photo, NO CAPTION, From The Stroop Report, compliments of the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum

###


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