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Focus Recent European events make us stop and reflect
Auschwitz lessons not fully learned
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
By Allan Levine For the Free Press

02/10/2000
Winnipeg Free Press
Metro Page a13
All material copyright Thomson Canada Limited or its licensors.

Fifty-five years after the Soviet army marched into Auschwitz and discovered
the true brutality and horror of Hitler's Nazi regime, the historical
lessons of that evil place have yet to be fully learned.

Perhaps they never will. Indeed, history is supposed to teach us something
about avoiding the pitfalls and catastrophes of the past. Yet too many of
us, it seems, still remain ignorant of its main message.

Two recent events in Europe, unrelated though nevertheless linked to the
tragedies of the last century, should make us stop and reflect about the
real meaning of Auschwitz and the other death camps. At a first glance,
neither event seems especially significant, but dismissing them would be
equally foolish as well as dangerous.

The first is the rise in Austria of Joerg Haider and his far-right Freedom
Party; the second, the lawsuit for libel in a London court brought by
controversial right-wing historian David Irving against U.S. historian
Deborah Lipstadt .

Despite warnings from the other members of the European Economic Union,
Haider's Freedom Party, which captured 27 per cent of the popular vote in
the recent Austrian elections (giving the party 52 seats in the 183-member
parliament), will be an important part of a new conservative coalition
government.

Haider, who will probably remain outside the government as governor of
Carinthia, a state in southern Austria, is a political opportunist of the
worst kind. Recently, he has had to apologize for past statements in which
he praised Hitler's "orderly employment policy," suggested that the members
of the notorious Waffen SS were deserving of "honour and respect," and
implied that the Nazi death camps were not as bad as history has made them
out to be.

While it is true that Haider should not automatically be seen as another
Hitler, his party's platform against "foreigners" and its support for a ban
on immigration may be cause for concern in the near future. It bears
repeating that Hitler never seized power in Germany in 1933, the German
people gave it to him.

In light of the hold that the memory of the Second World War and the
Holocaust still rightly has on Europe, the real question that needs
answering is why would thousands of Austrians buy into Haider's vision? It
may well be, as author Salman Rushdie has suggested, that Haider's recent
success at the polls is merely a backlash against the perceived ineffective
government offered to Austrians for so many years by the ruling
middle-of-the-road Social Democrats.

Still, it is the willingness of so many Europeans to embrace demagogues like
Haider or Jean le Pen in France that is the more serious issue. Has history
taught these people nothing about intolerance, racism and extreme
nationalism left unchecked?

No less disconcerting is David Irving's lawsuit for libel against Deborah
Lipstadt , a professor of Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory
University in Atlanta. Usually the proceedings of such a suit between two
historians would be of little interest to anyone but the parties themselves,
let alone have far-reaching consequences. Yet this case does deserve closer
scrutiny, because an outcome in favour of Irving would give further
ammunition to those misguided and, yes, dangerous individuals who continue
to deny that the Holocaust ever took place.

In the suit that he has initiated against Lipstadt and Penguin Books, Irving
claims that Lipstadt libelled him in her 1993 book published by Penguin,
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. By labelling
him a "Holocaust denier," Irving argues, Lipstadt has ruined his career and
reputation. In large part, he blames Lipstadt , among others, for the
cancellation four years ago of a major publishing contract with St. Martin's
Press, which was to have brought out his next big book, a biography of Nazi
propagandist Josef Goebbels.

Irving, the author of the 1977 bestseller Hitler's War, among other works on
the Nazis and the Second World War, is also known for his links with the
Institute for Historical Review, the leading U.S. Holocaust denial
organization. He has spoken to neo-Nazi groups and in 1988 testified in
Toronto on behalf of Ernst Zundel. He has been fined in Germany for stating
that the gas chambers were a myth and has been banned from Germany, Canada,
Australia, Italy and, interestingly, Austria.

Irving, like others who share his distorted views on the Holocaust, sees
himself as a "revisionist" rather than a denier." He does not dispute that
the Nazis killed some Jews and other people at Auschwitz, but he maintains
that the gas chambers were "fictitious" and that the number of Jews murdered
during the war has been greatly exaggerated. (In this, Irving has blindly
accepted the results of a flawed and ludicrous 1988 study of the death camp
by Fred Leuchter, an American consultant on execution facilities.)

If Irving was practising serious historical revisionism -- questioning and
reassessing the past based on real evidence -- it would be one thing. But
his theories are so far-fetched in the face of all documentation and
eye-witness testimony to the contrary (not the least of which is Stephen
Spielberg's Shoah Foundation that has now interviewed more than 50,000
Jewish Holocaust survivors), that he should be ignored and regarded as a
crank, except, as in the case of Haider, that would be a grave mistake.

In their attempt to portray the Holocaust as a Jewish conspiracy, Holocaust
deniers have, in the words of a group of French historians faced with this
issue several years ago, committed "an outrage on the truth.' "And despite
the fact that by his current legal action, Irving has once again essentially
put the Holocaust on trial, he may find that in his desire for vindication,
he will only receive censure.

There was also another recent event in Europe worth noting, one that offers
much more hope for the future. This was the gathering in Stockholm of
representatives from nearly 50 countries to discuss Holocaust education.
Both Britain and Sweden used the occasion to announce the establishment in
both countries of an annual Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27 to coincide
with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The message of this decision should be that the Holocaust is not merely a
tragedy to be remembered and marked by Jews or the state of Israel. It is an
event with a universal significance and implication and will be "forever
lodged in history's throat," as the late historian Lucy Dawidowicz once put
it. For in the years to come, if this fundamental truth is forgotten or
ignored -- if Haider and others like him continue to be popular and if
Holocaust deniers capture the attention of a wider and younger audience --
we all surely lose.

Allan Levine's most recent book is Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story
of Jewish Resistance during the Second World War.

==


Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Europe Limited
Press Association Newsfile
February 10, 2000

IRVING 'DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE CALLED HISTORIAN'

BY Jan Colley and Cathy Gordon, PA News

David Irving did not deserve to be called a historian, a top academic told
the High Court today.

Richard Evans, professor of modern history at Cambridge University, said
that he was not prepared for the "sheer depth of duplicity" which he
encountered in Mr Irving's treatment of historical sources relating to the
Holocaust.

Mr Irving, the 62-year-old author of Hitler's War, who is suing for libel
over claims that he is a "Holocaust denier", said that Professor Evans's
"sweeping and rather brutal" dismissal of his career stemmed from personal
animosity.

"I think you dislike what I write and stand for and what you perceive my
views to be," he told Prof Evans, who has been called as an expert for the
defence by author Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books.

Prof Evans, who has produced a 740-page report on Mr Irving's historical
method, said he had no personal feelings towards him and had tried to be as
objective as possible.

He said he previously had little knowledge of Mr Irving's work - although he
knew of his reputation as someone who was in many areas a sound historian -
and was "shocked" at what he found.

He said that the proceedings had reinforced his view in the report that Mr
Irving "has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary
among historians that he doesn't deserve to be called a historian at all".

Mr Irving said that he was "scrupulously fair" in everything he did in
public life - "the total opposite of being unscrupulous and manipulative and
deceptive as you say in your report".

Prof Evans said he agreed that Mr Irving had a very wide knowledge of the
source material for the Third Reich and had discovered many new documents.

"The problem for me is what you do with them when you interpret them and
write them up."

Prof Evans said that Mr Irving's published writings and speeches contained
numerous statements which he regarded as "anti-Semitic" - to the extent that
he blamed the Jews for the Holocaust.

He dismissed the theory that there was a "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" to
suppress Mr Irving's works - or undermine Germany in the 1930s - as "a
fantastic belief which has no grounds in fact".

Prof Evans said that he had examined a sufficient selection of Mr Irving's
output to justify his view that he did not use acceptable methods of
historical research.

In his report, he said that Mr Irving had relied in the past, and continued
to do so, on the fact that readers, listeners and reviewers lacked "either
the time or the expertise" to probe deeply enough in the sources he used to
discover the "distortions and manipulations".

He accepted that people should be allowed to challenge the "general
consensus" of history but asserted that there was a duty to conform to
academic standards in the evaluation of evidence.

Mr Irving, who is representing himself, is claiming damages over the 1994
Book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which
he says has generated waves of hatred against him.

The defendants have accused him of being a liar and a falsifier of history.

The hearing was adjourned until Monday.

==


TIMES  London
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html
Irving 'doesn't deserve to be called a historian'

BY A CORRESPONDENT DAVID IRVING did not deserve to be called an historian, a
leading academic said yesterday. Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History
at Cambridge University, told the High Court that he was not prepared for
the "sheer depth of duplicity" which he encountered in Mr Irving's treatment
of historical sources relating to the Holocaust.

Mr Irving, 62, who is suing for libel over claims that he is a "Holocaust
denier", said that Professor Evans's "sweeping and rather brutal" dismissal
of his career stemmed from personal animosity. "I think you dislike what I
write and stand for and what you perceive my views to be," he told Professor
Evans, who has been called as an expert for the defence by Deborah Lipstadt,
an American author, and Penguin Books.

Professor Evans, who has produced a 740-page report on Mr Irving's
historical method, said he had no personal feelings towards him and had
tried to be as objective as possible. He said that he previously had little
knowledge of Mr Irving's work - although he knew of his reputation as
someone who was in many areas a sound historian - and was "shocked" at what
he found.

He said that the proceedings had reinforced his view in the report that Mr
Irving "has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary
among historians that he doesn't deserve to be called an historian at all".

Mr Irving said that he was "scrupulously fair" in everything he did in
public life - "the total opposite of being unscrupulous and manipulative and
deceptive, as you say in your report".

Professor Evans said that he agreed that Mr Irving had a wide knowledge of
the source material for the Third Reich and had discovered many new
documents. "The problem for me is what you do with them when you interpret
them and write them up," he said.

Mr Irving's published writings and speeches contained numerous statements
which he regarded as "anti-Semitic" - to the extent that he blamed the Jews
for the Holocaust, he said. The professor dismissed the theory that there
was a "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" to suppress Mr Irving's works - or
undermine Germany in the 1930s - as "a fantastic belief which has no grounds
in fact".

Professor Evans said that he had examined a sufficient selection of Mr
Irving's output to justify his view that he did not use acceptable methods
of historical research. In his report, he said that Mr Irving had relied on
the fact that readers, listeners and reviewers lacked "either the time or
the expertise" to probe deeply enough in the sources he used to discover the
"distortions and manipulations".

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

The hearing was adjourned until Monday.


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