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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