*** London Independent (2) *** London Daily Telegraph *** Toronto Star ( via Reuters ) *** Los Angeles Times ( bylined reporter's article from London ) *** Atlanta Constitution ( bylined reporter's article from London ) *** Guardian, London *** New York Times (bylined reporter's article from London *** Express, London *** Financial Times, London Irving is a falsifier and a liar, says publisher Irving tells court of `verbal Yellow Star' Ian Burrell Home Affairs Correspondent 01/12/2000 The Independent - London FOREIGN Page 10 (Copyright 2000 Newspaper Publishing PLC) THE RIGHT-WING historian David Irving was described yesterday as a "falsifier of history" and a "liar" at the start of a High Court libel battle. In a packed court, Richard Rampton QC, representing Penguin Books, said: "Mr Irving calls himself an historian. The truth is, however, that he is not an historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. Mr Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and - not least - mistranslation. But all these techniques have the same ultimate effect: falsification of the truth." The historian is suing the publisher and the American author Deborah Lipstadt over her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, in which she describes Mr Irving as a "Holocaust denier". Mr Rampton repeated the allegation. He said: "By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder of millions of Jews, in particular - though by no means exclusively - by the use of homicidal gas chambers, and in particular - though by no means exclusively - at Auschwitz in southern Poland." But Mr Irving told the court that he he had never denied the existence of the Holocaust. He said: "No person in full command of his mental faculties and with even the slightest understanding of what happened in World War Two can deny that the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae." Mr Irving said the tag "Holocaust denier" had become "one of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult". He described the expression as "a verbal Yellow Star". Mr Irving, 61, who has been banned from at least five countries because of his views, told the court he had never claimed any specialist knowledge of the Holocaust. He said: "If I am an expert in anything at all, I may be so immodest as to submit that it is in the role that Adolf Hitler played in the propagation of World War Two." Mr Irving, who is representing himself, said the Holocaust should not be the focus of the libel case, which is expected to last three months. "What is moot here is not what happened in those sites of atrocities - but what happened over the last 32 years, on my writing desk in my apartment off Grosvenor Square," he said. "This inquiry should not leave the four walls of my study." Mr Irving said publishers were afraid to be associated with him: "I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach." The historian claimed that Ms Lipstadt and Penguin were part of an "organised international endeavour" to "destroy my career and to vandalise my legitimacy as an historian". Mr Rampton suggested that Mr Irving used distorted history "in pursuit of his exoneration of Adolf Hitler and his denial of the Holocaust". He said the historian often gave talks to "radical right- wing, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi groups". During a speech in Canada in 1991, Mr Rampton said Mr Irving had said aboutAuschwitz: "Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney?" *** A war between historians that may never end Boyd Tonkin 01/12/2000 The Independent - London FOREIGN Page 10 (Copyright 2000 Newspaper Publishing PLC) ANYONE WHO saw Schindler's List will remember the closing scene, in which each of the surviving Schindlerjuden places a stone on his or her rescuer's memorial. Some do look old and frail; others, remarkably trim and vigorous. The literature of the Holocaust continues to arouse such passion and polemic in large part because it still relates to living memory. Many children, after all, were dispatched to the extermination camps. Some who came through that torment will only recently have reached retirement age. This history is alive, and it kicks. Hence any apparent assault on the agreed version puts into question not just an academic consensus, but the integrity of living people. "Though denial of the Holocaust may be an attack on the history of the annihilation of the Jews," wrote the historian Deborah Lipstadt in the 1993 book that David Irving now disputes, "at its core it poses a threat to all who believe that knowledge and memory are among the keystones of our civilisation." That knowledge, and those memories, still service a flourishing literature of witness - a genre that only emerged in the 1970s, with such figures as Primo Levi and Jean Amery, after two decades of postwar silence. Even in 1999, important new additions were arriving: the painstaking diaries of Victor Klemperer, for instance, one of the few German Jews who survived life under the Third Reich. Roman Frister's memoir The Cap told how one young camp inmate bought his own life at the cost of another's death. And next month will see the publication of a posthumous autobiography by the much-loved rabbi and Auschwitz survivor Hugo Gryn. Not surprisingly, this torrent of testimony has carried in its wake one or two outright frauds. Last year the pathetic story of Binyaminn Wilkomirski, who falsely claimed to have spent his childhood in the camps, finally came to light. He would weep when he recounted his "ordeal", one sceptic noted; genuine survivors never can. Such rare cases of exploitation have prompted some experts to wonder whether the state-approved culture of Holocaust reminiscence may end up doing more harm than good. This year, two American Jewish historians are due to publish challenges to what one cynic has dubbed "Shoah business". Peter Novick's The Holocaust and Collective Memory will ask whether in effect it hands Hitler an ultimate victory. Norman Finkelstein, in The Holocaust Industry, will argue that the memorial cult insults the victims of Nazism more than "the rubbish of Holocaust deniers" does. The other side of this story concerns not that flagrant, truth- mocking "rubbish", but the revival of a kind of German patriotism in historical accounts of the Second World War. David Irving himself has acted as chief English- language standard-bearer for this movement. In the 1980s a group of German historians - a few veterans, but many from the younger postwar generation - began to "normalise" accounts of military and civilian life under the Third Reich. In the confident era of reunification, a tone of impatience with the burden of collective guilt crept into many studies. Ordinary Germans began to emerge more as victims than villains. So a writer such as Andreas Hillgruber could hint at a comparison between the suffering endured by Wehrmacht soldiers in the East and the mass persecutions committed by the Germans themselves. A bitter "historians' war" erupted between the "revisionists" and those who refused to let attention shift from the enormity of Nazi crimes. This was the background to the intensely divisive book by the United States historian Daniel Goldhagen, who asserted most of those decent, hard-pressed normal Germans were in fact enthusiastic anti- Semites, and "Hitler's willing executioners". Oddly enough, the revisionist readings of the Reich came to the fore just as it grew clear that the senior Nazi who most successfully maintained his innocence had eventually accepted his complicity in genocide. In 1995 Gitta Sereny published Albert Speer: his battle with truth - the final fruit of herinterviews with Hitler's pet architect and minister for war production, who spent 20 years in Spandau jail. At last, we learnt that the "good Nazi" had in the end acknowledged his awareness of the Holocaust. "My chief guilt," Speer wrote in 1977, was "my tacit acceptance of the persecution and murder of millions of Jews." He admitted that to the Jewish Board of Deputies in South Africa, which had sought his support in banning the notorious Holocaust-denial pamphlet "Did Six Million Die?" If Speer had said as much at the Nuremberg trial, he would undoubtedly have been hanged. *** History of the Holocaust goes on trial: Author sues for libel over book he says made him an international pariah and threatened his livelihood. Neil Tweedie reports Neil Tweedie 01/12/2000 The Daily Telegraph Page 05 Copyright (C) 2000 The Daily Telegraph; Source: World Reporter (TM) The historian THE controversial British historian David Irving claimed he was the victim of an "organised international endeavour" to destroy his career at the opening of a libel trial in London yesterday. Mr Irving is suing Prof Deborah Lipstadt , an American author, and her publishers over claims in her latest book - Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory - that he is one of the most prominent and dangerous "Holocaust deniers" in the world. Mr Irving, 62, is conducting his own case. In his opening address he told Mr Justice Gray that his livelihood and that of his family had been put in jeopardy. He said: "By virtue of the activities of the defendants and those who funded her and guided her hand, I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach." He said being described as a "Holocaust denier" was "like being called a wife-beater or a paedophile". Mr Irving told the judge, who is is sitting without a jury, that far from being a "Holocaust denier", he had repeatedly brought attention to major aspects of the Holocaust through his discovery of fresh documents from the Second World War. He had been the victim of a concerted attack on his character and work by an international network of Left- wingers and Jews who had succeeded in making him a "pariah". Mr Irving said it was not his intention in bringing the case to reopen the debate over the Holocaust. He had sued Miss Lipstadt because she had accused him of "manipulation and distortion", something he vehemently denied. "Holocaust denier" was, said Mr Irving, a particularly evil phrase because no one could deny what had happened in the war. Dissident historians were merely quibbling about dates, scale and other "minutiae". "It is enough for the label to be attached, for the attachee to find himself designated as a pariah, an outcast from normal society. It is a verbal Yellow Star [of David]." He denied he was anti-Semitic, citing his friendship with Jewish people from his schooldays. He numbered the publisher George Weidenfeld among his friends. Mr Irving, the author of Hitler's War and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, said Miss Lipstadt and Penguin Books were part of "an organised international endeavour" determined to destroy his career and "vandalise" his legitimacy as a historian. He said that he had always looked on his books as his pension fund and a legacy for his four children, but that was no longer the situation. Because of "the nature of the odium that has been generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants" his "pension" had vanished "as assuredly as if I had been employed by one of those companies taken over by the late Mr Robert Maxwell". Mr Irving claims that Miss Lipstadt 's book alleges that he has denied the Holocaust, has distorted statistics and documents to serve his own ideological purposes and to reach historically untenable conclusions, and that he has knowingly consorted with extremists. Penguin and Miss Lipstadt , the holder of the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, deny libel and plead justification. They claim that Mr Irving has denied both the Holocaust and that gas chambers were used to carry it out, and that he holds extremist views and distorts history. Mr Irving said that he had never held himself out to be a Holocaust expert and had not written books about it. If he was an expert on anything it was the role that Hitler played in the war. "As a peripheral matter to that topic, on which I have written a number of books, I inevitably investigated the extent to which Hitler participated in or had cognisance of the Holocaust. That was the sum total of my involvement as a book author up to the launching of these writs." He said that he intended to show that "far from being a Holocaust denier" he had repeatedly drawn attention to major aspects of the Holocaust and had provided historical documents to scholars and the public of which they had been previously unaware. "I submit that, harsh though it may seem, the court should take no interest in that tragedy [the Holocaust]." What was at stake was not what happened in Poland or Russia 50 years ago, but over the last 32 years "on my writing desk in my apartment off Grosvenor Square". He said that to justify her allegations it was not enough for Miss Lipstadt to show that he had misrepresented what happened but that he knew what happened and "perversely and deliberately" portrayed it differently. Mr Irving said that he once earned more than pounds 100,000 a year in royalties but had been done "very real pecuniary damage" by the defendants. He said Denying the Holocaust purported to be "a scholarly investigation of the operations of an international network conspiracy of people whom the second defendant [Miss Lipstadt ] has dubbed `Holocaust deniers'. It is not." Holocaust deniers "has become one of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult, replacing the N-word, the F-word, and a whole alphabet of other slurs . . ." Mr Irving added. The judge would undoubtedly hear from the defendants, he said, that he was fined a very substantial sum of money by the German Government. "It is no matter for shame for me, although it has had catastrophic consequences, as it now makes me de facto `a convict', with a criminal record and as such liable to a concatenation of further indignities and sanctions in every foreign country which I now wish to visit." It arose from a remark made during an address he made to an audience in Munich in 1990 - "We now know that the gas chamber shown to the tourists at Auschwitz is a fake built by the Poles after the war, just like the one established by the Americans at Dachau." Mr Irving added: "This may well raise eyebrows. It might be found to be offensive by sections of the community and if they take such offence, I can assure this court that I regret it and that such was not my intention. "These remarks were true; the Poles admitted it in January 1995 and under English law truth has always been regarded as an absolute defence." Mr Irving continued: "We shall hear, indeed from the defence's own expert witnesses - though perhaps the admission will have to be bludgeoned out of them - that the gas chamber shown to the tourists at Auschwitz was indeed built by the Polish communists three years after the war was over." The hearing continues. The accuser DEBORAH Lipstadt , Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, accused David Irving of being a liar who systematically suppressed, distorted and manipulated history in an attempt to deny the existence of the Holocaust. In Denying the Holocaust, she claims that he is one of the most prominent "Holocaust deniers". His mastery of historical documents makes him a particularly dangerous exponent of the claim, shared by neo-fascist and some Muslim fundamentalist groups, she says. Yesterday her counsel, Richard Rampton, QC, who also represents her publishers Penguin Books, told the court: "Mr Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. "Lies may take various forms . . . but in the end all forms of lying converge into a single definition: wilful, deliberate misstatement of the facts. Mr Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and - not least - mistranslation." Mr Rampton said Mr Irving's character could be judged by those he associated with: neo-Nazis, American white supremacists and the British National Party. He quoted a speech in which Mr Irving said that Auschwitz was merely a slave labour camp where large numbers of people happened to die from overwork, disease and starvation. Mr Irving said at Calgary, Alberta, in September 1991: "I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney, it's a legend. "I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. "Oh, you think that's tasteless, how about this? There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around, in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd. Because I'm going to form an Association of Auschwitz survivors, survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, or the ASSHOLS." Mr Rampton concluded: "This is obviously an important case. The essence of it is Mr Irving's honesty and integrity as a chronicler - I shy away from the word `historian' - of these matters. "For if it be right that Mr Irving, driven by his extremist views, has devoted his energies to the deliberate falsification of this tragic episode in history, then, by exposing that dangerous fraud in this court, the defendants may properly be applauded for having performed a significant public service." *** Holocaust accusation touches off libel suit 01/12/2000 The Toronto Star 1 NE13 Copyright (c) 2000 The Toronto Star LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's most controversial historian, who says there is no evidence six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, kicked off a libel action yesterday against accusations he is a "Holocaust denier." David Irving is fighting in London's High Court over accusations by Prof. Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., that he is "a dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial." Irving said Lipstadt , who wrote a book exploring links between the work of historians like Irving and the growing popularity of white supremacists in the U.S. and neo-Nazis in Europe, was out to destroy his career and "vandalize" his legitimacy as an historian. Representing himself in his action to sue Lipstadt and her publishers, Penguin Books, for libel, the right-wing historian told the court in London he had made a significant contribution to the world's knowledge of the Holocaust. Irving was fined in May, 1992, after a German court convicted him of telling a 1990 public meeting of around 800 people in Munich there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and the Nazi death camp itself was built as a fake. He was banned from Germany after his 1992 conviction and has been refused entry to Canada, Italy, Austria and Australia. Irving, who described Auschwitz as "a very brutal slave labour camp" where around 100,000 people died, appealed in January, 1993, saying: "There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz; I will not change my opinion." His appeal was rejected. The libel case is expected to last three months. *** The Holocaust case Helen McCabe 01/12/2000 ABIX - Australasian Business Intelligence: The Advertiser Page 36 Copyright (C) 2000 Business Intelligence Australia Pty Ltd.; Source: World Reporter (TM) On 11 January 2000, controversial Great Britain historian, David Irving, launched defamation action against Penguin Books. He is claiming in the High Court of Great Britain that its publication, in 1997, of "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory", by Deborah Lipstadt , led to him being falsely accused of distorting history. It also allegedly associated him with fascist extremists and their practices. In the late-1970s, he caused a furore with his book, "Hitler's War" - which claimed the extermination of the Jews was carried out without German leader, Aloph Hitler's knowledge. It also doubted allegations 6m Jews had been killed. *** Foreign Desk Holocaust 'Denial' Trial Gets Underway Courts: British historian, who says there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, claims Jews are out to malign him. MARJORIE MILLER 01/12/2000 Los Angeles Times Home Edition Page A-8 Copyright 2000 / The Times Mirror Company LONDON -- In what promises to be a landmark libel case over Holocaust denial, Hitler biographer David Irving portrayed himself before Britain's High Court on Tuesday as a victim of an international Jewish conspiracy to blacken his reputation. The British historian, much criticized for his widely dismissed views that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and that Hitler did not authorize the extermination of Jews, rejected a U.S. professor's claim that he is a Holocaust denier. He said there has been an "organized international endeavor" to ruin him and that he has been branded with the epithet like someone publicly accused of wife-beating or sexually abusing children. Irving is suing Deborah Lipstadt , a professor at Atlanta's Emory University and author of "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," and her British publisher, Penguin UK, for libel. He is seeking damages and a halt to the book's further publication. In her book, Lipstadt calls Irving "one of the most dangerous" Holocaust deniers, a man who deliberately bends historical evidence to fit his extreme political views. In its opening remarks, the defense branded Irving a liar. "Mr. Irving calls himself an historian. The truth is, however, that he is not an historian at all, but a falsifier of history," said defense lawyer Richard Rampton. "To put it bluntly, he is a liar." Yehuda Bauer, director of research at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, said the libel lawsuit is an important case. "Irving made a fatal mistake. He thought he would use the trial to publicize his views. But they are going to turn the tables on him and expose Holocaust denial as the stupid sham it is," Bauer said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. Irving said he chose to sue Lipstadt because her publishers were "foolish enough" to print her book in Britain, where libel laws are much tougher. The burden of proof is on the defendant, and, unlike in the United States, public figures are treated the same as private citizens. The case is being heard by a judge rather than a jury because it is considered highly technical. Both Irving and defense attorney Rampton insisted in their opening statements that this is not a trial about whether the Holocaust occurred or how many people died in it. Rather, it is about whether Irving deliberately manipulated and falsified history. But the trial, which is scheduled to last three months and include the testimony of some of the foremost experts on World War II, is regarded by both mainstream historians and Holocaust deniers as a chance to prove their cases. "At the end of the trial, on the question of gas chambers, either the world will accept that, yes, they existed, or they will raise an eyebrow in astonishment and say, 'What the hell?' " Irving said in an interview. Irving, 62, is the author of "Hitler's War" and "Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich," a book he published himself in Britain after he was unable to find a U.S. publisher. He has been fined for Holocaust denial in France and Germany, where it is against the law to propagate Nazi literature and ideology. He has been called a court historian for Hitler and even a fascist. But he is also regarded by some mainstream historians as a skilled researcher. Irving began his case Tuesday by reading a 55-page opening statement in which he insisted that he had made important contributions to the world's understanding of the Holocaust. "Far from being a 'Holocaust denier,' I have repeatedly drawn attention to major aspects of the Holocaust," he said. "I have provided historical documents both to the community of scholars and to the general public, of which they were completely unaware before I discovered these documents and published and translated them," he said. He blamed a British Jewish group, which he identified out of court as the Board of Deputies of British Jews, as leading the campaign against him to "vandalize" his reputation. The defense responded with quotes from books and speeches in which Irving denied the Holocaust took place, exonerated Hitler and called Auschwitz "baloney." *** Historians' views clash in court A British author testifies that an Emory professor's labeling him a 'Holocaust denier' has hurt his career. Bert Roughton Jr. 01/12/2000 The Atlanta Constitution Home Page A; 3 (Copyright, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution - 2000) A maverick British historian testified Tuesday that a book written by an Emory University professor was part of an international conspiracy to silence him and end his attempts to challenge conventional understandings of the Holocaust. David Irving, who believes the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews has been greatly exaggerated, is suing Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel over assertions made about him in her 1994 book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." They deny any libel. Lipstadt portrayed Irving as a prominent and dangerous "Holocaust denier" who believes the familiar story of the systematic murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis is untrue. She also depicts him as an extremist who manipulates, distorts and falsifies history for his own purposes. In his opening argument, Irving said the book is part of an international effort to silence him because his research undermines Jewish claims for compensation for the Holocaust. "My Lord, if we were to seek a title for this libel action, I would venture to suggest 'Pictures at an Execution' --- my execution," Irving said, addressing the wigged and robed judge hearing the lawsuit. Irving, a full-time writer, said he had counted on his work to provide him money to retire and a legacy for his four children. "I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me," he said. "In short, my pension has vanished." Throughout the proceedings, Lipstadt sat silent at a table in front of the judge. Wearing a navy-blue pin-striped suit, the articulate and animated 62-year-old Irving read his remarks for more than two hours in a cramped courtroom in the grand Royal Courts of Justice. The self- taught historian rambled from sweeping assertions about the damage done his reputation by what he characterized as an international Jewish conspiracy to detailed passages of private notes of key Nazi leaders. He also shared a bizarre account of his sneaking glass plates containing copies of Joseph Goebbels' handwritten diaries out of a Russian archive to London. He disputed the book's central point that he manipulated the historic record to support his version of the Holocaust story. He suggested that he may be guilty of being a "rotten, lazy or indolent" historian, but not a dishonest one. Irving said that Lipstadt 's use of the phrase "Holocaust denier" to describe him has been deeply damaging. "It is a poison to which there is virtually no antidote," he said. "It is like being called a wife-beater or a pedophile. It is enough for the label to be attached, for the attachee to find himself designated as a pariah, an outcast from normal society. It is a verbal Yellow Star. "Far from being a 'Holocaust denier,' I have repeatedly drawn attention to major aspects of the Holocaust," he said. Irving, who stated in a 1977 book that Hitler was unaware of the mass slaughter of Jews until 1943, said the term "Holocaust" is meaningless. "The word 'Holocaust' is an artificial label commonly attached to one of the greatest and still most unexplained tragedies of this past century," he said. In his view, Auschwitz was a slave labor camp but not a death camp. He argues that gas chambers at the camp were built after the war. In response, lead defense attorney Richard Rampton, also in wig and robe, attacked Irving directly. "Mr. Irving calls himself an historian," Rampton said. "The truth is, however, that he is not an historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar." The lawyer also argued that Irving's statements during appearances before "radical right wing, neo-fascist, neo- Nazi groups of people" reveal something more about his motives. During a 1991 appearance in Canada, Rampton said, Irving harshly disputed accepted versions of the Auschwitz story. "It's baloney, it's legend," Rampton quoted Irving as saying. "I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz." While it is widely accepted that at least 1 million people died at Auschwitz, Irving has argued that the number is closer to 100,000, and that most fell victim to illness and deprivation. The trial, which is being heard before a judge without a jury, is expected to last three months. It is scheduled to continue Wednesday. Under British law, Lipstadt and Penguin Books bear the burden of proving that statements about Irving contained in the book are true. Photo David Irving / Associated Press Photo Academic Deborah Lipstadt and Anthony Forbes Watson, head of her publisher, Penguin Books, arrive at London's High Court Tuesday to defend against charges brought by historian David Irving (above). / MAX NASH / Associated Press *** American professor and historian of the Holocaust By 01/12/2000 The Guardian Copyright (C) 2000 The Guardian; Source: World Reporter (TM) Deborah E Lipstadt Education City College, New York. Brandeis University, Boston. Career Has taught at UCLA and Occidental College, Los Angeles. Currently Dorot Associate Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. In 1994 President Clinton appointed her to serve on the United States holocaust memorial council. Member of the American advisory committee on religious freedom abroad since 1996. Books Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust (1986), Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1993). Research: Sally James *** 'Pariah' Irving sues Holocaust author: Historian labelled a liar over his views on fate of Jews says attack on his reputation robbed him of financial security VIKRAM DODD 01/12/2000 The Guardian Copyright (C) 2000 The Guardian; Source: World Reporter (TM) Vikram Dodd The alleged Nazi apologist David Irving branded survivors of the Auschwitz death camp with the acronym 'ASSHOLS' and denied the Holocaust happened, the high court heard yesterday. Mr Irving was condemned as a liar and 'falsifier of history' as the most emotive libel trial for a generation began. The controversial historian is suing over a book which said he denied the Holocaust as a historical fact, and wilfully manipulated and distorted history. Mr Irving issued a libel writ against the American academic Deborah Lipstadt , author of Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, and its publisher Penguin books. The defendants say the accusations against Mr Irving, 62, are justified and deny libel. Opening his case Mr Irving said the book stemmed from 'an organised international endeavour' to vandalise his reputation which had led to him being shunned by leading publishers. He claimed that the 'waves of hatred' following the book had robbed him and his four children of their future financial security. Richard Rampton QC, for Professor Lipstadt and Penguin, savaged Mr Irving. He quoted a 1991 speech in which Mr Irving allegedly rubbished the idea that the Auschwitz camp existed to murder Jews. 'I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz,' Mr Irving said, according to Mr Rampton. 'It's baloney, it's a legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney? 'I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. 'Oh, you think that's tasteless, how about this? There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around, in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd to say the least. I'm going to form an association of Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, or the ASSHOLS.' In the same speech in Calgary, Canada, said Mr Rampton, Mr Irving complained about Jewish protests at his being granted a platform and is alleged to have said: 'And it's happening now. They're zeroing in on the university [saying] 'Nazism not welcome here. Self-professed moderate fascist' - I strongly object to that word 'moderate'.' There was standing room only at court 37 at the high court in London. Mr Irving is representing himself in the trial, expected to last around three months and being heard without a jury because of the complexity of the evidence. He sat impassively as the defence detailed alleged falsehoods from his books about the second world war. Mr Rampton said: 'Mr Irving calls him self a historian. The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. 'Lies take many forms but in the end all forms of lying converge into a single definition: wilful, deliberate mis- statement of the facts. 'Moreover, the lies which the defendants in this case will show that Mr Irving has told concern an area of history in which, perhaps, it behoves any writer or researcher to be particularly careful of the truth: the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis during world war two - the Holocaust - and Adolf Hitler's role in that human catastrophe.' Mr Rampton continued: 'Mr Irving is nowadays a Holocaust denier. By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder of millions of Jews, in particular - though by no means exclusively - by the use of homicidal gas chambers, and in particular - though by no means exclusively - at Auschwitz in southern Poland.' Mr Rampton said the tell tale evidence of Mr Irving's attitudes were that he addressed audiences that often consisted of 'radical right-wing, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi groups of people'. Mr Rampton said the case was not primarily about whether the Holocaust occurred or Hitler's complicity: 'the essence of the case is Mr Irving's honesty and integrity as a chronicler - I shy away from the word historian - of these matters. 'For if it be right that Mr Irving, driven by his extremist views and sympathies, has devoted his energies to the deliberate falsification of this tragic episode in history, then, by exposing that dangerous fraud in this court, the defence may properly be applauded for having performed a significant public service.' Mr Irving likened the charge that he was a Holocaust denier to 'a yellow verbal star'. In the book Professor Lipstadt had branded Irving as one of the most prominent and dangerous Holocaust deniers. He said: 'The word 'Holocaust' is an artificial label commonly attached to one of the greatest and still most unexplained tragedies of this past century.' He said Professor Lipstadt had used the phrase 'Holocaust denier' repeatedly and took pride in coining it. 'Meaningless though it is, the phrase has become a part of the English language. It is a poison to which there is virtually no antidote, less lethal than a hypodermic with nerve gas jabbed in the neck, but deadly all the same: for the chosen victim, it is like being called a wife-beater or a paedophile. 'It is enough for the label to be attached, for the attachee to find himself designated as a pariah.' Mr Irving, 62, opened his claim for damages in a speech where at times his voice broke with emotion. Sometimes slapping the table in front of him, he said far from denying the slaughter of Jews he had unearthed documents revealing new aspects of the Holocaust. Mr Irving told Mr Justice Gray: 'By virtue of the activities of the defendants I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach. 'Such is the nature of the odium that has been generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants.' He told the court that the book had slashed his earnings which once reached pounds 100,000 a year from his writing. Mr Irving said that for Professor Lipstadt to win the case and justify the charges of manipulation and distortion, she would have to show that 'I knew what happened; and that I perversely and deliberately portrayed it differently from how I knew it to have happened'. Mr Irving condemned laws in Germany aimed at protecting the memory of the Holocaust: 'Some good friends of mine are sitting at this very moment in German prisons' after questioning the scale, system and numbers of dead. He said he felt no 'shame' that he himself was fined in Germany under these laws for saying the gas chamber at Auschwitz seen by tourists 'is a fake built by the Poles after the war, just like the one established by the Americans at Dachau'. 'Fifty years on,' said Mr Irving, 'it has become a criminal offence to question whether Nuremberg [war crimes trials] got it right. History is to be as defined by the four victorious powers.' Mr Irving is the author of Hitler's War and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich. The case continues. *** Foreign Desk; Section A London Trial Opens Dispute On Rewriting The Holocaust By SARAH LYALL 01/12/2000 The New York Times Page 7, Column 1 c. 2000 New York Times Company LONDON, Jan. 11 -- ''I have no intentions, and neither is it the purpose of this trial, to refight World War II.'' So declared the revisionist historian David Irving in his impassioned opening statement in High Court here today, on the first day of the libel case that he hopes will salvage his reputation. But in a way, World War II is exactly what the case -- Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd. and Lipstadt -- is about. Mr. Irving -- who has said, among other things, that Hitler did not approve the mass killing of Jews during the war and that Auschwitz was merely a brutal labor camp with an unfortunately high death rate --is suing Deborah Lipstadt , the author of ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,'' and her British publisher, Penguin. His main claim is that his reputation has been irrevocably damaged by the book's assertions that he is a Holocaust denier who manipulates history to serve his own ends. It is a case about free speech and historical methods, and about, peripherally, the magnitude and circumstances of the Holocaust. It is being closely watched outside of Britain, including in the United States, where Ms. Lipstadt holds the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. ''It's almost inevitable that the major focus of the case will be the crimes of the Holocaust, and whether they took place, and how they're interpreted,'' Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said in an interview. ''Any victory for Irving is a loss for historical justice.'' The case arises from Ms. Lipstadt 's book, first published in the United States in 1993, which examined Holocaust deniers and their connections to a worldwide network of right-wing and neo-Nazi groups. In the book, published in Britain by Penguin in 1994, Ms. Lipstadt charged that Mr. Irving, the author of more than 30 books on the Nazi era, was ''one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial'' and a researcher who ''bends'' historical evidence ''until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda.'' Mr. Irving brought the case, he said, because Ms. Lipstadt and Penguin, supported by ''an organized international endeavor,'' set about to destroy his career. As a result, he said, St. Martin's Press withdrew his 1996 biography of the Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels, which contends that Goebbels, not Hitler, was behind the murder of the Jews. ''I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach,'' said Mr. Irving, who is representing himself. He insisted that he was not a Holocaust denier, although he has disputed standard accounts of how many people died and under what circumstances. ''No person in full command of his mental faculties, and with even the slightest understanding of what happened in World War II, can deny that the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae,'' he said. Mr. Irving has had a curious career. Some of his works, especially ''Hitler's War'' (1977), have earned high praise from some reviewers for the elegance of his writing and thoroughness of his research. But in recent years, more and more questions have been raised about his methods and ideology. In the United States, Publisher's Weekly called his Goebbels biography ''repellant.'' In 1992, Mr. Irving was convicted and fined by a court in Germany, where Holocaust denial is a crime, after saying publicly that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. He has also been banned from Canada, Italy, Austria and Australia. Because of his early reputation as a formidable historian, Mr. Irving has confounded efforts to write him off as a simple crackpot. Gitta Sereny, the Nazi-era historian who is involved in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Irving after she wrote that he was a ''brilliant propagandist'' made ''dangerous'' by his ''clever mixture of truth and untruth,'' said in an interview that it was hard for readers to know just how much he distorts the facts. Richard Rampton, the lawyer arguing on behalf of Ms. Lipstadt and Penguin, charged that Mr. Irving was not a historian at all. ''To put it bluntly, he is a liar,'' Mr. Rampton said in court. ''The essence of the case is Mr. Irving's honesty and integrity as a chronicler -- I shy away from the word 'historian' -- of these matters,'' Mr. Rampton said. ''By exposing that dangerous fraud in this court, the defendants may properly be applauded for having performed a significant public service, not just in this country, but in all those places in the world were anti-Semitism is waiting to be fed.'' *** Historian or plain liar? 01/12/2000 The Express Copyright (C) 2000 The Express; Source: World Reporter (TM) Right-wing historian David Irving was branded a liar yesterday as he was accused of"falsifying" history to deny the Holocaust. He was accused, in court, of deceit over the Nazi murder of millions of Jews in World War Two and Adolf Hitler's role in it. Mr Irving, 62, was launching a libel action against Penguin Books and author Deborah Lipstadt . He said they were part of "an organised international endeavour" determined to destroy his career and "vandalise" his legitimacy as a historian. But Richard Rampton QC, counsel for Penguin and Professor Lipstadt , said: "Mr Irving calls himself an historian. The truth is, however, that he is not an historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. "Mr Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and, not least, mistranslation. "But all these techniques have the same ultimate effect - falsification of the truth." He said Mr Irving had lied about the destruction of the Jews during World War Two. "Mr Irving is nowadays a Holocaust denier. By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder of millions of Jews, in particular, though by no means exclusively, the use of homicidal gas chambers, and in particular, though by no means exclusively, at Auschwitz in southern Poland." He told the High Court in London that Mr Irving's campaign was determined to "sink the Battleship Auschwitz," thereby showing that the mass extermination was a "lie deployed by Jews to blackmail the German people into paying vast sums in reparations to supposed victims of the Holocaust." He said Mr Irving often spoke to groups of radical Right- wingers, neo-Nazis, white supremacist organisations, and the British National Party. Mr Rampton quoted Mr Irving as saying: "More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz." He was referring to the 1969 US scandal when passenger Mary Jo Kopechne died in an accident in the senator's car. Mr Irving, the author of Hitler's War and Goebbels: Mastermind Of The Third Reich, told the court that Professor Lipstadt 's book about the Holocaust and its publishers had generated "waves of hatred" against him. He said that he had always looked on his books as his pension fund and a legacy for his four children, but that was no longer the situation. "By virtue of the activities of the defendants I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach," he told Mr Justice Gray, who is hearing the 12-week case without a jury. He added: "Such is the nature of the odium that has been generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants. In short my 'pension' has vanished, as assuredly as if I had been employed by one of those companies taken over by the late Mr Robert Maxwell." He said he would not have faced "this hatred" if World War Two, and in particular the Third Reich and its "criminal leadership", had not been his area of expertise. Mr Irving claims he has been libelled in Professor Lipstadt 's 1994 book, Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory. He says that it alleges that he has distorted statistics and documents to serve his own ideological purposes and reach historically untenable conclusions, and has knowingly consorted with extremists. Mr Irving, who is representing himself, said that the phrase "Holocaust denier" had become "one of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult". "The word 'denier' is particularly evil because no person in full command of his mental faculties, and with even the slightest understanding of what happened in World War Two, can deny that the tragedy actually happened." Dissident historians, though, "may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae". Penguin and Ms Lipstadt , professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, deny libel and plead justification.The case continues. *** Copyright 2000 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London) January 12, 2000, Wednesday London Edition 2 HEADLINE: NATIONAL NEWS: Writer's action raises thorny questions LIBEL HEARING HISTORIAN SUES PUBLISHER AND US PROFESSOR OVER CLAIMS OF DENYING HOLOCAUST: BY: By JOHN MASON BODY: The long-awaited libel action between Penguin Books, the international publishers, and David Irving, the controversial second world war historian, over his version of the Holocaust, began yesterday in the High Court. The case will raise thorny issues such as: when are the ideas of historians or academics so appalling their work should be forever banned? Other issues include whether, or where, one limits free speech. And what makes a good historian anyway, especially when their subject is the most emotive in 20th century history? These apparently intractable ethical issues will, to some extent, now be decided by a single judge, Mr Justice Gray. The international publishing industry, with its commercial interests, will be watching attentively. David Irving, the historian of Hitler and other Nazi-related subjects, accused Penguin Books and US author Prof Deborah Lipstadt, of being part of an "organised international endeavour" to destroy his reputation as a historian by accusing him of distorting history and denying the Holocaust took place. "The word denyer is particularly evil because no person in full command of their faculties with even the slightest understanding of what happened in world war two can deny that the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae," he said. Mr Irving is suing both Prof Lipstadt and Penguin (a subsidiary of Pearson, the media group that also owns the Financial Times), for damages over their claims. He is also seeking an injunction to prevent further publication of the allegations in Prof Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust. Representing himself in court, Mr Irving claimed both Penguin and Prof Lipstadt were "villains" who were part of an internationally organised attempt to ruin his reputation. Mr Irving said his books had been previously published by a number of reputable publishers, including Penguin itself, Macmillan and Simon and Schuster. However, as a result of Penguin's allegations, leading publishers such as St Martin's Press now refused to publish his work. Richard Rampton QC, for Penguin, said: "Mr Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar." Accusing Mr Irving of using disreputable methods, Mr Rampton insisted he was a "Holocaust denyer", saying: "By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder or millions of Jews, in particular - though by no means exclusively - by the use of homicidal gas chambers and in particular at Auschwitz in southern Poland." The case is due to last three months. ### All British press edition for 12 January 2000 Irving is a falsifier and a liar, says publisher Irving tells court of `verbal Yellow Star' Ian Burrell Home Affairs Correspondent 01/12/2000 The Independent - London FOREIGN Page 10 (Copyright 2000 Newspaper Publishing PLC) THE RIGHT-WING historian David Irving was described yesterday as a "falsifier of history" and a "liar" at the start of a High Court libel battle. In a packed court, Richard Rampton QC, representing Penguin Books, said: "Mr Irving calls himself an historian. The truth is, however, that he is not an historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. Mr Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and - not least - mistranslation. But all these techniques have the same ultimate effect: falsification of the truth." The historian is suing the publisher and the American author Deborah Lipstadt over her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, in which she describes Mr Irving as a "Holocaust denier". Mr Rampton repeated the allegation. He said: "By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder of millions of Jews, in particular - though by no means exclusively - by the use of homicidal gas chambers, and in particular - though by no means exclusively - at Auschwitz in southern Poland." But Mr Irving told the court that he he had never denied the existence of the Holocaust. He said: "No person in full command of his mental faculties and with even the slightest understanding of what happened in World War Two can deny that the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae." Mr Irving said the tag "Holocaust denier" had become "one of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult". He described the expression as "a verbal Yellow Star". Mr Irving, 61, who has been banned from at least five countries because of his views, told the court he had never claimed any specialist knowledge of the Holocaust. He said: "If I am an expert in anything at all, I may be so immodest as to submit that it is in the role that Adolf Hitler played in the propagation of World War Two." Mr Irving, who is representing himself, said the Holocaust should not be the focus of the libel case, which is expected to last three months. "What is moot here is not what happened in those sites of atrocities - but what happened over the last 32 years, on my writing desk in my apartment off Grosvenor Square," he said. "This inquiry should not leave the four walls of my study." Mr Irving said publishers were afraid to be associated with him: "I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach." The historian claimed that Ms Lipstadt and Penguin were part of an "organised international endeavour" to "destroy my career and to vandalise my legitimacy as an historian". Mr Rampton suggested that Mr Irving used distorted history "in pursuit of his exoneration of Adolf Hitler and his denial of the Holocaust". He said the historian often gave talks to "radical right- wing, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi groups". During a speech in Canada in 1991, Mr Rampton said Mr Irving had said aboutAuschwitz: "Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney?" *** News A war between historians that may never end Boyd Tonkin 01/12/2000 The Independent - London FOREIGN Page 10 (Copyright 2000 Newspaper Publishing PLC) ANYONE WHO saw Schindler's List will remember the closing scene, in which each of the surviving Schindlerjuden places a stone on his or her rescuer's memorial. Some do look old and frail; others, remarkably trim and vigorous. The literature of the Holocaust continues to arouse such passion and polemic in large part because it still relates to living memory. Many children, after all, were dispatched to the extermination camps. Some who came through that torment will only recently have reached retirement age. This history is alive, and it kicks. Hence any apparent assault on the agreed version puts into question not just an academic consensus, but the integrity of living people. "Though denial of the Holocaust may be an attack on the history of the annihilation of the Jews," wrote the historian Deborah Lipstadt in the 1993 book that David Irving now disputes, "at its core it poses a threat to all who believe that knowledge and memory are among the keystones of our civilisation." That knowledge, and those memories, still service a flourishing literature of witness - a genre that only emerged in the 1970s, with such figures as Primo Levi and Jean Amery, after two decades of postwar silence. Even in 1999, important new additions were arriving: the painstaking diaries of Victor Klemperer, for instance, one of the few German Jews who survived life under the Third Reich. Roman Frister's memoir The Cap told how one young camp inmate bought his own life at the cost of another's death. And next month will see the publication of a posthumous autobiography by the much-loved rabbi and Auschwitz survivor Hugo Gryn. Not surprisingly, this torrent of testimony has carried in its wake one or two outright frauds. Last year the pathetic story of Binyaminn Wilkomirski, who falsely claimed to have spent his childhood in the camps, finally came to light. He would weep when he recounted his "ordeal", one sceptic noted; genuine survivors never can. Such rare cases of exploitation have prompted some experts to wonder whether the state-approved culture of Holocaust reminiscence may end up doing more harm than good. This year, two American Jewish historians are due to publish challenges to what one cynic has dubbed "Shoah business". Peter Novick's The Holocaust and Collective Memory will ask whether in effect it hands Hitler an ultimate victory. Norman Finkelstein, in The Holocaust Industry, will argue that the memorial cult insults the victims of Nazism more than "the rubbish of Holocaust deniers" does. The other side of this story concerns not that flagrant, truth- mocking "rubbish", but the revival of a kind of German patriotism in historical accounts of the Second World War. David Irving himself has acted as chief English- language standard-bearer for this movement. In the 1980s a group of German historians - a few veterans, but many from the younger postwar generation - began to "normalise" accounts of military and civilian life under the Third Reich. In the confident era of reunification, a tone of impatience with the burden of collective guilt crept into many studies. Ordinary Germans began to emerge more as victims than villains. So a writer such as Andreas Hillgruber could hint at a comparison between the suffering endured by Wehrmacht soldiers in the East and the mass persecutions committed by the Germans themselves. A bitter "historians' war" erupted between the "revisionists" and those who refused to let attention shift from the enormity of Nazi crimes. This was the background to the intensely divisive book by the United States historian Daniel Goldhagen, who asserted most of those decent, hard-pressed normal Germans were in fact enthusiastic anti- Semites, and "Hitler's willing executioners". Oddly enough, the revisionist readings of the Reich came to the fore just as it grew clear that the senior Nazi who most successfully maintained his innocence had eventually accepted his complicity in genocide. In 1995 Gitta Sereny published Albert Speer: his battle with truth - the final fruit of herinterviews with Hitler's pet architect and minister for war production, who spent 20 years in Spandau jail. At last, we learnt that the "good Nazi" had in the end acknowledged his awareness of the Holocaust. "My chief guilt," Speer wrote in 1977, was "my tacit acceptance of the persecution and murder of millions of Jews." He admitted that to the Jewish Board of Deputies in South Africa, which had sought his support in banning the notorious Holocaust-denial pamphlet "Did Six Million Die?" If Speer had said as much at the Nuremberg trial, he would undoubtedly have been hanged. *** History of the Holocaust goes on trial: Author sues for libel over book he says made him an international pariah and threatened his livelihood. Neil Tweedie reports Neil Tweedie 01/12/2000 The Daily Telegraph Page 05 Copyright (C) 2000 The Daily Telegraph; Source: World Reporter (TM) The historian THE controversial British historian David Irving claimed he was the victim of an "organised international endeavour" to destroy his career at the opening of a libel trial in London yesterday. Mr Irving is suing Prof Deborah Lipstadt , an American author, and her publishers over claims in her latest book - Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory - that he is one of the most prominent and dangerous "Holocaust deniers" in the world. Mr Irving, 62, is conducting his own case. In his opening address he told Mr Justice Gray that his livelihood and that of his family had been put in jeopardy. He said: "By virtue of the activities of the defendants and those who funded her and guided her hand, I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach." He said being described as a "Holocaust denier" was "like being called a wife-beater or a paedophile". Mr Irving told the judge, who is is sitting without a jury, that far from being a "Holocaust denier", he had repeatedly brought attention to major aspects of the Holocaust through his discovery of fresh documents from the Second World War. He had been the victim of a concerted attack on his character and work by an international network of Left- wingers and Jews who had succeeded in making him a "pariah". Mr Irving said it was not his intention in bringing the case to reopen the debate over the Holocaust. He had sued Miss Lipstadt because she had accused him of "manipulation and distortion", something he vehemently denied. "Holocaust denier" was, said Mr Irving, a particularly evil phrase because no one could deny what had happened in the war. Dissident historians were merely quibbling about dates, scale and other "minutiae". "It is enough for the label to be attached, for the attachee to find himself designated as a pariah, an outcast from normal society. It is a verbal Yellow Star [of David]." He denied he was anti-Semitic, citing his friendship with Jewish people from his schooldays. He numbered the publisher George Weidenfeld among his friends. Mr Irving, the author of Hitler's War and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, said Miss Lipstadt and Penguin Books were part of "an organised international endeavour" determined to destroy his career and "vandalise" his legitimacy as a historian. He said that he had always looked on his books as his pension fund and a legacy for his four children, but that was no longer the situation. Because of "the nature of the odium that has been generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants" his "pension" had vanished "as assuredly as if I had been employed by one of those companies taken over by the late Mr Robert Maxwell". Mr Irving claims that Miss Lipstadt 's book alleges that he has denied the Holocaust, has distorted statistics and documents to serve his own ideological purposes and to reach historically untenable conclusions, and that he has knowingly consorted with extremists. Penguin and Miss Lipstadt , the holder of the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, deny libel and plead justification. They claim that Mr Irving has denied both the Holocaust and that gas chambers were used to carry it out, and that he holds extremist views and distorts history. Mr Irving said that he had never held himself out to be a Holocaust expert and had not written books about it. If he was an expert on anything it was the role that Hitler played in the war. "As a peripheral matter to that topic, on which I have written a number of books, I inevitably investigated the extent to which Hitler participated in or had cognisance of the Holocaust. That was the sum total of my involvement as a book author up to the launching of these writs." He said that he intended to show that "far from being a Holocaust denier" he had repeatedly drawn attention to major aspects of the Holocaust and had provided historical documents to scholars and the public of which they had been previously unaware. "I submit that, harsh though it may seem, the court should take no interest in that tragedy [the Holocaust]." What was at stake was not what happened in Poland or Russia 50 years ago, but over the last 32 years "on my writing desk in my apartment off Grosvenor Square". He said that to justify her allegations it was not enough for Miss Lipstadt to show that he had misrepresented what happened but that he knew what happened and "perversely and deliberately" portrayed it differently. Mr Irving said that he once earned more than pounds 100,000 a year in royalties but had been done "very real pecuniary damage" by the defendants. He said Denying the Holocaust purported to be "a scholarly investigation of the operations of an international network conspiracy of people whom the second defendant [Miss Lipstadt ] has dubbed `Holocaust deniers'. It is not." Holocaust deniers "has become one of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult, replacing the N-word, the F-word, and a whole alphabet of other slurs . . ." Mr Irving added. The judge would undoubtedly hear from the defendants, he said, that he was fined a very substantial sum of money by the German Government. "It is no matter for shame for me, although it has had catastrophic consequences, as it now makes me de facto `a convict', with a criminal record and as such liable to a concatenation of further indignities and sanctions in every foreign country which I now wish to visit." It arose from a remark made during an address he made to an audience in Munich in 1990 - "We now know that the gas chamber shown to the tourists at Auschwitz is a fake built by the Poles after the war, just like the one established by the Americans at Dachau." Mr Irving added: "This may well raise eyebrows. It might be found to be offensive by sections of the community and if they take such offence, I can assure this court that I regret it and that such was not my intention. "These remarks were true; the Poles admitted it in January 1995 and under English law truth has always been regarded as an absolute defence." Mr Irving continued: "We shall hear, indeed from the defence's own expert witnesses - though perhaps the admission will have to be bludgeoned out of them - that the gas chamber shown to the tourists at Auschwitz was indeed built by the Polish communists three years after the war was over." The hearing continues. The accuser DEBORAH Lipstadt , Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, accused David Irving of being a liar who systematically suppressed, distorted and manipulated history in an attempt to deny the existence of the Holocaust. In Denying the Holocaust, she claims that he is one of the most prominent "Holocaust deniers". His mastery of historical documents makes him a particularly dangerous exponent of the claim, shared by neo-fascist and some Muslim fundamentalist groups, she says. Yesterday her counsel, Richard Rampton, QC, who also represents her publishers Penguin Books, told the court: "Mr Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. "Lies may take various forms . . . but in the end all forms of lying converge into a single definition: wilful, deliberate misstatement of the facts. Mr Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and - not least - mistranslation." Mr Rampton said Mr Irving's character could be judged by those he associated with: neo-Nazis, American white supremacists and the British National Party. He quoted a speech in which Mr Irving said that Auschwitz was merely a slave labour camp where large numbers of people happened to die from overwork, disease and starvation. Mr Irving said at Calgary, Alberta, in September 1991: "I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney, it's a legend. "I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. "Oh, you think that's tasteless, how about this? There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around, in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd. Because I'm going to form an Association of Auschwitz survivors, survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, or the ASSHOLS." Mr Rampton concluded: "This is obviously an important case. The essence of it is Mr Irving's honesty and integrity as a chronicler - I shy away from the word `historian' - of these matters. "For if it be right that Mr Irving, driven by his extremist views, has devoted his energies to the deliberate falsification of this tragic episode in history, then, by exposing that dangerous fraud in this court, the defendants may properly be applauded for having performed a significant public service." *** American professor and historian of the Holocaust By 01/12/2000 The Guardian Copyright (C) 2000 The Guardian; Source: World Reporter (TM) Deborah E Lipstadt Education City College, New York. Brandeis University, Boston. Career Has taught at UCLA and Occidental College, Los Angeles. Currently Dorot Associate Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. In 1994 President Clinton appointed her to serve on the United States holocaust memorial council. Member of the American advisory committee on religious freedom abroad since 1996. Books Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust (1986), Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1993). Research: Sally James *** 'Pariah' Irving sues Holocaust author: Historian labelled a liar over his views on fate of Jews says attack on his reputation robbed him of financial security VIKRAM DODD 01/12/2000 The Guardian Copyright (C) 2000 The Guardian; Source: World Reporter (TM) Vikram Dodd The alleged Nazi apologist David Irving branded survivors of the Auschwitz death camp with the acronym 'ASSHOLS' and denied the Holocaust happened, the high court heard yesterday. Mr Irving was condemned as a liar and 'falsifier of history' as the most emotive libel trial for a generation began. The controversial historian is suing over a book which said he denied the Holocaust as a historical fact, and wilfully manipulated and distorted history. Mr Irving issued a libel writ against the American academic Deborah Lipstadt , author of Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, and its publisher Penguin books. The defendants say the accusations against Mr Irving, 62, are justified and deny libel. Opening his case Mr Irving said the book stemmed from 'an organised international endeavour' to vandalise his reputation which had led to him being shunned by leading publishers. He claimed that the 'waves of hatred' following the book had robbed him and his four children of their future financial security. Richard Rampton QC, for Professor Lipstadt and Penguin, savaged Mr Irving. He quoted a 1991 speech in which Mr Irving allegedly rubbished the idea that the Auschwitz camp existed to murder Jews. 'I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz,' Mr Irving said, according to Mr Rampton. 'It's baloney, it's a legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney? 'I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz. 'Oh, you think that's tasteless, how about this? There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around, in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd to say the least. I'm going to form an association of Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, or the ASSHOLS.' In the same speech in Calgary, Canada, said Mr Rampton, Mr Irving complained about Jewish protests at his being granted a platform and is alleged to have said: 'And it's happening now. They're zeroing in on the university [saying] 'Nazism not welcome here. Self-professed moderate fascist' - I strongly object to that word 'moderate'.' There was standing room only at court 37 at the high court in London. Mr Irving is representing himself in the trial, expected to last around three months and being heard without a jury because of the complexity of the evidence. He sat impassively as the defence detailed alleged falsehoods from his books about the second world war. Mr Rampton said: 'Mr Irving calls him self a historian. The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. 'Lies take many forms but in the end all forms of lying converge into a single definition: wilful, deliberate mis- statement of the facts. 'Moreover, the lies which the defendants in this case will show that Mr Irving has told concern an area of history in which, perhaps, it behoves any writer or researcher to be particularly careful of the truth: the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis during world war two - the Holocaust - and Adolf Hitler's role in that human catastrophe.' Mr Rampton continued: 'Mr Irving is nowadays a Holocaust denier. By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder of millions of Jews, in particular - though by no means exclusively - by the use of homicidal gas chambers, and in particular - though by no means exclusively - at Auschwitz in southern Poland.' Mr Rampton said the tell tale evidence of Mr Irving's attitudes were that he addressed audiences that often consisted of 'radical right-wing, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi groups of people'. Mr Rampton said the case was not primarily about whether the Holocaust occurred or Hitler's complicity: 'the essence of the case is Mr Irving's honesty and integrity as a chronicler - I shy away from the word historian - of these matters. 'For if it be right that Mr Irving, driven by his extremist views and sympathies, has devoted his energies to the deliberate falsification of this tragic episode in history, then, by exposing that dangerous fraud in this court, the defence may properly be applauded for having performed a significant public service.' Mr Irving likened the charge that he was a Holocaust denier to 'a yellow verbal star'. In the book Professor Lipstadt had branded Irving as one of the most prominent and dangerous Holocaust deniers. He said: 'The word 'Holocaust' is an artificial label commonly attached to one of the greatest and still most unexplained tragedies of this past century.' He said Professor Lipstadt had used the phrase 'Holocaust denier' repeatedly and took pride in coining it. 'Meaningless though it is, the phrase has become a part of the English language. It is a poison to which there is virtually no antidote, less lethal than a hypodermic with nerve gas jabbed in the neck, but deadly all the same: for the chosen victim, it is like being called a wife-beater or a paedophile. 'It is enough for the label to be attached, for the attachee to find himself designated as a pariah.' Mr Irving, 62, opened his claim for damages in a speech where at times his voice broke with emotion. Sometimes slapping the table in front of him, he said far from denying the slaughter of Jews he had unearthed documents revealing new aspects of the Holocaust. Mr Irving told Mr Justice Gray: 'By virtue of the activities of the defendants I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach. 'Such is the nature of the odium that has been generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants.' He told the court that the book had slashed his earnings which once reached pounds 100,000 a year from his writing. Mr Irving said that for Professor Lipstadt to win the case and justify the charges of manipulation and distortion, she would have to show that 'I knew what happened; and that I perversely and deliberately portrayed it differently from how I knew it to have happened'. Mr Irving condemned laws in Germany aimed at protecting the memory of the Holocaust: 'Some good friends of mine are sitting at this very moment in German prisons' after questioning the scale, system and numbers of dead. He said he felt no 'shame' that he himself was fined in Germany under these laws for saying the gas chamber at Auschwitz seen by tourists 'is a fake built by the Poles after the war, just like the one established by the Americans at Dachau'. 'Fifty years on,' said Mr Irving, 'it has become a criminal offence to question whether Nuremberg [war crimes trials] got it right. History is to be as defined by the four victorious powers.' Mr Irving is the author of Hitler's War and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich. The case continues. *** Historian or plain liar? 01/12/2000 The Express Copyright (C) 2000 The Express; Source: World Reporter (TM) Right-wing historian David Irving was branded a liar yesterday as he was accused of"falsifying" history to deny the Holocaust. He was accused, in court, of deceit over the Nazi murder of millions of Jews in World War Two and Adolf Hitler's role in it. Mr Irving, 62, was launching a libel action against Penguin Books and author Deborah Lipstadt . He said they were part of "an organised international endeavour" determined to destroy his career and "vandalise" his legitimacy as a historian. But Richard Rampton QC, counsel for Penguin and Professor Lipstadt , said: "Mr Irving calls himself an historian. The truth is, however, that he is not an historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. "Mr Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and, not least, mistranslation. "But all these techniques have the same ultimate effect - falsification of the truth." He said Mr Irving had lied about the destruction of the Jews during World War Two. "Mr Irving is nowadays a Holocaust denier. By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder of millions of Jews, in particular, though by no means exclusively, the use of homicidal gas chambers, and in particular, though by no means exclusively, at Auschwitz in southern Poland." He told the High Court in London that Mr Irving's campaign was determined to "sink the Battleship Auschwitz," thereby showing that the mass extermination was a "lie deployed by Jews to blackmail the German people into paying vast sums in reparations to supposed victims of the Holocaust." He said Mr Irving often spoke to groups of radical Right- wingers, neo-Nazis, white supremacist organisations, and the British National Party. Mr Rampton quoted Mr Irving as saying: "More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz." He was referring to the 1969 US scandal when passenger Mary Jo Kopechne died in an accident in the senator's car. Mr Irving, the author of Hitler's War and Goebbels: Mastermind Of The Third Reich, told the court that Professor Lipstadt 's book about the Holocaust and its publishers had generated "waves of hatred" against him. He said that he had always looked on his books as his pension fund and a legacy for his four children, but that was no longer the situation. "By virtue of the activities of the defendants I have since 1996 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach," he told Mr Justice Gray, who is hearing the 12-week case without a jury. He added: "Such is the nature of the odium that has been generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants. In short my 'pension' has vanished, as assuredly as if I had been employed by one of those companies taken over by the late Mr Robert Maxwell." He said he would not have faced "this hatred" if World War Two, and in particular the Third Reich and its "criminal leadership", had not been his area of expertise. Mr Irving claims he has been libelled in Professor Lipstadt 's 1994 book, Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory. He says that it alleges that he has distorted statistics and documents to serve his own ideological purposes and reach historically untenable conclusions, and has knowingly consorted with extremists. Mr Irving, who is representing himself, said that the phrase "Holocaust denier" had become "one of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult". "The word 'denier' is particularly evil because no person in full command of his mental faculties, and with even the slightest understanding of what happened in World War Two, can deny that the tragedy actually happened." Dissident historians, though, "may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae". Penguin and Ms Lipstadt , professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, deny libel and plead justification.The case continues. *** Copyright 2000 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London) January 12, 2000, Wednesday London Edition 2 HEADLINE: NATIONAL NEWS: Writer's action raises thorny questions LIBEL HEARING HISTORIAN SUES PUBLISHER AND US PROFESSOR OVER CLAIMS OF DENYING HOLOCAUST: BY: By JOHN MASON BODY: The long-awaited libel action between Penguin Books, the international publishers, and David Irving, the controversial second world war historian, over his version of the Holocaust, began yesterday in the High Court. The case will raise thorny issues such as: when are the ideas of historians or academics so appalling their work should be forever banned? Other issues include whether, or where, one limits free speech. And what makes a good historian anyway, especially when their subject is the most emotive in 20th century history? These apparently intractable ethical issues will, to some extent, now be decided by a single judge, Mr Justice Gray. The international publishing industry, with its commercial interests, will be watching attentively. David Irving, the historian of Hitler and other Nazi-related subjects, accused Penguin Books and US author Prof Deborah Lipstadt, of being part of an "organised international endeavour" to destroy his reputation as a historian by accusing him of distorting history and denying the Holocaust took place. "The word denyer is particularly evil because no person in full command of their faculties with even the slightest understanding of what happened in world war two can deny that the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae," he said. Mr Irving is suing both Prof Lipstadt and Penguin (a subsidiary of Pearson, the media group that also owns the Financial Times), for damages over their claims. He is also seeking an injunction to prevent further publication of the allegations in Prof Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust. Representing himself in court, Mr Irving claimed both Penguin and Prof Lipstadt were "villains" who were part of an internationally organised attempt to ruin his reputation. Mr Irving said his books had been previously published by a number of reputable publishers, including Penguin itself, Macmillan and Simon and Schuster. However, as a result of Penguin's allegations, leading publishers such as St Martin's Press now refused to publish his work. Richard Rampton QC, for Penguin, said: "Mr Irving calls himself a historian. The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar." Accusing Mr Irving of using disreputable methods, Mr Rampton insisted he was a "Holocaust denyer", saying: "By this I mean that he denies that the Nazis planned and carried out the systematic murder or millions of Jews, in particular - though by no means exclusively - by the use of homicidal gas chambers and in particular at Auschwitz in southern Poland." The case is due to last three months. ### Conspiracy of hate is destroying me, says man at centre of Holocaust debate BILL MOULAND 01/12/2000 Daily Mail Associated Newspapers Ltd. 1ST Page 17 (Copyright 2000) THE insult was 'Holocaust denier' and more than 60 years since the start of World War II it ricocheted like a bullet around an English courtroom yesterday. It is fired at those who claim the eradication of six million Jews by the Nazis is just a myth; and that gas chambers at death camps such as Auschwitz were built as propaganda tools after the war was over. Yesterday it was aimed squarely at the Rightwing historian David Irving, author of books on Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, at the start of a libel action which is expected to last three months. Mr Irving, 62, is suing publishers Penguin and American author Deborah Lipstadt , 52, over a book she wrote in 1993 called Denying the Holocaust. He said its attacks on him were part of an international conspiracy, 'a wave of hatred', to stop him publishing his own works and destroy his career. A livelihood once worth more than 100,000 a year in royalties was at stake. 'My Lord,' he told the judge, Mr Justice Gray, 'if I were to seek a title for this libel action, I would venture to suggest Pictures At An Execution.' It took Mr Irving nearly two hours to read his 55-page opening statement, and just a few seconds for Penguin's counsel Richard Rampton QC to launch the counterattack. 'Mr Irving calls himself a historian, ' he began. 'The truth is, however, that he is not a historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar. 'Mr Irving has used many different means to falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion, manipulation and not least mis-translation. But all these techniques have the same ultimate effect: falsification of the truth.' As his opponent sat a few yards to his left along the same table, Mr Rampton produced a speech Mr Irving had made at Calgary, Alberta in 1991. 'I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz,' he had said. 'It's baloney, it's a legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the War, why believe the rest of the baloney? 'I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. 'Oh, you think that's tasteless. How about this? There are so many Auschwitz survivors going around in fact the number increases as the years go past, which is biologically very odd, to say the least. Because I'm going to form an Association of Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars, or the ASS-HO-LS.' Mr Rampton told the judge, who is hearing the case without a jury, that Mr Irving's words provoked laughter among his audience 'the laughter of mockery, mockery of the suffering of others people whom, on this and other occasions, Mr Irving has accused of lying about their Holocaust experiences, or forging Auschwitz tattoos on their arms, of deserving both contempt and the attention of psychiatrists'. He accused Mr Irving of being driven by extremist views and sympathies to deliberately falsify 'this tragic episode in history'. 'By exposing that dangerous fraud in this court, the defendants may properly be applauded for having performed a significant public service, not just in this country, but in all those places in the world where anti-semitism is waiting to be fed.' Mr Irving, who is presenting his own case, said that far from being 'a Holocaust denier' he had repeatedly drawn attention to it, and described it. 'I submit that, harsh though it may seem, the court should take no interest in that tragedy,' he said. 'The court may well disagree with me, and show a profound interest in it; but in my submission we have to avoid the temptations of raking over the history of what happened in Poland or in Russia 50 years ago. What is moot here is not what happened in those sites of atrocities but what happened over the last 32 years, on my writing desk in my apartment off Grosvenor Square.' Miss Lipstadt and her publishers were part of 'an organised international endeavour' to 'destroy my career, and to vandalise my legitimacy as a historian,' he said. 'I have since 1966 seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach,' he said. 'In private, the senior editors at those publishing houses still welcome me warmly as a friend, invite me to lunch in expensive New York restaurants and then lament that if they were to seek a contract with me on a new book, there would always be someone in their publishing house who would object. 'Such is the nature of the odium generated by the waves of hatred recklessly propagated against me by the defendants.' His enemies, he claimed, had him expelled from Canada in handcuffs in 1992, falsely said his first wife was the daughter of one of General Franco's top generals and implied he was being paid by Nazi fugitives in South America. The term 'holocaust denier,' he said 'had become one of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult, replacing the N-word, the F-word, and a whole alphabet of other slurs. 'Meaningless though it is, the phrase has become part of the English language. It is a poison to which there is virtually no antidote, less lethal than a hypodermic with nerve gas jabbed in the neck, but deadly all the same. 'For the chosen victim, it is like being called a wife-beater or a paedophile. It is enough for the label to be attached, for the attachee to find himself designated as a pariah, an outcast from normal society. It is a verbal Yellow Star.' The case continues. Courtroom coverage from the Israeli press after Jerusalem Post earlier this week. Top News Trial opens in Holocaust libel suit Sharon Sadeh, Ha'aretz Correspondent 01/12/2000 Ha'aretz Copyright (C) 2000 Ha'aretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. Tel Aviv, Israel; Source: World Reporter (TM) Hunters want UK man LONDON - The libel suit initiated by controversial British historian David Irving against an American historian who called him "a dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial" began yesterday with Irving declaring, "For years I have turned the other cheek. No more. Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University in Atlanta had called Irving "a dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial." Irving claims that Lipstadt 's book, published in 1994, irreversibly destroyed his career and that Lipstadt and Penguin Books, which is also being sued by Irving, are part of "an organized international effort" to destroy his reputation as a historian. Irving, who specializes in the study of World War II, has published two books, "Hitler's War," and "Goebbels: The Mastermind of the Third Reich." As the trial opened in the High Court of London, Irwin claimed, "By virtue of the activities of the defendants, I have, since 1996, seen one fearful publisher after another falling away from me, declining to reprint my works, refusing to accept new commissions and turning their backs on me when I approach." Irving, 62, who is representing himself, told the judge that he had once earned about 100,000 pounds sterling a year in royalties, but that the actions of the defendants had caused him "real financial damage." Irving said that Lipstadt 's book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," accused him of denying the Holocaust, distorting documents and statistics to serve his own ideological ends, drawing unacceptable historical conclusions and knowingly joining with extremists. "Far from being a Holocaust denier, all I want is to draw attention to major aspects of history - to describe them. I have selflessly done vital historical research. No person in full command of his mental faculties can deny that the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the dates and other minutiae." The attorney representing Penguin and Lipstadt , Richard Rampton, rejected these claims, terming Irving "a distorter of history, a liar and a Holocaust denier." He maintained that Irving denied the existence of a systematic plan of the Nazis to annihilate the Jews of Europe, that he denied that the gas chambers were used to execute this plan and that he harbored extreme views that knowingly presented a distorted view of history. The trial is expected to last 12 weeks without interruption and will not be held before a jury. Both sides agreed that because of the huge volume of documents involved, it would be preferable for the case to be heard before a judge.In another matter related to the Holocaust, the Simon Weisenthal Center appealed yesterday to British Home Secretary Jack Straw, requesting that he revoke the citizenship of Antanas Gecas, a British citizen of Lithuanian extraction living in Edinburgh, and deport him from Britain. According to Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Weisenthal Center in Jerusalem, Gecas, who arrived in Britain in the late 1940s, has admitted to U.S. investigators that he had served in the battalion of the Latvian security police that murdered tens of thousands of citizens, most of whom were Jews, in Lithuania and Belorussia. ###
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