Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt doesn’t expect everyone to become embroiled in high-stakes international legal battles like she did.
But the Emory University professor thinks her celebrated case against Holocaust denier David Irving carries lessons for all about the importance of speaking out for one’s beliefs.
“It showed, when it’s necessary, you have to stand up and fight,” said Lipstadt, who in April 2000 won a libel suit brought against her by Irving, a military historian who became affiliated with the Holocaust denial movement. A British High Court justice ruled that Lipstadt had accurately labeled him a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.”
Irving had alleged that Lipstadt and her publisher had ruined his career. But in a scathing judgment, the judge ruled that the book accurately described Irving, whom the judge branded a “pro-Nazi polemicist.”
“I never dreamt we’d prevail in as overwhelming a way,” said Lipstadt.
She plans to discuss her legal case, its consequences as well as the wider messages it carries for the community in an East Bay appearance on Monday, Oct. 28. Lipstadt is delivering the keynote address at the annual “Choices” event sponsored by the Women’s Division of the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay.
Lipstadt’s speech is entitled “The Power of a Woman to Make a Difference in This World.” The event will honor 21 community leaders at the evening event, which kicks off the federation’s annual campaign.
In a phone interview, Lipstadt described her legal costs as “tremendous.” Though Irving was ordered to pay them, he has declared bankruptcy. “We’ll never see a cent from him,” predicted Lipstadt, who nonetheless continues to challenge his bankruptcy action.
She said the “vast majority” of her costs were paid through a legal fund created by supporters worldwide.
“I was the one on the firing line,” she said. “I was the one whose reputation was personally up in federal court, but people very much interpreted this as an attack on truth, Jewish history, Jewish people. It’s really an attack on history.”
She said her publisher, Penguin Books, “feels very adamant” about pursuing legal costs from Irving and is continuing on that front.
“It’s not over yet,” said Lipstadt. “It will probably eventually cost me more to follow up on the bankruptcy issue than I’ll ever see from him.”
As for personal consequences of the trial, Lipstadt not surprisingly describes the case as “a seminal event in my life.” She only travels a couple of times a year for speaking engagements like “Choices,” however.
She is writing a book about the trial and hopes to have it completed in about a year.
HBO, meanwhile, plans to film a documentary on the trial late next year by award-winning director Ridley Scott.
At Emory in Atlanta, Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies, continues to teach classes on the Holocaust.
Such lessons “would be important anyway,” she said. “We’re not doing it because of the deniers. We do it because there’s something important to remember and to learn.”
The five years of legal wrangling that preceded the actual trial “sort of obliterated” research she was working on. “I had books that were half done that probably will never be finished,” she said. “People move on, time moves on.”
But many people, particularly Holocaust survivors, won’t soon forget the trial, which drew worldwide attention. It is not uncommon, she said, for survivors and their children to “come to me with tears in their eyes saying how important it was to them.
“I didn’t go seek this battle, but when it came I was ready to fight it,” she said. “Sometimes an injustice will smack you in the face and you have no choice but to fight.”
When she speaks at “Choices,” Lipstadt “will talk about that lesson but in a broader context. What it means in terms of responding to evil, responding to lies, standing up, teaching your kids to stand up, being willing to take chances.”