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[02/26/00]

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Yet the answers have become pieces of evidence in a British libel trial that litigants on both sides hope will define the parameters of debate about what many call the greatest moral crime of the 20th century.

On one side of the fluorescent-lit courtroom stands the British author David Irving -- revisionist historian, Hitler apologist or liar, depending on whom you ask -- who does not believe the Nazis systematically killed Jews in World War II. They died, he says, from disease or by the hand of "rogue Nazis." Irving stands alone on his side of the courtroom, for he has chosen to represent himself in a case that both sides agree is so complicated that a judge, and not a jury, should hear it.

On the other side of the room sits the target of his suit, Deborah Lipstadt, a professor from Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., who wrote "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." Lipstadt, Emory's Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, called Irving "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." She and others criticized his American publisher, St. Martin's Press, for picking up his latest book, "Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich," in 1996. The book was dropped before it was published.

Lipstadt and a representative from her fellow defendant, Penguin Books Ltd. (UK), are surrounded by a team of black-robed English lawyers and university researchers, all paging through files, leafing through books, typing notes on laptop computers and writing messages to each other on Post-it notes.

British law divides the duties of attorneys in a courtroom, between the solicitor who gathers the evidence and builds the case, and the wig-wearing barrister who puts these arguments to the judge. Lipstadt has a star team: Her solicitor is Anthony Julius, who represented Princess Diana in her divorce. Her barrister is Queen's Counsel Richard Rampton, a big name in British libel circles.

Both sides plead their case to Justice Charles Gray, formerly a premier libel lawyer himself and a relative newcomer to the bench. Gray has given Irving great leeway in presenting his case, for fear of putting a person with no legal experience at a disadvantage. The trial, which began Jan. 11, is scheduled to last three months.

If this were an American libel court, the judge and barristers would not wear wigs and Irving would have the burden to prove he'd been defamed ("with malice" in his case, as with all public figures). But this is a British libel court, and the burden is on the defense to prove Lipstadt told the truth when she wrote that Irving bends historical evidence "until it conforms with his ideological leanings."

Barrister Rampton's job -- which he does while pacing, tying the sleeves of his robe behind his back and adjusting his wig -- is to prove Irving deliberately misread, misinterpreted or missed key historical documents.

Irving's differences with the vast body of Holocaust scholarship are not subtle. He does not think gas chambers existed for mass extermination. They were used, he says, to delouse clothes and disinfect corpses. He does not believe Hitler devised the Final Solution.

The word "Holocaust" was removed from the second edition of his book "Hitler's War," because he finds the term "misleading, offensive and unhelpful. It is too vague, it is imprecise, it is unscientific and it should be avoided like the plague."

Despite this, Irving claims Lipstadt defamed him by labeling him a "Holocaust denier," marking him with "a verbal Yellow Star."

But the British author is after what he sees as a bigger enemy, as well. He says his reputation has been destroyed by an "organized international endeavor," which, upon closer inspection, comprises mostly Jewish lobby groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Their members have prevented him from publishing his books, speaking at universities and traveling to certain countries, he says.

Irving is banned even from Germany, where he has done much of the 40-odd years of research for his 30 books, because he violated that country's law against denying the Holocaust.

This week the trial's big news was Israel's decision to release the pre-execution memoirs of Adolf Eichmann, to help Lipstadt with her case. The computer disk containing an estimated 600 pages was handed over to Irving after he promised not to publish it on his Web site.

Next page | Irving: Historians do "make mistakes"