Holocaust scholar details legal fight

Audience members are moved by Deborah Lipstadt's struggles against those who try to deny the existence of the Holocaust.

By EILEEN SCHULTE

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 9, 2001

CLEARWATER -- Deborah Lipstadt, deeply admired by Jews for battling the Holocaust denial phenomenon, drew hundreds to Temple B'Nai Israel on Wednesday, and some were so moved by evening's end that they gathered around a reporter to share their own horrific experiences.

Lipstadt, brought to the temple through a visiting scholar program, spent 45 minutes guiding her audience through her legal battle with English writer David Irving, who sued her for libel after she described him as a dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial and a truth twister in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

Lipstadt won. Since then, the Emory University religion professor has been traveling the country, talking about "the trial that occupied five years of my life."

After the speech, Holocaust survivors gathered around a Times reporter and passionately told their stories.

Walter Lynn, a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, told of being taken to the camp by cattle car. He spent six weeks there existing on little more than watery soup. The guards, "who never slept," killed 15 to 17 people per day by whipping them and by other means, Lynn said.

Lynn still struggles with anguishing memories, said his wife, Lore Lynn. "He lives with this two or three times a week, it was such a horror," she said.

Lusia Igel, 85, said she and her husband and baby daughter were living in a Polish ghetto when the Nazis invaded. To save their child, Toni, they gave her to a gentile woman, who raised her for nearly five years. After the war, the couple was reunited with Toni and together came to the United States.

Also present were several teens who in April will travel to Europe and Israel to participate in a Holocaust remembrance called "March of the Living." They will march from one concentration camp to another. The teens all wore aqua T-shirts with the words, "I'm Going" on the back.

Although Lipstadt's subject was serious, there were moments of laughter during her presentation.

"In 1977, (Irving) published the book Hitler's War, claiming Hitler didn't know about the Holocaust, and when (Hitler) found out, tried to stop it," Lipstadt told those assembled.

The comment drew chuckles, but many shook their heads in amazement when Lipstadt quoted Irving as saying he had become convinced there were no gas chambers.

She said that is "when he came out as a denier," and that he "knows the truth, (he)twists the truth until it conforms to his ideological views as a right-wing extremist."

Lipstadt's book is about 300 pages long, and out of that, three pages deal with Irving and his alleged anti-Semitic writings and speeches, Lipstadt said. But that was enough for Irving to sue.

Her goal in fighting the suit, which was tried in English courts, was not to achieve a " "The Holocaust didn't happen' victory."

"I wanted it to be, "Is Deborah Lipstadt true?' " she said.

Also, in Jewish tradition, Lipstadt said, among acts of loving kindness, "the greatest act is what we do for the dead. They cannot thank us."

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