International Campaign for Real History
From: Marjorie Williams Dear Joel, About Elián: Don't you hate grown-ups who pretend, when it's convenient for them, that children's wishes are all-important? Giving a child too much power is one of the worst things you can do to him/her, and it's doubly destructive when you're manipulating the child at the same time. Picture Elián's Miami relatives three years down the road, in the unlikely event they win custody of him: No you can't go to the park today, Goddammit. Because I said so! But my favorite story today is historian Deborah E. Lipstadt's total victory, in a British court, over Hitler apologist David Irving. Although she is American, Irving, who is a Brit, sued her there because England's libel laws are so much more favorable to the plaintiff than ours. He claimed that she erred in calling him a "Holocaust denier," which is what he plainly is; the judge wasn't buying it. This is a real victory for plain truth. Earlier in Irving's career, his archival research in Germany earned him some genuine regard as a military historian. My father was his editor at the Viking Press (I teased him to his dying day about having written, in the flap copy for Hitler's War, that it would "stand athwart the annals" of somethingorother), and always claimed that if you told David Irving that you had just been shot and were bleeding to death, he would reply, "Hmmm, yes, well, as I was saying, Himmler then said to Goebbels ..." Every year, when my parents went to London, they had to endure the dread ritual of Dinner at the Irvings: "We are girding loins for dinner with David Irving," my father wrote home in November '76. "Do hope he doesn't bring out X-rays of Hitler's skull until dessert." It was always hot in the Irvings' flat, where they were served (this is my mother now) "the same horrible thing -- German champagne well-laced with Campari." And while Irving was bending my father's ear, Mrs. Irving would lead my mother to the kitchen for unsought confidences about the Irving connubial life. "David is as strange as ever," my mother wrote. "All he is really interested in is his Book(s), so that he looks at Alan as a kind of extension of his Hitler book, and just puts him under glass and gazes at him fondly. I do believe Alan could spit in his face and he would just say, 'Oh, yes, jolly good,' and go on gazing." Even then, when Irving was regarded as respectable and had not yet flatly denied the reality of the Final Solution, my father always sounded a little defensive about publishing him. Ron Rosenbaum has a great op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal about the fallacy of fellow historians who praise Irving's fact-gathering while disowning his conclusions. Research and conclusion are ultimately inseparable, Rosenbaum argues, "Can one praise a fact gatherer who somehow has failed to find the facts of mass murder behind Hitler's pattern of denial?" Regretfully, Marjorie |
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© Focal Point 2000 |
Introduction by this Website:
Williams came under fire from the usual New York circles for having published the book, but remained a staunch supporter until the end of his life two or three years ago. In the late 1970s Mr Irving presented Williams with a silver salver, engraved at Harrods with words in honour of Williams’ bravery; no fool he, the editor kept it at his home rather than on display in his Madison Avenue office (on the wall of which was a wanly-framed typed rejection note, in which he had rejected a certain manuscript, stating: “I am not sure if many people have ever heard of Mr Shirer, and I do not think there is any demand for a book on the rise and fall of the Third Reich.”) Yes, we all make mistakes. When visiting Princeton, Mr Irving would always call on the Williams family. Once when he did so, he blundered in just as the family’s daughter, evidently the Marjorie who is the poison-pen writer below, was about to be formally proposed to by her then fiancé. Music lover Alan Williams treated him to a gramophone performance of the entire Wagner opera “Rienzi”, which he had learned was Hitler’s favourite. Now see the spin which a daughter can put on her father’s associations, once he is no longer there to defend himself.
