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[verbatim trial transcripts ] The Gothenburg Post January 28, 2000 http://www.gp.se/nyheter/28/fasta/ftext/politik1.html
[ translation ] Is Holocaust denial stupidity or an expression of anti-Semitism, a belief comparable to others’ belief in flying saucers or a crime? by PER NYGREN 031-62 41 21 per.nygren@gp.se Not even at the conference on the Holocaust were the answers completely given. The question of the deniers, those who call themselves revisionists and who claim such things as that Hitler never ordered the extermination of Jews and Roma, that the gas chambers in the extermination camps could not be used for the mass murder of people or that Anne Frank’s diary is a hoax which in itself the work was written after the war, became doubly topical at the Stockholm conference yesterday. One of the invited speakers, Dr Deborah Lipstadt who wrote the main academic work to expose the deniers – “Denying the Holocaust: The growing assault on truth and memory” – was forced to London to appear at a trial. She and her publisher have been sued by author David Irving, one of the deniers. The publishers distance themselves Irving, known as the author of a series of books about the Second World War, claims that he has lost his livelihood since reputable publishers refused to renew their contracts with him because of Lipstadt’s book. For David Irving, the trial – which can be followed day by day and word by word on his website online – is a forum for developing his theses and challenging the established historiography. For the historians and experts at the Holocaust Conference, his texts are of course stupid, without substance, absurd. Prohibition of denial But should the denial of the Holocaust be banned as in, for example, Germany and France? Yes, thought several of the seminar participants who argued that the denial of the Holocaust is not about historiography but about anti-Semitism, is an insult to humanity, indeed a “criminal conspiracy”. – No, said Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt from Holland. – Don’t give the deniers a platform! Don’t make them martyrs! Bans do not work in practice. Our response to the deniers must be education and knowledge. van Pelt came directly from the trial in London, where he was cross-examined by David Irving for two days. And he is to return to London for further questioning. Therefore, he did not want to talk about the ongoing trial. – But my expert opinion is also available online, he said when asked about deniers like David Irving who really believe what they say. Or if they are knowingly lying. – From that it appears that I read twenty years of correspondence between deniers like Faurisson and Irving. That correspondence is 95-96 percent about money. When David Irving definitively became a denier in 1988, it was all about business. The deniers gave him a platform. The arguments lack substance Does education help? Stéphan Bruchfeld, Sweden’s foremost expert on deniers, said that after a ten-week course on the Holocaust, he handed out pieces of paper with the deniers’ claims and asked the students to answer them. – The result was a disaster, he said. Not because there would be the slightest substance in the arguments of the deniers. But who can prove that flying saucers don’t exist? – It is important to turn the tables. Ask the deniers what documentation they have. They have none at all. |
January 28, 2000
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