Picture: Mr Irving and a Washington Post reporter come under fire from a mob of Lipstadt’s supporters outside the High Court, London, April 2000

 Fact sheet on the letter-writer Gisela Schon | add to 

IT WAS with great delight that I watched your lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt take a turn for the worst. As much as I prize my and everybody else’s right to free speech, I cannot understand how people like you proceed in life as if decency and honesty were abstract concepts which have no impact on them whatsoever.

Also, your initial claim that Lipstadt was attempting to curb your right to free speech was ironic at best; after all, you’re the one who took her to court when she, exercising her own right to free speech, made comments about you that you considered unflattering.

I am not even half your age, but I know myself to be mature, well-educated and respectful of people’s heritage and personal history. Unlike you, I do have degrees which, if nothing else, provide me with the ability to step outside of my own familiar environment and realize that what is foreign is not per se malignant. You, Mr. Irving, seem to be unable to understand the nature of true, unbiased debate.

The fact that your bogus revision of history went unpunished (or only mildly challenged) for so long does not surprise me: on one hand, there are plenty of people who subscribe to ridiculous theories such as your Holocaust ones (people like you, ignorant and xenophobic by nature); and on the other, I really do believe that the scholarly world did not really take you that seriously — they rather perceived you as a clown of sorts.

The ultimate fallacy is having you actually deny Auschwitz and the gas chambers, where most of my family perished. In doing so, you even defy reports by your own government (and others around world) about the existence of the same. Do you really think us Jews so powerful as to be able to perpetuate a lie of this magnitude in so many different countries, during such a long period of time?

Probably the hardest thing for you Holocaust deniers/anti-Semites to deal with is the fact that not only Adolf Hitler and his culprits [sic. accomplices?] did not succeed in completely annihilating the Jews but the ordeal has, in many ways, made them stronger. This must be very hard to swallow, Mr. Irving.

In any case, we Jews can’t complain. We can now call you by your proper epithet — Mr. Irving the Anti-Semite (thanks to Judge Charles Gray‘s conclusion). Great things you’ve accomplished, dear sir.

Gisela Schon

David Irving replies: I CAN’T get involved too much in correspondence — I get 300 emails a day — please note! — so this is necessarily brief to the point of rudeness — I take it you have never read a book by me. Please go away, do so, and then see if you still wish to write letters like that.

ACTUALLY I have. I did read two of your books. I also read the entire court transcripts available on the libel suit proceedings. As you know, there is plenty of information about you and your positions on a variety of topics, and I did my research before writing you. Actually, this is not something I would normally do (write someone I disagree with in terms of world view). But in your case, your complete disregard for the suffering of millions of people is so blatant that I felt compelled to.

By the way – I took my time writing that letter to you; although I understand you must receive several letters similar to mine everyday (in the sense they are not supportive of what you stand for), the least you could have done is present me with a more articulate, elaborate response.

Gisela Schon

David Irving replies: 8:41 am: You say you read two of my books. I will be happy however to correspond, within limits, as you are young, beautiful, not susceptible to flattery, and articulate (and very very wrong). Please indicate which two books you have read.

• If that were true, you would have won your libel suit, don’t you think?
• If that were true, why would New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Canada and Germany deny you entry?

Do you sincerely believe that you’re right and the whole world is wrong?

Mr. Irving – you are not merely a confused individual; your fallacies were proven in court, and as Judge Gray said:

“Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.”

It seems to me that you’re quite finished, Mr. Irving.

As for me being beautiful – it is a preposterous comment, given the fact that we never met. In your current situation of persona non grata, it would be wise for you to refrain from absurd statements that could be easily misinterpreted.

Gisela Schon

David Irving replies: IF that is the end of your correspondence — since you do not identify to me the two books you claim to have read, and I do not like corresponding with liars — then I shall post it on the website shortly under the hatemail section.

POST whatever you want on your website — maybe you should post the highly inappropriate comment about me being beautiful. . . I am not concerned about you or your website, and it is our problem if you decide to classify my messages as hatemail. And I am not surprised — after all, why should you have an intelligent and proper exchange with a Jewish woman? It would probably be too much for you, Mr. Irving.

In any case, I will see to it that our exchange gets posted on other websites as well – in its complete and unadeltered [sic. unaltered? unadulterated?] and unedited form.

Gisela Schon

David Irving replies: So — Schön by name but not by nature. Alas, you have failed to detect the irony that I blandly called you beautiful, not having seen you, in precisely the same way that you called my works hateful, not having seen them either.

Of course the other Gisela Schons of this world did not stop at just calling my books hateful, they contacted every publisher in the world, every TV producer, and every public library from West Point to Worthing, and demanded that my books be withdrawn from the shelves and from publication.

What are they afeared of, one might wonder? I merely asked that the particular Gisela Schon called Lipstadt be required by the courts to remove the mindless and equally unfounded statements from her book — such as that I consort with Hamas and Hizbollah terrorists, that I damaged archival microfiches, etc., etc (statements by Lipstadt which your much-admired Mr Justice Gray also found were malicious lies, and as such libellous: if you have indeed read his Judgment in full).

At least my mindless and unfounded lie — calling you beautiful, sight unseen — will not have the consequence of ruining your career at best, and attracting an Israeli helicopter gunship, or lesser hoodlums, to “take me out” at worst. Sorry, but you fell for it.

 Sir John Keegan wrote: “Two books in English stand out from the vast literature of the Second World War. Chester Wilmot’s The Struggle for Europe, published in 1952, and David Irving’s Hitler’s War.”

 Kelly Snowden thinks that it is quite right that Mr Irving should be banned from speaking anywhere