Historian Deborah Lipstadt to Speak at UMass Amherst April 11 on The Holocaust on Trial

April 8, 2002

AMHERST, Mass. - Historian and author Deborah Lipstadt will give a talk titled, "The Holocaust on Trial," Thurs., April 11 at 7:30 p.m. in Mahar Auditorium at the University of Massachusetts. The talk is free and open to the public.

Lipstadt is the author of "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory," published in 1994, which refuted claims made by British historian David Irving in his 1977 book "Hitler’s War." Irving argued that Hitler did not command the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust, and instead was barely aware that it had happened. After the publication of Lipstadt’s book, Irving unsuccessfully sued her for libel in England, where, because there is no analog to the First Amendment, Lipstadt was forced to prove in court that the Holocaust happened and Hitler knew about the systematic murder of European Jews.

Larry Goldbaum, director of the UMass Office of Jewish Affairs, says Lipstadt is an important speaker for several reasons. "Professor Lipstadt’s scholarship on the Holocaust denial movement is important and, for her, very dangerous, as David Irving’s libel suit shows all too well," Goldbaum says. "Mr. Irving was an internationally known historian of World War II, whose pseudo-scholarship threatened to distort the historical record of the Nazis, and whose lawsuit against Ms. Lipstadt threatened to silence those who would speak the truth in the face of such distortions."

Goldbaum says although formally a civil lawsuit, the Irving libel trial in essence put the Holocaust itself on trial. Fortunately, and not surprisingly, the judge found Irving to be a Holocaust denier, a falsifier of history, a racist, and an anti-Semite, he says. Or as the New York Times put it in their front-page review of Lipstadt’s book, the trial "put an end to the pretense that Mr. Irving is anything but a self-promoting apologist for Hitler." Lipstadt’s lecture, Goldbaum says, will provide a rare opportunity to hear first-hand from a central figure in this landmark trial.

Lipstadt’s talk is presented by the UMass Office of Jewish Affairs and co-sponsored by the departments of Judaic and Near Eastern studies, legal studies, and history, the Office of ALANA Affairs, the Jewish Student Union, and UMass Hillel. Other co-sponsors include the Five College Lecture Fund, Mount Holyoke College Jewish Studies Program, Hampshire College Dean of Faculty and Jewish Studies Program, Hillel at Smith and Amherst colleges, the Jewish Federation of Greater Springfield, the Jewish Community Relations Council, and the Hatikvah Holocaust Resource Center.

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