Synopses & Reviews
The account of a trial in which the very meaning of the Holocaust was put on the stand.
D. D. Guttenplan's The Holocaust on Trial is a bristling courtroom drama where the meaning of history is questioned. The plaintiff is British author David Irving, one of the world's preeminent military historians whose works are considered essential World War II scholarship and whose biographies of leading Nazi figures have been bestsellers. Irving refuses to admit to Hitler's responsibility in the extermination of European Jewry, replying that the Holocaust as we know it never happened. The defendant is Deborah Lipstadt, who blew the whistle on Irving, calling him "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." Irving sued for libel, and under English law, it was up to Lipstadt to prove the truth of her writings, and the falseness of Irving's views. (4 pages of b/w photographs.)
Review
"As a piece of reportage, The Holocaust on Trial is concise and compelling, exactly what's needed to make sense of an involved and highly technical trial. As a piece of thinking, it's a disaster contradictory and shallow and sometimes lacking in basic common sense. Guttenplan is muddled on nearly every 'larger' issue he tackles, and his criticisms sound troublingly similar to some of the woollier thinking to come out of the trial....[Guttenplan's] sense of history is as shaky as his inability to make distinctions....Even if Guttenplan is, on some level, unwilling to acknowledge the danger Irving represents, the book he has written unwittingly does the job for him....Guttenplan's questioning of who decides facts not interpretations, but facts may spring from a desire to level the playing field by reminding us of the truism that history is written by the victors. Here, however, it is playing right into the hands of the brutes....When Guttenplan asks in relation to Auschwitz, 'How do we know anything beyond what we ourselves have experienced?' he's indulging in the sort of mental masturbation that you should be finished with by the end of your freshman year in college. Of course, we can never 'know' the texture of the experience of the death camps, but we can know the fact of it....[W]hen Guttenplan bemoans the elimination of the human element in the Irving-Lipstadt trial he misses not only the brilliance of the defense strategy but the moral fineness of it." Charles Taylor, Salon.com
Review
"Guttenplan's work manages to satisfy considerably more so than [Richard] Evans' frantic, hour-by-hour approach [in Lying About Hitler], in major part because he is, simply, a better writer....[A] thoughtful work as well as a courtroom thriller." Allen Weakland, Booklist
Review
"The most informed, disinterested account of this significant proceeding as we are likely to get." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
To his admirers, British author David Irving is a preeminent military historian, but his denial of Hitler's responsibility for the Holocaust got him labeled as a right-wing extremist. He sued for libel, and it was up to the dependents to prove the truth of what they wrote. Guttenplan's coverage of this high-stakes duel, based on access to many of the participants, makes compelling reading and raises surprising questions about what we know, or can know, about history.
Synopsis
D. D. Guttenplan's The Holocaust on Trial is a bristling courtroom drama where the meaning of history is questioned. The plaintiff is British author David Irving, one of the world's preeminent military historians whose works are considered essential World War II scholarship and whose biographies of leading Nazi figures have been bestsellers. Irving refuses to admit to Hitler's responsibility in the extermination of European Jewry, replying that the Holocaust as we know it never happened. The defendant is Deborah Lipstadt, who blew the whistle on Irving, calling him "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." Irving sued for libel, and under English law, it was up to Lipstadt to prove the truth of her writings, and the falseness of Irving's views.
About the Author
D. D. Guttenplan, a journalist and essayist, lives in London. His work has appeared in Granta, Harper's, The Nation, the Village Voice, Vanity Fair, and the London Review of Books. He has written on the Irving trial for the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and The Guardian.