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an undertaking by me not to pursue the matter in the courts).
First, your "article" Lies of Our Times (forgive the quotation
marks, but as you call me an "historian" it seems justified).
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is a British "historian", born in
1938.
* Correct.
According to David Cesarani of the Wiener Library in London,
England, he attended Imperial College at the University of
London, but never graduated. He holds no academic degree
and no academic position at any university or college.
* Correct. The same can be said for Winston S.
Churchill, Thomas Babington Macaulay (The
History of England), and the Gibbon who wrote
The Decline Fall of the Roman Empire, etc.
Would you denigrate them as "historians" too?
He calls himself a "moderate fascist",
* Incorrect. Please produce the source of this
spurious and libellous allegation.
and claims, among other things that the gas chambers at
Auschwitz (in which an estimated 2-3 million people died)
were "built by the Poles after the war as a tourist attraction."
* Not quite correct. I stated (on April 21, 1990 and
other occasions): "The gas chamber which is
shown to the tourists in Auschwitz is a dummy
(Atrappe) built after the war by the Polish
communists as a tourist attraction." In 1990, Dr
Franciszek Piper, the then director of the Auschwitz
State Museum Archives, confirmed that this is
true. As recently as 1995 the present directors
confirmed in an interview with Eric Conan, of the
well-known liberal French weekly L'Express, that
the gas chamber shown to the tourists was
constructed on the orders of the Polish communist
government in 1948. "Tout y est faux," reported
Conan, and the deputy chief of the site stated:
"Pour l'instant, on la laisse en l'йtat et on ne
prйcise rien au visiteur. C'est trop compliquй. On
verra plus tard" (L'Express, January 26, 1995).
(For this remark, he was fined DM 10,000 by a Munich court in
May 1992.
* Correct. On January 13, 1993 the fine was
increased to DM30,000 in view of my refusal to
retract the statement. (Why should I? It was true). In
addition, on July 1, 1993 I was permanently
banned from setting foot in the German Federal
Archives, which had benefited over the years from
my donations of half a ton of archival material
including the diaries of Canaris, Himmler,
Rommel, etc., which I had located, and which they
have now had to relinquish to me; and on
November 13, 1993 I was permanently banned
from Germany. How's that for freedom of speech!
The judge was quoted as saying that the gas chambers of
Auschwitz were "an historically certain fact.")
* Correct. The word used is offenkundig, and is
used in German law to deny defence lawyers the
introduction of any defence exhibits or witnesses,
e.g. the aforementioned Dr Franciszek Piper whom
we were prepared to call. There has been an
outcry in the German legal profession against
these methods, and Germany is to face a rebuke
from the United Nations for her repression of
freedom of opinion by such means. Of course, if
you believe they are correct to adopt such tactics,
such is your right.
Irving denies being a "Holocaust denier" or "Hitler apologist",
and seems willing to resort to legal action if necessary.
* Correct. Last year one of Britain's biggest Sunday
newspapers was forced to pay me substantial
damages after they printed such a libel. I issued a
Libel Writ in the High Court. (For legal reasons,
namely the settlement agreed, I am not permitted
to identify the newspaper or the amount, except off
the record). I am currently pursuing Libel action in
the British courts against The Observer, Deborah
Lipstadt, (whose odious little tract has been
foolishly published here, i.e. within the jurisdiction,
by Penguin UK Ltd) and Svenska Dagbladet. You
have been warned!
In a recent fax printed in the K-W Record, he is reported as
saying, "I have warned 22 British newspapers that I shall not
hesitate to commence libel action if they use smear phrases
such like 'Hitler apologist' or 'Holocaust denier' to embellish
their writings." But Bernard Levin, writing in The Times of
London in May of this year, quoted Irving as saying, "I hope
the court will fight a battle for the German people and put an
end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has been told
against this country for 50 years."
Irving first entered the headlines in 1970.
* Incorrect. Ever since 1963 my books have been
the subject of wide comment and much praise in
the British media.
In July of that year, he was forced to apologize in the High
Court of London for "making a wholly untrue and highly
damaging statement about a woman writer."--not an
auspicious start for someone who claims to be in pursuit of the
truth.
* Correct. A Sunday Express journalist, Jill -----,
stated that Rolf Hochhuth, the German playwright
and one of my closest friends had granted her an
exclusive interview. Hochhuth assured me he had
not even spoken to her. I mentioned this in a letter
to the newspaper's editor. She sued. As I was
fighting the hideously costly PQ.17 Libel Action at
the time, I had no alternative but to settle out of
court-- "shortening the front," is what military
commanders call such action. Make of that what
you will. Nothing has been heard of that
"journalist" since.
Later that year, Irving was back in the headlines, concerning
publication of his book, "The Destruction of Convoy PQ17".
Ostensibly an expose of an ill-fated 1942 Arctic convoy
headed for the Soviet Union during World War II, it eventually
resulted in Irving being fined 40,000 British pounds for libel.
* Incorrect. In actions for Libel--a tort--the defendant
is not fined, but can be required to pay damages.
The book was published by Simon Schuster and
other leading pubishers around the world. Not bad
for an "historian", eh?
Irving's book faulted Captain John Broome, commander of the
convoy at the time, saying he was guilty of "downright
disobedience" and "downright desertion of the convoy."
* Incorrect. No such allegations or quotations are
contained within the book.
Broome brought suit against Irving for false statements, and
won a judgment in August of 1970. Irving's lawyers appealed,
and lost in March, 1971.
* Correct. We then appealed to the House of Lords,
twice, and lost 4-to-3,which is a pretty close call.
Needless to say the insurers of Cassell Co Ltd,
the British publishers, would not have authorised
such defence actions had their counsel not studied
all the documents available and concluded that we
had a powerful defence, based on the Admiralty
records; this they in fact did, and wrote Opinions to
that effect. Libel actions in Britain are tried by jury.
Make of that what you will.
The case is revealing because of what it says about Irving's
abilities as a historian and his motives as an author.
According to The Times of London, Irving showed a copy of
the manuscript to Broome before publication.
* Correct. I showed the late Captain Broome the
mansucript in 1966, and he agreed to read it and
make comment (as did a score of other officers
involved); breaking his undertaking, he alone
decided not to co-operate, but to wait for
publication and then sue for profit. So be it.
Broome objected to the accuracy of some thirty passages in
the book, and threatened to sue for libel if Irving did not make
changes.
* Incorrect. He objected in reality to six words
("Captain Broome was a broken man"), and after
these words were expunged, years later, his
lawyers permitted the book's republication by
William Kimber Ltd.
At that point, William Kimbers Ltd., Irving's publisher, notified
him that they would not publish the book as it was then
written.
* Incorrect. I was in dispute with William Kimber
after they paid me only J67 instead of the agreed
fee of J200 for translating the book, The Memoirs
or Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. This being so, I
removed the PQ17 manuscript physically from
their offices; Kimber's secretary came running
down the street after me, pleading for me to return
it. I keep a very detailed diary of events. In court,
Kimber, already probably suffering from the
Parkinsonism from which he later died, gave a
totally different version, namely yours; he later
apologised to me, which did not assist me much of
course. Unfortunately, our counsel elected to call
no witnesses in the case but to rest securely on the
Admiralty documents.
Later, Irving published the book with another publisher.
The court found that Irving "was warned from most
responsible quarters that his book contained libels on Captain
Broome ... To make [the book] a success he was ready to risk
libel actions ... Documentary evidence .... showed that [Irving]
had deliberately set out to attack Captain Broome and in spite
of the most explicit warnings persisted in his attack because it
would help sell the book." The court labeled Irving's conduct
as "outrageous and shocking."
Irving's misrepresentations did not end with the publication of
his book. According to Cesarani, in 1979 a German publisher
had to pay compensation to the father of Anne Frank after
printing the German edition of Irving's book, Hitler's War. Irving
had claimed that Anne Frank's diary was a forgery.
* Correct as written. Without consulting me, the
Ullstein Verlag publishing firm, part of the
pro-Israeli Axel Springer Group) made some
unspecified payment to Otto Frank at his demand. I
had already halted production and publication of
the book for other reasons (tampering by Ullstein
with my text). The German Bundeskriminalamt
found that parts of the diary had been written in
(post-war) ballpoint ink-paste, which made its
authenticity problematic. My opinion on it now is
ambivalent: it is unimportant, not a historical
document of any value.
Irving claims that according to his "research", the Holocaust is
greatly exaggerated.
* Correct. I think the figures have been magnified
by an Order of Magnitude. Events in Auschwitz
alone suggest that I am right:: here the figure has
been effortlessly brought down from 4 million to 1
million, and now to even less.
(He was recently quoted in the K-W Record as saying that the
number of Jews who died in concentration camps was "of the
order of 100,000 or more.")
* Incorrect. Do you really believe all the
newspapers say? I may have said "killed", not
"died".
But during the 1988 trial of pro-Nazi publisher Ernst Zundel,
he was forced to admit under cross-examination that he hadn't
even read all of Eichmann's 1960 trial testimony. (In this
testimony, Eichmann admitted that Nazi leaders discussed
the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish
problem"--extermination, in 1942.)
* Incorrect. I have Eichmann's manuscript
memoirs, given to me in Buenos Aires in
November 1991. He states that to him Final
Solution always meant the Madagascar Solution.
Anyway, do you really want to base your case on
the utterances of a Nazi war criminal?
In November 1991, a reporter from The Independent showed
that Irving omitted crucial lines from a translation of Goebbels'
diaries--lines that would have contradicted his theory that
Hitler knew nothing about the extermination of the Jews.
* Incorrect. Which "crucial lines" am I supposed to
have omitted?
Irving's record is clear: he is not an historian, and he has
made false statements and been forced to apologize for them.
As Andrew Cohen, reporter for the Financial Post, has said,
"David Irving should be denied credibility."
* Well, that really wants to make me hang up my
shingle: namely, that a shyster from a money-rag
doesn't believe me. What a waste of kilobytes,
when there are megabytes of reputable historians
saying precisely the opposite about me.
Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Focal Point Publications
Professor Jeffrey Shallit
Associate Professor
Computer Science Department
University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada
The following is the full text of the article by Mr. Shallit that Mr.
Irving quotes in the preceding letter.
&&&&& LIES OF OUR TIMES
by Jeffrey Shallit
How the Words of the Holocaust Deniers and Their Allies
Show Them For What They Are
1. Background
Canada has a long tradition of tolerance and multiculturalism.
That's why many residents of the K-W area were shocked and
saddened to learn that a stereo store on King Street in
Kitchener was displaying posters advertising a talk by David
Irving, a self-described historian who says that the estimates
of six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II are
greatly exaggerated. Inside the store, according to the K-W
Record, one can find for sale a book by Fred Leuchter that
claims that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were never used
for mass killing. After local protests, the store owner retaliated
by putting up posters about the banking system based on the
writings of anti-Semite Eustace Mullins. Subsequently, these
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