David Irving on Trial in Austria for Holocaust Denial; Read What Deborah Lipstadt Has to Say About Her Onetime Courtroom Opponent

Historian Deborah Lipstadt thinks David Irving should not be on trial in Austria for his views on the Holocaust. Austria, like several other European nations, has laws that forbid denial of the existence of that event and it arrested Irving last November for statements he made some 15 years ago. Although Irving sued Lipstadt for defamation in an English court over her book Denying the Holocaust, a case which she and her publishers won (see accounts in Richard J. Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, the Holocaust and the David Irving Trial, Basic Books, 2002 and D. D. Guttenplan, The Holocaust on Trial, NY: Norton, 2002), Lipstadt says Austria should just let Irving “go and let him fade from everyone’s radar screens.” Read more here in a BBC interview. Compare with the ongoing case of Holocaust denier Ernest Zuendel in Germany.

Read more about the Irving-Lipstadt libel trial here.