This book could not have been written without the cooperation, encouragement, and assistance of the following people:
Deborah Lipstadt and David Irving were both extremely generous in granting me extensive interviews before this case went to trial and in answering my often impertinent questions during the trial and after the judgment.
Anthony Julius and James Libson at Mishcon de Reya, Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman at Davenport Lyons and Helena Peacock at Penguin Books were all remarkably patient in helping a non-lawyer to understand both the libel process and the legal issues at stake. I am particularly grateful to Anthony Julius and Mark Bateman for their consistently generous and helpful responses to my questions.
Charles Gray, the trial judge, surprised me by granting a request for an interview before the trial began. We never spoke again, but his former clerk, Kim Janes, furnished me with a wealth of material relating to his career as a libel barrister, while his current clerk, John Lloyd, made sure I had access to the proceedings and then to the transcripts despite my being both a foreigner and a stranger to the courts.
Don Honeyman, Gitta Sereny’s husband, allowed me access to material related to Irving’s suit against Ms. Sereny and the Observer; David Parsons of Lovell White Durrant, who represent Sereny and the Observer, helped me to understand how the two cases were related. Adam Bellow, who edited the American edition of Denying the Holocaust, helped me to make sense of the book’s publishing history. Michael Rubinstein, who once represented Irving, helped me to make sense of Irving’s legal history.
Christopher Browning, Richard Evans, Peter Longerich and Robert Jan van Pelt all answered my post trial questions with great candor and clarity. In the case of Evans and van Pelt this cooperation was all the more generous in that both men knew I was not unreservedly enthusiastic about their performance in the witness box; indeed Robert Jan van Pelt answered so many of my queries with such consistent kindness I felt constrained to remind him of my strictures. I am profoundly indebted to him and to his exemplary scholarship.
Writing for me is a way of thinking things through. My first attempt to understand what was at stake in this trial came in an article for the New York Times. I take great pleasure in acknowledging my debt to Patricia Cohen for commissioning that piece and for helping me to meet the Times’s standards of fairness and balance. She and I are both veterans of the late lamented New York Newsday, where such matters, though taken seriously, were perhaps less of a fetish. But my own roots are firmly in advocacy journalism, so it was with both amusement and amazement that I read an attempt in the New Republic to use what the magazine called my “fine relaxing balance” as a stick with which to beat both Ms. Cohen and the Times. Not every writer gets the satisfaction of such a speedy public response; for that, and for the incoherent ferocity of the attack, I am grateful to the editors of the New Republic.
My debt to the Atlantic Monthly is of a different order altogether. Jack Beatty commissioned 10,000 words to run on the eve of the trial, then accepted, edited, and printed over 15,000 words. Avril Cornel made contacting the magazine a pleasure rather than a burden. Amy Meeker and Yvonne Rolzhausen saved me from errors great and small, and particularly impressed my British sources with their tireless willingness to discuss nuances of meaning and their reverence for facts. None of this, however, would have been possible without the unwavering support of William Whitworth, a man I have still never met, and to whom I fear I never sufficiently acknowledged my gratitude for what was by any measure the most satisfying editorial experience of my journalistic career. For his initial queries, his consistently helpful advice, and most of all for his persistent questioning of whether what I wrote was what I really meant—his deep faith that it was in fact possible to get it right—I remain profoundly grateful.
It was my agent, Andrew Wylie, who first suggested writing a book about the Irving–Lipstadt libel trial. I thank him for that, for his serene confidence, and most of all for sticking with me through some long lean years. Thanks also to Zoe Pagnamenta, Helen Allen, Rose Billington, Georgia Garrett, Martha Lowe, and Emma Smart at the Wylie Agency.
Starling Lawrence at W.W. Norton and Neil Belton at Granta Books responded to my proposal to write about the trial with great enthusiasm and intelligence. I feel particularly fortunate to have editors on both sides of the Atlantic who understood immediately the importance of the trial, and who were both so willing and able to engage with the questions this book tries to answer. My thanks also to Sajidah Ahmad at Granta for guiding me through the production process, and to Drake Bennett at Norton for some crucial assists.
The United States National Archive cartographic division contains an extraordinary wealth of aerial photographs of Auschwitz and Birkenau, many of them digitized and available for viewing on-line at www.nara.gov. I thank Iris Cooper of the National Archive for helping me to reach the right person, and Sam Welch of the cartographic division for giving me permission to reproduce two aerial photographs.
I am a reporter, not a scholar. But in my various attempts to make sense of this trial I have benefited from the advice (which I have not always followed) and opinions (with which I have not always agreed) of the following scholars: Michael Berkowitz, Ruth Birn, Norman Finkelstein, Gerald Fleming, Michael Geyer, Eric Hobsbawm, and Jonathan Sarna. I am also indebted to Mark Mazower, both for his helpful comments and for the example of his own scrupulous, deeply engaged scholarship. Herr Dobblestein, of the legal section of the German Consulate in London, helped me to understand his country’s laws against Holocaust denial. My cousin, the philosopher Samuel Guttenplan, helped to clarify my understanding of the epistemological questions. Sir Martin Gilbert, whom I met in the course of the trial, responded with characteristic generosity to my many requests for information. I should add that while I am indebted to all of them, none should be held responsible for the opinions expressed in this book or the mistakes that remain, which are entirely of my own making.
As an independent researcher I wish to thank the staff at the Wiener Library, who let me borrow one of the few copies of Peter Novick’s book in Britain for months at a time; I am also grateful for the superb collection at University College London, where the American librarian, Ruth Dar, displayed similar indulgence. I also thank Dr. Eric Halpern, my supervisor at UCL, and Dr. Kathleen Burk, my director of studies, for allowing me to interrupt my studies in American History to write this book.
A trial is an enclosed universe, cut off from the rest of life by the protocols of court procedure and the fanatical attention paid by its inhabitants to meanings incomprehensible to the outside world. In the press section, Eva Menasse and James Buchan were singularly pleasant and stimulating companions whose understanding of the proceedings helped shape my own. Eva made it possible for a non-German speaker to follow the at times arcane arguments over the precise meanings of German words; Jamie first called my attention to the parallels between David Irving and Dio Chrysostom. Sam Tanenhaus, a visitor to the press section and newfound friend, proves you don’t have to be a lefty to be a mensch. Dan Yurman’s internet digest of trial coverage was a valuable resource, and Hilary Ostrov’s e-mails kept me on my toes.
Outside the trial I have derived enormous sustenance from Peter Cariani and Becky Heaton, Duncan Bull, Edward Fox, Larry Friedman, Merle and Gene Mahon, Rosemary Moore and Josh Shneider, Andrew Patner, Joel Sanders, John Scagliotti, Gene Seymour and Marie Nahickian, Sheila Shulman, and Carl Strehlke. My old boss and friend Robert Friedman provided moral support at a crucial juncture, as did Victor Navasky. Karen Rothmyer and Katrina van den Heuvel, my editors at the Nation, have given me a congenial journalistic home. And though I take issue with him in these pages, I am grateful to my friend Christopher Hitchens for bringing David Irving to my notice, and for not taking our disagreement personally.
There are some debts that can never be repaid. My wife, Maria Margaronis, put her own work on hold to allow me to complete this book on time. This was a very difficult year and though I look forward to doing the same for her I doubt whether I, or anyone else, could have made the same sacrifice with equivalent grace. But I will try.
Our children, Alexander, Zoe, and Theo, all saw a great deal less of their father than they were used to. I thank them, too, for being so splendid throughout, and so nice to come home to. (Part of the credit here must go to Audrey Lematte and Martina Gjurekovic, “look-after-ladies” extraordinaire.)
My mother, Jacqueline Goldstein Guttenplan, was a great believer in asking questions. And if my father, Mitchell Guttenplan, didn’t pass on his own piety he nonetheless continues to encourage his children and grandchildren in ways small and large to maintain their engagement with Judaism.
Long ago I realized that if I ever managed to write a book it would in large measure be due to the influence of Joseph Ormond, my teacher at Mayfair Elementary School in Philadelphia. As a parent I have seen yet again the importance of a teacher’s influence, and as a writer I will always owe a great debt to Joe, and to Linda Jarrett of White Station High School in Memphis, and Sidney Morgenbessor, Michael Rosenthal, Edward Said and Catharine Stimpson at Columbia.
Finally I would like to thank Raul Hilberg. Anyone who writes about the Holocaust is in his debt. To me, Hilberg is heroic not just for his achievement as a historian, but as a moral figure, a man whose passionate commitment to the truth is undiminished despite bringing him—or the world—little comfort. To contemplate such darkness and remain unmoved would be inhuman. Hilberg struck me as profoundly aware of the dispiriting nature of his subject. Yet he persists, spurning rationalization or mysticism, seeking consolation only in his precious facts. The dedication of this book reflects only a portion of the enormous gratitude I feel for his work and for his assistance in clarifying my own thoughts about what will always remain his field.
January 1, 2001
Hampstead, London and Guilford, Vermont