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Title: The Holocaust on Trial by D. D. Guttenplan, D.D. Guttenplan ISBN: 0-393-02044-4 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.69 (13 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Informative journalistic account, but unsatisfying.
Comment: IRVING v. PENGUIN and LIPSTADT (2000) was a remarkable law suit, pitting Holocaust denier David Irving against the noted scholar Deborah Lipstadt (author of DENYING THE TRUTH) and her publisher. Under the British law of libel, Irving could force Lipstadt and Penguin to prove the truth of their claims that he was a Holocaust denier who distorted history in the service of his racist agenda, instead of a respected historian who dared to take a revisionist view of Hitler's responsibility -- or lack of responsibility -- for the Holocaust.
The story that D.D. Guttenplan tells is often informative and occasionally riveting, but unfortunately it does little more than what you'd get from a thorough journalistic account of the case, which is what this book originally was. Guttenplan does not do an adequate job of assessing the phenomenon of Holocaust denial -- or of the laws that several European nations and Canada have passed making Holocaust denial a crime. He is usually good on the cut-and-thrust of the trial, but, having actually read Judge Charles Gray's mammoth and devastating opinion, I wish that Guttenplan either had given more room to analyzing it or had reprinted it as an appendix for the reader.
In sum, there are other, better books on the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, and I regret that this book was not better.
-- R.B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School
Rating: 5
Summary: "The Holocaust On Trial"--The Imperative of Truth
Comment: D.D. Guttenplan's "The Holocaust On Trial" is an insightful and well-written account of the David Irving--Deborah Lipstadt libel case. The story of the trial would be reason enough to buy the book--this is one of the best descriptions of a real-life legal proceeding that I have ever read. Guttenplan has a good reporter's ability to bring the setting and personalities to life so that the inherent drama of the trial holds the reader's interest throughout.
But of course, this was no ordinary trial. Irving is the author of several books about World War II that some reputable historians have praised. He has long argued that while some "atrocities" were inflicted on Europe's Jews (as they were also visited upon Germans), Hitler did not order any genocide of Jews and Jews were not systematically gassed at Auschwitz. When American scholar Deboral Lipstadt called Irving "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial," Irving sued Lipstadt for libel in England, where libel plaintiffs enjoy many advantages. Lipstadt and her publisher were forced to spend millions of dollars in a high-risk effort to prove that Irving was a liar and not just a historian with controversial views.
It is here that "The Holocaust On Trial" becomes much more than another good book about an interesting lawsuit with intriguing characters. As Guttenplan explains so well, the trial raised profound questions about the meaning of history and the ways in which the Holocaust has been remembered and understood as well as the ways in which it has been misrepresented and exploited.
It is a remarkable accomplishment that Guttenplan has compelling and thoughtful insights into the Holocaust-- a subject that on the one the one hand is so enormous and profound as to defy representation, and on the other hand has been so written about, depicted and analyzed that one picks up another book wondering if anything new can be said.
"The Holocaust On Trial" meets that exacting test on many levels--as a chronicle of a compelling courtroom drama, but more importantly as a meditation on the enduring impact the Holocaust has had on our culture. I was particularly impressed by Guttenplan's sense of the humanity of the Jewish victims of the genocide and his ability to make the reader appreciate them as human beings rather than abstractions.
We honor the victims of the Holocaust above all by remembering what happened with unsparing honesty. "The Holocaust On Trial" eloquently demonstrates that this difficult goal is a moral imperative. It is a valuable contribution to the literature of the Holocaust and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in historical truth and the sacrifices that are sometimes required in the service of that truth.
Rating: 2
Summary: This trial deserves better .
Comment: To start off as a real keen reader of WW2 I have read several of David Irving books on Nazi Germany. Some are very good like HITLER'S WAR and some are fair. Despite what you read in this book they are not brilliantly accurate even in a narrow military point of view. For example the treatment of the German army at Stalingrad is almost a complete cover up for Hitler.Those like John Keegan that say that they are good military histories probably don't care enough to go though them as Guttenplan makes clear in his book. What David Irving books are good is they show us what Hitler might have thought at the time. They have been called a study that Hitler might have written of himself in the war.
However this is not the issue of this case. What got David Irving into trouble is Holocaust revisionism? And in particular here his attempts to use the British legal system to provide money and get legal system with the respect that comes with it to justify his writings. In this book you will find a good coverage of the trial day by day as most of the reviewers have pointed out. As such I will not add to these points already mentioned.
And the main problem that I found with the book is that the writer tries to put his attitude about Jews and what is his own preduce and half truths into the case. So the reader is subjected to a rather weird idea! That the memory of the holocaust is used by Jews for political purposes mainly to prop up Israel. That somehow it was only after 1967 in the US that Jews cared about it as such.
Let me tell Guttenplan something that in my parents house, my grandfather lived and in a little room he filled up the walls with pictures of his dead brothers, father, cousins, mother and many school mates and friends all gone. After the war he went back to his town and collected all the pictures. The only thing left of this community is my grandfathers pictures. When I was a little boy I used to hear from him about the war. I knew about the Nazi, the labor camps and the death camps before I knew about politics.
Guttenplan however attacks several works with a vehemence such as Hitler's Willing Executioner by Daniel Gold. I would say that if ever a book was ruined by overstating a case it would be that one but it is certainly a first class book and his arguments overall are probably correct. Another book From Time Immemorial : The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters which the writer devotes a large footnote in the book not where most of the footnotes are at the end to discuss Norman Finkelstein who is not a respected scholar and considered to being basically a crackpot arguments about it. Certainly Joan Peters arguments are now almost accepted by all. One suspects that Guttenplan reason in rejecting these books has less to do with logic then with his politics.
Which would explain his rather weird attitudes that he tries to wrap around this case.
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Title: Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory by Deborah E. Lipstadt ISBN: 0452272742 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: July, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial by Richard J. Evans ISBN: 0465021530 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? by Michael Shermer, Alex Grobman, Arthur Hertzberg ISBN: 0520216121 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 29 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial by R. J. Van Pelt, Robert Jan Van Pelt ISBN: 0253340160 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp by Israel Gutman, Michael Berenbaum, Yisrael Gutman ISBN: 025320884X Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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