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Title: Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory by Deborah E. Lipstadt ISBN: 0-452-27274-2 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: July, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.7 (30 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Important But Flawed
Comment: Deborah Lipstadt is best known for her stand against the British neo-Nazi David Irving. Her book, the first full-scale history of Holocaust denial, is essential reading, but it does not always meet the high standards of scholarship which this subject demands.
Lipstadt gives a useful account of the origins of Holocaust denial in Europe and America, explaining how the deniers falsify facts to uphold their antisemitic conspiracy theories. She notes that the same Jews who supposedly forced the world to collaborate in the Holocaust "hoax" were unable to convince even a single country to admit significant numbers of Jewish refugees (p127). Yet Jews are credited with almost supernatural powers in the mental universe of the deniers. They manufacture reports by Nazi death squad commanders describing mass killings, they fabricate official documents from Nazi headquarters ordering further atrocities, they create false recordings of speeches by Nazi leaders glorifying the genocide, all the while planting this evidence in the correct locations to guarantee its discovery by the Allies. Lipstadt mercilessly debunks the absurd notion that without their scheme being discovered or exposed by anyone, the inventors of the "hoax" - working in Western and Eastern zones, with the acquiescence of American, British, French and Soviet officials - somehow managed, in an incredibly short space of time, to produce thousands of documents, all designed to prove that the Nazis intended to annihilate the Jews (p127).
However, Lipstadt has nothing to say about the primary source of Holocaust denial in modern times, namely the racist and fascist dictatorships of the Middle East. A full study of the subject would point out that in today's Arab world, the neo-Nazi rulers of Syria denounce "the myth of the Nazi ovens used for the destruction of the Jews" (Damascus Radio, November 7, 1998); Egypt reveals that "claims that such crematoriums existed in the Nazi detention camps are jokes" (Al-Gumhuriya, March 4, 2000); the terrorist Palestinian Authority ridicules "the figure of 6 million Jews" as "a lie for propaganda" (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 13, 2001); while the Saudi apartheid regime mocks the "memory of the 6 million Jews, about whom Israel lies, saying that they were killed in the Nazi crematoriums" (Al-Riyadh, April 10, 2002). Of course, when they are not denying its veracity, these fanatics hasten to applaud the Final Solution, as in the case of Egyptian state media, which offer "thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory," for his actions against "the most vile criminals on the face of the earth," namely the Jews, while conceding that "we do have a complaint" against the Fuhrer, in that "his revenge on them was not enough" (Al-Akhbar, April 18, 2001). Such matters pass unnoticed in these pages.
Unfortunately, this omission pales before Lipstadt's egregious errors of fact, manifest in her discussion of other genocides in relation to the Holocaust. She describes the Khmer Rouge bloodbath as "a means of subduing and eliminating those whom Pol Pot imagined had collaborated with the Americans" (p212), apparently unaware that Pol Pot sought to create "a new socialist man" who would renounce individual profit for the sake of "selfless dedication to the collective wellbeing," a goal requiring "the systematic eradication of those persons who embodied or perpetuated the notion of individualism" (Kenneth M. Quinn, "The Pattern and Scope of Violence" in Karl D. Jackson, ed., "Cambodia 1975-1978: Rendezvous With Death," p193). Even more incredible is her suggestion that the slaughter was "part of a brutalizing war that had destroyed much of Cambodia's moral, social and physical infrastructure" (p212), a fiction which is only one step removed from the views of Pol Pot apologists who depict Khmer Rouge atrocities as "the direct and understandable response to the violence of the imperial system" (Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, "After the Cataclysm," p291).
Lipstadt also informs us that "[w]hereas Stalin's terror was arbitrary, Hitler's was targeted at a particular group" (p212), indicating that she has never heard of Stalin's forced famine in the Ukraine, in which 7 million died (Robert Conquest, "The Harvest of Sorrow"). No less shocking is her claim that "no citizen of the Soviet Union" assumed that deportation and death were "inevitable consequences of his or her ethnic origins" (p212), an assertion which betrays ignorance of the murderous ethnic cleansing of millions of people belonging to more than a dozen national minorities, with hundreds of thousands killed (Robert Conquest, "The Nation-Killers;" Alexander Nekrich, "The Punished Peoples;" Otto Pohl, "Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949"). Then there is her throwaway remark that the charge of Soviet genocide in Afghanistan "barely demands a response" (p213), casually dismissing the communist massacre of 1.5 million civilians and the maiming of 700,000 with anti-personnel mines, an act of genocide by any definition of the term (Sylvain Boulouque, "Communism in Afghanistan" in Stephane Courtois, ed., "The Black Book of Communism," pp719, 725).
Such errors do not inspire confidence. Those who wish to read accurate accounts of this issue would be wise to study this book in conjunction with Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, "Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?" Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust" and Richard Evans, "Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial."
Rating: 5
Summary: An important book
Comment: I recently reread "Denying the Holocaust" after reading "Lying About Hitler" by Richard Evans, who was one of the witnesses for the defense in the libel trial brought by British writer and holocaust denier David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt and her UK publisher Viking Penguin.
Lipstadt provides here a valuable, concise, well-documented history of the phenomenon of holocaust denial, which was rooted partly in antisemitism and partly in the original World War I revisionism movement that between the wars attempted to prove that Germany was not responsible for WWI. After World War II, antisemitics, neofascists, and philoGermans gradually came out of the woodwork to peddle their wares cloaked in the guise of revisionist history. They are still active today.
The book, which is 9 years old now, could really use an updated edition; it would be interesting to have Lipstadt's reflections on the David Irving trial, recent developments in denial, and, as a few other reviewers here have pointed out, for her to take a critical look at the subject of epidemic holocaust denial in the Arab world. I might add that holocaust denial among Arabs is not just a problem overseas, it unfortunately exists here as well. I work for a publisher that in a merger acquired a book about the holocaust aimed at advanced high school students. The decision was made to backlist the book in spite of the fact that it was at the time only a year old. When I asked why this had happened, I was told that it was to avoid complaints from Arab Americans (the book was eventually transferred to the college book division of our company. I have no idea what they have since done with it).
An important book well worth anyone's time.
Rating: 1
Summary: This book is terrible.
Comment: Book is a prime example of one presenting an emotional argument rather than an analytical argument. It is full of antagonistic, name calling rants that condemn revisionists as mindless haters of Judaism. It does not give any credit to the opposing view points (no matter how academically based) and the author comes off like a Howard Stern like personality: she is right and all others are, at best ignorant and at worst, stupid. Not all revisionist are Nazis. Some revisionists happen to be Jewish. This book is a waste of time.
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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: Beyond Belief : The American Press And The Coming Of The Holocaust, 1933- 1945 by Deborah E. Lipstadt ISBN: 0029191610 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Holocaust on Trial by D. D. Guttenplan, D.D. Guttenplan ISBN: 0393020444 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Survival In Auschwitz by Primo Levi ISBN: 0684826801 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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