The Eichmann Trial Read Online Free

would result in a ruling that I was indeed guilty of libeling David Irving by calling him a denier. Irving could then legitimately interpret such a ruling as having concluded that his version of the Holocaust—no plan to kill the Jews, no gas chambers, no Hitler involvement—was legitimate. “So what?” the historian continued. “No one will believe it anyway.” From my then budding awareness of the Internet, I knew he was wrong. There were many people who, though not fully accepting deniers’ claims, might wonder if there was not some justification to Irving’s positions.
    Many British Jews did not want me to fight and pressured me to find some way “to settle this whole matter.” Irving, they were convinced, would “win,” irrespective of the outcome. “Even if he loses,” one told me, “he will wrest so much publicity from the matter that he will end up ahead.” Anthony Julius, my solicitor, the lawyer who prepared the case, developed the forensic strategy, and then turned it over to Richard Rampton to litigate in court, asked those who counseled me to settle what they thought my bottom line should be: Two million Jews? Three million? One death camp? Two or three? (Most dropped the matter at that point.) I juxtaposed these suggestions that I ignore the matter with the messages I was receiving from survivors. I could not look them in the eye and say, “When given the chance to stand up to this complete distortion of your history, I chose not to fight.” These skeptics’ arguments notwithstanding, I became convinced that I owed the survivors a full-fledged fight against those who would assault their history.
    If I had any lingering doubts about my decision, they were erased for me on the first day of the trial. In front of a packed courtroom, Irving had spoken for three hours. Predicting a great victory for himself, he had repeatedly denied the Holocaust. I seethed with anger as I listened to the historical distortions and the anti-Semitism I found riddling his speech. When the session ended and we emerged from the courtroom, both of us were surrounded by reporters. He happily engaged them. I, however, was stymied. Because I was not giving testimony during the trial, my lawyers had asked me not to speak to the press. They did not want to antagonize the judge and give Irving room to say to him, “Lipstadt won’t give testimony in your courtroom, but she was speaking on the BBC last night.” I turned to my lawyer, who was standing next to me, and insisted that I should “give them something.” He stood his ground: “Say nothing.” As we debated the matter back and forth, an elderly woman worked her way through the crowd, approached me, touched me on the arm, and then rolled up the sleeve of her sweater. Pointing to the number tattooed on her arm, she said: “ You are our witness.” I forgot about talking to the press.
    I never would have brought a matter of Holocaust denial to a court, but once I had been forced to enter that arena I had no choice but to respond with all my abilities. Though I did not represent the survivors, I felt their presence in that courtroom. They filled the public gallery. They gave me lists of the names of their murdered relatives. And when I prevailed, they embraced me, laughed, and cried with me. Though I’d never intended to do so, I ended up fighting for them.
    In a larger sense, these two choruses of voices—those of the victims for whom evil is still present and the fight is still in some sense ongoing; and those who believe the battle has been won and that anti-Semitic horrors are the province of either the past or the “crazies” who are better ignored—still constitute the foundation upon which we build our understanding of Eichmann, the judgment against him, and his sentencing. Although some look back and see a trial of momentous importance because it brought to justice one of the key players in the Final Solution, others dismiss both the trial and Eichmann