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Title: History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving
Author: Deborah E. Lipstadt
Format: Epub
Rating: 4.75/5
Status: Finished
Reading Date: June 27, 2017 to July 3, 2017
Book Summary: A serious and important work on the power of using words to incite hatred and the need to stand up against those who hide behind their words to manipulate others, as told through the author's account of her courtroom battle with Holocaust denier David Irving. Deborah Lipstadt chronicles her five-year legal battle with David Irving that culminated in a sensational trial in 2000. In her acclaimed 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called David Irving, a prolific writer of books on World War II, "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial", a conclusion she reached after closely examining his books, speeches, interviews, and other copious records. The following year, after Lipstadt's book was published in the UK, Irving filed a libel suit against Lipstadt and her UK publisher, Penguin. Lipstadt prepared her defence with the help of first-rate team of solicitors, historians, and experts. The dramatic trial, which unfolded over the course of 10 weeks, ultimately exposed the prejudice, extremism, and distortion of history that defined Irving's work. Lipstadt's victory was proclaimed on the front page of major newspapers around the world, with the Daily Telegraph proclaiming that the trial did "for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations." Part history, part real life courtroom drama, History On Trial is Lipstadt's riveting, blow-by-blow account of the trial that tested the standards of historical and judicial truths and resulted in a formal denunciation of a Holocaust denier, crippling the movement for years to come.
Book Review: "I don’t see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz...It's legend."
-David Irving to crowd at Calgary in 1991

David Irving wrote Hitler's War. In it, he tried to clean up Hitler's reputation by stating that Hitler had no knowledge of the Final Solution. He is the author of several World War II. Each book disclaiming that any of the Holocaust happened.

Unfortunately for David, Deborah Lipstadt also wrote a book but one in which denying such an important part of history was dangerous. Within the pages, she offered a few hundred words to David's craft as a Holocaust denier.

This, of course, angered David that he sued Deborah in the British Courts. Here the burden would fall upon her to prove that she was right about him.

This book follows that period in which she was sued.

I really enjoyed this book immensely. It gave us an insight into Deborah's thoughts leading up to the trial and showed the dangers of what Holocaust denying really caused. I knew that there were many out there that did not believe in the Holocaust but I did not know one had gone so far to even try to clean up Hitler's reputation and try to make it seem as if he had no knowledge of what the concentration camps were really for.

This kind of denial seems to be gaining steam even in this day and age even with so much evidence that it did happen. You still have those that believe that the concentration camps were not used as historical evidence shows. Some believe it was just made up by the Jewish community.

If you are interested in history and trying to protect it from those who believe otherwise, then this book is definitely be for you.