LitArk » Books » Art

Deborah E. Lipstadt - Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial

Here you can read online Deborah E. Lipstadt - Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2016, publisher: HarperCollins, genre: Art. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Book:
Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial
Author:
Deborah E Lipstadt
Publisher:
HarperCollins
Genre:
Books / Art
Year:
2016
Rating:
3 / 5
Favourites:
Add to favourites
Your mark:
- 60
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5

Description
Author's other books
Similar books

Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Now a major motion picture starring Rachel Weisz, Timothy Spall and Tom Wilkinson.

A compelling book: memoir and courtroom drama, a work of historical and legal import. -- Jewish Week

Deborah Lipstadt, author of the groundbreaking Denying the Holocaust, chronicles her six-year legal battle with controversial British World War II historian David Irving that culminated in a sensational 2000 trial in London

In her acclaimed 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called putative World War II historian David Irving one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial, a conclusion that she reached by examining his cunning manipulations of evidence, partisanship to Hitler, persistent exoneration of the Third Reich, and his confirmed celebrity among swelling ranks of anti-Semitic organizations internationally. In 1994, Irving filed a libel lawsuit, not in the U.S. courtroomwhere the onus of proof lies on the plaintiff, but in the UKwhere the onus of proof lies on the defendant. At stake were not only the reputations of two historians, but the record of history itself.

The four-month trial took place in London in 2000 and drew international attention. With the help of a first-rate team of solicitors and historians and the support of her UK publisher, Penguin, Lipstadt won, her victory proclaimed on the front page of major newspapers around the world. Part history, part real life courtroom drama, Denial is Lipstadts riveting, blow-by-blow account of the trial that tested the standards of historical and judicial truths and resulted in a formal denunciation of the infamous Holocaust denier.

Originally published as History on Trial.

Deborah E. Lipstadt: author's other books

Who wrote Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Dedicated to the victims of the Shoah and To those who enabled mein so many - photo 1

Dedicated
to the victims of the Shoah,
and
To those who enabled mein so many different waysto
fight the attempt to ravage their history and memory

But take utmost care, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And teach them to your children and your childrens children.

Deuteronomy 4:9

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Someday, perhaps, it will bring pleasure to remember all this.

The Aeneid I: 203

CONTENTS

Guide

I n 2010 I was first approached by the BBC and Participant Films to adapt Deborah Lipstadts book History on Trial for the screen. My first reaction was one of extreme reluctance. I have no taste for Holocaust movies. It seems both offensive and clumsy to add an extra layer of fiction to suffering which demands no gratuitous intervention. It jars. Faced with the immensity of what happened, sober reportage and direct testimony has nearly always been the most powerful approach. In the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, I had noticed that all the photography, however marginal and however inevitably incomplete, had a shock and impact lacking in the rather contrived and uninteresting art.

It was a considerable relief on reading History on Trial to find that, although the Holocaust was its governing subject, there was no need for it to be visually re-created. In 2000 the British historian David Irving, whose writing had frequently offered a sympathetic account of World War II from the Nazi point of view, had sued Deborah Lipstadt in the High Court in London, claiming that her description of him as a denier in her previous book, Denying the Holocaust, had done damage to his reputation. In English courts at the time, the burden of proof in any libel case lay not with the accuser but with the defendant, compared to the United States where it was the litigants job to prove the untruth of the alleged libel. It was for that very reason that London was Irvings chosen venue. He had thought it would make his legal action easier. All at once, an Atlanta academic found herself with the unenviable task of marshalling conclusive scientific proof for the attempted extermination of the European Jews over fifty years earlier.

There were many interesting features to the casenot least the condescension of some dubious parts of the British academic community to an upstart Americanbut three aspects appealed to me above all. First, there was a technical script-writing challenge. In conventional American pictures, the role of the individual is wholeheartedly celebrated. In a typical studio film, even one as good as Erin Brockovich, there is always an obvious injustice which is corrected by an inarticulate person suddenly being given the chance to find their voice. The tradition goes back to Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, and beyond. But what was unusual about Lipstadts experience was that she was an already articulate and powerfully intelligent woman who was ordered by her own defence team not to take the stand. The decision was made that her testimony would give David Irving, conducting his own prosecution, the opportunity to switch the focus of the trial from what it should properly be aboutthe examination of how his anti-Semitism infected his honestyto an attack on something entirely irrelevant: the reliability in the witness box of Lipstadts instant capacity to command every scattergun detail of history.

It was quite a professional undertaking to make drama out of such a complete and painful act of self-denial. One thing was for sure: we would not be offering a boilerplate Hollywood narrative. At great expense to her own peace of mind, Deborah Lipstadt had agreed to be silenced. The fascination of the film would lie with the personal cost of that choice. What were the implications for someone who, having been brought up to believe in the unique power of the individual, discovered instead the far subtler joys of teamwork? The book she had written turned out to be her complete defence, and the verdict vindicated that book in almost every detail. But in order to effect that defence, she had to trust the judgment of two other people from a country and a bizarre legal system different from her ownher Scottish barrister, Richard Rampton, and her English solicitor, Anthony Julius.

Second, it was clear from the start that this film would be a defence of historical truth. It would be arguing that although historians have the right to differently interpret facts, they do not have the right to knowingly misrepresent those facts. But if such integrity was necessary for historians, then it surely had to apply to screenwriters too. If I planned to offer an account of the trial and of David Irvings behaviour, I would enjoy none of the film writers usual licence to speculate or invent. From the trial itself there were thirty-two days of transcript, which took me weeks to read thoroughly. Not only would I refuse to write scenes which offered any hokey psychological explanation for Irvings character outside the court, I would also be bound to stick rigidly to the exact words used inside it. I could not allow any neo-Fascist critic later to claim that I had rewritten the testimony. Nor did I want to. The trial scenes are verbatim. To say that such fidelity represented an almost impossible dramatic difficultythis trial, like any other, was often extremely boringwould be to understate. At times, I would beat my head, wondering why real-life characters couldnt put things in ways which more pithily expressed their purposes.

But it was for a third overriding reason that I came to feel that a film of Deborahs fascinating book cried out to be made. In an Internet age it is, at first glance, democratic to say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That is surely true. It is however a fatal step to then claim that all opinions are equal. Some opinions are backed by fact. Others are not. And those which are not backed by fact are worth considerably less than those which are. A few clubby English historians had always indulged David Irving on the grounds that although he was evidently soft on Hitler, he was nevertheless a master of his documents. These admirers were ready to step forward and attack Lipstadts character and her success in the courts on the grounds that it was likely to make other historians more cautious, and thereby to inhibit freedom of speech. But far from being an attack on freedom of speech, Lipstadts defence turned out to be its powerful triumph. Freedom of speech may include freedom deliberately to lie, but it also includes the right to be called out on your lying.

During the early days of the Renaissance, Copernicus and Galileo would have scoffed at the idea that there was any such thing as authority. A sceptical approach to life is a fine thing and one which has powered revolutionary change and high ideals. But a sceptical approach to scientific fact is rather less admirable. It is dangerous. As Lipstadt says in my screenplay, certain things are true. Elvis is dead. The ice caps are melting. And the Holocaust did happen. Millions of Jews went to their deaths in camps and open pits in a brutal genocide which was sanctioned and operated by the leaders of the Third Reich. There are some subjects about which two points of view are not equally valid. We are entering, in politics especially, a post-factual era in which it is apparently permissible for public figures to assert things without evidence, and then to justify their assertions by adding Well, thats my opinion, as though that in itself is some kind of justification. It isnt. And such charlatans need to learn it isnt. Contemplating the Lipstadt/Irving trial may help them to that end.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial»

Look at similar books to Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Deborah Lipstadt

Denying the Holocaust

Donald M. McKale

Nazis after Hitler: How Perpetrators of the Holocaust Cheated Justice and Truth

Joe Mulhall

British Fascism After the Holocaust: From the Birth of Denial to the Notting Hill Riots 1939–1958

Spiegel

RENIAS DIARY: a holocaust journal

Lipstadt

Antisemitism: here and now

Deborah E. Lipstadt

Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933- 1945

Deborah E. Lipstadt

Antisemitism: Here and Now

Robert Jan van Pelt

The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial

Bazyler Michael J

Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust

D. D. Guttenplan

The Holocaust on Trial

Deborah E. Lipstadt

Denying the Holocaust

Deborah E. Lipstadt

The Eichmann Trial (Jewish Encounters)

Reviews about «Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial»

Discussion, reviews of the book Denial [Movie Tie-in]: Holocaust History on Trial and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.