Perspectives from a British Courtroom: My Struggle with Deception, Lies and David Irving

Abstract

This plenary session concerns the history of the Holocaust. It opens a conference at which hundreds of papers on the Holocaust will be presented. I would like, therefore, to use my time this morning to make a number of observations about the historical proportions of my recently concluded libel trial. By that, I do not mean to speak of this as an event of historical proportions, it was hardly that. Rather, I would like to speak of it as an event which helped move the history of the Holocaust and the means by which historians discern that history not just into the public arena, but into the forensic arena. There have been many trials concerning the Holocaust. Most have have concerned the actions and misdeeds of war criminals. The history of the Holocaust certainly figured into each of these. This trial, however, was the first trial in which a Holocaust historian was the defendant and a person who claimed to be a Holocaust historian the plaintiff or claimant.

Plenary Address, Oxford, 17 July 2000