Denying the Holocaust - Hardcover

Lipstadt, Deborah E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0029192358 ISBN 13: 9780029192351

Publisher: Free Press, 1993

Synopsis

Reviews the history of the revisionist movement that denies the truth of the Holocaust, tracing its growth from small mutterings on the lunatic fringe to a theory with a shocking amount of acceptance, and exposing the revisionists as sinister frauds.

About this title

About the Author:

Deborah Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Her other books are Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving and The Eichmann Trial.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A forceful analysis of attempts to deny the Nazi Holocaust. Lipstadt (Religion/Emory University; Beyond Belief, 1985--not reviewed) traces the history of Holocaust revisionism and contends that it can no longer be ignored, showing how Holocaust-deniers, once dismissed as a lunatic fringe, have been growing in numbers and influence during the past 20 years. Citing groups like the Institute for Historical Review, publications like The Spotlight, politicians like David Duke, and academicians like Leonard Jeffries, Lipstadt presents numerous examples of attempts to prove that the extermination of six million Jews is a hoax; that only a few thousand Jews died in the camps from disease; that the Allied bombings of German cities were worse than any Nazi offense; and that the ``true victims'' of WW II were the German people. These distortions of recorded history, argues the author, threaten to undermine our Western rationalist tradition and to legitimize the politicization of history. To Lipstadt, the common thread among Holocaust deniers is a ``purely anti-Semitic diatribe'' portraying Jews as victimizers. Self-declared scholars like Arthur R. Butz (whose credentials are in electronics) claim that Jews used the world's sympathy after the war to ``displace'' another people, establish the nation of Israel, and ``steal'' billions in reparations from their German and Western ``cash cows.'' Lipstadt argues vehemently against giving revisionists a forum in the name of free speech or freedom of the press, and she details the efforts of California revisionist Bradley Smith, who pushed a ``Holocaust was a hoax'' campaign in college newspapers throughout the US. Lipstadt contends that ``the responses to Holocaust denial by both students and faculty graphically demonstrate the susceptibility of an educated and privileged segment to the kind of reasoning that creates a hospitable climate for the rewriting of history.'' An important, well-documented study that deserves attention. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0029192358
• ISBN 13: 9780029192351
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 278