Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (review)

Book Reviews 157 This volume addresses a belated truth-seeking by the German post-war generation before their elders pass from the scene. The effort parallels the attempt by the children of Holocaust victims to integrate the tortured history of their parents. With minor exceptions, the German therapists do not explore those pre-existing conditions which spawned an extermination ethos in a civilized people. The enthusiasm with which the whole spectrum ofGermans embraced the notions of racial purity and social Darwinism did not arise in a vacuum. Historical, socioeconomic, religiOUS, and cultural forces which promote terror have not been extinguished by Auschwitz. Revisionism and racial cleansing remain everpresent answers to sociopolitical and economic crises. Werner Israel Halpern, M.D. Rochester, New York Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, by Deborah Lipstadt. New York: Free Press, 1993. 271 pp. $22.95. The recent stir of negative opinion and the theft of ca.mpus newspapers at Brandeis University because of the placement of a Holocaust denial advertisement by Bradley Smith suggests the heights that Holocaust deniers have achieved. Deborah Lipstadt has provided in this work an understanding of how Holocaust denial has prospered in recent years, particularly through misguided arguments of freedom of speech. This is an important work, as the debate about how to deal with Holocaust denial is one that does not engage merely students, but faculty members as well. While Holocaust deniers may be dismissed as group of antisemites, it is not enough, in the eyes of the author and a growing segment of American academia, to simply permit such people to run a free course, particularly in a university environment. Holocaust denial is not a question of opinion, but an issue which focuses on denial of facts in the interest of delegitimizing the event and its consequences, particularly the existence of Israel. Denial prospers because of the new generation of history illiterates, even in good universities, and the belief that debate of the facts is somehow freedom of expression. Lipstadt's history of Holocaust denial begins with the prewar antecedents and gives ample coverage to the well-known evolution of postwar literature of Bardeche, Rassinier, Barnes, Hoggan, App, Harwood, Butz, and Faurisson. Lipstadt not only summarizes their works but also develops substantial evidence of the methodology of Holocaust denial. A 158 SHOFAR Fall 1994 Vol. 13, No.1 good deal of this "methodology" involves falsely or incompletely quoting official reports, deniers quoting each other, rearrangement of chronological events, and making conclusions based on the absence of factual evidence. This is all the stuff of bad historical writing made significant because of the subject itself and the secondary issues. Lipstadt's chapter on "The Battle for the Campus" is particularly enlightening in light of antisemitic attacks on Jews and Zionism by the Nation ofIslam, nco-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and others. Lipstadt focuses, quite correctly, on the problems associated with political correctness and relativism of issues on campus (i.e., Stalin was worse than Hitler and there have been many "holocausts") and how those positions play into the hands of deniers. Bradley Smith, for example, has successfully utilized the idea that a "politically correct" official line on the Holocaust exists, which is not subject to debate. That" line" is actually the factual history of the event. Facts arc not debated, except for deniers. Another area where Lipstadt excels is in her analysis of the free-speech debate. The author makes very clear how First Amendment arguments to allow debate on the Holocaust are misused, even in high academic circles: "The First Amendment docs not guarantee access to a private publication. It is designed to serve as a shield to protect individuals and institutions from government interference in their affairs. It is not a sword by which every person who makes an outlandish statement or notorious claim can invoke a Constitutional right to be published." The frightening aspect of the campus "debate," Lipstadt admits in a pessimistic tone, is that students come away believing there arc two sides in this "debate." If this conclusion can be reached by educated students, then Holocaust deniers have already won a victory. For anyone associated with a charged campus environment where...