Interview with Anti-Semitism Historian Deborah Lipstadt
DER SPIEGEL: Professor Lipstadt, the trial of the Holocaust denier David Irving trial took place in London. How do you feel when you come back to the city today?
Lipstadt: Every time I come to London, I take the same hotel where I stayed then for 12 weeks during the trial. When we won in court, even taxi drivers and people in the street congratulated me. But the trial was not a pleasure, it was an ordeal, years of hard work. Luckily, I had wonderful lawyers and supporters. The court found Irving was a Holocaust denier, a racist and an anti-Semite.
DER SPIEGEL: He denied the mass murder of the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. He was also well connected with German neo-Nazis. He said that the Jews would keep coming back to the Holocaust because it was the only interesting thing they had ever experienced.
Lipstadt: It was unbearable how he made fun of Holocaust survivors. Before the trial, he once pointed to the tattooed camp number of a survivor and asked her how much money she had made from it. He claimed that more women had died in the backseat of Ted Kennedy's car in Chappaquiddick than in the Auschwitz gas chambers.
