Deborah Lipstadt: 'The truth is still there, but we have to act as guardians to it' #SkollWF2017

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, Atlanta. Her most recent book, HOLOCAUST: AN AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING (2016) explores how America has understood and interpreted the Holocaust since 1945.

Her previous book was THE EICHMANN TRIAL, (2011). The New York Times Book Review described Lipstadt as having “done a great service by… recovering the event as a gripping legal drama ….in the world’s delayed awakening to the magnitude of the Holocaust.”

Her book HISTORY ON TRIAL (2005) now entitled DENIAL: HOLOCAUST HISTORY ON TRIAL (2016), is the story of her libel trial in London against David Irving who sued her for calling him a Holocaust denier and right wing extremist. The Daily Telegraph (London) described David Irving v. Penguin/Deborah Lipstadt as having "done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations." The Times (London) said "history has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory." According to the New York Times, the trial "put an end to the pretense that Mr. Irving is anything but a self-promoting apologist for Hitler." The movie, DENIAL, starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, and Timothy Spall depicts the trial. With a screenplay by Sir David Hare, DENIAL was produced by BBC Films and Participant Media. The film was nominated for a BAFTA as one of the best British films of the year.

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