Lipstadt, Deborah E. 1947-

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Lipstadt, Deborah E. 1947-
(Deborah Esther Lipstadt)

PERSONAL:

Born March 18, 1947, in New York, NY; daughter of Erwin H. (a company president) and Miriam (a company president) Lipstadt. Education: Attended Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1966-68; City College (now of the City University of New York), B.A. (with honors), 1969; Brandeis University, M.A., 1972, Ph.D., 1976.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, 204C Candler Library, 550 Asbury Cir., Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Washington, Seattle, assistant professor of history and religion, 1974-79; University of California, Los Angeles, assistant professor of Jewish studies, beginning 1979; Hebrew Union College, New York, NY, assistant professor, summer, 1979; Emory University, Atlanta, GA, director of Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies and Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies. Israel Goldstein Lecturer in the History of Zionism and the Yishuv; research fellow, Institute for Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977; fellow, Center for Jewish Community Studies, beginning 1980. Member, United States State Department Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, 1996-99; representative, American delegation to the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 2005; member, United States Holocaust Memorial Council; Holocaust Museum, Washington DC, member of executive committee of the council and chair of academic committee.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, Association for Jewish Studies (member of board of directors, 1976-81), American Association for Religion, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture grant, 1977-78; University of Washington grants, 1977, 1978; research grant, University of California, Los Angeles, 1979-83; "Forward Fifty" list, Forward magazine, 2000; Al Chernin Award, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, 2005; Student Government Association Award and Emory Williams Award, both Emory University. Honorary doctorates from Yeshiva University, Bar Ilan University, and Baltimore Hebrew University.

WRITINGS:

The Zionist Career of Louis Lipsky, 1900-1921, Arno Press (New York, NY), 1982.

Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945, Free Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Norman Foster and Frederick Baker) The Reichstag Graffiti = Die Reichstag-Graffiti, Jovis (Berlin, Germany), 2003.

History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving, Ecco (New York, NY), 2005.

Also contributor to books, including Jewish Reflections on Death, edited by Jack Riemer, Schocken (New York, NY), 1975; Essays in Modern Jewish History, edited by Francis Malino and Phyllis Cohen Albert, 1981; and Organizational Structure of the American Jewish Community, edited by Michael Dobkowski, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1983. Contributor to periodicals, including Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Sun, New York Times, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, the London Times, and Daily Telegraph. Advisory editor, Dictionary of Twentieth-Century American Jewish Biographies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Deborah E. Lipstadt is a professor of Jewish and Holocaust studies and the author of several well-received volumes dealing with different aspects of the Holocaust, Jewish life, and Zionism. One of her earliest book publications is The Zionist Career of Louis Lipsky, 1900-1921. Lipstadt once explained part of her inspiration for that work to CA: "My interest in Louis Lipsky was prompted by my interest in how an American-born Jew, a lover of baseball and Coca-Cola, grew to become such an avid Zionist—and how he chose to define himself as both an American Jew and a Zionist. What conflicts, if any, did he see in that dual identity? What I found was that he had integrated the two in a fascinating fashion but was not afraid to confront the problems inherent in wearing ‘two hats.’"

Discussing her 1983 work, Organizational Structure of the American Jewish Community, with CA, Lipstadt further noted: "Jewish women are being granted increasing power in the organized American Jewish community. They are holding greater numbers of responsible positions and helping to formulate the policies of the community. Nonetheless, there is nothing even closely resembling parity. Women still function on a lower level in terms of power than do men. That situation is changing, in part because increasing numbers of women are working and control their own funds and make their own decisions. These women, as well as their nonworking counterparts, are no longer satisfied to hold a secondary status."

In her 1986 book, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945, Lipstadt deals with "the question of information and knowledge during the Holocaust," as she told CA. "What sort of information was in the press? What did the public know? How willing were they to accept the truth of the information that they read? How did the manner in which the press covered this news affect public opinion and perceptions of Hitler and the Nazis? I find that information and knowledge are two different things. The public had the information but did not translate it into knowledge because it just seemed too incredible to be true."

In 2000 Lipstadt won a libel suit brought against her by British historian David Irving in London, England. Irving had sued Lipstadt for libel after she characterized him as a denier of the Holocaust in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. Lipstadt's work was the first full-length study of those who attempt to deny the historical fact of the Holocaust. For Lipstadt, Irving was one of the most dangerous of Holocaust deniers because his work was reviewed in mainstream journals as well as in professional journals. She noted that in his works Irving has questioned the very existence of the death camps and gas chambers used to murder millions of Jews during World War II. Irving thereafter sued Lipstadt for libel, and she became an unwilling party to a protracted court case, which finally ended in 2000 when a judge ruled against Irving. It was an expensive victory for Lipstadt, whose lawyers presented her with a two million dollar legal bill. Irving subsequently lost his appeal to the judgment. Irving was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court in 2006 for being a Holocaust denier.

Lipstadt records her legal battles in her 2005 work, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving. Here she recounts how, under British law, it was up to her as a defendant to prove herself innocent of the charge of libel. "The core of the book," explained School Library Journal contributor Sandy Freund, "is the trial itself, combining a page-turning eyewitness account and a close look at the mind-set and dubious research methods of a neo-Nazi." Some of this dubious research, which Lipstadt's defense team presented, involved Irving's assertions that the death toll was higher in the Ted Kennedy car accident at Chappaquidick than in the Auschwitz gas chambers; that the narrative of Anne Frank was a fake; and that Hitler never knew or condoned the Final Solution. Lipstadt herself never took the stand during the trial, for her lawyers wanted to keep the focus on Irving, a tactic that proved successful in the end. Reviewing History on Trial in the Recorder, Patricia Paine felt that the first part of the book, in which Lipstadt's defense team arranges their evidence, might appeal most to readers. "The forensic details will appeal to those who like a good detective story," Paine noted. However, Paine felt that "once Lipstadt starts to describe the trial, her first-person narrative gets tiresome." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found the real "drama in the book" to come from the questioning of Irving by Lipstadt's lead lawyer. The same reviewer called the book a "powerful account" of a fight for freedom of speech and historical accuracy. Further praise came from a Kirkus Reviews critic who felt the book was a "fascinating and meritorious work of legal—and moral—history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Lipstadt, Deborah E., History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving, Ecco (New York, NY), 2005.

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 1986, Richard W. Steele, review of Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945, p. 1289.

History Today, May, 1995, review of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, p. 73.

Journal of American History, September, 1986, Thomas C. Leonard, review of Beyond Belief, p. 513.

Journal of Communication, spring, 1987, Hannah Kliger, review of Beyond Belief, 149,

Kirkus Reviews, November, 2004, review of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving.

Publishers Weekly, January 10, 2005, review of History on Trial, p. 51.

Recorder, April 15, 2005, Patricia Pane, "Firsthand Account of Author vs. a Holocaust Denier," review of History on Trial.

School Library Journal, August, 2005, Sandy Freund, review of History on Trial, p. 154.

Social Education, October, 1995, review of Denying the Holocaust, p. 377.

Tikkun, May, 1995, review of Denying the Holocaust, p. 19.