Deborah Lipstadt beat Holocaust denier in court and as film Denial recreates harrowing story… her victory against anti-semitism is as crucial as ever today

OFFICIALLY, it was historian Deborah Lipstadt in the dock when ultra-right author David Irving sued her for calling him a Holocaust denier.

But everyone in London’s High Court knew what was really on trial — that the Holocaust DID happen and that to deny this a LIE.

If Professor Lipstadt had lost, the evidence for Jews’ mass slaughter by the Nazis of World War Two would have been brought into question.

Now Bafta-nominated new movie Denial, starring Rachel Weisz as Lipstadt and Timothy Spall as Irving, tells the harrowing story of this courtroom drama.

In cinemas now, it tells how Irving dismissed Auschwitz’s gas chambers as a “fairytale” — and claimed Hitler was oblivious to the murder of six million Jews.

In the film’s trailer, Spall repeats Irving’s 1991 outburst: “I say quite tastelessly that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz.”

It was a reference to the late US senator’s 1969 crash on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, when he veered into a river, scrambled to safety and left his female passenger to die — not reporting the incident for nine hours.

In the same 1991 speech, English Irving, now 78, riled: “I’m going to form an association of Auschwitz survivors, survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, or the ASSHOLS.”

Five years earlier, he had sparked outrage by calling the Anne Frank diaries, about the Jewish girl who died in a German concentration camp, as “unattractive propaganda”.

So critics were as appalled by his 2000 libel action against American Jew Lipstadt as they were relieved when, ruling against him, the judge said he was “an active Holocaust denier; he is anti-semitic and racist and he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism”.

Lipstadt’s victory against anti-semitism is as crucial as ever today.

The poster for Denial was daubed in racist images in London, Irving is back touring his views in Britain, the internet is awash with hatred for Jews and key figures in the Labour Party are “tolerating” anti-semitism.

You might assume Lipstadt, 69, would want to silence Irving.

But she is a champion of free speech and does not believe Holocaust denial should be a crime like in Germany and Austria.

She said: “I don’t want to leave to politicians the decision of what can and can’t be said. That’s dangerous. Irving is free to do tours.”

The First Amendment in the United States Constitution defends free speech and Lipstadt was shocked by Britain’s libel laws when Irving first threatened to sue her in 1996.

Her book Denying the Holocaust had exposed him and he claimed she had damaged his reputation so badly that the £100,000 a year he earned in royalties was dwindling.

But under our UK libel laws it wasn’t enough for Deborah to show the Holocaust had happened, she also had to prove Irving had set out to distort the truth.

She recalled: “He could not have sued me for libel in the United States and he waited until the book came out here. Then he pounced.

“In Britain’s libel laws you are guilty until proven innocent.

“In the end the result was good, but it’s crazy that should have to happen.

“It’s crazy that politicians and reporters are subject to those kind of laws.”

Even more shocking to Lipstadt is the fact the UK government is now considering making libel laws even more onerous with rules making media pay the other side’s costs even if they win a case.

Branding the plans “crazy”, she said: “That’s an anti-free press thing. You have such a vibrant press in England, the best thing you can have.”

In her own libel trial, Irving’s diaries were used as evidence he was racist, as he admitted singing to his daughter: “I am a baby Aryan, not Jewish or sectarian, I have no plans to marry an ape or Rastafarian”.

Pelted with eggs Irving had claimed “rumours” of Nazi gas chambers were “fuelled by British propaganda” and cyanide had been used only to de-lice prisoners.

But in a crucial courtroom moment played out in the film, Lipstadt’s defence point out there would have been no need to delouse Jews as their bodies were burned in furnaces.

But what was most frustrating for Lipstadt was that her legal team would not let her take the stand, as they wanted to let Irving destroy himself with his lies.

She said: “I would have liked to take him on, to show I am not afraid of him.”

There was little doubt about whose side the public were on.

Irving was pelted with eggs and, when Lipstadt returned to her hotel after victory, she recalled: “The bellman stopped, the concierge stopped, and everybody started to applaud.”

Seventeen years on, though, she is “disturbed” by the UK Labour party not dealing with anti-Jewish comments in its ranks.

She said: “People like Ken Livingstone, even Jeremy Corbyn, have shown a willingness to tolerate anti-semitism that they would never do with homophobia or Islamophobia.”

Internet giant Google also stood accused of turning a blind eye to Holocaust denial by letting white nationalists Stormfront come out top when people typed into its search engine “Did the Holocaust happen?”.

Until last December, users were given a link to “Ten reasons the Holocaust didn’t happen.”

Deborah said: “The internet helps people with weird views. Google do have some responsibility.”

Indeed, Denial star Weisz’s parents fled here from Europe in 1938, and she said: “There was this intense gratitude. England was the wonderful place where they would take in a refugee and let them build a life.”

And her film role has been praised by Lipstadt, who said: “Rachel worked so hard to get to know me.”

Now Deborah, whose own immediate relatives avoided the Nazi purge, says: “The best memorial to the

Holocaust would be a true commitment to speaking out against prejudice.”