Wednesday, August 5, 1998

From: [email protected] (David Gress)

 

Dear Mr. Irving,

For two years I have been a fascinated reader of your Action Report which interests me both as a historian and as a scholar committed to complete freedom of inquiry. Most of the people I normally read or deal with belong to the large tribe of those who will have nothing to do with you. Much of my own work in history has been on Germany, although not exclusively on the National Socialist period, and I have to say that although I do not agree with everything you say, I have learned a great deal, both about history and about contemporary civilization, or lack thereof, from your writings. You are a person of quite extraordinary energy, persistence, and integrity. (Also, despite your appalling set of enemies, a very lucky man; I have just seen the photos of Bente and Jessica on your beautifully designed Web site). I very much hope to meet you sometime.

In short: even if your enemies are right about the Holocaust, their methods disgrace them. And even if you are wrong, your scholarly methods do you credit. Why, I wonder, is it becoming more, rather than less, difficult to conduct serious debate on these matters?

I can't help noting an analogy in this country. About a year ago, three youngish historians propounded, with great fanfare, the argument that some of the 8,000 Danish volunteers in the Waffen-SS had committed atrocities against civilians on the Eastern front. On this speculative possibility, for which they offered only thin, circumstantial evidence, they and others then based a vindictive campaign to persuade the German government to cancel its (rather measly) veterans' payments to the last few score of survivors of these volunteers. So far as I know, this campaign has not succeeded. But it demonstrated, yet again, that as we move further from 1945, sober and unprejudiced scholarship and debate become less, not more, possible. Prejudice, rather than truth, appears to be the daughter of time in these instances.

I have become much more aware of this last issue by reading a just-reissued history of the Danish Waffen-SS soldiers by one of them. I had been looking for something like that and was beginning to think I would have to write it myself, when I found it quite by accident in a bookstore in the poetry section (!?).

Anyway, if we do meet, we can discuss such matters of mutual interest. Meanwhile, congratulations on your recent 60th birthday, and on your continuing successful efforts to publish, despite all obstacles.

With best wishes for the future,

 

 

David Gress Senior Research Fellow, Ph D Danish Institute of International Affairs Nytorv 5 1450 Copenhagen K Denmark tel +45 3336 6586 fax +45 3336 6566