Letters to David Irving on this Website

Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate.

South African citizen David Katz submitted a deeply flawed version of David Irving's November 12, 1987 lecture in Johannesburg to the ADL-funded Nizkor Website. Nizkor Webmaster Ken McVay recklessly posted the Katz version on his Website a few hours later.

We reproduce the Katz version elsewhere on this site. In 1998 David Irving had a brief e-mail exchange with Katz about the errors. See too the corresponding passage in Mr Irving's diary of this 1987 tour (with incidentally many references to "Blacks" which make quite plain how mendacious the Katz account is).

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David Irving wrote to David Katz on February 2, 1998:
I HAVE now read your highly inaccurate account of a speech which I delivered at Johannesburg [see picture below].
Why did you not challenge me at the time if as you claim I used the n-word to describe the country's black population? Your allegation is ludicrous. I have asked others who were present and all say that you are lying.[*] I have never used the n-word in my life. To have used it, when I was a guest of South Africa, would have been tasteless beyond words. My last two personal assistants have been
(a) a Sri Lankan
(b) a Punjabi.

I think you are a very sick puppy, my friend.
David Irving

[* Among those whom Mr Irving questioned is a person now a diplomat for Nelson Mandela's South Africa based on the S.A. embassy in Mozambique.]

David Katz replied on February 3, 1998:

THANK YOU for your E-mail concerning a letter that I submitted to Nizkor nearly a year ago. In response to your denial I submit the following:
Dear Mr Irving, beside the obvious umbrage that you have taken to me referring to you using the nigger word, I am pleased to see that you have not really disputed the rest of my account of your promotional speech in Johannesburg. Pray sir what else in my account deserves the label of "highly inaccurate".
Prior to your speech I had read your work on Hitler's War. I was looking forward to listening to your speech as I had found your books on Hitler's war to be thought provoking and stimulating. Somewhat naively I had no clue as to what was in store for me that evening. As you will have no doubt guessed from my surname I am Jewish. Your anti-Semitic diatribe together with your association with Mr Derby-Lewis took me totally by surprise. I regret that I did not challenge you that night as I should have done.
The large majority of the people who were present there were known members of the Afrikaner extreme right or close English friends of Mr Derby-Lewis. These people had no hesitation in applauding your venomous anti-Jewish vitriol. I have no doubt that you will be able to rake up a number of those present to back up your rather cowardly denial. I alas am not as fortunate, as I attended your speech alone that night.
The things that were said by you about Jews that night in front of a highly appreciative audience, were extremely tasteless to say the least. I squirmed on my seat as one hundred and fifty of your cronies laughed at your brilliant wit as you proceeded to tear into the Jews, and the holocaust.
That you are tasteless and tactless when it comes to race relations is now a fact that has been recorded all over the world. I am surprised that you have not given me "the some of my best friends are Jews" line. Your personal assistants' racial origin will not rescue you from the truth that you uttered racist remarks against Blacks and Jews in Johannesburg in 1987.
Lastly Sir you are no friend of mine.
Yours faithfully,
David Katz Johannesburg

David Irving replied to David Katz on the same day:

THANK YOU for your reply. I deny that I uttered anti-Semitic remarks either then or on any other occasion. Both the Anti-Defamation League (New York, Washington) and the Board of Deputies of British Jews (in London) have gone on record in their private memoranda, copies of which I have obtained under legal processes, as stating that "regrettably" I cannot be attacked as an anti-Semite (this is of course normally their first line of attack).
The legal processes concerned are libel actions which I have brought in this country. I do not hesitate to defend my reputation with all proper legal means.
The Internet is a cowardly place to defame people, as it is beyond the reach of the law. Such defamers are cowards: willing to wound, but afraid to strike. All the power but none of the responsibilities -- the prerogative of the whore, as somebody so rightly said.

David Irving

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