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London, Thursday, December 21, 2006  The
tragedy is that David Irving has emerged as a
champion of free
speech
Holocaust
deniers now have their own martyr By Joan
Bakewell HOW much of what we "know" is
legend and how much verifiable history? Round about
Christmas time and its conflation of fable and fact
around the roots of the Christian story I begin to
wonder about the Massacre of the Innocents. Is
there any record of such an event -- the slaughter
of all children under two years old, recorded only
in St Matthew's gospel, as having happened "in
Bethlehem and all the coasts thereof...", thus
fulfilling "that which was spoken by Jeremy the
prophet".  David
Irving comments: "WE all thought," did we? I
recall being interviewed on BBC television
by Joan Bakewell about my book
"The
Destruction of Dresden" in about 1963.
I don't think she was sniggering then.
As for Bakewell's claim,
"I have seen the gas ovens at Saxenhausen
[sic]; I have interviewed managers
of the German company that produced the
Zyklon B gas", there were never any
homicidal gas chambers at Sachsenhausen
(the correct spelling) -- I presume that
is what her (deliberate?) confusion
between gas ovens and
crematoria is intended to convey --
and no worthwhile historian claims that
there were any. Crematoria yes; gas
chambers, no.
As for the managers of
Degesch, manufacturers of Zyklon-B, they
were hanged by the British in 1947 at
Hamelin prison, upon largely perjured
evidence, as is now known. Bakewell may
have communicated with them in the Other
World, in which she appears to be a firm
believer. |
No other gospel records the tale. We know that
Herod, the Great King of Judea at the time, became
insanely arbitrary and cruel towards the end of his
life. But such a specific slaughter would surely
have found its way into official records of his
reign. And if indeed it happened that, and as the
New Testament tells, Mary and Joseph were warned by
God ahead of time, one wonders why He neglected to
warn anyone else. As the literal belief in the
Bible seems to be on the increase among devout
Christians, it would be good to know what they make
of such a story. Legend or history?David Irving stands accused of trying to
start another legend. But he calls it history When
he first began to canvas his views about the
Holocaust in the 1970s we all
thought he was simply a crazy eccentric and
self-regarding egoist in search of a profile. As I
recall he was welcomed on chat shows around that
time making his extraordinary claims, simply so
that we might laugh to scorn his ideas. In the
1980s we would similarly hear sports commentator
David Ike, with whom I worked on
Newsnight, claim to be a God and predicting
the future of the world. It was harmless fun, to
listen and then to mock. David Irving's claims were not harmless fun at
all. They were deluded -- there was ample evidence
of the scale of the Shoah -- and dangerous. What's
more they had political resonances for people who
had an interest in challenging the origins of the
State of Israel. Irving would spend his
considerable skills at meticulously uncovering
records and archive to fuel the political dynamic
that would govern the destiny of the Middle East
for decades to come. The tragedy is that a loner, making his name by
contradicting the received historical fact, should
have, through the conflicting interests he has
stirred up, somehow emerge as a champion of free
speech. He is no such thing. His supposed wish for
a debate on the matter of Holocaust denial was
thwarted by his own deliberate intervention in
bringing the
2000 libel case against Penguin and the American
academic Deborah Lipstadt. The court case has
kept him in the limelight as the instigator and
promoter of his own destiny. It has not opened any
coherent and sustained examination of the
evidence. In fact there can be none. But the legend
gathers force among those who would believe. Last
week's conference in Iran mustered 67 participants
from 30 countries who came together in a mass
endorsement of anti-semitic sentiment. Historical
accuracy has nothing to do with it. Holocaust
denial had become a mindset, believed against all
the evidence by those with political intent.
Austria's law against Holocaust denial has
exaggerated Irving's importance and served to
legitimize such a conference. It is right that he has been released; and the
law should be repealed. But the damage is done.
Holocaust deniers have a champion and a martyr. The
cult will promote the pernicious legend that the
Holocaust was far less an event than numerous
historical testimonies and records indicate. The
Nazis kept meticulous details of their plans.
Besides -- we, I have been there. I have seen the
gas ovens at Saxenhausen [sic]; I have
interviewed managers of the German company that
produced the Zyklon B gas. Even so, first reports from those who first
entered the concentrations camps refer merely to
atrocities. Ed Murrow's famous dispatch from
Buchenwald in 1945 doesn't mention Jews at all. We
know that great numbers of communists, homosexuals,
the mentally defective and gypsies were also
targeted by the Nazi. But their loss does not
underpin the emergence of a Zionist power. It is
the imperatives of history -- the emergence of the
Jewish state in the 1940s -- that has given so much
power and emphasis to the horrors of Hitler's Final
Solution. In denying its significance as a defining event
of the 20th century Irving has promoted not
historical reassessment but naked political
conflict. Without such significance, his persistent
and deluded belief would be no more harmful than to
believe Diana was murdered by Prince Philip or that
someone other than Shakespeare wrote his plays. As
it is Irving has made himself a player in the
confrontation that will dominate the 21st century.
It is a hideous legacy.  Donate
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