WWU to Host Holocaust Historian Deborah Lipstadt on Nov. 15 for ‘History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving’

Western Washington University’s Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity and the Western Foundation will host Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, from 7:30-9 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 15 on the main stage of  the WWU Performing Arts Center.

The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required for entrance; they will be available from the Western Box Office in the Performing Arts Center starting Tuesday, Sept.5 or they can be reserved online at tickets.wwu.edu.

Lipstadt will present “History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving,” in which she will recount the story of her libel trial in London against right-wing extremist David Irving. In her 1993 book “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” Lipstadt had called Irving a Holocaust denier, and by the end of the trial, which lasted over five years, the judge found on Lipstadt’s behalf and labelled him not only a denier but a racist, a falsifier of history, and an antisemite. His later appeal of the verdict was rejected. The trial was described by the Daily Telegraph (London) as “having done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations.”

Lipstadt’s 2005 book on the trial, “History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving,” was made into a movie, “Denial,” in 2016 starring Rachel Weisz as Lipstadt.

She is also the author of “Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945” (1986) and “The Eichmann Trial” (2011).

For more information on Lipstadt’s lecture, contact Western Washington University’s Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at (360) 650-7427 or wolpow.institute@wwu.edu.