The Holocaust On Trial Book Review Example

D. D. Guttenplan's decision to make Irving David’s libel suit against Lipstadt Deborah and Penguin Books his subject matter in his book entitled “The Holocaust on Trial” seems to be quite challenging. It is, however, eventually justified. The American writer, Guttenplan who currently resides in London was present in every day of the trial that took place in the year 1999. There were two things of varying importance at stake: the status or the position in the legislation of the Holocaust and its constituents that were definable and the overall outlook of David Irving reputation. On the face of it, Irving David verses Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books was a libel dispute that was beyond reasonable doubt and was very straightforward. Lipstadt, an American academic, had written and the publishing body Penguin was responsible for publishing accusations against the American historian and right wing David Irving that he claimed to have resulted to the ruining of his reputation professionally. The case was brought on trial and the preceding judge on the case was so anxious in peddling that line. The judge, Mr. Gray Justice, made an announcement earlier before a serious commencement of hearing the case stated that, “. this trial is not concerned with making findings of historical facts” Inevitably, nevertheless, it was so.
Initially before the judge could give a ruling on the case and to decide the winner of the court case, a series of historical questions that demanded his answers lingered in his mind. The questions touching on how the numerous people of Jewish origin died in the Holocaust clobbered his mind repeatedly. The events that surrounded the brutal and merciless killings touched him too. To what extent did the tyrant Hitler know about the modes and means of the range of killings of the innocent Jews? How many Jews were killed through gassing at Auschwitz? These were among the hard questions that lingered in his noble mind before he made the final ruling on the libel case.
The big problem in the picture was that the English libel trials were not supposed to realize or make a discovery about the truth on anything. The process was a highly artificial one which was aimed at making a decision of whether or not words published have tendency of ruining someone’s professional reputation in any way. It does so awkwardly depending on a verbal shootout that ensued between two conflicting groups of partial witnesses together with their assisting silver-tongued attorneys. In the long run, the choice was based on a bunch that one was to believe in. At times in certain circumstances, justice can be realised by making good use of the blunderbuss method as it seldom come to the underlying truth.
However, in Irving’s libel case, choice was not available. Deborah Lipstadt had vividly indicated in writing that Irving was a denier of the Holocaust and was Hitler’s apologist and she also accused him of being a distorter who was responsible for distorting the available historical evidence in the favour of the Nazi’s version of events. In a bid to defend themselves against the case of the libel, Deborah and Penguin were bound to justify and prove beyond reasonable doubt to the jury that whatever she claimed about Irving in writing was factual and had a strong element of open truth. To achieve their aim, they had to demonstrate evidence of the presence of the chambers used for gassing at Auschwitz that were used for gassing the Jews. The case was tougher for the side of the defence because they had to demonstrate that the complainant has engaged in deliberate falsification of the documentary and that he had done so with for reasons that were anti-Jewish. In the event that they could have been justified to be mere honest mistakes made on no racism grounds, the case of the defence team would have seriously collapsed. The team of the defence has a few illustrious characters like Richard and Julius while David acted alone without a lawyer to represent him. However, with plaintiffs in person the judges hearing the case at times tend to be a bit lenient, lean towards them with the motive of assisting them in the process of hearing the proceedings of the case.
The stakes were high on the side of the defence team and the complainant’s side. The notion of Irving winning the case meant that the accused Deborah would not be in a situation to make any remarks regarding the position of Irving on the Holocaust minus being subjected to criminal sanction. In addition, it would have reinforced the statement made by the deniers of the Holocaust in the world. This would have turned the conventional comprehension of the vivid history that had been known since time immemorial on its head. For the complainant Irving, losing in the case would insinuate permanent tainting of his name as a historian and also he risked being bankrupt if he could not afford to settle payments of the legal costs that arose as a result of bringing the case to court for trial.
The American journalist DD Guttenplan having been present in the courtroom, in London's Royal Courts of Justice every single day of the two months during the hearing of the case, had an opportunity of conducting interviews with major participants of the case. He got the opportunity to interview the lawyers of both opposing sides, Lipstadt, Irving and the preceding judges who due to the complex nature of the case and the voluminous documentation that was given by the jury, opted to hear the proceeding of the ring’s case in person.
Guttenplan’s book at a given level is quite straightforward with well-calculated intelligent accounts of the court’s proceedings on the case. The author succeeds in the simplification of the densely and complex matters in his book comprehensible even to someone who lacks deep knowledge of the law and its applications. Guttenplan had a challenge acquiring information to write his book during the hearing of the case. The main difficulty was that the trial sessions of the cases was not lively. It lacked the peak moments that could revive the concentration of an interested party. The hearing was characterised by infrequent sparkling moments, a slight forensic sparring involving Richard QC and Irving, the publisher Penguin’s barrister, and finally occasional clashes between expert witnesses and Irving. There were also a few examples of Irving’s situational drama, for example because of his inability to to afford costly lawyers decided to represent himself somehow skilfully in a declamatory flow that combined naivety, arrogance and intelligence.
Even though a greater part of the trial was a dull one, it was however, occasionally unleavened by plentiful humour and some sensational revelation too. The explosive highlights of the trial ought to have been at the time a confrontation ensued between the accused and the alleged victim in the case. In this scenario, the team at the defence front made a decision barring Deborah Lipstadt from going to the witness box. This was a great disappointment and a big blow to Irving as he missed the long awaited opportunity to cross-examine Lipstadt in the courtroom. A few witnesses had the chance to be heard in this case. This amounted to a lesser portion of the total number of witnesses who were expecting to get a hearing during the proceedings of the case hence only a tip of evidential iceberg was displayed. The bulk of the materials that contained relevant information to the case was in the documents and reports that judges spent many weeks reading during the three months of hearing the case.
The book possesses another aspect or dimension that makes it more interesting than just an ordinary chronicle of prominent trial in a court of law. It is evident that the author, Guttenplan, is somewhat uneasy about the inadequacies and haphazardness that encompassed the legal process in his dealing with a large scale and sensitive questions. He perceives the trial process as one having so many shortfalls. Maybe the negative view that he hold towards the process is due to the high expectation that he had for it. He may have expected the trial to process to reveal or to provide significant answers and expose some hidden and unknown issues about the Holocaust. The author ponders about the difference that exists between facts, the evidence that was provided by the court, the truth about the contentious issues of the case and the history that is in record and in the end; he finally strikes the end that was missing. The judges, as expected had heard from the experts of the law and gone through many documents containing information about the theme of the case. However not even a single witness who was ready to present evidence was a witness or survivor of the said atrocities. "In the absence of voices of humans to instate flesh on the factual information, we have something which while it may freely qualify as history, cannot reveal the underlying truth." The author Guttenplan is right on this but surely just how could he think even for a moment that a libel of an English origin could possibly live up to such a burdensome task?