Dr. Deborah Lipstadt delivered a serious, and sometimes appropriately comical, speech treating modern day anti-Semitism last night in the Glenn Miller Ballroom.
Dr. Lipstadt is a Holocaust historian, professor and writer. She fights for the preservation of accurate descriptions of the Holocaust and against modern day anti-Semitism.
Holocaust denial comes in two forms, hardcore and soft-core. The soft-core version misrepresents what the Holocaust was. Soft-core can be equated to a group of Muslims in London saying they are treated like Jews were during the Holocaust, Lipstadt said.
Lipstadt classifies hardcore deniers as people like David Irving. Irving argued that Germans had no plans to annihilate the Jews; gas chambers were a physical impossibility; and the belief in the Holocaust creates financial gain for the state of Israel, Lipstadt said.
Irving sued Lipstadt for libel in the British courts for writing in her book, “Denying the Holocaust,” that Irving is the “world’s most dangerous Holocaust denier.”
Lipstadt won the trial by showing her objective was “not to prove that the Holocaust happened, but to prove what the denier is saying didn’t happen,” Lipstadt said.
Lipstadt said there are few hardcore deniers in Europe, but that it is a growing trend in the Middle East.
Soft-core denial is potentially more harmful because it leads to modern day anti-Semitism.
This type of prejudice “makes attacks on the state of Israel in lieu of Jews, obsesses over the vilification of Israel, has a vice-focus of Israel’s culpability of human rights abuses and carries ‘uni-focus’ blinders to all things that are going on in places such as Darfur,” Lipstadt said.
Lipstadt also said Holocaust denial should not be against the law.
“Holocaust denial laws tend to turn those charged into martyrs,” she said.
Some students shared the same view as Lipstadt.
“I think that it is important to know that Holocaust denial is just one head of a many-headed monster that needs to be cut off,” said Max Carson, a junior psychology major.
“She’s a really good speaker,” said Jill Orlovsky, a senior marketing major. “I think it’s important that she talked about the trial and the fact that anti-Semitism is a huge issue today and won’t go away.”
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Gary Black at gary.black@thecampuspress.com
