Case Study 8.1: Team Denial Emory University Holocaust studies professor Deborah Lipstadt faced an uphill battle when she was sued by British amateur historian David Irving in 1995. Irving was the world’s best known Holocaust denier. He claimed that Hitler didn’t order the killing of Jews. Instead, the Führer’s subordinates acted on their own, without his knowledge. Irving’s most audacious assertion was that no Jews and other victims were gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He denied that there were gas chambers. Instead, deaths were caused by typhus and other illnesses, not murder. Speaking before neo-Nazi groups, Irving declared that more people died in the back of Senator Edward Kennedy’s car (one young woman) than were deliberately killed at Auschwitz. In her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, professor Lipstadt called Irving “a Hitler partisan wearing blinkers” who distorted historical evidence to “reach historically untenable conclusions.”1 Irving then threatened to sue unless she retracted her comments. He likely thought she would settle out of court. Not Lipstadt. Surrender would give deniers a victory, meaning a “second death” to the victims of Auschwitz and other Jews who perished under the Nazis. But Irving had the upper hand. Under British law, Lipstadt had to defend herself from the allegations. (In the United States, accusers have to prove that they have been libeled and defamed.) The lengthy court case would cost over a million dollars to fight and would be held in London, thousands of miles from Atlanta, where Lipstadt taught. Fortunately for Dr. Lipstadt, others rallied to her cause. Emory gave her financial support and paid leave while hiring adjuncts to teach her classes. (School officials believed that canceling Holocaust courses would be a victory for Irving.) Penguin, her publisher, provided legal and financial support and Jewish groups raised money for her defense. Most important, she gained the support of a top-notch legal team who believed in her cause. This team included (1) those who prepared her case—a team of researchers who gathered information and the attorneys who assembled court documents; and (2) a pair of barristers who argued in front of the judge. (In Britain, one set of attorneys prepares the case while a different set of attorneys presents the case in court.) Lipstadt needed all the help she could get. Preparation for the trial took five years. Researchers had to sift through thousands of documents checking footnotes as well as hundreds of Irving’s personal diaries. They generated an eight-foot-tall stack of trial notebooks. The legal team decided to put Irving on trial, demonstrating how he systematically altered historical evidence to support his anti-Semitic views. That meant that Deborah wouldn’t testify, turning her into a spectator at her own trial. Lipstadt, a skilled public speaker, objected to these restrictions but eventually gave in. She said, “Being q ...

1. Case Study 8.1: Team Denial
Emory University Holocaust studies professor Deborah Lipstadt
faced an uphill battle when she was sued by British amateur
historian David Irving in 1995. Irving was the world’s best
known Holocaust denier. He claimed that Hitler didn’t order the
killing of Jews. Instead, the Führer’s subordinates acted on their
own, without his knowledge. Irving’s most audacious assertion
was that no Jews and other victims were gassed at the
Auschwitz concentration camp. He denied that there were gas
chambers. Instead, deaths were caused by typhus and other
illnesses, not murder. Speaking before neo-Nazi groups, Irving
declared that more people died in the back of Senator Edward
Kennedy’s car (one young woman) than were deliberately killed
at Auschwitz.
In her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on
Truth and Memory, professor Lipstadt called Irving “a Hitler
partisan wearing blinkers” who distorted historical evidence to
“reach historically untenable conclusions.”1 Irving then
threatened to sue unless she retracted her comments. He likely
thought she would settle out of court. Not Lipstadt. Surrender
would give deniers a victory, meaning a “second death” to the
victims of Auschwitz and other Jews who perished under the
Nazis. But Irving had the upper hand. Under British law,
Lipstadt had to defend herself from the allegations. (In the
United States, accusers have to prove that they have been
libeled and defamed.) The lengthy court case would cost over a
million dollars to fight and would be held in London, thousands
of miles from Atlanta, where Lipstadt taught.
Fortunately for Dr. Lipstadt, others rallied to her cause. Emory
gave her financial support and paid leave while hiring adjuncts
to teach her classes. (School officials believed that canceling
Holocaust courses would be a victory for Irving.) Penguin, her
publisher, provided legal and financial support and Jewish
groups raised money for her defense. Most important, she

2. gained the support of a top-notch legal team who believed in her
cause. This team included (1) those who prepared her case—a
team of researchers who gathered information and the attorneys
who assembled court documents; and (2) a pair of barristers
who argued in front of the judge. (In Britain, one set of
attorneys prepares the case while a different set of attorneys
presents the case in court.) Lipstadt needed all the help she
could get. Preparation for the trial took five years. Researchers
had to sift through thousands of documents checking footnotes
as well as hundreds of Irving’s personal diaries. They generated
an eight-foot-tall stack of trial notebooks.
The legal team decided to put Irving on trial, demonstrating
how he systematically altered historical evidence to support his
anti-Semitic views. That meant that Deborah wouldn’t testify,
turning her into a spectator at her own trial. Lipstadt, a skilled
public speaker, objected to these restrictions but eventually
gave in. She said, “Being quiet for me is an unnatural act. But I
had legal and historical experts second to none.”2 To prepare
for the trial, Lipstadt and barrister Richard Rampton—the
attorney who would present the defense case in court—traveled
to Auschwitz to collect data. Rampton called the visit a
“forensic tour” and gathered information about the size of the
camp, the location of the crematoria, and other details. Lipstadt,
who treated the camp as a sacred memorial, was offended by the
attorney’s aggressive questioning.
The trial took five weeks before a judge with Irving
representing himself. Because Irving could cross-examine
witnesses as his own lawyer, concentration camp survivors
(some of whom attended the trial and were eager to speak) were
not called upon to testify for fear that Irving would humiliate
them. Earlier he had ridiculed a camp survivor on an Australian
radio show by asking her, “How much money have you made
out of that tattoo since 1945?”3
The defense team argued that the amateur historian
systematically misreported, altered, and distorted historical
documents and photographs to support his racist views. The

3. reason for attorney Rampton’s behavior during the team’s visit
to Auschwitz became clear during the trial. When Irving
asserted that the gas chambers were bomb shelters, the barrister
was able to demonstrate that the chambers were too far away for
the SS guards to take shelter there.
In a 355-page ruling, the trial judge ruled in favor of Lipstadt.
He rejected Irving’s claims that he had made inadvertent
mistakes while doing research. Instead, the judge concluded,
“He has deliberately skewed the evidence to bring it in line with
his political beliefs.”4 He declared Irving to be “an active
Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist, and that he
associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-
Nazism.”5 Irving’s subsequent appeals of the verdict were
denied.
Professor Lipstadt credits her victory to her legal team. She
acknowledges that her advisers were right to suppress her desire
to testify. (They also forbid her from saying anything to the
press outside the courtroom during the proceedings.) Her
researchers not only identified deliberate misstatements but
were able to produce the needed documents at critical moments
during the trial, often catching Irving in contradictory claims.
Trial attorney Rampton mastered the historical details of the
Holocaust and demonstrated that Irving systematically altered
the truth and had ties to radical right-wing groups.
Members of Deborah’s team viewed their participation in her
defense as a watershed moment in their lives. Rampton said that
working on the case was “a privilege,” and now that the trial
was over, he missed the daily contact with other team members
who had become friends. His young assistant felt “enormous
pride” that “I have done something that is so important to many
others. I made a difference.”6 One of the law partners who
prepared the case noted that this was the rare legal
confrontation where no accommodation could be made with the
other side: “Here there was an absolute difference between right
and wrong. We could wholeheartedly be on the side of the
angels.”7

4. Discussion Probes
1. What risks did Lipstadt take in deciding to go forward with
her case? What if she had lost?
2. Why was the denial defense team successful? How did the
mission of the team and the values of its members contribute to
its success?
3. How do you determine when to follow or when to reject the
advice of the group?
4. Have you ever been on a team that performed at a high level?
What similarities do you note between your experience and that
of the denial defense team?