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FAILED LIBEL ACTION COSTS IRVING HIS HOME

by Vikram Dodd – 

The Guardian (Britain) – 

Wed., May 22, 2002

The disgraced author David Irving yesterday lost a last ditch attempt to stave off the seizure of his home after the disastrous libel case which left his reputation in shreds.

A high court judge refused Irving's application to have a bankruptcy order against him lifted. Irving, 64, was declared bankrupt in March after failing to pay £150,000 in costs after he lost a libel action against charges that he was a Holocaust denier. Irving now faces losing his flat in Mayfair, central London, which is his prime asset and his home for more than 30 years. He shares it with his partner Bente and their eight-year-old daughter Jessica. In 2000 the high court found he had falsified history to exonerate Adolf Hitler, driven by anti-semitism and his pro-Nazi views.

He had sued Penguin books and the author Deborah Lipstadt over her book which said Irving had persistently and deliberately misinterpreted and twisted historical evidence to minimise Hitler's culpability for the Holocaust. Penguin incurred costs of £2m to defend the claim. In May 2000 Irving was ordered to pay an interim amount of £150,000, but has failed to pay a penny.

Yesterday Mr Justice Peter Smith upheld the bankruptcy order granted to Penguin books in March. He ruled that Irving -- who was not in court -- should not be enabled to escape liability for the costs of the failed libel action.

The judge rejected two arguments raised by Irving's lawyer, Adrian Davies. Mr Davies said Penguin was not liable for any court costs which would be covered by its parent company and insurers.

The author had offered to pay Penguin £2,000 a month towards the interim payment but this would take six years to pay, not taking into account interest charges, said the judge.

He also said there were six other charges over the home that would take precedence and that the building society that granted a £248,000 mortgage for the property may take possession proceedings now Irving has been declared bankrupt.

David Irving's secret backers

The model, the Saudi prince and the U-boat commander

D.D. Guttenplan and Martin Bright
March 3, 2002
The Observer

They are a colourful group bound in a dubious cause: a London pensioner, a Saudi prince with an estate in Ascot, a former Nazi U-boat commander and a glamorous blonde model.

All are part of the international support network for David Irving, the writer branded a racist, an anti-Semite and a falsifier of history by a High Court judge.

Their backing allows him to continue to propagate his views on the Holocaust and support his lavish lifestyle despite his court defeat.

Irving, who operates out of a Mayfair flat and spends much of the year in Florida, has always kept his finances a closely guarded secret.

Now an Observer investigation has begun to unravel the web of contributors and companies that keep Irving's crusade on the march. Until now they have been anonymous.

British contributors also fear they might be held liable for a substantial portion of the £2 million in costs incurred by Irving's opponents.

The revelations come on the eve of a bankruptcy hearing triggered by the failure of Irving's libel action against American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books.

In April 2000 the court awarded costs to Lipstadt and her publishers and ordered Irving to pay £150,000 on account to Penguin. Irving is in court tomorrow because of his failure to pay. His defeat in the High Court has not deterred him from pursuing his libel action against the writer Gitta Sereny and this newspaper, even though that case hinges on many of the same issues. The law permits bankrupts to sue for libel and keep any money awarded from such suits.

Irving's most recent newsletter advertises 'The Next Battle' - his suit against The Observer - as well as a Special £150,000 Appeal: 'To defeat Lipstadt permanently and inflict the Six Million Dollar loss on her backers...' The reference to dollars is deliberate. Of the 4,017 names on Irving's active contributors list, 2,495 are in the United States and Canada. One was Henry Kersting, a tax-avoidance specialist from Hawaii. According to Irving, Kersting was a former German U-boat commander who was 'just deeply concerned with politics. He wasn't anti-Jewish'.

In an exclusive interview, Irving said Kersting, who died two years ago, made all his donations in cash. 'He was a strange character. He would phone me in Key West and say "I'm sending over another 10 flowers," or "I'm sending over five flowers by Fedex". And then the Fedex van would come the next day and there was $5,000 in cash. Or $10,000 in cash.' On another occasion Kersting asked Irving to meet him in Amsterdam, where he gave him a paper bag containing $50,000 in cash.

Irving is reluctant to comment on living contributors whose names are known to The Observer, including one from Sweden and another from Switzerland who between them loaned £17,500.

He refused to even discuss Albert W. Hess, who lives in Florida and loaned Irving $45,000 to fund his activities. A supporter of Udo Walendy, the German neo-Nazi and publisher of the German translation of the British Holocaust denial tract Did Six Million Really Die?, Hess was himself a featured speaker at one far-right Florida gathering.

The Observer can also reveal the financial details of Irving's mysterious 'fighting fund'. Irving's newsletter Action Report solicits donations, but fans who prefer to make their contributions in the form of a loan or investment are then directed to either Focal Point Publications or Parforce UK Ltd - a registered company set up by Irving's Danish wife, Bente Hogh, and his accountant, Alan Kentto, to publish his books. This puts it out of the reach of creditors.

Frederick Atkin, a former insurance company employee, loaned Irving £5,000. Atkin, 69, told The Observer that he was motivated by 'pure greed': 'It was an investment as far as I was concerned. He always seemed above board to me.' Another Briton, Nigel Hogg of Whitley Bay in Northumberland, invested £5,000 with Irving's publishing company and was repaid in full with interest. He was not prepared to comment on his connection with Irving or whether he supported his views: 'This is a private matter. I am not a current funder of David Irving.'

The British donors rely on Irving's absolute discretion. Under the law any third parties who help to fund a libel action can potentially be made to help pay the costs if the action is not successful.

'If I was ever to get an order against me by the court for having been maintained by outsiders,' Irving said, 'then... I have firmly established in my own mind the principle [that] on the date that such an order is made I'll come straight back here and destroy all the files, rather than reveal the names of the people who donated to me.'

But he confirmed that all money paid to him potentially ends up in his fighting fund.

'It all comes through the same pipeline,' Irving explained. 'Cheques are written to Focal Point. Some of the cheques are now written to Parforce UK Ltd. As I am Focal Point I don't really take much trouble to separate the investment side in my head from the litigation funding side because, at the end of the day, it's all the same pot.'

In July, Irving thought he'd finally found his ideal benefactor: Prince Fahd bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. The son of the governor of Riyadh and eldest nephew to King Fahd invited Irving to Harewood, his estate in Surrey. Just a month earlier Fahd had accompanied his father on a trade mission to Britain when he met the Queen and the Prime Minister.

The meeting with Irving was arranged by Michele Renouf, the mysterious blonde model who had been a constant presence at Irving's side during the trial. Renouf is an Australian taxi-driver's daughter who styles herself 'Lady Renouf' thanks to a six-week marriage to Sir Francis Renouf, the late New Zealand financier.

The prince agreed terms via a telephone call from Riyadh a few days later. Renouf confirmed Irving's account of the negotiations in an email to The Observer: 'Tragically, the following day, the generous and fit prince died suddenly,' she added.

· D.D. Guttenplan is the author of The Holocaust on Trial, now available in paperback from Granta Books.

Sad, foolish, rather disgusting.(David Irving's Holocaust denial)

Author/s: James Buchan
Issue: April 24, 2000

James Buchan, having endured the Irving libel case, concludes that the defeated author, like the Mitford girls in the 1930s, sees the Nazis as funny folk

Amid the general satisfaction at the High Court judgment in Irving v Lipstadt and Penguin Books on 11 April, the Tehran Times sounded a recessional note. In an editorial two days later, the newspaper regretted that the British writer David Irving had so comprehensively lost his Holocaust libel case.

"One of the biggest frauds of the outgoing century that dragged into the new millennium was the story of the Holocaust made up by the Zionists to blackmail the west," the Tehran Times wrote. Irving was one of many writers who had "proved with evidence that the so-called Nazi gas chambers could not accommodate six million Jews, and that the story of the Holocaust was only a sheer historical lie".

This sort of argument, standard for the embattled hardliners in Iran, would be of little interest but for another trial, which began on that same Thursday in the city of Shiraz in southern Iran. Thirteen Iranians of Jewish origin, mostly shopkeepers, are on trial for their lives on charges of spying for Israel. The prosecution says that four of the defendants have confessed. One of their lawyers denies that. It seems there are places, Shiraz and London's Strand, where anti-Semitism will not lie down and die.

Not since Oscar Wilde brought his case against the Marquess of Queensberry for calling him a "somdomite" (sic) has a libel action in this country so demolished its claimant. Irving will not, like poor Wilde, face a criminal prosecution in this country. Britain is not France or Germany, where it is a criminal offence to question the Nazi extermination of the Continental Jews between 1941 and 1945. Banned from the German historical archives and the country itself, harried by Jewish organisations, spurned by commercial publishers, and isolated from the intellectual mainstream, Irving now faces court costs of over [pounds]1.5m.

Irving, who has specialised in the history of the Third Reich since the 1960s, in 1996 sued Deborah E Lipstadt, Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, for defamation. He claimed that she had libelled him in her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust: the growing assault on truth and memory, and conspired with Jewish organisations to put pressure on publishers to deprive him of his livelihood.

In the book, which was published in Britain the next year and hence came within the jurisdiction of English libel courts, Lipstadt accused Irving of distorting the history of the Third Reich in the service of an extreme right-wing cause. As an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler, she wrote, Irving misrepresented data so as to exonerate him of complicity in the massacre of the European Jews. Further, Irving had allied himself with other right-wing extremists in Britain, North America and Germany, many of whom deny that the Holocaust ever took place.

TOMPAINE.COM NEWSBRIEF: Accused Holocaust Denier David Irving Loses Outcome of the British Court Battle

The TomPaine.com Staff

Published: Apr 11 2000

Our congratulations to historian Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt, a professor at Emory, wrote in a well-received book, Denying the Holocaust, that David Irving "is one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda." Irving, offended, sued in a British court, claiming libel.

Given Irving's own statements (see Holocaust Denial: David Irving Unmasked), one might have thought he'd agree with Lipstadt. It was he, after all, who said, "I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney. It's a legend." Alas, he did not and he sued. After a long trial, dramatically marked recently by the release, by Israel, of the diary of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, Irving lost.

His books remain on the shelves of libraries everywhere, owing to his diligence in tracking down Nazi documents. Perhaps librarians can stick Xerox copies of the court's opinion in-between the covers as a warning to unsuspecting students.

EXCERPTS FROM THE COURT'S OPINION

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH THE HON. MR. JUSTICE GRAY

I accept that it is necessary for historians, not least historians of the Nazi era, to be on their guard against documents which are forged or otherwise unauthentic. But it appeared to me that in the course of these proceedings Irving challenged the authenticity of certain documents, not because there was any substantial reason for doubting their genuineness but because they did not fit in with his thesis.

The prime example of this is Irving's dismissal of Muller's letter of 28 June 1943 dealing with the incineration capacity of the ovens at Auschwitz (to which I have referred at paragraph 7.106 and 7.120).As already stated at paragraph 13.76 I agree with the assessment of van Pelt that there is little reason to doubt the authenticity of this document. Yet Irving argued strenuously that it should be dismissed as a forgery. In my judgment he did so because it does not conform to his ideological agenda. Similarly Irving devoted much time to challenging the authenticity of Muller's instruction to furnish Hitler with reports of the shooting. I believe that he did so because this was for him an inconvenient document and not because there were real doubts about it genuineness. (Irving ultimately accepted its bona fides). There were other occasions when Irving sought to cast doubt on the authenticity of documents relied on by the Defendants (for example the Anne Frank diaries and the report of the gassing of 97,000 Jews at Chelmno referred to at paragraph 6.71 above). In neither case did Irving's doubts appear to me to have any real substance. His attitude to these documents was in stark contrast to his treatment of other documents which were more obviously open to question. One example is Irving's unquestioning acceptance of the Schlegelberger memorandum despite the uncertainty of its provenance. Another is his reliance on Tagesbefehl No. 47 in the teeth of mounting evidence that it was a forgery. In my judgment there is force in the Defendants' contention that Irving on occasion applies double standards to the documentary evidence, accepting documents which fit in with his thesis and rejecting those which do not.

******* It was a striking feature of the case that in the course of it Irving made, or appeared to make, concessions about major issues. In doing so he resiled from the stance adopted by him in relation to those issues before trial. Such concessions were made by Irving in relation to the shooting of Jews in the East; the use of gas vans at Chelmno and in Yugoslavia; the gassing of Jews at the Action Reinhard camps; the existence and genocidal use of gas chambers at Auschwitz and the Leuchter report.

******* ... having claimed before the trial that there were no gas chambers at Treblinka, Sobibor or Belzec, Irving accepted at trial that he could not challenge the accepted figures for the numbers of Jews killed at those camps which were 700-950,000,200,000 and 550,000 respectively. He again later explained his concessions as having been made "formally" in order to speed the trial along, adding later that he had seen no documentary evidence to support the figures for those killed. I have already given my reaction to that response.

******* I have already set out in section VIII above my conclusion that Irving displays all the characteristics of a Holocaust denier. He repeatedly makes assertions about the Holocaust which are offensive to Jews in their terms and unsupported by or contrary to the historical record. I have also given at section IX above the reasons for my findings that Irving is an anti-semite and a racist. As I have found in section X above, Irving associates regularly with extremist and neo-Nazi organisations and individuals. The conclusion which I draw from the evidence is that Irving is sympathetic towards and on occasion promotes the views held by those individuals and organisations.

*******

Over the past fifteen years or so, Irving appears to have become more active politically than was previously the case. He speaks regularly at political or quasi-political meetings in Germany, the United States, Canada and the New World. The content of his speeches and interviews often displays a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias. He makes surprising and often unfounded assertions about the Nazi regime which tend to exonerate the Nazis for the appalling atrocities which they inflicted on the Jews. He is content to mix with neo-fascists and appears to share many of their racist and anti-semitic prejudices. The picture of Irving which emerges from the evidence of his extra-curricular activities reveals him to be a right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist. In my view the Defendants have established that Irving has a political agenda. It is one which, it is legitimate to infer, disposes him, where he deems it necessary, to manipulate the historical record in order to make it conform with his political beliefs.

David Irving: the libel trial re-examined
by Robert Fulford

(The National Post, January 30, 2001)

In his perversely self-regarding way, David Irving will probably be pleased to hear about the conference at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre last week. A platoon of high-powered academics spent a whole day talking about him. The event was called The Holocaust in the Courtroom: Historical Reflections on the Irving Trial, and the scholars were there to analyze the libel action Irving brought against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, based on her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

When the judgment came down last April, Irving was the loser, on a calamitous scale. The evidence depicting him as a Holocaust denier, anti-Semite and twister of truth was far stronger than anything in Lipstadt's book. Several London newspaper cartoonists worked variations on the same satirical idea: Irving emerging from the court and announcing, "The trial never happened."

The Toronto conference became a prism through which to look at Irving and his motives. Why did he do it? Why did he set himself up to be humiliated? Lipstadt reported that she laughed when she first heard he was suing; after all, the facts she used were widely known. He had no case. No one on the defence team (some 40 individuals were involved, for up to two years) ever imagined they could lose. Like expert practitioners of a martial art, they used Irving's energy and momentum against him. They flipped him over and made him the defendant. He had nowhere to hide.

Possibly even he doesn't understand why he got into this mess. He's erratic and chronically confused, a clever writer who yearns for respectability and yet writes junk that places respectability forever beyond his grasp. One scholar used the word "narcissist," and Irving's behaviour fits the standard definition: He has an exaggerated sense of his importance, combined with fantasies about his potential for success.

In court, acting as his own lawyer, he was sometimes nasty, sometimes genial. Christopher Browning, a University of North Carolina authority on the Holocaust, reported that during his cross-examination Irving sometimes acted as if the two of them were colleagues on "a joint journey of exploration and discovery." Richard Evans of Cambridge University, who chased Irving's work back to his sources and showed him routinely distorting archival material, was cross-examined by Irving for 28 hours. Evans wasn't impressed: "He was a bit like a dim student who didn't listen. If he didn't get the answer he wanted, he just repeated the question." Evans believes that Irving's fellow Holocaust deniers are now angry with him for not calling them as witnesses and letting them share the limelight.

In a malign way, Irving emerges as a kind of artist, a maker of narrative fiction that he calls history. His work functions like a parody of postmodernism: By implication, it says that any historical text is indeterminate, unfixed, vague. To Irving, as to postmodernists, history means what you want it to mean. The making of the case against him was a triumph for orthodox, fact-based history, and an event of historic significance in itself. Evans mentioned that three books on the case have appeared, and about five more will be published this year.

The Holocaust in the Courtroom had a remarkable cast of characters. All the stars of the trial were there, except for the judge -- and Irving. Richard Evans, who wrote perhaps the most damaging report, wore a permanent scowl, as if he had just found a basic flaw in a graduate student's thesis. But he also introduced some humour: He said that at first the courtroom atmosphere seemed a little odd, since "the judge wore a wig and a kind of red dressing gown."

Deborah Lipstadt turned out to be wonderfully down-to-earth, still doggedly trying to get the main point across ("This was not history on trial, as some newspaper headlines said -- this was David Irving on trial"), and still surprised that many of her colleagues wondered, at least in the beginning, why she went to all the trouble to fight Irving. The alternative, of course, was to apologize and withdraw the book, something neither Penguin (to its eternal credit) nor Lipstadt would contemplate.

Richard Rampton, the barrister, explained "how we went about killing off this snake," and came across like Rumpole of the Bailey with 25 IQ points added. He showed during preparation for the trial that he can Hoover up mountains of facts, hold them in his mind, then pluck one from his memory at the precise moment it's needed. He astonished one of the historians by being able to correct him, always politely, on specifics in his own work.

Robert-Jan van Pelt, of the University of Waterloo school of architecture, who wrote 718 pages on the design and functioning of Auschwitz, discovered that to understand the Nazi killing machine, "You have to become like a German bureaucrat, as if you were planning all this." He found it heart-rending to describe the monstrous details in court while survivors sat listening. Like the other scholars, van Pelt was outraged, exasperated, often dismayed and yet energized. "It was two years of my life," he said, "and two years well spent."

Christopher Browning, the historian whose work has defined the terms of Holocaust study, said that on Holocaust denial no one should be complacent: "We have been fortunate in our opponents. There is no such guarantee for the future."

                    Lipstadt remarked that Holocaust denial remains respectable in some circles, citing John Sack's article in the February issue of Esquire; on examination,            that piece turns out to be an appallingly sentimental portrait of the deniers, including Ernst Zundel, as good, conscientious folks who are definitely not anti-Semites.

At the end of the day, the chairman of the conference, Michael Marrus, recently installed in the University of Toronto's Wolfe Chair in Holocaust Studies, asked whether the trial result would have been different if Irving had been represented by counsel. Lipstadt remarked that a good solicitor would never have let such a weak case go to court.

But surely, someone asked, there is a lawyer in England who would take the case as a way of spreading propaganda for the Holocaust deniers?

No, no, said Richard Rampton, QC, of Chancery Lane. No, it couldn't possibly have happened that way. "Irving would not have given place to an advocate. He enjoys the centre of the stage too much."

Narcissism launched Irving's case. Narcissism wrecked it.

 is entitled “Denying the Holocaust” and bears the sub-title “The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory”. The first words in the preface to the original edition are:

Cont..