The Strange Case of David Irving

\o7 I am a Baby Aryan

Not Jewish or Sectarian;

I have no plans to marry an

Ape or Rastafarian.\f7

The thought of Carol and Antonia in a small space with this large beetle-browed man as he spouted that was, well, distinctly creepy. (He has since posted the lines on his Web site, and they came back to haunt him at the trial.)

The next time Irving got in touch with me was after his utter humiliation in court, and I thought I'd give him one last chance--though I arranged to meet him in a neutral restaurant this time. I wanted to know if it was true, as I had read in the press, that he had abruptly addressed the judge in the case as "Mein Fuhrer." With some plausibility, he explained to me that this was a misunderstanding; he had been quoting from the slogans shouted at a rally he was addressing in Germany and had glanced up at the bench at the wrong moment. The transcript of the trial seemed to make this interpretation possible. So when telephoned by my friend Ian Buruma, who was writing on the case for The New Yorker, I suggested that he might check it out. He called me back with the information that, when he had asked Irving directly about the incident, Irving had taken him into confidence and said, "Actually, I did say it." At this point I finally decided that anyone joining a Fair Play for Irving Committee was up against a man with some kind of death wish.

"The Holocaust on Trial" and "Lying About Hitler" make that very point in widely differing ways. Like me, D.D. Guttenplan is full of contempt for the censorship of Irving and quite prepared to consider the idea that the Holocaust has been exploited and even distorted. However, Guttenplan became disgusted by Irving's alternately bullying and ingratiating style and by his repeated failure to make good on his historical claims. His account of the courtroom confrontation, most vividly the confrontation between Irving and the Dutch expert on the mechanics of Auschwitz, Robert Jan van Pelt, could hardly be bettered. He also provides a masterly guide to the byways of English law, especially the grossly biased and oppressive law of libel that Irving hoped to enlist on his side.