Awards

• Commended for A Selection of Traditions Jewish Book Club 2016

Overview

"From January to April 2000 a high-profile libel case brought by the British historian David Irving against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, charging that Lipstadt's book, Denying the Holocaust (1993) falsely labelled him a Holocaust denier, was tried in the British High Court. In the proceedings, the question about the evidence for Auschwitz as a death camp played a central role; Irving had based his alleged denial of the Holocaust in part on a report written in 1988 by an American execution specialist, Fred Leuchter, that claimed that there was no evidence for homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz. As an element of the defence, in 1998 Penguin and Lipstadt engaged Robert Jan van Pelt to prepare for the court an expert report presenting the evidence for our knowledge that Auschwitz had been an extermination camp where up to one million Jews were killed, mainly in gas chambers. Employing painstaking historical scholarship, van Pelt submitted an exhaustive forensic report, which he successfully defended in cross-examination in court. In his verdict in favour of the defendants, Mr.Justice Charles Grey concluded that ""no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews. "" The Case for Auschwitz analyses why Auschwitz has become central to Holocaust denial and how it became a focus in the Irving-Lipstadt trial. It presents the compelling evidence contained in the original expert report and details the way this evidence played out at the trial. Unique in its comprehensive assessment of the historical evidence for Auschwitz and devastating in its demolition of the arguments of Holocaust deniers against Auschwitz, van Pelt's book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Holocaust and for those who seek to combat Holocaust denial."

Full Product Details

9780253340160

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Reviews

The Irving case has done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations. --The Daily Telegraph ... offers an invaluable review of the information available between 1942 and 1947 about the genocide at Auschwitz-Bikenau. --Jewish Chronicle, 29 November 2002 ... the core of the book offers an invaluable review of the information available between 1942 and 1947 about the genocide at Auschwitz-Birkenau. --Jewish Chronicle, 29 November 2002

The bulk of the book is the methodical and chilling presentation of materials presented at the trial... interwoven with Irving's testimony and defense. Van Pelt has arranged an enormous amount of complex material succinctly and to great effect. Read as a whole, the book is a stunning courtroom drama and a vital document of historical evidence. This is an important addition to Holocaust literature and 20th-century history. -Publishers Weekly (starred review) Readers of this book, which will become the sine qua non of all writing about the Holocaust, should be warned that it describes the gruesome nature of Holocaust history, and the equally gruesome role of those who have sought to deny it. -The Jerusalem Post The Irving case has done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations. -The Daily Telegraph Fascinating insights into the conduct of the case and the main personalities... -Jewish Chronicle

Author Information

Robert Jan van Pelt is Professor in the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo, Canada. He is author (with Debrah Dwork) of Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present and winner of a National Jewish Book Award, 1996, and of the Spiro Kostof Book Award of the Society of Architectural Historians.

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