Archive/File: holocaust/usa/lipstadt lipstadt.007
Last-Modified: 1994/01/10

   "Others have argued that the best tactic is just to ignore the
   deniers because what they crave is publicity, and attacks on them
   provide it. I have encountered this view repeatedly while writing
   this book. I have been asked if I am giving them what they want and
   enhancing their credibility by digning to respond to them. Deny
   them what they so desperately desire and need, and, critics claim,
   they will wither on the vine. It is true that publicity is what the
   deniers need to survive, hence their media-sensitive tactics --
   such as ads in college newspapers, challenges to debate
   'exterminationists,' pseudoscientific reports, and truth tours of
   death-camp sites. I once was an ardent advocate of ignoring them.
   In fact, when I first began this book I was beset by the fear that
   I would inadvertently enhance their credibility by responding to
   their fantasies. But having immersed myself in their activities for
   too long a time, I am now convinced that ignoring them is no longer
   an option. The time to hope that of their own accord they will blow
   away like the dust is gone. Too many of my students have come to me
   and asked 'How do we know there really were gas chambers?' 'Was the
   _Diary of Anne Frank_ a hoax?' 'Are there actual documents
   attesting to a Nazi plan to annihilate the Jews?' Some of these
   students are aware that their questions have been informed by
   deniers. Others are not; they just know that they have heard these
   charges and are troubled by them.

   Not ignoring the deniers does not mean engaging them in discussion
   or debate. In fact, it means _not_ doing that. We cannot debate
   them for two reasons, one strategic and the other tactical. As we
   have repeatedly seen, the deniers long to be considered the 'other'
   side. Engaging them in discussion makes them exactly that. Second,
   they are contemptuous of the very tools that shape any honest
   debate: truth and reason. Debating them would be like trying to
   nail a glob of jelly to the wall.

   Though we cannot directly engage them, there is something we can
   do. Those who care not just about Jewish history or the history of
   the Holocaust but about truth in all its forms, must function as
   canaries in the mine once did, to guard against the spread of
   noxious fumes. We must vigilantly stand watch against an
   increasingly nimble enemy. But unlike the canary, we must not sit
   silently by waiting to expire so that others will be warned of the
   danger.. When we witness assaults on truth, our response must be
   strong, though neither polemical nor emotional. We must educate the
   broader public and academe about this threat and its historical and
   ideological roots. We must expose these people for what they are.

   The effort will not be pleasant. Those who take on this task will
   sometimes feel -- as I often did in the course of writing this work
   -- as if they are being forced to _prove_ what they know as fact.
   Those of us who make scholarship our vocation and avocation dream
   of spending our time charting new paths, opening new vistas, and
   offering new perspectives on some aspect of the truth. We seek to
   discover, not to defend. We did not train in our respective fields
   in order to stand like watchmen and women on the Rhine. Yet this is
   what we must do. We do so in order to expose falsehood and hate. We
   will remain every vigilant so that the most precious tools of our
   trade and our society -- truth and reason -- can prevail. The
   still, small voices of millions cry out to us from the ground
   demanding that we do no less." (Lipstadt, 221-222)

                            Work cited

Lipstadt, Deborah E.  Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on
   Truth and Memory.  New York: The Free Press (A division of
   Macmillan, Inc.), 1993.

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor