Deborah Lipstadt

Biography

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, Atlanta. Her most recent book, HOLOCAUST: AN AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING (2016) explores how America has understood and interpreted the Holocaust since 1945.
Her previous book was THE EICHMANN TRIAL, (2011). The New York Times Book Review described Lipstadt as having “done a great service by… recovering the event as a gripping legal drama ….in the world’s delayed awakening to the magnitude of the Holocaust.”
Her book HISTORY ON TRIAL (2005) now entitled DENIAL: HOLOCAUST HISTORY ON TRIAL (2016), is the story of her libel trial in London against David Irving who sued her for calling him a Holocaust denier and right wing extremist. The Daily Telegraph (London) described David Irving v. Penguin/Deborah Lipstadt as having "done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations." The Times (London) said "history has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory." According to the New York Times, the trial "put an end to the pretense that Mr. Irving is anything but a self-promoting apologist for Hitler." The movie, DENIAL, starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, and Timothy Spall depicts the trial. With a screenplay by Sir David Hare, DENIAL was produced by BBC Films and Participant Media. The film was nominated for a BAFTA as one of the best British films of the year.
She has also published DENYING THE HOLOCAUST: THE GROWING ASSAULT ON TRUTH AND MEMORY (1993) and BEYOND BELIEF: THE AMERICAN PRESS AND THE COMING OF THE HOLOCAUST 1933-1945(1986).At Emory she directs the website Holocaust Denial on Trial/ www.hdot.org ] which contains a complete archive of the proceedings of Irving v. Penguin UK and Deborah Lipstadt. At Emory Lipstadt has won the Emery Williams Teaching Award given by alumni to the teacher who had most influenced them. She was an historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.