History Matters: Prof. Deborah Lipstadt

good evening hello hi as folks continue to take their seats I'm going to introduce our event quickly do not worry have no fear my name is Judah Bernstein I'm the academic programs coordinator here I'm delighted to welcome you to the Center for Jewish history the Center for Jewish history is an umbrella institution that houses our five wonderful partner organizations whose emblems you can find in the Great Hall on the walls they are American Jewish Historical Society American Sparty Federation Leo Beck Institute Yeshiva University Museum and the EVO Institute of Jewish research together these partners possess an extraordinary trove of Jewish historical artifacts documents and other media that constitute the largest repository of Jewish archival material outside of Israel and perhaps in the world the archival library and collections housed at the center span over a thousand years they constitute more than five miles of archival boxes which an archive will speak is a lot of boxes over 500,000 volumes of printed materials some 100 million documents in dozens of languages from manifold geographic locations that is to say that right here in this unassuming building on a sleepy quiet street in Chelsea Manhattan any member of the public can walk through the doors enter our Lillian Goldman reading room on the third floor and immersed themselves in the personal regional national and transnational histories of Jews across countries and time periods I happen to exercise that very privilege myself the other day in assembling this PowerPoint which is drawn from archival materials that could be found at our friends at the American Jewish Historical Society and which reflect the ebb and flow of anti-jewish hostility in the United States although Jews in America have faced historically low degrees of anti-semitism the image above a cartoon from an 1880s 1877 publication at American Jewish Historical Society attests that anti-jewish hostility became a matter of pressing CERN in the late 19th century the cartoon came on the heels of the scandalous refusal of entry to a prominent Jewish businessman Joseph Seligman at a well-to-do New Yorker New York hotel the grand Union in Saratoga in 1877 such hostility of course intensified leading up to and following World War one perhaps most notoriously symbolized by Henry Ford's publication of a serialized screed about Jewish global conspiracies the International Jew originals of which you can also find upstairs in multiple languages and editions Jews in America did not stand idly by in the face of this attack though some like the Yiddish writer whose book is above lampooned Ford as a puppet of the Ku Klux Klan others lambasted their enemies as hateful anti-semites indeed the radio priests and nativist Charles Coughlin in this letter you can see his signature below also in our archive he complains and I quote I do not relish being characterized as an anti-semite and a pro-nazi unfortunately he went on to accuse his attackers of attacking a priest and therefore of the Christian religion it is these very same dynamics rising anti-semitic sentiment and their pushback against it by brave and courageous individuals that we will be exploring this evening the center is a world-class archive a portal for advanced research in Jewish history but it is also a public institution a Jewish Library of Congress we see it as our mission to preserve the Jewish past so as to bring history alive to a public that craves to understand the contemporary by first turning to the historical it is with this goal in mind that we plan the history matter series which we are inaugurating this evening funded generously by Dina and Jonathan leader the history matters series we'll explore matters of contemporary relevance by hearing eminent historians reflect on the link between their historical research and the present you can find a full listing of upcoming history matters evenings on the back of your program our next event which should be of extreme relevance considering politics in pole at this very moment will feature the distinguished scholar of Polish Jewish history yon gross who himself has been the subject of threats of arrest in Poland because of his work and he will talk about it in February please attend there are a few historians more well suited than professor Deborah Lipstadt to inaugurate our series beginning as we are with anti-semitism in the past and the present professor Lipstadt is the dura professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University where she has taught for decades she is the author of multiple books on the Holocaust including beyond belief which explores how American newspapers covered and obscured the Holocaust and denying the Holocaust a trenchant examination of Holocaust denial it was that book of course that aroused the ire of leading Holocaust revisionists David Irving who sued Lipstadt for libel in a court in the United Kingdom a case which Lipstadt eventually won and of course became the focus of a feature-length film denial in which he is portrayed by rachel wise professor Lipstadt brings to the center a profound expertise in the Holocaust but also an undying effort but also in the undying efforts I'm sorry she brings a profound expertise in the Holocaust but she is also an expert in the undying efforts by some to obscure distort or distort or altogether deny that seminal events historicity she is thus well-placed to meditate on the linkages between past and present anti-semitism and we are grateful and thrilled to welcome her here professor Lipstadt will be interviewed this evening by Professor David Meyers CEO and president of the Center for Jewish history without further ado I would like to call them to the stage thank you [Applause] welcome Deborah thank you it's good to be here I want to come back to hear Yan gross I'm your young grouse February 20th we look forward to seeing you back for that it's really a delight to have you as the inaugural speaker in our history matter series who better to link the past and present than than you the structure of our conversation I think is going to follow the follow this outline first we'll talk a little bit about Deborah's professor lip stats background then we'll talk about her work historical work and try and trace the arc of that important body of historical research and then finally we'll make our way to the present probably interjecting a long way observations about the president one thing you can call me Deborah half of this audience a either went to shul with the campus to school with have written about have attacked they've attacked me they all know me as Deborah so okay good good as a do I so all right professor Lipstadt let's begin so not that your accent would betray any indication of where you come from but maybe tell us a little bit about the world in which you grew up my father was an immigrant from Germany he came in 26 as a young man both his parents had died he couldn't find a job in Germany the economy was terrible so he came and he was with actually a group I lived on the Upper West Side of German Jewish immigrant grace max turn many others you know who came from Germany young Modern Orthodox men and some women because was mainly men who went off on their own or a young woman didn't do that as much and he was very involved in Upper West Side Jewish life met my mother in shul and he he had to have terre vet and someone introduced them outside and diminished Shabbos was over he called there's a great anecdote I have to tell you this wonderful anecdote my mother then then was my mother was from Canada and moved to Detroit and then to New York and she ran what was called Junior Miss rocky and she had just organized a major conference and a major event and she decided she'd give herself a couple of days vacation in Lakewood which was then a center of Jewish you know kosher hotels so she and my father said I'll Drive you there so he drove her there and they're having tea before he was going to drive back to the city and he was sitting there making delicious what are you working on what are you brightening he said well I get invited I'm a single man I get invited for Shabbat for Friday night for lunch all the time and it's hard for me to get to people's homes before Shabbat to bring them flowers and so what I do twice a year Rosh Hashanah this was November Rosh Hashanah and Pesach I fill up my car with beautiful beautiful really gorgeous bouquets and I go to all my the homes of the people who have hosted me and I give them as a rush Hashanah and a Pesach you she said what's November what do you when he said I'm making my Pesach list so she said her name was pieman she said his pieman on the list and he looked up he said if pieman isn't Lipstadt by Pesach she's not getting flowers that is a yucca who starts in November very much a yucca sure household mobile was considered a mixed marriage because she was from Polish background lunch in Krakow and then he moved to far removed to Far Rockaway where actually was a we moved because my parents wanted to move out of the city and small apartment same story is today and they spent the summer in Far Rockaway and they fell in love with Shari to fill them with a manual Rahman of blessed memory and my father said that's the kind of shoe I want to raise my kids in and very much of that Santa he came from the Sampson ray feel her community so very much of the sense of a rabbi who was a role model for your children and so I would say that after my parents Rabbi Rahman was the seminal influence the critical and flawed Jew on me he in 56 during a brief era of what we might call Paris right you know that when shortly after Khrushchev had came come in a group of Rabbis went to the Soviet Union and he went I was then I don't know seven eight and my father said to me stay in for the sermon it's going to be memorable I didn't know what memorable was but I stayed and I remember talking about that and he was a great orator and he was also he was a learner draba a learned man but also a lawyer a colonel in the Air Force so it was very much of that you know Torah and madhai approach and it really had a major impact on me and I write about it in history on trial on the book on the trial but and then we return to New York City and moved into the Bell Nord there must be someone here with a connection to the Bell Nord on 86th and Broadway to be close to the Jewish center because again my parents were looking for a tool with rabbinic figures rabbi Leo Young a blessed memory rabbi Norman lamb who were both in steeped in Jewish learning but steeped in sin you say the Jewish values that were most deeply impressed upon you were a great sense of the wisdom of our tradition that there was there was a wisdom that much of the world had had taken and adopted and adapted and also a sense of justice a sense there was a great sense I remember when one year my mother woke me up and on a Sunday morning she said starting early in the civil rights movement and she said there's a march in Harlem today let's go and my father made my father's in the monument business he made the monument for Andy Goodman and how moved he was by that and how he told us about it and they got home gross the sculptor to design it is here in Queens you can go see it on the way to LaGuardia you know and but how important that was and and how how proud he was of effort so it was very much that sense of said that said vectored of justice and doing the right thing and when I would get kicked out of class for standing up for a friend who was wrongly you know I remember once the teacher was berating a student I said she didn't do it you know it was someone else say who else and I got kicked out my mother said congratulations your tenacity for which you are known was born relatively early right it's full did someone call it bullheaded let's call it tenacity what about history what historical events left a deep imprint on you and maybe what related to the annals of the Jews um what are your first memories that's very interesting certainly the Eichmann trial I remember dinner was sort of you would get on earth it was ABC what would have 50 the news then was 15 minutes and they would have 15 minutes of the highlights of the Eichmann trial actually was the day before because it was before transmission they would tape the trial film the trial the films would be immediately brought down to Wood than the airport and then sent a to London a copy would stay in London a copy would go to Germany I believe and then to New York and we'd watch them as a family we talked about it the show ah was not discussed that much but I do remember very strikingly every Pesach at the Seder my father would read we got a little pamphlet that this was the night of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and when it came time to open the door for Elia who and she folks on my cot pour out your wrath my favorite part of the Seder it's a select group of one my father we would stand and my father would read that pamphlet and he would weep two times a year I would see him weep that and when he did the special beer fat abundant that the blessing for the children on Erev Yom Kippur there's a special bear hut upon him but so that that impressed me we didn't talk about the show uh but it's just something I knew about it you knew it was you knew it had happened and of course many of their friends on the Upper West Side were German Jewish refugees and the doctor we went to was had been a pediatrician in Germany and when he came to this country I worked as an orderly till he could get his medical papers in order and things like that so that certainly had an impact I remember certainly the Eichmann trial Exodus the book and the movie there were always Jewish books in our house singer Meyer Levin we got commentary New Republic which I thought was a Jewish magazine it was less so at that time and so when when did the desire to be a Jewish historian take rise in you your undergraduate at City College City College by two years in Israel 66 to 68 were really formative you know right well I was I did it the other way at Christmas time the gate would the mandelbaum gate would be open for non-jews to go back and forth Jordan would only allow you to go one direction it didn't want to make it easy for tourists to go from Israel to Jordan in the back to Israel so you were allowed going into Jordan or going out and it was very hard for tour groups to arrange it and so most people just didn't come to Israel they either went one place or the other but at Christmas time for ins foreigners in Israel could get special permission to go to across the Mandelbaum gate ostensibly go to Bethlehem and then come back and lots of my fellow students at the Hebrew University went and got permission and you had to say you were Christian and I just said I don't want to do that but then they came back with such interesting stories I said I want to do that so we had a very long break between somehow it worked out before Pesach I think we had a two or three week break at the University my sister then was had a Fulbright and she was in England so we arranged to meet in Greece we went a thens and then by train to Istanbul and then when she flew back to England I flew to Beirut and went by car from Beirut to Damascus the masker to Amman and then to Jerusalem and then through the Mandelbaum gate she had when she had been a student she was at Hunter she had a close friend who was a member of the royal family her husband was the ambassador the Jordanian ambassador to the UN and when he went back to Amman his wife stayed to finish her degree at Hunter she used to come to our house Friday night for dinner all the time and so I went to visit Safa in Amman and then I went to Jerusalem and I woke up the first morning of course I wanted to find the wall but I was a little hesitant to ask and they were literally a street urchin so you know messed up little dirty kids running around said we'll show you to the Dome of the rock we'll show you to this and if you walk to the to the to the Wailing Wall as they called it so I said oh I'd like to see the Wailing Wall and nonchalantly and I went there and it was then if you meant you know the pictures from before 67 was the thin alleyway maybe I don't know half the size of this auditorium and I stood there and I just looked and I took pictures and I just thought of how many Jews would like to a be here and do this and see it and then a guide group group came by English speaking group with an English speaking Jordanian guide and he said this was the holiest place for Jews until 48 they come and then he was sort of durog they pray and they cry and they scratch themselves and you know it's sort of and they said but now they don't come anymore okay let's continue on to the Via Dolorosa or something like that and then I went up to Mount of Olives of course she couldn't go to Mount Scopus because that was still held by by Israel and I stood at the the hotel on the top above the wrecked cemetery and I walked on you know roads that had cemeteries own them and things like that I didn't go into the cemetery the hotel was a sight when Israelis one very often the Saturday night we go up to orede not just a Saturday night but to heart see own to Mount Zion and from there you could sort of see and you couldn't see a damn thing but we would look into the old city or look across to her heart Sofia min ha reciting Mount Scopus in Mantle's and the intercontinental looked so intriguing the lights so I went up there and I stood there and I looked across and I saw at that point the tallest building in Jerusalem was what still is maybe emka YMCA you see the King David hotel and then you could see the apartment house above the supersoul are not grown which was then one of the tallest buildings in Jerusalem and I looked I said I've got enough stories here for a lifetime I got to Jericho I can go into Petra I said I'm going home and so I got my bags and I crossed into through the man I got you had to get permission to pass I thought I'd gotten that in Beirut the visa to go back and I crossed and there was sort of I think a like a barrier that they'd lifted I walked across and you I went into the Mandelbaum the house it was dr. Mann the ban I think it was a physician and eye doctor his home which was now maintained by the border police and I handed them my new passport I had gotten a new passport in Athens without any Israel stamps and they said where you coming from and I started to say in Hebrew I said me ordained I said I was in Syria and then I was in base and they the other guy put down whatever he was doing and they started to ask me questions and you go to the Kotel and you do this and do that and so after a while I said okay enough and I cook I'm called they called taxi for me I went outside take a taxi by the after the dorm and as I walked out one said I was thought I was already out of the door one said yes labate seems a lot of courage courage he cleaned it up and the other one said avellanal us say so so I didn't you know I sort of been doing these things and then and I came back and I decided I wanted to do Jewish Jewish Studies Jewish history and I went to Brandeis and then while I was at Brandeis it was I was in Israel of course during the six-day war so then I got to go back to all the places I had seen before and it was seeing them in a very different light including when the day they opened the Kotel to the public I think it was shoveled out of 67 which was maybe ten days after the war walking with streams of people around the edge of the old city to to the Kotel but then they came back to Brandeis and I think it was 72 David Ross Keyes whom I know has lectured here and a great wonderful and terrific Yiddish scholar of Yiddish literature had just had been in the Soviet Union he called me up he said I said how'd you get to the Soviet Union he said well he was a little surreptitious about it but essentially what was happening and now we talk about it publicly is that Israel couldn't Israelis couldn't get to the Soviet Union anymore because the Soviet Union had broken ties with Israel in 67 so what Israel was doing it was finding Jews with countries with strong passports British Jews American Jews Canadian Jews French and finding people who were also had a strong connection to Israel very often were fluent in Hebrew and asking them to go quietly particularly at times of the holidays to make contact with refuseniks to bring out names of people who wanted invitations and then Israel would find something called the lishka the office and it was in the Prime Minister's Office Kyle Beckerman writes about this and what in his wonderful book when they come for us we will not we will be gone and they would send us in twos and maybe threes and people would go quietly so I went to with a friend to Russia to first to Moscow and then we were in Kiev shortly and they were in chair of its and we were supposed to go petition F and end up back in Kiev in each we were in for a different holiday for Rosh Hashanah in Moscow Yom Kippur and chair of its etc through the Hakim and we met refuseniks in Moscow and I was invited on the first night of Rosh Hashanah they they spotted us in the and we sort of have been told how to reach them how to find them I don't remember exactly how and we were invited back to one of their homes where they showed slides in a very old-fashioned way of the first Bar Mitzvah one of the refusenik children had had a Bar Mitzvah at the shul and and the celebration and then I we hung out with them for a lot I met Eden Udell and she was just beginning to be part of infusing movement it was when Sharansky was beginning someone pointed out to me said that's Anatoly Sharansky new you know he's just getting involved etc etc and then we went to chair of its and we we we got we got hoodwink and chair nervous we met some young people outside the synagogue who clearly were with the KGB and they reported on us but so that on the day we were supposed to go to a kitchen if we were taken out of the country but it had a very powerful experience and it brings together a lot of the strands that you're asking about on the more on kkona train I was up in the women's section it was hot it was crowded and I said where's us in in in turn of its Janov it's is in bucovina it was a city what was 80% Jew or something like that ninety percent Jewish Paul Ceylon came from the Ruth Weiss was born in chair of its Rock David Rossi solder sister who will be speaking in our matter seriously oh then why am I not surprised so we spent I spent the whole Kol Nidre night outside on the street talking to people and then the next morning we didn't even go into Shore section again was so crowded was really unpleasant but came time for you skirt my father had passed away in Eric before Ikey for Pesach that year so I said I want to say yes sir so I asked is it time for you skir and finally when it was Easter time the the courtyard of the synagogue the big windows very typical kind of architecture and they yelled out of the window to the thousand thousand people staying on the street yes Kurt and everyone got quiet and I had a little seed or with me it was actually it's a challah seed or and I opened it up to find the astir and I began to say it and there was murmuring in the crowd you know that clearly here was a Western young woman able to find her way into through this through the the sea door and then people asked me to say you stir for them people because one woman who had sort of attached herself to me said you know that's we talked in a little bit of Yiddish I had gone to the eat to the Evo vine rock program which was then at Columbia to prepare so I had a little bit of Jewish and German etc so I said do you have anybody to say it for you she said no so I said it for her husband her children you know family members and that was very very Paris so so these experiences Israel and then this trip to the Soviet Union clearly played a significant role in forming you as a Jew as a Jew as an activist as an activist and how about your sense of Jewish history and as someone interested in Jewish histories what what did those two experiences do for your sense of just wanting to know wanting to better understand wanting to we went there's a little town outside of Sarah gara and we went to visit it because people I know had had relatives buried there and their Heschl's there are Amish was in that in that and I walk I told Susie a couple years later yes Susana Heschel and she said yes that's my that's where my family was from Avram you're sure you know or sometimes there's Avram you're sure you know it was it was it was it was a sense of wanting to know more wanting to be connected but they also came from the family my fault my parents love Jewish history so we go to visit old synagogues we go to different synagogues Spanish and Portuguese synagogue we go you know just all seen places of Jewish history there was a real sense of wanting to be connected and but at this time in your I guess your 20s you early 20s you developed this sense that this was your calling yes and it was that like what was the calling was that that I wanted to find a way of studying Jewish history which wouldn't which would take me into the archives I mean I did archival work and did you know the old boring work where you sit there and you turn the page looking for something that's going to tell you something and usually you don't know what it's gonna tell you to you've gotten to five boxes later so you have to go back and find it etcetera because you don't connect something you don't realize the significance of something it's it's the joy of research but it was remember this is Vietnam I've been in Israel during the six-day war its Kennedy's Kennedy's Robert remember I was a digital Robert Kennedy was killed civil rights there was a sense of wanting to study history but also wanted to be part of what was going on so those two things were linked activism and location historian were entwined yes in ways that seemed relevant and possible today I think so I think much more acceptable today in that time you know if you were too much involved in contemporary issues you weren't serious you know and the fact that I was interested in very contemporary stuff in the beginning some really serious more activism journalism is a history but you know I it just was something I felt there was a drip drive in your own work do you think that that still accurate I think for some analysts even well certainly I mean you can't ignore I had this little trial that certainly had a big impact but I was doing I was already involved in that before when I wrote look when I wrote the American the book of my first book beyond belief the American press in the coming of the Holocaust 33 to 45 in the book in the introduction I tell the story of how this book originated I was teaching one of my first courses on the history of the Holocaust it was at the University of Washington where I first started my career in Seattle and I was giving a lecture in America in the Holocaust and I was talking about information information and knowledge I've seen had information but did it transmit into knowledge and I was talking about showing them documents what the Congress knew what the White House knew what the State Department knew I had done this whole thing and in the middle of the lecture one student said but what could - who goes back a long time what could my parents have known today they'd say what could my grandparents have known and I say well if all this information was available to white they must have known a lot and the student then said I don't believe you and it's almost like what happened when Yan Karski came to this country yang Karski the Polish jente I was trying to alert the world this is very power if you haven't seen you have them zits flash but watch Lance Minh show ah you know it's nine and a half hours you have to have like a relationship with the movie but the Karski is in there and he's interviewed a Karski had been in the warsaw ghetto had been i believe he goes to Treblinka I forget which camp he goes to then he comes and then the Polish underground sneaks him out across Europe gets the Inc to London to arouse the world about the Shoah and then he comes to this country and he's a famous meeting with Felix Frankfurter who was then on the Supreme Court and he tells him the story of what's happening and frankfurter says I can't believe you and Karski says are you calling me a liar he said no no well he said it's not that I don't believe you it's that I can't believe you so here was a student asking what could my parents have known I said and I assume they could have known a lot he said I can't believe that so here's what you write in the opening of that book beyond belief 1986 during the 1930s and 1940s American Americans could have saved thousands and maybe even hundreds of thousands of Jews but did not do so this is a terrible indictment which carries a heavy burden of responsibility and also raises some difficult questions can you speak to that well you know it's such a it's such a heavy kind of thing you know very often than many particularly in the Jewish community if people want to beat up on Franklin Roosevelt and probably when I was writing that book and doing the research I held him in greater contempt than I did by the end of the book and certainly in the years of research since the truth of the matter is that if you want to look at what Roosevelt was doing you certainly have to look at what the Congress was doing you know and there was no desire to bring to let us come here 30 s of the pivotal years was in the 30s that people could have been allowed to come but if you look at the fate as you know well of the Wagner Rogers bill a bill introduced by senator Wagner of New York and representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts a Democrat and a Republican jointly introduced into the Congress after Kristallnacht so I think it's introduced January of 39 to bring 10,000 Jewish children 10,000 children over the course of Oh 10,000 a year over the course of two years children whose parents were either in concentration camps or had been arrested or whatever and bring them here and first there is a very positive reaction seems like a nice thing and then the protectionist the Southern Democrats the Republican Party almost on mas the America first errs begin to say well these are kids who were educated Nazi Germany why do we want them have them here it's anti it's an anti-semitism mixed with an anti it's a xenophobia anti-immigration anti-semitism all wrapped up together and the bill died the bill comes out of committee saying that these 20,000 children can come in and they don't add the word Jewish and the Jewish community is behind the bill Federation's and other groups but they're very quiet because they are told that if you become too out front it will sink the chances of the bill passing anti-semitism was was rampant in this country father Coughlin you just thought the letter he was he had hundreds of thousands if not millions of listeners to his program on CBS radio which was overtly anti-semitic and which CBS didn't take off till after the war started that letter I think was 1940 so it's pretty the war it started till after Pearl Harbor 41 when America gets into the war and the so the bill comes out of committee instead of twenty thousand children in in addition to the existing quotas from each of this countries remember we had quota systems there which heavily favored the British Isles and Northern Europe the Scandinavian countries Norway Denmark just the history just the history just the facts as sergeant Friday would say but only two women do you know that this little aside in dragnet who remembers dragnet when sergeant Friday would say just the facts ma'am just was only two women that he would say that because women will poor traders anyway that's for another talk the gender implications of dragnet yes for next week but so the that twenty thousand places in the quotas would be reserved for children and the supporters represent senator Wagner and representative Rogers let it die because rather than liberalizing the immigration you you was suddenly were limited to having to find twenty thousand children but the the saying the story of the st. Louis which happens a few months later June of thirty nine it's very easy to say Roosevelt sent it back but Roosevelt at that point was trying to get lend-lease through the Congress he was trying to get armament bills through and it was made very clear to him that if you let these 900 people in that's not gonna happen I'm not saying that he was heartbroken about having to do it he was a cold calculating politician but the sentiments in the country at large was one we don't want immigrants we don't want refugees even worse and even worse we don't want Jews well I mean it seems too obvious to pass on but what do we learn from this and do you look the twentieth century has been littered with ethnic cleansing mass murder genocide xenophobia and anti-immigration rhetoric including in this country what what do we learn from this oh it's terrible terrible to say that now especially you know a speech tonight that will be given which will deal a lot with immigration and I think there many Jews who feel have very mixed feelings about you know certainly one of the president's chief advisors on this issue is a man of Jewish heritage it's it's such a difficult question because it's so easy when I'm just we just started a new semester and I'm teaching history the Holocaust in one section of course is on the barriers to escape why didn't people leave they did birth by the way as Marian Kaplan who you know is and why you wonderful Jewish historian writes it makes the point in her book between dig dignity and despair on a Jewish life in Nazi Germany 1933 to 1945 that over close to 60% I usually over 50% but it's really I just checked it's close to 60% of German Jews left Germany and they went to very safe places they went to Paris they went to Brussels the most famous victim of the Holocaust her family left Frankfurt in 1933 they got up and they left mid 33 and they went to a very safe place Amsterdam I just was in Amsterdam just came back on Thursday night and I got to visit the Anne Frank House and which I had done before but I went through with the director of the anne frank house at 8 o'clock in the morning when there was no one else there it's a very powerful experience and we talked about that you know that I mean Anne Frank saves the reputation of the Netherlands because the Netherlands has probably in Western Europe the highest percent of a person yeah I think the population may even be higher of the Jewish population Netherlands 140,000 of whom one hundred and four thousand are killed so but for Anne Frank you know it would be a very different story so you know people left and we look today at what's going on now and I think many of us many American Jews are conflicted because it's more complicated the many of the people who are coming our people that we feel are not friendly to and yet I would bet if I asked how many people in this auditorium go going back to maximum three generations are children of immigrants and we have sitting here I just know it we have rabbis and we have PhDs and we have entrepreneurs and we have people who have contributed so much and yet on paper if you had been looked at if someone that looked at my father's you know prospects for coming to this country said you know he doesn't have a skill doesn't you know he has two PhDs and a child and children and NBA and and grandchildren and and and accomplished accomplished all right so we're gonna get back to the present I can assure you but I want to go back to the your past you wrote your dissertation on a topic in American Jewish history in science I was a too easily forgotten his Jewish historian Ben Ben Ben Halpern Ben Halpern at Brandeis and he was very interested in American Zionist history and he pushed me in this direction I think it had been a few years later I probably would have done America in the Holocaust okay so what prompted that turn I went to the University of Washington I was their first professor of Jewish Studies and now they have a program one of the biggest programs very robust program and the students the courses were subscribed oversubscribed from the day it was announced that you know before the students even knew who I was or and they came to me and they said would you ever teach a course on the Holocaust so I began to figure out how I would do that it was really in order and was that that was I would say 75 76 another very few you really had to figure it out yourself and there was hilberg there was Raul hilberg great work and there were a couple of other things your Prima levy and other things were out but there weren't and right around that time lucy Davidovich was writing she I've been at the American Jewish Committee but now she was than she's left at that point and Berman house the workers know this was before was publishing books of documents professor Twerski did one on Rambam their books translations of documents and they're I think they were about five or six in the series this was a horse of the Holocaust before and Lucy Davidovich did the one on Holocaust documents and a because of that she wrote war against the Jews so we I had that book but it's very meager compared to what we have today and over the course of the years I developed more and more interest in it and then this student challenged me saying what could my parents have known and I said that I'm gonna write that book I'm gonna figure it out and that became beyond belief on belief and then you turned your attention to the phenomenon of Holocaust denial how did that happen well I don't know I do a little shameless plug I don't know if you've seen my TED talk which crossed a million but we can go more than that so go home man guvo Lipstadt plus TED Talks a million two hundred forty seven capacity forty three thousand million forty four thousand something like that I promised my students that if they bring it up to a million won by the end of the semester they get a party so they're all home you know contacting their entire family etc and I had finished beyond belief and at that point unlike later in my career I didn't have a book on the burner that I wanted to do I wasn't sure what I wanted to do happen to be in Jerusalem and I bump into you who to Bauer and who knew me and knew me well knew my work loved love beyond belief and he said Debra do you have time for coffee come have coffee with me and you saw Goodman Goodman who is a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and one of it was a blessed memory one of the experts on the history of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and I I said sure fighting me to have coffee these two senior much respected people from who I had learned so much and they said yes we have an idea for you for a research project so now I was both delighted and intrigued so I went and they said to me we think you should write about Holocaust denial and I left I thought this was completely ludicrous I mean I didn't go far but I you know I said you mean the Flat Earth people you take them seriously and they both said yes and they both were at that point developing the what became the Sassoon Center for the Study of anti-semitism at the Hebrew University so they were looking at forms of anti-semitism and they said yes we take it seriously and we see it as a form of anti-semitism but we're not really sure what it is and how it is and how is it gaining any traction so I figured completely wrong that I would spend two three years writing the book I'd write that being my second book and then Furtick finish you know gamar knew I'd move on to other things that come back to America in the Holocaust era and of course it changed my life tell us why well it changed my life regular because the day is David I won't say Jack he's here I don't know if David's David's not okay so David Ellenson said to me when he saw when the book was just coming I said Deborah this book was gonna change your life I said forget it who's interested in Holocaust denial so I Oh David was was prescient in that but it changed in a number of ways first of all I can to take it seriously as I studied it because I saw and this brings us right smack into today I saw that the tactics of deniers denial had been around from almost immediately after the war when Ayman is in Argentina meeting with these German expats who were in Argentina not not all Nazis but some had come to Argentina before in the 30s business and other things and he was telling them what he had done during the warm what had happened during the war there's oh that's not true that couldn't be true and and you know they were began to deny it even though here you had I've been telling them what happened they're not only been around for a while but in the 70s it got a new modus operandi the beliefs were the same but it began to insist the followers began to insist on being calling being called revisionists as opposed to the term that you eschew yes very much very strongly so they earlier once had been called revisionist but now it became a fad in all their journals and all their Institute's cuz they said we're not anti-semites we're not against the Jews we're not denying anything we want to revise mistakes in history you could go to their meetings and you would look and you wouldn't see a swastika you wouldn't see an SS like uniform there had been a movie around that time a little documentary called California rice on neo-nazis in California these little kids dressed up in in in SS like uniforms and get sick Eileen and things like that that's not what you would find in the Institute for historical review in Newport Beach California where it was then or in their journal the Journal of historical review they presented a massacre themselves as a group that wanted to revise mistakes in history in fact they even got the use of they rented the Arrowhead Center UCLA for a retreat because the whoever was the the bureaucrat in charge of historical Institute you would look at the programs for their conferences nothing about it smacked of anti-semitism nothing about it smacked of Holocaust denial but it was all about that so it was wolf in sheep's clothing why was that what what because that that that shift in marketing strategy who was the architect of the architect Willis Cardo too great a great extent and some of his followers that you if you were overtly pro-nazi if you had you carried swastikas if you dress then sort of you know pseudo SS kind style uniforms people would look at you and say oh my god I don't want to be associated with them but if you presented yourself as mainline historians maybe even edgy historians doing serious work just asking questions well that's something that I could find intriguing you know where you see this precisely today in the alt-right the if you the alt-right alt-right or one amongst the organizers of the March in Charlottesville go look at the videos of the March in Charlottesville they look the guys look like they can't mainly guys not only look like they came out of a j.crew catalog polo shirts khakis you see no Slough there's one swastika one flag with a swastika they're carrying the flags of their organizations which have swastika like symbols on them I think the Atlantic in fact did I believe was the Atlantic or the New Yorker did a guide to the symbols that you see in Charlotte or what but but no you know and and they were and they said oh we're just here to to protest about the monuments that's what we hear about so that book okay so that change in tactics again linked me with a hist are a group that was trying to revise history with a contemporary kind of thing now in the book I devoted a hundred words 200 words I can really have to count them because it so impacted my life to David Irving and I called him the most dangerous of deniers because he was the one who was most had he had knew the documents he knew the documents he was seen as an edgy historical writer people he had written a book in 78 before he became a thing he openly associates with the deniers at the end of the eighties after the sundel trial in Canada and Toronto um but he he wrote a book in 78 called Hitler's war which he argues that and know it sounds ridiculous but it is ridiculous Hitler didn't know about the Holocaust and when he that about and he tried to stop it and Hitler was the best friend that Jews had in Germany so I looked at the reviews of this book and many reviewers said well this is a little bit crazy that that thesis is crazy but the rest of what he has to say is interesting instead of saying anybody who could say this I'm not gonna trust whatever else he has to say so I and I said he's a mess box when they would be when he would write his books they reviewed in TLS Times Literary Supplement or in New York Review of Books knew you know with nature they might pay in them but they review them so those those hundred words caught his attention right this book that you published in 1993 which won a National Jewish Book Award right caught his attention two years later and it came out in England about four or five months after came out in England penguin brought it out he brought a suit against me and again when I when I got the letter that he was suing me once again having left when I first heard about Holocaust denial and when professors bowring and Goodman proposed it I left again I said this guy is it's a denier and he's proud of it this is a guy who says I'm going to sink of the battleship Auschwitz this is a guy who says about it a survivor in Melbourne Australia how much money have you made from having that number tattooed on your arm what he testified at the sundel trial that there were no gas chambers what what is this man saying he's not it so I thought it was ridiculous and then then I thought it was not so ridiculous because the letters kept coming and I knew also that publishers didn't have a great track record of standing behind their authors and serendipitously on both its meaning by chance and and good fortune a person I knew in England who worked for the Jewish community on issues of security and researchers that are Mike wino right I wrote a lot we've been to conferences together called me and and we were talking I said and he knew about the suit against me because the papers had been filed in the court I'm gonna proof yes you but the the legal system is the flip mirror image of the American legal system in America if I say you libeled me I have to prove you libeled me in Britain if I say you libeled me you as the author of the words have to prove the truth of what you said so the burden of proof you get in America you can just say ignore it prove that I libeled you in Britain if you ignore it you're your claimant the person who's brought the proceedings against you wins by default on top of which you have as a result of the Supreme Court case of New York Times V Sullivan which i think is 63-64 where the New York Times had written about a I believe is a cop or a policeman in either Birmingham Birmingham or in Selma who had sick dogs on civil rights protesters and he had sued them for libel and the New York Times fought back when all the way to the Supreme Court and you know the Times argued and the judges ruled in The Times favor that a public figure someone who voluntarily puts themselves in the public eye so it began with government officials someone who or who worked for the government this this sheriff in in in the South loses the right to sue for libel on the issue of their on their professional issues because if they had the right to sue for libel it would have a chilling effect on the First Amendment and the First Amendment took precedence and that eventually it was expanded to include authors that's why in other countries you can sue when you get a lousy review in America you can't you've written the book you put it out there people have a right to say whatever they let's pause here and ask what are your views of Holocaust denial and free speech I am against laws outline Holocaust denial in fact again you can go to youtube I spoke at the Oxford Union on this you know the oh they call themselves one of the oldest existing debating societies in the Western world I say they've never been to a Friday night dim you know it's most Jewish families I know I'll tell a funny story about a Jewish historian Paula Hyman of blessed memory who was well from whom we learned so much and who some very good friends of hers aren't here tonight Paula told me that when her when her eldest daughter was applying for entry into Yale she had a stress interview she went to the the person the faculty member was interviewing her and it was stressful and it was challenging and and it was really you know a bit disconcerting so I said well what was her reaction and Paula's husband was standing there and he said she thought it was dinner at our house free speech but I don't believe thank you I don't believe in laws outlawing Holocaust denial first of all I have trouble with hate speech laws because they can be very dicey not a jerk certainly in Europe America you couldn't have laws outlawing Holocaust there now because again the First Amendment may be hanging on by its fingernails but it's still hanging on it would be contrary to the First Amendment so a on a free speech issue but there's another issue here as well and this applies to countries which don't have the First Amendment I think laws against Holocaust denial suggest that we don't have the facts to answer that we have to depend on laws to protect the history when the facts themselves will do it number one number two I'm afraid and I've only become more frightened in recent years of ceding to politicians control over what can and cannot be said such as we are seeing in Poland I said we've seen in Poland such as we're seen in many people many places I think that it's it suggests that I don't trust the polity I'm to give the politicians the right to determine this is acceptable and this isn't well I think all those things and and certainly free speech Trump's with a small tea Trump's you know the other the the idea of protecting the history believe me I hate deniers I hate Holocaust denial this is being taped that was a bad thing to say I dislike it very much I hate it is it a thing of the past it the hardcore denial the denial of the history if you would ask me this two years ago I said that's pretty much a thing of the past it's less so now where is it um certainly in groups I mentioned all right these groups that were marching in Charlottesville the white supremacist group - the white nationalist stormer yes exactly the daily storm it that's hardcore denial it didn't happen the Jews are making it up there exact there they're exaggerating they were being they were really criminals they were subversive but there's another form of Holocaust in Ireland I think I may have created these categories I'm not I think so I'm not sure what I call softcore denial because and and usually we use hardcore and softcore in relation to burn ography well I do that on purpose because I think denial of history is pornographic history whether you're talking about the Holocaust way they're talking about the Armenian Genocide whether you're talking about subrin itza whether you're talking about Rwanda it's it's it's pornographic it's doing to the to the victims and the survivors it's a double killing I think Alvin Rosenfeld coined that term so what we see today also is softcore denial softcore denial which says oh I'm not denying that Melilla Penn and his daughter marine lepen Mithila Penn you know long-term right-wing leader in France talks about Auschwitz and the gas chambers as a detail in history well if they're Jews not denying them it's a detail in history well if it's a detail in history why are we hearing so much about it would be the natural question and the answer of course the Jews the Jews insist on talking about it the Jews insist on you know and in relationship to Israel certainly look you can disagree with Israel's policy visa policies visa vie the Palestinians from A to C you can think they're all wrong do you think they're they're not productive you can think that they're not F you can think whatever you want to think but to talk about it as a genocide is to miss so misrepresent what is going on and so misrepresent what genocide is not just against the Jews but against other peoples as well you can talk about the mistakes made by the IDF the IDF is an army made up of human beings yes it claims and it prides itself on having very high rockin Neshek the purity of arms that the way the way arms and force should be used but you can think they've made horrendous mistakes but to talk about the Nazi like tactics of the idea is is grossly misrepresenting it's it's a form of softcore denial and that and a form of anti so that leads to the question about the persistence of anti-semitism today you've spent some time meditating on that I think you have a book I'm finishing my editors here so I should probably went to be more I'm not home our colleague Robert wist rich called anti-semitism the longest age right how do you understand the malleability it's amazing endurance of the phenomena what does it look like today for you the the endurance of the phenomenon look I can direct a line to from the origins of anti-semitism which I see in the New Testament in the story of the the death of Jesus yes there were attacks on Jews before but I believe they fall much more into the category of into a warfare of groups chalant be a minority groups being challenged etc but if you look at the way the death of Jesus is depicted in the new test and has and was taught by church fathers and they were mainly church fathers for millennia after that they had certain elements persisted the Jews of course everybody in the story is Jewish Jesus is Jewish the Jews are Jewish you know but that doesn't matter the Jews killed Jesus sort of like the whites killed Kennedy I don't know what the good analogy would be except for the Romans who actually killed them so if you acknowledge that the Romans actually killed him these Jews were managed in their nefarious ways to get the greatest power extent in the world that at that time roamed the roman empire to crucify this pure innocent son of god individual could have brought so much love and life and and and goodness to the world why because he wanted to chase the money changers out of the temple so there you have the basic elements of anti-semitism nefarious mendacious ways of the jews conniving managed to get money money managed to get they are small in number but look they get Rome to do the killing or they and and go right through go to the blood libels you know using killing Gentile children on free for use and Passover it's a reenactment of the DSi or to denial if you would ask a denier you know if they sold you how this never happened well why have the juice made up this myth he will have a very simple answer very straightforward answer will say what did the Jews get out of the Holocaust and what is the traditional answer that's given which is wrong because if you got me we give that answer because but if you look at the history history and the history of Israel there was the peel Commission 136 which a British Commission which could recommendation 37 right exactly which called for dividing the area up into Jewish political entities and Arab political entities in other words there would have been something before and if Israel had been a direct result of the Holocaust that would have been in 45 46 it's a result of the Brits pulling out it's much more complicated but that's an answer that's often given and what else did they get out of the Holocaust reparations which is a fancy word for money so there you have a rationale for how for creating this myth of the Holocaust which is sort of brings you right back to traditional anti-semitism you know when when miz I'm gonna give a strange analogy here when Miss magazine was first created it was a supplement in New York magazine there was an article in there but I think by a woman named Jane O'Reilly and she called it click and she talked about the Kliq phenomenon how for women you sometimes suddenly realize you're being asked to do something that if you're the only woman let's say at the table and the coffee is wheeled into the or there's coffee on the side the woman is that would you serve the coffee or you have an idea and you say it and nobody pays attention but when a man has the same idea suddenly it's paid attention to and she talked about the Kliq phenomenon how suddenly you realize wait a minute there's something wrong here and and when when you use traditional prejudicial caring stereotypical characteristics the Jews well the Jews made this up you know to get a state it didn't matter that they were displacing another people what do they care if they're hurting other people they're only after themselves and they manage they were so powerful that they got the Allies to plant all these documents and to spread this story they got Germany to accept this moral burden and to play Billy pay billions of dollars because otherwise they would have ensured that Germany didn't get back into the family of Nations so it's it's the same thing like with the racist stereotype you know where someone will tell you oh I I was held up I was mugged was he black you know or the person or use that person says happened to be a black individual oh you know of course because it it it fits the stereotype it fits the for prejudice to work the stereotype has to make sense so if you say african-americans are what they are because they're conniving and money-hungry doesn't make sense that's the Jewish stereotype but if you say they're shiftless and lazy that's that's not what they are but that's the the stereotype associated with african-americans it makes sense you say always Italian these mafioso it makes sense so I mean for a small and dispersed people the Jews have clearly had a monumental impact and one of the manifestations is with all the malleable images that the anti-semitic arsenal contains the structural function of the Jew is the classic other remains and we as historians ask but ultimately often fail to answer that question why we know the what I don't know the dynamics of I do it up why I think partially it's not a great answer I think it's a good aunt but I'm going to give you a some good answer but it's not a sufficient answer is that by all rights of history we shouldn't be here we should have disappeared or what we should have assimilated acculturated and then assimilated we shouldn't be here seventy years ago one out of every three of us one two three one two three was murdered we shouldn't be here never before did a nation go to such efforts to kill an entire people outside their boundaries in summer of 44 after the landing at Normandy they take boats and go to the Isle of rhodes one of the oldest Jewish communities probably is old if not older than the Jewish community in Rome and they strip it of the Jews there was you know meshuggeneh d'Ivoire they were fixated on this killing we shouldn't have survived we shouldn't have flourished but not just the Holocaust the Spanish Inquisition the Pope rum succumb let's keep program 1648 the the the Crusades there's so many different examples and just forgetting the anti-semitism small in number we should have disappeared into the majority that's what happened when he wrote his first but but I think that's part of it and I can't explain to you how that happened okay I have two final questions before we open up for questions from the from the audience first what are you concerned about in terms of anti-semitism today can you tell us yes as you under time there's two things I'm concerned about a I see a resurgence entering the conversation both from the right and from the left I see more about the same yeah you know Ben Halpern my teacher used to say the one place the right and the left meat is on anti-semitism you know and the bigger danger I see is that you know it goes back to one of the great Jewish thinkers and the father of a great Jewish historian Shimon revered of it Israel the ever dying people assume if you haven't read the essay read the essay I mentioned here last week oh okay with this picture okay so Shimon revered of age who created the Near Eastern Judaic Studies the first Department of Jewish Studies at in the United States at Brandeis um has a classic essay and I kind of gets a which I think has impacted all of us it's called Israel the ever dying people and he traces help me begins with a mission I think begins with the Mishnah up through contemporary times for the Zionist poets Rambam and and and medieval rabbinic scholars it said all the way through how every generation thought it was the final generation how every generation thought you know there's no one here who loves Torah there's no one who here was concerned about Jewish life Rambam Maimonides writes to the rabbi's of southern france no one cares about Turin learning like you do we are the end now how wrong was that you know but and rather dovish in the ass in the end and then who was it a said let me Ani I'm a laughter phone yes so the the great the great science poet whom do I write who's gonna read my poetry who's gonna care about this now what Brava dodge says is it was a psychological coping mechanism I don't know if he uses the words like a lot but that if you expected the worst you were never surprised by it you know the the Jewish joke where the guy is sitting on a train and he say i am i thirsty i am and the person sitting in the bar with him has gone crazy so he goes and brings him some water the guy thanks to me drink some water it's quiet in the train for a few minutes and then it's a Jewish joke so it's two endings who can choose which anything you want there's an optimum a pessimistic ending and a less pessimistic ending after a few minutes the guy who was so thirsty says I was i thirsty i that's the path that's the optimistic ending the pessimistic ending is he says I will I be thirsty I will I be there in other words nothing surprises us that's what rubbish now rava dove which was saying it in an affirming kind of way he was trying to understand this phenomenon what I'm afraid of is for too many Jews the fight against anti-semitism becomes the raison d'être the reason for staying as Jews it becomes the motivating force to be a Jew I'm gonna be a Jew I'm gonna do this you know not to give hit it's the same way back in high male faculty you shall not hand hitler posthumous victory thou shalt live as jews people took that out of its context I don't think FAC and I meant it but I'm going to keep kosher I'm going to do this I'm gonna do that not to hand Hitler a posthumous victory and I say Vaska you know it's it's awful Pete not ask Allah Hafiz it's not don't be and doing and be more firmly Jewish not to hand the anti-semites of victory but but I P nonetheless you know I fucking shit my mail we say about Elijah the Prophet even though he tarries and one of the ships like the Exodus one of the other ships was cause the FRP feign the nonetheless so how do you do that as someone who's devoted her life study of the holes of the destruction you know you live as a Jew but however you define that religiously ethnically academically or gonna say but you you you live as a Jew not I'm gonna show the anti-semites but because there's so much good stuff there there's so much I mean I'm bringing coals to Newcastle telling an audience who came out in freezing weather to listen to this conversation and and in a place a Center for Jewish history but you find the if you don't ignore the negative and you don't ignore those who will attack you what is it Tom with Bob Lee i biological a hog Akash game Largo someone comes to kill you get up early and kill them first Thomas says you know take action first don't sit around waiting for it to happen but at the same time that's not the reason why you worried you that's not the reason why you do what you do so let's return in my final question to history what how after your you know your your midway through a distinguished career as an historian what do you understand to be the function of the historian what do you understand to be the function of history in today's world look I think the function of history is for history's sake you have to be careful of using it as a political ideological social cudgel I think one of the reasons Jewish Studies succeeded in the Academy particularly in the phase in the 60s I mean there was Jewish Studies before of course professor say hello with them are around you know you in a Center for Jewish history you know is the icon at first chair in in Jewish history at Columbia first year in America and Jewish history and and other great historians they trained and I wasn't trained Barbara but you know the people who trained me at Brandeis it was history for history sake this is an academic profession we're not here to be activists we're not training and I think the other in the early incarnations in the 60s and the 70s the other identity or heritage Studies programs African American Studies and when its first incarnation not today was more more about activism you you exemplify the engaged historian for whom I think a perpetuation of the Jewish people is an extraordinarily important part of who you are part of your when I sit down to write my history and do my history I try to set that engagement aside because I think if I let it infuse what I'm saying it's not as valuable the young grouse will be here to talk next weekend again it's something I will watch online you know you look at the bill that's been introduced someone said to me did you hear about this bill I said yes I know better I was in Poland a lot a long time this summer I'm going again in a few weeks a few months right they said imagine you can't say polish concentration camps I said but that's true there weren't Pope they were not polish concentration camps the Germans built them the Germans did that you go to Auschwitz you know the town is called awesome and the camp is called Auschwitz the Germans saw it not as in Poland but as an extension of the right so this person is who I was saying this to said well if the poles have been smarter they would have done it crazy these were this was a I don't want to take one thing away from the Germans when it comes to the murder and the annihilation camps and this person was shocked they said on the other hand you have poles who collaborated to talk to so yes there's some people who feel that the Polish concentration camp finger was put in there as a sock to say well they're right on that but but it's really about the collaboration but we have to speak truth we have to be honest about what we're saying we can't take our history and say I'm gonna write a history that's gonna motivate people to act one way or the other in the book that I'm doing that I'm finishing up now on anti-semitism anti-semitism here and now it's structured as letters to a student and to a colleague a Jewish student and non Jewish colleague and they're composites but what I've done is I've taken all the emails and letters and conversations I've had with colleagues and with students about anti-semitism in the past three four or five years years since God's I guess and and and composited them and I and I it's it's sort of my most oh you know current kind of because it's something that's happening now and not a historical element but at the same time we have to be willing to be truthful about even contemporary events you know BDS there's no BDS anti-semitism the people who created BDS if you look at the founding papers of the BDS movement no question they call for the destruction of Israel no question that there's an anti-semitism that pervades them but not everybody who joins BDS is necessarily anti-semitic some kids who join it couldn't find Israel on a map you know um it's hard but it's there but but I think we have to be honest we have to be honest as historians we have to be honest in contemporary issues even if sometimes it's difficult I'd love to probe for much longer the boundary between history and memory which is a very important distinction but but I think we'll see if we can get back to that let's open up now for questions from the audience yes sir right there Judah do you want to the gentleman in the vest right there yes you three somewhat side comments in a short period of time a retired was a very interesting experience I people I've been retired for some twenty plus years say Louis was very is a very interesting experience when my first encounters there was a colleague asking to see my horns and my tail this is you know I was is there an indigenous anti-semitism okay we'll give you thank you okay Deborah I think there has been America upstairs the American Jewish Historical Society you saw examples of it in the introduction you go up and look at the library we have studied American anti-semitism but if you look at American anti-semitism in a comparative context and here professor Meyers can speak to that easily just as well as I you look at Europe it's not embedded in American culture and tradition in the same way that it's embedded in European culture and tradition and that's what makes it different I think that that that it's there no one is saying it's not there but it's it's not constitutive of the very senses a sense and I would say in Europe in England take England for example in England it was embedded in a way that people who went to Oxford in Cambridge in the 70s and the 80s can still talk about how they faced it and and snide comments from professors and things like that so it's here but it's not embedded in that way and in terms of information the I'm not sure your father could have gotten a letter and I don't know how you would have gotten a letter from Belarus in 43 but I can't you know obviously it got them some way but yes the information was was the information was available in December 42 December 17th 1942 all the Allied nations including the United States acknowledge this is one year after Pearl Harbor that there is an extermination of that's the word they use of the Jews taking place in Europe that two million Jews were already dead and four million more stood in danger of losing their lives we also have to remember though and here's the historian and Lee speaking that in 40 true and even through much of 43 the Allies were losing the war so to have asked America to change it's partly allies to change its policies when it didn't look like we were gonna win the war was a very touchy thing yes please right here hold can you just hold on one second we'll somehow reach okay well it's a funny it is a funny story we still are very close I'll be in London in a few weeks and we're gonna have Shabbos lunch together Anthony Julius was a is a lawyer in England solicitor a solicitor prepares the case up to trial and the barrister the guy in the wig or the woman in the wig brings it into the courtroom and he specialized in press and libel law and at some point Princess Diana after she had separated from Charles approached him about representing her in some of her cases against the press particularly men few remember she went to the gym and the gym owner planted cameras in the ceiling and took pictures of her in very you know revealing ways and he represented her a number of times and then he represented her in her divorce suit and when he when she said to him I want you to represent me in the divorce suit he said you know maybe you want one of my colleagues who specialized in divorce this would be my first divorce case and she said to him don't worry it's my first divorce so we'll learn together when I knew I was being sued and made contact with Mike wine who is both sort of a community organizer but also was write scholarly articles and about and looks at anti-semitism in a very analytical way and I was talking to him on the phone I said you know I really need my own lawyer and he said there's one person you have to get and he I said who's that and he said he's smart he's assertive great I think it's a man so he said assertive been a woman he probably were said aggressive he's smart he says he can't he does not abide anti-semites and I think he would do this for you and probably pro bono if necessary so I mean you know all the important words you know smarts or pro bono I said what's his name and he said Anthony Julius and I said oh I know who he is and because Anthony who was really incredible a Renaissance man after while he was representing the princess in other cases as well went back to university to get a PhD in comparative literature and he wrote on TS Eliot and anti-semitism and literary criticism essentially argued that the anti-semitism is a fundamental part of it's not little bits of Eliot's poetry here and there but it's endemic its to Eliot's poetry and that the critics had given him a free pass almost like what they did with David Irving initially oh yes well anti-semitism we won't that he's just writing that because he wants to be accepted by the modernist he's just writing that for you know he doesn't really mean it and the book had been reviewed in every place when it appeared in part because of Anthony's notoriety as the princess's attorney that divorced suit had been settled in very in felt in very favorable terms for Princess Diana but everyone also marveled the New Yorker profiled him and marveled at the fact that here was you know a full were a lawyer working full-time as a lawyer produces this book gets a PhD and gets your attention you know and so he was asked about he said well look some lawyers play golf on Wednesday I went got a PhD what's but he took on the case together with his colleague James Lipson and they represented me in me for close to two years pro bono and then when as the movie depicts when it began to take over their entire caseload they maybe they had to charge but they became there and they remained very close friends and in fact a good friend of my time cycler feller of UCLA hello was recently in London and he met Anthony Julius Singh's wife met Anthony Julius they were interested meet him and I swear I arranged for them to meet and and over lunch I asked him what's the best thing that came out of the trial free in your opinion he said my friendship with Deborah and when I am told me that I said I would have said exactly the same thing so yes right in the middle there we need more woman's hands as I know well I'm looking getting definitely do you think that Trump has been actively or you know that he has been drug whistling to the right or do you I think you I have no idea whether the president is an anti-semite or a racist I don't in fact I don't think he is but I do think we've seen a lot of issue a lot of points crucial points where there have been these either dog whistles or use of material from those groups going back to the picture of Hillary Clinton when during the campaign in July of 2016 with the Jewish star and piles of money or using stuff directly from The Daily stormer and things like that which means that somebody close to him is monitoring those sites is drawing things from those sites I think there's been look nice people don't March chanting Jews will not replace us nice people don't March chanting the Nazi slogan blood and soil blood and soil was the essence of anti-semitism to the Nazis the Jew could not be a German citizen they did not have the proper blood going to race assign a racial anti-semitism and they were not of the soil of the German soil there were cosmopolitan they were here there and everywhere nice people so what I think it has done is and and it has given a new life to these groups it whether meant to or not I'm just talking about the outcome it has encouraged them you hear it from David Duke you hear it from Richard Spencer you hear from many people okay I think we're gonna take a batch of three questions so we get some more voices yes I see you but I see you but I'm gonna actually go right up there for the first yes the woman right there you're gonna be second I see you yes there are lots of other people with hands up and the third person right there so yes please well that's my friend here in the front row yes thank you and she'll repeat that question dealt with the presence of Muslim or Islamic anti-semitism and what what does professor Lipstadt think about that that she will elaborate on it and the third question is the gentleman right there there may not be a need to repeat it Israel's mentioned and the New Testament was mentioned in Martin Luther I was going to ask of what the any comments about Islam since that's a repetition the last person last row where Judah will come up to you okay so the three questions are intermarriage as a Holocaust Muslim anti-semitism and the publication of mine cough I'm not a sociologist and it's really they who analyzed more intermarriage I wrote an article many years ago really decrying intermarriage and talking about it as something that seriously threatened the Jewish community I still think in many cases it does but I also know too many families internet where one partner is not Jewish who are actively raising their kids as Jews where they sending their kids to day school which is a big commitment the home is a Jewish home I know one of the year one couple in particular where the husband says I don't believe in any religion I don't believe I'm I was born a Christian yes my family is Christian but I don't believe in religion for me to convert would be a sham yet he's sending his daughters to day school he's proud as can be that his wife is active in the synagogue active in the Jewish community trying to revise us in it revived a synagogue in Atlanta so I think the the jury is out would I prefer that the young people in my family marry Jews of course because there's more of a guarantee of a continuation of the tradition but I know many families were Jews a married to Jews and they could give two wits about Jewish tradition so I think it's it's a more complicated picture than we thought and I do think that the Jewish community has it's been both depleted and been enriched in both ways so I think it's it's a more variegated picture in terms of Islamic anti-semitism I think when I was talking about the genocide of the Palestinians or the accusation of genocide the Palestinians or the Hitler like tactics of the IDF I was certainly referring to that but I think we also have to be careful be careful about talking about Muslims the same way we have be careful about talking about the Jews there yes there is a real problem and it's been shown the EU did a study of anti-semitism in Europe it came out about a - a year ago it's very interesting and it talks about the fact that in many European countries where there is a substantial Muslim population anti-semitism is endemic the the kid it's not like the kids are told go out and kill Jews or you know go burn down people if you see beat up people to see Israeli flag but that it's it's almost the way in a white household in the south and outside the south as well in the 3rd and the 20s people might have talked about African Americans the way they talk about Jews it's it's it's built into the into the culture that when they learn about the the Holocaust in in the school they go to then well the Jews were bad of course they hated them so it is very problematic I see anti-semitism coming from the right I see anti-semitism as I said earlier coming from the left comes from the for they're certainly Muslims who are anti-semitic and many Muslims who are not but it is built it has worked its way into the Islamic world in a way that is is disturbing and the final question on mine cough what I would have done I probably you know first of all who was it who said foolish Incan foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of small minds I think Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson he said foolish consistencies I make no claim to being consistent I saw no problem with Germany banning the publication of mine Kampf legal reasons it's now been reissued annotated etc but you know there are many there's I know a lot of scholars and academics in Germany who study anti-semitism in Germany and they said to some degree the banding of mine Kampf made it forbidden fruit made it more attractive I came back from France I bought back a copy of Mein Kampf so it's a tricky kind of thing context matters time and space okay we're gonna take one final batch of three questions yes right there the first let's see in the middle there and then finally behind you so let's begin right there up ur West Side okay second question right there yes please gentlemen with the beard yep maybe you can stand up so can you Wow and finally yes please the online issue the I assume you're talking about Jonathan Greenblatt and he's absolutely correct the defense agencies the organization's which follow and monitor anti-semitism were to use a British from gobsmacked absolutely flabbergasted during the election as the anti-semitism began to on online anti-semitism began to appear Wiseman I think it's Joseph Wiseman who is the one of the deputy editors of the New York Times had written an article it mainly came from the right from Trump supporters had written an article and they began to troll him to you know attack him online with the parentheses you know the the called the echoes it's usually three sometimes it's two parentheses and when he got it this was early in the campaign he didn't know what it was this was early on and he wrote to his the person who had sent it to him and the person that what you know what about that Ashkenazi genius that you're supposed to have its Belling the cat you know the story of belly in the cat with the mice tie a bell around the cat's neck so they'll all week when the cat is asleep so when they'll know when the cat is coming they'll know to scamper away so we now see the echoes that Weissman and other journalists now put put the EPI you don't have to guess that I'm a Jew I'm telling you there I'm a Jew Jeffrey Goldberg editor of the Atlantic talks about extensively the anti-semitism which emerged online Bethenny Mandel who writes for commentary writes for the four words had briefly mentioned an article by is a Robert Kagan Rob Robert Kagan in which he and this again is during the campaign which he found parallels between fascism and some of the things some of the things were being said by Trump and by the Trump campaign and they began to troll her so much she wrote an article for this in the four words that she went out and bought a they even doctors what it's called where they found out her personal information or personal Facebook page for personal address and things like that it is extensive and it is active it has given a new life to anti-semites because before certainly with Holocaust denial there were countries that monitored using the mails for Holocaust and I'll stop the sending of this kind of stuff if they could track it and the internet it's a free-for-all and and and it's very much there what I say to my students about I don't talk that much about it but what I say generally and what I said in the and this really goes to a certain extent to the final question about fake news and things like that so I'll take those two and then I'll come back to your your question is that before you post something before you share something even if it agrees with what you believe check it out I recently I don't remember exactly what the circumstances was were but I was looking at something on Facebook and they said something horrible anti-semitic sexist had been sent said by some politician Republican Trump supporter politician which neither of which I am and I was about to reposted was just horrific and then I stopped and I said wait a minute if this person really said that I would be seeing that all over Facebook certainly in my newsfeed which of course you know Facebook selects what you get but they know that's the kind of stuff I look at so I googled the headline and the only source that came up for it was the source that was on Facebook so clearly it was it was fake news and I didn't post it I've made mistakes sometimes but how important it is to check it out how important it is to to know the source um it's it's it's there and if you are trolled I mean I don't read the comments to the when I post an article I haven't read the comments on my TED talk I've read the comments in my Atlantic articles and other things and you know sometimes people will me too a particularly vituperative comment or something like that but it's very I can't give you an exact answer of what to do we're only beginning to fully understand the phenomenon and the fake news I think fake news is very dangerous even when it has nothing to do with Jews or anti-semitism or Israel fake news when we begin to distrust Jews have flourished in democratic countries countries which are really democratic multicultural we have flourished in a way that we've never flourished anyplace else that may be in in our own state and when you begin to attack the democratic institutions the media the courts even the FBI when you begin to create doubts about the reliability of what your are they all lie oh it's all fake news it's not a good thing for the nation at large and it's not a good thing for the Jewish people I really and I don't say that you know I guess I have a pull my own political bias which is of course always hard to set aside but I try to but I say that left and right it's simply not a good thing and you know finally and I wish I had a really good answer for you and your girlfriend that's a long-distance relationship I wish you great good luck you know red eyes well huh oh okay I hope that's good for her better for you certainly I wish I had a good answer for you I wish I had an easy answer for you but to give you an easy answer would be to sort of denigrate the whole reason you're here tonight though you you picked this to start your series this is something that as much as I study it I'm still surprised by it you know I'm reminded Lahav do rabbi heschel Abraham Joshua Heschel final interview on the early NBC morning the religion religion and he was asked who was it who interviewed him I forget who interviewed him but he said what still surprises you and he said everything you know I'm even as much as I study it as much as I understand that I'm so surprised by it when I was in high school we studied the combust internal combustion engine all the parts we took a blade teacher took us to a garage shop and they we we saw an engine being taken apart in how it works and the Pistons and all these things and when I shortly thereafter when I went to driver's ed in high schools we could all get our license you know and I put the key in and turned it on and it moved I was surprised and and to some degree I know all the moving parts of antisemitism but how it's possible that going back to my field of study of the Holocaust that the nation that was considered you know after you finished your PhD in the United States you went to Germany to get a real education was considered the leading intellectual creative artistic place designed a murder system which will go after a particular people like if they had won they would have murdered many people but this was a murder this was a murder that could not wait and not just in the boundaries of their country but as far as they could across Europe as I said earlier going to Rhodes after after the landing at Normandy when they're on the defensive the Soviet forces are moving west it's it's clear that it's not good that the situation is not good for them hungry the Jews in Hungary in seven weeks Eichmann oversees the murder of over 400,000 Jews and when he's told to stop by Himmler he still sneaks through another train load of Jews I can't explain that I can explain how it happened what happened but there's still something in through all these years that beggars the imagination that that I can't fully explain so I can't tell you you know explain it to you in a way that that would really fully explicated cuz I can't do that myself but I can say maybe to go back to what I was saying earlier about robideaux vich that as much as you're disturbed by it and I'm glad you're disturbed by cuz we all should be disturbed by it and not just say oh it was just the you know whatever it was frightening and now the murder of a young man as the student at University of Pennsylvania and in California blaze what is it Bernstein now is being attributed to a right-wing neo-nazi extremist those are horrific things and things that should disturb us and we should act be active in in talking about them and and monitoring them and when someone says oh anti-semitism you Jews talk about anti-semitism it's not real yes it is real but at the same time and I know nothing about you or your now East Coast based girlfriend but I would say that if you're interested in in your and concerned about your Jewish identity that at the same time that you monitor fights are aware of this anti-semitism that you never let it become the motivating factor in in the kind of Jews you are the kind of household you'll build together with her or someone else the the way you'll educate your children about being Jews that never you know that the whole world yes they should know some day that the whole world hates the Jews but before they learn about the oiz they should know about the joys before they learn about all that has been done to Jews they should know what Jews do what we've given to the world what we do how we celebrate our tradition our history that that should be what drives you and if you do that I think you you'll be in a good you tonight will have been worth it Diane them thank you very much thank you very much before we depart I just want to make three brief observations first if your appetites were wedded if you were stimulated and inspired by this evening I encourage you to come to our next session in this series and all of the sessions in them so that we together can explore the meaning of the past to the present second I want to thank again Deena and Jonathan leader for their generous support of tonight's program and the history matters series and third I want to remind you the Center for Jewish history is a world-class archive it's a museum and it's a cultural center and the axis around which everything revolves is the belief that history matters and if you share that belief that I encourage you to join as a member of the Center for Jewish history and even more ambitiously to consider sponsoring a program such as this I'd be happy to talk to you after tonight's session and again it's just been a great privilege to have professor Deborah Lipstadt with us thank you so much thank you you [Applause]

Channel: Center for Jewish History

Views: 2,374

Rating: 3.1379311 out of 5

Keywords: Center for Jewish History, Deborah Lipstadt, History Matters, yt:cc=on

Id: MNCPs0Obf1k

Length: 112min 45sec (6765 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2018