Product Description

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #821127 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 570 pages

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

Customer Reviews

An answer to historical liars.
Van Pelt presented expert evidence in Mr David Irving's libel fiasco , a defeat which revisionists have attempted to distance themselves from but one which was absolutely fatal to their cause and the alledged evidence they place so much confidence in.

Van Pelt describes the nature of the camp its building and structure within the context of the Irving libel action , the claims made by Irving and other revisionist "scholars" , he explains why their claims cannot be sustained .
He demolishes their claims and reveals the flaws and distortions on which the revisionist case has been built,whilst in parallel he describes how the gas chambers how they were built and operated , their evolution and how they were in turn were destroyed.
Van Pelt does this with cold hard evidence based fact - no guess work no pseudo science in the pages of this book he dismantles the revisions claims one by one and exposes them to the critical examination which they so often they avoid.

The science is touched on through the experts called to refute Leuchter and Rudolf, the latter Irving withdrew rather than see Germar Rudiolf's findings exposed for what they are.
To date he has never given a satifsfactory reason for doing so, this alone is worthy of note.

If you are at a loss as to what to read on Auschwitz Birkenau in the light of the complex claims made by "revisionist scholars" this book will assist you in making sense of the genocidal process - if you require an answer to the arguements of Butz , Irving , Faurission , Leuchter, Rudolf , Ball et al. this book puts their theories and ideas to the sword.

Well illustrated with photographs and diagrams from archival sources he explores how mass murder was accomplished and how it has been lied about.

This book does make the case for Auschwitz , having read it you are entitled to ask why there is such a need to distort history to support the denial of a well documented genocide and why individuals when having been proven to be utterly wrong that they continue telling the same lies over and over again.

An excellent book which should not be overlooked when answers are being sought.