Deborah Lipstadt

Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian and diplomat, best known as author of the books Denying the Holocaust (1993), History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier (2005), The Eichmann Trial (2011), and Antisemitism: Here and Now (2019). She has served as the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism since May 3, 2022. Since 1993 she has been the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States.

Quotes

• Lots of people told me not to fight, including leaders of the Jewish community, who were fearful that I was giving him a platform. [...] Many of them told me to settle. Don't fight, ignore it. But if I lost, it would become illegal to call the world's leading Holocaust denier a denier. And what he would then say is, "Ok, I'm not a denier, but the court ruled in my favour, ipso facto, the David Irving version of the Holocaust is the genuine version."
• You're allowed to stand up at Hyde Park Corner and say the Holocaust didn't happen. But do I have to invite you Cambridge or Yale to give you a platform to say so? No. There are not two sides to every story. You can argue [about] why the Holocaust happened, but not that it happened.
  • Interviewed in "Deborah Lipstadt: 'Many would like to stand up to antisemites. I had the chance to do it'", The Guardian (14 January 2017)
  • On the David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt libel case. The film Denial (2016) about the case was then an imminent release.

• Yesterday's heinous, barbaric terrorism against Israeli civilians is the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust. There is no justification whatsoever for this mass murder. None.
  • Tweet cited in "US antisemitism envoy: Barbaric attack most lethal assault on Jews since Holocaust", The Times of Israel (9 October 2023)
  • Hamas murdered at least 1,300 Israelis on 7 October 2023 beginning the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.