Denial by Deborah E. Lipstadt

Author:Deborah E. Lipstadt
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780062659651
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

REVOLTING CALCULATIONS

I was certain the next item on the agenda, though relatively small, would be a winner for us. In 1992, the Sunday Times hired Irving to go to Moscow to examine a copy of Josef Goebbels’s diary, which was stored on glass plates. The diary had been unavailable to researchers until after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Times, anxious to avoid a debacle similar to the “Hitler’s Diaries” episode, asked Irving to verify that this was truly Goebbels’s diary.

MOSCOW DIARIES: AN ILLICIT BORROWING?

In his diary, Irving described the extensive negotiations he conducted with the director of the Moscow archives to try to get permission to copy some of the plates. Irving, apparently unwilling to await the director’s decision, hid one plate outside on a desolate patch of ground during the lunch break. At the end of the day he retrieved it and had it photographed in Moscow. In his diary, he described how he “illicitly borrow[ed]” the plate. The next day he returned it and took two more, according to his diary, “by the same means.” However, instead of just keeping them overnight, Irving took them to Munich, left them in the hotel safe, traveled to Rome, returned to Munich, retrieved them, and brought them to England for forensic testing. He returned these plates to Moscow three weeks later. During Irving’s second visit the head of the archives permitted him to copy two plates. Irving described them in his diary as the “two slides we legally borrowed.”1 Irving’s actions, I had written in Denying the Holocaust, constituted a breach of archival protocol and caused archivists to fear that the plates had been damaged. Irving contended that he had broken no agreements and had not harmed the plates.

Irving began by calling Peter Millar, who had then represented the Times in Moscow, and asked him if he remembered when “I borrowed two of the glass plates from the archives without permission.” Millar recalled it well. Rampton then cross-examined Millar: Was it “clear to you that he knew he should not be taking the plates?” Millar answered, “Quite.” Rampton then read a memo Millar sent the editor of the Sunday Times. “Irving has taken liberties in our name in Moscow ‘borrowing’ two plates and taking them out of the country and will shamelessly take more.”

When Millar stepped down, Irving returned to the witness box so that Rampton could cross-examine him on this topic. Irving readily acknowledged that his behavior was “illicit and . . . rather shabby.” However, given the chaotic situation in the archives, he insisted he had performed a “valuable service” by ensuring that historians would have immediate access to the diaries.2

Given Irving’s contrasting descriptions of the two borrowings—“illicit” and “legally”—I assumed this would be a slam dunk. We had considered bringing the head of the archive to testify. Because of the cost involved and Irving’s descriptions in his diary, we decided that an affidavit by him, attesting to the fact that Irving lacked permission to take the plates, would suffice.

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