Holocaust on Trial History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case

David Irving is the leading Holocaust revisionist. He sued Penguin Books for libel. The trial was one of the strangest ever to take place in an English court: the judge had to give a verdict on history. At stake was the freedom of neo-fascist historians to exonerate Hitler and to deny that the Nazis set out to commit genocide, but his was also a trial about the present day, about what our society finds it politically and morally acceptable to say in public. It was also a libel trial about evidence: how do we know that the genocide happened. D.D. Guttenplan has followed David Irving's career for years and has studies the furious debates over the Holocaust. This is a dramatic recreation of a bizarre trial and a mediation on truth and discovery.