AAARGH
TORONTO - The verdict in the recent London trial that pitted American historian Deborah Lipstadt against plaintiff David Irving, the British Holocaust denier, was "quite a bitter victory," according to the 44-year-old University of Waterloo professor of architecture who served as an expert witness in the case.
Although Lipstadt and her team celebrated their victory, "there was a real sense that this was a completely obscene issue we'd been involved in," said Robert Jan Van Pelt in an interview at his home last week, following his return to Canada.
"When you're a Jew - and I am a Jew - there's something disconcerting in someone denying your own history and the history of your people." [Please note that when you are not a Jew, the same may be completely indifferent to you: for instance some say Napoleon is one of the greatest conqueror of the history of mankind, some say he is a mass murderer. As a French citizen, I do not feel disconcerted at all by these accusations - and denying of accusations. Of course, being French is not a religious belief. AAARGH]
A native of Holland born to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father, Van Pelt was named for an uncle who was killed in Auschwitz. He is a cultural historian (not an architect) and co-author with Deborah Dwork of the 1996 book Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present.
He wrote an even weightier tome on Auschwitz - a 772-page report, along with two supplementary reports - as evidence for the trial.
The issue of Auschwitz became the central point of contention at the trial, Van Pelt told The CJN.
"Irving was prepared to admit large-scale killings on the east front - these could be explained as killings done in the heat of war - but when you come to extermination camps like Auschwitz, you cannot explain this as part and parcel of the violence of a normal war situation."
In his cross-examination of Van Pelt, Irving - who served as his own lawyer - insisted that gas chambers at Auschwitz had no roof vents and thus could not have been used to kill inmates.
Van Pelt countered that argument, and similar ones, saying that evidence and testimony in the years since World War II made it a "moral certainty" that gas chambers were the main instruments of murder at Auschwitz between the summer of 1942 and fall of 1944. [It has been the usual procedure, since the beginning of forensic police, to prefer moral certainty to physical evidence in criminal matters. People are sentenced to be hanged for murders their ADN prove they have not committed, simply because the survivors have a "moral certainty" of their guilt. Everyone knows that, as we say In Sorbonne. AAARGH]
His report explains at some length the difference between "moral certainty" and other types of certainty. Moral certainty is based on quality of evidence and is the best certainty a historian can have[As the man first pretended to be an architect, then admitted to being a teacher of cultural studies, noone can clearly sees howx he can support any valid opinion as to what would or would not be the "best certainty a historian can have". AAARGH], he said. "It's a very particular technical term." [Of course, it goes much farther than any document Irving could have found in the archives!. AAARGH]
As the first expert witness to be called, Van Pelt was cross-examined for a total of almost four days by Irving.
Unexpectedly, Van Pelt was compelled to declare his religion when the judge wrongly assumed the Bible on which Van Pelt would take his oath was a Dutch Protestant version. In fact, he used a German-Jewish prayerbook that has been in his family since the 1930s.
He was nervous, he admitted. Although Irving attempted to undermine his credibility by exposing him as a non-architect, Van Pelt realized after the first half dozen hours "he wasn't going to damage me, really."
In fact, one of Lipstadt's lawyers, Richard Rampton came to the same conclusion and on Jan. 26 (the second day of Van Pelt's cross-examination) penned an outline of a sinking S.S. Irving alongside a victorious HMS Van Pelt, which he later presented to Van Pelt.
The experience of being cross-examined by Irving was like a cat-and-mouse game, Van Pelt said. Irving's "traps, most of the time, don't appear to be much of a trap...You have this incredible tension...It becomes a kind of surreal situation."
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