Podcast appearances and mentions of Deborah Lipstadt

This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark judgment in the infamous Irving v Lipstadt Holocaust denial case. David Irving sued American academic Deborah Lipstadt after she had described him as a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book, for his claims that Jews had not been systematically exterminated by the Nazis. Given the burden of proof in English libel law being on the defence, it was up to Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin to prove her claims were true that Irving had deliberately misrepresented evidence. In 2000, the Judge found in her favour.Deborah Lipstadt and the lawyers that represented her, Anthony Julius and James Libson, join Michael Gove for this special edition of Coffee House Shots to provide their reflections: on the trial, on what it's like to go to court over something that's widely accepted as settled historical truth, and to discuss why they think antisemitism flourishes in so many forms. They also talk about why the principles of the case are ever more important today as they were 25 years ago.Produced by Patrick Gibbons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark judgment in the infamous Irving v Lipstadt Holocaust denial case. David Irving sued American academic Deborah Lipstadt after she had described him as a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book, for his claims that Jews had not been systematically exterminated by the Nazis. Given the burden of proof in English libel law being on the defence, it was up to Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin to prove her claims were true that Irving had deliberately misrepresented evidence. In 2000, the Judge found in her favour. Deborah Lipstadt and the lawyers that represented her, Anthony Julius and James Libson, join Michael Gove for this special edition of Coffee House Shots to provide their reflections: on the trial, on what it's like to go to court over something that's widely accepted as settled historical truth, and to discuss why they think antisemitism flourishes in so many forms. They also talk about why the principles of the case are ever more important today as they were 25 years ago. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Next week marks 80 years since VE Day — the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Nazi Germany. But in the shadow of that anniversary, and in the wake of the October 7th attacks, Holocaust denial is on the rise once again — fuelled by misinformation and conspiracy theories spreading online.Today on The Daily T, we look back at a landmark legal battle that confronted those lies head-on. It's been 25 years since David Irving sued historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel — and lost. The trial exposed him as a Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi sympathiser, in a courtroom showdown that made headlines around the world.Camilla and Kamal are joined in the studio by Lipstadt and the lawyer who helped her win the case, Anthony Julius, to reflect on what was at stake then, and what's at stake now.Producer: Georgia CoanPlanning Editor: Venetia RaineyExecutive Producer: Louisa WellsSocial Media Producer: Rachel DuffyStudio Operator: Meghan SearleVideo Editor: Andy MackenizeOriginal music by Goss Studio Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025  Hoover Institution, Stanford University The Hoover Institution Applied History Working Group (HAHWG), chaired by Milbank Family Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson, and vice-chaired by Hoover Fellow Joseph Ledford, held its annual History Symposium on February 11, 2025. The Hoover Institution Applied History Working Group (HAHWG), chaired by Milbank Family Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson, and vice-chaired by Hoover Fellow Joseph Ledford, held its annual History Symposium on February 11, 2025. The 2025 History Symposium has the theme of “Anti-Semitism: Past and Present.” World-renowned historians will reviewed recent developments in the historiography of this subject and related them to contemporary aspects of anti-Semitism, not least those exposed by the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and their aftermath. The Symposium featured a series of papers and panels focused on both new historical research and contemporary developments. Presenters include Mark Brilliant (University of California, Berkeley), Rosa Freedman (University of Reading), Jeffrey Herf (University of Maryland, College Park), Ethan Katz (University of California, Berkeley), Jonathan Karp (Binghamton University), Rebecca Kobrin (Columbia University), Olga Litvack (Cornell University), Daniel Sargent (University of California, Berkeley), Jeffrey Veidlinger (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), and Steven Zipperstein (Stanford University). In addition, the Symposium held a special session featuring Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism and University Distinguished Professor at Emory University, in conversation with Niall Ferguson. Participation is by invitation only. For further information, contact jledford@stanford.edu

Have you ever heard the phrase “hiding in plain sight”? An Austrian Jewish woman named Edith Hahn survived the Holocaust by passing herself off as Christian using a friend's identity papers. She ended up marrying a Nazi officer, even after he found out she was Jewish. In this 1999 interview Edith Hahn Beer talks about her memoir The Nazi Officer's Wife. Get your copy of The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer As an Amazon Associate, Now I've Heard Everything earns from qualifying purchases.You may also enjoy my interviews with Deborah Lipstadt and Peter Z. Malkin For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers, subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. and now on YouTube #Nazi #WorldWarII #Germany #Holocaust

What do Doña Gracia, Glückel of Hameln, and Deborah Lipstadt have in common? They are all celebrated as iconic Jewish women in Dr. Aliza Lavie's incisive book, "Iconic Jewish Women". Dr. Lavie's book features 59 remarkable role models, highlighting the significance of women's voices and leadership in the Jewish community. In a compelling conversation guest-hosted by Dr. Alexandra Herzog, the national deputy director of AJC's Contemporary Jewish Life department, Lavie reflects on her grandmother's strength and her own experiences serving in the Israeli army and parliament. By showcasing the resilience and leadership of Jewish women throughout history—some stories well-known, others less recognized—Dr. Lavie emphasizes the need to confront the pervasive silence surrounding antisemitism. She urges us to learn from those who have paved the way, advocating for greater awareness and action against this global issue. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: with Hen Mazzig, Einat Admony, and more. People of the Pod:  The Nova Music Festival Survivor Saved by an 88-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Is Nasrallah's Death a Game-Changer? Matthew Levitt Breaks What's at Stake for Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah At the UN General Assembly: Jason Isaacson Highlights Israel's Challenges and the Fight Against Antisemitism Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. __ Transcript of Interview with Aliza Lavie: Manya Brachear Pashman: Former Israeli Knesset member, Aliza Lavie is the author of six books, including the award winning "A Jewish Women's Prayer Book". Her latest, "Iconic Jewish Women"–59 inspiring, courageous, revolutionary role models for young girls, introduces readers to amazing women from Queen Esther to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others in between, many of whom have been overlooked, but offer inspiring tales.  My colleague, Alexandra Herzog, is the national deputy director of AJC's Contemporary Jewish life department, and another amazing woman. She is our guest host this week, and she had the honor of speaking with Dr. Lavie. Alexandra, the mic is yours. Alexandra Herzog:   It's an honor and great pleasure to welcome Dr. Aliza Lavie to People of the Pod today. She's the author of six books. I want to especially highlight the two latest ones, "A Jewish Women's Prayer Book," which won a National Jewish Book Award in 2008. And the latest one that we will be talking about today, "Iconic Jewish Women". In many ways, Aliza gives voice to women who have been forgotten from Jewish history, and for that, I and so many women are so very grateful.  Since this book is about women, I want to make sure we don't forget all the women who are still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Not just our women, but also the children and the men. May we bring them all back.  Okay, let's dive into the conversation. Aliza, welcome to People of the Pod. Aliza Lavie:   Thank you so much, Alexandra. Alexandra Herzog:   It's very interesting that you have focused much of your writing about and for women. Let's also remind our listeners that your academic and professional background show your very long standing interest in women's issues. During your time in the Knesset, you served as the chair of the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, and the chair of the Committee to Combat Women Trafficking and Prostitution. So let me ask you this. Why this interest? Where does it stem from?  Aliza Lavie:   I believe in equality, and we need to work for it. We need men and women together to build a society. My grandmother came from Afghanistan, together with her husband. It was 1920, many, many years ago. They came to Jerusalem as a Zionist before Israel was established and became part of Jerusalem. They built and established a Bukharian neighborhood in Jerusalem, very, very old neighborhood.  But my granny, she lost her husband years after, two, three years after. Suddenly, she found herself without a voice, without a language, and she raised nine children. At that time, it was the big war just before Israel was established. And my granny, my granny, knew all the halachic code and all the Torah by heart. And always I asked myself, who told her? Who gave her the information?  And more, I became, you know, part of the Israeli society, as an officer in the army, in the Israeli army, and later as a lecturer at the University, and later became a parliament member and activist in Israel. So I found myself asking questions without finding answers. And I say to myself, come on, be part of the tikkun, be part of changing the mood.  Not because it's women's issue or problems, it's because the society needs men and women together, otherwise the society will lose. And more we have our part and position in Israeli society, in the Jewish world, in all of the world, we will build a better world for all of us.  I can declare and give lectures about it, but the question is, what are you doing?  How have you become a part of this? So I find myself starting as a social activist and at that time, I had a 20 years TV show in the Israeli broadcasting. And I find myself asking questions, bringing more women to the TV show, and you have to see role models around you. And I found that we have a lot of answers, but we need to continue working.  Alexandra Herzog:  Iconic Jewish Women offers readers 59 role models. And you were just now talking about role models, the book was designed as a bat mitzvah gift for girls celebrating their Jewish coming of age. But it's really about discovering one's Jewish identity and Jewish heritage. What is particularly compelling to you about that, about also the Bat Mitzvah practice in general? Aliza Lavie:  I asked myself, what is going on? You know, the big roads in the streets, most of them named after men. How come there is not even one public place in Israel named after Golda Meir? How come? Why is that? And it's not only questions of awareness. It's a question of knowledge and position and role models.  And the more I become familiar with the fact that I'm not that familiar with my heritage, with my history as a Jewish woman, as an Israeli woman. And even though women from the Bible, what really we know about Deborah the Prophet, or Miriam, the prophet or Esther the queen. Okay, so all of us, and the girls especially wants to be Esther the queen with a nice dress. But Esther the queen, she became from beauty queen to a leader.  She was the one that told Mordechai, okay, you want me to go to the king without permission, so do something fast three days. And then it was a huge fight between still and old high. And what Mordechai told her, No, no, no, we can't fast three days. But she gave him the order, and she was the one that told him that we should do it, to have future. So suddenly, from a woman in the megila, she became the leader, and more than that, in the end, she wrote, remember me for the next generation. She knew that women in the future will need her knowledge, her help, her position, her role modeling.  So more of you became familiar with the presence that our mothers, the women that were here before us, gave to us, so you will become much stronger. And more than that, Alexandra, you can find your only voice in a world that we are living in a very, very challenging time, increasing antisemitism and political instability, a lack of leadership and growing disconnected from a tradition, and we in Israel, in the middle of a war, where a brave soul who took responsibility. Alexandra Herzog:  And I think that that's really a project that you did also in your previous book, Tefillat Nashim, A Jewish Women's Prayer Book, you explore Jewish identities through the rich tradition of women's prayers that is often absent from traditional historical or religious consciousness. Is Iconic Jewish Women, in some ways, also a project about restoring, reclaiming and recovering? Aliza Lavie:  You are so right. And thanks for this question. My previous book, when I first spoke, Tefillat Nashim, A Jewish Women's Prayer Book. Actually, it's a collection of prayers that were written by women. When I start my journey, my research, nobody believed and felt that Jewish women wrote prayers. More than that, some professors wrote, Jewish women? They didn't know how to write, or they didn't allow the, you know, by the spiritual leaders to write, and they didn't know Hebrew or other languages.  And always, when I find myself as a politician or social activist, in a position that I didn't know what to do, I thought: what other women did when you can't find answer yourself? You have to go and make your own research. And believe it or not, I found ancient prayers. Actually the most ancient one is from the 13th century written by Paula [dei Mansi], the daughter of Rabbi Abraham [Anau] in Milan, north of Italy.  And actually, Paula, she copied the book we are talking about before the printing press time, and only men were allowed to copy books, because you need knowledge. So when I found this prayer in the end of the book named Yehudah de Trani, and she copied it. In the end, she wrote a prayer in Hebrew. Who was Paula, who taught her Hebrew, who gave her the thinking that you can add prayer for good days, for redemption, for coming back to Israel. 13th century.  And what about us? What about our knowledge and level of Hebrew and the permission to write your own personal prayer. And we are talking 13th century, not our days. So a lot of understanding about our position. Sometimes we think that, you know, in our generation, everything is open, and we are brave people and I suggest that we need to be a little bit modest and bring back knowledge from the past with the tools of our days and continue to tell the story. Alexandra Herzog:  I was particularly intrigued, really, by the choice of women that you picked, as well, actually, as the organizing format of the book. The women are not in chronological order, but rather in alphabetical order.  So one of the things that I particularly love about the book is the fact that the reader is asked to actively engage with the content and to add their own stories to a vast historical network of political, scientific, activist, literary, and religious figures. What advice would you give to young women aspiring to make a difference in the world? Aliza Lavie:  First of all, think about your dream. About your dream, and don't hesitate. You can make it. You can make it. And find role models for your lives. You know, you ask, Why I put alphabetic? By the way, in Hebrew, it's 71 women, and I hope in the next book to add much more women or in the technological project that I'm working on, and I invite girls, women men, to add their voice and to use the tools that they are professional with.  Remind yourself that one of us can make a story in the TikTok, video about Doña Gracia. The richest Jewish woman in the 16th century. She was the one that took control during the Inquisition about her brothers and sister in Spain and Portugal. Who was she? And how come that, you know, she became back to her Hebrew name Chana, and what is all about her and why we are not that familiar with her? Take the opportunity during your Bat Mitzvah or family dinner to share a little bit or to ask people and to open a discussion and bringback, see something again new. Go out of your comfortable area and find and bring back and tell your friends and be ambassadors. Because it's not a history book. It's not a history book.  And another thing I want to mention why I chose these amazing women, they didn't plan to be famous. They were in the right time for and chose to be helpful for the Jewish people and the Israeli society. When they found, like Henrietta, Golda, other names in this book, that the people of Israel need them. Need their help, or no one did something to stop the issue or to be there. They were there. Alexandra Herzog:  And so you're basically inviting young women to really, by engaging also with all of those amazing role models. And by the way, I do think that the you know, the chronological–using an alphabetical order rather than a chronological order, actually adds a lot of dynamism, because it really creates a conversation across time periods between Queen Esther, Glückel of Hameln, Golda Meir, and Deborah Lipstadt. And so, you know, the person, the reader is really asked to add their voice to this amazing group of women that they can be a part of. And I think that that acts, that really adds a content and a component of leadership that they can take on into their own life. Aliza Lavie:  In the end, you can also find timeline of iconic Jewish women, because we not always remember and now which year and Hebrew years and the area, etc, etc. Alexandra Herzog:  And I love that. And so I was wondering, because the book really delves into Jewish identity across continents, across time periods, sewing together different pieces of our history as a people. And I would be remiss if I didn't connect the difficult time that we are in as a people since October 7 with the powerful examples of leadership we find in the book. And we are asked to look for, around us in our daily lives. What do you think makes the book even more important, at this particular time? Aliza Lavie:  We're very upset to find a lot of our colleagues in all over the world, in United Nation and in universities, colleagues. I represent the Israeli parliament in the European Council, and I worked very hard together with other colleagues in the committee of status of women in the European Committee. And suddenly, when you saw all this blaming, and the way that nobody believe in what's happening October the seventh, and what Hamas did to our brothers and sisters and the situation, and the way the world treats us. First of all, you feel that you become betrayed.  What is, what is going on? Why is that? First of all, the aims are laid out in the document of Hamas. But what about the democratic world? Why is that? And when you saw all of this, I think that first we have to put it in a frame that it's not the first time in our history. It's not the first time. So when you see the story of the Jewish people, and it's maybe a sign for us to understand who are we, where are we coming from, and to remember all the difficult time in Egypt. When Pharoh say to the people of Israel that you know should not have boys, the baby boys, and to kill them. And the fact that brave women, Miriam and her mother, Yocheved, they gave birth to the children, and they didn't pay attention to Pharaoh, and they took control about the future of the people of Israel the men didn't want. And by the way, thanks to them, to these women, the promise of redemption, got from God.  And later in the Inquisition, more women took responsibility, and we know it from all the testimonies and all the understanding, and women that didn't, didn't lost Judaism, didn't lost and and become Christian. And when you see the numbers, you see that more men became Christian, or left the women together with the children. And later in the Holocaust, we see, and now we are in our days, we see that women, men, of course, brave people around us, men and women, but I see what women did. Women that didn't have a choice. They took control. They protect the people. They protect the children. And when Noa Argamani came back from Gaza, thanks to our soldiers. But Noa Argamani, she was the leader of the soldiers that kidnapped from their basic and Noa, without any help, she was the one that support. And I can share with you a lot of examples of women that lost their children and are going every day to other families and widows to support, to hug, to give help. Alexandra Herzog:  The book was published, as you said, before, in both English and Hebrew. Of course, Hebrew and English are the languages spoken by the two largest Jewish communities in the world, Israel and the United States. So how do you think that a book like this can contribute to strengthening Jewish peoplehood and conversations in the Jewish world? Aliza Lavie:  So knowledge is a power, and let's start with our common history. Let's start with our common heritage. So this book invites you to start, to begin, to continue the conversation between yourself, between you and your spouse, or your family. Of course, your children. That you know what, to bring back the responsibility, parents to the family.  What's happened actually, that in ancient world, the family took responsibility to the Jewish education or belonging, and then later the communities, because when they saw what's happening in the families and later organizations, we can start, you know, discussion about your amazing organization that's taking the responsibility and think about new directions or legacy or tools to continue. This book is an invitation to, you know, maybe to grandmothers, to aunts, to teachers, to educators, to organizations, to take knowledge and inspiration from a book like this. Alexandra Herzog:  Thank you, Aliza. So in a post October 7 world where Jewish women worldwide have had to make their voices heard even more than usual, to denounce the sexual violence that occurred on October 7, the deafening silence of many women's organizations, how has that impacted the conversations you're having? Could you tell us a little bit about how women have been engaging with you about the book? Aliza Lavie:  When this book was established in Israel, it was before the war, but in Israel that time, it was not an easy time in between the people of Israel that start, you know, many, many voices, again, the government and again, the parliament and etc, etc. And we need to bring, you know, the peaceful and to understand that the enemy is out of us, and for the enemy, all the Jewish are the same. It doesn't matter if you are secular, religious, Orthodox, reconstruction, reform. For them, we had this experience. Remember? Yeah, we had it in the Holocaust. They count seven generations ahead. Your question is a wake up call, the answer is a wake up call for all of us, for all of us, the citizens, the governments, the Jewish people all over the world. And to start getting serious thinking about the day after. And even now, even now, when you ask yourself, how come that our brothers and sisters are still in Gaza, where is the Red Cross?  So you can blame Israel all the time about that we are not, you know, delivering food to Gaza. But you know what is going on in Gaza. And you know who took all the food, etc. The Hamas. And it's not going to women and children. And what about our people? Where are they? So hypocrisy, yes, tikkun olam, of course. But in between, in between, we need to understand that we Jewish people have to work together and to bring back knowledge from the past. It's not a history lesson. Alexandra Herzog:  Thank you so much. I love that we end on hope and a better future. So I'm going to keep these words as the last ones, and with the notion I'm going to add of: Bring Them Home. Thank you so much for joining us, Aliza, to People of the Pod. Aliza Lavie:  Thank you so much, Alexandra, for having me, and we'll pray for good days. Manya Brachear Pashman: If you missed last week's episode, be sure to tune in for my conversation with Nova music festival survivor Daniel Vaknin about the horrific events that unfolded on October 7, 2023 and the brave Holocaust survivor who kept him and a handful of others safe and alive that day.

In this episode of Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael, historian Brandan P. Buck discusses his Reason magazine article, "Rachel Maddow's Prequel Is a Deceptively Framed History of the Radical Right." Buck critiques Maddow's portrayal of a Nazi Fifth Column attempting to influence America in the lead-up to WWII, arguing that while Nazi spies and groups like the Silver Shirts existed, their influence on U.S. non-interventionist sentiments is overstated. Citing sources like noted Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt's book Beyond Belief, Buck challenges Maddow's claims. He also emphasizes how antiwar opinions in the U.S. were shaped by the American experience of WWI and argues that Maddow does not highlight how that experience informed anti-interventionist sentiments prior to U.S. entry into WWII. Additionally, the episode explores Maddow's overestimation of groups like the Silver Shirts and the American Bund, whose actual membership was far smaller than her claims of widespread influence. This is not a defense of anti-interventionism during WWII but a critique of media oversimplification and historical distortion. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of U.S. antiwar movements, media narratives, and the importance of accurately framing historical events.

For the better part of four decades historian Deborah Lipstadt has been combating Holocaust denial. She has found that there is a sizeable share of people, both in the United States and elsewhere, who are convinced the Holocaust never happened In this 1993 interview Lipstadt discusses her book Denying The Holoocaust. Get Denying the Holocaust by Deborah LipstadtAs an Amazon Associate, Now I've Heard Everything earns from qualifying purchases.You may also enjoy my interviews with Peter Z. Malkin and Art Spiegelman For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers, subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. and now on YouTube #Holocaust #Nazi #World War II #Germany

Hitler and his cronies are often derided as monsters, but that lets them off the hook. Today Richard Evans joins to look at the leading figures of Nazi Germany for who they were as human beings. We also discuss the trial Evans was a key witness for, when holocaust denier Davig Irving attempted to sue Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Random House for libel, later dramatised in the movie, Denial starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson and John Sessions. Richard Evans Links Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich Aspects of History Links Latest Issue out - Annual Subscription to Aspects of History Magazine only $9.99/£9.99 Ollie on X Aspects of History on Instagram Check out Badlands Ranch: badlandsranch.com/AOH Get in touch: history@aspectsofhistory.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's another season of international sports competition, so where has one tennis star disappeared to this time?June 1933, Frank Shields loses at the French Championship then disappears only to be found later crossing the ocean. Meanwhile another sport takes notice with a superb knockout.Other people and subjects include: Cobina Wright, Prince Serge Mdivani, Prince David Mdivani, Rebecca “Billie” Tenney Shields, Queen Mary of England – Mary of Teck, Prince of Wales – Prince David – future King Edward VIII – Duke of Windsor, Prince Albert – Bertie – King George VI, Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles III of England, Vlad III – Vlad Tepes – Vlad the Impaler – Vlad Dracula, Julius "Julie" Seligson, Ellsworth Vines, Sidney Wood, George Lott, Cliff Sutter, Wilmer Allison, Helen Jacobs, Elizabeth Ryan, Mrs. Dorothy Andrus Burke, Christian Boussus, Cilli Aussem, Dunleavy-Cleaves firm, insurance policies, heavyweight boxing match, promoter, fighter, referee, Aryan, Jew, Nazi, American, African American, Max Baer, Max Schmeling, Jack Dempsey, Primo Carnera, Hitler, Nazis, Nazi publication Der Sturmer, Luftwaffe, Purge of Berlin, Joe Lewis – the Brown Bomber, Greta Garbo, June Knight, Rocky IV, Rocky Balboa, Ivan Drago, Harry Anslinger, Federal Narcotics Division, ocean liners – President Harding, Paris Europa, Le Havre, Auteuil, France, New York, Yankee Stadium, French Hardcourt Tennis Championship, London Championship, Wimbledon, Davis Cup, Newport Tennis Week, tennis, amateur status, appendicitis, strawberries, injury, Bigger Than Life by William Shields, missing person, tuxedo, stowaway, Prince Michael Romanoff – Harry Gerguson, stowaway monkey Jenny, recurring themes, overlaps, Michael Malice, Beyond Belief: the American Press & the Coming of the Holocaust 1933 – 1945 by Deborah Lipstadt, resilience, letting go, making choices changing course, Netflix film Unfrosted by Jerry Seinfeld, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Amy Schumer, Pop-Tarts,…--Extra Notes / Call to Action:Beyond Belief: the American Press & the Coming of the Holocaust 1933 – 1945 by Deborah LipstadtInstagram: @howhistorylooks Dracula & British royals connectionhttps://www.instagram.com/p/C8FcLUWMDPx/Next 2 episodes major turning pointShare, like, subscribe--Archival Music provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, www.pastperfect.com.Opening Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance BandsSection 1 Music: Sunshine by Jack Hylton, Album Fascinating Rhythm – Great Hits of the 20sSection 2 Music: Just As Long As The World Goes Round And Around by Jay Wilbur, Album The Great British Dance BandsSection 3 Music: Red Sails In The Sunset by Casani Club Orchestra, Album The Great Dance Bands Play Hits of the 30sEnd Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands--https://asthemoneyburns.com/X / TW / IG – @asthemoneyburnsX / Twitter – https://twitter.com/asthemoneyburnsInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/asthemoneyburns/Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/asthemoneyburns/

Historian and special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt joins The Post's Jonathan Capehart for a conversation about the spike in antisemitism following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, her role at the State Department, her scholarship about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past for today. Conversation recorded on Thursday, June 11, 2024.

In a conversation with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Ambassador Lipstadt discusses the current rise in hatred against Jews following October 7, and what we can do to advocate for stronger action against antisemitism in the streets, online, on college campuses.

Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department's special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, joins Margaret Hoover to talk about the surge of hatred against Jews worldwide since October 7th and why she considers it a threat to democracy. Lipstadt, who has studied antisemitism and Holocaust denialism for decades, details the double standard she sees in the muted response to the Hamas attack from organizations and corporations that have quickly spoken out against racism and other injustices in the past. She also questions why women's rights groups have not been more vocal about Hamas' use of sexual violence against women. She reflects on the attitudes driving protests against Israel on college campuses and elsewhere, as well as the prospect that diplomatic progress in the Middle East could quell hostility toward Jews. In addition, Lipstadt addresses China's promotion of antisemitism, dissent within the Biden administration over the war in Gaza, and allegations that Israel is committing genocide.  Support for “Firing Line for Margaret Hoover” is provided by Robert Granieri, Stephens Inc., Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, The Asness Family Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, Kathleen and Andrew McKenna through The McKenna Family Foundation, Pfizer Inc., Charles R. Schwab, The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Damon Button, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Roger and Susan Hertog, Cheryl Cohen Effron and Blair Effron, and Al and Kathy Hubbard.

Deborah Lipstadt is a well-known scholar of modern Jewish history, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. She has written many books. In the 1990s, she was involved in a famous trial against David Irving, the notorious English Holocaust-denier. (She won.) The case was depicted in a 2016 movie, “Denial,” in which Prof. Lipstadt was portrayed by Rachel […]

Deborah Lipstadt is a well-known scholar of modern Jewish history, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. She has written many books. In the 1990s, she was involved in a famous trial against David Irving, the notorious English Holocaust-denier. (She won.) The case was depicted in a 2016 movie, “Denial,” in which Prof. Lipstadt was portrayed by Rachel Weisz. Today, Prof. Lipstadt works in the State... Source

Deborah Lipstadt is a well-known scholar of modern Jewish history, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. She has written many books. In the 1990s, she was involved in a famous trial against David Irving, the notorious English Holocaust-denier. (She won.) The case was depicted in a 2016 movie, “Denial,” in which Prof. Lipstadt was portrayed by Rachel Weisz. Today, Prof. Lipstadt works in the State Department: as the U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism. She has a lot to say, as you can imagine—very important things to say.

Since October 7, the USC Shoah Foundation has added a new component to its mission: collecting the testimonies of those who survived the worst antisemitic attack since the Holocaust to counter those who deny it took place.  Dr. Robert Williams, Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation, joins us to discuss the history and tendency to deny atrocities committed against Jews, the importance of collecting testimonies, and how they help in understanding antisemitism in all its forms.  *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC.  Episode Lineup:  (0:40) Belle Yoeli (1:44) Robert Williams Show Notes: Take action to bring all hostages home now. To support our work today, you can visit AJC.org/donate. Or text AJC DONATE to 52886. Learn more: USC Shoah Foundation: Survivors of the October 2023 Hamas Terrorist Attacks Testimony of Shaylee Atary Winner Testimony of Maor Moravia  The Testimonies Archive The Testimonies Archive Listen – People of the Pod on the Israel-Hamas War: 4-Year-Old Hostage Abigail Idan is Free–Her Family is On a Mission to #BringThemAllHome What Happens Next: AJC's Avital Leibovich on the Hostage Deal and Challenges Ahead What Would You Do If Your Son Was Kidnapped by Hamas? Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Transcript of Interview with Robert Williams: Manya Brachear Pashman:   Since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, the Shoah Foundation has added a new component to its mission: collecting the testimonies of those who survived the worst antisemitic attack since the Holocaust to counter those who have dare to deny it took place.  Dr. Robert Williams is the Advisor to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, where he served for four years as chair of the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial. In October 2022, he became the Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation. Dr Williams is with us now to discuss the history and tendency to deny atrocities, in this case, those committed against Jews. Thank you for joining us. Dr. Williams, if you could begin by explaining to listeners what Holocaust denial is, and how it's similar or different from Holocaust trivialization and distortion.  Robert Williams: Holocaust denial is a little easier for us to wrap our heads around, for better or worse. Holocaust deniers are essentially trying to tell people that the Holocaust didn't happen for one of two reasons. The most obvious reason is because they're antisemitic, they want to tell people that the Jewish Diaspora writ large has come together to invent this grand conspiracy to pull the wool over the eyes of non-Jews for all manner of dastardly purposes. So that's the first reason.  The second reason is also antisemitic, although in a slightly different way. That is to rehabilitate national socialism as an acceptable ideology. No matter which way you slice that cake, it still ends up being antisemitism. That's why, to echo the words of people like Deborah Lipstadt, and others: Holocaust denial is antisemitism. Full stop. And it's a problem. It's something we need to deal with. But in our parts of the world, roughly speaking, the northern hemisphere, the West, it's become fortunately a bit of a microphenomenon over the last couple of decades.  The bigger problem is the second part of your question: Holocaust distortion, and I use the terms trivialization and distortion interchangeably. I prefer to use distortion. But Holocaust distortion is in essence, rhetoric that minimizes, confuses, or otherwise misrepresents the Holocaust, both as something factual, and something that has relevance today.  And that can take on a variety of forms, it can be something obvious like minimizing the number of victims, to something that's a little less obvious like figure skaters dressing up like concentration camp victims for their routines.  Now distortion also brings with it a challenge: is somebody distorting because they're cynical antisemites? Sometimes the answer is yes. Other times, distortion of the Holocaust happens because people don't know the facts, or they think they know the facts and they don't, and they end up saying the wrong thing.  But again, the end result, no matter the motivation, becomes problematic. Because if you are misrepresenting the Holocaust, you are effectively doing two things. On an ethical plane, you are disrespecting the memories of the victims and the survivors, and that's wrong. And on a practical plane, you are opening the door. I like to say Holocaust distortion kind of acts like a gateway drug to outright denial, to conspiracy thinking, and to more dangerous forms of antisemitism. So you have to tackle distortion, but you tackle distortion often in ways different from that of denial.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   But rather than focus on the word Holocaust, I want to focus on the word denial. You mentioned Deborah Lipstadt, for example, and she recently expressed concern that people are denying that Hamas committed so many heinous crimes on October 7.  Is this a phenomenon, this denial of atrocities – do you see it more applying to atrocities against Jews? Or have we seen it in other instances?  Robert Williams: Well, we've certainly seen it in other cases of mass crimes and genocides. One of the most prominent cases that predates the Holocaust is denial of the genocide of the Armenian people in the early 20th century, something that persists in certain parts of the world and is part of official state policy in some countries. Denial of the Armenian Genocide is problematic for a whole host of reasons. First, again, it's immoral visa vie the victims and survivors of that particular genocide to deny their experience, to say it never happened, to minimize it. It also has inhibited global understanding of Armenian life, history and culture since the genocide happened.  So denial of mass atrocity crimes is something quite common when it comes to the denial of crimes against the Jewish people. You do see this over and over over and over again, though, you see, either excuses for the various pogroms that have claimed the lives of hundreds of 1000s of Jews over the centuries, or an attempt to minimize it, or an attempt to suppress that history. And that's separate from the denial and suppression of Holocaust history that we've seen through time. And we have seen, not just in the case of the October 7 attacks, but denial of other atrocities that were carried out against Jews through various forms of anti semitic terror violence. But we've definitely begun paying attention to it after October 7, in part due to the scale, you know, the largest act of anti semitic violence against the Jewish people since 1945. In the one place where it was never supposed to happen, people were supposed to be safe.  And the international community, you know, you're used to seeing these claims of exaggeration or outright denial from certain countries in the Middle East or North Africa, but this is become widespread. Think within, was it a week, nine days after that horrible series of attacks, with people asking to see photographs of the murdered children, because they didn't believe that. So engaging in very dangerous, I would say almost pornographic rhetoric, about violence against the most innocent among us. And engaging in it in a way that encourages denial encourages doubting the veracity of these crimes, or–and we've seen this in other corners as well since October 7 –rhetoric that in turn moves from denial to outright justification for the atrocities that were committed. It's very tricky. It's not black and white. Unfortunately. Mnya Brachear Pashman:   Does social media amplify Holocaust denial, and are we seeing that same trend now with the October 7 attacks? You talk about it being a post-truth world. Robert Williams: I absolutely think that's the case. Although I will say, outright denial on social media. Again, it's there. It's a problem, but it's less common than distortion and intentional manipulation. You know, I think even the term Holocaust distortion is potentially problematic, we're probably better served calling it Holocaust disinformation. And I think we're seeing some of the same dynamics at play in the post October 7, discussions that we see in online forums, including closed forums, in places like telegram or Gab or Discord, as well as in more public facing ones like X and Instagram and threads. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Before we leave the topic of denial, and move on to distortion, because I do want to explore that a little bit more. I do want to ask about the role of Holocaust denial in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, he wrote his dissertation at the University of Moscow denying the Holocaust happened to the Jews, that it was more of a product of the Jews' collusion with the Nazis. Is that a belief that is common among Palestinians or pro-Palestinian supporters. What role does that piece of disinformation play in exacerbating the sentiments? Robert Williams: There's a lot to unpack in that question. I'm going to start with the caveat that I'm a specialist on Europe, not a specialist on the Middle East. So a lot of my understanding of dynamics around distortion and denial among non Israeli Palestinians is anecdotal, and based on secondary literature.  But it does seem that there is a current in some parts of the Palestinian culture where denial of the Holocaust is known to the degrees to which it's accepted, or probably vary from time and place. And it makes a certain amount of sense. Because if you can deny the reality of the Holocaust, you can then point to the State of Israel and say, the Jewish people who've never been victims were the eternal victim. It's much easier to be a victim when you're in a complex political world anyway.  The more interesting thing is the origins of the Abbas dissertation, and how it's managed to spread across at least the Arabic speaking and Persian speaking worlds. To a certain degree, it's something that has been generated in Muslim society. But as scholars like Jeffrey Herf, have shown certain elements of antisemitism spread from Europe in the case of Professor Herf's work, from National Socialist Europe to parts of the Middle East, and then those forms of antisemitism spread.  And as the works of people like Isabella Taparofsky have shown, particularly in the case of the Abbas dissertation, a boss wrote that dissertation in the Soviet Union and at a time when the Soviets promoted through international propaganda schemes and domestic propaganda, virulent, dangerous forms of anti-Zionist antisemitism, that also included trafficking and Holocaust denial.  So the origins of it came from the Cold War, policies and practices, to a certain extent, of the Cold War policies and practices of the regime that no longer exists.  A regime that sought to undermine democracy, sought to undermine solidarity in the western world sought to undermine the State of Israel, well throughout its history. And there's no acknowledgement of that.  So if we're going to root out Holocaust denial, no matter where it lies, we have to begin with its origins. And those origins vary from time and place. Some of the origins lie in the National Socialist experiment. The Nazis had all manner of terms and actual formal programs to cover up their crimes. Some of those origins lie with certain French intellectuals, certain origins lie with American public figures in the 1940s. And some of the origins lie in the Soviet Union. We need to know the enemy top to bottom if we're ever going to deal with. Manya Brachear Pashman:   I want to move on to distortion. And I'm curious if the kind of distortion that we're talking about that is common now on social media and in conversations, especially those around October 7, does it tend to be a far right phenomenon, far left, pretty universal?  Robert Williams: So Holocaust distortion, the trends have shown, cuts across all ideological, social, cultural, political and religious barriers. Now, certain forms are more common to certain groups at certain times, the forms of distortion that minimize the number of persons murdered during the Holocaust, for example, or claim that the Jewish people did something to deserve the Holocaust. Those have typically been more common on the far political right. And among some religious conservative extremists. Some of the forms that suggest that the Jewish people make use of the Holocaust for all manner of gain, everything from funding to guilt to special protections, to justifying the State of Israel – pretty much cut across the left, right divide. Certain leftist forms of Holocaust distortion through antisemitism that have emerged at least since the Second Intifada, take the form of the Jewish people using the Holocaust to justify the State of Israel or the policies of the Israeli government. But by and large, distortion of the Holocaust is unfortunately a phenomenon that is everyday. It even takes the form of particular types of commercial distortion, people engaging in it without any ideological agenda.  One need think of the unfortunate situation that seems to happen every couple of years where Anne Frank Halloween costumes go up for sale in the US or in the UK, or when Chinese made ornaments depicting Auschwitz Birkenau become up for sale on on Amazon or even I think it's still possible today to buy model kits and toys of Hitler and his inner circle. People who make the subject so blase and everyday that it loses its power. That's a different form of distortion, stripped of ideology.  Alright, October 7 distortion at first, and again, I'm an historian, so I like to have a wealth of evidence before me. But based on early observations and research, those forms of distortion and denial that emerged often enough were associated with in the Western world, largely the political left, and certain forms of protest movements that either had shared affinity with the Palestinian cause or would be affinity with the Palestinian cause.  But what we've seen over the last couple of weeks is that is no longer the plaything only of the political left. We have seen some people on the extreme right begin engaging in similar rhetoric. Now, there's no sympathy being given to the Palestinians in that rhetoric, but claims that the State of Israel is making too much use of this, or the Jewish diaspora is using this for all manner of bad things. So it is beginning to cut across those boundaries that we've seen. Manya Brachear Pashman:   The Shoah Foundation holds the world's largest video collection of Holocaust survivor and witness testimonies. And it has now begun collecting video testimonies of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against the Israelis on October 7. Why? Robert Williams: So I assumed the leadership role here at the Shoah Foundation about 13 months ago, and I was brought here to establish a robust initiative focused on antisemitism. The Shoah Foundation was created as a platform so that the voices of Holocaust survivors could echo for future generations, and moreover, lead to a better world. In a sense, we engage in wish fulfillment. Survivors gave us their testimonies to bring about the world they wanted. And when you get right down to it, survivors wanted only a few things. One of those things, I guarantee you, was a world without antisemitism.  So we have an obligation to those survivors to try, especially before the last of the survivors leave us, to create the conditions to bring about that better future. So we had been developing this laboratory, this multi-subject expert initiative that would deal with antisemitism as it's existed since 1945.  And we were going to start, we are starting, with the development of a massive collection. Our minimum goal is 10,000 testimonies of antisemitic violence in a variety of forms. And we broke, we broke that into five categories. One of those categories was the survivors of antisemitic terror attacks. Several months ago, we thought, alright, we're gonna focus on this, our starting point is going to be the 1994 bombings in Buenos Aires. We're going to work our way forward.  And then October 7 happened. So we had to swing into action immediately. Within 12 days, we had secured the first testimony on the ground. This was possible thanks in part to our already existing work in Israel and our strong partnerships with Israeli institutions, including the National Library of Israel and Yad Vashem and others. The Ghetto Fighters House as well. And very quickly utilizing our on the ground teams, our partnerships, we began to acquire testimonies using the same methodology that we did in the 1990s when we started taking Holocaust survivor testimonies. And a few things became readily apparent to us. One is just the simple tragedy, and the painful irony of this endeavor. In the 1990s, when a survivor came and gave us her testimony, the first thing you would see is a sheet. The survivors name, the date of the interview, the interviewer's name, some basic information. And we're seeing the same thing when we look at survivors of the October 7 attacks.  There's true tragedy there. We've secured as of the date, as of today's recording, a little more than 250 of these testimonies. They will be put online for free, I think we have about 70 or 80 online right now. We have a partnership with some media partners, including Tablet Magazine here in the United States to make them even more available, and they will be made available to our Israeli partners for use, because this is the history of Israel and its people now.  But our goal is to use these here, so that we can begin training people from a major university, how to understand antisemitism in all its forms and how to build resilience against it, how to research the subject on a deeper level, how to write better journalism around the subject, and how to respond and recognize that the victim of antisemitism is not some faceless person or somebody who lived eight or so decades ago. Somebody today, just like you, just like me, just like our children, or our parents. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Before we share a clip of one of the survivors from the Shoah Foundation's October 7th Testimony Collection, I want to give listeners a chance to turn down the volume or fast forward. These testimonies are incredibly painful to listen to.  This is a portion of testimony from Shaylee Atary Winner, from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, who hid for 26 hours with her newborn daughter [Shaya]. Her husband, Yahav, was killed. [Portion of testimony from Shaylee Atary Winner] Manya Brachear Pashman:   The voices and stories of the survivors are always so difficult to hear and even the bravery it takes to recount these horrors is so hard to fathom. We are talking about people who dare to deny these horrors happened. This collection serves to counter those attempts, right? Robert Williams: That's correct. There's a lot of, as we all know, the Israeli government pulled together GoPro and other footage captured from the terrorists. There's a lot of security camera footage. A number of teams have gone in, including a group at Reichman University, doing 3D scans of the atrocity sites. The physical record of this is astounding. So far, I've heard different numbers, I don't want to give a precise number, let's say tens of 1000s of videos have been made. And we're only just beginning to understand it.  Manya Brachear Pashman: We're going to share another clip here. This is Maor Moravia, a 37-year-old father of two, on returning to Kibbutz Kfar Aza after the October 7 terror attacks.   [Portion of testimony from Maor Moravia]  Robert Williams That the best way to counter denial and disinformation is to hear it from those who lived it, to see their experiences. And will that convince everybody? No. Those who don't want to be convinced, those who have an agenda will always be a problem. Our job is to make sure that we have this content and are reaching audiences who are vulnerable to being radicalized, vulnerable to becoming extremists, before that happens. And we're seeing that happen in a variety of spaces right now. So we have a big job to do. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Rob, you mentioned being there at USC. Our December 14th episode was tied to the congressional inquiry of university presidents regarding antisemitism on college campuses. Have the students and faculty at USC taken advantage of The Shoah Foundation's presence there on campus?  It seems like such a great resource, as long as people are actually utilizing it.  Robert Williams: Yes, I'm very proud to be at USC, especially right now. You know, the university president has been in regular contact and dialogue not not just with us, but with Hillel, with Chabad, with the Jewish students, with the Religious Life Center, with faculty across this massive University of 22 schools. Beyond that, the Shoah Foundation has been in dialogue with different departments, including the School of Social Work right before we started this podcast.  Now it had been planned in advance of October 7, but a couple weeks after October 7, we here at USC, along with our partners, and Hillel International, AJC, the local Federation, brought university administrators from across the west coast to our campus, for one reason: to learn about antisemitism and how to respond to it within a university environment.  Now, we haven't crowed about this. We're just doing the work. But I think the fact that we have strong leadership from the top, we have a peerless institution in the USC Shoah Foundation here, literally in the middle of the campus, has protected us against some of the unfortunate trends that we've seen on campuses and other parts of the country. Manya Brachear Pashman:   I mean, I could see being in any kind of a protest environment and hearing vile things come from the students mouths and pointing to the to your facility and saying, look over there, go in there.  Robert Williams: Yeah, well, and to a certain extent that has happened. You know, we do have regular outreach to students over the summer is part of the build up to our anti semitism programming, we took a significant number of the student athletes from USC's track and field team, a track and field team that has more Olympic gold medals than most countries, to our offices for a week of training on how to understand antisemitism in all of its forms.  And while they were here, they met with local Jewish community representatives, of course, our staff gave lectures as you would expect, we brought in virtual, or by remote, a very well known survivor of the Holocaust, Shaul Ladany. Mr. Ladany, for those who don't know, is one of the most remarkable and sweetest people I've ever met.  He's a survivor of the Holocaust, who made his way to Israel, became an Israeli athlete. As he told me, he felt he wasn't a fast enough marathon runner. So he became a speed walker, and entered and became part of the Israeli Olympic team in 1972. And he was one of the first athletes to escape the dormitories during that horrible, horrible tragedy. So he spoke to these athletes in his sport. After that, we took them to Poland, but we didn't take them to Poland just for the reason everybody would expect. We started in Krakow, where the students learned about a thousand years of Jewish life and culture, from its origins to its challenges to its almost Renaissance today. To learn about something more than just the Shoah.  They did, of course, visit Auschwitz Birkenau to learn more about the Holocaust. And they walked away from this program. more aware of the antisemitism in their midst. One student said something along the lines of, ‘I didn't realize I was engaging in distortion of the Holocaust until I took part in this program.' And some of these students after October 7, started emailing us again, ‘I'm hearing this, I'm hearing that, how do I respond to my friends?'. So our staff is working with them. And this is an important leadership group. This is a program that we have to continue engaging in. It will have an effect now, but I guarantee in a generation, it will have such an impact that we might start turning the tide because things have gotten so out of control in every other way. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Rob, thank you so much for joining us and having this conversation. Robert Williams: I appreciate it Manya. Thank you. Manya Brachear Pashman:   If you missed last week's episode, be sure to tune in for my conversation with Liz Hirsh Naftali whose great niece Four-year-old Abigail Mor Idan, returned home during a pause in fighting in November. The youngest U.S. citizen to have been kidnapped and held by Hamas, Abigail and her siblings are now orphans after Hamas murdered their parents. Hear about her family's continuing effort to bring the remaining 129 captives home to their loved ones.

Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt is a noted historian of antisemitism, and serves the State Department as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. Violence and threats against Jews have been surging for years.  “We've been seeing [antisemitism] coming from all ends of the political spectrum, and in between,” Lipstadt tells David Remnick. “We see it coming from Christians, we see it coming from Muslims, we see it coming from atheists.  We see it coming from Jews.”  In the aftermath of Israel's military strikes on Gaza, particularly on college campuses, she is very concerned about widespread sentiments that deny Israel a right to exist. While she doesn't believe students or faculty should be penalized for expressing solidarity with Palestinians or Israelis, she believes that the language used by some influential people “has served as a green light to the haters,” she says. “It sort of takes the lid off.” And ethnic prejudice, she notes, rarely limits itself. “Once you start dealing in the stereotypes of that one group, you're going to start dealing with the stereotypes in another group.”

The FBI director warned of a heightened risk for potential violence against Arab, Muslim, and Jewish Americans in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. Laura Barrón-López spoke with Rami Nashashibi about a White House effort to counter Islamophobia, and Geoff Bennett discussed a wave of antisemitic incidents with Deborah Lipstadt, the administration's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Ryan and Drew talk about the news of the moment coming out of the Middle East, the news industry's response and how social media has fueled hate in the wake of this intense conflict. We also talk about how we have responded to this moment and what people should do when absorbing verified, reliable information about what's happening. To read the books Ryan recommended, here are some links: "Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question" — edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens "Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945" — Deborah Lipstadt "Operation Shylock: A Confession" — Philip Roth "The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine" — Ben Ehrenreich Social media: Mars on Life: @marsonlifeshow on Twitter and Instagram Ryan Mancini: @mancinira (Twitter) and @manciniryan (Instagram) Andrew Martinez: @andrewomartinez (Twitter) Artwork by Zachary Erberich (@zacharyerberichart) "Space X-plorers" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mars-on-life-show/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mars-on-life-show/support

El exembajador de Estados Unidos en Colombia habló sobre la repercusión que podría tener para Colombia el mensaje de Deborah Lipstadt ante la postura del presidente Gustavo Petro sobre la guerra entre Israel y Hamás

Thirty-one years ago we took on an emergency family project -- we wrote a point for point rebuttal of a full page newspaper ad placed by Holocaust denier Bradley Smith in the Ohio State Lantern. In this podcast, I read the article we wrote, which was also published at the University of Michigan and other places where Smith had spread his lies.  Objective truth is often the only way to challenge lies -- especially when the lies are bold, outrageous, and dangerous. After a summer break, this episode marks the first in a new series of episodes that will explore significant areas of disagreement about what is true. We will try to avoid the common pitfall of painting those who disagree with us as the ones who are liars or believing falsehoods. But we will discuss all the tools we have for determining the truth of a claim. We will call in question what Christians have been doing lately, and attempt to contrast our cultural norms with what the Bible says in its writings about law, ethics, character, and prophecy. It is Near focuses on the alarming and the hopeful; the frightful and the forgotten; the blinding glare of giant problems, and the dark secrets that lurk even more menacingly in the shadows of global trends. "Amazing Grace" may have taught our hearts to fear, but for most Christians and non-Christians alike, divine grace as commonly conceptualized does not those fears relieve. It is Near will be informative, accessible, comforting, and challenging to every thinking person. It will call Christians to account and provide a breath of fresh air for secularists who, for once, would like to hear a conciliatory and intellectually honest message from a thoughtful Christian voice. Owen Kindig of Sitka, Alaska is your host, and is responsible for the content."Even the bad news is good news."

Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, joins us to discuss how she's settled into her new role and shares insights on the development of the new U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, for which AJC has long advocated. Lipstadt, a renowned Holocaust historian and one of Time Magazine's Most Influential People of 2023, also delves into the ways in which the Abraham Accords have contributed to the fight against antisemitism in the Middle East. Additionally, she provides an insider's look into the challenges and progress associated with addressing antisemitism and how the National Strategy factors in.  *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC.  Episode Lineup:  (0:40) Deborah Lipstadt Show Notes: Go Deeper:  Test your knowledge of the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism  Read: Everything You Need To Know About The U.S. National Strategy To Counter Antisemitism And AJC's Task Force Honoring International Antisemitism Envoys AJC David Harris Award Listen: People of the Pod: Hear from America's New Antisemitism Envoy Deborah Lipstadt Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. __ Transcript of Interview with Deborah Lipstadt: Manya Brachear Pashman:   Deborah Lipstadt, US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism is a renowned Holocaust historian, recognized earlier this year as one of Time Magazine's Most Influential People of 2023. She has written eight books, and four years ago, advised the United Nations on its unprecedented report on global antisemitism. In fact, she joined us on this podcast shortly after the report's release. Since then, she has joined the US State Department in a role that for the first time carries the rank of Ambassador. She joins us again this time in our popup Tel Aviv studio. Ambassador, welcome to People of the Pod. Deborah Lipstadt: Thank you. Manya Brachear Pashman:   America's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism was adopted in May. Your job primarily deals with US Foreign policy to combat antisemitism. But how does this new domestic strategy affect your work? Deborah Lipstadt: Well, it affects our work and that certainly I was consulted and worked closely with the White House in the shaping of it, my team played a part in helping to shape it people to reach out to and things like that. And there are over 24 agencies involved including the State Department, we're now looking at all the other national strategies to see best practices, what America could possibly adopt. And of course, informally, I'm the administration's most knowledgeable person on antisemitism. So they turned to me quite often for advice, for ideas, etc. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Okay. All right. Well, so as I said, your role is more international. Do you need a domestic counterpart? Does the United States need a domestic antisemitism czar? Deborah Lipstadt: I'm not sure. It's a lot on–the strategy is really run out of the Domestic Policy Council, which until about a week ago, was headed by Ambassador Susan Rice, who was greatly responsible for seeing this thing come to fruition. And we'll see how it works. It's up to them to decide how they want to do it. But I think it's also good that each agency from the usual suspects, as I like to say, homeland security, education, FBI, law enforcement, are involved, but so are so many others. Small Business Administration, Veterans Affairs, Smithsonian, all looking at ways to counter antisemitism, make sure there aren't barriers that are there, whether because of antisemitism or just ignorance. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And second gentleman Doug Emhoff has been certainly-- Deborah Lipstadt: Even before I was sworn in, after I was confirmed, I was in Washington and he asked me if I would come in and visit with him. We had a wonderful visit. We're in touch all the time. And he really feels this very deeply. And I give him great credit because he could easily have said, Look, I'm the first Jew in this position. First second gentleman. We put up a mezuzah for the residence. We have a Hanukkah party. We have a Seder. We do other things. Don't ask me to take the lead on this. But he's taken the lead. He's traveled all over, he traveled with me to Poland and Germany, where I coordinated a meeting for him with other special envoys, just to give him a sense of what other countries were doing.  And I think when he and his staff and other people in the White House who were with us saw that, it sort of energized them to say, my God, other countries have taken this really seriously. They're way ahead of us. We have to do something serious as well. Manya Brachear Pashman:   You know, with that in mind, I mean, if you think about it, your predecessors in this position have kind of made it their business to monitor, sound the alarm about antisemitism in Europe, elsewhere around the world. AJC helped convene that group of envoys at the White House. And so in many ways, the table's turned a little bit in terms of, you know, instead of the United States monitoring and sounding the alarm, these envoys came and advised the United States. Has this kind of mutual mission actually improved the relationship with some of these countries?  Deborah Lipstadt: It's improved the relationship tremendously. We really work as a team, not as a team–each one has its own you know, position, certain things one can get involved in certain things. You know, I lurk and watch what's going on, but I'm not involved in it. But one of the first things I did in fact, it was the same day as last year's AJC Global Forum, which was in New York, I think, at Temple Emanuel. And I was on the stage with Katrina von Schnurbein, the amazing EU envoy on Countering Antisemitism and Enhancing Jewish Life. And then she and I left the meeting with Mr. Lottenberg, Fernando Lottenberg, who's the OAS Special Envoy, and we met with a group of us of special envoys met to talk about how we could work together.  And so we've been meeting and convening. Katrina convened something that the EU others have convened, and then we meet, you know, sometimes we'll meet through the auspices, let's say, we'll be meeting here because many have come for AJC. But it is a government to government when we meet, it's not, convened by someone else. But it's people who speak for their governments coming together, which is quite amazing.  I've had great predecessors in this job. They're all terrific. And were strong supporters of me taking the position, very excited about it from both sides of the aisle. And I'm very grateful for that. But there are differences. First of all, Congress elevated the position to an ambassador before I was in the picture.  So it wasn't for me. And that carries weight in the world of protocol. That means you speak for the President. I see what weight it carries. In fact, I was just in conversation with a Republican senator, around the time of the rollout, because I was briefing him about the national strategy.  And he had been one of those who had pushed for the elevation of it to be an ambassador. And I said, you know, when I first heard you were doing this, I said, Oh, doesn't really matter. I said, I was wrong, you were right. It really enhances the importance, and it shows how America takes this seriously. But my predecessors, certainly amongst the earlier ones, we were the first country to have a position like this. So when something happened in France, and Belgium and Germany, whatever, they would go, and they would say to the government, you know, we take this very seriously, and we think you should take it seriously. Or if they were taking it seriously, we take this very seriously, and what can we do to help you take it seriously, and say, you have a problem, we've got to address it. And now first of all, I go and I said, we have a problem, because we have acknowledged that exists in our country. And sometimes I don't have to go racing as they might have had to, because there's someone else there. There's a local person, there's a national person there, too. So the fight has become much more coordinated, enhanced, and really raised to a government level in a way that it hadn't been previously. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Are there particular lessons that you can recall from any of your predecessors? Any of the envoys that you've taken to heart and realized. Deborah Lipstadt: I spoke to virtually all of them before I took the position. And they each had different advice, and I won't say one or the other, etc. But one the reasons–and I've only been in the job a year, but – building alliances in the State Department. And I'm worried a little bit not because of anything anybody tells me, just natural inclination to worry to be a pessimist so that we can be happily surprised when good things happen or the bad stuff doesn't happen.  But, would I find compatriots in the State Department, would people see me as you know, an add-on, a niche? Would I be operating off by myself? And that hasn't happened. And it's really been quite amazing. Partially thanks to the advice I've gotten, partially, I think, my own interpersonal connections, but I have built really strong alliances. And I'm not saying I have personally, but people in other offices with other portfolios, see this not as a niche issue. But as a central element of American foreign policy. Manya Brachear Pashman:   We hear a lot of statistics of incidents of hate crimes each month each year. And I'm curious if that's what matters most. In other words, does the perception of a community also matter whether it's a Jewish community or any other minority community, if that community perceives a rise in hatred against it? Is that enough to amplify our response? Deborah Lipstadt: The perception of a community is important, perception of an individual. Sometimes, any community, any individual can see things more dire than they are. But I think if anything, the Jewish community has become more aware of certain incidents and more aware of certain things. Give you an example, New York. I think there were a lot of Jews in New York who didn't take seriously some of the antisemitism encountered by Haredi, Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, you know, who would walk down the street, get their hat knocked off, or get spat upon. And you could say, Okay, what's the big deal?  Well, if you're walking down the street, especially walking with your kids and your hat gets knocked off, suddenly you're looking at your father, or your mother gets a little nervous because she's in, you know, other people that she sees people come in and might be dangerous or whatever. And I think now they take that much more seriously. Have that been happening on the Upper West or East Side. We would have been quicker to respond. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Do you think that that is enough for a government, for example, to amplify a response? Deborah Lipstadt: Well, certainly a local government, this was happening in New York, but as it became more national, and there's something else in the strategy addresses this. That government can't really deal with, but it can call out. And that's the normalization of antisemitism. And the strategy speaks very directly in the beginning, when it's something I'm paraphrasing, when politicians, when actors, when rap stars, when sports figures engage in anti semitism and amplifies it in a way that it hasn't been before. Government can't stop them. We have that pesky thing called the First Amendment and we all treasure it.  Even though sometimes it can make us gnash our teeth, the good comes with the bad, or the bad comes with the good. But the normalization, so with the strategy. And when the strategy was rolled out, I spoke from the podium of the White House, one of the things I said: government can do a lot.  Congress is already doing a lot and is willing to do more. But it calls for an all hands on deck and it has to be a public, the broader society has to be involved in this fight, not just because of protecting fellow American Jews, fellow citizens, but because as I think as listeners to People of the Pod know well, antsemitism is a threat to democracy. I've been talking about it now someone even said to me, the cliche, and I realized that I had been the one to really popularize it, as the canary in the coal mine of democracy. But it's a warning, it's a warning. Manya Brachear Pashman:   You began your tenure with a tour of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, right? Deborah Lipstadt: And Dubai. The first stop was Riyadh. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Oh, right. Okay. And in fact, you were just in Abu Dhabi again just a few days ago. Deborah Lipstadt: I was for a second time, right. And where I encountered an AJC's delegation. But AJC has been present in Abu Dhabi in the Emirates for a very long time. Manya Brachear Pashman:   I want to talk a bit about those visits and the Abraham Accords, which is another circumstance that has changed. I mean, your immediate predecessor got to benefit a little bit from the Abraham Accords. But I'm curious if those Accords are removing barriers, helping foster relationships. And you know, that will only continue to improve the relationship between Israel and Muslim majority countries but also, their receptiveness to your message for combating antisemitism.  Deborah Lipstadt: The Abraham Accords are of prime importance. And they've been wholly embraced by the State Department, this administration, and not only embrace, but I've been encouraged to build on them, in part because we see them as a good thing in terms of fostering relations in the region between Israel and these other Muslim majority countries, but also because we see them as enhancing the Middle East enhancing the economy. I mean, it's a great thing when we all go into Ben Gurion Airport and we look up and there's the flight to Atlanta and right in front of it's a flight to Abu Dhabi, you know, or the flight to Detroit, Dubai , you know, it's some people say it's Mashiach, it's the time of the Messiah in that sense.  The Abraham house in Abu Dhabi, which is a mosque, a church and synagogue is magnificent, of course, that's not part of the Abraham accords. So that wasn't, that was generated in 2018, with a visit of Pope Francis to Abu Dhabi, who said, Let us build the church and a mosque, and it was the leadership of the Emirates that said, let's build a synagogue, to make it a complex of the Abraham House, of the Abrahamic faith. So and then of course, Morocco, which refers to its normalization because it's been doing this for quite a while, Morocco that expects 400,000 Israeli tourists this year. I think last year it had 225,000. And then it's just you know, everywhere. And all those things are good things. And then there are countries which are not yet and I've used not yet euphemistically, part of these things, but see them as working and see them as operating. And I think they're very important. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And do you do feel that they are perhaps more receptive to your message and to listening to what you have to say?  Deborah Lipstadt: Yes, of course, I mean, I think even you know, when I went to Riyadh, to Saudi Arabia, I had meetings with high ranking officials, now you can show up and you can meet with the Minister of, I don't know, keeping the paint dry or something like that. Or you can meet with higher level ministers and I met with high level ministers, very productive meetings. And one of my messages was, look, there is a geopolitical crisis in this region, we're well aware that, my country is well aware of it. I work for a government that has hundreds of people actively engaged in addressing this issue.  But that's something in many respects separate and apart from prejudice, and from hatred. And the example, I had this interesting encounter in either Riyadh and Jeddah with an older imam who knew what was meeting with me and he knew what my, what my status was on my remit, was my portfolio was and he said, If Israel solved the Palestinian crisis, there'd be no antisemitism.  So there was a part of me that thought, I think there was antisemitism before there was a Palestinian crisis, I think there was antisemitism, for those in Israel, I think there was antisemitism, Zionism, you need to go back and back and back. But I didn't think that was going to get me anywhere, you know, putting it on my professorial hat, my mortar board as we do at graduation and lecturing him on that. So instead, I said to him, after 9/11, in my country, there was a surge, not of Islamophobia, but Islamic hatred. And as you will remember, I'm sure, there was an attempt at one point to build a Muslim community center, opposite Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center had been.  And in fact that the group that was building it consulted with the Jewish community center of Manhattan, you know, how, what's your experience? What room? Did you build enough? Should we have a gym, swimming pool, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And whatever body whether it was the city council or whatever in New York. New York, the polyglot capital of the United States, refused permission, because they said to build the Muslim community center, adjacent to Ground Zero, when it was Muslims that had destroyed the buildings and murdered the people there, would be an insult. And many of us thought that was wrong. That was prejudice. And I said, why should Muslims in lower Manhattan, a woman who wants a good place for her children to learn about their tradition, or to have an Iftar or whatever it might be a man to go to pray or whatever?  Why should they be denied that right, because other Muslims had destroyed and attacked the buildings? And the man said to me, you're absolutely right. It was prejudice. I said, well, to say that antisemitism is solely dependent on what Israel does or doesn't is the same thing. And he got very quiet. I don't think I changed his mind. But he stopped arguing.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Do you see any progress toward people understanding it more as a territorial conflict? Deborah Lipstadt: I think so. I hope so. I think it's a continuing, it's not like you get to a point and then well, we're at this point. Now we get to the next point, you know, like I used to lift 20 pounds, I can lose 30 pounds, you know, it goes back and forth. It goes back and forth, depending on the situation. It's a volatile process. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Do you think that getting them to understand it as a territorial conflict would actually fulfill part of your role in terms of combating antisemitism? Deborah Lipstadt: Yes, absolutely. But I think it's also necessary not to do things that are going to aggravate or not to do things that are going to make it harder for some of these countries to follow through with the Abraham Accords, so it cuts both ways. Manya Brachear Pashman:   In May, you and Ambassador Hood attended the annual Lag Ba'omer Festival at the El Ghriba synagogue. Deborah Lipstadt: In Djerba, Tunisia. Manya Brachear Pashman:   The island of Djerba. Tunisia is one of dozens of Arab countries where Jews were forced out and displaced. And I'm curious if you could reflect a little on the situation of Jews in the Middle East and North African countries. Deborah Lipstadt: Tunisia is a different story than Morocco, different story than the Emirates, then Bahrain. In that it does have a very small Jewish community. I think there are 1300 Jews in Djerba, been there, hundreds, thousands you know, years. And it's much more a community in Tunis than in a number of other places. But this festival has been going on for quite a while. And it was really reasserting itself after COVID, after an attack about 20 years ago on the festival. And it was so promising. And when I heard that Ambassador Hood, our American ambassador in Tunis was going, I said, you want company, he said, I'd love it. So we went together.  We visited the school there that is funded by and supported by the Joint American Jewish joint distribution committee, the joint, the JDC, one of the little students showed them how to draw an aleph. It's was very poignant. And we had a wonderful time. And then we went to the festival that night. And it was joy. The night before the deputy minister from the government catered a kosher meal for us, a kosher feast for many of the foreign representatives who were there. And we went to the festival and it was just joyous and we just loved it. We were so happy and meeting people and seeing people and meeting old friends and etc.  And people are the American ambassadors here, which was very exciting. And we stood in a place and I noticed that our security guards were pretty tight security because of course Americans and back to two ambassadors and personnel from American Embassy in Tunis. We're getting nervous I said, it should relax. 24 hours later precisely in that same place, there was a shooting and two guards were killed. Two Jewish one French, Tunisian and once one Israeli Tunisian, were murdered. So it's very sober. Very, very sobering. And Tunisia was that in the beginning, what we say reluctant to acknowledge this as an anti semitic act they talked about as criminality, they talked about it as terrorism. So Ambassador Hood and I together, not together with, but also with president Macron, and the German Foreign Minister, all said this is antisemitism plain and simple. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And swayed them, turned? Deborah Lipstadt: Oh, well, I don't know if we swayed them, but we got them to, he met with the President and met with the chief rabbi. And they changed a little bit, but sometimes it's criminality. Sometimes someone gets mugged on the street, and doesn't matter what they are who they are. But when this guy shot, he was on guard at a naval base. He shot his fellow guard, took a car and drove half hour across the island, to the synagogue, to attack the synagogue. And he didn't say, Oh, they're a crowd of people. I mean, he knew where he was going. And he knew what he was doing. Manya Brachear Pashman:   My last question is, some listeners might not realize that there is actually a separate Special Envoy for Holocaust issues. Deborah Lipstadt: That's right, Ellen Germain. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Your colleague Ellen Germain. Given the rise of Holocaust distortion, trivialization, your candidate, the loss of survivors, how much of what you do now intersects with her work? Deborah Lipstadt: Well, we're very careful. I mean, she's really handling Holocaust reparations issues, property reparations, not that we get directly involved, but in urging countries to address these things. But there's not that much overlap. But there's a great deal of cooperation with us, you know, times traveling together, working together, the more the more. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Are their priorities that you can see for implementing the National Strategy since we started talking about it. Deborah Lipstadt: I think there are so many things in there that can be done large and small. I urge people to download it. Maybe you can put the link on your website. It's downloadable. It's 60 pages, read the whole thing. thing. I have to tell you, I knew it as it was emerging. But at one point when I saw a draft of it, and they asked me to go over it, I was abroad doing it in another country. So complicated. But of course, as I began to read it without going into the specifics even have different issues. I was deeply moved.  Because I don't like to correct my boss, otherwise known as the President of the United States. But when he spoke about it at the White House, he called it the most momentous comprehensive plan the American government has ever addressed and he was wrong. It was the first comprehensive plan that the American government has ever addressed.  Of course, when there've been tragedies and presidents from both sides of the aisle, from all perspectives have condemned, have responded, America has responded. Law enforcement has responded. But this is the first time that the United States government is taking the bull by the horns and saying, What can we do to address this scourge?  And as I said, from the podium of the White House when it was rolled out, probably making history because it's the first time a mishna was quoted from the White House or talmud was quoted from the White House. I quoted from the verse from ethics of the elders, pirkei avot – lo aleicha hamlacha ligmor, v'lo ata ben chorin livatel mimenu. You're not obligated to complete the task, but you're not free from starting, from engaging in it. The United States government has now seriously engaged in it. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Well, thank you so much, Ambassador. Deborah Lipstadt: Thank you. 

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 15-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday. US bureau chief Jacob Magid and news editor Amy Spiro join host Anne Gordon on today's episode. One of the ongoing stories of this year is the ultra-high incidence of Arab homicide. On Tuesday, four people were gunned down in Abu Snan, an Arab town in northern Israel, including a candidate running in the upcoming municipal elections. Should the vote be postponed? Terror attacks have also been on the rise in recent weeks. A leaked report from a recent cabinet meeting suggests a renewed tough stance against terror may be in the works. Nearly 45 years after Golda Meir's death, and some 50 years since she was prime minister, her story, including but not limited to her time in office, is the subject of scrutiny. Deborah Lipstadt has a new book out, "Golda Meir: Israel's Matriarch," and a new movie simply called “Golda,” starring Helen Mirren, is due to be released tomorrow in Israel and on Friday in the US. Adam Sandler, who has made a name for himself as a proud Jew in popular culture, stars in a new Netflix movie, also due out this week. The question is whether "You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah" will be the crowd-pleaser that cements American Judaism in pop culture. Discussed articles include: 4 killed, including mayoral candidate, amid spiraling gun violence in Arab community Director-general of Arab municipality killed, drawing call for Shin Bet intervention Security cabinet meets as far-right advocates sharp crackdown in West Bank How should Golda Meir be remembered? Deborah Lipstadt weighs in In Jerusalem, Helen Mirren says Golda Meir ‘one of the greatest' roles she's played ‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah' is an endearing Sandler family affair Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on iTunes, Spotify, PlayerFM, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.   IMAGE: Police at the scene where four men were shot dead in the Arab Town of Abu Snan, northern Israel, August 22, 2023. (Shir Torem/Flash90)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already declared the plan “dead on arrival.” The president said he was open to meeting with McCarthy, but raising the debt limit was “not negotiable.” Meanwhile, E. Jean Carroll testified in her civil suit against former President Trump, describing the allegations in shocking detail. Leigh Ann Caldwell, Lisa Rubin, Stuart Stevens, Sen. Chris Murphy, Amb. Deborah Lipstadt, Bill Cohan, and Dan Nathan join. 

Deborah Lipstadt is an Award-Winning Author & a Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Originally part I of a special series on confronting antisemitism, please join us as we revisit this timely episode of On All-Inclusive with Jay Ruderman. And, we'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode.  For decades, Deborah Lipstadt has been a leading figure in writing about and combating antisemitism. She is most well-known for defeating Holocaust denier David Irving when he sued her for defamation. However, Deborah's accomplishments span far beyond the trial that made her infamous. She is currently the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and recently received a nomination by President Biden as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.  In conversation with Jay, they discuss the history of antisemitism, why there has been an uprise in hate recently, and what we can do to combat it. Please find a transcription of this episode:  https://allaboutchangepodcast.com/podcast-episode/deborah-lipstatSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Regarding the recent roundtable on combatting antisemitism held at the White House by Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Aaron Keyak, comments on his role as both a participant and as deputy to Amb. Deborah Lipstadt. With Teisha Bader.

Depositions are a crucial part of discovery—and they can also be, in the hands of a talented litigator, torture for the witness. So I suspect that many lawyers on the left—and beyond—might be jealous right now of Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan, the iconic lawyer and founding partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink (“KHF”). Last month, Robbie had the pleasure of deposing former president Donald Trump—not once, but twice.I'm guessing it wasn't a fun experience for the Donald. His niece Mary Trump, who hired Kaplan Hecker to sue her uncle for fraud, described Robbie to Bloomberg as follows: “She's brilliant, she's unrelenting, she can't be intimidated, and she's not going to back down. She eats bullies… for lunch.”Deposing the president twice in the same month is only the latest distinction for Robbie, known for handling some of the most high-profile and high-stakes cases in the country. She's most well-known for representing the late Edie Windsor in United States v. Windsor, the landmark gay-rights case in which the Supreme Court held unconstitutional section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. But Robbie is also the lawyer of choice for major corporations like Goldman Sachs and Uber, who hire her and KHF to handle their most complex legal problems.On Monday, I was delighted to speak with Robbie for the fourth episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast. She wasn't able to say much about the Trump depositions, but she did talk about her multiple cases against Trump in broader terms. We also spoke about what makes her unique as a litigator; her epic victory last year in Sines v. Kessler, in which she won damages of more than $25 million from the white supremacists behind the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017; her vision for Kaplan Hecker & Fink, the thriving litigation boutique she founded after more than two decades at Paul, Weiss; free-speech and cancel-culture controversies in the legal world; and whether she's a tough boss.Please check it out by clicking on the embed at the top of this post. Thanks!Show Notes:* Roberta A. Kaplan bio, Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP* Then Comes Marriage: How Two Women Fought for and Won Equal Dignity for All, Amazon* A History-Making Litigator Leaves Biglaw To Launch A Boutique, by David Lat for Above the Law* Roberta Kaplan Builds Progressive Firm Suing Trump, Defending Wall Street, by Erik Larson for Bloomberg* 2020 Attorney of the Year: Roberta Kaplan, by Jane Wester for the New York Law Journal* Lady Justice and Charlottesville Nazis, by Dahlia Lithwick for Amicus/SlatePrefer reading to listening? A transcript of the entire episode appears below.Two quick notes:* This transcript has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter meaning—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning.* Because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email. To view the entire post, simply click on "View entire message" in your email app.David Lat: Hello, and welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to by going to davidlat.substack.com.You're listening to the fourth episode of this podcast, which airs every other Wednesday. Today I'm honored to be joined by one of the nation's most celebrated, successful, and significant litigators: Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan, founding partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink. She is most famous for winning United States v. Windsor, the landmark case in which the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, paving the way for nationwide marriage equality a few years later. But she has worked on many other fascinating cases over the course of her career, including two pending cases against Donald Trump in which she deposed the former president—twice in the past month.Robbie was born in Cleveland and grew up in Ohio. After graduating from Harvard College, magna cum laude, and Columbia Law School, Robbie clerked for Judge Mark Wolf of the District of Massachusetts and the late Chief Judge Judith Kaye of the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. Robbie then practiced for more than two decades at the major law firm of Paul, Weiss, where she built a thriving commercial and pro bono practice, including her big win in Windsor.In 2017, Robbie left Paul Weiss to launch Kaplan Hecker & Fink (“KHF”), one of the nation's top trial boutiques, known for handling both complex commercial and white-collar cases and landmark public-interest matters. One of the first such cases filed by KHF was Sines v. Kessler, a high-profile lawsuit under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 against twenty-four neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders responsible for organizing the racial- and religious-based violence in Charlottesville in August 2017. That case went to trial, and a year ago this month, the jury awarded a total of more than $25 million to Robbie's clients.In our conversation, Robbie and I talked about her various Trump cases, how she knew she was destined for a legal career from a very young age, two qualities that have made her so successful as a lawyer, how KHF has managed to be so financially successful while also doing so much public-interest work, and her vision for the firm's future. Without further ado, here's my interview of Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan.DL: Thanks so much for joining me, Robbie—it's an honor to have you!Roberta Kaplan: It's a pleasure to be here.DL: To start with what's in the news—and I feel like you're always in the news—what can you tell us about your latest high-profile case, namely, E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit against former president Donald Trump? I know that you recently deposed him. Is there anything you can say either about the deposition specifically or about the litigation more generally?RK: Sure. We actually have two litigations that are very active against Donald Trump, and I actually deposed him in both, on two successive weeks. So it was a relatively exhausting period for me. I literally went to Mar-a-Lago two weeks in a row to depose him. That's about all I can say about it, in terms of the depositions themselves.But in terms of the cases, it's very interesting. The E. Jean case, which you asked about, is on the fastest track. Right now, trial is scheduled to happen on February 6th. Right now we have one case against Donald Trump for the defamatory statements he made in June 2019. That case is currently certified to the D.C. Court of Appeals as to the question of whether when he made those statements, he was acting within the scope of his employment as president—sounds like kind of a crazy question, but that's the question. And the D.C. Court of Appeals, I believe, recognizing the need for speed here, has scheduled that case on a very, very expedited schedule, with oral arguments to be on January 10. So I think it's entirely possible that we have a ruling from the D.C. Court of Appeals before the trial before Judge [Lewis] Kaplan starts.Even if that's not true, however, we have a second case that we've told everyone in the world, including Judge Kaplan and Trump's lawyers, that we intend to file on November 24, which is the first day we can file it. That is a case directly for battery, the common-law cause of action by E. Jean against Donald Trump, based on a new law that was passed in New York called the Adult Survivors Act. It's patterned on the Child Victims Act, and it gives people who were survivors of rape that happened a long time ago basically a free one-year period to bring claims, notwithstanding statutes of limitations. That case we're definitely bringing out November 24th, and I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn that we probably will add to that case some new defamatory statements that Donald Trump made on Truth Social against our client—again, none of which are subject to any Westfall Act issue at all, because he wasn't president when he made them.So big picture, it's highly likely, particularly given the judge we have—Judge Kaplan, no relation—that we will go to trial on all or at least some of those claims in February.DL: Wow.RK: And the new case shouldn't really delay anything because it's basically the exact same facts. As we told the court, the only thing that's different about the new case is the damages theory, so we will have different experts. You obviously have different damages for being raped than you do for defamation. But that's really it. Everything else has already been done in discovery. Fact discovery is closed, and I see very little reason for any additional fact discovery, again, because the facts are totally overlapping.DL: So what are the two depositions? What was the difference between the two depos?RK: The first deposition, which happened the week before, was in our fraud case. Before Judge [Lorna] Schofield in the S.D.N.Y., we have a nationwide class action, on behalf of people who invested—I'm using the word “invested” in quotes—in a business opportunity—I'm using “business opportunity” in quotes too—that Donald Trump endorsed and heavily promoted before he was president, known as “ACN” or “American Communications Network.”It's a multilevel marketing scheme—I don't think even they deny that—in which people pay $500 or $1,000 to become part of this opportunity. Then the goal is to sell video phones. The idea of selling video phones when Skype and other software was already heavily in use—not really the smartest idea in the world—and when I say video phones, I mean big, standard-looking video phones, like I haven't seen since I was a young associate, probably.The only way to make money as part of this multilevel marketing scheme is to recruit other people in it. You don't make money from selling the phones, you make money from bringing other people in, which is the classic hallmark of a multilevel marketing scheme. Trump was paid a lot of money, at least $11 million or so, from this entity over a period of years. He went to conventions where these people were recruited, and he had huge crowds going nuts for him that kind of looked like his conventions now, honestly. And he said it was the greatest investment he's ever heard of, he did tons of due diligence, he knew it was a great company, a great business opportunity, “people think I do this for the money, but I just like being here.”I gave you a sense of the kind of the statements he made, and we allege those were all fraudulent, in that they were untrue and he knew them to be untrue. In that case too, fact discovery is closed—there are a couple of exceptions that the magistrate judge ordered, but it's essentially closed. But in that case, given how much bigger the scope is, we are about to go into expert discovery and then class certification. So that case is behind the E. Jean Carroll case for those reasons, although we're very eager to try it before the next presidential campaign for sure.DL: Oh, interesting.RK: Because we don't want to lose our defendant.DL: Indeed. Totally, totally.So to rewind a little bit… as I know from having read your wonderful memoir, Then Comes Marriage, you knew from an early age that you wanted to be a lawyer. What can you tell us about your childhood or your upbringing that might have shed light on your future career or that shaped your career choice as a lawyer?RK: When I was a kid, I liked to talk a lot. I still do. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother, who was a very wise, very smart person. And there's a famous story in my family that when my uncle was in the Peace Corps in India at the time, and there is a series of letters between my mom, my grandmother, and my uncle from India, and in those letters—we still have copies—my grandmother is talking about how I just keep talking all time, and how at one point she said to me, ‘Robbie, you know I love you, but can you just be quiet for like three minutes? Can you stop for three minutes?' And I said something like, ‘No grandma, I can't. I just can't help myself. I love to talk.'DL: Ha!RK: And at a certain point, at a pretty young age, because I liked to read, I realized that if you're a lawyer, you got paid to talk. And I was like, “Okay, that's the job for me!”Then Sandra Day O'Connor—this is going to show my age, but she was made a Supreme Court justice, I believe when I was in high school. And that had a big impact on me at the time, because prior to that I don't think a lot of women thought they really had—not that I wanted to be a Supreme Court justice, but after that [women] thought they really had a future in the law. I remember that to this day, when that happened, what a big thing that was.And I just told everyone that I'm 85 years old….DL: Did judicial office ever cross your mind? Was that something you might have been interested in, in the past?RK: I certainly have a lot of friends who are judges and I admire what they do, and I think it's a great job. But I like to be a fighter. I like to be an advocate, and obviously I can't do that as judge. I think I would find it too quiet probably for my taste, even at the district-court or trial-court level. But there's no question that more and more we need great judges, and it's probably the single—at least in my job, in my world—the single most important job anyone can have. The only legal philosophy that ultimately works for me is legal realism, which means that often how a case goes—the pace of the case, how it flows, and ultimately what the result will be—is going to be based not only the philosophy but also the life experiences and understanding of the judge. That's just crucial. So the more people who are people of high character and great experience become judges, all the better.DL: I totally agree with you, totally agree. Looking at your remarkable career as a lawyer, what would you say is your superpower that is unique to Robbie Kaplan? Obviously, we know about how hard you work and how much you prepare, and of course your tactical brilliance, but is there something you would regard as a little different [about yourself]?RK: So I have a son who's now 16, but when he was little, one of his favorite books that I used to read, hundreds if not thousands of times, was called Dog with a Bone. And I think the reason I liked that book so much probably said something about me, which is that, as a lawyer, I really am like a dog with a bone. I do not give up as a lawyer. Our firm doesn't give up. And if I don't succeed on something the first time for a client, I succeed the second or third time, and it's that stubbornness maybe—stubbornness isn't usually considered a good quality, but it's that ability to keep on fighting, our resilience, that is our number-one quality.Then I'd say, second, creativity. I'm the least creative human being on the planet. I can't draw. My son goes crazy if I try to sing in the car because I'm so off key. I could never do creative writing. My pottery teacher basically kicked me out of class in high school because he asked me why every single pot I made look like a bong. And I wasn't even trying to make a bong! I was like, “I don't know what you mean!” So I have no artistic talent. But to the extent I have any creativity at all, I apply it to cases and the law, and how to achieve what we want to achieve for our clients in a creative and often unusual way.DL: That makes me think of the Charlottesville case, and your case against the individuals who caused such violence there and how you used a very old statute that was designed to be deployed against the Klan to go after these white supremacists, which was quite brilliant and creative. How did that theory come to you?RK: We saw what happened in Charlottesville, and we knew something had to be done about it. We were very concerned—and my firm had four people at the time, four lawyers—we were very concerned that the Department of Justice, then headed by Jeff Sessions, was not going do anything. Which we turned out to be right about.Pretty quickly after Charlottesville happened, someone got into the Discord servers that the organizers used and leaked a whole bunch of messages. This made it very clear that this was a conspiracy. So okay, great, we have the facts, we have clients, we went down there—but what law do we use? And there's not a lot, frankly, of current law to deal with this, in part because no one—I hope we're not going back to those times—but at least in my lifetime up to now, no one ever thought this was a huge problem. No one ever thought that we would have private conspiracies that were racially motivated, that planned, promoted, and engaged in violence. That may be changing, and that's one of the most disturbing things about our country right now, but that's generally been true for decades and decades.We had to go back and look for a statute called the KKK Act of 1871, which was passed to do exactly what it says it was passed to do, which was to try to curb the growth of the then-new Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South. Arguably it didn't have great success in that regard, but there were cases in the 1870s when it was passed trying to curtail or slow or stop the growth of the Klan.When you think about what happened in Charlottesville, though, it really is the modern-day version of what that Reconstruction Congress was trying to deal with. Back in the 1870s in Alabama, mostly men would don white robes and white hoods, and they would meet in the forest, and they would plan, tragically and horribly, a lynching or whatever they were going do.Today it's much easier. All you need is a hashtag on Parler or Discord or one of these dark websites, and it's like whack-a-mole—the minute one of the sites stops hosting these people, another one will take over. So all you need is a hashtag—that keeps your anonymity for the most part, unless you self-identify in your hashtag—and you don't have to go into the woods. Literally the guys who organized Charlottesville are from all over the country, and they all were able to plan nationwide and even internationally.When we filed the Charlottesville case—this is going to show how naive I was—I thought it was a terrible one-off, but it was a one-off, and we needed to bring the case so that it would never happen again. How wrong, in humility, I have to say I was, because not only was it not a one-off, it was really a harbinger, a kind of a road map to a lot of what has happened since then. Even this guy who attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband, while there weren't 20 guys who went to the house, everything that he believed and everything that he was motivated to do was based on these same kind of dark-web, white-supremacist, violent channels, which again, if you're interested or if you're a lonely guy who's looking for a community, it's pretty easy for you to get online and get indoctrinated in their thinking.DL: Absolutely. And I know this is perhaps a little far afield from your work as a lawyer, but maybe just even as a concerned citizen, how do we deal with this problem? How do we get ourselves out of this? It seems that it's just getting worse and worse.RK: I wish I knew. It's something I think and worry about all the time. We obviously—and I'm as committed as anyone to the First Amendment—we obviously have a right to free speech in our country, and we should have a right. But it may be both with the [Communications] Decency Act and with the case law, the developed case law in the First Amendment context, maybe [it] does not make sense in the modern day. For example, under Brandenburg, when you're doing something that wreaks havoc in a crowded theater, that may be translatable to things that people do online today in the dark web almost every single day. And whether our standards need to change to deal with that is a very, very serious question. Of course, whether or not this Supreme Court as currently constituted is open to hearing any of those arguments, I don't know.DL: That's very interesting. I wonder—because there are definitely some conservatives out there who want to revisit First Amendment doctrine as well—I wonder if this might be some weird area where maybe you agree with some of them?RK: We obviously have separation of church and state, though I'm a religious Jew, and Judaism going all the way back to the destruction of the Second Temple, in 62 AD or 66 AD, has been obsessed with speech. It's obsessed with speech because it understands that a lot of the damage that people can do to other people is through speaking. If you look at history, there's no question. Now, I'm not saying that we give up our right to free speech. It's embedded in our Constitution for good reason, and it came out of a world where people were severely restricted in what they could think and what they could say. But the link between certain kinds of speech and violence at this point is uncontroversial, and how we deal with speech that may not be committing violence, but is no question prompting and encouraging and invoking other people to commit violence, is a very serious issue.DL: Let me ask you this then, and again, perhaps I'm going a little bit out of what you usually focus on as a civil-rights, public-interest, and commercial litigator, but what is your take on what's happening to free speech in U.S. law schools right now? Because there have been speakers who have been shouted down, conservative speakers mainly, but of course, obviously conservatives have no problem going after free speech in other areas.What are your thoughts on that? Do you share the concern that certain speakers might come to law schools and inflict what activists call “harm” on students?RK: What I know about this, David, I mostly know from following your column, so that's basically the limit of my knowledge because I've been super-busy lately, but I have the general gist because you're a good journalist and I follow what you write. People have a right to protest. They should. But they don't have a right to protest in a way that stops other people from speaking.And there's no question that on both sides in our country right now—in fact, both the radical left and the radical right are looking more and more similar every day, which is petrifying because that's what it looked like in Germany in the thirties. So it's petrifying, but people both on the radical right and in the radical left who want to deprive other people of the ability to speak is not acceptable. It's not what the Founders meant. Speech and debate and discourse—even going back to Jewish law—is something to be highly encouraged. And we all make the situation worse, honestly, when we—I hate to use this expression, but when we cancel other people from expressing their views.Just because you don't agree with someone—I'm sure you and I don't agree on everything—doesn't mean that we shouldn't discuss and debate and argue with each other, and it's terribly distressing because it leads to the kind of breakdown in civil society I think that we're seeing today. And that's also incredibly scary.DL: Related to these cancel-culture controversies, what are your thoughts on the extent to which advocates can or should be held accountable for their clients? Even though you are most known or most famous for your civil-rights work, your public-interest work, you also represent Goldman Sachs, Airbnb, large companies, and there have been some on the left who have taken this sort of purist approach: “Oh, well, you represent all these progressive causes, but then you represent all these evil companies and defendants and what have you. “ So what are your thoughts on that, the extent to which lawyers should be held accountable for the sins of their clients?RK: I don't think lawyers should ever be held accountable for the sins of their clients. That's what lawyers do, and if lawyers were in any way held accountable for the sins of their clients, then we wouldn't really have a legal profession. The only exceptions to that would be when lawyers commit the sins of their clients as part of their representation, and that's where, for me, you can't cross the line. I think every lawyer I know weighs these things differently.Let me begin to say, I don't acknowledge for a second that Goldman Sachs or Airbnb or any of our other clients…DL: I'm playing devil's advocate—I have nothing against them personally….RK: … are evil or do anything evil or anything like that.You have to look at it differently in the criminal context than in the civil context. Criminally, I think my colleagues at Kaplan Hecker would say that everyone is entitled to a defense, and while there may be some criminal defendants that we wouldn't or that they wouldn't want to represent, the breadth of whom you represent criminally when someone's facing imprisonment is different than civil.Civilly, personally, it's a choice—and we, at Kaplan Hecker, think very seriously about these issues. We talk about them among the partners, and we won't take on a client who we feel somehow contravenes our values in some fundamental way. But that's a choice. I wouldn't judge another lawyer who did that because that's what lawyers do, if that makes sense.DL: That makes perfect sense, especially as you were saying in the civil context as well, because look, [clients] have a wide variety of lawyers they can choose from, and you have clients that you can choose from, you're very busy, and not everyone is entitled to Roberta Kaplan. I totally get that.RK: Other than E. Jean Carroll, who's entitled to me.DL: Indeed, indeed—and Edie Windsor, who was amazing, of course. This might be a dumb question, but is [Windsor] the win that you are most proud of in your long career? And if that is, then do you have a number two?RK: Charlottesville. Edie would be first, Charlottesville number two. Charlottesville, unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—was not covered that much. And the reason why is there were two highly racially motivated criminal trials going on at the same time. They were both in state court, so they were televised. So for the press, it was very easy to cover both those cases rather than cover Charlottesville, which had no cameras in the courtroom because we were in federal court, with very severe restrictions for Covid, and other things about access to the courtroom too. And I guess sadly in certain ways, the record we made wasn't really the focus of people's attention the way it should have been.But because of that, I don't think people realize how incredibly difficult it was. We were on trial for about four weeks. We had about a week of jury selection, so about five weeks total. Two of the defendants were pro se, Richard Spencer and Chris Cantwell. Chris Cantwell was then serving a sentence in federal prison for making violent threats against another white supremacist—I think he threatened to rape and kill his wife—but a week either before or after that, he made similar violent threats against me, saying something like, “When this case is over, we're gonna….”Can I swear on this?DL: Yeah, go for it.RK: “When this case is over, we're gonna have a lot of f**king fun with Robbie Kaplan.” And so we were in trial in this closed courtroom—the whole courthouse was closed, there was no other case going on for four weeks—with these two, with a bunch of defendants, but two of them who were pro se. I think Judge Moon rightly probably let them get away with almost anything they wanted to do because he was very concerned about an appellate record. And in retrospect, he was probably right.But living through it every day was extremely hard. They would just make incredibly outrageous arguments. Chris Cantwell in his closing started screaming, and I thought threatening the jury. The marshals would say to me, “Okay, you know, if Cantwell gets closer to you, we're gonna stay closer by you in case he tries anything.” It was crazy. And so just as a sheer endurance contest, and for being able to keep our dignity in the face of a trial where literally every day these guys were talking about how much they loved Mein Kampf—the rhetoric was unbelievable—is something I'm very proud of. And it's not just me, it's our entire team. I don't know how we did it so long, but we somehow managed to do it, and getting the verdict we did was incredible.DL: Absolutely. Congratulations. And Karen Dunn [of Paul, Weiss], Alan Levine [of Cooley]—you had a lot of other amazing lawyers involved as well, and other law firms. Did you have personal security at some point in addition to the marshals?RK: Yeah, I can't get into it, but yeah, so that made it hard too. We were really kind of trapped in the hotel in a lot of ways for security reasons. So imagine going from this closed-in courtroom to being trapped within the hotel for four weeks and thinking about how you're going to cross-examine someone about Mein Kampf or put on Deborah Lipstadt to talk about why these guys are obsessed with the Holocaust. It was something, for sure.DL: Yeah. But a great victory, a huge verdict, and a real blow against white supremacists and others who would harm the country.On a happier note, Kaplan Hecker & Fink celebrated its fifth anniversary, I guess this was over the summer?RK: Yeah, July 1.DL: Congratulations. What are you most proud of about the firm so far?RK: When we set out to create this firm, we had certain specific core values. One, doing work in the public interest together with commercial work and white-collar work. Two, having a paramount respect for maintaining our culture and making sure that we all liked each other and were friends and had the same values. And three, being as non-hierarchical as you can possibly be, in the sense that we hire, I think we now have 10 percent of our lawyers are Supreme Court clerks. That's kind of insane—like, I couldn't get a job with me anymore. But because we bring in such brilliant people, we make sure that we listen to their ideas, from day one.What I'm most proud of is that we kept to that. We really have to this day kept to that. Our greatest challenge, frankly, is not getting so large that we lose it. That's frankly the thing that we worry about the most right now. There are a number of partnerships where the partners don't know each other well enough to keep that sense of camaraderie and culture, and that's what we face every day. We're not there yet for sure, but that's what we think about a lot.DL: Right now the firm I think has around 60 lawyers, maybe 10 partners or so?RK: I think we're about—well, maybe about 13 or 14 partners.DL: Oh, okay.RK: And I think the limit for me, based on my experience, is about 25. Once you get to more than 25, it's hard for everyone to be friends the same way we are now. So we have some room to grow.DL: And what about total lawyers? Right now you're around 60-ish?RK: Yeah. Again, we don't know, but I think everyone agrees that at 125 we'd pretty much be at our limits. Again, we're nowhere near that now, but that's kind of what people have in mind, and I'm not sure all of us want to get even that big. We also, I think speaking unanimously for the partners, are not into this idea of having a lot of satellite offices.DL: That was my next question.RK: We have New York, which is kind of the main office, and then we have D.C., and I don't anticipate us expanding anywhere else. Before Covid, we might have thought about an office in California. One of the few good things about Covid, of very few good things, is that you see that you can practice across state lines in a much easier way than I ever anticipated. So I can't imagine [opening more offices] anytime in the near future.DL: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I don't think it's quite as imperative, and in this day and age of remote work, it is much easier.Let me ask you this question because people have asked me about it, and I'm genuinely curious for the answer. At Kaplan Hecker & Fink, you do tons of public interest work, you do tons of pro bono work, and then, on the other hand, you still pay above the Biglaw salary scale for associates.Something here is not computing. How do you do it? Maybe I'm being too nosy, but… are you content to just make, you know, a couple million rather than many millions, like you did at Paul, Weiss? What's the secret here?RK: I'm not going to get into any numbers—obviously, my partners would kill me—but let me put it this way: other than in our first year probably, I have not had to sacrifice anything financially at Kaplan Hecker & Fink.DL: Wow.RK: And I think for me and almost all the partners, we are doing appreciably better than we would have at big firms.What's our secret sauce? For one thing, we are very, very efficient. Even though our fees aren't significantly lower than big firms, our bills tend to be, because we don't have to have four levels of people working on something. The work product that we get from our associates is usually excellent and doesn't take as much work than it might at a big firm.Two, we're very creative about fee arrangements, which is also not a big-firm thing, at least in the past—it may be more so now. My managing partner, Julie Fink, was a client at Pfizer for years before she came here, and so she really understood this. We're very creative about success fees or contingency fees or flat fees in a way that I think is hard at big firms.DL: Hmm-mmm.RK: But suffice it to say that we're doing—knock wood, I'm knocking wood right now—we're doing okay, and we're pleased to be able to pay our associates and our staff the way we do. And money is not the paramount thing. No one comes to Kaplan Hecker thinking, “I want to earn as much as a hedge-fund person or an investment banker or a tech guy.” We do very well, and no one is in any financial distress. But maximizing dollar amounts per share, per partner, is not our number-one goal.DL: That makes perfect sense. I'm curious, since you mentioned contingency-fee arrangements—do you do a significant amount of plaintiff-side that work that helps generate unusually high revenue per lawyer, perhaps?RK: We've done some, we're certainly interested in doing more. We probably get, I don't know, I'd have to look at the numbers,.we get between six and a dozen people calling a week [with such cases]. We've probably turned down, I think the numbers have got to be 90, upwards of 95 percent of those. But the ones we take on tend to be profitable, so yes, that certainly helps the bottom line.DL: And then another thing I've heard about the firm is some of your public-interest work is also paid work, right? That it's not just entirely pro bono?RK: Yeah, some of it is funded. It's funded at a lower rate, so we have a public-interest rate we use that's about half our regular rate. We do a number of cases like that—a lot of the election work, cases that Joshua Matz does, are funded in that way.DL: Okay. So one last question before we go to my little lightning round of final questions. And again, maybe this is a delicate subject, but some people in the law firm world say you're a tough boss. Do you consider yourself a tough boss?RK: So let me tell you a story. Paul, Weiss had upward reviews. I don't remember when they started, but at some point when I was a partner, they started upward reviews. And my upward reviews—I'm not proud of this—but I would always have maybe one or two associates at a time that I didn't work so well with, and it always turned out that of the people who did the reviews, those would be the people who would turn in reviews. And so my upward reviews were not great. Then I did the Windsor case, and all of a sudden my upward reviews were stellar! I remember my wife saying to me, “Well, look, I don't understand.” Because I don't think I changed as a boss. I think what changed is the way people perceived me as a boss.DL: Hmm-mmm.RK: So, I don't know. Those were a long time ago, and I know I was under a lot of stress as a young partner at Paul, Weiss. But I don't think anyone today—you can ask them yourselves—has a problem with me as a boss. I certainly, and we all do, have high standards. We operate in very demanding situations, and our clients justifiably expect a lot from us. But I don't think anyone in the Charlottesville case or in E. Jean or in any of the paying matters for Airbnb or Uber would say I'm tough. If by tough you mean I have high standards, yes. But I'm also mentoring people and giving people opportunities to take depositions and to examine people at trial. We were the only firm in Charlottesville that had associates examining witnesses.DL: Wow. That's remarkable.RK: And that speaks for itself.DL: Totally, totally.So here are my standard final questions, which are standard for all my lawyer guests.My first is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law as that abstract system that rules over us all.RK: I think what I like the least is the tendency of lawyers and judges at times to fail to see that behind all this case law and precedent and statutory language are real people, and that each case affects a real live person. And it's hard to keep those things balanced in your head, but good lawyers and good judges need to. And I sometimes find it very frustrating when people take things to such a level of abstraction that they fail to see the common humanity in what we do.DL: And I think that is one of your talents as a lawyer, just bringing out the humanity of your clients, whether it's Edie Windsor or Heather Heyer or E. Jean Carroll. I think your storytelling about these very real, flesh-and-blood people is something that just stands out about your practice,RK: Thank you, because I would like someone to say that about me, so I'm very pleased that you have. That's something we really care about a lot at Kaplan Hecker.DL: My second question is—and this'll be interesting because I know that from a young age, I think you have a line in your book about how at age 10 or 12, you were plotting out your legal career—what would you be if you were not a lawyer?RK: Believe it or not, because it's pretty timely, I thought seriously about becoming a Russian historian.DL: That was your undergrad major.RK: Yeah, I was a Russian history and lit major, and I spent—I think it was probably the single biggest influence on who I became—I spent the spring semester of my junior year in Moscow, in what was then the Soviet Union, but glasnost had been announced. So it was kind of the beginning of change, although change that didn't last very long. And I think that semester, I was fluent in Russian then, watching and living in what was then a totalitarian regime in, in a lot of ways—we were bugged and all kinds of things—just had a huge impact on the way I see the world. And maybe that made me a good lawyer, because I always expect the worst—which is a good thing as a lawyer in a lot of ways, because you want to be planning for and anticipating all contingencies.I ultimately realized that there are not a lot of happy years in Russian history, sadly continuing to today, and that if I became a Russian historian, it was going to be pretty depressing. But I originally went to law school just thinking, “Okay, this will be a way to figure out what else I want to do in my life.” And then I fell in love with it. I'd kind of forgotten about what I was thinking as a 10-year-old about getting paid to talk.Oh, and I flirted with the idea of going to the CIA.DL: Oh?RK: I started taking Russian because that was a big period of global crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States. My professor at Harvard was Richard Pipes, who came up with the phrase “the evil empire.” And I thought about it, but at that time, I don't think it would've been very easy for someone who was—I wasn't out as gay, but I certainly had concerns that I was gay and or lesbian, and I was smart enough to know that that probably wouldn't mix too well with going into either the NSA or CIA. So I didn't do it.DL: Mmm-hmm.RK: Probably the best for me in a whole lot of ways.DL: And certainly history has benefited from your choice to become a lawyer. So my third question is, how much sleep do you get each night?RK: Believe it or not, I'm probably at the high end of the people you've talked to, seven to eight hours a night. I've never been someone who's functioned well with very little sleep. I remember my freshman year in college, some of my friends and I decided as an experiment that we were going to stay up all night and then write some essay that was required for some writing class we had to take, taking a lot of NoDoz, like only freshmen in college would be stupid enough to do something like that. But suffice it to say, I had to ask for an extension of the due date for the essay.When I'm on trial, I sleep obviously a lot less, but even then I'll go to bed at midnight and wake up at four or five in the morning. I still need to sleep every night.DL: I'm glad to hear that. I always love talking to successful people who [get decent sleep]. And who are also working parents—you have a son. I think it's great when people can… Look, I know work-life balance may be sort of an illusion or maybe a little much to ask, but I'm glad to hear that you can get a decent amount of sleep.RK: I've had migraines ever since I was 12. I suffer from migraines, and if you sleep too little, it will bring on migraines. I remember once, when I was working for Chief Judge Kaye, I hadn't slept enough or I don't know what had happened, but she came into my office and I was curled up under my desk in the fetal position because I had a migraine. And I'll never forget, she thought I would die. She's like, “What is going on?” So since I suffer from something like that, I'm very careful about doing things that won't bring on a migraine, and lack of sleep—or even too much sleep, both sides—can cause migraines.DL: My final question: any words of wisdom for listeners who look at your life and career and say, I want to be Robbie Kaplan?RK: I'm not sure anyone should say that because we all have our own lives, and you shouldn't want my life any more than anyone should want anyone else's.But I would say one, stick to your guts. The single greatest lesson I've learned as a lawyer is to trust your own guts because they often tell you the right thing. There's a lot of distractions that you may listen to or follow instead of following your own inner voice, and that's really important, to hear your own inner voice.And two, and I alluded to this earlier, your ability to function as a lawyer is based on your integrity, and you should never, ever, no matter what the fee, what the pressure, what the circumstance—and again, we're seeing this today, unfortunately—never do anything for a client that in any way compromises your integrity. I learned that at Paul, Weiss. I learned it from my mentor at Paul, Weiss, Marty London, and a bunch of others. And it's the single most important thing you need to know as a lawyer.DL: Well said. Thank you so much, Robbie, for joining me. I am so grateful for your time and your insight, and I know my listeners will appreciate it as well.RK: It's a pleasure.DL: Thanks again to Robbie for joining me. She's had such a remarkable life and legal career, and it was wonderful to hear about her landmark wins and what she's working on today. If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend her memoir, Then Comes Marriage.As always, thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers, for tuning in. If you'd like to connect with me, you can email me at davidlat@substack.com, and you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to Original Jurisdiction. Since this podcast is new, please help spread the word by telling your friends. And if you don't already, please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter, over at davidlat.substack.com. This podcast is free, as is most of the newsletter content, but it is made possible by paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast will appear two weeks from now, on Wednesday, November 16. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects.Thanks for reading Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to my paid subscribers for making this publication possible. Subscribers get (1) access to Judicial Notice, my time-saving weekly roundup of the most notable news in the legal world; (2) additional stories reserved for paid subscribers; and (3) the ability to comment on posts. You can email me at davidlat@substack.com with questions or comments, and you can share this post or subscribe using the buttons below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

Eighteen days to Israeli elections – recent polls show the far right Legislator Itamar Ben Gvir gaining momentum, at the expense of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party. We discuss the possible ramifications of Ben Gvir's ascension inside and outside Israel. And, on a lighter tone – Yonit is giving Jonathan a behind the scenes look at her preparations for the upcoming election night broadcast. Israel and Lebanon are on the verge of signing a maritime border agreement, and now that the political dust has settled - what is actually in the deal, and what does each side set to gain and lose. Our special guest this week is Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. She Joins Yonit and Jonathan for a conversation about ways to counter anti-Semitism - old and new, from the right and from the left, and shares her  thoughts about Kanye West's anti-Semitic outburst. Finally, what country hits our chutzpah award list, and one courtroom in Connecticut that can restore your faith in the power of truth. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the 2022 Texas Tribune Festival, Jodi Rudoren interviewed Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism, about her recent travels to the Middle East, why hate is on the rise around the world, and Ken Burns' latest documentary.

U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt and European Commission Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life Katharina von Schnurbein discussed, in a conversation moderated by Managing Director of AJC Europe Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, how to fulfill their governments' bold promises to fight antisemitism. When every day, it seems a new instance of antisemitism appears in the headlines, how are American and European leaders working to counter these global threats? Listen to this discussion, recorded at AJC Global Forum 2022, for answers to this pressing question and more.  ___ Episode Lineup:  (0:40) Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Deborah Lipstadt, Katharina von Schnurbein ___ Show Notes: Watch the AJC Global Forum 2022 session: Can Governments Win the Fight Against Antisemitism? A Discussion With Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt and Katharina von Schnurbein - The Max Fisher Annual Program   View additional highlights from AJC Global Forum 2022: AJC.org/GlobalForumNews   Listen to our latest episode: Building on the Abraham Accords: President Biden's Trip to the Middle East, and Its Implications for Israeli-Saudi Relations   Don't forget to subscribe to People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod   You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org   If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

It was a dark day that transfixed America and the world when a sea of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, hoping to overturn Joe Biden's election victory. Five people died in the melee. Now -- seventeen months later -- the much anticipated first public hearings of the committee investigating the insurrection have taken place. Pamela Brown reports.  The other big issue on this week's agenda was gun violence. While President Biden says that he won't abuse his executive power to enact gun restrictions, a bipartisan group of senators say they are making progress on bills designed to prevent gun deaths. Few people are monitoring this as closely as Cameron Kasky, who was 17 years old when a gunman stormed his high school in Parkland, Florida in 2018. The massacre propelled him and other survivors to start a gun control movement which saw more than one million people flood the streets across the country in the 'March for Our Lives.' Now they've called for another march this Saturday. Cameron spoke to Christiane about whether he thinks there can be change.  Also on today's show: Actor Emma Thompson, antisemitism expert Deborah Lipstadt. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Apologies for my weak voice today! Remnant of a second bout with Covid. Had to drink several cups of hot tea and honey, and take numerous breaks to at least sound somewhat understandable. Today, we look into how Germany dealt with the Holocaust once it was over. And how occupying powers, including the US and the Soviet Union, dealt with it as well. Who do you punish when millions have been complicit in some way(s) in committing one of the greatest atrocities in human history? We also look at holocaust denial. What evidence can deniers possibly point to to prove their claims that the holocaust either never happened, or didn't happen to the degree that mainstream (actual) historian's claim? Bad Magic Productions Monthly Patreon Donation:  The Bad Magic Charity for May is the HALO Dental Network. Founded by Dr. Brady Smith, HALO Dental Network is a coalition of dental professionals who donate their services to the dental underserved. Services include dental implants, veneers, fillings and crowns. If you want to learn more, please visit halodentalnetwork.orgNot only can you donate, you can also nominate someone you know who is in need. Thanks to those who helped us donate $14,300 this month! TICKETS FOR HOT WET BAD MAGIC SUMMER CAMP!  Go to www.badmagicmerch.comWatch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_2ekzi0R9pEMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Since the launch of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and the collapse of the Oslo Peace Process in the early aughts, the college campus has been a locus of American political conflict over Israel/Palestine. As student Palestine solidarity activists have attempted to introduce BDS resolutions across the country, Israel advocacy organizations have responded by building a vast organizing infrastructure to intervene in student debates about Israel, painting campuses as threatening and hostile places for Jewish students and pushing for greater restrictions on pro-Palestine student speech. In only the latest example, members of the NYU law school's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter—half of them Jewish—are facing media defamation for a statement the group sent to the law school listserv. How does it transform campus activism and the experience of individual students when outside organizations and media commentators get involved? Is it misleading to frame these conflicts as simply a fight between two opposing camps? What do you do when your mom forwards you Bari Weiss's substack? Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel, Assistant Editor Mari Cohen, and Contributing Editor Joshua Leifer discuss these questions and the recent NYU events with Dylan Saba, Jewish Currents fellow and Palestine Legal staff attorney.  Books and Articles Mentioned: “https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/to-the-antisemites-who-sit-next-to?s=r (To the Antisemites Who Sit Next to Me in School)” by Tal Fortgang   “https://davidlat.substack.com/p/nyu-law-erupts-in-controversy-over?s=r (NYU Law Erupts In Controversy Over Alleged Anti-Semitism)” by David Lat  “https://jewishcurrents.org/whos-trying-to-kill-bds-on-campus (Who's Trying to Kill BDS on Campus? An Interview with Josh Nathan-Kazis)” by Rachel Cohen  “https://jewishcurrents.org/how-israel-advocates-shut-down-a-unions-motion-to-endorse-bds (How Israel Advocates Shut Down a Union's Motion to Endorse BDS)” by Isaac Scher https://twitter.com/YehudaKurtzer/status/1516808603981819907 (Twitter exchange) between Yehuda Kurtzer and Joshua Leifer  https://www.ajc.org/Jewish-Millennial-Survey-2022/American-Jewish-Millennials (AJC's Survey on American Jewish Millennials)  “https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/everybody-hates-the-jews?r=exstm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter&s=r (Everybody Hates the Jews)” by Bari Weiss   “https://jewishcurrents.org/does-everybody-really-hate-the-jews (Does Everybody Really Hate the Jews)?” by Mari Cohen  “https://jewishcurrents.org/princeton-students-voted-to-boycott-machinery-used-by-israel-proponents-of-israel-are-countering-with-misinformation (Princeton Students Voted to Boycott Machinery Used by Israel. Proponents of Israel Are Countering with Misinformation)” by Isaac Scher “https://jewishcurrents.org/maccabee-games (Maccabee Games)” by Jess Schwalb “https://jewishcurrents.org/deborah-lipstadt-vs-the-oldest-hatred (Deborah Lipstadt vs. ‘The Oldest Hatred')” by Mari Cohen    “https://www.jta.org/2022/04/21/united-states/american-university-muslim-student-group-withdraws-from-interfaith-seder-with-hillel-over-its-israel-support (American University Muslim student group withdraws from interfaith seder with Hillel over its Israel support)” by Andrew Lapin “https://www.jta.org/2022/02/24/united-states/israel-studies-endowment-revoked-over-professors-israel-criticism-at-university-of-washington (Donor yanks Israel Studies endowment at U of Washington over professor's Israel criticism)” by Andrew Lapin  “https://www.972mag.com/us-media-palestinians/ (US Media Talks A Lot About Palestinians—Just Without Palestinians)” by Maha Nassar “https://jewishcurrents.org/waging-lawfare (Waging Lawfare)” by Natasha Roth-Rowland Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That

In 1996, British author and Holocaust denier David Irving filed a libel case against American historian Deborah Lipstadt, stating that she had defamed him in her book Denying the Holocaust. In what became the case, David Irving versus Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, architectural historian Robert Jan Van Pelt was brought in as the defense's expert witness owing to his work on the history of Auschwitz. Robert Jan Van Pelt has taught at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture since 1987. His book, ‘Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present' with Deborah Dwork and subsequent report ‘The Case for Auschwitz' generated The Evidence Room at the 2016 Venice Biennale. He is also the Chief Curator of the traveling exhibition ‘Auschwitz. Not Far Away. Not Long Ago'. More on Robert: https://uwaterloo.ca/architecture/people-profiles/robert-jan-van-pelt

Richard Cohen begins his new book Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past with two particularly appropriate epigrams. First, from the historian E.H. Carr: “Before you study history, study the historian.” Second, the historical novelist Hilary Mantel: “Beneath every history, there is another history—there is, at least, the life of the historian.”  The life of historians is the subject of Cohen's book, and he ranges from Herodotus and Thucydides in the Very Long Ago, to Ibram X. Kendi and the 1619 Project of Just Yesterday. Since this is a book about how historians make make history, it is therefore a book about how historians see the past, and think about it.   Richard Cohen is the author of By the Sword,Chasing the Sun, and How to Write Like Tolstoy. The former publishing director of two leading London publishing houses, he has edited numerous prize-winning and bestselling books, and written for most UK quality newspapers. He is a Fellowof the Royal Society of Literature.   For Further Investigation The podcast now has several conversations devoted to the subject of "Historians and Their Histories". To mention two historians of Rome who were also men of action, here's one with Adrian Goldsworthy on Julius Caesar, and another with Steele Brand on Polybius, onetime soldier, Greek, and historian of the Roman Republic. A site devoted to Shakespeare and history, which is suitably named shakespeareandhistory.com Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford: the house that historical novels built David Irving, mentioned in the podcast conversation, became notorious as Holocaust denier. In turn denying this charge, he sued historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel, the stakes of which were "not only Irving's contention that his reputation and livelihood had been harmed, but also a bitter argument about the nature of historical evidence and its interpretation." You can read more about the result of the trial in a contemporary source here.

This week, let's take a quick look at some Passover-related news just in time for the start of the holiday, as well as an update on Deborah Lipstadt's Senate confirmation. Then we need to talk about Israel, as a drastic increase in terrorism, and new government instability, leaves many Jews shaken.Say hello! Lev@tcjewfolk.comhttps://jewfolk-inc.creator-spring.com/https://tcjewfolk.com/donate/To help Ukraine: https://tcjewfolk.com/resources-to-help-ukraine/https://kyivindependent.com/https://www.jta.org/2022/04/07/food/cant-find-poultry-for-passover-the-kosher-chicken-shortage-explainedhttps://www.jta.org/2022/03/30/global/war-in-ukraine-pits-a-crunch-on-matzah-priceshttps://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/09/pandemic-supply-chain-nightmare-slow-shipping/620147/https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-lone-wolves-behind-latest-terror-spree-pose-such-a-challenge-to-israeli-intel/https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-703791https://tcjewfolk.com/toa-vandalism-details-emerge-as-two-suspects-sought/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PVT_84cE_5qK60hWxJOsf4nnXNeIxWNQSurOPK7g6GQ/edit?usp=sharing

Anna Salton Eisen, co-founder of the Colleyville, TX synagogue, attendee of Deborah Lipstadt's confirmation hearings in DC, and author of the new memoir "A Pillar of Salt"

Almost a month after a rabbi and three congregants were taken hostage at a synagogue in Texas, Congress held two hearings related to Jews: A Senate hearing on the position of global antisemitism monitor -- long delayed by Republicans because of dislike toward nominee Dr. Deborah Lipstadt -- and a House hearing on issues with federal nonprofit security grants that help protect Jewish and other communities. The hearings were…interesting. Say hello! Lev@tcjewfolk.comhttps://jewfolk-inc.creator-spring.com/https://tcjewfolk.com/donate/https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/020822_Lipstadt_Testimony.pdfhttps://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/watch?hearingid=FA97AA57-5056-A066-6057-E8D5391CD07Bhttps://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-civilian-security-democracy-and-human-rights/office-of-the-special-envoy-to-monitor-and-combat-antisemitism/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vcV5d14LWQhttps://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/minority-media/portman-hassan-introduce-bipartisan-pray-safe-act-to-ensure-faith-based-organizations-and-houses-of-worship-have-access-to-key-information-and-security-best-practiceshttps://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/nonprofit-securityhttps://tcjewfolk.com/hennepin-county-approves-1m-in-anti-hate-funding/https://forward.com/news/482149/republicans-defend-holdup-of-deborah-lipstadt-antisemitism-envoy/https://www.jta.org/2022/02/07/politics/texas-rabbi-who-faced-down-hostage-taker-to-appeal-to-congress-for-security-fundshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/13ra2nvV2ZbrDlsak7ZrkoN6ghWh52jMlyR35v1d3EYo/edit?usp=sharing

Thursday on Political Rewind: Gov. Kemp said he supports legislation giving parents the right to decide if their children should wear masks in school. Plus, a conservative voter mobilization group launches a campaign to expand Sunday voting in rural areas of the state. The panel:  Adam Van Brimmer — Editorial page editor, Savannah Morning News Chuck Williams — Reporter, WRBL-TV Columbus Kevin Riley — Editor, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Maya Prabhu — Statehouse reporter, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Timestamps: :00 - Introductions 5:28- Kemp will introduce legislation that lets parents decide whether or not to send their kids to school in a mask 14:15- Bill banning mailing of abortion pills passes committee in the senate 21:17- GOP lawmakers push "Patriotic Souls to the Polls" 26:51- Chief justice addresses court backlog, exasperated by COVID 33:50- Fani Willis criticism 34:32- Redistricting battles continue 41:30- Deborah Lipstadt's nomination on hold 47:44- Republican Governor's Association endorses Kemp Please be sure to download our newsletter: www.gpb.org/newsletters. And subscribe, follow and rate this show wherever podcasts are found.

In 2000, renowned Holocaust scholar Dr. Deborah Lipstadt was sued by David Irving for defamation, because she called Irving a Holocaust denier and falsifier of history in her 1994 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. Expert witnesses combed through Irving's research since the 1980s and found that Lipstadt was correct - Irving had deliberately manipulated the historical record, to support his ludicrous claims that most of the evidence of the Holocaust had been invented after the war. Listen to AJC CEO David Harris discuss the impact of the trial, and the quiet, global, multi-year effort he led to generate support for Lipstadt's trial defense, making sure the world never forgets the murder of six million Jews – a historical fact. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) David Harris ___ Show Notes: Take action.  Join AJC in calling for the White House to convene a taskforce that will develop a national action plan to fight anti-Jewish hate.  Urge the Senate to confirm Deborah Lipstadt as the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.  Listen to our most recent episode: Inside the Colleyville, Texas Synagogue Hostage Crisis: Hear from 3 Local Jewish and Muslim Leaders on What It Was Like on the Ground Don't forget to subscribe to People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod Keep an eye out for our next episode marking International Holocaust Remembrance, in which we learn about the lost Jewish community of Monastir from Ladino singer and songwriter Sarah Aroeste.  You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us.

Mike Isaacson: The holes! The holes! The holes! [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike Isaacson: Welcome back to The Nazi Lies Podcast. This episode, we're lucky enough to have Robert Jan Van Pelt, Architectural Historian at the University of Waterloo and chief curator of the traveling Holocaust exhibit Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away. He's the author of several books including Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present and The Case for Auschwitz where he specifically takes on Holocaust deniers or as he calls them negationists. Thanks for coming on the podcast Dr. Van Pelt. Robert Jan Van Pelt: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. Mike Isaacson: Thank you. So today, we're lucky enough to have a guest who's actually familiar with the Nazi lies he's debunking. So his book, The Case for Auschwitz, documents the testimony in the David Irving libel trial. So before we discuss who they are, why do you call them negationists? Robert Jan Van Pelt: The term was actually coined in the mid-19th century by a Scottish philosopher, his name is Patrick Edward Dove, in a book called The Logic of the Christian Faith. And basically, he refers to negationist as a German idealist like Immanuel Kant or Wilhelm Fried Hegel, who basically said that physical reality doesn't exist, or at least it's not relevant, that everything is in the mind. And so he talks about them as people who are negating, who are denying, actually the existence of the world as we experience it every day. And so, the term has a philosophical background, but in the 19, late 1980s, early 1990s, it became to be applied by a number of philosophers both in France and also in the United States-- Thomas Nagel is one-- to people who we normally call Holocaust deniers. Now, when I got involved in the struggle against Holocaust denier, so negationist, I was intrigued by, let's call it the philosophical aspects of this whole thing. You can of course say, these are all crazy people or they're bad people, they're anti Semite, blah, blah, blah. All of these guys passed judgment on it. But I was always fascinated by what it takes to actually deny reality. And of course, today, when we're in the middle of many denials that are around; from vaccine denial to COVID denial to climate denial and so on, I think that one of the interesting aspects of Holocaust denial is that it was a trial run that occurred in the 1980s 1990s of actually what we're seeing today. Trial, almost like a laboratory experiment, of how do people deny, what does it take to deny, what actually does it take to actually establish reality in a narrative? And so when I was asked to join the case, the defense team of Deborah Lipstadt who was being sued by David Irving, a English Holocaust denier, for libel in a British court, I basically took a year off of sabbatical to basically research this phenomenon. I very much went back also to the great what we might call epistemological questions, the questions of how do we know what we know? And going back to 17th century philosophers who talk about skepticism, can we have radical skepticism, under what conditions can we actually challenge a particular motion, when is it okay to accept something going back to legal theory? When actually do we have enough certainty to convict a man or a woman and chop his or her head off? Questions about negotiating a world in which in principle, we can always say, I don't believe this, I don't believe that. But then if we never have any certainty about anything, that we really cannot move forward, either individually or collectively. So I was interested in those questions. So in my choice of the term negationist, I in some way, try to show that larger context in which I was operating. And also, I wanted to connect back to a discourse, an argument that had been made first in the 1950s, by the Jewish German and later American philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who in 1941, ends up in New York after having fled from a German concentration camp or a French concentration camp controlled by Germans. And in a very famous book called The Origins of Totalitarianism, she basically says that one of the central characteristics of fascism, that is also national socialism, and she also puts it totalitarian communism in the statement, is that they basically attempt to acquire control over people and are successful in it for a considerable time, at least, they were in the 1920s and 30s, and 40s, by shaking the belief of people that they actually can understand reality to make everything into a question mark. And of course, in English, we have the term gaslighting for that. This idea is that nothing is sorted anymore. And so when people are put in a position in which everything might be a lie, ever say might be just a fiction, then in some way they become, as she said, the perfect raw material for a fascist state. And so again, by moving the focus a little bit away from the denial of the Holocaust, per se, to denial of reality, I thought that my work might have a somewhat larger relevance. Mike Isaacson: Okay, so now on to the negationists, who are these people that we're talking about? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Now, they're not the people who one would expect. If we talk about common parlance Holocaust about negationists who denied the Holocaust, one would first expect that the people who would have denied the Holocaust were Germans who were involved in the Holocaust, and who found themselves in front of allied courts after the war, and who were pleading for their lives. Now, they did plead for their lives, of course, but they didn't say that the Holocaust didn't happen, and hence, they were not guilty of any involvement in the Holocaust, like the shooting of two civilians, or putting them on transports to death camps, and so on. What they said, yes, it happened but that I only had a very minor role in it, or I wasn't there, or you really got the wrong man. So generally in the 1940s, and the 1950s, when these trials happened, and even later, the 1960s, the general statement of these perpetrators was, yes, it happened but it happens to be that I had no role in it or that my role was not that important. When we talk about Holocaust deniers, we have a different phenomenon. They actually say that it never happened, that it's all a fiction, that it is all basically created, in the case of Irving by the British Secret Service as a piece of war propaganda in the 1940s, during the war, and that it was basically a piece of atrocity propaganda, and that this atrocity propaganda got a second life after the war. Now, then the question is, who are the people who basically are carrying that message? And it's a very kind of motley crew, they are people from different backgrounds and I've always found this very interesting. When we look at the 1950s at the first Holocaust deniers, they actually come from the extreme left. And they come out of a particular French situation, many of them are Frenchmen. And the denial itself in the beginning isn't that much related to the Holocaust, but it is actually related to the Soviet concentration camps. The Soviet Union was in the 1930s, the 1920s and 30s, and also the 1940s. Of course, for many communists in France, and also elsewhere, it was utopia realized, especially after 1941, when the Red Army had an incredibly important role in ultimately crushing the Third Reich and defeating Marxism. In 1945, the Soviet Union was seen by many in the West as a heroic nation, a nation that that could be credited, and rightly so, with an incredible contribution to the defeat of Hitler. Many people say that around 90% of all of the soldiers who died in the second world war on the Allied side were Soviet soldiers. And so in 1945, and 46, in France, communism was a very popular political choice. It was a choice that expressed gratitude of people who were anti fascists, and rightly so, for the achievement of the Soviet Union. And it showed the promise of a new world. What happened was that, in the late 1940s, stories started to circulate about the good luck. That, in fact, the old system of camps that had existed at Sarris times and then also later in the 1930s, had not disappeared. And a Soviet defector came to the United States and started basically giving an account of all the Soviet camps, his name was Kravchenko. And many communists, especially in France, said, this is all made up, they don't exist, these concentration camps don't exist. They are a piece of CIA propaganda, because of course, it took place during the Cold War. And it very much served American propaganda interests to show that the Soviet Union, especially Europe, that the Soviet Union was a horrible state that nobody ever should vote communist. And so the discourse of a concentration camp system being a complete fiction, created, in this case by a malicious agent, that is the CIA, began in France. And then it didn't take that much at a certain moment for in hindsight, or in a second interpretation of this discourse for the concentration camp system to become the German concentration camp system, that this was as much a fiction as the Gulag was, or had been as much of fiction that the survivors were liars, so that had been created by Allied propaganda. And once that was set in motion, that idea, you get a number of people who, for different reasons, start to become members of that in-group, members of a group of people who are interested in working out in some way that narrative that denies first a concentration camp system. And a number of them were actually concentration camp survivors, interestingly enough, most important one, French Michael [unintelligible 13:45:12], who had been in a concentration camp as an inmate, but he had never seen anything that resembled gas chambers and crematoria. And he said, "The camps were bad, but certainly they were not extermination machines, they were not factories of death, of murder." And then you've get a sociological phenomenon of groups of people who bond over this common course, and attract then, in the 1970s, what I would call the intellectuals, a number of people who could join this movement, especially in France again. So it doesn't start in Germany, it starts in France. And the most important of men who in some way then starts to supply a theory and a whole body of work is a professor of literature, whose name is Robert Faurisson and who teaches literary theory at the University of Lille in France. Mike Isaacson: There were some other names in your book that you gave, you gave Arthur Butz. Who else? There was a guy...Staglich? Robert Jan Van Pelt: I would say there are many people who will start to make a contribution. I worked with Errol Morris on a movie, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred Leuchter, Jr. and we were discussing and making the movie, and actually I'm quoted in the movie, how do these people get together? What is their motivation? And I said, "Some way it is like a club because like the rotary club or the Freemasonry, you get into it, you don't really know what you're getting into it. But once you get into it, you get really committed to it because it becomes part of your social life." Arthur Butz, professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University, got interested. People get interested in the argument, they get interested in the nuts and bolts of the series. You have many buffs, you have many people who are interested in history, and their history buffs. And what makes a history buff, at a certain moment, different from a historian, is that a history buff always focuses on the detail and gets completely fascinated by the detail. And that can be a detail of the uniform, of the correct uniform of a civil war and actor. And of course, there are many of them in the United States, and that's all perfectly innocent. But sometimes there are history buffs who get focused on a detail like Sherlock Holmes. They see themselves as a Sherlock Holmes, and they think that there is a hidden reality that is not being stated, that is being hidden from the world. And that by focusing on the detail in the way that Sherlock Holmes does that in his of course, fictional investigations, that is, in some way, the way to the truth. And it has to do to with the CSI effect, which is idea of the fact that history can be recovered, can be, in some way, unveiled by the study of a detail. And of course, that makes incredibly good television. So a person like Butz, I think, gets interested in all kinds of what seemed to be very obscure details of the accounts of for example, the gas chambers or the crematoria is very suspicious, doesn't believe that the reality as told is really reality as it happened. And then gets interested in analyzing these details in such a way that this whole new world in some way is revealed once the detail is unmasked as a lie. And so it takes a certain mindset of people who in some way fall for the myth of Sherlock Holmes, or want to be Sherlock Holmes, but of course that is not normally the way that reality can be discovered even not, I would say in a criminal investigation. Mike Isaacson: Okay, so now let's talk about Auschwitz. Why Auschwitz? What about Auschwitz makes it command some attention? Robert Jan Van Pelt: So it commands a lot of attention, both for Holocaust deniers, they focus most of their attacks on the evidence of Auschwitz. But also, they do that because in some way many Holocaust story and some people who think about the Holocaust, if you hear the word Holocaust, and you ask an ordinary person in the street, does any name come to mind when you hear the word Holocaust of the place? Most people will say Auschwitz. In 1945, in the west, in Europe, they probably would have said American Belton. But since the 1970s, that is certainly Auschwitz. And there are very legitimate reasons for that. And I can just name a few of them. The first is that Auschwitz is the single largest place where Jews were massacred not only Jews, but also separatists normally, or Soviet prisoners of war. Also, other victims group in the Holocaust, one could say, and of course, also Polish non-Jewish patriots who were murdered there. Now, if we just accept for a moment to rough estimate of 6 million Jews victims of the Holocaust, then 1 million of them were murdered in Auschwitz. So that's the first thing. It is the largest of the extermination camps, the second largest Treblinka had a death toll of around 850,000, and then it goes down. So it is the biggest. The second, which is very important, is that Auschwitz is a place for which victims came from all over Europe. So, quite often, extermination camps that were very important in the Holocaust, and I give one example, Belzec that had 550,000 victims, but Belzec which was at that time in eastern Poland, it's still in eastern Poland today, it had a reasonable function. The victims came from around 200 miles 150 miles from around Belzec. It was a very densely settled area with Jews. Traditionally, it was the heartland of the Jews, around Lviv today in the Ukraine. But Auschwitz had victims coming from all over Europe, from Greece, from France, from the Netherlands, from Germany, from Italy, from Poland, and so on. So basically, when we talk about the Holocaust as a pan-European phenomenon, something that touched almost every European nation, that was either occupied or ruled by Germany. Then Auschwitz talks about that pan-European dimension of the Holocaust. The third thing is that Auschwitz is unique in that it doesn't have only gas chambers, and the word homicidal or genocidal gas chambers in Belzec, in Treblinka and Sobibor, in Majdanek and Kamno, but the gas chambers were actually part of crematoria. There were buildings in which the victims were brought into the building, they were then murdered in the gas chamber and their corpses were incinerated in that very same building. And you did not have that combination in the other camps, that is that if you have gas chambers in Treblinka, then after the murder, the corpses of the victims were taken out of those gas chambers and originally they were buried to mass graves, and later the bodies were incinerated on open pyres. So, what happens when you get a gas chamber that is in a building that has very complicated ovens, I mean ovens in the case of crematoria two and three that have the incineration capacity of almost 1500 corpses per day, you get actually a very complex building. Architects get involved, engineers get involved, a lot of money gets involved, because the buildings need to be constructed. Which means also that there is going to be a lot of evidence. We have no designs for the gas chambers in Treblinka, they didn't survive, they probably were drawn up on the proverbial back of an envelope or on a napkin. This is how architects quite conceive of their projects. But in the case of Auschwitz, because these were expensive buildings, it took time to build, they took resources, financial and also in building materials, there's a lot of evidence about that. And in this case, also, that's important, because when you have to commit a lot of resources in a crime, the crime of genocide, then it becomes very clear that it's intentional. And just to go back for a moment, in 1941 or 42, around 2 million Russian Jews were murdered in the then occupied Soviet Union, that would be today's Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic countries mainly, and a little bit of today's Russia also. They were murdered with men having rifles, by execution platoons, and so on. But those machine guns and those rifles had not been created to murder civilians, they had been created to be used in battle. So in that case, if you go to the smoking gun in those massacres, those killings, like the one in BabynYa in Kiev, that 80th anniversary will be happening in two months in the beginning of October, then you have the smoking gun, so to speak, you never can say this gun was actually made for the purpose of killing civilians. But if you go to a homicidal gas chamber in Auschwitz, and then you basically see it in relationship to the crematoriums that are in the same building, it's very easy to move the corpses from the gas chambers to that crematorium often, then basically, you have an installation that can only make sense in terms of a genocide, in terms of killing innocent civilians, civilians who cannot resist. Those gas chambers have no possible imaginable role in a battle. Now, you cannot, in some way, trick armed soldiers to go into a gas chamber and then you close the door and you bring in the gas. So in the case of Auschwitz, the fact that we have these very sophisticated expensive buildings that basically can only be explained from the perspective of genocide, actually, of which there were two is very important because the Auschwitz crematory and gas chambers are undeniable in that sense, as tools of genocide. And then the last reason is that actually, there's still a lot of stuff left enough. It's not only in terms of ruins, the ruins of this crematoria, but also there is a lot of paperwork preserved in the archives. And then finally, unlike these other camps, these extermination camps, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, Belzec had only two survivors, extremely effective extermination camp. Sobibor around 250, Treblinka around 200, but around 100,000, people actually left Auschwitz alive. Because Auschwitz was not only an extermination camp, but it was also a slave labor camp. And so this is why you have in Auschwitz, these selections upon arrival of the Jews where basically those who can't work are sent immediately to the gas chambers. And those who can work are basically worked to death or until they are moved somewhere else. And so what you have in the case of Auschwitz is enormous amount of eyewitness evidence. Not necessarily what happens right inside the gas chamber, it's impossible to have eyewitness evidence of that in a squared nature of the killing in the gas chamber, but eyewitness evidence of these buildings, the chimneys, the smoke. And then also in the case of the two slave workers that worked in the crematoria. A lot of eyewitness evidence was produced by them after the war, there were enough survivors of them to give evidence immediately after the war. And even a number of them had some good abilities to draw what they had seen. So there's also drawn evidence. So all in all, Auschwitz is in some way the crown jewel, in a sense, in the case that the Holocaust did happen, because of the nature of the evidence and the amount of the evidence that we have about the place. And that is exactly the reason that Holocaust deniers or negationists attack Auschwitz, because they want to attack that evidence. Mike Isaacson: So Irving's principle claim is that far fewer people die at Auschwitz in the Holocaust in general, than is the general consensus among historians. So you mentioned that a million people died at Auschwitz. How did we arrive at that number? Robert Jan Van Pelt: The number has evolved over time. And that actually is one of the reasons that in about 1990, the Holocaust deniers said you can never trust any number. When the Soviet, the Red Army, arrived on the 27th of January 1945 in Auschwitz, they had to make an informed guess immediately about a number of people that had been murdered in Auschwitz. And their first guess was around 5 million. And they didn't define who these people were. These were citizens of European nationals, they said. The Soviets were always very hesitant to actually divide the victims into groups. These were 5 million troops or 1 million troops, whatever like that, they never really wanted to go in there. They didn't want to separate the troops out. Then, the first forensic committee that was working there, reduced it to 4 million on the basis of almost no extra evidence, basically talking about the cremation capacity of the ovens. And said the ovens would have cremated so many bodies per day, these ovens existed in these four buildings for so many days, we assume that they were in operation 80% of the time, so they came to 4 million. Already at that time, basically, Jewish demographer said this is impossible. And they basically put the number closer to 1.5 million. They said, "Where would all those people have come from?" And in 1946, Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943, he was then relieved of his duty, was arrested and ultimately tried. He testified first in Nuremberg as a witness and then was tried in Poland. And he wrote his memoirs while he was in prison before he was executed. And he also testified, he said, "The 4 million figure is absolutely obtainable. My calculations are that we murdered around 1.1 million people in Auschwitz during my reign as commandant." So he didn't have the whole period, but he had long enough. And by implication, if we then also take the murder rates during the time of his successor, this would have meant that the total number that he would agree to as a commandant, as a witness, as a person around the place, around 1.6 million. And he gave a detailed accounting of where those victims would have come from. He said, "The only way that you can really look at it, is to look at the transports. Which transports of Jews arrived in Auschwitz, at what time, how many people were in each transport, and how many of the transport were killed on arrival. And so there were really two numbers by, let's say, 1950. The first number was based on Hoess' testimony. And that was somewhere one and a half million. And then the second number was the official number that was fixed by the Russians. It was the Cold War. Of course Auschwitz was in Poland, it was being ruled by the communists. That was the official number of 4 million, but it didn't give any details of where those 4 million people would have come from. And so at the memorial in Auschwitz in the 1950s 60s 70s, and 80s, that said, 4 million people were murdered here, but it didn't give a breakdown of that number. However, at the Auschwitz Museum, which was a very professional Museum, it is basically the organization, the institution that preserves the Auschwitz site, it's a Poland State Museum, the historical department had already started to work on a detailed analysis of transports, and of course, the Germans had destroyed much of the evidence, and they had to come to the conclusion that the total number of people who had been deported to Auschwitz was 1.3 million. And the total of number of people that had been murdered in Auschwitz was 1.1 million. And that number still stands, by and large. When they used to say murdered in Auschwitz, the question is how? Because even if you were to say, "Okay, we accept the figure, 1.1 million people died in Auschwitz." then the question, of course, remains did they die of natural deaths or that were they actually murdered? People died in Auschwitz in all different ways. People were murdered in gas chambers. Majority of people were murdered as they did slave labor, they were beaten to death on the site by overseers. People were murdered during torture sessions in the camp, the [unintelligible 33:37:22], people were murdered when they were ill, when they were seen that they could work anymore, they were given an injection in the heart, which was poison. But also people died as a result of infectious diseases, for example, typhus, or they died as a result of starvation. And so the question now is, how did people die? And can we "blame" the Germans for all of those deaths? So one of the things that deniers like Irving did early on, is to say, "Okay, we accept that Auschwitz and also other camps are really deadly places. But almost everyone died as a result of typhus, as infectious diseases." And we might say that the Germans were not acting wisely by bringing so many people together in the place. But ultimately, typhus happens also in other places. So we can't really say that the deaths as a result of typhus are part of a genocidal programme. They might be more part of mismanagement by the camp, or they are the result and this is actually blaming the allies now, turning the finger to the allies, they are the result of the terrible conditions created in Germany as the result of the Allied bombings. And in that case, the deniers point actually to Bergen-Belsen, which in 1945 was liberated by the British Army. And that became the symbol of the German death camps because of a lot of news, men arrived to the British troops in Bergen-Belsen on the 15th of April 1945. And what you saw in Bergen-Belsen, that camp had never had any gas chambers, they had never had any crematoria. It was, for most of its history, a relatively good camp to be. If you look at all of the options in the German concentration camp system, it was one of the better camps. But what the Allied soldiers saw in 1945 was the result of the typhus epidemic. And the typhus epidemic, according to Holocaust deniers, was the result basically the disintegration of the German economy and the German system to supply the camps with food and so on. And they ultimately decided if you have to blame anyone for the situation in Bergen-Belsen, these are the Allied bombardments which have destroyed the food and other infrastructure of Germany. And so, this is where many deniers are. They are in this grey zone. What they will say is that, "Okay, we agree that people died, they didn't die because a number of SS men put them in a gas chamber, and then supplied the chamber with cyanide, they died as a result of typhus." And this is in that discourse in the early 1990s, when actually an American historian at Princeton, basically endorsed this vision, his name was Arno Mayer in a book Why did the heavens not darken? that man like Irving was very much encouraged to take the position which he took, which he said, "This is all a big misunderstanding really. Auschwitz was not a good place to be but blame the bacteria, don't blame the Germans." Mike Isaacson: Okay, so moving along. Robert Faurisson has an infamous line, “No holes, no Holocaust.” So, what does that line mean, and what is the significance of the holes? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Yeah. So this goes back to the idea of show me the smoking gun, show me the evidence. Now, the two of the major gas chambers in Auschwitz, two of the crematoriums, which were the largest factories of deaths, they were underground gas chambers. And so now the question is, how did the gas enter into the gas chambers? Was it removed after the gassing, but also how did it enter? Now, people hear the word gas, they think that gas would have been pumped into a gas chamber through a system of pipes. But that actually was not the case in these Auschwitz crematoria. The gas that was used in Auschwitz was actually a delousing product, a cyanide delousing project that came in a tip. And it was really to use in ships of the Navy, it was also to use to kill vermin in grain silos because of course, all kinds of vermins would be eating the grain, it would be used on the front in the battlefield to delouse the uniforms of soldiers. Lice is everywhere where we have a lot of people who are camped wash and spent a lot of time together. So, what happened was that in the First World War, the German army had developed a delousing agent, that basically consisted of cyanide and that was commercially marketed since the 1920s. It was liquid cyanide that is soaked in either gypsum like substance or in paper discs. That happens in factory conditions. And then these paper discs or this gypsum full of cyanide is then packed in a tin, ordinary tin like canned tomatoes or something like that. In that tin, the cyanide has a shelf life of over six months. And so those tins can be shipped to whoever ultimately needs delousing job. And then what happens is that if you need to delouse, let's say a tom of clothing, then you put this in a room, seal the room, the windows and so on, and the doors, but keep one door that you can open and close, go into the room with a gas mask, open the tin with an ordinary tin opener, and then throw the contents on the floor, in this case the gypsum or the paper discs with the cyanide in it. What happens is that the cyanide will start to de-gas from the substance in it with a soak. And it will do so for around 24 hours. It de-gases very slowly because it needs not only to destroy the vermin, but also their eggs. And that takes a long time, it takes 24 hours. And immediately after the soldier or the medic has put all of that stuff on the floor, he walks out of the room and then closes the door, tapes the door so that it is sealed, takes off his gas mask and then you have to wait for 24 hours until the degassing has stopped and all of the vermin and the eggs basically are destroyed. This was the way that in Auschwitz, lethal gas was used gas chambers. Now, the problem with homicidal gas chamber is that you cannot simply put people in a room and then have a medic come in with a gas chamber with a gas mask, and then open a couple of tins, throw the contents on the floor and then walk out. That's not going to work. You need to introduce the gas in a different way. So the construction that the Germans used was that they had holes in the roof. In the case of those crematorium two and three, they had four holes in the roof. And in the first incarnation of a gas chamber, now if it was a crematorium two, they had to open the cover and then they dumped the contents of the tin inside the room. So that fell on top of the people who were crowded in tight room and then they closed the cover again and waited for 24 hours. And then opened the doors and started airing the place until people could come in and take the corpses out. That worked well until daily transport started to arrive of which people needed to be murdered. Now, the problem was the cyclone B as it was being shipped to Auschwitz, that it had this 24 degassing cycle. The degassing is very slow from the material in which the cyanide soaked. And if you're in a hurry, and the SS was formed late 1942 in Auschwitz in a hurry because of the daily arrival of train, so you needed to have the gas chamber available relatively quickly after it had been used and you needed to burn the corpses of the people who had been killed basically within the next 24 hours before the next train arrives with victims, you couldn't afford any more to wait for the 24 hours for the degassing to stop. The moment that everyone was murdered, and that mostly happened after 10 15 minutes, you wanted to basically be able to enter the gas chamber and then start cleaning up the gas chamber. Taking out the corpses you take out the gold off the teeth and so on, and then bring the corpses to the ovens. So the key to that operation was that you now had to remove the still degassing cyclone from the room 15 minutes after you had introduced it. That was the technical problem. And the technical solution was to actually lower now with let's call it a little basket. Put all of the contents of the tin in the basket, lower that basket into the room, basically murder everyone within the first 15 minutes because that's the time it takes with that cyanide concentration, and then hoists the basket out of the room through that same hole in which you have lowered it and discard the still degassing cyclone on the roof of the building. The problem of course, is that if you simply have a dive basket going down into a room, the victims can interfere with it. So the solution to prevent the interference of the victims with that lowering of the cyclone into the room was to create a wire mesh column, a cage around it, so it is lowered in the center of a cage. And the victims can see it. And through the cage, all of the cyclone material, the cyanide can drift into the room, but they cannot actually interfere with it. And so four of those cages existed in crematorium two and the gas chamber in four and crematorium three. The problem in terms of evidence is that we have a lot of eyewitness evidence of these cages, these columns as they're called, these gas columns. We have evidence of the man who made it in 1942, we have evidence of people who worked in those gas chambers, cleaning it up afterwards, and who survived the war. We have evidence even by Rudolf Hoess, but none of these cages survived because they were taken out before the destruction of the crematoria at the time that Auschwitz was evacuated at the end of the war. So first of all, we don't have those cages anymore, those columns. Second of all, we don't have drawings, we don't have original drawings, we don't have blueprints, because they were added into the building after the building was almost completed. And so Holocaust deniers, and especially Robert Faurisson, have said, "Because you cannot show me those cages, because you cannot show me the original blueprints, they'd never existed." And on top of that, those cages connected to the outside world through a hole because at the top of the cage was a hole and the cyclone was lowered through that hole in the cage. So they said, "If you cannot show me those holes in the concrete roof of the gas chamber, if there are no holes there at the alleged place where they were, then you can never say that actually there was any means of introducing the cyclone into those underground spaces." The problem with such roofs is that they were dynamited at the end of the war by the SS. And so they were destroyed, they're basically in pieces. So, how do you now show into a dynamited concrete slab in which there are many holes? No, the whole steps were purposely created to allow for the introduction of the cyclone. And a friend of mine, the late Harry Marcel, actually solved that problem in the year 2000 at a time of the Irving trial when he went to some forensic archaeological expedition to Auschwitz, and actually was in the case of crematory two, able to locate three of the four holes by looking actually at an important design detail. They said when you create a hole in the concrete slab, you have to do something with the rebar because if a rebar would probably run through that hole in some way, you cannot have that, otherwise the hole doesn't function. So what you do before you pour the concrete, you cut the rebar at the point and you bend to the end of the rebar back 180 degrees. And those kinds of details are still visible in the slab of that covered gas chamber of crematorium two. So in that sense, we have the forensic evidence, the physical material forensic evidence for the existence of those holes. Mike Isaacson: Okay, another thing I've seen negationists take aim at is the lack of insulation on the lights in the gas chambers. So, according to them cyanide is explosive and would have ignited in such a room. So, why is this a lie? Robert Jan Van Pelt: This the argument might be right, cyanide can be explosive, but the question is what concentration? Chemical substances behave very differently and behave at different concentrations. And the Auschwitz cyanide gas chambers operated at a very low concentration, it doesn't take that much to murder people. It takes around 500 600 parts per million and then you will be dead in 10 minutes. So the argument is derived from high concentration of cyanide into gas chambers. I certainly have not replicated the thing in a lab, so I must say that in this case, I need to lean on the authority of others. But basically, I have been taught that this can be all explained because of the low concentration of cyanide used in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Mike Isaacson: Right. So one of the strongest pieces of supposed evidence comes from Fred Leuchter, who claimed to have illegally taken a brick from Auschwitz to run some forensic tests. So, what can we say about Leuchter's tests? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Now, of course, the strongest piece of supposed evidence that the Auschwitz gas chambers would never use these gas chambers. In 1988, he went to Auschwitz to take samples of the walls of the homicidal gas chambers, and also of the walls of delousing chambers, that used cyclones. And so he did a compare and contrast method. One of the big differences, and in the case of the walls of the homicidal gas chambers, he said there's very little cyanide in there. And in the case of the level of cyanide in the delousing chambers, he said, "When we take samples, there's a very high concentration of cyanide." Now, there were many different problems. First of all, there were problems, this is basic assumptions. And if you go into delousing chambers, you see actually that the walls are blue, that these are originally whitewash walls that became blue. And this is Prussian blue, and it actually indicates the pigment is the result of binding of cyanide molecules with iron, basically the result is ferro ferricyanide, and that creates a blue pigment. Now, why do you get that cyanide deposit in the wall that creates this blue stain? The first reason is typically, in these delousing chambers, cyanide could be used in high concentration, it would be used over a long period of time, that is typically 24 hours at a time and this were also used continuously. And in order for Prussian blue, for ferro ferricyanide to form, it can only form when there is actually a low level of carbon dioxide in the room. And this actually has been replicated forensic labs in Poland. However, when you have a relatively high level of carbon dioxide in the room, as when you have also the cyclone material, the carbon dioxide prevents the formation of this pigment, prevents the binding of the cyanide with the iron atom. And this is why in homicidal gas chambers, you typically will not find this blue pigment, unless that homicidal gas chamber was also used for delousing. So this is one line of explanation. The second thing has to do with the fact that the homicidal gas chambers were basically destroyed. What Leuchter did was take samples of bricks that had been exposed to the elements by the time he came there for 35 years. The plaster that had covered the brick didn't exist anymore. It was very few samples, so that he took actually, the samples from the brick. That brick had not been exposed to cyanide at all because it had been covered by plaster. So the problem is his samples that he took from the homicidal gas chambers is that we actually do not know if they were ever exposed to cyanide because they would have been covered. And also then he took samples, we don't really know how much of the dilution of the sample material. We don't know how deep he went. So none of these things was ever recorded. So ultimately, chemists who have looked at his methods say this has no value whatsoever. This is the most amateurist forensic investigation. And certainly, the argument also of the complete different chemical conditions that exist in a homicidal gas chamber. That is especially because of the high level of carbon dioxide, the results of the breathing of the victims before they die, and the absence of a heightened level of carbon dioxide in delousing gas chambers provide enough evidence to show that Leuchter's results are worse. Mike Isaacson: Okay, so like I mentioned earlier in the show, you're the chief curator of Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away. What does Auschwitz have to teach the public today? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Yeah, there's no simple lesson. Some people will say what hatred can do. I'm a professor in an architecture school, for me, when I talk with my students about places like Auschwitz, I like to look at the macro level, at the role of professionals, of architects of people who get involved in creating these places, and who do this without really asking themselves any questions of what they're making. Or if they ask those questions, who do not really care how things are going to be used. Nowadays, bureaucrats, engineers, all of us, many of us have an incredible amount of power of ability to influence the lives of other people for good or for evil. And, of course, we find it very much right now on a very individual level when we're talking about vaccines, and masking and so on. And, in many ways, for me Auschwitz, it's not a story of a number of evil geniuses who are plotting to create hell on earth, certainly, that was a part of it. Certainly, there are moments in the history of that camp where you can say, "This is one of the major crimes in history that is being planned here." But it's also a story of a hell of a lot of people who with great thoughtlessness get themselves involved in this, and then at a certain moment, don't have the backbone to pull out. And, as a historian, I went into the research of this camp because so much evidence is there, in order to find in some way that diabolical dimension. And in the end, yes, the result is diabolical. But for the rest, I became actually fascinated by the incredible importance of mediocrity, of lies, of people lying to themselves, of where they are and what they're doing. And in that sense, I think that Auschwitz is in many ways, also a good metaphor of the situation we find ourselves in today. Mike Isaacson: Yeah, I believe Arendt called it the banality of evil, right? Robert Jan Van Pelt: Evil is not banal. Obviously, evil is not banal, but it's banal dimension to evil. And very few people do bad things because they want to do bad things. But most of us end up doing bad things because we're lazy, because we're intellectually lazy, because we do not basically ask for the truth. Because we're willing to basically make empty slogans into a convenient truth for ourselves so that we do not have to look in the mirror and do have to face very inconvenient facts. And we are right now clearly in many different ways, both climatalogically but also socially and politically on the crossroads. And when you have to make decision on what road you want to go, you have to ask tough questions to yourself. And certainly none of the people who were involved with Auschwitz between 1940 and 45 asked any of those tough questions. Mike Isaacson: All right, Dr. Van Pelt, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to debunk the Holocaust negationists. To learn more about Auschwitz and its detractors, check out The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Thanks again. Robert Jan Van Pelt: Thanks very much. It was wonderful to be with you. Mike Isaacson: If you liked what you heard and want to contribute to making this podcast, consider subscribing to our Patreon. Patrons get early access to episodes and free merch. You can also make a one-time donation to our PayPal or Cash App with the username NaziLies. Include your mailing address to get some swag. [Theme song]

President Joe Biden has appointed Deborah Lipstadt, one of America's preeminent Jewish historians and Holocaust scholars, to serve as the U.S. State Department's special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. Listen to our conversation with Lipstadt, which is being re-aired for this special episode, about the troubling rise of contemporary antisemitism from multiple sources and what we can do to stop it. ____ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Deborah Lipstadt  ____ Show Notes: Fill Out Our Audience Survey Here

Here is the descriptor: 1/07/21 Interview with world renowned Attorney, Nat Lewin, discussing his column criticizing Holocaust scholar, Deborah Lipstadt, on her comparing President Trump's questioning the legitimacy of the election results with Holocaust denial, and the ramifications of the Georgia Senate elections.

Shaun Thompson in for Amy. Deborah Lipstadt, Professor of Holocaust history at Emory University and author of Antisemitism: Here and Now, describes the lasting effects of anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish communities with Dan & Shaun. Noted Economist, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy , Stephen Moore, sets the record straight on free-trade with Dan & Shaun. Geoff Shepard, deputy counsel on Nixon’s Watergate defense team and author of The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down, tells Dan & Shaun that This Isn’t their Father’s ImpeachmentSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode we take a look back at some of our favourite interviews this year. Hilde Schramm, the daughter of Nazi architect Albert Speer, discusses her foundation and how she came to terms with her father's involvement with Hitler. Our Walter Isaacson talks to author Deborah Lipstadt about her book, "Antisemitism: Here and Now" , and fighting hatred in the U.S. Climate activist Greta Thunberg discusses how she first took an interest in global warming.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

On this edition of Political Rewind, we look at a subject many people would simply like to ignore: antisemitism.

This month, Emma and Steve discuss 2016 film Denial. Based on the true story of a court case between Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt and holocaust denier David Irving. The film speaks to the Labour Party's current crisis, but equally to the importance not just of remembering, but of not forgetting, which as Emma says are two different things.

"There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies," says historian Deborah Lipstadt, telling the remarkable story of her research into Holocaust deniers -- and their deliberate distortion of history. Lipstadt encourages us all to go on the offensive against those who assault the truth and facts. "Truth is not relative," she says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.