San Diego (special) -- Hillel of San Diego will sponsor a lecture Tuesday, May 1, by Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, an internationally acclaimed historian who has taken up the depressing, yet necessary, work of exposing the dishonesty and methodology of the pseudo-scholars who deny the authenticity of the Holocaust.

Lipstadt's recent book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on
Truth and Memory, dissected the ways by which so-called "Holocaust
Revisionists" have attempted to gain respectability for their lie that the
Holocaust never occurred.

In reaction, a British subject by name of David Irving sued Lipstadt in
Great Britain, contending that a few pages in her book had libeled him. 
Lipstadt won the suit, scoring a victory for true academic scholarship. So
fraught with drama and emotion was the trial that Lipstadt now is in the
process of writing another book, based upon the experience. Lipstadt is
expected to discuss the Irving trial at length during her appearance,
according to Jean Gaylis, one of the event's three co-chairs.

So honored is the work of Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University, that
both San Diego State University's Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies and
UCSD's Friends of Judaic Studies are cosponsoring the event. The
scholar's lecture is scheduled at 7:30 p.m. in the Lawrence Family Jewish
Community Center.

A ticket costs $18 for Lipstadt's lecture followed by a dessert reception
and book-signing function. Major fundraising will occur at an earlier
reception for persons contributing a minimum $1,800 to support Hillel's
work in fostering Jewish values on our college campuses. Anne Nagorner
and Marcia Sudolsky are serving as co-chairs with Gaylis for the evening's
events.

In Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt painstakingly sets out the ways which
the deniers set about their goals of rehabilitating the images of Adolf
Hitler and nazi Germany and to stoke the fires of anti-Semitism.

The deniers lie that the Holocaust was invented by Jews to create global
guilt feelings and thereby to extract money for individual Jews and pave
the way for the creation of Israel. They contend that Israel is an illegal
state.

They deny that there was a systematic, nazi-sponsored, genocidal
campaign against the Jews. They lie that the European Jews who perished
during World War II were simply casualties of war, whose deaths were no
more remarkable than those of other people who died during the world
wide conflagration. As a corollary of this lie, they challenge other
established historical facts, such as the operation of gas chambers at
Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Holocaust deniers quote each other as authorities, and pull quotes out of
context from established sources to give a false impression of
corroboration for their lies.

They cover up their real goal of anti-Semitism by posing as "academics,"
who care only about uncovering the truth. In this guise, they seek to gain
academic acceptance for their journals. They seek to have "Holocaust
denial" elevated from the status of an outright lie to that of an "opposing
opinion." They aggressively seek forums which will heighten public
awareness for their anti-Semitic campaign.

They also try to play upon cherished constitutional guarantees of
"Freedom of Speech" to force university newspapers to publish
advertisements which quote false statistics and reports to question the
validity of the Holocaust. Even when their advertisements in college
newspapers are surrounded by editorials and columns denouncing
Holocaust denial, the deniers are able to claim a victory. Each time their
advertisements appear, they have been able to portray a lie as a possible
truth.