University of Waterloo
Department of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
(519) 888-4804; Fax (519) 885-1208
E-mail: shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca
January 28, 1997
Dear David Irving:
Thank you for
your letter of August 3 1996.
I apologize for the delay in responding.
Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to be hinting at some kind of lawsuit
over my article. That surprises me, considering that I have publicly
defended your right to speak in Canada; see the Kitchener-Waterloo
Record, November 9 1992, page A1.
Many of your comments seem to be just that: comments. At least ten
of your comments acknowledge that statements in my article are, in fact,
correct. You offer a "larger context" in which you would like
them to be considered.
In any event, here are the sources for the quotations you have
disputed. If you can produce documentary evidence that the quotations
are incorrect, I would be happy to modify my essay to take into account
new information.
- "He calls himself a 'moderate fascist'...":
Vancouver Sun, March 11 1989, p. A7.
- "Irving first entered the headlines in 1970": Here I
was referring to genuine news headlines, not book reviews or
interviews with authors. My search of newspaper indexes such as those
for the New York Times or the Times of London did not turn
up any significant stories before 1970.
- "...Irving being fined 40,000 British pounds": my
dictionary lists one of the definitions of "fine" as "a
forfeiture or penalty paid to an injured party in a civil action",
which seems completely appropriate in the context.
- "...Irving's book faulted Captain John Broome...":
this is a genuine error on my part. The quotes around "downright
disobedience" and "cowardly desertion of the convoy" are
quotes from the article in the Times of London, March 5 1971,
page 8. I took these as excerpts from your book, but I see now that I
was mistaken; they are merely the words of a judge in the case. I will
rephrase the sentence to make this clear. Thank you for bringing this
error to my attention.
- "Broome objected to the accuracy of some thirty passages in
the book...": Times of London, February 2 1971, page 10.
- "At that point, William Kimber, Ltd., Irving's
publisher...": Times of London, February 2 1971, page 10.
- "He was recently quoted in the K-W Record as saying that the
number of Jews who died in concentration camps...":
Kitchener-Waterloo Record, October 3 1992, page A5. According to
this article, the quotation comes from
your testimony
at the Zundel trial:
Q. Do you have any opinion as a result of your research as to
the number of Jews who died in concentration camps during the
Second World War?
A. (I)t must have been of the order of 100,000 or more, but to my
mind it was certainly less than the figure which is quoted nowadays
of six million.
- "But during the 1988 trial of pro-Nazi publisher Ernst
Zundel...": Montreal Gazette, April 4 1988, page G10.
- "In November 1991, a reporter from the Independent
showed that Irving omitted crucial lines...": The
Independent, November 27 1991, review by Gitta Sereny.
Now, let me address some inaccuracies on your part. First,
your letter says, "It appears that your primary source is a handout
or handouts of the Wiener Library (Dr. David Cesarini [sic]) and of the
Board of Deputies of British Jews..." This is incorrect. I do not
possess, nor I have every seen, any "handouts" from Cesarani,
and until you mentioned it, I had never heard of the Board of Deputies
of British Jews. My sources were publicly available accounts of your
activities published in newspapers and magazines in Britain and North
America. (This includes an article by Cesarani in New Statesman and
Society, July 10 1992.)
Second, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that the
"Shallit Report" and "Lies of Our Times" are two
different documents, whereas in fact they are the same. The original
title of my article as published was "Holocaust Revised: Lies of
Our Times. How the Words of Holocaust 'Revisionists' and Their Allies
Reveal Their Agenda." In the future, could you please refer to this
article by its full title? The name "Shallit Report" was added
by Ken McVay.
Third, your newsletter
"David Irving's Action Report"
claims that "The Shallit Report" is a "newsletter
published on the computer Internet." It is not a newsletter, it is
a reprint of an article I wrote for a local campus newspaper that
appeared four years ago.
Fourth, your newsletter erroneously claims that I quoted only Jewish
sources, when in fact, my sources included an article by local reporter
Barry Ries (who is not Jewish, but rather of German descent).
Fifth, your newsletter claims that "[a]ll the allegations
contained in the Shallit report ... were vicious and untrue"
(emphasis mine), whereas in fact your own letter demonstrates that you
label most of the article as "correct."
Sixth, your newsletter incorrectly implies that my article was part of a
campaign to discredit your latest book. This is nonsense; the article
was written four years ago and has been available on the Internet in
various forms for quite a while.
I will look forward to receiving a copy of your corrections of these
errors in the next Action Report. Please send me a copy.
Now, as to your letter. If
Ken McVay
allows [of course -knm], I would like to put a verbatim copy of
your letter on the Nizkor web site, where it could be read by anyone who
reads my article.
Will you permit me to do this? The advantage for you would be that
your objections to my article would receive as wide an audience as the
original article. If so, please send me a signed letter agreeing to
this proposal, and if possible provide a diskette with the text of your
letter (plain Ascii text is best). Of course, by doing so you would
allow me to include, possibly at some later date, my own commentary on
your letter.
Yours sincerely,
(Prof.) Jeffrey Shallit
