From the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Holocaust denial trials

In reaction to the Irving v. Penguin/Lipstadt (winter, 2000) trial, the editors of this volume sought to provide a text that moves away from the Holocaust itself to ask broader questions about the stubborn persistence of anti-Semitic invective and historical distortion despite legal verdicts to the contrary, historical correctives and media reportage. In these essays the authors explore the assumptions and methods of their disciplines that limit or enhance the ability of any single approach (historical, legal, or journalistic) to challenge the racism and/or anti-Semitism which underlie the persistence of such forgeries as The protocols of the elders of Zion and the fallacies of Holocaust denial. Teachers of college and graduate courses on the Holocaust are increasingly faced with proliferating print and web based assertions and re-assertions of premises whose veracity have been long since disproved. This text encourages students and professionals to explore through three trial contexts (Protocols of Zion, Eichmann/Nuremberg, and Holocaust denial) the way in which claims related to the fate of Jews in the twentieth century have been made, struggled over, and fixed in the law, in historical canon and in the popular imagination. The Protocols are a forgery and crimes against humanity and genocide against the Jewish people did happen. This volume marks the ways in which we present and re-present the historical facts, the journalism, and the legal proofs that support the truth of those assertions in the face of invective and denial.