Editor of The Jewish Chronicle Stephen Pollard explains the importance of the case at the heart of the film Denial and says that the battle is far from over.

Google the question, “Was there a Holocaust?” and the first entry that comes up offers “facts that expose the fraudulent extortion racket known as the holocaust of Jews”. The second tells us this: “The fact is there was no Holocaust against European, even Russian, Jewry. That was a hoax.” So whatever else the Irving trial that features in the heart of the new film Denial did, it certainly did not put a stop to Holocaust denial.

But you would have to be blind to history to think that it might have done. Because Holocaust denial is simply the latest manifestation of what is often referred to as “the longest hatred”. Holocaust deniers are not really concerned with the Holocaust, and certainly not concerned with the truth. They are concerned with Jews.

Those who threaten Jews with terror are but one remove from the Holocaust deniers who are also seeking to write out, and to wipe out, Jews

My grandma, who arrived in the East End of London as a three-year-old when her parents fled the pogroms in Poland around the turn of the 20th century, used to keep a suitcase packed in her room. “You never know when you might have to leave at a moment’s notice,” she would tell me. And this was while she was a successful businesswoman, with her own shop in Marylebone.

As a boy, it fascinated me. Much as I adored her, I thought she was a little bit mad. Jew hate was, I was convinced, a thing of the past. After the Holocaust, human beings had seen where hatred of Jews could lead and would not allow it to take hold again. For years, I was convinced that while there were always a few skinheads with hobnailed boots, they were a tiny bunch of freaks and my generation was – and would continue to be – free from concern with anti-Semitism. I had never experienced it, and nor had my Jewish friends. Oh, the arrogance of youth!

Today, I work in a building that proudly has the words “Jewish Chronicle” on the door. And because of that, we require a regular police presence, sometimes armed, and a minimum of two highly skilled security guards. My children must pass through security cordons to attend Sunday religion school. And every Jew I know now thinks it a matter of when, not if, there is a terrorist attack on a Jewish target.

Hate crime: just one of 300 graves vandalised at a Jewish cemetery in France in 2015 Credit: Getty

So yes, there is indeed still anti-Semitism. And those who threaten Jews with terror are but one remove from the Holocaust deniers who, in seeking to rewrite history, are also seeking to write out, and to wipe out, Jews.

The Irving judgement is thus important as a permanent statement by the sober, considered and impartial judiciary of just how warped this mind-set is. On one level, of course, it is ludicrous that such a statement is needed. One can no more deny the existence of the Holocaust than one can deny the existence of Germany. And yet deny it they do.

That is the key to why the Irving trial was so important and why it is one of those legal battles that will resonate through history. Because it stripped the spurious academic justifications of Holocaust deniers of any last vestige of credibility and exposed them for what they really are.

Iran holds an annual “International Holocaust Cartoon Contest” specifically to celebrate the work of Holocaust deniers. Its latest winner, this March, was French cartoonist Zeon who won his prize for a cartoon depicting the entry gate of a concentration camp above a cash register with six million in cash inside. But the market for Holocaust denial is far bigger than Iran.

Warped: Timothy Spall as David Irving in Denial

Spend a few minutes on social media and you will soon see the hashtag “#Holohoax” and recommendations for supposedly authoritative articles and documentaries “exposing” how the Jewish-run “MSM” (mainstream media) has manipulated the “big lie” of the Holocaust to its own nefarious ends. What we don’t know is whether the rise of social media has unleashed a new wave of anti-Semitism or whether it simply gives voice to something that previously remained buried.

I lean towards the latter. It’s certainly the case, for example, that almost every Labour Party member exposed in recent months for anti-Semitic postings on social media has been a party member for some years. It’s unlikely that they have suddenly developed an intense hatred of Jews. More likely is that they have never before had the mechanism for revealing it. It’s easy to dismiss such posts as insignificant – a few oddballs who make themselves look foolish but of no wider significance. But the facts show that anti-Semitic incidents, as recorded by the police and collated by the Community Security Trust, are at record levels.

In the first six months of 2016, anti-Semitic incidents across Britain increased by 11 per cent, with a 62 per cent rise in London. Between January and the end of June 2016 there were 557 reported incidents, up from 500 in the first six months of 2015.

It’s unlikely we will see another Irving-type case again, but the courts will nonetheless still play a vital role.

It’s unlikely we will see another Irving-type case again, but the courts will nonetheless still play a vital role.

In December, far right activist Joshua Bonehill-Paine was convicted of the racially aggravated harassment of Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger. He had bombarded her with threats and abuse, such as “filthy Jew bitch”. There are many more Bonehill-Paines out there and in social media they have been given a tool to spew their hate – and recruit others to their cause.

This is the real threat now – whether from the hard right, the far left or extremist Islam. It raises all sorts of questions for society that go far beyond anti-Semitism, such as the limits to free speech – and the limits to hate itself. But we only need think about the issues raised by the Irving case, and by the long and depressing history of Jew hate, to realise that there really is nothing new under the sun. We’ve been here before, and will be again.

Denial – based on a true story

The film Denial, starring Rachel Weisz, Timothy Spall and Tom Wilkinson, tells the story of Deborah Lipstadt's courtroom battle with David Irving to prove the Holocaust took place. It opens in cinemas on 27 January.



To discover more about Denial, how the Telegraph reported the original court case, the rise of conspiracy theories and Stephen Pollard's exclusive feature on anti-semitism and the Irving v Lipstadt trial, visit tgr.ph/denial