Deborah was born in 1947 to Miriam and Erwin Lipstadt. She is an American historian and author and writes predominantly about Holocaust Denial and antisemitism in the world today. After receiving her Ph.D in Judaic Studies, she taught at various Universities and then as assistant Professor at UCLA. She was honoured with a research fellowship from the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism during which she studied Holocaust denial.
It was around that time that Holocaust denier David Irving sued Lipstadt and her publisher for libel in an English court for characterizing some of his writings and public statements as Holocaust denial which she had published in her book, Denying the Holocaust. Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin, won the case by demonstrating in court that her accusations against Irving were substantially true and therefore not libellous. Justice Gray, who presided, detailed Irving’s systematic distortion of the historical record of World War 2 and said “History has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory”.
