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Deborah Lipstadt was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1947. Her father came to the United States from Germany in the 1920s, not as a refugee but as an immigrant looking for work. The family were 'modern Orthodox' Jews and she was educated in Jewish schools; in the mid-1960s their next door neighbour was the acclaimed Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. At that time Deborah Lipstadt was influenced by the American black civil rights movement. Education Lipstadt graduated with a degree in political science and history. She spent a year in Israel and was there during the Six Day War in June 1967. When she returned to the States, she enrolled in the Judaic studies programme at Brandeis University, where she completed her PhD. Career An academic specialising in modern Jewish studies, she has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Occidental College in Los Angeles. Lipstadt has lectured all over the world and was a historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1994, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the museum's council. In 1996, Lipstadt was appointed by the US Secretary of State to serve on the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom and advises the government on political responses to Holocaust denial. She has frequently appeared in the media to analyse Jewish affairs and has been enormously influential on government policy. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1986 she published Beyond Belief: The American press and the coming of the Holocaust 1933-45, which described how the American media ignored news about the Holocaust during the years it was happening. Lipstadt's 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, is the first full-length account of those who attempt to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. It won the 1994 National Jewish Book Honor Award. She refuses to debate publicly with Holocaust deniers, arguing that to do so would give false credibility to their ideas. |
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