Propfessor Lipstadt Wins 2002 JDC/Katzki Award

NEW YORK -- Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, best known for her decisive victory in a recent libel trial against Holocaust denier David Irving was recently awarded the JDC’s Herbert Katzki Award for Outstanding Historic writing Based on Archival Material. Prior winners include Tom Segev, Yehuda Bauer and David Wyman.

Dr. Lipstadt was the focus of intense media and academic scrutiny earlier this year, when she sued  Irving in a London court for false assertions he had made in writing about the very fact of the Holocaust.

While accepting her award in New York, Lipstadt maintained that the Jewish people and the world in general, must remain "vigilant against those who would re-write history to suit their own agenda."

Lipstadt’s most recent book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory  is the first full-length study on the subject and has won scholarly praise. In researching the volume, Dr. Lipstadt made good use of JDC’s deep archive of modern Jewish history.

"Dr. Lipstadt is ideal recipient of this award," noted Steve Schwager, executive Vice President of JDC. "Herbert Katzki meticulously recorded many important operations of Jewish rescue and relief that might otherwise have been lost to our collective Jewish memory. So, too, Dr. Lipstadt is seeing to it that we all remember."