But Irving's whole approach to history was based on the premise that witness testimony is essentially worthless. Sure, he used it when it suited him - and, as the defence proved, ignored it when it didn't. As a reporter, I know perfectly well that witnesses can mislead - not always innocently. Even if there were sound reasons for not calling living witnesses, there might have been a place found in court for the voice of Salmen Gradowski, a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz who was killed in the fall of 1944. Knowing that his own death was imminent, Gradowski took the notes he had managed to make during the previous 19 months and put them inside a metal canister, which he buried in a pit of human ash.
Facts are crucial.
Facts are sacred. Facts are indeed what give history its dignity. But they are not the whole story. The struggle to find the right way to describe the destruction of European Jewry is sometimes depicted as a contest between history and memory. And so we take refuge in history, in documents, in facts - cool, detached, silent, precise.