Lipstadt, Justice Charles Gray ruled, did not libel Irving when she called him "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." She had described Irving as a man who distorted history to fit his ideologically driven conclusions that the Nazis did not systematically destroy between 5 million and 6 million of Europe's Jews. Though Irving received scant attention in the Emory University professor's 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault Upon Truth and Memory," he filed suit, alleging her words had destroyed his reputation as a historian.

Not so, ruled the judge. Irving is an "active Holocaust denier, an anti-Semite and a racist," who associates with neo-Nazis, Gray said in his 66-page ruling, read aloud to the court. "For his own ideological reasons, he has persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."

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Yet the answers have become pieces of evidence in a British libel trial that litigants on both sides hope will define the parameters of debate about what many call the greatest moral crime of the 20th century.

On one side of the fluorescent-lit courtroom stands the British author David Irving -- revisionist historian, Hitler apologist or liar, depending on whom you ask -- who does not believe the Nazis systematically killed Jews in World War II. They died, he says, from disease or by the hand of "rogue Nazis." Irving stands alone on his side of the courtroom, for he has chosen to represent himself in a case that both sides agree is so complicated that a judge, and not a jury, should hear it.

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