The Importance Of Evidence And Truth In The Film Denial

“We must understand that truth is not relative.” (TED Talk) Deborah Lipstadt underwent a journey that was not only important for her own research, but also helped influence the course of the future. The moment that Lipstadt decided to fight the lawsuit, she became the champion of the truth. The film Denial explores the importance of evidence and truth in a way that is easy to follow. Throughout Denial, Lipstadt and her legal team are shown collecting evidence and talking about why even though there was no photographic proof of the Holocaust, it happened. It was interesting to see her opponent, David Irving, struggle to combat her facts with his idea of reality. One exceptional example of this is when Rampton talks about the gassing chambers

Truth and facts should be relied on more in daily life, as many misunderstandings can be avoided with being truthful. We should hold ourselves accountable for staying truthful, however it is unreasonable to assume that everybody will follow suit. As such, it is incredibly important to search for the truth, evidence and fact within what we are told, holding not only ourselves accountable, but also those around us. If truthfulness were to become a commonplace habit, the world would certainly be a different place. Deborah Lipstadt and her team held Irving accountable for his lies. She stated “What we did is follow his footnotes back to his sources. And what did we find? Not in most cases, and not in the preponderance of cases, but in every single instance where he made some reference to the Holocaust, that his supposed evidence was distorted,half-truth, date-changed, sequence-changed, someone put at a meeting who wasn't there.”(TED Talk). In this case, they followed his evidence and were able to find the excessive and unreasonable holes within it. I feel that Denial is a very important film. While watching the film, I was absolutely captivated by the story, hanging on the edge of my seat waiting for the next bombshell to drop. I feel that I gained a lot of perspective while watching this film. To be honest, I had never really thought of people denying the Holocaust, in my mind it seemed so silly. I didn’t know that people legitimately argued that the Holocaust never happened, for I just accepted it as a fact. Much like Lipstadt says, “The Earth is not flat. The climate is changing. Elvis is not alive.” (TED Talk), and I accepted the Holocaust as