This TED Talk features historian Deborah Lipstadt, recorded live at TEDx Skull, 2017.

I come to you today to speak of liars, lawsuits, and laughter.

The first time I heard about Holocaust denial, I laughed.

Holocaust denial?

The Holocaust, which has the dubious distinction of being the best documented genocide in the world.

Who could believe it didn't happen?

Think about it.

For deniers to be right, who would have to be wrong?

Well, first of all, the victims, the survivors, who have told us

their harrowing stories. Who else would have to be wrong? The bystanders, the people who lived

in the myriads of towns and villages and cities on the eastern front,

who watched their neighbors be rounded up, men, women, children, young, old,

and be marched to the outskirts of the town to be shot and left dead in ditches.

Or the Poles, who lived in towns or villages around the death camps, who watched day after day as the trains went in, filled with people, and came out empty. But above all, who would have to be

wrong? The perpetrators, the people who say, we did it, I did it. Now, maybe they had a caveat.

They say, I didn't have a choice. I was forced to do it. But nonetheless, they said, I did it.

Think about it. In not one war crimes trial since the end of World War II has a perpetrator

of any nationality ever said it didn't happen. Again, they may have said I was forced, but never

that it didn't happen.

Having thought that through, I decided denial was not going to be on my agenda.

I had bigger things to worry about, to write about, to research, and I moved on.

Fast forward a little over a decade, and two senior scholars, scholars of the Holocaust,

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