Forward: Lipstadt tells Charlottesville jury she was ‘taken aback’ by antisemitism at ‘Unite the Right’ rally

By Arno Rosenfeld, Forward. Read the full article here. 

Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt told a jury in Charlottesville Wednesday that she was shocked by the extent to which antisemitism defined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally.

“There was a great deal of overt antisemitism and adulation of the Third Reich throughout the evidence I looked at,” said Lipstadt, an expert witness in a case against rally organizers.

“Very few things surprise me, but I was taken aback.”

One of the foremost experts on the Holocaust and President Joe Biden’s nominee for global antisemitism envoy, Lipstadt explained basic tenets of antisemitism to the jury and analyzed statements made by several of the defendants in the federal trial. Nine plaintiffs are accusing 14 men and 10 groups of conspiring to violate their civil rights at the 2017 rally that killed a counter-protester and injured dozens more.

In her first appearance as an expert trial witness, Lipstadt’s testimony served to confirm that past blatantly antisemitic statements made by the defendants, including that “the Jew has been drinking our blood,” were in fact antisemitic.

Continue reading at forward.com.