Far Rockaway native Deborah Lipstadt named anti-Semitism envoy

Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of modern Jewish history at Emory University in Atlanta is expected to be named President Joe Biden’s anti-Semitism envoy a State Department position that was elevated to ambassador level earlier this yar by Congress.

Lipstadt, a Far Rockaway native, is most known for her 1993 book “Denying the Holocaust.” Two years later the English author David Irving sued her for libel on the grounds that her book had ruined his once well-regarded career as an historian by accusing him of deliberately distorting historical facts.

The resulting court case placed the onus on her legal team to prove that the Holocaust did indeed take place, which she won. The real life events were dramatized in the 2016 film “Denial.”

Lipstadt attended the Hebrew Institute of Long Island, which merged with Lawrence’s Hillel School in 1978 to form the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, is one of the world’s most respected Holocaust historians and anti-Semitism experts.