Deboarh E. Lipstadt: Historian quits satricial Holocaust cartoon contest

American historian Deboarh E. Lipstadt announced Wednesday she was withdrawing from an Israeli cartoon competition poking fun at the Holocaust that she was to judge.

Lipstadt, who is currently in Rome, said she had made a mistake and that she calls on the organizers to cancel the contest.

The contest's organizers said they had not yet received word from the Emory University faculty member that she had pulled out.

Amitai Sandi, one of the contest's organizers, said he was saddened to hear of Lipsdat's decision.

"The fact that all the contest's participants are Jewish absolves it from any anti-Semitic content it might of allegedly had," Sandi said.

The contest was organized in order to ephasize the importance of self-satire in view of the angry responses by the Muslim world to the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

In a dispatch to the press, Lipstadt explained her decision, saying that at first she saw the contest as being ironic.

"It reminded me of a joke from Nazi times," Lipstadt wrote of the contest. "One Berlin Jew meets another. He is carrying (the Nazi propaganda) newspaper Der Strumer. The first Jew is shocked. 'You read that Nazi anti-Semitic newspaper?' 'Of course, If I read the Jewish press I only see all the trouble we are in... If I read Der Strumer I see how powerful we are. How we run the world."