Deborah Esther Lipstadt, Ph.D. (born March 18, 1947, New York City) is an American historian and author of the books Denying the Holocaust and The Eichmann Trial. She is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She received her BA from City College of New York and her MA and PhD from Brandeis University.

Lipstadt was a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1994, she was appointed by Bill Clinton to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, on which she served two terms.

David Irving sued her and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in an English court, after she characterized some of his writings and public statements as Holocaust denial in her book Denying the Holocaust. Lipstadt's legal defence team was led by Anthony Julius of Mishcon de Reya while Penguin's was led by Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman of Davenport Lyons. Both defendants instructed Richard Rampton QC while Penguin also instructed Heather Rogers as junior counsel. The expert witness for the defence was Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans, assisted by Christopher Browning, Robert Jan van Pelt and Peter Longerich.

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE ( /ˈɛli vɨˈzɛl/; Hungarian: Wiesel Lázár; born September 30, 1928) is a Romanian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. Wiesel is also the Advisory Board chairman of the Algemeiner Journal newspaper.

When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind," stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel had delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity.

Wiesel was born in Sighet,Transylvania (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Maramureş, Kingdom of Romania, in the Carpathian Mountains. His mother, Sarah Feig, was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a celebrated Vizhnitz Hasid and farmer from a nearby village. He was active and trusted within the community, and in the early years of his life had spent a few months in jail for having helped Polish Jews who escaped and were hungry. It was his father, Chlomo, who instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study the Torah. Wiesel has said his father represented reason, and his mother Sarah promoted faith. In his home, his family spoke Yiddish most of the time, but also Romanian, Hungarian and German. Wiesel had three sisters – older sisters Hilda and Beatrice, and younger sister Tzipora. Beatrice and Hilda survived the war and were reunited with Wiesel at a French orphanage. They eventually emigrated to North America, with Beatrice moving to Montreal, Canada. Tzipora, Chlomo and Sarah did not survive the Holocaust.