text:
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 7: Electronic Edition
Pages 1 - 199 of 199
1996 I. No. 113
2Royal Courts of Justice
3Strand, London
4 Thursday, 20th January 2000
10Claimant -and-
14The Claimant appeared in person
15MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
16Second Defendants
17MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
21(Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell
& Company, Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
1 <Day 7 Thursday, 20th January 2000.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
3 MR IRVING: This morning we are going to be dealing, as
4I apprehend, may it please the court, with the
5Schlegelberger document which I brought, as I indicated
6yesterday evening, with one or two of the surrounding
7documents. [Document not provided].
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have only just received this clip, so
9I am afraid I have not had a chance to go through it.
10 MR IRVING: I appreciate that, my Lord. I do not think it will
11be a very painful exercise. We will also take on board
12this argument, and I have taken the liberty of submitting
13to your Lordship a two-page skeleton, which again you will
14not have had time to reflect upon but I thought it would
15be of assistance to your Lordship.
16 I have also excised the first paragraph of that
17and put it on a separate sheet for your Lordship, in case
18you wish to mark it up and say,"Yes I thoroughly approve
19of this, this is a jolly good idea, I think Irving has it
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will come to whether that is going to be
22my conclusion in a moment, shall we? Can we just have open
23the Schlegelberger note, unless it is in your clip?
24 MR IRVING: It is in the clip, my Lord. It is little bundle D
25which you have just received, and you will find it on page
269. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to put this into J. We
1must keep an eye on not having stray bits of paper
2knocking around.
3 MR IRVING: This is a bundle called Schlegelberger, a 25 page
4document relating to the context and provenance of the
5Schlegelberger document which I have loosely dated as
6spring 1942. The document concerned is on page 9, my
7Lord, Tab 7.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR IRVING: The first document is page 1 which your Lordship
10will see is the folder cover of the Reich Ministry of the
11Justice, and I will read the words to you which are rather
12illegible. We have had problems with the German text
13before. Behandlung der Juden, "treatment of the Jews".
14My only gloss on that is to say it is not treatment of the
15mixed race questions. It is a Ministry of Justice file on
16the treatment of the Jews. I have taken the liberty, my
17Lord, of highlighting one or two sentences in the bundle
18I gave you.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is helpful.
20 MR IRVING: Somebody has my highlighted copy. I do not.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you date the cover to the file or the
22cover top sheet?
23 MR IRVING: Only inasmuch as the earliest document in the file
24is early 1942, my Lord. It is a very slim file, the way
25sometimes these governmental jackets, I think they are
26called in English parlance, go.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
2 MR IRVING: Page No. 2, my Lord, is the translation into
3English of the following page. Unless Mr Rampton has any
4objection, I will just deal with the English text.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 MR IRVING: We read it out yesterday but I will read it out
7again. It is from Schlegelberger, who is acting Minister
8of Justice after the death of the Minister, and he is
9writing to the Reich Minister, Hans Lammers: My personal
10assistant has just briefed me on the result of the session
11of March 6th on the treatment of Jews and mixed races".
12Your Lordship will probably see that I have highlighted
13the fact that it is both A and B, so to speak, not just
14the mixed race.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is your gloss, anyway.
16 MR IRVING: I am now still awaiting the official minutes. My
17Lord, of course, I will argue that it is not unreasonable
18-- we will be dealing later in the argument with what is
19reasonable and what is not reasonable, what would be
20perverse and what would not perverse. I am now still
21waiting the official minutes. From the briefing by my
22personal assistant there seem to be decisions in
23preparation which I have to consider for the most part to
24be completely impossible. As the outcome of the talks in
25which a personal assistant of your department took part is
26to form the basis for the decision of the Fuhrer, it would
1be urgently desirable for me to have a personal talk with
2you in good time about the affair. As soon as the minutes
3of the session are before me, I shall permit myself to
4phone you and to ask you whether and when a discussion
5between us might take place."
6 Lammers replies, my Lord, and this is on page 4,
7that he is very ready to conform. He suggests an
8appointment at the end of the month; in other words, at
9the end of March. I do not think it is perverse then to
10say that the conversation which is referred to in the
11memorandum is therefore at the end of March 1942. I may
12be wrong. I allow that I may be wrong. It is always
13possible to be wrong, but we are looking for a deliberate
14or wilful distortion.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You rely presumably also on the heading to
16that letter which is "overall solution to the Jewish
18 MR IRVING: "Overall solution to the Jewish problem", yes, my
19Lord, I am indebted to your Lordship for pointing that
20out, the overall solution of the Jewish problem.
21 The next letter, my Lord, pages 6 to 8, I do not
22propose to read out. They do not take us very much
23further. If your Lordship is interested in their content,
24then there is a British summary.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If are you not going to rely on anything
26there, I am not going to take time on it.
1 MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord. Mr Rampton may very well wish
2to point to one or two things in it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us see.
4 MR IRVING: The next document, page 9, is the actual
5memorandum. Page 10 is something that I did not have
6before me yesterday, my Lord. It is a translation of the
7following page, page 11 or part of it. If your Lordship
8were just to turn to page 11, I draw your attention to two
9things: first of all, the number at the top, 2653, where,
10at the beginning of the notes or near the beginning of the
11notes to the second volume of my Hitler biography, namely
12Hitler's War, and we are already on manuscript page
132,653. This will give your Lordship an idea of the
14magnitude of the task and I would therefore pray your
15Lordship's indulgence if I have occasionally got a word
16wrong or mistyped a word.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not underrate the magnitude of the task
18at all.
19 MR IRVING: I am indebted to you. I have translated note 63.
20Your Lordship will notice that the notes are not in the
21book in this form. Quite simply, the publisher said,
22"Mr Irving, that would add an extra 500 pages on to the
23text", so it went. It is helpful because note 53 refers,
24in this context, to the Schlegelberger document. The staff
25evidence analysis sheet, which is also in this bundle, we
26referred to yesterday. The copies were notarised by
1Dr Robert Kempner, which is not really important, unless
2we get on to the question of who found it first and when
3should he have used it.
4 Then I continue: " Before the International
5Military Tribunal (at Nuremberg) Lammers testified that
6Himmler had told him that he had received from the Fuhrer
7the task of bringing about a Final Solution of the Jewish
8problem, i.e. that 'the Jews were to be evacuated out of
9Germany'". That part is in quotation marks. "Lammers
10wanted to find out for himself, he said, and fixed an
11appointment with Fuhrer whereupon the Fuhrer told me that,
12yes, it was quite right that he had given the evacuation
13order to Himmler, but he did not want to hear any more
14briefings about this Jewish problem during the war".
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is undated.
16 MR IRVING: This is from the transcript of the international
17military tribunal.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. What I mean is there is no indication in
19the document as to when that was said by Hitler. For all
20we know, it may have been said in 1940 or '41.
21 MR IRVING: I will deal with that point very shortly, my Lord,
22when we skip a page, and we now come to page 12. Your
23Lordship or Mr Rampton might quite well object that it is
24unsatisfactory, that I should produce the quotation from
25the transcript in that form, of course, the Military
26Tribunal transcript. I objected, of course, in exactly
1the same terms yesterday but, if your Lordship is
2interested, I am sure we can obtain the precise page from
3the transcript.
4 Page 12. Two or three years ago, I went to the
5national archives in Washington and looked at the detailed
6verbatim interrogations of the number of people who were
7present at the Wannsee Conference and at the subsequent
8conference, my Lord, which your Lordship will remember was
9on March 6th 1942.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mean Wannsee?
11 MR IRVING: Wannsee on January 20th 1942 -- W-A-N-N-S-E-E
12-- and the subsequent conference, which was held at the
13headquarters of Heydrich on March 6th 1942. I wanted to
14find out what the participants said, what they recalled
15immediately afterwards, after the war. They were
16interrogated in detail by the Americans. We have the
17verbatim transcripts in German and English. I did not
18copy the transcripts, but I typed extracts on the filing
19cards which you will see on pages 13 and 14, my Lord, the
20relevant parts. I have translated them on page 12 which
21I think is all we need to look at today.
22 Cabinet counseller, Dr Hans Ficher of the Reich
23Chancellery (Lammers department) stated that from the
24invitation it was evident that evacuation or sterilisation
25were on the agenda." I skip on to the next
26sentence: "Lammers took this minute to the Fuhrer and
1returned with a memorandum. The discussion of the whole
2affair is to be postponed until after the end of the
3war". That must have been in March 1942. That is the
4opinion of Bohle. "To our horror", and I rely on this
5sentence, my Lord, "we learned that that then continued
6behind the scenes. We learned that that then continued
7behind the scenes".
8 Although Hitler had given this order, leave
9everything until the end of the war, to our horror, they
10learned that it went on behind the scenes, rather like the
11Bruns business, your Lordship will remember. The order
12comes down from Hitler's headquarters.
13 What we are looking for, I would submit, is any
14indication that I have been perverse in putting on this
15kind of document the meaning that I did in my various
16writings and utterances. If I continue now to the next
17statement by Mr Gottfried Bohle, who is also at the Reichs
18Chancellory Department, he testified that he had been
19interrogated about this on more than one occasion. The
20conference, he recalled, was at the headquarters of
21Heydrich's department, the RSHA. Eichmann opened, and
22I am relying on this purely to show that it was not just a
23discussion about the mixed race, my Lord. It was a
24discussion about the Jews as a whole.
25 Eichmann opened with the need for a quick
26solution of the Jewish Question. Bohle told his wife
1afterwards that they had talked of Jews being supplied
2like cattle. One man had objected, one cannot proceed
3against Jews who had behaved correctly, Eichmann's No. 2,
4that was SS van Fuhrer Gunter, said "that comes under our
5police judgment".
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not at the moment see what bearing that
7has on the issue we are concerned with.
8 MR IRVING: It is an indication where the kind of decisions are
9being taken, my Lord.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. Anyway Bohle again?
11 MR IRVING: Bohle in another interrogation said, and I draw
12attention only to the second two sentences, Hitler wanted
13postponement until after the war. "Whether the security
14police knew about the different orders from Hitler,
15I cannot say." In other words, different to what they
16were doing.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, your Lordship may attach no significance
19whatsoever to these documents. I am a historian looking
20at these documents. I submit that it is perfectly proper
21for me to pay attention to them, and it is not perverse
22for me to attach the significance to them that I did and
23the meanings that I did.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR IRVING: That is all that I have to submit on this
26Schlegelberger memorandum, my Lord.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You did that very, if I may say so,
2effectively and briefly.
3 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will have apprehended that I attach
4importance to the Schlegelberger memorandum. I have
5quoted it frequently, I have illustrated it in my books,
6and I wish to make sure that it stayed upright without
7being sunk.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It would not be exaggerating to say that it
9is something of a linchpin for your thesis about the
10extent to which Hitler knew about what was going on.
11 MR IRVING: One of the chain of document to which we
12occasionally refer, my Lord.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Schlegelberger.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, do you want to add anything?
15 MR RAMPTON: I have some questions remaining about
16Schlegelberger, particularly in the light of these
18 MR IRVING: Do you wish me to go into the box?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have to keep an eye on the time.
20 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship need not fear; we have enough
21material for today.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not worrying about having enough.
23Mr Irving, perhaps you would go back into the box?
24 < MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.
25< Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON QC, continued.
26 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, there is one document which you have
1not included in that little clip, is there not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I spent a large part of the night in looking
3for my Schlegelberger file, but the documents came back
4from solicitors for the Defendants in such disarray that
5it was in vain. I had to reconstruct it from other
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Curiously enough, I did the same exercise myself last
8night, and the document that I have included in my little
9clip which I will hand in---- (Document not provided) .
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are we going to put these?
11 MR RAMPTON: For the moment they can go together. Perhaps they
12can both go in whatever the J number is.
14 MR RAMPTON: Some of them may in due course be filed away into
15the core file.
16 A. [Mr Irving] May I express incidentally my amazement that this bundle
17of documents did not turn up in the bundles that were put
18to the court?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. I understand the point. Let us get
21 MR RAMPTON: There is a document, Mr Irving, that you did not
22include -- I am not saying it is deliberate, at least not
23at the moment -- in the little clip and that is the
24actual minute of the meeting on 6th March 1942, is it not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct. The reason for that being that it did
26not come from that Ministry of Justice file. This comes
1from, as the serial numbers at the foot of it clearly
2show, the Foreign Ministry files.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] It did not, but it is one of the footnotes to your
4Goebbels book, is it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, the footnote is referred to in the Goebbels
6book? It is indeed, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is footnote 36 to page 388, and one knows it is the
8same document for two reasons: First because the
9personnel mentioned at as being at the meeting include
10Karssonsen and Schmidtburg?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] And because the film roll number at the bottom right hand
13corner of the page that you have got there is the one
14which you give in your footnote. So we are looking now at
15the right document, are we? It is 371962?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Can you show me again the page reference in the
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes I have copied it for convenience. It is page 388, and
19it is note 36 in the upper half of the page, the big
20paragraph before the word Eichmann. My Lord, I have copied
21for your Lordship note 36 which is on page 647, where
22Mr Irving said -- perhaps I will read the Goebbels text
23first so that it will become a little clearer what it is
24that I am driving at. I will start if I may on 388. "On
25the following day" -- that is he and one can see from the
26previous page that that is Goebbels and the following day
1is 6th March -- "Goebbels took note of an extensive
2report prepared by Heydrich's office, probably on the
3Wannsee conference. There were still eleven million Jews
4in Europe, he dictated, summarizing the document. 'For the
5time being they are to be concentrated in the east [until]
6Later; possibly an island like Madagascar can be assigned
7to them after the war.' 'Undoubtedly there will be a
8multitude of personal tragedies,' he added airily,'But
9this is unavoidable. The situation now is ripe for a
10final settlement of the Jewish question.' In a covering
11letter Heydrich invited Goebbels to a second conference,
12on March 6. Goebbels sent two of his junior staff."
13 Then one goes to note 36, and one sees that it
14says they, that is the two junior members of staff, were
15Karssonsen and Schmidtburg of its Eastern territory
16subsection. Minutes of conference, March 6th 1942, on
17Final Solution of Jewish problem. Then your Lordship sees
18inside the bracket right at the end is the same film roll
19number, whatever it is, reference number 371962.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right?
21 A. [Mr Irving] "Eichmann talked crudely at this meeting"-- that is the
22meeting of 6th March attended by Karssonsen and
23Schmidtburg - "of 'forwarding' the Jews to the east, like
24so many head of cattle. The ministry of justice handled
25the report on this new discussion like a hot potato." --
26That is note 38. That is the letter of 12th March, which
1your Lordship has, to Herr Lammers in the Reichkanzlei
2"The Reich Chancellery referred it all to Hitler."
3That is an is interrogation of Hans Ficher, that
4footnote. I ask you to note the words "it all",
5Mr Irving. "Hitler wearily told Hans Lammers that he
6wanted the solution of the Jewish problem postponed until
7after the war was over - a ruling that remarkably few
8historians now seem disposed to quote."
9 That suggests, does it not, to the reader,
10Mr Irving, that the conference on 6th March was about the
11overall solution of the Jewish question?
12 A. [Mr Irving] The final solution of the Jewish question is the title
13given on the minutes.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But that was not the question. The question
15is you are conveying to the readers there that it is the
16final solution which is postponed.
17 MR RAMPTON: That was what that conference discussed, is what
18you are telling the reader.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now would you please look at the minute of the conference,
21the one you footnoted?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please read it yourself. Tell me when you have finished
24and I will ask you a question.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I think I am familiar enough with the document. My
26Lord, can I mention the fact that we have one of my
1witnesses present. Is he allowed to be in court?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. It is only in criminal trials that
3generally speaking you do not.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I think I am sufficiently familiar with the content
5of this memorandum to answer questions.
6 MR RAMPTON: The only topics that were discussed at that
7meeting on 6th March 1942 are the fate of the mischlinge,
8that is to say the children of mixed marriages, and their
9parents, the mischehen. There are two items, there are
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] The first is the mischlinge on page 478 at the bottom?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the second, on page 483 at the bottom, is the
15mischehen, that is to say mixed marriages?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is not a word in that memorandum of that conference
18about the solution in general, apart from the heading
19which was a general heading always used for these
20documents. Am I right?
21 A. [Mr Irving] You can say that about this document, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then, if you will, turn to the next page in my little
24 A. [Mr Irving] 371?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I will use yours because you have translated it and
26I have not.
1 A. [Mr Irving] This refers clearly to the conference concerning the Jews
2and the mixed races.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will just find your English first. I am going to read
4it again.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not, because we have been through it once
7 MR RAMPTON: "My personal assistant has just briefed me on the
8result of the session on March 6th, meeting might be a
9better word, on the treatment of Jews and mixed races".
10That personal assistant was a man called Masfelder, was it
12 A. [Mr Irving] That I do not know.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you look at the protocol, you can see Masfelder,
14sorry. The front sheet of the protocol, which is one of
15your own documents.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can short circuit this. Mr Irving, this
17must be a reference to the conference of which we have
18just seen the record, is it not?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes indeed.
20 MR RAMPTON: That conference had nothing whatever to do with
21what was to happen to the Jews overall. It was under that
22general heading, but it was specifically about mischlinge
23and mischehen, was it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] The minutes of the conference record only those parts
25dealing with the mischehen, the mixed marriages.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] So, in effect, you have totally distorted what was
1discussed at that meeting. You have totally distorted
2therefore the reason why Schlegelberger wrote to Lammers
3and therefore, if the Schlegelberger has a place in this
4chronology, you have distorted the effect of that, too,
5have you not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] This omission that you repeatedly make, and I beg to
7differ on that because of course I am looking at the other
8documents in the file and also looking at the
9interrogations of the people who were at the meeting.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us look at the interrogations, shall we?
11 A. [Mr Irving] If you remember, the business about Jews being supplied
12like cattle and so on. Quite clearly that is not in the
13minutes either. There is a lot of stuff that happened at
14that conference which is not recorded in the minutes.
15I think it is a mistake to adhere slavishly to the Nazi
16memoranda taken by these gentlemen, the minutes, which as
17you yourself have said frequently were written for
18camouflage purposes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is page 12 my Lord. Let us look at your extract from
20the postwar interrogation, shall we?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whether or not Hans Ficher is talking about this meeting
23one does not know because one has not got the full text,
24but assume that he is, then what he said was: From the
25invitation, whatever that means, it was evident that
26evacuation or sterilization were on the agenda. What was
1discussed at that meeting was to how to deal with the
2mischlinge and their parents the mischehen, and the
3question arose should they be sterilized, should they be
4evacuated, should they be allowed to stay where they are?
5That is what was discussed, was it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well we have of course two different versions of the same
7meeting. We have several different versions of the same
8meeting. We have the wartime minute taken by the one that
9you referred to us from the Foreign Ministry files, which
10of course was before me, but we also have the other
11sources of that meeting.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, the document that you referred to and relied on
13in the account that you gave in your book Goebbels is this
15 A. [Mr Irving] I specifically refer also to these interrogations of
16Ficher and Bohle and the rest in this paragraph.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not move the goal posts please, Mr Irving. It is no
18good talking about some other memorandum. This is the
19memorandum which you footnoted in Goebbels, is it not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] These gentlemen are clearly referring to this conference
21in their interrogations because they say it was at the
22headquarters of Heydrich, which pins it down as being this
23conference where the talk is about Jews being supplied
24like cattle.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are missing, I think, Mr Rampton's point
26on this, and I do not think we want to spend very long on
1it. It is that the evacuation and sterilisation that were
2on the agenda may have been the evacuation or
3sterilisation of mischlinge?
4 A. [Mr Irving] It may be.
5 MR RAMPTON: You do not tell your readers that, do you? You do
6not tell your readers that the discussion at this
7conference was confined to the fate of the mischlinge and
8the mischehen.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure that Professor Evans would have spent eight
10pages on this one detail, but I am writing a book which
11has to be kept into the confines of one bound volume.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Unless you will answer my questions, we are going to have
13a bad day. Will you answer my question? You do not tell
14the readers that the discussion at this conference was
15confined to the fate of the mischlinge and mischehen, do
17 A. [Mr Irving] Will you allow me to read again what I have written?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, indeed.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not take long because really the answer to
20that question must be yes, that you are conveying to the
21reader that it is the whole question that is being
22postponed until the end of the war?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I think, My Lord, that I have stated on several occasions
24in the Goebbels' book, and your Lordship will remember the
25case of Gottschalt having caused Hitler particular agony,
26in my submission; that I have repeatedly referred to the
1fact, to the question of the mixed marriages and mixed
2races was a thorn in the side of the Nazis because they
3did not know how to treat them, which side of the line to
4put them.
5 I cannot keep on, in a book which is for
6publication, coming back and reminding readers of things
7that the intelligent reader will be carrying in his brain
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Rampton was asking you about the
10passage at page 388, I think.
11 MR RAMPTON: I was, yes.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I think that the lines, about 10 lines down, where
13Goebbels is quoted as saying: "For the time being that it
14be concentrated in the East, undoubtedly, there will be a
15multitude of personal tragedies, but this is
16unavoidable". We then go straight on to talk about the
17March 6th conference.
18 I am making it in a way that a responsible
19writer should. I did not want to put the whole contents
20of this 10 page memorandum into a book at this point.
21That would have been acres of sludge again.
22 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to put it once more and
23I cannot go on making speeches through questions which are
24never answered. The fact is you that you led the reader
25in this passage to believe that what was discussed at the
26conference on 6th March was the fate of the Jews
1generally, that that then went to Hitler, via Lammers, and
2Hitler made a ruling that the fate of the Jews generally
3was not to be considered or discussed at that time. That
4is a total distortion of the evidence which you had before
5you when you wrote that.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I totally disagree with you, Mr Rampton. The evidence of
7Bohle, that there was talk there of delivering the Jews to
8the East like so many head of cattle, that is no longer
9talking about the mixed marriage problem. They are
10talking about the overall Holocaust in the way that I have
11accepted it can be defined and perceived.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you can find in this memorandum which you have cited in
13your book reference to the general question, please show
14it to us, otherwise that is my last question.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I have referred to the fact that I do not just
16rely on one document. I do not jump from mountain peek to
17mountain peek. I look at all the surrounding hills as
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There we are. That is the Schlegelberger
21 MR RAMPTON: I think, my Lord, that will do.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
23 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I was not intending to embark on anything
24new at the moment.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the plan is we have your witness so
26he is not kept waiting.
1 MR RAMPTON: As Professor Cameron Watt is here, he had better
2give evidence.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I think so, Mr Irving, if you
4would like to revert to your role as counsel?
5 < (The witness stood down)
6 MR IRVING: Can Professor Cameron Watt be called?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course.
8 < PROFESSOR CAMERON WATT, sworn.
9< Examined by MR IRVING.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, would you be more comfortable
11sitting down? You are welcome to sit down.
12 MR IRVING: I was going to make precisely the same suggestion,
13my Lord. (To the witness): Professor Watt, thank you
14very much for coming today. You are appearing, of course,
15under a witness summons. I want to make that quite plain
16to the court and you are not appearing voluntarily, so no
17odium can attach to you for coming and being called for
18the defence, for my defence, in other words, for the
19Plaintiff in this action.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we introduce Professor Watt and ask him
21about his background?
22 MR IRVING: Yes. Professor Watt, your name is Donald Cameron
24 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] It is.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] You are Emeritus Professor of International History at the
26London School of Economics and Political Science?
1 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] How long were you teaching at the London School of
4 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] From 1954 to 1993. 39 years altogether.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] 39 years a Professor of History at the London School of
7 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I did not have the rank of Professor until 1971, but I was
8on the staff.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] You enjoy the reputation of being something of a grand
10gentleman, a doyen, of the historical profession in this
12 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I think it is very difficult for an individual to say what
13their reputation is in the minds of other people.
14I certainly can only say that I have held a number of
15senior positions in international organizations devoted to
16historical research.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] Thank you. You describe yourself as an historian, writer
18and broadcaster. You are all three things?
19 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] These are the various sources of my income, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] You were educated at Rugby and at Oriel College in Oxford;
21is that correct?
22 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] You served in the Army in the Intelligence Corp.?
24 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I did.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] And that you were with the British troops in Austria in
26the occupation forces after World War II?
1 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] From 1947 to '48, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] 1947 to '48. Would you tell the court, Professor Watt,
3what you were engaged with in the years following your
4Army service?
5 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Following my Army service, I had three years reading
6politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford because only
7that way could you deal with 20th century history at that
8time; and I indulged myself in the usual activities of
9undergraduate. That is to say, I wrote, I played opera, I
10ran the Poetry Society -- I had a number of activities of
11that kind.
12 Q. [Mr Irving] And you became a member of the Foreign Office Research
14 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I was attached to it, yes -- I do not think I was ever a
15full member -- from 1951 to 1954, and then again on a
16part-time basis from 1957 to 1960.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. Interesting. So you are quite familiar in a way
18with the kinds of documents, Foreign Office, diplomatic
19documents, that we have been looking at in this court this
20morning, for example. The ones with the serial numbers,
21the six digit serial numbers stamped on the bottom?
22 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] The ones with the serial numbers are the ones -- those
23serial numbers are the way we recorded them on our index
24cards. They represent the serial number of the individual
25film and the frame number of the particular page.
26 Q. [Mr Irving] The British, in fact, captured all the German Foreign
1Office records?
2 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] They fell into the hands mainly of the British and
3Americans, were collected in Berlin and were evacuated.
4The whole project for editing them and publishing them was
5evacuated from Berlin at the time of the Berlin airlift.
6 Q. [Mr Irving] Did they go to a place called Waddon Hall?
7 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Waddon Hall near Bletchley, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving] Near Bletchley, near the code breaking establishment?
9 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes. We had no relationship with them at all.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] Nobody knew about them?
11 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Well, we knew they were there. There wee too many of them
12to be concealed and some of them played their part in
13ordinary social activities, but what they were actually
14doing, no, we did not know.
15 Q. [Mr Irving] Would you give the court, in most general terms, one or
16two lines, a picture of the scale and scope of the
17captured German documentation? Was it small or large?
18 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Well, at Waddon itself, we had 400 tonnes ----
19 Q. [Mr Irving] 400 tonnes?
20 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] --- of documents covering the records of the German
21Foreign Ministry and of its Prussian predecessor from 1860
22onwards. We also had access to those files of the German
23Navy, the Reichsmarines, had fallen into British hands at
24Blenzburg and we had an odd collection of documents from
25the Nazi leaders, from the offices of the adjutantur of
26the Fuhrer, for example ----
1 Q. [Mr Irving] Hitler's Adjutants?
2 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] --- and a number of private, collections of private papers
3that were found with the Foreign Ministry archives.
4 Q. [Mr Irving] Interrupting here at this moment, Professor Watt. Can I
5just ask you, when did we last meet -- 30 years ago?
6 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] 30 years ago, I think it was, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving] Have we had any discussion about what you are going to be
8saying today beyond just the invitation and my saying that
9it would just be very painful and very short?
10 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No.
11 Q. [Mr Irving] I have not rehearsed you in any way as to what to say?
12 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No.
13 Q. [Mr Irving] In your knowledge, in your time going through the German
14diplomatic documents, and I appreciate you did not read
15the entire 400 tonnes -- nor can I claim to have read the
16400 tonnes of German documents -- were any documents there
17which came to your attention which showed a Hitler order
18for what we can call the Holocaust in the sense of the
19extermination of the Jews?
20 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I would not come across them because my work was confined,
21where the original documents were concerned, to the years
221933/1937, and where the editorial work was concerned, to
23the documents from 1939 to 1940. I never had occasion to
24go in and look individually at the later documents. We
25worked with the Nuremberg files and, of course, I was
26familiar with the evidence that was produced at Nuremberg
1which dealt with war crimes and I have been consulted
2about this from time to time.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] Did you have discussions with your colleagues at the
4Research Department about the progress of their work when
5they were working on different periods?
6 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No, because the whole project was concerned in the years
7I was attached to it to completing series D of the
8documents which ended with Pearl Harbour, and to
9completing or doing the whole of the work on the years
101933, 1937, which were published as Series C in the
11documents. I never had any direct dealings with documents
12dealing with the ----
13 Q. [Mr Irving] War years?
14 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] --- war years beyond that, no.
15 Q. [Mr Irving] You never heard from one of your colleagues there that
16they had found, stumbled across, a document of the sort
17that I mentioned, that Hitler had given some extraordinary
18orders about killing the Jews or any other ethnic minority
19or persecuted people directly involving Hitler?
20 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No, but I cannot think, see why that would have arisen in
21our discussions. We were working eight to nine hours a
22day on the very large quantities of documents. Each
23document was read by members of two countries.
24I collaborated mainly with the Frenchmen.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] You are familiar, Professor, also with some of the other
26document collections outside your own area of expertise
1because of research at that time for the Foreign Office
2because, of course, you have written a number of
3distinguished works where you have had to draw on
4collections outside the Waddon Hall collection?
5 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Oh, I have worked in the archives, in the American
6archives, for the '30s. I worked in the Public Record
7Office. I have worked in British private collections and
8I have worked on published documents from all those
9European countries I had direct access to and those which
10were translated into languages I could read.
11 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, from your knowledge of these archives that
12you worked in, the Public Record Office in London, the
13national archives in the United States, the Foreign Office
14collection in this country and elsewhere, would you say
15that the records of the Third Reich, one way and another,
16either in original ribbon copy or in carbon copy, are
17largely intact, give or take a few holes of what the
18Russians took?
19 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No, there are very substantial gaps in the later period.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] In the later period?
21 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] From 1941 onwards.
22 Q. [Mr Irving] In specific departments, like the SS or the Army or the
23Air Force?
24 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I think that the gaps are consistent with the files not
25ending up in an archive and where they did to destruction
26by one means or another, and to their falling into hands
1of people who wanted to hang on them.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] For example, when the Germany archives at Potsdam was
3burned down in an air raid, that kind of thing?
4 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] That kind of thing and, in fact, some of the, one of the
5worst accidents was when a couple of trucks carrying
6German Foreign Ministry records in the Secret
7classification collided with one another and caught fire,
8and we had only fragments, burnt fragments, and the more
9you touched them, the more they disintegrated.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, may I ask you, you may not
11know the answer, but was there evidence that documents had
12systematically had gone missing in the sense that somebody
13had said, "We must take out a particular category of
14documents" or not?
15 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Not in the Foreign Ministry, sir, because, my Lord, the
16German Foreign Ministry practice, as we found out when we
17were looking at the documents dealing with the origins of
18the First World War, was either to deny the existence of
19files which were relevant or, in a number of cases, to
20unstitch the backs of them and to remove the documents so
21that the researcher was presented with what he understood
22to be a complete file but was not. Since in no case were
23the researchers allowed access to the registries where all
24these documents were and that one had noted, this kind of
25gap misled a number of very prominent American scholars.
26 MR IRVING: Professor Watt, can I ask, when was this
1unstitching done? Are you suggesting after the war or
2during the war?
3 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No, no. It was done by the political archive in the late
420s and 30s.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] But not relating to the Third Reich records?
6 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No, because the issue of anybody looking at them from
7outside would not have arisen at that stage.
8 Q. [Mr Irving] Thank you. So, by and large, the records of entire
9departments are there, but sometimes there are gaps where
10individual accidents happen, trucks colliding, buildings
11burned down, but then there would have been copies
13 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Not necessarily, no. We were helped by the gentleman
14called Leursche who had filmed a great many of the
15important documents before the originals were destroyed
16and, indeed, there was a great deal of dispute over the
17genuineness of the text of the Nazis in 1939 discovered
18that this was photostat.
19 Q. [Mr Irving] How safe is it to draw negative conclusions in the way
20that I sometimes do (if I may ask a leading question) on
21the basis of the fact that there is in the body of
22documents now existing 55 years later, after we have
23access to just about everything, including the Bletchley
24Park intercepts which are enormous, how safely can one say
25because there is not a document there, in your expert
26view, Professor Watt, would it be perverse to say the fact
1that there is no such document after 55 years, it would be
2perverse to say that, therefore, this document probably
3did not exist?
4 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I think there are two problems with that argument. One is
5that the range of the destruction is something which we
6cannot know because Nazi principles of registration of
7documents were, to put it mildly, somewhat amateurish.
8Secondly, the distribution of documents within the offices
9over which the Nazi amateurs had taken control was very
10peculiar; and, thirdly, as with other major leaders of
11other countries at that time, there are periods in which
12they did not confide their thoughts to anybody else, or to
13anybody else who might have recorded them.
14 That was, I think, the reason why the first
15sight or the first news about the Hitler diaries, alleged
16Hitler diaries, was for a moment so uplifting a piece of
17information. I came to hear about it when I had just come
18back from Finland and I had missed all the previous
19kerfuffle about it. My first reaction was at last
20something is going to fill in the gaps, but then, of
21course, I realized that it was not.
22 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, you are familiar with the way the German
23documents look, Civil Servant documents. They had a kind
24of standard layout, did they not?
25 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Those that came from professional offices, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving] How would you classify the SS in this respect? Would the
1documents of the SS that came into Abteilung in
2Langswei ----
3 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I think there it depended very largely whether the SS man
4concerned was a trained bureaucrat or not.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] There was actually a Civil Service regulation, a manual,
6I believe, on how documents had to be laid out, the
7reference number, the address, the location of the address
8list, and so on?
9 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] That is true, but there was also a very, the sort of macho
10SS type who says, "Do not bother me with all this
11nonsense". So that one cannot, I think, read anything out
12of this one way or another.
13 Q. [Mr Irving] Are you familiar with German security classifications?
14 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes, up to Top Secret and so on, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving] If a document is marked "Vertraulich", is that round about
16the lowest security classification, "Confidential"?
17 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I suppose so, yes. It is somewhere between "Restricted"
18and "Confidential" in the British classification.
19 Q. [Mr Irving] We will stick to the British classification because the
20American classifications are different, are they not?
21 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving] For example, American "Top Secret" is our Most Secret. If
23we go up the next rung in the ladder "Geheim"?
24 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] "Geheim" is" Secret.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] The one above that, we then divide?
26 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] "Streng geheim", "hochts geheim". The problem with that
1kind of document is exactly the same as one has in the
2British system, that there is a tendency to overclassify
3simply to emphasise the importance of the individual and
4of the post that he has occupied. It is not a very good
6 Q. [Mr Irving] If you were to be shown a document in which the
7classification "Geheim" had been upgraded manually to
8"Geheim Kommandosache"?
9 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] Then that would apply that somebody attached importance to
11the increased security rating?
12 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] It would certainly imply that somebody did, yes.
13Whether ----
14 Q. [Mr Irving] Conversely, if somebody had crossed out the
15"Kommandosache" and left it just as "Geheim", that would
16imply that they thought it was overclassified?
17 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] That is certainly true.
18 Q. [Mr Irving] And this would indicate that the person who wrote that
19document did attach importance to security
20classifications; he was being pernickety?
21 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Either that or he was engaged in a feud with the person
22who had first put the original grade on. I do not think
23you could arrive at any distinct generalization without
24looking at the document concerned.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] There is a parting of the ways, is there not, in this top
26security classification of Geheim Kommandosache on the
1Army documents, roughly speaking, and Geheim Reichsache on
2the political documents?
3 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Those were classifications which go back before the Nazi
4period, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] But normally you find Geheim Reichsache --
7 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes, that would be -- certainly if one found that from the
8Wehrmacht(?) period, one would regard that as the top
10 Q. [Mr Irving] Then there another one on top of that which is "Nur durch
11offizier", "Only by officer's hand"?
12 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] No. That is an instruction as to how the documents should
13be handled. It is a bit like the -- there are very
14similar classifications in the British and it has to do
15with the handling of the document in transition, not with
16the actual -- I would have expected to find "Nur durch
17offizierhande" on a document which was already classified
18as "Geheim" or "Hochstgeheim" or "Sprengheim" or one of
19the classifications of ...
20 Q. [Mr Irving] One of the highest -- "hochstgeheim" is H-O-C-H-S-T?
21 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes, that means "Highest Secret".
22 Q. [Mr Irving] Very rare. I have to admit, I have not seen that. To our
23surprise, we found another secret classification,
24Professor Watt, in the last day or two, on some of the
25documents, "AR". We have come to the conclusion, I think,
26although this speaks against me, that this is the
1classification "Aktion Reinhard". That is a possible or
2probable interpretation.
3 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I never came across anything like that. I had a look at
4the document.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, just remaining on that topic for one more
6question: if you were an historian, as indeed you are, or
7you were teaching historians how to become an historian,
8would you advise them to use the original document or
9facsimile, if possible, rather than use the printed text?
10 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Always, and, indeed, I used to urge my graduate students
11when using secondary works always to check the original
12reference if this was at all possible. The geographical
13distribution of the documents used to meant very often
14that there was not, but where you have to look at the
15original, I mean, where an original document has been
16cited by another author and that seems to play an
17important part in the argument you are using yourself,
18then it is of extreme importance to check the original.
19 I would add that, in my experience and in the
20advice I gave to my students, I always recommended that
21they should take most seriously those documents which
22seemed to support the views that they were in the process
23of supporting. After all, if you are in the process of
24being sold a pup by somebody, the man who is trying to
25deceive you will come as close as possible to what you
26know to be the truth before slipping in the element of
1falseness; and the conflict between the historian's desire
2to arrive at a decision and the insubstantiality of any
3written evidence, or any other evidence, particularly oral
4evidence, or of the kind of man who comes up and says,
5"Never mind what the documents say, I was there and this
6is the real truth", is one which is a constant pitfall in
7our paths and which has mislead a great many people,
8including some extremely important and senior historians
9in the past.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor, I was not going to ask you about eyewitness
11evidence but where would you rank eyewitness evidence on
12the scale, if you had, for example, aerial photographs, if
13you had prisoner of war intelligence, contemporary
14prisoner of war intelligence, if you had intercepts from
15Bletchley Park, if you had captured documents, either
16captured during the war or after the war, and eyewitness
17evidence, in other words, anecdotal evidence and, finally,
18interrogations, whether under oath or not in court, how
19would you classify those in order of reliability, starting
20with the least reliable?
21 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I do not know that there is any way of classifying those,
22because it depends so much on the individual. I did a
23great deal of interviews, particularly in the period
24before the 1967 Public Records Act released documents of
2530 years of age, and in my experience the kind of evidence
26I got differed according to the personality of the person
1giving it.
2 In some cases I found that the man I was
3interviewing had his own documentary record and was
4consulting it, and that what he said was confirmed later.
5In other cases, including at least one Minister of the
6Crown, I was given a very plausible and, for all I know, a
7very true story of a meeting at which he was supposed to
8have been present; and when the records of that meeting
9subsequently became available, it was clear that he was
10not. He should have been, but he just was not that day,
11and he must have heard the story from one of the people
12there and then repeated it.
13 Q. [Mr Irving] But he seriously believed that he had been there?
14 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Well ----
15 Q. [Mr Irving] By he came to tell the story?
16 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] If a gentleman who holds the rank of Admiral of the Fleet
17and is a junior Minister in the Cabinet tells you that he
18is there, one's reaction is not to question him and,
19indeed, it was one of these confirmatory details.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] But ----
21 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] For all I know, the story was true; it is just that the
22man who gave it me alleged that he was present and was
24 Q. [Mr Irving] My question was, Professor, if you remember, at the time
25he told the story he believed that he had been there?
26 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] He may have come to believe it. Memory is a very tricky
2 Q. [Mr Irving] So to repeat my original question, where you would rank on
3that scale of material that is lying before you, at one
4end of the bench you have the eyewitnesses and at the
5other end of the bench you have, for example, the
6Bletchley Park intercepts?
7 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] The Bletchley Park intercepts, in so far as they are
8complete, are always regarded as the most reliable because
9there is no evidence that the dispatcher was aware that
10his messages could be decoded and, therefore, he would put
11truth in them. There are cases, of course, in which
12messages were sent in a code that was expected to broken
13in order to mislead.
14 Q. [Mr Irving] The Japanese Purple Code, for example, the Japanese were
15aware that we were breaking it, is that not so?
16 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] That is not my information.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, I do not know whether you
18know the answer to this question but ----
19 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] That is not my information, no.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] The Bletchley Park intercepts, we have heard of messages
21about the shootings on the Eastern Front going back to
22Berlin and those having been intercepted by Bletchley
23Park, but how wide did it go? What other kind of topics,
24do you know, were intercepted at Bletchley?
25 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] We were reading at different times a very large proportion
26of the Naval codes. We were reading the Abwehr codes. We
1were reading some of the German Army codes. Not all the
2Bletchley Park intercepts have as yet been released, my
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But, on the whole, they were military?
5 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] This is not an area in which I have particular expertise.
6 MR IRVING: We have another expert who we will be calling on
7precisely this, my Lord.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. I need not trouble you further.
9 MR IRVING: Professor Watt, I only intend to detain you for
10another five or 10 minutes at most. Moving away from the
11documentation that you yourself worked with, you have had
12occasion on a number of times to read books that I have
13written on the commission of newspapers who have given the
14job to you to read them or possibly even out of
15entertainment or possibly even because you wanted to use
16them yourself as a source, have you a general comment to
17make on the quality of the research or the writing?
18 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I find your version of Hitler's personality and knowledge
19of the Holocaust, a knowledge of the mass murder of the
20Jews, a very difficult one to accept. That, of course, is
21a view that I have expressed in the reviews I wrote of
22your Hitler's War, in the review I wrote of the Goring and
23the Goebbels' biographies.
24 I find in other areas where your particular
25political convictions are not involved, I am most
26impressed by the scholarship. There is a book, my Lord,
1which I have brought me which is a second version of the
2book in which I collaborated with Mr Irving back in the
360s which is an edited version of possibly the only
4surviving document of the German research office,
5so-called, which was one of the agencies involved in
6listening to telephone conversations, in decoding
7diplomatic and other ciphers and so on. There were also
8agencies -- there was one run by the Foreign Ministry and
9there was one run by the German armed forces, but this was
10most ----
11 Q. [Mr Irving] Pioneering?
12 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] --- high level one and it was one which, although it had
13people, both of convinced Nazis and those who were
14unconvinced, on its ranks, it certainly enjoyed the
15highest reputation. The document itself is a lengthy
16summary of British policy in the year 1938, 1939.
17 MR IRVING: Professor Watt, have you any comment on the way in
18which I handled the document?
19 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes, this is what I am about to come to. When
20I collaborated with Mr Irving on this ----
21 Q. [Mr Irving] You wrote the introduction to the book.
22 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] --- after my discovery of it, I only had one basic
23document on the subject of the [German] which was the
24evidence of a man who was then unnamed which was provided
25me by a German organization. Mr Irving's second version
26of this is, I think, a major contribution to our knowledge
1on the subject. He has worked very effectively. He has
2interviewed large numbers of people. He has identified
3the British and American reports on the organization. The
4British ones, I may say, I am in the process of trying to
5persuade the authorities to release because they are
6available in America but not here.
7 I find it -- invaluable is perhaps too strong a
8word, but a very, very effective piece of historical
9scholarship, and it is one which does not deal with the
10issues on which Mr Irving is complaining.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask this, as a military historian,
12and I underline the word "military", how do you rate
13Mr Irving?
14 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I think Mr Irving is not in the top class, but as a
15historian of Hitler's war seems to ----
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is what I meant.
17 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] --- I think his is a view which, even if one disagrees
18with it, has to be taken seriously. He is, after all, the
19only man of standing, on the basis of his other research,
20who puts the case for Hitler forward and it seems to me
21that it is mistaken to dismiss it. It requires the most
22careful examination, though, I must say, I hope that I am
23never subjected to the kind of examination that
24Mr Irving's books have been suggested to by the Defence
25witnesses. I have a very strong feeling that there are
26other senior historical figures, including some to whom
1I owed a great deal of my own career, whose work would not
2stand up, or not all of whose work would stand up, to this
3kind of examination -----
4 MR IRVING: Would you like to mention some names?
5 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] --- and I think that would be a ----
6 Q. [Mr Irving] Selous ^^ Namier, perhaps, would you?
7 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Well, Namier ^^ I would mention because it was the first
8article I ever published -- the rash youth that I was, my
9Lord -- was an attack upon him and I am told that it was
10passed around Baliol College in plain brown wrappers
11because it caused such a sensation.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, when you said what you have
13just said about Hitler (sic) as a military historian, you
14are talking ----
15 MR IRVING: Irving.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- not really of what he has written about
17the Jewish problem; is that right?
18 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I am talking about his whole case for Hitler. I think it
19is difficult to divide this man's personality. I do not
20think he has solved what to me is the mystery which is the
21extraordinary third rate nature of Hitler's mind from
22personality and thoughts. How he could have managed to
23suck into his own private fantasy world the whole of
24Europe and the major powers and so on is one of the
25historical mysteries which I yet to see anyone tackle.
26I am waiting for the second volume of the latest
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is one of the few issues we do not have to
3tackle here either, so...
4 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] But it is a case, I think, of whether one is arguing about
5the key or the lock.
6 MR IRVING: Professor Watt, can I put this to you? I will read
7it out as that is the simplest way of doing it. It is
8attached to the back of the little sheaf of documents
9I gave my Lord. (Document not provided) Professor Watt,
10it is the review in the Daily Telegraph. It is the only
11review I am going to put to you. "On June 16th 1977, when
12you were invited to review my book Hitler's War, which was
13the first edition, am only going to read one paragraph.
14Mr Irving's views on Hitler's position in relation to the
15massacre of European Jewry are well known. He believes
16the massacre was organized by Himmler and Heydrich without
17Hitler's knowledge, a belief he rests on the absence of
18any direct evidence of Hitler's knowledge and the
19existence of certain specific orders in specific cases
20that there was to be no liquidation. From these negatives
21he deduces the positive, backed by evidence from the
22survivors of Hitler's immediate entourage that the matter
23was never mentioned in their presence at all". This is
24yourself writing, Professor Watt?
25 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving] "To this argument each historian would have apply his own
1judgment." You do not say straightaway what an absurd
2idea, what a perverse kind of reading of the documents.
3You carry on by saying, Professor Watt, "For myself
4I found it initially not unpersuasive, having read the
5book, until I reflected on the character of Himmler". At
6that point I propose to stop. In other words, that was
7your position at the time you had freshly read the book?
8 MR RAMPTON: May I interrupt? Could Mr Irving please complete
9the paragraph?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, because I do not have that document in
11front of me.
12 MR IRVING: "I found it unimaginable", yes, why not, "I found
13it unimaginable that he could proceed on so vast an
14enterprise without obtaining his master's approval". To
15put it the other way round, you imagined that he did
16obtain his master's approval, Professor Watt? Is that
17so? Is that what you are saying? You imagined that he
18must have obtained Hitler's approval?
19 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I assumed that, given his character, he would have at
20least thought he had Hitler's approval.
21 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] The difficulty in dealing with Hitler is that he himself
23defines secrecy in four different categories, the top one
24being ideas that I have not myself finally resolved, and
25the next one being ideas that I do not communicate to
26anybody. Then there is the James bond like category, for
1your eyes only, or, as Germans say, between four eyes, and
2then there is the normal category. It is in that area
3where the absence of evidence to my mind, it is a
4historical challenge but I do not think that it is
5conclusive in the way other people have assumed it is.
6 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, I do not to labour the point too much
7because, of course, it is well known that in my
8biographies of Hitler I have accepted that after October
91943, after Himmler's famous speech at Posun, the way
10I put it is that Hitler had no excuse for not knowing.
11Would this be a perverse reading of the situation, that he
12had no excuse for not knowing from that time on? He could
13not really get away with saying, I did not know what was
14going on? Am I wrong in suggesting that?
15 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] The difficulty is that Hitler's theory of the state,
16anything that was done in the state was done in his name.
17He would justify it retrospectively if he did not know
18about it. This is an area, I am talking here not having
19done the kind of detailed work which is in front of the
20court on this, and I am simply producing a judgment based
21on the work I have done on Hitler ----
22 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, if I was William Showler writing a book
23about the rise and fall of the Third Reich, then quite
24clearly this was Hitler's fault, this was Hitler's
25responsibility. But, if you have a student who is writing
26an examination of Adolf Hitler's personal responsibility,
1which is germane to the issues before the court, then you
2do come up against a bit of brick wall as far as
3acceptable evidence goes. You really have to start using
4what you yourself call your imagination. You imagine that
5Hitler probably, you cannot imagine that he did not, and
6this kind of thing, and that is very dangerous, would you
7not agree? It is a dangerous kind of basis. Imagination
8is a picking on a particular word I used here because
9I was trying very hard to present a review of your book,
10which did not descend into denouncing it as being contrary
11to what everybody knows.
12 Q. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, do you wish me to read any more of that
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It would save me from doing so.
15 MR IRVING: "For myself, I found it initially not unpersuasive
16until I reflected on the character of Himmler"- this is
17yourself writing, Professor Watt. "I found it unimaginable
18that he could proceed on so vast an enterprise without
19obtaining his master's approval. Heydrich would have been
20another matter. There are very large areas in which we
21have only the slenderest of indications as to what was
22going on in Hitler's mind. Like Roosevelt, he said
23different things to different audiences but, like
24Roosevelt, he committed nothing of his own thoughts to
25paper. In such circumstances inference is a legitimate
26historical method." Is that enough, Mr Rampton?
1 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Then I go on to say "But to infer Hitler's ignorance, to
2assume that Himmler and his minions went beyond the limits
3of what Hitler had approved, seems to assume something
4inherently improbable and out of keeping with all we know
5of Himmler's relationship to Hitler". What I am getting
6at there is that again, as in so much of this biographical
7approach, there is a kind of build your own Hitler, build
8your own Roosevelt, build your own Himmler, out of kits
9which are supplied.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] There are different images. There is the Madison Avenue
12 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] My feeling about Himmler was that he was a man who was
13almost incapable of originating anything himself unless he
14had what he thought was approval from above, that he was a
15man who was dependent on approval of those whom he
17 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, Himmler's brother actually told me the
18same. He said, I cannot imagine Heinny would have done
19this on his own. He said he was a bit of a coward. I
20think I mentioned this also in my books.
21 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Towards the end, he began to lose confidence in Hitler and
22he became open to the sort of arguments that were advanced
23by senior SS officers, the belief that the Allies would
24make a separate peace with him and so on, and he reached a
25point where Hitler believed that he was being betrayed,
26and there is an expression of his disbelief at this.
1 Q. [Mr Irving] But that is another story, as they say. Can I draw
2attention to the fact that the passages we read out were
3written by you in June 1977, in view of the fact that 23
4years have passed and still no document has come to light
5to shake the notion which you considered at that time
6inherently improbable, would you consider that my notion
7has become slightly more sustainable?
8 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I think I would be reluctant to change my mind about
9that. What I should say, however, is that the challenge
10that you then raise to the historical profession.
11 Q. [Mr Irving] The thousand pound offer?
12 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I was not thinking of money. I was thinking simply of the
13challenge of putting forward the sort of views you did and
14basing them on historical research, rather than
15ideological conviction, or at least seemingly so, has
16directly resulted in an enormous outburst of research into
17the ----
18 Q. [Mr Irving] Holocaust?
19 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] - into the massacres of the Jews, into the Holocaust and so
20on, which is now so large an area of historical research
21that it can support journals, it can support conferences.
22I see that there are three scheduled in Britain this
23coming year and that I myself am appearing in one in
24America in March. This, I think, is a direct result of
25the challenge which Mr Irving's work and the consistency
26and the effort which he has put into maintaining it in
1public, has resulted in somewhat similar ----
2 Q. [Mr Irving] Would you describe my notion as being perverse? Would you
3use that kind of word to describe it?
4 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] This is an argument about nominalism. I think that it is
5perverse in relation to the values of western society, as
6I understand them. I do not think it is perverse,
7speaking as a historian. I have seen more perverse
8arguments put forward, for example the gentleman who
9maintained that Stalin hardly killed anybody, who held an
10academic post of some importance in an American
11university. I gather that he has now changed his mind as
12a result of being shown the KGB records and is editing a
13book which is hastily changing his position.
14 I think to maintain that America entered the
15Second World War as a result of the machinations of
16British security authorities in New York is perverse.
17I think that the views that Stalin was about to attack
18Hitler when Hitler attacked Stalin, which is a view that
19apparently commands a certain amount of support in America
20and Germany and Israel, is perverse.
21 There are areas of perversity and indeed the
22late Alan Clark's support for an eminent British
23historian's views that Chamberlain could have made peace
24with Hitler in 1937, and that somebody else besides
25Churchill have made piece with Hitler in 1940, I regard
26these as perverse. There is a lot of perversity about, if
1one is to use that word in historical terms.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] I hasten to say that those are not the issues that are
3before the court, Professor Watt?
4 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I know, but one has to put this kind of argument, it seems
5to me, in the general context of what historians, I think
6Professor Evans and I share views on the responsibilities
7of historians to tell the truth as we see it, and to be
8extremely careful and professional in our use of evidence,
9but I cannot say that the evidence that we both confront
10in the writing of history generally altogether lives up to
11those expectations.
12 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, from what you know of my writings, do you
13believe that, if a document were now to be presented to me
14tomorrow morning in one of your plain brown envelopes,
15utterly confounding me in the issues that are before the
16court, I would hesitate for one moment to bring them to
17the attention my readers and that I would in some way
18suppress them, or do you believe, on the contrary, that in
19fact I would make them known immediately?
20 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I have no knowledge myself of times when you have
21suppressed evidence. But then our paths have not lain
22together very often.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] We are nearly at the end of this examination-in-chief,
24Professor. You wrote a review, you may remember, some
25years ago of my biography of Herman Goring for the Sunday
1 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] It was the principal review in the review section that
3week as indeed most of my books were reviewed very
4prominently in my hey day. You began the review with the
5words which I shall never forget, "David Irving is one of
6Britain's most disliked historians but ..." Do you
7remember writing those words?
8 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I have not looked at that cutting recently, but I find it
9quite likely that I wrote it.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] Quite likely that you wrote it! You did not of course
11stand in Oxford Street with a clip board asking the
12passers-by who their most disliked historian was, so this
13was just a subjective value judgment?
14 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I think so. That would be fair comment.
15 Q. [Mr Irving] It is not, of course, a historian's job to be liked, is
17 A. [Professor Cameron Watt] I do not regard the public's general view of historical
18facts as something against which one cannot appeal.
19 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor Watt, would I be wrong in suggesting that the
20reason you used that sentence was because, on balance, you
21proposed to write a very favourable review of the book,
22which in fact it was, but you needed to purchase the right
23to so by saying something wicked?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have the review. I think it will speak
25for itself. I do not think that is a helpful question.
26 MR IRVING: It is in connection with the next point, which is
1why I have had to issue a witness summons. I see your
2Lordship wagging your Lordship's head.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt was not anxious to come
4voluntarily. That must be the reason. There is so much
5we have to deal with, I just wonder whether those points
6are worth struggling with.
7 MR IRVING: In that case I will end the examination at that
8point. Professor Watt, thank you very much indeed.
9 MR RAMPTON: I have no questions.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, thank you very much indeed
11for coming.
12 <(The witness withdrew)
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to pause to collect your
14thoughts, Mr Irving? If you did, I would understand.
15 MR IRVING: I think a five-minute pause might be acceptable.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the transcriber would welcome that.
17 MR IRVING: Then how are we going to proceed, my Lord? With
18the argument or continue with the cross-examination?
19I would propose, if I may be so humble as to submit, that
20we should have the argument after lunch.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am prepared to fit in with whatever you
22would prefer, unless Mr Rampton tells me that is going to
23be very inconvenient.
24 MR RAMPTON: I have only one more evidence point that I want to
25deal with before I start on Auschwitz. I was going to
26start on Auschwitz today, not unless your Lordship tells
1me I must, on the technical stuff, but on Mr Irving's own
2utterances about it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So Holocaust denial rather than Auschwitz.
4 MR RAMPTON: Auschwitz denial plus Holocaust denial. That is
5where I propose to start. Professor van Pelt has only
6just got here. I do not have the technical stuff in court
7with me, but I do have one more question in relation to
8Hitler's knowledge, Hitler's orders, which I could not ask
9yesterday because I did not have the document, but I have
10it now.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How long will that take?
12 MR RAMPTON: Well, unpredictable, but it is about two
13questions. That is not fair.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: About half an hour. Shall we dispose of that
15and then have the argument and, if it is after lunch, it
16is after lunch. If it is slightly before lunch, so be
17it. We will have a five-minute break.
18 (Short Adjournment)
19< MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.
20< Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC, continued.
21 MR RAMPTON: May Mr Irving be supplied with the Dr Longerich
22report, please?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Rampton. For some reason
25which I do not understand, my Longerich has gone
26missing. We were looking at it this morning so it must
1have got left behind.
2 MR RAMPTON: It may be that we can manage without it, but
3I rather think not.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is a spare, I would be grateful.
5Otherwise I will do my best.
6 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, could you please turn to page 71 of the
7first part of this report? I will start on page 70. As
8usual, I always forget the context. I would like to start
9at 19.6 on page 70, my Lord. Now we are at the end of
101942: "For a report to Hitler on 10 December 1942 Himmler
11set up a handwritten list of the points which he wanted to
12bring up. Under 'II. SD and police affairs' Himmler
13specified as point 4 the following key words" -- I have
14added the S -- "Jews in France, -- 6-700,000, other
16 Then on page 71 Dr Longerich writes this: "Next
17to these key words can be found a tick and in Himmler's
18own handwriting the word 'abolished' (abschaffen): Himmler
19had thus brought up these points with Hitler and received
20permission from him to 'abolish' ie to liquidate (says Dr
21Longerich) the estimated 600,000 to 700,000 Jews in France
22as well as 'other enemies'."
23 I am going to read on, if I may: "After the
24meeting, Himmler sent a note to Muller, head of the
25Gestapo, in which he stated: The Fuhrer gave orders that
26the Jews and other enemies in France should be arrested
1and deported. This should take place, however, only once
2he has spoken with Laval about it. It is a matter of
36-700,000 Jews.
4 "Two months later, in February 1943, Eichmann,
5on a brief visit to Paris visited submitted a maximum
6programme for the deportation of all Jews living in France
7including those with French citizenship.
8 "At the meeting on 10 December 1942 Himmler
9presented Hitler with a proposal to set up a work camp for
10Jewish hostages from France, Hungary and Romania, for
11altogether 10,000 people. According to a handwritten note
12by Himmler, Hitler accepted this proposal. After the
13meeting, Himmler sent an order to Muller to concentrate
14these 10,000 people in a 'special camp' (Sonderlager). He
15stated: 'Certainly they should work there, but under
16conditions whereby they remain healthy and alive'".
17 So far as the documentary references there are
18concerned, or citations are concerned, Mr Irving, do you
19quarrel with anything that Dr Longerich has written?
20 A. [Mr Irving] With very many things, yes. First of all, the figure of
21600,000 to 700,000 is completely improper. I am not
22saying it is not a genuine document, but it is
23characteristic of the gross exaggeration that SS indulged
24in. There were not 6 or 700,000 Jews in France. There
25were a total of 240,000 Jews, of whom about 40,000 had
26already been deported by the time this conference took
1place, so it is an exaggeration by a factor of three or
2four. It is characteristic of what goes on. We were
3talking yesterday about this bus in Serbia with 90,000
4people or 70,000 people being gassed in the space of 35
5days. That would have meant 38 people being gassed every
6hour in each bus. That kind of figure is completely
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Pause there. That is the first thing you do not like
9about this, but it is not a criticism of Dr Longerich's
10account of the document, is it?
11 A. [Mr Irving] You asked me if I had any comments and you gave a very
12pertinent comment, that this is characteristic of the
13exaggeration which goes on when we come to numbers.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I follow that. That is a criticism of Himmler, not of
16 A. [Mr Irving] I do have criticisms of Longerich, of course.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will come to those in a moment. Let us deal with one
18thing at a time, otherwise we are going to be shadow
19boxing and I do not like that, Mr Irving.
20 A. [Mr Irving] You are relying here on the handwritten note. Of course,
21Himmler typed up a memorandum in which he used different
22words after this.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, please do not second guess. Do not jump your
24fences until you get to them, please?
25 A. [Mr Irving] You asked me for comments, Mr Rampton. I am sure you do
26not like the comments I give you.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I asked you for your first comment. I am now going to deal
2with your first comment, and I am going to deal with your
3comments, to use your word, seriatim. Could Mr Irving and
4his Lordship please be given these documents? This has a
5marking on it. The other document your Lordship can just
6throw away afterwards. It is only in case there is
7anything in it which Mr Irving wants to refer to.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where shall we put them?
9 MR RAMPTON: The first one is probably going to go eventually
10into the core file, but it is a Longerich document which
11was, until last night, not there. I now have a copy of
12it. It could, my Lord, at the moment just go perhaps at
13the front or back of Longerich, part one, or, as I have
14done, hole punched on the other side opposite the passage
15in the text. The other two pieces of paper, my Lord,
16which I have stapled together so that it is clear they are
17separate are two pages from the Himmler dienstkalender?
18 A. [Mr Irving] From this book?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, that is right, by Witte and others, the version of
20it. One reason to give your Lordship the dienstkalender
21extract is that the way in which the words are printed in
22the dienstkalender shows that this is a document which
23comes from the Berlin archive and not from the recently
24discovered Moscow archive?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I have had this one for a long time. I have had this one
26for 30 years.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, exactly. That is point number one. Point number 2,
2if one looks at the Himmler manuscript, at the very top
3right hand corner, somebody has written 10.12.42. Your
4Lordship need not look at it, but it is to be noted,
5I expect Mr Irving knows this, that the editors of the
6dienstkalender say that that has been written in by an
7unknown hand?
8 A. [Mr Irving] It was not on it when I had it because that is not on my
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly, so I am not asking anybody to accept that that is
11Himmler's dating.
12 A. [Mr Irving] No, the date is 10th December. I had a lot of
13trouble -- these are all loose pages in the original file
14but, using internal evidence, you can put them back into
15the correct sequence.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us get into the minutia if we do
17not need to be.
18 MR RAMPTON: No. I do not need to know the history. I just
19need to know whether the date ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The figure of 600 to 700,000 Jews is
21challenged as being a wild exaggeration.
22 MR RAMPTON: Against that entry, on the manuscript "Juden in
23Frankreich 6-700,000 zunstiger Finde", is the word, is it
24not, in Himmler's spidery Gothic, "Abschaffen"?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, in green crayon actually - "Abschaffen". Can we look
26in your Langenscheit dictionary?
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, because if we are agreed that is what it
2says, let us move on.
3 MR RAMPTON: No, will you stop asking me questions, please,
4Mr Irving.
5 A. [Mr Irving] I am not asking questions. I am stating that it is the
6wrong translation by Longerich. He said quite happily
7"Abschaffen" means "abolish" which he then by a quantum
8leap says "exterminate".
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] You must give me credit for having had some foresight
10about what you are going to say. Give us, please, your
11version of the word "Abschaffen"?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, why don't we just see what Langenscheidt, the
13dictionary, says?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, tell me what you think it means.
15 A. [Mr Irving] "Abschaffen" means ----
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Get rid of?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I mean, even "get rid of" in this kind of context is
18difficult, but we are aided by the fact that there is
19another version of this document which you have not put
20before the court, Mr Rampton.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have not got it.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us do one thing at a time. What do you
23say "Abschaffen" signifies? Do not worry about the
24translation of it, but what do you say that Himmler had in
25mind when he wrote "Abschaffen" against the French Jews?
26 A. [Mr Irving] "Remove".
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] "Remove", right.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is a neutral word, in other words, my Lord, with no
3kind of -- yes, you have.
4 MR RAMPTON: The root of the word -- I am doing a little bit of
5etymology myself, Mr Irving, if you will forgive me ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] I thought that was butterfly clothing.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- the root of the word is "create". So the word means
8literally "discreate", does it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I disagree. "Schaffen" is one of those words like "get".
10It is a word which has any number of different meanings,
11like get in, get out, get up, get hot, and so on. It is a
12multi-purpose word, a multi-purpose root.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You quite like my little schoolboy -- it is not mine, it
14is my son's -- Langenscheit, do you not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] You are going to ambush me, I can sense it.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You actually put your head in the noose yourself,
17Mr Irving. You asked for it literally. "Abschaffen",
18verb transitive, abolish, discontinue, repeal, abrogate,
19redress, suppress, do away with, get rid of, give up
20keeping, end of definitions?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I like the tenth meaning there, "do away with". But we
22are helped, fortunately, as I have mentioned, by the fact
23that we have a typed version of this document also.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] And?
25 A. [Mr Irving] On that it says "Abtransportieren" which means "transport
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. That is exactly my point, as you probably
2understood, Mr Irving. When Himmler is sitting in private
3with Hitler, in response to his request for information or
4instructions what to do with these French Jews, and I am
5coming to the number in a moment, these 6 to 700,000
6French Jews, he writes down, not the word
7"Abtransportieren", or whatever it is, he writes down the
8word "Abschaffen".
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now, when it comes to the point about what is to go into
11the official record and how the orders are to be
12transmitted onwards via Muller, it translates itself as a
13necessary first step towards extermination, "arrest and
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if we leave out the bit about "as a necessary first
16step towards deportation", yes, that is absolutely what it
17says, but the rest was your personal interpolation.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course, but, you see, Mr Irving, do we find this
19anywhere in your books, this ----
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- Himmler log entry?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am the first person to have found it and have used it,
25if I can keep on making that point.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have not the references so maybe you will tell me and
1I will look at them later. How in those books do you
2translate the word "Abschaffen".
3 A. [Mr Irving] Bear with me for a moment.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is it, "Hitler's War"?
5 A. [Mr Irving] It will be in "Hitler's War" in all the editions.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us look at 1991, shall we? Are you on
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I only have the bound volume of the original
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, all right. Let us use '77.
11 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think in 1991 it is likely to be in
12part 2 because the book is written more or less ----
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but Mr Irving has the 1977 version, so
14shall we use that? It will be part 2 of that too, will it
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes. (To the witness): Can you tell us, roughly
17speaking, where 1943 starts in Hitler's War 1977?
18 A. [Mr Irving] About page 450.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you. So it will be volume 2 of that, my Lord.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we are looking for it, we will take a lot
21of time. Do you think we might come back to this?
22 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I will come back to it.
23 MR RAMPTON: I would be grateful. It is my fault, but the
24index does not help.
25 A. [Mr Irving] So your point is that Himmler writes down the word that
26may actually have been used between the two of them.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] May have been. I quite agree it may not be verbatim
4Hitler's word, but Himmler has certainly written down, has
5he not, what he thinks Hitler's intention is, has he not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then when we get what one might call the bureaucratic type
8version, that word is transformed ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] Unambiguously.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, as you say -- into another form which is deport?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] And, of course, as one must expect, there is then an order
15from Himmler to Muller that they should be deported?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] You grumble about Himmler's exaggeration of the numbers.
18Have you noticed a suggestion -- it is in that Witte --
19that in that figure he was including all the Jews in the
20French colonies, particularly those in North Africa?
21 A. [Mr Irving] That is not what the document actually says. It says Jews
22in ----
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will find that in note 44.
24 A. [Mr Irving] --- Jews in France. I know that the French consider those
25colonies, or some of them, to be part of the metropolitan
26in France, but I think that in this document that would be
1stretching the point. I am not going to quibble about
2that. I just wanted to draw attention to the tendency to
3exaggerate figures.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] It might not be an intentional exaggeration, might it? It
5might be -- I am not saying whether it was or not --
6I quite agree with you there were never 600,000 Jews
7living in France at this time.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Let alone 700,000.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure it really matters very much.
10 MR RAMPTON: It does not matter at all. But then what happened
11next, leave out paragraph 19.8 of Longerich, apparently on
12the same day (and I am afraid I do not have this document)
13"Himmler made a suggestion or proposal to Hitler that
14there should be a work camp set up for Jewish hostages
15from France, Hungary and Rumania", three different
16countries, "for a total 10,000 people"?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, except we are not be given the actual quotation or
18document or it is just ----
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
20 A. [Mr Irving] --- summarized.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know of that document?
22 A. [Mr Irving] This is an important point, because there are other
23documents that he does not refer to.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is in the IFZ, this document.
25 A. [Mr Irving] It, presumably, comes from one of the Himmler microfilms.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. You do not recall seeing this document?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do. After the meeting, he goes on, Dr Longerich:
3"Himmler sent an order to Muller to concentrate these
410,000 in a 'special camp' (Sonderlager). He stated:
5'Certainly they should work there but under conditions
6whereby they remain healthy and alive." You notice the
7way I read it?
8 A. [Mr Irving] we are moving ahead at very great speed on this.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are still on 10th December 1942.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but we have already gone past the paragraph 19.7 at
11the top of page 71 of Longerich and I did want to draw the
12court's attention to this very bold and adventurous leap
13from the word "Abschaffen" with the neutral connotations
14in only one line's length to using the word "liquidate"
15which is certainly not used between these two top Nazis.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Dispose of" is what you use, I think?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Thank you very much, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. That is not a very benign word, is it, "disposal"?
19 A. [Mr Irving] No, but ----
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is on page 462 of 1977.
21 A. [Mr Irving] One has this terrible problem when translating German,
22when you have these multi-purpose words, to strike the
23right nuance without leaning too far in one direction or
24the other.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see, in 1977, for want of a better word, you believed
26still in the Holocaust, did you not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I believed in the factories of death element of the
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. You had no difficulty in 1977 in reading the word
4"Abschaffen" as Fuhrerwunsch, if that is the right thing,
5that these 6 to 700,000 Jews should be disposed of, not
6removed from France, that has to happen first, obviously?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, "disposed of" also does not necessarily imply
8killing, but contains -- it is one nuance in that
9direction from the dead centre neutral meaning of the
10word, and I believe Miss Rogers will be able to establish
11that I then continued by stating immediately afterwards
12what the typed version of the document says which is
13"transport away".
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] That may be so. I do not know. She is trying to find the
15reference in 1991.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may not be there at all?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it certainly is, my Lord.
19 MR RAMPTON: It is there, but in a footnote.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: She will find it eventually. Let us press on
21in the meantime.
22 MR RAMPTON: But do you agree that the translation "disposed
23of", I accept that that is a fair translation of
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I think it is exactly the right nuance.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the nuance -- construct for me, Mr Irving, if you can,
1an English sentence in which, according to natural,
2ordinary meaning, "dispose of" as applied to a person or
3people does not have a connotation of fatality in it?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes, it happens in large companies the whole time,
5downsizing. Additional staff are disposed of. That does
6not mean to say they are sent to the gas chambers.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Disposed of?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is exactly the right nuance that I applied to
9that word. That is my submission.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] So, "These Jews are merely redundant and we have to let
11them go"?
12 A. [Mr Irving] That is right.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. Probably with some nice payment or other?
14 A. [Mr Irving] That is a rather cheap remark, if I may say so.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I know, but, really, Mr Irving, do you really think that
16is what Himmler meant when wrote "Abschaffen"?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I remind you that this is a private note being written by
18Himmler for his own private files.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Precisely.
20 A. [Mr Irving] He had no reason to use euphemisms. If they had said
21"liquidate", as we have seen on other occasions, they
22quite frankly talked about "keine liquiderung", did he
23not? So why would he use a euphemism here?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am suggesting there is absolutely no difference between
25"dispose of" and "liquidate".
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, why would he have used ----
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, in a way, I have the point. I
2understand the basis.
3 A. [Mr Irving] That is an important point. Why would he use a euphemism
4here when he is quite happy to use the plain, blunt
5language elsewhere in his own handwritten notes,
6particularly in view of the fact that when he dictated the
7actual memorandum to Muller, so there could be no dispute,
8he then used "Abtransportieren", to transport away.
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes, of course, and to the East, no doubt?
10 A. [Mr Irving] No, indeed. They were being transported away to barrack
11encampments being built in the Reich. We have the
12documents on that which your Professor Longerich has not
13shown the court.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] What happened to them next?
15 A. [Mr Irving] We do not know, but, unfortunately, Longerich has not
16introduced into his report the evidence that there are
17encampments actually being built for them, reception
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, where was the Sonderlager which is referred to in
20paragraph 19----
21 A. [Mr Irving] Those were the special camps being set up for them.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But when you say "they" were being
23transported to the Reich, are you talking about the 10,000
24or are you talking about -- whether it was 60,000 or
25600,000 does not matter for present purposes?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Off the top of my head, I cannot say, my Lord.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] It may be quite important ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] I agree.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- because one interpretation -- let me put this to you
4and see if you agree -- is that the 10,000 people for one
5reason or another were valuable to the Reich, maybe
6because they whether qualified in some way?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Whereas the rest were not and that was why they were going
9to be "Abgeschaft" or whatever the word would be?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I will remind your Lordship of the fact that on this very
11same day, Himmler and Hitler on another page which is not
12before the court in this passage were discussing selling
13off Jews for hard currency. That may very well be what is
14going to happen to the 10,000 in the Sonderlager.
15 But the French Jews, in fact, ended up to a very
16large degree working in underground aircraft factories and
17so on inside the Reich. From my extraneous knowledge,
18I know that from the biographies I have written of Field
19Marshal Milsche, and so on. I have read the records of
20the Air Ministry conferences so we know what happened.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Is it or is it not a legitimate inference that if that was
22what was going to happen to the 10,000, something more
23sinister was going to happen to the other French Jews?
24 A. [Mr Irving] No, it is not, my Lord. It could be they were going to be
25sent to work, as I say, in the German arms industry or
26building fortifications or whatever which I happen to know
1actually happened. A very large number of these French
2Jews from my own work that I have done previously on the
3biography of Field Marshal Milsche who, on Goring's death,
4would be in charge of German armaments, in charge of the
5aircraft factory, construction industry.
6 It cannot be ignored that I have a lot of
7expertise, if I can call it like that, from other records
8and other books that I have written.
9 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I have found one of these documents,
10but I do not at the moment know which one it is. My Lord,
11it is in H4 (ii) at footnote 183. I think it is at 182
12that I do not have. Have you got that, Mr Irving?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a typed document. Again it looks as if it has been
15taken from a microfilm, does it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is from Himmler because it says so at the top left-hand
18side and there are his initials at the bottom of the page,
19are there not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the right-hand side it says "Feld-Kommandostelle", what
22does that mean?
23 A. [Mr Irving] "Field Headquarters".
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] 12th December 1942.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry. It just says "December 1942".
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are quite right. I am sorry. I misread that.
1 A. [Mr Irving] I would draw attention to that because this was Himmler's
2way of doing things, that he would always handwrite the
3day in. In other words, this is an authentic document. We
4are not challenging that. But there is a reason to draw
5attention to that because of something that comes up in
6later documents.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I follow, and it has the top security classification?
8 A. [Mr Irving] "Geheime Reichssache", yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] For an SS document?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is written to Muller. Now I need your help -- you are
12very good at this -- can you please translate the text for
14 A. [Mr Irving] You are too kind. "I ordain that from now on the Jews
15that are still on hand in France and also of the Hungarian
16and Rumanian Jews, all those who have influential
17relatives in America, are to be concentrated in a special
18camp. There they are, indeed, to work but under
19conditions that they remain sound and alive. This kind of
20Jews are valuable hostages for us. I am thinking of a
21figure of around 10,000" ----
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
23 A. [Mr Irving] --- "in this connection".
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] 10,000 from all three countries?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] There are special Jews who are preserved because they have
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is right, yes.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or because they have influential relatives in
5 A. [Mr Irving] That is right.
6 MR RAMPTON: Even suppose we divide 10,000 in three equal parts
7and subtract it from 600,000, we have the best part of
8600,000 still left who have nothing whatever to do with
9this piece of paper, do they?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is one camp?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Einem sonderlager?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes? The hostages' camp.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tell me about the other camps which you say in
16Germany ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- which is the destination for the remaining whatever it
19is, 597,000?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure he did say that.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I certainly did not say those figures. I do not
22think we accept the figures.
23 MR RAMPTON: I said I was challenging the proposition that
24"Abschaffen" meant "transported" and I think Mr Irving
25said, "And, what is more, we know where they were being
26transported to, camps being built in Germany".
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did we not then ask when French Jews he was
2talking about was going to Germany?
3 MR RAMPTON: Perhaps he would answer that question?
4 A. [Mr Irving] The balance ----
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you elucidate because we are really
6concerned with the other French Jews and I think I have
7put the question already.
8 MR RAMPTON: The balance were to be departed to Germany, but
9that is not a reference to those other Jews, that
10document, is it?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Well, Professor Longerich has given us a rather thin gruel
12of documents on which to draw our conclusions, but I am
13familiar with the documents that I have read and I am
14quite happy to bring them to the court on Monday, that
15special camps were being erected at this time to receive
16these French Jews who were being deported, not just one
17camp, but more than one camp. Eichmann is involved in
18the construction, if my memory is correct -- it is about
19two or three months sine I read these documents -- and
20from my own personal knowledge, large numbers of French
21Jews were put to work in the German Arms industry.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So they all went to camps in Germany, these
23other, balance of the French Jews?
24 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I am not going to say "all".
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] The vast part?
26 A. [Mr Irving] That would be something I could not swear to.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] The vast part?
2 MR RAMPTON: I would be very grateful and I am going to leave
3it there for the moment.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I shall bring the documents and I will make a note to.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you bring the documents, then it is no good my pouring
6over documents; may I copy them and given them to my
7experts to look at?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I will fax them over the weekend, the ones that we
9intend to rely on.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would your Lordship forgive me for one moment? Mr Irving,
11could you find page 462 of Hitler's War 1977?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] And page 511 of Hitler's War 1991. If you would look,
14page 462 of 1977 falls neatly into two halves. I do not
15need you to read it out and I am not going to either.
16Could you read that last paragraph on 462?
17 A. [Mr Irving] "When Heinreich Himmler came to headquarters" ----
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think to yourself.
19 MR RAMPTON: No, just to yourself. The people in this
20courtroom are going to get tired of hearing our voices,
21I would imagine, Mr Irving.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you. Now would you read to yourself in the same way
24the middle paragraph on page 511?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am not happy with reading these things to myself because
26the court transcript does not know what I am reading to
2 MR RAMPTON: I see.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It can be determined later what was being
4read. So can we proceed in this way for the time being?
5It just saves time.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is the middle paragraph on 511.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does save time.
10 A. [Mr Irving] The parenthesis in brackets you are looking at which has
11vanished between the two volumes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am looking at two things. In the text of 462 the word
13"Abschaffen" is translated by you as "remove"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] In the footnote it is "dispose of"?
16 A. [Mr Irving] 462, you mean the end note?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, I call them footnotes. That is very clumsy of me.
18Yes, the end note.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I have given the German and the translation that
20I propose, yes, in each case.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] But in the text you have, what shall I say, edged away
22from "disposed of" and replaced it with "removed"?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I have not edged away from anything, Mr Rampton. I have
24just used the word "removed" and in the scientific end
25note I have then given the original German in both
26versions, once "Abschaffen" which I have translated as
1"disposed of" and I have said: "In his subsequent memo
2to the Gestapo Chief Muller, however, he used the milder
3words 'Verhaftet und abtransportieren' "arrested and
4transported away".
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] But, Mr Irving, you see the word has now been through two
6processes. It starts off in German. Fair enough, it has
7to be translated. When that happens in the end note, it
8is "disposed of". Now it has become "remove"?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, are you familiar with the concept that
10sometimes one word in one language can only be given, you
11can only get the meaning by giving its three alternative
12meanings in another language if you do not have an exact
13synonym between the two languages.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you do not want to go back to the Langenscheit, to my
15primary meanings; you have been into that trap once
16already this morning.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, Langenscheit is probably not concentrating on the
18fact we are talking about people. They are probably
19talking about Abschaffen of a government or Abschaffen of
20a condition or a situation.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 511 of what? I am so sorry. I am lost.
22 MR RAMPTON: Of 1991 Hitler's War, my Lord. I was just going
23to compare the two versions. Then at the bottom, still on
241977, Mr Irving, 462, at the bottom of the page, you have
25got a parenthesis which you have already spotted, in
26brackets, "Hitler's notes do not indicate that he
1mentioned to Hitler the alternative fate of the others".
2You and I can disagree about that, but my question is
3this, or first question is this. What did you mean by
4"the alternative fate of the others"?
5 A. [Mr Irving] We do not know because he did not mention it.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see.
7 A. [Mr Irving] That is not a weasel answer. I am just saying that there
8was an alternative fate clearly adumbrated, but we are not
9told what it was, whether it was being sent for slave
10labour or sent to the gas chambers or what.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Notwithstanding that at this date you still believed in
12the mass murder of the Jews, including a lot of French
14 A. [Mr Irving] I am being very cautious the way I write. This was a very
15sensitive subject, as you yourself said. I am extremely
16cautions the way I proceed phase by phase when I write
17these narratives.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] When we have got to 1991 on page 511, by which time, on
19your own admission, you have become a hard core
20disbeliever so far as the Holocaust is concerned, that
21little parenthesis has gone, has it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Very simple. First of all, the 1991 edition is an
25abridged edition. I do not know if you have ever abridged
26a book, but you go through it cutting out lines which are
1superfluous. My editor, Tom Congden, as I mentioned on a
2previous day, taught me the basic or retaught me the basic
3principles of bookwriting. One of them is, don't say what
4somebody didn't do; say what they did do. This is a
5classic example of me saying what somebody did not do
6which is totally superfluous to our knowledge.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving] So I cut out the reference to what somebody did not do. A
9classic example of what somebody did not do being cut out
10because the book has to be shortened by one-third.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The truth of the matter, Mr Irving -- it must be really
12pretty obvious -- is this, is it not? 1977, you still
13believe in the Holocaust. I use that as shorthand because
14I do not like to use a whole lot of words where two will
16 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the factories of death.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] In 1977 you believed in the factories of death. That is
18four words, I think?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] In 1991 you do not. You have removed the parenthesis
21because you fearful that your readers might think that you
22meant, as indeed you did in that parenthesis, that the
23fate of the other Jews, the alternative fate of the other
24Jews, was going to be death?
25 A. [Mr Irving] You have no basis for making that suggestion other than
26the purposes of this action which is you are looking,
1I think, I will not say desperately, but you are looking
2for everything you can seize upon ----
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, the answer is no.
4 MR RAMPTON: The answer is no.
5 A. [Mr Irving] The equally and far more plausible suggestion is that we
6are cutting out what we possibly can out of the book to
7trim it down to make room for fresh material.
8 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, it will not be for either you or I to
9say whether your answers are plausible at the end of this
11 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I venture to suggest that this is the least perverse
12explanation. You are trying find room to put in an extra
13200 pages of material into a book that we were already
14tying to shorten. So if we put in a paragraph here, a
15parenthesis, which says something did not happen, then
16that is an obvious candidate for the chop.
17 There are very many sentences cut out on every
18page if you compare the pages. I would also add the fact
19that much of the editing was not done by me; it was done
20by the American publishers or by an assistant who I hired
21specifically for the job.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry. I have been given something, Mr Irving. I am
23not being discourteous. I am trying to read it very
24quickly to find out if I need to ask anything about it.
25I think not.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, can I just ask you this,
1"Abschaffen", you say, is relevant to Hitler's
3 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And is also an example of distortion?
5 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, it is three things. It is relevance, not
6just of Hitler's knowledge, but probably of a Hitler, some
7kind of a, one of these utterances -- well, it is more
8than that.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand how you put it.
10 MR RAMPTON: It is an instruction. That is No. 1. 2, it is
11evidence of a developing distortion. The distortion is
12already there in 1977 with the word "remove". We can see
13that, in fact, from the footnote which uses "dispose" and
14the parenthesis. In 1991, in the eighth line down in the
15middle paragraph the word "remove" has been "extract" and
16the parenthesis has gone.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.
18 A. [Mr Irving] To which my response is, of course, that I have given no
19fewer than three different translations for the word
20"Abschaffen" in the one volume so the reader can pick his
21own way, my Lord.
22 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, for the moment, until I see Mr Irving's
23other documents on Monday, that is as far as I need take
24that question today.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we have a discussion about Auschwitz
26now rather than?
1 A. [Mr Irving] We could try to -- I think we will dispose of it before
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you found that a problem and you want more
4time, just say so, but why do you not go back to your
6 < (The witness stood down)
7 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I will sit down because I would like
8Mr Irving to take this argument.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, if I can get to the legal precedents out
11of the way first, it is Edgington v. Fitzmorris with which
12I am sure your Lord is familiar, the statement by Bowen LJ
13that the state of a man's mind is as much a fact of the
14matter as the state of his digestion. What is very
15material in this case is the state of my mind when I am
16writing the books.
17 We are partially examining in that, in the
18materials that we have been going over over the last few
19days in the proper manner, but I do not think that the
20state of Auschwitz or the state of what happened during
21the war years is nearly as material to the issues as
22pleaded as the state of my mind, if I can put it like
24 The issues as pleaded, in my view, bear a strong
25resemblance to the law in tort, the distinction with which
26your Lordship will be familiar between deceit and
1negligence. The defence that the Defendants have pleaded
2is, basically, one of deceit, that I have had documents
3before me at the time I wrote the books, that wilfully or
4perversely attached to those documents meanings that no
5reasonable man could say they could bear.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is part of the Defendants' case.
7 MR IRVING: That is part of the defence. But they go beyond
8that, my Lord, in a manner which I would aver a Plaintiff
9would be tempted to do if he has pleaded initially the
10case in deceit and, in finding that he is not making that
11case, he then ventures to throw in negligence as well,
12although he has not pleaded it. He is not allowed to do
13that without amending his pleadings and this is a very
14serious matter for the court to consider. If you find, my
15Lord, that the Defendants in this action are trying to
16plead negligence, if I can put it like that, as they have
17been saying.
18 MR RAMPTON: No.
19 MR IRVING: Mr Rampton --
20 MR RAMPTON: We are not.
21 MR IRVING: If they are saying, in effect, Mr Irving is a
22rotten historian, he did not do his job properly. He
23spoke about Auschwitz, he wrote about Auschwitz and the
24Holocaust. He ought to have known better, then this is a
25plea of negligence. They have not pleaded negligence in
26the pleadings as yet before the court, my Lord, and, of
1course, it is perfectly open to them to go to your
2Lordship at any time and seek your Lordship's leave to
3amend their pleadings. It would be a very grave step for
4them to take because I would immediately ask your Lordship
5order that all the costs up to that point should be borne
6by the Defendants.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They have not done it yet, so...
8 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, they are still attempting to plead,
9effectively, deceit, and I suggest that they have not yet
10established a substantial case in deceit, but that is
11outside the realm of this argument. What is far more
12important is; what is the purpose of looking at what
13happened in Auschwitz and in the camps of Belzec,
14Treblinka and elsewhere if it was not known to me at the
15time I wrote the book. It may be of the utmost interest
16to history and for the purposes of historiography and it
17has not escaped me and I am sure it has not escaped your
18Lordship reading, as you say you do, the press accounts
19that people hope that this will draw a line under the
20Holocaust and we shall establish what happened at
21Auschwitz and so on. That is not the purpose of this
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, at the moment I am with you to this
24extent, that it seems to me that if you are able to say of
25any particular piece of evidence relating to Auschwitz,
26well, it was not available to me at the time, I find it
1difficult at the moment to see how that really is going to
2assist the Defendant's case. Because their case, as
3I understand it, is that what you have said about
4Auschwitz flies in the face of the evidence, and that the
5inference they ask me to draw is that you must have known
6that it flew in the face of the evidence.
7 MR IRVING: I ought to have known. There is a subtle
8difference, my Lord. Must have known -- if they wish to
9prove I must have known it, I submit that they had to
10establish that that material was at some material time
11before me when I wrote either or any of the editions --
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think "available to you". I think it
13is not just a matter of whether it was, in fact, before
14you, because if you knew it was there and you, as it were,
15put your telescope to your blind eye and ignored it, then
16that is as good as having seen it, and decided to suppress
17it, as they would put it.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, material may very well be there in Moscow
19or on the far side of the Fiji Islands for all I know but
20there is a limit to what a reasonable person can expect
21one historian in my position to do by way of research into
22a subject which is beyond the purview of the books which
23he is know to write.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree with you, it is a question of degree.
25 MR IRVING: It is a question of degree, my Lord. It is quite
26possible that the very capable researchers (and I have to
1admire the effort they have put into this case) who are
2backing learned counsel in this matter for the defence,
3would have found documents after the expenditure of very
4consider sums of money, as they have, in the defence of
5this matter. But no reasonable person can hold that
6against me that I did not find these documents or come to
7those conclusions based on those documents and certainly
8not 30 years ago at a time when none of these documents
9were available.
10 So it is an argument in negligence which they
11are trying to make, my Lord, and I am asking that you bear
12that firmly in mind at the very least. And I have drawn
13up -- your Lordship will see three guidelines that I would
14ask your Lordship possibly to accept, possibly with
15amendments. They are on the first page.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
17 MR IRVING: Does it go to the proof of wilful deceit, the
18evidence that the Defendants are adducing? What materials
19were before the claimant, myself, at the time I wrote the
20book or books referred to because, of course, we are not
21just going to refer to Hitler's War. I understand other
22books are going to be the topic of discussion by the
23defendants. I respectfully submit that ephemeral spoken
24utterances particularly extempore, unscripted talks are
25less material to this action than books and I would like
26to hear your Lordship's view on that.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you are talking about eyewitness
2evidence here?
3 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, no, I am sorry, you misunderstood me
4there, that if they are holding to me a talk I have given
5in Los Angeles or something like that, or an answer
6I given at a press conference, this should be given less
7weight than what I have written in the books. The talks
8are ephemeral, they are here today and gone tomorrow.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a comment you can make, but supposing
10you went on on the record at an IHR conference.
11 MR IRVING: Yes. Does that become a book?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: With some extreme remarks about Auschwitz,
13let us assume that, it seems to me that they entitled to
14rely on that as an instance of Holocaust denial as they
15would label it.
16 MR IRVING: It is a matter of weighting, my Lord. That I would
17ask you to weight each of these utterances and say, well,
18here he is writing a book which is going to go in
19libraries and used as a reference work by other
20historians. Clearly, far more weight should be attached
21to these than off the cuff remarks he makes at an press
22conference. I am not thinking of any specific remark.
23I am not saying that is my own defence pre-emptively, I am
24just saying that I would just ask your Lordship to weight
25them accordingly.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hear what you say.
1 MR IRVING: Yes. Have they established -- the second point --
2beyond the balance of probabilities, as I understand it,
3it is in a civil action like this, that the Claimant faced
4with various alternative interpretations and following as
5the Defendants wrongly represent an agenda to exonerate
6Adolf Hitler put fraudulent meanings on these materials
7before him, i.e. meanings that were so perverse that no
8reasonable and unbiased man informed by the same materials
9and expertise could have arrived at those meanings.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think that is putting the case, or
11asserting that the case against you has to be established
12at a far higher level than it seems to me that it actually
13does have to be established. I think what they have to
14show, or what they may have to show, I have not heard
15Mr Rampton yet, is that you have misrepresented the facts
16and that you have done so because you are working to your
17own ideological agenda.
18 MR IRVING: Wilfully represented, not accidently or
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not accidently, yes, I am cautious about the
21"wilfully" because that may not help.
22 MR IRVING: They will have to establish the element of
23deliberation in that, my Lord, otherwise it does fall
24under the ambit of "negligence", which they are not
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, and No. 3.
1 MR IRVING: What about the element of reasonable doubt, my
2Lord? Or the balance of probabilities? You say you are
3not prepared to accept that.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I have not said that.
5 MR IRVING: But which is the part of paragraph 2 which you find
6difficult to accept then?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is you asserting that the Defendants have
8to show that you put as you described it "fraudulent
9meanings" on the materials --
10 MR IRVING: As opposed to negligently doing it.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I was -- I accept the point you make on
12negligence -- suggesting to you is that they may not have
13to establish quite that, but I am inclined to accept that
14they will have to establish that this was a
15non-accidental, false interpretation placed on documents
16for the reason that you had your own political agenda, and
17that I think --
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, for example, the word "haben" and "Juden"
19is a typical example; was this a deliberate misleading of
20the word or was it an --
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very good example.
22 MR IRVING: A negligent --
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: A very good example, yes.
24 MR IRVING: Thirdly; have they established -- have the
25Defendants established beyond the balance of probabilities
26that I wilfully and following that political agenda
1mistranslated or distorted such materials.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not find much to disagree with about
4 MR IRVING: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, Mr Irving, this is all helpful in a way,
6but I understood we were going to be having an argument
7about the Auschwitz evidence I am not sure I understand --
8 MR IRVING: This comes up --
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How this impacts on that.
10 MR IRVING: If they are going to be introducing a lot of
11evidence about Auschwitz which will no doubt be of the
12utmost interest to everybody in this court, and at the
13expense of the person who pays the costs of this action,
14or persons, I think that your Lordship should rule
15repeatedly on what falls within the issues as pleaded and
16pleaded under the ambit of "deceit" rather than of
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But thinking of the evidence, which is not at
19the top of my mind at the moment, but thinking of the
20evidence that the defendants have adduced in relation to
21Auschwitz, one could put it into various categories, as
22indeed the Defendants do in their summary of case, it
23seems to me that most of what they are relying on was
24probably known to you, but if not known to you was
25certainly readily available to you; was it not?
26 MR IRVING: I think that is very bold perception, my Lord.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you tell me, what --
2 MR IRVING: I would certainly challenge that.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: -- categories of evidence you say you really
4have no knowledge of?
5 MR IRVING: For example, the entire records in Moscow. I am not
6an Holocaust historian, my Lord. I thought I had brought
7this matter across to your Lordship satisfactorily that I
8am know as an historian and a biographer of the top Nazis
9and that the Holocaust is very much a section of that
10material. But one cannot, after all because one is
11writing about the atomic bomb learn nuclear physics. One
12would not be considered to be negligent that one had not
13become a Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist before
14writing about the history of the atomic bomb, if I may say
15so. I am asking your Lordship to keep this negligent
16element before yourself and you say to yourself, this does
17not go to issues as pleaded, and this is just an attempt
18to bring in material for the newspapers, put it like that.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me ask you this question, and do not
20answer if you do not want to, but if I were to come to the
21conclusion that there is a whole range of formidable
22evidence of one kind and another.
23 MR IRVING: Yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Camp officials, eyewitnesses, scientific
25evidence, evidence of construction at the gas chambers and
26the like; all of which was there, but you paid no
1attention to it, is that something you would accept? Is
2that the way you put your case? That you went for broke
3on the Liechter Report.
4 MR IRVING: It depends upon the degree of intensity which would
5have been appropriate. If I was intending to go on, for
6example, a BBC talk show and I was likely to be asked
7about Auschwitz should I therefore spend $5 million on
8sending researchers into the archives around the world?
9It is a degree of proportionality which comes into it, my
10Lord. I am sure your Lordship appreciates that point and
11bear it constantly before yourself.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I am not sure you have really quite
13grasped the nettle of the question; is it your position
14that the Defendants really are not entitled to rely on the
15body of evidence that I have just listed for you because,
16although it was available you did not refer to it; you did
17not familiarize yourself with it?
18 MR IRVING: I am not interested to hear Mr Rampton justify
19doing precisely that.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think he will find it difficult to do
21so unless you have made clear what your position in
22relation to these various categories of evidence is. If
23you are saying, "yes, I accept it is there and I simply
24did not attach any weight to it"; then he may say, "well,
25what is the point of calling the evidence?" That may not
26be right, but he may say that. That is why I am asking
1you. I am trying to get you to come clean, as it were,
2what your stance is in relation to this evidence.
3 MR IRVING: I am mortally wounded by the suggestion that I am
4not coming clean on this.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not mean that in any pejorative sense.
6You see because this is really what the argument is, is
7this evidence relevant? If you say, "well, I do not
8quarrel with it, I hear what you say about it all being
9there, but it just did not feature in my thinking about
10Auschwitz", well and good.
11 MR IRVING: My Lord, what I have had to do, because Auschwitz
12has bulked so large in the Defendants' case I have to
13become something of an expert. I have had to get involved
14with consultants and discussed the issues with them and
15learn all sorts of things that I had no need to or desire
16to learn at the time I wrote these books, or at the time I
17made the utterances. I do not think that should have been
18necessary. I would have hoped that your Lordship would
19have ruled at a relatively early date in this trial -- and
20we are still at an early date in this trial that you will
21not hear evidence, my Lord, I would ask you to bear this
22in mind, that you will not hear evidence that goes only to
23the imputation of negligence and that you will only hear
24evidence that goes to the imputation of deceit.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you see, you say it comes only into
26the category of negligence, but if you are making
1pronouncements about Auschwitz in what the Defendants say
2are offensive terms of denying the gassing happened; are
3not the Defendants entitled to say, well, that really
4flies in the face of the evidence and anyone who is
5prepared to make those pronouncements is not just
6negligent, he is deliberately deceiving himself.
7 MR IRVING: Very well.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know whether that is the way they
9put the case or whether it is not. I think it may be.
10 MR IRVING: I accept that but then the element of
11proportionality comes into it.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
13 MR IRVING: To make that kind of pronouncement one is not then
14required to spend $5 million research, one is required to
15inform oneself to an adequate degree. But I still ask
16your Lordship to be on the alert every time that
17Mr Rampton either implies or actually says he ought to
18have known this, to say to yourself, yes, but on the basis
19of proportionality should he really have gone to that
20degree? Should he really have done that depth of
21research? Was he really expected to fly to Moscow and
22bang on the door and say "let me in"?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do not think I am not taking the point
24you are making.
25 MR IRVING: Because that goes purely to the negligence issue
26and not the deceit issue, which is the only one they have
1pleaded. My Lord, I must emphasise the fact they have not
2pleaded negligence. It was open to them to plead
3negligence at the time that they drew up their pleadings.
4I am not criticising learned counsel at all for the way
5they have drawn their pleadings, but if they intended to
6plead negligence the way that they have been hinting at
7throughout the first six days of this trial, then they
8should have pleaded it.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I want to take a bit of time on this because
10I think this may be really quite important to try and see
11where we are actually going, but just on Auschwitz and
12tell me if you are not able to deal with this, but just
13take the category of "Camp Officials" I cannot immediately
14put my ...
15 MR IRVING: The eyewitnesses?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I was thinking more of the camp
17official eyewitnesses, but take them, and I think there
18are probably about ten or maybe a dozen of them, something
19like that.
20 MR IRVING: My Lord, we shall be --
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now, the last thing we want to do is plough
22through each individual account if that really is not
23being to be necessary. Are you saying in relation to
24them, by way of an example, well, I appreciate that they
25have said what they are recorded as having said, but I did
26not know about it when I said what I said in Australia in
1the 1980s or the States in the 1990s, and, therefore, the
2worst you can say is that I was negligent; is that the
3line you take in relation to that particular category of
5 MR IRVING: Finely couched though your Lordship's words are
6I would not use them in precisely that form. I would say
7that at the time I made the utterances or wrote the books
8I was not informed to the degree that I am now am by
9virtue of having had to prepare for this case. In 1988
10I saw certain evidence which you will be discussing later
11on, which obliged to me to change my mind about what I had
12accepted without having gone into it in any detail up to
13that point. As a result of this case I have now gone in
14much greater detail into the eyewitness statements by the
15camp officials to which your Lordship alluded. I still
16have less reason to accept them as being reliable than has
17the defence, and we shall go through these statements with
18forensic methods when the time comes to cross-examine
19Professor van Pelt.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, I have certainly got your point.
21Shall I invite Mr Rampton to tell me --
22 MR IRVING: That may be useful.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What his position is.
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, it is really very simple. We had
25these last days been dealing with the way in which
26Mr Irving on our case, distorts history, deliberately,
1wilfully distorts history. In 1988, as your Lordship
2remembers, there was on trial in Canada a man called
3Zundel. He was on trial for something like inciting
4racial hatred by publishing an Holocaust denial book.
5Mr Irving went to Toronto to give evidence for Mr Zundell,
6in the course of that exercise he got to read -- I think
7he met Mr Liechter either then or earlier that year -- and
8he got to read the Liechter report. He came home and he
9held a press conference the following year, in which he
10said: "The buildings which we now identify as gas chambers
11in Auschwitz were not. I cannot accept that they had gas
12chambers there. There was no equipment there for killing
13people en masse. I am quite happy to nail my colours to
14the mast ... Jews cannot have been killed in gas chambers
15at Auschwitz".
16 From there on, until 1993, which is the relevant
17date, he goes into public, into the public arena, and
18repeatedly makes utterances of that kind. Had he not done
19so he would not have appeared in the book which forms the
20subject of this libel action. One of the meanings which
21Mr Irving complains of, my Lord, this is paragraph (vii)
22on page 6 of the Statement of Claim: "That the plaintiff
23after attending Zundell's trial in 1988 in Toronto, having
24previously hovered on the brink now denies the murder by
25the Nazis of the Jews."
26 That is Mr Irving's -- this is the most
1elementary stage of the whole thing -- that in Mr Irving's
2case is a defamatory statement by Professor Lipstadt and
3Penguin Books, who published the book. That alone would
4allow as the defence -- the Lucas-Box particulars of the
5defence indicate that they will do -- that alone would
6allow the Defendants if they wished to do so to prove that
7he was wrong as a matter of fact. That is paragraph 6.1
8of the Lucas-Box on page 2 of the defence, that the
9plaintiff has on numerous occasions denied the Holocaust,
10the deliberate planned extermination of Europe's Jewish
11population by the Nazis and denied --
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I have thought about that, because I do
13not think either the meaning you have just cited from the
14statement of claim, or paragraph 6.1 of the Lucas-Box,
15really are defamatory meanings at all.
16 MR RAMPTON: That may well be, but as I say that is the
17elementary -- that is stage one. As the pleadings stand
18I could do it. I do not, as your Lordship knows, put the
19case like that.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.
21 MR RAMPTON: What I say is this: it is not negligent,
22negligence is no part of this case, I am not the least
23interested in the qualities or efficiency of Mr Irving's
24research or anything like that; what I am concerned about
25is two things. He dignifies himself, and Professor Watt,
26for example, was no doubt called for this purpose, perhaps
1by some others, as an historian. He then lends his
2considerable weight, if that be right, to repeated and
3I have to say from time to time very offensive Holocaust
4denial statements. He does that, not as he would if it
5were Hitler that he was interested in researching, he does
6that upon the basis, the flimsiest possible basis, the
7Liechter Report. Along down the road as your Lordship
8will hear, he thinks of other reasons why there were no
9gas chambers at Auschwitz. But Liechter is the foundation
10of his denial. For a man to do that, who glorifies
11himself as an serious historian, is morally wrong. Now
12that is defamatory. One of the aspects of this case is
13that he has done it because of his political "with a small
14P" sympathies and attitudes. He is, we have pleaded, a
15right-wing extremist, and he feeds this Holocaust denial
16into audiences of right wing extremists.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And he done it deliberately, in other words,
18it is not negligent.
19 MR RAMPTON: He has deliberately not been to Auschwitz and
20looked at the archive, never mind Moscow. I have been to
21Auschwitz, I have not been to Moscow. I have seen many of
22the documents in the archive and they are -- well, they
23are what they are. Professor van Pelt deals with them.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Go back to the camp officials, that does
25mean, does it not, that if your case is that Mr Irving
26deliberately shut his eyes to that corpus of evidence.
1 MR RAMPTON: He did not even care about it.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And his case is, well, I was not an Holocaust
3historian, maybe I knew that some of that evidence was
4there, but I did not think it was any part of my function
5to go and trawl through it.
6 MR RAMPTON: Then he should have --
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we do not need to trawl through it in
8this trial, do we?
9 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, if he will accept that his denial is
10false. If he will accept that it happened as described by
11Professor van Pelt and dozens of other people; that the
12eyewitnesses are telling the truth, those reports of
13Hoess, the commandant, are perfectly well-known to
14Mr Irving, for example. He knows all about the Weber and
15Weisler Report that came out during the War. No doubt he
16knows all about Jean-Claude Pressack's (?) ^^ book. They
17are there for anybody to read.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure whether I see why you are now
19saying, rather contrary to what you have been saying
20before, that we have to make a finding of fact as to what
21happened in Auschwitz.
22 MR RAMPTON: No, absolutely, I have never said that. I am not
23saying that.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why should he accept that those camp
25officials are telling the truth when they say they saw
26what they say they saw.
1 MR RAMPTON: Because then, my Lord, it is very easy, if you
2will not accept then that I have to lay out the evidence
3which would have been accessible to him if he had bothered
4to look before opening his mouth.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but only in the sort of general sense
6of, let us put it as you might cross-examine, Mr Irving,
7are you aware that there are statements made by ... and
8then we can list them and name them and give them
9positions within Auschwitz, Hoess and all the rest of
10them; did you read a word of their evidence?
11 MR RAMPTON: That is right, the answer will be "no", what you
12did do, Mr Irving -- one has to know that this is his
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, that is why I tried to --
15 MR RAMPTON: I know, well, he has not come clean, to use your
16Lordship --
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I disavow that expression now.
18 MR RAMPTON: If that is the position, that is fine, Professor
19van Pelt can go back to Canada, specifically though
20Mr Irving has to accept, before that can happen, that the
21Liechter Report is indeed bunk and very easily detected
22bunk, because what a responsible historian cannot do,
23unless he is motivated by some sinister ulterior motive,
24is nail his colours to the mast, as he said he did,
25without critical review of the mast to which he is nailing
26his colours, namely the Liechter Report. And that is
1exactly what he did.
2 If he will concede that that was, to put it
3neutrally, a complete mistake, because Liechter is bunk,
4if he will concede first that a lot of the other evidence
5is freely available to anybody who bothers go and look at
6it; a lot has been published in books. But that he did
7not care to look at it. But nonetheless went about his
8Holocaust denial in these various forums, why then we can
9close down the evidence, apart from what he said in these
10various places.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you very much, Mr Rampton.
12Mr Irving, I do not think we will be able to quite
13conclude this argument, but I think the ball is in your
14court, because the admissibility of this evidence and how
15much detail we need to go into in regard to it seems to me
16to depend, to an extent, what you are going to say about
18 MR IRVING: Which your Lordship does not know yet, of course.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which I do not know yet and you do not really
20have to tell me, we can deal with this on the hoof as we
21go through your cross-examination. It may have to come to
22that. But I have to have an eye on how long this trial is
23going to last and it seems to me --
24 MR IRVING: Well, I threw a lifeline to your Lordship.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not the predominant consideration, it
26has to be a feature of my thinking, it seems to me there
1may well be sense in dealing with the -- I have used the
2camp official's eyewitness accounts as an example, dealing
3with that body of evidence in a rather broad way because
4if you say, "well, I was not familiar with the detail of
5it", then Mr Rampton may achieve what he needs for his
6purpose by putting to you, in effect, you shut your eyes
7to it deliberately.
8 MR IRVING: I can say in two lines if that will assist you what
9my position on the four or five camp officials will be;
10that I was not familiar with the evidence of the lower
11camp officials. I was partially familiar with the
12evidence of Camp Commandant Hoess. I have reasons to
13discount that evidence, which I will bring out during
14cross-examination of the experts. But the reasons have
15only become apparent to me now I have done the research
16for the trial. But at the time , of course, I had this
17gut instinct against eyewitnesses in the first place.
18I have always preferred to use concrete documents rather
19than statements of people, for whatever reason. My Lord
20that does not help your Lordship very much at this stage.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not help us in the sense that it does
22not enable me to make a ruling which will ...
23 MR IRVING: I am hoping that your Lordship will be able to
24make --
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Direct which evidence we can safely exclude
26and which we admit, I am afraid.
1 MR IRVING: Your Lordship is now aware of my arguments as
2against fraudulence in this action. I am hoping your
3Lordship will make determinations from time to time as to
4what is admissible and what is not on the issues as
5pleaded, and possibly at a later date, once you have heard
6my remarks about the eyewitness, or went a bit further
7down the road we have had a chance to cross-examine
8Professor van Pelt, then you can possibly even make a
9ruling on the basic issue as to the admissibility of what
10happened at Auschwitz or not, if I can put it like that.
11 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I add one thing, I know it is a
12little irregular, but it may help. Mr Irving says that
13now with hindsight he sees reasons to doubt what, for
14example, Hoess said, I believe that that is an irrelevant
15observation. What he now sees as being flaws in Hoess'
16evidence is quite beside the point, we are not concerned
17with what he now sees; what we are concerned with is with
18Mr Irving's state of mind, his bona fides, at the time
19when he made these denial statements.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but that really is having the best of
21both worlds, is it not? You are wanting me to see what
22Hoess said and to be satisfied that he is correct in what
23he says.
24 MR RAMPTON: No.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you seek to prevent Mr Irving from
26showing why he does not accept Hoess.
1 MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord, that it is perhaps a slight
2misapprehension, it is probably my fault, on your
3Lordship's part. I do want you to see what Mr Hoess says,
4in just the same way as Mr Irving could have seen it
5before he spoke in public. I do not need your Lordship to
6accept what Hoess said is true.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is where I think I joined issue with you
8earlier on.
9 MR RAMPTON: I need your Lordship simply to say this --
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The evidence was there.
11 MR RAMPTON: This evidence is suggestive of a strong
12probability it was there, and it is not such obviously
13rubbish evidence that one would join immediately with
14Mr Irving and say, "no, there were no gas chambers at
15Auschwitz"; quite the contrary. That is all I need to do
16because all I am doing by looking at the evidence is
17suggesting what an open-minded, careful historian would
18have found if he had looked at the evidence.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you see open-minded, careful --
20 MR RAMPTON: Open-minded, leave the "careful" out of it.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, "careful" is not the ...
22 MR IRVING: Open-minded historian without an ulterior motive,
23beyond informing the public of the truth would have found
24if he had looked.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the right formulation, yes. I will,
26if you would find it helpful, both of you, make a ruling,
1but I think, really, we are going to have to deal with
2this on a bit of a piecemeal basis. Would it help if
3I gave an indication maybe at 2 o'clock what I think
4the --
5 MR RAMPTON: Well, it would --
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Guidelines should be.
7 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I did not mean to interrupt. It would
8very much help, because it will put Mr Irving in the
9position of deciding whether or not, in order to save time
10and everybody's labours, whether or not there are not some
11concessions that he ought to make.
12 MR IRVING: That rather implies that I can answer under oath in
13any way that is not true.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, it does not imply anything of the sort.
15 MR RAMPTON: No, I meant before he gives evidence.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will try and say something which helps at 5
17past 2.
18 (Luncheon Adjournment)
19(Please see separate transcript for Ruling)
20 MR IRVING: My Lord, I think that admirably clarifies the
21situation. I hope that you will agree that it was a
22useful exercise to conduct at this point in the trial.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I most certainly do because I think it may
24keep the case in slightly more reasonable bounds than
25might otherwise have been so.
26 MR IRVING: I think that this was the right time to conduct
1that exercise, being several days into the trial. Thank
2you very much, my Lord.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you both happy to proceed with
4cross-examination on the topic of Auschwitz?
5 MR RAMPTON: Indeed I am. I have not of course got a
6transcript yet. We have been trying to follow it on the
7screen. May I see if I have understood the last part of
8your Lordship's ruling correctly?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
10 MR RAMPTON: If and in so far as Mr Irving should contend that
11he was entitled to rely on the Leuchter report in the way
12that he did, then I have a gate open, as it were -- not
13that I want it to, I would much rather it did not -- for
14me to go through the detail, in effect. Is that right or
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, I am not quite sure. The detail of
18 MR RAMPTON: If he said should say, I maintain that I was
19entitled to rely on the Leuchter report, then the detailed
20criticisms of the Leuchter report may become relevant.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I totally agree. What I was intending to say
22right at the end of my little ruling was that that is
23really open season, the whole of the Leuchter report.
24 MR RAMPTON: That, apart from some parts of the eyewitness
25testimony, this was my fear, and some parts of Professor
26van Pelt's report about other evidence, it is, I am
1afraid, two thirds of the evidence on Auschwitz.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am a bit doubtful of that, but
3I appreciate there is an enormous amount left.
4 MR RAMPTON: Maybe that is a wrong estimate, but it is a large
5lump of the actual factual evidence about Auschwitz, what
6can be known of what happened there by reference to what
7Mr Leuchter said.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but there is no reason why you should
9not cross-examine on the totality of that.
10 MR RAMPTON: I just wanted to be clear. I do not want to put
11my foot in the wrong ----
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is without prejudice to Mr Irving's
13entitlement at any point to say that that question is not
14relevant to the issues for whatever reason he may suggest.
15 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship may say it without being prompted by
16Mr Irving, I dare say.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I might even do so, yes. Mr Irving, would you
18like to come back?
19 < Mr Irving, recalled.
20< Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC, continued.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, may I say this before you start?
22It would help me if one could, perhaps by some initial
23questions to Mr Irving, put into the context of your case.
24 MR RAMPTON: A little bit of history?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: A little bit of history and where one pigeon
26holes it, if you like.
1 MR RAMPTON: Not wartime history. This is Mr Irving's history.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Eighties/nineties.
3 MR RAMPTON: That is right. Mr Irving, when did you first meet
4Mr Fred Leuchter?
5 A. [Mr Irving] On a day in April 1988 in Toronto, Canada.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You went, and I do not think there is controversy about
7this, to Toronto, Canada, in order to give expert evidence
8at the trial of Mr Hans Zundel. Is that right?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I was residing in Florida at that time, writing. They
10invited me to give evidence as an expert witness on the
11general history of the Third Reich, I do emphasise not on
12Auschwitz, and on Adolf Hitler's involvement in what is
13referred to as the Holocaust. I flew to Toronto on the
14day before I was due to give evidence.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] So the answer to my question is yes, I think, is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] What was it, in case I have got it wrong, that Mr Zundel
18was charged with?
19 A. [Mr Irving] There was a mediaeval law in Canada which made the
20spreading of false information a criminal offence. That
21law has now been struck down by the Canadian Supreme
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] In respect of what statements under that mediaeval law, as
24you call it, in what form was Mr Zundel charged?
25 A. [Mr Irving] If I remember correctly, he was charged with having
26published or disseminated a brochure called, "Did 6
1million really die"?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. What was the topic of that pamphlet or whatever it
4 A. [Mr Irving] As its title implies, it was questioning the fundamental
5aspects of the Holocaust.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I had not, up to the time I arrived in Toronto, read that
8brochure, but I was given a copy to read shortly before
9the trial began, because I was going to be asked questions
10about it.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did not give evidence, I expect, immediately upon
12arrival? You did not get off the plane and into the
13witness box?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I gave evidence on the following day if I remember
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Does this mean that you had the opportunity to read
17Mr Leuchter report before you gave evidence?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Either on the evening I arrived, or the following morning
19before I went into the witness box, defence counsel for Mr
20Zundel gave me a one inch thick affidavit which was the
21engineering report produced by Mr Fred Leuchter, and he
22said, if you read this, you will find this very
23interesting. Of course, I could not read a one inch thick
24affidavit in the remaining hours, but I glanced at the
25summary at the beginning and I looked at the principal
26conclusions. They may even have told me in outline what
1the affidavit purported to conclude.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] For how many days did you give evidence?
3 A. [Mr Irving] It was over a weekend. I think I was in the box for three
4or four days, possibly three days.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Over the weekend while were you were in the box -- I am
6not suggesting there is anything in the least bit improper
7in this because there plainly is not -- did you get a
8chance to read the inch thick affidavit?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I would have had a chance to, but I do not think I did. I
10think we went on an outing to the Niagara Falls, which is
11close to Toronto.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] If I may say so, a good deal more edifying than the
13Leuchter report.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you this? You were asked to give
15evidence as an expert on the Holocaust?
16 A. [Mr Irving] On Adolf Hitler basically, and his involvement, the kind
17of thing we have been discussing until now, my Lord.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is not what I am getting at. You were giving
19evidence about extermination, of whether there were really
206 million Jewish deaths?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Not on the extermination, my Lord. They were purely
22interested in hearing what Adolf Hitler's part in this was
23or was not. I could not give expert evidence on the
24Holocaust and I would not have been accepted by the court
25as an expert.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand.
1 A. [Mr Irving] I was very closely questioned before the trial began,
2before my hearing began, as to my qualifications by the
4 MR RAMPTON: May Mr Irving please be given a file? Your
5Lordship may not have this in court. I have the reference
6here, D 9 (i). (Document not provided) If your Lordship
7has not got it, which I do not expect you have, I will try
8and find one.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I should have thought to bring it.
10 MR RAMPTON: It is a transcript of Mr Irving's evidence in the
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it.
13 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, the page numbers are the original. There
14are two page numbers. I intend to use the original
15transcript page numbers, which are at the top left hand
16corner of the page. The page I am looking for is 9473.
17I think it must be that the Canadians numbered the whole
18trial with consecutive page numbers.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Is this examination in chief?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, this is cross-examination by Mr Pearson?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you got it, Mr Irving?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I have it in front of me.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] 9473. It has the helpful heading "Irving CREX Pearson".
25At the bottom of the page it says 327. It is a recent
26file number. Mr Pearson has put to you something -- I do
1not think it probably matters what much except that it
2will have to do with the Holocaust -- about which you say
3this. I am reading from the top of the page: "At the time
4that I wrote that in the 1960s, 1974 or thereabouts, when
5I wrote that introduction, I believed, I believed
6everything I had heard about the extermination camps".
7 A. [Mr Irving] I think there should be a comma after the first "believed"
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
10 MR RAMPTON: There is in my copy. There should not be?
11 A. [Mr Irving] I think there should be a comma after the first
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not matter.
14 A. [Mr Irving] It sounds a little bit obsessive, otherwise.
15 MR RAMPTON: (Document not provided) "I believed everything
16I heard about the extermination camps. I was not
17investigating the extermination camps. I was
18investigating Hitler. Question: But you told us that you
19did ten years of extensive research on the national
20socialist regime? Answer: Yes. Question: And you had no
21problem making that statement, did you? Answer: Because I
22believed. Question: Right. Answer: I believed what I had
23read up to that point. I had not gone to the sites at
24Auschwitz and Treblinka, and Mydonek and brought back
25samples and carried out an analysis. I had not done any
26research into what is called the Holocaust. I researched
1Hitler and his staff. Question: You have done that, have
2you, since? Answer: I have not. Question: You have not
3done those things? Answer: I have carried out no
4investigation in equivalent depth of the Holocaust.
5Question: But your mind changed? Answer: My mind has now
6changed. Question: You no longer believe it? Answer:
7I have now begun to challenge that. I understand it is
8now a subject open to debate. Question: But your belief
9changed, even though you did not do any research? Is that
10what you are saying? Answer: My belief has now changed
11because I understand that the whole of the Holocaust
12mythology is after all open to doubt, and certainly in the
13course of what I have read in the last few days, in fact
14in this trial, I am now becoming more and more hardened in
15this view".
16 Mr Irving, what had you read that led to such a
17volte-face during those last few days?
18 A. [Mr Irving] A few figures in a column of chemical tests. Percentages.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You had read a few figures in a column in Mr Leuchter
20report. Is that right?
21 A. [Mr Irving] In the laboratory analysis appended to the Leuchter
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] That evidence, I think I am right in saying, was given on
2425th April, 1988?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think your diary entry for the 22nd, which is a Friday,
1tells us this. I will just read it: "Breakfast in the
2Carven Inn. Hans Zundel and defence lawyer Douglas
3Christie came around 8.30 am for a briefing session.
4I told them I had read Leuchter's report on Auschwitz and
5am much impressed". What is the truth of this?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] The two things are not the same.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, obviously, if the report is one inch thick and has
11only been given to me either that morning or the previous
12evening, I have not read the entire report one inch
13thick. But I have read the relevant part they are
14interested in.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] The last entry for the previous day, which is 21 April,
16which is a Thursday, you said this in your diary. I do
17not know whether you are intending to publish your diaries
18but you say this: "Zundel says I give evidence tomorrow.
19Read their lab reports on Auschwitz until late. Bed
20around 11" p.m.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I do emphasis that I have not read those diaries since
22I wrote them 12 years ago, but that precisely confirms my
23memory. I read the lab reports, the percentages, until 12
24 A. [Mr Irving] m. There are quite a few pages of them.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] When you tell them next morning at breakfast time that you
26had read Leichter's report on Auschwitz "and am much
1impressed", that is a shorthand way of saying "I have read
2some small part of the Leichter report". Is that right?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I think so, the relevant part.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because that is the guts of it, really, the
5lab reports? Is what you are saying?
6 A. [Mr Irving] They may have drawn my attention specifically to the lab
7reports, but the answer to your question is yes.
8 MR RAMPTON: I am not suggesting that what you said in answer
9to those questions on 25th April in the court in Toronto
10were false answers. What I question is this. Do you
11think it sensible -- I will use a neutral word to begin
12with Mr Irving -- for a man in your position, who has
13gone all the way to Canada to give expert evidence on a
14different aspect of the case, to arrive at so certain a
15conclusion on the basis of one part evening's reading of
16one part of a report made by a man -- we will come to his
17qualifications in a moment -- who, so far as you were
18aware at that date, was not known to history?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Was not known to ----
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Was not known to history as a scholarly discipline?
21 A. [Mr Irving] There are several questions contained in that question.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is all one question. It is a long
23question, but I think it is an important question.
24 A. [Mr Irving] It is, but there are several questions contained within a
25question there. Would you break it up into fragmentary
26questions, one question at a time?
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I agree about that. Do you want
2it asked in parts?
3 MR RAMPTON: My eyes are just not the right focal length for
4the screen.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will read it. Do you think it is sensible
6I -- am going to skip the interpolations -- Mr Irving,
7for a man in your position, who has gone all the way to
8Canada to give expert evidence on a different aspect of
9the case, to arrive at so certain a conclusion on the
10basis of one part evening's reading of one part of a
11report made by a man like Leuchter? I am slightly fudging
12the end of the question, but I think it is fair?
13 A. [Mr Irving] All right. So there are several parts in that question.
14The question is, what is my value judgment on
15Mr Leichter? We can deal with that separately, my Lord.
16This part of the report was of course not produced by
17Mr Leichter. It was produced by a qualified forensic
18laboratory, and that I would emphasise at this point.
19 For whatever value it is worth, I would point
20out the fact that I spent three years at London University
21unsuccessfully trying to get a degree in physics and
22chemistry. One thing that I did excel in was quantitative
23and qualitative chemical analysis. In fact, in the
24examination which I took I got the correct amount to six
25decimal points, which was an embarrassment because it
26looked as though I had been cheating.
1 So I am aware of the fact that, unlike the
2writing of history, where there is a lot of reading
3between the lines, chemical analysis is an exact science.
4When I looked at that document, and I probably said it on
5subsequent occasions, I said that no matter how much
6historians can interpret documents, as they do one way or
7the other, perversely or honestly or genuinely, you cannot
8interpret percentages in any different way than the
9figures actually speak. We will come to what the figures
10actually said, I am sure, later on, but, when I looked at
11those columns of figures, I said to myself, and I accepted
12of course that I was not being taken in, I was not being
13given fraudulent figures because they would be very
14rapidly exposed by the court, I accept that I was being
15given genuine forensic analysis figures. I would go
16straight ahead and say to this day I have no reason to
17doubt that those percentages are correct, and I state that
18the figures that I saw at that time, spoken in
19unmistakable language, so unmistakable that any person
20with even a smattering of knowledge of chemical analysis,
21quantitative and qualitative, would have to accept that
22the story, as it had been preached so far, was untenable.
23 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, have you read the Leuchter report with
24any care since that date?
25 A. [Mr Irving] The report or the chemical analyses?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] The report. You have to read the report to understand
1what the chemical analysis is referring to, do you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is referring to a number of samples taken from the
3fabric of Auschwitz and Birkenau, various buildings.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you notice, Mr Irving, before you started making these
5statements, or indeed since, that the chemical analysis
6gave a much higher reading of hydrogen cyanide residues
7for the parts of the camp, whether Birkenau or Auschwitz,
8which were known to have been used as delousing facilities
9than it did for those parts which were said to have been
10gas chambers? Did you notice that?
11 A. [Mr Irving] It would probably be useful if you were to give us the
12actual figures, but this was my general impression from
13memory, that this was the conclusion based ----
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you notice, Mr Irving, that Mr Leuchter conclusion was
15based upon the assumption that higher concentrations of
16hydrogen cyanide would have been needed to have been used
17in the gas chambers than in the delousing facilities?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Leuchter was an expert in homicidal gas chambers.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please. This is very important. I wish you would answer
20my question. Did you notice that Mr Leuchter's conclusion
21that there were no homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz was
22based in part upon the assumption that higher
23concentrations would have been needed to kill people than
24were needed to kill lice?
25 A. [Mr Irving] As this appears to be an important point, can we see the
26precise passage in the report where he states this and the
1language he uses?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, so that there is no
3misunderstanding because it puzzled me for a while, kill
4lice in clothing? That is right, is it not?
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes. If you try and do it while the clothes are
6still on in a concentration of 6,666 parts per million,
7you are going to kill your people about 22 times over.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You understand why, if that is not made
9clear, it can be a bit puzzling?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I think we ought to see what the report actually says.
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Perhaps you would like to take your coloured
12copy and I will use my weary old photocopy.
13 A. [Mr Irving] I have a colour copy here. This is an abridged version.
14It is not the one inch thick one that was shown to me.
15 MR RAMPTON: I do not know if your Lordship has the file copy?
16 A. [Mr Irving] This was the actual discovery copy I want them all back
17because they are very rare now.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] You would like them back at the end of the case?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, please.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will be welcome to them, as far as I am concerned.
21Page 15 of this glossy -- this is not its original form.
22This is the Irving publication form?
23 A. [Mr Irving] This is no doubt an abridged version, certainly much
24slimmer than the one inch affidavit I was given in the
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] But what about the use of ordinary type, bold type and
1bold italic type.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, the original version was in my discovery and
3was available to your instructing solicitors. They could
4have drawn this kind of comparison.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, please listen. In this document, as we see if
6we look at page 15, leaving the capitals on one side, we
7see four different kinds of type that are used. There is
8first of all what you might call ordinary Roman, then
9there is bold Roman, then there are ordinary italics which
10we see at the little words "table 3", and then there is
11bold italics, which is the paragraph fortunately that I
12want to read.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who made the decision to use those different kinds of
16 A. [Mr Irving] Not I.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Not you?
18 A. [Mr Irving] No.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] So in the affidavit they have used these sorts of type,
20have they?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. You have in the discovery the original
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Anyway, it was not you?
24 A. [Mr Irving] No.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you see the paragraph in bold italics?
26 A. [Mr Irving] In the second column, the controlled sample.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right. "One would have expected higher" -- do you
2see that?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you agree that whoever put that in bold italics thought
4that it was an important paragraph?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot see "one would have expected higher".
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Paragraph, not half sentence. I will read it.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "One would have expected higher cyanide detection in the
9samples taken from the alleged gas chambers, because of
10the greater amount of gas allegedly utilized there than
11that found in the control sample. Since the contrary is
12true, one must conclude that these facilities were not
13execution gas chambers when coupled with all the other
14evidence gained on inspection.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You must have read that?
17 A. [Mr Irving] No.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did not read that?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Not to my knowledge I looked just at the laboratory
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Does it not occur to you, Mr Irving, that, if in fact, as
22it is the case, Mr Leuchter has got history completely the
23wrong way round, then you can reverse the figures in the
25 A. [Mr Irving] If you exclude extraneous factors, which you can talk
26about later on, the factors which you are not talking
1about, about the fact that the "gas chambers" have been
2freshly built, they were freshly poured concrete, they
3sweat, there is a pronounced interaction between humanity
4and hydrogen cyanide gas which would have led one to
5conclude there should have been more in the so-called gas
6chambers, but this was a degree of research that
7Mr Leuchter did not go into. It has been done since the
8Leuchter report. This is where I am in difficulty, my
9Lord, because of course there had been ongoing research
10into this kind of controversy since then.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is my point, Mr Irving.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Not by myself, I hasten to add.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that.
14 MR RAMPTON: This is one of a one of a large number of
15absolutely basic school boy errors from an historical
16point of view, as well as some scientific ones as well.
17But from the historical and archeological point of view,
18this is one of the basic school boy errors in the Leuchter
19report. Fair enough, you are not Mr Leuchter and you did
20not write the report, but you made the decision to change
21your mind about the Holocaust, or whatever you like to
22call it about gas chambers at Auschwitz.
23 A. [Mr Irving] On the basis of the forensic percentages.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the basis of absolutely no research whatsoever.
25 A. [Mr Irving] On the basis of no research whatsoever; you are absolutely
26right. I made the decision to change my mind on the
1percentages of hydrogen cyanide residues, the compounds
2which were missing from the chambers where they should
3quite clearly have been present.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, they were not; they were present in smaller quantities
5which is exactly what you would expect.
6 A. [Mr Irving] They were present in quantities that are familiar to
7people doing the laboratory analyses. You guess
8statistically meaningless numbers. The figures are so low
9that they are statistically meaningless. They may be
10there from any external sources. They may be there from
11the cleaning lady. They may be there from there having
12been a regular fumigation. The quantities are so low that
13they are statistically meaningless; whereas in the
14fumigation chamber, you get a figure that is 1,050
15milograms per kilogram of cement, starting with the high
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving, precisely, which is exactly what, if you
18know the very slightest thing about this topic, you would
19expect to find.
20 A. [Mr Irving] I now know quite a lot about this topic, Mr Rampton, which
21I was not aware of at the time, and I am not prepared to
22change my position.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then, Mr Irving, it behoved you, as an historian, brought
24over as an expert witness, to keep your trap shut until
25you had done some proper research, I suggest.
26 A. [Mr Irving] This is the negligence argument again, is it not?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, it is not.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It very clearly is; you are saying I ought to have done it
3and I did not.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] No responsible person in your position would give that
5kind of evidence to a court on the kind of research you
6had, I should say, not conducted.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I did not give this evidence to court.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let me finish question.
9 A. [Mr Irving] You just said I gave this evidence to the court -- this
10court or the court in Toronto?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The court in Toronto.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I not give this evidence to the court in Toronto.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is the starting point, Mr Irving.
14 A. [Mr Irving] This was the evidence that Mr Leuchter gave.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let me finish my question, Mr Irving, please -- unless
16that so-called historian had an ulterior motive for diving
17into a sea on which he had no knowledge, is that right?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Diving into a sea is rather literally. Can you state
19specifically what you are trying to say?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Venturing on to a territory of history, an area of
21history, of which he had absolutely no knowledge whatever,
22making world-shattering statements from the witness box in
23Canada without having done any research suggests, does it
24not, Mr Irving, that you had an ulterior motive for doing
26 A. [Mr Irving] Let me give you an analogy, Mr Rampton -- it just occurs
1to me. Suppose just before you are going to go into the
2witness box, the barrister for the Defence comes up to you
3and says, well, the man is alleged to have been shot by a
4nine-milimetre automatic, but, unfortunately, we now find
5out that the bullet that was found in the body was a 38;
6would not this be sufficient grounds, even for a person
7who is not versed in ballistics, to say, "Well, I am
8beginning to change my mind"?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a rotten analogy which I do not want to pick up,
10Mr Irving, because it will just waste time.
11 A. [Mr Irving] You have to remember, I have just been going into the
12witness stand in Toronto to pontificate, if you can put it
13like that, about Hitler and the decision-making at the top
14level, and I have been shown by the barrister laboratory
15reports produced by a qualified laboratory in New England,
16suggesting very strongly that there is no significant
17residue of cyanide compounds to be found in the fabric of
18the so-called gas chambers at Auschwitz where millions of
19people have been gassed, or hundreds of thousands of
20people have been gassed.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What was the relevance, as you saw it, of
22that to your own evidence? Why did they come to your
23hotel and talk about the Leuchter report?
24 A. [Mr Irving] I think probably because they were trying to get the
25Leuchter report before the judge.
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Not through you?
1 A. [Mr Irving] They were having difficulties, my Lord, because the judge
2had taken judicial notice of the Holocaust in Canada and
3they were in legal difficulties. My Lord, I am not a
4legal expert and I can only begin ----
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, the answer is you do not really know?
6 A. [Mr Irving] The answer is I do not know, but if you ask me the reason
7why I suspect they were trying to get me to make reference
8to it and to try to bring it before the jury, before his
9Lordship, in that case Lock J could intervene to say this
10matter has been ruled inadmissible.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I was puzzled.
12 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you just given what you know to be an
13untrue answer to his Lordship. The Leuchter report was
14ruled out of court because the judge held that Mr Leuchter
15had no relevant expertise that would justify his report
16going before the jury.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I would be grateful if you would lead that evidence
18actually on a documentary basis.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will. I do not have the file here. You will see it on
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but you remember I questioned that before when you
22said that.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is in the transcript. I cannot give you the page
25 A. [Mr Irving] That was not my understanding of the reason why the
26document was ruled inadmissible.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will wait until we have the transcript,
2shall we?
3 A. [Mr Irving] And certainly, if that is the reason why, then it was not
4to my knowledge.
5 MR RAMPTON: It was quite clear from the answer -- I am not
6suggesting you gave an answer to the judge in Canada which
7was untrue at all?
8 A. [Mr Irving] You are saying I gave an answer just now which was untrue
9and I am on oath.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I believe that it is and we will come back to it.
11Mr Irving, you said to the Judge in Canada, truthfully
12I believe, that you had never been to Auschwitz to look at
13the archive?
14 A. [Mr Irving] It was true then and it is true today.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is true today?
16 A. [Mr Irving] And you know the reason why.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no idea what the reason why is?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it matter?
19 MR RAMPTON: It does not matter.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Because I am banned from visiting Auschwitz or the
21archives. I am the only historian in the world who is not
22allowed to set foot in the Auschwitz archives.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] When did that happen?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Last summer -- summer 1996.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] But between this trial in 1988, yes, and whenever the ban
26was imposed recently, you have had every opportunity to
1visit the archives in Auschwitz, have you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. I think the ban would have been
3imposed even then. I think it is like the big casinos in
4Los Vegas. They do not want the big winners to come.
5They said, "For God's sake, don't let David Irving come
6and look in our archives".
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is the reason for the ban in the Czech Republic --
8no, Poland, sorry, as it is still is, Mr Irving?
9 A. [Mr Irving] They did not state. In their letter to me, they said:
10"Mr Irving, you will not be permitted to set foot on the
11territory of the Auschwitz camp nor will you be allowed to
12enter the archives".
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you not think it virtually certain that the reason for
14that is that ever since the Zundel trial in 1988, you have
15been up on your hind legs denying that Auschwitz served
16the purpose which everybody knows that it did?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, in that case they have taken precisely the wrong
18attitude with me. They should have said, "Mr Irving, do
19come round. We have some very interesting documents here
20which will change your mind". They know perfectly well
21that had they produced one document to me of quality,
22I would immediately have changed my mind because I have no
23axe whatever to grind on this. I have repeatedly said
24that. But they took the opposite attitude. They said,
25"Don't let him anywhere near our archives. That is David
26Irving who exposed the Hitler diaries and all these other
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it matter what these various governments
3have said and done?
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it does.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why?
6 MR RAMPTON: Because the reason for the ban has likely been
7Mr Irving's denial of the Holocaust without any evidence.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, sure, and I want to see the denials, but
9I do not think I am really interested in knowing what the
10Polish government did about it.
11 MR RAMPTON: It is only a passing suggestion that he has
12brought the ban on himself.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So what if he has?
14 A. [Mr Irving] In which case this is one more example of the damage
15done to me by the book that the Defendants have published.
16 MR RAMPTON: Did you make any attempt to go to Auschwitz,
17following your first receipt of the -- I cannot remember
18the man's name -- Leuchter report and your publication of
19it in this country in 1989?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Why should I have done so, if I may ask the question?
21What possible reason would I have had to go to Auschwitz?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the answer is no?
23 A. [Mr Irving] The answer is no because I am not a holocaust historian,
24my Lord.
25 MR RAMPTON: The answer is no. Did you take any steps before
26you published it with a press conference in London in May
1or June -- June, I think it was -- 1989, did you have any
2steps to have its logic and its science and Mr Leuchter's
3methodology verified?
4 A. [Mr Irving] The whole point of publishing a document like this is in
5order to test the hypothesis. You put it up on the wall
6and you invite people then to contact you and say, "This
7is wrong, that is wrong, this is flawed", and this is
8precisely what happened.
9 In fact, Mr Rampton, you will notice in my
10introduction to the report, as you are aware, I described
11this report as being flawed. One would have wished to see
12it written differently and the investigations carried out
13differently. So it was published with reservations by
14myself as a publisher.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, the answer to my question is no, is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] The answer is just as I gave it.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] The answer is you did not take any steps to have the
18contents of the Leuchter report, and Mr Fred Leuchter's
19shattering conclusions, as you describe them, you did not
20do anything at all to have them verified by an independent
21expert or experts, did you?
22 A. [Mr Irving] The very act of publishing the report was the attempt to
23get it verified.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The answer is no.
25 MR RAMPTON: The answer is no?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon?
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The answer is no. It is helpful to -- you
2add things, but, you know, answer the question and then
3elaborate if you feel you must.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Is a publisher bound to take steps to verify in detail the
5scientific basis of every book that he publishes?
6 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, if he adds the weight of his own
7authority as a noted historian on this period in human
8history, then the answer must be yes, must it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, then I would draw your attention to the
10language in which my introduction was couched which was
11clearly with reservations.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Some small reservations?
13 A. [Mr Irving] And it says the ball is now in their court which makes
14quite clearly the trial nature of the publication of this
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you have a press conference on 23rd June 1989 to
17announce the publication of the Leuchter report?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you say at that press conference: "The buildings which
20we now identify as gas chambers in Auschwitz were not"?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Had you had any research done beyond what appeared in the
23Leuchter report to verify that statement before you made
25 A. [Mr Irving] No.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you. "I cannot accept", you said, "that they had
1gas chambers there. There was no equipment there for
2killing people en masse." You went on: "And hydrogen
3cyanide is wonderful for killing lice, but not so good for
4killing people unless in colossal concentrations".
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you take any steps to verify the scientific and
7biological correctness of that statement ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] No.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- before you made it. Do you know now that it is
10complete rubbish?
11 A. [Mr Irving] No, I would not agree.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you read the appendices to Mr Leuchter's report?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Which appendices?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] The ones appended to his report?
15 A. [Mr Irving] There are several appendices.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. They are all here. I have got them.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but I am saying that I have read some of them and
18I have not read the others.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Shall we just have a quick look at them? Are they
20attached to your version?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, they are not in the slim line version, as you might
22call it.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Unless somebody can find me the reference in court, this
24also will have to go back to Monday.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it must be somewhere, surely.
26 MR RAMPTON: Well, I know.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is probably the most important single
2document in the case.
3 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I did not do the files.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I am not casting blame anywhere.
5 MR RAMPTON: No, I am not trying to cast blame. I am trying to
6find the report.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor van Pelt might know where it is.
8 MR RAMPTON: He has his own copy, I expect, and he did not do
9the filing either. I will send out some messages, to put
10it politely, at the end of today and make sure that
11everybody has the same copy as I have.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You did say you were going to deal with the
14 MR RAMPTON: I am.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that is something one can deal with
16without the Leuchter report.
17 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there is a problem about this, not from
18my point of view, but from your Lordship's point of view.
19Miss Rogers and I have not been arguing about it, but we
20are thinking the best way of dealing with it. There are
21so many of them and the transcripts are so long that my
22voice could conk out and your Lordship would die of
23boredom if I went through them all.
24 The fact that I select some passages in some of
25them over a period of time should not allow anybody to
26think that this is not a topic which Mr Irving has
1returned to again and again and again over a period of
2years from 1988 onwards.
3 A. [Mr Irving] We will not have difficulty with the denials because I
4denied at that time and I deny now that the buildings
5shown to the tourists at Auschwitz are gas chambers or
6ever were.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is easy. In case, I can give your Lordship the
8references simply, can I not?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Can we just spend a few minutes on this
10because it is really a sort of methodological kind of
11problem, is it not?
12 MR RAMPTON: It is.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The difficulty that I see is I have all those
14articles and I do not want to plough through them
15particularly, and I would have no problem, unless
16Mr Irving tells me he does not like this idea, in your
17sidelining, or somebody on your team, the passages on
18which you rely. The problem arises because, as I
19understand Mr Irving, he says that in a number of the
20statements you rely on he has been taken out of context.
21 MR RAMPTON: Then I will have to do it.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, heaven forbid, but that is right,
23Mr Irving, is it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] If it is relevant, my Lord, yes, then we ought to look at
25it, but I thought that the statement that I just made
26would have helped your Lordship, if I make a crystal clear
1statement of denial there of an element of the Holocaust.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I had better just highlight it whilst I
3am thinking of it. Sorry.
4 A. [Mr Irving] One could have operated with that statement in lieu of
5looking at all the passages.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think, well, I will not say that. I
7think it is up to Mr Rampton to decide what course he
9 MR RAMPTON: No. I am open to guidance, if not actually of
10being told what to do. I want to save time. At the same
11time I must make absolutely sure (a) that your Lordship
12has the relevant parts of the evidence and, quite frankly,
13I cannot ask you to sit down and read all these
14transcripts; (b) that Mr Irving is given a fair chance of
15dealing with what I shall say about his conduct in this
16regard at the end of the case.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My feeling is it probably can be dealt with
18without actually ploughing through the individual
19transcripts. You might want to take some what you would
20describe as prime examples. Beyond that, I think it may
21be down to me to read them.
22 MR RAMPTON: I will do that. I will need help from my learned
23junior who is the master of these, if I can call her that,
24mistress, if you like, of these transcripts.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I think they are very similar. It is always the same
26gramophone record. It may just be embedded in a different
1amount of verbiage.
2 MR RAMPTON: Could your Lordship and Mr Irving be provided,
3please, with file D2(i)?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hope I have it. What I am going to try to
5do, my Lord, is to take what your Lordship calls a prime
6example from each year to start with and see how we get
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That would be very helpful.
9 MR RAMPTON: Could your Lordship and Mr Irving please turn to
10tab 4 in this file? This, Mr Irving, is a speech made in
11Toronto, I know not on what date, but in August, 13th
12August 1988. My Lord, this file has an index, not an
13index, a contents page, two contents pages, at the
14beginning from which one can see that tab 4 is an audio
15cassette marked "Toronto". But I do not know, therefore,
16what the audience was. I will ask Mr Irving. (To the
17witness): Could you tell us, please, Mr Irving, who the
18audience was on this date?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Human beings.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not a conspicuously helpful answer?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, my Lord, I have no idea who was in the audience,
22without wishing to be disrespectful.
23 MR RAMPTON: Was it an event arranged by somebody else?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Without looking at my diary, I cannot tell you who was
25there. Sometimes I spoke 150 times a year.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] 40 to 50 -- who lives at Kentville?
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr & Mrs Weisner?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Mr & Mrs Weisner, I think it was a private soiree in their
3home probably.
4 MR RAMPTON: 255, I am reading from your diary for that day:
5"3.00 p.m. function, audience of 40 to 50, in stiflingly
6humid basement room, no air conditioning"?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I remember and there was a colossal thunder storm that
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do sympathise. Also there are some remarks about the
10gate of $350 and Ernst, that is Ernst Zundel's, book sales
11$600. Our book sales $180." Who is the "we" in "our"?
12Whose book is that?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I think Mr Zundel bought a number of books off me as
14I sold books all around the world, and he runs a
15bookshop. So I divided it up between this bulk sale of
16books to him and bulk and books that we sold. That was
17myself and my assistant.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] So in this stiflingly hot basement in August in Toronto,
19if you turn to page 6 ----
20 A. [Mr Irving] I think it was probably Ottawa rather than Toronto.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I cannot help about that. It has "Toronto" on the front.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Canada anyway?
23 A. [Mr Irving] It was Ottawa.
24 MR RAMPTON: It is Miss Rogers fault. I will scratch out
25"Toronto" and put -- sorry about that -- "Ottawa"?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Manipulate the place back to Ottawa, shall we?
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just negligence, I think.
2 MR RAMPTON: We will sort this out later. It is just a waste
3of time. It does not matter. It is the words that
4matter. Whether it is an audience of 130 or an audience
5of 50, it is still quite a lot of people?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you asked me who the audience was and that is why
7you, obviously, attached importance to it.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I wondered what the occasion was. Some friends of
9Mr Zundel's who paid at the door to come in, is that
11 A. [Mr Irving] No, it was the friends of the Weisners.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] The Weisners?
13 A. [Mr Irving] The Weisners who live in Ottawa, and they invited me to go
14and address their family and friends, basically.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Were these family and friends mostly German
17 A. [Mr Irving] I am not anti-German. I dislike this kind of ethnic
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, no, Mr Irving, nor am I.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Anti-Germanism is as bad as anti-Semitism, I think.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is a matter of opinion. Can you please turn to page
226 of this document?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Page 6?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is a parenthetical note, (286). That must be some
1kind of mark on the recording. You say this: "But just
2imagine the omelette on their faces", they are the
3orthodox historians, are they, or who?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, probably like saying I like seeing egg on the
5historians' faces. The court may have gained that
6impression also over the last few days.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I would have to trace it a way back and I really ----
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us worry.
9 MR RAMPTON: "Imagine the omelette on their faces if we managed
10to unmask the other six milliion lie". What do you mean
11by the words "the other 6 million lie"? "This is the
12prospect that is now opening up in front of me"?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, because the previous day I had been talking about
14Derstern spending $6 million on buying the Adolf Hitler
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] So this is what you call the Holocaust lie, is it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it is obviously a play on words between $6 million
18and 6 million people, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you frequently referred to what you might call the
20received view about Auschwitz and the Holocaust generally
21as a lie, have you not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think you will find many occasions, Mr Rampton.
23This is not being spoken from a script. This is an
24extemporary talk to a group of fans and friends in the
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] And, rather like Heinreich Himmler -- I mean no offence by
1that, but we looked at something this morning -- the more
2apt, I suggest, to portray your true inner thoughts than a
3carefully crafted script?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what he says in the next sentence.
5 MR RAMPTON: "And I am glad, in fact, that we are such a small
6circle" -- indeed so, my Lord -- "today because I can
7talk, I think, in a small audience like this more frankly
8than I would in a large audience about what I am doing and
9what I am proposing to do. Because, of course, an
10historian who now stands up and says, 'I do not believe it
11happened' is putting his name on the line. He's risking
12his reputation and his career and his prospects and his
14 A. [Mr Irving] Precisely what we have seen over the last few years, of
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] "In Germany, of course, if you say it you're risking a
17jail sentence, because that particular lie has become a
18lie anchored in law and it is now a criminal offence to
19challenge that six million lie. And I think that alone is
20prove sufficient that there is not documentary evidence to
21back the lie up".
22 A. [Mr Irving] Can I point to the word "challenge" rather than "deny"?
23"Challenge" implies you are looking at aspects of it.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please do not be impatient, Mr Irving. The more time goes
25by, the more emphatic you become about this.
26 A. [Mr Irving] No, these are quite important points -- small though they
1may seem.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] "And I think that alone is proof sufficient that there is
3not documentary evidence to back the lie up. So they
4anchor it in law and this is one particular reason why
5I am even keener to demolish the lie. Yet, to find myself
6speaking like this to you now, in August 1988, until would
7have astonished me", "until now", I do not know, "would
8have astonished me had I thought about it at the beginning
9of this year, because at the beginning of this year I was
10among the believers. You can find that if you look at a
11number of my books, the Adolf Hitler biography I wrote or
12a book that I wrote called 'von Guernica bis Vietnam'. A
13number of books I accept quite happily that Auschwitz
14existed and that Auschwitz did exist as an extermination
15camp, among other extermination camps. What I did write,
16which upset a lot of people in my Hitler biography, was",
17and then you go on about upsetting people by denying that
18Hitler knew anything about it.
19 Then you say: "This was the kind of halfway
20house in my conversion".
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, and then if I can just draw attention to three lines
22from the bottom: "... not the slightest evidence of
23Hitler knowing about Auschwitz, Auschwitz as we are now
24taught to regard it". When we are talking about
25Auschwitz, I was being quite specific there. "Auschwitz
26as we are now taught to regard it". That is what I am
1trying to demolish.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] I know exactly what are you talking about, Mr Irving.
3That is why you say it was a halfway house in your
4conversion. You were saying to yourself, were you not,
5whether honestly or not is not today's work, "Well, if
6Hitler did not know about the fact that Auschwitz was a
7massive extermination camp, very likely or perhaps it was
8not", then you get Mr Leuchter's little report put in your
9hand and you said, "Oh, well, I am right after all.
10Hitler cannot have known about it because it never
12 A. [Mr Irving] What never happened?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is the whole house in your conversion, is it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] What never happened?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Auschwitz use as an extermination camp by the use of
16homicidal gas chambers?
17 A. [Mr Irving] As a factory of death, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] A factory of death. It was never built -- we know this --
19we have been over this a dozen times already in this court
20-- everybody knows who knows anything about it at all
21that Auschwitz did not start life as a totas fabrik , as
22you call it?
23 A. [Mr Irving] There is no point getting testy about it, Mr Rampton.
24I think it is appropriate if I remind the court at this
25point that if it turns out that I am right, then truth is
26an absolute defence to this kind of position. And I am
1quite happy to stand here and be subjected to this
2grilling, but if it turns out that I am right at the end
3of this trial on this particular matter, then this been a
4lot of water under the bridge that we could have spared
5our time over.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] With respect, Mr Irving, I believe you might have
7misconceived the nature of this case. This case is not,
8as I have repeatedly said, about who is right and who is
10 A. [Mr Irving] Oh!
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not indeed. It is about your qualities as an
12exponent of the truth.
13 A. [Mr Irving] So, in other words, "OK, he propagated the truth, but he
14did it in a tasteless manner and an offensive manner and
15an insensitive manner"?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think this is a debate that may need to
17take place at some stage, but I think it is not productive
18at this stage.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am astonished to hear Mr Rampton say that it is not
20about ----
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I know what he means and I know your
22response to it, but let us postpone this.
23 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, we are dealing here, as you yourself
24said this morning, you opened with some reference to a
25state of a man's mind taken from a legal case, what we are
26dealing here with, Mr Irving, is your state of mind at the
1time when you made these statements?
2 A. [Mr Irving] In August.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And subsequently.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Not about whether you were right or wrong, as a matter of
6objective fact. Do you understand?
7 A. [Mr Irving] But it is about both matters together taken in tandem.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, we are not. In this part of the cross-examination
9we are simply dealing with what you said, why you said it
10and what basis you had for saying it -- you had.
11 A. [Mr Irving] So the allegation is David Irving was right, but how
12tasteless the way he put it?
13 MR RAMPTON: No.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us press on. For what it is worth,
15I think the way Mr Rampton puts it just now is precisely
16right, but please let us not prolong the debate.
17 MR RAMPTON: Keep in the front of your mind what the Judge
18said, lest you go down some other routes or you may get a
19ticking off from the bench, Mr Irving?
20 A. [Mr Irving] That is a risk when one is under cross-examination for
21several days.
22 MR RAMPTON: Please turn to page 12, Mr Irving.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will start at 549. I am not at all sure what you are
25talking about but I do not think it matters. Towards the
26top of the page: "I do not like the historian writers who
1have been going around for last the 20 years saying this.
2I do not like them because they have not been using
3scientific methods". You know their names because they
4frequently appear in the newspapers under attack and they
5have done our cause quite a lot harm I think."
6 Can I pause there? What do you mean by the
7words "our cause"? Whose cause?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Do you mind if I read these few lines again to try to work
9out what I am talking about?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please do.
11 MR RAMPTON: And back if you want as well for the content.
12 A. [Mr Irving] It is a problem. You leap forward ten pages and then say
13who are we talking about? I do not know. I do not know
14who we are talking about there.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] These people, whoever they are, have been blundering about
16in the room, saying things or doing things you do not
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You say:"These people have done our cause quite a lot of
20harm". Whose cause, Mr Irving?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. I do not know who I am talking about.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are talking about the cause of like minded
23anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, are you not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think there is the slight hint of that in those
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who else's cause would you be talking of?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Obviously I am going to have to read the previous page to
2see who we are talking about then. (Pause for reading)
3One interpretation is that it is the defence team of
4Mr Zundel, who was at that time under appeal, or I think
5the case was ongoing against him. Or historians like
6myself. To try and put in words like anti-Semitic and
7things like that I think is not very helpful.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You may as well have them now, Mr Irving. You will get at
9the end anyway.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Are you going to imply that I am anti-Semitic, are you, or
11my friends are anti-Semitic?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have said it in opening and I will say it again now if
13it pleases you so that you will have it in mind ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] So the newspapers will have it tomorrow, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] You may or may not do, but you will certainly get it at
16the end of case when we have looked at all the evidence.
17Our case is that you consort with people who are deeply
18anti-Semitic, and you do it quite frequently, not all the
20 A. [Mr Irving] So did Winston Churchill. Most of his Cabinet ministers
21were anti-Semitic but does it make Winston Churchill
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Two blacks do not make a white?
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am not calling Mr Winston Churchill black. I am just
25giving that as an example that that is not so far very
26good evidence.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton was putting his case to you.
2Perhaps wait until you have the whole of it and then
4 MR RAMPTON: What is more, Mr Irving ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] This is a very serious charge to make, of course.
6 MR RAMPTON: Of course it is. It is a charge I made in opening
7the case and I intend to make it good.
8 A. [Mr Irving] You did not make the anti-Semitic charge in opening the
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I made the charge that you made statements, and I now add
11the word "deliberately", which are deliberately designed
12to feed the virulent anti-Semitism which alas today in the
13world is still alive and kicking, and you know perfectly
14well that that is what you are doing. I further say, and
15we will look at some of this down the line, that some of
16the observations you make on these occasions are
17themselves greatly anti-Semitic.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Well, no doubt we can take each of these seriatim when we
19come to them.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will. You will remember the one that I read out in
21opening, will you not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, your instructing solicitors may not have told
23you but we had correspondence on this matter, and
24I invited the solicitors to say to me whether they were
25going to level at me the allegation that I am anti-Semitic
26so that I would have the opportunity to lead evidence on
1that. They refused to state at that time that that was
2their intention. You are now coming totally against the
3principles of the new rules with this fresh allegation
4that I am in some way anti-Semitic.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I did not say that.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I think it is highly improper.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you will read the transcript of what I said I chose my
8words very carefully.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure you did, Mr Rampton, so that they get in the
10newspapers in that form tomorrow. I am sure you know
11exactly how carefully to choose your words to make a slur
12like that.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do. That is why they pay me, Mr Irving. Precision is
14everything, I find. You make observations -- I am trying
15to repeat myself without looking at the screen -- which
16can fairly characterised -- I am not sure that I have it
17verbatim -- as grossly anti-Semitic on these occasions.
18 A. [Mr Irving] I am not going to dignify that with an answer, Mr Rampton,
19unless his Lord invites me to.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you do not have to. I will invite
21Mr Rampton in due course to make that good by reference to
22what you said. That is elementary fairness to you.
23 A. [Mr Irving] To lead appropriate evidence.
24 MR RAMPTON: Thank you. I could not possibly say it if I did
25not have that intention, Mr Irving.
26 A. [Mr Irving] It would have been nice if your solicitors had informed me
1in good time that this was going to be your intention,
2which would have given us time over the months to build up
3the appropriate dossier of counter material.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point because I am not sure
5this is spelled out quite as clearly as you did just now,
6Mr Rampton.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Very clearly indeed in the correspondence between the
9 MR RAMPTON: It is not spelled out clearly in the original
10defence, my Lord, I accept.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have just been looking at the way it is put
13 MR RAMPTON: I think it is spelled out very clearly in the
14statement of case. I think it is. I think I read it the
15other day.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 6, not so clearly as all that.
17 A. [Mr Irving] But this is clearly playing to the gallery in the form of
18the press gallery.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, really, I must be the judge of
20that, must I not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] It goes to the conduct by the Defendants of the case when
22the time comes, my Lord.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course it does.
24 MR RAMPTON: Do you know anything at all about life at the Bar,
25Mr Irving? Do you know anything about the rules under
26which we operate?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I am totally ignorant, as you are now well aware,
2Mr Rampton.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you did, you might not say something like that?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I am aware you are not supposed to lead evidence you
5cannot justify.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am never supposed to say anything that I do not think
7can be justified, that is right.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the summary of case, which is quite short
9and that is to its credit, I think you will see the
10observation I just made is perhaps not an unfair one.
11 MR RAMPTON: I did not sorry, I did not catch your Lordship's
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I said that I did not read the
14summary of case as putting the Defendants' case as clearly
15and in quite the terms that you put just now.
16 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I do not think I can do better, and I do
17not think I did better just now, than what appears in box
1880 on page 27.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was looking at the front. You are looking
20at the end.
21 MR RAMPTON: I am looking at the summary we give of what we say
22is to be drawn from the content of Mr Irving's speeches.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to have a look at that,
24Mr Irving?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I think your Lordship sees my objection to this particular
26kind of thrust.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
2 MR RAMPTON: Shall I read it, Mr Irving?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you ought to, Mr Rampton, because
4I think you have corrected me rightly, if I may say so.
5 MR RAMPTON: "P - that is P for plaintiff as he then was -
6Mr Irving, is a right-wing pro Nazi ideologue, as is
7demonstrated by the views he has expressed in his speeches
8and publications. The Defendants will refer to the
9anti-Semitic racist and misogynistic tone and contents of
10Mr Irving's speeches and publications, including those
11referred to above and in sections 1-5".
12 A. [Mr Irving] Very well. If you are going to lead evidence about that
13topic, then you ought to do so earlier, sooner rather than
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point. The evidence must be
16led. But that is the case. It is spelled out clearly.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Sooner rather than later, rather than leaving this
18allegation in suspense.
19 MR RAMPTON: That is what I am starting on now. I have just
20started on your speeches and publication.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we press on?
22 MR RAMPTON: Where am I now? I am still in 1988.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are still in Ottawa.
24 MR RAMPTON: Or was it Toronto? That is what I am going to try
25and prove, Mr Irving, over the next few hours or days or
26however long it may take.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Would your Lordship allow me then to lead evidence to
2refute these allegation? S.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes of course.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I am not sure how we can do it.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can do it yourself.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Or I can put it to one of the experts, Professor Levin or
7Professor Eatwell. It is an easy slur to make, but it
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us concentrate on the evidence that is
10going to be put now.
11 MR RAMPTON: The only thing which is going to stick in this
12case, Mr Irving, is his Lordship's judgment. At least,
13I hope so.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Shall we proceed with the questioning, Mr Rampton.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving. We will continue, shall we? I think
16I was at the words: "But Mr Zundel has used the scientific
17methods and, taking this as a starting point, I have now
18begun over the last few months going round the archives,
19with a completely open mind, looking for the evidence
20myself because, if Auschwitz, just to take that
21one cardinal tent pole of the case, itself was not an
22extermination factory, then what is the evidence that it
23was?" I do not understand that sentence but I understand
24the sense of it. "This is one thing I have to look at.
25How did all the evidence come into existence? It is an
26interesting case because we all now accept that the media
1knows, everybody knows, it has become a matter of common
2experience, judicial notice has been taken of the fact
3that Auschwitz was an extermination camp. So what is the
4evidence that it was? If you then start going all your way
5back down the pipeline to find out where this evidence
6comes from, you come up with one or two or three documents
7and eyewitness accounts and that is all."
8 Now, that was your account of the state of the
9evidence regarding the proposition that Auschwitz was a
10totas fabrik in August 1988, some five months after the
11end of the Zundel trial.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You had not even bothered going to look at the archive in
14Auschwitz, had you?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I think I did not say here that I went to the Auschwitz
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said you had been round the archives with a completely
18open mind looking for the evidence.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] You tell your audience that all you come up with is one or
21two or three documents and eyewitnesses accounts and that
22is all.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Let me explain to you the situation at the time as
24I understand it, archively speaking. The Soviet archives
25were not opened until 1990, I believe I am correct in
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am listening. Please continue.
2 A. [Mr Irving] I do not like talking to the back of counsel.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It happens all time in court. It has to. It
4is not rudeness or anything else. It is just the way of
5the world.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I promise I will not turn my back on people when they are
7speaking to me.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Just carry on with your answer, please.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Soviet archives had not been opened at that time. Poland
10was still behind the iron curtain. The wall had not come
11done. Am I making my point?
12 MR RAMPTON: No, not in the least bit.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Which of those sentences did you not understand?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I understood the first sentence, which was completely
15irrelevant because we are in 1988. I am not interested in
16Moscow. I asked you about the archive at Auschwitz so
17leave Moscow out of it.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Our present state of information about Auschwitz, the
19superior information we now have about Auschwitz, comes
20primarily from the fact that the Russians, when they
21arrived in Auschwitz, captured the records of the camp
22intact, particularly the construction records of the camp,
23which therefore went to the Moscow archives. Poland,
24where Auschwitz is situated, was behind the iron curtain.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am getting some information. Continue. Yes?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Principal archives which were being used by historians at
1this time were in the national archives in Washington, and
2the German Federal archives, to which I at that time still
3had access, not having been banned from them by the German
4government in the interests of German people.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you familiar with the work which you disparagingly
6call the French country chemist, Jon-Claude Presac?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I am not familiar with his work, no.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You know who he is, do you not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. He wrote this being volume on the desk.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] He did indeed. Do you know that he went to the archive in
11Auschwitz in 1982 and 1983?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Maybe they found favour in him which they did not find in
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You never asked?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I am not a Holocaust historian, Mr Rampton. At this time
16in 1988 I was writing, if I remember correctly, the latest
17edition of the Hermann Goring biography or I was working
18on the second volume of my Winston Churchill biography,
19neither of which would have required me to go to
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have it that
22Auschwitz did not exist and you cannot have it that there
23is no evidence in the archive if you have never looked.
24 A. [Mr Irving] If I say I have been round the archives, I am not saying
25I have been round all available archives, including those
26had Poland and elsewhere. I am saying I have been round
1the archives, which at that time is perfectly true. I
2might even have gone to the Public Records Office to see
3what they had.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] You might have been round the archives of the Royal
5Botanical Gardens in Kew, for all I know.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I find that a cheap remark.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course it is cheap, but this is a very cheap----
8 A. [Mr Irving] Which you say is a matter of great sensitivity to the
9Jewish people.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is a very cheap fraud that you have perpetrated on
11the 50 or so people in this room because what you are
12telling me is that you have looked everywhere and all
13anybody can come up with is two or three documents.
14 A. [Mr Irving] I have not said I have looked everywhere. This is again
15your manipulation of the sentence, your rather superfluous
16gloss. To look everywhere you need to spend the kind of
17money that your team has spent.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I put it a different way round? Which
19were the archives that you had spent a few months going
21 A. [Mr Irving] I do not want to be ambushed by references from my own
22diary, but I would suspect, from the way I put that
23sentence, that I went to the German Federal Archives and I
24went to the national archives in Washington, and possibly
25to the Hoover library in California where they also have a
26certain amount of material relating to this.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So you have done a fair amount of research into the
2Holocaust, or into Auschwitz?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but not specifically for that. I would have gone
4there for other purposes and I would then have called up
5roles of microfilm of Heinreich Himmler's papers which are
6in great abundance in the national archives and I would
7have looked at some of the Nuremberg documents. But I had
8not travelled there specifically to research the
9Holocaust. At this time I was researching probably
10Winston Churchill Volume 2.
11 MR RAMPTON: So, when you said on page 6 that in relation to
12Hitler you had been round the archives of the entire
13world, we have to exclude Auschwitz from that, do we not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Can I see the exact reference?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, of course you can. You are talking about Hitler and
16his knowledge of whatever, I do not know, Auschwitz
17I suppose, five lines up from the bottom?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Because I worked in the archives of the entire world,
19including the public archives here in Wellington Street.
20That shows as Ottawa, by the way.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please do not give us a list. The entire world is the
22entire world, but apparently does not have Auschwitz in
24 A. [Mr Irving] It did not have anything behind the iron curtain and the
25people who were in the audience at that time would have
26realized that.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, I see. So they would not have been in the least bit
3 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you have to put yourself back to 1988 before
4the wall came down.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not think so, because I am told that the archive at
6Auschwitz was readily accessible to anybody with the
7proper credentials, that is to say I am an historian,
8please may I have a look because I intend to write a
9serious piece of research about this, before I go public
10on what it was or was not.
11 A. [Mr Irving] So we are coming back on to the negligence argument
13 MR RAMPTON: No.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The picture I have, and I think we probably
15need to press on a little bit, is that Auschwitz may or
16may not have been accessible to somebody like yourself,
17but you never in fact enquired about getting access to the
18Auschwitz archive?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I ought to have but did not. If I was going to write
20about Auschwitz and the Holocaust then I ought to have but
21did not.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is a fair summary of factual position?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, with the rider that I added, my Lord, that if I
24intended to write about the Holocaust, then I would have
25done that and ought to have done it.
26 MR RAMPTON: I add to this, and you not only deliberately
1decided not to go to Auschwitz because you were not
2interested in finding the truth before making these
3statements ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] Deliberately decided not to?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, deliberately decided not to. You made a deliberate
6decision. If you were the slightest bit interested in the
7truth about Auschwitz, you would have gone there.
8 A. [Mr Irving] If I was writing a book about Auschwitz and the Holocaust,
9then I would have gone there. When I became deeply
10involved in it, thanks to this litigation, and I tried to
11go to Auschwitz, then I was banned from entry, the only
12person in the world who has so far been banned,
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] That was recently, Mr Irving.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There we are.
16 MR RAMPTON: What is more, Mr Irving, what is important about
17this very early speech in your Holocaust denial career, is
18that you actually deliberately misled your audience in
19Toronto or Ottawa or wherever it is into believing that
20you had done the research and had found that there was no
22 A. [Mr Irving] I can only repeat what I previously said, Mr Rampton, that
23my audience were not stupid and they knew that the iron
24curtain was still standing at that time, even if you have
25forgotten it.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that the lot from that speech?
1 MR RAMPTON: That is all I want from Toronto/Ottawa, whichever
2it be.
3 A. [Mr Irving] There is, of course, a great deal more in that speech, my
4Lord, which your Lordship may well read later on. The
5reasons why one is sceptical about the report by the two
6Slovac Jews, for example, and so on. I am not just
7speaking off the top of my head. It is quite clear, I
8think, by that time that I went to the Reisaltz Library
9and had a look at the origins of the war refugee board and
10its entire file on that report and so on. It is a bit
11deceptive really just to take these single paragraphs out
12and hold them up.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We may have to have more discussion about the
14mechanics of dealing with the contextual points that you
15want to take.
16 MR RAMPTON: I quite agree about that and, as I think I have
17already said at some time in this case if not just now,
18one of the problems with this sort of an exercise is that
19there is a danger that the most innocent selectivity can
20lead to distortion. I do not want that to happen. I do
21not want to skin this cat by a false case, if you see what
22I mean.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. This is not a criticism and
24please do not think it is, but we have taken, I do not
25know, three quarters of an hour on one relatively
26unimportant speech, and I do not think we can do that with
1all of them, can we? It really is not a criticism. This
2is very difficult.
3 MR RAMPTON: I realize that. I would make the complaint, if
4I had to, that I never get an answer to my question.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not being critical either way.
6 MR RAMPTON: I get a speech, and that is one of the reasons why
7it takes such a long time.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did suggest prime examples.
9 MR RAMPTON: That is quite a prime example, in our submission.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is a selection of prime
11examples, followed by a marked up list of those that are
12relied on, and then and then we will work out how best to
13allow Mr Irving to take the context.
14 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think I already read some of the most
15important parts of the press conference announcing the
16publication of the Leuchter report.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you give me the reference?
18 MR RAMPTON: That is tab 5 of same file.
19 A. [Mr Irving] If you had listened, with respect, to what I said about
20weighting the verbal utterances less heavily in the
21written books and so on, perhaps we would have avoided
22part of this misery.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not fair. I am anxious not to have
24a sort of running commentary about the evidence, but the
25fact is, it seems to me on what I have heard so far, that
26you have been far more unrestrained in your assertions
1about Auschwitz when speaking at these various talks that
2you gave.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Private gatherings, yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Gatherings. Well, I do not know that it
5matters very much that they are private gatherings.
6I think the Defendants are perfectly entitled to put that
7to you.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I bear in mind what you said about these
10being, relatively speaking, unconsidered remarks, but the
11fact is you made them, so I am not going to stop
12Mr Rampton. Indeed, I think it is very important that we
13do see some of the things that have been said. We are on
14now to the press conference. That is Tab 5.
15 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving was about to say provided your Lordship
16does not attach too much weight. On the contrary, Mr
18 A. [Mr Irving] I was not. I was about to say provided he bears in mind
19they are extempore, not scripted.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the contrary, Mr Irving, what you say in private to
21what I might call people of like mind is, in our
22submission, likely to be far more revealing of your true
23thoughts and motives than what you carefully craft for
24publication to the world at large. Do you follow me?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I do not follow where you get people of like mind from.
26What is the evidence for that?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are coming to that when we look at some of your
2remarks, for example, to the national alliance.
3 A. [Mr Irving] We have just been looking at this particular meeting.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us get on. I really think we are spending
5an awful lot of time debating and fencing. The thing is,
6I need to be shown what it is the Defendants rely on that
7you said and to hear what you say about it now, Mr Irving.
8 MR RAMPTON: In answering your Lordship's request I am only
9showing your Lordship a fragment of what we rely on.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I follow that. Prime example. So
11press conference.
12 MR RAMPTON: Can we turn next, please, to page 35 of tab 5?
13Before I do that, Mr Julius has drawn to my attention
14something which your Lordship may actually think really
15rather important. Mr Irving challenges me to justify my
16observation, proposition, that these remarks, these, what
17shall I say, unclothed naked remarks, are to people of
18like mind. I do that by reference, if I may, before
19I leave tab 4, to page 16, and we see this again when we
20get, for example, to Calgary in 1991.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts on the page?
22 MR RAMPTON: In the middle of the page there is a sentence
23which starts: "The Auschwitz propaganda lie that was
24starting to run in 1944 is now out of control and it is
25going to take he men of the kind of stature of Ernst
26Zundel to kill that particular hare. Applause."
1 That is not the only such example.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Of what?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the question, because it was not
4quite put as a question, is does that not show that you
5were addressing a bunch of supporters of Zundel?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I think they were just people who appreciated the fact
7that I had compassion for a man who had had his house
8burned down and been subjected to repeated physical
9violence and that he was still standing up to this kind of
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the answer. On to the press
12conference, page 35.
13 MR RAMPTON: Page 35. You are answering questions at the press
14conference. Just under halfway down the page somebody
15asks: "Everybody who has written about their camp
16experiences ----" You do not allow them to finish what
17they were going to say, Mr Irving. You butt in: "Anybody
18who has described gas chambers in slave labour camps at
19Auschwitz or anywhere else is to my mind making it up."
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you mean to say that?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I think that, if I had written this sentence out
23logically and not in this incoherent scramble, it would
24have been anybody who has described gas chambers in the
25slave labour camp at Auschwitz is to my mind making it up
26and it has probably come out a bit garbled, for which of
1course I accept full responsibility.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you mean, garbled? It is a perfectly good English
3sentence. Garble: It is as clear as a shaft of
5 A. [Mr Irving] In slave labour camps at Auschwitz or elsewhere.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, exactly. Or elsewhere. That is why you have used the
7plural, slave labour camps.
8 A. [Mr Irving] That is why I am talking about garbled. You cannot have
9camps at Auschwitz, when Auschwitz was just one of two
10camps. It is garbled.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "All" should be "and" really.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but the sense of that is saying anybody who describes
13gas chambers in the slave labour camp at Auschwitz is to
14my mind making it up.
15 MR RAMPTON: Or elsewhere, gas chambers elsewhere, is making it
16up too, are they not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I might have to be pernickety and say I would like
18to see me actually saying that and hear what emphasis is
19attached to the words verbatim. This is the problem
20with transcripts, particularly when it is an incoherent
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Questioner: Not at slave labour camps either? Is that
23what you are saying?
24 A. [Mr Irving] They have obviously got hold of the wrong end of stick
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You repeated, no gas chambers at slave labour camps
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, is that really fair? Over the
3page, "Question: What do you think happened at Treblinka
4and Sobibor? I do not know".
5 MR RAMPTON: Fair enough, my Lord, yes. Let us concentrate on
6Auschwitz. That is danger of taking these plums ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Springing them on me like this, that is the danger.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] What did you say?
9 A. [Mr Irving] One springs just fragments on me and on the court like
10this, but his Lordship has quite wisely read ahead.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you have for a very long time, I mean months,
12had a whole list of the speeches, the transcripts of
13speeches etc. on which we rely. You have had copies of
14them. And you made them in the first place. How can you
15say I am springing it on you? What shall I do? Give you
16a marked up copy Is that the best thing? I do not know
17what your Lordship thinks?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Sarcasm apart.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we press on and find the other passages
20relied on? I just think we have to get to the passages
21that are relied on.
22 MR RAMPTON: I am looking, my Lord, yes?
23 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, these are not my transcripts. These are
24transcripts made by --
25 MR RAMPTON: I am looking for a way round two problems, one
26that this is taking far too much time.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you went direct to the passages, as it
2were, one after another, would that not help?
3 MR RAMPTON: I just did that.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know.
5 MR RAMPTON: I do not want to be disobedient but this is
6cross-examination and I cannot just stand in
7cross-examination and read out passages without the
8witness being given a chance to speak about them.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, he has to have a chance to comment but
10I just wonder whether we do not want to go from one to
11another with a minimum of intervening exchanges.
12 MR RAMPTON: I will do what I can. I am not going to get the
13file out for this one because it will take too much time.
14Do you remember you made a speech at Dresden in February
16 A. [Mr Irving] On the anniversary of the air raid, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] So what?
18 A. [Mr Irving] So what?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us concentrate on what was said.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Did you say something like this: The
21Holocaust of Germans in Dresden really happened. That of
22the Jews in the gas chambers at Auschwitz is an
23invention. I am ashamed to be an Englishman?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Could I just have that?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] By all means, so far as I am concerned.
26 A. [Mr Irving] There is what happened in Dresden and of that I am
1ashamed. I am sorry, my Lord, I have only got one copy
2with me but it is a picture of the old market in Dresden,
3thousands of bodies, victims of the air raid. Mr Rampton,
4you mentioned it.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes but I am going to ask you to put it
6down. We are going to spend no doubt a lot of time on
7Dresden. The reasons, as you must appreciate, that
8Mr Rampton put that alleged quote was nothing to do with
9Dresden but what you said by way of comparison between
10Dresden and Auschwitz. Did you make that comparison?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Perfectly entitled to I think.
12 MR RAMPTON: Did you say: I am not at present interested in
13Dresden. We can argue moral and historical questions
14about Dresden until the cows come home. At the moment
15Mr Irving we are dealing with your statements about
17 A. [Mr Irving] Can I see the passages you are relying on?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is why I said so what?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Can I see the actual passage you are relying on?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That you are perfectly entitled to do.
21 MR RAMPTON: You have to get out another file, D3(i)?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I am afraid, when somebody says so what about Dresden,----
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please. There is going to have to be a
25ruling before long. This is just absurd, this back and
26forth exchanging. Dresden is, I am sure, where is it in
1the index?
2 MR RAMPTON: D3(i) 25, page 493.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you know the internal pagination
4Mr Rampton?
5 MR RAMPTON: No. I do not have a copy of it here. I have only
6got an extract.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you found the passage, Mr Irving?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry I have not.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, if things are being put, they really
10have to be available in documentary form in case Mr Irving
11wants, as he has in this case, to see the context.
12 MR RAMPTON: I agree with that. All that follows from this is
13that the reference I have been given is not the right
14one. It is entirely my fault. I am using the wrong
15idiot's guide to those transcripts. Can we forget Dresden
16for the moment, Mr Irving?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I can never forget Dresden.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Not Dresden what happened, what you said about Auschwitz
19at Dresden, and then come back to it at some later stage
20if we have to? In D3(i), page 25, tab 25, may I please
21have a copy of that file? There should be, my Lord, a
22speech at an IHR conference on 14th October 1990.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was that where we were just now, D3(i)?
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I think it was because what I am told by
25Miss Rogers is that in that speech one finds a reference
26back to what Mr Irving said at Dresden. That, I think, is
1the point, which is why I was given the page reference
2which I will now go back to. I am sorry about the
4 A. [Mr Irving] What is the section again, please, or tab?
6 MR RAMPTON: Page 493 in this tab. The page numbers are at the
7top of the page, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving] I have it.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] In the right-hand column of page 493 somebody has
10written: "Irving concluded his address" -- this is about
11near the end of the middle paragraph -- "in Dresden with
12these words: 'Ladies and gentlemen, survivors and
13descendants of the holocaust of Dresden, the holocaust of
14Germans in Dresden really happened. That of the Jews in
15the gas chambers of Auschwitz is an invention. I am
16ashamed to be an Englishman'".
17 This article starts with the heading:
18"Battleship Auschwitz, David Irving, (Remarks presented
19to the Tenth International Revisionist Conference With an
20Introduction by Mark Weber". That recitation or
21repetition of what you had said at Dresden, therefore,
22comes, does it not, the mouth of Mr Weber?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Did he write this or is this ---
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is his introduction to your talk.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Very well.
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] It looks as if he did, but the question is was he
1accurate, was he right, had you said that?
2 MR RAMPTON: Did you say that?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. There is a transcript of my speech in
4Dresden which your researchers could have obtained.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] OK. So Mr Weber got it wrong?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well, on the evidence of this document, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the transcript?
8 A. [Mr Irving] They could have had the video tape transcribed.
9 MR RAMPTON: No, we have not got a tape of Dresden?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, but a tape was made by Mr Geiger.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Maybe it was, but we have not got it.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry but ----
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you would be kind enough to retrieve it, we should very
14much like to have it transcribed.
15 A. [Mr Irving] I will see if I can obtain a copy for you.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is why our only source of what you said in Dresden
17is this document.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, it is not the kind of source that I personally would
19have relied upon.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who is Mr Weber?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Weber is, I think he is the head of the Institute
22Historical Review.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know him well?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is he a reliable gentleman?
26 A. [Mr Irving] On the evidence of that, no.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is he a friend of yours?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Probably no longer.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Probably no longer. Seriously though, how close is your
4association with Mr Weber?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I see him about once every two years.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you correspond regularly?
7 A. [Mr Irving] He occasionally telephones me. I am glad he is paying the
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think if I were you, I would remember
10having said that if I said it.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Having said this? It is the precise wording that worries
12me, my Lord. The sense is correct.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I see. Do not worry about the precise wording. Is the
14substance of it, did you make the points that Dresden was
15a Holocaust or Auschwitz is a non-Holocaust because it did
16not happen?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I did not say that and I do not think even this says that,
18my Lord. What I have said is that Dresden was a real
19Holocaust. I have witnessed the pictures.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, you then go on to say that of the Jews in the gas
21chambers of Auschwitz is an invention?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it is no secret that I have said that no Jews were
23killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz that are shown to
24the tourists, but that is the kind of limitation which
25Mr Rampton would probably find unhelpful.
26 MR RAMPTON: No. That is one of your own, what I might say,
1self-set traps, Mr Irving. You have occasionally made
2reference to the reconstructed gas chamber at Auschwitz 1,
3the Stumlager. You have on numerous occasions said that
4there were no gas chambers anywhere in the German system.
5That must include Birkenhau; we have just looked at one
6such remark.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I think you ought really to lead evidence to this
8and not just summarize ----
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Am I right or -- it will ----
10 A. [Mr Irving] --- to this effect.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- save so much time, Mr Irving, if you would accept that
12you have on numerous occasions said there were no gas
13chambers, plural, at Auschwitz?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am sure that if you had evidence to that effect,
15then you would have started off the afternoon by saying
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Well, I will try to find your Chappaquidick remark.
18Here we are, this is in November 1990, something called
19the Latvian Hall ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Reference?
21 MR RAMPTON: That is the wrong one. I am so sorry. There is
22the one I read out. D2(i), my Lord, tab 9. This is 1991,
23so I have got ahead of the chronology, so it does not
24matter. I will start, if I may, with page 14?
25 A. [Mr Irving] At tab 9, you say?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think so.
1 MR RAMPTON: Page 14 of tab 9, Mr Irving?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is a speech at, well, this is called Travel Lodge
4Airport Inn, is that the same thing as Latvian Hall?
5 A. [Mr Irving] 2,000 miles away, otherwise it is the same, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes, this is Calgary, yes. Quite right. Now I am
7going to start at ----
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 10 lines down.
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes, something like that. You were saying that
10Elie Wiesel is a liar. I am not the least bit interested
11in the answer to that question -- it is not a question --
12that observation, not the slightest bit, so please do not
13but in with something about Eli Wiesel. "And so are the
14other eyewitnesses in Auschwitz who claim they saw
15gassings going on because there were no gas chambers in
16Auschwitz, as the forensic tests show."
17 Mr Irving, is that right?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] So when I said a moment ago that you had referred to gas
20chambers in the plural, as you had at the Leuchter press
21conference, I was right?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I could quite simply say this is a matter of English
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I could say there is no Chinaman sitting in your team, and
26I could equally well say there are no Chinamen sitting in
1your team. Both facts are equally correct if there is not
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving, that is, I am afraid, a rather poor
5 A. [Mr Irving] It is an exact parallel.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you said at the Chelsea Press Conference, the
7Leuchter Press Conference, that there were no gas chambers
8at Auschwitz or elsewhere?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you are showing us one speech in Calgary and
10suddenly you switch to Chelsea.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to show you a dozen references.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, shall we deal with this one first?
13 MR RAMPTON: When you made that remark, am I right, am I
14not ----
15 A. [Mr Irving] If there was no gas chamber at Auschwitz, then there were
16no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, please try to focus on the question.
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is precisely the question you asked me and I am saying
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you had said no gas chambers, plural, at Auschwitz;
21what it means we can argue about later on. You knew when
22you made that observation, did you not, Mr Irving, that
23Mr Leuchter had purported to sample the ruins of the
24supposed gas chambers at Birkenhau, did you not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Also, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. So your assertion was meant to mean there were no
1gas chambers at what people generally think of as
2Auschwitz, that is to say Auschwitz 1 which is relatively
3unimportant, and also at Birkenhau?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, we are slopping over the whole thing into Birkenhau
5too now, are we?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you mean? Every time ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] I am clearly talking about Auschwitz here and you want to
8drag Birkenhau under that umbrella as well.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] You meant to refer to Birkenhau, you meant people to
10understand Birkenhau, did you not, Mr Irving, because you
11knew that Mr Leuchter's forensic tests related to
12Birkenhau as well as Auschwitz? You also know that
13everybody thinks when they think of Auschwitz of the
14massive extermination facility at Birkenhau?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, Mr Rampton, you say "everybody thinks" this, this is
16another of those wild assertions you make, rather like you
17previously said everybody says the Holocaust is the gas
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it is true, Mr Irving, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] It is not, my Lord. It is a very important point.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Just speaking for myself, I had never heard of Birkenhau,
23but I had heard of Auschwitz.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you have heard of Auschwitz, but, unfortunately,
25there are two camps. One is called Auschwitz, one is
26called Birkenhau and there is a third camp called Monovitz
1which is where the plant was, and experts, the historians,
2are very careful to distinguish between them.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes, but in terms of lay reaction and understanding,
4almost everybody regards the whole complex as being
5properly called "Auschwitz"?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I was not talking down to an audience here, my Lord.
7I was speaking ----
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] They were all experts?
9 A. [Mr Irving] --- in terms of what I could justify. It would be talking
10down to them ----
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Anyway, you accept you said what is recorded as having
12been said here?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Quite definitely, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Do you also accept that you said that the existence of
15hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses at Auschwitz, from
16Auschwitz, is evidence that Auschwitz did not have a
17dedicated programme to kill the Jews there?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, and I think that is a very fair comment to make. If
19we are told that the Nazi programme was one of
20extermination of every Jew that Hitler could get his hands
21on, the fact that very large numbers evidently survived
22this programme, they were in the jaws of death at
23Auschwitz, and at Birkenhau ----
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Hundreds of thousands?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed. The figures are very large indeed if we look at
26the figures of those who survived the camps. Anne Frank
1was one example, my Lord. She was in Auschwitz. She
2survived Auschwitz. She was evacuated to Begen-Belsen and
3died of typhus there with her family.
4 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, the public perception, or what you call
5the legend, is that upwards of a million people were
6deliberately murdered in gas chambers at what people call
7Auschwitz. Do you know that the actual number of people
8murdered by that method at Auschwitz 1 was between 10 and
10 A. [Mr Irving] No, I do not know that.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where did Mr Leuchter do his forensic tests precisely?
12Tell me that.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Can we look at the report?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, take the samples for the forensic tests.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Can we look at the report and see?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no. I want to know what you know about this.
17I really do not want you to deflect my questions by
18forever trying to refer to something else. Tell me, if
19will, whether you know as a fact or you knew as a fact,
20rather, at the time when you were speaking here that he
21had taken samples from the ruins of crematoria 2, 3, 4 and
225 at Birkenhau?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am certainly not going to answer a detailed question
24like that from memory of a document I saw 12 years ago.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] You knew he had taken samples from Birkenhau, did you not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] You knew that those samples had been subjected to forensic
2chemical tests, did you not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. Please turn to page 11 of this transcript that we
5are presently looking at. About halfway, just under
6halfway, I would say two thirds of the way down, there is
7a sentence which begins: "And it was the forensic tests".
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] "And it was the forensic tests", those, Mr Irving, in your
10mind are the Liechter tests at Auschwitz One and at
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] As you have just told us: "On the gas chambers" plural "in
14Auschwitz which has totally exploded the legend", now what
15is "the legend"?
16 A. [Mr Irving] The legend of Auschwitz as a factory of death,
17purpose-built with gas chambers that clanked into
18operation and killed upwards, as you say, of a million
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of which the major component, as I have just suggested to
21you, by a very long way was Birkenhau?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you. Now can we please go to ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] A major component of a legend, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course, Mr Irving. Page 22. I am going to read from
26the beginning actually of this is in connection with that
1piece of pleading that I read out to you, from the
2beginning of the big paragraph about a quarter of the way
3down the page: "There is more to come. 'Irving has been
4welcomed in Ottawa. Less publicized but no less
5disgusting are Irving's on women. He argues that women's
6brains are 10 per cent smaller than men's". This is now
7Mr Irving speaking:
8 "You see they are scraping, it is true, they
9are scraping the bottom of the barrel now. They are
10trying to appeal to all the organizations in Ottawa who
11are being called together under a mass demonstration
12against the gays, the lesbians, the communists, the trade
13unions, all these people".
14 A. [Mr Irving] You will notice I do not mention the Jews there even in
15this audience, is that not surprising for an
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us read it through.
18 MR RAMPTON: "All these people are being called out to
19demonstrate against me on October 6th." Was that true?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, we had rented the biggest hall in Ottawa for me to
21speak in and massive attempts were being made to shut me
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] "It brings us back to the fact that what they are really
24after is to try to stop me speaking, because when I speak
25audiences go away worried about whether the gas chambers"
26plural "and death camps" plural "and the factories of
1death" plural "really did exist or is this really the
2biggest lie of the 20th Century?"
3 I will stop there. Do not comment. Please
4listen to my question. The answer you gave me a moment
5ago to the effect that when you referred to the Auschwitz
6legend and there being no gas chambers, was in fact
7intended and never intended to refer to anything but the
8single reconstructed gas chamber at Auschwitz one. That
9answer was complete tosh, was it not, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] We would have to go back and look at the precise wording
11I used. I think both statements are entirely
12supportable. The fact that audiences go away worried that
13if this is true about this site, what about the other
14sites, it is quite a natural reaction.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will pass now to page 31. You say with some pride,
16I think, Mr Irving, and I am afraid I do have to take this
17up now because it is part of my case, I am sorry I did not
18spot it earlier, proudly as though you scored some kind of
19wizard point, there is no reference to the Jews amongst
20all that stuff about the gays, the lesbians, the
21communists and the trade unions. Let me read on.
22 A. [Mr Irving] What page are we on?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 22. Let me read on. This is one of some of the
24remarks which I shall rely on at the end of the case.
25 "Is this really the biggest lie of the 20th
26Century, because if it is the biggest lie, then it has a
1corollary, and that is that hundreds of millions of
2innocent people who have been bamboozled", I will miss out
3the "who" I think, "hundreds of millions of innocent
4people have been bamboozled, and they have been bamboozled
5for a purpose. And the purpose I think we can all say on
6reflection, looking over our own perception of the media,
7is that every time a Jewish financier, a John Guttfreund,
8the Salomon brothers or Ivan Boesky or Ernest Saunders or
9one of these, or Michael Milken, everyone time one of them
10is caught with his hands deep in the till and he has, yes,
11that's true, he has undoubtedly bilked hundreds of
12thousands of investors out of every penny they have
13got" ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] That was Mr Michael Milken. He went to prison for it.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please let Mr Rampton continue.
16 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving. "Michael Milken and the rest of them,
17people have gone to the wall, they have put all their
18money into junk bonds and the rest of it, and these
19financiers have laughed like Ivan Boesky paid $100 million
20fine on the instruction of the American Government and
21they still laughed because they can afford it".
22 Now what is that passage?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you read the next three or four lines.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Precisely.
25 MR RAMPTON: "When you read this kind of story and if you
26realize that they are Jewish, then the invitation is that
1the man in the street should say: Yes, but they have
2suffered, haven't they? They did the have Holocaust."
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is it.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 MR RAMPTON: What is the point of putting that glorious purple
6prose passage into this speech about Auschwitz, tell me?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Because first of all may I say this is not only my
8opinion, even leading Jewish experts like Professor Peter
9Novac of the University Chicago quite recently within the
10last two or three months ----
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Answer for yourself, Mr Irving.
12 A. [Mr Irving] --- has stated precisely the same point. They have said
13that the whole of the Holocaust industry has been
14generated in order to prevent, to create a kind of safety
15curtain, a fire wall which protects, for example, as
16Professor Peter Novic says, the activities of the Israeli
17Government on the West Bank, which protects, for example,
18the entire Jewish population in the United States from
19criticism to which they might otherwise be subjected.
20I think this is a perfectly reasonable statement and
21I would not have made it if I did not know that I was
22buttressed by leading Jewish authorities who are equally
23aware of precisely the same origins or possible origins of
24part of the present promotion of the Holocaust story. We
25will be listening to one of my own experts on this,
26Professor McDonald, on precisely this matter when the time
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So the Holocaust is a kind of a lie dreamt up
3in order to excuse crooked Jewish financiers?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I would like to endorse your Lordship's wording but
5I cannot. I did not put it like that.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] What are you saying if you are not saying that?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I have said here that there is a body of opinion which
8says that one possible cause for the promotion of this
9particular legend is the fact they find it serves a
10purpose to protect their community from criticism which
11might otherwise be levelled against them because of their
12activities in the world of finance, or because of their
13brutality on the West Bank or whatever. I certainly would
14not have made that kind of statement had I not known that
15senior members of their own community are worried on
16precisely the same score. I mentioned the name of
17Professor Peter Novic of the University of Chicago whose
18book is about to be published in this country too
19I believe. They cannot be insulated from criticism just
20because of the Holocaust, and I think most members of the
21Jewish community would find it repugnant to suggest that
22they were or they should be.
23 MR RAMPTON: Can we move on in this transcript, please,
24Mr Irving, to page 31, bottom of the page.
25 A. [Mr Irving] This is transcript No. 9.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am still in transcript No. 9. "I don't see any reason
1to be tasteful about Auschwitz." You have heard this
2before of course. "It's baloney. It's a legend. Once we
3admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and
4large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of
5innocent people died elsewhere in the war. Why believe
6the rest of the baloney? I say quite tastelessly in fact
7that more people died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's
8car at Chappaquidick than ever died in gas chamber", note
9you do not say "the gas chamber", "a gas chamber in
10Auschwitz. Laughter." Laughter, Mr Irving?
11 A. [Mr Irving] No laughter is just once there, Mr Rampton.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Laughter. That is three times.
13 A. [Mr Irving] That is three times, Mr Rampton. Now you are getting
14appreciative laughter from your audience.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why should your audience think that what you yourself
16describe as "tasteless", why should they think that is
18 A. [Mr Irving] Possibly because you omitted the beginning of that
19paragraph, Mr Rampton. Can I read it? "Why did Gorbochov
20release the Auschwitz records? A very interesting
21question. This was in September 21st 1989. Tass, the
22Soviet News Agency, announced that they had 'now
23found' all the death books of Auschwitz which sent a
24shudder through every Jewish so-called refugee around the
25world notice word so-called around the world." Notice the
26word "so-called" around the world. "Every so-called
1survivor of the Holocaust or survivor of Auschwitz, people
2who claimed they had been in Auschwitz. When they heard
3that the Russians announced that they had found all the
4death books and the entire filing cards of every prisoner
5who had been in Auschwitz, suddenly there was a lot
6reshuffling went on. Ely Weasel, for example, no longer
7claimed to be a survivor of Auschwitz. He suddenly
8decided he was a survivor of Dachau or Vukenvau. He was
9not even quite sure about that."
10We are talking here about the spurious survivors
11of the Holocaust which is the second S in that word you
12are just going to come to which has been left out of the
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Will you read on the next sentence, please, about
15Mr Wiesel. "In fact he seems to have done quite a cook's
16tour of the different concentration camps. Laughter."
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is it, do you think, that you your audience is
19laughing about?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Because they know that Ely Wiesel is a particularly
21unpopular character. Even the Jewish community holds him
22as being particularly unpopular because of his posturing.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, posturing, what is the posturing?
24 A. [Mr Irving] He is a poser. He is on all the presidential committees.
25He is on all the Holocaust memorial museum committees. He
26has made a lot of money out of the Holocaust, and yet he
1cannot quite remember which camp he was in, my Lord.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Is that so surprising?
3 A. [Mr Irving] If I was in Auschwitz ----
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Tell me. I would like to know your answer.
5 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, if I was in Auschwitz I would remember it was
6Auschwitz and not Vukenvau or Bergen Belsen or Dachau.
7That is what his problem is, my Lord. The world is full
8of people come forward and claim to have been survivors of
9Auschwitz, most recently the notorious case of Benjamin
10Wilkomersky who was recently exposed by the BBC. I find
11these spurious -- I have the utmost sympathy for people
12genuinely suffered the torments and horrors of Auschwitz
13and these other camps, and let there be no doubt
14whatsoever about that, but the spurious survivors who are
15trying to cash in now by saying they too were there, that
16is the people I reserve this association of spurious
17survivors of the Holocaust, "the arseholes" as they
18referred to here. I agree that is a frightfully tasteless
19word to use and I would not normally use it in public.
20But I have the greatest contempt for these people who are
21trying to climb on the Holocaust bandwagon.
22 MR RAMPTON: And it is not a laughing matter if they should do
23so, is it, Mr Irving?
24 A. [Mr Irving] These unfortunates who claim they were there and never
25been anywhere near Auschwitz, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] People who fraudulently, if there are any such people,
1people who fraudulently ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] You do not believe the case of Mr Wilkomersky who said he
3had been there?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I know well about the case of Mr Wilkomersky and I am not
5going to discuss ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] So the word "if" is misplaced.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not misplaced necessarily, Mr Irving. We are not
8going to, unless his Lordship tells us we are, going to
9examine the case of Mr Benjamin Wilkomersky, the Swiss
10orchestral musician, in this court, if you do not mind.
11Mr Irving, you will not answer my questions, I know,
12because you do not like them, but please answer: Why
13should such a serious matter as fraudulent Holocaust or
14Auschwitz pretence or posturing provoke laughter from your
16 A. [Mr Irving] Because there is something ludicrous about it, something
17pathetic about it, and the notion that a lot of these
18spurious survivors had been found out by the Russians of
19all people who were publishing the index cards, made known
20that they had found the index cards of everyone who was a
21genuine survivor which promoted the scurrying that went on
22for the few weeks after that. That is what provoked the
23laughter I am afraid.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can I suggest something completely different, and perhaps
25a little nearer to the truth of the matter. That remark,
26those remarks about spurious survivors, the remark about
1Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquidick, the remark over the
2page about arseholes, as we call them in this country,
3provoked the laughter they did because you were amongst an
4audience of anti-Semitics, these remarks were intended to
5provoke that kind of laughter. You can see that, if you
6like, from the very way in which they are phrased?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. I think I was amongst an audience of
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did not you notice anything when you were talking about
10the way in which the Holocaust is used to protect
11frightful Jewish criminals like Boesky, did you not detect
12anything in the wording of that passage reminiscent of
13Dr Goebbels in it, in the way you relish the dishonesty of
14these Jewish people?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I relish the dishonesty of the Jews?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] So it seems to me, Mr Irving, please comment on that?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Now I am stuck here with a bit of a problem, because
18Jewish historians have made precisely the same comment
19I have. The Jewish community have made precisely the same
20comment that I have. Jewish sociologists have made
21precisely the same comment that I have. Are suggesting
22that only Jewish sociologists are entitled to make this
23kind of hostile comment about the reasons for the
24propagation of the Holocaust story, and that non-Jewish
25historians are to be excluded from this kind of comment?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I did not ask you about the sober sentiment.
1 A. [Mr Irving] And that they are at risk of being of compared with
2Dr Goebbels if they do?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] You never ever answer my question, Mr Irving.
4 A. [Mr Irving] That was a very good answer, I believe.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, because you do not listen or because you do
6not want to listen. My question was not about sober
7sentiment, ill-conceived though it may be. My question
8was about the wording, the language, of that passage that
9I read.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Which particular words are we looking at here? Can you
11pick on any particular inflammatory words?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please go back to page 22. I am not going to read it out
14 A. [Mr Irving] Just the Goebbels type of words.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Because if it is" down to the bottom of the page ending
16with the word "Jewish comment".
17 A. [Mr Irving] Is the word "Jewish" a Goebbels word perhaps?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Please just quietly re-read that section of what you
19said to yourself and tell me when you have got to the
20bottom of the page.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I think I am entitled to know which words you consider are
22typical of Dr Goebbels.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Will you please read it and then I will tell you.
24 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, will you direct him to identify the words he
25considers ----
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you know it by heart then you do not need
1to read it.
2 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know it by heart.
3 MR RAMPTON: The whole passage.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is redolent of animosity, hostility, contempt, spite,
6malignantly, just like Dr Goebbels articles in Das Reich?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Just like Winston Churchill talking about Adolf Hitler if
8you want to put it like that. Any number of people who
9are capable speakers are capable of using language.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Absolutely, you have got it in one, Mr Irving.
11Mr Churchill rallied this country to the flag during the
12war by being spiteful and beastly about Adolf Hitler. The
13difference is, unlikely Dr Goebbels, Winston Churchill had
14a very good reason to be spiteful.
15 A. [Mr Irving] But do not these particular gentleman who I have
16identified by name deserve our contempt, or are you
17supporter of these gentlemen who bilked ordinary people
18out of thousands pounds and their entire life savings as
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not have to give a list of names. All you need to
21say is the sober sentiment, if you believe it. The
22trouble is or one of the problems with the Holocaust is
23that it is sometimes apt to protect some Jewish people who
24have broken the law?
25 A. [Mr Irving] No, I gave chapter and verse. These are specific
26instances which were probably in the news at the time, I
1think Ivan Boesky was in the news at that time, Mr
2Gutfreund, Mr Milken was certainly in the news at that
3that time.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us move on.
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes I am trying to.
6 A. [Mr Irving] If you cannot identify which particular words you are
7identifying with Dr. Goebbels ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am looking at the flavour of the whole passages.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Anybody can play that game, Mr Rampton can.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So am I. We are moving on.
11 MR RAMPTON: And so is his Lordship. I am grateful.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Would you accuse Professor Peter Novac also using the
13language of Dr Goebbels in his ----
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, because he does not write like that.
15 A. [Mr Irving] He is a Professor and he is Jewish, so he is allowed to do
16it but non-Jews are excluded.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can deal with this in your own evidence,
18if you wish.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I certainly shall, my Lord.
20 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is Chelsea Town Hall. This is tab
2111 of the same file.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 2.
23 MR RAMPTON: Page 2, yes. A couple of a very short passages on
24this page.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The first one is by the upper hole punch.
26 MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is right. Say you, MR IRVING:
1 "If you look at my great Adolf Hitler biography
2here, this bumper Adolf Hitler biography that we have only
3just published, in fact it literally arrived off the
4printing presses today, you won't find the Holocaust
5mentioned in one line, not even a footnote. Why should we
6if something did not happen and you don't even dignify it
7with a footnote". That is in plain terms an assertion by
8you that the Holocaust did not happen?
9 A. [Mr Irving] We have not even heard the word "Holocaust".
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a speech you made, is it not?
11 MR RAMPTON: I am so sorry, Mr Irving, look at the penultimate
12line of the passage I have just read..
13 A. [Mr Irving] Am I looking at the wrong passage?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I it must, because it starts, "if You
15look at my great Adolf Hitler biography", which sounds as
16if it could be you speaking.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I see right, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Did you say that?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Well, obviously the reference, as we have now found out,
20the word "Holocaust" has been taken out of the second
21volume, yes. You will not find "Holocaust" mentioned in
22this book.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Because it did not happen, that is what you are saying?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I do not want to quibble about this too much, but we
25do not really know what we are talking about when we are
26saying if something did not happen. I know his Lordship
1will interrupt and say straightaway you are referring to
2the Holocaust, but we do not know how much of a pause
3there is there. We do not know what emphasis is made
4here. We have to look at the whole speech. The
5references later on you will see to the bars of soap and
6so on, which clearly did not happen because that has now
7been admitted. I mean that is what we are building up
8to. This is a topic sentence.
9 MR RAMPTON: I know it is late but I really do not think you
10are doing yourself justice. Look down to the bottom page
11at 001425.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Read it out loud, will you?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am looking at a paragraph which you want skipped.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is there in there that you really derive
17any assistance from?
18 A. [Mr Irving] "Two years from now nobody in the world will believe in
19these absurd legends any longer. They already don't
20believe in the absurd legends of Jewish concentration camp
21prisoners being turned into bars of soap, because Jad
22Vaschen has now formally admitted that that was a lie."
23So this is what I am talking about, if things do not
24happen they do not deserve a footnote. So I am being
25specific in what follows by what I mean.
26 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I know you like your platform and I am
1sure you want to get into the newspapers.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Can I now interrupt with the utmost respect, Mr Rampton,
3if you move that sentence "if something didn't happen and
4you don't even dignify it with a footnote", the beginning
5of the following paragraph, then it becomes the famous
6topic sentence of which I have spoken earlier giving the
7topic of what follows in the following paragraph and that
8is what it is. It has been put deliberately into the
9paragraph above to make it look as though it is applying
10to the word "Holocaust".
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now look, Mr Irving, we can go a lot quicker if you just
12occasionally ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] I know you do not like these answers because of course it
14is a total answer to what you just said, Mr Rampton.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is a matter for his Lordship.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I heard the answer.
17 MR RAMPTON: I think it is one of the worst answers you have
18given and that is saying something, Mr Irving.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is comment and I think we will move on
20to the lower quote.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Maybe his Lordship thinks differently but his Lordship has
22heard from me about topic sentences and that is a clear
23example of a topic.
24 MR RAMPTON: If you will please stop talking for one minute I
25will show ----
26 A. [Mr Irving] I was about to say the same to you.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- I will show you why it is such a rotten answer. Read
2the first sentence of the last paragraph out loud.
3 A. [Mr Irving] "The biggest lie of the lot, the blood libel on the German
4people, because people were hanged for this, as I call it,
5is the lie that the Germans had factories of death with
6gas chambers in which they liquidated millions of their
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you very much, Mr Irving.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is a convenient point at which
10to break off.
11 MR RAMPTON: I just want to take one more ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] Truth is an absolute justification of that remark of
14 MR RAMPTON: --- little line from this transcript.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not know there was any more. I am
17 MR RAMPTON: There is one line on page 4.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, page 6. Page 4. I think there is also
19something on page 6.
20 MR RAMPTON: There is. I will just tell your Lordship which it
21is. I do not need to read that out yet again.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 4.
23 MR RAMPTON: Page 4, the last line of the second paragraph, the
24last sentence: "So Fred Leuchter is poisoned for the whole
25of the Holocaust legend." The whole of the Holocaust
26legend. "The whole of the Holocaust legend" includes all
1alleged gas chambers anywhere in Nazi occupied Europe,
2does it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] He is bad news in the sense, as I said in the earlier
4speech, once people have heard the data that Fred Leuchter
5brought back, the forensic laboratory results, they go
6away thinking, they begin asking awkward questions. That
7is what is meant by that sentence and certainly no more.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, if that is convenient, there is one
10matter I wish to raise.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think it is. I am just looking to
12see whether we ought to deal with the passage I have
13marked on page 6.
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes, very well.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is about just below the lower hole punch.
16I have marked it presumably because you relied on it in
17your Summary of Case.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Page 6, last paragraph, Mr Irving. You say
19about five lines down: "If I can just dot the i's cross
20the t's to some of these details of details of details.
21He mentioned that after Fred Leuchter did his truly epoch
22making investigation of the gas chambers" plural "at
23Auschwitz, the forensic laboratory tests which yielded the
24extraordinary result which converted me, made me into a
25hardcore disbeliever."
26 Yes? I will read on if you like.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not affect the context, the sense of
3 MR RAMPTON: It does not affect the context?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think it takes it very much further, that
5sentence, my Lord.
6 MR RAMPTON: You are by this date, are you not, November 28th
71991, a hardcore disbeliever in the whole of the Holocaust
9 A. [Mr Irving] You are incorrigible, Mr Rampton. We have just been
10talking about the gas chambers.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we will leave the evidence there
12because there may be some more
13 (Administrative Discussion)
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Monday 10.30.
15 < (The witness stood down)
16(The Court adjourned until Monday, 24th January 2000)