text:
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 5: Electronic Edition
Pages 1 - 187 of 187
1996 I. No. 113
2Royal Courts of Justice
3Strand, London
4 Tuesday, 18th 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 FIVE Tuesday, 18th January 2000
2 (10.30 a.m.)
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving, I have been provided with a
4document that you, I understand, want to make some mention
6 MR IRVING: Yes, if I may address the court on this. The only
7important one I want to draw your attention to is page 10.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you do, can I just mention two things
9which will take a few minutes? Do sit down. The first is
10the transcription which, once they have been edited, are
11extremely useful and I think it is extraordinary that it
12can be done so well.
13 MR RAMPTON: So do I.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it did strike me, reading yesterday's
15transcript, that the first 20 minutes of yesterday was
16what you might call administrative discussion, and I think
17it is a waste of energy to have that transcribed.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Unless either of you disagree, I was going to
20suggest that in future when we have that kind of
21discussion we can just, as it were, stand down the lady
22who is doing the transcribing, and save her energy.
23 MR IRVING: Except, my Lord, for any conclusions that are
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course, and any what you might call
26substantive discussion about the issues.
1 MR RAMPTON: Can I also suggest this? If at any stage your
2Lordship makes rulings which you may have to -- I hope not
3but it does happen -- they be transcribed separately as a
4separate document.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, if and when we come to that, that is a
6very good idea.
7 MR RAMPTON: It worked very well last time that this lady was
8in charge of one of my cases.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I also, before Mr Irving deals with this
10document, ask you, Mr Rampton, to help me as to where we
11are at the moment.
12 MR RAMPTON: Where are we going?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Can I just tell you what my concern
14is. It is that I should know at every stage, if possible,
15to what issue the evidence is directed. Your
16cross-examination started out with the topic of the
17killing of the Jews from Berlin.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it has now moved on to the shootings on
20the Eastern Front.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just trying to tie it in with your
23summary of case. I want to make sure I have understood
24correctly, because the section on shootings on the Eastern
25Front is in the part of your summary of case which deals
26with Auschwitz, whereas, as I understand it, the evidence
1that you are eliciting from Mr Irving at the moment is
2really directed mainly to the issue of Hitler's knowledge.
3 MR RAMPTON: The trouble is, of course, that it has both sides
4to it, as does gassing.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because your case is, just so that
6I understand, that the mass shootings, were a prelude to
7an alternative way of killing Jews, namely gassing.
8 MR RAMPTON: Largely speaking but by no means entirely, gassing
9took over from shooting. Both are features of what is
10called the Holocaust and both happened on such a scale,
11logistically speaking and military speaking, that they
12must have come from headquarters, so the whole thing locks
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That has helped me understand how the case is
16 MR RAMPTON: Apart from one or two fiddly things which always
17happen arising from yesterday, I am going to deal with the
18table talks such as remain, not many. Then I am going to
19go on to what happened next, as it were, 42 onwards to
20about September 42.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It will, I think, sometimes help me if one
22can see the big picture, perhaps by way of a few prefatory
23questions, and then go to the individual documents.
24 MR RAMPTON: One of the fiddly but necessary features in all of
25this is that one repeatedly has to make reference to what
26Mr Irving himself has said about these things ----
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course.
2 MR RAMPTON: --- which clouds the picture, but is unavoidable.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. I quite understand that. Yes,
4thank you. Mr Irving, do you want to say anything about
5that exchange? It was really to clarify my own
6understanding of where exactly we are going to and getting
7to with the evidence.
8 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord. What we in Riding call a topic
9paragraph would be useful.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It would certainly help me and it might even
11be that it will help you. It might be that it is right
12that you should have the opportunity to comment on the
13general proposition as well as the particular proposition.
14 MR IRVING: Very well.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You want to say something about this
17 MR IRVING: My Lord, I referred yesterday to the fact that
18I relied on the Weidenfeld translation of Hitler's table
19talk. It is completely proper that I should produce that
20translation to you, which is page 2. You will see it from
21the rostrum at the Reichstag, and so on.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
23 MR IRVING: I do not attach anything in particular but, for
24reasons of procedure, I should have shown that to you,
25having averred that I had used that translation.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see. Thank you very much.
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, on page 3 I referred to a document in the
2December 1942 time frame, which is so important because
3that is when this meldung, this report, was allegedly
4shown to Hitler at the end of December, but here is Hitler
5at the same time ordering that Jews should be released if
6foreign currency could be provided to barter for them.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are not mutually exclusive, those two
8policies, are they?
9 MR IRVING: I appreciate that, my Lord, but, if the contention
10of the Defence is that Adolf Hitler was hell bent on
11exterminating every Jew that came into his possession, for
12some reason of weltanschauung or a deeper philosophy or a
13deeper streak of human nature, there are several documents
14of this nature which of course go through to the famous
15trucks for Jews deal at the end of 1944, which indicates
16that he was not all that pragmatic.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not understand the Defendants to put the
18case, as it were, at that extreme level.
19 MR RAMPTON: Not at all.
20 MR IRVING: Well, it just is not watertight either way. My
21Lord, I keep trying to drive breaches into the damages of
22defence. We have a much more serious breach coming on
23page 10, my Lord.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall I go straight to 10?
25 MR IRVING: Except to have a quick glance at pages 8 and 9
26which is another meldung in that series. It shows Hitler
1was being bombarded with meldungen. This is a much more
2routine one which relates to Operation Hamburg, as it was
3called, an anti-partisan sweep resulting in 6,000 enemy
4dead, and a certain amount of equipment taken, and so on.
5I am not going to rely particularly on that, just to show
6that these meldungen cannot be taken in vacuo.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not Hitler vorgelegt, is it, as it
9 MR IRVING: I believe it is, my Lord. If you look at my page
108, you can see "vorgelegt 25 December PF".
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
12 MR IRVING: SS Hauptstungfuhrer Fuhrer, who was Hitler's
13personal adjutant, who happened to have an SS rank. That
14is quite important, my Lord, because we now come to the
15page 10 which I think is going to blow their December 28th
16document, not out of water but it is going to cripple it.
17To a certain degree, my Lord, I myself am crippled
18because, as your Lordship knows, I donated my entire
19archives to the German Institute of History many years ago
20with a rather sad result that I alone in this room am not
21allowed to see them.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you say that again?
23 MR IRVING: I donated my entire archives of research which I
24had collected for Adolf Hitler ----
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow, yes. Now you are banned from going
26into that museum?
1 MR IRVING: I am banned from going into Germany. I cannot set
2foot in that museum and I cannot see my own archives,
3whereas Professor Evans, as I understand it, has had teams
4of researchers clawing over these files, where they would
5undoubtedly have found these very documents to which I am
6now going to refer.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you take me through them if you rely on
9 MR IRVING: On the following page you will see the photocopies
10of index cards which is all that remains in my collection,
11the index cards relating to these documents. I have
12translated the index cards into English on page 10. The
13first item is 28th December 1942, a report coming from --
14the other way round this time -- Hitler's adjutant to
15Himmler. The only significance of that is that that is
16feed back. That is an indication that that document to
17which this document, this card, this reply refers was
18clearly shown to Hitler, because there was feed back
19coming back from Hitler's adjutant saying, "Well, Hitler
20wants to know how many of our own troops are being killed
21in these operations".
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Report No. 49 would be two reports before
23No. 51.
24 MR IRVING: Yes. It is not the one that is significant in this
25case, my Lord. I am just saying that it is a pity we do
26not have a similar kind of feed back on the crucial one.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This rather suggests that Hitler was paying
2attention to what was being laid before him.
3 MR IRVING: I disagree, my Lord. Look at the next card down.
4We now have December 30th 1942, which is another report by
5Himmler to Hitler, signed by Muller this time, the Chief
6of Gestapo. It is dated December 29th, exactly the same
7day as the incriminating one.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, you have lost me.
9 MR IRVING: This is the second card down on page 10, my Lord.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see, December 29th.
11 MR IRVING: The reason it is dated December 30th is because my
12card index is organized according to the date that
13something was allegedly shown to Hitler, not the date of
14the document. It is a telegram from Muller, the Chief of
15the Gestapo, back to Himmler on combating the high level
16achievement in Serbia, and it has been sent by Himmler to
17Hitler to have a look at. It is in the big Fuhrer
18typeface, and you will notice, my Lord, that on this
19occasion Fiefer has endorsed the document twice, laid
20before December 30th, laid before December 31st. In other
21words, twice he has put it on Hitler's breakfast tray
22outside his door. He is not looking at it. Is this not,
23my Lord, precisely the point I made yesterday, that Hitler
24had other things on his plate? He was fighting the battle
25of Stalingrad. He had a quarter of a million men trapped
26in Stalingrad. He was waiting for it to break through.
1He had the battle crews out in the Arctic. He had all
2these things going on. Here is Himmler's message lying
3outside his breakfast room door twice, and the adjutant
4putting a note on it, saying he has twice put it out
5there, twice he has laid it before him. He would not have
6had to do it twice if it was read the first time, my
8 I suggest this casts serious doubt on the
9proposition that we can accept that the other document was
10necessarily shown to Hitler. I would not put it any
11stronger than that.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just let us keep an eye on the reality. You
13did accept yesterday, as I understand it, that the
14shooting of Jews and others on the Eastern Front was a
15programme which was systematic and co-ordinated by Berlin,
16and Hitler was aware and approved of what was going on.
17 MR IRVING: The shootings of Russian Jews, my Lord, yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. So, in a sense the issue whether a
19document was laid before Hitler and read by him becomes
20relatively speaking insignificant, in this context.
21 MR IRVING: I disagree, with respect. I think that this shows
22how flaky the whole system was. What Mr Rampton would
23like to describe as being a cast iron, watertight
24bureaucratic system with reports going this way and
25messages coming back, it breaks down at the very top level
26when you are dealing with a man, the head of state
1himself, who has other things on his plate. I would
2suggest that there is a very strong reason to suspect that
3this is precisely the reason why Himmler slid that figure
4in, because he apprehended quite likely that the boss was
5not going to read it.
6 That may possibly be going too far to impute
7that to him, but certainly this indication that on this
8very day documents were being put to Hitler twice and not
9being read can indicate that that 29th December document
10cannot, therefore, necessarily have been taken as having
11been read and submitted no doubt to Adolf Hitler or taken
12cognisance of it. That is the only point I want to make,
13my Lord.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. Is that it?
15 MR IRVING: That is it.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like to go back into the witness
18 MR RAMPTON: Can I say two things before that happens? We
19would very much like to see the German version of the
20Kovno train message, if it exists, if Mr Irving has it?
21That was page 6 of the first of these.
22 MR IRVING: My Lord, it was actually mailed to the instructing
23solicitors, about three weeks ago.
24 MR RAMPTON: What, the German?
25 MR IRVING: In a bundle.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The German version of what? Did you say page
2 MR RAMPTON: Page 5 I meant.
3 MR IRVING: I will certainly supply it again.
4 MR RAMPTON: That would be very kind. If we have had it and it
5has not got to me, that is entirely our fault.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am still puzzled. Page 5 is in German.
7 MR RAMPTON: Oh, 5?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You said 6 and then I thought you said 5.
9 MR RAMPTON: I did say 5.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is in German.
11 MR RAMPTON: I say no, I am looking at a different document
12with "05" at the bottom.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you not looking at the clip?
14 MR RAMPTON: No, to this previous one.
15 MR IRVING: The little bundle probably.
16 MR RAMPTON: Does your Lordship remember the train load of
17Berlin Jews to Kovno?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am putting this latest clip into the back
21of J. I know Miss Rogers is keeping track.
22 MR RAMPTON: Tab 5, my Lord.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have something in tab 5 already anyway.
24They are all going in there.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Rampton. You are back on
1 MR RAMPTON: I raised the question whether or not the German of
2this report, or message No. 35 on page 5, exists and, if
3it does, whether I can see it. If we already have it,
4then enquiries are perhaps futile.
5 MR IRVING: I will certainly produce another copy tomorrow.
6 MR RAMPTON: That is very kind. The other thing I should
7mention because I said I would and your Lordship asked me
8to is this. We spoke to Professor van Pelt yesterday. He
9says at this late stage it would be extremely difficult
10for him to alter his arrangements and come later on in the
11case. So, with your Lordship's permission, I will adhere,
12if I may, to my schedule, which is to start
13cross-examination about Auschwitz on Monday when he will
14be here.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must ask Mr Irving whether that is going to
16cause him problems.
17 MR IRVING: I shall just burn the candle at both ends which is
18nothing new.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but I am conscious that you have a fair
20old burden, being effectively, as it appears, on your
21own. You say if things are getting on top of you.
22 MR IRVING: It is proper that we should continue with
24 MR RAMPTON: I am very grateful for that. The other thing
25which arises out of that is that Mr Irving said, I think
26yesterday, that at some stage he would like to have an
1argument about the significance and relevance of Auschwitz
2so far as this case is concerned. Plainly, if I am going
3to start cross-examining on Monday, we ought to have that
4argument this week and the question is when. I understand
5Professor Watt is coming on Thursday. Have I got that
7 MR IRVING: That is correct, but I think he will be relatively
9 MR RAMPTON: He will, at least, as far as I am concerned. We
10might perhaps do that on Thursday also, because then we
11will know what the framework is before Monday.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Can you just, so I can think about it,
13give me in a couple of sentences what you understand the
14argument to be about?
15 MR RAMPTON: It has been our case all along -- the book is
16about Holocaust denial. Auschwitz in Mr Irving's
17utterances and certainly in our eyes is at the centre of
18Holocaust belief. It is therefore at the centre of
19Holocaust denial. Mr Irving has flatly denied that there
20were any gas chambers for killing human beings at
21Auschwitz. We say he has done that on the basis of really
22no evidence whatsoever. It illustrates two things: First
23of all, his casual attitude to an important matter of
24history and, secondly, his political attitudes and
25sympathies. That has been in our case from the very
26beginning and still is.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I understand all of that, but what might
2be going to disappear from the case?
3 MR RAMPTON: Only this, that Mr Irving may be going to
4concede -- this is what I do not know because for one
5reason he never answered our Auschwitz questions -- as we
6contended and as I have already said in open court, that
7the Liechter report is bunk. If he is, then I cut a great
8swathe through my cross-examination. I throw three
9quarters of it out of the window. I do not need it. That
10why it is important to know what he says.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not sound to me like a terribly long
12argument I am not going to ask you, Mr Irving, to answer
13it now.
14 MR IRVING: I would just draw attention to the fact that this
15court is seized only with the issues as pleaded and not
16with the issues as portrayed by Mr Rampton.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to pursue this now but the
18fact is that, on the proceedings as I understand them at
19the moment, you rely quite heavily on the Liechter report
20for your proposition that there were no gas chambers at
22 MR IRVING: I think that your Lordship will realize the error
23of that statement, if I may respectfully put it like that,
24when we come to the cross-examination both of myself and
25of the expert witnesses.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we obviously do need to have an argument
1about this, because I have, to an extent anyway,
2misunderstood the position. Let us carry on. Would you
3like to come back?
4 <Mr David Irving, recalled.
5<Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC.
6 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I did produce also the Himmler diary so that you
7could see the actual page I worked from, if you wish to
8see the quality of the photocopy.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it carry the matter much further?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Only if your Lordship intends to attach much weight to
11Mr Rampton's suggestion that I deliberately and wilfully
12misread that word.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not saying I am not so, if you want me
14to have a look at it, I will. I doubt whether it will be
15significantly different from the photocopy I have in the
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we will leave it.
18 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you have left behind, I am sorry, your
19little clip that you brought with you this morning.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Somebody will give it to you. The only page I am
22interested in at the present is page 3.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Page 3, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have only two questions, three questions possibly. Did
25any such cases occur in practice?
26 A. [Mr Irving] We have a document which we can produce to the court
1showing that the Germans were instructed actually to build
2special camps for these special category -- I am sorry,
3this is not an answer to that particular question. Were
4any actually sold?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
6 A. [Mr Irving] No, not to my knowledge.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know what sort of cases were envisaged?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Not on the basis of this document which I produced, no.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know what the scale of this proposal was meant to
11 A. [Mr Irving] This document does not show that.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. You do not know from extraneous sources the answers
13to any of my questions?
14 A. [Mr Irving] The answer is?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Those two last two questions: Do you know not the answer
16from other evidence?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Not that I wish to repeat just from memory, which may be
18uncertain on oath.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you very much. Now I would like to return, if
20I may, to something that cropped up yesterday. It is in
21fact the only topic that cropped up yesterday that I am
22going to return to, save for continuing with the table
23talk but that is not really a repetition. Could you,
24please, be given Hitler's War 1977, the first volume. My
25Lord that is D 1 (i).
26 A. [Mr Irving] I have it here.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you please turn to page 341?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] The left hand page that is. Here again you are purporting
4to give a translation of the table talk of 25th October
51941, are you not, in the second paragraph?
6 A. [Mr Irving] On the right hand page, you mean?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, 331?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, 331.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] In my copy it is the left hand page.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Odd numbers are always right hand pages in books.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] That may be so. Here you purport, do you not, to give a
12translation of the table talk of 25th October 1941. Is
13that right?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I have just reproduced the remarks noted by the adjutant,
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Take it slowly. The answer to my question I think is yes,
17is it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot see the word "translation" in that paragraph.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have put it in quotes in English. The quotes start at
20"from the rostrum" and end at "terror is a salutary
21thing", do they not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but the word "translation" does not occur there. You
23are saying that I am purporting that this is a
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It obviously is. Let us move on.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I apprehend that he intends to attach importance to the
1word "translation". This is why.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us wait and see.
3 MR RAMPTON: That version, let us call it, was -- for this
4fact on its own I make no criticism -- taken straight
5from the Weidenfeld and Nicholson?
6 A. [Mr Irving] It was an accurate transcript of the original official,
7shall we say, translation of the Hitler's table talk that
8I produced to his Lordship this morning.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] At that date you did not have the Genoud original?
10 A. [Mr Irving] In 1977 nobody had them except Mr Genoud.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You got it very shortly after that, did you not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] About 1982, if I remember correctly.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think it was earlier, but it does not really matter.
14The last sentence in the quotes reads: "Terror is a
15salutary thing".
16 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] When you came to write about this in the 1991 edition, as
18you confirmed yesterday, you did at that date have the
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is also right, is it not, that you omitted the single
22sentence "terror is a salutary thing"?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, because I discovered that it was not in the original
24German, so I quite properly cut it out.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you maintain, do you, still -- I am not going over
26old ground, I just want to be sure that I have understood
1what your case is -- that, save for that sentence, it is
2an accurate account of what was reported to have been said
3by Hitler?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Had I made a version account from the German original,
5starting from scratch, I would have translated it
6differently. As I had an existing English translation,
7rather than rework it into a different form, then
8I preferred to leave it as it was, rather than incur the
9wrath of historians who were familiar only at that time
10with the English text. Professor Martin Bourchard, in his
11very famous attack on my book, had commented extensively
12on the fact that my translations of documents differed
13from the official English versions, I wanted to avoid that
14kind of ill informed attack.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could Mr Irving please be given file D3 (i)? Would you
16turn, please, to tab 20? Does your Lordship have that?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
18 MR RAMPTON: At tab 20 this is a document headed On
19Contemporary History and Historiography. I think it comes
20from the journal of the International Revisionists body,
21and the sub-heading is "David Irving, remarks delivered at
22the 1983 International Revisionists Conference". Do you
23recognize it, Mr Irving?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is this one of those things that you approve before it is
26printed for publication?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Quite possibly. I cannot say off the top of my head.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] The easiest way of doing it is to look for a stamp 101 at
3the bottom of the page.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] And look at the right hand column. I will start, if
6I may, for context at the bottom of the left hand page,
7which in fact in the document is page 280, though it has
8been cut off. "The will of the Fuhrer that the Jews are
9shipped stage by stage from west to east again and again
10and again even in his table talk, you have all heard of
11Hitler's table talk or tichgesprache, written down by
12Martin Hein and Martin Bormann's secretary. Long before
13anybody got those these things, I got the actual
14transcripts from the Swiss lawyer who controls these
15documents. Here you see the actual wording used by Hitler
16in German, which is completely different from the
17published English translation."
18 You said that and then you had it published, did
19you not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] If you read the next sentence, you will see what I am
21referring to, the interpolator's sentence.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] In fact, in the English translation sentences (plural)
23have been interposed which do not exist in the original
24German at all.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] In that original you see Hitler saying things like: "It
1is a good thing that this legend is being spread about
2that the Jews are perishing. It is a good thing that this
3terror story" ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] "Terror story".
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- "is being spread about us". Then you go on to make a
6comment of your own. I am not going to argue with you
7about that because it speaks for itself. You say he
8regards it altogether as being a legend.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Who regards it as being a legend?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] You say that Hitler regards it altogether as being a
11legend, do you not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] He says it is a good thing that this legend is being
13spread about that the Jews are perishing.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is you translation of the word "schreck", is it?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I do not have the document in front of me when
16I am delivering an extemporary speech. Is this fact
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Pardon?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Is this fact plain? I do not have thousands of documents
20stacked in front of me when I am making an extemporary
21speech to an audience.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] You must know that part of the table talk absolutely
23backwards, do you not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Know something backwards? I am familiar with certain
25documents on which I have relied.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You must have known ever since you got the Genoud version
1that the key word in that particular sentence -- there are
2two key words -- the first one is the word "schreck"?
3 A. [Mr Irving] This is your submission that that is the key word, but it
4is a loose word that has been put in there by Heinrich
5Heime who transcribed it and we then have to try to make
6some sense of it.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is there any sense in German -- you are the expert -- in
8which it can be read be read as meaning legend?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Coupled with the next sentence which I put in, this terror
10story, I think that legend terror story is an extremely
11good translation of the one word "schrecken". I am giving
12precisely the sense of it.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I think I have really the point.
14We went through this yesterday and "schreck" means what it
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is merely Mr Irving's observation, my
17Lord, or acknowledgment, if you like.
18 A. [Mr Irving] But we also have the problem, Mr Rampton, we are writing a
19work of literature and, undoubtedly, you could translate
20that document in a very wooden form, putting precise
21literal translations and you would end up with a ghastly
22book of the kind that academics and scholars write. You
23have to write a work of literature which is legible,
24giving the sense of the word while at the same time having
25it readable in a literary sense.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but, Mr Irving, when you are dealing
1with source material, which you are here, is it not
2important to convey the proper translation?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I appreciate that, my Lord, but you have to take into
4account the fact that we also have what Mr Rampton calls
5extraneous knowledge, knowledge from other sources than
6just this one document, which we use when putting the
7proper construction on those words.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That will, with respect, Mr Irving, will no do, will it?
9You cannot translate a document differently because you
10are aware of other material which may point in a
11particular direction.
12 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, once again I would have to draw your attention to
13the fact, and I think it is cruel and unnecessary to try
14to suggest that I have done wrong by taking the original,
15official translation published by people who are far
16better qualified than I, professional translators.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, I have that point. I understand it. I was
18questioning you about what you then went on to say which
19is that you were anxious to avoid what you have described,
20I think, as a "wooden" translation. I was putting to you
21that an historian really has to take what he finds when he
22is dealing with source material?
23 A. [Mr Irving] This is right, which is why scholars' books are published
24in such small, limited editions, my Lord, because they are
25so illegible, that they are wooden translations of
26documents. You have to try to make the text flow when you
1are writing a book. Perhaps this is why my books are more
2successful than theirs or more readable than theirs
3because I put a lot of extra effort in to making my works
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I tried to cut it short and
6I have lengthened it. I am sorry.
7 MR RAMPTON: With my gratitude is all I will say about that.
8Thank you. It saves me from asking any more questions
9about that which I now will not do. But I am going to go
10on to what I contend must be another piece of deliberate
11mistranslation. My Lord, this appears on page 338 of
12Professor Evans' report.
13 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, if I could just add to that point? Of course,
14the motive there for changing the words or giving a
15different meaning is nothing to do with the motives of
16Holocaust deniers; it is purely an intention of producing
17a more readable book which is possibly an important
18distinction to make.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is what you are saying?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
22 A. [Mr Irving] It has nothing to do with trying to minimise anything or
23trying to ...
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, now, Mr Irving, have you got your Goebbels'
25book there?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, indeed.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could you please turn to page 379?
2 A. [Mr Irving] A vivid description of the Holocaust, if I may say so.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Pardon?
4 A. [Mr Irving] A vivid description of the Holocaust, if I may say so.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is that?
6 A. [Mr Irving] On page 379.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is as may be.
8 A. [Mr Irving] You say "that is as may be", but that is what this trial
9is about, Mr Rampton.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you will have plenty of opportunity when this
11case is at an end or before if you want to re-examine
12yourself -- do you understand what that means? Do you
13understand that means? At the end of the
14cross-examination you have a chance to go back to
15questions that I have asked you by reference to the
16transcript and give further evidence?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Notwithstanding what you say, Mr Rampton, I think it is
18helpful that I remind the court that this case is about
19Holocaust denials, and there is on this page you intend to
20quote from a vivid description of the Holocaust in action.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This last three or four minutes has been a
22complete waste of time. I know what the case is about, so
23let us get on.
24 MR RAMPTON: You write in the middle paragraph of that page, a
25short little paragraph, "The article", that is Goebbels'
26article in Das Reich on 16th November 1941, "displayed a
1far more uncompromising face than Hitler's towards the
2Jews". Then can I understand, you are going to back that
3up in the next sentence. You explained how you work
4yesterday, did you not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I explained how I work?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. You put in ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is the topic sentence.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Topic sentence, so the topic is ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] That is a good example of a topic sentence.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] The topic is now a comparison between the anti-Semitic
11faces of Hitler and Goebbels, is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Between the evil genius, Dr Goebbels, and Adolf Hitler who
13has been caused immense difficulties by this kind of
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now you are going to explain why it is that Hitler's face
16was far less uncompromising than Goebbels', are you not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] That is what that sentence says.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then we get this evidence, as it were, for your first
19sentence in the next sentence: "When the Fuhrer came to
20Berlin for Luftwaffe General Ernst Udet's funeral, he
21again instructed Goebbels to pursue a policy against the
22Jews that does not cause us endless difficulties and told
23him to go easy on mixed marriages in the future."
24 So, as you have written it, the reader would be
25inclined to agree with you, would he not, Mr Irving, that
26Hitler's face was less uncompromising than Goebbels',
1would he not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now can you turn, please, to page 645 ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] I am just doing it at this moment.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- where we find footnote 39?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Obviously, a reference to the Gottschalt tragedy. That
8must be something to do with Ernst Udet, I dare say?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I will explain it, if you wish.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I do not.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it is important in this context.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is important in this context?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. But if you do not wish me to explain it, I will not.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you wish to explain it, better get it over now.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Gottschalt was a German actor who was married to a
16Jewish wife. Goebbels being in charge of the German film
17industry had demanded that Mr Gottschalt divorce his wife,
18because otherwise he would get no more roles in Berlin.
19The actor had refused to divorce his wife because he loved
20her and, instead, the whole family committed suicide.
21That is the Gottschalt tragedy that I have described in
22this book, Mr Rampton, and you know it.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know it actually. It is very interesting, but
24I do not understand what it has to do with an answer to my
26 A. [Mr Irving] Because it was typical of the tragedies that were being
1caused by the evil genius, Dr Goebbels, in his ^^ doktrene
2insistence on the execution of these anti-Jewish measures.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we are sliding away, are we not, from
4is what is going to be put.
5 MR RAMPTON: I am completely baffled why it is obvious that
6that diary entry is a reference to the Gottschalt
8 A. [Mr Irving] Because the previous diary has been full of the Gottschalt
9tragedy and we happen to know what happened to Mr
10Gottschalt and his family.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Shall we have a look see what the "evil genius
12Dr Goebbels" actually wrote in his diary. Keep what you
13said he wrote open, if you please, and turn to page 338 of
14Professor Evans' report. I remind you you wrote only
15this: "The Fuhrer again instructed Goebbels to pursue a
16policy against the Jews 'that does not cause us endless
17difficulties' and told him to go easy on mixed marriages
18in the future."
19 Now, please, look at paragraph 1 under (D) in
20brackets on page 338 of Professor Evans' report. I read
21the English first:
22 "The Fuhrer also completely agrees with my views
23with reference to the Jewish question." According to
24Dr Goebbels, there was no water between them in relation
25to how the Jews should be treated.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I put my comment on that in my foot note saying, well,
1clearly there was because here is Hitler saying, "Do not
2keep causing me problems".
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us see what he reports Hitler as actually having
5 "He", the Fuhrer, that is, "wants an energetic
6policy against the Jews which, however, does not cause us
7unnecessary difficulties". Three things about that,
8Mr Irving. The word "energetic" has been omitted by you.
9You have omitted the word "however", "alladings" in
10German, and you have mistranslated "unnecessary",
11"unnotige", as "endless"?
12 A. [Mr Irving] The latter one I accept.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where is the ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] But that is not -- that does not really seriously change
15the burden of what I have said.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have altered the whole sense of that sentence, have
17you not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] May I just comment? The word "alladings" is a much
19stronger form of "however". The normal word for "however"
20is "aber". "Alladings" is a much stronger word than
21"however". It implies a much stronger contrast.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where is the word "enagische" in your translation?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I have not omitted that from the quoted passage.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, you have just ignored it.
25 A. [Mr Irving] No. On the contrary, Mr Rampton, you are not obliged to
26put in every single word from a sentence unless you put it
1in quotation marks, and I will have a word or two to say
2about that with Mr Evans when the time comes. In one
3quotation he left out 86 words, three sentences, five full
4stops and two semi-colons.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, well, Mr Irving, I have sufficient confidence in
6Mr Evans to think that he may be able to deal with that.
7 A. [Mr Irving] I may be able to shake your confidence when the time
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Don't let us -- it not fair -- this is the
10point that is being put to you -- the way you represent
11this in your book on Goebbels suggests that a wholly
12passive policy towards the Jews is what Hitler is telling
13Goebbels should be followed?
14 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord ----
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] And, in fact, the word "energetic" is the opposite
16of "passive", is that a fair way of putting the point?
17 MR RAMPTON: It is another complete perversion of the ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] I have not used the word "passive". I have not used the
19word "energetic", my Lord. I have left it neutral. We
20have to bear in mind that we are not dealing with a
21transcript of what Hitler said by court reporters. We are
22dealing with a passage that had been filtered through the
23evil brain of Dr Goebbels who I have shown in the rest of
24the book has a track record of doing things first and then
25claiming in his diary afterwards that he had the Fuhrer's
26sanction for it. For example, when he made Hitler stand
1as Vice President which was a disaster for him in 1932,
2events like that.
3 The Goebbels' diary again and again and again
4and the Kristallnacht, the Reich, the Night of Broken
5Glass, is another example of Goebbels doing something
6first and subsequently claiming in his diary that he had
7Hitler's sanctions.
8 So you have to be very careful before you use
9the Goebbels' diary as pure gold source material. You
10have to refilter it out of that evil brain.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, can we please take this in two stages? Do you
12agree that the version which you have given in the book is
13completely contrary in sense to that which Dr Goebbels put
14in his diary?
15 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, it is quite plain from the Goebbels'
16diaries that the suicide of the Gottschalt family had
17caused uproar in Berlin life. This is, undoubtedly, what
18they are referring to, the fact that the onset of the
19Holocaust in Berlin, if I can put it that way, the
20deportation of train loads of Jews beginning at this time
21is leading to these human tragedies. It is precisely what
22Hitler does not want. He is now fighting a desperate war
23on the Eastern Front, things are turning nasty, the rains
24have begun, the frost is setting in, and here is this evil
25little man in Berlin who is causing him totally needless
26problems, and Hitler saying, "By all means go ahead with
1your doktriner programmes but stop causing me
2difficulties". And this is the meaning of that sentence.
3Goebbels has written it down in the diary and you have to
4refilter it back into the correct sense because, you
5remember, it has been given negative spin by Goebbels and
6you have to give it the right spin again.
7 Goebbels, remember, is an arch liar. He is a
8minister of propaganda. The diaries show this again and
9again -- an extremely dangerous weapon to use.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] He is always telling the truth when he says something
11which in your mind is favourable to him, but whenever he
12says anything which is unfavourable to Hitler, he in your
13mind is a liar and, therefore, you feel justified in
14obliterating that from the text of your books, do you not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I do not want to labour the point, but I am
16sure you are familiar with witnesses and you know how to
17sort out the evidence they provide which is evidence in
18their own self-interest and evidence against their
19self-interest. If you apply that kind of criterion to the
20statements and diaries -- for example, what he writes
21about himself, you have to be mistrustful about, even when
22he writes about Hitler you have to be mistrustful because
23there is the element of the hero worship; but, on the
24other hand, what he writes about two or three, C or D,
25shall we say, in the alphabet, persons is more likely to
26be accurate because he would have no axe to grind one way
1or the other. You have to apply these kinds of filters.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving. I will put it once more in order to get
3the reader to think that Hitler's policy towards the Jews
4or the policy that he wanted was really quite kind,
5gentle, much less ferocious and severe than Dr Goebbels,
6you have actually doctored the words which Dr Goebbels
7reports Hitler having said to him?
8 A. [Mr Irving] What is the essence of this quotation, Mr Rampton? The
9essence of this quotation is not all the rest of those
10eight lines quoted by your Mr Evans. Yesterday the
11quotation to the words does not cause us unnecessary
12difficulties. That is Adolf Hitler saying to Goebbels,
13"Don't cause us unnecessary difficulties" and there is no
14way you can talk yourself out of that particular
15quotation, Mr Rampton.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] We can echo that with what General Bruns reported and what
17Wisliceny reported. "Do not let us make a stink about it,
18but let us be very energetic in this persecution, discreet
19cautious, careful, concealed"?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, no doubt you will advance documents and lead
21evidence in that direction, but those very words, Adolf
22Hitler, quoted even by the victim himself, Goebbels
23himself, at whom the criticism is being directed, saying,
24"Do not cause us unnecessary difficulties". There is no
25way that your Mr Evans or you yourself, Mr Rampton, can
26talk yourself out of those five words. Whatever else you
1want to say about the rest of that quotation and what use
2is made of it mind. Do you want me to have two or three
3times as much quoted from the diary? If I did that, the
4book would have been 2,000 pages long.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you not see a difference between "unnecessary" and
7 A. [Mr Irving] No, not in burden, not in weight, not in thrust, not in
8push, not in emphasis.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] "An energetic policy will cause some difficulties, but let
10us do it in a way that does not cause difficulties which
11are not necessary to the carrying out of the energetic
13 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the energetic policy, of course, we have accepted;
14people were being roused in the middle of the night by the
15Gestapo and given half an hour to pack their goods and
16packed on trains to Riga and Minsk. That is an energetic
17policy and there is no denial of that in this book.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now, I want to, if I may, go back to these table talks?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Hitler is saying, "For God's sake, do not take it too
20far. You are causing us a problem.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] For which you will still need Professor Evans in a
22moment. Am I right that you gave us -- I am not going to
23go to the transcript; it is too time consuming -- the
24impression -- you will tell me if I am wrong -- yesterday
25that these table talks were little private gatherings
26between often, not always of course, Hitler and, say,
1Himmler or Goebbels, the Nazi high ups, perhaps Heydrich
2might be there as a particular honour, and, therefore,
3there was absolutely no bar, inhibition or restraint on
4the use of direct language about what was happening, for
5example, in the East?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Not completely right, Mr Rampton, because certain subjects
7were taboo. That I do grant.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
9 A. [Mr Irving] The Schierak ^^ family at the end of June 1943, when
10Henrietta von Schierak ^^ said to Hitler that she had seen
11Jews being loaded on tucks in Amsterdam and was this kind
12of inhumanity necessary? There was a lot of glaring went
13on and the family was banished from Hitler's house for the
14rest of the war.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, but the fact is I think you were
16suggesting there was a degree of candour because Hitler
17was amongst friends?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Well, he is talking to people whom we know were actually
19the mass murderers, but I was asked a question, Mr Rampton
20asked, I tried to answer honestly that, in fact, they were
21taboo subjects.
22 MR RAMPTON: There will have been at many of these lunches, or
23I do not know whether they were really lunches or dinners
24or whatever, a whole lot of people who were not Himmler or
25Goebbels, but much lower down the scale, were there not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] People like Heinreich Heim who was Martin Bormann's
1private adjutant and took the initial record. He was
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And secretaries and, what are they called, orderlies?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] People like Schmunet, Schau?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] The secretary, Krista Schroeder -- people like that?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] So it is hardly surprising that in that company, as
10opposed to direct face, one-to-one discussion with Himmler
11or Goebbels, Hitler's language should be somewhat cloaked?
12 A. [Mr Irving] That is possible, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to deal with it now because I do not want to
14have to come back to it. Do you remember, you have
15published this information (and as information certainly
16not disputed by us) there was a report, I think, in March
171943, by Himmler's statistician, a man called ^^ Korheir?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Dr Richard Korheir.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Dr Korheir in which at I think about page, what was
20it, 20 -- I cannot remember the page number -- a long
21report, he gave a total for the number of Jews that had
22been killed up to that date, and he separated the Wartige
23from the General Government, and I think the total comes
24to about 1.4 million, does it not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am going to have to take issue with the way you describe
26the report.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] Because this is going into the record, you said "had been
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well the word actually used was "zondebehandlung"?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but Dr Korheir, not many years ago, wrote a letter to
6Das Spiegel which is published in which he said that at
7the time he wrote the report he had no notion that is what
8that word means. He was a straightforward statistician,
9just doing a job on the basis of documents shown to him.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is exactly my point.
11 A. [Mr Irving] But you said "killed". Can we be precise about the use of
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Disposed of"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Disposed of.
15 MR RAMPTON: You see, you must be patient because my questions
16build on each other -- at least they usually do?
17 A. [Mr Irving] But that goes into the transcript of me agreeing to you
18that you are saying that it said that.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but perhaps you will agree in just a moment the word
20actually used was "zondebehandlung"?
21 A. [Mr Irving] "Zondebehandlung zugefuhrt".
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not have the document.
23 A. [Mr Irving] That is the actual phrase that he uses.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Himmler had the report typed up in the large Fuhrer type
25so that Hitler could read it; whether he did or not is
26another matter, but he did, did he not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] It was not typed in the large Fuhrer type. It was typed
2in the small regular German office typewriter. I have
3never seen a version in the large Fuhrer type of that
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I forget which of your books it is that I read it in, but
6the assertion by you is that there was a copy prepared for
7Hitler to read by Himmler?
8 A. [Mr Irving] An abridged version for Hitler.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Just be patient, but is what you tell us in your book, is
10it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] You were speaking about the 20 page version.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] The which?
13 A. [Mr Irving] You were speaking originally about the 20 page version.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You had better give me a moment to find it. The trouble
15is that your books, like many books, are not as well
16indexed as they might be.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Blame the index now.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think it is in Hitler's War 1977. You do not remember
19the page reference, do you?
20 A. [Mr Irving] 503 to 504.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well done, Mr Irving.
22 A. [Mr Irving] From the index.
23 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, it is part 2.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Is this point raised anywhere in the
25pleadings, as a matter of interest?
26 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. Actually, I noticed it sometime
1ago, but this arises not as an example of distortion by
2Mr Irving because it is not. This is a true story. It
3arises for the reason that I will make clear in a moment
4which is directly relevant to the way in which we would
5suggest that the table talks, the language used at the
6table talks was in some sense sanitized. Perhaps I should
7start at the second paragraph on page 503? "Nor did
8Himmler evidently raise with Hitler the progress made on
9the Jewish problem during their two hour mountain stroll
10on March 30th". This is 1943, is it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] 1943.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I did say that. "Hitler wearing a soft peek cap to shade
13his eyes against the alpine glare. Earlier in 1943,
14Himmler had submitted to him", that is Hitler, is it, I do
15not know, "a statistical report on a similar
16topic... (reading to the words) ... he had sponsored since
17Hitler's written order of October 1939. The report was
18typed on a special large face typewriter and clearly went
19to the Fuhrer"?
20 A. [Mr Irving] That one. In other words, the earlier report was.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I follow you. That is all right. "But did Hitler ever
22see the statistical report that the Reichsfuhrer had
23commissioned at the same time on the Final Solution to the
24Jewish problem in Europe". That is what the report is
25called, is it?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is correct.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] "In dry tones Hitler's chief statistician, Dr Richard
2Korheir, had analysed the fate of the world's estimated 17
3million Jews. Europe's 10 million had dwindled by 45 per
4cent since 1937 owing to emigration and a high natural
5mortality rate and the enforced", and these are your
6quotes, are they, "evacuation"?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is not taken from Korheir?
9 A. [Mr Irving] He uses "evakierung" but, of course, I think we are agreed
10that "evakierung" often has an ugly connotation.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] In 1977 you believed it had the ugliest of all
12connotations, did you not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I repeat what I said. It often has the ugliest, almost
14sinister, connotation.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] "The evacuation that had begun with the prohibition of
16emigration ... (reading to the words) ... To Himmler's
17annoyance, on reading the 16 page document on March 23rd,
18he found that it stated expressis ^^ verbage", that is in
19actual words explicitly, "on page 9 that of the 1,449,692
20Jews deported from the Eastern provinces, 1,274,166 had
21been subjected to 'special treatment'" -- now, that is
22zondebehandlung, is it not ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- "at camps in the General Government and a further
25145,301 similarly dealt with in the Warthegau. Himmler
26knew too well that the Fuhrer had in November 1941 ordered
1that the Jews", general, "were", italics, "not to be
2liquidated. On April 1st he had the report edited 'for
3submission to the Fuhrer' and a few days later, lest he
4had not made himself plain, instructed that in version for
5the Fuhrer he 'did not want there to be any mention of
6special treatment of Jews' whatever".
7 According to the new text the Jews would have
8been 'channelled through' the camps to Russia
9not 'subjected to special treatment' at the camps. As he
10wrote on April 9th, the report would serve magnificently
11for 'camouflage purposes' in later years. Camouflage from
12whom, Mr Irving?
13 A. [Mr Irving] It does not say but, of course, this passage has remained
14the same in all versions of my book. I think it is an
15eminently satisfactory description of the kind of things
16that were going on at the highest level. People were
17withholding things from people.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not going to reengage on the argument about the
19so-called Fuhrer order of 30th November 1941. We have
20been down that road.
21 A. [Mr Irving] That passage was removed from the subsequent editions.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We know all about that. What is the
23relevance to table talk?
24 MR RAMPTON: We have had all that. The relevance of this is
25the words unterbehandlung. You see, I suggest to you,
26Mr Irving, that the reason why that was taken out had
1nothing whatever to do with the Fuhrer learning of
2something which he did not ought to know, because the fact
3is, if the word unterbehandlung had been in there, he
4would have known exactly what was being talked about,
5would he not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. The word unterbehandlung was a very
7common German word, frequently used by even Himmler in
8totally different ----
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then why did Himmler have it edited?
10 A. [Mr Irving] He wanted the report cut down from 16 pages to 9 pages
11which is one thing that is quite plain, but he also wanted
12the explicitness, and I have made this quite plain in
13this, that ugly things are happening in the East, and he
14does not want Hitler being told, he does not want his nose
15being rubbed in it. Let us put it like that.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know what the German says but, "subjected to
17special treatment" is a good deal shorter than "channelled
18through to camps in Russia".
19 A. [Mr Irving] If you subject people to special treatment at camps, then
20this has a very sinister connotation indeed. "Channelled
21through those camps to the east" has a less sinister
22connotation. My primitive reading of this document, and
23maybe you will educate the court differently, is that this
24is being withheld from Hitler. Himmler is saying to the
25statistician, "Write a different version for submission to
26Fuhrer". These words do not occur.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving.
2 A. [Mr Irving] You keep interrupting me.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, I do not accept that. What Himmler has
4done is precisely what he said he did. He has camouflaged
5it so that, when Hitler reads it, he is not going to go
6through the roof and say, you cannot have a document
7talking about zonderbehandlung. We all know what that
9 A. [Mr Irving] Unless you are going to lead evidence which actually bears
10that out, I do not think there is any sustainability
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am offering you another perfectly natural ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] I think it is a perverse interpretation. If Himmler is
14saying this is an excellent document for camouflage
15purposes, and says "I want a short version for submission
16to the Fuhrer which does not mention these sinister
17words", I think that my interpretation is the most obvious
18interpretation, and in fact I think it bears out
19everything I have said all along, that there is monkey
20work going on along here, and either it is the Richard
21Nixon complex, as I call it, where Hitler may admittedly
22have said, "Do what you want, Mr Himmler, but do not let
23me be told", which I am perfectly prepared to accept may
24have happened.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I suggest to you that precisely the same sort of exercise
26took place at the table talks. In other words, camouflage
1language, slightly more delicate language was used than
2would have been used between, say Hitler and Himmler when
3discussing these matters.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I have had the advantage -- you are familiar
5with the table talks, you are also familiar with the
6German version which has more recently been published.
7The table talk was written by Martin Bormann's adjutant,
8Heinreich Heim. Heinrich Heim was a person that
9I interviewed at great depth personally while he was still
10alive. He was a very educated, cultivated man, an art
11collector, oddly enough, in private life. I questioned
12him in great deal as to how much about the final solution
13was discussed. You are not listening to what I say so
14there is no point in my continuing.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps Mr Rampton is just pretending he is not
17listening. I questioned Mr Heim and the other Adjutants
18in great detail as to how much was discussed in these kind
19of circles, and there was no discussion whatsoever of any
20kind of mass extermination of the Jews at Hitler's table
21or in private or else where at Hitler's headquarters,
22which is what I find very disturbing because I satisfied
23myself, possibly not the court but I satisfied myself,
24that I had won these people's confidence.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you turn to page 426 of the Professor Evans report
1 A. [Mr Irving] We are moving on to a new topic now, are we?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. We are still on table talk. Henry -- was he called
3Henry -- was one of those two people who wrote down what
4Hitler said at these table talks, was he not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Not strictly accurate.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You tell me, then.
7 A. [Mr Irving] The primary scribe was Mr Heim, the gentleman I have just
8mentioned. When he was relieved by Henry Picker, Henry
9Picker found in the desk a large number of Heim's original
10transcripts, and he published them under his own name in
11the third person. So he was not always the person who was
12himself present in the case of Mr Picker.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] But Mr Picker would have been there on a number of these
14occasions, would he?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, particularly from 1942 onwards.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can I read from the second sentence on 426? You tell me
17whether this is right or not. "Henry Picker, who took the
18notes at the table talk of 24th July 1942, which I promise
19you we are coming to, claimed that Hitler, even in his
20private circle, had 'never forgotten to keep silent about
21things for which there was no resonance among his table
22companions as amongst the broad mass of out people"' -- it
23must be "our people", unsere volkes. "Only take the
24persecution of the Jews, which he obscured before his
25table companions with references to preparations for the
26establishment of a Jewish national state on the island of
1Madagascar, or alternatively in central Africa." That was
2published in, I think, Berlin in 1997 but also in London
3in 1994?
4 A. [Mr Irving] 1977.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Can we be quite plain that this is not actually wartime
7writing there?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I realise that.
9 A. [Mr Irving] This is writing by Mr Picker 32 years after the war was
10over and the climate in German where people were put in
11prison for having the wrong opinions. He wanted to
12publish a volume of Hitler's sayings, so he wrote a
13suitably politically correct introduction.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you tell me because I have missed it?
15Picker was what? A secretary or something more senior?
16 A. [Mr Irving] He replaced Henry Heim as Martin Bormann's adjutant at
17Hitler's table talk, and from 1942 he took over the task
18of writing down Hitler's table conversations in this
19summary form. He died a few years ago. This was
20published in 1977, at the time when this persecution in
21Germany had already begun.
22 MR RAMPTON: You see, this is perhaps reflected, is it not, in
23something -- do you remember Kurt Engel?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Gebhardt Engel, Hitler's army adjutant.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. You interviewed him, I think, in 1971 on several
1 A. [Mr Irving] On several occasions.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is the only version I have of it at the moment. Do
3you have Professor Evans' supplementary or amendment
5 A. [Mr Irving] I have received them, but I have not even had time to look
6at them yet. That is the 18 pages that I referred to.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have not got it here?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I can comment on.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Put the point, Mr Rampton. I think Mr Irving
10is saying he can cope.
11 MR RAMPTON: Well, I think he should have it.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can he have a copy?
13 MR RAMPTON: I have a copy.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Thank you very much.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Paragraph 12 on page 16, Mr Irving.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This is the written transcript that I made after the
17interview with Engel.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is what I understand. I think I have the original
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know your handwriting but this must be you. Your
22handwriting is legible, so I can read the handwriting.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I can explain. After every interview with one of these
24gentleman I sat down and wrote a formal protocol on what
25had been discussed between us.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think it is best if you just look at this document that
1I have, so that in the transcript you have identified it
2as your document.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Notes on the second interview with General Gerhardt Engel
4at his office, WAH, which is an arms dealers, Dusseldorf
5and so on, 9th December 1970. Then it is the second one
6that you are relying on? Notes on the interview of General
7Gerhardt Engel at his home Dusseldorf, April 5, 1971, in
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could I have it back?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I just want to make sure that nothing has been omitted.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do check it against the typescript in case of error.
12Thank you. I will read from your manuscript:"When I asked
13his views on Hitler's association with Juden Hausroten (?)
14he confirmed broadly Carl Wolf's statements, and added
15that the Fuhrerbefallen," that means Fuhrer orders.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Is it? Can I check that?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It must be, from the sense. It is in the
18singular but it must really be the plural.
19 MR RAMPTON: There is not just one Fuhrer order throughout the
20war, is there? It has an E on the end.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It has not in Professor Evans?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I accept that it should have an E on the end.
23 MR RAMPTON: It has in the manuscript. That is why I am glad I
24have the manuscript. "Frequently resulted from remarks F,
25that is Fuhrer, made at his late discussions, vo 'Hitler
26dutzierte stundenlang' (?). That should have a small S,
1should it? Yes, it is an adverb. He referred to the
2Hewell tagerbruf (?) as proof." That means Hitler just
3rattled on for a long time. That is all that means, is it
4not? "He never summarized the conclusions of these
5discussions. Each was left to pick his own meat from the
6talk, Himmler in his way quiet but efficient, (that was
7how the three quarters of a million strong Waffen (?) SS
8had been born and Bormann more crudely issuing edicts on
9party notepaper beginning der Fuhrer hat befallen" etc.
10That is exactly what would have happened?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. You note incidentally that this is part of my
12collection in Munich which I no longer have access to.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] We must have got this from Munich I suppose?
14 A. [Mr Irving] It has come from the Institute in Munich as part of the
15early collection which is now denied to me.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you would like copies of these, we can certainly give
17them to you.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Very generous of you.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the point on this?
20 MR RAMPTON: The point on this is that what Engel is saying
21there reflects what Picker has said in 19 whenever it was
22after the war, that if there are a lot of people, or even
23a few people, unless they are the two or three high
24ranking people alone, Hitler would use euphemism. He
25would use a sort of a thought process. To Himmler, for
26example, Siberia would mean extermination. To somebody
1else who was not in the know it might mean Siberia. Do
2you follow me?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that really right? Picker is talking
4about euphemisms, but Engel is talking about something
5rather different. That is how a Hitler order emerges. Is
6that not a different point?
7 MR RAMPTON: It is part of the same process.
8 A. [Mr Irving] It is a very clear picture, in fact, those two lines, of
9how these Himmler orders emerged, that Bormann would be
10hanging around in the background with a note pad writing
11things down, and eventually an order would be drafted,
12sent out as the Fuhrer has ordered, and sometimes it was
13not what Hitler had ordered at all. There are famous
14examples where Hitler learned of these orders months later
15and said,"Who ordered this?"
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sure that from time to time people got the wrong end
17of the stick but, if Hitler is talking about evacuation of
18the Jews at one of these table talks and is saying, "we
19must get on with it" for example, then Himmler will know
20exactly what Hitler is talking about, and Hitler does not
21have to talk about extermination, does he?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, it is precisely why not only I question but
23also the allied interrogators questioned all these
24surviving members of Hitler's staff very closely on this
25very point. How much discussion was there, whether veiled
26or otherwise? I have to say that I am not saying there
1was no discussion. There is one famous episode, if I can
2just relate for two minute, where Hitler's film camera man
3personally witnessed a mass shooting of the Jews outside
4Minsk in August 1941. He had been there with Himmler. He
5is still alive. I am the one who weedled this story out
6of him. He came back to Hitler's headquarters with the
7photographs in his camera. He showed the photographs to
8General Schmundt, Hitler's wehrmacht adjutant, and
9Schmundt said to him, "If you know what is good for you,
10you will destroy these photographs", which is what I put
11in my book also. What do you make of a statement like
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I go back to where we started and ask you
14whether you do or not accept that Picker is giving an
15accurate portrayal of talk within Hitler's private circle
16when he says that there is an element of camouflaging
17about the language that was used.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not accept that, my Lord. I fully accept his
19transcripts that are published as transcripts in his
20volume, which is very similar to the table talks but in
21the third person instead of being in the first person.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is not really answering my point.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am just about to answer, my Lord. What has been quoted
24from, the passage you are asking me about, is not written
25during the war. It is written in 1977, when the climate
26of fear in Germany has grown to such an extent that
1everybody who wants to write a book about Adolf Hitler has
2to put in a politically correct introduction to make sure
3it gets past the census. In Germany they have a book
4censorship body which burns books and closes down
5bookstores and arrests authors. In order to make sure you
6get past this book censorship body in modern Germany, you
7put in politically correct statements in order to avoid
8trouble. This is a typical example of the kind of
9politically correct statement to which I would attach no
10evidentiary weight whatsoever without supporting material.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is clear answer. Thank you very much.
12 MR RAMPTON: I am still on table talks Mr Irving. In Hitler's
13War 1991, there is a reference on page The gulf between
14the actual atrocities in the east, and what Hitler knew or
15said about them, widened. Over lunch on May 15 Hitler
16again merely spoke to staff about transporting the Jews
17eastward; her referred indignantly to the misplaced
18sympathies of the bourgeoisie. How well the Jews were
19faring, he remarked, compared with the German emigrants of
20the nineteenth century - many of whom had even died on
21route to Australia! Goebbels, unhappy that forty thousand
22Jews still remained in'his' Berlin, raised the subject at
23lunch with Hitler on the twenty-ninth. ('I once again
24inform the Fuhrer on my plan to evacuate every single Jew
25from Berlin...') Hitler merely expatiated on the best
26post-war homeland for the Jews. Siberia was out- that
1would just produce an even tougher baccilus strain of
2Jews; Palestine was out too- the Arabs did not want them;
3perhaps central Africa? At all events, he summed up,
4western Europe must be liberated of its Jews - there could
5be no homeland for them there. As late as July 24 Hitler
6was still referring at table to his plan to transport the
7Jews to Madagascar - by now already in British hands- or
8some other Jewish national home after the war was over."
9So you there, as it were, made use of four different
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] The table talk of the 15th May, Goebbels' diary of 30th
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] The table talk of 29th May?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the table talk of 24th July?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. The Goebbels' diary of May 30th would refer of
19course to the events of May 29th.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is absolutely right. I would like you again, if you
21will, to look at the supplement to Professor Evans' report
22where you will see I think on page 8, starting under the
23cross line, a rather fuller translation of Goebbels' diary
24entry for 30th May 1942. To save my voice and with his
25Lordship's permission, it is quite a long passage, I would
26ask you to read the English. If you have any problems
1with it, the German is printed underneath. Starting with
2the small type on page 8 and ending with the words "here
3they will not be allowed to have any home any more" on
4page 9.
5 A. [Mr Irving] (Pause for reading) Acres of sludge, is it not? If I had
6to put all that into a book, the book would sink under its
7own weight.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have read that?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the next page, page 10 at paragraph 3, Professor Evans
11has set out a translation of the table talk for the 29th
12May 1942, and again I ask you to read that.
13 A. [Mr Irving] (Pause for reading) He is suggesting that it is two
14separate conversations.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. He is suggesting that it is two separate
16conversations. What he is suggesting, and I think you may
17agree with him, is that it is only the last part of the
18Goebbels diary entry, from the middle of second paragraph
19on page 9, that is in fact a report of the table talk
20because there there is a degree of congruence. The words
21are not identical but there is a great deal of similarity
22in the subject matter between what Goebbels wrote in that
23short passage and what we find in the table talk on pages
2410 and 11.
25 A. [Mr Irving] These two records are created in totally different ways,
26of course. Henry Picker would sit at a side table with a
1note pad, writing down things as they were said on which
2he would then base his subsequent dictation. Dr Goebbels
3would wait until the following morning, the first hour in
4his working day, to summon his stenographer, and he would
5dictate a diary on the previous days events.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] But the point might be this, might it not, Mr Irving?
7Dr Goebbels will have recorded a whole day's events, as
8you say, over many pages.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but, if there were two or three separate
10conversations, it is quite possible that he would have
11coalesced them.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see, what I am suggesting is that the first part, down
13to the middle of the second paragraph on page 9,
14starting "How little the Jews can assimilate themselves",
15the first part which ends "Therefore, one must liquidate
16the Jewish danger, cost what it will", I think in German ,
17"Deshalb, muss man die jedische Gefall-Liquidierung Koste
18es was es wollen". That is not table talk.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot find it.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you want to have a little time?
21 A. [Mr Irving] No. I think I can cope with it.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I hesitate to say this and it is
23my fault. I am afraid you have lost me. I am not
24following the point that is being made which is presumably
25eventually a criticism of 465?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I will do it more precisely.
1 A. [Mr Irving] It is a problem that authors frequently have. When
2material comes in late, you attach far more significance
3to it than it really deserves.
4 MR RAMPTON: You must leave judgments about significance to me
5and his Lordship, Mr Irving. You will make your own, no
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, it is my fault, I am sure, but I
8am just not quite following what we are on at the moment.
9 MR RAMPTON: I have tried to take it quickly because this sort
10of exercise is tedious. What happens in the end of course
11is that, if you do it too quickly, it gets into a muddle.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Fill me in.
13 MR RAMPTON: On page 9 there is a sentence which begins, "How
14little the Jews can assimilate themselves to Western
15european life in reality can be seen from the fact", and
16so on, and there is a good deal ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] Halfway down the second paragraph.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Halfway down the second paragraph on page 9.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have that.
20 MR RAMPTON: They get put into a ghetto, they become very
21quickly ghetto-ised again, then there is talk about
22Siberia and then about central Africa.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
24 MR RAMPTON: That is reflected in the table talk on page 10,
25starting with the words in the third line "The whole
26prudity of the Jewish people really finds expression" and
1so on and so forth. Then there is a reference to the
2ghetto, and then on the next page there is a reference to
3Siberia, and on the next page the reference to Africa, and
4probably one can stop there so far as the Goebbels' diary
5entry is concerned.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That much I follow. What is the
8 MR RAMPTON: The significance is this. What I am putting to
9Mr Irving is that the earlier part of the Goebbels' diary
10entry, certainly down to the end of the first paragraph on
11page 9, has nothing to do with the table talk at all, but
12represents a private conversation between Hitler and
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that is an adventurous presumption, I think. If you
15look at the Weidenfeld edition of the table talk, there is
16yet again a totally different version of that table talk,
17and Professor Evans has ignored that completely.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not worrying about that.
19 A. [Mr Irving] It worries me. It should worry. It should have worried
20Professor Evans too, the fact that there are three
21different versions of the same thing.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, please, can we stick to the point? If you read
23the first two paragraphs on pages 8 and 9, what you see is
24something a very great deal blunter about the fate of the
25Jews from both sides to the conversation, if it be
26Goebbels and Hitler, than you ever find in the table
2 A. [Mr Irving] (Pause for reading) You mean the argument about the need
3to keep the equilibrium?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the suggestion, perhaps more than a suggestion, the
5proposal, that it is probably going to be necessary to
6kill all the people in the prisons as well, because the
7sentence about the prisoners starts with the little German
8word "auch".
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are you, Mr Rampton?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot see any plan to kill people in the prisons.
11 MR RAMPTON: Page 8, my Lord, in indent in small type, there is
12some talk about the Jews. "Thus I plead once again for a
13more radical Jewish policy", this is middle of the page,
14"whereby I am just pushing at an open door with the
15Fuhrer". This has been quoted by a number of people but
16without the context. "The Fuhrer is of the opinion that
17the danger will become greater for us personally the more
18critical the war situation becomes. We find ourselves in
19a similar situation to that of the second half of 1932
20where bashing and stabbing were the order of the day and
21one had to take all possible security measures to escape
22from such a development in one piece. The extermination
23of criminals", and there is no ambiguity about this, "is
24also a necessity of state policy", but the German sentence
25which you find on page 9, when he goes on to say: "Auch
26die ausmerzung ist ein stattspolitische notwendigkeit",
1necessity. What I am suggesting is that Goebbels and
2Hitler had a fairly frank conversation about the fate of
3the Jews and indeed of the prisoners but, when you get to
4the table, the larger audience. That all goes up into the
5air into airy talk about central Africa and Siberia.
6 A. [Mr Irving] May I just comment that to translate "ausmerzung" as
7uniquely as "extermination" is either showing the
8bankruptcy of Professor Evans' vocabulary. Ausmerzung has
9a very wide range of meanings. It is very similar to
10"ausschlossung". It is rubbing out, wiping out,
11disposing of.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You can argue with Professor Evans about that, Mr Irving.
13 A. [Mr Irving] I certainly shall.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, am I wrong in thinking, if this
15is important, I do not know, that the first paragraph of
16this extract from the diary entry is dealing with the
17particular problem in Berlin and the dilemma whether you
18keep the Jews there, because they are better working in
19armaments factory than having in potentially criminal
20elements from the East, or wherever. Then it seems to go
21on to the rather wider question what will happen to people
22in prison if the war situation gets much worse.
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that fair?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes. What I am suggesting is that the use of the
26word "also" or "auch" may be tending to suggest that the
1more radical solution of which Dr Goebbels spoke was the
2same as that which was going to befall the criminals.
3After all, if it had by this time already been decided, as
4undoubtedly it had, that the German Jews were going to be
5deported, and lot of Berlin Jews had already gone by May
61942, it could hardly be, could it, Mr Irving, that Joseph
7Goebbels would have been pleading for a more radical
8policy in that regard? That is right, is it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I am just totally baffled that you are hanging your entire
10case on one little German word "auch" and, if I was in
11that position, I think I would deserve to be hanged, drawn
12and quartered. You have been bedazzled by this recent
13acquisition rather like a new toy. You are trying to make
14something out of it, but I am afraid that it escapes me
15and I think may very well have escaped the court. What
16point are you trying to make out of it? What is
17significant in the quotation is that Hitler is saying once
18again, "There is no point sending them to Siberia because
19that will just toughen them. Let us send them to Africa.
20That is a more reasonable solution." Once again, he is
21not talking about killing.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] In May 1942 send them to Africa?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am just repeating what is in the documents.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what the document says.
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is what the document says but it was not a
26realistic possibility.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Hitler was hoping to win the war, I remind you of that
2fact. He was an optimist. He was an incurable optimist.
3People, when they get in that position, hope to win, the
4same as the defendants in this action. They do not
5necessarily paint a worse case scenario.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, just so that I try and understand
7the point that we have been spending a little time on, and
8looking at it in terms of where you say the manipulation
9or the distortion occurs in volume 2 of Hitler's War 1991,
10you would criticise Mr Irving's sentence which reads: "But
11he evidently never discussed these realities with Hitler".
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes, indeed.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the point, is it?
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
15 A. [Mr Irving] I am not going to respond to that, my Lord, because
16I think that that is not a fair conclusion from this
17material. I think the real allegation is that Mr Rampton
18would have liked that I ladled acres of sludge into my
19manuscript, rather the way Professor Evans has, which
20would have sunken without trace.
21 MR RAMPTON: There it is. Now finally on table talks for the
22moment at least, your favourite one, Mr Irving, which
23I think is 24th July 1942.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Only favourite because in a sense it brings this
25particular phase to a end. It is the bottom line.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does what?
1 A. [Mr Irving] It brings this particular table talk phase to an end and
2after that there is nothing more useful to be dug out of
3them one way or another.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] The relevant part of it is very short, and I do not know
5whether or not there is any way one can get more out of
6it, but it is on page 422 of Professor Evans' report.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Interestingly, yet again, this is a passage which is in
8the Picker version of the table talk, but not in the
9original Heinich Heim version, so it may well be something
10that can be attached to that.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be that Picker was there and Heim was
13 A. [Mr Irving] Heim also wrote a version of the table talk that day, my
14Lord, in the first person, so it is possible that Picker
15added to the original from his own notes.
16 MR RAMPTON: Let us look at 466 in your 1991 edition of
17Hitler's War, to start with?
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is the first paragraph, about lines 6 and 7.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] "As late as July 24th", this is the last part of the first
20paragraph, "Hitler was still referring at table to his
21plan to transport the Jews to Madagascar, by now already
22in British hands, or some other Jewish national home after
23the war was over." Yes? Is that, do you think, a fair
24rendering of that part of the table talk?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, did you read the table talk?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
1 MR RAMPTON: I think we are maybe at cross purposes. That is a
2fair rendering of the table for that day, is it, what you
3wrote there?
4 A. [Mr Irving] The table talk says, "After the war was over, he would
5rigorously take the standpoint", this is Hitler, "that he
6would smash after city to pieces if the Jews did not come
7out and emigrate to Madagascar or some other Jewish
8national state".
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then it finishes up, I do not know how far down ----
10 A. [Mr Irving] My reference I can quote "As late as July 24th", this is
11now me in my book, "Hitler was still referring at table to
12his plan to transport the Jews to Madagascar by now
13already in British hands or to some other Jewish national
14home after the war was over".
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where in the table talk does the last piece in evidence
17 A. [Mr Irving] Which last piece?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Therefore significant".
19 MR RAMPTON: When it was reported to him that Lithuania was
20also Jew free today, that was, therefore, significant?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, first of all, we do not know what those three little
22dots stand for in the case of Professor Evans. Those
23little dots sometimes stand for two or three paragraphs or
24even pages of text.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course they can. Are you not familiar with this table
1 A. [Mr Irving] I have not got it with me.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the significance of that last
3sentence you have just read out, Mr Rampton? It makes no
4sense to me at all.
5 MR RAMPTON: What it means is that Hitler already knew that it
6had happened in Lithuania.
7 A. [Mr Irving] What had happened?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] The Jews had been removed from Lithuania?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why is that significant?
11 MR RAMPTON: Because of what happened next and, of course, with
12what had happened before.
13 A. [Mr Irving] So you accuse me of a sin of omission yet again, in other
14words, the book should have been 2,000 pages long instead
15of 1,000.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] If his plan was to transport everybody to Madagascar after
17the war, why should he think it is significant that
18Lithuania was now Jew free?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. We do not know what the preceding
20sentences say, and I hesitate to express opinion there. It
21looks like the corollary of something that he said in the
22previous sentence which Professor Evans has not vouchsafed
23to us.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is not the real point on this it was obvious,
25or should have been obvious -- this is Professor Evans to
26Mr Irving -- that this was a classic example of camouflage
1in Federation
2 MR RAMPTON: Yes, absolutely.
3 A. [Mr Irving] He could well argue that, but I would argue on the
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That, as I understand it, is the way the case
6is put on this particular table talk.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Your Lordship will certainly attach whatever weight you
8wish to to that, but the evidence is that Adolf Hitler,
9certainly since June 1938, had adumbrated the Madagascar
10plan, and he repeatedly referred to it in a rather wistful
11kind of way. He discussed it with the German Navy. The
12German Admiralty actually became involved in a detailed
13plan, so did the German Foreign Office, so did various
14subordinate departments. All I am saying in this sentence
15is that as late as July 1942 in this rather madcap way he
16is still talking of Madagascar.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but it is a question of whether you take him
18seriously or not, is it not? That is what matters, from
19history's point of view.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Should I have suppressed this sentence? Should I
21have dropped it on the floor, the same way as your
22historians have dropped the other documents on the floor
23that do not fit into their arguments?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you please turn over the page in Professor Evans'
25report to page 423, you will see why it is that I suggest
26that when Hitler talks of Madagascar in July 1942 at his
1table talk it is mere fanciful waffle. Look at paragraph
23 in Richard Evans's report, please?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not just waffle, euphemism.
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes, euphemism, yes. "By early 1942, it had thus
5been made official that Hitler was no longer aiming at
6driving Jews out of Europe to Africa. The Madagascar
7plan, which had already been postponed indefinitely in the
8Autumn of 1940, was now officially shelved. It is totally
9misleading to speculate, as Irving does, that Hitler in
10July 1942 'might still be dreaming of Madagascar'. On
1110th February 1942 the Foreign Office official who had
12first proposed the plan for deporting the Jews to
13Madagascar in 1940 wrote that:
14 'Gruppenfuhrer Heydrich has been charged by the
15Fuhrer with carrying out the solution of the Jewish
16question in Europe. In the meantime, the war against the
17Soviet Union has opened up the possibility of placing
18other territories at our disposal for the Final Solution.
19Accordingly, the Fuhrer has decided that the Jews should
20be pushed off not to Madagascar but to the East.
21Madagascar, therefore, does not need to be foreseen for
22the final solution any more"?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Are you implying that Heydrich was the one who called the
24shots and not Hitler?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] This appears to be a report at secondhand, admittedly ----
26 A. [Mr Irving] I am afraid this point rather operates against yourself.
1You are implying that Heydrich is the one who made the
2decisions and not Hitler who is talking here still about
3Madagascar. I am perfectly ----
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, because it goes on to say that the Fuhrer
5has made the decision that it should not be Madagascar.
6 MR RAMPTON: The Fuhrer has decided.
7 A. [Mr Irving] But here, quite clearly, the Fuhrer is still talking about
8Madagascar in the way that Heads of State do.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it is camouflage; it no longer means anything?
10 A. [Mr Irving] May I remind you, why the Madagascar plan was dropped was
11because Germany was not in a position to ship the stuff,
12to get the shipping and to transport these emigres
13overseas any more without the ships being torpedoed. He
14is talking about after the war it would be nice if we
15could resume the Madagascar plan.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Maybe, so we can lay our hands on the remaining 4 million
17Jews, perhaps?
18 A. [Mr Irving] That is not exactly what he says, Mr Rampton. I have
19adhered very closely to what is in the sources. It would
20have been irresponsible of me to have ignored this remark
21in the way that the historians have ignored the other
22documents that do not fit in with their schemes.
23 I am writing a biography of Adolf Hitler, and
24this is very clearly a germane document to include, but to
25give it no more weight than I assigned to it.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] So is the Foreign Office document, is it not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I have mentioned that at the appropriate place in this
2very volume too.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, the appropriate place, do you say that place -- if
4you do, I am wrong?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I shall certainly look it out overnight and bring it
6before the court so we do not have to waste more time.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] But, of course, Hitler had, in fact, already ordered
8Madagascar to be taken off the menu back in February, so
9this cannot be taken at face value. Did you write that
11 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, these are your suppositions for which you have
12no evidence. I can only work on the evidence which is in
13the documents. The table talk, as I have always said, are
14documents of a very high category of authenticity and
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that Foreign Office document of, is it, 10th February,
17is that an authentic document, do you think?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed, yes, but you will accept the planning undergoes
19swings and changes as the climate of the war changes, as
20the advance proceeds on the Eastern Front or as one has
21set backs, then one adapts one's plans.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is page 423, if you want to cross-refer.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am indebted to your Lordship, yes. This very document
24was quoted by me in full on page 423, the relevant part,
25which is what, no doubt, brought it to Professor Evans'
26attention in the first place.
1 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, may I say what I propose to do next?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
3 MR RAMPTON: That ends that little exercise with the table
4talks and very little it was, I took too long. It ends on
524th July. I now propose to lay out as quickly as I can
6(but it is necessary to look at some original German
7documents) what was going on, so far as anybody knows from
8the German documents, from 28th or earlier about this
9time, end of July 1942, and then I make no secret of it,
10I am going to then end up with Himmler's note of 22nd
11September 1942. That is not quite my terminus.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which is that?
13 A. [Mr Irving] We have not had that yet.
14 MR RAMPTON: That is the next topic, but it does require some
15background. It may be best to lay the ground by referring
16to what Mr Irving wrote about it in his book.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you say you are going to be producing to the
18court German documents. Will you make it plain on each
19occasion whether they were documents that were before me
20at the time I wrote the books or not.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point.
22 MR RAMPTON: I may not know the answer to that -- it is a fair
23point, but it is not the whole of the point by any means
24because you have said something about the Himmler log
25entry of 22nd September 1942, and what I want to do is to
26see whether you adhere to what you there said. It is also
1evidence of system, of course, and scale. So it does
2several jobs at the same time. Can we look, please, first
3of all, at page 467 of Hitler's War 1991?
4 A. [Mr Irving] The closing words of the paragraph -- of the chapter?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, they are. It is right to point out that this half
6page which ends at a half page on page 467 starts with a
7reference to Himmler on page 466. Perhaps your Lordship
8might just read that? I have some questions about that
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: From where?
11 MR RAMPTON: From "Himmler kept his own counsels".
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just read it? I have read it before,
13but I have to remind myself.
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
16 MR RAMPTON: Now, Mr Irving, if you would just look at that for
17a moment, just 467 for the moment? At the end of the
18paragraph you write: "Himmler meanwhile continued to pull
19the wool over Hitler's eyes. On September 17th he calmly
20jotted in his notes for that day's Fuhrer conference:
21 '(1) Jewish immigration; how is it to be handled
22in future? (2) Settlement of Lublin', and noted next to
23these points 'Conditions in general government and
24Globas'" which is Globocnik's nickname. Yet, at the top
25of the page, at the end of the first little paragraph you
26write this: "The Fuhrer himself", and this is a
1translation of Himmler's letter to Berger of that
2date, "The Fuhrer himself has entrusted me with the
3execution of this arduous order and nobody can deprive me
4of this responsibility."
5 A. [Mr Irving] You did not read out the first part which is to say what
6the order was.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am so sorry. The task is making the occupied Eastern
8territories ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] The full text is: "The occupied Eastern territories are
10to be liberated of Jews. The Fuhrer himself has entrusted
11me with the execution of this arduous order. Nobody can
12deprive me of this responsibility."
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am just getting out the original which is "Die besetzen
14osgebete werden Judenfrage", "The occupied East
15territories will be Jew-free", correct?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Well...
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] It must be?
18 A. [Mr Irving] That is what I would refer to as a wooden translation,
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes. I do not make any apology for it being wooden?
21 A. [Mr Irving] It is me being defensive.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Die durchfuhrung dieses sehr schweren gefalls" --- the
23carrying out of this very hard order -- "hat der Fuhrer
24auf mein schuntten gelecht" -- has the Fuhrer placed on my
25shoulders, is that right?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] So Himmler has been given the very hard, sehr schwer, task
2of clearing the Eastern territories, occupied Eastern
3territories, of all the Jews, has he not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Rendering the Eastern territories free of the Jews, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. So about what was it, if Himmler is telling the
6truth about that, that Himmler on, in fact, I think the
7dates are 22nd and not 17th, but it matters not.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You accept that, do you not, Mr Irving?
9 A. [Mr Irving] That I do not know, but it is not important.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not important, I agree.
11 MR RAMPTON: On 22nd September, about what was it that Himmler
12was pulling the wool over Hitler's eyes?
13 A. [Mr Irving] At this time a killing operation had begun, that the
14killings were going on.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Surely not. By what means?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. It is not important for the purposes of
17that answer.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am afraid I think it is. You see, Mr Irving, your
19position is that the gas chambers of Belzec, Sobibor,
20Treblinka and Auschwitz did not exist, so how do you think
21Himmler and his bods were carrying out the killings on a
22massive scale which they did not want Hitler to know
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am just checking on the date. Well, my position on that
25really is that on the basis of the documents, I am not in
26a position at this time of writing that to be specific
1about what kind of camouflage is going on; but it did seem
2plain to me on reading this agenda that Himmler had
3written for his talk with Hitler, dated either September
417th or 22nd, that if he just jotted down conditions in
5the government general and Globus there was possibly
6something sinister being discussed between them, but that
7Himmler was not going into detail about it. More than
8that, I could not say on the basis of what I had.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well. We will have a look at the wording of the Himmler
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, it strikes me this is quite
12important. Could we -- this is for my benefit and, bear
13in mind, you have the advantage of me -- I just ask about
14the reference made in Himmler's gentle rebuke of 28th July
15what, Mr Irving, you understand the liberation of the Jews
16entrusted to Himmler by the Fuhrer really means?
17 A. [Mr Irving] The territories are to be liberated of Jews.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] By the physical deportation or continued shooting or by
20 A. [Mr Irving] My contention here is that Hitler has clearly ordered the
21Jews turfed out of all these countries and I have always
22said this.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So it means that and no more than that?
24 A. [Mr Irving] There is no evidence for anything uglier than that, and
25I would be surprised if Professor Evans has found any
26evidence that there was and certainly that there was any
1evidence that was before me at the time I wrote the book.
2I have been very careful not to go over what the evidence
3actually bears out when I write this. When I quote a
4document like this, I put in what the document says and
5I try to let the reader draw their own conclusions.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But even now you would take that view, in the light of
7your present knowledge?
8 A. [Mr Irving] With the utmost respect, what I think now is immaterial
9for the purposes of the issues pleaded.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, I do not agree for the reason I think I explained
11yesterday, namely that if one is judging your approach as
12an historian, how you interpret fresh information is
13something that we can legitimately ask you about; do you
14remember I made that point to you?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I appreciate that point, my Lord. But in that case I
16would then have to devote time to looking at the documents
17all over again and reevaluating them in order to be able
18to give a balanced answer to that now.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] If you feel that you would need to do that, I understand.
20 A. [Mr Irving] I think I would have to do that.
21 MR RAMPTON: As I am about to embark on the documents, my Lord,
22I will ask the question I was going to ask about the entry
23in the Himmler log, but then maybe Mr Irving could spend a
24little bit of time between the end of that and 2 o'clock
25looking at the documents?
26 A. [Mr Irving] And having lunch.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, it is a problem that faces everybody in the
2profession, Mr Irving.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, in this volume which you also have, which is
4the Himmler diary, it is on page 566, and my date reading
5is correct. It is September 17th. You rather worried me
6on that.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you are right there in saying it does
8not in the end matter.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Except that once again, it is only detail, you are quite
10right, my Lord. I will save my triumph in private. It is
11on the left-hand page.
12 MR RAMPTON: I agree with you.
13 A. [Mr Irving] It does not matter, Mr Rampton.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to keep this open.
15 A. [Mr Irving] His Lordship has ruled it does not matter.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you turn, please, to page 432 of Professor Evans'
17report? There you see the English set out more or less as
18it is in German. Is that not right?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could you give me the reference in the
20documents as to where one finds that note?
21 MR RAMPTON: One does not. One has to look in this book. Can
22I hand it up?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry. I assumed it was somewhere.
24 MR RAMPTON: I cannot find it in ----
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry. I did not realize there was a
26problem. I am sorry. I have wasted a certain amount of
2 MR RAMPTON: It is quite all right. I think we should have
3it. My Lord, in H1(ix).
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I probably have not got it here anyway.
5 MR RAMPTON: As I have the Witte version, I suggest we give
6this to your Lordship.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is just so I have the reference really.
8 MR RAMPTON: It is at page 364 of the file. Have you got one,
9Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] No, but I am very familiar with the document. I am the
11one who found it. I am the one who found it and first
12used it.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. It says in English, well, in German first,
14"volkstung und ziedlung" which means?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Volkstung und ziedlung.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, "volkstung" is one of those very difficult words to
18translate. It means nationality or ethnicity.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] And "sietlung" just mean "settlement"?
20 A. [Mr Irving] "And settlement", yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then it says: "Judensauswanderung"?
22 A. [Mr Irving] "Jew emigration".
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Wiezelweitr verfahren werden"?
24 A. [Mr Irving] "How should we carry on? "How should it be carried on?"
25There is a tick next to it so they discussed it.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] And then "Besiedlung" Lublin?
1 A. [Mr Irving] "Resettlement of Lublin" in that sense, really, once it
2was empty, then settlement.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And a line against it?
4 A. [Mr Irving] The sense is that they are going to use people, citizens
5from Lorraine, the Germans from Bosnia and ethnic Germans
6from Bessarabia which is a province of Romania.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which suggests, does it not, that the Jews who have been
8sent on an auswanderung will make room -- the Jews of
9Lublin -- will make room for these people from Loraine,
10Bosnia and Bessarabia?
11 A. [Mr Irving] That is a reasonable assumption that the two facts are
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then the right-hand column matters not, but
14"verhaltnisse", circumstances, general governor or, no,
15General Government it must be, must it not, Globus?
16 A. [Mr Irving] It could be either, but the likelihood is it is government
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Globus, if I may use a wrong word, is the Czar of Lublin
19is he not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] He is the chief of police.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and Lublin is in the General Government?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] So it would fall to Globus -- he is an SS man, is he not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] He was one of the mass murderers.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, he was. He was under Himmler's, he is in
26Himmler's ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] He is the senior SS and police chief, Hohere SS und
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] So he has been given, or is going to get, the
4responsibility for the further processing or procedure of
5the auswanderung and replacement with Germans, ethnic
6Germans. That is right, is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you are beginning to join dots in a very
8adventurous way which is not supported by any of the words
9actually on the paper in front of me.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Globus, Lublin is in the General Government?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Globus is head of police, or whatever it is, and, as you
13rightly say, one of the mass murderers in Lublin. The
14proposal is that Lublin shall be settled with people of
15German origin from different parts of Europe, and that
16comes immediately under the heading "Emigration of Jews,
17how to be further proceeded"?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Right, but you are missing the first word in that line
19which is "verhaltnisse" which is circumstances,
20conditions, and although, of course, we are now Holocaust
21obsessed in this world at present, other things were
22happening in the government general than just killing Jews
23which is what you would maintain.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, the ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] The resettlement programme, the deportation of large
26numbers of innocent people to uncertain areas in the East
1was causing great civilian unrest. There were posters
2appearing overnight saying, "This week it is the Jews,
3next week it may be you, Poles". There were major
4problems of civilian moral problems in the government
5general and, if you look at my Goebbels' biography, you
6will see references to this when telegrammes come from the
7propaganda offices in these regions, back to the Berlin
8Ministry saying, "We are having major problems caused by
10 So, this is just one example of the dangers of
11leaping from mountain peak to mountain peek. There are
12things happening in between of which this document gives
13us no cognisance, but of which I have cognisance. So that
14why it is very dangerous, I think, to leap to conclusions.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I am not leaping to conclusions, Mr Irving. Though
16I may not have your enormous wisdom and knowledge on this
17topic, I have learned a certain amount. After you have
18had a chance to think about the documents which come up to
19and beyond this point, ending with the conference in
20Berlin on 26th and 28th September -- that is the only that
21comes after this point ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] The conference in Berlin between whom?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- we are going to let everybody take cognisance of the
24surrounding material. We can start now if you want.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but, of course, these reports I referred to were in
26my discovery for your experts to see relating to the
1severe moral problems and internal unrest caused by the
2Nazi methods in Poland.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I am not saying that there is any certainty
4about what this document means, but one of its most
5natural interpretation, surely, is this, that the
6emigration of the Jews from wherever needed to be further
7proceeded, if that is the right translation, and Himmler
8wanted Hitler's views about that. As a subtopic of that,
9it was proposed that Lublin should be settled with German
10speakers from different parts of Europe. That might
11depend upon the verhaltnisse and the responsibility would
12be that of Globus within the General Government. It does
13not say any more than that on its face, does it?
14 A. [Mr Irving] It says a lot less than that, Mr Rampton, with respect.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why does it say less?
16 A. [Mr Irving] He is filling in the dots, my Lord, in an overdangerous
17way. First of all, this passage in the right-hand column,
18if I am familiar with these Himmler's notes, is something
19that has been added either after or during the actual
20talk. It is not something which is primarily on the
21agenda, but something which has come up. So this is the
22first reason why it is dangerous to hang too much on
23that. I can only respectfully submit that I made the
24proper use of that by referring only to the content of
25what the note tells us and not being too adventurous about
26speculating to my own advantage or against ----
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am not following at the moment is why
2you say Mr Rampton is being adventurous. He is simply
3saying that this means, on a sensible interpretation,
4Lublin is going to have to be resettled?
5 A. [Mr Irving] That I accept.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] These are the people we intend to resettle there?
7 A. [Mr Irving] That I entirely accept, my Lord.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] The circumstances need to be discussed and Globus is going
9to have something to do with it. That is all Mr Rampton,
10I think, was suggesting that paragraph to mean.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I accept the first two parts of that, my Lord, but when he
12continues to say that when they are talking about
13circumstances and the government general and Globus, this
14can only refer to killing Jews. I think this is a very
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He did not say that.
17 MR RAMPTON: I did not say that. I have never said it. I will
18say it.
19 A. [Mr Irving] If Mr Rampton does not say that, then we are totally in
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us take it in stages.
22 MR RAMPTON: I will say it, but I will not say it yet because I
23have not laid the ground for it, but be sure as eggs
24I will say it, yes, of course.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, then I was right to pre-empt.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you were not. What, Mr Irving, this document also
1talks about is how to further the emigration of the Jews,
2does it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] How we are to proceed, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, yes, how are we to proceed. It has already been
5taking place on a large scale from all different parts of
6Europe by September 1942, has it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] There are all sorts of train movements going hither and...
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] All over the place, both within the general government and
9out of the Reich, and I do not know what the date of the
10first Slovakian transport was, and so on and so forth.
11That is something which is already well underway. This
12document is silent about what is to happen to those Jews
13or has happened to those. It is completely silent about
14it, is it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] That is why I made the reference about wool being pulled
16over people's eyes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving. It is you who has built a huge mountain
18out of a tiny little mole hill. Assume two completely
19contrary hypotheses either of which could be right:
20Hitler does know what happens to the Jews when they
21arrive, and when they will arrive they are going to be
22killed. That is one hypothesis. He and Himmler would
23very well still need to talk about how to get the process
24continuing and continuing and continuing, until they had
25all gone. That is hypothesis one.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Hypothesis two, Hitler does not know, but, of course, he
1knows about the deportations because he has authorised it.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] So on either hypothesis this is a neutral document?
3 A. [Mr Irving] If your first hypothesis is correct, if these two men are
4in cahoots, if I can use gangster slang, why would Himmler
5need to use euphemisms?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because they are actually talking about how to do the
7evacuations, the emigrations. You cannot kill somebody in
8a gas chamber or a pit somewhere near Lublin unless you
9have them there in the first place. You have to evacuate
10them emigrate them from, say, Berlin or Vienna or Rome or
11wherever it may be and you have to do that. It is a matter
12of logistics. It costs money. The trains are needed by
13the army. It is a necessary stage in the process, and
14there is no reason on earth why Himmler and Hitler should
15not have a conversation about that, is there?
16 A. [Mr Irving] But if they are in cahoots why do we find nowhere in all
17these hundreds of sheets these agenda, telephone notes and
18all the rest of it anything specific to bear out the
19notion that Hitler had ordered the killing of the European
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you have constructed out of this perfectly natural,
22normal, neutral document and discussion, if you do not
23know the background, a discussion about how to continue
24the deportations, and how to make this into German
25"labensround", this area of Poland, Lublin, you have
26erected on the basis of that flimsy platform, this
1sentence "Himmler meanwhile continued to pull the wool
2over Hitler's eyes"?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Because there no reference in this --
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why should there be?
5 A. [Mr Irving] -- to any of the sinister things that had happening,
6whatever they are.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why should there be? This is not a deceptive document.
8 A. [Mr Irving] It is. He is using the euphemisms, which your own experts
9agree are the euphemisms for the extermination operation
10going on.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you accept that, so far as Himmler is
12concerned that when he said "ausvanderung" he was really
13in his own mind visualizing what was going on in the --
14 A. [Mr Irving] We have a terrible problem with these euphemisms, my Lord,
15and this is that the word, the same word can mean
16different things used by the same person at different
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] -- well, take this note, do you regard "ausvanderung"
19meaning --
20 A. [Mr Irving] It could quite possibly mean that, that in his own mind he
21is referring to that, because he knows perfectly well what
22is going on.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] -- namely?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Shall we just leave it in vague terms, that something ugly
25is happening?
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No. You are the historian; what do you think that Himmler
1in his own mind had in --
2 A. [Mr Irving] He knows that the Jews --
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] -- contemplation when he used the word "ausvanderung"?
4 A. [Mr Irving] -- he knows that the Jews are being liquidated and that
5very few of them are surviving, as we know from the entry
6in Goebbels' diaries of March 1942 which is quite
7definitely an SS. In other words, the Himmler document. It
8has gone to Goebbels and has told Goebbels that of those
9who are deported and I think Goebbels actually mentions
10Lublin, 60 per cent may be fit for work, but 40 per cent
11had to be liquidated or the other way round.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But there is no reason to suppose that Hitler would ever
13have seen this note of 22nd September 1942?
14 A. [Mr Irving] No, but unfortunately we are confronted with a problem, we
15can only write history safely on the basis of the paper
16before us. But it may well be that two or three pages
17later we come across a document which gives one more clue
18in the direction that I am trying to lead the readers.
19I think it is dishonest just to pick on one fragment and
20say, "Mr Irving has only mentioned this". I have found
21this document. I have mentioned. I have put it on the
22slate for people to read it, and later on we will find
23another document and we will refer to it just the same as
24your Lordship quite rightly pointed out that I had
25mentioned that 10th February 1942 document earlier on. It
26is there somewhere buried in the book and anyone can play
1this exercise of yanking one pebble out of the wall and
2saying "Mr Irving has only painted this one pebble", when
3the whole picture is there in the book at the end of it.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not being critical at the moment, I am simply trying
5to understand your thought processes when you approach
6this document and as I understand it, correct me if I am
7wrong, I am sorry, Mr Rampton, to go on, you accept that
8Himmler had it mind that there was mass extermination of
9Jews going on?
10 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord --
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] And that that is what he was referring to when he writes
12"ausvanderung" of the Jews?
13 A. [Mr Irving] -- I have to be careful, my Lord , because--
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] In paragraph 1?
15 A. [Mr Irving] -- I am constantly aware that I am under oath here and
16I am also relating something that happened 35 years ago
17when I wrote this manuscript for the first time. These
18particular words you are looking at were written by me
19probably at the end of the 1960s, so I have to be very
20careful when you ask me what my thought processes were.
21I can reconstruct them, but that is probably not a very
22useful exercise. I have to say that I would have been
23aware that later on we have what is called the Korheir
24Report, which is referred to earlier today, where Himmler
25has said: "Redraft this report in a form that we can show
26it to the Fuhrer", which strongly suggests that there is
1wool pulling going on. That is why I feel safe in
2asserting a sentence like that here, because I regard this
3document as being evidence that quite probably what
4happened on this occasion was a certain amount of wool
5pulling. That somebody was being "horn swaggled", as the
6Americans say.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, Mr Rampton, I interrupted.
8 MR RAMPTON: It is all right. I do not think I have many more
9to ask about that particular sentence. I have made my
10suggestion. I would like you to look, however, at
11something I said I would ask you some questions about, the
12earlier part of this passage which begins on page 466,.
13 Himmler kept his own counsel. From his papers
14it emerges that on 9th July his SS Police Chief
15Kruger... already briefed him on the solution of the
16Jewish problem. On the 16th he visited Hitler.
17Photographs in the modern Polish archives"; do you
18remember, this is not a memory test, I just wonder whether
19you remember where you got the information, Mr Irving,
20that Himmler visited Hitler on the 16th?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I would have to go back to my card index to check. It
22could have been from a number of sources.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is an entry in Witte which says that he had lunch
24with Hitler on the 14th, but that is something you could
25not have had, because that is one of the entries that has
26only recently emerged from Moscow?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I would not have had that one.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Except, no, I had Himmler's -- I have Himmler's diary
4here. I will just check it.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see if you can find anything for the 14th July. What
6have you put, the 16th?
7 A. [Mr Irving] The 16th July we only have the telephone notes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] What, you have put the 16th?
9 A. [Mr Irving] No, the 16th July we only have the telephone notes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I think that is what I have here, yes. Certain, it
11is he saw Hitler either the day before, or a couple of
12days before he went to Auschwitz, is it not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Photographs in the modern Polish archives show him
15[indeed they do] visiting the immense synthetic rubber
16plant. They also show him at the camp itself, on the 17th
17and touring the concentration camp itself on the 18th in
18the company of his Chief Engineer, SS General Hans Cammler
19and Fritz Bracht, the gaulieter of Upper Silesia. Whatever
20later historians would claim Hitler himself never visited
21any concentration camp, let alone Auschwitz. Historians
22would also claim that Himmler witnessed the liquidation of
23a train load of Jews on this occasion. This is
24apocryphal". Blah-blah-blah I will not bother to read
26 Can I go down to the history again? Starting it
1on July 19th 1942: "On July 19th 1942, the day after
2Himmler's tour of Auschwitz, he issued a written order to
3Kruger 'I decree that the transfer of the entire Jewish
4population of the General Government is to be carried out
5and completed by December 31st 1942'." That is a document
6we will have to look at a bit later, Mr Irving.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Hitler might still be dreaming of Madagascar, but the
9head office of the Eastern Railroad at Krakow reported
10since July 22nd one train load of 5,000 Jews --"
11 A. [Mr Irving] Can I just interrupt there and point to the word "dreaming
12of Madagascar", I think that adequately sums up the
13earlier passage.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You say "dreaming", I say talking in a camouflage way, but
15perhaps it really does not matter. It is not a
16reality. "Since July 22nd one train load of 5,000 Jews
17has been running from Warsaw... to Treblinka every day and
18in addition a train load of 5,000 Jews leaves Przemysl
19twice a week for Belsec". Can I stop there. Mr Irving?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will look at some more documents in relation to those
22transports this afternoon. Why was it -- in fact, I think
23the figures are not quite right, but suppose they are for
24the minute, why was it that one train load a day of 5,000
25Jews was going from Warsaw to Treblinka and one twice a
26week of 5,000 Jews to Belsec from the place which begins
1with P?
2 A. [Mr Irving] The documents do not tell us, but perhaps it might be
3useful if we had a look at a map which will show us
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to, with his Lordship's permission, I am going
6to give you -- this is new to me, I got it last night, so
7I have not been hiding it away, it is an original German
8army I think military railway map?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it one of the ones you --
10 MR RAMPTON: No, your Lordship, has not got it. I had not it
11until last night.
12 THE WITNESS: I certainly have not had it.
13 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving has not had it and so everyone can have
14it now, and there is one for the witness (same handed).
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, we are moving on to another issue
16really now.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, we are. I was actually going to suggest that
18I stopped there because I was going to ask just one
19question, and then I could give Mr Irving time to have a
20bit of lunch and perhaps look forward at some of the
21documents which he has referred to here.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Only if he feels he has time to do it over
24 MR RAMPTON: But I am now going to do what I said I would do
25this morning, which is to look at the true scale and
26nature of what actually happened. This is awkward, I am
1sorry, I should have had sellotaped together, but I did
2not have time. If you just hold them roughly on top of
3the other because that is how it works, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I follow.
5 MR RAMPTON: We see Warsaw at the top of the map, then you if
6go out the key tells us that a double line is a two track
7railway, and a single line is a single track railway,
8which is logical enough, is it not? The key is in the
9bottom right hand corner.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then there is that another marking, which we do not have
12to bother about, which is the actual, I think, German
13railway as opposed to the Russian one or the Polish one.
14A different gauge, I think. The line runs north/east or
15east/north/east out of Warsaw to a place called Malkinia;
16do you see that?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Just on the border with White Russia?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] And there is a sharp right turn and the first dot down
21that single line is Treblinka.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then if you go to Lublin and you go east/south/east
24towards the Russian border you come to a place Kelm or
26 A. [Mr Irving] First of all Treblinka and then Kelm, yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you go sharp left northwards to Sobibor?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is just again next to the border. If on the other
4hand you turn right before you get to Kelm or Khelm and go
5to Savadar, again, travelling right down to the border on
6a single line you get to Belsec?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Those, Mr Irving, were little villages in the middle of
9nowhere, and from the 22nd July 1942, if these figures you
10have given in your book are right, which they are not
11quite, but the volume, if you multiply, must be hundreds
12of thousands of Jews transported from Lublin and Warsaw
13and as I shall show you after the adjournment also from
14the East; what were those Jews going to do in these three
15villages on the Russian border?
16 A. [Mr Irving] The documents before me did not tell me.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but try and construct in your own mind, as an
18historian, a convincing explanation.
19 A. [Mr Irving] There would be any number of convincing explanations, from
20the most sinister to the most innocent. What is the
21object of that exercise? It is irrelevant to the issues
22pleaded here, I shall strongly argue that, it would have
23been --
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you want to take that point, can you --
25 A. [Mr Irving] -- it would have been irresponsible of me to have
26speculated in this book, which is already overweight, and
1start adding in my own totally amateurish speculation.
2 MR RAMPTON: No, you mistake me, Mr Irving, it is probably not
3your fault I, as his Lordship spotted what I have done,
4I have taken what you have wrote in the book as a stepping
5stone to my next exercise, which is to show the scale of
6the operation, and in due course, and I give you fair
7warning, to demonstrate that anybody who supposes that
8those hundreds of thousands of Jews were sent to these
9tiny little villages, what shall we say, in order to
10restore their health, is either mad or a liar.
11 A. [Mr Irving] -- Mr Rampton, can I just draw one parallel and say during
12World War II large numbers of people were sent to
13Aldershot, which is also a tiny village, but I do not
14think anybody is alleging there were gas chambers at
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think actually the problem Mr Irving has is
17we moved on a different phase of the case. We are no
18longer dealing with allegations of manipulating the
19historical records which we were when we were going
20through "Hitler's War" and so on. I think really Mr
21Rampton is now on the issue of Holocaust denial, where the
22defence case is that what you have said flies in the face
23of evidence, but it is not an allegation of manipulating
24the record. Do you follow what we are on now?
25 A. [Mr Irving] The evidence he has adduced so far apart from that is from
26my own books.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You objected to the question, I am trying to
2explain what I perceive at the moment to be its relevance.
3 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship is absolutely right.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton knows which way he is going, but of course
5I have to prepare little minefields all the way round just
6in case.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is important you know where he is going
8and that is why I was trying to help you. Anyway I think
9the question perhaps needs to be put again, does it,
10because I am not sure there has been an answer yet.
11 MR RAMPTON: No. I suggest, Mr Irving, that anybody -- any
12sane, sensible person would deduce from all the evidence,
13all the available evidence, including, if you like, the
14shootings in the East which you have accepted, would
15conclude that these hundreds of thousands of Jews were not
16being shipped to these tiny little places on the Russian
17border in Eastern Poland for a benign purpose?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, what possible other conclusion could somebody
19have drawn from reading that page in my book? You are
20implying that the reader is being invited to draw a
21different conclusion.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I am wondering what your position is, you see,
23Mr Irving, because if it is simply this; I accept that the
24Germans systematically murdered Jews in vast numbers
25throughout 1941, accelerating through 1942 1943 and
26reaching a crescendo in 1944, but I simply do not accept
1there were any gas chambers, then I am not bothered
2because it does not matter how it is done, the fact is it
3is a systematic genocide. I want to know whether you
4accept that; if you do accept it, then we can forget the
5Professor van Pelt and all his works and everything else
6beside in relation to Holocaust denial.
7 A. [Mr Irving] It is my belief that Professor van Pelt's purpose in
8coming here is prove to us that the gas chambers at
9Auschwitz existed.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] He is not. He is coming here to demolish the basis of
11your Holocaust denial, which is the Leuchter Report,
12amongst other things?
13 A. [Mr Irving] But the Leuchter Report relies solely on the gas chambers
14in Auschwitz. So there seems to be a contradiction in
15what you said.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] So if, for example, Franjiseck Piper, the custodian of the
17museum as he was, at Auschwitz, now proposes a figure of
181.whatever it is, 2 million Jews murdered, I do not mean
19worked to death or killed by types, murdered in Auschwitz,
20you are going to accept that, are you?
21 A. [Mr Irving] No. I have a good reason not to and --
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think in that case we are back to where we are, alas.
23I thought I saw a chink of daylight, but it is not there.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, well, I am not clear in my mind what
25it is that it is suggested Mr Irving may need to look at
26over the luncheon adjournment. I have no idea whether it
1is practical to ask him to do that or whether it is not.
2 MR RAMPTON: It is probably not, because they are spread all
3over the bundles and that would be quite unreasonable
4because he would have to stay here and I would have spend
5at any rate 40 minutes giving him a list of documents and
6that would not be sensible either. I will go as
7cautiously as I can in the afternoon and I will try and
8make sure if I do not remember, perhaps your Lordship
9will, to find out as I ask the questions whether the
10documents in question is one that he has seen before or
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, do you have any problems
13with that? You are going to be asked about documents
14which I suspect you know about now, but you may well say
15in relation to it some of them, well, I see that now and
16I saw that last summer, but I did not know about it when
17I was writing "Hitler's War"?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I am in your Lordship's hand on that matter but where
19possible I shall state which ones I have seen for the
20first time.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That will not cause you a problem, will it?
22 A. [Mr Irving] No. Your Lordship will decide later on whether it is
23relevant or not.
24 MR RAMPTON: I will give your Lordship a copy too. I am not
25saying it is exhaustive, complete, or comprehensive --
26what Miss Rogers and I have done is to produce a
1chronological list of the relevant events. I am not going
2to start at the beginning of this in my cross-examination,
3but it does give Mr Irving an idea of what I will be
4asking about this afternoon.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The topic is what?
6 MR RAMPTON: The topic is the scale of what happened during the
7summer and early autumn of 1942, from which one can make
8quite obvious deductions, both about system and knowledge,
9and also about the intent.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your case is these are deaths in the gas
12 MR RAMPTON: Oh, there is no question.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They started operating in November 1941.
14 MR RAMPTON: The first gassings start systematically in
15December 1941 at Chelmo, I am not going to deal with
16Chelmo this afternoon, except at the tail end if I get
17there. There is the three Reinhardt camps; Belsec,
18Sobibor and Treblinka. They used a different system of
19gassing. They used a vehicle exhaust --
20 A. [Mr Irving] Carbon?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] -- carbon monoxide. You can also suffocate someone with
22carbon dioxide, can you not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] You can suffocate someone by locking them into a closed
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] And by hydrogen cyanide at Auschwitz. I do not say there
26were not some random murders as well by kicking, shooting,
1but the system was gas?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, so Mr Irving is going to get a copy of
3this, so at any rate he will have some; is that right?
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, that will at any rate give you
6some foretaste of what is to come this afternoon.
7 MR RAMPTON: I am not saying he must read it. But it might be
8helpful if he did.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will adjourn now and resume at 2.00 pm.
10 (Luncheon Adjournment)
11MR DAVID IRVING, continued.
12Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON QC, continued.
13 THE WITNESS: My Lord, before he begins his cross-examination
14on this, can I make a few general observations on these
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What difficulties you are going to have
17dealing with them, or what?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I would draw attention to three general observations which
19I may not have a chance to make when we go through them
20document by document.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is fair, Mr Rampton.
22 MR RAMPTON: It is what?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Fair that he should do so now before going
24through these various documents.
25 MR RAMPTON: I did not hear, I was looking for documents.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He going to make three points and I am going
1to allow that to happen?
2 A. [Mr Irving] General observations, and please interrupt me if you think
3they are wrong. Obviously, some of them I am familiar
4with because they come from my own records, some of them
5I am not. I am unhappy about the elipses, the passages
6that have been left out. I do hope we will have a chance
7to see the whole document rather than just these
8abbreviated versions.
9 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, carry on.
10 A. [Mr Irving] In general, of course, there are much larger elipses which
11are the material surrounding the documents, if I could put
12it like that, which are not represented here.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
14 A. [Mr Irving] The second observation I would make, my Lord, is this.
15Bear in mind all along that we are now 55 years down the
16road since the end of World War Two and we are entitled to
17expect a better quality of evidence and documentation from
18the archives than would have been accepted, say, in 1945
19or 1946. This is the standard I have always held in front
20of myself. I say to myself if, even now, there are no
21better documents than this, therefore we have to be much
22more careful about how we assess these documents that are
23put to us. We are no longer entitled to jump across from
24mountain peak to mountain peak. We have to say that, if
25there are no other documents, then there is probably a
26reason why there are no other documents. That is the sum
1total of the observation I wish to make.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
3 MR RAMPTON: As to that last point, Mr Irving, jumping from
4mountain peak to mountain peak may sometimes be
5necessary. Sometimes one can do it because one knows what
6is lying on the ground in between, and there is nothing
7the matter with that, is there?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, from one's general expertise.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, the general array of evidence. Mr Irving, never
10mind that for the moment. It is the fact, is it not,
11perhaps I am wrong but I do not think so, I think you said
12it several times in this court, what I might call the
13residue of German wartime documents that we have got,
14whether from the bottom fighting units, police units or
15whatever, right up to the top, is fragmentary?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I would say on the contrary, it is there in embarrassing
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have everything, have we?
19 A. [Mr Irving] There is such a volume of documentation that in the United
20States they still have not finished cataloguing it. They
21are still working on it and usually the Germans create
22multiple copies of the documents that they are dealing
23with. So, if they had destroyed in one place, they would
24exist in another.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] So, unless a document has been deliberately destroyed,
26which it might well have been, one could expect to find it
1somewhere at some stage in the future near or far? Is
2that right?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I would have expected to have found it in the past,
4frankly, at least one copy of it.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, the possibility remains that there are certain kinds
6of documents which certain kinds of people at certain
7times in history will set out deliberately to destroy?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I think this is a useful discussion. Yes, I think that
9with certain kind of documents one would have expected
10people to attach priority to their destruction but, even
11if that is the case, there will always be somebody
12slightly lower down in that chain of hierarchy between the
13person who gives the orders and the person who executes
14them who has felt a qualm of conscience or a pang of
15conscience, and who has written to his wife, saying we
16have to carry out orders that are too ghastly even to
17think of, and I found documents just like that, too.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] You found a letter that the officer Dr Otto Schutz Duval
19wrote to his wife, did you not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I did not find that, no.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did not, but that is such an example, is it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I am afraid I am not familiar with that document unless
23you remind me of it.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] You refer to it on your web site.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Somebody else found it, obviously posted it and put it on
26the web site. I am talking about around Hitler's level
1there with generals who wrote letters of precisely that
2content, saying they are doing things in Poland that I do
3not even like to tell you about.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] That process, what one might call the workings of
5conscience or anything else, might account for what you
6have called the occasional orphan document, might it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes indeed, but also there could be an uglier process,
8namely a document created like the identity card of Mr
9Ivan Demjanjuk, which turns out to have been generated by
10the KGB for whatever purpose. We have to be constantly on
11the look out, particularly for documents coming from
12Russian or KGB archives. It is a remote possibility, but
13we have to be alert to that possibility.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Of course that is absolutely right. Can we start
15please -- I know you will think or may think initially
16that this is somewhat anachronistic out of our chronology
17but it is not really as you will see in a moment -- a
18document which I am sure you are familiar with. My Lord,
19it is in bundle H4 (v).
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid that is one I do not have here.
21 MR RAMPTON: We seem to have quite a lot of spares here.
22Footnote 187. These are Dr Longerich's documents?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I think I am the first person to have quoted this
24document in fact ever.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Again, I am afraid it is a document which is sideways in
26the file. This is a reprint of the original. It is very
1short. It is document No. 54 at the top of page 157 on
2the right-hand side: "Schreiben Himmlers an den Gauleiter
3im Wartheland Geiser: Ankundigung von Judentransporten
4aus dem Reich nach Lodz, 18.9.1941", which means, being
5translated, Mr Irving?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Which sentence are you reading?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I read the heading at 54?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Letter from Himmler to Gauleiter in the Wartheland
9Greiser, forewarning of the arrival of Jewish transports
10from the Reich in Lodz or Lodsch in Litzmannstatt, as the
11Germans call it, on September 18th, 1941.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will not read the German. Does it say: The Fuhrer
13wishes that, as quickly as possible, the Altreich and the
14Protectorate, that Bohemia and Moravia, is it not, shall
15be cleared and free of Jews from West to East?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you accept that as evidence of, I do not know what the
18word is but it does not matter, something that Hitler has
19told Himmler he wants done?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, Hitler has taken the initiative and has ordered the
21emptying out.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Which is made quite plain in all my books also, of course.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] If mere deportation from central and Western Europe is
25Hitler's idea of a losung, maybe even an endlosung, until
26Madagascar is free, this is the date at which it takes
2 A. [Mr Irving] Not precisely on this date. It would have been any date
3up to this date.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] From this date?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It takes effect from this date.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] From this date. Well, can we then leap forward in time
7please, in this file?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Can I just express a certain amount of dismay that we are
9having printed versions of these telegrams shown us to and
10not the originals? The reason for that is that the
11originals have certain paraphernalia attached to them,
12which are not without significance. I am referring
13specifically to their security classification, because
14I intend later on to draw conclusions from documents which
15have security classifications and documents which do not,
16what you call janitorial level, or what I call janitorial
17level documents, and we do not know what classification
18this document has. That does help us -- I am sorry to
19speak so quickly -- to classify in the other sense a
20document into its degree of importance, whether it has the
21very highest security grading or no security
22classification. We cannot tell from this of course
23because the editor has taken it off.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I fear Mr Irving, I am naked in this regard. I have no
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you do. It was in my discovery, and it should have
1been put in the bundles rather than this printed version.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, please do not let's get on to that again.
3I was trying to explain yesterday that, by oversight or
4whatever, I think you were away for quite a long time in
5the autumn, there was no discussion about what documents
6you wanted included in the bundles and that is the sole
8 A. [Mr Irving] It is regrettable because we are robbed or deprived of
9that possibility.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There we are. We have to make the best we
11can of what we have got.
12 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, if this is something which is troubling
13Mr Irving, which it obviously has been for some time, if
14he has any time in the three day weekend which is coming
15up, because we shall be going on to Auschwitz the week
16after, therefore there will not be much need to refer to
17this kind of document, he should make a list of those
18documents in his discovery, he will know very well which
19they are, which he would like us to copy as originals and
20put into these bundles.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure he will do it if he has the time.
22 MR RAMPTON: That is what I mean.
23 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, they were all copied for them originally. They
24have copies of the entire discovery.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point is to make a selection of the ones
26that you regard as being important. Anyway, we have this
1document, we have seen what it says, it has never really
2been in doubt, but it is a start, you say, Mr Rampton.
3 MR RAMPTON: Can we now turn, please, forward and also forward
4in the bundle, to footnote 245. It is in the same file.
5Again, I apologise profusely for the fact that I do not
6think I have the original of it. Footnote, 1st May 1942,
7tab 25 if it helps anybody find it.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are all these documents going to be in German
9without a translation?
10 MR RAMPTON: There is a translation of this one, my Lord. I am
11just looking for it, because it is annoying.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It just takes longer.
13 MR RAMPTON: I did observe that I think Mr Irving said he did
14not want just to look at summaries of translations. He
15wanted to look, so far as he could, at the original
16document. I am respecting that until such time as your
17Lordship tells me to ignore it.
18 My Lord, there is a summary, in part a
19translation on page 53.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of what?
21 MR RAMPTON: Of Dr Longerich's report, part 2, page 53,
22paragraph 1.3. Have you got that too, Mr Irving?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Very shortly, yes. Document September 18th, by the way,
24was on page 326 of Hitler's War translated in full.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
26 A. [Mr Irving] This one is presumably on page 330. The one we are
1looking at now is on page 330 of Hitler's War, the
2original edition.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not suppose much of what I am going to put to you is
4going to be controversial, save in point of
5interpretation, not translation. There may be some things
6you have not seen before, in which case then you must say
8 A. [Mr Irving] I have seen this document.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Obviously you have. It would not be in the book,
10otherwise. It says, does it not, in effect this: Greiser
11is writing to Himmler, and he says that the "special
12treatment" -- the word is Sonderbehandlung -- "of about
13100,000 Jews in my district was authorized by you in
14agreement with Heydrich, and that it could be completed
15within the next two to three months"?
16 A. [Mr Irving] "You" in this case is of course Himmler, not Hitler.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh sure.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I said it is a letter from Greiser to Himmler.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but it is an important point to make. It shows where
21this particular system link ends.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, you say that. That is assuming that Himmler never
23communicated any of this sort of stuff to Hitler.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am just drawing attention to what this actual document
25says, Mr Rampton.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I follow that.
1 A. [Mr Irving] The special treatment which you, Mr Himmler, and Heydrich
2have both authorized.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we just leave Adolf Hitler out of this for the
4moment? I am not actually on Adolf Hitler. I will have
5to come back him, no doubt. I am dealing now with the
6scale and systematic nature of this operation, whatever
7this operation may turn out to be.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Very well.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Here in May of 1942, following an order or whatever you
10like to call it from Hitler, that the OutReich and the
11Protectorate are to be cleared of their Jews, Himmler gets
12a letter from Greiser saying that he can clear out, no,
13specially handle, whatever that may mean, about 100,000
14Jews in his gaugebiet, which is the Warthegau, in the next
15two to three months.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, is that the first reference to
18sonderbehandlung that one finds in the documents?
19 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, we have had it once or twice up to this point, I
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I mean chronologically?
22 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that is a very good question, if I may
23say so. I do mean it is a good question because I do not
24know the answer.
25 A. [Mr Irving] With this sinister meaning, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] There may be something in Professor Browning, I do not
1know. This means killing, does it not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] In the light of what subsequently happened, yes, but it is
3not evident from this particular document.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not in gas chambers?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Not necessarily, no, not evident from this particular
7 MR RAMPTON: Where were the Jews of the Warthegau killed,
8Mr Irving?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know, and I suspect that you cannot tell from
10this document either.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but I know what went on at Chelmno, as indeed do you,
12do you not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] We know that there was a killing operation started there,
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] With the use of gas trucks?
16 A. [Mr Irving] That is possible, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Well, let us look at another document in the same
18file. This is one you may not have seen before but, as
19I say, I am doing two things at once so, notwithstanding
20that you have not seen them before if you have not, could
21you look at footnote 247? It is just a couple of pages on
22from the one we looked at. This is a reprint from a book
23call Faschismus, I do not know who wrote it, which I am
24sure is German for "fascism". Have you seen this before?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I have not, no. It is a translation into German from the
26Polish, presumably.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I think probably not. If you look at item 218, Auszug
2aus einem Lagebericht...
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but that comes from a totally different provenance,
4according to the following page. It come from AIM,
5Gestapo Lodsch.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] How do you know what document it is that I am talking
8 A. [Mr Irving] You are talking about document 217.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, 218.
10 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you read the part of 218 that is printed on that
12page, and the first part down to the words " geschaffen
13worden ist" on the next page in German. I am certainly
14not going to do that.
15 A. [Mr Irving] You wish me to read it out in German?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there not an English version? This is not
18a very happy way of doing it, is it? It is terribly
20 MR RAMPTON: I have not got a translation of this particular
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not even in Longerich?
23 MR RAMPTON: It is noted in Longerich, as you can see. The
24document is 9th June 1942.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not in your schedule, is it?
26 MR RAMPTON: It is footnoted. It is not in my schedule, no.
1It is a document I found quite late.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is no alternative, we will have to
3do that way.
4 MR RAMPTON: Right, I only want to ask one question really
5about this. That is a report from the Gestapo in Lodsch
6about movement of Jews, is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. What it is saying is, we make space for Jews coming
9-- I am paraphrasing -- in from the Outreich and the
10Ostmark by, I do not know whether the word is displacing,
11resettling, the Jews that are already in the ghetto at
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This was always the policy. There would be a stage
14by stage ripple, shall we say.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] What does the last phrase in the fifth line and sixth
16lines of 247 mean? "... So das nunmehr fur zirka 55000
17Juden Platz im Ghetto geschaffen worden ist"?
18 A. [Mr Irving] So that we have now generated enough space for about
1955,000 Jews in the ghetto.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] That must mean that about 55,000 Jews more or less have
21been moved out somewhere?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, assuming that the ghetto had not been expanded at
23that time.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sure, but, if you look at the table above, which may
25indeed have a different source, it may have been
26translated from the Polish, I do not know, 217, do you see
1the right hand column "Abgang"?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the subheading "Ausgesiedelt"?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which means settled, taken away?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] The first of the two columns in the middle says nach
8Kulmhof, does it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] To Chelmno, yes.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the same as Chelmno, is it?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 MR RAMPTON: That is Chelmno. If you total up the figures in
13that column, they come, I can tell you, to 54,990.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] So that is where, using a reasonable degree of
16intelligence and interpretive wisdom, Mr Irving, those
1755,000 Jews in this Gestapo report have gone, is it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Effectively, from January to May.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right, in five months?
20 A. [Mr Irving] In five months, yes. You are confronting me with these
21documents. I am seeing it for the first time. I think we
22are learning together. We are reading them together and
23I will accept that as an interpretation, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you. Are you prepared to say what you think might
25have happened to those 55,000 Jews that were sent to
26Chelmno in the first months of 1942?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Not on the basis of just those two documents, no. I think
2it would be highly irresponsible to do so. I am just
3looking at where Chelmno is on the map.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know anything about what was at Chelmno?
5 A. [Mr Irving] We know something about what was at Chelmno. There were
6these gas trucks that were disposing of people at some
7time during the war, but whether they were operating in
8these five months, I do not know. I notice that Chelmno
9is on the border to the East, and an equally plausible
10interpretation would be that they had been sent there as
11the first stepping stage to go somewhere East. I am not
12saying this is what happened.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Chelmno?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, Chelmno, you are quite mistaken. Chelmno is in
16the Warthegau. It is about 40 kilometres west-north-west
17of Lublin.
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is off this map?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, it is not on the map but I can tell you that it is on
20every map I have ever looked at. Chelmno is in the
22 A. [Mr Irving] Of Lublin?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, Lodsch. Did I say Lublin?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] It will not be on this map then.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought Chelmno was the same as Chelm.
1 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought that is what I was told this
4 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So Chelmno is not here at all.
6 MR RAMPTON: Unless I can find it. I think this is Eastern
7Poland. I think this is a general Government map. It is
8not a map of the Warthegau at all. Your Lordship does
9have some coloured maps.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do. I have found Chelmno on one of
12 MR RAMPTON: You will find Chelmno, as I say, about 40
13kilometres West.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Whatever. The precise answer is that, on the basis of
15these two documents, we can say that that is on the
16balance of probabilities the identical 55,000 people.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] I agree.
18 A. [Mr Irving] But we cannot say on the basis of those two documents what
19happened to those.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Chelmno is in fact some distance West of
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but also West of Lodsch.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
24 MR RAMPTON: This is a different grouping, if I may call it
25that, of Jews in some sense. These are the Jews of the
26Warthegau that no doubt form part of the figure given by
1Dr Korheir in March 1943.
2 A. [Mr Irving] This is the kind of statistical basis that would have been
3provided to that statistician, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] In that document he said that the Jews of the Warthegau,
5I forget how many, 145,000 I think, had undergone
6Sonderbehandlung, did he not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I am not going to answer that without seeing the document.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You remember, we discussed it this morning. You agreed
9with me. The Korheir report that Himmler had edited?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but whether those specific ones -- I know the phrase
11Sonderbehandlung ... comes into the document but whether
12it is specifically the Warthegau Jews he is referring to.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] He referred to 145,000 Warthegau Jews and some whatever
14million Polish Jews.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, if that is what the document says.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] As far as I recall, it does. It is something like that.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was Chelmno a village like Sobibor?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am as ill informed as your Lordship is on this. I am
20not an expert on these matter but I am prepared to blunder
21around in the darkness along with Mr Rampton.
22 MR RAMPTON: I think Professor Van Pelt may have something to
23say about that if asked, and so would, no doubt, Professor
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The odd thing about it is that they are going
26West rather than East.
1 A. [Mr Irving] That point obviously does stand out.
2 MR RAMPTON: If you are going to kill large numbers of people,
3it does not matter how you do it or where you do it,
4provided you do it with a degree of concealment or
5discretion, does it, Mr Irving?
6 A. [Mr Irving] You are absolutely right. But I repeat, of course, that
7the conclusions you are drawing are not actually included
8in the two documents you have so far put to us.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No it is a little piece of evidence along the way,
10Mr Irving.
11 A. [Mr Irving] After 55 years we are entitled to more than just little
12bits of evidence, particularly now that the Polish
13archives and the Russian archives are open to us.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] We go over this again and again and again, you see. I am
15not looking for a single document as you are, Mr Irving.
16I am looking at a jigsaw puzzle and I am trying to fit the
17pieces together. When I have done that, I look at the
18picture and I say, as an intelligent historian with an
19open mind, what does this tell me?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I think you are absolutely right. I do exactly the same
21exercise but I think I am applying possibly slightly
22stricter criteria, because one is always liable to be
23ambushed ten years down the road by a document which
24produces a completely different conclusion. The closer
25you adhere to the original documents, if you possibly can,
26the less likely you are to be ambushed. For example, when
1the entire Goebbels' diaries came out about 15/20 years
2ago, I contacted the editors and I said is there any
3document that proves me wrong because I am quite happy to
4be proven wrong. That is exactly the kind of nightmare
5that awaits you, that suddenly some new huge archive may
6open up like the entire Auschwitz archive, as happened
7quite recently, and the documents may be there to prove
8that you made irresponsible conclusions.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But does the responsible historian take
10account also of the fact that we do know that quite a lot
11of what you might call the compromising documents were
12destroyed deliberately as the Russian army advanced
14 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, the entire Auschwitz archives were captured by
15the Russians, as we shall be hearing from the expert
16witnesses, which is a very substantial trove. It was not
17just any archives, it was the entire Auschwitz
18construction archives. The same happened in Mydonek when
19the Russians captured Mydonek.
20 MR RAMPTON: Can we try to speed up a bit, Mr Irving, because
21this is uncontroversial. Have you still got that tabular
22sort of chronology summary document we gave you before the
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] We put at the bottom of page 6 that Himmler had lunch with
26Hitler on 14th July. We took that from the Witte book.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You in your books say he saw him on 16th. It does not
3probably matter, does it?.
4 A. [Mr Irving] It may well be that -- he was constantly in and out. It
5may well be that I had a letter that Himmler wrote to
6Berger, for example, in which he said, "Yesterday I had
7lunch with the Fuhrer". This is the kind of source that
8you would extract that information from. I have now
9obtained access to all the private letters that Himmler
10wrote to his mistress where he describes this very trip to
11Auschwitz, that kind of material. You are constantly
12coming across new material.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] At all events, either one day or three days after meeting
14Hitler, Himmler goes to Eastern Europe, he goes to
15Auschwitz first?
16 A. [Mr Irving] He goes on quite a swing around the occupied territories.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] On 19th he is in Lublin?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Eventually, I think, he winds up in Finland or somewhere
20like that, but never mind that. He goes to Auschwitz.
21 A. [Mr Irving] We have, of course, the private shorthand diary of
22Himmler's personal assistant, Rudolph Brant, for this
23entire period, about a 300 page shorthand diary, which
24I had transcribed and to which you have made no reference
25in this, I see.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I did not know about it and I know not whether it has any
1relevance or significance?
2 A. [Mr Irving] It has been in my discovery and your instructing
3solicitors have photocopied the entire document.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no knowledge whether it has any significance or
5relevance for this case.
6 A. [Mr Irving] It has negative significance in as much as it is
7shorthand, it is kept by Himmler's personal assistant, and
8yet it contains none of the kind of evidence that one
9would have liked to have found.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now there is a document which I think we need to look at,
11which is having been to Auschwitz on 17th and 18th July
121942 -- if anybody wants to see it, there is a photograph
13of the visit in the Witte book.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Gerald Fleming also publishes it.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We do not really need to look at it, do we?
16 MR RAMPTON: I do not think you need to look at it, no,
17I agree.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it shows who went. Kamla was there, the man who
19built Auschwitz.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] The architect, Bischoff, was there?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Bischoff was there. Presumably, Dejaco was also there --
22all the local notables. Mr Dejaco is D-E-J-A-C-O.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now Mr Irving will need file H3 (ii).
24 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is a document referred to on pages
2563 to 64 of, so I am told -- can I just -- you perhaps
26would like to have it open in front of you, page 63, my
2 A. [Mr Irving] Of?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of Browning.
4 MR RAMPTON: Of Browning. Could you turn to page 63, please?
5I will just read out what Professor Browning says: "An
6earlier document mentioning Einsatz Reinhard". We can
7translate that as "Operation Reinhard", can we?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Not spelt that way though.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I am sorry you will have to look at the document in
10a moment. It dates from July 18th 1942. "It is a form on
11which the personnel specially authorized 'for the carrying
12out of the work of the Jewish resettlement within the
13framework of Operation Reinhard" by the SS and police
14leader in the Lublin district' acknowledged having been
15orientated to specific rules of secrecy by SS Amtstung
16Fuhrer Hofle on Globocnik's staff. They were forbidden to
17make any communication, verbal or in writing, concerning
18the Jewish resettlement, Juden umsiedlung, under any
19circumstances to anyone outside of Operation Reinhard.
20Moreover, there was 'an explicit prohibition against
21photography in the camps of Operation Reinhard'".
22 Would you just glance, please, or more than
23glance, at the document which is in footnote 154 in volume
26 MR RAMPTON: 154, my Lord, behind tab 16 in H3(ii).
2 MR RAMPTON: This document is the right way up. Again it looks
3to me like a reprint?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Again it is a printed document.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] What? It looks like a reproduction, this, does it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] 154, document 228 you are talking about?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, document 228.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, it is a print.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Have you seen the original of this?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I have not, no.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you know of its existence?
12 A. [Mr Irving] No.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Has Professor Browning -- I will give you a moment in a
14minute -- is my question summarized its effect correctly?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, and I am familiar with the security, the secrecy
16declarations. I have seen several of them, particularly
17in connection with Auschwitz itself.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see how, at any rate, in this version ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- in July 1942, Reinhard is spelt?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, in this printed version.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] In this printed version.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] The spelling that you prefer, Mr Irving, has a "T" on the
25end, does it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] You are rather presuming, but, in fact, there are disputes
1about how it should be spelt and perhaps I should explain
2to his Lordship the reason for the...
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is Heydrich?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Obviously, the diminuendo is named in honour of Reinhart
5Heydrich who had been assassinated a month earlier. But,
6in fact, Operation Reinhard in its documentation, and I
7can produce other documents which very much go in this
8direction, there is an operation run by State Secretary,
9Fritz Reinhart, of the German Ministry of Finance who is a
10leading Nazi in that ministry who was in charge of the
11expropriation and looting of stolen Jewish property. This
12was a primary concern of these SS gangsters on the Eastern
13Front to round up the Jews and rob them blind and take
14their gold and everything else. Then it want to the
15Ministry of Finance literally. It was appropriated by the
16Reich. That is how it became known as Operation Reinhart,
17but I do agree that sometimes the documents leave out the
18"T" because of confusion.
19 MR RAMPTON: Professor Browning, Mr Irving, only a few pages on
20at page 66, at the bottom of page 66 ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- you may dispute it, but this is what he says, tells us
23that the spelling of "Operation Reinhart" with a "T"
24begins only in late 1943?
25 A. [Mr Irving] There are documents prior to that, and only two months ago
26I was sitting in the Hoover Library in California going
1through a whole file on Operation Reinhart from Himmler's
2files which details in very great degree the financial
3expropriation that went on, the gold rings, the watches,
4the whole of the business of recycling the stolen
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] And is your thesis this then, I do not know, perhaps I had
7better ask you an open question, what is your thesis as to
8the nature of Operation Reinhard?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I am not setting up a rival thesis, Mr Rampton. I am just
10rattling slightly at yours and saying it is not quite as
11concrete and cast in stone as possibly you would like
12people to believe.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will find when you question Professor Browning that he
14does not say either that it is certain that it is named
15after Reinhart Heydrich. All he notices is that the
16spelling undergoes a change. What he is perfectly certain
17about, and this is what matters in this case, is that it
18was a killing operation as an adjunct of which the Nazis
19stole the property of the dead people?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, without wishing to reveal too much about what
21I intend to cross-examine Professor Browning on, I can say
22I that I shall be putting to him certain documents on the
23letter head of Heinreich Himmler, the Chief of the SS,
24which in the typical German Civil Service then have the
25sub-departments and the sub-departs indicated in the
26reference number, and you come to "Verwaltung" which is
1administration, "Reinhard" and so on and the document is
2purely connected with the expropriation and the stolen
3watches and the remanufacture of the fountain pens and
4everything else that has been stolen from the victims of
5what they called the Holocaust. So the Operation
6Reinhard, it has a far stronger element of the
7expropriation than of the liquidation, if I can put it
8that way.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you because sometimes we seem to be
10proceeding without, as it were, starting with the general
11proposition. Do you accept that Operation Reinhard,
12whoever it was called after, did have an aspect to it
13which involved the wholesale killing of Jews by whatever
15 A. [Mr Irving] Operation Reinhard was a subsection of the Holocaust which
16was partly the deportation element, partly the killing
17element, whatever it happened, it had the for the SS the
18pleasant side effect, the large numbers of fountain pens,
19watches, gold, gold rings, jewellery and so on, came into
20their hands which were then processed in a ruthlessly
21methodical manner by the technicians of Operation
23 Now, in the way that these things happen, it may
24happen, it may have come about that people will then
25regard Operation Reinhard as being the whole rather than
26as being part of the whole, if I can put like that.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So the answer to my question is, yes, that was an
2operation and it did have the wholesale killing of
3Jews ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] It was an element.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- as part of its objective?
6 A. [Mr Irving] It was a part of the whole, my Lord, which possibly later
7on may then have become regarded as the whole.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Sorry, Mr Rampton, just to get the
9general position.
10 MR RAMPTON: No, your Lordship, as so often, and I do not say
11this in any sycophantic way, just bad luck on me, has
12asked a question that I am about to ask and it has several
13times and, in a sense ----
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry.
15 MR RAMPTON: --- I am grateful, no, because ----
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It saves your voice.
17 MR RAMPTON: --- for (1) it has the reassuring effect that one
18knows the judge is up to speed with the case.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It happens occasionally.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, please do not hesitate to ask it again
21yourself and you will probably get the same answer.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I will ask you a much, much simpler question, not that
23his Lordship's question was in the very slightest bit
24complicated. Do you accept or do you not accept because
25if you do we can go on to something else, Mr Irving, that
26hundreds upon thousands of Jews were from, let us say, the
1spring of 1942 and in Chelmno earlier and probably Belzec,
2deliberately killed in Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I think, on the balance of probabilities, the answer is
4yes. But I have to say on the balance of probabilities
5because the evidentiary basis for that statement is
6extremely weak, even now, 55 years later. The Russians
7captured the camps, they captured the documentation of
8many of these camps, and we are still short of the actual
9smoking gun, shall I say.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are also short of factory buildings and such like, are
11we not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] What kind of factory buildings?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, Sobibor, let us take them north to south, Treblinka,
14Sobibor and Belzec were not factory or work camps, were
15they, whatever they were?
16 A. [Mr Irving] My understand and, once again, I have to keep on
17emphasising I am not an expert on the Holocaust and I do
18not intend to become one for the purposes of this trial.
19My understanding is that those camps also had a transit
20camps aspect, that people would arrive there and they
21would be shipped elsewhere.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where?
23 A. [Mr Irving] For example, from Mydonek -- from Treblinka they were
24shipped to Mydonek, for example. There is a ----
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Maybe somewhere?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Maybe somewhere.
2 A. [Mr Irving] 60,000.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Very late on, I recollect, is that right?
4 A. [Mr Irving] May 1943, my Lord, the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto,
5according to the standard work by the Soviet historian,
6Grossmann, published very early in the war, they had the
7access to the records in Mydonek. They traced 60,000 Jews
8from the Warsaw ghetto who had been sent to Treblinka and
9then sent off to Mydonek. This kind of thing happened and
10one wonders how often where we do not have the records of
12 But I have to state that I am not an expert on
13this, and I am willing to go along with any hypothesis
14that Mr Rampton can ----
15 MR RAMPTON: No, not an hypothesis. I want to know what you
16accept and what you do not accept. If you accept, on a
17balance of probabilities, that Operation Reinhard, whether
18it had other aspects to it or not, was a killing operation
19in the course of which hundreds of thousands of Jews were
20deliberately killed by the Nazis, we can close this
21chapter and go on to something else.
22 A. [Mr Irving] No, I do not accept that. I say the that Operation
23Reinhard was frequently something very definitely only a
24sub-operation. It was the looting part, the looting
25element, and the recycling element, which is where the
26name originally came from.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am getting terribly confused. I sometimes feel that
2either I am not asking the right question or ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] This is partially the reason for the secrecy that was
4attached to the people operating in it. They were
5required to sign these forms saying they had not seen the
6looting going on and the stealing going on.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am confused. I had asked you a couple of minutes ago
8whether you accepted, on the balance of probabilities,
9that in Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec whether you accepted
10that hundreds of thousands of Jews were deliberately
11killed by the Nazis and I thought you said yes.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but then you tried to say this was Operation Reinhard
13and that I do not go along with.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does the label matter in the end, really?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so.
16 MR RAMPTON: No, of course it does not. One sees a document
17saying whatever it is, 100,000, it does not matter what it
18is, and then one sees a document saying "greater secrecy"
19and then one has the concession from the witness, that is
20the end of that story, so it seems to me?
21 A. [Mr Irving] It is not a concession, Mr Rampton. It is a simple
22statement of fact on the balance of the evidence, balance
23of possibilities.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Does it matter what the means of killing were?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, apparently it does because apparently we are going
26to waste a lot of our time over the coming weeks looking
1at certain buildings.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can I read something that you said -- you can look at it
3in a moment -- on 21st May 1989 in a letter to somebody
4called Zitelmann?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Dr Reine Zitelmann, a West German historian, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You wrote this: "As for what did unquestionably happen to
7the Jews, the CSDIC report, of which I also enclose a
8copy, shows with reliability beyond question the manner in
9which the killings occurred, that is to say, shooting"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] That is, of course, the Bruns Report which I have just
11sent to yet another historian.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly. "Random, haphazard, criminal in nature,
13occurring without Hitler's knowledge and immediately
14forbidden by him when he learned of them but going
15unpunished by him too."
16 A. [Mr Irving] I still stand by that statement today.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] So, although it was hundreds of thousands of people that
18were killed in these three small villages in Eastern
19Poland, it was wholly random; is that right?
20 A. [Mr Irving] If it had been systematic to the degree that you are
21hoping to establish, industrialised, shall we say, it
22would have been done by far more ruthlessly efficient
23means with all that efficiency we come to associate with
24the German name.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] That means we will have to look at some of the documents.
26I had hoped to avoid that.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But so that we are clear what the issue
2actually really is that we are trying to resolve, it is
3not so much the numbers -- I think you said you do not
4like playing the numbers game -- it is whether it was
5systematic in the sense of having been organized from
6Berlin and, perhaps, a higher level of Hitler?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, in view of the fact that the court proposes to
8attach significance to the word "systematic", I shall have
9to resist the suggestion that what happened in those camps
10was systematic, and I am sure that Mr Rampton is aware
11that on occasion even the SS headquarters sent out
12travelling judges who established that unauthorised
13killings had been going on and, in fact, on one or two
14occasions the camp commandants were hanged before their
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You are quite right to pick up the word "systematic". We
17have been using it, I think, Mr Rampton, have we not, to
18mean policy and policy adopted, laid down at a high level?
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I do and I draw the -- inference is too weak
20a word -- conclusions about system from both ends of the
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But that is the issue. We need not bother
23about numbers, it seems to me, in the light of what
24Mr Irving has said.
25 MR RAMPTON: Nor, I guess, about "deliberate" either?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Deliberate?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Deliberate killing"?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Have we had an argument about "deliberate" yet?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Murder?
4 A. [Mr Irving] You would need to then specify who is deliberating.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a ...
6 MR RAMPTON: Intentional killing.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: By whoever it was, the killing was not ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] It certainly was not accidental.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- not accidental.
10 MR RAMPTON: But the people who did it were criminals who were
11acting in a random, haphazard way; is that right?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. At whatever level. I mean, you could equally well
13say that the middle level SS officers, the SS officials,
14who were acting in a random and haphazard way.
15 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, the reference to this document which, if
16Mr Irving does not trust me, he should have is file D8(i),
17page 222.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what you have just read out.
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but I am going to read another bit, an
20earlier bit?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Which document is that, the Hofle document?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is your letter to Zitelmann.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Zitelmann, I am familiar with that. I was looking at it a
24few days ago.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] OK. Well then it is not necessary.
26 A. [Mr Irving] May I just pause at that point and say, my Lord, you
1remember that I said that I sent the Bruns' document to a
2very large number of historians. That is exactly the way
3I would work. I would send documents like that and later
4on the Aumeir document as well.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to read the paragraph above the one I just
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts in 8(ii)?
8 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, 8(i), my Lord, 222. Am I waiting for
9something, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I am ready, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The third paragraph of the letter reads as follows. This
12is May 21, 1989, so it may be your views have changed
13since then, I know not. "On the... (reading to the
14words)... my own view has crystallized a lot since 1975
15when I delivered Hitler's War to the publishers. It is
16clear to me that no serious historian can now believe that
17Auschwitz", which is for some reason underlined?
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is a link, it is a hyperlink.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I follow you, yes. "... Treblinka, Mydonek, were totas
21 A. [Mr Irving] "Factories of death".
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Factories of death, precisely. "All the expert and
23scientific (forensic) evidence is to the contrary." We
24are going to have an argument about Auschwitz. We can
25agree that Auschwitz did not start out as a totas fabrike,
26or whatever the singular is. Mydonek, I can agree, was
1only partly used for that purpose, but you have just
2agreed with me that, so far as you know, Treblinka did not
3serve any other purpose or am I wrong?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I did not say that.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. What purpose did it serve?
6 A. [Mr Irving] You asked if it was true that large numbers of people and
7you said hundreds of thousands ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I said hundreds of thousands.
9 A. [Mr Irving] --- were killed at these places to which I agreed that
10they were killed at those places, which included
11Treblinka, but this does not mean to say that Treblinka
12was a factory of death existing solely for that purpose.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. Something special about the word "factory of
14death", is there?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it is. It is a quantum leap, if I can put it like
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] What does it mean?
18 A. [Mr Irving] A factory of death is a purpose built ad hoc establishment
19for killing the people who arrive. That is the way
20I understand -- maybe I am wrong. Maybe you interpret it
21somewhat differently.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, it is your word. It is not my word.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Because I just pointed out the 60,000 Warsaw Jews who
24arrived there from the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1943 were then
25sent from Treblinka to Mydonek. So, clearly, it was not a
26factory of death. It had other purposes too.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, a transit camp for some small number of people?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Later on, shortly after which I believe it was closed
4down, was it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] That I do not know.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is, no doubt, why they were moved on to Mydonek, is
7it not? It was the nearest place.
8 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. I do not know if you have any evidence for
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have a map.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I am not talking about the proximity. I am talking about
12the ----
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not worry about it.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We need not trouble with Mydonek, need we?
15 MR RAMPTON: Well, it was a place at which large numbers of
16Jews were killed. There was a gas chamber there -- this
17is our evidence -- which has been reconstructed since the
18war, but it was also ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] In other words, faked since the war.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It was also in some sense a work camp?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a pleading point, but I think it is
22not one of the camps that you actually specifically rely
24 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. This is just for information. It
25was liberated, I think, in late '44.
26 THE WITNESS: September 1944.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was the first to be liberated, was it not?
2 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it was, by the Russians. This is, as I say,
3what the experts will tell your Lordship, I think. It was
4such a shock in Berlin that everything was stopped.
5 A. [Mr Irving] The Russians, of course, captured the entire camp records.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Well, then, Mr Irving, you have accepted
8that an awful lot of people were killed in these little
9places on the borders. You do not know one way or the
10other whether there were any remains there, do you?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Were there any?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Remains there of buildings?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I have not been to see it.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I think that there is relatively little. You can go to
16these places and search in vain for any kind of
17foundations or anything. I am sure there were buildings
18of some kind there, but I think the Polish people
19descended on them like locusts after the war looking for
20anything they could reuse.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have not been there. Have you read about whether
22there are remains of factories or large barbed wire
23encampments with huts for workers and that kind of thing?
24 A. [Mr Irving] What, still there or whether they were there?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, still there. Have you been to Auschwitz?
26 A. [Mr Irving] No.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you seen photographs of Auschwitz?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now, that has a lot of remains, has it not, comparatively
5 A. [Mr Irving] Quite a high percentage of remains still left there.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Even in that part which is alleged to have been the ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Are we talking about Auschwitz or Birkenhau?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I call the whole thing in the usual way Auschwitz,
9but let us talk about ----
10 A. [Mr Irving] Let us be more precise.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- have you been to Birkenhau?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I have not been to either camp.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you seen photographs of Birkenhau?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] There are in Birkenhau quite lot of ruins and huts and
16bits and pieces, are there not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the remains of the IG Faven(?) factory are still
19there, are they not, outside the camp?
20 A. [Mr Irving] At Monovitz, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Monovitz. Is there anything like that, so far as you
22know, at Treblinka, Sobibor or Belzec?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am not informed one way or the other on that.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] The short point is this, Mr Irving, you have no evidence
25to contradict the probability that these camps, these
26three, I call them Reinhard camps (and I do not want to
1have an argument about that) were purpose-built
2extermination facilities?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I have no evidence to contradict the probability. It is a
4very fair statement.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that right?
6 A. [Mr Irving] It is a very fair statement, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that mean that you do now resile from
8the view you expressed in your letter?
9 A. [Mr Irving] No, my Lord. I am just confirming the way he put the
10statement. I have no evidence to contradict his statement
11because I have no evidence, period.
12 MR RAMPTON: Then will you accept it is a probability then?
13 A. [Mr Irving] No. That is a different thing entirely. I do not want to
14sound as though I am a bit of an eel on this but...
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] My word entirely, Mr Irving!
16 A. [Mr Irving] I do not want to sound slippery; I just do not want to be
17nailed down in one corner where later on you will hold it
18up dripping and slithering next day and say, "Look what
19you said yesterday".
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, you see, you said to Dr Zitelmann that
21it was clear to you that no serious historian can now
22believe that Treblinka and some other camps were "totas
24 A. [Mr Irving] Quite. They were purpose-built factories of death; in
25other words, had no other purpose than that.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Oh, I see.
1 MR RAMPTON: But you told me -- I am sorry about this; this is
2getting a bit like a fourth form debating society, I fear
3-- a moment ago you said to me that you had no evidence
4to contradict the probability that these were
5purpose-built extermination facilities.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, because I have no evidence, period.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but you write in this letter: "All the experts in
8scientific forensic evidence is to the contrary"?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] So what is that scientific and forensic evidence and
11expert evidence to the contrary?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Do you wish now already to get into the cyanide tests and
13that kind of thing?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I am talking about Treblinka.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is the expert and scientific (forensic) evidence that
17contradicts the probability that Treblinka was a
18purpose-built extermination facility?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am now looking at a letter which I wrote 11 years
20ago. I would have to try to put myself back into the
21mindset at that time when I wrote that letter, and try to
22recall the actual documents I had been pouring over and
23the air photographs and the interrogation reports and
24things like that, if I was to explain why I wrote that
25particular sentence.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Were you extrapolating from Auschwitz?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I was extrapolating backwards from Auschwitz, if I can put
2it like that, but certainly tests were also carried out
3equally on at least one of those other two locations, the
4same kind of forensic tests. We also had material of the
5kind I mentioned, like air photos and prisoner of war
6reports and things like that, but it is not the kind of
7evidence that puts me in a position to say, "I can,
8therefore, challenge the probability or whatever it was
9that Mr Rampton was saying".
10 MR RAMPTON: But how could you extrapolate from Auschwitz,
11Mr Irving? It has never been proposed by anybody, so far
12as I know, that the Nazis used hydrogen cyanide anywhere
13outside Auschwitz to kill people with, has it?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, exactly. This is what I find so puzzling. We were
15told that this is part of system by learned counsel and
16yet, apparently, they used cyanide here, petrol gas there,
17diesel fumes there, bullets in yet another place,
18bulldozers, hangings, shootings -- it appears to have been
19a totally ramshackle and haphazard operation. A total
20lack of system.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you please answer my question, Mr Irving? You said
22you extrapolated the conclusion that there was expert and
23scientific evidence that Treblinka was not a totas
24fabrike. You extrapolated that from Auschwitz?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I very foolishly used the word suggested by his Lordship,
26"extrapolated". Perhaps I should have -- without
1realising that the word was going to be seized upon by
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is what I am paid for, Mr Irving. I am sorry if you
4say things ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- you readily accept a suggestion from the Judge and
7make it part of your evidence and it seems to me to be
8idiotic, then I am going to seize on it, am I not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think his Lordship suggested an idiotic word but
10in this particular case ----
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, the process would be idiotic, though, would it not, to
12extrapolate a denial about Treblinka from the evidence
13about Auschwitz, would it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] No, the extrapolation there would be to say that if
15Auschwitz was not a killing station, a dedicated factory
16of death, then, on the balance of probabilities, it is
17likely that these two were not dedicated factories of
18death either.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why? Auschwitz started out as a huge grandiose scheme by
20Himmler, did it not, to provide a sort of fife for the SS
21in central or south Poland at which there would be vast
22factories and brilliant agricultural lands and experiments
23of that kind, without any thought of killing anybody at
24all except through hard work?
25 A. [Mr Irving] You are giving evidence on my part.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right, is it no?
1 A. [Mr Irving] That is absolutely right and I wish you were my counsel at
2this moment.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is how Auschwitz started out. Its origins were quite
4different from those of the three so-called Reinhardt
6 A. [Mr Irving] It now squares up to the chronology, Mr Rampton. We are
7told by your experts that Auschwitz had become a dedicated
8killing station by the end of 1941 or early 1942 at the
9latest, and yet apparently the also had found it necessary
10to establish other places to do killings too.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I am sorry ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] So that is what I mean by extrapolating. If you have a
13super mass production factory here, then why do you build
14these villages elsewhere?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you read Professor van Pelt's report with any care you
16would know that that was complete nonsense, that the
17evolution of Auschwitz into a dedicated killing facility,
18in fact not Auschwitz, Birkenhau, really began at the end
19of 1942. There were some gassings by the use of a cellar
20at Auschwitz, one, and by, two, converted farm houses
21during 1942?
22 A. [Mr Irving] But of there was a course huge rate of mortality at
23Auschwitz in the middle of 1942.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will get on to Auschwitz next week, but do not
25misrepresent what Professor van Pelt has said, unless you
26are sure of your ground, because it is not what he said.
1 A. [Mr Irving] You have brought up Auschwitz now and you are talking
2about dates and months, and when I try to pin you down on
3the huge mortality rate in the middle of 1942 you are
4saying let us talk about that next week.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] There was a typhus epidemic at Auschwitz in 1942.
6 A. [Mr Irving] So we are saying now that all the deaths in 1942 were from
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, surely you can do better than that?
9 A. [Mr Irving] You just said it, Mr Rampton.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I said there was a huge typhus epidemic in 1942?
11 A. [Mr Irving] The killings did not start until the end of 1942.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I did not say that. At the same time people were being
13gassed in what are known as bunkers one and two, and that
14the conversion of the two planned crematoria at Birkenhau
15into gas chambers took place in the late part of 1942 at
16the planning stage, and that they came into operation in
17early 1943?
18 A. [Mr Irving] With the cyanide being dropped in through the roof,
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have to compartmentalize to an extent. We
21are not on that topic yet.
22 MR RAMPTON: No, we are not.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I think Mr Rampton made some useful concessions.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is actually party my fault. I
25think I rater reintroduced Auschwitz. We are back on the
26systematic nature of the killings by whatever means, is
1that really the broad heading for the topic we are on?
2 MR RAMPTON: This is right. I am not sure where we have got in
3relation to Treblinka, my Lord, and the other two
4Reinhardt camps, except this. There has been an
5acceptance by Mr Irving that hundreds of thousands of Jews
6were intentionally killed in those three places, but not
7as the consequence of any policy or system, I think, and
8that he is not satisfied that that was their dedicated
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Speaking for myself, one does not really need
11to spend terribly much time now on what exactly was going
12on in any of those places. The point seems now to be how
13did it come about, was it local murderers?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I think the way Mr Rampton summed it up is a very fair
15summary of my position.
16 MR RAMPTON: There is also, of course, an issue about the
17method of killing, but that may in due course turn out to
18be less significant.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In relation to those camps I think it might.
20 MR RAMPTON: Indeed. As to system ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] It is only of relevance when it goes to the expertise of
22the people who considered this whole matter, if they
23willing accept that kind of story, if I can put it like
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I agree with that. So, my Lord, what I propose is to look
26at just some very few documents for two purposes. What
1I am going to do is to look at just some very documents
2for two purposes: one to show the scale of the thing and
3the other to show the sort of level at which it was being
4discussed. So I am not going to look at a lot of what
5Mr Irving calls "janitorial" documents, and I hope that
6most of what I am going to look at is going to be common
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So far as the scale of the operation is
9concerned, it may be that that can be, as it were,
10disposed of as an issue by some very general questions.
11I do not know.
12 MR RAMPTON: Well, I expect so, but if one looks at, for
13example -- I would rather do it chronologically, if I am
14allowed, I think.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was just that if the door is an open one,
16then there is no point in pushing against it too hard.
17 MR RAMPTON: I agree. Do you agree, Mr Irving, you have
18written something of it in your own book, that daily
19trains full of Jews, thousands of Jews, from about 22nd
20July were going eastwards from Walsall, Radom, and
21eventually Lublin. There is another place too, I cannot
22remember, to these three places from about 22nd July?
23 A. [Mr Irving] This is the correspondence between Wolff and Ganzenmuller.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is Wolff and Ganzenmuller?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, the Minister of Transport.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do accept that?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Large numbers, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will look at what the position was in ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] They are going via Malinka to Treblinka I think.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, all that, in enormous numbers. If you think about
5it, 5,000 Jews a day is 35,000 Jews a week?
6 A. [Mr Irving] That would be five train loads.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. What?
8 A. [Mr Irving] That would have been five train loads per day.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly. I am comfortable without having just a quick
10look at the document.
11 A. [Mr Irving] It might be useful just to have a look at the documents to
12see what the security classification was.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I must say I rather agree. We will look at two documents,
14if you do not mind. Ganzenmuller to Wolff on 29th July
151942, it is either 28th or 29th, anyhow I need a copy of
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it H4(ii)?
18 MR RAMPTON: It might be.
19 A. [Mr Irving] The originals were in my discovery of course.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we not operate off Professor Browning's.
21 MR RAMPTON: I do not know where that is.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 45.
23 MR RAMPTON: There is no copy, that is the trouble.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can do it off the report, can we not?
25Page 45.
26 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, my Lord, where did your Lordship say?
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 45. I think that is probably all you
2really need. I cannot believe the context is going to
3make much difference.
4 MR RAMPTON: No, the context probably is not.
5 "Since July 22nd one train with 5,000 Jews
6departs daily via Malinka to Treblinka. Moreover, twice
7per week a train with 5,000 Jews departs", a Polish word
8for Belzec. So that is, is it not, 35,000 a week from,
9I think that is actually from Walsall?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, my only little quibble is with the figures. I accept
11the documents are completely authentic, but you could not
12get 5,000 people into one train, not even with a shoe
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I agree. That is why I think the figure is exaggerated.
15 A. [Mr Irving] There is a little bit of bragging going on here.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, probably.
17 A. [Mr Irving] The normal figure is about 1,000 people per train and this
18is, certainly at this time, I mean later on in 1944 when
19they used more brutal methods I think they packed them
20into more unorthodox transport.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Perhaps, Mr Irving, we do better to look at a summary
22which was made in Berlin at the end of September 1942, and
23you may agree these figures are more reliable. It is page
2447, my Lord, of Professor Browning and it is note 121,
25which is H3(ii), tab 13 I am told. I apologise to your
26Lordship for that slight delay, but when the files are
1open I cannot tell what they are. It is first document
2behind tab 13.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
4 MR RAMPTON: We looked at this once before I think, Mr Irving.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have to at the moment take it from Professor Browning
7that it is what he says it is.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] He says it is a conference in Berlin on 26th and 28th
10September 1992. What his basis for that saying is I do
11not know. He will tell us no doubt when he gets here.
12Assuming that to be right, it is telling us that there was
13discussed, one, the evacuation of 600,000 Jews from the
14General Government?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of the General Government.
16 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, my Lord, yes, of the General
17Government. Then item two is the forwarding of 200,000
18Romanian Jews into the General Government.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I can see item one, the 600,000 going.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Die Verschieckung".
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Paragraph 2?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Am I looking at the Browning or at a document?
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, I am sorry, you should be looking at a document.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Right. Which is where.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would do a bit of housekeeping if I were
26you, Mr Irving.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Where do I find it in H3(ii)?
2 MR RAMPTON: You will find it behind tab 13.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Under tab 13?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, OK, I have it.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have that and I expect you recognize it?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I have never seen it before. It is pages 149 and 150 of
8some, it looks like a court document of some kind.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Highly unsatisfactory of course to have a document
11presented in this form in a court transcript.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you dispute its reliability or its authenticity you can
13take it up with Professor Browning when he gets here.
14I have asked you to bear that in mind.
15 A. [Mr Irving] It is just a comment I make that it is unsatisfactory to
16have a document presented in this form.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course, but this is not an historical enquiry,
18Mr Irving. You brought this action against my clients
19asking for damages and an injunction. So we have to do
20the best we can with what we have before us. Can I just
21ask you ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you have a very large staff of experts and
23experts' assistants and assistants to those assistants
24behind you in this very courtroom. I am acting on this
25action by myself.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving. Just assume for the sake of argument,
1will you, that this is both authentic and possibly, I do
2not know, reliable?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] It speaks of the evacuation of 600,000 Jews of the General
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] It speaks also of the forwarding into the General
8Government the 200,000 Romanian Jews, does it not, the
9second paragraph?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, it is in words, yes, "von zweihunderttausend Juden
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is the first heading I am interested in under point one
13or as to point one, urgent transports, I cannot read the
14next word, can you help me with that?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Proposed, "polkishen".
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] What does it mean?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Urgent transport proposed by the Chief of Security Police
18and by the Security Service.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that ----
20 A. [Mr Irving] Heydrich.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- Heydrich?
22 A. [Mr Irving] No, at this time it would be Carleton Brunner. Heydrich
23was killed.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] How high up is that?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Directly under Himmler.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Directly under Himmler. What he has ordered are ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] Two trains per day from the district of Walsall to
2Treblinka; one train per day from the district of Random
3to Treblinka; one train per day from the district of
4Krakow to Belzec, and one train per day from the district
5of Lemberg or the Wolff to Belzec.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] That makes a total, I think I am right, of 5,000 a day?
7 A. [Mr Irving] That would be approximately 5,000.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you for me, please, just complete the sentence because
9it was not, after Lemberg and then the numbers there is
10some more, is there not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] "Could be conducted".
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
13 A. [Mr Irving] That is in the subjunctive. "Waren" with the 200 G-wagen,
14which are presumably goods trucks, "which have already
15been placed at our disposal for this purpose by the
16headquarters of the Krakow Railways, as far as this can be
17carried out or is feasible".
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you very much. So they are reporting, what, a
19proposal or an event or series of events?
20 A. [Mr Irving] It is an estimate of what we can do with the transport
21capacity placed at our disposal.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Available rolling stock, they can do 5,000 a day to two of
23these three places in the East, except that the one train
24a day from Lemberg which, as you say, is what I call
25"Lavof" which is in what is now the Ukraine and then was
26Galicia, is going eastwards if it is going to Belzec, is
1it not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] One train a day is going from Lemberg to Belzec that is on
3the frontier, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is going eastwards. It is crossing ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- from Galicia westwards into the General Government?
7 A. [Mr Irving] It is right on the Eastern border of the General
8Government, about two kilometres from the edge.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] So the Jews of Lemberg, to give it its German name, are
10being transported eastwards to Belzec?
11 A. [Mr Irving] To Belzec two kilometres from the border, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. No sense then in which Belzec can be regarded as a
13transit camp, is there, for movement further eastwards?
14 A. [Mr Irving] These destinations that are in this document which I am
15seeing for the first time, Treblinka, Belzec, they are all
16on the border, what I might say the exit door, of the
17General Government.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] It is like standing something next to the door where they
20are robbed. Everything is taken off them by Operation
21Reinhardt. Then we do not know, on the basis of this
22document, what happened to them after that.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Trains converge on Belzec containing Jews in vast numbers,
24frankly, from East and West. Belzec most likely,
25Mr Irving, is in any sense of the word a terminus, is it
1 A. [Mr Irving] Did you say they are coming from East and West?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. If you look down what is proposed next, the line is
3bust at the moment, they are going to start up in
4November, then trains are going to go from Lublin to
6 A. [Mr Irving] Where is that?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, read the next bit then.
8 A. [Mr Irving] After the restoration of the railway line from Lublin to
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Probably on about 1st November.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
13 A. [Mr Irving] "The" other urgent transports will also be, we can also
14carry out the other urgent transports, namely one train
15per day from Radom to Sobibor; one train per day from
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Lublin North.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Lublin North to Belzec and one train per day from Lublin
19centre to Sobibor.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] So once that is in operation, which is in about a month's
21time, five weeks time, Belzec will be receiving Jews both
22from the West?
23 A. [Mr Irving] From Lublin.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] From Lublin and from the East, Lavof?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Lemberg?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry about this, Mr Irving, but sometimes junior
3counsel and experts produce aid in a case like this.
4H1(ix) I think you may already have, unless his Lordship's
5advice about housekeeping has been rigorously obeyed. My
6Lord, H1(ix), page 329.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, it is one of the relevant documents. It is still
9only a transcript, but it is it is more useful.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What tab is it?
11 MR RAMPTON: 329, my Lord. You will find the translations, my
12Lord, at pages 429 to 30 of Evans.
13 A. [Mr Irving] If your Lordship has the document, I draw attention only
14to the security classification which is "Geheim" on page
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do I get what the security
17classification is?
18 A. [Mr Irving] On about the tenth line, G-E-H-E-I-M.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is secret?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is just the lowest security classification there
21is, apart from "vertraulich" which is confidential,
22whereas everything to do with the killing operations, at
23any rate anything that could be explicitly recognized as
24killing operations, was a much higher classification.
25I shall be making that point once or twice.
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But against that this is not in a sense a compromising
1document on its face. It is simply saying these trains
2are going to Treblinka?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I agree, my Lord, but taken in conjunction with the other
4document in this pair where Wolff writes back saying, you
5remember, "It's a good thing that 5,000, a chosen few, per
6day are going that way." I do not know if the reply is
7also there, is it? Here is Wolff replying in the next
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] He is W, is he?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, he is W. "Dear Comrade, Ganzenmuller", and again this
11document has no classification at all. This is from my
12own files, my Lord. This is actually from Himmler's
13papers and it has no classification rating at all. If you
14look at the square box, the rubber stamp at the top
15right-hand corner, my Lord, you will have see on that
16little bundle I have gave you this morning, I had printed
17in red there was one such little bundle translated into
18English and that had the security classification on it.
19The third line of that box where it says "actung nummer"
20which would be file number, would have afterwards G-E-H
21oblique stroke, and then they would write in handwriting
22the secret file number, if this was a classified
23document. So neither of these two correspondents,
24Ganzenmuller or Wolff, considered this matter they were
25talking about to be secret, and I shall be leading
26evidence, my Lord, that the SS were very pernickety about
1security classifications on their documents.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But there is nothing compromising, as I say, on the face
3of either of these documents. It is just trans going to
5 A. [Mr Irving] Even documents that were written as euphemisms had the
6security classification put on them which was rather
8 MR RAMPTON: I am puzzled by that. I am puzzled for two
9reasons, Mr Irving. The first document is not an
10original, I think. It is a Nuremberg reprint, is it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] It is a transcript, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] But that does not tell us anything about what its original
13classification might be?
14 A. [Mr Irving] It does, if you excuse me, it has the German
15classification on it.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is?
17 A. [Mr Irving] About the tenth, Geheim, G-E-H-E-I-M, in the centre.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] What does that mean?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Secret.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, secret?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But that is a low security classification,
23that is what Mr Irving has just said.
24 A. [Mr Irving] The only one lower than that was "vertraulich" which means
25confidential. Before that there are three or four
26successive ranks. You have Geheimreichs,
1Geheimschetaffe(?) and (?)offizier which means only an
2officer can carry it.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Very learned, Mr Irving, and it is quite right you should
4say it.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Are you sneering at my expertise?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I am not sneering at your expertise. Actually I am
7complaining about the way you keep making speeches in
8answer to questions I have not asked, if you want to
10 A. [Mr Irving] I think his Lordship has indicated in the view of the fact
11that I am a litigant in person I am allowed a little bit
12of latitude in making points which I would otherwise have
13no opportunity to make.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but may I suggest if you are going to do that, to
15which I have no objection whatsoever, you make your
16observations to his Lordship and not to me. We are not
17having an argument. You are answering questions under
18oath. Now I am trying to find the translation of this
19document. Yes, I have found it. My Lord, it is the
20bottom of paragraph 4 of page 430 of Evans, but I dare say
21there are other versions.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 430 of?
23 MR RAMPTON: Of Evans, my Lord.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR RAMPTON: This is from Ganzenmuller whose precise position
26is what?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Secretary of State, Staff Secretare, which is the
2Permanent Under Secretary in the Ministry of Transport.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] In Berlin?
4 A. [Mr Irving] In Berlin.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is he a senior Civil Servant?
6 A. [Mr Irving] A very senior Civil Servant.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] A very senior Civil Servant. He writes to Wolff?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Karl Wolff was the personal adjutant of Heydrich Himmler.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and it was Karl Wolff who was quite often, am
10I wrong, tell me if I am, as it were, seconded by Himmler
11to Hitler, is that right, or have I got that wrong?
12 A. [Mr Irving] It was a floating kind of relationship. Karl Wolff was
13very close to Hitler. He fell out over a marital dispute
14I think, a matrimonial dispute, but actually his position
15was Chief Adjutant of Heydrich Himmler. He was never on
16Hitler's staff. He was on Himmler's staff.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. What I am driving at is obvious I think, Mr Irving.
18Karl Wolff was in a position if Adolf Hitler should say to
19him one day, say late August or September or July 1942,,
20"How is it going in the East?", Wolff is in a position to
21tell him?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Undoubtedly, yes. He would have told him about these
23train loads of Jews being shipped off to Treblinka.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] You can imagine the conversation. This is pure fancy on
25my part of course. "Karl, how is it going in the East?
26Well, we've good news from Ganzenmuller that they're able
1to shift about 35,000 of the chosen people a week to these
2camps in the East." That is all, as simple as that.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Hitler of course never used deprecatory phrases like
4"the chosen people".
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. He used nice complimentary phrases like "parasites"
6and "bacilli", did he not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] That is right. But of course this is just your
8imagination which has no evidentiary value whatsoever in
9this action.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, of course not, but Wolff was in a position, what I am
11saying is Wolff was close to Hitler, close to the thrown,
12was he not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] He was close to Himmler's thrown. He was on Himmler's
14personal staff.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] And Hitler's too. You just old us he was close to Hitler?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I made it quite specific. He was on Himmler's staff, not
17on Hitler's staff, but he was a frequent visitor to
18Hitler's headquarters.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you look at this letter and tell us what it says,
20please. It says something about a telephone call on 16th
21July, does it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Which letter are we talking about?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] This one from Ganzenmuller to Wolff.
24 A. [Mr Irving] "Referring to our telephone conversation of July 16th 1942
25I inform you of the following report from my general
26direction of the Eastern Railroads in Krakow for your own
1personal information."
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then he quotes the report, does he?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Then he quotes the report: "Since July 27th a daily train
4load of 5,000 Jews, each is travelling from Walsall via
5Malkenia to Treblinka, in addition to which two are
6running each week, a train of 5,000 Jews will run each
7week from Eprzemysl to Belzec."
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Do you wish me to continue?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I do not. I am just wondering whether I was right to
11agree with you that 5,000 per train was too many.
12 A. [Mr Irving] If they were in goods trucks, as that September document
13indicates they have been planning, then they may possibly
14have packed that many in.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you still got Professor Brownings' report there?
16This is inevitable, I am afraid, in a case like this.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Page 430, is it?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, page 44 of Professor Browning.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am constantly marvelling at your cross-referencing.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It breaks down all too often. Page 44, paragraph 5.3.11,
21I will read it. We will look at the documents if you
22insist, but I do not believe it is necessary:
23 "The trains deporting Jews from Galicia". What
24is the matter?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I have it, 44. Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] 5.3.11, MR IRVING:
1 "The trains deporting the Jews from Galicia did
2indeed go to Belzec as can be seen in the report of
3Reserve Lieutenant Westermann of the 7th company of Police
4Regiment 24, whose men helped round up the Jews in
5Kolomyja", which is, I can tell, you southeast of Lavof,
6in other words further East than Lemberg, "and nearby
7towns and then guarded two transports to Belzec on
8September 7th and 10th 1942. The first contained 4,769
9Jews in 50 train cars and went without incident. The
10second involved 8,205 Jews. Many had been held for days
11without food and force-marched 35-50 kilometers to the
12train in blistering heat. They were then packed into
13train cars, in many cases 180 to 200 per car, virtually
14without ventilation. As Lieutenant Westermann concluded,
15'The ever greater panic spreading among the Jews due to
16the great heat, overloading of the train cars and stink of
17the dead when unloading the train cars, some 2,000 Jews
18were found dead in the train made the transport almost
19unworkable.' Nevertheless, the train that left Kolomyja at
208.50 p.m. on September 10th finally crawled into Belzec at
216.45 on September 11th".
22 So these figures quoted by Ganzenmuller's
23subordinate of 5,000 Jews per train ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] They are feasible, yes, on the basis of this evidence.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are feasible?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] If that were so, we are talking about even greater
2numbers, are we not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] In what respect greater numbers?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, greater numbers than I had originally supposed.
5I mean we are originally talking about by the end of the
61943 or whenever it was that these camps were disbanded,
7well over a million people I would guess.
8 A. [Mr Irving] May I just remark for the record that of course this
9Westermann document I have not seen and never had when
10I was writing my books.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but in a way that is not a particular
12pertinent observation, because we are really at the moment
13looking at the scale of the operation.
14 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, you did suggest that I should make that quite
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Fair enough and it is helpful for you to do so, but the
17criticism is not of the way in which you have dealt with
18these matters in your books, if you follow me?
19 A. [Mr Irving] We are just trying to get the picture.
20 MR RAMPTON: Can you turn, while we have it open, to page 46 of
21Professor Browning's report, please?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I had pointed out to you that trains apparently went, we
24saw it again there, westwards from Galicia to Belzec, and
25then you see at the top of page 46 of Professor Browning's
26report: "Surviving fragmentary train schedules also show
1that Jews were deported from northern Lublin district,
2Radom district, and the Bialystok district to Treblinka as
3well. The deportations from Bialystok, a district East of
4Treblinka, are of special significance for two reasons.
5First, these deportations from Bialystok make clear that
6Treblinka was not a transit camp for the expulsion of Jews
7eastwards from the General Government. Rather the tiny
8village of Treblinka, like Belzec, was a point at which
9transports of Jews converged from East and West.
10 "Moreover, the fate of the Bialystok Jews in
11the fall of 1942 was clearly stated in Himmler's report to
12Hitler of December 31st 1942", that is either that or
1329th, it is report No. 51, "the Jews of Bialystok were
14among the 363,211 Jews executed."
15 A. [Mr Irving] There I would have to comment of course that that line
16I would not agree there is any connection, because the
17363,000, that report, the Himmler report, is referring
18only to events within that region and not events within
19the General Government.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] You mean that is Jews killed at or near Bialystok and its
21area, not Jews transported?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Transported somewhere else out of the region and dealt
23with somewhere else.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] You might be right about that. You can take that up with
25Professor Browning.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is nit-picking.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. It may be a fair point and you can take it up with
2him. It matters not the least to me. The point about
3this is, we have another example, have we not, of Jews
4being transported from the East to the West?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] To a different camp, Treblinka, the one in the North?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Where we do not know for certain what happens to them.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but these do not look very much like transit camps, do
10 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. Let us just leap ahead a bit and say
11suppose these enormous numbers of Jews had been liquidated
12in some way, we come up against that familiar word
13"logistics", what happened to the remains?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I suppose what happened to the remains, upwards of
15whatever I do not know ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] We have to think this right through, you see.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is partly a question of evidence and it is partly a
18question of constructive thinking. It could be that many
19of them were burnt, the corpses I mean. There is some
20evidence of that, is there not? It may be that many of
21them were buried. There is also some evidence of that
22too, is there not, I mean contemporary evidence?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is as much as we can say.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I agree.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I take that kind of answer, that is as much as we can say,
26one stage further back in the sequence to say, this is as
1much as we can say: They went there where they then
2vanished from our general sight.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we had reached the point where we
4were agreed that it does not really, in a sense, matter
5terribly much exactly how many, but huge numbers ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] Huge numbers were killed.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- were killed in one way or another. In a sense, the
8Court's problem is only a problem if you are disputing the
10 A. [Mr Irving] Precisely, my Lord. The logistical problem is one that we
11will keep on coming up against. It is a distasteful
12subject but one you cannot overlook.
13 MR RAMPTON: Just for completeness and for his Lordship's note,
14in effect so his Lordship really knows where to find it,
15if you turn over the page two pages from Ganzenmuller ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, if I could just interrupt, it is one reason why
17I was entitled to extrapolate, if you remember, from
18Auschwitz to the other two camps, and we have precisely
19those logistical reasons which make it improbable that
20they were factories of death.
21 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will see Wolff's nauseating reply,
22if I can call it that ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] Which he never expected one day to have read out in open
24court, I am sure.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but then he would have been a hypocrite if he had
26edited it, would he not? On page 331 at the bottom of the
1Evans' document bundle, this is not a retype by the
2Nuremberg people, I think, is it, Mr Irving?
3 A. [Mr Irving] No.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is a copy of some sort of original, whether a carbon
5or not I do not know.
6 A. [Mr Irving] It is off the microfilm number T175/54, page 620.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 331 of Evans?
8 MR RAMPTON: 331, my Lord, no of H1(ix).
9 A. [Mr Irving] Can I make a remark against myself?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am sure Mr Rampton will not want
11to ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] Looking back at that rubber stamp, my Lord, on that
13document where there is no secret classification, it has
14in its place the two letters AR.
15 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
16 A. [Mr Irving] It also has the letters AR on the top left-hand corner at
17the beginning of the handwritten reference number.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What does that mean?
19 A. [Mr Irving] "Aktion Reinhardt" I would suspect. I would suspect, it
20is a degree of probability that this was given a separate
21file for Aktion Reinhardt.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not Geheim?
23 A. [Mr Irving] But not Geheim. It is a reasonable presumption, although
24it may be held against me.
25 MR RAMPTON: Tell me this. I think that is an English word.
26You see the bottom of 331?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] The bottom left-hand corner in a box somebody has
3written "index". That would be people at Nuremberg?
4 A. [Mr Irving] No, it would be me.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is you?
6 A. [Mr Irving] All documents that passed through my possession when I was
7writing the Hitler book went into a 20,000 card index, and
8once it had been indexed I would rubber stamp the index so
9that I did not index it again.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. The reference to "the chosen people" is in the
11fifth line, is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] "For your letter of July 28th 1942 I thank you, also in
13the name of the Reichsfuhrer SS, most heartfelt. With
14particular joy I have taken cognisance of your information
15that for 14 days now already every day one train with
165,000 members of the chosen people are going to Treblinka,
17and that in this way we are being put in the position that
18we can accelerate the speed of this population movement."
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it probably is really more selective
20than "chosen", is it not? Is it not just saying these are
21people who have been selected for the transport?
22 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, that is the German for "chosen".
23 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think it is a sarcastic reference to,
24I would guess.
25 A. [Mr Irving] It is the correct German for "the chosen people".
26 MR RAMPTON: "For the chosen people". Mr Irving actually put
1it in his book in that form, did you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] As an accurate translation, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why did it cause him, Mr Irving, why did it cause him,
4Wolff, especial joy?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure that is just a way of dictating letters. Wolff
6in particular is an SS Officer.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] "A rabid anti-Semite is very pleased to be told that 5,000
8a day are going off to be massacred." Surely that is the
9natural interpretation?
10 A. [Mr Irving] 57,000 are getting their comeuppance, I suppose that is
11the way he is looking at it, as a good Nazi.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Comeuppance" meaning?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Well, just they are meeting their well-deserved fait,
14whatever it is. They are not specific.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Death?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Death?
18 A. [Mr Irving] He does not actually say it, my Lord.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is what he means?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am not going to pin Karl Wolff down on this on
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, but you are an historian looking at the document,
23Mr Rampton has put a perfectly fair question to you, is he
25 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot say from this document, my Lord, and I do not
26think anybody could just looking at this document
1in vacuo. In hindsight we can say that they were going to
2that place, they never turned up again, obviously
3something ugly happened to them.
4 MR RAMPTON: Karl Wolff, who I have to correct you I think
5about in a moment, but never mind, Karl Wolff on receipt
6of Ganzenmuller's information is overcome with joy that
7these 5,000 a day are going to their deaths, is he not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] He does not say that, but that may very well be the reason
9why. I accept there is the degree of probability. That
10may be the reason why.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is my second point. I am told, I am not an
12historian, that Wolff was not simply a visitor or even a
13frequent visitor to Hitler's headquarters, but was
14Himmler's liaison officer at Hitler's headquarters?
15 A. [Mr Irving] For a time he may have been, but I am not sure whether it
16was at this time.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is a fair point. I will accept that.
18 A. [Mr Irving] He fell out of favour after contracting an unsuitable
19marriage and for a long time he was out of favour.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] But if he is Himmler's liaison officer at the Fuhrer
21headquarters, whether it is in Berlin or in East Prussia,
22wherever it might be, his formal role is to pass
23information and instructions backwards and forwards ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] As a conduit.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- between Himmler and Hitler, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] He would have acted as a conduit between the two.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] A conduit pipe. So if Hitler was at all interested in
2reports of what was going on in the East, he could expect
3to get them for Wolff, could he not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This letter is, of course, actually written from the
5Fuhrer's headquarters.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
7 A. [Mr Irving] That is the address at the top.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I quite agree with you. In case you should have missed
9the point, it does not say, "and I have brought your glad
10tidings to the Fuhrer today at lunch and we all had a
11glass of champagne"?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I think I treated the document responsibly. I gave you
13the full text of it or whatever was relevant in my books,
14and once again I leave the readers to draw their own
15conclusions. I may say that your Lordship and yourself
16have also drawn the right conclusions from this document
17or the appropriate conclusions.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could you please turn, Mr Irving, to page 143 of Evans'
19report, paragraph 5, no, I had better start actually a bit
20earlier. This is all, my Lord, embedded in a discussion
21of the suggestion that the gas chambers were an invention
22of British propaganda. Mr Irving, I am right, am I not
23that, Riegner was some kind of figure in the Jewish
24community in the West?
25 A. [Mr Irving] In Switzerland.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] In Geneva.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Or in Bern, one or the other, yes. He was a young man
2with contacts inside Nazi Germany.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we, please, start at the top of page 142. It is your
4position, is it not, or has been at any rate, that the gas
5chambers were a very cleaver piece of propaganda that we
6British very cunningly connived at and contrived during
7World War II, is that right?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think I would use child adjectives like "clever
9and cunningly connived".
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Look at the bottom of page 141 of the Evans' report.
11 A. [Mr Irving] There is a great deal of evidence that the British
12propaganda agents is propagated in the gas chamber motive,
13for example.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is taken from an interview given by you to This Week
15on 28th November 1991.
16 A. [Mr Irving] In the broadcast of Thomas Mann but I will come to that in
17due course. Thomas Mann operated for the British and
18American Intelligence Agencies.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Stripping out "clever and cunning" for the
20sake of argument, do you contend, Mr Irving, that gas
21chambers at Auschwitz were an invention by British
22Intelligence during the war?
23 A. [Mr Irving] British Intelligence broadcast repeatedly through the BBC
24and through other information channels into Nazi Germany
25information about gas chambers in occupied Nazi, Nazi
26occupied Europe at a time when they were not in
1operation. In other words, the information was premature
2information, shall we say.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, premature begs the question rather, does it not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, in other words the information came forward.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you suggesting it was an invention?
6 A. [Mr Irving] To degree the it must have been an invention because at
7the time the British propaganda was talking of them they
8did not exist.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] So it was an invention by British propaganda?
10 A. [Mr Irving] British propaganda invented the story of the gas chambers
11or invented stories of gas chambers which were broadcast
12into Nazis Germany during the war years. There is any
13amount of evidence of this in the BBC monitoring reports,
14in the German radio monitoring reports, in the memoirs of
15people like Thomas Mann, the famous German novelist, who
16worked for British propaganda agencies in their private
17diaries and so on.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, well, I am sure it was broadcast; it is a question of
19whether it was an invention by the British propaganda
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if the Allies, as we know from the Foreign Office
22files, had no knowledge of any gas chambers, then,
23clearly, it was an invention.
24 MR RAMPTON: I wonder about that. Can you just look at the
25middle of page 143? We may have to come back in due
26course to what you said about this, but that is a
1different question. Paragraph 5. Professor Evans has
2recited your rather complicated account of this in your
3forthcoming Churchill book. Then he says: "What is the
4real documentary evidence for this account? Gerhard
5Riegner was director of the Geneva Office of the World
6Jewish Congress from 1939 until 1945. On 8th August 1942
7Riegner handed an identical telegram to Howard Etling,
8American Vice-Counsel in Geneva, and to HB Livingston, the
9British Consul. Riegner asked that a telegram be conveyed
10to the World Jewish Congress leaders in London (Sydney
11Silverman, MP) and New York (Rabbi Steven Wise). The
12telegram stated:
13 'Received alarming report stating that, in the
14Fuhrer's Headquarters, a plan has been discussed, and is
15under consideration, according to which all Jews in
16countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering 3
17and-a-half to 4 million, should, after deportation and
18concentration in the East, be at one blow exterminated, in
19order to resolve, once and for all the Jewish question'."
20 Then there is a reference to a document which
21I think I can show you in a moment.
22 Then Professor Evans goes on: "Although the
23message the put the as 'under consideration', there was an
24additional detail: 'Ways of execution are still being
25discussed, including the use of prussic acid'. Riegner
26himself said, 'We transmit this information with all the
1necessary reservation as exactitude cannot be confirmed by
2us'. But he added, 'Our informant is reported to have
3close connections with the highest German authorities, and
4his reports are generally reliable'".
5 That should be footnote 90 in this part of
6Professor Evans' report.
7 A. [Mr Irving] The actual document is in my discovery, of course -- the
8Riegner telegrams.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, my Lord. The way that the Evans' documents
10have been indexed makes them rather difficult to find.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we need the original for this purpose?
12 MR RAMPTON: Well, if it has come from Mr Irving's
13discovery, I think we do not actually because he would be
14well familiar with it.
15 A. [Mr Irving] I am very familiar indeed with the document and with the
16associated minutes by the Foreign Office officials on it.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is an accurate account, is it, in Professor Evans'
18report of what the telegram says?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Those three lines are accurately transcribed from the
20telegram, to the best of my recollection.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] So there are four lines in the body of paragraph 5 and
22then there are some further references to things like
23prussic acid in paragraph 6?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but, of course, the actual telegram is longer than
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
1 A. [Mr Irving] We know a great deal also about the origins of the
2telegram, whether this informant existed, and so on.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] I can see that it is much longer; I am certainly not going
4to bend the court's ear by reading it out.
5 A. [Mr Irving] What is significant, of course, is the associated
6memoranda on the Foreign Office file, the treating of its
7credibility and of what to do with it, and so on.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, sure, but if this is the source of the information --
9call it that, no more -- it is hardly an invention of
10British propaganda, is it?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Which information?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] This information here, in the Evans' report. If Riegner
13is the source of the information ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- then it is not an invention of British propaganda, is
17 A. [Mr Irving] Not at this stage, no, but, of course, there had been
18references by British propaganda to alleged hydrogen
19and cyanide gas chambers before this August 1942 telegram.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let me take it slowly. If Riegner's information is not
21something that he has been put up to by British
22propaganda ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- true, you may say, though, I am not going accept it,
25that the British propaganda then built on that idea, maybe
26you do say that, maybe you do not, I do not know, but the
1fact is that information is an important piece of
2evidence, not a huge piece of evidence, an important piece
3of evidence, when one comes to consider what I call the
4Final Solution and the means by which it was achieved, is
5it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I am not quite sure what question -- are you asking
7whether this was the origin of the British, or whether it
8was just a ----
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no.
10 A. [Mr Irving] --- link in your system chain.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is just a link in my chain of documents. It is said
12that Riegner had the ear of somebody ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- high up in the Nazi ----
15 A. [Mr Irving] And, therefore, the British did not invent the story
16because Riegner brought it to them.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no. Therefore, it is quite important evidence that
18the use of hydrogen cyanide was intended from quite a long
19way back as a killing agent for Jews?
20 A. [Mr Irving] If this is an authentic account by Riegner, but, of
21course, if we subsequently find out, as has been
22established by people of the calibre of Walter La Coeur,
23that Riegner's source did not exist as a source of
24integrity, shall we say, a man who was not in a position
25to know what he was talking about, then that tells us
26absolutely nothing whatsoever. It is a fluke. But if we
1can just have five or six lines reproduced from one
2document here, that is not the way to go about things. We
3need to know all the surrounding material and, in
4particular, if you want to say this is evidence the
5British did not invent because they built the story on
6this, then I have to say that British files, Foreign
7Office minutes show that it was totally dismissed. They
8said, "We cannot believe this. We cannot believe stories
9of this type. We have no supporting evidence at all.
10There is not a shred of evidence that this story is true".
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is on the original of this Riegner
13 A. [Mr Irving] It is in the typical Foreign Office folder with all the
14minutes attached to it with what are called treasury ties.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Is that the document Mr Rampton was looking for a moment
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it is in my discovery, my Lord, and I can produce it
18in court tomorrow as one of these dreaded little bundles.
19 MR RAMPTON: Well, it is there, my Lord. I really do not
20think at this time of the day I would ask your Lordship to
21look at it. It is difficult to read. It is bitty and the
22essence, for my purposes, is in the Evans' report anyway.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the essence as extracted by Professor Evans, of
25course, not the essence which I would extract, but I will
26do that under cross-examination, my Lord, when the time
1comes, I think.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, yes, but, I mean, Mr Rampton will
3appreciate, obviously, that your case is that the
4annotations on the document show that it was not given any
5credence at the time by those who subsequently used it.
6That is your point, is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Quite, and that should have been drawn out by the experts.
8 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, but an historian, Mr Irving, has the
9wonderful benefit of hindsight, does he not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I think I have used that word once or twice myself.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] He can fit a document like that which the poor bods in
12London and Washington could not do. He can fit a document
13like that into a vast weft or weave, call it what you
14will, tapestry, of other information, can he not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is what, perhaps, gives it more significance now?
17 A. [Mr Irving] There is a great temptation to do precisely that.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] One must be careful that one does not give more weight to
19it than it deserves, but any document must always be
20placed in the context of all the rest of the relevant
22 A. [Mr Irving] This is quite right, and this is why this particular
23document I did investigate in some detail, and I made an
24exception. I read what Professor La Coeur (?) had written
25about it who carried out an examination of the origins of
26the document and the alleged source.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we go north, please, because I am still engaged on the
2same exercise? My Lord, I have finished pre Auschwitz.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I interrupt you when you say you have
4finished pre Auschwitz? I quite understand what the case
5is and to a large extent it is accepted on the scale of
6the operations.
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I am really talking about the post
9shooting phase, one calls it the gassing phase. It is a
10bit tendentious but it may not matter in the end. What
11I have not at the movement got clear in my mind is how you
12put the case that this was known by and authorized by
14 MR RAMPTON: Authorized by I do not know, the case is not that
15there is a piece of paper from Himmler to Hitler, saying
16here, Adolf, are the statistics, at least not until we get
17to December 1942 and that may concern Einsatzgruppen
18shootings rather than gassings in these places. The case
19is simply this. The scale of the operation is vast. It
20involves what must have been very considerable disruption
21to military operations amongst other things. It involves
22a lot of economic and manpower resources. It certainly
23goes all the way up to Heydrich and Wolf who is Himmler's
24adjutant, seconded as liaison officer at some time at
25least to Hitler. In the light of what we do know that
26Hitler did know, in the light of all the other information
1we have about Hitler's anti-Semitism and, as in due course
2one will see, as one of the foundations of Nazi ideology,
3it would be amazing if Hitler did not know, in broad
4terms, I am not saying he was interested in numbers or
5anything like that, what was going on. It is as simple as
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is extremely helpful to have you put it
8clearly in that way. Thank you very much.
9 MR RAMPTON: It is an inference which any lawyer, never mind
10historian, would be willing to draw, I would suggest, on
11the balance of probabilities.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I suggest that we just invite Mr Irving,
13if he wants to, to comment on that, because that is part
14of your case.
15 MR RAMPTON: It certainly is.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is entitled to have his say.
17 MR RAMPTON: I would only add this negative sentence, I think.
18The fact that there is not a piece of paper, as the denier
19said, there is not just a single proof with Adolf's name
20on it, is neither here nor there?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, my Lord, let him fight his own battles. The
22proposition that learned counsel has put is entirely
23acceptable. It is monstrous to assume that Adolf Hitler
24would not have known, and I have said precisely the same,
25my Lord. In my books I have said that after October 1943,
26which is the kind of watershed time that I put, he had no
1excuse for not knowing, which is as far as I would go. Of
2course, it is not a smoking gun. It is not the kind of
3balance of probabilities, or even evidence beyond all
4reasonable doubt that would be required in a criminal
5case. But he had no excuse for not having known because
6he then came into very close proximity with a large number
7of people who had been briefed in the most nauseating
8detail by Himmler himself as to what he was doing. I have
9made no secret about that in my books. I would be
10interested to hear how learned counsel gets round that
11particular problem when the time comes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That again is extremely helpful to have you
13say that, but can I ask you one question arising out of
14it? I quite follow why you take October 1943 as the date
15from which you accept Hitler was in the know.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Had no excuse not to know.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Or had no excuse not to know, but what about the period
18with I think Mr Rampton has really been dealing with this
19afternoon between November/December 1941 and October 1943?
20 A. [Mr Irving] We are very ill-advised by the documents that are
21available even now. We are ill informed by the documents
22that are available even now after 55 years, my Lord, and
23this is where you begin having to say that, I forget what
24the legal term is, there may be a legal term for it, but
25in any case of ambiguity then the balance of doubt has to
26be given to the accused rather than to the incriminated.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Can that really be right when you have a situation where
2Hitler was at any rate not objecting as from October 1943
3to what most people would regard as thoroughly abhorrent?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Can you not infer from that that, assuming the evidence
6was available for him, he would not have put up any
7objection before October 1943?
8 A. [Mr Irving] That is precisely the way that I would be inclined to put
9it, my Lord. I have even said on occasion that there is
10no evidence that he would have objected even if he had
11been told the most brutal detail of what was going on.
12But we just do not have that evidence. My literary agent
13in America said, "For God's sake, if you have not got the
14evidence, invent it". I thought my ten years spent in
15researching the book were too precious for that.
16 MR RAMPTON: So it really comes to this, does it, Mr Irving?
17If you were sitting on a jury in a criminal court, whereas
18I might very easily convict Hitler, you would not, but, if
19you are looking for proof positive that he did not know,
20you are swimming very hard against the tide, are you not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] No. You talk about in a criminal court and in a criminal
22court of course the standards of evidence required,
23particularly where a man's life is at stake, are much
24sterner than in a civil action. Am I right?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Never mind civil actions or criminal actions. This is a
26rotten analogy, anyway. You are an historian.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you started the analogy.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you did, with your references to the standard of proof
3in a criminal court when you were answering his Lordship.
4It is a rotten analogy.
5 A. [Mr Irving] I think it is a very useful analogy.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] What are you looking at as an historian is not a question
7whether a man is guilty or not of law, whether he is
8liable to pay damages. You are looking at the evidence
9with an open and objective mind to see what is the degree
10of probability that it suggests as to what happened. That
11is what are you doing, is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] This is right, but then at this point different historians
13operate in different ways, and it may be that I make
14myself culpable by just putting the evidence in the pages
15and not joining up the dots and allowing the reader to do
16the dot joining for himself. I assume that my readers
17have a certain degree of intellectual honesty and ability,
18that they are capable of forming their own conclusions
19provided I present the evidence to them with as much
20integrity as possible. Other historians, like no doubt
21some of the experts in this case, like to join up the dots
22for you and that is where the mistakes I think creep in.
23It is possible that my way of writing history is wrong.
24It is possible their way of writing history is right.
25They have been taught in universities how to write, I have
26not, but this is not Holocaust denial, Mr Rampton.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, Mr Irving, we will come to that next week, but your
2method of writing history, whether one approves of it
3academically or not is quite beside the point, is
4perfectly all right provided that you do not distort and
5manipulate the evidence, is it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] You are absolutely right.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] If we should succeed in proving that that is exactly what
8you have done on a number of occasions, then you do not
9deserve the name historian, do you?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I take you do not consider that you have succeeded so far.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] What privately I should think, Mr Irving, I certainly am
12not going to tell you.
13 A. [Mr Irving] From the way you couched the question.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I could be standing here thinking why am I going through
15all this, I have already cooked ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] You know why you are going through this, and I do. It is
17connected with a very substantial fee you are paid for
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is cheap. Let us get on.
20 MR RAMPTON: It is not only cheap, it is complete rubbish. My
21Lord, I would pass now, if I may ----
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we will probably stop now.
23 MR RAMPTON: I tell you where I am going next. I am going
24briefly to Dr Brach in the autumn of 1941, which relates
25to gassings in the Warthegau and possibly also in Riga.
26 JUSTICE GRAY: Is that vans?
1 MR RAMPTON: Vans yes, and then I am going to go to what
2Mr Irving calls the Schlegelberger memorandum, and then
3probably to the Roman Jews, unless your Lordship would
4prefer, which equally well we can do, to have a look at
5Hitler's earlier utterances.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. All I think is that sometime that is
8 MR RAMPTON: It is obviously important.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Both to the manipulation and also to
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I am thinking that the subject of Hitler's
12Adjutants is a long one with, I am afraid, probably quite
13a lot of documents to look at because of the records of
14what they said. That may take more than one day, which
15I do not have, so I was going to leave that until after
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is fine. It does occur to me that
18sometimes there is scope for exploring before one gets
19into the detail.
20 MR RAMPTON: I know.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We had an example just a moment ago. It is
22not remotely intended to be a reproof.
23 MR RAMPTON: It is amazing what answers one can get. I have
24made the assumption, perhaps wrongly, that any general
25question I ask is either going to get no answer ----
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see there may be forensic reasons for
1doing it the other way too, but I just wonder in this case
2whether the desirability of short cuts does not suggest
3one sacrifices ----
4 MR RAMPTON: I see the attraction, but I do think it essential,
5and the only forensic reason, apart from wanting answers
6to my questions, is that I do want your Lordship to have
7as full a picture as possible, because all these things
8are contextually linked.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have the reports, remember.
10 MR RAMPTON: I know.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What about the argument about Auschwitz? It
12seems to me that we are nipping at that topic from time to
13time, inevitably. I think in many ways the sooner we have
14the argument the better?
15 A. [Mr Irving] It is Tuesday now, possibly on Thursday.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If would you like go for Thursday, yes?
17 A. [Mr Irving] If you would limit us both to half an hour each on that.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am all in favour of doing that.
19 MR RAMPTON: I have said my two minutes already.
20 A. [Mr Irving] You may have more to say after you have heard me.
21 MR RAMPTON: We will let Mr Irving go first since essentially
22I believe it to be an objection really.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it matters who goes first.
24Would you like to go first, Mr Irving?
25 A. [Mr Irving] It makes no difference to me either.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good, so 10.30 tomorrow?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Thank you.
2 <(The witness stood down)
3(The court adjourned until the following day)