text:
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 14: Electronic Edition
Pages 1 - 175 of 175
1IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
2Royal Courts of Justice
3Strand, London
4 Wednesday, 2nd February 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)
23(This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company)
1 <Day 14 Wednesday, 2nd February 2000.
2 (10.30 a.m.)
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?
4 MR IRVING: My Lord, may it please the court. Mr Rampton
5wishes to put the witness van Pelt back in the witness box
6(and I have no objections) to take further submissions in
7connection with the challenged document.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
9 MR RAMPTON: My Lord ----
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The incineration capacity?
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes, he has done his homework and I am just going
12to let him tell your Lordship ----
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whilst we remember what the point is, it is a
14good idea.
15 MR RAMPTON: Can I, first of all, pass up to your Lordship, as
16requested, he has given your Lordship a nomenclature guide
17for Auschwitz and also he has done a hand drawn sketch
18plan of the whole site. I suggest your Lordship puts that
19in the front of the Auschwitz file, probably the second
20Auschwitz file.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes, K2. The documents which he will produce in a
23moment will go in tab 4 of K2, I suggest.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have had these documents, Mr Irving, have
26 MR IRVING: Yes, my Lord, I have just received them.
1 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see, this is what I asked for.
3 MR RAMPTON: It is, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. I had not realized what
5it was.
6 < PROFESSOR VAN PELT, recalled.
7 < Further re-examined by MR RAMPTON, QC.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor, thank you very much for doing
9that. Yes, Mr Rampton?
10 MR RAMPTON: Professor van Pelt, just one question. Have you
11taken up his Lordship's request or invitation to study
12this document, which is the one we had which is the
13document of 28th June 1943, which relates to incineration
14capacity, to study the question whether or not it is
15authentic ----
16 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, I have.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Its having been challenged. Will you then please tell his
18Lordship what conclusions you have reached by reference to
19this document and any others in this little clip? Can you
20give that to the judge?
21 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I have last night with what was still available to me,
22because I only carry a small bundle of documents I carried
23with me to London and even some already had been packed
24I did not want to open the box, but whatever I had, I was
25going to look at a couple of the challenges which had been
26made yesterday by Mr Irving.
1 Before I go into that, I would like to present,
2first of all, my copy, my marked copy, which is No. 1 of
3the document which comes from Moscow. There are some
4calculations on the back, on the side, which are
5irrelevant. I have indicated on this, this is page No. 1,
6on what were the particular issues Mr Irving found
7important which is the way the date was typed in as 28th
8June 1943 without a location, without Auschwitz,
9Achtundzwanzigte Juni Neunhundertdreiundvierzig.
10 The second thing which was challenged yesterday
11was the code which indicates the Brieftage Buchnumber
12which is 31550, and then Jahrling, or Jahrling, and then
13the secretary.
14 The third one was the title of SS Brigadefuhrer
15Generalmayor der Waffen SS Kammler.
16 On the last point, I did not have find any
17document where the same mistake had happened. So I cannot
18explain that or I cannot give any second document, but
19then I only had one other document with me which was the
20Vergasungskeller letter of 29th June 1943 where Kammler
21has got on the right and the correct title.
22 The first document I would like to present which
23is a new document is No. 2, which is the copy which is in
24the Domburg archive in the DDR -- the former DDR now --
25and which was made available to the Auswenzin archive.
26This was the document, the copy which actually has been
1published in the 50s, and I have here the original.
2I have given you a copy of my copy, but I have here the
3original copy from the Auschwitz archive with the original
4stamp on it, so I do not know.
5 MR RAMPTON: I do believe his Lordship ought to see that partly
6because our copy ----
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a very good copy.
8 MR RAMPTON: It is not a very good copy. There are some colour
9on that, original colour on that.
10 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] This copy is not much better, but at least it shows the
11original stamp of the archive.
12 MR IRVING: Just so we can be plain, this one went, in other
13words, to East Germany and Auschwitz, not the other way
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, probably.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where it was stamped?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just to make sure I am following, the one
18that we have previously been looking at, I thought you
19said came originally from the Moscow archives?
20 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] That is the Moscow copy, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] This is DDR?
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Domburg, yes, the Domburg archive, which has been
23available in Poland since at least -- this was published
24in the 50s and this is also the document which went to
25Vienna, this particular copy. A copy of that was made
26available to Vienna.
1 Now, what is important in this second copy, and
2it is not a very clear copy, but I think the essential
3information is the same. I mean, the information is the
4same but the formatting is different. We see when we look
5at this particular copy, we see at the top it says
6"Abschrift" which means this is a typed copy. There was
7no photocopy machine in it. So while the original, the
8Moscow copy No. 1 is a carbon copy of the original, the
9second one is actually a newly typed copy, and with all
10these newly typed copies there would always have been a
11note at the bottom. It should be signed. It says: "Fur
12Die Richtigkeit der Abschrift which means for the correct
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Accuracy?
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] --- the correctness of this copy and then there is an
16initial there. It is very difficult even in my copy to
17see who actually signed this.
18 The reason that I think this is quite important
19is that this is a different copy of the Moscow one which
20is in a different archive. So we have now two different
21objects, both talking about an incineration capacity of
224,756 persons in the camp. If, indeed, the Moscow --
23I mean, I think it is very, very unlikely that somebody
24who would have falsified this document, made it up
25afterwards, would have created both a carbon copy of one
26and then have made a new kind of Abschrift of that same
1document, and then placed it into two different archives.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, on the contrary, I thought that might have been what
3a determined forger might have done.
4 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] So that he actually make two different versions of the
5same copy?
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I understand your point.
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I disagree with your Lordship on that, but your opinion in
8the end is more important than mine on this, I think.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Your are rather better informed than me.
10 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] This very much takes the format of a typed copy as you
11find in the Auschwitz archive. So I think that in this
12case there is a convergence of two different objects,
13showing in two different archives, that, indeed, we have
14here, you know, as far as I say with absolute certainty in
15the original document. But there were other challenges
16made and, in order to deal with the other challenges,
17I would like to go to a very short review of the way
18documents in the Auschwitz archive, both letters and also
19copies, are dated, and the way the code which shows which
20file it has to go in is done.
21 So when I go to No. 3, which is a letter from
22Bischoff, the chief architect to the chief doctor in
23Auschwitz, of 30th June 1944, about the building of small
24morgues in Birkenhau, they were built in the existing
25barracks -- every camp in Birkenhau would get one morgue
26-- we see basically that the heading says Auschwitz, 30th
1June, "den 30.Juni 1944". It would be the normal accepted
2way of dating a letter, and then we see the brief type of
3book number. We see there two numbers and then we see
4"Jo" which is for Jotam who was at that moment the chief
5architect, and "Go" without dots, without periods.
6 If we go to No. 4, this is a record of a
7meeting. We see that the date is again Auschwitz, 30th
8January 1943, but we see that the secretary who typed this
9letter in this case has a period behind the initial.
10 If we go to No. 5, which is a letter to Topf u.
11Sohne, a carbon copy of a letter to Topf u. Sohne, which
12was done on letter head, we see that there is no place.
13It says simply 28th February 1943. In this case there are
14no periods behind the initials of both Jahrling and the
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] When you say "no place" do you mean no "den" ----
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No period. It does not say Auschwitz den 28th February.
18Mr Irving yesterday challenged the authenticity of the
19Moscow document because there was no place. So this one
20does not have a place given.
21 Then we have No. 6 which is one of these typed
22copies, Abschrift, which does not have a place which
23probably would be, you know, probably would also not have
24been in the original. But what we see here is that the
25secretary has again a period behind her name, but the
26Jahrling thing, we see in this case Jahrling is typed JA
1umlaut H, while in other ones he is only typed as JAH,
2umlaut, which means now they have added an H. So there
3seemed to be at least also the way the name has been
4shortened, there seems to be no kind of agreement on it.
5 Then we go to No. 8 because No. 7 is the ----
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Second page?
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] --- the second page of that letter. We see that again the
8secretary has a period and then Dr E has a period. He is
9one of the doctors in the camp. No. 9 we see again, no
10place. This is a letter to Hoess from Bischoff and one
11would have expected this to be probably correct, following
12the correct format. We see that there is no place
13indicated. It says 12th February 1943. Again, the
14secretary has a period but not the Sturmbannfuhrer Pollok,
15who dictated the letter. But, when we go to No. 10 and
16No. 11 ----
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] There is a point on 6. I just wonder whether it is a good
18point or a bad point? Tell me. The tagebuch number is in
19typescript, not manuscript.
20 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Sometimes it is typescript, sometimes manuscript.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That was another point Mr Irving made, I think.
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, I am sorry, I had forgotten that. We see again that
23sometimes it is handwritten and sometimes it is typed.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes. Sorry, that was taking you back.
25 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes. Now we come to No. 10 and there we see that in fact
26both the person who dictated the letter and the person who
1typed the letter in this case have a period behind their
2initials, and in fact behind the person who typed it there
3is even a dash. No. 11, the letter of 19th July 1944, we
4see that this is a letter dictated by Steilv.Bauleiter
5Teichmann. We see there is a period behind the shortened
6form of his name and a period behind the letter indicating
7the secretary.
8 So I think that the only conclusion one can draw
9out of this is that there was no standard procedure in the
11 I have added two other documents and this has to
12do really with a challenge Mr Irving gave in his letter to
13me which was posted on the web. I do not know if I can
14address that, but it is an alternative way of dating a
15letter, which says "am" instead of "den". So sometimes it
16says "Auschwitz den" and then the date comes, but
17sometimes it also says "Auschwitz am" 14th May 1943.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I do not think that was
19Mr Irving's, if he will forgive me, best point. They are
20both used, are they not?
21 MR IRVING: I accept his point on that.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you did.
23 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Then there was one other thing which came up yesterday and
24I do not know if I am allowed to give testimony on that,
25which was the number of 2.5 million and 1.1 million which
26were given by Hoess.
1 MR IRVING: Yes.
2 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I have re-read that passage.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not object to this? You introduced it
4Mr Irving, so I think it is right.
5 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I would like to go back to the point in my report which is
6at page 306 where the actual quotation is. I have
7repeated it in a few other places but I think 306 is a
8good point to do that.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
10 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] It starts in the second paragraph: "On the basis of the
11figure of 2.5 million", and I do not know if you want me
12to read it?
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Shall I just cast my eye down it? (Pause for reading)
14Yes, I have looked at quickly. I have read it before.
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] OK. So the point is that what Hoess says -- I will
16summarize it -- is that there is this figure of two and a
17half million which is mentioned by Eichmann. This is the
18only figure we have because Eichmann mentions it. But
19then he says that I have only kept to this figure because
20Eichmann has given it, but I myself think it is too high.
21Then he makes his own calculation on the basis of
22transports coming into Auschwitz. So he actually
23challenges that figure. After he has first mentioned it
24he challenges this figure and he comes then to a total
25number of deportations of 1,125,000 Jews going to
26Auschwitz at the bottom of that paragraph.
1 So that I think will in some way resolve the
2confusion about these two numbers.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. That is helpful.
4 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there are a couple of other points --
5I have seen these documents for the first time myself --
6which I just draw attention to, perhaps through the
7witness. Can we go back to page 10, Professor van Pelt?
8I do not know that you did draw attention to this, it
9really is obvious. There is underneath the Kommandantur
10KL there is an AZ and a colon.
11 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] And then a number. Do you see that that number is
13somewhat typed? It may have been altered in hand, I
14cannot see.
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You notice also that the reference is underlined?
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you turn over the page,, this one is coming from
19Birkenhau apparently and, unlike the previous one, the
20reference is handwritten and there is no underline.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the significance of the underlining,
22do you suggest?
23 MR RAMPTON: I am not suggesting any significance at all. All
24I am suggesting is that this is a medley.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Another variation?
26 MR RAMPTON: It depends who is typing it, it depends how fussy
1the boss is, all that kind of thing. There is nothing to
2be told from these documents except that, like all
3offices, they vary in their practices. Look, will you
4please, Professor, at page 12, again at the reference,
5there is no underline. We see that it is apparently typed
6by a secretary called Lm, whatever gender that may have
7been. If you turn over to the last page, again we find
8the reference both typed and underlined. And we find that
9Lm is typing for somebody else called Eg. Do you see
11 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not happen to know who Eg was, do you?
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Egelich.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does not particularly arise out of this, I think, or
15indirectly -- do you happen to know how many secretaries
16there were at any one time?
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] That changed. There are documents which have actually
18been signed by people who also had other functions.
19Normally I think there were one or two German secretaries
20and there were a number of Polish secretaries also. For
21example, P is a Polish worker named Pluskurer. It seems
22to be that there was no regular typing pool in the
23Zentralbauleitung. Also the Zentralbauleitung, if you
24look at the personnel lists, changes very rapidly, with
25people moving in and people moving out.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if the authenticity of the
2incineration capacity is still in issue, you might want to
3cross-examine further? I do not know.
4 MR IRVING: I think I am entitled on the points he has made, my
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are certainly entitled to, yes.
7 MR IRVING: I will be as brief as I possibly can.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not hurry
9 < Further cross-examined by Mr Irving
10 MR IRVING: Firstly, I will abandon relying on the full stops.
11That will probably ease your Lordship's task in assessing
12the matter, but the other matters, I am afraid, are just
13reinforced by what I have seen here.
14 First of all, reverting to what you said about
15the witness Hoess, the Kommandant of Auschwitz, have you
16seen a handwritten confession by Hoess made in British
17captivity at the request of Colonel Draper, the British
18public prosecutor?
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, I have not seen that.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] It was one of the very first statements he made, in which
21he admitted -- it is just five or six lines long --
22having killed 2.8 million people in Auschwitz.
23 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, I have not seen that one.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Killing by gas?
25 MR IRVING: Just killing, my Lord. He does not actually say.
26I rely on that purely to indicate the vacillating nature
1of the figures that the witness Hoess gave.
2 Reverting now to these documents that you
3very kindly produce for the court, I will take up first of
4all the point that his Lordship very astutely made about
5page 6, where you pointed out that the letter book number
6was typed. Witness, what does the first word on that page
7mean, "Abschrift"?
8 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] That means it is a copy.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] In other words, it has been copied from the original?
10 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving] Would there have been any reason why somebody copying an
12original document would have then left a space there and
13handwritten in the letter book number, which was
14presumably handwritten in on the original? He would have
15typed a copy of the whole document, would he not?
16 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I presume so, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] So it would be wrong to draw any significance from the
18fact that that one is typed. Stepping through the
19documents, I would just ask in general, have you seen, in
20all the documents that you have worked on in the Auschwitz
21archives, any other document in which the year 43 or 44 is
22missing from the letter register line?
23 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Are we referring back to the original Moscow document?
24 Q. [Mr Irving] Any document at all. Have you seen any document at all?
25I am not referring to the date of the document. I am
26referring to the letter register line.
1 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] The 31550 and no year.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] That is correct, which has no year. Have you seen any
3document at all which omits the year?
4 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I do not remember.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] Very well. Have you seen any document at all which has a
6secretary with the initials Ne?
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] As I said, I do not remember. I could reconstruct who the
8secretary was, but that is at the moment not available to
9me. The point I thought I made was that many different
10people are typing these letters. We have seen, I think,
11not one time the same person typing any of these letters
12in this very small collection.
13 Q. [Mr Irving] Is it correct that there are about 50,000 such letters now
14extant, now in the archives, in Moscow and in Auschwitz?
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Something like that, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. Would it surprise you that other researchers
17investigating specifically this document have looked for
18any other letter at all in all the thousands of letters
19available signed by a secretary Ne, or with the
20secretary's initials Ne on them, and there is no such
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] This is a big problem, of course, how to make a proof, how
23to make a negative proof. I can imagine that people have
24been looking for this. What I can say is that I have not
25investigated the secretary who wrote this letter. The
26only thing I can say is that there seems to have been no
1consistent policy. I must also remark that, if I were to
2be a forger ----
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is not really a policy point, is it?
4 MR IRVING: It is the only way I can phrase the question.
5 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] OK.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a policy point. It is was there a
7secretary whose name started ne? It is nothing to do with
9 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] When I am back in Canada I can look that up, but I think
10the important point is, if I were to be forger, I would of
11course not invent a new name.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a different point.
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I would take one of the existing initials.
14 MR IRVING: This is clear. So you would not be surprised if we
15found another letter with the secretary's initials Ne on
16it? I am afraid I cannot give evidence in my
17questioning. I can only say would you be surprised to
18hear that there is not one?
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] If this were to be a forgery, the forger would have been a
20very, very dumb person.
21 Q. [Mr Irving] In all the letters that you have seen, Professor van Pelt,
22including these ten you provided this morning, have
23you seen any in which the rank of the Brigadier General
24Kammler is wrong? They have left out the words
25"Generalmayor der Waffen SS". My Lord, I will draw your
26attention to the way it should have been.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have noticed Kammler is the recipient of
2one of the other documents.
3 MR IRVING: It is, on page 13, my Lord. That is the correct
4way it should have been written.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have the answer, that this is the only
6occasion on which the Professor has seen that happen.
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] There is one final point, my Lord, which is a fourth
9question, which is possibly new and I would certainly be
10willing to let Mr Rampton come back on this one. The
11serial number of the document 31550, is that in sequence
12with the other documents of those days?
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] In the file, you mean?
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes.
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I do not remember. I looked at the document in the file
16originally in relationship to the contents and not in
17relationship to the serial number. I am happy to go back,
18when I am back in North America, and have the whole file
19printed out, and then this thing could be reconsidered.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Again, I have to ask the question this way. Would it
21surprise you to hear that the number is way out of
22sequence by several weeks?
23 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] In general, if you look at the files -- I am not
24completely surprised but the thing is, the way the files
25were created, the files quite often have things not in
26sequence, even in the Auschwitz archive. So it is very
1difficult sometimes to see. Normally what happens is a
2file is built up, that the earliest documents are at the
3back and then, of course, as new documents come in, the
4documents ultimately get their final order.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But you agree that all the other documents, in these ten
6you have provided, the numbers are in serial sequence?
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] In serial sequence?
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I have just checked them and they are, in so far as they
9are part of the same series?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are put together for the purposes of
11this clip.
12 MR IRVING: I appreciate that, my Lord.
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I just picked up some things from a pack I had last
14night. I just was going through what I had in my hand.
15 Q. [Mr Irving] The very last question is this. Was Jahrling an SS
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I think Jahrling was actually a Zivilarbeiter.
18 Q. [Mr Irving] Why is he on the second page of this document signing as
19an SS Sturmbannfuhrer, the one that has been provided?
20 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] It seems that the original document was obviously meant to
21be signed by Jahrling, but this is an abschrift and he
22initialled this thing. Whatever the abschrift was made
23of, whatever copy the abschrift was made of, had his
24initials on it and this happens quite often. Since the
25original signed copy went to Kammler, which was signed by
26Bischoff, then quite often there would be a little -- one
1of the other people would just ----
2 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor van Pelt, I think you have misunderstood my
3question. Would you look at page 2, please?
4 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes. I see Jahrling, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] It appears to have been signed three lines from the bottom
6Gezeichnet Jahrling SS Sturmbannfuhrer.
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] It says "Zentralbauleitung der Waffen SS und Polizei" on
8the top, which means this is signed by the leader, the
9chief architect which was SS Sturmbannfuhrer Bischoff at
10the time, but the copy which was available to the person
11who wrote the Asbchrift must have had Jahrling's signature
12on it, which is something which happens quite often, that
13you see another signature than Bischoff's in actually the
14copies which are in the archive.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does "gezeichnet" actually mean "signed".
16 MR IRVING: Yes.
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] If means "signed" here, but I presume that this person who
18was writing this Asbchrift had in some way ----
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow what you are saying.
20 MR IRVING: Is it not correct civil service procedure to put
21the letters "iA" if you are signing on behalf of someone?
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, bit I do not think we are here in a kind of typical
23Civil Service condition. We have seen that people are all
24over the place in the way they are actually formatting
25these documents.
26 MR IRVING: My Lord, I have no further questions.
1 MR RAMPTON: Well, sorry, I do have some by way of
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You may want some re-examination.
4 < Re-examined by MR RAMPTON, QC
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we take that last point first? Can you take page 1,
6please? In the bottom left-hand corner of the page is a
7column what looks a bit like names?
8 MR IRVING: It is a distribution list.
9 MR RAMPTON: Thank you, Mr Irving, but I am asking the witness
10questions. "Verteiler", do you see that?
11 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the last name on that might be "Jahrling", might it?
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, that is Jahrling. So Jahrling got a copy of this
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the point you have made, that is the
16only indication of who signed it available to the person
17who did the Auschwitz. So they put "gezeichnet" by
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Do you notice, please on page 4 a signature
21over a Sturmbannfuhrer?
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whose signature is that?
24 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] That is Bischoff's signature.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] What about page 7 over the same word Sturmbannfuhrer?
26 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] That is not Bischoff's signature, but it was ----
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Somebody has written "signed Bischoff"?
2 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, what we see here is we see that there is a little
3note on the lower corner, the lower on page 7, it says Fur
4die Richtigkeit der Asbchrift, which says, this is
5Pollock, I think it is Pollock, SS Untersturmfuhrer, and
6so Pollock now has put the name of Bischoff, signed in his
7own handwriting Bischoff's name, since we are dealing here
8with an Asbchrift. So in some way Pollock has done by
9hand what in some way occurred in page No. 2 which is
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is only one other thing I need to ask you about and
12it is this. Mr Irving seems to take the point, if I have
13understood it, that if the reference number is typed
14rather than handwritten, one must expect to find the word
15"Abschrift" on top of the document. Can you look at page
163? Is there "Abschrift" on top of the document?
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, that not Abschrift.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] And is the reference number typed or handwritten?
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] The reference number is typed.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] And at page 6 we see Abschrift and a typed reference
21number, but what about page 10?
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Page 10, it was typed and it was corrected by hand.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] And there is no Abschrift on top of it?
24 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, there is no Abschrift.
25 MR IRVING: It is not actually a letter register number there;
26it is the file number.
1 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] [German].
2 MR RAMPTON: Well, this is the third or fourth example so
3perhaps the point is made. What about page 13?
4 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Page 13, it is typed.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is typed and there is no "Abschrift" on top of it?
6 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes, thank you.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you the same question, Professor,
9that I asked you when you gave evidence yesterday which is
10whether the points that have been put to you this morning
11raise something of a doubt in your mind about the
12authenticity of this document?
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, it does not.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] The point about the year not being included, is there
15anything in that?
16 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I think it is a good observation, but what we see also
17here, you see if we look at this Moscow, this Moscow
18document, what we see that the numbers were actually typed
19in later. It seems to be that there is a -- it is a
20slightly different - also when we look at the persons, it
21seems they may made up first the letter and that
22ultimately they were -- this letter was drafted and the
23numbers were put in after some kind of final
24consultation. It is a very marked difference with the
25second copy with Domburg. It seems to be that the final
26numbering, the number, was brought in later and I can
1quite imagine that there was a slip occurred at that
3 MR IRVING: May I enquire on what basis you say that the
4numbers were typed in later?
5 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] It seems that if we look at the way, if we look at, for
6example, No. 340 personen, the 340 seems to be almost done
7slightly sharper than "persona". If we can compare that
8to 1943 on top, I do not know, I mean, but it seems to be
9that it is -- that my sense would be that they were added
10later, that there was a first draft made, and especially
11if we look at the "31550/" in the brieftagebuch number,
12again the slash seems to come very close to the zero,
13almost as if they put it back in the typewriter and put in
14the numbers.
15 Now, it is also possible, of course, that they
16had cleaned their numbers. You know, these typewriters,
17these manual typewriters, they would get very messy at a
18certain moment and especially as in Auschwitz they were
19reusing the same, how do you call it, ribbon constantly
20because there was a great lack of it. They get very
21smudgy at a certain moment, and also the letters get very
22smudgy, so maybe they had cleaned the numbers to be
23absolutely certain that these numbers would be clear.
24I cannot say. But my sense would be, if you look at the
25brieftagebuch number, that it is possible that they were,
26that it was added later, also because it goes left of the
1original, how do you call it ----
2 MR IRVING: The margin.
3 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] The margin, and in the other things it seems to be in
4generally on the margin. So that also indicates that it
5was generally added later. So, you know, you cannot be
6absolutely sure about it. But, it seems to be that it was
7not regular that the person was typing that heading and at
8that moment was actually putting on all the information.
9So since the information was put in later, maybe it is
10simply the 43 slipped.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?
12 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] But it is speculation. We cannot be certain about it.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Thank you very much. Can I give you back your original?
14I am ashamed to say I have made a slight mark on it, not
16 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] You can keep it if you want because I have a copy now.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But this is the original?
18 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] This is the original copy from Auschwitz. That is why it
19is stamped. If you want to keep it, since it has a stamp
20on it?
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] All right. Thank you. Can I say one or more thing? On
22the back of it, of that copy you have, actually has the
23actual file in which it is. It says BW34. It is on the
24back, so that is the actual file in which that document
25can be found.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
1 < (The witness stood down)
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, where shall I put this clip?
3 MR RAMPTON: In tab 4 of K2, the second Auschwitz file.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Immediately after page 49?
5 MR RAMPTON: I would think so. In due course I am going to
6sort mine into chronological order.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So further cross-examination of Mr Irving
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
10 < MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.
11 Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I have two things which I wish to say here from the box,
13my Lord, if I may?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
15 A. [Mr Irving] One goes to yesterday, the letter, you remember, from the
16man who had been in an Aufraumungs Kommando, do you
17remember, and who had had knowledge of 30,000 records of
1830,000 in Dresden.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Dresden, yes?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Back on Dresden. I just want to draw attention to the
21fact that the letter was dated sometime in 1965, four
22years after the book was written. That is a reference to
23page 538 of the Evans report.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.
25 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I provided to your Lordship a copy of the actual
26order of the day which was missing from the bundle,
1and ----
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] The Tagesbefehl?
3 A. [Mr Irving] That is right, and I have provided you with an English
4translation of it.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Thank you very much.
6 A. [Mr Irving] And in view of the fact that the Defence, at least in
7their catalogue, relied on a letter that Mr Kimber wrote
8to me, which I complained of as being prejudicial, I
9have put in the clip for your Lordship the reply that
10I sent to him.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Just pause a moment. The Tagesbefehl we ought to put
13 A. [Mr Irving] It does not really add or subtract anything from the case,
14but your Lordship should really have a copy of the
15document we spent most of yesterday talking about.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I quite agree. Mr Rampton, where would it go?
17 MR RAMPTON: This ...
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is the genuine one?
19 A. [Mr Irving] No, my Lord. This was the fake one.
20 MR RAMPTON: If you look on the second page, my Lord, you will
21see it has the ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know whether there actually ever was a genuine
23one. I telephoned with Mr Bergander in Berlin this
24morning, and he said that the man who gave him the
25so-called genuine one had copies of both.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think page 14A, is that right?
1 A. [Mr Irving] The other only little bundle I have gave your Lordship
2this morning was ----
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Just pause a moment, and let us get this into the right
4place. Is that right? It is a question of where it goes
5in the chronological sequence otherwise it gets lost.
6Come on, we are wasting time.
7 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I have not got my Dresden file here so I
8am afraid I cannot help.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, can Miss Rogers find out where it should
11 MR RAMPTON: Can we sort it out?
12 A. [Mr Irving] The only other thing I gave your Lordship was just five
13photographs of the Goebbels diary so you know what we are
14talking about when we come on to the Goebbels matter.
15That is the boxes and so on that they came in.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
17 MR RAMPTON (To the witness): Mr Irving, Hans Almeyer, I think
18you first discovered him in June 1992?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I think it was June 2nd 1992, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your diary entry ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] June 3rd.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- is 3rd, so it would be yesterday, would it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your diary entry reads -- you can see it if you like, we
25have it here -- "Later at PRO all day". This is what
26happened on 2nd. "Finished reading file of interrogations
1and MS manuscript by one SS officer, Hans Almeyer, a high
2Auschwitz official. Once again, like Gerstein, his
3reports grow more lurid as the months progress. I wonder
4why? Beaten like Hoess or was he finally telling the
5truth? A disturbing two hours anyway." Do you remember
6that entry?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Very clearly, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then I think there is a document you should look at. I am
9afraid, my Lord, I have no idea which file it comes from.
10It is a letter written by Mr Irving on 4th June to
11Mr Marcellus?
12 A. [Mr Irving] "Dear Tom".
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] The whole clump should go into L1 at tab 5, if it is empty
14which it should be.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: L1, this is nothing to do with Dresden, is
17 MR RAMPTON: No, this is to do with Auschwitz actually, but it
18has much more to do -- I mean, it is indirectly to do with
19Auschwitz because Almeyer was there for a time. I do not
20remember how long, about nine months, I think, perhaps a
21bit longer. No, it is the way in which Mr Irving handles
22this information that may be of importance. So that is
23why L1 is a what file?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Dresden.
25 MR RAMPTON: It has "Hungary" in front, so it can have Almeyer
26at the back. So long as they go where Miss Rogers says,
1my Lord, then the index will be of use, otherwise it will
3 (To the witness): Have you got that letter you
4wrote on 4th June 1992 to Mr Marcellus and Mr Weber?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I was looking at them last night.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh good. That is all right. It is a fax, in fact.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] They both would have received the whole text, is that
9right, although the first part is addressed to
10Mr Marcellus and the second part to ----
11 A. [Mr Irving] I think they worked in same warehouse, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am only going to read the part that is addressed to Mark
13Weber or does he calls himself "Weber"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] "Weber", I think.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who as Marcellus?
16 A. [Mr Irving] He was the Director of the Institute.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So he is IHR as well?
18 A. [Mr Irving] IHR, yes and Mark Weber was some functionary there.
19 MR RAMPTON: You write to Mark Weber: "Working in the Public
20Record Office yesterday, I came across the 200 page
21handwritten memoirs, very similar in sequence to the
22Gurstein report versions of an SS officer, Almeyer, who
23was virtually Hoess's deputy. They have just been opened
24for research. He was held in a most brutal British prison
25camp, the London Cave (the notorious Lieutenant Colonel A
26Scotland)". Then you write: "These manuscripts are going
1to be a problem for revisionists and need analysing now in
2advance of our enemies and answering. I attach my
3transcript of a few pages and you will see why. It
4becomes more lurid with each subsequent version. At first
5no gassings, then 50, then 15,000 total. Brute force by
6interrogators perhaps".
7 Now, I have a number of questions about that
8little message, Mr Irving.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why are the manuscript notes, or whatever they are,
11memoirs of Almeyer going to be a problem for revisionists?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I think because they refute a number of the tenets of the
13revisionist Bible, if I can put it like that.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is the revisionist Bible?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the revisionist credo.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, at its most extreme, it is that not a hair was harmed
18on the head of the Jews which was the most extreme and
19indefensible position.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Does that include Mr Marcellus and Mr Weber?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Obviously not, otherwise I would not be writing this kind
22of letter to them, but the Almeyer manuscript, as I would
23call them, just like the Adolf Eichmann manuscripts that I
24had found the previous October in Argentina, raised
25serious questions. They helped to do somewhat more than
26dot i's and cross t's.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] "... and need analysing now in advance of our enemies"?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who is the "our" referred to there?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the enemies of myself and Mr Weber and, presumably,
5Tom Marcellus.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who are those enemies?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Irresponsible historians who will leap on any document and
8use it to inflate the untenable position at the other end
9of the spectrum.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] What you were worried about, Almeyer tells a tale,
11accurate in parts, inaccurate in other parts, according to
12the traditional or the orthodox view of these matters,
13about his time at Auschwitz, does he not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] It is a very inaccurate tale which is, presumably, one
15reason why -- which is, presumably, one reason why the
16Defence has not relied on him so far.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will find him in extenso in Professor van Pelt's
18report. You will also find precise observations about
19what is accurate and what is not.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you remember when we asked the witness van Pelt who
21his important eyewitnesses were, there was no mention of
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, there is not because Almeyer is, in certain respects,
24plainly wrong.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, exactly what I said.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it may be what you said. What I am wondering about,
1Mr Irving, is why you were so frightened of Hans Almeyer's
2handwritten notes?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think I am frightened about him. I am just
4concerned for several reasons. Let me explain. As an
5independent historian, with no tenure Professorship to
6fall back on and, as I explained in my opening statement
7to this court, no pension to rely on, I have to rely on
8what find in the archives to sustain myself and my young
9family. In order to do that, I rely on finding what might
10be commonly called scoops, and when you have found a
11scoop, it would be very foolish if you put it straight in
12the shop window and say, "Come on and help yourself".
13This was clearly a scoop.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, that is not what you mean by the little phrase
15"our enemies", is it? What you are frightened of is that
16somebody will find it or see it and will say: "Well, here
17is another little piece of information. It does not fit
18in every respect, but the bits which are consistent with
19what we have already got fit neatly into the Auschwitz
20jigsaw". That is what you are afraid of, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] They do not fit neatly into Auschwitz jigsaw. It is quite
22plain. If he only refers to 15,000 dead or 15,000 gassed,
23then that fitted more into our jigsaw than into the jigsaw
24of our opponents.
25 MR RAMPTON: I will not ask you to look at it now, my Lord.
26I give in the reference a very full account of Almeyer,
1warts and all ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] Well, let me just draw your attention to that letter.
3 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I am speaking to his Lordship.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let Mr Rampton finish. Then you say what you
5want to say. Mr Rampton, yes, where do we find it?
6 MR RAMPTON: May I finish what I am saying to his Lordship?
7 A. [Mr Irving] His Lordship has just said the same.
8 MR RAMPTON: On pages 260 to 266.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of Professor van Pelt?
10 MR RAMPTON: Not the whole of it, I am sure it is not the whole
11of it, but a good deal of what he said is set out there.
12At various points in the footnotes, my Lord, Professor van
13Pelt, and probably also in the text, though I do not have
14the whole of it here, Professor van Pelt draws attention
15to passages in Almeyer which cannot be right.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the point on Almeyer was not really so
17much the number of Jewish prisoners who were gassed, but,
18rather, the detailed nature of the description of the gas
20 MR RAMPTON: Precisely, my Lord.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that fair?
22 MR RAMPTON: Absolutely right.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Right.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is what you and your revisionist friends were afraid
25of, was it not, Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Let me explain. I saw the Almeyer file on three
1occasions, as you now know, because I went to the Public
2Record Office and asked if they would give me a print out
3of all the occasions on which I saw the file. I saw it
4once for afternoon on June 3rd 1992, and I saw it
5subsequently four years later -- I have the actual print
6out here which will tell you the precise days when I saw
7it -- on May 29th 1996, and again probably in connection
8with preparation of this action on 6th September 1997. So
9I have seen it three times.
10 I am not a Holocaust historian. My time in the
11archives is limited. If I am not writing about the
12Holocaust in 1992, I am not going to spend the entire
13afternoon analysing a file of what looks like 200 pages.
14I skimmed through it, looked at the various versions,
15spotted the obvious discrepancies and immediately sent
16this, what you quite rightly described, I suppose, as an
17alarm signal to other people saying, "There is this report
18in the archives which is going to cause problems, and we
19are going to have to face up to it and it is better that
20we are the ones who publish it, rather than the people at
21the other end of the extreme, of either end of the two
22extremes, who will put spins on it which are quite
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] But, you see, Mr Irving, before ever having analysed it,
25thought about it, compared it with the rest of the great
26corpus of evidence about Auschwitz, you are already
1suggesting in this letter that Almeyer's account was
2beaten out of him by the British under the charge of the
3notorious Lieutenant Colonel Scotland, are you not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I take it you have never heard of Lieutenant Colonel
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, will you answer my question?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I have. I know who Lieutenant Colonel Scotland is
8and I know all about the Kensington Cage in which the
9prisoners were tortured.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I dare say you have. I am not the least bit
11interested in Colonel Scotland. Please answer my
12question. Before you have analysed these notes or
13compared them with the corpus of evidence on Auschwitz,
14you have already begun to suggest that they were beaten
15out of it?
16 A. [Mr Irving] The papers are found in the files of Lieutenant Colonel A
17Scotland which were seized from him by the British
18Government after the war. Almeyer was held finally in the
19London prison cage, which was Colonel Scotland's outfit,
20before he was turned over to the Nuremberg authorities.
21As his questioning proceeded, starting in Norway and then
22ending up in England because he was captured in Norway,
23his accounts became more lurid. The final accounts in his
24file are written in British Army style with all place
25names and proper nouns written in capital letters with all
26that that implies, in handwriting, in pencil.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But Mr Rampton's question, I think, was
2suggesting this to you -- I am just going to ask it, if I
3may -- that in a way you are putting the cart before the
4horse jumping to the conclusion -- this is the
5question ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- that because the Almeyer account was found in what you
8describe as the London Cage, it, therefore, followed that
9the account that he gives is worthless?
10 A. [Mr Irving] No, my Lord. What I am saying is because it gets
11progressively more lurid, because the numbers increase
12from report to report, and because it ends up written in
13traditional British Army style on British Army notepaper,
14in pencil with all the place names and proper nouns
15written in capital letters, one is entitled to draw
16certain conclusions from the physical appearance of this
17file, particularly when one associates it with the name of
18the notorious Colonel Scotland.
19 MR RAMPTON: Have you ever seen a police interview with a
20witness, Mr Irving -- a record, a handwritten record, of a
21police interview with a witness, Mr Irving?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I think there have been references to them in various
23Courts of Appeal, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving. Have you ever actually seen the record of
25a police interview? I am talking about the days before
26they were tape recorded and later typed, transcribed.
1Have you ever seen a record of an interview in a Police
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] You know perfectly well it is common form that poor old
5officer Bobby laboriously writes out what the witness is
6saying, and then when he comes to a name he always puts it
7in capital letters?
8 A. [Mr Irving] But is he writing out what the witness is saying or is he
9writing down something and saying to the witness, "No sign
10here, please. This is what you said"?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] So it is not just the notorious Colonel Scotland, it is
12the notorious Scotland Yard, is it?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you dragged them in. I did not mention them.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Come on, Mr Irving, the fact that it is written in pencil
15with the names in capitals tells us nothing.
16 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, it indicates clearly that he is doing
17precisely what he is told to at the dictate of the British
18Army officers who, undoubtedly, had ways of doing their
19job, they had ways of making people talk, and I have no
20criticism whatsoever of that. We won the war and these
21are the methods we used to win the war. But to use these
22same documents that we won the war with to write history
23from is, I think, indicative of the problems that we are
24having in the courtroom today. Because you yourself have
25admitted, your expert witnesses have admitted, that
26Almeyer frequently made wrong statements in his report.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, he did. In fact, he gave his first account in
2Norway, did he not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am told, and you probably will not know because you have
5never studied it, but in fact I am told that his most
6explicit and detailed account was given in Norway.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Not with these numbers, as I said in my letters to
8Mr Weber and also Mr Philip on the same day.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] His significance is not numbers, is it? His significance
10is procedure at Auschwitz, is it not?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that right, Mr Irving?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, I was not listening. I was just checking this
13other letter I wrote on that day. I am not sure if it is
14in the file or not.
15 MR RAMPTON: If there is one in German, I am going to ask you
16about it. It is Karl Philip.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will ask you about that in a moment. The significance
19of Almeyer for the record in so far as he has significance
20is not the numbers that he gives, but the description that
21he gives of how they killed the people at Auschwitz, is it
23 A. [Mr Irving] Even there, if my memory is correct, he gets it wrong.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what is the answer to the question and
25then carry on about whether he gets it right or wrong.
26 A. [Mr Irving] He describes gassing procedures, this is true, but, of
1course -----
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But the question, Mr Irving -- do focus on the question --
3is that the significant thing about Almeyer's account is
4not the number that he gives of the Jewish prisoners who
5were gassed, but the description he gives of the way in
6which they were grassed. That is the question.
7 MR RAMPTON: It is the question.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you say whether you agree or disagree
9with it?
10 A. [Mr Irving] If you tell me what the description is that he gave?
11 MR RAMPTON: Let me tan an example, the middle of page 262 of
12the transcript, as it where, that appears in van Pelt. It
13corresponds very roughly with what SS Untersturmfuhrer
14Broad tells us:
15 "In the time that followed some three to four
16gassing were undertaken in the old crematorium. These
17always occurred in evening hours. In the morgue were two
18or three air vents and medical orderlies wearing gas masks
19should blue cyanide gas into these" ----
20 A. [Mr Irving] Now, which crematorium are we talking about? Crematorium
21number ----
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is crematorium (i) at Auschwitz 1 at the stammlager.
23 A. [Mr Irving] About which, unfortunately, we have not asked the
24Professor very much in his evidence.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, you did not.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, indeed, but I tried to bring this up and his Lord
1said, "We are not interested in whether this building has
2been faked after the war or not".
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, do you never answer an overt question?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a total misrepresentation of what
5I said, but let us move on..
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I tried to bring up crematorium No. (i) in order to
7get the admission from the witness that it has been built
8in 1948 by the Poles and at this point your Lordship
9intervened, you will remember, and said, "This is of" ----
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am not going to go through that again
11because the transcript is there, but let us get back to
13 MR RAMPTON: We will just read on, and this is where Almeyer is
14a real killer for you revisionists, is it not, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. I will have to see what it says.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] "We were not allowed to come close and only the next day
17the bunker, gas chamber, was opened. The doctor told that
18the people died within half a minute to a minute. In the
19meantime, in Birkenhau, close to the burial sites, two
20empty houses were equipped by the construction office with
21gas chambers. One house had two chambers, the other
22four. These houses were designed as bunkers 1 and 2.
23Each chamber accommodated about 50 to 150 people.
24 "At the end of January or February, the first
25gassings were undertaken. The Commando was called "SK"
26and the camp commander had put it under the direct
1authority of Untersturmfuhrer Grabner and was again led
2and brought into action by Hoessler". That is different
3from Hoess. "The area was surrounded by notices and
4marked as a security zone and, moreover, encircled by
5eight guardposts from the Commando.
6 "From that moment onwards the camp doctor sorted
7from the arriving transports immediately the inmates and
8those who were destined to be gassed. They had
9instructions to select for gassing those crippled by
10illness, those over 55 years of age who could not work and
11children up to 11 or 12 years". From a revisionist point
12of view, that is a catastrophic account, is it not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] But I also draw attention to the frequent footnotes that
14Professor van Pelt has quite rightly written in saying
15this is wrong, that is wrong, the following is wrong, this
16is an incorrect account, the time was longer, the time was
17shorter. If one knows that, what kind of credence can you
18attach to a report like that?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In relation to the passage Mr Rampton has
20just read, is that not an accurate account of, I do not
21know, is it crematoria (iv) and (v), or (iii) and (iv)?
22 MR RAMPTON: No. In that passage it is bunkers 1 and 2.
23 A. [Mr Irving] It is talking about the bunkers 1 and 2, which we have not
24talked about and which, as far as I am concerned, actually
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My question really is this. Is there
1anything wrong with that as an account, so far as you see
3 A. [Mr Irving] I see nothing wrong with that as an account, my Lord, but
4then, of course, as I have to keep reminding the court,
5I am not a Holocaust historian. I have never set myself
6up as a Holocaust historian. I have not written about the
7Holocaust in books or otherwise. All I know is that this
8is a flawed account, if I can use that word. Professor
9van Pelt himself describes it as being inaccurate in very
10many respects, and this is the kind of problems which
11would no doubt have been brought out, had I ever sat down
12and read the whole file and start comparing it with all
13the others.
14 MR RAMPTON: Before suggesting that this flawed account, put
15into his mouth by the brutal British interrogators, was
16tortured out of him by Colonel Scotland?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I am talking about the figures of course, both in the
18English letter and in the German letter, June 4th. I said
19it becomes more lurid with each subsequent version, first
20no gassings, then 50, then 15,000 in all. I suggest brute
21force by interrogators perhaps.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you are quite prepared to accept that these accounts,
23he goes on on a subsequent page to give an account of
24gassings of crematorium (ii) in Berkenhau?
25 A. [Mr Irving] We have exactly same problem with Rudolf Hoess. We know
26Rudolf Hoess was badly manhandled and no doubt he richly
1deserved it, but his account also became more lurid with
2each successive interrogation.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, your answers are in danger of becoming
4characteristically inconsistent, if I may say so. You
5were worried that Colonel Scotland may have tortured these
6numbers, or threatened to do so, out of Almeyer, is that
8 A. [Mr Irving] That is not actually what I said. I said his account
9becomes more lurid with each successive interrogation.
10That is all one can safely say, looking at them, on the
11basis of a first blush look at the entire file.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us start again, Mr Irving. If this is a flawed
13account, and an obviously flawed account ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] In the opinion of your own expert witness.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. If you only have to compare it with the rest of the
16evidence. I know you have never done that, but it is, let
17me tell you, in certain respects unclear, confused and
18inaccurate. The guts of it, however, I put to you a
19moment ago, are dangerous to revisionists. If this
20account had been beaten or threatened out of this man by
21the brutal British interrogators, would you not think that
22they would have made it consistent with what else they
24 A. [Mr Irving] That is perhaps what they were doing.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you not think ----
26 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps that is why it is marginally consistent with other
1accounts known at this time. By this time, you have to
2remember, they already knew quite a lot from other
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly. So they would have made Almeyer get it right.
5They have not only got all the details right, they would
6have got the numbers right, would they not, Mr Irving?
7 A. [Mr Irving] What you mean? Put in 2.8 million or some ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whatever. But 15,000? That is pathetic, is it not? That
9is not a very good answer to a threat of torture or
10torture itself, is it?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Maybe that was going to be in a later stage. Maybe there
12was going to be an interrogation 5 or 6 when he came to
13Nuremberg into the shadow of the gallows. This is a
14rather threadbare kind of argument. We do not know what
15stage they reached in their coercion.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you have made a suggestion in this letter to
17your chums in the revisionist movement to the effect that
18this man gave a fallacious account because he was tortured
19or threatened with torture by the Brits. You have
20absolutely no basis for that whatsoever.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, when the time comes to cross-examine your
22expert witnesses, I shall be putting to them documents
23which show very clearly what methods were used to extract
24information from witnesses, including some of the most
25brutal and horrifying descriptions of what happened to the
26witnesses in the Malmedy trial. I shall invite them to
1state whether they consider this kind of evidence is
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving,, I am tempted myself to resort such methods to
4get a straight answer to my question, I have to say. You
5have no evidential ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] It included, for example, crushing the testicles of 165
7out of 167 witnesses. Is that what you are proposing to
8do to me?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] We cannot fit that many witnesses into your witness box up
10there, Mr Irving, I am afraid. Can you turn to the next
11page, 92, please? It has a 92 in the right hand corner,
12so that you can identify it. It is a letter from you,
13London, 4th June 1992 -- it is a facsimile -- to Karl
14Philip. Just tell me, does it say more or less the same
15as what your letter to Mark Weber said?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I do not know what file I am supposed to be looking
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is yes, having read
19through it.
20 MR RAMPTON: It looks like it. My German is rotten but it
21looks much the same.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who is Philip?
23 MR RAMPTON: That is my next question. Who is Karl Philip?
24 A. [Mr Irving] He is a German friend of mine.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why would he want to have this information?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I would have to think back. In 1992 he was publishing a
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] He is another revisionist, is he not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Oh yes. He is a wicked revisionist.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, he is another revisionist?
5 A. [Mr Irving] But I said yes, he is a revisionist.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said he was a wicked revisionist. Would you like to
7expand on why he is wicked?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Apparently all revisionists are wicked. This is a piece
9of sarcasm on my part which obviously totally escaped you.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, revisionists are wicked if they tell deliberate
11falsehoods about the past.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Let us hear if you can catch me out in telling deliberate
13falsehoods on oath, which is of course a serious matter.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On we go, I think.
15 MR RAMPTON: I quite agree. The last three pages in this
16little clip should be some pages from your book
17Nuremberg. Do you recognize them? Starting with the page
18number 245.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is a paragraph at the bottom of page 245 which
21begins, "in fact Eichmann".
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I just have the notes here. I have 245, yes, page
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] "In fact Eichmann had no authority to issue orders to
25Hoess, as they were in different branches..." I will not
26bother to read that. You are talking about the material
1presented by the Allies at Nuremberg, I suppose, are you?
2"There is no trace on the Allied aerial photographs
3either of such burning operations or of the pits
4themselves. Perhaps for security reasons, the Allies made
5no attempt to introduce these highly detailed aerial
6photographs of Auschwitz in this or the later war crimes
8 Those are probably including some of the
9photographs we looked at earlier in this trial, are they
10not, Mr Irving?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. The aerial photographs helped in particular with
12secrecy by the Americans and the British after the war.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now, the footnote there is 34, and you will find that
14footnote on the next following page in this little clip of
15documents. At the bottom of the page, I am afraid the
16page has lost its number.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Pages 4 and 5.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. It is page 353 of the book. You write: "Nor did
19they (that is Allies) introduce other compelling evidence
20about Auschwitz, for example, the testimony of SS
21Sturmbannfuhrer Kurt Almeyer". In fact I think he is
22called Hans Almeyer, is he not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] That I do not know.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] -- "who had for several weeks acted as deputy Kommandant
25of Auschwitz. Almeyer was initially as incoherent as
26Hoess under interrogation by the British in Norway and
1England. The memoirs and manuscripts which he pencilled
2in the Kensington Interrogation centre commanded by
3Lieutenant Colonel Scotland also displayed an increasing
4precision with each week that passed. The final
5manuscript (or fair copy) signed by Almeyer was pencilled
6in British Army style with all proper names in block
7letters. Almeyer was extradited by the British to
8Poland and hanged."
9 If you write the words "compelling evidence",
10are you being sarcastic?
11 A. [Mr Irving] It is compelling. It is very important. I have always
12been puzzled why that evidence was not introduced at
13Nuremberg, unless perhaps the experts at Nuremberg said
14this will harm us more than it helps us because of the
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] How many people were tried at Nuremberg for the sorts of
17crimes alleged to have been committed at Auschwitz and
19 A. [Mr Irving] At the principal trial there were 22 Defendants and in the
20subsequent actions, there were 12 subsequent actions with
21the United States, people of the United States against
22individual groups.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] How many of the 22 pleaded guilty?
24 A. [Mr Irving] None of them.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Were they all convicted?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Two were acquitted.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Was the evidence of, for example, Heinrich Tauber used at
3 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. I do not know, is the answer to that.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. I just want to come back to one thing on this.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you leave that, I am a bit puzzled,
6Mr Irving. Can you help me? I had got the impression
7that you really thought that Almeyer's account was not
8worthless but really not worth a great deal because of the
10 A. [Mr Irving] It is questionable material, but obviously, if you read
11the whole file, this was a man who was in a position to
12know. He is an important character, and I am surprised
13that they did not introduce either his statements or call
14him as a witness.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] If it is questionable, why do you describe it in your
16Nuremberg book as compelling?
17 A. [Mr Irving] It is compelling evidence which needs to be examined. It
18is compelling evidence that should have been before the
19court if they were looking at these atrocities. It is one
20of the oddities of the Nuremberg War Crimes trial that
21Auschwitz was hardly mentioned. The prosecution of crimes
22against humanity was left to the French and the Russian
23prosecutors, and the actual events in Auschwitz were very
24skimpily touched upon. The purpose of this footnote, my
25Lord, is to bring the attention of the Almeyer file to the
26historical community, to say there is this material, here
1is the file number, it is important stuff, go for it.
2 MR RAMPTON: When was book published? 1996?
3 A. [Mr Irving] It was written in 1994, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] When was the first time you went public on Almeyer? You
5discovered it in the beginning of June 92.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I drew attention of the fellow historians to it and other
7writers from 1992 onwards immediately. I found one letter
8in October 1992 to a Mr Paul Gifford, to whom I sent the
9entire file on the Holocaust, including the Almeyer
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who is he?
12 A. [Mr Irving] He is a British writer. If you are interested in this
13letter, it was in the discovery. I sent it to him on
14October 7th, saying this file must be returned within four
15weeks please. I sent him a reminder on 29th 1992, that is
16the same year as I found it, saying please now return the
17file. So it went on. I sent it to Gerald Fleming. I
18believe I drew Sir Martin Guildford's attention to it, but
19on that I cannot be certain without looking at my papers.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] I cannot challenge that. I am in no position to do that.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I certainly drew the attention of, I would say, half a
22dozen or a dozen other writers around the world over these
23years to the Almeyer file.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Finally this, Mr Irving, I am reading now ----.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Quite simply because I was not an expert on it and they
26were better placed than I was to evaluate it.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am reading now from the report of Professor Funker,
2which you may or may not yet have read, who will be giving
3evidence, I hope, in about a fortnight's time, about
4political movements and figures in modern Germany. You
5know who I mean, do you not? Hyo Funker?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think he is a Professor in Berlin. He tells us this
8about Karl Philip and I want you to comment on it.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will obviously get the chance to cross-examine him if
11he is going to be a witness, I mean Professor Funker.
12Karl Philip NPD: What is NPD?
13 A. [Mr Irving] It is national something or other.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Party Deutschland?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that a legal political party in Germany?
17 A. [Mr Irving] What are you suggesting, that he was a member or an
18official of it? I do not know.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Functionary?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. That is news to me.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not know that? In the 1970s and 1980s?
22 A. [Mr Irving] No.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you know that in 1990 he received a fine of about
243,600 deutschemark for incitement of the people and
26 A. [Mr Irving] I know the expression give a dog bad name and hang them,
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is it correct that he received a fine, to your
3knowledge -- if you do not know, say so -- of 3,600
4deutschemarks for incitement of the people and defamation?
5 A. [Mr Irving] This is not known to me, no.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not known to you?
7 A. [Mr Irving] When was this?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] 1990.
9 A. [Mr Irving] No.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] When did you first meet Mr Philip?
11 A. [Mr Irving] 1989, October 23rd or thereabouts.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] How often do you correspond, speak to or meet Mr Philip,
13Herr Philip?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I suppose 1989, for about two years. He was in
15correspondence with me for those two years. He
16occasionally sends me emails now.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know a newspaper called Die Barenschaft?
18 A. [Mr Irving] The little magazine, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is a neo-Nazi magazine?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. I never opened it. It was sent to me and
21it went straight into the trash can.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know Ahmed Rami of Radio Islam in Stockholm?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I have had no dealings with him whatsoever.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you leaving Almeyer?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, is the allegation pursued that
1Mr Irving sat on the Almeyer material until it was
2discovered by the defendants' solicitors?
3 MR RAMPTON: Since I am in no position to challenge that he
4wrote to these various people when he says that he did, it
5obviously is not. He did not go into public print on
6until the Nuremberg book but he did mention it there.
7 A. [Mr Irving] The reason I did not go in public with it is because it
8was my scoop, and although I am known for my generosity in
9giving my files away to other writers, this particular one
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] What would be the value of a scoop, Mr Irving, when, as
12soon as you have made the scoop, according to you, you
13have to throw it away because it has been devalued by
14being tortured out of the man who provided it?
15 A. [Mr Irving] No. What would happened, you see, is just the same as the
16Institute of History in Munich published the Hoess
17memoirs. I would have contemplated publishing the Almeyer
18memoirs with suitable surrounding material and documents
19from the archives, but from 1993 of course this became
20impossible when I was banned from the German archives on
21July 1st and banned from German soil on November 9th.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] It would be a bit like publishing the Hitler diaries and
23saying, look at this, it not terrific, it is a forgery?
24It would be absolutely worthless, would it not, according
25to you?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I can see no comparison whatsoever.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now I want to move to something else, if I may. Again it
2is only a little point. My Lord, what I am going to do,
3if I may, is spend a little time just clearing up some
4loose ends. Loose ends do happen in the course of
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course they do. Can you explain to me, as
7you do so, where the loose ends fit in?
8 MR RAMPTON: I am now going to deal with three documents which
9Mr Irving Denied in evidence that he had ever seen.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Can I come back on the Almeyer thing by way of
11re-examination, so to speak?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Your Lordship very rightly asked if they were upholding
14that allegation that I sat on it. There is the specific
15allegation in the van Pelt report that I did not let it be
16known until I heard that Mishcon de Reya ----
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was what I was asking Mr Rampton about.
18 A. [Mr Irving] You did not specifically mention that footnote, my Lord.
19I think I have established that I put it in the public
20domain long before Mishcon de Reya started scrabbling
21around in the archives.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton is not pursuing that allegation.
23 MR RAMPTON: I am not pursuing it, subject to this, that
24I would quite like to see the letters which he said that
25he wrote to the various historians.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Certainly. I will try to find them. I have seven copies
1of it here, if you would like to have this.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Being a suspicious bloke, I like to see the chapter and
4 A. [Mr Irving] This is dated October 7th 1992 and there are seven copies
5of it which I did at 4 o'clock this morning.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord, what I am going to do now is refer to three
7documents -- they are different documents -- which Mr
8Irving told us in evidence that he had never seen. The
9first one is the letter from Muller, the head of the
10Gestapo, the order rather, to the Einsatzgruppen, all four
11of them, of 1st August 1941, which says, in effect, that
12the Fuhrer will be getting continuous reports about the
13work of the Einsatzgruppen in the East.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is it, just in case it is necessary to
15look at it?
16 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, it is in Professor Browning's documents.
17It is referred to by him.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That will do.
19 MR RAMPTON: On page 7 of his report. I think my memory is
20that he has written it out in translation. Unfortunately,
21I do not have it here. It is actually in H4 (ii).
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that, unless Mr Irving wants it dug
23out, this will probably do.
24 MR RAMPTON: I have given a sort of a translation.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am not normally very picky, my Lord, but in this
26particular case it would be nice sometime to see the
1original or a facsimile of it.
2 MR RAMPTON: I agree. I do believe that Mr Irving should be
3given H4 (ii). That is actually Dr Longerich's documents
4but it is the same document.
5 A. [Mr Irving] It is a document from the Russian archives?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and it is the first sentence of the writing which
7I am interested in. It is footnote 143, in handwriting at
8the bottom right hand corner of the page. Do you see it?
9It is a copy.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] It says so. Did I more or less translate the first
12sentence correctly?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Oh dear. I can only say "oh dear" about this document.
14Where does it come from?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I can tell you that, Mr Irving. It has been available in
16the Munich Institute of Contemporary History IFZ with the
17reference number FA 213/3 since before 1982.
18 A. [Mr Irving] That does not tell us so much about the provenance though,
19does it?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why? What is the matter with it?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I mean, normally you would have either a Nuremberg
22document number in the top right hand corner or some
23indication of provenance and it would not contain German
24spelling mistakes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why not? Do soldiers not make mistakes when they write,
26or civil servants? Goodness me. We have spotted several
1already in the original documents in this case, have we
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you saying that this not an authentic
5 MR RAMPTON: Another fake, I think. He does not like it so it
6is another fake.
7 A. [Mr Irving] I am seeing this for the first time, of course, but
8I noticed straightaway at the bottom line that
9interestingly it does use the SS runes after the word
10"Muller", which implies that it is a wartime document.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I am looking at the wrong document.
12 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, it is footnote 143.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. There are two 143s.
14 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, it is a copy.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is page 295?
16 MR RAMPTON: That is right, yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another footnote 143.
18 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry about that. Both Dr Longerich and
19Professor Browning make reference to this.
20 A. [Mr Irving] It may be that I am more picky than they are when I am
21dealing with what looks like a duplicated copy of a
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Never mind. It is a what?
24 A. [Mr Irving] It looks like a duplicated copy of a document, in other
25words on an old fashioned Gestetner duplicator, so to
26speak, but it has the SS runes on it after the name
1Muller, which implies, or should be taken to imply, that
2it is a wartime document rather than a postwar one.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] I would guess that it is. Why not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] What worries me is the word "verschlussel" in the fifth
5line, which is neither fish nor fowl in German. It is
6"verschlussel". It is not "verschlusselt," it is not
7"verschlusselung". It is a word that does not exist by
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well tell me what it means.
10 A. [Mr Irving] If it was completed it could be to be coded or cyphered,
11encyphered, but it is just, as I said, wrong.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, suppose that there was an N instead of an L,
13would that make a difference?
14 A. [Mr Irving] It would have to be after the L. It is a strange error,
15I would say that. If it is genuine, then the next thing
16I would point to, of course, is the fact that it has a
17very low classification, just G, secret.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I am not asking you about the document.
19 A. [Mr Irving] All right.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] When I asked you about this document before, it was ages
21ago, you denied ever having seen it.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Now I am seeing it for the first time, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you say.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon. I am on oath and, if I say I am seeing
25this for the first time, then I am seeing it for the first
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you have said many things on oath which
2I simply do not accept, so we can get past that childish
3stage of this interrogation.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I think this is probably the time to have it out. Where
5you think I am lying on oath, then you should say so.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is saying so.
7 MR RAMPTON: I am doubting it, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, he is not saying when. He is just alleging in
9broad terms.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, that is not right. Let me make it
11clear to you.
12 MR RAMPTON: Will you please wait. I do not do that.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are all talking at once. Mr Rampton, I
14was talking.
15 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. It might be valuable if your Lordship
16reminded Mr Irving of my duty.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am going to. I think it is fair to
18say that every time Mr Rampton is challenging the truth or
19credibility of what you are saying, he has made that clear
20in his questions.
21 A. [Mr Irving] He is saying that he does not believe ----
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Please wait. If you think that he is not making his case
23clear at any point, then you are entitled to say, what are
24you asking me, Mr Rampton? What are you putting to me?
25But on this particular document, I would like to know
26whether you do or do not challenge its authenticity.
1 A. [Mr Irving] I think for the purpose of today I will accept that it is
2genuine, but it has these blemishes to which I may refer
3later on. But to suggest that I have seen this document
4before is inaccurate and untrue.
5 MR RAMPTON: I have not said that yet, Mr Irving.
6 A. [Mr Irving] You said "so you say" and the record shows that.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do say "so you say" because I doubt your answer, and
8I will tell you precisely now why I doubt it, as I always
9do, because I am not allowed to make that suggestion
10unless I have a basis for doing so. It has been in Gerald
11Fleming's book "Hitler und die endlosung" ever since
13 A. [Mr Irving] I have not read that book.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have not read that book?
15 A. [Mr Irving] It has been sent to me twice by Gerald Fleming, once in
16English and once in German, and I have not read that book.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you not interested in books which contain references
18to documents which focus on your very field of historical
19activity, that is to say the connection between Adolf
20Hitler and the endlosung?
21 A. [Mr Irving] The reason why is because Gerald Fleming and I had a very
22lively correspondence and he was constantly sending me
23copies of his latest documents. It is was unlikely there
24were going to be documents in the book which he had not
25already sent me months earlier.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You told us near the beginning of the case that Gerald
1Fleming has done some very good work on one particular
2episode, not this. That was Bruns and Altemeyer.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes he corresponded with me about it. You have seen my
4entire file of correspondence with Gerald Fleming and you
5know exactly how detailed that correspondence is. It is
6about 4 inches thick.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you possess a copy of "Hitler und die endlosung"?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, two copies.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you have never looked at them?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I may have looked for a specific document in it. I seem
11to remember looking to see -- that is right. When I wrote
12my web site page on General Bruns, I checked up on the
13spellings of the names and the correct identification of
14Altemeyer and people like that, and I used it as a
15reference work. I looked in the index, in other words,
16for Bruns and Altemeyer and got the data out of that, one
17or other of the editions.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] How much time have you spent in the Munich archive, the
19IFZ if that is what it is?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Until I was banned in 1993? I was there from 1963 for 30
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] If Gerald Fleming found it in the Munich archive before
23his book was published while he was writing it, it was
24published in 1982 and you spent time in that archive,
25I know not how many days or hours or weeks, looking for
26documents about Hitler. Do you expect us to believe that
1you did not come across this document?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Both. I looked for documents back in 1964 and 1965 and
3I hired a lady whose name almost certainly will be
4mentioned later on in today's hearing to do the research
5for me, to re-research the files for me, looking for
6material on Adolf Hitler and the final solution, and
7certainly neither of us came across that document.
8However, your researchers could have established if I saw
9that particular file, because the IFZ keeps a detailed log
10of who sees each file, just as the Public Record Office
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Down the line that may happen, Mr Irving. Now I want to
13turn to another document, which I find even more puzzling,
14if I may say so.
15 A. [Mr Irving] You are implying that the IFZ has a record of my having
16seen that document, which is untrue.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I am not implying that at all. I have absolutely no
18idea. All I would say, if you want me----
19 A. [Mr Irving] That was the innuendo of "down the line this may happen",
20was it not?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] It may do if we look. That is all that means. All I will
22say at the moment, if you want me comment, is this, that
23I do not find your answer very convincing. But that is
24not my task, it is his Lordship's task.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry I do not convince you but it is your duty to
26come forward with plausible evidence to the court that I
1am lying, and you cannot because I have not seen this
2document before.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have two copies of Gerald Fleming's book.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I have two copies of Fleming's book, one in German and one
5in English.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You write about Hitler and his connection with the
7endlosung. You spent hours in the Munich archive and this
8is a key document which you have missed.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I read the reviews by Tom Bower and by Gordon Craig of
10Gerald Fleming's book. Tom Bower said that Gerald Fleming
11has failed to destroy David Irving's central hypothesis,
12and Gordon Craig said exactly the same. That being so,
13why should I waste my time reading that book, apart from
14looking up specific references, because undoubtedly
15Fleming has done very detailed research, but I am not a
16Holocaust historian. If I was writing a book about the
17Holocaust, then no doubt I would consult Fleming.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This does not really go to the Holocaust,
19does it? It goes to Hitler's knowledge of the shooting by
20the Einsatzgruppen.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but I can only repeat that my attention was never
22drawn to this document, I never saw it in that book, there
23is no reason why I should have done.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It has not yet been established there is any
25evidence you actually saw this although I think the
26evidence does suggest you had an opportunity to find it.
1 MR RAMPTON: I make it quite clear I shall invite----
2 A. [Mr Irving] I had an opportunity to find very large numbers of
3documents, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a different thing, I accept that.
5 A. [Mr Irving] But I am very well known for not consulting other people's
6books. If Gerald Fleming had sent me the document as a
7copy, which I would have expected him to have done, then
8I would of course have taken it into account.
9 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I am a little bit at sea, Mr Irving,
10because this has only just been brought to my attention.
11You were asked some questions in an IHR conference on 4th
12September 1983 -- I am telling you this as a fact because
13I have the printed version in front of me -- and the
14question was: Could you give your reaction to the recent
15book by Gerald Fleming, "Hitler und die endlosung", so we
16are talking about the same thing, are we not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then you say this. I have not been able to edit it
19because I have only just been shown it. "Yes, Gerald
20Fleming, frightfully nice, he and I were face to face once
21on the David Frost programme" -- again it does not seem
22to be much of an answer to the question -- "for an hour
23and a half in England on television. He was not able to
24prove me wrong then. He has ever since felt mortally
25wounded by the fact that he was not able to prove me wrong
26in front of" -- goodness me, this is all about the
1television audience.
2 A. [Mr Irving] I am failing to answer a question, am I?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, you are.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yet again.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because you were asked the question, what do you think of
6the book?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I probably did not want to admit that I had not read
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] The reviewers admit in reviewing his book that he has not
10found the evidence that I am wrong, that he has not found
11documentary proof.
12 A. [Mr Irving] That is exactly what I just said 17 years later. My
13memory is not all that bad.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] "His book in fact is a lie"?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] How on earth can you say that about a book you have not
18 A. [Mr Irving] I have read the reviews. The book was written as an
19attempt -- the book has been written specifically, it says
20in the introduction, this is an attempt to answer David
21Irving. The whole reason he wrote the book was to answer
22my book "Hitler's War". I read the reviews by Tom Bower
23and numerous other people and they say this book has
24failed to refute David Irving.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am going to come back to what
26seems to be perhaps more important. I had the impression,
1and it is a long time ago now that we had evidence about
2it, that you accepted that Hitler was kept informed about
3the shootings by the Einsatzgruppen?
4 A. [Mr Irving] You are absolutely right, my Lord. Certainly as far as
5the Russians Jews were concerned, and the non-German Jews
6were concerned.
7 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am on the question whether Mr Irving
8was telling the truth when he said first time around that
9he had never seen this document.
10 A. [Mr Irving] I can tell you I have never seen this document before in
11my life.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, laughing will not help. I am going to read on
13what you said at this IHR conference shortly after the
14book was published. "The book is a lie because the book's
15title is 'Hitler and the Final Solution' when underneath
16is a subtitle in quotes, 'it is the Fuhrer's wish...'".
17 A. [Mr Irving] It is the Fuhrer's order, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] "As though this is from some document. In fact it is
19not. This is just what some Nazi big wig after the war,
20sweating and pleading for his life in the dock at
21Nuremberg or somewhere else, tried to claim that it was
22the Fuhrer's wish that this should be done. This is
23precisely the kind of evidence which I am not prepared to
24accept. It is a well-written book. He has done a lot of
25research but he constantly mixes first, second and third
26order evidence in a completely reprehensible way".
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did not read the book?
3 A. [Mr Irving] This is precisely what the reviewer said. Actually,
4exactly what the reviewer said about the book. I can
5produce to you tomorrow the reviews by Tom Bauer and
6Gordon Craig and the other reviewers of the Gerald
7Flemming book.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, was there in your discovery ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] And also in correspondent with me he told me what he was
10going to base his subtitle on, namely a particular
11statement by a particular General. Every time he found a
12new document, he would write me a triumphant letter.
13I remember that one particularly.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, was there in your third supplemental list of
15documents two editions, one in German -- no, sorry, an
16edition of a German book by a man called Koegon and
18 A. [Mr Irving] Eugene Koegon, yes -- a murderer.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you know that its German edition is called "National
20Sozialistische Massentugenturm Durch Giftgas"?
21 A. [Mr Irving] That is right. Koegon is on the United Nations "Wanted"
22list for mass murder.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is the point of that remark?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am just trying to, shall we say, equalify the
25author of this work so that you know what kind of
26credentials he has.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not interested in the very least in Mr Koegon's
2credentials. He has not brought an action for damages for
3libel against my clients.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, just in case you rely on anything Mr Koegon wrote.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Have you a copy of the English edition published in
6New Haven in 1993?
7 A. [Mr Irving] That I do not know offhand, probably not.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] It has been disclosed in your supplemental list of
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, then, it is probably on my book shelf, yes.
11I certainly would not have purchased it. Somebody must
12have handed it to me.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You what?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I would not have purchased it. Somebody must have sent it
15to me.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You would not have purchased it? So that is another book
17you will never have read?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You mean you will not have read it?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Highly unlikely that I would have read it and I can say
21for certain I have not read his book.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see, it contains printed out in full -- if you are
23interested in this subject, of course ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- what the people were doing to the Jews in that part of
26Eastern Europe during 1941, '42 and'43, if you are
1interested in that subject, it contains printed out in
2full the RSHA letter of 5th June 1942 which recites that
3they have managed to process 97,000 people in gas vans at
4Chelmo. Do you remember that document?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, the incredible -- 97,000 people in how many weeks,
6five weeks?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Five weeks.
8 A. [Mr Irving] That is approximately 40 people her hour per van.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] You accepted it. I am not going back to that, Mr Irving.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we are going to be questioning your experts about
11those figures when the time comes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You may do whatever you like with my experts ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] I remember the document clearly.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Provided, Mr Irving, you let them finish their answers.
15Mr Irving, that document, you accepted when I was
16cross-examining you earlier in this case ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] It is a genuine document.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and you accepted that it showed that, so far from
19being an experiment on a small scale, this was a
20systematic and large scale operation?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we are going to be looking at the figures later on,
22as I say.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you have already accepted that.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Do not start brow beating me about the figures. I have
25accepted the document is genuine, but we are going to be
26looking at the figures when your experts are standing
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] If we need to go back, Mr Irving, to see what you actually
3said, we will, but that is not the point. You denied ever
4having seen that document before?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you have a copy of the book in which this document is
7actually printed?
8 A. [Mr Irving] And?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you interested in this period of history or not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I am not interested in that aspect of the history, no.
11I am interested in Adolf Hitler's personal role in
12decisions taken during World War II.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you do not think the question whether or not these
14gassings and shootings in the East were large scale and
15systematic has anything to do with Hitler's role, is that
16is right?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I do not know if you have ever written a book
18in your life. You probably have.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] As a matter of fact, I have.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had this before, yes.
21 MR RAMPTON: It is a very small book and not a very good one,
22but it does exist, yes.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I can believe that.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Come on, it is ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] But the time comes when you have ----
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- degenerating.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that was well deserved modesty on his part. The
2time when you are writing a book when you have to decide
3what to leave in and what to keep out if the book is not
4going to be 2,000 pages long with 8,000 pages of sludge in
5the middle. If you are writing a book about Adolf
6Hitler's command of the war and his command decisions,
7then really what happens in detail, the crimes committed
8by these gangs of gangsters on the Eastern Front, you have
9to decide to leave the detail out otherwise your readers
10will not see the wood for the trees.
11 MR RAMPTON: So we have now two books in your possession, one
12was sent to you by the kindly -- is he Professor Fleming?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I think he probably sent it to me himself. Yes, I think
14he actually dedicated it to me.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] And one which either somebody sent you, you certainly
16would not have bought a book by the mass murderer
17Mr Koegon?
18 A. [Mr Irving] That is what surprises me. You say it is in my book shelf
19and I am sure nobody planted it there, but ----
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is in your discovery, Mr Irving.
21 A. [Mr Irving] But, for the life of me, I never knew I had that book in
22my book shelf.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just go back to Professor Fleming's
24book for a while? Correct me if have this wrong,
25Mr Irving, you are saying that what you said at IHR press
26conference was derived from the reviews, not from your
1reading of the book. One of the things that you said was
2that Professor Fleming is given to citing second and
3third-hand documents?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So your evidence is that that also would have come from
6one or other of those two reviews?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, and from the fact that he and I were in almost daily
8correspondence at that time and also on the telephone, he
9would be constantly on the telephone to me, telling me
10about his latest discoveries and latest finds and what he
11was doing and what he was writing.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I thought your evidence earlier on was that what you had
13said came from the reviews.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, and from the reviews, yes, but you asked me, my
15Lord, if I have understood correctly, whether my statement
16to the IHR was based only on the reviews, and I was saying
17that those and the personal communications I had with him
18on a daily basis and, indeed, a very, very thick file of
19correspondence with him indeed, mostly handwritten on his
21 MR RAMPTON: There is one more book I am going to ask you
22about, Mr Irving. Do not take it from my silence that
23I accept a word of what you say. The coincidence is too
24great, if I may say so. There is another book. Do you
25remember Gertz Bergander's book about Dresden?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed, yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] You told us yesterday you have never read that either, did
2you not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Certainly I never read it from cover to cover, no.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I asked you twice.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I asked you, "Have you read this 1977 book of his?"
7Answer,"No, I have not".
8 A. [Mr Irving] Can I enquire what you mean by "read"? Do you mean
9sitting down and opening at page 1 and reading through or
10dipping into it to look for a fact or item?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The context was that you had not read it in such a way as
12to be able to evaluate the figures he gave.
13 A. [Mr Irving] I want to be precise about the answer I give here, so I
14know what you mean by "read".
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] You actually interrupted a question -- not for the first
16time -- that I was asking. I will read the whole
17passage. My Lord ----
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page.
19 MR RAMPTON: --- page 75 of yesterday's transcript, line 9.
20"If you turn to page 11", my Lord, I said, "of the
21table", that is Miss Rogers' table, "it says, basing
22herself on Professor Evans ... this: '1977, the real TB
2347 comes to light. It is discovered by Bergander who
24found a reservist Ehrlich who had a copy cited at page 261
25of Bergander. Evans describes Bergander as the most
26authoritative work', and so on". Then I turn to
1Mr Irving:"I dare say if you have not read Bergander,
2Mr Irving ... you will not be conscious of" ---- And you
3interrupted, Mr Irving, and said this: "Well, Gutz
4Bergander was a very good friend of mine -- he still is a
5very good friend of mine". Question: "Have you read this
61977 book of his?" "I have not, no."
7 Then, my Lord, on page 178 also in yesterday's
8transcript: Question: "Look at Bergander's book. Have
9you not read that?" Answer: "No".
10 A. [Mr Irving] This is a reference to the Order of the Day, the
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that was the page you ----
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] 35,000 was the question.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well ----
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then you said: "I know Bergander very well as a human
17being and I respect him as a friend and he is a jolly
18decent chap, but I do not put his book in the same
19category I put Reichart's book having read Reichart book".
20 A. [Mr Irving] I assume that I had read Reichart's book at that time,
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now, was it true or not -- people make mistakes; you might
23have forgotten -- when you told me that you had not read
24Bergander's book?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I have never read Bergander's book.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have never read it?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I may have dipped into it. I may have looked at the
2photographs or looked to see what his sources were.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do we understand when on page 281 of your Dresden
41995 edition, at footnote 10, you tell us that Bergander
5-- this is about the ACK-ACK gunners, saying that
6Bergander was one of them -- then you say this:
7"Bergander subsequently published his own well researched
8account of the raids, Dresden, in Luftrieg, Cologne and
9Vienna 1977"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you had not read it, how do you know it was well
13 A. [Mr Irving] Because he asked me to help him with the research. That
14is why it was well researched. He is a very good friend
15of mine. He asked me where he should go to, what
16archives. He got all my archives. I give him 8,000 pages
17of my paper. It was a well researched book he wrote. He
18went beyond what I had done and did further research as I
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is it unreasonable for me to suggest on the basis of this
21morning's discussions, Mr Irving, that everything you do
22not like is either a forgery or you have never seen it
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you put to me specific example of books and said,
25"Have you read this?" to which my answer has always been
26accurately on oath, "No, I have not read it". We have
1looked at two documents today in detail, one of which is
2the crematorium capacity document which I insist is not
3genuine, and nothing that I heard this morning has changed
4my mind on that, and that is the only document I intend
5impugning in this entire legal action. We have looked at
6another document now ----
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have just been having a go at the Muller order of 1st
9 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that is because I have seen it for the first time,
10and every time I look at a document for the first time, my
11first instinct, particularly when it is not an original,
12but a Gestatnat duplicated copy which comes from an
13uncertain provenance with no kind of markings whatsoever,
14is it say, "Hello, what is this then?" If my eye
15immediately alights on German words that have been spelt
16wrong and, as I say, are neither fish nor foul, then that
17makes me slightly more nervous about it.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you backed off that in relation to the
19Muller document, did you not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I did not want to waste the court's time, my Lord.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, do not worry about that.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I appreciate your Lordship's impatience when I start
23looking at documents in detail.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, no, I am not in the least bit impatient. I am
25interested to know.
26 A. [Mr Irving] No, the reason why I backed off it, my Lord, is because
1I accepted that Hitler knew about these actions and there
2not much point going into that one.
3 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I now pass on to something rather more
4central which is Mr Irving's utterances on the subject of
5Jews, blacks, etc. etc., both public and private.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Are we not dealing with Dr Goebbels today then? The
7Goebbels diaries?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] What has Goebbels got to do with it?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, the Goebbels diaries. I think the
10answer is yes if we have time.
11 MR RAMPTON: We will get to Moscow along down the road if we
12have time.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we have my witness coming tomorrow, Mr Peter Millar.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is fine. I do not mind. You can interpose him if
15I have not finished. I am not troubled about that.
16I will certainly finish tomorrow to make room for
17Professor Browning on Monday.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, may I enquire when these bundles
19that have just been handed up were generated, as it were?
20 MR RAMPTON: I think they came into court at about 29 minutes
21past 10.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have they caused you a problem, Mr Irving,
23these new bundles?
24 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, they are not new.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate that they are somewhere in some
26bundle, but I am just asking Mr Irving if he has found it
1a problem dealing with two new bundles.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Well, are they new? To what degree are they new?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think the documents are not new in
4the sense that they are probably in one of the other
5files, but I am concerned that you are being presented
6with newly arranged documents and that may cause you a
8 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, my concern is not being presented with the big
9bundles. I am very concerned about these little
10catalogues of excerpts that they are presenting your
11Lordship with, which appear to look to me not so much like
12case management as case manipulation.
13 MR RAMPTON: It is perfectly all right, Mr Irving. Everybody
14has the full text. You are perfectly free to refer to the
15full text or ask the judge to read the full text if you
16should be suspicious.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I think ----
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] If we had not -- Mr Irving, please -- had done this bundle
19of extracts, we shall be here until next Christmas.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but we have seen the kind of policy that the Defence
21uses when it makes their extracts and excerpts. There is
22one passage by Professor Evans where "..." stands for 86
23words and four sentences and three full stops and two or
24three semicolons.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, as we go through, Mr Irving, will you
26say when you think the context ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it is very difficult ----
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- puts a different gloss on what you are recorded as
3having said.
4 A. [Mr Irving] It is very difficult just on the basis of the catalogue
5that they are going to leave your Lordship with.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not yet digested what I am being
7presented with because I have not seen these.
8 MR RAMPTON: What your Lordship is being presented with is, in
9effect, our selection of those passages all from
10Mr Irving's own documents and his own words -- nobody
11else's words, just his own words -- of those passages
12which best represent -- they are by no means exhaustive --
13what we say is Mr Irving's underlying frame of mind. This
14is the only neat way we could think of doing it without
15scuttling about from one file to another and from one page
16within the file to another.
17 Mr Irving is a very wordy person and many of
18these transcripts are very long.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I did ask at an earlier stage for a
20marked up version and I have now got that.
21 MR RAMPTON: You did, and your Lordship has three things.
22First of all, the original unvarnished speeches, etc. etc.
23in the various D files. Then your Lordship has what your
24Lordship first asked for which is a marked up copy of the
25important passages in those files, but those have now been
26transferred into the other two files. Finally, what has
1happened is that for ease of reference and to make
2everybody's life simple, we have extracted those passages
3on which we rely. It is as simple as that.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And that is that, is it?
5 MR RAMPTON: And that is that. This is going to be a long job
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, let us see how we proceed, my Lord, is probably the
8answer, but I have waved a little red flag.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you find yourself in difficulties, then
10just say so.
11 A. [Mr Irving] It is not the difficulties, my Lord, it is the little
12catalogue of excerpts, the manipulation that is going on,
13that concerns me.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, let us wait and see whether that is right or wrong.
15 A. [Mr Irving] If I were to do this with my books, I would be in deep
16trouble and justifiably so.
17 MR RAMPTON: Can I start on the first page of the text of this,
18please, under the heading "Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust",
19subheading -- these are our headings, I hasten to add, not
20yours. "Jewish responsibility for anti-Semitism pogroms,
22 On 12th July 1997, your action report, "A
23Radical's Diary" is recorded as having expressed this
24thought ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] What page are we on?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is page 3 at the bottom of the page. Every single one
1of these passages is referenced. Top of the page, I think
2it has a 11/A in square brackets.
3 A. [Mr Irving] What bundle am I supposed to be looking at?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This little one, I think.
5 MR RAMPTON: It is a small quote. Some of them, I am afraid,
6are much longer. If you would not mind looking at the
7little bundle?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure he has it. Have you got this,
9Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so.
11 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, Mr Irving was given one.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was he? Anyway, he has another one.
13 A. [Mr Irving] I strongly object to this kind of excerpting. You are
14taking a sentence out of, I do not know what, a long
15article or a speech or something.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can look at them. We have them here. But
17let Mr Rampton ask his question and then we will look at
18the context.
19 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, can I suggest that every time you think
20we have tried to distort the record ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] "Manipulate" is the word I used.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, great, "manipulate the record" -- I must remember
23that -- for the purposes of presenting a skewed picture to
24the court, please mark beside whichever quote I refer to
25"check" because then when you reexamine yourself you can
26show his Lordship how bad our manipulation has been.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Can I ask that each time we open the full speech first and
2then find what you are taking the excerpt from?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Evans, but what we can do is have
4Mr Rampton ask his question and if part of your answer is,
5"Oh, well, you have taken it out of context, then we will
6look". I think that is the right way of proceeding.
7 MR RAMPTON: But you have plenty of time to check whether we
8have taken it out of context, Mr Irving. The full
9speeches are in those two files.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, this is going to be a very long procedure.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Let us make a start.
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but I would rather you did not do it. Let me
13say this, I take it that every single extract that I ask
14you about you will preface your answer (and so let us take
15it as pregnant preface) with the answer, "Ah, yes, but
16you must look at the context", all right? Can we proceed
17on that basis because if you reply in that way every
18single time, we really are going to be here until the cows
19come home.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am bound to say -- I am sorry,
21this debate is going on and on -- I do think if he says in
22relation to any of your questions, "Well, yes, that is
23what I said but look at what I said immediately
24afterwards", he must be entitled to make that part of his
25answer to you.
26 MR RAMPTON: Of course, if he wishes to do so.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, right.
2 MR RAMPTON: Let me take the first one on this page 3, may I,
3Mr Irving? This is your action report No. 12, I think, of
4July 1997. The reference is given if you want to look at
5it. "Why are they [the Jews] so blind that they cannot
6see the linkage between cause and effect? They protest,
7what, us? when people accuse them of international
8conspiracy. They clamour, 'Ours, ours, ours' when hoards
9of gold are uncovered and then when anti-Semitism
10increases and the inevitable mindless pogroms occur, they
11ask with genuine surprise, why us?"
12 Mr Irving, is that a fair quote in the context
13from ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] Can I read the two paragraphs before that?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, please do.
16 A. [Mr Irving] To set it in context: "Three hours work today on
17discovery", that is for this action two years ago already,
18"compiling exhaustive files for my papers for my libel
19actions, my archive files on the Judenfrage, the Jewish
20problem. Depressing.
21 "There is an item in today's Jewish Chronicle
22which reports that, according to a study by the University
23of Tel Aviv, anti-Semitic incidents everywhere are on the
24decline. There has been an 8.1 per cent decline in
25Britain over the 12 month period to the end of 1996.
26 "There are two significant exceptions, however.
1An increase in anti-Semitic propaganda in Switzerland
2during 1996 was generated by 'Jewish claims for the return
3of money and of the property of Holocaust victims or their
4heirs'. The other exception is Australia 'where there was
5a 12 per cent rise over the previous year'."
6 I then continue with the passage that you have
7put before his Lordship which is the conclusion to be
8drawn from this fact, that in Australia -- "In fact,
9Australia today is on fire about me again, about my not
10being allowed into the country. The Prime Minister of
11Australia this morning has criticised me. This kind of
12thing generates the anti-Semitism in countries", and this
13is precisely what this is about.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not see anything in what I have just read which
15might account for the Australians' unwillingness to have
16you on their shores?
17 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, this is saying cause and effect. Why is
18there increasing anti-Semitism in Switzerland today when
19it is going down everywhere else in the world? Answer, we
20know why. Why is there anti-Semitism today in Australia
21today? Answer, we know why.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you are adopting it, are you not? You are saying the
23anti-Semitism is justified on account of the fact that the
24Jews are greedy?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Did I say justified or explicable? Is there a subtle
26difference there, do you think?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will read the next passage, Mr Irving.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot find the reference. K4, tab 10,
3page 60.
4 MR RAMPTON: At 1.
5 A. [Mr Irving] This is a typical example of something being taken out of
6context and the word "explicable" being changed into
7"justifiable". This is a typical manipulation.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you say so, Mr Irving. It is going to get worse, I am
9afraid. Can we read the next passage? This is rather a
10long passage so perhaps you would like to have a look?
11This is taken from your interview with Errol Morris on 8th
12November 1998.
13 My Lord, the passage in the file is at page 60
14of tab 10. 60 is written in the round circle. It is at
15the bottom of the left-hand column of page 22 of the
16action report.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this your second one?
18 MR RAMPTON: No, that is first one your Lordship was asking
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I did find it. I am sorry. I have it
22 MR RAMPTON: This comes from, if you want the reference,
23Mr Irving, pages 25 to 27.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I have it. I have the full text in front of me. Once
25again you left off the opening passage which explains what
26I am saying.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which opening passage?
2 A. [Mr Irving] You begun half way down the paragraph of what I said.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will read the whole thing if it bothers you.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I have just read the opening part
5of that paragraph. It makes no difference at all to what
6is relied on, I do not think, does it?
7 A. [Mr Irving] No, what I am saying is if somebody calls me a liar, which
8frequently happens, especially in this courtroom, even
9when I am on oath, I shrug my shoulders.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] And then you contrast that with the Jewish reaction?
11 A. [Mr Irving] And I contrast that with the sensitivity of the Jewish
12community. When they are called liars, then suddenly all
13the force and majesty of the law is called in and you are
14invited to go before the Magistrate and all the rest of
15it, and this generates anti-Semitism, in my view.
16 MR RAMPTON: Well, Mr Irving, I am going look at something
17which I suggest is a massive exercise in the generation of
18anti-Semitism. It is you speaking at line 39 on page 25
19of the file.
20 You see: "It is certainly is inexcusable.
21Every country, every people, particularly the Jewish
22people, I think are robust enough to survive the knocks,
23to survive the insults, to survive the impugning of their
24integrity". So far so good.
25 "If somebody says to me, 'David Irving, I think
26you are a liar', I shrug my shoulders and say, 'So, so
1what? You are entitled to your opinion'. But if somebody
2says to the Jewish community, 'Jewish community, we think
3you are a liar', suddenly the jail doors are swung open
4and people say, 'This way, come on, you have called them a
5liar'" ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] Like Karl Philip, for example, fined 3,000 deutschemarks
7for some utterance. That is precisely the example, and
8that generates anti-Semitism, in my view.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, "... and this I think does harm to the Jewish people
10in the long run because the non-Jewish people will say,
11'What is it about these people?' Irving: I am deeply
12concerned about this and I have said this to people
13like Daniel Goldhagen who I challenged to the debate at a
14meeting in New Orleans a few months ago. I said, 'You
15have written a book called Hitler's Willing Executioners.
16You have talked to us this evening at great length about
17who pulled the trigger, but the question which would
18concern me if I was a Jew is not who'" ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] "If I were a Jew".
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- "'pulled the trigger, but why? Why are we disliked?
21Is it something we are doing? I am disliked. Dave Irving
22is disliked. I know that because of the books I write.
23I could be instantly disliked by writing. I could become
24instantly liked by writing other books. You people'", by
25which, of course, you mean the Jews, "'are disliked on a
26global scale. You have been disliked for 3,0000 years and
1yet you never to seem to ask what is at the root'",
2misspelt, "'of this dislike. You pretend that you are not
3disliked but you are disliked. No sooner do you arrive as
4a people in a new country, then within 50 years you are
5already being disliked all over again. Now what is it?
6And I do not know the answer to this. Is it built into
7our microchip? When a people arrive who call themselves
8the Jews, you will dislike them? Is there something in
9our microchip? Is it in our microchip that we do not like
10the way they look? Is it envy because they are more
11successful than us? I do not know the answer, but if
12I was a Jew, I would want to know what the reason is why
13I am being disliked, and not just disliked in a kind of
14nudge, nudge, wink, wink, he is not very nice kind of sort
15of way, but we are being disliked on a visceral, gut
16wrenching, murderous level, that no sooner do we arrive
17than we are being massacred and beaten and brutalized and
18imprisoned until we have to move on somewhere else. What
19is the reason? I would want to know the answer to that,
20and nobody carries out an investigation about that".
21 Then I have to go on: "(Interviewer) What would
22you say the reason is? (Irving) I am just looking at this
23as an outsider; I come from Mars and I would say they are
24clever people. I am a racist, I would say they are a
25clever race. I would say that, as a race, they are better
26at making money than I am". That is a racist remark, of
1course, Mr Irving. It is worthy of Dr Joseph Goebbels, is
2it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Now then, you are taking words here and you are putting
4your own intonation on them: "If I am a racist, then
5I would say these things, I say things in a racist kind of
6way -- there are better people than us, they play the
7violin better, they make money better than us and this
8would generate my envy".
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] "But they appear to be better at making money", you repeat
10yourself, "than I am".
11 A. [Mr Irving] That is right, I am putting myself in a position of the
12critics. I am trying to find reasons why people are
13anti-Semetic. I am talking here to a television
14interviewer. We are investigating the reasons why people
15may become anti-Semetic in my own rather clumsy and
16incoherent way. We are trying to find what makes people
17anti-Semetic. Is it because the Jews are better than us?
18Is it because they play the violin or the piano better
19than us, better at making money than us or is there
20something built into our microchip?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving.
22 A. [Mr Irving] I think this is a very coherent expression of the whole
23anti-Semitic tragedy, that nobody knows what it is that
24makes people dislike foreigners, the xenophobia that is
25inside every human being.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That sentence (I do not know whether
1Mr Rampton has read it yet or not), you say: "If I was
2going to be crude, I would say not only are they better at
3making money but they are greedy", that is you, Mr Irving,
4saying the Jews are greedy, is that right, or have I
6 A. [Mr Irving] No, this is the two or three levels down in the argument,
7my Lord; this is putting myself into the skin of a person
8who is asking questions about those clever people. There
9should be triple quotation marks around this.
10 MR RAMPTON: Oh, no, Mr Irving, that will not do; that is
11another rash and hasty ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] If you read on, you will see exactly why we are talking
13about the Swiss gold business.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to read on, Mr Irving. That is exactly why
15I said it was a rather rash answer.
16 A. [Mr Irving] This is precisely the moment when Abraham Foxman and the
17Jewish newspaper 'Forward' have said: "Sure, we
18bludgeoned them until they had parted with the money".
19That was his headline: "Yes, we bludgeoned them". This
20is the kind of thing that generates anti-Semitism as
21witnessed what happened in Switzerland.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] So every time there is a pogrom or a machine gunning into
23a pit, or a mass gassing, it is entirely the Jews' fault
24because some of them make money and some of them are good
25at the piano, is that right, and some of them are clever?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I regard that a very childish oversimplification of what
1I have tried to set out in two paragraphs there.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is just exactly what you have been telling ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] It is a childish oversimplification. I am confronting
4Daniel Goldhagen who is a very clever writer and who has
5written a whole book on Hitler's willing executioners
6asking the question: "Who pulled the trigger?", and I am
7attending a meeting, in fact, in a synagogue in New
8Orleans, November two years ago. I am the first person
9who is allowed to ask him a question and I say to him --
10these are the questions I asked him and I am repeating the
11questions I have actually said to him and you will also
12find that in my Radical's diary; the whole of this episode
13is also there --- Professor Goldhagen, a very interesting
14book you have written. Of course, it caused a great
15sensation around the world in May 1996, but the question
16you have asked is the wrong question. If I were a Jew,
17the question that would interest me is not who pulled the
18trigger but why, and why does it keep on happening again
19and again and again and why does nobody investigate that
20phenomenon, the phenomenon of where does anti-Semitism
21come from?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your thesis, Mr Irving, is perfectly clear and will become
23clearer and clearer as we go through these extracts.
24 A. [Mr Irving] So what is my thesis?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your thesis is that the Jews have deserved everything that
26has been coming to them?
1 A. [Mr Irving] That is totally different; the difference between
2justification and explanation, already made once earlier
3this afternoon, to say that something is explicable is
4totally different from what I am saying, that it is
5justifiable. Nowhere have I ever (and I would find it
6repugnant if anyone suggested this) heard suggested that
7what happened to the Jewish people, that that tragedy is
8justifiable; it is not justifiable. But anti-Semitism, as
9a different phenomenon, you can begin to explain it; you
10can say that if somebody acts like Abraham Foxman and
11bludgeons the country like the Swiss in departing with
12billions of pounds of money, then it must not be
13surprising if it turns out that Switzerland is one of the
14few countries in the world where anti-Semitism increases.
15There is, surely, a cause-and-effect connection between
16those two facts.
17 If I were Daniel Goldhagen, or his father, the
18famous Professor Goldhagen, I would want to investigate
19that phenomenon rather than the rather more mundane
20phenomenon of which gangsters actually pulled the
21trigger on those sub-machine guns.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Does one swallow, or to use something more akin to your
23terminology, one vulture, does one swallow or vulture make
24a summer, Mr Irving?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I do not understand that question.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you have used one case to characterize the
1whole of the Jewish people, wherever in the world, as
2greedy and, therefore, as having brought anti-Semitism on
4 A. [Mr Irving] Did I say this was the only instance?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have your words in black and white in front of me.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so; I think this is a pattern,
7unfortunately, which is repeated again and again. These
8whole page advertisements around the world which you
9yourself have undoubtedly seen, and which I can certainly
10introduce if you have not seen them, where it states:
11"You can get money, too; you do not have to have been in
12a concentration camp, you did not even have to have been a
13slave labourer. It suffices if you are a member of a
14minority persecuted by the Nazis living within the Third
15Reich, you can get money out of it". This generates
16anti-Semitism, in my view. I may be totally wrong; maybe
17anti-Semitism comes from somewhere else.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, may I just ask you a question
19about the interview you gave in November 1998?
20 A. [Mr Irving] November 1998?
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] The one you have just been asked about?
22 A. [Mr Irving] This actually was August 1998, I think.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Right. It may be wrongly dated. But I just want to get
24the sort of structure of what you are conveying to your
25interviewer. You are saying of the Jews, well, they have
26been disliked for 3,000 years, they are disliked wherever
1they go?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Then you say: "Well, I do not know the answer".
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I do not -- I am not ----
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Pause. Am I right so far?
6 A. [Mr Irving] You are absolutely right, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But then do you not go on to say ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] I venture a suggestion.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, look at it at as if I came from Mars"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I tried to stand right back from the planet Earth and look
11down on these people.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] "And it appears to me that the reason why they are
13disliked is because they are greedy"; is that not what you
14are saying?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I go on to a whole series of different reasons.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] All right, but that is the first one you come up with?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I say globally I do not know what the reason is.
18Effectively, I am not a sociologist, I am not an expert on
19this, but possible reasons are -- what is the connection
20between the rise in Swiss anti-Semitism and the gold bank
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But you are putting that forward as the reason why there
23is this dislike of Jews?
24 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, with respect, not the reason.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] All right.
26 A. [Mr Irving] One contributing reason -- one contributing reason at this
1moment in time.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I see. I just want to get it clear.
3 A. [Mr Irving] But I also suggest very strongly it may be built into our
4microchip, as I put it. It may be part of the endemic
5human xenophobia which exists in all of us and which
6civilized people like your Lordship and myself manage to
7suppress, and other people like the gentleman on the
8Eastern Front with the submachine guns cannot suppress.
9 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, before we proceed any further, I think
10you might be advised to have a look at your own diary, if
11you would not mind?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you have had 50 million words of my diaries to look
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Aren't we fortunate?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I think discovery on a scale like this contrasts
16very severely with the discovery that your own instructing
17clients have made.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving, good point.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Sarcasm is, perhaps, not called for.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] 38, please, Mr Irving -- no, indeed not, when you look at
23 MR RAMPTON: 38 of tab 10 of the bundle K4, my Lord. It is
24page 36 of the extract bundle. This is Irving speaking to
25Irving. This is not Irving punting some thesis about
26Jewish culpability to the television audience. I want you
1to look at the last part of the entry for September 17th
21994 which was a Saturday.
3 A. [Mr Irving] I am looking at the wrong page.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 38 of the bundle, tab 10.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Tab 10?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of K4?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it in your ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- selection?
10 MR RAMPTON: This is a typed or printed page.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Some of it has underlines and italics?
13 A. [Mr Irving] The underlinings are not from me.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] "A quiet evening at home", etc, "Jessica", who is Jessica?
15 A. [Mr Irving] My little infant child.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
17 A. [Mr Irving] At this time she was nine months old at this time.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Nine months old in September 1994. "Jessica is turning
19into a fine little lady. She sits very upright on an
20ordinary chair. Her strong back muscles, a product of our
21regular walks in my arms to the bank, etc., I am sure. On
22those walks we sing the binkety-bankety-bong song. There
23are two other poems in which she stars: 'My name is baby
24Jessica. I have got a pretty dressica, but now it is in a
25messica' and, more scurrilously, when half breed children
26are wheeled past" and then you go into italics, "'I am a
1baby Aryan, not Jewish or sectarian. I have no plans to
2marry an ape or a Rastafarian"?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Racist, Mr Irving? Anti-Semitic Mr Irving, yes?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Teaching your little child this kind of poison?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Do you think that a nine month old can understand words
8spoken in English or any other language?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will tell you something, Mr Irving, when I was
10six-months old, I said, "Pussy sits in the apple tree
11until she thinks it is time for tea"?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You were very precocious!
13 MR RAMPTON: I was, but then I burned out at two!
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Perhaps I should set this in its context. The
15scurrilous magazine "Searchlight" (about which we will, no
16doubt, hear more) had just published a photograph of
17myself and Jessica and her mother, who is very blond and
18very beautiful, and it had sneered at us as being the
19"perfect Aryan family".
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] They did not write this, you did?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but this is my little private response to this rather
22nasty sneer ----
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] You wrote this on 17th September.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Please do not interrupt me. This is my private response
25to this rather nasty smear by this magazine which has been
26giving me trouble ever since I had the man arrested for
1breaking into my house 30 years earlier when he called my
2family a "perfect Aryan family" in a public magazine. So
3I sit with my infant child on my lap, humming a little
4song to her about us being a perfect Aryan. Do any other
5words upset you?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Do any other words in the poem upset you apart from the
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no. It is the contrast. The poor little child has
10been taught a racist ----
11 A. [Mr Irving] Poor little child! She is a very happy child.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- ditty by her perverted racist father.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Have you ever read Edward Lear or Hilliard Belloch?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] They have not brought a libel action complaining of being
15called a racist, Mr Irving. You have ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know if they have brought libel actions or not.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you sued because you said we called you a
18racist and an extremist?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but I am not a racist.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, look at the words on the page.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, are you accusing me of racism, in other words,
22looking down on ethnic minorities?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, how is it behind you in the entire four weeks we
25have been here today I have not seen a single coloured
26member on the team behind you, when I have employed
1coloured people of ethnic minorities on my staff and, so
2far as I can see, not you or your instructing solicitor
3have employed one such person.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now, shall we have a little pause? I do not
5think that is a very helpful intervention.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I think it is very important to say that. It is the point
7where hypocrisy begins and dudgeon ends.
8 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you are condemned out of your own
9mouth, you see. That is the trouble.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am condemned by what I say and you are condemned
11by what I see. Not once have you had a member of the
12ethnic minority working on your side.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I just suggested that was not a
14very helpful intervention. Do not just repeat it.
15 MR RAMPTON: I expect you are hoping the newspaper reporters
16are going to write it down, are you not, Mr Irving?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I do not place much trust in the newspaper reporters. I
18can recognize hypocrisy when I see it.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us go back in this same tab of the file to a diary
20entry for 10th November. That is a long way back. If you
21want to turn to page 17, you are in South Africa,
22Johannesburg, on November 10th 1987?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 17 of your extracts.
24 MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord, I am trying to avoid accusations of
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you give me the references if they are
2 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is page 41, I think of, I hope, the
3extracts bundle, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 41.
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is the last entry on page 41 in my copy.
6I will read the whole of it because I do not want -- the
7entry on page 19, please, Mr Irving?
8 A. [Mr Irving] What page am I supposed to be looking at?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 4, tab 10, page 19.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 MR RAMPTON: "Stayed in hotel all evening apart from a short
12walk down the street. Worked revising Goring in the
13foyer. The conservative newspapers of Johannesburg and
14Pretoria are full of my coming. Unfortunately, I have not
15left all my blue sheets and media and personal contacts in
16London. Around 8 p.m. ... (reading to the words) ... She
17is bristling a bit about some of my more blatant
18chauvinism; he talking most interestingly about the AIDS
19epidemic in black Africa. He says he thinks that the
20black population in all Africa will die out within a very
21short space of time". That was in 1987 -- poor man will
22have been disappointed. "He attributes the incredibly
23high AIDS" ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] On what do you base the conclusion he is going to be
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us read on. I think the trouble is with
1interpolations, they ----
2 MR RAMPTON: "He attributes the incredibly high AIDS incidence
3among blacks to their sexual activity, few blacks,
4apparently, engaging in less than five sexual acts per
5night". Whose underline is that?
6 A. [Mr Irving] It looks like mine.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does, does it not? "He says the astonishing sexual
8activity among black men accounts for why a large number
9of white female intellectuals and students like having
10black boyfriends which now, of course, they will regret.
11God works in mysterious ways, but here we agree he", that
12is God, not your mate Burridge, "appears to be working
13remorselessly towards a Final Solution which may cruelly
14wipe out, not only the blacks and homosexuals, but a large
15part of the drug addicts and sexually promiscuous and
16indiscriminate heterosexual population as well."
17 Not racist, Mr Irving?
18 A. [Mr Irving] What is racist about that?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are hoping that God is going to complete his long term
20plan, his Endlosung, his Final Solution, and wipe outline
21all the blacks as well as the homosexuals and everybody
23 A. [Mr Irving] What a totally perverse spin you have put on that diary
24passage. I am a religious man. When I see things
25happening, I see God's hand in everything that is
26happening. When I see God inflicting a plague like this
1on Africa, I ask myself what the possible explanation for
2it can be. I am talking to a medical expert, who is a
3medical expert from Swaziland, who is describing to me
4what I did not know, I had never heard of at that time.
5I know a great deal more about the AIDS, the incidence of
6AIDS, among the native population of Africa. At this time
7it was total news to me and he told me, and it undoubtedly
8is true, that it is cutting a swathe right through the
9native populations of the whole of the African Continent,
10and we are musing about the strange way that God works in.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] So God, like you, would have used capital F, Final,
12capital S, Solution, would he, just as Hitler, no doubt,
13was God's instrument in applying that to the Jews? Is
14that right, capital F ----
15 A. [Mr Irving] It is obvious I am referring to the Final Solution in the
16Aryan sense there, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you think God ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] But you will not find in that sentence the slightest trace
19of approval of what is going on there. I think this is
20another of these enormous human tragedies.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you think, and I do not want ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] And to suggest that I approved of what was done to the
23Jews or to suggest that I am approving here of what is
24happening to the wretched black population of Africa is
25perverse and repugnant.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is God working remorselessly towards his capital F,
1Final, capital S, Solution, so far as the blacks etc. are
2concerned ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] You cannot find in any of that passage any hint of
4approval from me of what is happening.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see.
6 A. [Mr Irving] It is -- I am listening aghast to what the doctor is
7telling me about what I had never heard of before, namely
8the incidence of AIDS in the black population of Uganda
9and Swaziland and the southern African Continent.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now I would like to look at something else, please. Tab 5
11of this file, pages 10 to 11. This is your talk to the
12Clarendon Club ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] While we were on that previous African tour, it is a pity
14you did not leave in the pages of the diary which referred
15to my visit to Soweto township where we picked up several
16black people in our car -- this was at the height of the
17troubles -- and drove around Soweto with these five blacks
18sitting in our car allowing -- to show us around the whole
19of their township because I was very interested in their
20problems, but, unfortunately, you took those pages out.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you agree with me, Mr Irving, that one sometimes gets a
22better insight into a person's true thoughts and feelings
23when one reads them written in his private diary than in a
24speech, for example?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes. These diaries are not intended for publication
26and you have been very fortunate to have them. 50 million
1words have been placed at your disposal.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, thank you, Mr Irving. People who bring libel actions
3have to make discovery. It is as simple as that.
4 A. [Mr Irving] And I have had no objection whatsoever. I attach the
5proper conditions to it and I said you can have access to
6my entire private diaries and telephone logs and
7everything. So far this is all you have found.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we turn to tab 5 in this one? This is something, my
9Lord, that is not copied into the extract.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is not?
11 MR RAMPTON: It is in your Lordship's but not in mine.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you give me the reference in mine?
13 MR RAMPTON: I cannot, no, because I have not got it -- page
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
16 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to read the full entry in
17this which is a talk I think you gave to the Clarendon
18Club, whatever that may be, on 19th September 1992, as you
19can see from the beginning of the tab. After some
20applause you say this: "For the last four weeks just for
21once I have gone away from London, where I have been
22sitting, down in Torquay, which is a white community. We
23saw perhaps one black man and one coloured family in the
24whole time I was down there. I am not anti-coloured, take
25it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at
26an airport, or a station, or a seaport" ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] Can you tell me what page you are, please?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am lost too.
3 MR RAMPTON: 10 of 13 at the top of the page. I will start the
4paragraph again.
5 A. [Mr Irving] The bit about I am not anti-coloured, right?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I read the previous paragraph. "I am not
7anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more
8than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a
9seaport, and I see a coloured family there - the black
10father, the black wife and the black children. I think it
11is just as handsome a spectacle as the English family, or
12the French family, or the German family, or the South
13African family ... (reading to the words)... I think that
14is the way that God planned it and that is the way it
15should be. When I see these families arriving at the
16airport I am happy (and when I see them leaving at London
17airport I am happy)". Well, Mr Irving, well, Mr Irving?
18 A. [Mr Irving] It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in a car in Durban
19which said, "Welcome to Durban, now go away". I think we
20all dislike tourists of any colour.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: These are black tourists though, that is the
23 MR RAMPTON: Tourists? These are black people ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- you are talking about, and your statement, "i am not
26an anti-coloured, take it from me", was a cynical little
2 A. [Mr Irving] I do not agree. I am not anti-coloured. This was the
3cynical little joke at the end because you will notice
4that the first bit did not get the laughter. It was the
5cynical little joke at the end that got the laughter.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, "... and when I see them leaving" ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Right, so that was recognized as being the joke.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "When I see them leaving at London airport I am happy.
9[Cheers and Laughter]". You were speaking to a bunch of
10fellow racists who would like to clear these islands of
11all their black people?
12 A. [Mr Irving] On what information do you base the knowledge of what the
13audience was ----
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Otherwise you would not have got cheers and laughter; you
15would have been bundled out ----
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is a question. It is a question.
17Were you speaking to a bunch of racists?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Was I -- no, I was not. No, they were perfectly
19ordinary ----
20 MR RAMPTON: Why were there cheers?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, they obviously liked the jokes that I said. They
22liked the way that I told the joke at the end.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you had been speaking to a normal audience of
24non-racist people and you had said something like that,
25you would have been chucked out on your ear, Mr Irving.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you can take it from me, I am less racist than
1yourself probably as witnessed the people that I employ.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] All right. I am going to read on. "But if there is one
3thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this --
4the way ... the thing is when I am down in Torquay and
5I switch on my television set and I see one of them" --
6"one of them" -- "reading our news to us". Now, who is
7the "them" and who is the "us"?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Trevor McDonald.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, "one of them"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, in fact, this is a stock speech I used to make.
11I used to -- it was a debating speech I would deliver to
12university audiences. I would start off by talking about
13having our people, the God old days, Lord Reith, the
14announcer wearing his dinner jack, you knew the people
15behind the camera were actually wearing dinner jackets too
16on Royal occasions, but now in the gradual drumming down
17of television, they have women reading the news and they
18have -- it is part of a general speech I used to deliver
19and I used to say ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The question, I think before you go
21further ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] I am trying to set the ----
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- was what did you mean -- listen to the question ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- what did you mean by "them", not what did you mean by
26"one". What did you mean by "them" and "us"? What is
1the answer to that?
2 A. [Mr Irving] As you say, I go on straightaway, I talk about women.
3 MR RAMPTON: Right. Wait a minute. We are coming on,
4Mr Irving. You have rambled on without reading the text,
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that is the clear answer. The very next sentence
7says ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, we are going to read on.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I do admit to chauvinism.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] "It is our news and they're reading it to me"?
11 A. [Mr Irving] That is right.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] If I was ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] It is male news and it should be read to us by men
14wearing ----
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, will you please be patient?
16 A. [Mr Irving] --- dinner jackets and ----
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are going to read quite a lot of this. Please.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please. Can I just ask one other
19question because I am puzzled, and I want to make sure
20I understand what you are conveying. When you were asked
21what was meant by that passage, you said the "one" was
22Trevor McDonald ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, because ----
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- but you then said that the "them" was women.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we come to ----
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, I do not understand.
1 A. [Mr Irving] --- oh, we come to Trevor McDonald over the page, I see,
2my Lord. I was jumping ahead of myself. He is three
3paragraphs on.
4 MR RAMPTON: Trevor McDonald is one of us because, like me, he
5wears glasses, is that right -- one of them, rather?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I am afraid I do not follow that.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said initially without thinking of your clever, clever
8"woman" answer, you said, "That is Trevor McDonald"?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Well, this is a standard speech that I used to give as
10a standard gramaphone record.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why did you say that Trevor McDonald was one of them?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Because I know what is coming. I know what is coming in
13the speech.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] What "them" is Trevor McDonald one of?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, he is someone who is different from us.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] In what sense? He wears glasses?
17 A. [Mr Irving] No, he speaks English better than you and I do ----
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is what you meant, is it?
19 A. [Mr Irving] --- for example -- yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] He is one of them very good English speakers?
21 A. [Mr Irving] This is a witty speech being delivered after dinner to an
22audience in a private club.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Wicked", Mr Irving?
24 A. [Mr Irving] "Witty", not wicked.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Witty", did you say?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it got laughter.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes -- just, no doubt, as Dr Goebbels' audience would
2have laughed at him.
3 A. [Mr Irving] I used to deliver exactly the same speech to the
4University of Durham, Cambridge University Union Society
5-- no complaints from anyone. The women laughed loudest
6of all.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we turn over the page to page 11 of 13. Can?
8 A. [Mr Irving] But, of course, you are missing out the bits that help to
9set the tone of the kind of mood of the evening.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not mind, Mr Irving. I want to finish this
11question before the adjournment. You do not like what is
12coming, I know, but I am going to do it very, very quickly
13so that I get my question in: "Because basically
14international news is a serious thing and I yearn for the
15old days of Lord Reith when the news reader on the BBC,
16which was the only channel in those times, wore a dinner
17jacket and bow tie and rose to the occasion. On great
18State occasions, one had the satisfaction of knowing not
19only that the news reader wearing the dinner jacket and
20the bow tie -- on great State occasions I think it was
21even a white tie that was called for -- but you had the
22satisfaction of knowing that the gentleman behind the
23camera was also wearing a dinner jacket. It gave a
24certain solid sense of satisfaction that all was well in
25the best", you should have said "all possible worlds" but
26it has got missed out, "but now we have women reading out
1news to us"?
2 A. [Mr Irving] "Now we have women reading out the news to us".
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Wait, Mr Irving, the good bit is coming. "If they could
4perhaps have their" ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] But this is setting the whole tone of it, you know, you
6are not enjoying this speech.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] "If they could perhaps have their own news which they were
8reading to us I suppose [Laughter], it would be very
9interesting. [Good-natured female heckling]". So far,
10Mr Irving, so good. "For the time being, for a
11transitional period, I would be prepared to accept that
12the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading
13the important news to us, followed by a lady reading all
14the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald
15giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the
16drug busts - [rest lost in loud Laughter and Applause]".
17Are you not appalled by that?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Not in the least. This is a funny after dinner speech in
19the spirit of any stand up comedian on the BBC. We have
20heard exactly the same comedy from the end of the pier in
21Brighton. It is exactly the same kind of speech, and if
22you find that -- even the black audience would not find
23something like offensive, believe me; and as for which of
24us two is the racist, I can only refer to the fact that I,
25unlike the members of the Defence team, employ ethnic
26minorities without the slightest hesitation ----
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, how many times do I need to tell
2you not to make that comment? It is inappropriate,
3futile ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if I am being accused of racism, my Lord, I
5think ----
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- and is doing your cause no good, I can assure you.
7 A. [Mr Irving] If I am being accused or racism, I think it is highly
8relevant to find out that I employ ethnic minorities
9without the slightest hesitation.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, it is my view that counts and I do not think it is
11says, so please do not say it again?
12 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, what I would like to do with your
13Lordship's permission -- there is an awful lot of this --
14I have got a very little way, and your Lordship can
15understand one reason why that is so -- what I would like
16to do is at 2 o'clock -- it will take a little bit of time
17to set up -- is show a video of one of Mr Irving's
18speeches at Tampa, Florida, on 6th October 1995 at a
19gathering of something called the National Alliance.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. We will do that at 2 o'clock.
21 (Luncheon adjournment)
22(2.00 p.m.)
23 A. [Mr Irving] May I first apologise for my unruly behaviour on the race
24matter. I should not have kept making that point.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry. I do appreciate that it is
26quite stressful. You have been being cross-examined for
1quite a long time, but I think it is better unsaid.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Secondly, in view of the fact that I was broadcasting to
3Australia at five this morning, may I sit during the
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. Sit any time during your
7 MR RAMPTON: I hope that goes for me too so far as the film is
8concerned. My Lord, this is a video tape recording of a
9speech or talk, call it what one likes, by Mr Irving at
10Tampa, Florida, on 6th October 1995. The transcript,
11I think, is K3, tab 20. The plan is to do the beginning,
12and there is a specific reason for that, and then go to
13the section which your Lordship has in the extract at page
14page 14.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
16 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, is there any reason why they are just showing
17this section and not the whole tape?
18 MR RAMPTON: I do not mind. It takes an hour. I have
19absolutely no views about that at all, my Lord.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why not watch the extract and then we can go
21on the written page to any other passage you want.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Very well.
23 MR RAMPTON: If it makes Mr Irving uncomfortable, I would much
24rather ----
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just concerned about time, Mr Irving.
26Explain to me why you want the whole thing shown.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Your Lordship will probably have glanced through it and
2you will have seen that----
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I have not, actually.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry. In fact, I remarked to one of Mr Rampton's
5instructing solicitors as I came upstairs in the elevator
6that I was astonished that they had chosen this particular
7video tape because that is precisely the one that I would
8have wanted shown. I had apprehended they were going to
9show the whole tape and not just a fragment.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. You think this in a way gives the
11flavour of the sort of speeches you were making?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Unless they are intending showing lots of extracts from
13lots of speeches, then I would prefer one entire to be
14shown rather than just one fragment taken out of context.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If Mr Irving puts it like that, that in a way
16this would be a good sample speech, I am inclined to think
17he is entitled to have the whole thing played.
18 MR RAMPTON: I quite agree. I have no feelings about that.
19 Video is shown.
21 Break in video at this point.
22 A. [Mr Irving] I then leave the room so there is not much point in
23showing the rest of it.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there may be.
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
26 (Video continued).
1 MR RAMPTON: There is a small break.
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is when I then leave the room.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I know what the point is.
4 MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship has the point in the transcript,
5then we do not need to see the tape because it is at the
6beginning of the transcript as well as the end.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are stopping?
8 MR RAMPTON: That will do, if your Lordship is satisfied that
9what I need is in the transcript.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have laid the ground for a question.
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Mr Irving, do you remember that earlier on
12in this case we asked you some written questions, or we
13requested some information?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] And do you remember that we asked you questions about the
16national alliance?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Very clearly. I remember very clearly what answer I gave
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I asked you a number of questions, general and specific,
20about the national alliance. You gave some replies. My
21Lord, these are in bundle A, tab 8. Mr Irving should be
22handed bundle A, and he should turn to tab 8 where he gave
23some answers. If turn it to the seventh page -- have you
24got your answers, Mr Irving -- it is a document which
25calls itself "some answers".
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you turn to page 7 of those answers, you will find a
2page which begins with the answer number ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] Tab 9, that is correct.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
5 MR RAMPTON: Tab 9. That is my fault. 23 and 25 are the
6relevant answers. You said this, Mr Irving: "I have no
7association with the body known to the Defendants as the
8National Alliance as such or whatsoever."
9 A. [Mr Irving] What number are you?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Number 23. "I have no association with the body known to
11the Defendants as the National Alliance as such or
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] "I cannot rule out the members of that organization which
15I take to be a legal organization in the United States.
16They have attended functions at which I spoke.
17Accordingly I have no knowledge of, and I take no interest
18in what materials it publishes or distributes. I have no
19knowledge whatsoever of the character of the National
20Alliance other than what is now claimed by the witnesses
21for the Defendants nor of the publications which it is
22alleged to publish or advertise"?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] "I do not agree that I have spoken at any National
25Alliance meetings. It might be that on occasions a
26gentleman who was a member of the National Alliance
1offered to organize a lecture for me. In other words he
2undertook to find a suitable room but I then circulated my
3entire local mailing list to provide an audience. No
4doubt he brought his friends as well. It will be seen
5that in all these photographs of these events which were
6produced at trial there is no kind of National Alliance
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, that was a false answer, was it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Both answers are absolutely true. I draw your attention
11to the fact that your expert witness, Professor Evans,
12having read my entire diaries from start to finish, has
13lamented the fact that he has found not one single
14reference to the National Alliance. Am I correct?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no idea what Professor Evans ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] I am telling you. That is the answer to your question.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not the answer to my question by any manner of
18means, Mr Irving. We are going to show a film of you in a
19moment wearing a National Alliance -- never mind that.
20Look at the beginning of the tab?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Do you wish to have that part struck off the record?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. It is a misunderstanding by me. I do not have things
23struck off the record. That happens in the United States,
24Mr Irving.
25 A. [Mr Irving] There is a fragment of a sentence there about my wearing
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On we go. On we go.
2 MR RAMPTON: On we go, Mr Irving. Tab 20, please, of K3, which
3is the transcript of this last film we have been
5 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right at the beginning. Look at the beginning of it
7please, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] "The first transcribed speech. Ladies and gentlemen, on
10behalf of the National Alliance and National Vanguard
11Books, I would like to proudly welcome Mr David Irving".
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You were not in the room at the time, of course?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I was there at the time.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] On behalf of the National Alliance?
16 A. [Mr Irving] It would have meant nothing whatsoever to me. There is no
17reason at all why I should have remembered that phrase.
18I have no idea what the National Alliance is. I still do
19not know what it is. If somebody introducing me says I am
20here on behalf of some legion of something or some
21alliance of something, it is instantly forgotten by me two
22minutes later. I was there at a meeting which had been
23organized with my mailing list and the evidence for that
24is in the following paragraph: "Ladies and gentlemen,
25there are few familiar faces here this evening". In other
26words, all my own friends off my own mailing list.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] It would not be right to suggest that, including this
2meeting, you have attended no less than eight National
3Alliance events between 1990 and 1998?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I have attended no events that have been organized, to my
5knowledge, as National Alliance events and, had I attended
6such events, then it would have been described as such in
7my private diaries, quite clearly.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you think that was?
9 A. [Mr Irving] This was a function which had been organized by an
10individual for me to attend and to which I had invited my
11entire Florida mailing list.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] "On behalf of the National Alliance and National Vanguard
13Books I would like to proudly welcome Mr David Irving"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] He had a table there no doubt on which he was selling
15books. That was no doubt the return that he got. But
16I have no idea what the National Alliance is and
17I supposed 90 per cent of the people in this audience also
18have no idea what the National Alliance is.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You were the ham in the sandwich between that man
20introducing you proudly on behalf of the National Alliance
21and another man after you spoke, who also spoke out on
22behalf of the National Alliance, Mr Irving.
23 A. [Mr Irving] That may well be, but I repeat what I say. 99 per cent of
24the English public, of which I am a member, has not the
25slightest idea what the National Alliance is in the United
26States, and that is the position I am in, and what I am
1still in. This is no doubt the reason why your expert was
2unable to find the slightest reference to this
3organisation in my private diaries.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember speaking at the Best Western Hotel in
5Tampa on July 25th 1998?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I remember speaking at the Best Western Hotel in Tampa,
7yes, but I do not know what the date was.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am just going to hold it up. This is a flier, poster or
9leaflet for your talk. Do you recognize it?
10 A. [Mr Irving] No. I have not seen that. It would not have been sent to
11me for obvious reasons.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] It says: "Banned. World famous British historian banned
13for publishing politically incorrect views about the
15 A. [Mr Irving] Can you tell me where I find it in the bundle, please?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is one of these files, trial bundle C, tab 2, page 78.
17Mr Irving, there is a witness statement in tab 2 which is
18that of the Defendants' witness Rebecca Gutman.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Who we are not going to be able to cross-examine, I take
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you are certainly not. I am only interested in
22pictures of you, Mr Irving, and the stuff that you know
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am talking about my coming back. If this witness is not
25presenting herself for cross-examination, then the court
26is entitled to take what view of her evidence it wishes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course we know that, Mr Irving. Not only that, you
2should know that you are entitled to introduce by the same
3method material which might be apt to discredit her
5 A. [Mr Irving] I am not the one who is defending this case. You are the
6one defending this case. I remind you that I am the
7Claimant in this action and you are the Defendants, not
8other way round.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On we go.
10 MR RAMPTON: Thank you, Mr Irving. I think his Lordship
11probably knows that. You can be sure that I do.
12Mr Irving, will you look at that poster?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Tab 2.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 78 on the right-hand side of the page in the stamp.
15 A. [Mr Irving] C2.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mine has just got C on it.
17 A. [Mr Irving] This appears to be a leaflet handed out in the University
18of Southern Florida, University of Tampa.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Best Western Hotel, 820 East Bush Boulevard, Tampa. That
20is a regular venue for your attendances at the National
21Alliances meetings, is it not, Mr Irving?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think I have ever spoken there again. I may be
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is 1998.
25 A. [Mr Irving] There is no year on this document.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, but there is in Miss Gutman's statement. This is
1where she picked it up, and when she picked it up she
2reads in paragraph 3 as follows: "On or around mid July
31998 the AJC (whatever that is) South West Florida
4Chapter, received a flier ... advertising a lecture to be
5given by Mr Irving on 25th July 1998 at the Best Western
6Hotel (address), this flier is attached".
7 A. [Mr Irving] The AJC is the American Jewish Committee, is that
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I hope so, yes. Anyhow, it turns out it is another
10National Alliance meeting.
11 A. [Mr Irving] She says, "Although the flier made no mention of the
12National Alliance, the contact telephone number given was
13the number listed for the national office and the National
14Alliance", and I of course would have known that, would I?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] You would, Mr Irving, would you not, if you were pictured
16on the rostrum, podium or platform with a National
17Alliance banner beside you?
18 A. [Mr Irving] How on earth I would not what National Alliance banner
19looks like.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us have a look at it. Tell us where it
22 A. [Mr Irving] Does it say National Alliance or something?
23 MR RAMPTON: As far as I am told. I have never seen it. Let
24us look at it.
25 (Video was played)?
26 A. [Mr Irving] It has also got David Irving posters behind.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
2 A. [Mr Irving] So what is the significance of the CND banner?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] CND? I thought you said National Alliance.
4 (Video played)?
5 A. [Mr Irving] It looked like the CND emblem to me.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, they are not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Is that not the CND emblem?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, if you would stop speaking for a moment,
9I could try and watch the picture.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. That is what Mr Irving calls a CND banner.
11 A. [Mr Irving] If I could see it from where I was standing, which is
12highly unlikely, if you look at the way the hall is laid
13out, I would have seen it sideways and I would have
14thought either that is a tree or a CND banner or
15something, but certainly the words and the banner would
16have meant nothing whatsoever to me. There is no reason
17why they should have.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is the eighth of eight meetings of this body that you
19had been to.
20 A. [Mr Irving] What is the evidence for that.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it true?
22 A. [Mr Irving] What?
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Have you been to eight meetings of the National Alliance?
24 A. [Mr Irving] No, my Lord. Of the National Alliance, not. I have
25spoken across the United States possibly 50 or 60 times a
1 MR RAMPTON: That is one of them, is it not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you have yet to produce any evidence that I have
3known that I am speaking in a National Alliance meeting
4and, if it is not in my private diary, which is the
5obvious place to look for that evidence, at a time when no
6legal action was contemplated, then quite clearly I had
7not the slightest notion what the National Alliance was.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, in 1995 the man introduces you proudly on
9behalf of the National Alliance and National Vanguard
11 A. [Mr Irving] Why should that have stuck in my memory, do you think?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because you are tailed by another man who speaks about the
13National Alliance. You go back again at least in 1998.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Excuse me.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] You go back again in 1998 and you speak from a rostrum
16with a prominent National Alliance banner beside you.
17 A. [Mr Irving] If you could see where this prominent banner is, it is
18either on a back wall or on a side wall where no doubt
19I cannot see it.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] How did you get into the room, Mr Irving? Did somebody
21let you in?
22 A. [Mr Irving] So you imagine I go into a room as the speaker and I say,
23before I just go up to the rostrum I am just going to have
24a look around all the walls to see what is on display here
25and oh, by the way, what is that banner over there?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who put up the pictures of you behind you?
1 A. [Mr Irving] No doubt the organizers did.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, the organizers, Mr Irving. Really!
3 A. [Mr Irving] The people who had invited me there.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, the National Alliance.
5 A. [Mr Irving] This is what you say but, unfortunately, you are
6introducing no evidence and your witness you are
7frightened to put on the cross-examination stand.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have seen the evidence on two tapes, Mr Irving.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, that is not sufficient. You have somebody, a
10member of the American Jewish Committee, who makes a
11written statement, who is not prepared to subject herself
12to cross-examination. I am prepared to subject myself to
13cross-examination week after week after week by you and
14none of your witnesses are prepared.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Very kind of you considering that you brought this action,
16Mr Irving. We are all very grateful to you.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, if I may say so, that sort of
18comment is going to prolong matters.
19 MR RAMPTON: I pass on to the actual text.
20 A. [Mr Irving] I think it is a very fair statement to make, to draw
21attention to the fact that they are not presenting their
22witnesses for cross-examination.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a perfectly fair point to make and
24I will bear it in mind with all the witnesses who are not
25actually going into the witness box to be cross-examined,
26I can assure you.
1 A. [Mr Irving] In the circumstances I think Mr Rampton's sarcasm is not
2called for.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us stop the comments and get on with the
4questions and answers.
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I quite agree. I am sorry about that. Will
6you turn, please, to the text of what we have just seen?
7I have only a couple of questions about this. It has to
8do with some of the things that you have said.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I draw attention first of all to the fact that there were
10familiar faces there, in other words people off my own
11mailing list are there. That is what the nature of the
12audience is.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] There was a lot of laughter, was there not, at your
14tasteless jokes?
15 A. [Mr Irving] My what?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] A lot of laughter at your tasteless jokes, Mr Irving.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I flatter myself that I am an accomplished speaker.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will not say what I was going to say. It would have
19been too obvious and rather cheap. Now, would you like to
20use the full text?
21 A. [Mr Irving] You mean there was laughter at the point where I said, "if
22it does not fit you must acquit"?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. There was laughter ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am drawing attention to where the laughter comes and of
25course the reference there is to the O J Simpson case.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, Mr Irving----
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are interrupting me. The reference was to the O J
2Simpson case which had just ended two days earlier where
3Johnny Cochrand had won the case by saying, "If it does
4not fit, you must acquit."
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] There was the first laughter. There was laughter all the
6way through and I am going to draw attention to some of
7the laughter. Some of it is noted not in that transcript,
8in my transcript. I made some notes as I was going
9through it. In particular, when you are dealing with the
10plan from Colindale, I think your page number is probably
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] And over the page please.
14 A. [Mr Irving] These opponents had tried the usual tactic of taking over
15half the audience and then rioting throughout my entire
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please be patient. In the top half of page 19, the man
18from Colindale -- I do not know how you knew he came from
19Colindale, I am bound to say.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us leave that on one side.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes. You said to your affable audience in Tampa,
22"And he went berserk". Yes?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] He said: "Are you trying to say that we are responsible
25for Auschwitz ourselves"?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] And I said: "Well, the short answer is yes", and at that
2point I made a note on my transcript that there was really
3quite loud laughter.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it is funny that it is not on the transcript in
5front of us when all the other laughter has been noted.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] We can go back to it, Mr Irving. I assure you it is
8 A. [Mr Irving] I do not see quite what the point is that you are trying
9to make.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is funny about ----
11 A. [Mr Irving] I am repeating an actual exchange that happened in
12Shrieveport, Louisiana, between these hecklers who had
13decided to disrupt a lecture which I was delivering and
14then the heckling subsided and their ring leader stood up
15and I engaged him in this debate. He said precisely the
16words that I quoted there, and I could have dodged the
17issue and said I do not want to get into that, but instead
18I met it head on and I said, "Well, the short answer would
19be yes, but there is a long answer. The short answer
20misses out everything between the alpha and the omega, all
21the intervening stages". It may be that it is an
22uncomfortable answer, it may be that it was not the answer
23they wanted to hear, but it is a question I had been
24wrestling with ever since I first became engaged with the
25Holocaust, how do crimes like this happen, and why do they
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am asking you a completely different question,
2Mr Irving. You know that I was. Again you dodge because
3you do not like it. I asked you ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, you did not get to the question then.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] What was funny about what you said?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I disagree. I did not hear any laughter and, if there had
7been laughter ----
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Assume for the sake of argument, because
9I remember the laughter, assume there was laughter, what
10is funny about saying that the Jews are responsible for
12 A. [Mr Irving] It is not the least bit funny.
13 MR RAMPTON: No.
14 A. [Mr Irving] It is not the least bit funny and, if the audience laughs,
15you saw precisely what my answer was, I do not see what
16relevance it has to me.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] All right. Let us go up to the top of page 18.
18 A. [Mr Irving] I think probably it would be called nervous laughter
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh no, Mr Irving.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Nervous laughter, because they had never heard an answer
22as blunt as that followed then by the corollary which was
23to explain precisely what you mean between the yes ----
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now Mr Irving ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] Between the alpha and the omega there is a whole series of
26intervening stages.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you like a rest? You seem very enerve, if I can use
2the French word.
3 A. [Mr Irving] I can carry on if you can.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, it occurred to me actually whilst
5watching the film that you said you were up till 4 or 5
6this morning. I am very concerned that it is a huge
7physical strain on you and I would be perfectly happy if
8you said you had had enough.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I can go as many rounds with Mr Rampton as he wishes.
10 MR RAMPTON: You do not have to worry going rounds with me,
11Mr Irving. I have been doing this for 35 years. I am
12asking you genuinely. You seem rather rattled. Would you
13like a rest?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, I am not rattled.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rattled is the wrong word.
16 MR RAMPTON: Whatever?
17 A. [Mr Irving] You have to accept the answers I give you in the spirit in
18which they are given.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are going to carry on.
20 MR RAMPTON: Go to the top of page 18, Mr Irving.
21 A. [Mr Irving] If you are just trying to score cheap points from----
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I am not.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please, there is a lot of point
24scoring going on. Let us get on with the question and
26 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, what I am concerned about is that today
1of all days you seem quite incapable of answering my
2questions. That is a waste of his Lordship's time and my
3client's money.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Ask another one.
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I will.
6 A. [Mr Irving] These are comments for his Lordship to make rather than
7for leading counsel, in my view. Can I draw your
8attention to the final sentence of that paragraph that you
9objected to?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
11 A. [Mr Irving] It is an interesting point. They go round the other way
12and they make life unbearable for those who try to analyse
13whatever happened, whatever it was. That is what I try to
14do. I try to analyse whatever happened, whatever it was.
15It is not an easy task, because you are constantly being
16accused of wrong motives.
17 MR RAMPTON: Now, can we please go to the top of page 18 in the
18version you have there?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Here you cannot argue about laughter because it is written
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said, "I find the whole Holocaust story utterly
24boring. It goes on and on and on and they, that is the
25Jews, keep going on about the Holocaust because it is the
26only interesting thing that has happened to them in the
1last 3,000 years". Funny, isn't it?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I think that 95 per cent of the thinking public find the
3Holocaust endlessly boring by now but they dare not say it
4because they know it is politically incorrect.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] The joke is in the sting in the tail. "It is the only
6interesting thing that has happened to the Jews in the
7last 3,000 years". Very funny, isn't it, Mr Irving?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, what other explanation is there for the fact that
9that is all they ever go on about now?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] It might very well be that----
11 A. [Mr Irving] Lots of wonderful things have happened to them in their
123,000 years. There have been the most incredible episodes
13in the Jewish history and yet all we hear from the movies,
14the television and the newspapers of late is the
15Holocaust, and people are thoroughly bored of it.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are, Mr Irving, no doubt, and you do not speak for
17anybody but yourself, I am sorry.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Maybe you stood in Oxford Street with a clip board taking
19a poll saying, "are you bored with the Holocaust yet?" My
20own perception, which is what I am giving here from this
21box, is that the people I speak to, who are intelligent
22people from academic and ordinary walks of life, say they
23are thoroughly fed up with it.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not know anything about it and you have managed to
25lecture for an hour about the detail of it.
26 A. [Mr Irving] What, now?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, in this transcript. You went on for an hour.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It has been interesting to this audience because I had put
3to them facts they did not know about, the code breaking,
4about the aerial photographs, everything they have not
5heard about on the established media I have been putting
6to them. That is how I have held their attention.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I think may have been being put to you
8and, if it was not, I will put it ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] Question of taste.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Listen to my question.
11 MR RAMPTON: It is not a question of taste.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You said many times that you are not a
13Holocaust historian, and I understand that.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But you said you had to become one. I cannot remember and
16I have not got the reference, but when was it you told me
17that you decided you had to become a Holocaust historian?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I had to become one for this trial, my Lord, which means
19for the last three years I have wading around knee deep in
20matter and in files and in documents that I would never
21willingly and voluntarily have occupied myself with.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Was the speech in Tampa, Florida, in 1995?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] It appears to me that you knew an awful lot about the
25Holocaust then.
26 A. [Mr Irving] This is true because by that time there had been a lot of
1discussion about it in the newspapers, and material had
2come my way. If people send you things about the decodes,
3if people send you things about the aerial photographs, if
4you are the Hitler historian that I was and people send
5you material indicating, for example, the police decodes,
6which have obviously now come to play a very important
7part in the Hitler history, for example the episode around
8November 30, December 1st 1941, you pick up this material
9as you go along. But I certainly never knew as much then
10as I have learned in the course of this trial, and
11particularly from the very interesting remarks made by
12Professor van Pelt. When I read Professor van Pelt's book
13for the first time "In 1270" I wrote both to him and to
14Trevor Roper in fact in May 1997, saying the most
15extraordinary book on Auschwitz had been published, which
16was one of the first books I have read from cover to
17cover. That was the kind of interest I had, general
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. Mr Rampton, that was my
21 MR RAMPTON: I find that helpful. Looking back on it now,
22Mr Irving, in the light of what you actually know as
23opposed to what you purported to know in October 1995,
24would you accept that almost everything that you told this
25audience about the facts of the Holocaust was wrong?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Some figures are wrong, I think.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Leuchter was wrong?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I do not agree. Can we just turn to the passage where
3I refer to Leuchter?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not starting that cross-examination all over again.
5 A. [Mr Irving] If you look at the top of page 19, that is the passage you
6are referring to. I looked at that in some alarm, I must
7admit, in view of what we have been discussing here in
8these last few days. I refer specifically to the cyanide
9findings -- which is what Leuchter was good on, in my
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You mentioned Hinsley?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I cannot remember whether you mentioned the death books in
14this speech or not.
15 A. [Mr Irving] I did, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Without even pausing to consider the evidence to the
17effect that those who were immediately gassed were never
19 A. [Mr Irving] That the burden of the eyewitness testimony, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is also what a number of the Germans said too, for
21example General Oswald Pohl, but never mind that.
22 A. [Mr Irving] In what way is General Oswald Pohl not eyewitness
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is. It is post war eyewitness testimony from the
25German side.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I shall be introducing a document to Professor Browning
1which suggests precisely the opposite when the time comes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You go on about people faking their tattoos, in effect
3Mrs Altmann's tattoo is a fake, is it not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, I said that she no doubt suffered.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I will take you to the passage. We cannot leave that
6answer where it is, I am afraid. What page is it in the
8 A. [Mr Irving] You have to remember I have had the benefit of seeing Mrs
9Altmann in action on television and you have not.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 17, last quarter of the page. Tell me one thing.
11You are reporting in what one might think rather tasteless
12terms, that is your own word, your conversation with
13Mrs Altmann. Tell me one thing, and this is why I am
14going to get tasteless with her, because you have got to
15get tasteless. "Mrs Altmann, how much money have you made
16out of that tattoo since 1945? Laughter again. Jolly
17funny. How much money have you coined for that bit of ink
18on your arm, which may indeed be real tattooed ink"?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] The suggestion is she has had it put on after the war.
21 A. [Mr Irving] You can take that one either way. As a general matter, in
22my view, expressing a criticism of the way that a Jew or
23the Jewish people are behaving or acting cannot be taken
24per se as anti-Semitism. They are not a people or a race
25who are immune from criticism, am I right?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, the suggestion is that Mrs Altman had that
1tattoo put on her and pretty damned quick after the war so
2as to get money out the German Government, is it not? Be
3honest for once, that is what you are trying to suggest
4and that is why you got a jolly laugh?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I said it may be genuine; it may not.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is why you got a laugh for your tasteless joke?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Whether it got a laugh or not is neither here nor there.
8I am concerned only with the words I have uttered, which
9is that may be genuine or it not may not. We cannot tell.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] The fact is that those which were gassed without going
11into the camp to work were never tattooed, were they?
12 A. [Mr Irving] That is the eyewitness evidence, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and it would not be in the least bit surprising, as
14in fact happened, if a lot of those who were registered
15tattooed and set to work, particularly towards the end of
16the war, actually survived, would it?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I think that the burden of my criticism of the Mrs Altmans
18of this world is that the ones who have been coining the
19money are the ones who suffered least. The ones who
20suffered most are the ones died under the most hideous
21circumstances in these camps, and they did not get a bent
22nickel out of it of course. It is survivors, whatever
23degree they suffered or otherwise, who have been turning
24their suffering into profit, whereas people who suffered
25in other circumstances, like the air raid victims or the
26Australians soldiers building the Burmese railway, have
1never sought to make money of their suffering. This is a
2criticism of the Jewish survivors that it cannot be taken
3as anti-Semitism. The reason I say it is a criticism is
4because I perceive that as being a possible source later
5of anti-Semitism.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Very nicely put in a nice academic way, Mr Irving.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Thank you very much.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but I am not your audience in Tampa in October 1995,
9that is the difference.
10 A. [Mr Irving] In other words, I should tailor my utterances to the
11audience I am speaking to? This I think would be
12repugnant. I have never tailored my utterances to the
13audience. I have always given every audience exactly the
14same speech.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, exactly, and in exactly the same terms with the same
16sneer in your voice.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I disagree.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] We all heard it.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I disagree. I am not accustomed to sneer. I do not stoop
20to the hypocrisy or sarcasm when I speak.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] The same sarcastic jokes which evoked laughter from you
22sympathetic audience about the suffering of the Jews at
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am prepared to take lessons in sarcasm from you,
25Mr Rampton.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I have no interest in a sober academic argument
1which I believe to be hopelessly ill-conceived any, but
2that is completely beside the point, about whether or not
3the Jews are in some sense to blame for what has happened
4to them through the pages of history. I am interested in
5your motivation, your attitude and nobody else's. You
6notice I did not cross-examine your nice Mr McDonald.
7That is the reason, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I think we know the reasons why you did not
9cross-examine Professor McDonald.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you would look, please, at page 19, it is the last
11reference I want to make to this transcript. Towards the
12end of the big paragraph at the top of the page there is a
13sentence which begins: "If you", that is Jews: "If you
14[Jews] had behaved differently over the intervening 3,000
15years, the Germans would have gone about their business
16and would not have found it necessary to go around doing
17whatever they did to them, nor would the Russians, the
18Ukranians, the Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians and all
19the other countries where you have had a rough time."
20 Why do you propose that in any sense, whatever
21the Jews might have done or not done, differently or
22otherwise, made it necessary for them to be exterminated
23by these other central Europeans?
24 A. [Mr Irving] I agree "necessary" is the wrong word. The point I am
25trying to make there, it is exactly the same question as
26I put to Goldhagen in New Orleans. I said to him, not
1just the question that why have all these nations found it
2so easy to kill the Jews, why have all these nations found
3it so easy to unburden themselves for their Jewish
4population, for example the Slovaks and the Dutch and the
5Hungarians and Romanians and so on, when the Nazis said
6"Give us your Jews", all these surrounding countries
7said, "Take them off us", that would have worried me if
8I was a Jew. Also why the British and the Americans and
9the other nations refused to accept the boat loads of
10Jews, like the famous episode with the St Louis, the ship
11laden with Jews, these kinds of things would have
12concerned me as a Jew. I would have wanted to know what
13is it, why do people not want to accept us, why do people
14not want to rescue us. I would have wanted to know that
15far more than I would have wanted to know the sordid story
16of who pulled the triggers. But maybe I am different from
17Goldhagen in that respect. He wants to look at the
18immediate effect and I would have wanted to look at the
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you, Mr Irving.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I agree that the word "necessary" is totally misplaced
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Indeed so. You used it, nonetheless, to a different
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am not speaking, as you will have noticed, from the
26film, I am not speaking from a prepared script.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Any more than I am speaking from a prepared script now.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, do you have, only because I do not have a
4transcript in the file, that clip of extracts which
5I handed in this morning?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Do I have that clip of extracts?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, this little clip of extracts? If you do, could you
8please turn to page 24 of it, to the extract marked 1.7/A
9in a square bracket.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] I want you to look at the top of the page. There are some
12words in German in a square bracket which are said to come
13from a video cassette of your having said something
14entitled the: "Ich Komme Wieder" about 1994.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, rioters standing outside my home against whom the
16West End Police had to put up steel barricades, yes, very
17nice people.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sure you were not feeling in the best of moods
19because you had just lost your contract with the Sunday
20Times for the serialization of the Goebbels' Diary, had
21you not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Not true. This is two years before that.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] So it is not 1994?
24 A. [Mr Irving] No. The contract with St Martins -- I am sorry, the St
25Martins Press contract was lost in April 1996.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, this is the Sunday Times contract.
1 A. [Mr Irving] The Sunday Times episode was, if this is referring to July
21992, yes, the "Gas Irving" posters and so on.
3 MR RAMPTON: I am sure you were under pressure, as you are now,
4reasons for stress.
5 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, I would use exactly the same phrase now.
6Anybody who comes ----
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us see what the phrase was because I have
8not seen this before.
9 MR RAMPTON: Let us see what you said: "The whole rabble", you
10read the German and then you can correct the translation
11if it is wrong: "The whole rabble, all the scum of
12humanities stand outside. Homosexuals, the gypsies the
13lesbians" ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] This is a typical example of how objectionable it is to
15produce something out of context. Outside what? The
16answer is outside my family home at 3 a.m. in the morning
17we hear the police bringing the barricades. I get phone
18calls from the police say, "Mr Irving, if your home is
19invaded this is the emergency number you have to phone".
20I get a phone call from Scotland Yard saying, "Mr Irving,
21we need to come and photograph the inside of your apparent
22in case we have to come rescue because we have had secret
23intelligence about what they are going to do to you."
24This is the kind of nightmare I went through in July 1992,
25when I see the barricades going up outside my house during
26the middle of the night and my family says, "What's the
1sound?", and I say: "It's lorries unloading barricades
2again. Tomorrow the scum are going to be outside again",
3and here they are described.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now under stress, a perhaps little frightened, certainly
6 A. [Mr Irving] I am not easily frightened but I get angry at this kind of
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right, angry when under stress. Do you know the
9expression, I am sure you do, which is sometimes used, it
10is Latin but it is not legal Latin so I can use it, in
11vino veritas?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Are you accusing me of drinking?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Please do not always try to fifth guess me. In vino
14veritas, what does it mean? It means that we sometimes
15get better truth from people when they are pickled.
16 A. [Mr Irving] When they are drunk.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, in wine it means, in their cups.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you not agree sometimes when a man is angry or under
20stress the mask may slip?
21 A. [Mr Irving] That is precisely why I prefer to carry on talking this
22evening so that his Lordship knows that I am talking from
23the heart.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I suggest this came directly from the heart, Mr Irving.
25This is when the mask slips. Mr Irving is under stress.
26He is angry. He thinks people are getting at him. He is
1feeling persecuted.
2 A. [Mr Irving] I think people are getting at me?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, what evidence does one need before one stops
5thinking and starts realising?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] He has got a grudge against the Sunday Times and some
7people are causing a nuisance, and so what he says is
8this: "The whole rabble, all the scum of humanity, stand
9outside. The homosexuals, the gypsies, the lesbians", and
10now this is where you interrupted me, "the Jews, the
11criminals, the communists, the left-wring extremists, the
12whole commune stands there and has to be held back behind
13steel barricades for two days."
14 That is Mr Irving's true mind, is it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] This is a literal description of who was visible on the
16other side of those barricades. Shall I show you the
17photographs? We can identify who they are, the banners
18they are holding, the placards, the leaflets they are
19holding out, the stickers they are putting on all the
20lampposts: Irving speaks Rostock burns. That is what
21I had to put with day after day.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are we going to see gypsies?
23 A. [Mr Irving] They were there. They were there in the photographs. They
24were holding up placards saying "Gas Irving".
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] What, the sort of "Gay liberation wants Irving gassed"?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I will bring the photographs in and you can satisfy
1yourself. I have quite a folder of them.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is the plain language of a plain unvarnished racist?
3 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary. This is the language of somebody who can
4see the evidence with his own eyes, the people who he has
5got to put up with, the people who are harassing everybody
6in that street for two days, being held back by the forces
7of law and order.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I will give you one clue as to the conditions of terror we
10were living in, my family.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, I am going to tell it to you. We had basket,
13a Moses basket in the corner of my drawing room with a
14length of wire rope so I could lower my child out of the
15window in case my house was set on fire. That is the
16conditions we were living under at the time I made that
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course. I understand that.
19 A. [Mr Irving] It cannot be very nice. I am sure this very seldom
20happens to leading counsel.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will not respond to that either. Mr Irving, I want to
22look at some other little things that you said, if I may.
23Page tab 10 of this file, please. Page, I hope this is
24going to be right, page 57.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am in the wrong file. Which file are you
1 MR RAMPTON: It is K4, my Lord. You are in the right file, my
2Lord. I am in the wrong one. I meant K4.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this in the clip?
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is my Lord.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Give me the reference?
6 MR RAMPTON: It is the bottom of page 24 and the top of page 25
7of the clip. This is from your publication Action Report,
8Mr Irving, is it not, for July 1997?
9 A. [Mr Irving] What page are we looking at, 24?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] 57.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Page 57.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tab 10, page 57. It is the column: "Going for Gold".
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will read the first paragraph as your Lordship has not
15got that in the clip, but it does no matter. It is very
17 "Mr Winston Churchill is rumoured to have
18observed that he could listen to arguments about the
19merits of different breeds of tea with complete
20disinterest. Action Report finds it can view any dispute
21between New York politicians, lawyers, wealthy Swiss
22bankers and the international Jewish community with the
23same lack of passion. What is remarkable is that this
24community have considered it worth taking such a long-term
25risk, possibly evening sowing the seeds of future
26Holocaust in the name of short-term gain in gold. All the
1elements of anti-Semitic stereotype are there. The
2cosmopolitan, rootless millionaire, bereft of any local
3patriotism, flinging his unpopular perception, ill-gotten
4gains outer head as he escapes from the country where he
5has briefly rested. The demand for 'unclaimed Gold'
6regardless of whose it is", note those words, Mr Irving,
7"regardless of whose it is, whether wedding rings eased
8off the lifeless fingers of Hamburg or Dresden air raid
9casualties for identification purposes and stored by the
10bucket in the Reichsbank vaults or dental fillings ripped
11out of the bodies of gas chamber victims by SS dentists,
12somehow immune to the Zyklon fumes which had dispatched
13the others." That is July 1997.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is this reference then to the gas chamber victims and
16the Zyklon-B fumes?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well ----
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] The mask slipped again, has it?
19 A. [Mr Irving] No, but we saw in the drawings that have been shown to us
20by Professor van Pelt the gold aubeit, the rooms where the
21smelting furnace was contained.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sure.
23 A. [Mr Irving] It is well-known that in the mortuaries they ripped the
24gold teeth out of the victims.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] But, Mr Irving, "these gold teeth", according to you,
26"came from the bodies of gas chamber victims taken by SS
1dentists somehow immune to the Zyklon fumes which had
2dispatched the victims."
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, this is one of the eyewitness statements that is
4obviously baloney because they could not have gone in
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is it doing in this article, Mr Irving, by you in
8 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot quite understand the point you are making or the
9question you are asking.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why are you making reference to this if you do not believe
11it to be true?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Why am I making reference to this if I do not believe to
13be true.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Why are you, a Holocaust denier in full fledged
15condition in 1997, making reference to dead people from
16the gas chambers having their teeth, gold teeth ripped out
17by the SS dentists?
18 A. [Mr Irving] But I have just said, it is accepted by all parties that
19the Nazis gangsters stole the gold teeth from their
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Again you are dodging the point.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are dodging the gas chamber element.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Your Lordship, can you rephrase the question for me so I
24can understand it?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. What Mr Rampton is putting to is that
26it sounds as if you are accepting in what you there say
1that there were indeed gas chamber victims who had their
2gold fillings removed by SS dentists.
3 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so, my Lord.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] The whole tenor of that is supposed to be disbelieving to
6the point of mockery, and the reason I say that is they
7are helping to regenerate the ill-gotten stereotype of the
8ugly greedy Jew. If you will carry on to the next
9paragraph but one, you will see the source of that
10particular criticism by me. I freely admit to having
11stolen the criticism from Heim Bermont who is a very wise
12English writer indeed who wrote for the Jewish Chronicle
13and who interviewed me once. He made precisely the same
14criticism, that by helping to create or recreate this
15public perception, this public image, of the grab-all
16rich, wealthy Jew, they were generating fresh
17anti-Semitism with this gold campaign.
18 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] And Heim Bermont went on to say that the truth is, as
20everybody knows, that most Jews are in fact not rich and
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] We see in the middle of that, you draw our attention to
23it ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- in middle of that paragraph, two on, on the other side
26of the column ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- after you have quoted Heim Burman, you say:
3"Commenting on the squabbles that had already broken out
4between rival factions ... and the anti-defamation league,
5all of whom want their pound of Swiss flesh." Whose words
6are those?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Probably Bermont. I have quoted Bermont.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not in quotes.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Bermont wrote a savage leading article in the Jewish
10Chronicle. I have never seen an article written -- if a
11non-Jew had written that he would be described as being
12viciously anti-Semitic.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a reference to the unsympathetic portrait of Jewish
14nature presented by William Shakespeare in the Merchant of
15Venice, is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is your reference and not Mr Bermont's, is it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Whether it is mine or Mr Bermont's I do not know, but
19placed where that it is in a paragraph which starts with
20Bermont and ends with Bermont, I am pretty certain it
21comes from Bermont.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we go back to the paragraph on the left-hand side of
23the page?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] You say: "All the elements of anti-Semitic stereotype are
1 A. [Mr Irving] The stereotype.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I know. I have heard what you said about it. What I want
5to know is why the rest of it is there: "The cosmopolitan
6rootless millionaire bereft of any local patriotism".
7Where does that stereotype come from?
8 A. [Mr Irving] That is part of the stereotype.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is, is it?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] In whose mind?
12 A. [Mr Irving] It is part of the general anti-Semitic stereotype of the
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is you are busy promoting here, are you not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] No. I am not quoting in fact -- shall I bring in the
16article that Bermont wrote? I am pretty sure I can find
17it or get it from his web site.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] It has all this stuff, does it, about ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] The only thing I admit which Bermont did not write was
20where I said that the weddings rings may have come off the
21lifeless fingers of the Hamburg victims or the Dresden air
22raid victims, because I happen to know that our witness
23Hans Voight collected three buckets of wedding rings off
24the fingers of lifeless victims of the Dresden air raids,
25and they went to the Reichsbank and they were filmed in
26the Reichsbank subsequently for the Nuremberg trial.
1I have the record of the Nuremberg trial officers who
2said: "Unfortunately we cannot use that film of the gold
3rings found in the Reichsbank because we have no evidence
4it came from concentration camps".
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you are saying part of the stereotype is
6true and part is not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, most of the stereotype is untrue, but this is what
8the Jewish people, the community, rightly objected, that
9they have gained this stereotype somehow and Bermont has
10written this warning editorial in the Jewish Chronicle
11saying: Here we go again, we are just helping create it
12again because a few self-appointed leaders of the Jewish
13community, whether they are Abraham Foxman or Charles
14Edgar Bronson, or whoever it is, are going about this
15ill-advised campaign against the Swiss, which is just
16helping to reinforce the ugly stereotype.
17 MR RAMPTON: While we are in this volume, Mr Irving can we just
18pick up that reference to the pound of flesh, please?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It seems to be one of your themes, if I may say so. Page
2150 of the same volume, my Lord. This is page 23 at the
22top of the clip. I am going to read from the clip,
23because my copy of the article has been sliced off by the
24machine. There is a paragraph on the right-hand side
25beside the box in the middle which begins "Finally". Do
26you have that?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Will Jon Dem Janjung now sue his tormentors" and it is
3all about ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- that man.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, the most shocking episode in American judicial
7history I think.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, that he got acquitted?
9 A. [Mr Irving] He was finally acquitted on the orders of the Israeli
10judges, except he had been framed and set up by eleven
11false eyewitnesses, as one man identified him, and the
12Israeli Supreme Court set him free.
13 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am tempted to say "so what" but if I
14do you will produce a life size portrait of Mr Dem Janjung
15I dare say. Really, Mr Irving, you did not mean that.
16Page 23, my Lord.
17 A. [Mr Irving] You do not always get the answers you need, Mr Rampton.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 23 of the little clip.
19 MR RAMPTON: I did not ask you about Mr Dem Janjung. That was
20one of your offerings, Mr Irving.
21 A. [Mr Irving] You asked me about the paragraph.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] And then you gave us a long lecture about something which
23has nothing to do with this case.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps you should not have paused.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] What you have actually written is this: "The world will
26not easily forget how, even when" ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] "Even when acquitted after all".
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not give me another pitiful lecture about Mr Dem
3Janjung, please?
4 A. [Mr Irving] You are just going to read what I wrote.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Dem Janjung was detained in custody by his enemies for
6two more weeks while they thumbed through their sweaty
7manuals looking for some way to crush him that they might
8have overlooked. Nor how when they failed again these
9shylocks cheated on their pray, frog marched him to his
10plane home to freedom still in handcuffs like a convicted
12 I quite agree that one can take the view that it
13was a disgraceful prosecution. The fact that the
14prosecution was made by Israelis, who one must assume were
15Jewish, do you think that that justifies the use of
16language like this?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think these particular lawyers are above
18criticism, and that was a criticism I chose to level at
19them. I think they are below, beneath criticism, these
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why the shylocks though?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Because they wanted -- you know the Shakespearian
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving.
25 A. [Mr Irving] They wanted their final pound of flesh. Although he had
26been acquitted by the Supreme Court they kept him in jail
1and they frog marched him in handcuffs although he was a
2free and innocent man. What better description of it is
3there than that? I repeat, these people are not above
4criticism just because they happen to be Jews, believe
5me. They are beneath contempt for it. They tried to hang
6him for political reasons.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the next page 51, I do not know what this issue is, May
81995 I think, my Lord, this is page 26 at 1.7 (c). You
9are writing something about Wiesenthalers Zap Jap Crap,
10whatever you mean by that. This is full of stuff about
11Israel and Jews.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Either read the whole article or do not make any comments
13on it.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not the least bit interested in, as it were, your
15themes in your articles, Mr Irving. I am Interested in
16your terminology. That is why I drew attention to your
17use of the word "shylocks".
18 A. [Mr Irving] Zap, Jap or Crap, which is the word?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I now look at the bottom of the right-hand column of this
20article and I see this: "Overshadowed by the gloating
21vulpine figure of Rabbi Cooper himself."
22 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot see this.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is right at the bottom right-hand corner.
24 MR RAMPTON: It has a 3 against it.
25 A. [Mr Irving] A 3?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The right-hand column right at the bottom.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 MR RAMPTON: "The gloating vulpine figure", does that remind
3you of any sort of propaganda put out at any time in
4recent European history, Mr Irving?
5 A. [Mr Irving] No. It sounds rather Churchillian to me.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you got your Goebbels book there?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Have you ever read Churchill's speeches about Adolf
8Hitler? Exactly the same kind of language.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Neither of them is on trial here.
10 A. [Mr Irving] August 1941, a magnificent speech that Churchill made,
11oddly enough shortly after he had read the first police
12decodes of the crimes on the Eastern Front. He used
13exactly this kind of terminology.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you tried to lead us down that road before.
15I tried to suggest that Mr Churchill might have had some
16reason to be beastly about nice Mr Hitler.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you asked for an answer and you do not like the
18answer you get.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] That reminds you of Churchill, does it?
20 A. [Mr Irving] You asked me about the language.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I did.
22 A. [Mr Irving] And I am telling you that it is Churchillian language.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] OK. Now would you get your Goebbels' book please, if you
24have it to hand, and turn to after page 332. Sorry,
25I will have to count the pages. I will count them as
26double: 1, 2, 3, 4. On the left-hand side page there is
1a picture of Hitler wearing what looks like a bathrobe in
2the bottom of the picture or it might be a dust coat, I do
3not know, with a hat on.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the right-hand side there are some pictures with the
6heading "Isidor's Torment"?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "From the moment of his arrival in Berlin on November 28th
9Dr Goebbels wages a remorseless war against the city's
10police chief, Dr Bernhard Weiss. Weiss sues him forty
11times, mostly for calling him Isidor", of course his name
12was not Isidor. "Nazi caricaturist Mjolnir portrays him
13as a donkey skating on thin ice. After a judge rules the
14cartoon defamatory, Goebbels' newspaper announces: Judge
15agrees donkey does look like Isidor."
16 I do not know what that is doing in that book.
17Perhaps you would tell us?
18 A. [Mr Irving] In this book?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. You have put a picture of Dr Weiss or whatever he
21 A. [Mr Irving] If you have read the book ----
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] He was chief of police, was he not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure his Lordship has read the book, although may not
24have. Goebbels' arch enemy during the years when he was
25Gauleiters of Berlin before the Nazis came to power, was
26in fact Bernhard Weiss who Goebbels mocked and called
1"Isidor". He raged this remorseless campaign against him
2in the newspapers he controlled resulting in no fewer than
340 libel actions brought against him by the police chief,
4and this is a page devoted to that particular episode.
5Goebbels was obviously completely incorrigible. He had
6utter contempt for the law courts in Berlin. He repeated
7the libels. Weiss fled to England after the Nazis came to
8power, and I believe his daughter is still alive in North
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] She may still be. We knew that she was in 1994.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I approached her to try to obtain a more flattering
12photograph of her father.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can I just read what you wrote, it saves us getting out
14yet another file. This is revelations from the Goebbels'
15diary in the Historical Review for January/February -- no,
16I am reading from the wrong thing -- it is 1995. My Lord,
17the reference is K3, tab 18, pages 7 to 8. Mr Irving,
18I expect you will want to look at the full text.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure we can take it if you just read it out.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] You publish a picture of Dr Weiss or Mr Weiss or
21Superintendent Weiss or whatever he was.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I went to some pains to try to get a better
23photograph of him.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] You write this, the right-hand column on page 7: "Isidor
25Weiss", and you retain Goebbels' nomenclature and you put
26the two quotes round the name.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] "When Goebbels arrived in Berlin as Gauleichter in 1926 he
3was confronted by a city with 179,000 Jews, one third of
4all Jews in Germany and he made use of this fact. The
5Berlin population already receding because of the presence
6of these Jews. In the coming years Goebbels repeatedly
7explained to foreign diplomats that the problem there was
8the usual one in which the Jewish population
9disproportionately controlled all the lucrative
10professions. This rankled the Berlin's non-Jewish
11population of course and Goebbels, whether deliberately or
12by instinct, zeroed in on this as a wound that he could
13work on to promote the Nazi cause."
14 You seem to accept in that paragraph that
15Goebbels was right in thinking that the professions were
16disproportionately controlled by the Jews?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it was not just Goebbels; the German Federal
18Statistical Office has provided me with the figures.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am putting a marker down because this is something which
20you are going to have to argue with Professor Evans
22 A. [Mr Irving] What the German Statistical Office told me?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. About what the fact was.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Which fact?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] The one you have stated here.
26 A. [Mr Irving] In other words, the disproportionate ----
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] "The Jewish population disproportionately controlled all
2the lucrative professions". I put a marker down. I am
3not going to argue about it now.
4 A. [Mr Irving] We are just going to argue about the word "all", are we?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Read the report, Mr Irving.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well, can I suggest that Professor Evans also reads what
7President Roosevelt said about precisely the same
8situation in Germany when he said, in fact he made the
9completely impossible statement that if he had been the
10Germans he would have acted in exactly the same way
11because of this disproportionate, this imbalance.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know about Professor Roosevelt.
13 A. [Mr Irving] President Roosevelt.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry. Everybody in this court is a professor except
15you and me, Mr Irving. "He was aided in this endeavour by
16the fact that his chief opponent there, Berlin's Deputy
17Police Chief who acted as though he was police chief, he
18was a real police chief, referred to him as being a chief,
19Dr Bernhard Weiss, a Jew, Weiss looked so much like a
20Jewish character, but his photographs did not need to be
21retouched by the Nazis. He was stereotypically semitic in
22feature, short with rounded ears and hooked nose and
23wearing spectacles."
24 A. [Mr Irving] This is a description I took out of one of the
25contemporary Western newspapers I believe.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are not to take that as being any kind of endorsement
1by you, are we, Mr Irving?
2 A. [Mr Irving] No. There is actually a very good book on Bernhard Weiss
3written by a Professor of history Cologne University whose
4name escapes me, and he made precisely that point, that
5because of his appearance he was unfortunately doomed to
6become a target of the Nazis.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] He deserved to be persecuted by Dr Goebbels.
8 A. [Mr Irving] That is not the words I used, Mr Rampton. But this is
9precisely the reason why I went to great lengths to locate
10his daughter in London and tried to obtain a different
11photograph of her father than the one the Nazis used.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have one more reference I think in this, maybe more than
13one I do not know, in this file K4, tab 4, page 33 at the
14bottom of the clip, my Lord.
15 A. [Mr Irving] We are going to go out with a whimper.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I doubt that, Mr Irving. It is not my style. We are not
17going to go out with a whimper. Page 17 at the top. This
18is you speaking to, and I will tell you who you are
19speaking to, somebody or people at Bow in London on 29th
20May 1992. You say: "I had a lot of trouble with Simon
21Wiesenthal yesterday, and I remember that three or four
22years ago I had the unnerving experience sitting in my
23rental car after I had been speaking in London, not London
24England but London Ontario, which is about 200 miles west
25Toronto and I had driven back to Toronto that night, the
26speaking was very exhausting and I got back in Toronto at
1half past 2.00 on this November morning and as I drove up
2something street in Toronto, which is the main artery of
3Toronto, I pulled up at the traffic lights and glaring at
4me from the car next to me in the traffic lights was Simon
5Wiesenthal himself, his face hideously contorted by
6rage". So, evidently, Mr Irving, some things make him
7cross too. "I got a real shock because he looked into me
8through my driver's window and there was Mr Wiesenthal,
9this hideous, leering, evil face glaring at me, then
10I realised it wasn't Simon Wiesenthal, it was a Halloween
11mask [Applause].
12 "Now, those of who you have seen Mr Wiesenthal
13will know what I'm talking about. Mrs Wiesenthal who has
14seen Mr Wiesenthal many times, of course, and she says to
15him at Halloween, 'Simon, please keep the mask on, you
16look so much nicer with it on'". That is just pure racist
17abuse, is it not, Mr Irving?
18 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, the word "Jew" is not mentioned there
19from start to finish. The racism is in your mind,
20Mr Rampton. This is a reference to a person who is not
21one of the world's most attractive people. He is known
22for not being particularly attractive. Whether he is
23Jewish or not does not play any part at all.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, really! Will you turn back to ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] If I pick on any other name and put that name to this,
26then it would never have occurred to suggest, if I pick on
1any other race, but because Mr Wiesenthal is apparently
2Jewish, I do not know, but he presumably is Jewish,
3therefore, you say it is anti-Jewish. It is not. It is
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, now we are going to end with a bang. Turn
6back, please, to the top of page 16, will you?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "I have found governments being involved in trying to
9silence me in Canada and South Africa and Australia and
10I never used to believe in the existence of an
11international Jewish conspiracy". Pause there. Who is
12Simon or Simon Wiesenthal? Who is Simon Wiesenthal?
13 A. [Mr Irving] He is an Austrian who has no connection at all with the
14Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is he Jewish?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I presume he is, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right, and so now we are going to see the context in which
18you put his Halloween mask. "I never used to believe in
19the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy, and
20I am not even sure even now if there is an international
21Jewish conspiracy. All I know is that people are
22conspiring internationally against me and they do turn out
23mostly to be" -- in fact, the word must have been "Jews",
24must it not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. It does not say.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, come on. Look at the syntax of the sentence.
1 A. [Mr Irving] OK, let us assume it was "Jews", yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Applause, applause"?
3 A. [Mr Irving] But that is precisely what we are going to be
4demonstrating to the court in the next few days, how much
5this international endeavour has been, unfortunately,
6guided by the self-appointed leaders of that community.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you are going to attempt that, you will have to give me
8notice. It is no part of your pleading and I shall have
9something to say about it because it has nothing to do
10with Mrs Lipstadt.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you will see -- oh, and indeed it does and that is,
12undoubtedly, the reason why I have put in bundle E global.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is a digression. We may have to
14come back to that.
15 MR RAMPTON: A digression. But that inspiring observation,
16Mr Irving, was greeted with applause. Do you see that?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know why?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Probably because they thought it was funny or that they
20were applauding the fact that I said there was no
21international Jewish conspiracy or because -- I do not
22know. What is your theory?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] They are very pleased that, in fact -- it is another of
24your clever, little sarcastic racist jokes about the Jews
25-- though you do not know there is an international
26Jewish conspiracy, it turns out most of the conspirators
1are Jews?
2 A. [Mr Irving] So, in other words, I am not allowed to criticise the fact
3that this community's self-appointed leaders around the
4world have set about trying to suppress freedom of speech,
5to abrogate my right to travel freely around the world,
6I am not allowed to criticise that because they are
7Jewish, is that right? On the contrary, if I find any
8person or any body of people, whether they are black or
9yellow or Asian or French or Germans or leading counsel,
10indeed, who are trying to abrogate my rights to freedom of
11speech and free right to travel, then I will criticise
12them without fear or favour. And the fact that this
13comment happens to be Jewish is neither here nor there. It
14cannot be construed as anti-Semitic.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Shall we read on and see whether we agree with that,
16Mr Irving? "We have one basic problem and this is, apart
17from the literature displayed on the table over there, we
18have no national" -- I do not know who "we" are -- "organ
19that we can read to find out what is going on. I am not
20ashamed to say that I read the Jewish Chronicle to find
21out what they are doing because they seem pretty well
22informed". This is the sort of Aryan Defence League
23against the Jews, the "we", is it?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Where do you get "Aryan Defence League" from?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, who is the "we"?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I frequently find out what the Jewish organizations
1are planning against me because it is announced in the
2Jewish Chronicle. They say, "Meet outside Mr Irving's
3flat, 81 Duke Street, 12.00 midday". That is how I know
4when these demonstrations are going to happen.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not the Royal "we", Mr Irving. "I read the Jewish
6Chronicle to find out what we are doing". Who are the
8 A. [Mr Irving] I have no idea.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] "There is an article here only a couple of weeks ago
10called 'Anti-Semites ask for cash in latest sophisticated
11forgery'" -- not, by any chance, the united anti-Semites
12then, the "we"?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I have got no idea what the article is about.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, you must have done because you mentioned it.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it certainly was not me so I cannot see what the
16reference is.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] "This is, of course, an unusual twist as it is not usually
18anti-Semites who are asking for cash in sophisticated
19forgeries. A man called Mr Mike Whine, the director of
20the board of deputies of British Jews", Mike W-H-I-N-E,
21you spell it ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] You will appreciate the reason why I do not like Mike
23Whine because I discovered that he is the person who has
24dedicated much of his life to destroying my career and
25livelihood by now, and that those documents are also in
26the bundle.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I might not like the black man who is my enemy, but I am
2not likely to use the fact that he is black in order to
3defend myself, am I, Mr Irving?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I do not criticise anybody because of their colour,
5Mr Rampton.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then why do you make such again with Mr Whine's name?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Because I am defensive about the man. The man has spent
8many years trying to destroy me. He has maintained a
9dossier full of the most evil and defamatory and lying
10facts about me which he puts to foreign governments with
11the intention of destroying my career, as we now know.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not like Mr Whine. I understand that.
13 A. [Mr Irving] With good reason, and because he is Jewish does not make
14him immune from my criticism.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Precisely. But the fact that he is Jewish has nothing to
16do with your criticism either?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I am perfectly entitled to make fun of his name among
18other ways of getting back at him.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] "I am bothered by their names". That is more people than
20just poor Mr Mike Wine, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] We had this in another speech too and I have listed a
22whole bunch of names, Wieseltier and so on.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to read on. Please be quiet. "I love them
24dearly, I really do, believe me. I love them very dearly,
25yet around the world they have these extraordinary names.
26In Australia the man who has defamed me so consistently
1has now received from my lawyers in West Australia four
2libel writs. His name is Mr Izzy Leibler".
3 A. [Mr Irving] Leibler, L E I B L E R. That has been misspelt.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Laughter".
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, if a man's name is Leibler and he has received from
6me four libel writs, it seems singularly apposite.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, that is a perfectly decent joke. It is a pity
8it is misspelt, is it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] It has been consider in your copy but I know how to spell
10properly. His name is L E I B L E R and his brother, Mark
11Leibler, spells it the same way, oddly enough. They are
12both multi-millionaires and they have used their money to
13try and destroy my career in Australia.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, L I E B L E R?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, it is misspelt. It is L E I. That is
16the point.
17 MR RAMPTON: Oh I see.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Which is pronounced by any normal person as "libeller".
19He is careful to pronounce it as "leebeller".
20 MR RAMPTON: Let us pass on, Mr Irving. "If I had a name like
21wine, W H I N E, or Leibler, it reminds me of Brentwood
22School, where I want to school. Perhaps I ought not to
23read out the name of the school. There was a boy in our
24class called Bottomwetten".
25 A. [Mr Irving] There is another one called Jack Straw.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] "What bravery to carry the name of Bottomwetten, not only
1just through your own life, but also through generations
2before you, passing this name proudly down. Whine,
3Leibler. I would be inclined to change my name by deed
4poll, not once but twice, in case anyone asked what my
5previous name was". I am going to pause there, Mr
7 A. [Mr Irving] You will recognize this as the old gramophone record, you
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. The old gramophone record, indeed I do. Mr Irving,
10when you were being cross-examined by me some days ago,
11there was a reference to a footnote in van Pelt's report,
12I think it was, it matters not, to a book edited by a lady
13called Deborah Burnstone.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember that, when that was drawn to your
16attention, you pronounced that name "Bronsteen"?
17 A. [Mr Irving] No, I do not.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will find it for you in the transcript. If I am right,
20 A. [Mr Irving] I have no idea. I have no recollection of that episode at
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why this interest in names? What does it matter what a
23person is called?
24 A. [Mr Irving] You are putting this to me and I am hearing it for the
25first time. I am as astonished as you are. If I read it
26like that, then that was the way I read the name.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. You did not read it like that. You knew that she was
2called Burnstone?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Why would I know that she was called Burnstone?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because it is in the footnote and it was read out to you.
5 A. [Mr Irving] If I misread it, misreadings do occur. You have been
6misreading words----
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us wait until we have found the docment.
8 A. [Mr Irving] You have been repeatedly misreading words throughout the
9last few days but I have not commented on that.
10 MR RAMPTON: "Do not worry. I will come back to it tomorrow.
11You may have a chance to answer properly. Let me go on.
12The problem is somebody has apparently issued a leaflet.
13I am sure that none of us here is personally responsible.
14The hoax, including a picture on the front cover of a
15notorious saisai" -- what is that? "Anti-Semitic forgery.
16The protocols of the learned elders of Zion. The covers
17cartoon which protects its serpent encircling the world
18used to have a traditional crude character of a hideous
19Jewish face, but it now includes instead a picture of
20Gerry Gable. I wonder how they spotted the difference."
21 A. [Mr Irving] You know the connection with Gerry Gable, of course. Or
22shall I explain it to you?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know it so you do not need to.
24 MR RAMPTON: I do not want to know.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Gerry Gable is also no friend of mine, so I am quite happy
26to describe him in these terms.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. Another of your enemies whom you insult by, as it
2were, comparing with a hideous Jewish face - is that
4 A. [Mr Irving] Whether he is Jewish or not is neither here nor there. He
5is hideous, he is immoral, he has spent the last 36 years
6of his life trying to destroy me and my family because he
7has a criminal conviction for breaking into my house.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] But the insult which you have prepared -- apparently they
9thought it was jolly funny because they laughed -- for
10Mr Gable is that he should replace the hideous Jewish
11face, is it not?.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it certainly was not forged by me. I do know who
13did that but obviously other people hold the same opinion
14of Mr Gable as I do.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] My problems began in October of last year when I was
16speaking in Los Angeles and I received a letter from the
17Canadian government telling me not to come home on my
18projected tour of Canada which was to cover 17 cities from
19Vancouver right the way across to Ottawa. The Canadian
20governments had been alerted by the Simon Wiesenthal
21Institute in Los Angeles and immediately clicked their
22heels together and said "Ja vohl, Herr Wiesenthal, we will
23not let him in". Now tell me about this Wiesenthal
24again. I asked you before and you said, "Oh no, it is not
25the well known Simon Wiesenthal".
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, of course, H I E R is the director of the Wiesenthal
1Centre. The Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles has no
2connection with Simon Wiesenthal apart from the concession
3they pay him every year for the use of his name.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] But it is a Jewish organization, is it?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I imagine that they restrict their intake of employees to
6Jews, yes, but I have no information on that.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know about that, but it is some kind of Jewish
8institute in Los Angeles, no doubt in some part concerned
9with the history of the Holocaust?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I have collaborated with them in the past with
11documents and things.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then comes the stuff about the Wiesenthal facial
13appearance and its comparison with the Halloween mask.
14 A. [Mr Irving] I think I should explain. It may very well help his
15Lordship. This date is wrong on this. It is not 1992, it
16is definitely 1993, after I have had to go through the
17harrowing episode of being deported and handcuffed on the
18floor of an Air Canada plane, after I have been thrown out
19of Germany. All these things have happened as the result
20of the machinations of these people around the world,
21after I have been banned from Australia. So I am afraid
22you have the wrong year on this and suddenly everything
23clicks into place. I am perfectly entitled to criticise
24these people for what they have done to me.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] As we noticed before, when an anti-Semite is rattled or
26riled, out comes the anti-Semitic language.
1 A. [Mr Irving] No, critical language. This is unfortunately where you
2make a mistake, Mr Rampton. When you are critical of what
3the Jews do to you as Jews, it is not anti-Semitism. They
4are entitled to take their action against me as Jews but,
5if I criticise them, it becomes anti-Semitism. Have
6I understood correctly?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you have not. I do not think you are trying,
9 A. [Mr Irving] I am trying very hard to understand the point that you are
10trying to make.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The answer to one's enemies is not that they are ugly Jews
12with silly names, it is that they are acting badly, is it
14 A. [Mr Irving] They were doing all of it.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] But what relevance is it that they have ugly Jewish faces
16and silly Jewish names?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you are talking about the ugly Jewish face. You are
18referring to the episode with the Halloween mask in which
19the word "Jew" does not figure. We are talking about a
20man who is well known for not being a particularly
21beautiful gentleman.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] What relevance has it to your defence against him that he
23happens not to be beautiful?
24 A. [Mr Irving] I am just making fun of him. If I had made fun of any
25other person who was not Jewish, it would never have
26occurred to them to say this is anti-Semitism or
1anti-Asian or anti-French. If I made fun of Monsieur
2Mitterand, for example, or Jacques Cherac, I would not be
3accused of being anti-French if I said that he had a
4ridiculous face that looked like a Halloween mask. I
5would be accused of being anti-Mitterand or anti-Cherac.
6But, because we are talking here about Wiesenthal,
7suddenly different rules apply.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, when you reach a convenient
10 MR RAMPTON: I have not quite finished this, I am afraid.
11 A. [Mr Irving] He is beginning to whimper a bit and he wants to find
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, that is unnecessary. We will be here a
14long time if you go on.
15 MR RAMPTON: You are not going to provoke me at this time of
16night, Mr Irving. I can do another two of these things or
17I can stop and do them in the morning.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you finished on this particular
20 MR RAMPTON: I have finished on Wiesenthal.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I think, in all the circumstances, we
22will adjourn until 10.30 until tomorrow morning.
23 < (The witness withdrew)
24 (The court adjourned until the following day)