text:
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 29: Electronic Edition
Pages 1 - 186 of 186
1996 I. No. 113
2Royal Courts of Justice
3Strand, London
4 Thursday, 2nd March 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 (10.30 a.m.)
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton and Mr Irving, before we start
3today, I wonder if I can hand to you now a list of
5 MR IRVING: Yes.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I did mention earlier that it might
7be helpful -- it is up to both of you -- if we could
8perhaps take the issues in more or less the order in which
9I have set them out, if that is not inconvenient? I also
10want to make sure that I have got everything in that
11I need to cover, and that I have not included things that
12really are no longer live issues. Do not take time with
13it now.
14 MR RAMPTON: No, I will not. There is one item in (i) of four
15which is still to come today from Evans, which will need
16to be added.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. It is just that either at a later stage
18today, or perhaps tomorrow, it might be worth spending a
19few minutes just going through that.
20 MR RAMPTON: I do not think I will finish my cross-examination
22 MR IRVING: That is very useful, my Lord. There are four or
23five minor points that I wish to raise before Mr Rampton
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
26 MR IRVING: The first point is that I have repeatedly asked the
1Defence to provide me with the speeches, the transcripts
2on disk, most recently about 10 days ago by letter. It
3would obviously assist me in responding to and rebutting
4these juicy morsels that they are tossed out of their cage
5into the courtroom, like yesterday. If I had such a thing
6on disk, and I am entitled to it of course under the
7rules, once the documents have been pleaded, I am entitled
8to have them in digital form. There is no reason for this
9delay other than a deliberate and wilful attempt to impede
10my response.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that I am clear what you are asking for,
12is it a disk containing the speeches that you have made
13that the Defendants rely on?
14 MR IRVING: No, it is a disk containing the transcripts. They
15are put into court by way of their pleadings in evidence.
16Obviously it exists in digital form. It is no great
17burden on them. It is five minutes work to do, just
18pressing one button. They could have done this 10 days
19ago, if not, indeed, when I first asked for them.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not sound an unreasonable request.
21 MR RAMPTON: I have no idea. I do not deal in disks, I am
22afraid. I deal in paper. I will pass on that request.
23I am surprised it has not been responded to. If it is
24anybody's fault, I apologise for it on their behalf. If
25these transcripts -- and I think Mr Irving means the
26transcripts that are in the K files ----
1 MR IRVING: Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, which is racism, anti-Semitism, or
3allegedly so.
4 MR RAMPTON: -- which are mostly his own words. If they are on
5a disk, which I imagine they must be, then by all means,
6if it is easier.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I know they are on disk because I am
8not -- well, anyway, if it can be done, it should be done
9soon because Mr Irving needs it.
10 MR RAMPTON: If it is possible, it should be done before the
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before the weekend, I agree, yes.
13 MR IRVING: A not unrelated matter is that the Defence
14solicitors are still sitting on a number of my microfilms
15and papers. They keep promising to return them. When
16they returned my previous boxes of papers, they returned
17them in a totally disheveled state, which has not assisted
18me ----
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is something I do not really want to get
20into now. Raise that, but perhaps at a later stage.
21 MR IRVING: The third point, my Lord, is the Eichmann
22manuscripts. I gave the undertaking which your Lordship
23very properly required. The manuscript has now been
24placed in the public domain. It is on, for example, the
25website of Der Spiegel and elsewhere. I would ask that
26the undertaking which I gave should now be rescinded or
1annulled, if Mr Rampton has no objection, in order that I
2am not----
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I suspect he may not really know the score on
5 MR RAMPTON: I do not know the score. I am told that that
6version, which is the electronic version, that came to us
7from the Israeli Government cannot be used for any purpose
8but this trial. If it is on some website or other, then
9perhaps we can have our disk back so we can give it back
10to the Israeli Government, and people can use the public
11domain copy.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well ...
13 MR IRVING: Without wanting to compare the public domain
14version word for word with the version given to me, I see
15that it has been published in the Guardian yesterday, for
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have seen reports which make it appear that
18you may be right.
19 MR IRVING: Having given the undertaking ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am not in a position to judge is
21whether the whole of it is in now in the public domain.
22If the whole of it is, then it seems to me that you should
23be released from your, undertaking, but I am not going to
24release you now. I do not think this is really in a way
25Mr Rampton's problem.
26 MR RAMPTON: My problem is that I am merely the conduit pipe
1for this material. I gave my own personal undertaking in
2order to get the material released; I do not really feel I
3can break it.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: To save time, what I am inclined to say is
5this. It does appear to me that there is good reason for
6supposing that it is in the public domain. If that be
7right, I do not see it is realistic to maintain the
8undertaking. I am therefore inclined to think it should
9be lifted, but I would like to give an opportunity to
10whoever it may be to make representations, whether through
11you or in some other way.
12 MR IRVING: I do not want to be held in contempt.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course you do not, but the undertaking
14will stay until tomorrow morning. If somebody tomorrow
15morning wants to say that the undertaking should remain in
16place, I will hear argument then.
17 MR IRVING: My Lord, tomorrow is Friday.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, but I suspect your cross-examination
19is going to continue until tomorrow.
20 MR RAMPTON: I do not know that there is going to be any
21difficulty at all. The only difficulty I can see, and it
22is mere conjecture, is that there may be parts of the
23electronic version which has been given to Mr Irving for
24the purposes of this case and no other purpose. There may
25be parts of that which are not in the copy which has been
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be.
2 MR RAMPTON: -- in which case I would have to maintain my
3position so far as those other parts are concerned.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say I am not sure that
5I understand why the Eichmann diaries are relevant
6because, if they were not, and they by definition were
7not, available to Mr Irving, I am not sure how they can be
8used by way of criticism.
9 MR RAMPTON: I may say I rather agree with that. It is not my
10intention contention today at any rate to make any
11reference to them in this court. The fact is they do
12contain, as anybody can see if they read the public
13report, some statements made in 1960 something which, if
14reliable, demolish Holocaust denial really at one fell
15swoop, but so what.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see that there is a way in which they
17could be capable of being used in this trial, but I will
18leave you to take whatever course you think is right.
19 MR RAMPTON: My present inclination, I am not saying it is the
20final inclination, is that this is something for the
21historians to argue about, rather than the lawyers in this
22court, but I will reserve my position for the present at
23least, if I may. I do not know, Mr Irving may have
24further things?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there is one other point.
26 MR IRVING: There are two other points, my Lord. One is the
1video of the Halle meeting on 9th November 1991. I wish
2to make submissions to your Lordship next week about the
3admissibility of that video, because it was the subject of
4a bitter dispute between myself and the instructing
5solicitors for the Defendants. It was a matter of
6withheld discovery, fraudulently withheld discovery. In
7fact, I was reminded of this by the OSS this morning.
8I put a complaint into the OSS over undertakings broken by
9the solicitors, and so on.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who are the OSS?
11 MR IRVING: Offices for the Supervision of Solicitors in
12Leamington Spa; a rather toothless body which watches over
13malfunctions by solicitors. So I would like permission to
14make a submission about the admissibility of the video as
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Do that when you like. In some ways it
17ought to be perhaps done sooner rather than later.
18 MR IRVING: I had prepared a little bundle on this many, many
19weeks ago and I was just reminded of this actual matter
20this morning by this phone call from the OSS.
21 The final matter is the little bundle I put
22before your Lordship headed "Documents on Mr Irving's 1991
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR IRVING: This is the Lowenbraukeller meeting. It is a
26matter of my truthfulness, whether I am right or whether
1the Defence submissions are correct, namely that I was a
2participant in an illegal demonstration or not. These are
3three or four documents on the police file which contain
4the statement that was made at the time of arrest and so
5on, which I have summarised in the two-page translation at
6this beginning. Either your Lordship can say now that you
7attach no importance to the issue of the submissions made
8yesterday as to whether I was telling the truth or not.
9It bulked quite large in the cross-examination but your
10Lordship may very well say you attach no importance to it.
11If your Lordship does attach importance to it, then
12I would ask permission to put these documents to Professor
13Funke, who is in the court this morning.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it matters a row of beans
15whether it was an illegal demonstration, or whether it was
17 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The relevance, as it appears to me ----
19 MR IRVING: The question is my truthfulness.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: -- is simply whether you did either
21participate in, or in some other way associate yourself
22with, the demonstration that one sees on the video.
23 MR IRVING: I appreciate that point, my Lord, but the other
24point is my truthfulness. If I state something which is
25then disbelieved by the Defence and they maintain their
26position despite my several invitations to accept that
1they are wrong, and here are the documents that clearly
2show from the police files that I am right, namely what
3time it was, the fact that it was an hour after the
4function in the Lowenbraukeller ended that I was
5apprehended, the fact that we were heading northwards, so
6to speak ----
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am going to do, subject to Mr Rampton,
8is -- I do not know whether he is going to cross-examine
9you about this?
10 MR RAMPTON: No.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think there is any reason -- I do
12not think it has anything do with Professor Funke. He was
13not there. I do not see any reason why you should not
14very shortly, as it were, put this in evidence through
15your own mouth, as it were, or indeed by way of
16submission, I do not mind.
17 MR IRVING: Very well.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That can be done either straightaway or it
19can be done later on. Mr Rampton, I do not know whether
20you are going to touch on this in cross-examination?
21 MR RAMPTON: No. For the most part, right-wing extremism to my
22way of thing, has been done and dusted. I have very
23little cross-examination left on that, and it certainly
24does not concern Germany. As to these new document, I am
25completely neutral because I do not know what they say.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That suggests to me that probably this ought
1to be done at a later stage.
2 MR IRVING: By way of submission.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Perhaps first thing tomorrow or at the end of
4cross-examination tomorrow, if we go into tomorrow.
5 MR RAMPTON: I will need to have them looked at by German
6speakers in the usual way.
7 MR IRVING: There are two or three more letters from me to
8German Embassies and people like that, which show that
9I went about things in a perfectly proper way, asking
10whether the bodies that invited me to speak were legal and
11lawful and constitutional and so on.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We do not want to get disproportionate about
14 MR RAMPTON: I would only say this about that kind of material,
15whether it advances the matter one way or another, I
16rather doubt, but self-serving protests by Mr Irving are
17not evidence that it did not happen.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate that.
19 MR IRVING: I did not catch that, but it is my veracity which
20I am concerned about that.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You are obviously concerned about that.
22I have indicated the way I think we ought to deal with it
23so we will leave it until tomorrow. That concludes the
24points you wanted to raise?
25 MR IRVING: Yes.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the next step is for you to go into
1the witness box, please. You are obviously still under
3 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, before I start, I announce the first
4thing, if I may, that I am going to do. Your Lordship
5will remember the short sequence we had from the
6negationists, or whatever you call it, meeting at Hagenau
7in Azas in November 1989, and the reference to the sedan
8chair and the telephone box. What I am now going to do,
9with your Lordship's leave, is show a short section from a
10speech that Mr Irving made at Milton, Ontario, on 5th
11October 1991, that is to say almost two years after the
12Hagenau event. Its transcript is at K3, tab 10.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this what is called the Moers speech?
14 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not Moers. This is Milton, Ontario,
15which I think is in Canada. It is more of the same. Then
16I shall ask Mr Irving some questions about it in the light
17of the questions he asked Professor Funke yesterday.
18 < Mr Irving, recalled.
19< Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC continued.
20 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think the relevant part of the
21transcript is pages 17 and 18. Have I got that right?
22The television seems to be defunct.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we need to start with this, Mr Rampton?
24 MR RAMPTON: It is a question of continuity, and it is fresh in
25everybody's mind from yesterday. I find it difficult to
26cross-examine with the witness box overrun by
2 (Video played)
3 MR RAMPTON: Stop there, thank you. Mr Irving, that is the
4same story in a rather more expanded version that you told
5to your audience at Hagenau in November 1989, is it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where does it come from?
8 A. [Mr Irving] There are -- which ones are you talking about? The
9conveyor belts, the swimming pool, the electric shock that
10comes from Pravda, February 1945?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving.
12 A. [Mr Irving] There is a whole bundle of these, there is a whole series
13of these eyewitness accounts which have been given in
14various postwar trials, 1945, 1946, 1947. These are the
15accounts that are not quoted by the Holocaust historians
16for obvious reasons.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where did the telephone box come from?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Which part of the story are you asking for, about the box,
19the one man ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Telephone box.
21 MR RAMPTON: The telephone box?
22 A. [Mr Irving] The telephone box?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] The telephone box. "Well, the answer is", says Irving,
24"it is disguised as a telephone box, this one man gas
25chamber. This is the mentality of the people who invent
26these eyewitness stories. It is a disguised as a
1telephone and if I am a man who has escaped from
2Auschwitz, a harrowing experience, and I am standing
3around in the Polish countryside and suddenly a telephone
4box" ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] Appears from nowhere, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- "where there was not one a few minutes ago and two
7German soldiers standing around looking like nothing,
8nothing is going to get me inside that phone box. The
9eyewitnesses, plural, say they got you to get inside by
10having the phone inside ringing". Where does that little
11anecdote come from? How many sources?
12 A. [Mr Irving] The phone ringing is an embellishment. But the disguised
13as a telephone box is in the eyewitness account.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] How many eyewitness accounts and who were the people that
15told those stories?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Alleged survivors of Auschwitz.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] How many?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Certainly one account.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Eyewitnesses, plural?
20 A. [Mr Irving] That, obviously, is a slip of the tongue.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it is not. It is a deliberate exaggeration, is it?
22You got some good laughs with this little story?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I think it is such a ludicrous story and it so clearly
24exaggerates the problem, it so clearly illustrates the
25problem with the eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz ----
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, really?
1 A. [Mr Irving] --- this and the other similar accounts. There is the
2conveyor belt, there is the swimming pool, there is the
3electric shock, there is the killed in steam chambers, all
4these stories which come out of the earlier accounts, if
5you read the account published by Pravda, I think on
6February 2nd 1945, there is the first description of the
7conveyor belt. These are never quoted by the modern
8historians. Even the Gerstein report that you have which
9is an alleged eyewitness account had, of course, 130 foot
10high mountain of shoes. These details need to be brought
11to the attention of the public so they can see what the
12problem is and how selectively the historians use the
13eyewitness accounts. They take the ones that they like
14and they ignore the ones that are obviously baloney.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, do you see any purpose in a serious historian,
16I mean a serious, reputable historian, reciting simply for
17the purpose of knocking it over, a story, if it indeed is
18a story, which is quite obviously untrue?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Well, as we have heard in this court, Mr Rampton, the
20factory of death story, as far as crematorium (ii) in
21Auschwitz is concerned, relies on three legs, it is a
22stool with three legs, one is the eyewitnesses, one is the
23discrepancies between the blueprints or the architectural
24drawings and the other one is the German documentation.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Quite a lot more than that.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you will have time to say that when you make your
1closing speech. If the eyewitnesses turn out to be partly
2baloney, and they are a body of evidence that, in my
3opinion, should, therefore, be discounted, I am entitled
4to make this point as forcefully as I can by drawing
5attention to the ludicrous elements contained by some of
6the eyewitness accounts.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you tell this audience about the evidence, the
8eyewitness testimony, of Henrich Tauber, for example?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Probably at that time it was not known to me, but I would
10certainly have done so and I would have drawn attention to
11the discrepancies in his account as well.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why do you think your audience in Milton, Ontario, find
13these little anecdotes, fables, if you like, so funny?
14 A. [Mr Irving] There are two ways of addressing an audience. One is in
15an academic climate where you are enveloped in professors'
16robes and speaking to students who have no obligation but
17to sit there with their notepads on their lap, and then
18you can dictate to them all the documents and all the
19material you want until the bell rings and it is time for
20them to go out.
21 The other way is to make or deliver a talk or a
22lecture in such a manner that you capture and hold your
23audience's attention, and you do that repeatedly by
24interlacing the serious documents that you want them to
25listen to with material to keep them awake, if I can put
26it like that.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] How long, is it, Mr Irving, since any, if ever, reputable
2historian has paid any attention whatsoever to this kind
3of material?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I would say within living memory shall we say within four
5weeks in this very courtroom we have listened to account
6after account from Professor van Pelt who relies on Ade
7Bimco, who relies on Henrich Tauber, who has relied on
8five or six eyewitness, all of whom have elements of total
9distortion. Ludicrous elements. For example, the
10Gerstein report. Ludicrous elements contained in their --
11Christopher Brown, he had to put back into the Gerstein
12report the stuff that he had omitted, the mountains of
13shoes and shirts, and these ludicrous elements which
14disqualify the eyewitness from any source value
15whatsoever, just as they disqualified finally
16the allegation that there were gas chambers in Dachau.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Like your old chum Karl Wolff, for example?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I have never met Karl Wolff in my life except once when he
19was pushed under my nose by a Sunday Times cameraman at a
20function in Schattenburg.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] An eyewitness in some sense to the events in this part of
22German history, would you agree?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I do not understand. What is the question?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] You rely on him to exculpate Hitler, so far as the
25conversation, reported conversation, between him and
26Himmler in August 1942 is concerned, do you not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I relied on Karl Wolff who was the adjutant of Heinrich
2Himmler for a period of about 10 or 15 years, if my memory
3serves me right, who wrote in this confidential manuscript
4an account of his own personal impressions of the
5character and nature of this rather weird man, Heinrich
6Himmler, who came from humble origins and turned into one
7of history's biggest mass killers. He was an interesting,
8obviously a man very well placed, Karl Wolff, to describe
9Heinrich Himmler in his underpants, so to speak.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] You put that passage from Karl Wolff's interrogation in
111952 -----
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- by Dr von Siegler, I think his name was, before this
14court because you wanted to rely on a single passage where
15Karl Wolff, effectively, in your eyes, exculpates Adolf
16Hitler in relation to the Holocaust, is that not what you
18 A. [Mr Irving] No. I put it before the court because I am accused of
19having invented or manipulated or distorted without any
20fundamental or documentary basis whatsoever, and I cannot
21help it if your historians and experts either did not know
22of these sources or knew of them but decided not to use
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] In your eyes, is Karl Wolff a reliable witness?
25 A. [Mr Irving] In some respects he is and in some respects he is not.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] So when he talks in unvarnished terms about the Juden
1ausrottung, the extermination of the Jews -- your
2translation -- is he reliable or not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] It depends precisely what he is saying. As I said, he is
4in some respects reliable and in some respects he is not.
5If you let me see the passage you wish to ask me about,
6then, of course, I will comment on it.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a very short line. You translated it yourself only
8a very few days ago. We are not going back to ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] Please, if you wish me to comment on a passage, my Lord, I
10think ----
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are two points. You can have it if you
12like, but I think the two points are (1) is the reference
13to millions of Jews having been killed and the other is a
14reference to gassing. We can look at the document if you
16 A. [Mr Irving] I probably have it in front of me here somewhere.
17I promise I am not going to use the tactics that have been
18used by the Defence witnesses throughout this case of
19constantly relying, asking to see the documents.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, well, if you want to see it, we can see
22 A. [Mr Irving] In this particular case, I am asked for an impression and
23I ought to have a look at the original document.
24 MR RAMPTON: If you would like to look at page 5 of your own
25translation, it is just above and below your page
26reference 00032. I am quite happy with your translation,
1so we need not bother with the German.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Page 5, right?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Fifth page. I do not know where it is.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I have it. It is page 00031 or 32.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
6 A. [Mr Irving] "From what we survey today", is this right?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I will read it, if I may: "From what we survey
8today, there were perhaps 70 men, all told, from Himmler
9to Hoess who were involved in the extermination of the
10Jews", and you give the German, Juden ausrottung.
11"General Wolff also saw Bormann who was definitely
12actively involved in these things together with Hoess, the
13former Famer murderer. Bormann and Himmler", handwritten
14insert "Wolff probably", "represented the view that the
15Jewish problem had to be dealt with without Hitler getting
16his fingers dirty in the process. The gassing idea", and
17that means gassing of human beings, does it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] "... probably emerged when a genuine epidemic broke out in
20the Auschwitz camp and mass dying resulted". Can we rely
21on General Wolff as telling the truth in that passage so
22far as the extermination of Jews by gassing is concerned?
23 A. [Mr Irving] It is the curate's egg, if you know the expression,
24Mr Rampton.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving, I am nearly as old as you are.
26 A. [Mr Irving] The figure of 70 is clearly wrong. That is clearly an
1understatement. Far more than 70 men all told were
2initiated in the mass killing of Jews by the Nazis.
3Depending on what he means by that, regardless of what he
4means by that, whether he is talking about just the
5Auschwitz and the killings of the western European Jews or
6if he is talking about the shootings on the East. I think
7here he is talking about the first. He is talking only
8about the killing of the European Jews.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Come on. He uses the word "gassing".
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. That is precisely what I am mentioning. That is why
11I am saying that. The gassing idea. Now, that part
12I think he is clearly commenting on what he now knows,
131952, after seven years of reading newspapers.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Oh really?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. But also he is involved -- if he read the Harold
16Turner letter, of course, from Serbia, then he would have
17been aware of gassings on a small scale in Serbia.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Not in relation, Mr Irving, to a reference to Auschwitz as
19having been the source of the gassing because, if it was
20Auschwitz and disease there that gave rise to the idea, as
21General Wolff suggests, then the substance used for the
22gassing in consequence of the realization of that idea
23would have been prussic acid, would it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, Zyklon-B.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you. Now I want to go back to this Milton thing.
26I am going to make a suggestion, you will deal it with it
1and then we can pass on to something else. I suggest to
2you that, so far from, as it were, approaching this matter
3as a serious historian would be and asking your audience
4to be critical about eyewitness accounts, had you done
5that, you would have paid attention to the serious
6eyewitness accounts, so far from doing that, what you are
7doing is feeding the anti-Semitism of your audience by
8mocking the survivors and indeed the dead from the
10 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think that in that fragment we saw, and of course
11I do not know else is in the rest of the speech.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Assholes?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I think I am right in referring -- do you wish me to deal
14with that matter or the matter you just asked me about?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Finish your answer.
16 MR RAMPTON: You finish the answer and I will draw your
17attention to that. Carry on. You finish your answer, I
18am sorry.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I think that the word "Jew" or the reference to "Jews" was
20not made in that fragment, and of course very many other
21people suffered the torment of Auschwitz. I do not know
22why you just single out the Jews for this particular
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. Here we are talking about Polish gentiles, are
25we? This telephone box and the sedan chair and all that
26kind of thing?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I think the reference is to Poles, yes. Thank you for
2reminding me.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you, because I am not quite clear,
4Mr Irving? You say there was one eyewitness who told the
5story about the mobile telephone box?
6 A. [Mr Irving] There are sheaves of stories like this which came out in
7various trials, right up to the to 1960s.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Focus on my question. I think you did say earlier on, in
9answer to Mr Rampton, that there was one eyewitness who
10told the story of the telephone box?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is one of the stories that is told.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes. I just want you to focus on that one eyewitness.
13Did you read it or hear it? How did you come to know
14about it?
15 A. [Mr Irving] This was probably ten years ago and I have to say that,
16having read large numbers of documents at that time and
17having read very large numbers of documents more recently,
18I cannot say whether I saw the actual eyewitness
19interrogation, or whether it has become part of the law
20through being quoted in the Frankfurt trial by the defence
21or prosecution. It is certainly part of the folk law, if
22I can put it like that in a non-derogatory way,
23surrounding the Auschwitz killings, rather like the
24conveyor belt and the rest of it, that is known to
25historians on both sides of the divide. Yesterday
26evening, when I got home, I did put out an appeal to my
1world wide circle of historian friends to say, who can
2provide me with the actual document.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Has anything come up as a result of that?
4 A. [Mr Irving] By this morning, when I checked the e-mails, one person
5came up with a reference to a one man portable low
6temperature chamber that was being developed and that was
7being spoken.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is obviously not it, is it?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Not yet, no.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You have not been able to pinpoint where this comes from?
11 A. [Mr Irving] No, but obviously I have put wheels in motion to obtain
12the actual document, because of the value it would have
13for the court.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Sorry, Mr Rampton.
15 MR RAMPTON: I just put these remarks of yours in context, if
16I may, Mr Irving. You say you were talking only about
17gentile Poles that escaped from Auschwitz. Let us read on
18on page 18.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I did not say I was only talking about Poles. My actual
20remark was that I did not talk about Jews in that
21particular fragment. You then said Poles.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Shall we put the fragment in context, Mr Irving? On page
2316, the page before the one we were looking at, there is a
24lengthy reference at the bottom of the page to somebody
25call called Ely Wiesel. Is he a Polish gentile or is he a
1 A. [Mr Irving] I think he is a very well-known Holocaust propagandist, if
2I can put it like that.
3 MR RAMPTON: That is not an answer to my question.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is he a gentile or is he a Jew?
5 A. [Mr Irving] He is Jewish, so far as I know.
6 MR RAMPTON: Then let us have a look at page 18, from where the
7video stopped. It is the top of page 18 after the note
8that there was applause.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I do not have the transcript in front of me and perhaps
10I should.
11 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. Then you will need it.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you should.
13 MR RAMPTON: It is K3, tab 10, page 18.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Ely Wiesel, of course, is one of the people I call
15the spurious survivors of the Holocaust like Benjamin
16Wilkormierski and others, who have made a living out of
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sandwiched between that Jewish gentleman whom you
19characterize as a spurious survivor of the Holocaust and
20the next passage, which is also about spurious, in your
21view, survivors of the Holocaust, is all this stuff about
22the telephone box. So let us read page 18, shall we: "Let
23me give you an example of why I think it" -- that is to
24say this imaginary experience -- "is a psychiatric
25problem. Let me give you a little parable here, a
26biblical parable almost, because in Israel, now the
1Ministry of Justice, announced three or four weeks ago the
2British newspaper, the Independent, reported this news
3communique, that every year 200 tourists go to Jerusalem,
4which is, of course, that magnificent city, this crossing
5point of three different religions and cultures. They are
6so overwhelmed by these cross currents, these, the vibes
7of the city of Jerusalem, that every year 200 tourists go
8there and believe that they are the messiah reborn and
9returning to Jerusalem. They cannot all be the messiah.
10At most one of them can be the messiah", and you are not
11talking about Jesus of Nazareth, are you?
12 A. [Mr Irving] It is quite clear that I am. This is a genuine statement
13released by the Israeli government.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Carry on.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are talking about the messiah, for whom the Jewish
17people are still waiting, are you not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] This reminds me of mathematical equations. You said the
19letter E in an equation can be the exponential factor but
20need not be. These people could be the messiah, but need
21not be, if I can put it like that.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You call it a parable, do you not? Come on.
23 MR RAMPTON: "They cannot all be the messiah. At most, one of
24them can be the messiah, so 199 of them are liars".
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] "But they have had this immense religious experience, and
1it is rather the same kind of trauma as people who went to
2Auschwitz, or people who believed they went to Auschwitz,
3or people who can kid themselves into believing they went
4to Auschwitz, and the only way to overcome this appalling
5pseudo-religious atmosphere that surrounds the whole of
6this immense tragedy called World War II is to treat these
7little legends with the ridicule and the bad taste that
8they deserve. Ridicule alone is not enough. You have got
9to be tasteless about it. You have to say things like
10more women died on the back seat of Senator Edward
11Kennedy's car at Chappaquidick than died in the gas
12chambers of Auschwitz (applause)".
13 A. [Mr Irving] The applause drowned the rest of the sentence,
14unfortunately, which is "in the gas chambers of Auschwitz
15which are shown to the tourists". I always say exactly
16the same thing.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh no, you do not, Mr Irving. We went through that
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it on the video?
20 MR RAMPTON: This is on the video. Would your Lordship like to
21see it?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, unless it is going to take ages to get
23it going.
24 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. It is only the rest of this page
25really. Just go from where it is.
26 (The video was shown).
1 MR RAMPTON: Stop there, please.
2 A. [Mr Irving] You are right. You are absolutely right. In that
3particular one I did not put in the rider that that is the
4one they show the tourists.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did not. Frequently you have not. Not only have
6you not put in the rider, you have added other gas
7chambers elsewhere, Treblinka, Belzec. Not here. In the
8documents we were looking at yesterday.
9 A. [Mr Irving] You are adding them now verbally into my speech.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I am not.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Shall we just abide by the speech that I was speaking
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said a moment ago that you never make any reference to
14any gas chamber but the one which was reconstructed by the
15Poles after the war. That is simply false, is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] The one that is faked by the Poles after the war.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, whatever you like. It is simply a false statement,
18is not, Mr Irving? We saw a whole lot of statements by
19you yesterday, did we not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Will you please ask the question again because you ----
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your statement that you never make reference to any but
22what you call the fake gas chamber at Auschwitz (i), gas
23chamber singular, is a false statement, is it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] I frequently refer to gas chambers elsewhere, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
26 A. [Mr Irving] But in what connection?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] In the context of saying that they never existed.
2 A. [Mr Irving] In Dachau, for example. We now know that eyewitnesses
3reported there were gas chambers in Dachau, and we now
4know the German government has confirmed there were never
5any gas chambers in Dachau. That is a typical example.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I do not believe you have that bad a memory. I
7really do not.
8 A. [Mr Irving] You just asked me a question and I have answered it.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] In that case I am going to have to remind you of what you
10were shown but yesterday. Laborious, but necessary.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Dachau is typical example of survivors who were caught out
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will have to be patient with me, Mr Irving. I will
14find it. This is just an example from page 156 of
15yesterday's transcript, if you have yesterday's
16transcript. This is a speech by you at Moers that we
17looked at yesterday.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like a copy of it?
19 A. [Mr Irving] If it is not going to be too tedious.
20 MR RAMPTON: I will read it out. You said: "The dummies are
21still standing in Auschwitz, because the German government
22has no sway there". Page 156, line 8. "The dummies are
23still standing in Auschwitz because the German government
24has no sway there, and understandably that is problem for
25you" -- that is the Germans -- "that you have a
26government in Bonn that allows its own people to be
1defamed by all countries of the world, although in the
2meantime it is cried out that these things in Auschwitz,
3and probably in Maidonek, Treblinka and in other so-
4called extermination camps in the East, are all dummies".
5That is a direct quote from your speech in Moers.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Are you quoting the speech to me? Are you going to
7quote something from the exchange that follows? If so,
8I cannot quite understand why we are looking at
9yesterday's exchange rather than looking at the actual
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because it was the easiest way to what you said in Moers.
12I have it in the file.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Of course, if you do it that way, we do not know exactly
14what was said in the actual speech.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can track it down, I am sure.
16 MR RAMPTON: Page 3, tab 5, Mr Irving.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps we can just wait to see what the question is and
18then it may not be worth the effort.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have put the question already. You made a statement not
20more than a couple of minutes ago that you never make
21reference to the non-existence of gas chambers except in
22relation to what you call the fake gas chamber at
23Auschwitz (i). That statement was false, was it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] "The dummies were still standing in Auschwitz, these
25things in Auschwitz and probably in Maidonek, Treblinka
26and in the other so-called extermination camps". I think
1the word "probably" therefore has to be looked at and
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Carry on. Read on.
4 A. [Mr Irving] In other words ----
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Read on. The fact is that Auschwitz we know that what
6they show the tourists is fake because the Poles have no
7now admitted it. I am sorry, "reconstructed" is what you
8call it.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
10 A. [Mr Irving] But the other places, Maidonek, Treblinka and so on, my
11hands are tied in really dealing with that because, for
12the purposes of this court action, I am not challenging
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we are getting a bit confused here.
15 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, perhaps I can help?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, because I may have misunderstood the
17position. I think it all arose out of your saying to
18Mr Rampton earlier that, whenever you refer to no Jews, or
19virtually no Jews, having died in concentration camps, you
20add the rider that you are really talking about what you
21call the dummy constructed after the war at Auschwitz.
22 A. [Mr Irving] I hesitate to allow your Lordship to put words into my
24 MR RAMPTON: Let us go back on the transcript for today and we
25will find it.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I am much more specific than that, and I say that, in this
1rather tasteless way, more women died on the back seat of
2that car than died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz,
3meaning the one they showed the tourists.
4 MR RAMPTON: It is when I was reading the transcript before we
5saw the video. We will get the exact words, my Lord.
6 A. [Mr Irving] It is part of the gramophone record, if I can put it like
8 MR RAMPTON: In the light of yesterday's evidence from
9Professor Funke -- I cannot read that. Now, Mr Irving, I
10am going to read you back your answer.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 24.
12 MR RAMPTON: Page 24 of today. This what gave rise to all of
13this, you see, Mr Irving. You made yet another, shall
14I say courteously -- "The applause drowned the rest of the
15sentence, unfortunately, which is, 'in the gas chambers of
16Auschwitz which are shown to the tourists'. I always say
17exactly the same thing". It was a false statement, that,
18was it not?
19 A. [Mr Irving] It was clearly wrong.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
21 A. [Mr Irving] But not deliberately wrong. I have this same part of my
22speech that I deliver again and again and it is possible
23that, in the heat of this particular speech which was
24spoken without notes, as you will see ----
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving.
26 A. [Mr Irving] -- to a non-skinhead audience.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] What was false is that you always say exactly the same
2thing. You do not. You frequently refer to the
3non-existence of any gas chambers in the plural.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I think you will have to show me the passages where
5I frequently say this.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point is you deny the existence of gas
7chambers and, when you do that, you do not talk only of
8the dummies such as the one that was constructed after the
9war at Auschwitz. That I think is the point.
10 A. [Mr Irving] If that is the point he is trying to make, then of course
11he is wrong because I have made it quite plain earlier in
12this case that I accept that in Auschwitz Birkenhau gas
13chamber experiments were conducted, for example, in the
14bunkers, the two buildings called the bunkers, and to that
15degree I certainly do not deny it.
16 MR RAMPTON: I expect you have been reading the Eichmann
17memoirs, have you not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Not yet. If you know how little time I have.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you do a word search on them, look for the word
21 A. [Mr Irving] I take your tip. Thank you very much.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, "Vergasungslager", gassing camps, Mr Irving.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I will tell you the result of that when I come here
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am just going to finish. My Lord, unless your Lordship
1wants me to ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, if you intend to rely on that particular word,
3I think you should show me the passage so I can comment on
4it now, rather than just leave it hanging in mid air.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: At the moment we have not gone to the
6Eichmann diaries at all, and I do not know whether we are
7even going to.
8 MR RAMPTON: I am going to continue, my Lord, if I may, with
9page 18 of the transcript, unless your Lordship would like
10to see it on the screen.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think not.
12 A. [Mr Irving] That is certainly not the way to introduce the Eichmann
13memoirs, to do it like that, just to throw one word out.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They have not been introduced, Mr Irving. Let
15us go back to page 18.
16 MR RAMPTON: After the statement that more women died on the
17back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquidick than
18died in the gas chambers (plural) at Auschwitz, there is
19some applause which did not drown out anything else you
20said. You then continued: "Now" you think that is
21tasteless. What about this? I am forming an association
22especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try
23and kid people that they were in these concentration
24camps. It is called the Auschwitz Survivors of the
25Holocaust and Other Liars Assholes", and you spell it out
26for them so that they get the joke. "Cannot get more
1tasteless than that but you have got to be tasteless
2because these people deserve all our contempt and in fact
3they deserve the contempt of the real Jewish community and
4the people, whatever their class and colour, who did
5suffer." I do not know that I need to go on.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I got something wrong, of course.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] What was that?
8 A. [Mr Irving] The title of that association. It is the Association of
9Spurious Survivors of the Holocaust, but, once again, in
10the heat of the talk, I got it wrong.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am awfully sorry about that. The fact is, Mr Irving,
12what you are doing here, as you were at Hagenau and on
13other occasions that we have seen ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] Mocking the liars.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh yes, Mr Irving, but why the applause?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Because I am a good speaker, Mr Rampton.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I am a good speaker.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, Professor Funke had you bang to rights, did he
20not? What you are doing is appealing to, feeding,
21encouraging, the most cynical radical anti-Semitism in
22your audiences, are you not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Do liars not deserve to be exposed as such? If you saw
24the audience as you saw them in that film, did you see any
25skinheads or extremists or people wearing arm bands?
26I did not. They looked like a perfectly ordinary bunch of
1middle-class Canadians.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No doubt they too, Mr Irving, will spread the word, if
3I may use that terminology?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Is that evidence or are you asking me a question?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am asking you a question. That is what you are hoping,
6is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Spread the word that there are elements of the Holocaust
8story that need to be treated with scepticism, yes.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, an I ask you this? Of these
10eyewitnesses, are you saying that they have come to
11believe what they say about their experiences and that is
12why they need psychiatric treatment? Or are you saying
13that they are collectively telling lies, deliberate
15 A. [Mr Irving] Different people have different motives or different
16reasons. There are different reasons why they tell
17stories that are not true in this particular context. We
18saw the witness Professor van Pelt in the video and in his
19report talking of the almost mystical and religious awe in
20which he holds the site of Auschwitz. I can well
21understand that. It has become very central to their
22existence as the Jewish people. It has become an
23important part of their social awareness. It has become
24very close to religion in some aspects, in my view. It
25has become almost blasphemy to trample on any part of that
26ground. It has become holy ground, both in the physical
1concrete sense and in the metaphysical sense. As with any
2religion, there are hangers on, people who believe they
3were there, people who believe they touched the cloth, if
4I can put it like that. There have been an increasing
5number in recent years -- Benjamin Wilkormierski is one
6example Ely Wiesel is another -- who have capitalized on,
7or instrumentalized, the Holocaust. Now, I am not a
8psychologist, I am not a psychiatrist, but I have looked
9into some of the learned psychiatric texts that have been
10written about this phenomenon of the man who believes he
11is a survivor, the man who has been through a traumatic
12experience and either puts himself in the middle of an
13experience that he was on the periphery of, or who puts
14himself into an experience when he was not there at all.
15That is what the reference to the psychiatric problem is
16in this. It is put admittedly in the most tasteless
17possible way. Nobody can accuse me of not having been
18tasteless, and I probably deserve to be horse whipped for
19it, but the fact is that I am dealing here with a serious
20problem concerning the eyewitness accounts from Auschwitz.
21 MR RAMPTON: And your audience absolutely love it, do they not,
22Mr Irving? It is music to their ears, is it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] They travel 200 miles sometimes to come and hear me speak,
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Good. Now I want to ask you about the National Alliance,
26if I may. For this purpose you will need Bundle A. It is
1the request for information and the answers that the
2witness will need. Page 79 of the request first of all,
3question 23, in the middle of the page under the main
4heading, the National Alliance. We asked you the
5questions, Mr Irving. I hope you have got it: "Do you
6agree that the National Alliance is responsible for the
7material contained in the appendix to Rebecca Goodman's
8witness statement? Do you agree that it is the largest
9and one of the most influential neo-Nazi organizations in
10the United States of America, being extremely right-wing,
11racist and anti-Semitic? Do you agree that it publishes
12and/or advertises through national vanguard publications
13which are extremely right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic"?
14Then we asked you: "Do you agree that you spoke at
15various National Alliance events"?
16 You will find your answers to questions 23 and
1725 in a document in tab 9, I think I am told, page 7. Can
18I ask you this? When you receive a document like this in
19the course of legal proceedings, and I know this is not
20the first time you have litigated, do you take the
21questions which are asked seriously? Do you take this to
22be a serious event in the course of the proceedings?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Well, in view of what happened to Mr Aitken, I take it
24very seriously indeed, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] So your response to the first question about your
26knowledge of the National Alliance is this: "I have no
1association of the body known to the Defendants as the
2National Alliance as such or whatsoever. I cannot rule
3out that members of that organization, which I take to be
4a legal organization in the United States, have attended
5functions at which I spoke. Accordingly I have no
6knowledge of, and I take no interest in, what materials it
7publishes or distributes. I have no knowledge whatsoever
8of the character of the National Alliance, other than what
9is now claimed by the witnesses for the Defendants, nor
10the publications which it is alleged to publish or
12 In relation to the next question, in answer to
13the next question, you gave this answer: "I do not agree
14that I have spoken at any National Alliance meetings. It
15might be that on occasions a gentleman who was a member of
16the National Alliance offered to organize a lecture for
17me. In other words, he undertook to find a suitable
18room. But I then circulated 'my' entire local mailing
19list to provide an audience. No doubt he brought his
20friends as well. It will be seen that in all these
21photographs of these events which are produced at trial,
22there is no kind of National Alliance 'presence'".
23 Those statements were false, were they not,
24Mr Irving?
25 A. [Mr Irving] At the time I made them, they were absolutely correct,
26yes. They were not false. I have the photographs.
1I have not yet introduced the photographs I am referring
2to, but I have them ready.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, we showed in this court, oh some time ago now,
4video tape of you standing on a platform with a National
5Alliance banner by your left shoulder, did we not? That
6was film taken by the Australia film crew, was it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] You showed a video tape of me in a room, on one wall of
8which was a banner, which has been pointed out to me in
9this courtroom as being a National Alliance banner. I do
10not suppose a single person in this courtroom would be
11able to tell you what a National Alliance banner looks
12like, and that is the position of most English people.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Except, may I suggest, you, Mr Irving. Could the witness
14be given RWE 1, and be asked to turn to tab 2?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Shall I get my own file?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Somebody must do it for you. The first document in
17this section of the file, Mr Irving, is a letter dated 3rd
18February 1990. It has on its left-hand side a sort of
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the right-hand side it says in large, emphatic black
22ink: "National Alliance, PO Box something or other, Palma,
23Ohio", does it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Hello David", it says, "I have arranged for you to speak
26on Wednesday, June 3rd, 7.30 p.m. at the Croatian Home in
1Cleveland. Enclosed is a map, Croatian Home", and then
2the address. "You are welcome to stay again at the
3residence of Mark Wavra", I think it is, in somewhere or
4other and then the telephone number is given?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Stay in touch and call me if need be."
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] That letter, I suspect, comes from your discovery, I do
9not know?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Almost certainly, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, so is this letter a forgery?
12 A. [Mr Irving] No.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, how do you explain it?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if you would like to ask me specific questions?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] How do you explain this letter in the light of the answers
16you gave us on paper?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Would you ask me a specific question?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks like a letter from an official of
19the National Alliance because it has "National Alliance"
20at the top, and it looks as if you have a prior
21relationship with the writer, Gliber, is that the point?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Can I draw your attention to the second sentence of my
23answer No. 25? It might be that on occasions a gentleman
24who was a member of the National Alliance offered to
25organize a lecture for me, in other words, he undertook to
26find a suitable room. Is that the kind of letter you
1would expect in response, describing the room that he has
2offered, that he has provided? No reference that it is
3going to be a National Alliance function; he is just using
4his own notepaper?
5 MR RAMPTON: "I have no association with a body known to the
6Defendants as the National Alliance as such, or
7whatsoever. I do not agree that I have spoken at any
8National Alliance meetings". Those were false statements,
9were they not, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Still completely true. This is not an association with a
11body. He is not writing in official capacity to me. He
12is writing to me as a personal friend. I do not know why
13he used that notepaper. It was not a National Alliance
14function, and if you asked me 10 years later, do
15I recognize that logo on the top left-hand corner, I do
16not recognize it; and if you had asked me even between the
17time we saw the video and now, I could not have drawn it
18from memory, let alone 10 years later. Can you draw from
19memory the logo of the Automobile Association, just to
20give one example? I do not know.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have not finished, Mr Irving. Do not be too hasty.
22 A. [Mr Irving] That is why I asked you to ask specific questions rather
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] The specific question is you know perfectly well who the
25National Alliance are and you always have done?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I now know who they are, yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no. You always knew who they were.
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is a different question, is it not?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have cooperated with them willingly. You agreed to
4speak at meetings hosted or organized by them in the full
5knowledge of who they were, did you not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] The answer is, no, I did not. I am talking in the past
7tense. I know now who they are because I have now read a
8lot of literature provided by the Defendants about them.
9At the time that, at all material times, I was not aware
10who the National Alliance were, I was not aware of what
11their logo looked like, the fact that somebody had some
12kind of logo on the top left-hand corner of letters
13certainly is not going to embed itself in my
14consciousness. Why should it?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will tell you why in a moment. Turn over to page 2,
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Is there any logo on this letter?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, there is no logo ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] Is there any "National Alliance" heading on the letter?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please be patient. You will see how the matter develops
21very shortly. This is dated 15th September 1995. It
22comes from somebody called Erich Gliber?
23 A. [Mr Irving] The same man.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
25 A. [Mr Irving] The same man, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Is it?
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, the same man.
2 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, the same man, the same fellow. This time
3you are going to be speaking at Lithuanian Village in
4Cleveland as opposed to Croatian Home in Cleveland.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Do you want to make anything out of that? I mean, you
6appear to be emphasising those words as though you were
7attaching importance to.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do, perhaps, Mr Irving.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Do I detect any xenophobia there?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, answer the questions.
11 MR RAMPTON: Perhaps you can help us.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I have nothing against Croatians or Lithuanians.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, during the war the Croatians were one of the Nazi
14puppet governments, were they not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Is that the point you are trying to make?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Answer my question, please, Mr Irving.
17 A. [Mr Irving] The Croatians?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] There was a puppet Croatian government, yes. There was a
20puppet Belgian Government and a puppet Dutch Government,
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] But the Croatians -- I do not want to go too far down this
23road -- it is right were enthusiastic supporters of the
24Nazis, were they not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] All the Croatians? I do not know.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no, the Croatian Government.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the puppet government was. That is what puppet
2governments do. There were puppet Marxist governments.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And during the war in Lithuania, as we have seen,
4Reinhardt Heydrich saw Lithuania, amongst other places in
5the Baltic states, as being a fertile source of
6anti-Semitic problems, did he not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I think most of the Eastern European countries were, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you know why these places are called "Croatian Home"
9and "Lithuanian Village"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I think they had -- if you look in one of the photographs
11which I will present to the court, there is actually a
12Croatian banner hanging on the back wall. It is rather
13like the British Legion. The veterans who live in that
14area, in the Cleveland area, there are a lot of these
15ethnic minorities, and I have got nothing against ethnic
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
18 A. [Mr Irving] But they have their own meeting place, their own social
19halls and so on.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now, the next page over, page 3 in the circle in
21handwriting at the bottom of the page, is from what?
22There will be an index somewhere.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I have no idea at all. Never seen it.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is from the National Alliance bulletin, yes. It is a
25very bad photograph and one could not tell it was a
26photograph of anything at all in the top right-hand
1corner, and it is captioned "David Irving lecturing at
2Cleveland. A fund raising activity for the Cleveland
3unit." Under "Cleveland activity", the cross heading in
4the middle column says: "On October 1st, the Cleveland
5united hosted", sorry, just looking for a date, "October
61st, the Cleveland unit hosted a very successful lecture
7by the British historian and revisionist author, David
8Irving. More than 100 tickets were sold at $10 each.
9After paying Mr Irving's $500 fee and the modest rent for
10the hall, the unit had a profit of approximately $400. To
11this was added the income from sales of Alliance books and
12from a bake sale". Drop down, please, to the bottom of
13the page.
14 A. [Mr Irving] From a bake sale organised by the unit's women -- a very
15dangerous body, obviously!
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, of course, it is like the Women's Institute! Drop
17down to the bottom of the page: "Mr Irving's lecture was
18received enthusiastically by the audience and he was able
19to autograph and sell a substantial number of his own
20books during the meeting. The Cleveland unit's next
21public activity will be a white power rock concert on New
22Year's Eve"?
23 A. [Mr Irving] "White power rock concert".
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Now please turn over the page to page 4.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Are you going to ask a question about that? Have I ever
26seen that before? The answer is no.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, this is just part of the narrative, Mr Irving. My
2question may sometimes come after several documents. You
3have to be patient.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, sometimes I will give an immediate response.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 4, your diary, October 1st 1995: "Pittsburg,
6Pennsylvania to Cleveland, Ohio. Rose at 7.30 a.m..
7Packed. Left for Cleveland around 3 p.m. Arrived at
8meeting place 6.00 p.m. Fine meeting, around 150 people,
9many ethnic Germans. Gate of $500 was agreed plus £1700
10book sales. What a relief. Sat up to 2 a.m. with my
11hosts after supper chatting". October 2nd: "Rose 9.50
12a.m. breakfast with my hosts, plural, lawyer etc." Do
13you still maintain that you do not know who these people
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. The host was Mark Wavra who is a well-known
16Cleveland lawyer who had nothing to do with the Alliance.
17Is that the question you are asking?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] They were your hosts for this meeting, Mr Irving.
19 A. [Mr Irving] The hosts are the people I am actually staying with. If
20you saw the previous letter, the first letter, that they
21have arranged for me to be accommodated in this lawyer's
22home, I have nothing against lawyers.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that Mark Wavra the -- I can never remember what "IHR"
24stands for and I do not much care. IHR is historian?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Sorry, it is not. It is Wavra, W-A-V-R-A.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it is mishearing?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I point out, of course, there is not the slightest
2reference either in that diary entry or in any other diary
3entry to the NA or the National Alliance or to any other
4body which confirms what I said about having had no
5knowledge of them.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I asked you to be patient. You have jumped in as
7you so often do ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] ---- and I turn now, please, to page 5?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Page?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] 5, your diary again?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] October 6th 1995, same year?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Five days later: "Savanna, Georgia to Tampa, Florida.
167.45 a.m. radio show from Tampa. Did a 20 minute
17interview and they announced the location. Not amused by
18that. Drove all day to Tampa, phoned Key West, etc. etc.
19etc. Arrived at the Hotel Best Western at 4.00 p.m.
20Sinister gent with pony tail was the organizer. Turned
21out the meeting here is also organized by the National
22Alliance and National Vanguard Bookshop. Well
23attended". Now, Mr Irving, do you want to revise the
24answers you have just been giving me?
25 A. [Mr Irving] It just goes to show how bad my memory is, yes, but it
26always illustrates, does it not, the fact that I am
1learning as I go along, and that I had not the slightest
2notion who these people are. Would that be a proper
3interpretation to put on that entry?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, it would not. Turn now to the meeting
5here, Tampa, is also organized by the ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] The same entry.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- National Alliance. In other words, you knew that both
8the meetings were organized by the National Alliance?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Obviously, I had subsequently learned that the previous
10one was also organized by this body which I had never
11heard of.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have seen that speech in Tampa in full in this court
13some weeks ago. On this occasion the host, let me call
14him this, whose name I am afraid I do not know, but I
15suppose it might have been this chap Gliber, I do not
16know, although he seems to be in Cleveland and not Tampa,
17he opened the proceedings with you on the platform and the
18banner nearby: "Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the
19National Alliance and National Vanguard Books, I would
20like to proudly welcome Mr David Irving." Do you want to
21revise your evidence, Mr Irving?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, obviously he put in a plug, what on TV would be
23called a plug for his own particular passion.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] "On behalf of the National Alliance and National Vanguard
25Books", remember your diary entry ----
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- organized by the National Alliance and National
2Vanguard Bookshop, "On behalf of the National Alliance and
3National Vanguard Books, I would like proudly", "I would
4like to proudly", he is an American, "I would like to
5proudly welcome Mr David Irving"?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, as I say, he has taken the advantage that he is
9making the opening speech to put in a plug for his own
10friends. That is all I can say, and it does not contrast
11with what I said in paragraph 25, that I have been invited
12by an individual and that the audience is almost entirely
13made up from my own list and that is why he is putting in
14his plug and why he is welcoming the outsiders.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] "I have no association with a body known to the Defendants
16as the National Alliance as such or whatsoever. I do not
17agree that I have spoken at any National Alliance
18meetings". Two statements which are both completely
19false, am I right?
20 A. [Mr Irving] No. I stand entirely with what I said in paragraph 25,
21and it is quite evident from my diary entries that I am
22learning as I literally drive around the United States
23that I speak at these functions and afterwards I have
24found out, "Oh, that one was organized by this person too
25or by that body too", and I find out subsequently. Once
26again, I have to say that I have not the faintest notion
1who they are or who they were. I spoke in the United
2States sometimes 100 times in one year, always to
3different bodies, and I am not going to make any
4particular note of which these bodies or these functions
5or universities or groups or whatever.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I take leave, if I may, Mr Irving to inform you that
7I reject every word of that answer. I will not take it
8any further in that direction, but I do ask you, have you
9familiarised yourself with the National Alliance
11 A. [Mr Irving] No, I am not the least bit interested in it.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I thought you said you had looked at it since this case
14 A. [Mr Irving] I fluttered through the things that were put into your
15bundles. That is when I have been mystified as to the
16relevance of them, frankly, catalogues of books and
17things. I thought, what on earth has that got to do with
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because this poisonous material is on sale at the meetings
20which you have allowed yourself to be exploited at, if
21I may put it like that, held and organized with your
22knowledge by the National Alliance?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I understand that Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" and Adolf
24Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is on sale at Harrods, but that does
25not mean to say that people who go and shop in the
26crockery department are in some way poisoned, does it, or
1in some way associated with those poisonous gentlemen?
2 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I foresee there is not going to be much
3point in my asking Mr Irving to look at the material at
4this stage. However, in the light of this passage in the
5evidence, I will invite your Lordship to look at it along
6down the line because it will form part of my closing
8 MR IRVING: Perhaps you should put them to me seriatim if you
9intend that his Lordship rely on them and I can say point
10by point have I seen it before, answer no.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not seriatim, but what I think would be
12helpful and I think would be right, if I may say so, would
13be for you to put maybe a couple of them by way of
14representative samples.
15 MR RAMPTON: I will simply put their ideology. One need not go
16any further than that.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where, as a matter of record, would I find
18National Alliance?
19 MR RAMPTON: You would find the literature behind Rebecca
20Gutman's statement which is in file ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] That is right. That is where I saw it too.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- C1, tab 2.
23 A. [Mr Irving] That is where I saw it for the first time and, frankly,
24I thought what on earth has it got to do with me, which is
25precisely why these witnesses should have been called so
26they could have been cross-examined, in my view.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are now going to have the
2opportunity ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] It is not quite the same thing.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- to comment on the literature.
5 A. [Mr Irving] It is not quite the same thing, though, is it?
6 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, the document I wish to refer to is the
7second document of the appendix to Rebecca Gutman's
8statement. The front page says: "What is the National
9Alliance?" Ideology and programme of the National
10Alliance. Copyright 1993".
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Has Mr Irving got a copy of this?
12 MR RAMPTON: I am hoping he will be given one.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Can I draw your attention to page 1 which is one of the
14leaflets for one of the meetings that is relied on,
15apparently, and there is not any reference whatsoever to
16the National Alliance. That is the Tampa function, is it
18 MR RAMPTON: True, but that was, as you acknowledge in your
19diary, a National Alliance event?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I say it subsequently turned out that the organizer was
21National Alliance.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, this is 1998, Mr Irving, not 1995.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do I already have this file that has just
24been handed in?
25 MR RAMPTON: I am afraid mine is anonymous. You have got your
26own C1 bundle, my Lord, I think.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems to be differently made up.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Can we, first of all, ask what paragraph of Gutman's
3report relies on this document so we can fit it into the
4constellation of evidence, so to speak?
5 MR RAMPTON: 14, I think, I am told. This is another National
6Alliance meeting at which you spoke, you see, Mr Irving,
7in 1998. It might be worth looking at some of this. Does
8your Lordship have it there?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am just puzzled. I do not think
10I have ever had this file. I may be wrong about that,
12 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, may I first draw attention to parts of
13the Rebecca Gutman's statement? This is the Civil
14Evidence Act evidence, paragraph 10 on the fifth page, the
15eligibility requirements of the National Alliance
16are: "Any White person (a non-Jewish person of wholly
17European ancestry) of good character and at least 18 years
18of age who accepts as his own the goals of the National
19Alliance and who is willing to support the programme
20described herein". It continues: "No homosexual or
21bisexual person ... no person with a non-White spouse or a
22non-White dependant ... may be a member". Notice,
23Mr Irving, the "white" wherever it appears has a capital
24W. Now paragraph 14 ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] Can I draw your attention to paragraph 3 first?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] By all means.
1 A. [Mr Irving] The flyer made no mention of the National Alliance. She
2points out that the function had no National Alliance
3presence apart from these leaflets that were, apparently,
4offered on some table somewhere else in the building.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] But for somebody, Mr Irving, like you who already knew
6that it was the National Alliance who was organizing the
7meeting, that really does not matter, does it?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Are you going to lead evidence that I knew in advance it
9was the National Alliance organizing the meeting?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am suggesting to you it must have been perfectly
12 A. [Mr Irving] That is something different, is it not?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is an old friendship, Mr Irving.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Is this the consensus of opinion again or is it something
15for which you have evidence?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, please. You have seen the evidence in your own
17diary. You know the National Alliance, do you not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Will you take me to the evidence in the diary?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have just been through it, Mr Irving. I
20do not think we need to go through it again.
21 A. [Mr Irving] This is a different meeting, my Lord.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes, different meetings, three years later?
23 A. [Mr Irving] It is conflating different meetings, if I can use that
24word. If he relies on this document, then, of course, we
25have to look at the actual meeting where the witness
26obtained this document which was, apparently, not a
1National Alliance meeting.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will just have a look at paragraph 14, if we may?
3"Inside the room there was a table set up with
4Mr Irving's books and copies of this latest newsletter.
5Across the room there was" ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] "Across the room".
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
8 A. [Mr Irving] "Across the room", in other words, nowhere near me.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] How big was the room, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] About twice as big as this.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Across the room there was a table set up for the National
12Alliance with books, fliers and cassette tapes. I picked
13up a selection of the material on offer. This material is
14at appendix pages 11 to 106", and so on and so forth,
15"including a flier advertising Mr Irving's books, a
16handwritten photocopied flier advertising Mr Irving's next
17lecture and a publication entitled 'David Irving's Action
18Report dated 20th July 1998'."
19 Now, Mr Irving, can we have just a quick look at
20the policy document?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I will just draw your attention once more to the
22page before it, page 1, which makes no mention whatsoever
23to this being a National Alliance function. Do you accept
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I accept it does not say it. I certainly do not accept
26that you did not know that it was. That is quite
2 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if it was a National Alliance function, then
3why would it not have said so on the actual flier?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Perhaps because the National Alliance are slightly nervous
5about making too much publicity for themselves outside the
6magic circle?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Your own witness said there was no evidence of it being a
8National Alliance meeting.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have made that point; I have taken it on
11 A. [Mr Irving] So what possible relevance, whatever leaflet was on the
12table 100 feet away from me ----
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say I regard it as being
14relevant to know what sort of an organization it is that
15you have addressed on three occasions?
16 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I object to the suggestion that I was addressing
17an organization. I was addressing my people who had come
18from all over Northern Florida to hear me speak at a
19function organized by this gentleman. I am sure it was a
20slip of the tongue, but I would hate it to go on the
21record unchallenged.
22 MR RAMPTON: Inside the front cover, "What is the National
23Alliance?" we read this: "Building a new White world", do
24we not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] What are we looking at?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Headline.
1 MR RAMPTON: "Building a new White world".
2 A. [Mr Irving] 80?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Oh, sorry. I think it is called C1, tab 2,
4page either 3 or 80, according to your preference.
5 MR RAMPTON: We notice, as I said a moment ago, the date of
6this document is 1993, so it was written before your visit
7to Cleveland in 1995, your visit to Tampa in 1995 and your
8visit to Tampa in 1998?
9 A. [Mr Irving] It is another lie, Mr Rampton, I am afraid. Look at page
109 -- I am sorry, page 86. Top left-hand corner of the
11box. Do you see some figures there?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, yes, Mr Irving. The copyright date is 1993. This
13may be a revised or updated version perhaps.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am telling you this document appears -- I am
15saying I have never seen it before -- to be dated October
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] In which case it was in existence at the date of this
18speech by you at Tampa 1998, was it not?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but you cannot rely on it for what happened in 1993.
20I may be wrong but ----
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you are wrong, but I am not sure it
22tremendously much matters.
23 MR RAMPTON: That is one of the areas where it matters not
24least to me whether you are right or wrong, Mr Irving.
25Can you turn over the page, please? I am not going to
26wade through all that acres of sludge on the first page
1all about -- I will read "Summary statement of belief", if
2I may, bottom right-hand column: "We may summarize in the
3following statement the ideology outlined above. We see
4ourselves as a part of nature, subject to nature's laws",
5nothing very controversial about that, one may think?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know where you are.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] "We recognize the inequalities which arise as natural
8consequences of the evolutionary process and which are
9essential to progress in every sphere of life". Again,
10somewhat uncontroversial. "We accept our responsibilities
11as Aryan men and women to serve for the advancement of our
12race in the service of life and to be the fittest
13instruments for that purpose that we can be." Then if you
14turn over the page we are beginning, Mr Irving, you may
15agree, to enter familiar territory.
16 A. [Mr Irving] In what respect?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] In the respect that this is, one might think, simply an
18English, a modern English American version of Nazi
20 A. [Mr Irving] So what? I mean, so what? What has that got to do with
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] "White living space". You fuel these people with your
23thoughts about the Holocaust, Mr Irving, that is why it
24has got to do with you.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, has it occurred to you I may go there and correct
26their opinions? I read them the documents they do not
1want to hear. Has this possibility occurred to you?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] When did you last address a meeting of the South Balham
3Trotsky Society, Mr Irving?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you are perfectly familiar with my policy
5which says I accept invitations from whichever body
6invites me, left or right.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, my question was put ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] If they choose not to invite me, that is their own loss.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No comment, Mr Irving.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you asked me a question and I gave you an answer.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The answer to my question is never, is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] If they invite me, I will come. I cannot force myself on
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] "White living space". "In spiritually healthier times,
15our ancestors took as theirs those parts of the world
16suited by climate and terrain to our race, in particular
17all of Europe and the temperate zones of the Americas, not
18to mention Australia and the southern tip of Africa",
19note. "This was our living area and our breeding area and
20it must be so again. After the sickness of
21multiculturalism which is destroying America, Britain and
22any other Aryan nation in which it is being promoted, has
23been swept away, we must again have a racially clean area
24of the earth for the further development of our people."
25Does that reference to the "sickness of multi-culturalism"
26in Britain have any resonance for you, Mr Irving?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Not really, no.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not remember the remarks you made in South Africa
3about God working out the Final Solution remorselessly by
4means of AIDS against homosexuals and blacks?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I think if you are going to rely on a passage like that,
6you should see the actual words that I used in the context
7I used them.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember the remarks ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] In particular, use the actual words and not your
10vulgarized recalled version.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember the remarks you made about feeling queasy
12when you saw black people playing cricket for England?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, because they are better than us.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember ----
15 A. [Mr Irving] And I am sorry about it.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember that you reported that it gave you a
17shudder when you were welcomed at Heathrow about Pakistani
18immigration officials?
19 A. [Mr Irving] And it turned out that you associated the word "Pakistani"
20with coloured when I would have been equally queasy if it
21had been a German standing there checking my passport --
22probably even more queasy.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember saying that you wanted Trevor McDonald,
24the famous black news reader, relegated to reading the
25news about muggings and drug busts?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Have you never listened to Dave Allen on television
1telling similar jokes and not being prosecuted for racial
2incitement? If somebody tells a joke about a black man
3and a Rabbi and a Irishman, is that serial racism? I
4mean, where does hypocrisy end and real indignation start?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Shall we read on? "We must have White schools", all these
6"Whites" have capital Ws, I point out, "we must have
7White schools, White residential neighbourhoods and
8recreational areas, White workplaces, White farms and
10 A. [Mr Irving] I think you will find the Daily Telegraph also capitalizes
11the word "White" and "Black".
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] All you are doing is putting a number of other rogues in
13your gallery, Mr Irving, by these remarks. However, let
14us read on.
15 A. [Mr Irving] You have upset at least one Correspondent, I am afraid.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] "We must have no non-Whites in our living space", and you
17know from their definition that that includes Jews as
18non-Whites. "We must have no non-Whites" ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] What an extraordinary remark.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- in our living space us and we must have open space
21around us for expansion", etc. etc. etc. Then read down,
22drop your eye, please, to "an Aryan society": "We must
23have new societies throughout the White world which are
24based on Aryan values and are compatible with the Aryan
25nature. We do not need to homogenize the White world.
26There will be room for Germanic societies, Celtic
1societies, Slavic societies" -- in that respect more
2generous, perhaps, than the Nazis -- "Baltic societies and
3so on, each with its own routes, traditions and language.
4What we must have, however, is a thorough rooting out",
5Ausrotten, Ausrotten, Mr Irving, "of Semitic and other
6non-Aryan values and customs everywhere".
7 A. [Mr Irving] All very interesting, but what has it do with me?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] It has everything to do with you, Mr Irving.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you say that this is, as it were,
10news to you.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I read it with the same interest that your Lordship has.
12These people have obviously ----
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you just wait for the question, then you
14will see what I am wanting to know. How do you react to
15this sort of stuff?
16 A. [Mr Irving] It is a most appallingly badly written piece of
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Badly written?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am reading it now for the first time and it is
20head-shaking stuff, is all I can say. I keep on saying
21what is it doing in this courtroom frankly. I am sure it
22interests Barbara Gutmann no end and it interests the
23Defence no end, but it does not interest me in the
24slightest this kind of stuff, because wherever it was it
25was not within my cognisance and I do not intend to retain
26it in my memory quite frankly.
1 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, can you put aside that file; I do not
2think I need to come back to it, that National Alliance
3document, and take back the RWE 1 file, please, and turn
4to page 14.
5 A. [Mr Irving] RW1?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] RWE 1, yes, in tab 2 where we were and turn to page 14,
7please. First of all, actually I think we had better
8perhaps start at page 11, as this will give us the context
9for what you write on 25th July 1990. The entry for the
107th December 1996, again at Tampa, and again I suggest
11quite obviously a National Alliance meeting, leave the
12first line: "I shook off the Australians around 2 p.m.".
13They were the Australian film crew that were following you
14around, were they not, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] "And scooted on ahead to Tampa, arriving at 4 p.m. Set up
17room nicely".
18 A. [Mr Irving] I set up the room, in other words; it was not somebody
19else setting up the room for me.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you must have seen the National Alliance banners, must
21you not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Were there any?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have seen them on film, in this courtroom.
24 A. [Mr Irving] On this particular occasion?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. This film that we have shown in court. We did not
26show the whole of it. We just saw you standing on a
1podium you speaking like an inverted CND sign, the
2National Alliance banner a few feet away from your left
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, of course it must have been that because that was the
5Australian film.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly. "Set up room nicely. Good audience at 7 p.m.
7Around 90 to a 100 people. Their book sales were not
8commensurate. Too many young people. I gave a few books,
9too, to lighten a load and I had four boxes of Goering
10(that is your book) to each hard paperback with P and
11his/her name is not given to us".
12 A. [Mr Irving] No, Pat Ryan.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Vincent Breeding decided he had to deliver a Nazi-type
14introduction and preparation which I tried hard to defuse
15by my remarks about that and the Swastika t-shirts, Nazi
16tattoos, etc., will give the Australians any amount of
17ammunition to use against me in their feature. What
18short-sighted, mindless types I am surrounded with.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Will you please read on.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Certainly. "To my disenchantment, the Australian
22television team spent some time in the foyer interviewing
23obvious Nazi crack pots, so I shall stop co-operating with
24them and they can whistle for tomorrow's interview, then
25that is the Australians".
26 A. [Mr Irving] That is right.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] "I had one of the crack pots informing the Australians
2loudly that Rupert Murdoch is obviously a secret Jew.
3Aargh! I shall set out early for Key West. That is the
4end of this mini book I am speaking to".
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] So there were a lot of Nazi-looking types?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Nazi crack pots, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Nazi-looking types.
9 A. [Mr Irving] "Nazi crack pots" are the words I use.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Nazi-looking types, Mr Irving. You did not like that
11because you thought that that appearance could be
12exploited against you by the television crew.
13 A. [Mr Irving] I did not like it because that is not my chosen company.
14I cannot prevent -- it is a free world, particularly in
15the United States where they believe in the freedom of
16speech -- I cannot stop people wearing what they want;
17I cannot stop people cutting their hair the way they want
18to; I cannot stop people coming into a public meeting, but
19I express my obvious displeasure at it.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] A bit like those nice friendly young men we saw in the
21video tape of Halle in 1991. It is nothing to do with;
22you cannot help it if Nazi, Neo-Nazi ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] Is it the ones waiving the red flags or their opponent?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, the red flags were not your opponents. Professor
25Funke told you clearly that was one sections of the
26neo-Nazi movement in Germany.
1 A. [Mr Irving] That is why there is a long line of police holding them
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, can we now look at page 14. This is you at the
4what I call the National Alliance event in 1998, two years
6 A. [Mr Irving] You call it the National Alliance event?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, there is no question.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The fact is that they there were National
9Alliance events, so you were wrong to suggest that I was
10guilty of a slip of the tongue. You may be whether you
11knew about it knew that that was the organisation.
12 A. [Mr Irving] This is 1998, my Lord, and I held up to your Lordship the
13invitation which has no reference whatsoever on it to
14National Alliance, no logo, no inverted CND sign, just a
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Wait for the question.
17 MR RAMPTON: Let us look at the diary entry at the bottom of
18the page, shall we Mr Irving: "July 25th 1998. Tampa
19Florida", again. Then there is a square bracket with
20three dots in it. I am coming back to that, Mr Irving.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] "5 p.m. Over to Bess Western. Good function at 7 p.m.
23About a 100 there. Good book sales". Vincent Breeding,
24remember him from 1996?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, he learned his lesson from my lecture.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] He is the National Alliance organiser, is he not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] That I do not know. I am sorry, that I did not know, let
2me correct that.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Better behaved this time. His young men were dressed in
4suits or blazers, standing impassively at the corners. No
5skinheads, neo-Nazis, thugs or jack boots in evidence. No
6doubt, the press will tell their readers otherwise". What
7you worried about, Mr Irving, is not the presence of
8neo-Nazis. You are worried about the dent in your public
9image, the public knowledge of the presence of neo-Nazis
10will make, are you not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] No, I am worried about the press lying. I have seen press
12reports in this courtroom saying the courtroom is filled
13with skinheads in the audience, and I do not think any of
14us have ever seen that. That is what has been in the
15press reporting around the world on this particular trial,
16that my skinhead supporters are packing the benches here.
17I am very familiar with this kind of press reporting.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I said I would come back to look at that
19ellipsis in square brackets we find in that diary again.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I would like you to look at a couple of documents,
22please. This is also taken, partly from a discovery and
23partly from a document which you produced in court.
24Mr Irving, you said repeatedly in this court, when
25cross-examining my expert witnesses, that you have
26disclosed the whole of your diaries.
1 A. [Mr Irving] On disk, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
3 A. [Mr Irving] You have received them on disk.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you look at the first of these documents ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] Let me just qualify that, please. I disclosed all of
6those that were discoverable. I may be wrong but my
7belief is that the diaries were discoverable up the time
8the writ was served. Am I right, my Lord?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes.
10 A. [Mr Irving] And when was the writ served, September 1996?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Look at the entry for 2nd June 1998.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Which is after the writ was served.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] That depends, Mr Irving. Your analysis of law is a little
15 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps we ought to ----
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Discoverability depends not on the date of the writ; it
17depends upon, subject to legal professional privilege,
19 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps his Lordship can lecture me on this point, but you
20ask me whether I had disclosed everything that was -- you
21put to me the sentence that I had withheld nothing ----
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, come on, let us not waste time on
23this. It is quite obvious that you disclosed something in
24relation to June 2nd 1998 ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 MR RAMPTON: Yes, and now would you look at the second sheet,
1which is what you produced in court.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- and that is after the writ. The point
3is that there is an ellipse in what you disclosed, as I
4understand it.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 MR RAMPTON: If you look at the second two pages of that little
7clip -- it is two and a half pages, this is something you
8wanted to use in court so you produced it for our
9edification during the course of this trial.
10 A. [Mr Irving] No, I did not. Which one?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The large three-page document.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Headed "June 2nd 1998, Chicago Illinois".
14 A. [Mr Irving] No, you asked me for the summary of the Himmler letters to
15his mistress, and I have gave that entire summary, that
16entire day's entry in my diary.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is an entire entry in your diary?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] So, it is not right to say that we have had the whole of
20your diaries, is it? Look at the difference in length.
21This is four lines long and this is two and a half pages.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps we should have a lesson from his Lordship about
23what is discoverable and what is not.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me take it in the sequence which I
25understand it to be in.
26 A. [Mr Irving] The writ was served in September 1996.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not worry about whether the writ was served; that has
2nothing to do with it. You, is it right, originally
3disclosed an extract from your diary of June 2nd 1998
4which consisted about four and a half lines?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] There was then, as I understand it, a request from the
7Defendants that you disclose more of that entry whereupon
8one gets ----
9 MR RAMPTON: No. It was something that Mr Irving himself
10produced voluntarily to answer some question about the
11Himmler diaries.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. So then you voluntarily disclosed
14additional from that day's diary entry?
15 A. [Mr Irving] About 10 days ago, yes.
16 MR RAMPTON: So we must not be misled, must we Mr Irving, to
17thinking that the diary entries that we have in this court
18are anything like the complete diary entries?
19 A. [Mr Irving] His Lordship is aware of the fact that a lot of private
20material that has been taken out, a lot of personal
21material to which you are not entitled.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course. I, being the lawyer here, Mr Irving, or one of
23the lawyers, have no problem with the obliteration (that
24calls a Court of Appeal authority for it), from disclosed
25documents of material that is irrelevant, or that is
26legally professionally privileged, no problem at all. My
1question here is, in relation to 25th July 1998, there is
2an ellipse, does that ellipse disguise a reference to the
3National Alliance or not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] That is a very proper question and I will certainly have
5it answered. I can send you the entire diary entry.
6I will even ask you for undertakings, but I think that
7I can say with honesty that, to my knowledge, I have
8redacted nothing out of the diaries which is properly
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you know about the British National Party,
11Mr Irving?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I know more about them than I know about the National
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tell me what you know about the British National Party,
16 A. [Mr Irving] What the Germans call a "verlorenes Haufen" - a lost
17heap, a band of hopeless right-wingers going nowhere.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you speak to them, do you not?
19 A. [Mr Irving] No.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Or you have done?
21 A. [Mr Irving] No.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tab 5, please, in the right-wing extremist file, page 2A
23for example, diary entry for some date in June 1983,
24second paragraph: "4.30 p.m. Train to Leicester. Spoke
25there to 27 people at a British National Movement meeting
26organised by Ray Hill".
1 A. [Mr Irving] You are asking me about the British National Party,
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. What is different between the British National
4Movement and the British National Party?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I am not totally ignorant. I assume there is a
6difference, otherwise I would have not written that.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Turn over the page, please. This is 17th July 1990, a
8letter from ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] Seven years later.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- Geoffrey D Brown. "British National Party, Yorkshire
11region. Dear Mr Irving, further to our telephone
12conversation today, I am writing to confirm that we would
13be very happy for to you come up to Leeds on Friday 14th
14September to address a special northern regional meeting
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] " --- whilst the bulk of the audience will no doubt be
18from the BNP. It is expected that there will also be
19people attending from other groups such as the Monday Club
20Yorkshire Area and something called English Solidarity".
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Last line: "Again, many thanks for accepting our
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is very similar to the functions in America where
25somebody who is a local functionary of some political
26group is inviting me to come and address an umbrella body
1which all sorts of functions will come. If you look at
2the diary entry which covers ----
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, come on, that is letter on the
4stationery of the British National Party.
5 A. [Mr Irving] --- all these jumped up people, you notice he then gives me
6his private address to reply to. He is inviting me as a
7person, my Lord.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you inviting me to accept that this is
9not an invitation to speak, and an invitation by the
10British National Party to speak at a British National
11Party meeting.
12 A. [Mr Irving] He says that the bulk of the audience will, no doubt, be
13from the BNP, and that I accept. It is also going to be
14totally hybrid. There are going to be people from the
15Monday Club which is another disreputable group, and
16English Solidarity. If you look at my diary entry which
17is on page 5, my Lord, you will see that there is not the
18slightest reference to me being at the BNP function.
19 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you do give the most appalling hostages
20it fortune, if I may say so. Please turn to page 7.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps I can say that this is mark of an honest witness,
22that I am speaking from memory, I have not prepared for
23this, I have not rehearsed. We are all hostages, not so
24much to fortune as to bad memory, looking at events in
251983, which is 17 years ago and 1990 which is 10 years ago
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now we are coming to 1993.
2 A. [Mr Irving] --- and I speak at, as I have said many times, 190 or
3sometimes 200 functions a year.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 7, please.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] "British National Party, in Kent. Dear Mr Irving, the
7British National Party is organising a rally in central
8London on the afternoon of Saturday 6th November. It is
9expected that several hundred people will attend. You are
10hereby invited to attend as a guest speaker".
11 A. [Mr Irving] And I refused.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You refused?
13 A. [Mr Irving] End of story.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You refused?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Sorry. So your BNP file is rather thin, I am
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, turn to page 8, will you. You are in key West.
18 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, which tab was it again?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] The same tab, page 8, bottom of the page: "12 midday,
20Kirk Lyons phoned".
21 A. [Mr Irving] Tab 8 you say?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Page 8, tab 5.
23 MR RAMPTON: "12 midday. Kirk Lyons phoned. Going to London
24November 2nd to November 9th for BNP meeting". Is that
25you or Kirk Lyons?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Lyons, he is a lawyer.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is his connection with the BNP then?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I have no idea; he is an American lawyer.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] No idea?
4 A. [Mr Irving] No.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] How do you know he is an American lawyer?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Is it relevant?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
8 A. [Mr Irving] You asked me what his connection with the BNP is and the
9answer is I do not know.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am mildly interested in your associates. Mr Irving. I
11am much more interested in you personally, of course?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Speaking of my first lawyer, who was Michael Rubenstein
13who was my lawyer for 25 years or 20 years and may be
14familiar to this court. I am quite happy to go through
15all the lawyers I have employed in my life.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Many of my best friends are Jews too, Mr Irving. I want
17to go back now, if I may, some 50 years or so.
18 A. [Mr Irving] So the BNP file was rather slim. Can we agree on that?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is your comment, Mr Irving. You have given one
20dishonest answer already in relation even to so slim a
21file as the BNP, which is that you it did not go to the
22BNP me in Leeds, and you told us in answer to our
23question, answer 45, "I have no connection with the
24British National Party nor have I been following its
25progress, nor do I have any knowledge of its official aims
26or policies".
1 A. [Mr Irving] I think that is a very reasonable and fair answer. It
2turns out that I attended one semi-BNP function 23 years
3ago or 17 years ago or something like.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] 1990, Mr Irving.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Ten years ago.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then you said: "From memory I have never spoken at a BNP
8 A. [Mr Irving] If you want to hang your hat on that then you are at
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I have a whole row of pegs for my hat, thank you,
11Mr Irving.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, what is puzzling me a little bit
13is why you troubled on the 26th October refer to the fact
14that Mr Lyons was going to London for the BNP meeting?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Lyons is an acquaintance of mine and he told me he was
16going to go London, that is all. He probably wanted to
17know if I was going to be in London at that time and he
18could come and drop in on me, but that is all. I mean, my
19Lord, I can be quite plain and say had I attended the BNP
20meeting your Lordship will be familiar with the fact that
21they have had my entire diaries and they would have
22dredged that little morsel out of the diaries and dangled
23it before this court. It is dishonest of them to have
24suggested any different. In view of the fact they have
25had 20 million words of diaries and these are the only
26references to the BNP, that is a minuscule, almost
1frantic, attempt to associate me with them.
2 MR RAMPTON: Describe the BNP? You seem to have some knowledge
3of them which I am afraid I do not have, but you tell me
4who they are, the BNP, while I search for a document?
5Hopeless right-wing, is that right, going nowhere? What
6did you mean by that, hopeless right-wing going nowhere?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Their attempt to establish a right-wing alternative party
8in this country which is, as I understand from newspaper
9accounts, riven by internal dissension, by poor quality,
10officers. I do not know. I do not follow them develop.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who is Mr Anthony Hancock who in Munich describes himself
12as Mr Michael Carter?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Are you asking if he has any association with the BNP?
14I do not know.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I am asking you who he is, what his political stance
17 A. [Mr Irving] I think he is a right-winger.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you mean by a right-winger, free market?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Somebody who is to the right-wing of me, shall I say. If
20I describe him as being right-wing, then he is right-wing.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] So he would like black people to be sent back to wherever
22their ancestors came from, that kind of thing, is it?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I imagine so, yes, but I have not had learned political
24discussions with him, so perhaps I should not give that
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, my Lord, there has been a hitch in the
1administration, I am afraid. Mr Irving, do you remember
2the question arose, first of all, in Professor Evans'
3report of a letter written to his wife probably sometime
4in 1942 of a German officer called Schaultz du Bois?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember telling this court some days or weeks ago
7that you were not aware of the contents of that letter?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot remember what I told the court, but I can tell
9you now what my position is.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please do.
11 A. [Mr Irving] At the time I was researching the background of the Bruns
12Report, checking on the names in the report, finding out
13who was who, I read the book by Professor Gerald Fleming,
14the relevant parts of that book, and Professor Gerald
15Fleming had done research into the same shootings at Riga,
16and he had managed to obtain a copy of the letter which
17Schaultz de Bois had written in 1942, and I read the lines
18in the Fleming book relating to that letter. In other
19words, I have not read the actual letter but I know the
20letter exists.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, indeed you do. You were I think asked by his
22Lordship, this is day 22, which is 17th February 2000,
23page 103, his Lordship asked you this at line 23:
24 "Is it your case, Mr Irving, because you must
25put it", because you were cross-examining Professor Evans,
26Mr Irving, "because you must put it clearly and
1straightforwardly, that you were unaware of what
2Mr Schaultz de Bois said in this letter?" Mr Irving:
3"Yes, and your Lordship will have heard from the
4cross-examination over the previous ten minutes that I do
5not attach very great importance to the remarks by
6Canaris." We can ignore most of that sentence, except the
7"yes", Mr Irving. It was not a straightforward answer,
8was it?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Ah!
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] You know very well what was in the Schaultz de Bois
11letter, did you not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure his Lordship is familiar with the problem with
13transcripts in court, that when a witness is having
14something read it him and there is a pause and the witness
15says "yes" as though to say, "Yes, I hear what you are
16saying", right? This should not be taken as being, yes,
17I agree with what you are saying, but, yes, I hear what
18you are saying.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hope we are not going to treat all your
20answers in that light.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I think your Lordship is capable of seeing the difference.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I certainly see the difference.
23 A. [Mr Irving] What I would call a substantive yes rather than a nod.
24This is mine. Can I have it back now, please?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, exactly. Indeed so.
26 A. [Mr Irving] This is the Gerald Fleming book in my hand.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is indeed. The reason why that letter comes into the
2case, Mr Irving, as I expect you will remember, is that it
3contains an account of what happened when the message got
4back to Hitler -- you will find it on page 98, will you
5not, it is in German, but you will recognize the passage.
6It is just above a red marking by you, is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Read out what it was reported to Schaultz de Bois that
9Hitler had said after he learned of the Riga shootings.
10It is just before your red marking.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I have to find it first.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Schaultz de Bois went it Canaris to get him
13to intercede with Hitler?
14 MR RAMPTON: That is right. He wrote a letter to his wife
15apparently reporting what Hitler's reaction had been.
16 A. [Mr Irving] I am not deliberately delaying anything. I am just trying
17to find the actual passage.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think it is on page 98.
19 A. [Mr Irving] OK I am sorry. Yes, here we have it. This man, who went
20in and out, he is talking about Canaris obviously.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, obviously.
22 A. [Mr Irving] This man, who went in and out at the Fuhrer's, was to tell
23the Fuhrer the consequences and the atrocities of these
24methods once more in a most penetrating manner. No, he is
25said to have done this whereupon the latter, Hitler, is
26said to have said, and then comes the quotation: "Mein
1Herr, you want to go soft, do you? I have to do that
2because after me there will not be anybody else to do it".
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. Now, that is some evidence, is it not -- I am not
4saying it is the strongest evidence in the world, of
5course not, Mr Irving -- that Hitler thought it his
6job -- Hitler, his job -- to abolish the Jews and kill
8 A. [Mr Irving] It is some evidence, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Why have you never brought that to the attention of
10your readers? You have known about it since 1982.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I have known about it since roughly the same time as
12I found the Bruns book, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Professor Fleming sent you a copy of his book, the German
14copy, which I think came out in 1982, did it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you look carefully at that copy, just flick through the
17pages, you may agree with me that you have in fact read
18the whole of it up to page 104.
19 A. [Mr Irving] No. I think I set this out at the time I gave the book to
20you. I obviously dipped into the first 17 or 18 pages.
21Let us see where the markings end. I think 27 was where
22I stopped reading.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] See if you can find the next marking after 27.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Then I put it away. Then, when I needed a source to look
25up details on the Bruns Report, I picked it up and looked
26specifically at the Bruns passages. You will see the ink
1is a different colour.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, I did not mean to interrupt. Would you look at
3page 88?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is one of your markings there, is there not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, and I write "oy" in the margin.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is something said that you do not like, I suppose?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is what I would say to him. If he had read this
9out to me, I would have said "oy".
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is a slight diversion. What is it about that
11passage you did not like?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. Let us have a look.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have a photographic copy of the relevant part of this.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am following.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Oh yes. On the basis of the liquidation order issued on
16November 10th and 11th to the newly appointed senior
17police chief and SS chief in the Baltic, who was Jeckeln,
18the order issued by Himmler and Hitler, I have underlined
19the words "Himmler and Hitler" and that is where I have
20written "oy" in the margin as though to say, "OK, Himmler,
21I agree but how are you just sliding in the words 'and
22Hitler' as well"?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] He no doubt has reached the position in 1982, which you
24have now reached in this court for the first time, that
25Hitler authorized the shootings in the East.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Are you asking me a question?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I am. That is right, is it not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Let me just explain why I have written "oy" then next to
3it because that may be part of the answer. This is a book
4which has been written for the purpose of disproving me,
5as he admits himself, and this is admitted in the reviews,
6and this is the evidence on which he relies in disproving
7me, to prove that it is the Fuhrer's wish. In fact the
8subtitle of this book is, "It is the Fuhrer's Wish", and
9it is that actual quotation, the so-called liquidation
10order, "tell Lohse it is my order and it is also the
11Fuhrer's wish". I have written in the margin, saying "oy,
12is that as good as it gets?", the same as I have sometimes
13said to you, Mr Rampton.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving.
15 A. [Mr Irving] One had expected better, same as his Lordship has
16sometimes said to me, in fact.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Turn back two pages, will you, from that marking to page
19 A. [Mr Irving] I did notice on the opposite page they are relying on the
20Wetzel letter, which of course the Eichmann manuscript now
21challenges as being a forgery.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] That matters not to me in the least, Mr Irving.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] As we discussed earlier today in this court, recent
25discoveries have very little bearing on your competence or
26honesty as an historian. Page 86 Mr Irving. What is it
1that Professor Fleming is reciting on the top of that
3 A. [Mr Irving] He is referring to the Muller document, about which of
4course I have made representations to this court, dated
5August 1st 1941.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. The Muller document saying the Fuhrer is to have
7running or continuous information, or reports, about the
8work of the Einsatzgruppen in the East.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Got to be kept au courant.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Laufend is the German.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I was using a French phrase on the work of the
12Einsatzgruppen in the East, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember that I put it to you in cross-examination
14that, contrary to what you said in court, you were indeed
15familiar with the Muller order of 1st August?
16 A. [Mr Irving] You put to me, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you saying you did not read this passage in Fleming's
19 A. [Mr Irving] I have to say that you are asking me about something 18
20years later but I can say with great confidence that, as
21there are no kind of markings on those pages, then, with
22the high degree of probability, I did not read them.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then I asked you by reference to this very passage, "Have
24you read Gerald Fleming's book?" And your answer is,
25"I have not read that book".
26 A. [Mr Irving] I have not read the book as such, no. But may I also say
1that had I seen that passage about the Muller document,
2which is very interesting, obviously, I would have written
3to my friends at the Institute of History or the very next
4time I went there, because that is the source he gives
5there, footnote 172, and on my next visit to Munich after
61982 I would have said, "Can I, by the way, have a look at
7that file, please?" and, obviously, that is one indication
8that I did not see that document. But I have to say that
9I will have submissions to make about that document when
10the time comes unless the Defence can produce the exact
11file of where it is stated to be.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not worry; we are working on it, Mr Irving. Don't you
13worry about that.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am just reminding...
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] We have plenty of time and lots of contacts. Many
16rabbits ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I need time after I have been told the file number,
18of course, to make use of it.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] There are many rabbits in this burrow. Do you remember,
20Mr Irving, that in your account of the conference on 16th
21and 17th April 1943 you transposed a remark made by Hitler
22on 16th as though it had been made on the 17th?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is one of the two errors I have corrected in the
24new edition of my Hitler book.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am pleased to hear it. My reason for asking you that is
26this. You have been aware of what the true chronology was
1at least since 1977, have you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes -- wait a minute, wait -- yes, since 197.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Martin Broszat pointed it out to you?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember writing to a Mr Ashton on 31st December
7 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes, clearly. What did I say? Can we see the letter,
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will but I will just read it out.
10 A. [Mr Irving] I am being sarcastic.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] We may not need to get it out. "As for your views on the
121943 Horthy document, I believe I have replied to you
13quite fully about this, drawing your attention to Hitler's
14explicit remark to the Reichs vorweise" one day
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- "to the effect that nobody was asking him to kill the
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] So in 1978 you were fully conscious that Hitler's remark,
21"There is no need for that" ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] Was one day earlier.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- was made on a previous day?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you never corrected it, did you?
26 A. [Mr Irving] No. But you know my views on that, Mr Rampton, that
1whether the remark is dated in my book on April 6th or
2April 17th, I think that is a very flimsy peg and the hat
3falls on the floor ----
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I hear what you say, Mr Irving.
5 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I said I hear what you say.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you interrupted me before I had finished.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] That was the excuse, if I can put it like that, that you
9gave us last time.
10 A. [Mr Irving] In fact, it is one of the errors I corrected in the latest
11edition because it is a minor error, but it is worth
12picking up.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I want to ask you about another document from 1942.
14My Lord, this is the Kinner Report from Zamosk in Poland
15on 16th December 1942. I believe your Lordship will find
16that in file K2, tab 4, page 19A (vi). For once, my Lord,
17we have the English as well as the German. This is an
18English translation, Mr Irving, but you would probably
19prefer to use the German, I do not know.
20 A. [Mr Irving] I have them both here.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] It concerns, does it not, a transport of 644 Poles to the
22work camp at Auschwitz on 10th December 1942, am I right?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you turn to look at the second page under the
25subheading or by the underlined subheading "arbeit
1 A. [Mr Irving] In German, yes, I have that.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, or the English. "Capacity for employment as
3labour". We find this: "SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Halmeier",
4in fact, that is a mistake for Almeier, "explained that
5only Poles capable of work should be delivered so as to
6avoid as far as possible any useless burdening of the camp
7and also of the delivery traffic. In order to relieve the
8camp, limited people, idiots, cripples and sick people
9must be removed", the word is "entfernt", "from the same",
10that is the camp, "by liquidation". The word there is
11"liquidation", is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes -- very explicit.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is very explicit. There again we see another example,
14as in Himmler's closing speech of 4th October 1943, of
15removal and liquidation, evacuation and extermination
16being used synonymously, do we not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] "This measure", that is to say liquidation, "however
19becomes more difficult to implement because, according to
20an order from the RSHA", the English is translated as "in
21opposition to"?
22 A. [Mr Irving] "In contrast to", I think.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, "in contrast to", I was going to suggest that, "in
24contrast to the measures applied to the Jews, the Poles
25must die a natural death." Does that not mean, Mr Irving,
26in fairly unvarnished terms, that whereas Poles must be
1kept alive until they die, the Jews can be killed?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I think that is the interpretation on those words, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And this is in relation to procedures at Auschwitz, is it
5 A. [Mr Irving] It is in relation to Auschwitz, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, because Aumeier was at Auschwitz, was he not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that not some sort of rather powerful evidence that
9Auschwitz, so far as Jews were concerned, was so far from
10being a work camp a place where they were being
11exterminated, liquidated?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am not saying they were being exterminated; it is
13a place where they are not being protected and ----
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] They can be killed at will, can they not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] That is right, yes, according to this document.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you mistrustful of this document?
17 A. [Mr Irving] No. I am not challenging the authenticity of the document
18at all, but it is ----
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But are you challenging what is said here,
20that the policy appears to have been, in relation at least
21to this transportation, that any Jews who were not fit for
22labour would be liquidated?
23 A. [Mr Irving] The comment I would I make on this document, and obviously
24it is an important document, I am not challenging that
25respect, but is written by an SS, what, Untersturmfuhrer
26which is, what -- I have to look at my military dictionary
1and see the rank, but it is an SS corporal, I think.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, he is quoting an SS Haupsturmfuhrer which is going
3slightly higher up the hierarchy.
4 A. [Mr Irving] He is what?
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] He is quoting Aumeier.
6 A. [Mr Irving] But the actual document has written or drafted by an SS
7corporal and we have had this kind of problem with
8documents before, that you have to be very careful if you
9are going to look at actual words used or actual senses
10conveyed, and I do not want to put it more strongly than
11that, just to say that -- I do not want to put it more
12strongly than that. I just want to say that it is -- the
13corporal's language, he is not a lawyer drafting a
15 MR RAMPTON: No, if he had been, Mr Irving, he might have used
16rather more guarded language?
17 A. [Mr Irving] No, I do not ----
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is the advantage of these janitorial documents, is it
19not, that one sees the truth?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I agree it is an important document. It says the Jews are
21being killed at Auschwitz and this has not been denied.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] The word is actually "liquidate"?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Liquidation".
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Well, that is why I say that this is the kind of
26language the corporals would probably have used to each
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Now we are going to go even further back in time,
3Mr Irving. We are going to go back via your book Goebbels
41935, 33, 34, and 32, but we are going to do it in one
5sentence, as it were. Have you got your Goebbels book,
6Mr Irving?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. My Lord page.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord, page 46 of Goebbels.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord, this relates to pages 692 to 698 of Professor
11Evans' report. It has to do with criminal statistics in
12Berlin and to some extent Germany but Berlin in 1932 to
13'35, and the way in which Mr Irving has represented the
14Jewish share of those criminal statistics, if I may put it
15like that.
16 Generally speaking, in this part of the book you
17are discussing, in general terms, how it was that Goebbels
18came to be so radical and anti-Semite?
19 A. [Mr Irving] No.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is general context, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. I am explaining how Goebbels came to
22be so successful in Berlin with his anti-Semitism, if
23I can put it like that?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] OK. It does not matter. It is all about Berlin, is it
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, and why his anti-Semitism found a fertile audience.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, in the first, second and third paragraphs on page 46
2there are some references to the Jewish deputy police
3chief, Dr Wernhart Weiss, and then at the bottom of the
4page, it starts: "Dr Goebbels would shun no libel to
5blacken his", that is Dr Weiss's, "name. Instinctively
6carrying on an ancient tradition of name calling he seized
7on Dr Weiss' nickname of 'Isidor' and commissioned the
8scurrilous Nazi marching song about him. He would
9highlight", that is Goebbels, "every malfeasance of the
10criminal demimondes and identify it as Jewish. In these
11closing years of the Weimar Republic he was unfortunately
12not always wrong."
13 So now, Mr Irving, we are getting a recitation
14of the true facts as opposed to Goebbels' propaganda.
15 "In 1930 Jews would be convicted in 42 of 210
16known narcotics smuggling cases; in 1932 69 of the 272
17known international narcotics dealers were Jewish. Jews
18were arrested in over 60 per cent of the cases concerning
19the running of illegal gambling dens; 193 of the 411
20pickpockets arrested in 1932 were Jews. In 1932 no fewer
21than 31,000 cases of fraud, mainly insurance swindles,
22would be committed by Jews". Then we are referred to
23footnote 29 which we will find on pages 547 to 548.
24 The footnote for that last statement "In 1932 no
25fewer than 31,000 cases of fraud, mainly insurance
26swindles, would be committed by Jews", footnote 29 on page
1547 says: "Interpol figures" ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] Excuse me. The footnote refers to everything ----
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] OK.
4 A. [Mr Irving] --- prior to that.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] That fine.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Everything after footnote 28, if you see what I mean? Not
7just the last statement.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I follow that, but it includes the figures given in the
9last sentence, does it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Interpole figures, in Deutsche Nachrichten-Buro
12(hereafter DNB) July 20th 1935; and see Kurt Daluege,
13'Judenfrage als Grundsatz' in Angriff, August 3rd 1935",
14and then there are some general references about the
15general demimonde. Tell me first, Mr Irving, who is, who
16was, I should say, Kurt Daluege?
17 A. [Mr Irving] He was the head of the Ordungspolizei which is the order
18police in Germany.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving. Tell us a wee bit more about him, would
21 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, he was a mass murderer later on. He was in charge of
22all the killing on the Eastern Front.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] He was, what shall I say, an enthusiastic member of the
24Nazi Party?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. And he met his just desserts on the Czech gallows.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] So one should be rather cautious, perhaps, about what one
1is told by Mr Daluege, do you not think?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, properly cautious.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Properly cautious. You will see that I have used his
4files which are in the German Federal archives. That is
5what the reference is that you left out.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to show you what are the references on which
7you have relied.
8 A. [Mr Irving] No? Yes, this one.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Now, the first of these documents, Mr Irving, is a
10written version, probably a draft, in the sense that he is
11going to speak as they say nowadays to it, I rather say
12from it, he is going to speak from, this is Daluege, on
1320th July 1935 at a press conference, is it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I have not seen this typed document. I relied on
15the Gothic typed face one.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Look at the Gothic one if you prefer because it is
17identical. The sixth paragraph of the Gothic is identical
18to the sixth paragraph ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- on our pages 16 to 17 of the typescript. Since the
21typescript is easier to read, can we look at the bottom of
22page 16 of this little clip? You will have to forgive me
23if my translation is a wee bit rocky. We will get it
24proper translated, my Lord, in due course. Does it say
25this, roughly speaking: "Even though we have succeeded in
26decreasing the number of cases of fraud in the Reichs
1capital to 18,000 in 1934 compared with 31,000 in 1933,
2the damage caused still amounts to over 112.5 million
3Reichsmarks", am I doing all right so far?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] And here we come to the conclusion after further
6investigation that "a considerable or significant part, if
7not the largest, of these fraudulent manipulations are
8still committed by Jews."
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right, where did you get your figure of no fewer than
1131,000 cases of fraud committed by Jews?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I am just now looking for the original quotation. What
13page was the original quotation? 43?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is 47. You have the year wrong, but I am not going to
15criticise you for that. You put 1932 instead of 1933, but
16leave that on one side.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Have you checked the two books that I give as sources
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I have not checked the two books, Mr Irving. This is
20your primary source. The books have been checked, yes,
21and so I am not on false ground.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes -- well, I will give you a conditional response which
23probably will not satisfy you, and say that if the books
24which are also given in the footnote, there are four
25sources given in the footnote, do not support the year
26which is different from the year contained in the document
1you gave me, or do not support the figure of 31,000, then,
2clearly, the same kind of error has occurred here as
3happened with the 1.20 a.m. telegram that in the course of
4writing six separate drafts one after the other this kind
5of error goes ----
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] --- but it is a conditional response.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have effectively doubled, or more than doubled, the
9number of fraud cases attributed by this rabid Nazi
10Daluege to the Jews in Berlin in that year, have you not?
11At the very most, even if the Jews are 50 per cent, it is
12only 15,500 cases attributable, according to Daluege, to
13Jewish perpetrators?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. If you are right, then that is correct, but, I
15mean, I have to say that is a conditional answer not
16seeing all the sources.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right.
18 A. [Mr Irving] And I would not be able to reconstruct that now because
19I no longer have access to the sources that I had at the
20time for the reasons you know.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why do you say that these are Interpol statistics in your
23 A. [Mr Irving] Presumably from one of the sources.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Interpol was not actually established as Interpol
25until after the war.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I am very sorry, but, of course, the Haus an Wannsee, the
1famous Wannsee House, where the Wannsee conference took
2place, was the headquarters of Interpol. Interpol was
3actually founded by Reinhardt Heydrich.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but, no, it was not called Interpol, was it?
5 A. [Mr Irving] It was presumably written out in full.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Even assuming (which I do not) that this was an innocent
7mistake on your part to double the number of offences
8attributable to Jews, do you think it right when your
9source is this man Daluege uncritically simply to take his
10figure as being right? You state it as a fact, you see.
11In probability, he had already doubled the figures at
12least, do you not think?
13 A. [Mr Irving] You are faced with a problem, of course, when you are
14writing a history of the 1930s, you look at as
15many sources as you can of what sources are available.
16These are the sources from the German Federal archives
17which contain all Daluege's papers. It is very easy to
18say, "Well, why do you take those figures because I do not
19like those figures, why do you not take these figures?"
20You have to take some kind of figures from somewhere, and
21if you are writing the Battle of Britain and you are going
22for a long time to believe Winston Churchill's figures of
23how many Nazi bombers were shot down, and we no know that
24those are wrong. But there we have the benefit of
25complete access to records and you can correct the
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] May I suggest, Mr Irving, that if a reputable historian
2were writing about this, he would say, "According to the
3Nazi propagandist, Kurt Daluege, whose figures are very
4probably not reliable" ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- perhaps as many as 15,500 frauds were attributable to
7Jews", but to assert that that is what Goebbels would find
8in 1932 is just the most appalling distortion of the
9truth, is it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I do not agree. I have made it quite plain what the
11source of this evidence is. You found it, your
12researchers found it. Everybody knows who Kurt Daluege
13was. He was not a Nazi propagandist. He was the head of
14the German police system. He was in a position to know.
15He is giving facts to a learned audience. They would be,
16no doubt, in a position to check and expose these facts if
17they were wrong. I certainly would not have said it was
18an Interpol function if I did not have the evidence for
19it, and I am not going to waste the court's time looking
20in these pages of Gothic script for the actual evidence
21for it, why would I have invented that? And, of course,
22if you look at the rest of the page ----
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I can think of a simple answer, Mr Irving ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] If you had looked at the rest of the page that you did not
25read out, I have relied on the figures from the German
26Federal Statistical Office on the percentages and so on.
1I built up a very careful picture from all the regular
2sources and, admittedly, we are -- I beg your pardon.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are going to look at some of those in a moment,
4Mr Irving?
5 A. [Mr Irving] And, admittedly, in this particular matter we have to rely
6on a dodgy source which is what you are trying to suggest.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] We do not have to, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving] But then, of course, the Goebbels diaries are dodgy
9sources too. They are diaries written about the arch Nazi
10liar, and you have to pick and choose and that is the
11problem you have when you are writing history about the
12Nazis and it is a problem when you write about history
13about anything.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, Mr Irving. Where in that Daluege, which is your
15primary source, that Daluege document, do you have find
16any reference to insurance swindles?
17 A. [Mr Irving] What basis do you have for saying it is the primary source
18when it is a scource of four.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is the first source you cite?
20 A. [Mr Irving] The reason for lumping several sources under one number is
21because otherwise the book is going to look like a rash of
22measles, every single word is going to have a note number
23attached to it. So it is the standard practice that you
24will lump three or four sources relating to the previous
25two or three statements, even if they are gathered up in
26one sentence, into one note number. This does not mean to
1say that is the primary source for that statement.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we agree this far ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] Have you ever written book? Oh, we had this out before,
4did we not?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, we have had this before and, yes, I have. It is not
6a very good book, but I have written a book, yes.
7 A. [Mr Irving] It is quite a difficult task to satisfy all the parties,
8the publishers, the readers and everybody else.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not agree with you, Mr Irving. I do not accept that
10for one moment. This is a case of deliberate distortion
11by you so as to inflate the number of wicked, dishonest
12Jews in Berlin in 1932. That is my case and you may as
13well know it, because what we have got is you double
14Daluege's numbers, at least, you have relied on an
15unreliable source, you have attributed his figures to
16Interpol and you have spoken about insurance swindles
17which are not mentioned in Daluege's document.
18 A. [Mr Irving] But I am sorry to sound incorrigible. There are four
19sources listed under that footnote, and you have waved one
20source at the court and said, "It is not in this source of
21the four". If you were to do your job properly, you would
22produce the other three scourss and say, "It is not in
23these three either".
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] All the figures, I am told, come from Daluege. How about
26 A. [Mr Irving] Who is that or what is that?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is a note passed to me by people who know better than
2I and , apparently, better than you, Mr Irving?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I mean, with the utmost respect for your researchers, if
4they had done their job properly, they would have had
5those books that I cited in court as well, and they would
6possibly even have given me fair warning and said,
7"Mr Irving, we are going to challenge you on these
8figures; do you want to spend the lunch hour or this
9evening just providing the evidence for them?"
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it was in Professor Evans' report.
11 MR RAMPTON: It is all in Professor Evans' report, Mr Irving.
12This document which you now have at the back of that
13little clip is one of Professor Evans' documents.
14 A. [Mr Irving] I have only got the Daluege report here.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I have only got the Daluege report.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, it is folded at the back, I hope. It is an A3 size
19 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, this one?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Right.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now look at the front of it, will you, please, Mr Irving?
23This is what you might call a slightly more reliable
24source, you may think, because it is the official Berlin,
25it is the official German statistics?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Is this from my discovery or from elsewhere?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Is this from my discovery or from ----
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, this is Professor Evans'.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I mean, it is important to know whether this is from my
5discovery or from your own research.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why? It is a public document, Mr Irving.
7 A. [Mr Irving] All right, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are the great archive fiend.
9 A. [Mr Irving] There is no need for that tone of indignation. I am just
10asking a simple question.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, Mr Irving, really. Is this a forgery then by
12Professor Irving (sic) and his cronies?
13 A. [Mr Irving] No, I am sure you are familiar with the point I am trying
14to establish.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not at all, Mr Irving.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think I understand the point that is
17being made. But let us look at it anyway.
18 MR RAMPTON: If you look, you see this is for the whole of
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is it not? "Statistik des deutschen Reichs", that is the
22whole of the Reich for the year 1932. If you look down
23the left-hand side of this big sheet, we find Nos. 80,
2480B, 80C and 81. Now, in 1932 -- I am going to work
25upwards -- in the whole of Germany, No. 81, there were but
2674 cases of insurance fraud, do you agree?
1 A. [Mr Irving] You say in the whole of Germany, but although I agree you
2have given us the title page of this, this is page 112, we
3do not know if it was the whole of Germany or just a
4province of of Prussia or what.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am told it is the whole of Germany.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well ----
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] Because I am quite familiar with these statistical reports
9and they are broken down into provinces, and I would like
10the assurance we are not just looking at Berlin or just at
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] So far as it is within my power to do so, I give you that
13assurance because that is what I am told and I regard my
14source as reliable. Now, even if it were just Berlin,
15Mr Irving, just 74 cases of insurance fraud were committed
16by persons of all ethnic backgrounds in Berlin, if you
17like, but in fact for the whole of Germany during 1932.
18Where are these over 50 per cent of 31,000 insurance
19swindles committed by Jews?
20 A. [Mr Irving] We are looking at 80B and 80C, is that right?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] 81 is ver sicherungsbetreff which I think means insurance
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I was looking at the betreff, the ones above, which
24total something like 70,000, 60,000.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Betreff, 80A, that is plain fraud is 50,000 plus?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Repeat frauds, that is 80B [German] 7,000 and a bit?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And then something about minor fraud offences, 80C, 312.
481, insurance fraud -- insurance swindle, to use your word
5-- 74 cases, yes?
6 A. [Mr Irving] The overall total of frauds ----
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is 57,888 for the whole of Germany?
8 A. [Mr Irving] And Daluege says that in Berlin it was 32,000 -- of
9course, we are looking at different years, are we not?
10One is 1932 and here it is 1934 or thereabouts.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, I am sorry. Leave Daluege out of this, if
12you will? You made an assertion of fact in your book
13about the number of frauds committed by Jews, mainly
14insurance swindles, in 1932. I am suggesting that any
15reputable historian would have gone to this document, as
16opposed to some rabid Nazi's utterance to a press
17conference, to find out what the truth was.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Are you saying that Paul Veiglin is a rabid Nazi and that
19Walter Keolein, who is a very well-known German historian
20of the police, is a rabid Nazi?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Those are your other references, are they?
22 A. [Mr Irving] These are my other sources -- two of the other, two of the
23four sources used, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, then if we find that your figures and statements are
25not supported by either of those sources, will you accept
26without equivocation that you have here committed a
1deliberate distortion, inflation of the figures against
2the interests of the ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] Obviously, if you find that those books do not support the
4statements I made, then I would accept that I have made an
5error. But, of course, I am not going to accept that such
6an error is deliberate because I have got no reason to
7make a deliberate error. You do not establish a
8reputation by making deliberate errors and I am baffled
9that anyone could suggest that you do.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I think I have about 25 in my pocket by now,
11Mr Irving, and that is the 26th. Thank you. Now I want
12to deal with the Goebbels diaries. My Lord, may I stop
13now because it is quite intricate and it is 1 o'clock?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but before you depart, can we work out
15where we are going to put these?
16 MR RAMPTON: It is in a sense a new section because it is a new
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we put it at the back of what I
19am calling J3?
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Could your Lordship put it at in the
21separate tab at the back of N1?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Back of N1.
23 MR RAMPTON: Because it is an historical document.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, 2 o'clock.
25 (Luncheon adjournment)
26 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, before I pass from the criminal
1statistics for 1932 to a question or two about the
2Goebbels diaries, can I pass you up a piece of paper? It
3is a sheet from the same German government document that
4we were looking at this morning, and there is one for the
5judge, please. (Same handed). I would like you to look
6at the section headed "Summer A bis D" for the year 1932.
7Tell us, please, to what area or areas of Germany these
8statistics relate?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Which? I am sorry, the bottom one, right.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] What does the heading say?
11 A. [Mr Irving] It says the crimes and misdemeanours against Reich laws
12that have been tried by German courts.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. That disposes of that question. This relates to the
14whole of Germany, does it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, apparently.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you very much.
17 A. [Mr Irving] This particular page.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the page before the following page, is
20 A. [Mr Irving] It is not, my Lord, no.
21 MR RAMPTON: No, there are some pages missing, but you can see,
22if you look at the top of page 112, which we already have,
23that the numbers run serially. At the beginning we start
24with 1 and by 112 we are at 63B.
25 A. [Mr Irving] That may or may not be the case, I cannot comment on that,
26but there are pages missing. I am sure your researchers
1would not mislead us deliberately.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] I hardly think that. The missing pages are here, if you
3would like to see them. (Same handed). I feel quite
4confident in saying that these run serially from 1 through
5(as the Americans say) 115. Anyhow, have a look and see
6if you agree with me that these are the statistics for the
7whole of Germany for 1932.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, they do.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you agree?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, they do.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] They do? Good. Excellent. Perhaps we could have that
12back because it is not mine. I said Goebbels diary, but I
13have been interrupted because we do not have sufficient
14copies of the documents I want, so that will take about a
15quarter of an hour to do. I want to pass to something
16else instead, if I may, which is your assertion that the
17gas chambers were an invention of British propaganda
18during the war. Do you agree that you have, on a number
19of occasions, made that assertion?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This is the Foreign Office clip of documents you
21gave me recently? Is that right?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Has the judge got a copy of the clip of documents on
23this topic?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know if I still have it.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought you meant a new clip. The old
2 MR RAMPTON: I feel cautious about that, but yes. File L1, tab
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I still have it here.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord, this relates to two different years, 1942 and
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 MR RAMPTON: 1943 starts at page 11, and I will deal with 1942
9first, if I may. Through no fault of ours, the passage of
10time, inefficiency of typewriters in those days, some of
11this is a bit difficult to read, but never mind. The
12first page -- does your Lordship have it now?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have.
14 MR RAMPTON: The first page contains some typescript in the
15top, and some manuscript in the bottom.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, doing the best I can, the date of this,
18I think, is 8th August 1942.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It says "Reported German plan for extermination of all
21Jews". Do you see that?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is a Foreign Office document, is it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then it says, I think, "Geneva telegram No. 174, Message
26for Mr Sidney Silverman, Chairman of World Jewish
1Congress, London, from Mr Gerhard Riegner, Secretary of
2World Jewish Congress, Geneva. Mr Riegner has received a
3report stating that in the Fuhrer's headquarters a plan
4has been discussed and is under consideration for the
5extermination after deportation to East of all Jews in" --
6can you read the next bit -- "in the areas occupied or
7controlled by Germany. Action is planned for the autumn.
8Ways and means are still (something or other) and include
9the use of prussic acid". Hydrogen cyanide, that is, is
10it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. The full text is on the next page actually in
12typescript. You could have read it.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I know that, but I just wanted to see the first date at
14which this information was relayed to the Foreign Office
15in London via Mr Sidney Silverman via Mr Gerhard Riegner
16in Geneva.
17 A. [Mr Irving] It was received 11th August 1942.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly. 17th August 1942, which is the next page, that
19information is laid out. Says the Foreign Office, "Have
20received by telegraph through His Majesty's Consul General
21at Geneva the following message", and then in a legible
22form we see it on the next page, page 3.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will read this: "Following for Mr Sidney Silverman, SS
25Silverman MP, chairman of British section, World Jewish
26Congress London, from Mr Gerhard Riegner, Secretary of
1World Jewish Congress, Geneva. Received alarming report
2stating that in the Fuhrer's headquarters a plan has been
3discussed and is under consideration, according to which
4all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany
5numbering three and a half to four millions should after
6deportation and concentration in the East, be at one blow
7exterminated in order to resolve once and for all the
8Jewish question in Europe. Action is reported to be
9planned for the autumn. Ways of execution are still being
10discussed, including the use of prussic acid. We transmit
11this information with all the necessary reservation as
12exactitude cannot be confirmed by us", that is Geneva.
13"Our informant is reported to have close connections with
14the highest German authorities, and his reports are
15generally reliable. Please inform and consult New York".
16 That message from Geneva is an authentic
17message, or was an authentic message, was it not,
18Mr Irving?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I am very familiar with these documents.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It was not an invention of the British propaganda machine,
21was it?
22 A. [Mr Irving] No.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] So why do you maintain that the use of homicidal gas
24chambers employing prussic acid, hydrogen cyanide,
25Zyklon-B, was an invention of British propaganda?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Because the following pages make plain the skepticism of
1the Foreign Office about this particular report.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, unless you want to go ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] Page 5, at the foot of it, says, "I do not think we should
4be wise to make use of this story in propaganda to Germany
5without further confirmation".
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the decision is made not to do so. Do you agree?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we take it in stages? The first thing
8is, are you accepting you said that this was all an
9invention of British propaganda?
10 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, you will be familiar with the document on which
11I rely, which is a year later than this, signed by
12Cavendish-Bentinck, saying, "we have no evidence
13whatsoever that these things" ----
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is why I asked you. I am asking you about whether
15you agree that you have claimed that the lie about the gas
16chambers was an invention, underline "invention"?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. A propaganda story put out by the British in early
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Invented by the British? That is the point.
20 A. [Mr Irving] And invented by the British propaganda agencies.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] What Mr Rampton is putting to you is that this is a
22message from Geneva that they have had a report.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. They are two separate ----
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I am not following at the moment why you say it is an
25invention of British propaganda.
26 A. [Mr Irving] If we abandon gas chambers for a moment, and say, suppose
1a message came from Geneva, saying children were having
2their hands hacked off, on the face of it an implausible
3story, which the Foreign Office said, "We find this
4difficult to believe", as it says later in this document,
5"We find no confirmatory evidence" and so on, and then
6later on the propaganda agencies send out reports by the
7propaganda channels, the BBC, Voice America and the rest
8of it, saying, "We have reliable stories that the Germans
9are cutting off children's hands", that would be an
10invention, would it not?
11 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, may we stick with history, rather than
12fantasy? Here we have a report from Geneva, from
13Mr Riegner, who is not an agent of the British propaganda
14machine, he is an element in the World Jewish Congress,
15that, as, indeed you might say, prophetically turned out
16to be the case, there was a plan reported to him from the
17Fuhrer's headquarters to exterminate the whole of the Jews
18in Europe, or most of them, at one blow by the use,
19amongst others perhaps, of hydrogen cyanide. Now, how can
20it be that that story is, to use your words, an invention
21of British propaganda?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Which story?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] This story that you see reported on the page in front of
25 A. [Mr Irving] That is two separate things. Riegner is sending a message
26to England to be passed on to Sidney Silverman, reporting
1a story which the Foreign Office clearly, from the
2handwritten minutes, do not consider to be part of what is
3actually happening. They say there is no doubt that large
4numbers of Jews are dying. They even used the word
5I think ----
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They may not believe it, but they did not
7invent it. That is the point that I was asking about and
8I think Mr Rampton is asking about.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I hesitate to use the words "hair splitting", my Lord, but
10I think it is quite plain that if in August 1943
11Cavendish-Bentinck, the head of the British Intelligence
12Service, says, "We have no evidence that these gas
13chambers exist", and yet by that time for 12 months
14already the British propaganda agencies have been pumping
15out the message, then that is an invention, and there is
16no other way of interpreting that.
17 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, the story originated not with British
18propaganda. It originated with a personal organization in
19Geneva, a remarkably accurate story, as it happens. If
20you turn over to page 4, you see the comment at the time
21in August 1942: "Mr Silverman having asked if he could
22see somebody about the cable, Sir Beaugrave Beecham had a
23talk with him this morning, first, Mr Silverman said he
24would let us have some particulars about Mr Riegner -- I
25think it is misspelt -- "whom he regards as entirely
26trustworthy. Secondly, Mr Silverman stated that he had
1received reports of transportation of Jews from occupied
2territories in Germany towards the East, which might be a
3confirmation of the alleged plan".
4 Then we see in the following pages -- turn to
5page 5, for example. I do not know whose notes these are,
6probably one of the Allens, but I am not sure about that.
7Yes, it is David Allen. In the middle of the next page 5
8he is talking about atrocious conditions in the East, and
9he says: "Such stories do provide a basis for Mr Riegner's
10report, but they do not of course amount to extermination
11at one blow. The German policy seems to be rather to
12eliminate useless mouths, but to use able-bodied Jews as
13slave labour."
14 In the light of all of that, the Brits, bless
15their little cotton socks, I might say if I were Jewish,
16decide not to make use of this information. Is that not
17right? They put the kaibosh on it, do they not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] No. You are overlooking one important detail, the
19chronology. Do you remember that I put to one of the
20witnesses, I forget which one it was, the diary evidence
21and other evidence of the propaganda broadcasts, some of
22which were in June 1942, about the use of poison gas, and
23some of which were earlier that year, about the
24deportation of the Dutch Jews to Mauthausen, using poison
25gas? So what is then reported back to us in August 1942
26is interesting, but no more.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have forgotten where the evidence is for
2use of this by the British in their intelligence
4 A. [Mr Irving] Your Lordship will remember there is a bundle of about ten
5pages of documents, including pages from Thomas Mann's
6diary, and the diary of a man called Ringelbulm, and the
7diary of a man called Viktor Klemporer, recording the
8actual dates that they received these broadcasts. I am
9afraid I do not know which bundles they are in.
10 MR RAMPTON: 1943, Mr Irving. Page 12 I cannot read. I hope
11it is legible in your copy.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am so sorry, Mr Rampton. I appreciate you
13want to get on, but does anybody have any idea where the
14documents -- I suspect they are somewhere in J -- that
15have just been referred to are to be found?
16 MR RAMPTON: No.
17 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I can certainly very easily bring in the copies
18again next time I come.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure I have them somewhere. I would
20like to know where they are.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I am not as well organized as I should be, I am afraid.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not blame you for that. Could I ask
23Miss Rogers or somebody to try to track them down?
24 MR RAMPTON: Do you still feel confident, before we come to
251943, Mr Irving, in saying that the gas chambers were an
26invention of British propaganda?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Based on the evidence that I have seen so far, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do? Can we turn to page 13, because I am afraid
3I cannot read page 12.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Page 12 is the draft declaration of the British and
5American governments.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Page 13 refers to a telegram to Moscow, and it is
7said to be based in the main, or taken in the main from
8the aide memoir by the Polish government in another file.
9"This aide memoir", reads this minute from Roger Allen to
10Cavendish-Bentinck, "is in line with a good deal of other
11information which we have received from time to time.
12There can, I think, be little doubt that the general
13picture painted is pretty true to life. On the other
14hand, it is of course extremely difficult, if not
15impossible, for us to check up on specific instances of
16matters of detail."
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have lost you.
18 A. [Mr Irving] So have I.
19 MR RAMPTON: I am on page 13, my Lord.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Which paragraph are we looking at?
21 MR RAMPTON: I read from the top of the page.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Something has gone wrong in that case.
23 MR RAMPTON: In that case something has gone wrong.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I thought I was going mad.
25 MR RAMPTON: It is a minute by Roger Allen dated 27th August
261943. If we had another year, we might get these file
1sorted out.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the problem may be we have not got
3the first page. I think we are missing that document
5 MR RAMPTON: It is a minute, Mr Irving, do you see, dated 27th
6August 1943 from Mr Roger Allen?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will call that 12A, because there is a 13
10 MR RAMPTON: Yes 12A, to Mr Cavendish-Bentinck. I will start
11again. I understand that the information on which
12telegram number 1190 to Moscow is based is taken in the
13main from the aide memoir by the Polish government in C,
14whatever it is. This aide memoir is in line with a good
15deal of other information which we have received from time
16to time. There can, I think, be little doubt that the
17general picture painted is pretty true to life. On the
18other hand, it is of course extremely difficult, if not
19impossible, for us to check up on specific instances or
20matters of detail. For this reason, I feel a little
21unhappy about the statement to be issued on the authority
22of His Majesty's government that Poles "are now being
23systematically put to death in gas chambers." I expect
24you are familiar with the rest of this document.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the aide memoire, Mr Rampton?
26 A. [Mr Irving] That is the previous illegible page, my Lord.
1 MR RAMPTON: That is the one I cannot read.
2 A. [Mr Irving] To be a draft declaration to be signed by Roosevelt and
3Churchill and they were meeting in Quebec to discuss it.
4 MR RAMPTON: Which I think must be the document. Maybe this is
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can actually read it fairly well.
7 MR RAMPTON: Let me try it: Reliable information has reached HM
8Government regarding the crimes committed by the German
9invaders against the population of Poland. Since the
10autumn of 1942 a belt of territory extending from the
11province of Bialistok southwards along the line of the
12river Bund has been systematically emptied of its
13inhabitants", crossed out "hundreds of thousands of whom
14have been deported from their homes", continuing uncrossed
15out, "in July 1943 these measures were extended to
16practically the whole of the province of Lublin, where
17hundreds of thousands of persons have been deported from
18their homes or exterminated". That is the handwriting.
19"These measures are being carried out with the utmost
20brutality. Many victims are killed on the spot. The rest
21are segregated. Men from 14 to 50 are taken away to work
22for Germany. Some children are killed on the spot.
23Others are separated from their parents, and either sent
24to Germany to be brought up as Germans or sold to
25German settlers, despatched with the women and old men to
26concentration camps, where they are now being
1systematically put to death in gas chambers. HM
2government" -- something?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Reaffirm.
4 MR RAMPTON: "Reaffirmed their resolve to punish the
5instigators and actual perpetrators of these crimes. They
6further declare that, so long as such atrocities continue
7to be committed by the representatives and in the name of
8Germany, they must be taken into account against the time
9of the final settlement with Germany. Meanwhile, of the
10war against Germany" -- then I run out, I am afraid, of
11legible words, but that may not matter.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Has been finally overthrown.
13 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not really an aide memoire, is it? It
15is a proposed communication or release.
16 MR RAMPTON: It is a communique, is it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a proposed communique, making reference to, in
19particular, systematic extermination in gas chambers.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then, says Allen R to Cavendish-Bentinck on page
2312A apropos that proposed communique, "On the other hand,
24it is of course extremely difficult, if not impossible,
25for us to check up on specific instances or matters of
26detail. For this reason I feel a little unhappy about the
1statement to be issued on the authority of HMG that
2Poles 'are now being systematically put to death in gas
3chambers'". Does that look to you, Mr. Irving, like an
4intention to exploit this story for its propaganda value?
5 A. [Mr Irving] There are two different levels of authentication here.
6What has been put to the Foreign Office is a draft
7telegram to be signed by the two heads of State and
8approved by Marshal Stalin, declaration on the war crimes
9committed by the Nazis and the punishment of the
10perpetrators. At the other level you have black
11propaganda where any kind of lie counts, the kind of stuff
12that was put about by Richard Crossman and Sefton Delmer.
13There are two totally different levels of truthfulness
14involved. The Foreign Office obviously balked at the idea
15of persuading the British and American heads of State to
16sign a document containing a detail of which, as they
17later stated in this same bundle of documents, there was
18no proof, of which they had no evidence.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Quite. "The only two references", goes on Mr Allen,
20"which I have been able to find in the appendix to this
21Polish aide memoire which deal with this form of execution
22are as follows: (1) Telegram of 17th July 1943 from
23Poland, Commander in Chief, Armed Forces, Lublin District,
24informed me that he had evidence that some of these people
25are being murdered in gas cells there, Maidonek camp. (2)
26Telegram of 17th July 1943 from Poland: 'It has been
1ascertained that on July 2nd and 5th two transports'",
2probably about 10,000 people, do you agree?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Made of women children and old men" ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] No. 2,000 people, it would have been.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
7 A. [Mr Irving] It would have been 2,000 people.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Women, children and old men, consisting of 30 wagons
9each, have been liquidated in gas cells". Did the British
10invent the idea of gas chambers and the Nazis' use of
12 A. [Mr Irving] No, but, if you are familiar with the British Foreign
13Office files, then you will be aware that little credence
14was attached to reports from Polish sources.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I ask my question again, which you resolutely
16refuse to answer. Did the British invent the story of the
17gas chambers?
18 A. [Mr Irving] You will not get a direct answer. I am going to draw your
19attention ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to direct that you do give a
21direct answer. What is the answer?
22 A. [Mr Irving] The answer is yes, still, if the word "invent" means
23anything at all.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is fine. That is your position. So these stories
25which are coming back from Poland in 42 via Riegner in
26Geneva, and directly from the Polish people in 1943, they
1are simply recycled British propaganda? It has to be so
2if you are right does it not Mr Irving?
3 A. [Mr Irving] If you are putting something out on the air waves through
4the BBC and black propaganda channels, for which you know
5you have no evidence, and you state in writing in terms
6that you have no evidence, then that is an invention, and
7that is stated quite clearly on page 14 by Victor
8Cavendish-Bentinck himself, the head of the British
9Intelligence Service.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] The Foreign Office, Mr Irving, took the view, as it had in
111942, that the material that they had received, either via
12Geneva or direct from Poland, was not sufficiently
13convincing to allow of propaganda about this matter. That
14is right, is it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] They put it much more strongly in August 1943.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you are not following me, Mr Irving.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Victor Cavendish-Bentinck wrote: "As regards putting
18Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe that
19there is any evidence that this has been done". He is
20head of the British Intelligence Service, the chairman of
21the Joint Intelligence Committee and you cannot climb over
22the document, Mr Rampton.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not trying to climb over it, Mr Irving. I am trying
24to make you face up to its significance. The decision is,
25despite this information received in 42 and 43, that the
26evidence does not stand the case up, so they do not use
2 A. [Mr Irving] They do not have sufficient evidence to persuade the Prime
3Minister and the President to put their names on a
4document, but they have enough evidence to put the story
5out on the air waves. They are quite happy to put it out,
6although they are quite satisfied that they have no
7evidence that it will stand up. It is good enough for the
8liars, but it is not good enough for the presidents, the
9heads of state.
10 MR RAMPTON: When did they put it out, Mr Irving, on the air
12 A. [Mr Irving] They started putting the story out in late 1941, certainly
13in January 1942, they repeat it in June 1942, in November
14and December 1942, there was quite a blitz on the air
15waves with stories about the liquidation of the Jews in
16gas chambers in Poland. It is referred to in a lot of the
17private diaries, and also in the files of the German
18Propaganda Ministry who monitored the British Broadcasting
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] By whom were these broadcasts made?
21 A. [Mr Irving] They were put about by the BBC. Broadcasts were carried
22by the BBC, which has a monopoly in broadcasting at that
23time, and by the American corresponding channels.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do the documents that you have provided to us contain
25transcripts of these broadcasts?
26 A. [Mr Irving] No. They contain entries either, as I was saying earlier,
1in private diaries of the people who listen to broadcasts,
2either in occupied countries or in Germany or they contain
3the monitoring reports that were maintained by the
4propaganda agencies in Germany, who monitored foreign
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see, please, what this
7material is, which I think has probably been produced.
8 MR RAMPTON: So would I. No, I do not think so. I would know
9it if I had seen it.
10 A. [Mr Irving] I think this is one of the cases where your Lordship
11intervened and said, we are not making enough progress.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Never mind.
13 MS ROGERS: The position seems to be this. We have checked
14through the documents which have produced by Mr Irving
15which have been filed gradually in the J files. We cannot
16find any trace of it. In transcript day 20, starting at
17page 40, going over 41 and 42, Mr Irving, I think, in
18cross-examination of Professor Evans raised Thomas Mann's
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page?
21 MS ROGERS: It starts at 40, going over to 41.
22 A. [Mr Irving] If you look for Mauthausen, you will probably find it or
23Dutch Jews, 400 young Dutch Jews deported.
24 MS ROGERS: That reference appears on page 42, my Lord, the 400
25young Dutch Jews.
26 A. [Mr Irving] And that was in January 1942. And then there is another
1reference in June 1942 in the ----
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just take this in stages? Thank you
3very much, Miss Rogers. Thomas Mann, he is the novelist?
4 A. [Mr Irving] He was working for the American propaganda agencies.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] How is that evidence that the British Intelligence Service
6were making use of this information about what was going
7on? He does not have a connection with the British
8Intelligence Service, does he?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Only in as far as the Allied Intelligence Operations of
10the Office of War Information in Britain and the British
11Ministry of Information were co-ordinated, but it is as
12tenuous as that. In other words, I cannot produce the
13actual missing links there.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] In relation to him or generally?
15 A. [Mr Irving] In relation to linking Thomas Mann's broadcast with what
16happened in No. 10 Downing Street.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] What do we next have?
18 A. [Mr Irving] June 1942, would that be the Ringelbulm diary? I
19am saying all this from memory, of course.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I appreciate that.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I do not have the documents in front of me.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes, you do mention that. Ringelbulm, I have no
23recollection of him at all.
24 MR RAMPTON: Who is Ringelbulm?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I think he is living in one of the ghettos, either in
26Warsaw or somewhere listening, obviously very hopefully,
1to BBC broadcasts.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, it does not say "BBC". It says "broadcasts" about the
3extermination of Jews with poison gas.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know who else would be broadcasting about the
5extermination of Jews, apart from the Allies.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see, Mr Irving, I am puzzled by this. What evidence
7do you have that these stories, I would say factual
8accounts, of what was happening, maybe not in '41, but
9certainly in '42 to '43, emanated from the propaganda arm
10of the British Government? How do you know that these
11people did not pick it up from the Poles or from
12Mr Riegner?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or from the Americans.
14 MR RAMPTON: Or from the Americans?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the sources that I quoted refer specifically to
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] To what?
18 A. [Mr Irving] They refer specifically to broadcasts and listening in to
19enemy broadcasts.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sure, of course, but a journalist, even in those days, a
21self-respecting journalist, would use material supplied to
22him if it seemed to him to be reliable, would he not?
23What on earth connection do you see in all of this with
24the PWE?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Because the PWE was controlling the black propaganda from
26Britain at this time. This was Robert Bruce Lockhart and
1Richard Crossman.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, Mr Irving ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] But I mean ----
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- what you are telling us is not ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] --- I am at a disadvantage here because I do not have the
6diaries in front me and I am not able to look for the
7collateral material which I would clearly do if I knew
8I was going to be cross-examined on this.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see it.
10 MR RAMPTON: So would I.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I have made a note of it and I am going to produce another
13 MR RAMPTON: We do not need it now. This can lie in wait for
14next week or the week after. But would you agree with me
15on the basis of the original documentation which we have
16seen, there is (a) evidence that the story was a real
17story, whether a true story or not, but a real story and
18that it did not originate with the British?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but it is of a low grade evidence.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is as may be.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is there also evidence before us that on account of what
23the British then saw as its low grade quality, they
24decided not to use it?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you.
1 A. [Mr Irving] But they did not find it, of course, in the high grade
2sources where they would have expected to find it like the
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, before you leave this, in view of
5what Mr Irving said about broadcasts, could you invite
6Mr Irving to look at page 15 in this same tab, tab 6?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Is this the actual declaration as released, my Lord?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is not for me to say.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Am I looking at the right document?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not for me to say.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, is it the declaration headed "Confidential Future
12Release" or?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know what it is, but it seemed to me
16it might be relevant.
17 MR RAMPTON: I do not have the same pagination as your
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In my version of this it is the last page.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes, is this, Mr Irving, 19 it is in my version,
2115 in yours. Is this a United States document?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, Department of State.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is dated August 28th 1943?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] It says, well, I will read it: "Confidential release for
26publication in the morning newspapers of Monday, August
130th 1943, which do not appear on the streets before 9.30
2p.m. Eastern [something]", no, it is not Standard Time, I
3thought it would be, but it is not, BMT. "Sunday, August
429th 1943, not to be previously published, quoted from or
5used in any way not to be sent abroad before 7.30 p.m.
6Sunday, August 29th 1943". So it is an embargo?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] What it says is "Declaration on German crimes in Poland.
9Trustworthy information has reached the United States
10Government regarding the crimes committed by the German
11invaders against the population of Poland. Since the
12autumn of 1942 a belt of territory extending from the
13province of Bialystok southwards along the ... (reading
14to the words) ... has been systematically emptied of its
15inhabitants. In June 1943 these measures were extended to
16practically the whole of the province of Lublin where
17hundreds of thousands of persons have been deported from
18their homes or exterminated. These measures are being
19carried out with the utmost brutality. Many of the
20victims are killed on the spot. The rest are segregated.
21Men from 14 to 50 are taken away to work for Germany.
22Some children are killed on the spot. Others are
23separated from their parents and either sent to Germany to
24be brought up as Germans or sold to German settlers or
25dispatched to the women and old folk concentration camps.
26The United States Government reaffirms its resolve to
1punish the instigators and actual perpetrators of these
2crimes. It further declares that so long as such
3atrocities continue to be committed by the representatives
4and in the name of Germany, they must be taken into
5account against the time of the final settlement with
6Germany. Meanwhile, the war against Germany will be
7prosecuted with the utmost vigour until the barbarous
8Hitler itinerary has been finally overthrown". That is an
9official United States press release, is it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you notice something about that press release,
12Mr Irving?
13 A. [Mr Irving] That is a strange question.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] There is no reference to gassing or gas chambers.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] So, on the advice, no doubt of the Department of State in
17the United States and of the Foreign Office in Great
18Britain, the reference to gas chambers in the draft has
19been removed?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, because it was -- there was no adequate evidence.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, the Allies and, in particular, the British PWE
22decided against using, unhappily perhaps, but they decided
23against using the gas chamber story as propaganda,
24correct, am I not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] This is not a propaganda declaration; this is a warning to
26the German leaders, to the Italian leaders, that
1retribution is on its way to them. It is nothing to do
2with propaganda. Propaganda was what we broadcast of
3which there is any amount of evidence.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I would like to see it because at the
5moment I do not have any no evidence at all.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I have great confidence on this score.
7 MR RAMPTON: I have been given Claimant file F, my Lord, on
8page 61 your Lordship will find it, I hope.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have had this before. F became
10something else.
11 MR RAMPTON: You should have a separate file F, my Lord, a
12small file F. It had originally, I think, a two-page
13index and the document in question is page 62. I think
14Mr Irving should have it too, please.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think this what I had in mind.
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes. This is the so-called Ringelbulm diary. It
17has, I am afraid, no year date on it. But I will read it
18just the same because it is rather interesting. But I do
19think Mr Irving should have it. Could somebody please
20find Mr Irving a file F? I hope, Mr Irving, that your
21index page, your contents page, 62, there are two pages
22from this book?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] 294, 295, is that right?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we look at 295 which is on the right-hand side in my
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Friday, June 26th has been a great day for OS", what is
4"OS", see introduction", well, that is hopeless. I have
5not got the introduction. What is "OS", Mr Irving?
6 A. [Mr Irving] No idea.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] OK. "This morning the English radio broadcast about the
8fate of Polish Jewry. They told about everything we know
9so well, about ... (reading to the words)... Lemburg and
10Chelmno, and so forth. For long months we had been
11suffering because the world was deaf and dumb to our
12unparalleled tragedy. We complained about Polish public
13opinion, about the liaison men in contact with the Polish
14government in exile. Why were they not reporting to the
15world the story of the slaughter of Polish Jewry? We
16accused the Polish liaison men of deliberately keeping our
17tragedy quiet so that their tragedy might not be thrown
18into the shade. But now it seems that all our
19interventions have finally achieved their purpose. There
20have been regular broadcasts over the English radio the
21last few weeks treating of the cruelties perpetrated on
22the Polish Jews, Belzec and the like. Today there was a
23broadcast summarizing the situation. 700,000, the number
24of Jews killed in Poland was mentioned. At the same time
25the broadcast avowed revenge, a final accounting, for all
26these deeds of violence".
1 Which year, Friday June 26th, Mr Irving?
2 A. [Mr Irving] 1942.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] 1942. Do you see anything in there about gas chambers?
4 A. [Mr Irving] No.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Am I right that the Polish Government in exile at the
6instance, no doubt, of people in Poland had been, as it
7were, hacking at the Allies to pay attention to these
8stories for some considerable time?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] These stories were not invented by the British Government,
11were they?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Inasmuch as when the British Government put them out, they
13had no firm evidence that they were true and they later
14summarized that they had no such evidence, they were.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now I think we know where we are.
16 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, on the broadcasts in their clip there is a number
17of docments which I did not actually rely on when
18I cross-examined Mr Klemperer. When we next come
19together, I will produce a schedule of broadcasts and what
20they contained in this respect, I think, as far as I can.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there anything else in this clip at the
22moment that ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I think it would take up too much of the court's
24time to read the 10 or 15 pages.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I am not too bothered about that. I do not think it would
26take very long. Do you rely on the ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] But what I am really saying is ----
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Do you rely on the diaries of Klemperer? I am sorry,
3Mr Rampton, it is just that once one is on this topic, one
4really needs to ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I do not really want to do it in a hurried manner
6and if I do it in a slow manner, then your Lordship will
7get impatient. What I am really saying is that we do not
8want to go back and have a look at the files to see what
9else I can dredge up.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have got 64. I am just looking for
11references to a broadcast. Page 64 is Klemperer.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 67, I think. Could you just read the top of page 67,
13Mr Irving?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I do not have those numbers on this.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, page 442 of whatever it is.
16 A. [Mr Irving] "Millions of German people did, in fact, listen
17attentively and regularly to German language BBC
18broadcasts, even though it was illegal for them to do so.
19Moreover, the BBC German service took considerable pains
20to convey accurate and believable information about the
21annihilation of the Jews. These efforts were particularly
22noteworthy considering that they were frowned on by the
23British Foreign Office which did not regard Jewish
24persecution as an efficacious theme for propagandists to
25take advantage".
26 MR RAMPTON: So Mr Irving, your story is now this, is it not,
1if this story was an invention, it was the BBC, the wicked
2journalists and their informants who invented it, it was
3not the British Government? Is that right?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I think at all material times the BBC was in arm with the
5British Government and the Ministry of Information. It
6certainly did not operate in a kind of independent way.
7I think it would be useful if I do draw up a schedule of
8references, including whether it specifically referred to
9gassing or not and the dates. This will...
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am moving to another topic now, my penultimate topic,
11Mr Irving, you will be pleased to hear. The first page in
12this clip should be a page from the transcript in this
13trial on day 23, Monday, 21st February 2000, is it?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you see what his Lordship was asking you on page 140?
16You were cross-examining.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Gita Sereny, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] You were cross-examining Professor Evans about a passage
19in his report which asserted that you had falsely accused
20Gita Sereny, or having ignored Gita Sereny's assertion
21that Christa Schroeder had said that Hitler knew about the
22Holocaust. I am paraphrasing.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Justice Gray at line 18 on page 140 asks you this: "Is
25it your case that there is not any record, whether tapes,
26notes or anything, of Gita Sereny's interview with Christa
1Schroder and she is, in fact, making the whole thing up?"
2Mr Irving, "Yes". Is that still your position?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that still your position that Gita Sereny made the
5whole thing up?
6 A. [Mr Irving] On the basis of what I have seen in her discovery in the
7other action, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now we are going ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] You are familiar with the fact that I requested to see all
10her-- I had discovery from her.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] The date of this exchange between his Lordship and you is
12Monday, 21st February 2000.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am now going to show you some papers from your case
15against Gita Sereny and whichever newspaper it is,
16I forget, the Observer, I think. The second page in this
17little clip is a letter from you to the solicitors for
18those Defendants ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- Lovell White Durrant, dated 4th January 2000. You say
21this: "I note from my discovery item No. 545 that your
22client, Sereny, took notes of her conversations with
23Gunsche, von Welloff and Schultzer and that Frau Schroeder
24also wrote to her" -- notice those words, please. "These
25items appear to be missing from your client's discovery
26and I would request that" ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] "She".
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- "you give disclosure" or "she" it might be "give
3disclosure of these within a reasonable amount of time".
4I do not know what the second document is.
5 A. [Mr Irving] To which I received no reply.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. 545 is what you enclose with your letter.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a letter from the Associate Managing Editor of the
9Sunday Times dated 13th October 1997 to you: "Dear
10Mr Irving, thank you for your letter. With regard to the
11first point, you will be interested to see the enclosed
12letter which appeared in the Sunday Times two weeks after
13publication of the original article. It indicates that a
14misunderstanding on this point has already been publicly
15acknowledged and corrected. With regard to the second
16point, there is no such necessity. We have records of
17Gita Sereny's conversations with Walter Gunsche, Colonel
18von Welloff and Richard Shultzer supporting what was said
19in our article. Christa Schroeder's comments on the
20subject of Hitler and the extermination of the Jews were
21conveyed to Miss Sereny in a letter. Under the
22circumstances, therefore, I think you will agree that
23there is no basis for the complaints made in your letter".
24 In response to your letter to them, Lovells
25replied on 27th January: "Thank you for your letter dated
264th January 2000. We have raised your request with
1Miss Sereny and will revert to you again in this
2connection once we have received her response. We take
3the opportunity to note that we have not", and so on and
4so forth. That is something else.
5 Then they write again on 10th February, this is
6but 11 days before you gave your evidence in this court.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "We write further to our letter dated 27th January 2000,
9having now discussed your request with Miss Sereny. The
10documents which you seek have already been disclosed.
11There were no notes in Miss Sereny's conversations was
12Gunsche, von Welloff and Schultzer, only tape recordings.
13These have been disclosed to you. The letter to
14Miss Sereny from Frau Schroeder was disclosed as item 2.57
15in schedule 1 part 1 of the same list". The rest is
17 The last page, please, here is the letter,
18please tell me what the penultimate paragraph says. The
19first of the two letters printed on this page is from Frau
20Schroeder herself, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. "Dear Miss Sereny, I regret that for health reasons
22I have not been able to receive you", for an interview, in
23other words. So there was no interview.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Carry on.
25 A. [Mr Irving] "As far as the telephone conversation that you sketched of
261976 is concerned, what you write about, what you mention
1about Himmler in connection with me appears, you appear to
2have fallen victim of having heard, misheard something.
3Himmler has not", underlined "not", "spoken with me",
4underlined "with me", "in this manner. I have tried to
5arrange an interview between you and his, Himmler's,
6daughter, but I have unfortunately failed for which
7I request that you leave out this passage. As far as the
8Judenfrager is concerned: I consider it improbable or
9unlikely that Hitler did not know -- that Hitler knew
10nothing. He had frequent conversations with Himmler which
11took place as tete a tete. More than that,
12I unfortunately cannot tell you as I am ignorant of the
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now 10 days after being reminded of that letter because it
15had been in the discovery originally according to
16Lovells ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- his Lordship asked you and I repeat: "Is it your case
19that there is not any record, whether tapes, notes or
20anything, of Gita Sereny's interview with Christa
21Schroeder and she is, in fact, making the whole thing up?"
22Answer by Mr Irving: "Yes". A false and a knowingly
23false answer, is it not, Mr Irving?
24 A. [Mr Irving] To this I have to say two things. The first thing, not in
25any order of priority, is that, as is evident from the
26correspondence which I just read out, there was no
1interview. She did not get to see Mrs Schroeder.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] What, you mean you cannot interview somebody by telephone?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Not in my book. Secondly, I have to confess that even
4after receiving that letter from the opposing solicitors
5in the other action, I did not look into the
6correspondence and discovery files for reasons which are
7probably evident for you. To do so would have taken me
8probably 20 or 30 minutes to find the file and look up the
9letter, and at present I am under very great time
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am not following that at all.
12On 10th February 2000, you were sent a letter which
13specifically directed you to the document. It would not
14have taken you a second to find it.
15 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, my files are not in any very great shape at
16present. They are in great shape for this action, but
17they are not in great shape for an action which has not
18yet been set down even. And to have looked and found the
19Sereny discovery and to have found this particular
20document -- all I can say is that I am stating here, I am
21asserting here, that I did not look up this document and,
22even having looked it up, it has not altered my position
23because I knew perfectly well ----
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] But I am sorry, Mr Irving, on 4th January 2000 you
25specifically requested documents relating to what Frau
26Schroeder had said.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Very well. In preparation of this case, I have gone
2through our entire discovery for the action against
3Penguin Books which is the current case, which is what
4this number is on the top right-hand corner of the Sunday
5Times letter, 545. When I took this letter out, my eye
6lit on the fact on paragraph 2 that there were quite
7clearly interesting items that Sereny had not disclosed to
8me, as she should have. I wrote a routine letter to the
9solicitors for the opponents in that action, saying, "Oh,
10by the way, I note you have not given discovery of those
11documents, please now do so", which is a perfectly
12reasonable act. They then wrote back that letter. But
13I already knew from Christa Schroeder that she never
14interviewed Miss Sereny for personal reasons.
15 MR RAMPTON: But she did not make it up, did she, Mr Irving?
16 A. [Mr Irving] She did not make what up? The statement?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] The assertion that Hitler probably knew what was going on
18because he had these four hours, frequently had these four
19hours conversations closeted with his friend, Heinrich
21 A. [Mr Irving] Now, that is not the question you asked me, is it, or the
22question which his Lordship asked me?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have a look at it again if you want to.
25 MR RAMPTON: "Did she make it up?" Answer; "Yes".
26 A. [Mr Irving] "Is it your case that there is not any record of Gita
1Sereny's interview with Christa Schroder?" That was the
2first question to which the answer was quite correctly,
3"Yes", "And that she is, in fact, making the whole thing
4up?" in other words, the interview, answer: "Yes". And
5I take issue with the way you put her response. She did
6not say she considered it probable that Hitler knew. She
7said she considered it improbable that Hitler did not know
8or that he knew nothing, rather, was the exact language.
9That is not quite the same as you have said. I do not
10want to split hairs, but let us stick to the actual
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you like to withdraw the allegation of little
13invention you made against Miss Sereny in this court not
14very long ago?
15 A. [Mr Irving] No, I would not. Miss Sereny has stated that she
16conducted interviews with a number of Hitler's staff, who
17disavowed what I had reported of my very lengthy
18interviews with the same people. It is a matter of
19professional pride that I establish that what I wrote was
20true on the basis of proper interviews, not conducted over
21a snatched telephone conversation. Proper interviews.
22You have of course seen the very complete and proper
23records I took of those interviews, and I was perfectly
24satisfied from my knowledge of these people and what they
25told me that they had not granted her interview.
26Certainly Krista Schroeder had not and, when it was
1suggested in this court that she had, I knew perfectly
2well that she had not, and it now turns out I was right.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] The last item on my agenda for today, Mr Irving, is the
4Goebbels diaries, the entry for 13th December 1941, what
5Adolf Hitler said to the Gauleiters and others on 12th
6December 1941.
7 A. [Mr Irving] And my knowledge of what was in them, presumably.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Absolutely. Precisely that. My Lord, this is on page 337
9and 338 of Professor Evans' report. I invite reference to
10that because the English is there.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to be tedious about this but where
12should I put the little clip that has just been handed in?
13 MS ROGERS: J2, which is now in an overspill marked J2 to 3.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather than being an overspill marked J2 to
153, it is actually going to be J3.
16 MS ROGERS: I am very happy with that, and I think we are up to
1717 or 18.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have run out of tabs.
19 MR RAMPTON: May Mr Irving and his Lordship have the Goebbels
20clip and Mr Irving should also have a copy of Professor
21Evans' report.
22 A. [Mr Irving] In that case I had better clear a large space on my desk.
23 MR RAMPTON: Please turn to page 337. On page 337 in paragraph
248 Professor Evans writes this: "On 12th December 1941,
25less than one month after the publication of the article
26in Das Reich, Hitler spoke about the Jews in front of the
1Gauleiters (noted down by Goebbels): 'With reference to
2the Jewish question", Bezuglich der Judenfrage, "the
3Fuhrer is determined to clear the decks". The actual
4German is reinen Tisch zu machen, which might be better
5translated as make a clean sweep. "He prophesied to the
6Jews that if they should once more bring about a world
7war, they would experience their own annihilation in doing
8so. That was no mere talk. The world war is there, the
9annihilation of Jewry must be the necessary consequence.
10The question is to be considered without any
11sentimentality. We are not there to have sympathy with
12the Jews, only sympathy with our German people".
13 In paragraph 9 on page 338, writes Professor
14Evans: "Here Hitler mirrored directly Goebbels's
15statements from the article in Das Reich", which I think
16was published in November of that year, 16th I think?
17 A. [Mr Irving] November 16, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] "While Irving does cite this speech of 12th December 1941
19by Hitler in Goebbels, he is careful to omit any mention
20at all of this key passage because it shows that Hitler
21was as determined to act brutally against the Jews as
22Goebbels was".
23 Your account of the omission of that may be
24thought crucially important passage from the Goebbels
25diaries from your book on Goebbels, or indeed from
26anything else that you have written so far as I know, is
1I think, if I may summarize this and you will correct me
2if am wrong, that you went to Moscow to look at the
3Goebbels diaries with a specific commission from the
4Sunday Times.
5 A. [Mr Irving] A shopping list, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which consisted of, or which included, the instruction,
7direction or request to look for material on Pearl
8Harbour? Is that right?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have I got it right so far?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] When you got there, you found the glass plates on which
13the diaries were recorded so voluminous or so crowded that
14you stopped four lines into the second of the glass plates
15for this date. Do you remember that? Would you like to
16turn to tab 2, which I think are some Irving documents,
17are they not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] The little clip, the file you have been given.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, tab 2. The notes taken by my assistant on our
21progress as we waded through the glass plates.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. The first page in that is headed "box 1", is it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whether that means the big filing box or the little box of
25glass plates, I cannot say.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have absolutely no idea. I am afraid I was not there.
1 A. [Mr Irving] It is a big filing box. I can see that because on box two
2she puts in the Russian designation.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could you turn to page 9 please? It is the original 09 at
4the bottom.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Under No. 38 at the top of the page we see the list of
7plates that you read, or part read, for December 1941, do
8we not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] The plates that we found, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whatever. Lesen is German for read, is it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Read or read, oddly enough.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Read. It must be read. 10th December, read, 11th to 12th
13December, read, Pearl Harbour.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Read with gelesen.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] All right. 13th December, lesen, whatever it means.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] 13/14 December, 41, bis vier zeile gelesen?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Read to the fourth line yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, to the fourth line. Now please turn over some
20pages. There is a lot in here that I do not need.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I am astonished that she was so meticulous in what she
22wrote down.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am about to suggest to you that she actually might have
24made a significant mistake.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Ah.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] At tab 5 of this little file you will see a document in
1Russian dated 23rd February of this year. If you want to
2turn over, we have attempted the translation.
3 A. [Mr Irving] I was just about to get my O-level Russian to work.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Forget your O-level Russian unless you are going to
5grumble about the translation. It comes from the Federal
6Archives Services of Russia and Moscow and it is written
7to my solicitors Mishcon de Reya in London. It says,
8"Dear Sirs, further to your letter we are sending to you
9photocopies Goebbels diary pages for 13th December 1941.
10The photocopies are taken from two separate glass
11plates". So far you are not falling out with the
12Russians, I think, are you, Mr Irving?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I am happy to accept this, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] The second plate starts from page 18.
15 A. [Mr Irving] I see what they mean.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] We turn over the page to tab 6 of this little file and we
17find what it is that the Russians have sent us.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you turn through the pages, the numbers are at the
20top. You find that the first plate ends. Well, let us
21look at the first page. The first page has on it 13th
22December 1941.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] That does not mean that that plate starts on the 13th
25December 1941, does it?
26 A. [Mr Irving] No, it does not.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. So, when the Russians say that plate 1 ends at
2page 17 of this 13th December entry, which you can see,
3they are probably right, are they not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now I will direct you to where on plate 2, rather far past
6line 4 I fear, your clip that you gave us as representing
7what you transcribed begins. Page 26, please. If you
8want to compare it with what you gave us as being your --
9we had better do it in an orderly way. Your transcription
10is at tab 4, and it begins "Mittags habe ich eine
11Unterredung mit dem Fuhrer".
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] So we can see that that passage starts -- it is the first
14part of your transcription for the 13th and it starts on
15page 26, I think, of plate 2, I ask you to note, of the
16series for this date. I can tell you, because I have
17marked it all the way through, you run out in the sections
18you say you transcribed on page 38. Is that right? Yes,
19it is, I think. You end with the passage "Das wir im
20Osten nicht weitergekommen sind, als wir jetzt stehen",
21and we find that on page 38 of plate 2, do we not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] That is when I run out.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] You end "nach Schutzproblem aber".
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 4 is what? Transcribed microfiche
26material done by Mr Irving in Moscow?
1 MR RAMPTON: Yes. So point 1, Mr Irving, the story that all
2but four lines of your transcription came from plate 1 is
3just rubbish, is it not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I have just done a little bit of a calculation.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] It all comes from plate 2, does it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, if you are saying that plate 2 starts on page
718 ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Do you know how many images there were per plate?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no idea.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Ah.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] I can count the pages, Mr Irving. I do not need images.
13 A. [Mr Irving] It was either 25 ----
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] 35. It does not matter.
15 A. [Mr Irving] It does, because I think that you will find that the
16remaining images you got here probably come from yet a
17third plate.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Because you could not have had more than a certain number
20of images. Unfortunately, unless your Lordship has in
21front of you the actual colour photograph I gave you what
22the plates look like, I think those were the handwritten
23pages. I am sorry, that would not apply. That is
24handwritten pages and not the typed pages. The typed
25pages have more to a page than the handwritten images.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] They seem to have got on to this plate, plate 2, and I do
1not know whether plate 2 ends on 13th December. I think
2not, because the Russians tell us that the second plate is
3partly the 13th and partly the 14th, but we see, of the
413th, they got a total of 59 minus 18, which is 41 pages,
5and the whole of what you transcribed came from plate 2,
6not from plate 1, as you would have us believe.
7 A. [Mr Irving] I am anxious not to put my foot in it by saying something
8ill considered. The final page in the clip appears to be
9the end of the day's entry, does it not?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] It might be that it is, and it may be that there are some
11more pages in the plate relating to 14th December. It
12might be, it might not be, it might be the end of the
13plate, I have no idea. I suspect it is not the end of the
14plate because of what the Russians have just told us.
15However, the fact is that, starting on page 26, that is
16say, roughly speaking, eight pages into plate 2, you then
17succeed in transcribing your way all the way through in
18bits and pieces with some left out, to page 38. Yes?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Right. I am sorry. I am getting the picture now.
20Obviously, you have thrown this at me just now as I am
21trying to get the overall picture. You know this better
22than I do. Which pages of the large type face have
23I actually transcribed?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. They are not continuous.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I know that.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You start on page 26, you continue on page 27. There is
1then a gap starting at the bottom two lines of 27, and
2going through to the end of the first three lines on page
330. You then start again at "Ich habe noch gelegenheit".
4 A. [Mr Irving] And there is nothing on those pages that I have taken out
5that you are worried about?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, nothing at all. This is not what I am driving at.
7 A. [Mr Irving] All right. I think this is the way to do it.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You then transcribe the whole of page 31.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] The whole of page 32, the whole of page 33 and the first
11three lines of page 34.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You then jump to page 38, where you transcribe all but the
14last two lines of the large paragraph on that page.
15 A. [Mr Irving] In the part that has been jumped there is there anything
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, nothing significant.
18 A. [Mr Irving] All right, so that is unimportant.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know whether there is or there is not. I am not
20interested in that.
21 A. [Mr Irving] That is the way to do it, so I know what you are getting
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] The fact is you managed to get to page 38 of a diary entry
26which, considering its date, is recording the speech to
1the Gauleiters and I think the Reichskommissars and,
2considering its date, is a very important entry.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, if one had known that was there. But you have to
4remember, I am looking at these glass plates through
5something the size of my little finger nail like this all
6day long, dictating on to a tape.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you seriously telling me that you resisted the
8temptation to read this important speech of the Fuhrer
9from end to end, start to finish?
10 A. [Mr Irving] There was a temptation to read the entire 50,000 pages,
11this is true.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Never mind the 50,000 glass pages.
13 A. [Mr Irving] There is a limitation. I knew I was only going to be in
14Moscow for a few days before I flew back to England.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are, or purport to be, an historian with a particular
16interest in Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler makes a important
17speech on 12th December 1941, which is recorded by his
18chum Joseph Goebbels.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are in the middle of this important speech. Are you
21telling me that your ordinary curiosity would not have
22compelled you to read on to the end of this speech?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I have to say that, even had I seen it, and this is an
24entirely different question, I would not have attached any
25importance to it, because it is the old Adolf Hitler
26gramophone record again. But the question you are asking
1is why I did not read ahead and see that kind of thing was
2there, and the answer is quite simply I did not, so I did
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am suggesting that you did. It is to be found at the
5bottom of page 50, the relevant passage.
6 MR RAMPTON: Bezuglich der Judenfrage ist der Fuhrer
7enschlossen, reinen tisch zu machen.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Can you me where I stopped reading?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] You stopped reading eleven pages earlier, bottom of page
1038. Actually, to be fair, in lines it is probably 12
12 A. [Mr Irving] So it was not a question of kind of my eye not running
13over on to the next page. I would have had to read on
14twelve pages on the glass plate, and then said to myself,
15hey, this is important, but I am afraid to say I would not
16have, for the simple reason that none of the other people
17present at that Gauleiter meeting, none of the other
18Gauleiters, and there were 48 of them, bothered to write
19anything about this particular speech being any different
20from the others.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Were you aware at this date when you were examining these
22plates, Mr Irving, what to you at one time at least was
23passionately important, that is to say, what you believed
24to be the signal ending the Final Solution, Himmler's
25telephone call to Heydrich on 30th November of this year,
26that is to say 12 years before the event which this diary
1entry records?
2 A. [Mr Irving] 12 days?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] 12 days. What did I say? 12 years?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is obviously not 12 years, is it? 12 days. That is
6elephantine, Mr Irving, but we will not worry about that.
7You knew well about that diary entry, did you not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I knew about a lot of documents, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no. This is one of your cherished icons, or it was
10until it was shattered.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Said to have been, yes, but I do not agree that it was.
12It was one of a long series of documents.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] This was Hitler ordering a final end to any shooting of
14Jews for ever, or killing of Jews for ever. If you look
15at the introduction to the 1977 edition of Hitler's War,
16we can all see that.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you really telling me that a speech made 12 days after
19that crucially important event in your mind, you come upon
20a Hitler speech at the meeting with the Gauleiters and the
21Reichskommissars, and you do not read the whole of the
23 A. [Mr Irving] Quite simply did not, because of the very scarce resource,
24namely time. The archive opened and closed at set hours.
25I was only going to be in Moscow for two more days.
26I think this is already probably the last page of notes
1that Miss Teplar made of our actual discoveries. We were
2running out of time. I could not afford just to indulge
3my curiosity. I had a shopping list to fill for the
4Sunday Times. There were certain items we were trying to
5obtain. I was reading these glass plates under extreme
6conditions of awkwardness, namely using a 16 times little
7thumbnail magnifier. I did not do badly under the
8circumstances, and I agree I should be horse whipped for
9having not seen that there but, even had I seen it,
10I would not have used it, I do not think.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You would have suppressed it anyway, would you? It does
12not seem to you significant?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. I think the Schlegelberger document is
14of far greater significance than this. This is just the
15old Adolf Hitler gramophone record. I made that prophecy
16then and they do it ----
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sure. This is the prophecy coming to actuality, if I may
18borrow from the French for a moment. It is being
19realized. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they should
20once more bring about a world war, they would experience
21their own annihilation in doing so. This was no mere
22talk. This is on 12th December. The world war is there.
23The annihilation of Jewry must be the necessary
24consequence. Then why was the world war there,
25Mr Irving? Why was Hitler speaking to the Gauleiters on
2612th December? The reason is that he declared war on
1United States the day before.
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is right. He had picked up the gauntlet.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Do you tell me honestly that you did not think that
4that speech by Adolf Hitler the day after the declaration
5of war by Germany on the United States, making this into a
6world war, was something you were not interested in
7reading from beginning to end?
8 A. [Mr Irving] This is the difficulty. If you are sitting in a library,
9in your book lined cave, just picking volumes off a shelf
10with an index and a contents list, with the content of
11every entry in the diary, then this is made so easy for
12you. But, if you sitting in a Russian archive without
13even a microfilm reading machine, and you are looking at
14glass plates, and you are the first person to open those
15boxes in 55 years, you have not the faintest idea what
16lies ahead of you.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is the date, is it not, Mr Irving, on which in effect
18Hitler, having declared war on the United States and thus
19having brought about a world war, declares war on the
21 A. [Mr Irving] No.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] He says to them, does he not: "Right, mates, you brought
23about the first war, I told you that you would be for it
24if there was a second war. Now this is it. Face the
26 A. [Mr Irving] Actually, the declaration of war was the next day.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] What, the 13th?
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is right. Hitler declared war on the United States
3on 13th December, and the speech is on the 12th. The
4diary entry is the 13th, but Goebbels also wrote it up one
5day later. It is not any significance, that point,
6just ----
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I rather think it may be. I had always thought that it
8was 11th December. I do not know why I thought that.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause a moment.
10 MR RAMPTON: They think it is the 11th, too. They know a lot
11of history, far more than I do.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I would not bet on it, but I think I am right.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there is a reference, which caught my
14eye as I was looking through, in Goebbels diary to the
15United States. I cannot now find it.
16 MR RAMPTON: Dr Longerich thinks it is the 11th, my Lord.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What would be conclusive, with all respect to
18him, is if Goebbels mentioned it as having happened before
19he wrote his diary entry.
20 MR RAMPTON: Or if Mr Irving did, but I cannot find it in the
22 A. [Mr Irving] It would be in my book Hitler's War, but of course that is
23just a pack of lies, is it not?
24 MR RAMPTON: No. There are some things that are right. For
25example, the name on the cover, Hitler, and war.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I think a sudden silence is going to fall among the----
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is quite an important point so, if your Lordship does
2not mind, we will find out, on the best authority, when it
3was declared.
4 A. [Mr Irving] I think it is a "Who wants to be a millionaire" question,
5is it not?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Not really, I think.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 15 of Goebbels diary entry?
8 MR RAMPTON: Page 15 in this Russian version, my Lord?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am not sure if it actually does
10answer the question, but it is coming close.
11 MR RAMPTON: Perhaps we can bypass the good Dr Goebbels, my
12Lord, because this is Professor Irving writing his Goring
13book in 1989ish, I think, page 337. "It is probably only
14now that he", that is probably Hitler, might be Goring,
15"learned that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbour.
16At the Reichstag session on December 11th Hitler declared
17war on the United States".
18 A. [Mr Irving] I found it at the same time, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, who is right? You or you?
20 A. [Mr Irving] This time you are right.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] OK, the 11th.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Luckily I am not a betting man.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Lucky you have not lost a million quid, yet.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I would have phoned a friend if I had one.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, this was a very important speech, was it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] No.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] The day after the declaration of war on the United States?
2 A. [Mr Irving] It was the usual Adolf Hitler pep talk. He did not often
3see the Gauleiters. He did not like the Gauleiters. He
4said to Martin Bormann after Rudolf Hess went, "Keep the
5Gauleiters off my back".
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] What he said was: "You Jews, I threatened you, I promised
7you, you have got it coming to you, and now it is here
8because the world war has begun".
9 A. [Mr Irving] Do you want to see his actual speech?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I would like you to look at what Goebbels reports
11that he said.
12 A. [Mr Irving] That is what I am asking.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is at the bottom of page 50 of the Moscow microfiche.
14 A. [Mr Irving] That is 22 pages beyond how far I got.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not. It is 12 pages. I must say -- I have to say,
16Mr Irving -- pretty weedy little pages too, narrow and
17short. Bezuglich der Judenfrager ist der Fuhrer. It is
18the last line on page 50. It goes through, probably the
19bit about the Jews, only as far as page 51, because he
20starts something new on the bottom of page 51. Yes, here
21we are. This is going to be the German India in the
22future in the East. So the little bit about the Jews is
23really mostly on page 51. If you read it to yourself ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] I have read it.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I repeat my question. This is a statement that the threat
26will now be fulfilled, is it not.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. He had said it endless times before. It is exactly
2the same thing. Mr Rampton, I had the advantage of having
3read these Hitler speeches through and through for 35
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sure you have.
6 A. [Mr Irving] After a time, you know what he is going to say next. He
7is that kind of person.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am surprised you remain sane, Mr Irving.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Thank you for the compliment.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] However, the fact is that the world war, which was what
11Hitler was ranting about in the Reichstag on 30th January
121939, for example, is now here. The day before.
13 A. [Mr Irving] He had had the entire British Empire around his neck
14already, so it was not exactly a localised conflict, and
15the Soviet Union.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is highly significant to anybody, is it not, Mr Irving,
17who is in the least bit interested in an objective account
18of Hitler's responsibility for what happened to the Jews?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I can only repeat what I said earlier. There are
20two separate issues here: Whether I saw it and suppressed
21it and whether, if I saw it, I attached any importance to
22it, or would have attached any importance to it, and the
23answer to the second question is decisively no. I would
24not have attached any undue importance to that passage
25beyond what Hitler had said on countless occasions
26before. The answer to the first question I can say with
1the utmost emphasis is that I never saw this passage,
2I did not read the passage, I did not get that far in the
3glass plate, I had other things on the shopping list.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I make it clear, Mr Irving -- I am going to sit down
5now -- that I do not accept either of those answers so
6that you shall not be surprised when I say it when I close
7this case. May I just take a moment to read my briefing,
8my Lord?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course.
10 MR RAMPTON: (After a pause). Thank you, Mr Irving.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Thank you.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes Mr Irving.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Unless your Lordship has any questions on that?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have somewhat theoretical possibility of
15re-examining yourself if you want to add anything by way
16of evidence to what you have told Mr Rampton.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I re-examine myself every night in the small hours to see
18what I have done wrong, and that is as far as I can get,
19unfortunately. By way of submission, I will certainly
20make certain propositions which, whether permitted or not,
21is the only way that I can effectively do it on the basis
22of documents.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think I would find it quite helpful
24if you were able to perhaps fax the little clip of
25documents that I think you are probably going to produce
26in relation to the invention by the British, the PWE.
1 A. [Mr Irving] The broadcasting. I have made a note of that. The
2immediate question is when do we next come together?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to return to your usual place?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 (The witness withdrew).
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, there are a number of loose ends,
7I think.
8 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I agree.
9 MR IRVING: Can I ask a technical question? Is Mr Rampton
10continuing to rely on any other names in the bundle?
11 MR RAMPTON: What names?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, what names?
13 MR IRVING: Hancock and names like that.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who?
15 MR IRVING: Mr Hancock.
16 MR RAMPTON: No, I have the answer I need about Mr Hancock. He
17is some kind of unattached roving rightist who thinks that
18all immigrants should be sent home. He is in the diary
19entry for what he is worth.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am taking it that the Defendants are relying
21on ----
22 MR RAMPTON: The list.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- all the names on the list.
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Although they may abandon some of those names
26in the light of your answer. I do not know whether they
1will or they will not, but they are entitled to rely on
3 MR IRVING: The question I am really asking, my Lord, is do
4I need to make submissions about any of the other names
5than those that I have been cross-examined on?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The ones that are not on the list you mean?
7 MR IRVING: The ones that I have not been cross-examined on.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that there really in the end
9there were any. There may have been one.
10 MR IRVING: There were several. I am not going to mention
12 MR RAMPTON: I have no intention of cross-examining Mr Irving
13on any of the names on the list in so far as the
14cross-examination was done for me by Professor Funke over
15the last two proceeding days. There is no point in my
16cross-examining and repeating just on Professor Funke has
17said. I rely on the evidence of Professor Funke, so far
18as those names are concerned. But, as I have said before,
19principally do I rely on Mr Irving's own words and
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am taking it that if the names on the list
22have not featured in the oral evidence at all, then they
23drop from the picture.
24 MR RAMPTON: I would accept that.
25 MR IRVING: Easily.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you will find that only is one or
2 MR IRVING: I think there are rather more than that.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am open to correction on that. The first
4thing is, any evidence that you have not, as it were,
5formally tendered, Mr Rampton, now I think probably is the
6time it should be done. You have some more evidence?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not oral.
9 MR RAMPTON: I see, the Civil Evidence Act witnesses, yes
10I think we probably have.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is customary to inform the court what the
12evidence you rely on is. It is just that I do not
13actually really ----
14 MR RAMPTON: I really do not want to ask Miss Rogers to stand
15here and read them out.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I want to know what there is, because
17I was slightly alarmed to get a bundle that I am not sure
18I previously had which I have kept.
19 MR RAMPTON: Can we not make a snap statement about that now.
20To say I have not read it would be false, but to say
21I have not read it recently would be true. I cannot even
22remember what is in it. I do not have it. Lipstadt your
23Lordship can forget, not as a person but as a witness. As
24to the rest, frankly your Lordship can forget the
25Russians, I have got what I need from Mr Irving. As to
26the rest, they are all Americans I think.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not even have an index in this bundle.
2 MR RAMPTON: Can we come back on that?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we meeting tomorrow?
4 MR RAMPTON: I would rather not meet tomorrow if it is
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I need to know now, do I not?
7 MR RAMPTON: Unless we are meeting on Monday or unless we send
8a written note to your Lordship's Clerk just saying which
9names we rely on. I certainly do not feel competent to
10make a decision about that now. I know I rely on Miss
11Gutmann, but beyond that I really cannot say. For
12example, it may be possible that some of these people make
13reference to people that I do not rely on as primary
14actors, in which case this Civil Evidence Act Notice can
15be ignored.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not entirely happy, if I may say so,
17with it being left in quite that way, because I do not
18think it is reasonably to expect me to plough through
19whatever it may be you are relying on. I am just wondering
20whether we are not going to have to have a further session
21in court before everybody goes away to write final
22speeches to deal with, at any rate, that.
23 MR RAMPTON: I do not mind coming back tomorrow morning, if
24that would help.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it really is not, if I may say so,
26satisfactory just to be told, well, we rely on some of
1them, but we cannot really say which or which parts.
2I think it has to be a bit more crystallised than that.
3 MR RAMPTON: I was suggesting might be able to do it on paper,
4that is all.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, do you have any submissions to
6make about this.
7 MR IRVING: I would be perfectly happy to receive a faxed list
8of the names on which they intend to rely, if it would
9prevent your Lordship from reading untoward material on
10which they are not intending to rely.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, quite. It is not just which witnesses
12but also I think some guidance as to which parts of the
13witness statements. I do not know how long they are.
14 MR RAMPTON: Would your Lordship like us to take your C1 back
15and send you an edited version?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
17 MR RAMPTON: Would that help?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, it would.
19 MR RAMPTON: We will send it to you tomorrow.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Absolutely.
21 MR RAMPTON: That was not my idea, needless to say.
22 MR IRVING: The next question is when can we appoint the time
23for me to make the submissions I have to make on various
24other documents and bundles?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Rampton, Mr Irving is asking when he
26can make the submissions he has, which are basically, as I
1understand it, really objections to certain parts of the
3 MR IRVING: Objections, but also I wish to put in bundle E if
4I possibly can.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Put in what?
6 MR IRVING: Put in bundle E by way of submission.
7 MR RAMPTON: Bundle E is in, without objection from me. The
8question of what anybody makes of bundle E is a matter for
9submission at the end of the case, final speeches.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right, Mr Irving.
11 MR IRVING: Yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are really dispensing with the rules of
13evidence pretty much entirely in this case, which I think
14is actually right and inevitable, but that means that you
15have got into bundle E a whole lot of documents that in an
16ordinary case would not be evidence or admissible or even
17relevant some of them. So do not worry about that, but if
18you are objecting to any of the evidence that the
19Defendants have put in, then my own feeling is that that
20ought to be dealt with sooner rather than later, because
21if there are documents that are going to disappear from
22the case, well, then it is better we know they are going
23to disappear sooner rather later.
24 MR IRVING: There are two documents I am objecting to, one is
25the Muller document of which I still have not been given
26adequate information on its surroundings, its family and
1where it comes from, and even if I am given the
2information I am not sure how I can put that before your
3Lordship, except by way of including my representations in
4my closing speeches which is clearly unsatisfactory
5because they will then have to answer to that.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the first document.
7 MR IRVING: The second document which I object to in the manner
8in which it was presented was the video tape of the Halle
9speech over which we had serious altercations with the
10solicitors for the Defence, because it was withheld from
11me, most improperly and fraudulently withheld, which
12resulted in a hearing at a lower level, as a result of
13which the Second Defendant was ordered to provide an
14affidavit on her list, behind which I was not able to go.
15I was informed that she would be presented for
16cross-examination in the appropriate manner, which of
17course has now not happened. The object of that
18particular altercation was Halle video, and has now been
19presented to the court. I think that as they have
20misbehaved over that video, withholding it from me, it was
21then accidentally provided to me, it was returned with all
22my videos to me, that was the only way I became aware of
23the fact that this video consisted containing the real raw
24material ----
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are giving me a bit of the history and
26I do not think now is the time to go into it, because you
1need to get your thoughts together, but that is something
2I think ought to be dealt with sooner rather than later,
3because the way of the Defendants have put their case is
4quite a significant aspect of ----
5 MR IRVING: It is significant when it goes to costs, my Lord.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- that compartment in the case.
7 MR IRVING: It is significant when it goes to costs.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know about costs, but I do think you
9ought to have the opportunity to make objections. I do
10not think that is a frivolous objection. I think the
11Muller document is in an altogether different category, if
12I may say so.
13 MR RAMPTON: Can I take this these stages? The Muller document
14is in hand. Dr Longerich is in touch with the IFZ. As
15I have told your Lordship and Mr Irving at least once
16before, the reason we believe why Mr Irving could not get
17hold of it was that the file reference he gave, not
18through his fault, was wrong. We think that the document
19is both in Munich and in the criminal prosecution archive
20in the Ludwigsburg, and we will produce what we can find
21when we can find it.
22 As to the Halle tape, can I say two things?
23That is the best version we have. If Mr Irving, by way of
24argument or submission, is able to point to features of
25the video, or indeed to extraneous evidence which
26demonstrates that that tape is in some sense, some
1important sense, unreliable, why then, your Lordship can
2take that into account; not by way of whether or not it is
3admissible, but whether or not it should be given weight.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not even sure about that. As
5I understand the objection, it is that it has been so
6heavily edited at various stages by various people that it
7gives a wholly false impression of what actually happened.
8 MR RAMPTON: No. It has not been edited.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not saying I agree with that. I am
10saying that that I understand to be the objection, and if
11that be right then it might be that it will be knocked out
13 MR RAMPTON: It might be.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not deciding it now obviously, but
15I think that that objection, if it is taken, ought to be
16disposed of one way or the other sooner rather than later.
17 MR RAMPTON: If it is authentic and not a forgery and not, as
18it were, apt to mislead because of the way in which it has
19been edited, I mean mislead significantly, why then, it is
20admissible. It matters not what its provenance is. It
21matters not in the least what fraud Mr Irving may assert
22on the part of my solicitors -- I have to say I have
23absolutely no idea what he is talking about.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to deal with it now, but if
25I am told by a party that there is a video which has been
26put in about which he wants to make, in effect, a
1submission that it has become a bogus item of
2evidence ----
3 MR RAMPTON: It is not bogus.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is effectively what I understand
5Mr Irving to be saying.
6 MR RAMPTON: Then I will deal with it when I am fully
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Quite. All I am saying at the moment is that
9I think this ought to be dealt with before final speeches,
10because one normally deals with these sort of evidential
11questions at an earlier stage, which unfortunately means
12that we will have to have another session sometime. I do
13not really mind myself whether it is tomorrow or Monday.
14 MR IRVING: Next week sometime would be preferable.
15 MR RAMPTON: I would rather not tomorrow because I need time.
16I do not want to relay half understood messages.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I think Monday morning is the right time
18to do it.
19 MR RAMPTON: Monday morning might be all right, but first
20I need to know chapter and verse as to what Mr Irving's
21objections actually are, with supporting documentation.
22 MR IRVING: I have put a clip together, but can I say that
23I expect it will be a conduct of the case matter, rather
24than a withdrawal of the video tape matter finally, if I
25can summarise it like that.
26 MR RAMPTON: In that case, I really do not see the point of
1wasting his Lordship's time, and I have to say mine, at
2this stage in the case. If it is a conduct of the case
3question it can only every reflect on costs or damages.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know. I am not sure what the
5objections are.
6 MR RAMPTON: Can I wait to see what Mr Irving actually says
7because I have no idea what he is talking about at the
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I hope we can avoid having a further
10session in court ----
11 MR RAMPTON: So do I.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- but one thing I do want to deal with, and
13if it can be dealt with now well and good, is the list of
14issues, because I think it is going to make a huge amount
15of difference to my task for a start, and I think it is
16possible going to simplify Mr Irving's task if we can
17agree or possibly improve on the list and the order in
18which the issues are taken. If you have not had a chance
19to look at it ----
20 MR RAMPTON: I have not, I am afraid.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I wonder whether we can deal with that ----
22 MR RAMPTON: I do not want to deal with it on the hoof, if your
23Lordship will permit me not to. This is a list very
24similar to that which I myself have composed. I really do
25want to be sure before I agree to anything that it is
26either not got something in that I do not read or has some
1things missing.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you obviously have not had a
3chance to consider it?
4 MR IRVING: I have glanced at it and it seemed to be very
5useful indeed, but I hope not it is not an obligatory
6list, that I do not have to address all the matters that
7are contained in it.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not have to address any of them, but
9they are, it seems to me, all questions that I have to
10consider and, to an extent anyway, make a finding about.
11 MR IRVING: Yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So if you do not deal with them ----
13 MR IRVING: I hear those words and I understand the meaning of
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, do you want to say anything about
17 MR RAMPTON: I would rather not say anything about them at the
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When are you going to?
20 MR RAMPTON: What I will do, if I gain permission, is to write
21any additions or subtractions that I having thought about
22it tomorrow probably, that I feel in my client's interests
23ought to be made any amendments and then I will simply
24send it to your Lordship and to Mr Irving.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am again perfectly happy with that.
26Can you at the same time consider, and this obviously
1applies to Mr Irving as well, what I think is very
2difficult in this case, which is the sequence in which it
3is sensible to take the issues, because they all mesh into
4one another and overlap and so on, and it is quite
5important that the judgment ----
6 MR IRVING: As drafted by your Lordship?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am trying to do is to make the
8judgment flow, if that is the right word, or be
10 MR IRVING: I am sure that your Lordship being an outsider will
11have synthesized the matters adequately and absolutely
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you have any suggestions for improving it
14in that respect, then I would be grateful.
15 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I have some housekeeping that I am
16supposed to do. First, they are on the list, little
17sections for RWE 1 Staglich and Varela 8A and 8B. They
18are very small.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is that. What else?
20 MR RAMPTON: I promised a response if I could get one from
21Professor van Pelt about those three labour camps that
22Mr Irving produced. I have the response and I would like
23to add it, if I may, as a supplement to Professor van
24Pelt's report. It contains some typographical errors but
25no matter.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is all very well just throwing documents
1at me, but this is another 20 pages. What is this?
2 MR RAMPTON: The broad conclusion is very simple. They have
3got nothing whatever to do with extermination. Those are
4documents which deal with keeping up the levels of
5workers, because they date from a period which arrived
6I think in 1942, they deal with a period when the SS,
7unlike the preceding period, had started hiring out its
8workers to commercial companies like I.G. Faben and so on,
9and therefore there came a concern because these workers
10were no condition to do the jobs they were being paid for,
11and they were paid, there came a concern that the SS camps
12were letting their slave workers die like flies instead of
13keeping them fit and healthy to work in the factories.
14This is connected, according to Professor van Pelt,
15obviously and naturally with the fact that the Germans
16needing to recruit soldiers were having to take them from
17factories in the greater Reich, and so needed the slave
18labour to keep the war economy going.
19 He then explains why this has absolutely no
20connection with the extermination, first, because the
21exterminees, if I can call them that, were not registered
22as worker prisoners, and second because of course they do
23not concern any of the extermination camps.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is exactly what Professor Funke says?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is what Professor Longerich says.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Longerich.
1 MR RAMPTON: It was observed by your Lordship in the course of
2the cross-examination that Mr Irving's questions were
3directed to the wrong witness.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Actually it was Professor Funke, was it not?
5 MR RAMPTON: No, it was Professor Longerich.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, whoever.
7 MR RAMPTON: So that is what that deals with.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
9 MR RAMPTON: I am not suggesting your Lordship read it now or
10anything like that, but I may make reference to it in
11closing. Then the next thing, my Lord ----
12 MR IRVING: Before we move on from that, my Lord, what kind of
13document is this?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is further evidence which actually to be
15fair to the Defendants ----
16 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving laughs ----
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- resulted from your putting documents
18which I think had not really been seen before, I do not
19think they were disclosed documents ----
20 MR RAMPTON: Absolutely not.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- in the course of your cross-examination,
22I thought it was of Professor Funke but I am sure
23Mr Rampton is right, it was Dr Longerich. Do you remember
25 MR IRVING: Yes, but the difference is of course I have had the
26chance to cross-examine and Mr Rampton has had the chance
1to re-examine on those documents. On this of course
2I have no possibility of making any comment at all.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you have every opportunity to make
4comments about it. What you cannot do is cross-examine
5Professor van Pelt because he is in Canada presumably.
6 MR IRVING: It is neither fish nor foul really.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, on the contrary, it is further evidence.
8You are perfectly right, you have not had the opportunity
9to cross-examine him. I am not quite sure what you could
10really have put to him in cross-examination that you did
11not already put to Dr Longerich.
12 MR IRVING: Your Lordship says further evidence; it is a
13further statement, it is a further opinion.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the way we use the term evidence experts'
15reports are evidence.
16 MR IRVING: I am sure your Lordship will attach the proper
17weight to it.
18 MR RAMPTON: I protest at that. Mr Irving pulled out of his
19back pocket far too late for us to get Professor van Pelt
20to deal with it in the witness boxes, long after he had
21gone back to Canada, expecting poor Dr Longerich, who is
22not a Holocaust expert, to deal with it, and then
23complains because I get the proper witness to deal with it
24on paper.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid that is why it seems to me to be
26fair to let it in, which I have done. I have already said
1it could go in. You must deal with it, Mr Irving, by
2making any submissions you want in relation to it. It
3seemed to me actually when Dr Longerich was in the box, it
4was fairly obviously right that it was dealing only with
5what one might call camp inmates in the proper sense
6rather than people who never got as far as the camp
8 MR IRVING: It is difficult to fit in with the accepted picture
9of the extermination programme which is the reason
10why ----
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the sort of point you can develop in
12your final speech.
13 MR IRVING: It goes to the scale operation again, which is one
14of the main planks of my case.
15 MR RAMPTON: So Mr Irving says. Let us deal with all that in a
16week or so hence, if we may. Then, my Lord, I have the
17little clip of documents relating to Mr Irving's, in our
18book, misrepresentation of what Judge Biddle wrote in his
19notes at Nuremberg about the evidence of Mme
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What extra do I need on that?
22 MR RAMPTON: You do not. You just need the papers in one
23convenient lump.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have them already.
25 MR RAMPTON: I see, well, that is fine. We were told by
26somebody that your Lordship had not got them. It is K2,
1it is Auschwitz, tab 7.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did I tell that you or not?
3 MR RAMPTON: Not your Lordship. Maybe it has been Chinese
4whispers that we got from somewhere. It is tab 7 of K2.
5 MS ROGERS: Mr Rampton hates filing more than me, my Lord.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The answer is I have some of the file but not
7all of it.
8 MS ROGERS: I think it is sensible for your Lordship to have
9the lot in one place.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree, yes.
11 MS ROGERS: I am taking over on the housekeeping.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is a good idea.
13 MS ROGERS: It is too boring for Mr Rampton. Your Lordship has
14been asking for the denial statements put together in one
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
17 MS ROGERS: In a sense the hard copy form is going to be less
18useful than the disk copy which will follow, but for now
19could this go into the front of K3?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That effectively means I can discard
22 MS ROGERS: I think not. Mr Irving relies on context so much
23that I think ----
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: For that purpose, yes.
25 MS ROGERS: --- it is better to keep them there, and the
26passages on that document are the passages which have been
1highlighted in the K3 files.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving will get the ----
3 MS ROGERS: Mr Irving will have exactly what your Lordship has.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
5 MS ROGERS: Then going into an N file, this is a document which
6Mr Irving had but I do not think your Lordship does have.
7It is the Moscow chronology derived from the diaries and
8letters. All of the documents -- there are extracts from
9the documents -- all of the documents extracted are
10contained in the file, but for convenience it is a sort of
11chronology of the relevant events in Moscow. If that
12clipped at the front of N. Then hot of the press there is
13a transcript of part of the tape your Lordship saw, the
14Leuchter Congress. This is an extract of the speech by
15Ahmed Rami.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In French.
17 MS ROGERS: In French and translated into German and what the
18translator has done, which has just been produced in the
19course of the afternoon, is to translate both the French
20and the German for reasons which will be become apparent
21on reading it. Can I suggest that goes into the Rami
22section which is RWE 2 tab 18? I hope that that completes
23the filing part of the exercise. Mr Berry has been most
24helpful in liaising on indexes. I would invite your
25Lordship, through Mr Berry, if there are any loose papers
26that do not have a home, to let us know and then we will
1produce indexes which are final versions of the files so
2your Lordship will know what is in them.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think everything that matters has got a
4home now.
5 MS ROGERS: I hope so, but if something turns up, then we will
6file it.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Right.
8 MR RAMPTON: I wonder if your Lordship would want to take away
9any of the tapes we have been showing in court? I am
10going to comment on them in closing the case, but whether
11your Lordship wants to have them in the meantime or simply
12we hand them over when we finish speaking because I
13obviously now (and I do not know that your Lordship has
14either) do not have any idea how long it will be before
15your Lordship is able to give judgment.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am hoping not tremendously long. It
17depends a little bit. The only one that perhaps one might
18need to look at it is the Halle video, but we will
19probably be doing that anyway in the context of any
20argument that may be going to take place on its
22 MR RAMPTON: We do not want to burden your Lordship with them,
23so we will hang on to it in the meantime.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am not terribly keen on looking
25through them.
26 MR RAMPTON: No. There will be coming a transcript of
1Mr Irving's home made tape [German] which places him,
2I think, in Germany after he has been banned. I think it
3means "I am coming back" -- "I will be back".
4 MR IRVING: "I shall return".
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Come again". I do not know what you are
6proposing to do about reducing any part of the final
7speech into writing.
8 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am going to write the whole thing, at
9least Miss Rogers and I are together, and I am going when
10the time comes obviously to give a copy to your Lordship
11and to Mr Irving. However, what I will not do, unless
12otherwise ordered to do, is give Mr Irving a copy in
13advance of his giving me a copy of what he is going to
14say. I am not saying he should write it for exchange. If
15there is not going to be an exchange, because he does not
16want an exchange because he is not going to write it out,
17then I will hang on to mine and I will give your Lordship
18a copy after I have read it.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I certainly would not ----
20 MR RAMPTON: As I read it.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: -- order that there should anything other
22than exchange.
23 MR IRVING: An exchange on the day perhaps?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am really driving at is this, that if
25it were to prove to be possible to exchange, even if it is
26only one day in advance of actually having the argument,
1I suspect we would save a lot of time because I could, you
2know, spend a bit of the previous day having a look and
3perhaps going to the bits that I would like more help on
4as opposed to the other bits.
5 MR IRVING: In theory, yes, my Lord, but, of course, I would
6then forfeit the advantage which comes to the person who
7makes the closing speech which is answering specific
8points that have been made.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is true. That is a perfectly fair
10point. Well, I will leave it this way, that if you could
11on Friday, first thing on Friday, agree to exchange, that
12would help me but if ----
13 MR RAMPTON: I think that will be too soon.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not mean tomorrow, obviously, I mean
15Friday week.
16 MR RAMPTON: No, no, I doubt it will be ready before the Monday
17morning anyway.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So be it.
19 MR RAMPTON: If it is, so be it, but I doubt it will be. What
20I would like to do, since your Lordship said I think
21yesterday that Monday 13th was not a fixed day for
22delivery of the speeches, as it were, in court, what
23I would possibly like to do is to let your Lordship have
24it as soon as I can, and I hope it might be before the
25Monday morning but it might not be, and then come to court
26(which is what I did in another long case I finished
1recently) and answer questions, as it were, when your
2Lordship has had a chance to read it. But in the
3particular and peculiar circumstances of this case, there
4will be quite a lot that I will want court time to read
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think we want to regard Monday 13th as
7being pretty much a fixed date when we are going to have
9 MR IRVING: I may have over misheard something there. Is the
10intention that the speeches should be read out and not
11just taken as read?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Oh, no, no, not read out at all, no. I think
13one has to play it by ear. I do not know what you are
14proposing to do. You do not have to write a word down.
15 MR IRVING: No, I propose to write mine, yes.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I suspect then there may be odd points
17I want to pick up with you. I mean, do not feel the need
18to just read out your prepared final speech. That would,
19I think, be a complete waste of time.
20 MR IRVING: Right, so it is a written submission rather than --
21that point I had not appreciated.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I do not know what you are going to say
23so I cannot really ----
24 MR IRVING: That I am right and that they are wrong,
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- predict how I would want to deal with it.
1Good. Anything else, Mr Irving?
2 MR IRVING: No, my Lord.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So I am assuming next Monday for any argument
4that is going to take place on the Halle speech.
5 MR IRVING: This coming Monday?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This coming Monday, which will be the 6th.
7 MR IRVING: It will be a short session.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 (The court adjourned until Monday, 6th March 2000)