Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.03 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, it is. What did you originally transcribe that as? MR IRVING: Juden, I would submit this is a perfectly reasonable kind of mistake to make. If I was to labour the point I would draw your Lordship's attention to all the other versions of the word "Juden" that are correct, you will see they are very similar indeed in the German Gothic handwriting. So what we have, my Lord, to recap at this point, November 30th Himmler for some reason in a telephone conversation with Heydrich saying that train load of Jews from Berlin is not to be liquidated. I believe that is a fair expansion of that sentence. On the following day he has that telephone conversation with SS Gruppen Fuhrer Poll, I am back on page 13, at 4.45 p.m. They touch on Depervartens (?) . P-18 Fuhrer, but more important now is the conversation, again, with Heydrich about the same time as the previous one, on the previous day, 13.15 on that page 13. He has a conversation with Prague first of all about his scribes, the female scribes and, secondly, "executionen", like "executions", in Riga. I am sure I do not have to translate that. So it is now very much in the air that something has gone on in Riga, my Lord. On page 15, that same day, we are well in the chronology, my Lord, this is a telephone conversation at 7.15 a.m. on that Monday morning, December 1st, 1941. This is coming from Jeckelm to Berlin. This is a very ugly one indeed, my Lord. He is saying in English: "I need by next available air courier 10 Finnish", Finland, in other words, "military pistols with two drum magazines each. Execution of sonder aktionen", special actions, S-O-N-D-E-R A-K-T-I-O-A-N, "request radio telegramme reply. Senior SS and Police Command, North Russia". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who is this addressed to in Berlin then? MR IRVING: The main leadership Hauptamt, would be the body concerned with the procurement of such armaments. The significance of this, my Lord, if you remember the harrowing description by General Bruns of the shootings on the edge of the pit where the men were using machine guns, tommy-guns, and he has run, he has not enough tommy- guns, . P-19 he needs more. You can see the actual intercept of that, my Lord, on the next page. What is the answer he gets? Page 17, again my translation my Lord, Himmler himself contacts him, either in person, that is the second message, or through his Adjutant, Grothmann (who is still alive in Germany now). He sends this message to that same criminal, Jeckelm, at 7.30 p.m. on December 1st: To SS Obergruppenfuhrer Jeckelm, Senior SS and Police Commander, Osla, Riga. Reichfuhrer SS Himmler summons you to him for a conference on December 4th. Please state when you will arrive here and by what means you will be travelling". In other words, he had been summoned urgently to the Headquarters. The very next message explains what is going to happen. "SS Obergruppenfuhrer Jeckelm" -- this is the message we dealt with yesterday, my Lord -- "The Jews being outplaced to Osland", to the Baltic, "are to be dealt with only in accordance with the guidelines laid down by myself and/or by the ... (reading to the words) ... on my orders. I would punish arbitrary and disobedient acts", signed Himmler. A most incredibly important message, I think, for many reasons. He is not talking about a Hitler order here. He is saying: "The guidelines issued by me", by Himmler, "or by the Reichssicherheits Hauptamt" who is Heydrich", his telephone conversation partner. Jeckelm, out on the Eastern front, has overstepped the guidelines. . P-20 He started shooting thousands of Germans. He had been summoned to Himmler's headquarters, to Rastenburg, in East Prussia to account for himself. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do we find the guideline? MR IRVING: My Lord, we will hear in the course of this trial that these intercepts are not wall to wall. We do not have everything that they sent. There is an enormous mass of trivia, people whose cars have been towed and that kind of thing, people whose wives have died. Occasionally embedded in the trivia, like in a goldmine, in the slurry, there are diamonds like this. The incredible thing is, although this document has now been in the public domain for about five or six years, the historians and the world have not leapt on this document and said,"Irving was right. This proves that the Fuhrer's headquarters were not only indignant, but were calling people to account. In the way that the wars are, although he is brought back from the Front and he is wrapped on the knuckles, he is sent back to the Front to carry on with his job. He is not dismissed from service; in rather the same way as I know General Patten, for example, went to the Front when General Patten had been liquidating prisoners. He was called before Eisenhauer and called to account. He was put on ice for two or three months and then he was given command of one of the best armies, the 3rd American Army, because good men are hard . P-21 to come by in a war. That is, undoubtedly, the way the Nazis viewed this criminal. May I proceed, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you. MR IRVING: We can see on page 21 the arrival of the unfortunate criminal, the arrival of the unfortunate criminal, SS Obbergruppenfuhrer Jeckelm in Himmler's appointment book, in other words, at Hitler's headquarters. One notices at 1300 they are driving over Hitler's headquarters. Then Himmler visits the barber and the dentist. He sees Hitler at 5 p.m. and at 7 p.m. he sees other SS Generals. At 8 p.m. he has dinner in part of Hitler's headquarters with Jeckelm and at 9.30 he hauls Jeckelm over the carpet, the Jewish question, the SS brigade, economic business. So that is the actual visit. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would it be a fair interpretation of this document that the original plan was that Jeckelm should be present with Hitler and Himmler at 5 o'clock in the afternoon? MR IRVING: I cannot be specific on that, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks like it, does it not? MR IRVING: I do not want to speculate, but these are grey areas. The documents do not tell us everything we would dearly love to know. What we do know is the final two pages I put in the bundle. My Lord, you will see that the last page has some red print on the bottom, the very last . P-22 page. This is the German, I would say, official transcript of Himmler's diary which, my Lord, the Defendants also have on the desk in front of them. It is published this year. It is enormously expensive. It is a very good and highly dependable transcription of Himmler's diaries and appointment book. They put that in as a footnote at 104, I believe, in which they say: "After these signals were exchanged", which, oddly enough, they do not elucidate to the degree that I have, "the killings of German Jews stopped for many months". I have no further submissions to make about these documents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have lost me a little. Where do I find after these messages ---- MR IRVING: The very last line of the red text. This is the comments by the editors, who are a team of German historians, on the Himmler diaries which they have annotated most expertly, and they too have drawn finally on these two mysterious messages that we intercepted. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the point that may be made, I do not know, on this is that it is the mass shootings of German Jews that ceased. MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord. This is why I have been very careful to make a distinction in my evidence and, indeed, in my books. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That suggests to me -- tell me if I am wrong . P-23 about this -- that the guidelines mentioned in the earlier message were guidelines relating to German Jews. MR IRVING: This is quite possible, my Lord. I would only ask you in reading, as undoubtedly you will, and re- reading passages from my books on which the Defendants seek to rely, you ask yourself this question, has Mr Irving, the so-called Holocaust denier, at any time implied that this kind of massacre did not go on, and that it was systematic and it was carried out on guidelines from above? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: But you will notice that Mr Himmler talks about "orders that I have issued and the Reichssicherheits Hauptamt". He never says, "On the Fuhrer's instructions" which, obviously, there would be a strong temptation in a message like this to say, "You have not only upset me, but you have put Adolf's nose really out of joint". So, I mean, obviously, I am going to submit that if documents like this exist of a quality like that, to imply that I was speaking off the wall in some way with no kind of documentary basis for the submissions that I make in my books, it would be unfair, unjust and perverse. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You have taken me through, and thank you for that ---- MR IRVING: I ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- this little bundle. I am making this point at this stage because it is going to crop up time . P-24 and again. I am rather anxious not to have little one issue bundles cropping up at odd stages because, frankly, in a case of this length, it is all going to get lost and tangled. I imagine that all these documents are in one or other of the existing files. MR IRVING: They are in this cover, my Lord, but not in such pristine condition as that. I want to very great trouble last night to prepare this particular bundle in the hope that you would say to yourself, well, if he was able to come up with evidence like this on this matter, no doubt he will be able on any other matter ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not misunderstand me. I am not critical. I think it is helpful to have a bundle prepared like this, but what I need to be sure of is that I know where these documents can be found in the existing files. What I will ask somebody on the Defendants' side to do, if they would be good enough, if they can do this, is to provide me with the cross-reference. Could you ask somebody to do that? MR RAMPTON: We will think about that. The trouble is at the moment that our files are ordered according to the experts' reports. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but most of these documents would be relatively easily traced? MR RAMPTON: Most of them, I think, are referred to in the expert reports anyway. Whether they are copied in quite that form, I am not sure; I think probably not. . P-25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You see why I need to have what I am asking for. MR RAMPTON: Yes, I do. My immediate idea is just to put them with a separate numeration at the back of Professor Browning or that report. It is apparently ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is not a bad idea, to put them into J, otherwise there is going to be proliferation of... MR IRVING: My Lord, I am using an alphabetical system which requires that there are going to be less than 26 such files over the entire case that I would anticipate putting in of this nature. If you will bear with me, the reason I called this just "Himmler" is that I was intending to produce further documents, for example, the Schlegelberger series (which I am sure your Lordship is familiar with). I would also put that into that binder. So there will just be an Irving series, Irving A, Irving B, Irving C. This is, after all, my case, my Lord, and I do not want my structure to be subsumed into the case for the Defendants. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I entirely agree with that. This may all seem very boring, but, believe me, in a case like this you ---- MR IRVING: "Boring" is not a word I would use. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- really do have to watch the sort of housekeeping. Just so that everybody knows where I have it, I am putting it into J. MR RAMPTON: Tab C. . P-26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not got a tab C. MR IRVING: My Lord, I would propose that we now continue where we left off last night. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to treat what you have told me in the last 20 minutes or so as being part of your evidence, although you told me from counsel's bench. It is up to you; I think you probably ought to go back, if you would be good enough, into the witness box. Cross-examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued. THE WITNESS: My Lord, there is just one other document there that I forgot to refer to and this is No. 23. I will just read it out to you. There is no need for your Lordship to see it.
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