Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.13 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 Q. And the questions which followed it. You remember -- you need not look it up, but it is on page 24, if you want of . P-111 tab 30, internal page 24, not final page 24 -- I drew your attention towards the bottom of the left-hand column to the words in quotes as a report of what Bruns had said that Altemeyer had said: "These mass shootings have got to stop at once". Do you remember that this morning? A. Yes. Q. And I think your answer was to this effect, that it was justified anyway but you could not rely on a transcript of an extemporary answer to a question. I am summarizing. I am not quoting your words directly. A. On this transcript of my extemporary answer? Q. Yes, on this example? A. Yes, that it would be -- yes, continue. Q. Is it right, Mr Irving, that, in fact, before this version of your words as printed in this way, you went through them and approved them? A. Occasionally I did. Q. This particular article? A. I am sure, Mr Rampton, you will be able to refresh my memory; if I did, then I did. Q. You have recently told us so in your answers to our requests for information. A. I do not want to be specific about this one, and I am not being clever, but frequently they would send me a transcript to read, and sometimes I would proof read it and send it back and sometimes I would not. . P-112 Q. You are right to be cautious, Mr Irving, not because I am setting traps, but because memory is fallible. You served on us, that is to say, our side, something called --- A. "Answers to requests for information". Q. "Some answers". A. Yes. Q. Fair enough because there were only some answers, on 27th December of last year? A. Yes. Q. And one of the answers was this. This is No. 13 on page 5, my Lord. It is tab 9 of the main pleadings bundle, A1. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do not think I have it. MR RAMPTON: No, but it does not matter; it is very short. Is very short. (To the witness): "In October 1992 I spoke at an IHR conference"? A. Is that this one? Q. Yes. It is the only one I know of in October 1992. "As on previous occasions, I attended my booked table and paid no attention to the other speakers. Once again I corrected the text of my talk before it was published." A. Very well, yes. Q. Also it is right to say, is it not, that the whole of that, including the questions and answers, appears on your web site? A. The whole of this? . P-113 Q. Yes. A. No, it is not correct to say that. Q. It is not? A. No, it is not correct. Q. That particular passage does, does it not? A. Will you give me the web site address? Q. Yes, I will. In fact, I had better you see the hard copy. A. Www. Q. File D2(iii). It is HTP.www.fpp.co.uk.speeches. Speech ---- A. Yes. Q. --- 111092 HTML? A. In that case, that is correct, but does this particular passage also appear on that or just the speech? Q. Yes, it does. I have the page here. By all means, I will pass it up. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you will take that on trust, I suspect, will you not? MR RAMPTON: You can trust me if I say something like that. A. No, the reason I say that is because in some of the witness reports things have been said to be on my web site whereas, in fact, they are just links on my we site somewhere else. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, do not let us take more time on this. I think it is accepted it is on the web site. MR RAMPTON: I think the answer is yes. . P-114 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, it is. MR RAMPTON: So, first of all, you corrected the transcript of the talk before ---- A. Yes. Q. --- it was published and, secondly, you put the whole thing in that form on to the web site? A. Without in any way reviewing it. Q. No, I understand that, but the fact is we can then take it that you have no quibble with the quotation marks around the words "These mass shootings have to stop at once"? A. Not the kind of thing I would quibble about, I do not think, no. Q. Quite, good, I an glad to hear. There is one more, slightly more substantial point that I want to go back to which I apologise for having missed this morning. I am grateful it has been drawn to my attention. Have you got your 1977 "Hitler's War" with you there? A. 1997? Q. In 1977? A. Yes, I have. Q. I am apt to '97 when I mean 1977, excuse me. A. This is the English edition of it, yes. Q. Yes. I think the words are probably the same though, are they not? A. The English and American, yes. Q. Page 332? . P-115 A. Yes. Q. I am not going to read it again. We have heard it too often. In the middle of the page, there is the passage dealing with the Berlin Jews, is there not? A. Yes. Q. You have written: "The fate of Berlin's Jews was clearly raised". So the context of that passage is, at any rate, foreshadowed as being Berlin's Jews, is it not? A. The context of the paragraph is the prior responsibility of the SS for the murders and not Hitler. Q. Sure. A. Yes. Q. But we are talking here in this little bit about a discussion about Berlin's Jews between Hitler and Himmler? A. Yes, in that sentence. Q. Yes. Then you say in the next sentence: "At 1.30 p.m. Himmler was obliged to telephone from Hitler's bunker to Heydrich the explicit order that Jews were not to be liquidated"? A. Yes. Q. Let me ask you this. You remember what you put in the introduction? A. Yes. Q. When you wrote that, did you mean to say that these Berlin Jews or Berlin's Jews in general were were not to be liquidated, or that Hitler had made a general prohibition . P-116 against the slaughter or murder of Jews anywhere? A. It is nit-picking. Q. It is not. A. What I am about to say is nit-picking. Q. Oh, I see. A. But there is a period after the word "Judentransport aus Berlin", Jew transport from Berlin. In other words, there is a full stop at the end of that and a new line. Then comes the phrase "Keine Liquidierung" as a separate phrase. Operating as we were at that time, 1977, totally in the darkness about this particular -- we now know a lot more, but at that time we were operating totally in the darkness. I was going through a jungle of new documents that no other historian had set foot in. It was perfectly rational to say, is the "Keiner Liquidierung" a phrase which is attached to the line above, or is it a separate subject; just in the same way, if you look, there are four lines in that facsimile. The first one is -- I will say it in English so we have no problem -- arrest of Dr Jakelius. The next line after a period is "Apparently son of Molotoff" or "apparent son of Molotoff". The next line is "Jews transport from Berlin", full stop. The next line is "No liquidation". Q. Yes. A. I appreciate that in the light of our present knowledge the fourth line clearly refers to the third line. Are you . P-117 with me, Mr Rampton? Q. I am absolutely with you, Mr Irving. Carry on. A. But in the state of my knowledge in 1977, when I am still in darkest jungle of new documents, it was perfectly reasonable to accept the fourth line as being as detached from the third line line as were the first and second lines from each other and from the rest. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So answer to Mr Rampton's question is that you were conveying in that passage what you thought was an explicit order relating to Jews generally, not just Berlin Jews? A. Based solely on the fourth line with Jews being the topic of conversation, my Lord, yes. MR RAMPTON: I am coming back to that. A. That is why the full stop is so important. Q. You say that, but it has this possible effect as well which is something evidently you did not even pause to think about; it might not have had anything to do with Jews at all, might it? A. You are absolutely right. Q. You inflated it on the basis of what one might call a speculative inference into a general order against the liquidation of Jews in general, did you not? A. I object to the word "inflated". I said that I interpreted that line from the clear evidence that the previous topic of conversation had been Jews. . P-118 Q. Berlin's Jews? A. Yes, Jews all the same. I interpreted the fourth line as being a reference to "no liquidation". We now know that this was, in all probability, a reference purely to that train load. Q. We do not want to get ahead of ourselves, at least I do not want to get ahead of myself, Mr Irving, though you should not feel sorry for me. A. Right, but please do not forget that full stop in the line above. Q. Of course I do not forget it. I can see it in the original. A. We had a lot of discussion about whether the "K" of "Keine" was actually a large "K" or a little "k" among historians, believe it or not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you have a full stop, it does not matter? A. Well, people wondered if that was a full stop or a blemish, my Lord. This is the kind of level to which one sinks. MR RAMPTON: The fact is, Mr Irving, that full stop or no, the first line of those two lines concerns Jews from Berlin, as it happens, one transport? A. Well, it concerns Jew transport or transportation from Berlin. Q. The second line, if it is to be read disjunctively from the first line, refers to "no liquidation". No . P-119 liquidation of what? Businesses, gypsies? A. It would have to be a very perverse mind indeed which accepted there was no connection between the fourth and the third lines, general topic. Q. The natural meaning of those two lines taken together, whether you insert the full stop or not, is that there is to be no liquidation of the Jews from Berlin? A. You say whether you accept the full stop or not; the full stop is there. Q. No difference. It might have been a ---- A. Pardon? Q. There might have been nothing. It is a note in a man's handwritten telephone log. A. I agree. One cannot put it on the gold balance. Q. If you say, Mr Irving, the "liquidieren" refers to Jews at all, then it is most probable, most probable -- I do not have to deal in certainties, you see, Mr Irving -- that it refers to the Jews referred to in the previous line, is it not? A. Yes. Q. Yes. So why, what was the warrant for your inflating this (and I use that word advisedly because it is an inflation, objectively regarded) into a prohibition against the liquidation of all Jews anywhere? A. I remind you of your previous question; you are saying it is most likely that it was, and you are talking in the . P-120 present tense, but was it most likely in 1977 when I wrote the book or published the book? Q. I am looking at the German as it was written in 1941. A. No, are you asking me was it most probable that the fourth line referred to the third line in the 1960s when I wrote the book? The answer to that is it not so likely, it is not so evident because at that time we did not have the documents that we do now. Q. Ignore the extraneous material completely, if you will, Mr Irving. A. You cannot when you are writing books.
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