Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.16 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 MR RAMPTON: I see the two words "extermination" one on top of other. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you mean different from the 1939 translation. A. Yes, but the word that is different of course is Judentums what does your Langscheidt tell us about that? MR RAMPTON: I doubt it has it in, I am not going to bother with it. A. Can I ask that you look in Langscheidt because I do not . P-140 have a copy here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You accept "Jewry" is the right translation? A. Jewry, Judaism, but not Jews. If somebody talks about wiping out Christianity that would be the parallel, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: This is only Dr Goebbels speaking, does it matter? A. What is the standard dictionary? Q. You cannot -- we cannot believe a word Dr Goebbels says, can we? A. This is your Judentums. Q. I am just looking to see if it is in, it may be Jewry collective... there is a choice Mr Irving, which would you like to choose? A. Wiping out Jewry, wiping out Judaism, it is not the same as exterminating the Jews this is a manipulated translation. Q. It has Jewry? A. He is saying that this is evidence of the wiping out of the Jews. Q. No, look at it "Jewry" big letters, extermination of Jewry? A. Extermination of Jewry. Q. Yes. A. Is not the same as annihilating Judaism. Q. No, but the two meanings are both there? A. He has chosen once again the tendentious meaning, which . P-141 highly is disreputable for an historian to do. Q. Perhaps that is because it is consistent with the rest of the text? A. No, it is incumbent upon an historian, just as a lawyer to give the benefit of the doubt to the person you are impugning; am I correct? Q. No, you are not correct. Not in this case. A. In an ambiguity. Q. No, there is not ambiguity here -- A. There is a total ambiguity. Q. Mr Irving, I go back: "He had prophecised to the Jews that if they", nothing to do with Judaism, "once again brought about a world war they would experience their own" that is to say the Jews own extermination "vernichtung", the same word in the next sentence. A. This is Dr Goebbels, right? Q. Yes, yes. A. OK. Q. No, that is Hitler. A. Hitler as reported four years later by Dr Goebbels. Q. By Dr Goebbels. The world war is there. The extermination of Jewry must be the necessary consequence. The one flows quite naturally and logically from the other. A. In the first case he has taken the third meaning of the word. In the second case he has taken the second meaning . P-142 of the word. In neither case has he taken the primary meaning of the word, primary translation. If I was to do that I think I would be hearing about it shortly in this court. Q. Eradication, extermination, annihilation all mean the same thing -- A. I do not think so. I gave an example if one talked about eradicating Christianity, drug addiction, you do not go about wiping out the drug addicts. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have the point. A. -- I think there is room for manoeuvre on something like this and it is incumbent on people not to take the evil meaning of a word when there are much better sources. MR RAMPTON: There is only room for manoeuvre for those who want to find room to manoeuvre? A. Like people who pay witnesses for expert cases like this. Q. I must make a note to prompt you to put that allegation to Dr Longerich -- A. I shall, to all the witnesses. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us press on with the translation. MR RAMPTON: This question must be seen without sentimentality "die frage ist ohne jede sentimentalat so betrachten" correct? A. -- that is a fair translation. Q. Good. We are not here in order to have sympathy with the Jews, "wir sind nicht dasu da, mitlied mit den juden" . P-143 correct so far? A. Yes. Q. "Sondern nur mitleid mit unserem deutschen volk so haben"? A. Just to have sympathy. Q. Rather we should sympathise with our own German people? A. A loose translation, but I am not tendentious. Q. If the German people have now once again sacrificed as many as 160,000 dead in the eastern campaign, then the authors of this bloody conflict must pay with their lives (German spoken) authors? A. Yes. Q. (German spoken) of this bloody conflict, therefore -- with their lives -- account for, must account for or pay for? A. Yes, this is Dr Goebbels. Q. It may be? A. I am sorry it is, because it is not in the subjunctive. If it is not in reported speech. If he was reporting what Hitler had said, it would be not "hat" but "ete", that is the way reported speech is done in German. Q. You see no ground for thinking that Hitler said anything like this? A. This is Dr. Goebbels' gloss on what Hitler had said. Q. You think it is just a gloss on what Hitler said. Do you think it is a invention? A. That is what the language tells us Mr Rampton it is not in subjunctive, so it is not him reporting what somebody else . P-144 said. Q. Could you answer my question. A. I have given you the answer. Q. Do you think it is an invention? A. Is what an invention? He is writing down his own opinions. Goebbels -- Q. None of this is attributable to what Hitler said on this occasion when he addressed the Reich and Gau leaders on 12th December -- A. -- Mr Rampton, you do not know and I do not know because we do not have a transcript of that speech. MR JUSTICE GRAY: How much do you say Mr Irving of this little snippet is a report of what Hitler said to the gaulieter? A. -- as I say, in all my editions of Hitler's War, Hitler made the original speech on January 30th 1939 and he repeatedly and ominously repeated and recorded what he had said on that occasion, saying I prophecised then and I will say it again and those who laughed then they are laughing on the other side of their faces now. This kind of thing. He said it something like eight or nine times during the war on 8th November 1942 and so on. Q. Answer my question. A. It was one of his stock speeches. So I know with a pretty fair degree of certainty how much of this quotation Hitler actually said because Hitler was always saying the same thing and how much is probably Goebbels adding his own . P-145 private gloss. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But this is something, this is in part at any rate a report by Goebbels of what Hitler said in 1941 to the gaulieter? A. I appreciate that, yes. Q. Nothing to do with 1939. My question, if I can ask you for an answer, is how much do you say of this snippet from Goebbels' diary is a report of what Hitler said to the gaulieter? A. I would say half is. Q. Which half? Half in reported speech and half where he repeats exactly the kind of sentence that Hitler had said so many times before, but what I will not accept is that he necessarily used the word vernichtung, when Hitler frequently used other equally vague and ambiguous words and indeed euphemisms. I am quite happy to accept that. And personally I would consider it deeply shocking if an historian was to pin any kind of hypothesis just on this third order information which is what this actually is. I know it has been done quite recently by Dr Christian Gerlach who is a young Hungarian historian. He has tried to pin a major hypothesis on it, but he is on the wooden path as the Germans says, and the fact that the sentences are not in the subjunctive makes it quite plain that Goebbels is not reporting what Hitler said. We can ask Dr Longerich this on the question of language if I am . P-146 right about the subjunctive. MR RAMPTON: You will have the opportunity to do that and you can ask Professor Evans too whose German is probably as good as yours. A. I doubt it but I would prefer to ask Dr Longerich. Q. He wrote it. Tell me this, is it your belief that Hans Frank, Governor General, was a Poland, Eastern Poland, at this meeting on 12th December? A. He was a Reichsleiter. This was a speech to the Garleiters and the Reichsleiter, so the likelihood is that he was present. Q. And the word "vernichtung" is not really capable of what we might call being characterized as a Goebbels' invention or exaggeration because it was after all the word that Hitler used in his speech in the Reichstager in 1939? A. Yes. Q. So it would not be the least bit surprising if Hitler had used the same word on this occasion, would it? A. Yes. Q. Why? A. The word "vernichtung" is not killing. It is not unambiguously killing. It is destruction. Q. So you say. You say that. I do not know accept that answer? A. It is the primary meaning of the word. Q. Whether you call it extermination or annihilation, which . P-147 are his two primary senses, it is a literal ---- A. Excuse me, extermination was not the primary sense. Q. No annihilation was? A. It was the third sense. You said extermination or annihilation which are its primary senses. Extermination is not. It is number 3. Q. What difference do you see between annihilation and extermination? A. Can you read out the three meanings? Q. No, I ask you in English. What difference do you see? A. I have been annihilated by these books but I have not been exterminated. Is that sufficient for you? Q. Yes, and I annihilate you in cross-examination but I do not exterminate you, I hope! Of course I see the difference. Seriously, Mr Irving, please, annihilation of the Jewish race, come, it is not difficult. German is not a mystery language any more than English. What does it mean, be honest? A. If Adolf Hitler was considering annihilation to be the biological liquidation of the Jewish race, why would he have been talking the entire time about the Madagascar? Plan. Q. He talked about the Madagascar plan I think as late as sometime in 1942 by which time he had already issued an order that the Madagascar plan was to be put to sleep? A. He talked about it on July 24th 1942. . P-148 Q. Yes, and it was a dead duck? A. This is your word, but why would Hitler talk about even in private with his staff? Q. Because Hitler it would appears, if one reads his table talk ---- A. He is talking about it in a conversation with Bormann and Himmler, the people who we know were the actual murderers. Q. It is not to be taken seriously. It cannot be. The Brits had occupied Madagascar in May of 1942? A. The British had occupied large parts of the world which the Germans subsequently reoccupied. Q. Like Crete. So your thesis is that Hitler had it in mind the German Navy would travel all the way to the East Coast of Africa, that huge island, and spend a lot of ships and men capturing the island so they could put the Jews on it in 1942? A. I know I am not supposed to ask you questions, but you are not suggesting that the table talks are fake, are you? Q. No, no that they are fake, no, far from it. On the contrary, the table talks are very good evidence of a man who sometimes waffles, sometimes deceives, sometimes talks at endless length about nothing very much? A. Rather like counsel in this case! Q. If you say so.
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