Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day007.08 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. No, all right. Let us use '77. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think in 1991 it is likely to be in part 2 because the book is written more or less ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but Mr Irving has the 1977 version, so shall we use that? It will be part 2 of that too, will it not? MR RAMPTON: Yes. (To the witness): Can you tell us, roughly speaking, where 1943 starts in Hitler's War 1977? A. About page 450. Q. Thank you. So it will be volume 2 of that, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we are looking for it, we will take a lot of time. Do you think we might come back to this? A. My Lord, I will come back to it. MR RAMPTON: I would be grateful. It is my fault, but the index does not help. A. So your point is that Himmler writes down the word that may actually have been used between the two of them. . P-63 Q. Yes. A. Yes. Q. May have been. I quite agree it may not be verbatim Hitler's word, but Himmler has certainly written down, has he not, what he thinks Hitler's intention is, has he not? A. Yes. Q. Then when we get what one might call the bureaucratic type version, that word is transformed ---- A. Unambiguously. Q. Well, as you say -- into another form which is deport? A. Yes. Q. Yes? A. Yes. Q. And, of course, as one must expect, there is then an order from Himmler to Muller that they should be deported? A. Yes. Q. You grumble about Himmler's exaggeration of the numbers. Have you noticed a suggestion -- it is in that Witte - - that in that figure he was including all the Jews in the French colonies, particularly those in North Africa? A. That is not what the document actually says. It says Jews in ---- Q. You will find that in note 44. A. --- Jews in France. I know that the French consider those colonies, or some of them, to be part of the metropolitan in France, but I think that in this document that would be . P-64 stretching the point. I am not going to quibble about that. I just wanted to draw attention to the tendency to exaggerate figures. Q. It might not be an intentional exaggeration, might it? It might be -- I am not saying whether it was or not -- I quite agree with you there were never 600,000 Jews living in France at this time. A. Let alone 700,000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure it really matters very much. MR RAMPTON: It does not matter at all. But then what happened next, leave out paragraph 19.8 of Longerich, apparently on the same day (and I am afraid I do not have this document) "Himmler made a suggestion or proposal to Hitler that there should be a work camp set up for Jewish hostages from France, Hungary and Rumania", three different countries, "for a total 10,000 people"? A. Yes, except we are not be given the actual quotation or document or it is just ---- Q. No. A. --- summarized. Q. Do you know of that document? A. This is an important point, because there are other documents that he does not refer to. Q. This is in the IFZ, this document. A. It, presumably, comes from one of the Himmler microfilms. Q. Yes. You do not recall seeing this document? . P-65 A. Yes. Q. You do. After the meeting, he goes on, Dr Longerich: "Himmler sent an order to Muller to concentrate these 10,000 in a 'special camp' (Sonderlager). He stated: 'Certainly they should work there but under conditions whereby they remain healthy and alive." You notice the way I read it? A. we are moving ahead at very great speed on this. Q. We are still on 10th December 1942. A. Yes, but we have already gone past the paragraph 19.7 at the top of page 71 of Longerich and I did want to draw the court's attention to this very bold and adventurous leap from the word "Abschaffen" with the neutral connotations in only one line's length to using the word "liquidate" which is certainly not used between these two top Nazis. Q. "Dispose of" is what you use, I think? A. Thank you very much, yes. Q. Yes. That is not a very benign word, is it, "disposal"? A. No, but ---- Q. This is on page 462 of 1977. A. One has this terrible problem when translating German, when you have these multi-purpose words, to strike the right nuance without leaning too far in one direction or the other. Q. You see, in 1977, for want of a better word, you believed still in the Holocaust, did you not? . P-66 A. I believed in the factories of death element of the Holocaust. Q. Yes. You had no difficulty in 1977 in reading the word "Abschaffen" as Fuhrerwunsch, if that is the right thing, that these 6 to 700,000 Jews should be disposed of, not removed from France, that has to happen first, obviously? A. Well, "disposed of" also does not necessarily imply killing, but contains -- it is one nuance in that direction from the dead centre neutral meaning of the word, and I believe Miss Rogers will be able to establish that I then continued by stating immediately afterwards what the typed version of the document says which is "transport away". Q. That may be so. I do not know. She is trying to find the reference in 1991. A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may not be there at all? A. Well, it certainly is, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: It is there, but in a footnote. MR JUSTICE GRAY: She will find it eventually. Let us press on in the meantime. MR RAMPTON: But do you agree that the translation "disposed of", I accept that that is a fair translation of "Abschaffen"? A. Yes, I think it is exactly the right nuance. Q. And the nuance -- construct for me, Mr Irving, if you can, . P-67 an English sentence in which, according to natural, ordinary meaning, "dispose of" as applied to a person or people does not have a connotation of fatality in it? A. Oh, yes, it happens in large companies the whole time, downsizing. Additional staff are disposed of. That does not mean to say they are sent to the gas chambers. Q. No. Disposed of? A. Yes. It is exactly the right nuance that I applied to that word. That is my submission. Q. So, "These Jews are merely redundant and we have to let them go"? A. That is right. Q. I see. Probably with some nice payment or other? A. That is a rather cheap remark, if I may say so. Q. I know, but, really, Mr Irving, do you really think that is what Himmler meant when wrote "Abschaffen"? A. I remind you that this is a private note being written by Himmler for his own private files. Q. Precisely. A. He had no reason to use euphemisms. If they had said "liquidate", as we have seen on other occasions, they quite frankly talked about "keine liquiderung", did he not? So why would he use a euphemism here? Q. I am suggesting there is absolutely no difference between "dispose of" and "liquidate". A. Well, why would he have used ---- . P-68 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, in a way, I have the point. I understand the basis. A. That is an important point. Why would he use a euphemism here when he is quite happy to use the plain, blunt language elsewhere in his own handwritten notes, particularly in view of the fact that when he dictated the actual memorandum to Muller, so there could be no dispute, he then used "Abtransportieren", to transport away. MR RAMPTON: Yes, of course, and to the East, no doubt? A. No, indeed. They were being transported away to barrack encampments being built in the Reich. We have the documents on that which your Professor Longerich has not shown the court. Q. What happened to them next? A. We do not know, but, unfortunately, Longerich has not introduced into his report the evidence that there are encampments actually being built for them, reception centres. Q. Sorry, where was the Sonderlager which is referred to in paragraph 19---- A. Those were the special camps being set up for them. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But when you say "they" were being transported to the Reich, are you talking about the 10,000 or are you talking about -- whether it was 60,000 or 600,000 does not matter for present purposes? A. Off the top of my head, I cannot say, my Lord. . P-69 Q. It may be quite important ---- A. I agree. Q. --- because one interpretation -- let me put this to you and see if you agree -- is that the 10,000 people for one reason or another were valuable to the Reich, maybe because they whether qualified in some way? A. Yes. Q. Whereas the rest were not and that was why they were going to be "Abgeschaft" or whatever the word would be? A. I will remind your Lordship of the fact that on this very same day, Himmler and Hitler on another page which is not before the court in this passage were discussing selling off Jews for hard currency. That may very well be what is going to happen to the 10,000 in the Sonderlager. But the French Jews, in fact, ended up to a very large degree working in underground aircraft factories and so on inside the Reich. From my extraneous knowledge, I know that from the biographies I have written of Field Marshal Milsche, and so on. I have read the records of the Air Ministry conferences so we know what happened. Q. Is it or is it not a legitimate inference that if that was what was going to happen to the 10,000, something more sinister was going to happen to the other French Jews? A. No, it is not, my Lord. It could be they were going to be sent to work, as I say, in the German arms industry or building fortifications or whatever which I happen to know . P-70 actually happened. A very large number of these French Jews from my own work that I have done previously on the biography of Field Marshal Milsche who, on Goring's death, would be in charge of German armaments, in charge of the aircraft factory, construction industry. It cannot be ignored that I have a lot of expertise, if I can call it like that, from other records and other books that I have written. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I have found one of these documents, but I do not at the moment know which one it is. My Lord, it is in H4 (ii) at footnote 183. I think it is at 182 that I do not have. Have you got that, Mr Irving? A. Yes. Q. It is a typed document. Again it looks as if it has been taken from a microfilm, does it not? A. Yes. Q. It is from Himmler because it says so at the top left- hand side and there are his initials at the bottom of the page, are there not? A. Yes. Q. On the right-hand side it says "Feld-Kommandostelle", what does that mean? A. "Field Headquarters". Q. 12th December 1942. A. I am sorry. It just says "December 1942". Q. You are quite right. I am sorry. I misread that. . P-71 A. I would draw attention to that because this was Himmler's way of doing things, that he would always handwrite the day in. In other words, this is an authentic document. We are not challenging that. But there is a reason to draw attention to that because of something that comes up in later documents. Q. Yes, I follow, and it has the top security classification? A. "Geheime Reichssache", yes. Q. For an SS document? A. Yes.
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