Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day007.13 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR RAMPTON: That, apart from some parts of the eyewitness testimony, this was my fear, and some parts of Professor van Pelt's report about other evidence, it is, I am . P-107 afraid, two thirds of the evidence on Auschwitz. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am a bit doubtful of that, but I appreciate there is an enormous amount left. MR RAMPTON: Maybe that is a wrong estimate, but it is a large lump of the actual factual evidence about Auschwitz, what can be known of what happened there by reference to what Mr Leuchter said. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but there is no reason why you should not cross-examine on the totality of that. MR RAMPTON: I just wanted to be clear. I do not want to put my foot in the wrong ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is without prejudice to Mr Irving's entitlement at any point to say that that question is not relevant to the issues for whatever reason he may suggest. MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship may say it without being prompted by Mr Irving, I dare say. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I might even do so, yes. Mr Irving, would you like to come back? < Mr Irving, recalled. < Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC, continued. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, may I say this before you start? It would help me if one could, perhaps by some initial questions to Mr Irving, put into the context of your case. MR RAMPTON: A little bit of history? MR JUSTICE GRAY: A little bit of history and where one pigeon holes it, if you like. . P-108 MR RAMPTON: Not wartime history. This is Mr Irving's history. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Eighties/nineties. MR RAMPTON: That is right. Mr Irving, when did you first meet Mr Fred Leuchter? A. On a day in April 1988 in Toronto, Canada. Q. You went, and I do not think there is controversy about this, to Toronto, Canada, in order to give expert evidence at the trial of Mr Hans Zundel. Is that right? A. I was residing in Florida at that time, writing. They invited me to give evidence as an expert witness on the general history of the Third Reich, I do emphasise not on Auschwitz, and on Adolf Hitler's involvement in what is referred to as the Holocaust. I flew to Toronto on the day before I was due to give evidence. Q. So the answer to my question is yes, I think, is it not? A. Yes. Q. What was it, in case I have got it wrong, that Mr Zundel was charged with? A. There was a mediaeval law in Canada which made the spreading of false information a criminal offence. That law has now been struck down by the Canadian Supreme Court. Q. In respect of what statements under that mediaeval law, as you call it, in what form was Mr Zundel charged? A. If I remember correctly, he was charged with having published or disseminated a brochure called, "Did 6 . P-109 million really die"? Q. Yes. What was the topic of that pamphlet or whatever it was? A. As its title implies, it was questioning the fundamental aspects of the Holocaust. Q. Yes? A. I had not, up to the time I arrived in Toronto, read that brochure, but I was given a copy to read shortly before the trial began, because I was going to be asked questions about it. Q. You did not give evidence, I expect, immediately upon arrival? You did not get off the plane and into the witness box? A. I gave evidence on the following day if I remember correctly. Q. Does this mean that you had the opportunity to read Mr Leuchter report before you gave evidence? A. Either on the evening I arrived, or the following morning before I went into the witness box, defence counsel for Mr Zundel gave me a one inch thick affidavit which was the engineering report produced by Mr Fred Leuchter, and he said, if you read this, you will find this very interesting. Of course, I could not read a one inch thick affidavit in the remaining hours, but I glanced at the summary at the beginning and I looked at the principal conclusions. They may even have told me in outline what . P-110 the affidavit purported to conclude. Q. For how many days did you give evidence? A. It was over a weekend. I think I was in the box for three or four days, possibly three days. Q. Over the weekend while were you were in the box -- I am not suggesting there is anything in the least bit improper in this because there plainly is not -- did you get a chance to read the inch thick affidavit? A. I would have had a chance to, but I do not think I did. I think we went on an outing to the Niagara Falls, which is close to Toronto. Q. If I may say so, a good deal more edifying than the Leuchter report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you this? You were asked to give evidence as an expert on the Holocaust? A. On Adolf Hitler basically, and his involvement, the kind of thing we have been discussing until now, my Lord. Q. That is not what I am getting at. You were giving evidence about extermination, of whether there were really 6 million Jewish deaths? A. Not on the extermination, my Lord. They were purely interested in hearing what Adolf Hitler's part in this was or was not. I could not give expert evidence on the Holocaust and I would not have been accepted by the court as an expert. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand. . P-111 A. I was very closely questioned before the trial began, before my hearing began, as to my qualifications by the court. MR RAMPTON: May Mr Irving please be given a file? Your Lordship may not have this in court. I have the reference here, D 9 (i). (Document not provided) If your Lordship has not got it, which I do not expect you have, I will try and find one. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I should have thought to bring it. MR RAMPTON: It is a transcript of Mr Irving's evidence in the court. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, the page numbers are the original. There are two page numbers. I intend to use the original transcript page numbers, which are at the top left hand corner of the page. The page I am looking for is 9473. I think it must be that the Canadians numbered the whole trial with consecutive page numbers. A. Is this examination in chief? Q. No, this is cross-examination by Mr Pearson? A. Yes. Q. Have you got it, Mr Irving? A. I have it in front of me. Q. 9473. It has the helpful heading "Irving CREX Pearson". At the bottom of the page it says 327. It is a recent file number. Mr Pearson has put to you something -- I do . P-112 not think it probably matters what much except that it will have to do with the Holocaust -- about which you say this. I am reading from the top of the page: "At the time that I wrote that in the 1960s, 1974 or thereabouts, when I wrote that introduction, I believed, I believed everything I had heard about the extermination camps". A. I think there should be a comma after the first "believed" probably. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: There is in my copy. There should not be? A. I think there should be a comma after the first "believed". MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not matter. A. It sounds a little bit obsessive, otherwise. MR RAMPTON: (Document not provided) "I believed everything I heard about the extermination camps. I was not investigating the extermination camps. I was investigating Hitler. Question: But you told us that you did ten years of extensive research on the national socialist regime? Answer: Yes. Question: And you had no problem making that statement, did you? Answer: Because I believed. Question: Right. Answer: I believed what I had read up to that point. I had not gone to the sites at Auschwitz and Treblinka, and Mydonek and brought back samples and carried out an analysis. I had not done any research into what is called the Holocaust. I researched . P-113 Hitler and his staff. Question: You have done that, have you, since? Answer: I have not. Question: You have not done those things? Answer: I have carried out no investigation in equivalent depth of the Holocaust. Question: But your mind changed? Answer: My mind has now changed. Question: You no longer believe it? Answer: I have now begun to challenge that. I understand it is now a subject open to debate. Question: But your belief changed, even though you did not do any research? Is that what you are saying? Answer: My belief has now changed because I understand that the whole of the Holocaust mythology is after all open to doubt, and certainly in the course of what I have read in the last few days, in fact in this trial, I am now becoming more and more hardened in this view". Mr Irving, what had you read that led to such a volte-face during those last few days? A. A few figures in a column of chemical tests. Percentages. Q. You had read a few figures in a column in Mr Leuchter report. Is that right? A. In the laboratory analysis appended to the Leuchter report. Q. That evidence, I think I am right in saying, was given on 25th April, 1988? A. Yes. Q. I think your diary entry for the 22nd, which is a Friday, . P-114 tells us this. I will just read it: "Breakfast in the Carven Inn. Hans Zundel and defence lawyer Douglas Christie came around 8.30 am for a briefing session. I told them I had read Leuchter's report on Auschwitz and am much impressed". What is the truth of this? A. Yes. Q. Which? A. I beg your pardon? Q. The two things are not the same. A. Well, obviously, if the report is one inch thick and has only been given to me either that morning or the previous evening, I have not read the entire report one inch thick. But I have read the relevant part they are interested in. Q. The last entry for the previous day, which is 21 April, which is a Thursday, you said this in your diary. I do not know whether you are intending to publish your diaries but you say this: "Zundel says I give evidence tomorrow. Read their lab reports on Auschwitz until late. Bed around 11" p.m. A. I do emphasis that I have not read those diaries since I wrote them 12 years ago, but that precisely confirms my memory. I read the lab reports, the percentages, until 12 a.m. There are quite a few pages of them. Q. When you tell them next morning at breakfast time that you had read Leichter's report on Auschwitz "and am much . P-115 impressed", that is a shorthand way of saying "I have read some small part of the Leichter report". Is that right? A. I think so, the relevant part. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because that is the guts of it, really, the lab reports? Is what you are saying? A. They may have drawn my attention specifically to the lab reports, but the answer to your question is yes. MR RAMPTON: I am not suggesting that what you said in answer to those questions on 25th April in the court in Toronto were false answers. What I question is this. Do you think it sensible -- I will use a neutral word to begin with Mr Irving -- for a man in your position, who has gone all the way to Canada to give expert evidence on a different aspect of the case, to arrive at so certain a conclusion on the basis of one part evening's reading of one part of a report made by a man -- we will come to his qualifications in a moment -- who, so far as you were aware at that date, was not known to history? A. Was not known to ---- Q. Was not known to history as a scholarly discipline? A. There are several questions contained in that question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is all one question. It is a long question, but I think it is an important question. A. It is, but there are several questions contained within a question there. Would you break it up into fragmentary questions, one question at a time? . P-116
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