Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day007.20 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Do you know him well? A. Yes. Q. Is he a reliable gentleman? A. On the evidence of that, no. . P-172 Q. Is he a friend of yours? A. Probably no longer. Q. Probably no longer. Seriously though, how close is your association with Mr Weber? A. I see him about once every two years. Q. Do you correspond regularly? A. He occasionally telephones me. I am glad he is paying the bill. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think if I were you, I would remember having said that if I said it. A. Having said this? It is the precise wording that worries me, my Lord. The sense is correct. Q. I see. Do not worry about the precise wording. Is the substance of it, did you make the points that Dresden was a Holocaust or Auschwitz is a non-Holocaust because it did not happen? A. I did not say that and I do not think even this says that, my Lord. What I have said is that Dresden was a real Holocaust. I have witnessed the pictures. Q. Well, you then go on to say that of the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz is an invention? A. Well, it is no secret that I have said that no Jews were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz that are shown to the tourists, but that is the kind of limitation which Mr Rampton would probably find unhelpful. MR RAMPTON: No. That is one of your own, what I might say, . P-173 self-set traps, Mr Irving. You have occasionally made reference to the reconstructed gas chamber at Auschwitz 1, the Stumlager. You have on numerous occasions said that there were no gas chambers anywhere in the German system. That must include Birkenhau; we have just looked at one such remark. A. Well, I think you ought really to lead evidence to this and not just summarize ---- Q. Am I right or -- it will ---- A. --- to this effect. Q. --- save so much time, Mr Irving, if you would accept that you have on numerous occasions said there were no gas chambers, plural, at Auschwitz? A. Well, I am sure that if you had evidence to that effect, then you would have started off the afternoon by saying this. Q. No. Well, I will try to find your Chappaquidick remark. Here we are, this is in November 1990, something called the Latvian Hall ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Reference? MR RAMPTON: That is the wrong one. I am so sorry. There is the one I read out. D2(i), my Lord, tab 9. This is 1991, so I have got ahead of the chronology, so it does not matter. I will start, if I may, with page 14? A. At tab 9, you say? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think so. . P-174 MR RAMPTON: Page 14 of tab 9, Mr Irving? A. Yes. Q. Which is a speech at, well, this is called Travel Lodge Airport Inn, is that the same thing as Latvian Hall? A. 2,000 miles away, otherwise it is the same, yes. Q. Oh, yes, this is Calgary, yes. Quite right. Now I am going to start at ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: 10 lines down. MR RAMPTON: Yes, something like that. You were saying that Elie Wiesel is a liar. I am not the least bit interested in the answer to that question -- it is not a question -- that observation, not the slightest bit, so please do not but in with something about Eli Wiesel. "And so are the other eyewitnesses in Auschwitz who claim they saw gassings going on because there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz, as the forensic tests show." Mr Irving, is that right? A. Yes. Q. So when I said a moment ago that you had referred to gas chambers in the plural, as you had at the Leuchter press conference, I was right? A. Well, I could quite simply say this is a matter of English grammar. Q. No. A. I could say there is no Chinaman sitting in your team, and I could equally well say there are no Chinamen sitting in . P-175 your team. Both facts are equally correct if there is not one. Q. Yes, Mr Irving, that is, I am afraid, a rather poor answer. A. It is an exact parallel. Q. Mr Irving, you said at the Chelsea Press Conference, the Leuchter Press Conference, that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz or elsewhere? A. Mr Rampton, you are showing us one speech in Calgary and suddenly you switch to Chelsea. Q. I am going to show you a dozen references. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, shall we deal with this one first? MR RAMPTON: When you made that remark, am I right, am I not ---- A. If there was no gas chamber at Auschwitz, then there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. Q. Mr Irving, please try to focus on the question. A. It is precisely the question you asked me and I am saying yes. Q. No, you had said no gas chambers, plural, at Auschwitz; what it means we can argue about later on. You knew when you made that observation, did you not, Mr Irving, that Mr Leuchter had purported to sample the ruins of the supposed gas chambers at Birkenhau, did you not? A. Also, yes. Q. Yes. So your assertion was meant to mean there were no . P-176 gas chambers at what people generally think of as Auschwitz, that is to say Auschwitz 1 which is relatively unimportant, and also at Birkenhau? A. Oh, we are slopping over the whole thing into Birkenhau too now, are we? Q. What do you mean? Every time ---- A. I am clearly talking about Auschwitz here and you want to drag Birkenhau under that umbrella as well. Q. You meant to refer to Birkenhau, you meant people to understand Birkenhau, did you not, Mr Irving, because you knew that Mr Leuchter's forensic tests related to Birkenhau as well as Auschwitz? You also know that everybody thinks when they think of Auschwitz of the massive extermination facility at Birkenhau? A. Well, Mr Rampton, you say "everybody thinks" this, this is another of those wild assertions you make, rather like you previously said everybody says the Holocaust is the gas chambers. Q. Mr Irving ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it is true, Mr Irving, is it not? A. It is not, my Lord. It is a very important point. Q. Just speaking for myself, I had never heard of Birkenhau, but I had heard of Auschwitz. A. Well, you have heard of Auschwitz, but, unfortunately, there are two camps. One is called Auschwitz, one is called Birkenhau and there is a third camp called Monovitz . P-177 which is where the plant was, and experts, the historians, are very careful to distinguish between them. Q. Yes, but in terms of lay reaction and understanding, almost everybody regards the whole complex as being properly called "Auschwitz"? A. I was not talking down to an audience here, my Lord. I was speaking ---- Q. They were all experts? A. --- in terms of what I could justify. It would be talking down to them ---- Q. Anyway, you accept you said what is recorded as having been said here? A. Quite definitely, yes. Q. Do you also accept that you said that the existence of hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses at Auschwitz, from Auschwitz, is evidence that Auschwitz did not have a dedicated programme to kill the Jews there? A. Yes, and I think that is a very fair comment to make. If we are told that the Nazi programme was one of extermination of every Jew that Hitler could get his hands on, the fact that very large numbers evidently survived this programme, they were in the jaws of death at Auschwitz, and at Birkenhau ---- Q. Hundreds of thousands? A. Indeed. The figures are very large indeed if we look at the figures of those who survived the camps. Anne Frank . P-178 was one example, my Lord. She was in Auschwitz. She survived Auschwitz. She was evacuated to Begen-Belsen and died of typhus there with her family. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, the public perception, or what you call the legend, is that upwards of a million people were deliberately murdered in gas chambers at what people call Auschwitz. Do you know that the actual number of people murdered by that method at Auschwitz 1 was between 10 and 15,000? A. No, I do not know that. Q. Where did Mr Leuchter do his forensic tests precisely? Tell me that. A. Can we look at the report? Q. Sorry, take the samples for the forensic tests. A. Can we look at the report and see? Q. No, no. I want to know what you know about this. I really do not want you to deflect my questions by forever trying to refer to something else. Tell me, if will, whether you know as a fact or you knew as a fact, rather, at the time when you were speaking here that he had taken samples from the ruins of crematoria 2, 3, 4 and 5 at Birkenhau? A. I am certainly not going to answer a detailed question like that from memory of a document I saw 12 years ago. Q. You knew he had taken samples from Birkenhau, did you not? A. Yes. . P-179 Q. You knew that those samples had been subjected to forensic chemical tests, did you not? A. Yes. Q. Right. Please turn to page 11 of this transcript that we are presently looking at. About halfway, just under halfway, I would say two thirds of the way down, there is a sentence which begins: "And it was the forensic tests". A. Yes. Q. "And it was the forensic tests", those, Mr Irving, in your mind are the Liechter tests at Auschwitz One and at Birkenhau? A. Yes. Q. As you have just told us: "On the gas chambers" plural "in Auschwitz which has totally exploded the legend", now what is "the legend"? A. The legend of Auschwitz as a factory of death, purpose-built with gas chambers that clanked into operation and killed upwards, as you say, of a million people. Q. Of which the major component, as I have just suggested to you, by a very long way was Birkenhau? A. Yes. Q. Thank you. Now can we please go to ---- A. A major component of a legend, yes. Q. Of course, Mr Irving. Page 22. I am going to read from the beginning actually of this is in connection with that . P-180 piece of pleading that I read out to you, from the beginning of the big paragraph about a quarter of the way down the page: "There is more to come. 'Irving has been welcomed in Ottawa. Less publicized but no less disgusting are Irving's on women. He argues that women's brains are 10 per cent smaller than men's". This is now Mr Irving speaking: "You see they are scraping, it is true, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel now. They are trying to appeal to all the organizations in Ottawa who are being called together under a mass demonstration against the gays, the lesbians, the communists, the trade unions, all these people". A. You will notice I do not mention the Jews there even in this audience, is that not surprising for an anti-Semitic? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us read it through. MR RAMPTON: "All these people are being called out to demonstrate against me on October 6th." Was that true? A. Yes, we had rented the biggest hall in Ottawa for me to speak in and massive attempts were being made to shut me up.
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