Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day008.07 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. For some idiotic reason, he has put it in inverted commas, which rather gives the game away, does it not? A. It does, yes. Q. That is code for gassing truck, is it not? A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which camp is being referred to? MR RAMPTON: Semlernin outside Belgrade. So the same business is going on there as elsewhere. I do not know how many they managed to -- well, you can see how many they managed to polish off if you look at 5212 of Professor Browning's report? A. Can I stay with this document for a moment, Mr Rampton? Q. Yes. A. And say, if I was cantankerous, there are any number of reasons why I could challenge this document, but I do not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then you do not need to spend time on it. A. For example, it is on non-standard German size paper. It does not use the S runes. It has wierd typed toward in SS runes and so on. But I do not. I fully accept that it is . P-57 genuine and I think it important to make that distinction. This is quite clearly a very sinister document. MR RAMPTON: Do you now accept therefore that statements that you have made to the effect that oh, yes they used gas trucks on a very limited scale for experiments were just plain wrong? A. Yes. Q. And do you also accept, which is the important question, that, before making a statement of that kind about such an important matter, it matters not that these people were Jews, they were human beings, do you not think, before making such statements, it behoved you to do a little bit of research in accessible files? A. Mr Rampton, I was being asked this question at a press conference, if you remember. I did not volunteer the information. Somebody asked me did I accept that there had been such use of gas trucks. My information at that time was based on what I knew from Adolf Eichmann's papers that he himself had taken part in those experimental runs. Q. I am just pausing only, Mr Irving, because I want to find what you said about it in the pleadings. A. Yes. It is in answer to a question, if I am right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the pleadings I think it is a limited experimental basis, is it not? A. I think this really falls into two or three parts. I quite clearly said yes, there were gassings in gas . P-58 trucks, but at that time the state of my knowledge was that it had not been on anything like this scale. MR RAMPTON: This was probably some time served in 1996 or 1997 I should think. Yes, it is in the reply, my Lord. It is on page 3 of the reply. It was served in March 1997. One part of it says this: "It is denied that the plaintiff has denied the Holocaust. It is denied that the plaintiff has denied that gas chambers were used by the Nazis as the principal means of carrying out that extermination". I think those two sentences are going to be contradictory with what next follows. "They may have used them on occasion on an experimental scale which frankly is not denied". That is in March 1997. This is a considered statement by you for the purpose of these proceedings? A. Yes. Q. And I have just shown you what is not a particularly secret document in the historical sense. A. Which shows that that element of my statement was wrong, yes. Q. And you made the same statement to the public at large? A. In response to a question on the basis of my information at that time. Q. I think I am going to be enabled to contradict that, too, in a moment. A. I think it also has to be said that these gas trucks of course did not carry on month after month after month . P-59 after month after month. According to the information in this document and others, it just operated for a few weeks. Q. Tell me, Mr Irving, we got to 97,000 in a month. A. Yes, which certainly seems an incredible figure, when you have only three trucks, they can only take 20 at a time and they have to drive 20 miles into the country side. But I do not have the information on which to challenge the figure, apart from the inherent improbability of that figure. Q. It is a massive figure. A. You also have to remember that they are bragging and boasting about what they have achieved. Q. Yes, of course. There is always that danger, that they are seeking to please somebody. If that were so, Mr Irving, I think that letter about the 97,000 sent to Himmler, I cannot remember? A. Yes. Q. They must have believed, if they were exaggerating, that Himmler was avid for information, telling him that vast numbers of Jews had been murdered. A. Yes. Q. Right, and you say, oh, it is not really credible that Hitler knew anything about that? A. I do not see the connection between those two statements. Q. You have been, I think, in the services, have you not? . P-60 A. Is it not remarkable we have documents of this quality for everything below Himmler, but not a single page above Himmler? Q. Yes. How often do you say that Hitler and Himmler met in the course of a week? A. It varied through the year, depending on whether he was in or out of favour. Q. When they were on good terms? A. I would suggest two or three times a week. Q. You were in the army, I think? A. No. Q. Navy? A. No. Q. Air force? A. No. Q. Right. So you have not been in service? Have you ever worked in a company? A. No. Q. Do you know anything about how companies work? For example, do you know anything about the day-to-day relationship between a managing director and a chief executive? A. No. Q. You live in a little world of your own, do you, Mr Irving? You know nothing about the means by which humans convey information to each other in matters of . P-61 importance on a day to day---- A. Mr Rampton, it was not the question you asked. You asked specifically whether I had been in companies, army, navy or air force and I said no. Q. Do you not think it more than likely, leave aside report number 51 which speaks for itself, that on a day-to- day basis Himmler and Hitler would have talked about all the things that concerned him. Obviously Hitler, as leader of his country, would be chiefly concerned with the progress of the war, would he not? A. I do not think so. I think there is written evidence that, whenever people went to Hitler with stories of the atrocities they had heard about, Himmler's immediate response was always as relayed back to the person concerned, usually through Lammas, "Do not bother the Fuhrer with this, he will only say this is all Himmler's business and I do not want to hear about it". Q. Then why did Himmler bother having the Korheir report edited in March 1943 to take out the word sonderbehandlung? A. Very interesting, is it not, that it was camouflaged downward? Q. Answer my question, please. If it is right that Hitler was not interested in that kind of thing and would just have swept it aside and said oh, that is all Himmler's business, silly old fool, he is passionate about this . P-62 Jewish question, it would not mattered, would it? A. I think the Korheir report really needs a discussion of its own without being dealt with in this rather flippant manner. Q. Please, Mr Irving, could I have an answer to my question? Why do you think that Himmler had that report sanitized, as I put it? A. Well I am not inside Himmler's head but, if the original report said expressus verbus, or as plain as a pike staff, that a million Jews had been killed or sonderbehandlung zugefuhrt, but if Himmler says I want a shorter version without that in so that I can show it to the Fuhrer, I think that that very much supports what I have said rather than what you are maintaining. Q. What it means, Mr Irving, is this, is it not, that if the word sonderbehandlung had been left in, Hitler would have known exactly what it meant? A. Well, in the way that it was written, if you remember, if 1,200,000 people are subjected to special treatment at a camp, that does not mean they are having their hair cut. Q. It did not say at a camp. It said in the Warthegau and I think in the General Government. A. I beg to differ. I know that document fairly clearly. Q. Maybe we will go back to later on. I do not have a copy of that. A. I really think that document, if we are going to deal with . P-63 it, should be dealt with extensively rather than here in this rather cursory manner. Q. Mr Irving, I am taking what I know of it simply from your own book. A. Yes, but you have quoted it wrongly there from memory, and I know the exact text. Q. I am afraid, Mr Irving, that you are going to have to look at this, because this is important. This is one of the two most important aspects of the case. A. Mr Rampton, you will always find I am willing to eat humble pie if I have made a mistake. There is never any question about that. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is D3(i), tab 30. Mr Irving, do you have there a paper by you with the suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels papers? A. Yes. Q. It is presented by you at the 11th IHR conference in October 1992? A. Yes. Q. Do you write these things before you present them? A. No. Q. So you spoke, as it were, off the top of your head. A. I am well known for that. Q. Yes, I can believe that. A. Some people say it is waffling but other people say it is lecturing. . P-64 Q. You see, Mr Irving, that the questions begin at page 174. Is this yet again one of those papers that you had checked, or you checked or approved before publication in print? A. I would probably have edited it for split infinitives and the like. Q. Yes, quite. Now turn to page 173. Remember this is in October 1992. This is a bit I read to you earlier but it is well we see it in context, as part of what shall I say, not a rehearsed but as part of a serious paper presented to something which calls itself the Institute for Historical Review. You see the passage that I read to you earlier halfway down the page, bang in the middle of the left-hand column on page 173. I do not know why Eichmann recounted that kind of detail in his memoirs? A. Can we have what the detail was? Q. Absolutely not. A. May I read if out after you have dealt with it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes you can, but then I will ask you why you want it read out. Let's get on with Mr Rampton's question. MR RAMPTON: So shall I. Go down to the end of that paragraph in the middle of the page on page 173. You say: "So I accept this kind of experiment, we are talking about a gassing experiment in a bus witnessed by Eichmann, what you call a gassing experiment, so I accept that this kind . P-65 of experiment was made on a very limited scale but that it was rapidly abandoned as being a totally inefficient way of killing people. But I do not accept that the gas chambers existed and this is well known. I have seen no evidence at all that gas chambers existed". Unless you are going to quibble about the word "chambers", Mr Irving, the fact is that what you said about the gassing on that bus and the limited kind of scale for that kind of experimental gassing, was just rubbish, was it not? A. Mr Rampton, when you talk about gas chambers and the public perception, people are imagining what they see at Auschwitz, the big concrete fixtures, the chimneys, the steel doors, the whole of the paraphernalia. I am sure that I am right on that.
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