Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day012.05 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Also the passage starting at the bottom of page 256, "Wo die Juden sich selbst uberlassen waren", down to the end of the first paragraph on the next page, and this is what Hitler is recorded as having said, is it not? A. Yes. It is in the subjunctive, so it is Adolf Hitler speaking, quoted in reported speech. Q. Yes. Whether accurate or not, it is a report by Schmidt or the tape recorder or both, the hidden microphone, of what both Ribbentrop and Hitler are said to have said on that occasion? MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, if it is in reported speech, it cannot be a transcript of a tape, can it? A. It is the way the diplomats worked. It is the same with the meeting between Churchill and Stalin. The interpreter would take notes as he went along but, as he interpreted between the two of them, he would take down what Hitler said, write down a note ---- Q. This is not a transcript, you are saying? A. No it is not, but it is a very accurate transcript. Q. It is an account of what was on the tape. A. It also accurate reflects the language used, too. MR RAMPTON: You have used it yourself as being a reliable account? . P-37 A. Schmidt is a very accurate source. Q. It is not in dispute that it is an accurate account of what was said. A. He was a professional diplomat of very high calibre. Q. Could I then ask you to look at how you represented this meeting on 17th April 1943 between Horthy and Hitler? A. Apart from the mix up on the dates, right? Q. No, there is rather more to it than that, I am afraid, Mr Irving. "Mix up" is not the word that I am going to use when we look to see what was said on the 16th, but there is more to it than that, I am afraid. Could you look, first of all, please, at Hitler's War 1977, page 509? It is the second volume, D 1 (ii). A. Yes. Q. I am going to start, if I may, with the first complete paragraph on page 509: "Nor was the language Hitler and Ribbentrop used to prod the Hungarian regent into taking a sterner line over his Jewish citizens very delicate. The Nazis found it intolerable that 800,000 Jews should still be moving freely around a country in the heart of Europe- particularly just north of the sensitive Balkans. For many months Germany had applied pressure to the Hungarian Jews to be turned over to the appropriate German agencies for deportation to 'reservations in the east'". A. Note the quotation marks. . P-38 Q. Yes. This is the 1977 version, I remind you, Mr Irving. A. Yes. Q. "It was argued that so long as they remained they were potential rumormongers, purveyors of defeatism, saboteurs, agents of the enemy secret service, and contact men for an 'international Jewry" now embattled against Germany. "Events in Poland were pointed to as providing an ugly precedent: there were reports of Jews roaming the country, committing acts of murder and sabotage. The eviction of the Jews ordered by Hitler had recently been intensified by Himmler's order that even those Jews left working for armaments and concerns in the Generalgouvernement were to be housed collectively in camps and eventually to be got rid as well. In Warsaw, the 50,000 Jews surviving in the ghetto were on the point of staging an armed uprising -- with weapons and ammunition evidently sold to them by Hitler's fleeing fleeing allies as they passed westward through the city". A. They would be Italians. Q. "Himmler ordered the ghetto destroyed and its ruins combed out for Jews . 'This (that to say this uprising) is just the kind of incident that shows how dangerous these Jews are'". To whom in those quotation marks, Mr Irving, did you intend to attribute that sentence? A. Presumably to Himmler. . P-39 Q. Your very next sentence is this: "Poland should have been an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler argued". A. Yes. This is a new paragraph. This is another topic, the first sentence of the coming paragraph. Q. No, Mr Irving. What you are trying to suggest there is that Hitler used the Warsaw ghetto uprising, which in fact did not happen until two days later, as a means of prodding Horthy into taking sterner measures against his Jews, are you not? A. No. I said quite clearly that the Warsaw ghetto uprising was about to happen. In other words, it had not happened yet. Q. "Himmler ordered the ghetto destroyed and its ruins combed out for Jews. 'This is just the kind of incident that shows how dangerous these Jews are'". A. We are on the point of staging an armed uprising, so it has not happened yet. I can only repeat that. Q. "Poland should have been an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler argued. He related how Jews who refused to work there were shot; those who could not work just wasted away". The German word is Verkommen, is it not? A. Yes, which means wasted away, to rot away. Q. "Jews must be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, he said, using his favourite analogy. Was that so cruel when one considered that even innocent creatures like hare and deer to be put down" (the German word was getturtit). . P-40 A. Put down means killing, does it not? Q. Killed. A. This is a very accurate precis so far of what is in a much longer paragraph by Paul Schmidt, I think. Q. -- "To prevent their doing damage? Why preserve a bestial species", the German is die bestien, which means the beasts, does it not? A. Yes, but remember we are writing a literary work which is by David Irving, not by Paul Schmidt. Q. Well, actually by Adolf Hitler. "Whose ambition was to inflict bolshevism on us all. Horthy apologetically noted that he had done all that he decently could against the Jews: 'But they can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated', he protested. Hitler reassured him: 'There is no need for that'. But just as in Slovakia, they ought to be isolated in remote camps where they could no longer infect the healthy body of the public; or they could be put to work in the mines, for example. He himself did not mind being temporarily excoriated for his Jewish policies, if they brought him tranquillity. Horthy left unconvinced.". Where in that transcript of the meeting of 17th April, Mr Irving, do we find that passage? A. Which passage are you talking about? MR JUSTICE GRAY: "There is no need for that". MR RAMPTON: From"Horthy apologetically noted" down to "Horthy . P-41 left unconvinced". A. I do not know. I would have to have time to look at these papers. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take your time, because those words are in quotation marks. MR RAMPTON: I would not trouble taking too much time, Mr Irving. It was said on the 16th, as the second piece of extract from Schmidt, that you got there will tell you. A. On which page. Q. On page 245. A. Yes. Q. At the bottom of the fourth paragraph we find words, if you want to check the paragraph to see that I am right, attributed to Horthy: [German- document not provided]. He is saying, "Well, all right, but I do not think that we can murder or otherwise kill them", is he not? A. It is difficult because we have only got three pages of this transcript here. Q. I have more or less the whole extract if you are fussed about that, Mr Irving. A. And, of course, your imputation is that this is the only source that I have used, is it not? Q. No. Carry on reading, please. You can make your point in a moment. A. You asked where I got this quotation from and I was trying . P-42 to answer your question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, which quotation are you talking about? A. "They can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you se, that seems to be an accurate representation of what you have just read out. MR RAMPTON: Yes. What you have done is lifted what was said on 16th and put it on 17th to make Hitler look better, have you not? A. How does it make him look better if I get the date wrong by one day? How does that make him ---- Q. You quote precisely what Hitler said on 16th. A. Yes. Q. Which is [German - document not provided]. A. Yes, well, OK, you have found it. Q. "There is no need for that"? A. You have found it then, good. Q. That is on 16th, Mr Irving. A. As I said about five minutes ago, there was mix up of dates when we wrote this first edition by one day. Q. A mix up, Mr Irving? A. Yes. Q. What you have done is deliberately to transfer something gentler that Hitler said on 16th in order to mitigate or water down the brutality of what he said on 17th? A. How could it possibly mitigate it? It is ridiculous. And what is your evidence for saying I deliberately did it? . P-43 Let me explain, in case his Lordship does not realize, that when I wrote this book it was written on the basis of 20,000 pink filing cards, and it is very easy when you are writing a manuscript and you have 25 filing cards to the left of your typewriter which you have collected over the previous five or 10 years to juxtapose two filing cards so you get one date wrong. There is nothing deliberate about that. These things happen. Q. You transposed an earlier date, it is quite clear -- do you have a copy of this Hillgruber book? A. I will write a formal admission for you if you want. I got the date wrong by one day, but to say that this is deliberately done for a purpose is perverse. Q. You actually repeated it? A. What you do not like is Adolf Hitler saying, "We cannot kill them". Q. No, I accept that Adolf Hitler did not say that anyway, he said, "That is not necessary"? A. Yes. Q. I accept that he said that. A. Well, that is what you do not like. Q. I do not mind what Adolf Hitler said. He is not on trial, Mr Irving. In a sense, what is on trial here is your historiography. A. You are absolutely right. Q. This is a bent piece of history? . P-44 A. You are absolutely right, but to say that I got the date wrong by one and, therefore, this is a deliberate misrepresentation of Adolf Hitler's views. Q. No, if you have an entry for 167th and an entry for 17th? A. A filing card for the 16th and a filing card for the 17th. Q. It involves removing from the 16th and transferring to the 17th something which was said the day before, and you know that, do you not? A. Well, maybe you can explain to the court because it certainly surpasses my understanding how that in some way mitigates Adolf Hitler's guilt or otherwise or how it can be said to be a deliberate perversion, the fact that a date is wrong by one digit. Q. Ribbentrop, which you do not quote at all in the main text ---- A. The book is about Hitler, not Ribbentrop. Q. Yes. Ribbentrop makes a murder reference to a choice between extermination and concentration camp. A. In what terms does he make that reference? Shall we go back to it and see. Q. Yes, it is here. I will read it from Professor Evans which you have accepted is an accurate translation? A. Ribbentrop says: "The Jews must be either annihilated", "vernichte", "or taken to the concentration camps. There is no other way". Q. That is right. . P-45 A. Of course, once again we are up against that word "vernichte".
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