Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day019.03 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR IRVING: Oh, very definitely, my Lord, I submit. I have already suggested it in connection with the Hamas and Hisbollah allegation; I have been exposed to very severe risks. In connection with being accused of being a Holocaust denier, I have been exposed to the risk of what . P-19 happened to Professor Faurisson. His jaw was smashed so badly, it was wired together for six weeks and he had acid poured in his eyes, and he was a man slightly older than myself. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have tried to explain to you earlier that all this sort of thing can be relevant to damage, but it has to be linked to the Defendants. MR IRVING: I shall be making a submission on damages later on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just bear in mind that that is the way I am seeing it. MR IRVING: As this witness did refer to Professor Faurisson in terms of rebuke, I thought it appropriate to show him photographs of what happened to people who stick to their principle at the other end of the scale. A. I do not think you can make me responsible for what happened to Professor Faurisson. Q. No. Witness, you have read or your researchers have read very large parts of my diaries and private papers and lectures and speeches? A. Yes. Q. Have you at any time in any of those readings come across any evidence whatsoever that I was associated with the Hamas or the Hisbollah terrorist leaders or with Lewis Farakan, the notorious black American anti-semite? A. Well, that was not what I was asked to do, so we did not read them for that purpose. . P-20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Even so, can you answer? A. We read the material in order to, well, I am trying to explain that my expertise may be not very good at that particular level, there were other expert witnesses who were asked to do that. I did collect information which is on page 174 and afterwards of my report, which is about your connections with Holocaust deniers, and I did find -- I am trying to find it in my report -- connections with Ahmed Rami, page 198. Q. Can you tell the court what these alleged connections were? A. Yes. You appeared on the same platform as him in the so-called Leuchter Congress, 23rd March 1991. Q. Is there any reason why I should have recognized Mr Rami, in your opinion? A. I think if one appears on a platform with other speakers, one knows who they are. Q. Is there any connection at all between this Mr Rami and the gentleman, Mr Farakan that I mentioned, or the Hisbollah and the Hamas? A. I have to claim that I do not have any direct expertise on that. I cannot say. Q. Have you found any kind of correspondence between myself and Mr Rami? Has any been shown to you? A. Not to my recollection. Q. So apart from this ---- . P-21 A. But, as I say, that is not what I was really looking for. I am really concerned with looking at connections between you and people whose main business is Holocaust deniers. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So the answer to the original question, whether you have discovered any links, as it were, is no? A. Is no, that is right. That is not to say that there is not any but... Q. No, but you have not come across it? A. I have not come across it, no. I mean, he, Rami, occupies about four lines of my report. MR IRVING: Yes. Is there any particular reason why you mentioned Rami in this connection? Is he a terrorist or an extremist? I mean, to me, he unknown. I know nothing at all about him. A. Well, I find that difficult to believe since you appeared on the same platform as him in a meeting, a public meeting. He is an extremist who runs an extreme anti-semitic website which I have looked at. Q. When you say that he appeared on the same platform, do you have photographs of him standing shoulder to shoulder with me or are you just saying that he was there one day and I was there the next day? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you challenge having been on the same platform as him? MR IRVING: I want to know what he means by this, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I am asking am asking you because you . P-22 have to put your case, Mr Irving. I mentioned that on Thursday. Is it your case that you have never appeared on a platform with Mr Rami? MR IRVING: Never knowingly appeared. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Never? MR IRVING: If I can put it like that, my Lord. A. I footnote video tape 201. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Never knowingly appeared? I see. MR IRVING: Well, quite simply, because when is this video taped alleged to have been? A. 23rd March 1991. MR IRVING: 1991. So it is nine years ago and this is somebody who has, apparently, stood near me on a platform and this is good as the connection gets? A. Well, you were both speakers. As I say, this is not a very important part of my report; it only occupies a few lines. Q. Will you turn to page 37 of your report, please? We are now moving on, my Lord. Paragraph 244. You talk about the unreliability of Hitler's former aids as a source? A. Yes. Q. And, effectively, my gullibility in falling for everything they said? A. No. I would not accuse you of being gullible, Mr Irving. Q. My lack of critical nous, shall we say, in accepting what Hitler's Adjutants and secretaries and people have told me . P-23 -- is that the burden of that paragraph 244? A. Critical intention, I think. Q. Do you accept, however, that on numerous occasions I have persuaded Hitler's private staff and the Adjutants and their juniors to reveal to me matters which were against their interest, or against the interest of Adolf Hitler which is probably more significant? Do you accept this is true? Do you remember from The War Path where Hitler's private secretary, Krista Schroeder, describes to me on the night of the long knives, June 30th 1934, when they returned to the Chancellery afterwards Hitler vanished and had a shower? A. Yes, I remember that. Q. Do you remember what Hitler said to her when he reappeared, roughly? A. Very vaguely. You would have to remind me of the exact words. Q. "So Fraulein Schroeder, now I have had a shower and I feel as clean as a new born babe"? A. That is right. Q. Do you feel that speaks highly for Adolf Hitler, that he murders his closest compatriots and has a shower and washes himself clean? A. No, I do not. But you do say in a document which I quote on page 604 that, once the former members of Hitler's staff, once you had won their confidence I think you mean, . P-24 they thought well now at last they were doing their chief a service. So it seem to be your view that you persuade them that they were doing Hitler a service by talking to you. Q. I think the sense is that they were doing history a service. A. That is not what you said. Q. They were telling the story -- what are the exact words that I used? A. The exact words were, and I think you have reversed the sense here a bit, once they had won your confidence -- I think you mean once you had won their confidence -- and they knew you were not going to go and report them to the State Prosecutor, they trusted you and they thought well, now at last they were doing their chief a service. Q. Yes. How would they be doing their chief a service if they told me details of how Hitler had ordered the liquidation of the inmates of a concentration camp? A. That is not what Krista Schroeder said, was it, to you? Q. I am giving specific examples now. You said that I persuaded these people to talk, but that I then fell for them, so to speak, and that I did not manage to use my methods, my oily greasy methods, shall I put it like, in fact to get from them information against their self- interest which is what I contend I did. A. Oily and greasy are not my words. . P-25 Q. They are words I put in -- I oiled these remarks out of them, shall I put it like that? If I put this one example to you, that I persuaded an SS officer who was on Hitler's staff to describe to me the meeting between Hitler and Himmler in April 1945, where Hitler gave the order to liquidate all the inmates of Buchenwald if they could not be evacuated in time, do you remember that episode? A. Yes, I do. Q. Was that in any way -- did it reflect well on Adolf Hitler, do you think? A. No, it certainly did not, but obviously there are some places in which they do reveal things, at which some of them reveal things, which are not ---- Q. I will give you only one further example because I do not wish to test his Lordship's patience but it is important here because I am accused of having exonerated Hitler and fallen for the Adjutants' wiles. You are familiar with the colour photographs that are in some of my books of Adolf Hitler's staff, are you? A. Yes. Q. Will you accept that these photographs were taken by Hitler's film cameraman whose name was Walter Frentz? A. Yes. Q. He described to me, did he not, a visit to the Eastern Front with Heinrich Himmler in August 1941 where they witnessed a mass shooting outside Minsk, to which shooting . P-26 you also refer of course, do you not? A. Yes. Q. This man Walter Frentz was present. Are you aware that he described to me in great deal at 2 o'clock one morning the whole episode, including how Himmler told him to take photographs of the shootings, and other very vivid details? A. Yes. Q. Was that in any way in his own interest to tell me that story? A. We are moving slightly away here. What we are talking about, of course, is their attitudes to, or what they report of, Hitler and Hitler's views, and in that case it really does not apply to that. Q. We will move on to Hitler's views in this connection in a minute, but will you just answer my question? If Walter Frentz told me this story, how he was with Himmler and witnessed a mass shooting, and took photographs of it, did that in any way reflect well on either himself, the witness, or on Adolf Hitler, for that matter? A. I would think no, but then he might have thought something different. Q. If I now tell you that Frentz took photographs back to Hitler's headquarters and showed them to Hitler's Chief Adjutant, and the Chief Adjutant said, "If you know what is good for you, you will destroy these photographs, . P-27 Mr Frentz", is this a significant contribution to a historical debate which I, with my methods, obtained, do you think? A. The answer is, if that is the case, then yes. I am not denying, Mr Irving, that your interviews with Hitler's former staff have contributed in some ways to historical knowledge, not at all. Q. So your judgment against me in that paragraph is overhasty, would you agree? A. No, I do not agree. I think, taken as a whole, your interviews with Hitler's staff, as I show in a chapter of the report, are uncritical, and in some cases also involve elements of falsification of what they actually said, or of the nature of their sources that you used. Q. I will come to those particular episodes later on, but in general? A. This is a general statement which is a conclusion drawn from the detailed cases that I look at later on in the report. Q. You have said that I used these statements only in the service of their chief, so to speak, and I did not put in material from the Adjutants or the secretaries which was unfavourable, and that I was uncritical in my assessment of these sources, and I have given you three episodes where quite clearly I persuaded members of Hitler's staff to reveal from their innermost memory things that they . P-28 probably told nobody else. A. Where do I say the things that you say I say? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think the word "always" is to be found, Mr Irving. I think that is the difference between you. MR IRVING: That is why I suggested that the phrase overhasty was probably justified, and overhastily rushed a judgment on me, which is not borne out by all the evidence my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The evidence I think I am hearing from Professor Evans is that usually -- that may be an under statement -- you are portraying these Adjutants as having told you things which are in Hitler's favour, but sometimes not. Is that a broad summary?
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