Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day020.03 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q. But you have here referred of course only to Professor Faurisson. Does that imply that he was my only source of any change of mind or new direction of my thinking that I may have adopted? MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Such as" are the words used. A. "Such as", yes. You were familiar with the brochure, Did 6 million really die, by Richard Verul of the National . P-19 Front published under the pseudonym of Richard Harwood. Q. You are saying I am very familiar with it. When did I become familiar with it? A. You note in 1988 that you said in the Zundel trial in the evidence you gave over 90 per cent of the brochure is factually accurate. Q. Have you also read in the diary that the Verul report was given to me to read one day before I gave evidence, and that I looked at it the same as you look at documents here in order to be able to form an opinion of it? A. I am saying you read it, Mr Irving. Q. Yes, but are you suggesting that I thought it out and read it and then used it as a basis for my arguments? MR JUSTICE GRAY: He cannot possibly answer that, can he? MR IRVING: I mean, the allegation, the suggestion, the imputation, from the witness is that I have read it and used it as a source when, in fact, I read it as an expert witness has to read documents that are put to him. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You just said you were familiar with it, Mr Irving. MR IRVING: I had sufficient familiarity with it on the basis of 24 hours study in order to be able answer questions as an expert witness. This is the point I wish to put to him. If the witness makes a statement like that, which is intended to create an impression, then I am surely entitled to rectify the impression. . P-20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you cannot ask him questions to which he obviously cannot possibly know the answer. MR IRVING: My Lord, he can because the reference to this particular report is in my diaries which he has just quoted from and it makes quite plain that the Verul(?) Report was submitted to me. It was put to me by the Defence counsel to read in order that I could answer questions on it when I came into the box. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what is the answer? A. I am not sure what the question was, my Lord. MR IRVING: Are you familiar with, have you read my diary and do you accept that, in fact, the Verul report was put to me purely for that purpose? A. That is what your diary says. I am familiar with the diary entry. The fact is that you read the report and you judged it 90 per cent correct. Similarly, you are familiar with the work of another Holocaust denier, Dr Wilhelm Steglisch which you have commented on on a number of occasions. Q. Notwithstanding your desire to move on to other matters, can we deal with one thing at a time and say that a number of documents have been put to you by me in the last few days, is that is right? A. That is right. Q. Would you find it repugnant if people said you have relied on these documents that I have put to you and that . P-21 you have read these Irving documents and that, therefore ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please, come on. It is just becoming unhelpful and argumentative. Let us get on to what matters. I say that for, I should think, the 12th time. MR IRVING: 132, Professor, page 132, line 4. I am afraid I have to demolish this witness in detail, my Lord. It is the only way I can do it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am sorry, I am intervening more than I want to, but I have told you before that on Auschwitz I do not regard Professor Evans as being, if I may say so, authoritative. Therefore, you do not have to ask interminable questions about Auschwitz. What matters starts at about page 150, as I have said many times before. MR IRVING: If I am accused of putting things into documents which are not in the documents, this goes to the root of one of the principal libels on my name, my Lord. That is in line 4. That is why I will ask this witness now to go to page 57 of the bundle and see the document to which I am referring. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 54. MR IRVING: Page 57. Is this an invoice for the supply of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz concentration camp? A. Yes, it appears to be. . P-22 Q. Do you in your report say: "It makes no mention at all of pest control"? A. Yes, I do, yes. Q. Would you now look at line 5 of the invoice, the typed portion? Do you agree that it says: "This material was sent to Auschwitz Abteilung, Entwesung und" ---- A. Yes. My mistake, Mr Irving. Q. This is your mistake? A. Yes. Q. So, in other words, I did not fake and I did not distort and I did not insert and I did not manipulate on that particular document? A. Let me read the paragraph. "The plates", we are still on the plates of your Nuremberg book, and the caption says: "Tonnes of Zyclon-B pellets, containing poisonous hydrogen cyanide, are shipped by the Degesch factory to the Pest Control division of Auschwitz and other camps including Oraneinburg in 1944". The delivery note, though, only concerns Auschwitz. I agree I overlooked the mention of the pest control in Auschwitz, but it does not affect the other camps. Q. It does not affects the other camp? But that is not the point I am making here. It is just that once again I have been accused of distorting and manipulating and you have now admitted that you are wrong? A. Well, no ---- . P-23 Q. Just as on the Spectator letter and other things. A. --- because you are illustrating, you have an illustration there of a note to Auschwitz and you are making claims on the basis of it about other camps. Q. I am not going to put to you all the other invoices which I have in the file which show deliveries to the other camps which makes the point. But the point I am making here, will you accept that, is purely that you wrongly accused me of mistranslating or distorting a document? A. I do not think I wrongly -- and I admit I am wrong on that point, yes. Q. Thank you. A. I have already admitted that. Q. Footnote 60, very briefly, you reference there the Gerstein report. Will you now accept that the Gerstein report has been totally discredited by the people you call the Holocaust deniers because of the figures and ludicrous facts it contains? A. No, I will not, no. As I have said, I am not an expert on this subject, but it is a report that is -- I will not accept simply on your word, that it has been discredited. Q. The next footnote, No. 61, you refer to an interview between me and Radio Ulster, but, unfortunately, is not produced in any of the bundle of documents, so it is difficult for me to judge how accurate this is. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you help about that, Professor Evans? . P-24 A. I cannot, I am afraid. Q. Do you know where the transcript is? A. I am unable to locate it, but we can quite well dispense with that. There are plenty of other statements here on which we can rely, as in the very next sentence: "There were no gas chambers in Auschwitz" as you said on 5th March 1990. MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the distinction between Auschwitz and Birkenhau? A. I think we have been through this in this case, Mr Irving, and that ---- Q. No, but I am asking you. Are you familiar ---- A. It is generally understood that when one talks about Auschwitz, one talks about the whole complex of all the various camps inside covered by the name of Auschwitz. When one talks about Birkenhau, that includes Birkenhau. Q. Have you been to Auschwitz? A. I have not been to Auschwitz. Q. So I cannot ask you and there is no point in my asking you questions about that. You refer on page 133 to the shower baths? A. I am not, really not an expert on this. What I am trying to do here is to assemble evidence that you have denied that there are gas chambers, there were gas chambers in ---- Q. I am placed at a disadvantage and I appreciate his . P-25 Lordship's impatience with this procedure, but you have rambled on for pages in your report about Auschwitz and included numerous false statements and I am trying to proceed at speed, but every time I ask you you say you are not an expert on this. A. What I am trying to do here is to include and present numerous statements of yours to the effect that gas chambers were not used, did not exist, and so on, at Auschwitz and elsewhere. I presented a substantial number of these statements here. I do not really propose to read them out. Q. Well, I am afraid you will have to do what I ask under cross-examination. One of them is look at line 1 at page 134, please. A. Yes. Q. "On 8th November 1990 he", that is Irving, "repeated the same claim to an audience in Toronto: 'The gas chambers that are shown to the tourists in Auschwitz are fakes'." A. Yes. Q. Do you now agree that this is true? A. It is true that you said that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we have to go through this again? You say fake, Mr Rampton says reconstruction. I have the point. MR IRVING: This is my way of now introducing a cardinal document which is on pages 59 and 60, my Lord, on which I shall very definitely rely. It is a visit by a very . P-26 well-known French news magazine called L'Expresse on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. On page 60 there is the admission that everything in it is fake, and they do not know how to tell the tourists this. MR RAMPTON: I really do not know where this is going. This was not put to Professor van Pelt who made it perfectly clear that the single gas chamber at Auschwitz (i), Sturmlager, is a post-war reconstruction and he explained ---- MR IRVING: It is a postwar reconstruction. MR RAMPTON: He explained how it had been done and that the beginning and the end of that story. How Professor Evans is expected to deal with this, I do not know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The difficulty, as you know, is that one does have the section on Auschwitz. That is the problem. MR RAMPTON: I know, but, as your Lordship knows, as I have shown your Lordship already and Mr Irving has been in court, again and again Mr Irving has referred to gas chambers in the plural, not just at Auschwitz but elsewhere. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I just have never from the word go understood the point that you make about these so- called fake gas chambers. MR RAMPTON: There are two points, my Lord. First of all, Mr Rampton calls it a "reconstruction", I call it a "fake". The second point is if I am accused of having a . P-27 criminal conviction in Germany, which is used against me by the Defence, I am entitled to point out the criminal conviction is for saying precisely this sentence and it turns out to be true. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not remotely interested in your criminal conviction in Germany. I simply am not. MR IRVING: I am indebted to your Lordship for saying that because the Defence has repeatedly referred to it ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am now going to rule that you get on. Please, Mr Irving, this is enough about Auschwitz. I just do not think that there is anything to be gained by any further cross-examination on Auschwitz. You have spent a long time on it. MR IRVING: Just about Auschwitz or about the Final Solution, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not stopping you on the Final Solution. MR IRVING: Page 134. "Systematic nature of the extermination". You take exception to my suggestion that Jews were the victims of a large number of rather run-of-the-mill criminal elements, and I mention there the Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians? A. And Austrians. Q. Yes. A. And Germans. Q. Are you familiar with the report by Jan Karski who was one of the first people to report on the Final Solution? . P-28 A. Not -- I am not, no.
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