Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.02
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

MR RAMPTON:  I have the original discovery copy and it has lots
of pencil marks on it, or what appear to be copies of
pencil marks, to be exact.
MR IRVING:  Can I take you to the little bundle of documents?
We will jump several stages in this case, my Lord.
Towards the end of the little bundle of documents probably
on the second page ----
A.Sorry, you will have to tell me which little bundle, Mr
Irving.  I have plenty here.
Q.The one I gave you this morning.
A.Let me try and find it.  Yes.
Q.About two pages from the end, is that a letter from me to

.  P-10



somebody called Mrs Weckert dated June 3rd 1979?
A.It is.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am sorry.  I wonder if I am looking at
the
wrong thing?
MR IRVING:  It is two pages from the end of that little
bundle,
my Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not think it has found its way here.
It
does not appear in my clip, at any rate not two pages
from
the end?
A.This is the one with 693 in the top right hand corner.
Q.Does the 693 indicate that that letter was in my
discovery?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.  I am sure it does.
MR IRVING:  Am I replying in that letter to a sehr
ausfuhrliche
Darstellung which this lady has sent to me?
A.Yes.
Q.I am thanking her for a very ----
A.Extensive.
Q.Extensive description.
A.Yes.
Q.Will you accept that this was a description of the
events
of the Kristallnacht as she has researched it up to
that
point?
A.I accept that that is her tendentious account of the
Reichskristallnacht.
Q.Very well.  Will you look in the second paragraph and
see

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that I make criticisms already of her account and
suggest
that I am not going to go along with everything that
she
writes?  You cannot just dismiss the report of the SA
Group -- do I write that?
A.You write that, yes.
Q.This will certainly interest you most of all?  I also
refer to the diary of von Hassell, the diary of
Grosfort
and other contemporary sources?
A.Yes, Mr Irving.  As I have already said, I do not say
that
you take over all her ideas.  You do not, for example,
depict, as she does, the pogrom of the
Reichskristallnacht
as devised and put forward by Zionists in order to
cast
opprobrium on the Nazi regime and cause it to fall.
Even
you have some scruples, Mr Irving.
Q.Is possible that an amateur historian like Ingrid
Weckert
will succeed by her obsessive diligence in turning up
items, or documents, or conversations with people that
she
conducted, that would be use to the general body of
historical opinion?
A.I would not regard her as an amateur historian, Mr
Irving.
Q.An amateur writer, an amateur chronicler?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Answer the thrust of the question,
Professor
Evans.
A.There is always a possibility, yes, of course, that
anyone
can do that.
MR IRVING:  Is this the kind of correspondence you would
expect

.  P-12



to see between one writer and another where one writer
is
saying, "I found this kind of thing", and the other
writer
writes back and says, "well, I think you got this
right
but you got that wrong, here are some documents that
I have got" -- does this go on?
A.I have not said that you take over all her ideas, or
that
you agree with absolutely everything she says.  The
fact
remains, Mr Irving, that in your accounts of the
Reichskristallnacht some years later than 1979, and
after
she had published her work in the course of the 1980s,
you
do adopt a number of her ideas.
Q.Have you seen the lengthy Darstellung that she sent
me?
It was in the discovery.
A.We used her book and her ----
Q.You have used her book?
A.Wait a minute, and the articles with the pencil lines
in
the margin.
Q.You have used her articles, but have you seen the
lengthy
typescript letter she sent me with all the details of
the
research that she had done?
A.We have not used that in the report, Mr Irving.  We
have
used her -- this is not a report about Frau Weckert
and
her works.
Q.But quite a lot of it is about her, is it not?
A.The report is about you, and your use of her work.
There
are one, two, three, four, five, about half a dozen
pages

.  P-13



here about your reliance on aspects of her work rather
than on your own research.
Q.The inference you are giving in your report -- I am
going
it move on very shortly from this -- is that I have
relied on her book.  You go in great detail into her
book.  You say that her book has been black listed by
the
Germans.  It has been put on the censorship list, has
it?
A.It is illegal to sell or lend it to any person under
the
age of 18 because it is regarded by the authorities as
an
anti-semitic work which is liable to corrupt young
minds,
and also shows no evidence of even minimal attempts at
truthfulness and objectivity.  Let me say once again,
Mr Irving, that what I demonstrate in my report is
that
you have taken some, although not all, of Ingrid
Weckert's
ideas from her writings, from her articles, which then
were reprinted and put together as the book.
Q.But you have not made no reference at all to the fact
that
I had from her a lengthy special Darstellung which she
wrote at my request and which has no reference to her
book, which is the thing that has been banned and on
which
I pass critical comment?
A.Are you claiming that this is entirely different from
the
book and the articles, it says completely things and
that
that is what you use in your book, Mr Irving?  I do
not
think so.
Q.In the corner of the world where you come from,
Professor

.  P-14



Evans, do you agree with the censoring of books,
blacklisting of books?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not think we need to get into that.
A.That is an entirely different matter.
MR IRVING:  Why did you mention it then in this report?
A.Because the German authorities have investigated her
work
and decided after the investigation that it is
anti-semitic, corrupting and shows no evidence of even
minimal attempts at truthfulness or objectivity.
Q.As you said earlier, have we anything----
A.What they do as a result of that is a matter for them.
Q.Have we anything to learn from Germany in this last
century about freedom of speech?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not think that question helps, Mr
Irving.
A.I take that as a rhetorical question, Mr Irving.
Q.Yes.  Leave me to deal with the question.
MR IRVING:  In paragraph 10 on page 308 you object to the
fact
that I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date.
What on earth is wrong with that?
A.Sorry, where is this?
Q.In paragraph 10 on page 308.  You say he unilaterally
alters the date of arrival of Goebbels back in Berlin.
I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date.  What
is
wrong with that?
A.Let me just read back here.  I am afraid this might

.  P-15



require ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Professor Evans, if this is a point that
you
do not really place much reliance on, I think I would
say
so.
MR IRVING:  Again it is an allegation that I have relied on
the
book, and the wrong date in the book.  In fact, of
course,
I have relied on the correct date from other sources.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It does appear to me, Mr Irving, that
whether
you actually relied on the book is, in a sense, a bit
of a
side issue.  Even if you have not, the criticism that
is
made of you, and you have not really addressed it, is
that
you are content to cite a source who Professor Evans
says
is anti-semitic and not a worth while source for a
reputable historian to use.
MR IRVING:  Let me address that point now, my Lord, by way
of a
response to your Lordship.  This is to say that there
may
be some historians with a political bent who will
disregard entirely evidence coming from people of
whose
politics they disprove.  If we were to do that with
all
sources, of course, we would be left without a very
large
body of historical documentation, for example, the
works
of all the Nazi war criminals, somebody like Rudolf
Hoess,
Kommandant of Auschwitz, who clearly was not very
pro-Semitic, to disregard the writings as somebody on
the
basis of the fact that they have expressed anti-
semitic
views, or racist views, or any other views of which
the

.  P-16



researcher personally disapproves, is a very poor
criterion for selectivity of documentary materials, in
my
submission, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, I see.  Would you like to comment
very
briefly on that?  Turn that into a question, if you
see
what I mean, and give your answer.
A.I do not think anybody suggested that Rudolf Hoess was
an
historian.
MR IRVING:  Very well, if that is your answer.  Now will
you go
down to page 309 and the justification for my having
dealt
with that previous matter at such length, my Lord, is
the
first line of paragraph 1, "another instance of
Irving's
poor scholarship is".  In other words, you are saying
that
all the aforegoing is evidence of my poor scholarship?
A.Indeed, yes.
Q.Although you now admit that I did not use the book, I
have
not got the book?
A.Do we have to go over this all over again, Mr Irving?
I
have already given my answer about five times to that.
Q.I think I have made my point.  Page 312, line 6 of
your
report?
A.Yes.
Q.My Lord, I necessarily have to leap forward onto
little
mountain peaks like this, because otherwise we will
get
bogged down in the minefield.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  As long as they are mountain peaks.  You
also

.  P-17



must explain to me in what context if you go to the
middle
of a paragraph.  We are on now the testimony of
Shirmeister and Fritsche.
MR IRVING:  Professor Evans, you objected to the fact that
I have mentioned the figure of 91 deaths in the
Reichskristallnacht in the previous paragraphs, or are
you
going to insist that we look for the actual
references?
A.Well, it is not a very important point, Mr Irving.
Q.Can you allow me to decide what is important?
A.No.  Please, I think I am entitled to say what points
in
my report I regard as important, and what I do not
regard
as important.  You may disagree with that.  That is
another matter.  But I am perfectly entitled to say
that.
This is not a particularly important point ----
Q.Do you agree you spent an entire page describing this?
A.Will let me speak, please, Mr Irving?  I am getting
very
fed up with these constant interruptions.  I will read
this out, OK?
  "In the War Path, published in 1978, Irving
gave the official figure of 91 killed, arrived at by
the
Nazis themselves.  Of course, this figure is still far
too
low, and does not account for suicides, of which there
were 680 by Jews during or shortly after the pogrom in
Vienna alone.  Others were killed after their
transport to
the concentration camps.  However, many other
historians
have quoted the figure of 91 deaths, and Irving's
account

.  P-18



in 1978 at least gives some insight into what happened
during the pogrom".
Q.Will you please now stop?  That is all we need?
A.This is intended to comment relatively favourably, or
to
sort of find some redeeming features in the account
you
gave in 1978.  It is not a very important criticism.
Q.You say it is not an important criticism.  You devote
an
entire paragraph, an entire page, to the suggestion
that
my entire portrayal is designed to diminish the
suffering
of the Jews.  You pick on the figure of 91 and it
turns
out many other historians have quoted precisely the
same
figure.
A.Mr Irving, let us read on a bit, shall we?

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