Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.11 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q.If I can halt the flow of words for one moment ---- . P-94 A.What Bruns is talking about is an order to continue them more discreetly, and you are presenting this as an order to stop them altogether. Indeed, what we know is that four days after Jaeckel was given his dressing down by Himmler about the shooting of transports from Berlin, the rest of the Riga ghetto of local Jews was shot by Jaeckel. Q.I hesitate to halt this kind of flow of verbiage, but I have to. A.So presumably, Himmler must have therefore discussed with Jaeckel the shootings of the Jews in Riga. Q.Can we try and keep to the point. You referred to the hard evidence, which is the harder kind of evidence, decoded messages intercepted on the same day in real time by the British, of which the SS have no knowledge that we are decoding them whatsoever and which have been in the British archives ever since then, or something said at second or third hand by a German Army General four years later? Which is the hard evidence, in your view? A.Hard evidence of what? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at the documents. It is all so unsatisfactory. Are we talking about J1 tab 3, page 17 or some other document? If you want me to follow it, you are going to have to tell me which document you are talking about. MR IRVING: I am referring to the police decodes of December 1st, 1941, on the one hand, and the Bruns document of . P-95 April 1945, on the other? A.Let us have a look. Let me see this decode. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know about the Bruns document. This simply refers to guidelines, does it not? MR IRVING: The simple question that I have asked first of all is ---- A.Could you refer me to the decode, please. Q.In the witness's opinion ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is J1 tab 3, page 17. A.Page 17. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I may be completely wrong, but I do need to be anchored to a document. MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord, and that has narrowed it down these two documents. A.The decode says: "The Jews being out-placed to the Ostland are to be" ---- Q.Will you answer my question first, please? A.I just want to read this document that you are referring to. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him read it out. You see, he is just reminding himself of what it says, Mr Irving. Just because you do not want to listen to some of what is given by way of an answer, you must not prevent him. MR IRVING: We will get to his content later, but I must ask him which class of information he considers to be harder and he will not answer this. . P-96 A.Evidence is evidence of something; otherwise, it is just a document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just read out the bit and then say what you are wanting to say. A."The Jews being out-placed" [this is an order from Himmler to Jackeln decoded by British on 1st December]. "The Jews being out-placed to Ostland are to be dealt with only in accordance with the guidelines laid down by myself and/or by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt on my orders. I would punish arbitrary and disobedient acts. (Sgd. H HIMMLER)". That refers to the Jews being placed, being transported from Germany, particularly Berlin. MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you do not have to know the content of a message to be able to answer the simple question, in your opinion as a historian and as a person who has written books on historiography, which kind of evidence is harder, in other words, more dependable as a primary source, something which is recorded at the time, in real time by British interceptors of decodes, on the one hand, or something reported at third hand in captivity by a German Army general four years later? A.As a general rule, of course, it is the first. That does not mean to say you discredit the second altogether. Q.I agree entirely, but you have to attach the appropriate weight to each of those sources in the absence of any . P-97 other support. A.Yes. Q.Right. So, our only information of what Altemeyer said, that it has to be done more surreptitiously in future - or whatever word he used more furtively - out of the public eye, is a third-hand report by Bruns as overheard by the British in April 1945? A.Yes, but he also says, Mr Irving (the previous sentence): "Here is an order that has come saying that mass shootings of this kind may no longer take place in the future, that to be done more cautiously". You cannot say that the second sentence is unreliable but the first is. In your work, you make use of the first. You not only make use of the first sentence, you know now that you are just trying to discredit what Bruns says. You actually manipulate and distort it by talking about these mass shootings, instead of saying it is mass shootings of this particular kind. Q.What is the difference between the words: "These mass shootings" and "mass shootings of this kind". A.It is quite clear. "These mass shootings" refers to all mass shootings, whereas "mass shootings of this kind" refers to ones which are indiscreet. You gather that, from me, you are incautious. You gather that, from the second sentence, that two sentences belong together. Q.Did you agree that the reference in the first part of the . P-98 statement by Altemeyer, that: "We have received orders from above that mass shootings" (let me put it like that) "are to stop", is a clear reference to the kind of signal contained in the decode? A.You are trying to ---- Q.And that therefore one has hard evidence supporting that part of his the statement, right? A.Not necessarily, because you are talking about the decode that relates to transports from Berlin, whereas really ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am missing something, Professor Evans, can you help me? A.Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The decode is said by Mr Irving to be hard evidence and obviously one understands why he says that. But hard evidence of what, because all that seems to me to say is that the Jews, as you say from Berlin, are to be dealt with in accordance with guidelines, but we do not know what the guidelines are. So I do not quite see what it is hard evidence of. Am I missing something? A.I do not think so, my Lord, no. MR IRVING: Will you read that signal out in full in a clear voice so that the court can hear it, please? The one talking about arbitrary acts and acts against the guidelines. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not frankly think it is necessary. It . P-99 has just been read, it was read yesterday and today. What is the point pout of reading it again? MR IRVING: Because it make clear reference to the fact that these shootings have found disfavour higher up and future such actions will be severely punished, and he simultaneously orders the man who does done it to come to his headquarters? A.No, it does not. It says: "The Jews being out-placed to the Ostland are to be dealt with only in accordance with the guidelines laid down by myself and/or by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt on my orders. I would punish arbitrary and disobedient acts". So if you took that, that could mean that they are only to be shot if Himmler says they are to be shot. Q.It could mean anything, could it not? It could mean that they were going to be sent to Butlin's Holiday Camp, but we are going to use common sense here, are we not? A.I do not think it could mean that, Mr Irving. Q.We are going to use common sense here where it says that there has been a mass shooting that very previous day which has been reported to Hitler's headquarters; the words come up the grapevine; now the fat has hit the fan, to put it that way, and heads are going to roll and this has got to stop. I am going to punish this kind of thing in the future. Come immediately to headquarters, which then happens. And this the common sense sequence of . P-100 events and we have back out in the fields, so to speak, Bruns hearing then down the grapevine, as he says a few days later - that is the word he uses.He goes to see Altemeyer, the one who set the mass executions rolling at the lower level, and he says that we have got this order now from on top. The top brass has said that these mass shootings have got to stop. But they are going to carry on anyway, right? Is that the way it was done? A.No, I am sorry, let us look at this decode. "The guidelines laid down by myself and/or the Reichssicherheitshauptamt" could easily say something about doing it cautiously or discreetly. MR IRVING: They could, indeed. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I really think, Mr Irving, that we have he batted this one backwards and forwards enough. MR IRVING: Indeed, and we have, I think, discovered what the harder of the evidence is, and why there are reasons why one is entitled to discount, if I may put it this way, my Lord, in the mildest possible way, the second part of that sentence for we have no supporting evidence. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you say that the first half of it is reliable because of the circumstances under which was provided then it was eavesdropped upon. MR IRVING: And the consequences that flowed from it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is reliable but second half is unreliable. . P-101 MR IRVING: The second part is less reliable, if I may put it like that. Professor Evans, are you suggesting that the letter of de Bois was in front of me at any time when I wrote any of my books? A.Let me come back and say that the point I am making is that you have misrepresented even the first part of the order on which you rely. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have moved on. MR IRVING: I am looking at paragraph 6 of page 359. A.Yes, on your website. Q.Yes. Are you suggesting that at any time that the actual letter has been in front of me? A.Yes. Presumably that is why you mention it in the website. Q.I refer to it on the website ---- A.Yes. Q.--- to draw people's attention to it? A.Yes. Q.Do you know where the letter is now? A.I would imagine ---- Q.Is it in the Institute of History in Munich? MR JUSTICE GRAY: The question is whether you had it in your possession, is it not, Mr Irving, really? MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, did you or did you not? MR IRVING: The answer is not, but I cannot lead evidence as a . P-102 cross-examiner. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course you can. You can say: Were you aware, Professor Evans, that I never actually had this letter from Mrs de Bois? MR IRVING: Yes. Can I put it this way? Professor Evans, in writing in line 4, "However, he makes no mention of the letter's contents", were you aware at the time you wrote this in your report that I have never had the letter in my hands in my life? A.On this report I quote you as saying that there was this letter and you say it was on your website, and I assumed because you were referring to it and that it is about killings in Riga that you must have known what was in, otherwise why would you refer to it? Q.Is it not just stated on the website that in fact there are some interesting documents if people who want to follow it up may wish to go and have a look at, and one of them is the de Bois letter? A.How would you know it was interesting if you have not seen it? Q.Because I am told by this correspondence. Could that be possible? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is your case, Mr Irving, because you must put it clearly and straightforwardly, that you were unaware of what Mrs Schultz de Bois said in this letter? MR IRVING: Yes, and your Lordship will have heard from the . P-103 cross-examination over the previous ten minutes that I do not attach very great importance to the remarks by Canaris. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a different matter. MR IRVING: But that the letter was not in front of me at any material time anyway. A.If you think it was an important piece of evidence, Mr Irving, and you did not have it, why did you not make attempts to obtain it?
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