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Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

MR IRVING:  Obviously done at some ungodly hour in the morning.
A.July 1942.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Anyway, what is it and what are we ----
MR IRVING:  It is an interesting one because it is talking
about -- this is Himmler writing to Berger, General
Berger, SS General Berger, right?
A.Yes.
Q.[German] Berger.  On July 28th 1942, which is an
interesting period, is it not?
A.Yes.
Q.In fact, it is a Top State Secret document, highest
classification.  Is Himmler saying to Berger responding to
his minutes or memoranda:  "I urgently ask you that there
should be no kind of ordinance about what the word 'Jew'
is, the meaning of the word 'Jew'.  With all these stupid
determinations, we are just tying our own hands".
  Then he continues, does he not, by saying: "The
occupied Eastern territories are going to become free of
Jews.  The execution of this very grave or burdensome
order has been placed on my shoulders by the Fuhrer"?
A.Yes.
Q."Nobody can take that responsibility off me in
consequence"?
A.Yes.

.  P-189



Q."So I forbid anybody to interfere".
A.Yes.
Q.And "What can we" ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Can you put how you rely on that
document?
MR IRVING:  I was going to ask the witness, Professor
Evans,
what interpretation would you place on that, that "The
Fuhrer has given me the job, placed on my shoulders a
job
of rendering the occupied Eastern territories free of
the
Jews"?
A.Yes, well, we are talking about July 1942, as I have
said,
when the death camps were already in full swing.
There
are large numbers of Jews from the occupied
territories
are being gassed in Belzec, Sobibor and Auschwitz,
Treblinka, and so on.  So I think, given that context,
it
clearly means that the Fuhrer has told Himmler to kill
the
Jews in the occupied Eastern territories.
Q.That is how you would read between the lines of that
document?
A.It does not require too much reading between the
lines.
Q.It is not actually in the document, though.  You are
entitled to do this; as an historian, you are entitled
to
extrapolate, are you not?
A.Well, it is not a very grand extrapolation, given the
context of what was going on at the time.
Q.Yes, but in view of the fact that this is precisely
what
we are trying to determine here, we had to be a bit

.  P-190



careful how far we allow ourselves to extrapolate.
A.I think that is a legitimate extrapolation.
Q.In fact, all the document says is: "The Fuhrer has
told me
to clean the Jews out of the occupied Eastern
territories
and" ----
A.No, he does not say that, Mr Irving.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, it says "will become free of Jews"
and
that can either mean "free" because they are being
booted
into the further East or murdered.
MR IRVING:  Oh, indeed, yes.
A.It is difficult to say that they could be booted
further
East because that is where the Red Army was, the
battle
front.
MR IRVING:  Did large numbers of the Jews find themselves
being
booted over the Euro mountains?  Have we seen
documents in
that connection?
A.I do not believe we have.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, we have, but, was that not much
earlier?
A.Have we?
MR IRVING:  Or taking flight?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  100,000 going over the Eurols?
A.That is right, yes.  I have not seen that.
MR RAMPTON:  That was in September 1941.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is why I said I thought it was
rather
earlier.

.  P-191



MR RAMPTON:  Yes, and they were not booted, they ran.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, "booted" was a colloquialism.
MR IRVING:  Can we now turn the page?  I am making progress
as
rapidly as I can, my Lord, as you will see.  We are
making
huge progress.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not want slow you down, but can you
put
what you say the right interpretation of this is,
Mr Irving, to the witness?
MR IRVING:  My Lord, your Lordship will know precisely what
I am going to say, that one should not go further than
what the document actually says, and that one should
say
what the document says and leave the reader to form
their
own conclusions.
MR RAMPTON:  My Lord, I cannot accept that.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not think I can.
MR RAMPTON:  This is a document which plainly shows, unless
Himmler is lying, that Himmler has been given an order
--
"order" is the word he uses I think.
MR IRVING:  Yes.
MR RAMPTON:  A very difficult order by Hitler to make sure
that
the occupied Eastern territories are going to be or
are
becoming free of Jews.  Now the question Mr Irving has
to
grapple with and put to this witness is where were
they
going?  Were they still going to Madagascar, is my
question?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think that articulates rather better
than

.  P-192



I did what I was really inviting you to do, which is
to
say -- I mean the Defendants say this is quite an
incriminating document.  I think if your case is, Mr
Irving, that it is not an incriminating document you
should explain, or not explain, put to the witness why
not.  Do you follow me?
MR IRVING:  My Lord, you know my method.  I will churn
around
inside a document as long as I can before moving on to
the
next document which makes the point I am about to
made,
which I will now do, if I may.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If that is really right then that is fair
enough.  The next document?
MR IRVING:  The next document is the document headed in
handwriting at the top right-hand corner September
1942.
It is typed.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Not in my bundle.
A.Not in mine.  Is this NG2586?  I have the one.
MR IRVING:  Does this appear to be a typed transcript of
the
same kind of agenda for discussion with Hitler, as we
have
previously seen in December 1941?
A.Yes, indeed.
Q.The tentative date 17th September 1942, but it might
have
been 22nd.  Is paragraph (iv) headed "Volkestung"
which
I suppose is nationalities and settlement?
A.Races I think.
Q.Race and settlement?

.  P-193



A.Race and settlement.
Q.Is the first topic "Juden auswandern"?
A.Yes.
Q.How would you translate that "Juden auswandern"?
A.Jewish emigration.
Q.Does he then ask the question which he is going to ask
Hitler: How should we carry on or continue?
A.Yes.
Q.Then there is a tick indicating that, yes, they did
discuss it?
A.Yes.
Q.Then the next line says: The settlement of the
district of
Lublin.  They are looking at various people who they
can
send there, the people from Lorain, Germans from
Bosnia?
A.Yes.
Q.And so on.  They are going to discuss this with this
Globos.  Who is Globos?
A.That is a nickname for Globocnik.
Q.Who was the Police Chief in Lublin, is that right?
A.That is right.
Q.What kind of conclusions can we draw from these
admittedly
very sketchy notes by Himmler on a talk with Hitler,
or
for a talk with Hitler?  Is this more camouflage?
A.It is difficult.  It is an extremely cryptic remark.
Q."Auswandern" is that another euphemism?
A.It would seem to be at this point in September 1942

.  P-194



I think certainly a euphemism.  The basic point is
that
they are talking about moving.  I mean, the Nazis,
particularly Himmler and his agencies, had this grand
scheme of resettling Eastern Europe and moving ethnic
Germans from other parts of Europe in there, and what
he
has here under 2 is settling the Lublin area with what
they classify as ethnic Germans from Lorain, Bosnia
and
Bessarabia.  Of course the point here is that, in
order to
move them in and create space for them, Jews were
moved
out by being deliberately exterminated.  That is
really
the connection between those.  It seems that in the
previous couple of days there was a conference in
which
Himmler had taken part on a kind temporarily agreeing
to
keep a small number of Jews on to work, as in indeed
everyone will be familiar from the film Schindlers
List.
Q.So, do you translate "Juden auswandern" as murdering
the
Jews?
A.No, translated as Jewish emigration, but it would seem
to
me at this time in the war that it really means
killing.
Q.This is another ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am sorry, Mr Irving, I am bit a puzzled
about that because "auswandern" is an odd word to use,
even if it is a euphemistic.
MR IRVING:  It is not the usual word used as a euphemism.
They
use "Evakuierung", do they not? That has a sinister
connotation.

.  P-195



A."Auszedlum" is another word they use.  There is a
whole
battery of euphemisms that they use.
Q.Have you seen "auswandern" used before as a euphemism?
I
do not want to hang too much importance on this.
A.Obviously not.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  How would you translate "auswandern"?
A.Emigration.
MR IRVING:  Literally "emigration", wandering abroad,
wandering
out.  It is not one of the regular catalogue of
euphemisms
which with we have become familiar.
A.This again at the absolute height of the mass murders,
the
mass gassings, the mass shootings, all over this part
of
Europe, and it really I think beggars belief to think
that
they are simply talking some other nice kind of
emigration
somewhere to Madagascar or somewhere like that. I
think
this is talking about killing.
Q.It is a terrible problem, is it not, that we are faced
with this tantalizing plate of crumbs and morsels of
what
should have provided the final smoking gun proof, and
nowhere the whole way through the archives do we find
even
one item that we do not have interpret or read between
the
lines of, but we do have in the same chain of evidence
documents which are quite clearly specifically shown
Hitler intervening in the other sense?
A.No, I do not accept that at all.  It is because you
want
to interpret euphemisms as being literal and that is
what

.  P-196



the whole problem is.  Every time there is a
euphemism,
Mr Irving, or a euphemistic or a camouflage piece of
statement or language about Madagascar, you want to
treat
it as being the literal truth, because it serves your
purpose of trying exculpate Hitler.  That is part of
the
problem of the way in which you manipulate and distort
the
documents.
MR IRVING:  We know I am a manipulator and distorter, we
have
established that point.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Can I just ask question?  Am I right in
thinking that at this time, which is, is it September
1942?
A.Yes.
Q.There was still what I think somebody described as
deghettoization going on, namely Jews were being taken
from cities in the East within the German jurisdiction
and
transported to concentration camps?
A.To be killed, yes.  At this time there seem to have
been
about 300,000 Jews in the General Government left
alive
out of about 2.3 million of the original.
Q.So that was still going on?
A.So this was going on right through this time.  If one
looks back in Dienskalendar to 18th July 1942, that is
the
point at which Himmler had given the original order to
resettle ethnic German in the Lublin area, and he said
to
make room for them:  "The Jews must finally disappear
from

.  P-197



the town", so the two processes are directly connected
and
the disappearance there again is another not so
mealymouthed euphemism for sending them off to be
gassed
or shooting them.
MR IRVING:  What makes you think that "Juden auswandern"
refers
only to the generalgouvernenent?  It might equally
refer
to France or any of these countries where they were
carrying out these inhuman measures.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But they were not going westwards any of
them, were they, at this time?
MR IRVING:  It does not say.  It just says emigrating.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is not your case that Jews were moving
en bloc in a westerly direction?
MR IRVING:  This is Himmler going to Hitler with that word
written in his calendar saying: "Emigration of the
Jews.
How are we going to carry on?  How are we going to
proceed
with this?"
MR RAMPTON:  I am sorry to intervene, but this is all
rather
odd to my mind, the possibility of that the Jews were
going to West to East, from France, Austria goodness
knows
where.
MR IRVING:  We do not know where they are going.

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