Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.21 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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