Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day025.06
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

Q.  Which is very much within the guidelines that Hitler had
  laid down, saying:  "Kill the Jewish intelligentsia"?
A.  Yes, but the fact that also this order relates to other
  radical elements I think makes it quite clear that you
  could kill Jews under other headings than Jews in party
  and state positions.
Q.  You are relying on that?
A.  If you look at the Einsatzgruppen reports, they are going
  to kill in the next weeks, they are going to kill Jews who
  were not in state and party positions.  They were killing,
  for instance, the Jewish intelligentsia.  They were going
  in the following, they were starting in July 1941 to kill
  all men of military age.  So I try to interpret this
  instruction in the light of the following events.  I think
  from the following events it becomes quite clear that the
  intention of instruction is not to limit the executions to
  Jews in party and state positions.  But, let us say, that
  it is the first group where they would start to kill
  people, the first group to start with.  You see the
  instructions, I think you have to go back to the context,
  this is a kind of summary of verbal instructions Heydrich
  gave to the Einsatzgruppen, and he is just informing the

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  highest SS leaders about this verbal instruction.  It is a
  summary.  We do not have the verbal instructions.  We are
  trying to reconstruct the verbal instructions, but I think
  the verbal instructions were different than this here.
  The verbal instructions tended to include more Jews than
  this intention.
Q.  So your paragraph 7 relies on three sources:  Verbal
  instructions for which you have no source; the document
  itself and what you know to have happened, in other words,
  presumptions backwards towards the document, so to speak.
  So your opening sentence there about the order is not to
  be interpreted as meaning, is based on more than just the
  document itself?
A.  Well, give me some time, please.  I think I refer here and
  in the following, we have numerous eyewitnesses actually
  who stated, go so far to state after the war that actually
  that these instructions of Heydrich were the order to kill
  all Jews in the Soviet Union.  I am trying to, I spent a
  lot of time, I am trying to reconstruct the context of
  these verbal instructions.
Q.  Can you go to the next page, please, and look at your list
  of footnotes on the next page?
MR RAMPTON:  Could I please intervene once again?  Mr Irving is
  quite incorrigible.  This kind of cross-examination would
  never be permitted in a professional advocate.  Can we
  please go back to page 5, paragraph 2, which Mr Irving

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  leapt over.
MR IRVING:  I am leaping forwards because his Lordship wishes
  to make progress.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You are dotting about.  I do not find this
  very helpful and I have got well in mind what you said in
  the course of your cross-examination which is why I have
  not highlighted anything for quite a while now.  Anyway,
  page 5, Mr Rampton.
MR RAMPTON:  Page 5 which Mr Irving leapt over because it is
  inconvenient for him, paragraph 2 which is a document
  dated 19th May 1941.
MR IRVING:  I think this is a most unhelpful interruption.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It really flows from the way in which you are
  carrying out your cross-examination.  You are dotting
  about the report and you are cherry picking again.
  Mr Rampton is perfectly entitled to say, if you are really
  suggesting, that the instructions to kill the Jews was
  limited as you have just been suggesting to Dr Longerich,
  Mr Rampton is certainly perfectly entitled to say, well,
  you are missing out some of the documents which give the
  full picture. .
MR IRVING:  My Lord, we have dealt with these May and March
  documents exhaustively over the past few days.  I am very
  happy to deal with every single document that is mentioned
  in this report, but then once again I will fall foul of
  your Lordships reprimands.

. P-74



MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I would find it more helpful if you were to
  deal with it not so much by going to individual references
  but at any rate to start by a number of broader brush
  questions.  The difficulty in this part of the case is
  that you are shifting your position.  I think there is no
  doubt about that.
MR IRVING:  Shifting my position?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.
MR IRVING:  I am trying to establish the weaknesses of this
  expert report as well as I can.
MR RAMPTON:  It is not permissible to do that, in my
  submission, by a kind of memory test when the foundation
  for what the witness has said in a later paragraph is to
  be found in an earlier paragraph.  It is simply cheating.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, Mr Irving, I cannot conduct the
  cross-examination for you.  Dr Longerich, do you regard
  the guidelines referred to, the 19th May guidelines, as
  being limited to Jewish intelligentsia, the few holding
  senior positions in the State or in the Party?
A.  I mentioned this before.  I said this is the order which
  was read out on company level, so every German soldier was
  aware of these guidelines.  It plainly says Jews.  It
  refers to energetic and drastic measures against the
  Bolshevik agitators, gorillas, saboteurs, Jews.  So Jews
  are here mentioned among partisans and members of the
  Bolshevik Party.

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MR IRVING:  Very well, my Lord.  I will cross-examine on that
  particular document, if your Lordship wishes.  Are you
  familiar roughly with the contents of the Kommissar order?
A.  This is not the Kommissar order.  The Kommissar order is a
  different order.
Q.  I am asking.  Are you familiar roughly with the contents
  of the Kommissar order?
A.  Yes.
Q.  Is it perfectly explicit about killing, about liquidating
  the Kommissars and Jews and the intelligentsia?
A.  No.  The Kommissar order only refers to Soviet Kommissars.
Q.  The guidelines of March 1941, do they make it quite plain
  what is going to happen to these enemies of the Nazis when
  they invade Russia?  They are going to be liquidated.  It
  is quite specific, is it not?
A.  The Kommissar order is quite specific, yes.
Q.  Why does this document here then just talk about energetic
  measures, if it is perfectly plain?
A.  The document does not say every German soldier is entitled
  or allowed to kill every Jew on Russian soil.  It gives
  them a guideline how to deal with, let us say, suspicious
  people.  They are entitled, encouraged, to take the most
  drastic measure.  The other important document we have to
  refer to here are the guidelines concerning the military
  jurisdiction in the Soviet Union, which says that no
  German soldier is automatically prosecuted for atrocities

. P-76



  against the Soviet population, so the message is, if you
  feel there is something suspicious going on, you are
  entitled, you are in a way free to take the most drastic
  measures against Bolshevik saboteurs and Jews.  So you can
  shoot Jews.  It does not say you have to.
Q.  It does not say that.
A.  I think it becomes clear.  You have to see this document
  in its historical context.
Q.  The context is other documents that quite freely use
  uncamouflaged words.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, you are going to have to start
  putting what your case is.  I am going to put what
  I understand you to be suggesting.  The suggestion --
  Dr Longerich can deal with it -- is that the 19th May
  guidelines, when they talk of energetic and drastic
  measures against, amongst others, Jews means some measures
  other than killing them.  Do you accept that?
MR IRVING:  Not necessarily killing, I would think.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Do you accept that?
A.  I think that the most drastic measures means to kill
  them.  This is the most drastic measures I can think of.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is enough.  You do not need to embroider
  on that answer.  Mr Irving, move on.
MR IRVING:  Does it limit it to killing or does it say any
  measures, though drastic and ruthless?
A.  I think the most drastic measures you can take against

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  anybody in a war is to kill him or her.  I think this is
  quite clear.
Q.  Is there any reason why they should not have said killing
  in that document if that is what they meant?
A.  I am sorry?
Q.  Is there any reason why they should not have used some
  word for killing if that is what they meant?  You are
  entitled to execute or to kill while trying to escape or
  whatever other things they would say if they did in the
  other documents?
A.  We discussed yesterday the use of language and I showed
  you a document which explicitly said that they were
  particularly cautious to use words like liquidation, for
  instance.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, you are suggesting that energetic
  and drastic measures means something other than killing.
  Would you like to put to the witness what exactly you are
  suggesting those measures would be?  Precisely.
MR IRVING:  Were energetic and drastic measures taken against
  Soviet prisoners of war?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No.  That is not what I am asking you to do.
  You are suggesting that energetic and drastic measures
  means something other than killing the Jews and the
  others.  What are you suggesting those measures would be?
MR IRVING:  My Lord, I do not think this witness knows.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am asking you to put to the witness what

. P-78



  you say energetic and drastic measures means, if it does
  not mean killing.
MR IRVING:  Is it not possible that, by using the phrase
  energetic and drastic measures, the German Army was
  instructing its lower levels to arrest, imprison under the
  harshest possible conditions, torture, interrogate, beat
  up, deprive of their liberty ----
MR RAMPTON:  I am sorry, this is perfectly terrible.  The
  German does not just say energetic and drastic measures.
  It uses the word rucksichtsloses which is translated as
  ruthless energetic and drastic measures.  Now Mr Irving
  ought to ask the question again, in my view.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is slightly my fault.  I left out the
  ruthless.
MR RAMPTON:  I know.
MR IRVING:  Start again.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You do not need to start again.
  Dr Longerich?
A.  Yes, I think the answer is quite clear that in English the
  most ruthless energetic and drastic measures is to kill
  somebody.
MR IRVING:  Yes.  But there are other measures which are also
  ruthless and drastic which are not killing, is that right?
A.  Yes and this is the reason why it said the most drastic.
Q.  Will you now look at paragraph 9, please, on page 7?  You
  say that the Einsatzgruppen received explicit orders - -

. P-79

  this is quite important, is it not -- to murder Jewish
  civilians, and your evidence for that is -- is it a
  document?  Are there any such orders in the archives?
A.  We went through these orders just five minutes ago, and
  there is additional evidence for that if you look at the
  statements of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen.  I am not
  relying completely on this, but I am trying to put
  together here documents and eyewitness accounts.
Q.  Yes.  Just very briefly, you have listed the eyewitnesses
  on page 8, have you not, in the footnotes?
A.  Yes.
Q.  These are all testimonies that are over 20 years after the
  event, are they not?  Every single one.  In some cases 30
  years after the event.  Do you attach much reliance on
  that in German courts?
A.  Yes.  Most of them are from the 1970s, 1960s and beginning
  of 1970s.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, again I am baffled by this part of
  the case.  Are you now suggesting that thousands of Jewish
  civilians were not shot by the Einsatzgruppen?
MR IRVING:  No, my Lord.  I am attacking his credibility as a witness.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  His credibility?
MR IRVING:  Yes, his.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You have just put to him that these
  eyewitnesses who say they saw civilian Jews being killed

. P-80



  are not to be treated as reliable because they gave their
  evidence so long after the event.  How does that go to
  this witness's credibility?
MR IRVING:  If I was to write a history based entirely on
  testimonies given in court 30 years after the event, I
  would be derelict.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I repeat, are you suggesting now that
  thousands and thousands of civilian Jews were not executed
  by the Einsatzgruppen?
MR IRVING:  Quite the contrary.  We have seen any amount of
  evidence to show that they were.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So why are you casting doubt on the
  reliability of these eyewitnesses?
MR IRVING:  I am casting doubt on the reliability of the report
  as a whole because it depends on such sources.
MR IRVING:  It does not depend on those sources.  It depends
  heavily on the contemporaneous----
A.  The report as far as the Einsatzgruppen is concerned is
  based, first of all, on orders.  We went through that.
  Then on accounts of eyewitnesses, and then in the next
  chapter I am going in fine detail.  I am looking at every
  command and I am showing you, again on the basis of the
  Eichnesmeldung and other sources, that these orders were
  carried out and the Einsatzgruppen killed hundreds and
  thousands of people.  I am not relying only on some
  witness statements made in the 1960s in German courts.

. P-81



MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving does not seem to be disputing that
  so why we are spending so long on it, I do not know.
MR IRVING:  Let me look at the word orders and ask the specific
  question which I think probably will help the court.  Is
  there any suggestion that these orders came from Hitler
  for these particular killings?
A.  Many of these eyewitnesses referred to explicit Fuhrer
  order they got.  We are not able to trace this back.
  There is no written evidence for that.
Q.  My Lord, this is the reason that I asked the earlier question.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not accept that, but you have asked a
  relevant question now and I am listening to the answer.
MR IRVING:  It was actually the follow up question in my list.
  I shall have to ask it again.  In other words, the only
  evidence which you would advance for any connection
  between this and the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, giving such an
  order is eyewitness testimony of 20 or 30 years after the
  event.  Is that right?
A.  I think we went through this yesterday.  The problem is we
  do not have a written explicit order signed by Adolf
  Hitler which says European Jews or the Jews in the Soviet
  Union ----
Q.  The answer is yes?
A.  -- has to be killed.  I do not have this document unfortunately.

. P-82



MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What we do have -- may I make
  sure I understand your evidence and then we can move on --
  is the Muller document, which you have given evidence,
  rightly or wrongly, which suggests that Hitler wanted the
  reports from the Einsatzgruppen to go to him, and we have
  at any rate some reports going to Berlin.
MR IRVING:  Munich.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Berlin, which set out in great detail the
  numbers of Jews killed.
A.  Yes.  Yesterday we went through the documents and we had
  Himmler's entry in this diary, 18th December.  You will
  recall that.  We mentioned briefly the report No. 51 which
  states that actually more than 360,000 Jews were killed
  and so on.  So we can make this connection but, as I say,
  there is no explicit order on Hitler's letter head with
  Hitler's signature which actually would say that he is
  ordering the killing of all European Jews.
MR IRVING:  So the answer to my question was yes, in other
  words it is just eyewitness testimony 30 years after the
  event?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is not, for the very reason that he has
  just given, because we have the Muller document followed
  by reports going to Berlin.
Q.  My Lord, the Muller document is  not a Hitler order.  It
  shows that Hitler is quoted as saying that he wanted to
  see visual materials relating to the activities of the

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  Einsatzgruppen.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think we went through this.  I bear in mind
  the concession you made in your cross-examination and the
  cross-examination yesterday, and I really do not think we
  ought to spend any more time on this.  We have a lot of
  ground to cover.
MR IRVING:  On page 10, four lines from the bottom, this goes
  purely to your translation ability, gewalte Ladung, which
  you translate as a massive load.  In fact that is a
  military phrase for hand grenade, is it not?
A.  Gewalte Ladung, you put together a dozen or so hand guns,
  this thing about gewalte Ladung.
Q.  Page 12, paragraph 2.12, this is the Jager report.  This
  is another document from Soviet archives, is it not?
A.  Yes, available since the beginning of the 1960s.

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