Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day026.05 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 MR IRVING: Is there any reason why writing private letters to their SS comrades in a letter where they use very robust language, does he not -- he says, who cares what happens . P-37 to the Vienna or Pressberg, which I think is now called Bratislava, Jews? It is a robust language, is it not? A. It is the matter of camouflage. These officers in the government of the Generalegouvernement tried of course to keep this operation as a secret. What they would admit is they would tell a story about shipping people to the to the White Sea and to the marshes, but they would not say actually, we are going to transport them to Minsk, I think in this case, and they are killed there. I think the interpretation of Aly in this book that it was a camouflage letter, I think this is the most likely interpretation, but also it is possible that at this stage, because he is referring to transports from the Reich to Minsk, and the systematic killings of the persons transported to Minsk from the Reichs, started in May 1941, it is possible, it is not very likely but it is possible, that this information had not filtered through to him. So camouflage is one explanation, but also it is possible that he did not at this stage know about the systematic killings of people transported to Minsk at this stage. It is a letter to SS comrades, not to one. It is not a confidential letter to one of his comrades. It is to comrades, so it was shown to 20 people, 30 people. There were strict rules as far as secrecy was concerned. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you explain what significance you attach, if any, to Furl having written that the Jews from . P-38 Kurfurstendam and Vienna and Pressberg will not survive? What is the implication? A. I think this is the same implication which we heard on Thursday when we read through the Wannsee protocol. This is the idea of natural dissemination by hard labour so they will not survive. They will not survive the work labour programme they were getting involved to. If you read the last line, "but not without having first built a few roads". So this is, I think, the same idea which is expressed clearly by Heydrich in the Wannsee conference minutes. MR IRVING: We have a logical problem here, which is best solved by the question do you believe that Furl, who wrote the letter, knew the truth, that he knew what was going on, he was writing a camouflage letter, or that he did not know what was going on? A. No. I think the camouflage letter, he is referring to the official story. The official story is the Jews are sent from Central Europe to the East, and they will be used in slave labour programmes, many of them will die, but some of them will of course survive. This is the official line and he is using this official version of the story. But at the same time the systematic killing of Jews deported from Germany, from central Europe to the East, had already started. So I think the idea Gotz Aly said here that this is a camouflage, still camouflage, is, I think, very . P-39 persuasive. Q. It is one plausible explanation, is it not? A. I think it is a very good interpretation. Q. It is one possible interpretation, but the other interpretation is that Furl is writing to the best of his knowledge what happens in a very brutal letter to his SS pals? A. As I said, it is possible that this information that the Jews arriving from the Reich in Minsk were systematically killed, it is possible at June that this information had not filtered through to the office in Krakow. Q. You would have noticed that there are two echoes of previous documents here, are there not? There is the echo of having first built a few roads. Does that remind you of the Wannsee conference? A. Yes. Q. Is that the language that was used at the Wannsee conference, that they are going to be put to work building roads? A. Yes, that is used there. Q. And this idea of sending into the marsh lands, does that remind you of the October 25th 1941 table talk, where Hitler says, "who says we cannot send them to the marshes?" A. Yes, of course, but I cannot fully ignore what happened in Minsk at the same time in other places. . P-40 Q. Yes, but we are looking here at chain of command and at system and, if you are looking at parallels with the late 1941 killings, which turn out to have been carried out without authority, then this would explain how the people who are on the route, shall we say, on the track, the train loads heading East, would think that one thing is happening, whereas the people at the other end who actually receive them with anything but open arms, know that something quite ugly has happened to them. A. Yes but this is not an official letter. This is a private letter from Herr Furl to his SS comrades, so it is nothing to do with the chain of command. MR IRVING: Does your Lordship have a question on that letter? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Thank you very much. MR IRVING: I am anxious, my Lord, from the timetable point of view to leave sufficient time before lunch for re-examination, so that the doctor can leave at lunch time. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry too much about that. MR RAMPTON: I think it unlikely that he will be able to anyway, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us wait and see. Do not rush it because the timetable may have slipped a little. MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, I am now going to go to a memorandum written by a man called Horst Arneirt. Now, when I asked you about this on Thursday, it seemed unfamiliar to you. . P-41 Have you had time to review your recollection about it? A. I cannot recall the document you are referring to at the moment. Q. You cannot recall it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was not available on Thursday. That is why we passed over it. Is that not right, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: You did edit a book called (German title)? A. Yes. Q. This document is printed in full at the end of this book, pages 240 onwards, and that should be one of the clips that I gave to ---- A. It has not arrived yet. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it was faxed and emailed to the Defendants over the weekend. Is that right? MR IRVING: It was faxed to me from Australia this morning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is not one of the ones that went over the weekend? MR IRVING: No. That was just the Wolff translation. Dr Longerich, will you accept that you published the memorandum of Arniert as document No. 94 in your book? A. I do not have it in front of me. Yes, I published the document. Q. This is a conference relating to the deportation of the Jews from France? MR RAMPTON: No, I am sorry, this cannot proceed. I do not want to be horrible, but it cannot proceed without our . P-42 having the document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you not got it? MR RAMPTON: No. I have a piece of Gotz Aly. I have something from a book by Serge Klasfeld and that is it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is headed "Die Endlosung der Judenfrager" on the front. MR RAMPTON: I have got it. Sorry, my fault. MR IRVING: There are two versions of it, my Lord. One is in a book published by Serge Klasfeld, who is a well-known French lawyer, but this morning I received a copy of the book which is actually published by the witness, edited by the witness, in which the same document appears as an appendix. This is a report by a man called Horst Arniert dated September 1st, relating to a meeting held on 28th August, at the SS headquarters, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, with Adolf Eichmann in the chair, and he informs the participants that the current evacuation programme of the Jews from France is to be completed by the end of that quarter. I am going to look just at some of those paragraphs. You have now a number of paragraphs in the document A, B, C, D and E. A is the reinforcement of the deporting transports in October. B is loading difficulties due to the longer hours of darkness in October. C is provision of blankets, shoes and eating utensils. D is the nationality problem. E is the purchase of barracks. Now I am going to look at C and . P-43 E, in particular, Dr Longerich, and ask you to answer some questions on those paragraphs. First of all, this is a genuine document, is it not? A. Yes. Q. Paragraph C, I am going to translate it and you can correct me if I am wrong: "Giving with them blankets, shoes and eating utensils for the transport participants. The commandant of the internment camp at Auschwitz has demanded that the necessary blankets, working shoes and eating utensils are without fail to be put into the transport, in with the transports. In so far as this has not been done, they are to be sent on to the camp afterwards immediately"? A. Yes. Q. Now, if these Jews were being sent to Auschwitz to be liquidated, they would not need blankets, shoes and eating utensils, would they, and there would be no great urgency on the part of the commandant of Auschwitz to have this stuff sent on after the train had arrived. A. I think we went through this before. It is quite obvious that not all the Jews in Auschwitz were killed on the spot. From late summer 1942 onwards, the trains stopped in a camp called Kausal, it is near Auschwitz, and the people fit for work were actually unloaded and spent several months in slave labour camps in Silesia. Some of them actually survived. So I would guess that the . P-44 reference here to shoes and other things refers to the people they wanted to keep alive for a couple of months. Q. Paragraph E, the purchase of barracks: "SS Major Eichmann has requested that the purchase of the barracks that have been ordered by the commander of the security police in the Hague should be immediately put in hand. The camp is going to be erected in Russia. The departure transport of the barracks can be arranged in such a manner that each transport train can take three to five barracks with them." What does that tell you about the final destination of where these train loads of Jews were going to go? A. I have no indication actually that these barrack were actually, you know, in the end were loaded on these trains. It is only said that -- Eichmann expresses his intention that this should be done. I have no idea whether they did this or not and I have no idea what the purpose of this barrack was. It is referring here to the commander of the security police in Den Haag, so this relates to the Netherlands, and at the moment I cannot say either whether this happened or what the purpose of this barracks was. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is talking about Dutch Jews, not French Jews? A. It refers here under E [German- document not provided]. So this refers to the Dutch Jews only. He had no . P-45 responsibility for the Jews in France. So it is obviously -- maybe they had a plan to, I do not know, whether they had a plan to build barracks somewhere for Dutch use. I have at the moment no idea. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Like they did for the French Jews? A. Definitely here it is nothing to do with the French Jews. MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you say you have no idea but in your book you reference another document which is in a note by a man call Roethke, R-O-E-T-H-K-T, dated August 26th 1942, instructing him to raise a list of points at a meeting on 28th August 1942, which is the one we have been looking at. Here it says, point 8: "When can we count on the construction of the barracks of the Dusseldorf camp? Has construction already been commenced? Where exactly will the camp be situated?" There is a marginal note: "Attended to". A. I do not have the document in front of me, I have to say. Q. Yes, but that is a document referenced in the book which ---- A. Yes, I should not comment on the document ---- Q. Do you remember the Roethkt document? A. Pardon? Q. Do you remember the Roethkt document, the memorandum? A. Well, the book was published in '89, so I cannot recall every document in the book, and it should not be a big problem to have it in front of me and to read it simply.
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