Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.06 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree. I have just said, I take Mr Rampton's point, that you are perfectly at liberty to say that you have left out a particular entry is significant for one reason or another, but I have the picture from the selected extracts and all I am asking you to do is to ---- MR IRVING: Speed things up. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- help on the overall association rather than go through individual diary entries. . P-49 MR IRVING: We have one more specific episode here, April 29th 1992, there is a fax from Althans, and I say ---- A. April 19th? Q. '92? A. No, 19th. Q. April 29th 1992. A. Excuse me. Q. "Fax from Althans with an horrendously tasteless invitation to my Tuesday press conference"? A. Yes. Q. Then on May 4th, from the diary again, 1992 ---- A. Yes. Q. "The Manager of the Bahlscheroff has cancelled the booking because of Althans' horrendous invitation leaflet"? A. Yes. Q. So to turn to my original question which his Lordship wishes me to ask you, it is clear that relations with Althans were brittle? A. I would say yes. Q. Yes. A. But intense. Q. So although you quite rightly say there were contacts between myself and Althans, and his Lordship has seen an ongoing correspondence ---- A. But very intense. MR RAMPTON: The witness was cut off he said intense, brittle . P-50 but intense, is that right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. MR IRVING: Well, in the sense that our relations with Adolf Hitler during World War II were brittle but intense, is that correct? A. This comparison does not hold. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, do not dealt with it at length because I do not think it helps either. MR IRVING: Paragraph ---- A. Because may I add that I not caught into a wrong perception of my answer, it was intense co-operation based on the interaction with Zundel and others, and also, as I said, the Kuhnen connection, with which Althans has also very intense relationships at that time. So they often came twice, like both of these groups or persons, to the same meetings where you attended. So I see this collection of references that show that you have problems with him more on a tactical basis, you know. You said he is unprofessional, he did wrong invitations. So... MR IRVING: Horrendous? A. Or he messed the things up. So, with respect to your efficiency to put your things down to the German audience, yes, he was not efficient, but because of the contents you shared it was at the beginning and in the coming year, you know, at the beginning, a very helpful and very intense relationship and co-operation. . P-51 Q. Until one learns more about the man and then you tend to break away from someone, would that be possible? A. Yes, of course. Q. Yes. In paragraph 5.1.5, you mentioned once again there incidentally, Professor Funke, the name of "Kuhnen". You do accept that I have never met Kuhnen, never had a single word exchanged with him and never written to him? MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has already accepted that. A. I have to even question this because I do not know, but there are hints that, for example, but, you know -- your Lordship, am I allowed just to do ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: We dealt with this yesterday. A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have the impression that you accept you have got no evidence that Mr Irving has met Kuhnen or corresponded with Kuhnen? A. They were at the same march. That is not getting slippery. He was on the same march, maybe only two or 20 minutes, you know, you do not know ---- MR IRVING: Which march was this? A. --- he was in the same meeting of the march to the Vertherren Halle, the famous, the second famous, as you say, and he was, so far the records are there, he was -- Kuhnen was at the 3rd March '90. But as long as we do not -- it is, you know, these groups are conspiracy. MR IRVING: Conspiratorial. . P-52 A. Conspiratorial. These groups, the Kuhnen connection, one of their main points is to act conspiratorially. So they use you as a kind of the most political outsider, as Christian Worch told it in the letter in June '90, so there was a special interaction. So this conspiratorial things, you even are not in their perception allowed to talk about this event, what really happened at 3rd March '90. So you even from their perspective had to sanitize your diary. There is nothing about the whole event at 3rd March of '90, and the lie. So there is, I just have to say it, I have just to say that there are sources that said Kuhnen, Worch and Mr Irving were there, but, you know, as long as we have not the ---- Q. We are going to look at the sources later. A. --- definitive proof, I have to be cautious at that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, he is not on the list. MR IRVING: Kuhnen? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. A. I did not know. MR IRVING: Is Kuhnen not ---- A. He was on the list. MR IRVING: He was on the list yesterday, I believe. MR RAMPTON: That is a mistake. I mean, I will have in the end to be guided by the evidence of the witness. If the witness, under pressure from Mr Irving, refuses to concede that the link between Althans and Kuhnen is illusory, . P-53 well, then he has to go on the list. MR IRVING: It is the link between me and Kuhnen that we are interested in. MR RAMPTON: I do not find that very difficult either, I have to say. MR IRVING: My Lord, on a point of law, I would like to be reminded of here, if a grave allegation is made in libel, do we have to expect an enhanced degree of proof and it is not just the balance of probabilities. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not quite sure why you raise that point now, but the answer is yes. MR IRVING: I just wanted to remind myself, in other words, what I can now be confident your Lordship is paying attention to. MR JUSTICE GRAY: At the moment it seems to me that the link with Kuhnen is extremely tenuous and if there are not better fish to fry, if I can put it that way, then I am not impressed. I really think we must move on. MR IRVING: Paragraph 5.15, we have Remer who is one of the people on the list. Will you accept just in two lines or one line that this July 22nd meeting with General Remer on the evidence which has been before the court, do you have it, Professor Funke? It is on page 53. A. Yes. Q. At this meeting with Remer at Flotto was a conversation with him for the purpose of interviewing him for my . P-54 Goebbels biography. A. Yes, it seems so, yes, and you did attend later on as I see. Q. Yes, and although we have seen evidence that he may have been in the audience of some meetings I addressed, there is no other evidence of contact between us? A. So far I see, yes. Q. Paragraph 5.1.5, when I in line 2 of that describe somebody as being a bit of a right-wing friend of someone, a rather right-wing friend, does that ---- A. Where is it? Q. Line 2 of paragraph 5.1.5. A. Yes. Q. If I described somebody as being a rather right-wing friend of somebody, does that tell you something about my attitude to right-wingers? A. No. Q. It does not? Does it not imply that I hold right- wingers at arm's length slightly? A. No. There are other statements that you describe yourself as a right-winger, but we come to that later. Q. 5.1.6, this demonstration, this little demonstration, which organize rather wickedly outside the German Sender Freies Berlin ---- A. Right. Q. --- television station, of which we have seen the . P-55 photograph, Pedro Varela was there, was he not? A. I do not know. This is photograph, yes, then he was there. Q. He was next to me holding a placard calling German historians liars and cowards? A. Yes, right, yes. Q. How do you know that it was because of the repugnance of my views that the historians refused to debate with me, Jaeckel and the other historians who have been invited on to this panel? A. So far I know it is because of your radicalization of your revisionist viewpoints since you endorse the so-called Fred Leuchter report. Q. Like the Second Defendant in this case, all these historians refuse to debate with people who have different opinions? A. No, say it again. Q. These historians refuse to debate with people who hold different opinions to themselves? A. No, not at all, not at all. They are very informed and debatable, debating scholars, like Jaeckel, for example. I know him very well. Q. There is a footnote on the previous page 53, 158, you refer to a letter that I say that I am brushing up my Holocaust vocabulary? A. It is on? . P-56 Q. Page 53, because I am about to go to Spain, am I not, and go on a lecture tour organized by Mr Varela? This is footnote 158. A. Excuse me. Q. In the meantime, I will freshen up my Holocaust vocabulary? A. Yes. Q. If you were going to make a lecture tour in Spain, in Spanish, would you also want to know how to translate words ---- A. Yes, of course. Q. --- and you would make sure you have the correct words? A. Of course. Q. That is what that refers to, in other words? A. Yes. Q. There was nothing sinister about it. Paragraph 5.1.7, this is still about the Berlin demonstration, and I say that some of the people who are turning up on our behalf are some quite rough in my private diary, is it not? A. Yes. Q. What was the political situation in Berlin at that time? Was there a violent left-wing scene? I mean, the anarchists, were they an extremely violent gang of thugs who went around brutalising people? A. That period of time I was in Berkeley, California. Q. Well, Berkeley was much the same, was it not? . P-57 A. Not, at that point of history. Q. It was when I spoke there. A. No. Q. But in Berlin? A. So I do not feel, you know, endangered by this. Q. I am sure you do not, but, well ---- A. As a normal person ---- Q. What is the word ---- A. --- and also my friend. Q. What does the word "Chaoten" mean to you? It is C-H-A-O-T-E-N? A. Chaoten? You want a good translation? Q. Well, I just want to know what image does it conjure up? It is frequently used by the press, is it not, to describe people to breaking up demonstrations? A. Yes. They bring up demonstrations and doing it too often, this is a kind of subtext of it. Q. So if you were organizing any kind of demonstration, even on the smallest scale in Berlin, you would want to go along and make sure that you were not going to be beaten to a pulp, you would have people there who were able to protect your suit or whatever? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you have lost me completely. I just do not know what point you are seeking to make. MR IRVING: The witness has referred to the fact that, obviously, I made a note in my diary that some of the . P-58 people who were coming along to our demonstration that night were rough necks, some quite rough, I think are the words, and I am just pointing out there was obviously a reason why we were glad to have one or two people with shoulder muscles there. A. Was there a kind of violent interaction? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, Professor Funke ---- MR IRVING: We have moved on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- don't let us spend time. MR IRVING: Paragraph 5.1.8, please? "Irving told journalists", towards the end of that paragraph, "'The result of this report is final. There was no mass murder with poison gas'"? A. Yes. Q. Do you accept that this was not a verbatim transcript of that particular press conference A. It was not a what? Q. Verbatim transcript, it is not a worlaut protokol? A. There was no mass murder with poison gas. "Es gab keine Massentotung durch Giftgas". Q. Yes, but you accept that this is not necessarily a verbatim protocol of my actual words as spoken at that press conference A. Yes, it is a summary, it seems to.
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