Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.03 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 . P-18 ausrottung, the extermination of the Jews -- your translation -- is he reliable or not? A. It depends precisely what he is saying. As I said, he is in some respects reliable and in some respects he is not. If you let me see the passage you wish to ask me about, then, of course, I will comment on it. Q. It is a very short line. You translated it yourself only a very few days ago. We are not going back to ---- A. Please, if you wish me to comment on a passage, my Lord, I think ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are two points. You can have it if you like, but I think the two points are (1) is the reference to millions of Jews having been killed and the other is a reference to gassing. We can look at the document if you like? A. I probably have it in front of me here somewhere. I promise I am not going to use the tactics that have been used by the Defence witnesses throughout this case of constantly relying, asking to see the documents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, well, if you want to see it, we can see it. A. In this particular case, I am asked for an impression and I ought to have a look at the original document. MR RAMPTON: If you would like to look at page 5 of your own translation, it is just above and below your page reference 00032. I am quite happy with your translation, . P-19 so we need not bother with the German. A. Page 5, right? Q. Fifth page. I do not know where it is. A. Yes, I have it. It is page 00031 or 32. Q. Yes. A. "From what we survey today", is this right? Q. Yes, I will read it, if I may: "From what we survey today, there were perhaps 70 men, all told, from Himmler to Hoess who were involved in the extermination of the Jews", and you give the German, Juden ausrottung. "General Wolff also saw Bormann who was definitely actively involved in these things together with Hoess, the former Famer murderer. Bormann and Himmler", handwritten insert "Wolff probably", "represented the view that the Jewish problem had to be dealt with without Hitler getting his fingers dirty in the process. The gassing idea", and that means gassing of human beings, does it not? A. Yes. Q. "... probably emerged when a genuine epidemic broke out in the Auschwitz camp and mass dying resulted". Can we rely on General Wolff as telling the truth in that passage so far as the extermination of Jews by gassing is concerned? A. It is the curate's egg, if you know the expression, Mr Rampton. Q. Yes, Mr Irving, I am nearly as old as you are. A. The figure of 70 is clearly wrong. That is clearly an . P-20 understatement. Far more than 70 men all told were initiated in the mass killing of Jews by the Nazis. Depending on what he means by that, regardless of what he means by that, whether he is talking about just the Auschwitz and the killings of the western European Jews or if he is talking about the shootings on the East. I think here he is talking about the first. He is talking only about the killing of the European Jews. Q. Come on. He uses the word "gassing". A. Yes. That is precisely what I am mentioning. That is why I am saying that. The gassing idea. Now, that part I think he is clearly commenting on what he now knows, 1952, after seven years of reading newspapers. Q. Yes. Oh really? A. Yes. But also he is involved -- if he read the Harold Turner letter, of course, from Serbia, then he would have been aware of gassings on a small scale in Serbia. Q. Not in relation, Mr Irving, to a reference to Auschwitz as having been the source of the gassing because, if it was Auschwitz and disease there that gave rise to the idea, as General Wolff suggests, then the substance used for the gassing in consequence of the realization of that idea would have been prussic acid, would it not? A. Yes, Zyklon-B. Q. Thank you. Now I want to go back to this Milton thing. I am going to make a suggestion, you will deal it with it . P-21 and then we can pass on to something else. I suggest to you that, so far from, as it were, approaching this matter as a serious historian would be and asking your audience to be critical about eyewitness accounts, had you done that, you would have paid attention to the serious eyewitness accounts, so far from doing that, what you are doing is feeding the anti-Semitism of your audience by mocking the survivors and indeed the dead from the Holocaust? A. I do not think that in that fragment we saw, and of course I do not know else is in the rest of the speech. Q. Assholes? A. I think I am right in referring -- do you wish me to deal with that matter or the matter you just asked me about? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Finish your answer. MR RAMPTON: You finish the answer and I will draw your attention to that. Carry on. You finish your answer, I am sorry. A. I think that the word "Jew" or the reference to "Jews" was not made in that fragment, and of course very many other people suffered the torment of Auschwitz. I do not know why you just single out the Jews for this particular comment. Q. I see. Here we are talking about Polish gentiles, are we? This telephone box and the sedan chair and all that kind of thing? . P-22 A. I think the reference is to Poles, yes. Thank you for reminding me. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you, because I am not quite clear, Mr Irving? You say there was one eyewitness who told the story about the mobile telephone box? A. There are sheaves of stories like this which came out in various trials, right up to the to 1960s. Q. Focus on my question. I think you did say earlier on, in answer to Mr Rampton, that there was one eyewitness who told the story of the telephone box? A. Yes, that is one of the stories that is told. Q. Yes. I just want you to focus on that one eyewitness. Did you read it or hear it? How did you come to know about it? A. This was probably ten years ago and I have to say that, having read large numbers of documents at that time and having read very large numbers of documents more recently, I cannot say whether I saw the actual eyewitness interrogation, or whether it has become part of the law through being quoted in the Frankfurt trial by the defence or prosecution. It is certainly part of the folk law, if I can put it like that in a non-derogatory way, surrounding the Auschwitz killings, rather like the conveyor belt and the rest of it, that is known to historians on both sides of the divide. Yesterday evening, when I got home, I did put out an appeal to my . P-23 world wide circle of historian friends to say, who can provide me with the actual document. Q. Has anything come up as a result of that? A. By this morning, when I checked the e-mails, one person came up with a reference to a one man portable low temperature chamber that was being developed and that was being spoken. Q. That is obviously not it, is it? A. Not yet, no. Q. You have not been able to pinpoint where this comes from? A. No, but obviously I have put wheels in motion to obtain the actual document, because of the value it would have for the court. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Sorry, Mr Rampton. MR RAMPTON: I just put these remarks of yours in context, if I may, Mr Irving. You say you were talking only about gentile Poles that escaped from Auschwitz. Let us read on on page 18. A. I did not say I was only talking about Poles. My actual remark was that I did not talk about Jews in that particular fragment. You then said Poles. Q. Shall we put the fragment in context, Mr Irving? On page 16, the page before the one we were looking at, there is a lengthy reference at the bottom of the page to somebody call called Ely Wiesel. Is he a Polish gentile or is he a Jew? . P-24 A. I think he is a very well-known Holocaust propagandist, if I can put it like that. MR RAMPTON: That is not an answer to my question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is he a gentile or is he a Jew? A. He is Jewish, so far as I know. MR RAMPTON: Then let us have a look at page 18, from where the video stopped. It is the top of page 18 after the note that there was applause. A. I do not have the transcript in front of me and perhaps I should. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. Then you will need it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you should. MR RAMPTON: It is K3, tab 10, page 18. A. Yes. Ely Wiesel, of course, is one of the people I call the spurious survivors of the Holocaust like Benjamin Wilkormierski and others, who have made a living out of it. Q. Sandwiched between that Jewish gentleman whom you characterize as a spurious survivor of the Holocaust and the next passage, which is also about spurious, in your view, survivors of the Holocaust, is all this stuff about the telephone box. So let us read page 18, shall we: "Let me give you an example of why I think it" -- that is to say this imaginary experience -- "is a psychiatric problem. Let me give you a little parable here, a biblical parable almost, because in Israel, now the . P-25 Ministry of Justice, announced three or four weeks ago the British newspaper, the Independent, reported this news communique, that every year 200 tourists go to Jerusalem, which is, of course, that magnificent city, this crossing point of three different religions and cultures. They are so overwhelmed by these cross currents, these, the vibes of the city of Jerusalem, that every year 200 tourists go there and believe that they are the messiah reborn and returning to Jerusalem. They cannot all be the messiah. At most one of them can be the messiah", and you are not talking about Jesus of Nazareth, are you? A. It is quite clear that I am. This is a genuine statement released by the Israeli government. Q. No. A. Carry on. Q. You are talking about the messiah, for whom the Jewish people are still waiting, are you not? A. This reminds me of mathematical equations. You said the letter E in an equation can be the exponential factor but need not be. These people could be the messiah, but need not be, if I can put it like that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You call it a parable, do you not? Come on. MR RAMPTON: "They cannot all be the messiah. At most, one of them can be the messiah, so 199 of them are liars". A. Yes. Q. "But they have had this immense religious experience, and . P-26 it is rather the same kind of trauma as people who went to Auschwitz, or people who believed they went to Auschwitz, or people who can kid themselves into believing they went to Auschwitz, and the only way to overcome this appalling pseudo-religious atmosphere that surrounds the whole of this immense tragedy called World War II is to treat these little legends with the ridicule and the bad taste that they deserve. Ridicule alone is not enough. You have got to be tasteless about it. You have to say things like more women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquidick than died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz (applause)". A. The applause drowned the rest of the sentence, unfortunately, which is "in the gas chambers of Auschwitz which are shown to the tourists". I always say exactly the same thing. Q. Oh no, you do not, Mr Irving. We went through that before. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it on the video? MR RAMPTON: This is on the video. Would your Lordship like to see it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, unless it is going to take ages to get it going. MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. It is only the rest of this page really. Just go from where it is.
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