Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.04 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 (The video was shown). . P-27 MR RAMPTON: Stop there, please. A. You are right. You are absolutely right. In that particular one I did not put in the rider that that is the one they show the tourists. Q. You did not. Frequently you have not. Not only have you not put in the rider, you have added other gas chambers elsewhere, Treblinka, Belzec. Not here. In the documents we were looking at yesterday. A. You are adding them now verbally into my speech. Q. No, I am not. A. Shall we just abide by the speech that I was speaking here? Q. You said a moment ago that you never make any reference to any gas chamber but the one which was reconstructed by the Poles after the war. That is simply false, is it not? A. The one that is faked by the Poles after the war. Q. Yes, whatever you like. It is simply a false statement, is not, Mr Irving? We saw a whole lot of statements by you yesterday, did we not? A. Will you please ask the question again because you --- - Q. Your statement that you never make reference to any but what you call the fake gas chamber at Auschwitz (i), gas chamber singular, is a false statement, is it not? A. I frequently refer to gas chambers elsewhere, yes. Q. Yes. A. But in what connection? . P-28 Q. In the context of saying that they never existed. A. In Dachau, for example. We now know that eyewitnesses reported there were gas chambers in Dachau, and we now know the German government has confirmed there were never any gas chambers in Dachau. That is a typical example. Q. Mr Irving, I do not believe you have that bad a memory. I really do not. A. You just asked me a question and I have answered it. Q. In that case I am going to have to remind you of what you were shown but yesterday. Laborious, but necessary. A. Dachau is typical example of survivors who were caught out lying. Q. You will have to be patient with me, Mr Irving. I will find it. This is just an example from page 156 of yesterday's transcript, if you have yesterday's transcript. This is a speech by you at Moers that we looked at yesterday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like a copy of it? A. If it is not going to be too tedious. MR RAMPTON: I will read it out. You said: "The dummies are still standing in Auschwitz, because the German government has no sway there". Page 156, line 8. "The dummies are still standing in Auschwitz because the German government has no sway there, and understandably that is problem for you" -- that is the Germans -- "that you have a government in Bonn that allows its own people to be . P-29 defamed by all countries of the world, although in the meantime it is cried out that these things in Auschwitz, and probably in Maidonek, Treblinka and in other so-called extermination camps in the East, are all dummies". That is a direct quote from your speech in Moers. A. Yes. Are you quoting the speech to me? Are you going to quote something from the exchange that follows? If so, I cannot quite understand why we are looking at yesterday's exchange rather than looking at the actual speech. Q. Because it was the easiest way to what you said in Moers. I have it in the file. A. Of course, if you do it that way, we do not know exactly what was said in the actual speech. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can track it down, I am sure. MR RAMPTON: Page 3, tab 5, Mr Irving. A. Perhaps we can just wait to see what the question is and then it may not be worth the effort. Q. I have put the question already. You made a statement not more than a couple of minutes ago that you never make reference to the non-existence of gas chambers except in relation to what you call the fake gas chamber at Auschwitz (i). That statement was false, was it not? A. "The dummies were still standing in Auschwitz, these things in Auschwitz and probably in Maidonek, Treblinka and in the other so-called extermination camps". I think . P-30 the word "probably" therefore has to be looked at and emphasised. Q. Carry on. Read on. A. In other words ---- Q. Read on. The fact is that Auschwitz we know that what they show the tourists is fake because the Poles have no now admitted it. I am sorry, "reconstructed" is what you call it. Q. What? A. But the other places, Maidonek, Treblinka and so on, my hands are tied in really dealing with that because, for the purposes of this court action, I am not challenging them. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we are getting a bit confused here. A. My Lord, perhaps I can help? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, because I may have misunderstood the position. I think it all arose out of your saying to Mr Rampton earlier that, whenever you refer to no Jews, or virtually no Jews, having died in concentration camps, you add the rider that you are really talking about what you call the dummy constructed after the war at Auschwitz. A. I hesitate to allow your Lordship to put words into my mouth. MR RAMPTON: Let us go back on the transcript for today and we will find it. A. I am much more specific than that, and I say that, in this . P-31 rather tasteless way, more women died on the back seat of that car than died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz, meaning the one they showed the tourists. MR RAMPTON: It is when I was reading the transcript before we saw the video. We will get the exact words, my Lord. A. It is part of the gramophone record, if I can put it like that. MR RAMPTON: In the light of yesterday's evidence from Professor Funke -- I cannot read that. Now, Mr Irving, I am going to read you back your answer. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 24. MR RAMPTON: Page 24 of today. This what gave rise to all of this, you see, Mr Irving. You made yet another, shall I say courteously -- "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". It was a false statement, that, was it not? A. It was clearly wrong. Q. Yes. A. But not deliberately wrong. I have this same part of my speech that I deliver again and again and it is possible that, in the heat of this particular speech which was spoken without notes, as you will see ---- Q. No, Mr Irving. A. -- to a non-skinhead audience. . P-32 Q. What was false is that you always say exactly the same thing. You do not. You frequently refer to the non-existence of any gas chambers in the plural. A. I think you will have to show me the passages where I frequently say this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point is you deny the existence of gas chambers and, when you do that, you do not talk only of the dummies such as the one that was constructed after the war at Auschwitz. That I think is the point. A. If that is the point he is trying to make, then of course he is wrong because I have made it quite plain earlier in this case that I accept that in Auschwitz Birkenhau gas chamber experiments were conducted, for example, in the bunkers, the two buildings called the bunkers, and to that degree I certainly do not deny it. MR RAMPTON: I expect you have been reading the Eichmann memoirs, have you not? A. Not yet. If you know how little time I have. Q. If you do a word search on them, look for the word "Vergasungslager". A. I take your tip. Thank you very much. "Vergasungslager"? Q. Yes, "Vergasungslager", gassing camps, Mr Irving. A. I will tell you the result of that when I come here tomorrow. Q. I am just going to finish. My Lord, unless your Lordship . P-33 wants me to ---- A. Mr Rampton, if you intend to rely on that particular word, I think you should show me the passage so I can comment on it now, rather than just leave it hanging in mid air. MR JUSTICE GRAY: At the moment we have not gone to the Eichmann diaries at all, and I do not know whether we are even going to. MR RAMPTON: I am going to continue, my Lord, if I may, with page 18 of the transcript, unless your Lordship would like to see it on the screen. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think not. A. That is certainly not the way to introduce the Eichmann memoirs, to do it like that, just to throw one word out. MR JUSTICE GRAY: They have not been introduced, Mr Irving. Let us go back to page 18. MR RAMPTON: After the statement that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquidick than died in the gas chambers (plural) at Auschwitz, there is some applause which did not drown out anything else you said. You then continued: "Now" you think that is tasteless. What about this? I am forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps. It is called the Auschwitz Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars Assholes", and you spell it out for them so that they get the joke. "Cannot get more . P-34 tasteless than that but you have got to be tasteless because these people deserve all our contempt and in fact they deserve the contempt of the real Jewish community and the people, whatever their class and colour, who did suffer." I do not know that I need to go on. A. Yes. I got something wrong, of course. Q. What was that? A. The title of that association. It is the Association of Spurious Survivors of the Holocaust, but, once again, in the heat of the talk, I got it wrong. Q. I am awfully sorry about that. The fact is, Mr Irving, what you are doing here, as you were at Hagenau and on other occasions that we have seen ---- A. Mocking the liars. Q. Oh yes, Mr Irving, but why the applause? A. Because I am a good speaker, Mr Rampton. Q. What? A. I am a good speaker. Q. Mr Irving, Professor Funke had you bang to rights, did he not? What you are doing is appealing to, feeding, encouraging, the most cynical radical anti-Semitism in your audiences, are you not? A. Do liars not deserve to be exposed as such? If you saw the audience as you saw them in that film, did you see any skinheads or extremists or people wearing arm bands? I did not. They looked like a perfectly ordinary bunch of . P-35 middle-class Canadians. Q. No doubt they too, Mr Irving, will spread the word, if I may use that terminology? A. Is that evidence or are you asking me a question? Q. I am asking you a question. That is what you are hoping, is it not? A. Spread the word that there are elements of the Holocaust story that need to be treated with scepticism, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, an I ask you this? Of these eyewitnesses, are you saying that they have come to believe what they say about their experiences and that is why they need psychiatric treatment? Or are you saying that they are collectively telling lies, deliberate falsehoods? A. Different people have different motives or different reasons. There are different reasons why they tell stories that are not true in this particular context. We saw the witness Professor van Pelt in the video and in his report talking of the almost mystical and religious awe in which he holds the site of Auschwitz. I can well understand that. It has become very central to their existence as the Jewish people. It has become an important part of their social awareness. It has become very close to religion in some aspects, in my view. It has become almost blasphemy to trample on any part of that ground. It has become holy ground, both in the physical . P-36 concrete sense and in the metaphysical sense. As with any religion, there are hangers on, people who believe they were there, people who believe they touched the cloth, if I can put it like that. There have been an increasing number in recent years -- Benjamin Wilkormierski is one example Ely Wiesel is another -- who have capitalized on, or instrumentalized, the Holocaust. Now, I am not a psychologist, I am not a psychiatrist, but I have looked into some of the learned psychiatric texts that have been written about this phenomenon of the man who believes he is a survivor, the man who has been through a traumatic experience and either puts himself in the middle of an experience that he was on the periphery of, or who puts himself into an experience when he was not there at all. That is what the reference to the psychiatric problem is in this. It is put admittedly in the most tasteless possible way. Nobody can accuse me of not having been tasteless, and I probably deserve to be horse whipped for it, but the fact is that I am dealing here with a serious problem concerning the eyewitness accounts from Auschwitz.
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