Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.14 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 Q. Quite. "The only two references", goes on Mr Allen, "which I have been able to find in the appendix to this Polish aide memoire which deal with this form of execution are as follows: (1) Telegram of 17th July 1943 from Poland, Commander in Chief, Armed Forces, Lublin District, informed me that he had evidence that some of these people are being murdered in gas cells there, Maidonek camp. (2) Telegram of 17th July 1943 from Poland: 'It has been . P-121 ascertained that on July 2nd and 5th two transports'", probably about 10,000 people, do you agree? A. Yes. Q. "Made of women children and old men" ---- A. No. 2,000 people, it would have been. Q. What? A. It would have been 2,000 people. Q. "Women, children and old men, consisting of 30 wagons each, have been liquidated in gas cells". Did the British invent the idea of gas chambers and the Nazis' use of them? A. No, but, if you are familiar with the British Foreign Office files, then you will be aware that little credence was attached to reports from Polish sources. Q. Mr Irving, I ask my question again, which you resolutely refuse to answer. Did the British invent the story of the gas chambers? A. You will not get a direct answer. I am going to draw your attention ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to direct that you do give a direct answer. What is the answer? A. The answer is yes, still, if the word "invent" means anything at all. Q. That is fine. That is your position. So these stories which are coming back from Poland in 42 via Riegner in Geneva, and directly from the Polish people in 1943, they . P-122 are simply recycled British propaganda? It has to be so if you are right does it not Mr Irving? A. If you are putting something out on the air waves through the BBC and black propaganda channels, for which you know you have no evidence, and you state in writing in terms that you have no evidence, then that is an invention, and that is stated quite clearly on page 14 by Victor Cavendish-Bentinck himself, the head of the British Intelligence Service. Q. The Foreign Office, Mr Irving, took the view, as it had in 1942, that the material that they had received, either via Geneva or direct from Poland, was not sufficiently convincing to allow of propaganda about this matter. That is right, is it not? A. They put it much more strongly in August 1943. Q. But you are not following me, Mr Irving. A. Victor Cavendish-Bentinck wrote: "As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe that there is any evidence that this has been done". He is head of the British Intelligence Service, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and you cannot climb over the document, Mr Rampton. Q. I am not trying to climb over it, Mr Irving. I am trying to make you face up to its significance. The decision is, despite this information received in 42 and 43, that the evidence does not stand the case up, so they do not use . P-123 it. A. They do not have sufficient evidence to persuade the Prime Minister and the President to put their names on a document, but they have enough evidence to put the story out on the air waves. They are quite happy to put it out, although they are quite satisfied that they have no evidence that it will stand up. It is good enough for the liars, but it is not good enough for the presidents, the heads of state. MR RAMPTON: When did they put it out, Mr Irving, on the air waves? A. They started putting the story out in late 1941, certainly in January 1942, they repeat it in June 1942, in November and December 1942, there was quite a blitz on the air waves with stories about the liquidation of the Jews in gas chambers in Poland. It is referred to in a lot of the private diaries, and also in the files of the German Propaganda Ministry who monitored the British Broadcasting Agency. Q. By whom were these broadcasts made? A. They were put about by the BBC. Broadcasts were carried by the BBC, which has a monopoly in broadcasting at that time, and by the American corresponding channels. Q. Do the documents that you have provided to us contain transcripts of these broadcasts? A. No. They contain entries either, as I was saying earlier, . P-124 in private diaries of the people who listen to broadcasts, either in occupied countries or in Germany or they contain the monitoring reports that were maintained by the propaganda agencies in Germany, who monitored foreign broadcasts. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see, please, what this material is, which I think has probably been produced. MR RAMPTON: So would I. No, I do not think so. I would know it if I had seen it. A. I think this is one of the cases where your Lordship intervened and said, we are not making enough progress. Q. Never mind. MS ROGERS: The position seems to be this. We have checked through the documents which have produced by Mr Irving which have been filed gradually in the J files. We cannot find any trace of it. In transcript day 20, starting at page 40, going over 41 and 42, Mr Irving, I think, in cross-examination of Professor Evans raised Thomas Mann's diary. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page? MS ROGERS: It starts at 40, going over to 41. A. If you look for Mauthausen, you will probably find it or Dutch Jews, 400 young Dutch Jews deported. MS ROGERS: That reference appears on page 42, my Lord, the 400 young Dutch Jews. A. And that was in January 1942. And then there is another . P-125 reference in June 1942 in the ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just take this in stages? Thank you very much, Miss Rogers. Thomas Mann, he is the novelist? A. He was working for the American propaganda agencies. Q. How is that evidence that the British Intelligence Service were making use of this information about what was going on? He does not have a connection with the British Intelligence Service, does he? A. Only in as far as the Allied Intelligence Operations of the Office of War Information in Britain and the British Ministry of Information were co-ordinated, but it is as tenuous as that. In other words, I cannot produce the actual missing links there. Q. In relation to him or generally? A. In relation to linking Thomas Mann's broadcast with what happened in No. 10 Downing Street. Q. What do we next have? A. June 1942, would that be the Ringelbulm diary? I am saying all this from memory, of course. Q. I appreciate that. A. I do not have the documents in front of me. Q. Yes, you do mention that. Ringelbulm, I have no recollection of him at all. MR RAMPTON: Who is Ringelbulm? A. I think he is living in one of the ghettos, either in Warsaw or somewhere listening, obviously very hopefully, . P-126 to BBC broadcasts. Q. No, it does not say "BBC". It says "broadcasts" about the extermination of Jews with poison gas. A. I do not know who else would be broadcasting about the extermination of Jews, apart from the Allies. Q. You see, Mr Irving, I am puzzled by this. What evidence do you have that these stories, I would say factual accounts, of what was happening, maybe not in '41, but certainly in '42 to '43, emanated from the propaganda arm of the British Government? How do you know that these people did not pick it up from the Poles or from Mr Riegner? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or from the Americans. MR RAMPTON: Or from the Americans? A. Well, the sources that I quoted refer specifically to broadcasts. Q. To what? A. They refer specifically to broadcasts and listening in to enemy broadcasts. Q. Sure, of course, but a journalist, even in those days, a self-respecting journalist, would use material supplied to him if it seemed to him to be reliable, would he not? What on earth connection do you see in all of this with the PWE? A. Because the PWE was controlling the black propaganda from Britain at this time. This was Robert Bruce Lockhart and . P-127 Richard Crossman. Q. Well, Mr Irving ---- A. But I mean ---- Q. --- what you are telling us is not ---- A. --- I am at a disadvantage here because I do not have the diaries in front me and I am not able to look for the collateral material which I would clearly do if I knew I was going to be cross-examined on this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see it. MR RAMPTON: So would I. A. I have made a note of it and I am going to produce another clip. MR RAMPTON: We do not need it now. This can lie in wait for next week or the week after. But would you agree with me on the basis of the original documentation which we have seen, there is (a) evidence that the story was a real story, whether a true story or not, but a real story and that it did not originate with the British? A. Yes, but it is of a low grade evidence. Q. That is as may be. A. Yes. Q. Is there also evidence before us that on account of what the British then saw as its low grade quality, they decided not to use it? A. Yes. Q. Thank you. . P-128 A. But they did not find it, of course, in the high grade sources where they would have expected to find it like the intercepts. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, before you leave this, in view of what Mr Irving said about broadcasts, could you invite Mr Irving to look at page 15 in this same tab, tab 6? A. Is this the actual declaration as released, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is not for me to say. A. Am I looking at the right document? MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not for me to say. A. Yes, is it the declaration headed "Confidential Future Release" or? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know what it is, but it seemed to me it might be relevant. MR RAMPTON: I do not have the same pagination as your Lordship. MR JUSTICE GRAY: In my version of this it is the last page. MR RAMPTON: Yes, is this, Mr Irving, 19 it is in my version, 15 in yours. Is this a United States document? A. Yes, Department of State. Q. It is dated August 28th 1943? A. Yes. Q. It says, well, I will read it: "Confidential release for publication in the morning newspapers of Monday, August . P-129 30th 1943, which do not appear on the streets before 9.30 p.m. Eastern [something]", no, it is not Standard Time, I thought it would be, but it is not, BMT. "Sunday, August 29th 1943, not to be previously published, quoted from or used in any way not to be sent abroad before 7.30 p.m. Sunday, August 29th 1943". So it is an embargo? A. Yes. Q. What it says is "Declaration on German crimes in Poland. Trustworthy information has reached the United States Government regarding the crimes committed by the German invaders against the population of Poland. Since the autumn of 1942 a belt of territory extending from the province of Bialystok southwards along the ... (reading to the words) ... has been systematically emptied of its inhabitants. In June 1943 these measures were extended to practically the whole of the province of Lublin where hundreds of thousands of persons have been deported from their homes or exterminated. These measures are being carried out with the utmost brutality. Many of the victims are killed on the spot. The rest are segregated. Men from 14 to 50 are taken away to work for Germany. Some children are killed on the spot. Others are separated from their parents and either sent to Germany to be brought up as Germans or sold to German settlers or dispatched to the women and old folk concentration camps. The United States Government reaffirms its resolve to . P-130 punish the instigators and actual perpetrators of these crimes. It further declares that so long as such atrocities continue to be committed by the representatives and in the name of Germany, they must be taken into account against the time of the final settlement with Germany. Meanwhile, the war against Germany will be prosecuted with the utmost vigour until the barbarous Hitler itinerary has been finally overthrown". That is an official United States press release, is it not? A. Yes. Q. Do you notice something about that press release, Mr Irving? A. That is a strange question. Q. There is no reference to gassing or gas chambers. A. Yes.
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