Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.14 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 Q. I will. I am trying to get back to your state of mind in 1970 something when you first wrote this passage which got replicated in 1991. I look at what you had in front which you told us this morning was just the sheet. You did not have the surrounding material. German is an ordinary, Western European language. They think like us, they speak somewhat like us, and the entry is: "Jew transport from Berlin", full stop, "no liquidation". Now, if the "liquidation" refers to Jews, it refers to those Jews and no other Jews? A. Mr Rampton, you have four topics referred to in that conversation, one, two, three and four. One, two and three are all totally different topics from each other, and it is very reasonable to assume that the fourth topic is probably also yet another fourth topic. . P-121 Q. That is interesting. A. But you say there was no other document before me at that time. Of course, there were the rest of these telephone logs. For example, the reference to "no destruction of the gypsies" which clearly shows the way which decisions are going at the top. Q. So you mean the fourth line, "Keine Liquidierung" could refer to the verhaftung of Dr Jakelius? A. Equally. Q. What is the verhaftung of Dr Jakelius? A. The arrest of Dr Jakelius. Dr Jakelius, my research has established, was an euthanasia doctor in Vienna who had been arrested for some reason. Q. OK. He has been arrested. What is the Angleblich Molotoff? A. Somebody who was, apparently, claiming to be a son of Molotoff. Molotoff, the Foreign Minister, had no sons. Q. And then there is the "Judentransport aus Berlin"? A. Then come -- yes. Q. Then the fourth line is "Keine Liquidierung", so this could mean that none of those three groups, categories, is to be liquidated. Is that what you are telling us? A. I do not think I said that. I am saying that all four lines can be taken separately because the first three lines are quite clearly separate topics from each other. Q. Let us go through it. Plainly, it is an utter nonsense to . P-122 talk about the "angeblich sohn Molotoff" as being subject to an injunction against liquidation, is it not? A. Subject to? Q. Being subject to an injunction against liquidation? A. Well, very clearly it is. If somebody was the son of a prominent Soviet leader, they would definitely be kept in a very special confinement. MR JUSTICE GRAY: He was thought at one time to have been on that train. A. The usual trick was that a prisoner would be taken and he would claim to be Churchill's son or nephew or cousin or something like, and knowing that they would not be able to kill him. But it would be dangerous to read too much just into three words. All we know is that Molotoff had no sons and that, obviously, there is no connection between the Jakelius and Molotoff. MR RAMPTON: No, but, of course, there is no full stop after "Jakelius" either, is there, so it might be asserted that he was arrested because he was pretending to be the son of Molotoff, might he not? A. I am not sure how much time the court wishes to... MR RAMPTON: Well, this is fanciful. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am wondering whether we have not thrashed through this document sufficiently. MR RAMPTON: Is it not? The "Keine Liquidierung" refers to the "Judentransport aus Berlin" whether there is a full stop . P-123 or not. A. This is your opinion, but it is not mine, Mr Rampton, when I am writing my book in early 1970s and ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: It comes to this. In the early 1970s you took that, as you now accept wrongly, to have been a reference to Jews generally? A. At large or at larger than is justified. I took it to be transportation, the transporetation of the Jews as --- - MR RAMPTON: No, in the introduction it is "at large", not "at larger". In the introduction it is all Jews. A. Yes. This was the inference that I drew ---- Q. This is the incontrovertible evidence that Hitler had ordered, no liquidation of any Jews anywhere. A. Into account I take when writing that sentence my entire expertise based on all the other documents that we have by that time already collected, and, of course, now we know a great deal more which proves I was absolutely right to write what I wrote at that time. Q. Mr Irving, we are not here to find out whether you were right or wrong; if we were, we would be here until the next Millennium. A. I doubt it. Q. No doubt. We are here to test your credentials, your honesty and your integrity, as an historian, a chronicler of these events. The proposition which I put to you for you to deny is that you deliberately distorted the sense . P-124 of these two lines so as to make the reference to "Keine Liquidierung" without any warrant whatsoever appear to be a reference to Jews everywhere? A. This sentence would only stand up in court, in my view, if you were able to establish that at the time I wrote those sentences I knew different and better. I think it would be very difficult to make that stand. To show that one makes a mistake in interpreting a translation of the word "transport", that one chooses the wider interpretation rather than the narrow narrower definition that we now know to be correct from the other documentation, this is not a deliberate wilful and perverse distortion or manipulation or translation of a document. Q. I put it to you, Mr Irving, that, on the contrary, it quite plainly is -- shall we leave it there -- which you deny? Just while we are on the question of full stops, since you have raised it, if we go to page 14 in your little bundle, we see the rather worse photograph, I agree, of the same sort of document that the log for the beginning of December, the first day of December? A. Precisely, yes. Q. Yes, and I do not know, this is not a very good copy, are you certain whether or not there is a full full stop after word ---- A. "SS"? Q. --- "Verwaltung", yes, "SS"? . P-125 A. The second rune, you know what I mean by the rune, the lightening flash that the SS ---- Q. Yes, SS thing. A. --- the second rune is right off the photocopy. Q. I know. A. So we cannot tell if there is a full stop or not. Q. Have you got the original? A. I have got it in my volume at the end -- the blue volume marked "Himmler Diary". Q. Have you got that printed transcript of these documents? MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is in this file, is it not? A. Well, I am afraid that I do not trust this ---- Q. OK. A. --- to that degree. Let me just explain why I will not trust this for being that kind of evidence. On two or three occasions I spotted instead of writing "u." for "und", they have written out "Und" in full. Q. My fault entirely. I used the wrong document. One does make mistakes. I quite agree. Turn back to page 13 of your own documents, will you? This is your carefully retranscribed version of the Himmler log? A. Yes. Q. Where you correct the mistake "Juden" to read properly "haben"? A. "Haben" with a small "h". Q. And there is no full stop after "SS", is there? . P-126 A. It would have been highly improper of me to have put a full stop in if there was not one visible on the photocopy. Q. Exactly. What would in German the sentence or phrase (because is not really a sentence) "VerwaltungsFuhrer der SS haben zu bleiden" mean -- I mean "Juden zu bleiden", I beg your pardon. What would it mean? A. Jews to remain. Q. No, no. I will read it in English: "Administrative officers, leaders, of the SS Jews to remain"? A. Read like that, it would mean nothing at all. It would be quite meaningless. Q. Exactly. It would be a complete nonsense, would it not? A. Yes. Q. Thank you. Be patient with me, Mr Irving. I am just going to a new topic now. Mr Irving, you are conscious, I suppose and, in fact, I know you are, that Adolf Hitler made a speech I think to Reich and Gauleiters in Berlin on 12th December 1941. I am still in the same period of short period of history. A. 4th December? Q. Yes, 12/12/41. A. Yes. Q. We know that because there is a report of it in Goebbels' diary for 13th December, is there not? A. There is a reference to it. . P-127 Q. Yes. Well, there is rather more than that, I think. Have you got -- have you got your Goebbels book there? MR JUSTICE GRAY: The answer is "no" can he be provided with a copy? MR RAMPTON: Yes, please somebody give him a Goebbels. A. It is here. I have it here. Q. If you turn to page 383 you see in the first complete paragraph you start like this: "Addressing the... whilst still in Berlin Hitler opted for greater candour. He confessed that he had spent sleepless nights... whether he was doing the right thing in declaring war on Roosevelt." Then you quote Goebbels: "The Fuhrer" Goebbels reported to his diary "is convinced that he would have had to declare war on the Americans sooner or later. Now the conflict in the Far East drops into our laps as an added bonus". "He viewed the battle of the Atlantic" etc. etc. down to the end of paragraph "an unavoidable hitch". Footnote 72. In footnote 72, which is on page 646, you explain that those references are taken from Goebbels diary on 13th December. A. That is correct, and that is true. Q. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am sorry, what page? MR RAMPTON: 646, the footnote. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, what page in the text? MR RAMPTON: 383, I am so sorry. . P-128 A. The second paragraph. Q. Then I ask you to note, I will wait until his Lordship has it, I ask you to note on the same page in the second part of the next paragraph these words, because I am coming back to this: "Returning by train on December 16th to the Wolf's Lair" yes? A. Yes. Q. So that you are saying means that -- I take it what are you saying means that Hitler having addressed the Gauleiters on the 12th went back to the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia on the 16th? A. Yes, I can easily check it from the war diary. Q. No. I am sure you are right about that, I am not about to dispute it, you will be surprised to hear. Could you now please be provided with a copy of Professor Evans' report? No, I am sorry that is the wrong reference I beg your pardon. Can somebody retrieve that mistake by me, and give Mr Irving Professor Longerich. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This point is dealt with by Evans? MR RAMPTON: I know it is, but I have not got the reference in Evans. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is page 320. MR RAMPTON: I have put it away. A. I am looking forward to it actually. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What? A. I am looking forward to it. . P-129 MR RAMPTON: It is very well known passage in Goebbels diary, or seems to be. Thanks perhaps in part to Mr Irving, I know not. If you have got Dr Longerich's report now, could you turn to page 61 of the first part? A. Yes, I have it. Q. We are on 12th December still. His report reads as follows, at the bottom of page 61, paragraph 17.3: "One day after the declaration of war on the USA on 12th December Hitler addressed the... of the party"; so far is that correct, Mr Irving? A. That is correct, yes. Q. "In this speech he returned once again to prophecy of 30th January 1939", that is the one in the Reichstarget about the fate of Jews, is it not? A. Yes. Q. "And now announced the approaching extermination of the Jews living under German domination, as we can read in the Goebbels diaries." Now please look at footnote 156, and I am not going to read it out because that is a strain for me and worst still for the transcribers. It is the original German. Tell me if it is accurate, your German is very good. A. The German text is accurate apart from the fact it has transcribed some of the diacriticals incorrectly. Q. Fair enough.
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