Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.02 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 MR IRVING: The reason it is dated December 30th is because my card index is organized according to the date that something was allegedly shown to Hitler, not the date of the document. It is a telegram from Muller, the Chief of the Gestapo, back to Himmler on combating the high level achievement in Serbia, and it has been sent by Himmler to Hitler to have a look at. It is in the big Fuhrer typeface, and you will notice, my Lord, that on this occasion Fiefer has endorsed the document twice, laid before December 30th, laid before December 31st. In other words, twice he has put it on Hitler's breakfast tray outside his door. He is not looking at it. Is this not, my Lord, precisely the point I made yesterday, that Hitler had other things on his plate? He was fighting the battle of Stalingrad. He had a quarter of a million men trapped in Stalingrad. He was waiting for it to break through. . P-9 He had the battle crews out in the Arctic. He had all these things going on. Here is Himmler's message lying outside his breakfast room door twice, and the adjutant putting a note on it, saying he has twice put it out there, twice he has laid it before him. He would not have had to do it twice if it was read the first time, my Lord,. I suggest this casts serious doubt on the proposition that we can accept that the other document was necessarily shown to Hitler. I would not put it any stronger than that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just let us keep an eye on the reality. You did accept yesterday, as I understand it, that the shooting of Jews and others on the Eastern Front was a programme which was systematic and co-ordinated by Berlin, and Hitler was aware and approved of what was going on. MR IRVING: The shootings of Russian Jews, my Lord, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. So, in a sense the issue whether a document was laid before Hitler and read by him becomes relatively speaking insignificant, in this context. MR IRVING: I disagree, with respect. I think that this shows how flaky the whole system was. What Mr Rampton would like to describe as being a cast iron, watertight bureaucratic system with reports going this way and messages coming back, it breaks down at the very top level when you are dealing with a man, the head of state . P-10 himself, who has other things on his plate. I would suggest that there is a very strong reason to suspect that this is precisely the reason why Himmler slid that figure in, because he apprehended quite likely that the boss was not going to read it. That may possibly be going too far to impute that to him, but certainly this indication that on this very day documents were being put to Hitler twice and not being read can indicate that that 29th December document cannot, therefore, necessarily have been taken as having been read and submitted no doubt to Adolf Hitler or taken cognisance of it. That is the only point I want to make, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. Is that it? MR IRVING: That is it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like to go back into the witness box? MR RAMPTON: Can I say two things before that happens? We would very much like to see the German version of the Kovno train message, if it exists, if Mr Irving has it? That was page 6 of the first of these. MR IRVING: My Lord, it was actually mailed to the instructing solicitors, about three weeks ago. MR RAMPTON: What, the German? MR IRVING: In a bundle. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The German version of what? Did you say page . P-11 6? MR RAMPTON: Page 5 I meant. MR IRVING: I will certainly supply it again. MR RAMPTON: That would be very kind. If we have had it and it has not got to me, that is entirely our fault. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am still puzzled. Page 5 is in German. MR RAMPTON: Oh, 5? MR JUSTICE GRAY: You said 6 and then I thought you said 5. MR RAMPTON: I did say 5. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is in German. MR RAMPTON: I say no, I am looking at a different document with "05" at the bottom. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you not looking at the clip? MR RAMPTON: No, to this previous one. MR IRVING: The little bundle probably. MR RAMPTON: Does your Lordship remember the train load of Berlin Jews to Kovno? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do. MR RAMPTON: J3. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am putting this latest clip into the back of J. I know Miss Rogers is keeping track. MR RAMPTON: Tab 5, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have something in tab 5 already anyway. They are all going in there. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Rampton. You are back on what? . P-12 MR RAMPTON: I raised the question whether or not the German of this report, or message No. 35 on page 5, exists and, if it does, whether I can see it. If we already have it, then enquiries are perhaps futile. MR IRVING: I will certainly produce another copy tomorrow. MR RAMPTON: That is very kind. The other thing I should mention because I said I would and your Lordship asked me to is this. We spoke to Professor van Pelt yesterday. He says at this late stage it would be extremely difficult for him to alter his arrangements and come later on in the case. So, with your Lordship's permission, I will adhere, if I may, to my schedule, which is to start cross-examination about Auschwitz on Monday when he will be here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must ask Mr Irving whether that is going to cause him problems. MR IRVING: I shall just burn the candle at both ends which is nothing new. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but I am conscious that you have a fair old burden, being effectively, as it appears, on your own. You say if things are getting on top of you. MR IRVING: It is proper that we should continue with Auschwitz. MR RAMPTON: I am very grateful for that. The other thing which arises out of that is that Mr Irving said, I think yesterday, that at some stage he would like to have an . P-13 argument about the significance and relevance of Auschwitz so far as this case is concerned. Plainly, if I am going to start cross-examining on Monday, we ought to have that argument this week and the question is when. I understand Professor Watt is coming on Thursday. Have I got that right? MR IRVING: That is correct, but I think he will be relatively brief. MR RAMPTON: He will, at least, as far as I am concerned. We might perhaps do that on Thursday also, because then we will know what the framework is before Monday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Can you just, so I can think about it, give me in a couple of sentences what you understand the argument to be about? MR RAMPTON: It has been our case all along -- the book is about Holocaust denial. Auschwitz in Mr Irving's utterances and certainly in our eyes is at the centre of Holocaust belief. It is therefore at the centre of Holocaust denial. Mr Irving has flatly denied that there were any gas chambers for killing human beings at Auschwitz. We say he has done that on the basis of really no evidence whatsoever. It illustrates two things: First of all, his casual attitude to an important matter of history and, secondly, his political attitudes and sympathies. That has been in our case from the very beginning and still is. . P-14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I understand all of that, but what might be going to disappear from the case? MR RAMPTON: Only this, that Mr Irving may be going to concede -- this is what I do not know because for one reason he never answered our Auschwitz questions -- as we contended and as I have already said in open court, that the Liechter report is bunk. If he is, then I cut a great swathe through my cross-examination. I throw three quarters of it out of the window. I do not need it. That why it is important to know what he says. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not sound to me like a terribly long argument I am not going to ask you, Mr Irving, to answer it now. MR IRVING: I would just draw attention to the fact that this court is seized only with the issues as pleaded and not with the issues as portrayed by Mr Rampton. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to pursue this now but the fact is that, on the proceedings as I understand them at the moment, you rely quite heavily on the Liechter report for your proposition that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. MR IRVING: I think that your Lordship will realize the error of that statement, if I may respectfully put it like that, when we come to the cross-examination both of myself and of the expert witnesses. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we obviously do need to have an argument . P-15 about this, because I have, to an extent anyway, misunderstood the position. Let us carry on. Would you like to come back? < Mr David Irving, recalled. < Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC. A. My Lord, I did produce also the Himmler diary so that you could see the actual page I worked from, if you wish to see the quality of the photocopy. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it carry the matter much further? A. Only if your Lordship intends to attach much weight to Mr Rampton's suggestion that I deliberately and wilfully misread that word. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not saying I am not so, if you want me to have a look at it, I will. I doubt whether it will be significantly different from the photocopy I have in the file. A. Well, we will leave it. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you have left behind, I am sorry, your little clip that you brought with you this morning. A. Yes. Q. Somebody will give it to you. The only page I am interested in at the present is page 3. A. Page 3, yes. Q. I have only two questions, three questions possibly. Did any such cases occur in practice? A. We have a document which we can produce to the court . P-16 showing that the Germans were instructed actually to build special camps for these special category -- I am sorry, this is not an answer to that particular question. Were any actually sold? Q. Yes. A. No, not to my knowledge. Q. Do you know what sort of cases were envisaged? A. Not on the basis of this document which I produced, no. Q. Do you know what the scale of this proposal was meant to be? A. This document does not show that. Q. No. You do not know from extraneous sources the answers to any of my questions? A. The answer is? Q. Those two last two questions: Do you know not the answer from other evidence? A. Not that I wish to repeat just from memory, which may be uncertain on oath. Q. Thank you very much. Now I would like to return, if I may, to something that cropped up yesterday. It is in fact the only topic that cropped up yesterday that I am going to return to, save for continuing with the table talk but that is not really a repetition. Could you, please, be given Hitler's War 1977, the first volume. My Lord that is D 1 (i). A. I have it here. . P-17 Q. Would you please turn to page 341? A. Yes. Q. The left hand page that is. Here again you are purporting to give a translation of the table talk of 25th October 1941, are you not, in the second paragraph? A. On the right hand page, you mean? Q. No, 331? A. Yes, 331. Q. In my copy it is the left hand page. A. Odd numbers are always right hand pages in books. Q. That may be so. Here you purport, do you not, to give a translation of the table talk of 25th October 1941. Is that right? A. I have just reproduced the remarks noted by the adjutant, yes. Q. Take it slowly. The answer to my question I think is yes, is it not? A. I cannot see the word "translation" in that paragraph. Q. You have put it in quotes in English. The quotes start at "from the rostrum" and end at "terror is a salutary thing", do they not? A. Yes, but the word "translation" does not occur there. You are saying that I am purporting that this is a translation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It obviously is. Let us move on. A. I apprehend that he intends to attach importance to the . P-18 word "translation". This is why. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us wait and see. MR RAMPTON: That version, let us call it, was -- for this fact on its own I make no criticism -- taken straight from the Weidenfeld and Nicholson? A. It was an accurate transcript of the original official, shall we say, translation of the Hitler's table talk that I produced to his Lordship this morning. Q. At that date you did not have the Genoud original? A. In 1977 nobody had them except Mr Genoud.
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