Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.10 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 Q. No, Mr Irving. It is you who has built a huge mountain out of a tiny little mole hill. Assume two completely contrary hypotheses either of which could be right: Hitler does know what happens to the Jews when they arrive, and when they will arrive they are going to be killed. That is one hypothesis. He and Himmler would very well still need to talk about how to get the process continuing and continuing and continuing, until they had all gone. That is hypothesis one. A. Hypothesis two, Hitler does not know, but, of course, he . P-83 knows about the deportations because he has authorised it. Q. So on either hypothesis this is a neutral document? A. If your first hypothesis is correct, if these two men are in cahoots, if I can use gangster slang, why would Himmler need to use euphemisms? Q. Because they are actually talking about how to do the evacuations, the emigrations. You cannot kill somebody in a gas chamber or a pit somewhere near Lublin unless you have them there in the first place. You have to evacuate them emigrate them from, say, Berlin or Vienna or Rome or wherever it may be and you have to do that. It is a matter of logistics. It costs money. The trains are needed by the army. It is a necessary stage in the process, and there is no reason on earth why Himmler and Hitler should not have a conversation about that, is there? A. But if they are in cahoots why do we find nowhere in all these hundreds of sheets these agenda, telephone notes and all the rest of it anything specific to bear out the notion that Hitler had ordered the killing of the European Jews? Q. But you have constructed out of this perfectly natural, normal, neutral document and discussion, if you do not know the background, a discussion about how to continue the deportations, and how to make this into German "labensround", this area of Poland, Lublin, you have erected on the basis of that flimsy platform, this . P-84 sentence "Himmler meanwhile continued to pull the wool over Hitler's eyes"? A. Because there no reference in this -- Q. Why should there be? A. -- to any of the sinister things that had happening, whatever they are. Q. Why should there be? This is not a deceptive document. A. It is. He is using the euphemisms, which your own experts agree are the euphemisms for the extermination operation going on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you accept that, so far as Himmler is concerned that when he said "ausvanderung" he was really in his own mind visualizing what was going on in the - - A. We have a terrible problem with these euphemisms, my Lord, and this is that the word, the same word can mean different things used by the same person at different times. Q. -- well, take this note, do you regard "ausvanderung" meaning -- A. It could quite possibly mean that, that in his own mind he is referring to that, because he knows perfectly well what is going on. Q. -- namely? A. Shall we just leave it in vague terms, that something ugly is happening? Q. No. You are the historian; what do you think that Himmler . P-85 in his own mind had in -- A. He knows that the Jews -- Q. -- contemplation when he used the word "ausvanderung"? A. -- he knows that the Jews are being liquidated and that very few of them are surviving, as we know from the entry in Goebbels' diaries of March 1942 which is quite definitely an SS. In other words, the Himmler document. It has gone to Goebbels and has told Goebbels that of those who are deported and I think Goebbels actually mentions Lublin, 60 per cent may be fit for work, but 40 per cent had to be liquidated or the other way round. Q. But there is no reason to suppose that Hitler would ever have seen this note of 22nd September 1942? A. No, but unfortunately we are confronted with a problem, we can only write history safely on the basis of the paper before us. But it may well be that two or three pages later we come across a document which gives one more clue in the direction that I am trying to lead the readers. I think it is dishonest just to pick on one fragment and say, "Mr Irving has only mentioned this". I have found this document. I have mentioned. I have put it on the slate for people to read it, and later on we will find another document and we will refer to it just the same as your Lordship quite rightly pointed out that I had mentioned that 10th February 1942 document earlier on. It is there somewhere buried in the book and anyone can play . P-86 this exercise of yanking one pebble out of the wall and saying "Mr Irving has only painted this one pebble", when the whole picture is there in the book at the end of it. Q. I am not being critical at the moment, I am simply trying to understand your thought processes when you approach this document and as I understand it, correct me if I am wrong, I am sorry, Mr Rampton, to go on, you accept that Himmler had it mind that there was mass extermination of Jews going on? A. My Lord -- Q. And that that is what he was referring to when he writes "ausvanderung" of the Jews? A. -- I have to be careful, my Lord , because-- Q. In paragraph 1? A. -- I am constantly aware that I am under oath here and I am also relating something that happened 35 years ago when I wrote this manuscript for the first time. These particular words you are looking at were written by me probably at the end of the 1960s, so I have to be very careful when you ask me what my thought processes were. I can reconstruct them, but that is probably not a very useful exercise. I have to say that I would have been aware that later on we have what is called the Korheir Report, which is referred to earlier today, where Himmler has said: "Redraft this report in a form that we can show it to the Fuhrer", which strongly suggests that there is . P-87 wool pulling going on. That is why I feel safe in asserting a sentence like that here, because I regard this document as being evidence that quite probably what happened on this occasion was a certain amount of wool pulling. That somebody was being "horn swaggled", as the Americans say. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, Mr Rampton, I interrupted. MR RAMPTON: It is all right. I do not think I have many more to ask about that particular sentence. I have made my suggestion. I would like you to look, however, at something I said I would ask you some questions about, the earlier part of this passage which begins on page 466,. Himmler kept his own counsel. From his papers it emerges that on 9th July his SS Police Chief Kruger... already briefed him on the solution of the Jewish problem. On the 16th he visited Hitler. Photographs in the modern Polish archives"; do you remember, this is not a memory test, I just wonder whether you remember where you got the information, Mr Irving, that Himmler visited Hitler on the 16th? A. I would have to go back to my card index to check. It could have been from a number of sources. Q. There is an entry in Witte which says that he had lunch with Hitler on the 14th, but that is something you could not have had, because that is one of the entries that has only recently emerged from Moscow? . P-88 A. I would not have had that one. Q. No. A. Except, no, I had Himmler's -- I have Himmler's diary here. I will just check it. Q. You see if you can find anything for the 14th July. What have you put, the 16th? A. The 16th July we only have the telephone notes. Q. What, you have put the 16th? A. No, the 16th July we only have the telephone notes. Q. Yes. I think that is what I have here, yes. Certain, it is he saw Hitler either the day before, or a couple of days before he went to Auschwitz, is it not? A. Yes. Q. "Photographs in the modern Polish archives show him [indeed they do] visiting the immense synthetic rubber plant. They also show him at the camp itself, on the 17th and touring the concentration camp itself on the 18th in the company of his Chief Engineer, SS General Hans Cammler and Fritz Bracht, the gaulieter of Upper Silesia. Whatever later historians would claim Hitler himself never visited any concentration camp, let alone Auschwitz. Historians would also claim that Himmler witnessed the liquidation of a train load of Jews on this occasion. This is apocryphal". Blah-blah-blah I will not bother to read this. Can I go down to the history again? Starting it . P-89 on July 19th 1942: "On July 19th 1942, the day after Himmler's tour of Auschwitz, he issued a written order to Kruger 'I decree that the transfer of the entire Jewish population of the General Government is to be carried out and completed by December 31st 1942'." That is a document we will have to look at a bit later, Mr Irving. A. Yes. Q. "Hitler might still be dreaming of Madagascar, but the head office of the Eastern Railroad at Krakow reported since July 22nd one train load of 5,000 Jews --" A. Can I just interrupt there and point to the word "dreaming of Madagascar", I think that adequately sums up the earlier passage. Q. You say "dreaming", I say talking in a camouflage way, but perhaps it really does not matter. It is not a reality. "Since July 22nd one train load of 5,000 Jews has been running from Warsaw... to Treblinka every day and in addition a train load of 5,000 Jews leaves Przemysl twice a week for Belsec". Can I stop there. Mr Irving? A. Yes. Q. We will look at some more documents in relation to those transports this afternoon. Why was it -- in fact, I think the figures are not quite right, but suppose they are for the minute, why was it that one train load a day of 5,000 Jews was going from Warsaw to Treblinka and one twice a week of 5,000 Jews to Belsec from the place which begins . P-90 with P? A. The documents do not tell us, but perhaps it might be useful if we had a look at a map which will show us exactly. Q. I am going to, with his Lordship's permission, I am going to give you -- this is new to me, I got it last night, so I have not been hiding it away, it is an original German army I think military railway map? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it one of the ones you -- MR RAMPTON: No, your Lordship, has not got it. I had not it until last night. THE WITNESS: I certainly have not had it. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving has not had it and so everyone can have it now, and there is one for the witness (same handed). MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, we are moving on to another issue really now. MR RAMPTON: Yes, we are. I was actually going to suggest that I stopped there because I was going to ask just one question, and then I could give Mr Irving time to have a bit of lunch and perhaps look forward at some of the documents which he has referred to here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Only if he feels he has time to do it over lunch. MR RAMPTON: But I am now going to do what I said I would do this morning, which is to look at the true scale and nature of what actually happened. This is awkward, I am . P-91 sorry, I should have had sellotaped together, but I did not have time. If you just hold them roughly on top of the other because that is how it works, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I follow. MR RAMPTON: We see Warsaw at the top of the map, then you if go out the key tells us that a double line is a two track railway, and a single line is a single track railway, which is logical enough, is it not? The key is in the bottom right hand corner. A. Yes. Q. Then there is that another marking, which we do not have to bother about, which is the actual, I think, German railway as opposed to the Russian one or the Polish one. A different gauge, I think. The line runs north/east or east/north/east out of Warsaw to a place called Malkinia; do you see that? A. Yes. Q. Just on the border with White Russia? A. Yes. Q. And there is a sharp right turn and the first dot down that single line is Treblinka. A. Yes.
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