Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.12 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 Q. Well, the possibility remains that there are certain kinds of documents which certain kinds of people at certain times in history will set out deliberately to destroy? A. I think this is a useful discussion. Yes, I think that with certain kind of documents one would have expected people to attach priority to their destruction but, even if that is the case, there will always be somebody slightly lower down in that chain of hierarchy between the person who gives the orders and the person who executes them who has felt a qualm of conscience or a pang of conscience, and who has written to his wife, saying we have to carry out orders that are too ghastly even to think of, and I found documents just like that, too. Q. You found a letter that the officer Dr Otto Schutz Duval wrote to his wife, did you not? A. I did not find that, no. Q. You did not, but that is such an example, is it not? A. I am afraid I am not familiar with that document unless you remind me of it. Q. You refer to it on your web site. A. Somebody else found it, obviously posted it and put it on the web site. I am talking about around Hitler's level . P-102 there with generals who wrote letters of precisely that content, saying they are doing things in Poland that I do not even like to tell you about. Q. That process, what one might call the workings of conscience or anything else, might account for what you have called the occasional orphan document, might it not? A. Yes indeed, but also there could be an uglier process, namely a document created like the identity card of Mr Ivan Demjanjuk, which turns out to have been generated by the KGB for whatever purpose. We have to be constantly on the look out, particularly for documents coming from Russian or KGB archives. It is a remote possibility, but we have to be alert to that possibility. Q. Yes. Of course that is absolutely right. Can we start please -- I know you will think or may think initially that this is somewhat anachronistic out of our chronology but it is not really as you will see in a moment -- a document which I am sure you are familiar with. My Lord, it is in bundle H4 (v). MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid that is one I do not have here. MR RAMPTON: We seem to have quite a lot of spares here. Footnote 187. These are Dr Longerich's documents? A. Yes. I think I am the first person to have quoted this document in fact ever. Q. Again, I am afraid it is a document which is sideways in the file. This is a reprint of the original. It is very . P-103 short. It is document No. 54 at the top of page 157 on the right-hand side: "Schreiben Himmlers an den Gauleiter im Wartheland Geiser: Ankundigung von Judentransporten aus dem Reich nach Lodz, 18.9.1941", which means, being translated, Mr Irving? A. Which sentence are you reading? Q. I read the heading at 54? A. Letter from Himmler to Gauleiter in the Wartheland Greiser, forewarning of the arrival of Jewish transports from the Reich in Lodz or Lodsch in Litzmannstatt, as the Germans call it, on September 18th, 1941. Q. I will not read the German. Does it say: The Fuhrer wishes that, as quickly as possible, the Altreich and the Protectorate, that Bohemia and Moravia, is it not, shall be cleared and free of Jews from West to East? A. Yes. Q. Do you accept that as evidence of, I do not know what the word is but it does not matter, something that Hitler has told Himmler he wants done? A. Yes, Hitler has taken the initiative and has ordered the emptying out. Q. Yes. A. Which is made quite plain in all my books also, of course. Q. If mere deportation from central and Western Europe is Hitler's idea of a losung, maybe even an endlosung, until Madagascar is free, this is the date at which it takes . P-104 effect? A. Not precisely on this date. It would have been any date up to this date. Q. From this date? A. Yes. It takes effect from this date. Q. From this date. Well, can we then leap forward in time please, in this file? A. Can I just express a certain amount of dismay that we are having printed versions of these telegrams shown us to and not the originals? The reason for that is that the originals have certain paraphernalia attached to them, which are not without significance. I am referring specifically to their security classification, because I intend later on to draw conclusions from documents which have security classifications and documents which do not, what you call janitorial level, or what I call janitorial level documents, and we do not know what classification this document has. That does help us -- I am sorry to speak so quickly -- to classify in the other sense a document into its degree of importance, whether it has the very highest security grading or no security classification. We cannot tell from this of course because the editor has taken it off. Q. I fear Mr Irving, I am naked in this regard. I have no originals. A. Well, you do. It was in my discovery, and it should have . P-105 been put in the bundles rather than this printed version. Q. Mr Irving, please do not let's get on to that again. I was trying to explain yesterday that, by oversight or whatever, I think you were away for quite a long time in the autumn, there was no discussion about what documents you wanted included in the bundles and that is the sole reason? A. It is regrettable because we are robbed or deprived of that possibility. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There we are. We have to make the best we can of what we have got. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, if this is something which is troubling Mr Irving, which it obviously has been for some time, if he has any time in the three day weekend which is coming up, because we shall be going on to Auschwitz the week after, therefore there will not be much need to refer to this kind of document, he should make a list of those documents in his discovery, he will know very well which they are, which he would like us to copy as originals and put into these bundles. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure he will do it if he has the time. MR RAMPTON: That is what I mean. A. My Lord, they were all copied for them originally. They have copies of the entire discovery. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point is to make a selection of the ones that you regard as being important. Anyway, we have this . P-106 document, we have seen what it says, it has never really been in doubt, but it is a start, you say, Mr Rampton. MR RAMPTON: Can we now turn, please, forward and also forward in the bundle, to footnote 245. It is in the same file. Again, I apologise profusely for the fact that I do not think I have the original of it. Footnote, 1st May 1942, tab 25 if it helps anybody find it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are all these documents going to be in German without a translation? MR RAMPTON: There is a translation of this one, my Lord. I am just looking for it, because it is annoying. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It just takes longer. MR RAMPTON: I did observe that I think Mr Irving said he did not want just to look at summaries of translations. He wanted to look, so far as he could, at the original document. I am respecting that until such time as your Lordship tells me to ignore it. My Lord, there is a summary, in part a translation on page 53. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of what? MR RAMPTON: Of Dr Longerich's report, part 2, page 53, paragraph 1.3. Have you got that too, Mr Irving? A. Very shortly, yes. Document September 18th, by the way, was on page 326 of Hitler's War translated in full. Q. Yes. A. This one is presumably on page 330. The one we are . P-107 looking at now is on page 330 of Hitler's War, the original edition. Q. I do not suppose much of what I am going to put to you is going to be controversial, save in point of interpretation, not translation. There may be some things you have not seen before, in which case then you must say so. A. I have seen this document. Q. Obviously you have. It would not be in the book, otherwise. It says, does it not, in effect this: Greiser is writing to Himmler, and he says that the "special treatment" -- the word is Sonderbehandlung -- "of about 100,000 Jews in my district was authorized by you in agreement with Heydrich, and that it could be completed within the next two to three months"? A. "You" in this case is of course Himmler, not Hitler. Q. Oh sure. A. Yes. Q. I said it is a letter from Greiser to Himmler. A. Yes, but it is an important point to make. It shows where this particular system link ends. Q. Well, you say that. That is assuming that Himmler never communicated any of this sort of stuff to Hitler. A. I am just drawing attention to what this actual document says, Mr Rampton. Q. I follow that. . P-108 A. The special treatment which you, Mr Himmler, and Heydrich have both authorized. Q. Can we just leave Adolf Hitler out of this for the moment? I am not actually on Adolf Hitler. I will have to come back him, no doubt. I am dealing now with the scale and systematic nature of this operation, whatever this operation may turn out to be. A. Very well. Q. Here in May of 1942, following an order or whatever you like to call it from Hitler, that the OutReich and the Protectorate are to be cleared of their Jews, Himmler gets a letter from Greiser saying that he can clear out, no, specially handle, whatever that may mean, about 100,000 Jews in his gaugebiet, which is the Warthegau, in the next two to three months. A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, is that the first reference to sonderbehandlung that one finds in the documents? A. My Lord, we have had it once or twice up to this point, I believe. Q. I mean chronologically? MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that is a very good question, if I may say so. I do mean it is a good question because I do not know the answer. A. With this sinister meaning, yes. Q. There may be something in Professor Browning, I do not . P-109 know. This means killing, does it not? A. In the light of what subsequently happened, yes, but it is not evident from this particular document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not in gas chambers? A. Not necessarily, no, not evident from this particular document. MR RAMPTON: Where were the Jews of the Warthegau killed, Mr Irving? A. I do not know, and I suspect that you cannot tell from this document either. Q. No, but I know what went on at Chelmno, as indeed do you, do you not? A. We know that there was a killing operation started there, yes. Q. With the use of gas trucks? A. That is possible, yes. Q. Yes. Well, let us look at another document in the same file. This is one you may not have seen before but, as I say, I am doing two things at once so, notwithstanding that you have not seen them before if you have not, could you look at footnote 247? It is just a couple of pages on from the one we looked at. This is a reprint from a book call Faschismus, I do not know who wrote it, which I am sure is German for "fascism". Have you seen this before? A. I have not, no. It is a translation into German from the Polish, presumably. . P-110 Q. No, I think probably not. If you look at item 218, Auszug aus einem Lagebericht... A. Yes, but that comes from a totally different provenance, according to the following page. It come from AIM, Gestapo Lodsch. Q. How do you know what document it is that I am talking about? A. You are talking about document 217. Q. No, 218. A. I am sorry.
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.