Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day008.22 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sending them all the way from France to Poland and then back again. MR IRVING: And then back again. I cannot speculate as to the reason why they should engage in this movement, except that Auschwitz does appear to have had a transit camp character about it. It had facilities there for stealing, robbing; it had facilities there for fumigating and checking; it had also the big slave labour camp that was attached to the Molovitz factory. There are two reasons, your Lordship has quite rightly spotted that fact, and that is I wanted to hint at the possibility this may have been the kind of movement -- remember your Lordship drew attention to the fact that people were coming back from the East, from Lemburg to one of the camps on the border. Of course, the special reception camp, that is, Bezonderes Auffanglager, you will see on the next page, my Lord, in line 4, "Bezonderes Auffanglager", a special reception camp, is clearly the Sonderlager to which reference is later made, in my submission. . P-3 If I can move rapidly on to the next document, my Lord, it is headed "Pocket Dictionary". It is three or four pages. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I have that. MR IRVING: In that case ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang ob. I probably have it somewhere. MR IRVING: It will be in white, my Lord, with a green corner tab. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Oddly enough, that has not arrived. MR IRVING: My Lord, I went to some trouble over the last few months obtaining contemporary a German dictionary by which I mean a wartime Third Reich German dictionary so we can see what the meaning of words were at that time, rather than the modern Langenscheidt being used and relied upon by the Defence. This is a 1935 dictionary, my Lord, which is this one here. I have just looked up at random some of the words we are interested in. The first page is "Entfernen" which means "to remove". It has no subsidiary sinister meanings. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think anyone is suggesting, except in a euphemistic way, that it means anything other than to remove or distance. MR IRVING: My Lord, I believe the Defence is relying heavily on the fact that I have mistranslated and distorted. In my submission, if I use the correct wartime translation of the word, then this destroys that particular Defence . P-4 justification. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: The next page is "Vernichten", a very sinister word, "annihilate and destroy". The next page is "Abschaffen" which is quite significant in connection with the French movements, you will remember, my Lord, because Himmler wrote next to the figures "Abschaffen" in his handwriting, and this means "to dismiss". MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the difficulty with "Abschaffen" is that it would not normally be applied to people. Is that not a fair point? MR IRVING: You are right, my Lord. It could apply to a body of people, perhaps, to dismiss them, and I shall be making, obviously, my closing speech submissions at some length summarising this question of the translations which is a thorny one, I appreciate, but in view of the fact the Defence do rely on it so heavily for the distortion element of their justification; and, finally, my Lord, on page 33 of the dictionary we have the famous "Ausrotten" and there the 1935 meaning of the word is quite clearly "to root out", as you would imagine, the word "Ausrotten"; whereas I quite readily accept that nowadays in 1999/2000, the word "Ausrotten" quite clearly means "liquidate". It has become that, the same as words change their meaning over the years. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. . P-5 MR IRVING: My Lord, finally, I come to the little bundle of documents. It is a rather arcane matter, but again I believe the Defence rely heavily on my choice of language. Your Lordship will remember the rather heated remarks I made about certain Jewish fraudsters and racketeer in the United States, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and so on. I suggested they were hiding behind, they were insulating themselves from public criticism by the use of the Holocaust. This is what is now scientifically or academically referred to as the instrumentalisation of the Holocaust. This is one particular example which came to our attention. Mr Melvin Murmelstein, who may well be mentioned later on in the case, started a claim against the Hertford Insurance Company. His lawyers warned the insurance company that, as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II, this matter is extremely important to Mr Murmelstein. That is page 2, my Lord. On page 6, the insurance company's own lawyers warned them, warned the insurance company, to settle the $100,000 being claimed, saying, "The lawyer argues that a jury will be sympathetic to a man who has survived a Nazi concentration camp", and so on. So this is the kind ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not quite the same point, is it? The point that I think you were making in that talk that we looked at on Thursday was that Jews who get up to some . P-6 sort of financial or other misconduct then used the Holocaust as a kind of shield against their own criminality. MR IRVING: My Lord, it may well be that I shall lead ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a slightly use or instrumentalization of the Holocaust. MR IRVING: It is an insulation which goes on. Perhaps it is automatic -- we all have the utmost sympathy with victims of the Holocaust, and that includes myself, and I want to say that here; but I want to get this one instance in now because of the rather ugly note we closed on on Thursday evening, and it may well be I will lead further evidence which will go more closely to the matter actually raised. With that, I end my submission, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will put these into, just so we know where they are going, J. I think we have got to 8, but there is a problem with these loose documents. So that completes what you wanted to say about that, Mr Irving. MR IRVING: I have completed my submission, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, you do not want to say anything about this matter? MR RAMPTON: No, I do not want to say anything about any of them at the moment. I may have to come back to some of them in due course, but certainly not today. J8, my Lord, says Miss Rogers. . P-7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could I mention something that I would like to do, I think probably first thing tomorrow morning, if that is convenient, and that is to have a look and see what the future timetable is looking like, as far as one can judge it. I would appreciate there are witnesses to be accommodated. We might need to discuss what topics need to be cross-examined to and possibly some do not need to be. MR RAMPTON: I agree. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And timing generally. MR RAMPTON: I mean, I quite agree with that. One reason, if I may respectfully say so, I would say it was a good idea to do it tomorrow is that today is a bit uncharted, I am chartered, but I do not know where my charts will lead me today. But there is also the very good question your Lordship has raised on how much more of Evans do I have to do? Of course, essentially, that is a question for me, subject to being told not to. There are only, I think, two big topics left in Evans, that is ReichsKristallnacht -- three, ReichKristallnacht early anti-Semitism of Hitler with the Nuremberg rules and Dresden. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there is another heading post Kirstallnacht, is there not? MR RAMPTON: Yes, but that is all part of the same subject. MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I mention something which I think . P-8 I have mentioned before, which is this, that it would be convenient to us if we could have our reading day on Thursday rather than Friday of this week for the reason that Professor van Pelt has to go to Stockholm on Thursday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: For a day or for a weekend? MR RAMPTON: Only for a day. He is going in the morning and coming back in the afternoon, but there is a conference that he has been asked to attend and thinks that he should. So if we could possibly have ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not see any problem with that. Does that cause you any difficulty, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: My Lord, we were going to call Dr John Fox as our expert witness on that day, but I can easily postpone him. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very accommodating. Thank you. We will do that first thing Thursday morning, if that is all right with both of you? So we can now press on with cross-examination. MR IRVING: My Lord, I am calling Mr Peter Miller as a witness tomorrow, but he will be relatively brief, I think, on the events in Moscow. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That raises a question that I have canvassed before. To what extent are we going to have to go through quite voluminous evidence on the Goebbels' diaries? To some extent I am in both of your hands. I have made no secret of the fact that whilst I understand, Mr Irving, . P-9 your complaint about it, and I have seen the way the Defence is put, in the end is it a topic that we benefit by spending a very great deal of time on? MR IRVING: On the Goebbels' diaries. MR JUSTICE GRAY: On the Goebbels' diaries and the breach of the agreement or whatever it was. MR IRVING: My Lord, I am accused of having breached agreements in Moscow. This is what I will certainly ask Peter Miller to evidence on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is really in a way addressed to Mr Rampton as he will understand. MR RAMPTON: There are really only two points left in Moscow. There is an admission that plates were removed without permission. The question, was there any significant risk they might be damaged? Second, how many plates? Now, whether that is more than about half an hour's cross-examination -- nothing more than that, I doubt. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, well and good. That is, I think, all it really merits, frankly. MR RAMPTON: That is how I see it. There is the additional point, of course, that Moscow would be, if it fell anywhere in the case, a section 5 question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what you say. MR RAMPTON: That is what I believe, and it may be against everything else I will take a view (and it will be my decision) that it pales into insignificance. . P-10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really why I have said what I have just said. I do appreciate, Mr Irving, you do not accept that it is an insignificant point because you say you are accused of breaking an agreement. MR IRVING: Well... MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not sound as if Mr Rampton is really pursuing that at all. MR RAMPTON: Yes, but without permission. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but without permission does not mean breaking an agreement necessarily. MR RAMPTON: That is a question of terminology really. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am in both your hands about that, but I personally do not think we should spend a lot of time. MR RAMPTON: That is my present view, but I am not committing myself now. But I think your Lordship can reasonably expect that Moscow will not take up a lot of the court's time, as far as I am concerned. MR IRVING: My Lord, if they were to put Moscow into section 5 as well, I think that bucket is beginning to overflow. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very vivid way of putting it. MR IRVING: We can put the whole of his Hizbollah and Farrakhan into section 5. MR RAMPTON: That is not section 5. That is common sting which is different. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, anyway, let us get on. That disposes of that. Yes, do please come back, Mr Irving. . P-11 (MR DAVID IRVING, recalled. Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued.) MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there are three new bundles. They are not new in any surprise sense. They are new in that we have composed them for ease of reference for this part of the case. There are two Auschwitz core bundles; the first consisting of what one might call material arising out of the Leuchter Report, and it has the Leuchter Report at the beginning of it. The second Auschwitz core bundles are the original drawings and documents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: The third new file, again composed from other sources, are statements by Mr Irving about Leuchter and the Leuchter report. That has been extracted from a range of the D files, D1 and 2 and 3. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Many of which we have been through? MR RAMPTON: Yes, exactly, but not the specific reference and I am hoping to cut that short this morning, if I possibly can. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to be tedious about it, but can we perhaps give these bundles a slightly more convenient means of identification? MR RAMPTON: We started off by calling them "K". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, why not? MR RAMPTON: All right. K1, 2 and 3 then. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is just going to make life simpler later . P-12 on.
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