Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day013.01 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London Tuesday, 1st February 2000 Before: MR JUSTICE GRAY B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING Claimant -and- (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED (2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT Defendants The Claimant appeared in person MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and Second Defendants MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell & Company, Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4 Telephone: 020-7242-9346) (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell & Company) PROCEEDINGS - DAY THIRTEEN . P-1 (Day 13. Tuesday, 1st February 2000.) MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving? MR IRVING: May it please the court. Your Lordship will have appreciated that the Defence relied to a certain degree on that document about crematorium capacities. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: I was going to ask your Lordship's leave to have Professor van Pelt back in the box for 10 minutes to put further points about it to him which he may not be able to answer, but which would give the chance then for their other experts later on in the procedure to come back and address. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think your position on that document was that you doubted its authenticity. Is that fair? MR IRVING: This is, I think, the only document whose integrity I am challenging. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is the only one but it is certainly one that you are challenging. MR IRVING: It is a very important document. I did not appreciate at the time that we went over it the degree to which Professor van Pelt was going to rely on it. You remember the diagram he drew with the tall green column, and so on? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Subject to what Mr Rampton says, as Professor van Pelt is here, I do not see any reason why he should not be further cross-examined, do you? . P-2 MR RAMPTON: No, I do not mind at all, provided he does not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure he has a choice. MR RAMPTON: He has not got any of his papers and I do not have the document here myself. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure he will manage. Let us have him back, shall we, now? Professor, would you mind coming back? ( PROFESSOR VAN PELT, recalled. Further Cross-Examined by MR IRVING.) MR IRVING: It is in the Auschwitz core file No. 2. I have provided a set of documents to the Defence to operate with. It is under tab 4, item 49. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it. What about these odds and ends, Mr Irving? Where are you suggesting we put them? MR IRVING: If we come to Dresden during the day, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: These are Dresden, are they? MR IRVING: They are Dresden, my Lord. A. This is Kristallnacht, so this is my own report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can he have a copy of K2? MR IRVING: This is the actual document. The first thing is that Jean-Claude Pressac on page 247 himself points to the fact that this document did not surface until 1981. Would you agree with that, Professor? A. No, I do not agree, because it was available in the Vienna trial. The first copy I found was in the Vienna trial. What I actually had in my hand was, I think, in file OM . P-3 461 at the Dejaco and Ertl trial. Q. When was that trial? A. That trial was in 1971. Q. Are you aware of any earlier occasions when that document surfaced, shall we say? A. I think that Jan Sehn had it his hands in the early 50s, but I cannot be sure about that. When I talked about the Domberg version of the document -- there is a version of that document, as far as I know, in the Hoess trial transcript, and that would have been there in '48. I am not yet absolutely sure any more that I have seen that document in the Hoess trial transcript. I went through the Hoess trial transcripts. This was in 1990, but I am not absolutely any more sure that I have seen the Domburg copy in that transcript. I thought it was brought up -- I have certainly seen the Domburg copy. A copy was elsewhere in the Auschwitz und Bauleitung files. Q. These would be useful pointers to the defence to research the document over the next few days. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, Professor van Pelt, you referred to the Domburg document. I do not know what you mean by that. A. There is an archive in the DDR, in Domburg. They sent at a certain moment a copy of that document to the State Museum. MR IRVING: Would that be in 1959 that that transfer took . P-4 place? A. I am not sure. If indeed it is in the Hoess trial transcript it should have happened earlier because Hoess was in 1947, and then, of course, the other camp SS men were tried in 1948, and some of these files of the Hoess trial and that of Grapner and the others are actually combined, so it is kind of difficult to determine exactly what comes from where. Q. The operative word in that response is the word "if" of course, "if it was in the trial". Is it right that the document as published, or a version of the document as published, in a 1957 volume published by the East German, the DDR, the German Democrat Republic? A. I am not sure. I wonder, do you remember -- do you mean the Petsalt book? Q. I do not know the title of the book. A. I cannot comment on that. I am not absolutely sure, I think that Petsalt did it, but I thought the Petsalt book was later. Q. Can I now draw your attention to the document in front of you which is in facsimile? This is taken from the Defence bundle, the Auschwitz core file No. 2. A. Yes. Q. This is an original document, is it not? It is not a postwar transcript, to the best of your knowledge? A. Yes, this is a copy of an original document. I mean a . P-5 wartime copy. MR JUSTICE GRAY: A 1943 document? A. Yes. MR IRVING: Yes. But you have not seen this particular one in the Auschwitz archives, or have you? A. No, this one is in Moscow. Q. This one is in Moscow? A. Yes. Q. This is from the captured files of the Auschwitz construction office which are at present in the Moscow archives? A. Yes. Q. I draw your attention to the first line, the date 28th June 1943, right? A. Yes. Q. How many documents have you seen in carbon copy which do not include the word "Auschwitz" and the following word, "Den", D-E-N? A. If this is a carbon copy, I presume it was a carbon copy of an original which was on a letter head. Q. Yes. A. On the letter head it does actually say "Auschwitz", so in carbon copies one can have quite often just the date and no information about the place. Q. Very well. A. But I cannot give a quantity in this case of how many . P-6 documents I have seen. Q. We go down now to the next line, which is what I will call the letter register line, which begins with the No. 31550. You will notice that that number is typed in and not handwritten in? A. Yes. Q. How many documents have you seen in the Auschwitz construction archives that have that letter register number typed in on a carbon copy? A. I cannot say. I have seen it, but I cannot say how many copies. Q. Very well. A. If I had my files with me right now, maybe I could show you examples of it typed in, but at the moment I am standing here just with one document. Q. I agree. I draw the attention of the Defence to what I call this discrepancy. The next event in that line is an oblique, stroke, followed by "JA.", JA period. A. Yes. Q. How many items have you seen in the Auschwitz construction office files which have a period after the JA? A. I am sorry. I cannot answer that. Q. Yes. I appreciate that. I draw your attention to the next item which is an oblique stroke and the initials "Ne.-". How many items have you in the Auschwitz construction office files which have the initials "Ne" as . P-7 a secretary, signing a letter dictated by Jahrling or Jahrnish, or by the man whose initials are "JA"? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not quite sure I follow that question. MR IRVING: I am sorry. Let me phrase it in two parts. Am I correct in saying that the man whose initials are "JA" was the man who dictated the letter? A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Jahrling? MR IRVING: Yes. Am I correct in saying that the following initials "Ne" would be his secretary? A. Yes. Q. Have you seen any other letters whatsoever in the entire 50,000 documents in the Auschwitz archives which have a secretary whose initials are "Ne"? A. Since you brought up the challenge a few days ago, I thought it was an "M" here. I mean, it seems to read as "M". I actually checked. I think I mentioned the name of the secretary a couple of days ago. It should be in the transcript because I checked. A 28 year old woman employed as a secretary at that moment in the Zentralbauleitung, I think. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You cannot remember her name? A. Sorry, I cannot remember her name. I had all the documentation with me on Friday and on Wednesday. MR IRVING: Very well. Are you aware that his secretary, actually her name began with an "L" or his name began with . P-8 an "L", and that of the 50 items which are in the collection which we control or which I am advised exists, dictated by this man, 49 of them have the secretary's initials as "L" or "Lm"? A. I cannot comment on that. Q. Very well. And that in none of these cases is there a period after either the "JA" or after the secretary's name? Can you comment on that? A. No, I cannot comment on that. Q. Clearly, the reason I am saying this, my Lord, is to give the Defence a chance to come back possibly with documents proving me wrong on these points? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think that is fair. MR IRVING: Will you now look five or six lines lower down to the address: "SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-hauptamt, Antsgruppenchef C". I draw your attention now to the following line. Is there anything missing from that line "SS Brigadefuhrer u. Generalmajor"? A. Generalmajor SS that would have been normally. Q. Generalmajor der Waffen SS? A. Yes. Q. Have you seen any other documents whatsoever in the entire construction files of the Auschwitz office, either in Moscow or in the Auschwitz archives now, in which the words "Der Waffen SS" are omitted after the word"Generalmajor"? . P-9 A. I cannot comment on that. Q. In other words, the address is improper in its present form; is that correct? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, he cannot comment. MR IRVING: Yes. Well, my Lord, it is an incorrect rank. A. It is an incorrect designation of a rank -- a very important one because they were very particular, particularly if they had the rank of a Brigadier General. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can be a Brigadefuhrer. MR IRVING: They were a Brigadier General in the SS and Simultaneously they had a military rank in the Waffen SS.
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