Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day013.19 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Then the 1995 edition -- wait a minute, I have leapt ahead of myself. We will come back to it, Mr Irving, when we have the document, but I just want to ask the question whether you remember on 28th November 1991 saying in an interview with This Week that there were 25,000 killed at Auschwitz and that "we (that is Allies) killed five times that number in Dresden in one night"? A. I probably would have said four times or five times. Q. Check it. A. I do not know. I would have to see what I said. Q. If you did say that, what it means is that you are saying to the viewers on 28th November 1991 that 125,000 were killed at Dresden ? A. I would need to know exactly the words I used in that statement. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather than leave these things dangling in the air. Have we not got that somewhere? MR RAMPTON: The files have been taken away to be marked up for another purpose which your Lordship knows, the K files. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have probably got them here, have I not? MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship probably ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would much rather not leave points hanging in the air or we will forget about them. MR RAMPTON: I agree. . P-168 A. If your Lordship knows can I know too? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going to show you my copy. I am not going to keep it from you. The whole point was to show it to you. MR RAMPTON: I cannot tell your Lordship where to look, I am afraid. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you tell me even the letter of the alphabet? MR RAMPTON: The date is 28th November 1991. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the file called? MR RAMPTON: K3, says Miss Rogers. MR JUSTICE GRAY: K3. A. This is a transcript of a Thames Television This Week film? MR RAMPTON: No, it is a transcript of an interview with you This Week. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Somebody has removed my K3. MR RAMPTON: What I am going to do is to read out your exact words. A. I always like to see the context of what things are being said. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is going to be shown to you. MR RAMPTON: I am going to show you the whole page and a half that I have. I am going to read it out and if you have read it and say I have missed something or I am being selective, then please tell us. . P-169 The interviewer, whose name I know not, asked you: "So what is the point of quibbling about the exact number of Jews that were killed by Hitler? Irving: Exact numbers are important. Look at Auschwitz, about 100,000 people died in Auschwitz. Most of them died of epidemics as we know now from code breaking", that is to Hinsley decrypts. "So even if we are generous and say a quarter of them, 25,000 were killed by hanging or shooting, 25,000 is a crime, that's true. 25,000 innocent person executed by one means or another, but we killed that many people, burning them alive in one night, not in three years in a city like Faucheim. We killed five times that number in Dresden in one night, equals 125,000." A. We killed I think 17,000 in Faucheim in one night and five times that is less than 125,000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but that is not rally the relevant bit, is it? A. That is precisely why I would like to see the original quote. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let Mr Irving have a look at and see if and make any point you want. A. I am not really going to quibble about this, because to my mind if I said it is 125,000 and Mr Rampton says it is only 100,000 in my mind, or you said only 100,000 before, this kind of chiselling around major catastrophes I find regrettable, repugnant. I will have a quick look at it. . P-170 The reason I want to look at it, my Lord, is because Professor Evans by suppressing one word in a quotation from a certain letter has totally reversed another passage. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are absolutely entitled and right to ask to look at it. MR RAMPTON: Yes. A. Here I am going to have to say I want to hear the sound recording to see if I said five times or not or four times. If they are going to quibble on that kind of word I want to what hear if I said four or five. Q. It is not a quibble. A. It is a quibble. Q. You said yourself, Mr Irving, that the figures are exact. A. That is why I think it is important I should know whether I said four or five. Is that This Week recorded by the way? Q. Yes, I think so. A. I will listen to it at home. I have it on tape. Q. By all means do. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please do. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, remember the Leuchter press conference? My Lord, I am sorry, I have jumped a date, 23rd June 1989, page 11 of the table. I have got the transcript here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the reference? It is in D2 . P-171 somewhere. MR RAMPTON: The actual file is D2(i) tab 5, page 10. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. Does Mr Irving have a copy? A. Yes. MR RAMPTON: You start at the bottom of page 9. This is the question and answer session of the Leuchter press conference. Does your Lordship have it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes I have. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, have you got it? I am starting with Irving at the bottom of page 9. "I am suggesting to you alternative explanations to the gas chambers, because obviously as the gas chamber now turns out to be phoney, then we have to try to explain what happened to the figures". I think you probably meant the people. "Now one possible reason is the large number of Jews that turned up in the state of Palestine which is now the state of Israel. Jews in Israel did not come from nowhere. Another part of them when Auschwitz was liberated was set out on the roads and shipped westwards where they ended up in cities like Dresden". Pause there, Mr Irving. What evidence do you have that any of the people from Auschwitz went to Dresden? A. I say cities like Dresden. Q. Let us read on in the light of that answer. "I do not have to tell you what happened in . P-172 Dresden three weeks after Auschwitz was evacuated by the Germans. One million refugees on the streets of Dresden at the time when we burnt Dresden to the ground killing anything between 100,000 and 250,000 of them"? A. Yes. Q. Of whom ---- A. Of the 1 million people on the streets of Dresden. Q. One million refugees on the streets of Dresden. A. One million people on the streets of Dresden. Q. "One million refugees on the streets of Dresden at the time when we burnt Dresden to the ground killing anything between 100,000 to 200,000 of them." A. Of them. Q. The refugees? A. Dresedens, the people in Dresden. Q. I can well understand a degree of ---- A. Hyperbole. Q. Sloppy expression in answer to a question. Of course I understand that. Although you say refugees, I do not suppose you meant that 250,000 refugees were killed in Dresden, any more than you meant that 250,000 refugees from Auschwitz were killed in Dresden? A. I am giving the upper and lower limits. Q. In 1989 where does the figure of 250,000 as an upper limit come from, Mr Irving? A. It comes in the war years from the records that I saw, as . P-173 the upper limit, hence the estimate that was put to Adolf Hitler on the morning after, but also over the intervening years I received very large numbers of letters from 1960 onwards when I was writing the Dresden book, from 1960 right up to 1989, that is almost 30 years I received persistent letters from people who said it cannot possibly have been as low as X; it must have been as high as Y. Nearly all of them gave as the upper limit the figure of 250,000. So I am stating here limits in my view; not more than 250,000, not less than 100,000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you attach credence, do you, to letters like the ones you have just mentioned, giving an upper limit? A. Not only to that, my Lord, I also mentioned the documents during the war years which also mentioned that kind of figure. It is an upper limit, however improbable and a lower limit, however equally improbable, without setting the figure in between which on this occasion I consider to be more accurate, given as an answer to a question, a belligerent question, at a press conference. MR RAMPTON: I think the latest figures I have from you are probably in the Goebbels book. I notice, in passing, that in the republication of Dresden, the focal point edition of 1995, you say in the introduction: "Between 50 and 100,000", in the text, "up to 100,000". In Goebbels you say, "Between 60 and 100,000 men, women and children". . P-174 A. Yes, that is having read the latest accounts that had come from East Germany, which I consider to be very impressive, which were published, I suppose, within the last three or four years or five years. Q. Is Dr Professor Herr Reichert an East German? A. My recollection is that the book was sent to me by the East German Government -- by the Dresden City Authorities. I think it is the last item in your clip, is it not? The last item I saw anyway was a letter, yes, just above tab 3, my Lord. 1997, yes, they sent me a copy of that book. There had been several newspaper accounts also based on it. Q. I am trying to find the Reichert's final estimate which I think is about 25,000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is that? MR RAMPTON: My Lord, 511 of Evans. Dresden historian, yes, you can call him an East German, if you like. I prefer just to call him a German? A. "Central German", perhaps. Q. From Dresden, a Dresdener? A. 500? MR JUSTICE GRAY: 511. MR RAMPTON: 511, paragraph 6. MR RAMPTON: "Many historians accept the 35,000 figure". Pommerin, Sherry. "For instance, the historian, Earl A Beck", who seems to be an American, "said the constant . P-175 increase in estimates of the number killed in the raids does not comport with the facts. Official reports justify an estimate of between 25,000 and 35,000 killed. Figures that rose to 100 or 200,000 killed lost touch with the reality. In 1994 research by the Dresden historian Friedrich Reichart was published, using a previously unused source, which convincingly reduced Bergander's figure of 35,000 to 25,000. This figure", says Professor Evans, "can be regarded as close to definitive"? A. Well... Q. Well, now, Mr Irving, 100,000, 60 to 100,000 those figures are fantasy, are they not? A. I think the answer to that is you pays your money, you takes your choice, and we know who is paying the money to Mr Evans and we know what choice he has made. Q. I see. But what about Mr Reichert? Has he been paid by the international Jewish conspiracy to produce these figures? A. What an extraordinary statement! Q. Well, that is what you have been asserting all through this case. A. I do not think I have mentioned the phrase even once. Do you want me to comment on Reichart's book or are you just making ---- Q. We are going to have a little trawl through your public utterances about the Jews tomorrow. . P-176 A. Oh, good. Q. You might enjoy that. Is it right, Mr Irving, that when ---- A. Can we also have a bit of a trawl through the public utterances about the Jewish community about me? MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are perfectly entitled to. MR RAMPTON: About what? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Call evidence about that, Jewish organizations' statements about Mr Irving. MR RAMPTON: Oh well, he can, yes. A. I think Reichter has done a very good job. I have read the book in part. I have been very impressed by the solidity of his research, particularly as he had access to the records to the crematorium administration and the cemetery administration. Q. That is right, the numbers of burials, certified burials and so on and so forth, the numbers of bodies found since and all that kind of thing, the capacity for incineration in the Altmakt. He is a sensible, level headed chap who has actually bothered to check the hard cold figures and the contemporaneous documentation, he is not? A. Are you implying that these were documents that I was ---- Q. No. A. --- that I suppressed when I wrote my book in 1962? Q. I am implying that when you write in 1995 and 1996 figures as high as 100,000 you were just making it up? . P-177
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