Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.08 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I am a little bit at sea, Mr Irving, because this has only just been brought to my attention. You were asked some questions in an IHR conference on 4th September 1983 -- I am telling you this as a fact because I have the printed version in front of me -- and the question was: Could you give your reaction to the recent book by Gerald Fleming, "Hitler und die endlosung", so we are talking about the same thing, are we not? A. Yes. Q. Then you say this. I have not been able to edit it because I have only just been shown it. "Yes, Gerald Fleming, frightfully nice, he and I were face to face once on the David Frost programme" -- again it does not seem to be much of an answer to the question -- "for an hour and a half in England on television. He was not able to prove me wrong then. He has ever since felt mortally wounded by the fact that he was not able to prove me wrong in front of" -- goodness me, this is all about the . P-65 television audience. A. I am failing to answer a question, am I? Q. Yes, you are. A. Yet again. Q. Because you were asked the question, what do you think of the book? A. Well, I probably did not want to admit that I had not read it. Q. The reviewers admit in reviewing his book that he has not found the evidence that I am wrong, that he has not found documentary proof. A. That is exactly what I just said 17 years later. My memory is not all that bad. Q. "His book in fact is a lie"? A. Yes. Q. How on earth can you say that about a book you have not read? A. I have read the reviews. The book was written as an attempt -- the book has been written specifically, it says in the introduction, this is an attempt to answer David Irving. The whole reason he wrote the book was to answer my book "Hitler's War". I read the reviews by Tom Bower and numerous other people and they say this book has failed to refute David Irving. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am going to come back to what seems to be perhaps more important. I had the impression, . P-66 and it is a long time ago now that we had evidence about it, that you accepted that Hitler was kept informed about the shootings by the Einsatzgruppen? A. You are absolutely right, my Lord. Certainly as far as the Russians Jews were concerned, and the non-German Jews were concerned. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am on the question whether Mr Irving was telling the truth when he said first time around that he had never seen this document. A. I can tell you I have never seen this document before in my life. Q. Mr Irving, laughing will not help. I am going to read on what you said at this IHR conference shortly after the book was published. "The book is a lie because the book's title is 'Hitler and the Final Solution' when underneath is a subtitle in quotes, 'it is the Fuhrer's wish...'". A. It is the Fuhrer's order, yes. Q. "As though this is from some document. In fact it is not. This is just what some Nazi big wig after the war, sweating and pleading for his life in the dock at Nuremberg or somewhere else, tried to claim that it was the Fuhrer's wish that this should be done. This is precisely the kind of evidence which I am not prepared to accept. It is a well-written book. He has done a lot of research but he constantly mixes first, second and third order evidence in a completely reprehensible way". . P-67 A. Yes. Q. You did not read the book? A. This is precisely what the reviewer said. Actually, exactly what the reviewer said about the book. I can produce to you tomorrow the reviews by Tom Bauer and Gordon Craig and the other reviewers of the Gerald Flemming book. Q. Mr Irving, was there in your discovery ---- A. And also in correspondent with me he told me what he was going to base his subtitle on, namely a particular statement by a particular General. Every time he found a new document, he would write me a triumphant letter. I remember that one particularly. Q. Mr Irving, was there in your third supplemental list of documents two editions, one in German -- no, sorry, an edition of a German book by a man called Koegon and others? A. Eugene Koegon, yes -- a murderer. Q. And you know that its German edition is called "National Sozialistische Massentugenturm Durch Giftgas"? A. That is right. Koegon is on the United Nations "Wanted" list for mass murder. Q. What is the point of that remark? A. Well, I am just trying to, shall we say, equalify the author of this work so that you know what kind of credentials he has. . P-68 Q. I am not interested in the very least in Mr Koegon's credentials. He has not brought an action for damages for libel against my clients. A. Well, just in case you rely on anything Mr Koegon wrote. Q. No. Have you a copy of the English edition published in New Haven in 1993? A. That I do not know offhand, probably not. Q. It has been disclosed in your supplemental list of documents. A. Well, then, it is probably on my book shelf, yes. I certainly would not have purchased it. Somebody must have handed it to me. Q. You what? A. I would not have purchased it. Somebody must have sent it to me. Q. You would not have purchased it? So that is another book you will never have read? A. Oh, yes. Q. You mean you will not have read it? A. Highly unlikely that I would have read it and I can say for certain I have not read his book. Q. You see, it contains printed out in full -- if you are interested in this subject, of course ---- A. Yes. Q. --- what the people were doing to the Jews in that part of Eastern Europe during 1941, '42 and'43, if you are . P-69 interested in that subject, it contains printed out in full the RSHA letter of 5th June 1942 which recites that they have managed to process 97,000 people in gas vans at Chelmo. Do you remember that document? A. Yes, the incredible -- 97,000 people in how many weeks, five weeks? Q. Five weeks. A. That is approximately 40 people her hour per van. Q. You accepted it. I am not going back to that, Mr Irving. A. Well, we are going to be questioning your experts about those figures when the time comes. Q. You may do whatever you like with my experts ---- A. I remember the document clearly. Q. Provided, Mr Irving, you let them finish their answers. Mr Irving, that document, you accepted when I was cross-examining you earlier in this case ---- A. It is a genuine document. Q. Yes, and you accepted that it showed that, so far from being an experiment on a small scale, this was a systematic and large scale operation? A. Well, we are going to be looking at the figures later on, as I say. Q. Mr Irving, you have already accepted that. A. Do not start brow beating me about the figures. I have accepted the document is genuine, but we are going to be looking at the figures when your experts are standing . P-70 here. Q. If we need to go back, Mr Irving, to see what you actually said, we will, but that is not the point. You denied ever having seen that document before? A. Yes. Q. But you have a copy of the book in which this document is actually printed? A. And? Q. Are you interested in this period of history or not? A. I am not interested in that aspect of the history, no. I am interested in Adolf Hitler's personal role in decisions taken during World War II. Q. And you do not think the question whether or not these gassings and shootings in the East were large scale and systematic has anything to do with Hitler's role, is that is right? A. Mr Rampton, I do not know if you have ever written a book in your life. You probably have. Q. As a matter of fact, I have. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had this before, yes. MR RAMPTON: It is a very small book and not a very good one, but it does exist, yes. A. Well, I can believe that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Come on, it is ---- A. But the time comes when you have ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- degenerating. . P-71 A. Well, that was well deserved modesty on his part. The time when you are writing a book when you have to decide what to leave in and what to keep out if the book is not going to be 2,000 pages long with 8,000 pages of sludge in the middle. If you are writing a book about Adolf Hitler's command of the war and his command decisions, then really what happens in detail, the crimes committed by these gangs of gangsters on the Eastern Front, you have to decide to leave the detail out otherwise your readers will not see the wood for the trees. MR RAMPTON: So we have now two books in your possession, one was sent to you by the kindly -- is he Professor Fleming? A. I think he probably sent it to me himself. Yes, I think he actually dedicated it to me. Q. And one which either somebody sent you, you certainly would not have bought a book by the mass murderer Mr Koegon? A. That is what surprises me. You say it is in my book shelf and I am sure nobody planted it there, but ---- Q. It is in your discovery, Mr Irving. A. But, for the life of me, I never knew I had that book in my book shelf. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just go back to Professor Fleming's book for a while? Correct me if have this wrong, Mr Irving, you are saying that what you said at IHR press conference was derived from the reviews, not from your . P-72 reading of the book. One of the things that you said was that Professor Fleming is given to citing second and third-hand documents? A. Yes. Q. So your evidence is that that also would have come from one or other of those two reviews? A. Well, and from the fact that he and I were in almost daily correspondence at that time and also on the telephone, he would be constantly on the telephone to me, telling me about his latest discoveries and latest finds and what he was doing and what he was writing. Q. I thought your evidence earlier on was that what you had said came from the reviews. A. Well, and from the reviews, yes, but you asked me, my Lord, if I have understood correctly, whether my statement to the IHR was based only on the reviews, and I was saying that those and the personal communications I had with him on a daily basis and, indeed, a very, very thick file of correspondence with him indeed, mostly handwritten on his part. MR RAMPTON: There is one more book I am going to ask you about, Mr Irving. Do not take it from my silence that I accept a word of what you say. The coincidence is too great, if I may say so. There is another book. Do you remember Gertz Bergander's book about Dresden? A. Indeed, yes. . P-73 Q. You told us yesterday you have never read that either, did you not? A. Certainly I never read it from cover to cover, no. Q. I asked you twice. A. Yes. Q. I asked you, "Have you read this 1977 book of his?" Answer,"No, I have not". A. Can I enquire what you mean by "read"? Do you mean sitting down and opening at page 1 and reading through or dipping into it to look for a fact or item? Q. The context was that you had not read it in such a way as to be able to evaluate the figures he gave. A. I want to be precise about the answer I give here, so I know what you mean by "read". Q. You actually interrupted a question -- not for the first time -- that I was asking. I will read the whole passage. My Lord ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page.
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