Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day017.16 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Is there a passage in the protocol that reads: "The remnant that finally survives all this" -- do you remember this passage -- "because here it is undoubtedly a question of the part with the greatest resistance will have to be . P-140 treated accordingly"? This is what you were referring to right, right? A. Yes. Q. "Because this remnant representing a natural selection can be regarded as the germ cell of a new Jewish reconstruction", what are the next two words, do you know? A. "If released". Q. "If released", that is the way you translated them, is it not? A. Yes. Q. And you are familiar with the fact that people accused you of having mistranslated that, people accused you of having translated the words "upon release" "as if released"? MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the German? A. "Abfreilasung". MR IRVING: "Abfreilasung". It is one of those German words which you can translate so oder so, as the Germans say, one way or the other. A. And when you say people, quite specifically, Mr Christie, the attorney for Zundel ---- Q. Precisely. A. --- spent a great deal of time trying to make a great deal out that. Q. Trying to embarrass you, I agree. I certainly shall not try to embarrass you today with that, Professor. I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that we do have . P-141 problems with words, do we not, in German? I know that there are occasionally from the public ranks behind me when I spend time going into these words, like "vie" and "als" and so on, but it is a problem, is it not, how to translate words with the right flavour? A. There are many areas where we could have disputes. I think the context here does not leave a whole lot of doubt in this case. Q. Is it not possible, and have you in fact done it, to either interview those who were at the Wannsee conference or to read the interrogations of them which were conducted by the Allies after the war, people Stuckart and Kritzinger? Have you read the interrogations when they were questioned about their recollections of that and other conferences? A. No, I have not read those systematically. I have seen excerpts of them, I believe, but I have not gone through the exercise of tracing all of those. Q. For once I have to express my astonishment that, as an Holocaust historian, knowing that in the national archives in Washington they have verbatim transcripts of the questionings of these half dozen or so surviving attendees, you did not read what they had to say about their recollections? A. You are free to express your amazement. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what did Kritzinger have to say? Can . P-142 you put that? MR IRVING: As a question? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, otherwise ---- MR IRVING: Can you justify why you did not do so? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, no. He has accepted he did not do so, but that perhaps is only material if there is something really significant he missed by not having consulted what Kritzinger said, whoever Kritzinger may be, I do not know. MR IRVING: He was a State Secretary in the Reichschancellory, I believe, under Lammers. Is it right -- well, I cannot ask him what he has not read, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you can. MR IRVING: Would you not expected to find that they would have been questioned about as to whether there was actually explicit reference to killing operations in the Wannsee conference and that this might have clarified the uncertainties from the text? A. I think I have seen excerpt of the Stuckart one and, in general, they are denying that this had much significance. Q. Yes. So all of them denied that there had been any discussion explicitly of killing operations? A. Yes, as far as I know all of them did. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that influence your thinking about what Wannsee was about? A. No. I think these people were shown the protocol and if, of course, their participation there made them more . P-143 vulnerable legally, and here is one case where I would invoke Mr Irving's practice that we look at oral testimony very carefully, and ask what motive would they have to say less than the full truth, and when I have a written document, on the one hand, and a self-exculpatory testimony post war, on the other hand, I put more weight on the written document. MR IRVING: But suppose this self-exculpatory testimony after the war contained references, for example, by a man called Gottfried Buhle who attended the subsequent conference on March 5th 1942, and he says: "It was disgusting the way these SS officers treated the Jews like cattle", and referred to forwarding them here and shipping them there, "and when we protested, Eichmann's deputy said, 'We are the police and we do as we want'", would that be taken as self-exculpatory? Would you expect this man also to have remembered and testified if there had been decisions on killings? A. I would take that as testimony that, in fact, they talked fairly openly about killing at these conferences, and a denial of others to the contrary should not be trusted. This is a non-self-exculpatory statement with much more specificity and would indicate, in fact, that Eichmann's indication that there were open in their discussion about killing than his euphemism has for their credibility. Q. Well, if I am more specific here and say that these . P-144 interrogations referred only to the brutal nature of the language used by the participants in the uncouth language, but there was still no talk of killing, it was just treating these people like cattle, does this not indicate that probably there was no talk of killing at these meetings, no open talk anyway? A. Well, there is no open talk of that at the second one, at the March 6th. That is all that Buhle is referring to. Q. But again neither in the interrogations nor in the records of the Wannsee conference, as far as you have seen them, have you seen any explicit references to killing only references by inference? A. Except for Eichmann. Q. Except for? A. Eichmann is a participant and he ---- Q. What he said in Israel in 1963? A. Yes. Or 1960/61. Q. '61. My Lord, do you wish to ask further questions about Wannsee? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, thank you very much. MR IRVING: You referred to Hermann Goring's authorization to Heydrich dated July 31st, 1941. One very brief question on that: was it intended or taken by either party as being a blank cheque to kill? A. I believe it was intended as a kind of authorization for a feasibility study, that what it says is, "Please study the . P-145 question of"---- Q. Of what? A. --"the fate of the Jews in the rest of Europe". It does not say killing, it says a total, you know, examine the possibility of a total solution for the Jews in Europe. Deal with, the second sentence, I believe, is to deal with the agencies whose jurisdiction is affected. The third is to bring back a plan for a Final Solution, both "gesamtlosung" and "endlosung", and my interpretation is this is not an order, this is an authorization for Heydrich to look into the possibilities of what will they do with the rest of the Jews of Europe? Q. Yes. Can it be taken just as an extension of the powers conferred on Heydrich in January 1939? A. My feeling is no, that the very fact they needed a new authorization means that we are no longer talking about immigration but a new kind of solution that is no longer immigration is what is envisaged, otherwise he would not need a new authorization. Q. Can I ask to go to page 44 in your expert report, please? This is another criticism, I am afraid, of your methodology. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page what? MR IRVING: 44 of the Professor's expert report. Two lines from the bottom you say: "... unloading the train cars some 2,000 Jews were found dead in the train"? . P-146 A. Yes. Q. That is the figure you quote? A. Yes. Q. You have made the translation yourself? A. Yes. Q. Can I draw your attention to the footnote 113 on the following page, 45? A. Yes. Q. In which you state, no doubt correctly: "A more legible, retyped copy of this document contains the figure 200 rather than 2,000"? A. Yes. Q. Why did you use the larger figure rather than the smaller figure? A. Because it was the original document. The other one says "Abschrift" and I use the original rather than copy if I have both of them. Q. Why do you, therefore, state that a more legible retyped copy contains the figure 200 rather than 2,000? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was the figure illegible in the original? A. The original is clearly 2,000. It is just a hard document to read because the photostat quality is less. The retyped copy is a clear one to read but in neither --- - MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship has it. A. --- is there any doubt about ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do I? Well, we can actually look at it for . P-147 ourselves. MR RAMPTON: Yes. Everybody should look at it. It is page 103 to -- it is the Westerman report, I think, of 14th September 1942 -- 105 of L1. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And this is the original, not the Abschrift? Whereabouts? MR RAMPTON: That I cannot -- your Lordship will need the Professor's report. I can barely read the wretched thing. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is not legible? A. Well, the report itself is very difficult to read in this edition and in terms of whether it is, you know, what the number is. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think I have found it in it. I think it says 1,000. It is the third paragraph on page 105. It looks to me like 1,000 Juden. MR IRVING: How many spaces does it have? Is it enough spaces for ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: It has plenty of spaces to be 1,000. MR IRVING: Four digits then? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, four digits. MR IRVING: In that case I will accept that 2,000 is probably correct. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can have a look at it, if you want to, Mr Irving. I may have the wrong bit. A. It will come near the end. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think it is the wrong paragraph. I am . P-148 sorry. I think it is the last paragraph up from the bottom of the last page and I think it is the third line and I can read it very clearly. 5,000 "Juden tot" -- it is five words in from the right-hand margin is the word "tot" and 2,000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
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