Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day017.22 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR IRVING: My Lord, I fail to see under what wangle Mr Rampton is being allowed to produce this document to put it in? It has had no relevance at all of the cross-examination that I conducted. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We may not have quite got to it yet. It is certainly relevant on the questioning so far on whether Schrecken is properly translated as "public rumour", which was one of the points we went through this morning. MR IRVING: A very tiny shoe horn for such a long document, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can promise you I am not going to plough through it unless I am shown other bits of it that are worth ploughing through. MR IRVING: This document was one of the ones that was put to Hitler. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is, as I understand it, one that is suggested was generated by the request. MR IRVING: I think the witness should be asked if there is any . P-196 evidence that this document was one of the ones that was put to him. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is a fair point. I think that question should be asked, whether there is any evidence that this particular situation---- MR RAMPTON: I am going to come to that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you may have jumped the gun, Mr Irving. MR RAMPTON: These documents, taken in conjunction, affect three questions, Mr Irving's ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have through them. I remember them. MR RAMPTON: They all arise directly out of cross- examination. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right. MR RAMPTON: I mentioned, Professor, that you have also got there report number 81 about which Mr Irving cross-examined you yesterday without producing the document. He has not got it there, but I can tell you. On page 14 it makes similar remarks about the 72, 90 per cent of the people having fled across the Urals? A. This was one that was cited yesterday? Q. It is the day after. It is 12th September. We will hand those in later, if we may, my Lord. Can you turn to page 59 of Longerich, part I? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, before we leave this, I am taking it that the reference to 70 to 90 per cent of the original refugees having fled is a reference supporting one of . P-197 Mr Irving's points, which is that that was what happened to quite a lot of the local Jews, namely they went into Russia. MR RAMPTON: I do not think we dispute that at all. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. We are agreed about that. MR RAMPTON: Oh absolutely. How many Jews do you think there were in the Ukraine before the Germans got there? A. I do not know, but the total Soviet population of Jews was probably around 5 million, and of course only the question of whether one or two million of those were murdered is really where you get the difference between five and six million victims of the Holocaust. Q. In your mind, I know this is probably a matter for his Lordship than for me, but maybe I can ask this. In your mind does it matter whether it is one million or two million? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is for me, is it not? MR RAMPTON: Well, except in so far as it may impinge on the question of system, but I think that has been conceded so I need not pursue that. Page 59 of part I of Dr Longerich, do you have that? A. Yes. Q. Paragraph 16.4. A. Yes. Q. He writes this: "On 25th October, the year is 41, Hitler made the following remark at his table talk after he had . P-198 once again made mention of his prophecy of 30th January 1939. 'This criminal race has the 2 million dead from the world war on its conscience, now hundreds of thousand. No one can say to me we cannot send them into the morass. Who then cares about our people? It is good if the terror we are exterminating Jewry goes before us", and the word for terror is Schrecken in German. You saw in report No. 80 the words the rumour that the Germans shoot to kill all the Jews has advantages. You notice that that comes about a month and a bit before Hitler's table talk on the 25th. You have seen the Muller order of 1st August 1941. Is it legitimate in your mind as an historian to draw any inference about Hitler's reception and knowledge of these reports from that information? A. We could say that there is a certain resonance. It is not a direct one, but it is an inference that the materials were getting to him and that the Table Talk might be a reflection of having read that. Q. If we are good, cautious historians, we do not need leap to giant conclusions from little inferential sketches like that, do we? A. We would say that this a possible inference. Q. Yes. Thank you. The Barbarossa guidelines are on -- if you have got Dr Longerich's report, can you turn to the second part of it on page 5 where in paragraph 2 he sets . P-199 out a part of the guidelines for the conduct of the troops in Russia of 19th May. That is about a month before Barbarossa is actually launched, is it not? A. Yes. Q. He translates it as: "Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of the National Socialist German people ... (reading to the words) ... Germany's struggle. 2. This struggle demands ruthless, energetic and drastic measures against the Bolshevik agitators, guerillas saboteurs and Jews as well as the complete removal of all active and passive resistance". The German is at footnote 10 at the bottom of the page and I have two questions about this. Professor Longerich translates the German as "Those Jews were a separate or disjunctive category from all the rest of them". Do you understand? A. Yes. Q. Can you look at the German at the bottom of page 10 and tell me whether you think he is right write about that? A. That is the way I would translate it too. MR JUSTICE GRAY: How else could you do it? MR RAMPTON: I do not know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure ---- MR RAMPTON: I do not know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- is this a bit of an Aunt Sally? I mean, I am not sure what Mr Irving has made of this. MR RAMPTON: I do not know. I have not heard what he says . P-200 about this. I know that he does not ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is re-examination. MR RAMPTON: No, this arose in the course of cross- examination, this document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I know it did, but this point about whether Jews are disjunctive as a category. MR RAMPTON: Yes. Professor Browning said in his cross-examination Jews are a separate category. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: So I wanted to check with him against the German whether he thought that Longerich had translated it correctly. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see. MR RAMPTON: He did not have it in front of him at the time when he said it, I think, actually. A. Yes, I was doing that from memory and now I am looking at the document. MR RAMPTON: The second question is this. Again, this is said to be a document directed at the Vermacht, not at the SS or anybody else like that or the Gestapo. Who would have written it? A. These would have been prepared in the General Staff, I think. Q. Somebody underneath Jodl? A. Yes, or even further down but in the Armed Forces, yes. Q. Now, the numbers -- page 38 of your report, please, . P-201 Professor, now -- this is the famous 97,000, I should say "notorious". We do not need the German for this. I am going to excuse the motor mechanic who is not good at German grammar. Page 38: "Since December 1941, for example, 97,000 were processed by three trucks in action, without any defects in the vehicles being encountered". How many trucks did they use during this period, December to June 1942? A. They had two trucks that were there constantly. Another truck came and that is the one that had the accident that blew up. So most of time they had two trucks running, part of the time a third truck. Q. I am going to use some arithmetic, then I will ask you further questions, if may? I do not know whether 1941 was a leap year or not, but there are from 1st December '41 to 1st June 1942, 172 or 173 days. A. Yes. Q. So let us assume it was not a leap year and it is 172. If you divide 97,000 by 172, that means they are processing 564 people a day. If you divide that by three trucks -- I know this is rough stuff and maybe the trucks did not have equal capacities -- that means roughly 188 people per truck per day. If they did, say, four trips a day, that would be 47 people per trip and that would mean -- when I say "a day" I mean on a 24-hour basis? . P-202 A. Yes. Q. That would mean there would be six hours, roughly speaking, five and a bit, between each trip. Does that seem feasible? A. We know the Saurer truck was much bigger than 40. We do not know the size ---- Q. What do you think its capacity was? A. The Saurer truck was, depending on, you know, women and children or adults, would be between 50 and 80. Q. Right. A. But, in general, you know, I mean, I think as they show that the number per day is not beyond the capacity of the two and three trucks. Q. Right. So four trips a day, that would actually cover the numbers involved, would it not? A. Yes, we know in Semlin when they made -- they could do two trips a day and that would be all the way across Belgrade to a burial site that was much further away than the distance between the burial grounds and the Chelmno camp here. Q. I mean, how long does it take to drive 20 kilometres in one of these trucks? A. We are talking about driving about two or three kilometres from the camp. Q. Two or three? That is a matter of minutes? A. Yes. The longer period would be the period to gas. That . P-203 is why the motors had to run inside the camp before they left or the passengers would not be dead when they arrived. Q. From start to finish of the operation, what is your estimate of how long it would have taken? A. Well, would you have to let the desired number of people into the basement of the main building where they would be undressed, force them up ramp into the truck, close the truck doors, run the motor for probably 20 minutes, and then drive, given the issue of undressing and the driving, on the generous side, we would say an hour, and then you must empty the van and clean it out and drive back. MR IRVING: My Lord, this is purely speculative. He is not an expert on gassing operating ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr irving, you must understand if you ask almost identical questions in cross-examination, Mr Rampton must be entitled to ask the same sort of questions in re-examination. MR IRVING: Well, I was objecting really to the question that was asked about how long would it take to gas them and... MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you went into the arithmetic, Mr Irving. That opens the issue for Mr Rampton. I am afraid you have to take that as being the rule. MR IRVING: Well, I asked a slightly vaguer question. He asked a specific expert question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again that is legitimate, I am afraid. . P-204 A. I would say this is not speculation in the sense that I have read through virtually all the testimony of the Chelmno trial and have seen a number of descriptions of the operations, so to call what I have said speculation would be unfair characterization. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is speculation in the sense it is reconstruction. A. Correct. MR RAMPTON: Yes, reconstruction. My real question is this. Those sorts of rates, whether it is two or three trucks in operation at any one time, whether it is 40 or 50 people in the truck at a time, whether there are three or four or five trips a day for each truck, does the figure of 97,000 seem to you to be credible? A. It is entirely credible.
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