Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day020.02 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Professor Evans, this is a point at which I think you ought to join in, if I can put it like that. I think, Mr Irving, the point he made yesterday is right? A. It is right, yes, indeed. MR IRVING: Is it right to say that I, therefore, did not double the death roll by means of the comparison, in fact? I adhered to a death roll in Hamburg of up to or nearly 50,000? A. That is right, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not, I think, your error, but Professor Eatwell's? A. It looks like it, my Lord. MR IRVING: My Lord, the problem is Professor Evans' report has turned out to be a bit of a dummy minefield. I am advancing into it, but very gingerly, because I do not know where the real mines are and where the dummies are like that one, and this is what is delaying us. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I accept any of that, but let us move on anyway. We have got to about 100? MR IRVING: 128, my Lord, is where I propose to continue, my Lord. I am on 128 at paragraph 4, Professor Evans. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are still on the topic of Holocaust denial, are you not? MR IRVING: We are, my Lord, and we are dealing just briefly with the experiment made with the gas vans. Your Lordship . P-10 was concerned that I described this as an experiment in view of the large numbers. So Professor Evans has quoted me as saying, "So I accept that this kind of experiment was made on a very limited scale". Do you agree that there was, in fact, an experiment, Professor Evans, the use of the gas vans for a limited period of months on the Eastern Front and elsewhere? A. You go on to say: "But, I don't accept that the gas chambers existed, and this is well known. I've seen no evidence at all that gas chambers existed". So what I am saying there in that quotation is that you say that gassing took place on a very limited scale, experimental scale, but, as you say, it was rapidly abandoned as being a totally inefficient way of killing people. Q. Yes. A. I understand that during the trial you have now admitted that that was wrong, that it was, that gassing was not merely used on a limited experimental scale. Q. You are overlooking the use of loaded words like "conceded" and "admitted". Do you accept that, therefore, the gas vans were used as an experimental basis for killing, and that they were abandoned then for whatever reason afterwards? A. No, I do not. They were used for killing on a large scale, as I think---- Q. Did they continue using them throughout the war or did . P-11 they stop? A. There was a transition to mainly using gas chambers, but they were used on far more than a limited scale, as I believe you yourself have said in the course of this trial. Q. Looking purely at the word "experimental" at this point, you have agreed that Professor Burrin, the Swiss Professor is something of an expert. He is not an extremist or what you call a Holocaust denier. A. That is so, yes. Q. I just put to you one sentence from his standard work on this. This is on page 112 of Philip Burrin: "The gas truck had been an improvised response to a situation no one had foreseen or imagined". Would you agree with that? A. I would have to see the whole passage. I find it difficult to comment simply on a single sentence taken out of that. In any case, the context of this section of my report is concerned with your denial that gas chambers existed, that gas chambers were used. That is the context. Q. Before we move on, just a simple answer. You do accept therefore that the gas vans were used and then abandoned at some stage as a means of killing? A. Well, yes. In the end of course the gas chambers were abandoned as a means of killing when they had fulfilled their purpose. I do not accept---- . P-12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I just want to see where we are going occasionally. MR IRVING: That was the end of that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: At an earlier stage in this case -- correct me if I am recollecting wrongly -- you were presented with a document which indicated that at Chelmno 97,000 Jews were killed in five weeks. MR RAMPTON: Five months, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree you did not accept that figure was correct, but I believe you did accept in terms that the gas vans were not used on a solely experimental basis but were used for the systematic killing of substantial numbers of Jews. MR IRVING: They were. I do not agree that they were used only at Chelmno. They were certainly used once at Chelmno because there was an explosion there, but there is no evidence they were used only there. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not say "only there". I am using that as an illustration of what I had understood you to have accepted earlier in this case. MR IRVING: I am trying to justify the use of the word "experimental" by the virtue of the fact that other historians of reputation have also described this as being an interim phase and it was abandoned, as it proved not to be a very feasible or practical way of doing things. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be rather a different thing from . P-13 saying it is experimental, but there we are. MR IRVING: I think that you had fastened on the word "experimental" as being something repugnant in this particular connection and I can appreciate that, but I was just trying to establish what was meant by the word "experimental". Can we now proceed to paragraph 6 on the same page 128, where we are talking about the subsequent Polish tests which attempted to replicate the Leuchter tests. You say that I allege that there was a refusal of the authorities to call for site examinations and that forensic tests were carried out by the Poles, but the results were suppressed". Is that correct in the last four lines on page 128? A. Yes. Q. Are you suggesting that I have got it wrong somehow? A. In this paragraph I am trying to sum up your views as succinctly as I can. Q. Do you accept that the Poles did carry out tests and suppress them? A. No, I do not. I have to say I am not an expert on Auschwitz and there has been a separate, as I call attention to at the top of the next page 130, expert witness report by Professor van Pelt, who is an expert on Auschwitz, who goes into this in very great detail. Q. Yes. So we will not dwell very long on this, but would . P-14 you go to page 56 of the little bundle, which is the first page of the Polish report I am referring to. We are going to look at two dates on it. A. Yes. Q. It is a Polish document. I am told that the date at the top in Polish means 24th September 1990, and that is the date that the report was submitted by this Polish Institute to the museum at Auschwitz, as you can see in the address line on the top right quarter. If you look in the rubber stamp box, can you see a date on the final line? A. Indeed, 11.10.1990. Q. Did the Polish State authority, the Auschwitz authorities, at any time thereafter publish that report, or did it sit in their safe for some months and years? A. I am not an expert on this subject. I cannot really comment. I think probably, if one consulted Professor van Pelt's report, one would be able to clear that up. Q. You spent a whole page -- again on the foot of page 129 you say that Irving went on to claim that Dr Piper, in other words the Auschwitz State Museum, had suppressed the fact and filed the report away. A. Yes, I say that. Q. You disqualify the Leuchter report in your view. I have to ask you these questions because it is said that I have relied on the Leuchter report and that this was an . P-15 unjustifiable act of a responsible historian. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not have to ask these questions. I have already indicated that on Auschwitz -- I know it is referred to in Professor Evans' report -- it does not appear to me that, if I may respectfully say so, Professor Evans' opinions really bulk very large. I think that is really Professor van Pelt. So do not feel you have to ask these questions. MR IRVING: I would like to ask him purely then about one matter. Is it right that you suggest that the report was not admitted as evidence at the Toronto trial, and that this in some way discredits the report? A. No, I cannot see that in my report. I say it was discredited at the Zundel trial in 1988. That is my understanding, having read some of the transcripts of the trial. Q. Was the report actually admitted as evidence of the Zundel trial? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we know it was, do we not? We can move on. MR IRVING: The point that I am trying to make, my Lord, is that I have had considerable dealings overnight with the Canadian solicitors involved in that action who confirmed to me -- I just put the essential three lines of their letter to you. The solicitor Barbara Kulaska has written to me saying that the Leuchter report itself was not filed . P-16 as an exhibit for the sole reason that such engineering reports are not generally admissible under Canadian rules of evidence unless the other side consents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I treat that with a certain amount of scepticism. The evidence up to now is that it was not admitted in evidence at the Zundel trial because it was not accepted that Leuchter was suitably qualified as an expert. MR IRVING: My Lord, with the utmost respect, I have to say that I have a very large bundle here now which contains the actual transcript on that matter between the prosecution and the defence and the court in Toronto. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we put that on one side? I do not suppose Mr Rampton has had a chance to look at what you are referring to me at the moment. At any rate, let us got on with Professor Evans. I am not shutting you out from adducing that evidence. MR IRVING: I am prepared to make this transcript available to the Defence in this matter. MR RAMPTON: I have the transcript. I used it in cross-examination of Mr Irving. It is perfectly clear the judge would not admit Mr Leuchter as an expert. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What you have not seen is what Mr Irving is relying on from the Canadian lawyers giving an entirely different reason why. MR RAMPTON: I have seen it. There is a one page letter . P-17 I think in this new bundle. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am suggesting is that Mr Irving follows this up later. MR RAMPTON: Yes, I agree. I attach no weight to what the lawyer says at all. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather than now. MR IRVING: Whether Mr Rampton attaches weight to it or not is neither here nor there. In that case I shall put it to your Lordship by way of submission later on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you mind. MR IRVING: At page 130 line 8 you say that my arguments derive from previous work from well-known Holocaust deniers, and then you mention some. A. Yes. Q. Professor Faurisson. . Are you familiar with the expertise of Germar Rudolf? A. I mention Faurisson there. I do not mention Rudolf there. Q. I can make this very brief. Can you accept that there are a number of other documentary bases on which I base my arguments, for example the air photographs as interpreted by a man called John Ball? A. It is clear I think that in the documents that I cite you do rely heavily upon Faurisson, whose work you did read in the late 1980s, as you recall in your diary. Q. Which works of Professor Faurisson do you allege that I read? . P-18 A. It was an article in your diary entry of 26th July 1986. You wrote "Faurisson's paper on Auschwitz set me thinking very hard." I presume that is an article that he published or a paper that he gave to you. Q. Are you suggesting that he is my only source, the only basis of my arguments that I do not rely---- A. No, I am not. I give that as an example there. Q. When is set thinking very hard, as no doubt you have also been occasionally made to think very hard, you then start looking at other sources to see how one should finally align one's own political or scientific or historical viewpoint. A. Yes. I say here that it derives from previous work by well-known Holocaust deniers such as Faurisson. Q. Would you call Professor Hinsley a well-known Holocaust denier? A. I do not think that these arguments, the arguments are derived -- you misuse Professor Hinsley's material in your work.
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