Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day020.15 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q. This is not the question and you cannot ask me questions, Professor. Are you suggesting that there is no distinction between an article written by an author for a . P-131 journal and a paper written by that journal? MR RAMPTON: I have to say, my Lord, I do find this very trying. Time is passing. I do worry about creatures like Reichskristallnacht and Schlegelberger and all those people down the line. We know from Mr Irving's own answers in cross-examination that the Journal reprints versions of his speeches which he has edited and approved in advance of publication. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember. MR RAMPTON: It is on the record. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am anxious not to interrupt too much, but Mr Rampton is plainly right. MR RAMPTON: I know that, but I have a duty to the court and also to my clients. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a criticism of you. I think you have been very restrained, but it is very difficult, Mr Irving. I really cannot tell you often enough that I want to get on to the meat of Professor Evans' report. MR IRVING: I have assured you how far we shall certainly get. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had two full days' of cross-examination and we still have not got there. We have not even begun. MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not responsible for the fact that the instructing solicitors did not instruct the witness to write his report in a way which would be useful to this court. . P-132 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well ---- MR IRVING: I can only cross-examine on the basis of the report which is before your Lordship and myself. MR JUSTICE GRAY: When the Judge tells you time and again that he is not deriving any assistance from the cross-examination on these earlier passages in the report, surely, Mr Irving, it makes sense to get on to what the court wants to hear about. MR IRVING: But if your Lordship were to say to me, "Mr Irving, tear up pages 1 to 250 of the report", I would willingly have done so. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, on to the next point. MR IRVING: No one would have done so more willingly than I. I have had to devote a lot of very scarce resources to going through these in great deal on the basis that they are before your Lordship also and I cannot allow these --- - MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me tell you this, Mr Irving, it is the last case I would want to do this, but what sometimes has to happen is that one says after a certain amount of cross-examination, "Right, this is going too slowly. You have X amount of time to complete the cross- examination". I would be very loath to do that in a case of this kind, but I can see that coming if we do not move to what really is at the heart of Professor Evans's expert report. MR IRVING: My Lord, I said very clearly yesterday that I was going to ask for two and a half more days. I shall . P-133 certainly keep to that timetable which I think allows possibly sufficient time for re-examination in the remaining half day. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am really interested to hear Professor Evans being cross-examined by you on these points that makes on the historiography. MR IRVING: But he has also made these points on guilt by association, my Lord, and they stand unless I challenge them. He says that Judge Steglisch was once introduced to me at a hotel breakfast, this kind of thing. Page 184, witness. We are still back on 184. You complain about the fact that the IHR sells my books or advertises my books. A. No, I am not complaining at all. Who am I to complain about that? Q. Well, you say that they advertise my books -- the second and third lines, the book is obtainable through the Institute. A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Look. What he is saying in the whole of that paragraph is that you are closely associated with the IHR. If you want to put to him that you are no more than the occasional speaker at the odd conference, put that and then move on. If that is your case? I do not know what your case is. MR IRVING: It certainly is. Professor Evans, are you familiar . P-134 with any of the other speakers there? Would you agree that John Toland is an occasional speaker at the IHR conferences? A. I think he has spoken once, to my recollection. Q. Is John Toland a Pulitzer prize winning author on the American literary scene? A. Plenty of people have won Pulitzer prizes. It does not mean to say that I think that their views are admirable simply because of that. Q. Is he a Holocaust denier or right-wing extremist, to your knowledge? A. That I do not know presently. I know him only as the author of a biography of Hitler. Q. Are you familiar with the fact that the Canadian liberal journalist and author Jim Back has spoken at the IHR? James Back? A. Yes. Q. Yes or no? A. Yes, I am. Q. Are you familiar with the fact that the Japanese general Hidi Omiki has spoken at the IHR? A. Let me just mention James Back because he is an author who has claimed that many, and I go into this on page 186 of my report. Q. He is a Holocaust denier? A. He is somebody who has written two books now, alleging . P-135 that the Americans murdered six million Germans after the end of the Second World War, that they deliberately killed at least a million German prisoners of war at the end of the Second World War. Q. Has that book been taken very seriously? A. No. I do not regard him as a serious author and, of course, as I say, his paranoid style of writing based on the manipulation of statistics which historians have easily shown to be totally false, bears a striking resemblance to the pseudo history of the Holocaust deniers, which is no doubt why he has been welcome at their meetings and indeed why you quote his work in your book on Nuremberg. Q. He is a Holocaust denier? A. I do not know whether he is or not, but certainly I think his ludicrous ---- Q. Has he not expressed strong opinions against Holocaust denial, both in the Canadian press and elsewhere? A. If you can show me documentary evidence of that, I will be prepared to accept it, but not otherwise. Q. Are two other speakers at the IHR, the Japanese general Hidi Omiki, and the CIA senior official, Victor Marcheti, are they Holocaust deniers? A. What I would need to do to, as it were, make a judgment on the full import of what you are saying there is to see what they actually said at the meetings of the Institute, . P-136 provide documentation of what they said, and if what they said has nothing to do with Holocaust denial, then, either directly or indirectly, I will accept your point. But I do think that Mr Back's thesis of course, I directly ---- Q. You do not like them, this is plain, right? You do not like the thesis of Mr Jim Back? A. It is not that I do not like them, Mr Irving, it is that they are completely phoney. Q. Are you an expert on those matters? A. Why do you think that he has alleged that the Americans killed 6 million Germans after the end of the Second World War. Q. Have his books been published by the world's leading publishers, including St Martin's Press? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can we please move on? This is a man who says that the Americans killed 6 million Germans. One's eyebrows rise slightly, do they not? MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not going to go down that particular cul-de-sac and, if I had done, your Lordship would have reprimanded me. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You were suggesting that the man was a respectable historian. I do not know whether he is or he is not, but I really think we must get on, please. MR IRVING: I am in a dilemma there because, if I had taken up that particular red herring, then I would have been . P-137 rightly reprimanded by your Lordship. I have just moved on. Is it right to say therefore that the IHR has a reputation for inviting revisionist speakers with unorthodox views to speak there? A. In its own self understanding of revisionism, yes, revisionism in which Holocaust denial is the central element. That not to say of course that every speaker there gives a speech which is purely centrally or wholly concerned with Holocaust denial, but that is what they are about and that is why they invite people like Mr Back. Q. So it is correct to say that sometimes Holocaust deniers speak there, but the fact that people speak there does not make them Holocaust deniers? A. I think, if anyone accepts an invitation to the Institute of Historical Review, it is quite clear to everybody that it is a Holocaust denial Institute with no academic respectability or credentials whatsoever and that therefore, by appearing there, you are approving, at least in part, of what they do. Q. So, if somebody comes and speaks at Caius College, they would be automatically accepting the tenets of all the other professors who have spoken there? Is that the kind of position ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please. MR IRVING: It is such an absurd kind of argument to make that I thought I would highlight its absurdity. . P-138 A. I do not know if that is a question, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is. MR IRVING: Page 191, paragraph 4, you state that I published on my website a very lengthy tract by somebody with the pseudonym of Samuel Crowell. A. Yes. Q. Very brief answer: Are you familiar with the difference between publishing something on a website and just putting a link on a website to somebody else's documents somewhere else in the world, in other words what is called an outlink or hyperlink? A. Yes, I think I am. Q. Would it be the same as being editor of a magazine under the footnote of the magazine saying, readers might be interested in this document by Mr Crowell which they will find in that library somewhere over there? Would that be a comparison? A. There is a similarity, but of course the link is close in the case of the Internet because you do actually have to trail across to another library or go out to a bookshop to buy the book. You can just flick a switch and it is there. Q. But to suggest, as you have, that Irving has published on his website this very lengthy tract is in other words inaccurate? I have posted a link to a document by another author somewhere else. . P-139 A. I understood that it was on the Auschwitz section of your website. My recollection is that that is where I read it. It is on the Auschwitz index, is it not. Q. If you had clicked on it, would you have been surprised to find that you were no longer in my website but somewhere in California? A. I have to say I did not realize that, if that is the case. Q. If you are referring to the Auschwitz index, will you agree that that same page also has hyperlinks to organizations like Niscore and Holocaust History Project? Do you know those web sites? A. You would have to provide me with a print out so that I could examine it. Q. If I say to you that on those pages you will find a hyperlink to Niscore, do you know what Niscore is? A. Yes, I know what Niscore is, Mr Irving . Q. What is Niscore? Is it a body friendly to me? A. No, it is not. I accepted this on Thursday, Mr Irving. On your website you do include a reference to, or the ability, you say, to make people alert to the fact that there is a Niscore website which gives a contrary view to your own. Indeed, you print the whole text of my own report. That is up on your website. The daily transcripts of this trial are on your website. But you also use your website to disseminate Holocaust denial material, such as that by Samuel Crowell. . P-140
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