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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts//day021.21


Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day021.21
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

   Q.   "Please state when you will arrive here and by what means
        you will be travelling on account of being fetched"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Is the immediately following telegram from Himmler himself
        to the same man?
   A.   Yes.

.          P-192

   Q.   Does this one say: "The Jews being outplaced to the
        Ostland are to be dealt with only in accordance with the
        guidelines laid down by myself and or by the
        Reichssicherheitsbeamter on my orders.  I would punish
        arbitrarily and disobedient acts"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Do you think this is a reference to the arbitrary and
        disobedient execution of these Berlin Jews?
   A.   Yes.  It wants to make sure that that does not happen
        again, which indeed it does not for some months.
   Q.   Do we see then a few days later on December 4th, we have
        to turn back a few page I am afraid, the actual visit by
        Jackelm?  It is headed on the top right-hand corner in
        handwriting page 350.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Right down at the bottom of that page we find Jackelm, he
        is actually twice on that page.  Halfway up the page his
        name is there but it is crossed out, somebody else has
        taken his slot?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Then at 2130 SS Oberguppenfuhrer Jackelm ----
   A.   That is right.
   Q.   --- has this no doubt rather uncomfortable meeting with
        the chief of the SS?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   What do you suspect happened there?  Can you look at the

.          P-193

        right?  Does is say Judenfrager?
   A.   Yes, that is right.  I expect he was told off.
   Q.   He was told off.  Is that not an extraordinary episode, in
        your opinion?
   A.   Well, no, I do not think we disagree about it, Mr Irving.
        A train load of Berlin -- Jews are being deported from
        Berlin to the East, and it does not seem to have been the
        intention at this time to have to kill them.  A few train
        loads were killed, and Himmler stepped in and stopped it.
   Q.   And for several months there were no more killings, is
        that right?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Of German Jews?
   A.   Of German Jews transported to the East.
   MR IRVING: Yes, I am sorry.
   A.   Four days after this of course on 8th December all the
        rest of the Jews in the Riga ghetto were killed by
        Jackelm, on Jackelm's order.  So presumably when he
        discussed this with Himmler on the 4th, Judenfrager, he
        must also have discussed that too.  Himmler must have said
        "Go ahead, kill all the rest of the Jews in the Riga ghetto".
   Q.   Do you attach any importance at all to the fact that
        Himmler had this epiphany, if I can put it like, while in
        Hitler's bunker or at least at Hitler's headquarters?
   A.   Well, as I say, I do not think there is any evidence that
        he was in Hitler's bunker.

.          P-194

   Q.   But he was definitely in Hitler's headquarters, was he not?
   A.   He was Hitler's headquarters.  The interview with Jackelm
        was conducted in Himmler's own place.
   Q.   We have seen from that rather fragmentary typed message of
        November 15th 1941, the Nuremberg document, that there was
        nothing in the brown file; he found no directives which
        would indicate what to do with the Jews who were there or
        who were arriving, and he asked for a directive.  So it
        appears there was system ----
   A.   Can I just date that again?  That is on the 15th.
   Q.   November 15th.
   A.   November 15th, that is right, yes.
   Q.   He says that he has looked in the brown file and he cannot
        find anything:  "Please tell me what we are supposed to be
        doing with the Jews?"
   A.   That is rather different.
   Q.   In what way is it different, in your view?
   A.   The Himmler, Jackelm, Heydrich series of exchanges just
        deals with transports of Jews from Berlin.
   Q.   But does this not ----
   A.   This deals with a slightly different matter of the
        economic advisability or otherwise of killing all the Jews
        in the Ostland.
   Q.   But do you agree that this message, the November 15th
        message you are looking at, says that there are no

.          P-195

        directives whatsoever on what to do with the Jews which
        would cover killing them, in effect?
   A.   He cannot find any in the brown file, no.
   Q.   So this is quite an important episode, is it not, November
        1941, December 1941, as far as the Baltic States are
        concerned, which highlights the fact that there were no
        directives from above at that time.  The killings had
        begun, evidently on the initiative of the local people, on
        a huge scale.  When Hitler's headquarters learned about it
        or when Himmler at Hitler's headquarters learned about it,
        he issued immediate orders stopping it and reprimanding
        the one who was doing it?
   A.   No, because you are drawing a false link between these two
        documents.  The order issued by Himmler and the rapping of
        Jackelm over the knuckles is concerned simply with the
        killing of transports of Jews from Berlin.  As I have
        said, four days after his meeting with Jackelm in which he
        told him off for this, Jackelm, presumably with Himmler's
        full approval, killed all the rest of the Jews in the Riga
        ghetto.  The killing of Jews in Eastern Europe, who were,
        as it were, already there, continued on a large scale.  It
        was uninterrupted.
   Q.   From this you can agree with us, can you not, that there
        was a distinction made in the Nazis' minds between the
        value of German Jews or European Jews and the native
        Russian Jews?  It was open season on the Russian Jews,

.          P-196

        whereas at this time there was still no order, and in fact
        no permission for the German European Jews to be killed?
   A.   At this point that does seem to be the case, yes.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, do you wish to ask any questions on those
        particular documents?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No.  You do not any longer suggest I think,
        Mr Irving, that this is an instruction which applied to
        anything other than that particular transport, do you?
   MR IRVING:  It very clearly laid down the ground rules, that
        transports like this of European or German Jews were not
        to be liquidated.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I had thought you accepted earlier on that
        you had misread the singular as being plural.
   MR IRVING:  Clearly, if the liquidation of this transport of
        Jews was not to happen but did happen and the one who did
        it got hauled over the coals, then that massage held for
        any subsequent transports, and they did not need to keep
        on repeating the orders, the same as your Lordship does
        not have to keep telling me to be brief.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Do you agree with that?
   A.   Yes, the actual document says quite clearly that this
        particular transport of Jews from Berlin should not be
        killed, and that is all it said.  It does not permit of
        the interpretation saying that no Jews at all are to be
        killed or that no Jews being transported at any time have
        to be killed.

.          P-197

   Q.   Do you take the view that it applies to all transports of
        German Jews?
   A.   Not that particular one, but it seems to me that one can
        read out the from consequence that transports of Jews from
        Berlin were not ----
   MR IRVING:  Or from the Reich?
   A.   --- killed, from the Reich were not killed subsequently,
        that this was the policy for the following few months.
        That does not of course ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But those were the guidelines laid down by Himmler?
   A.   Yes.
   MR IRVING:  In the absence of the guidelines lines in the brown
        file or in any other colour filed, this kind of emergency
        took place by code message?
   A.   It would seem to be the case.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, I sense you are about to move on
        to another topic.  I have a fear I am going to have to
        say -- how long are you going to take on your next topic?
   MR IRVING:  I will be one more document.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, fine, but I have rise early as I think
        I mentioned.
   MR IRVING:  As you mentioned, my Lord, but I am anxious to make
        progress.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, so I am.
   MR IRVING:  6th July 1942.  This is one paragraph.

.          P-198

   A.   Sorry, where is this?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  This is in your clip, is it?
   A.   Yes, I have it.
   MR IRVING:  The Reichforschungsrat was the government level,
        scientific co-ordination agency, is correct, the Reichs
        research agency or council?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Will you take it that this is the constituent assembly or
        the founding meeting of that particular body in July 1942
        over which Hermann Goring is presiding?
   A.   That is what it purports to be, yes.
   Q.   And that the source at the foot at the page is Milch
        documents which are bound volumes of transcripts of these
        meetings which were originally in the British Air Ministry
        archives?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   I am just going to draw your attention to the indented
        paragraph.  They are talking about the persecution of
        Jewish scientists and the damage this is doing to the
        German war effort.  Goring says, and I am going to
        translate this: "I put this to the Fuhrer himself now"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "We have kept one more Jew in Vienna for two years and
        another one in the field of photography because they were,
        they had certain things that we needed and which we could,
        which would absolutely advance our cause at this time.  It

.          P-199

        would be madness to say here 'he's got to go'.  He might
        have been a great researcher, a fantastic brain, but he
        had a Jewish wife and so he cannot be at the technical
        university", and so on?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "The Fuhrer has in this case in the field of art right
        down to operetta level made exceptions in order to keep
        things as they are"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "So, all the more is he likely to or will he agree to
        exceptions there and give permission where we are dealing
        with really big research projects or researchers"?
   A.   Yes, great researchers.
   Q.   My question is quite simply, does this show one more
        example of Adolf Hitler intervening on whatever scale to
        prevent ugly things happening to Jews of a particular
        value, if I can put it like that?
   A.   Yes, it is a very small scale.  He mentions I think we
        have got one Jew, we kept one Jew in Vienna and another in
        photography because they have things that we want.  So it
        is on a very small scale.  I do not think anybody has ever
        disputed that there were individual exceptions.
   Q.   This invites one further question which will make sense of
        this clip at this point.  Have you seen documents of this
        quality, in other words, direct, non-hearsay documents, in
        the other sense, Adolf Hitler saying:  "Kill this

.          P-200

        researcher, get rid of him, he is a Jew.  I don't want him
        around the place.  Liquidate that train load of Jews", in
        other words, the exact opposite of these documents?
   A.   Oh, I see, Hitler, as it were, commanding in writing the
        killing of individual Jews.
   Q.   No, just documents of this quality with specific,
        explicit, unchallenged authenticity, documents of
        integrity, but just saying exactly the same kind of thing
        but with a minus sign instead of a plus sign, if I can put
        it like that?
   A.   Not in such a precise way referring to individuals, but of
        course there is a large quantity of evidence from the
        table talk of Goebbels' diaries and other places which
        attests to Hitler's murderous intentions and policies and
        views towards the Jews, his murderous anti-Semitism.
   Q.   You will have noticed that I have left the table talk out
        of this particular clip because they can be taken one way
        or the other depending on frequently and how you translate
        them.  So I thought we would just pick on specific
        documents and verbatim transcripts and intercept signals.
                  My Lord, I have come to the end of today's matter.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, thank you very much.  10.30 tomorrow.

(The witness stood down).
(The court adjourned until the following day)

.          P-201

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