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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