The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts//day022.07


Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.07
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

Q.I will have to put it to you to in an "if" form, then, and
on Monday bring the photocopy of the original.  Professor
Evans, if the 1935 or if the contemporary wartime edition
of the Cassell's Dictionary says that the meaning of

.  P-56



"transport" in English is in this order of priority,
"transport, transportation, carriage, conveyance,
transfer and shipment", is it unreasonable to assume, in
the absence of any contextual information, that this is
referring to a transportation, rather than to a single train load?
A.It is unreasonable, I think, yes, from the context here.
"Judentransport aus Berlin.  Keine Liquidierung" quite
clearly means "the Jew transport from Berlin, no
liquidation".  I think it is likely that, had it said, had
they meant there should be no liquidation of any
transport, train loads of Jews from Berlin, then it
would
have said something, they would have said so in the
plural, transporte, or he would have put down
something
like people, emigrants, or people who were deported,
or
whatever.  Let us try and remember what it is that you
actually wrote in Hitler's War in 1977.
Q.I am trying to narrow this down to a simple matter.
A.Which is that Himmler was summoned to the Wolf's Lair
for
a secret conference with Hitler, I am quoting from
your
book here, at which the fate of Berlin's Jews was
clearly
raised.  "At 1.30 pm Hitler was obliged to telephone
from
Hitler's bunker to Heydrich, the explicit order that
Jews
were not to be liquidated".  That is what you said in
your
book.  You did not mention Berlin there at all.
Q.Can we keep to the language problem, which is to say,
that

.  P-57



if it was what you said----
A.I am sure you would like to, Mr Irving.
Q.  -- the Jew transport, would it not be "der
Judentransport
aus Berlin"?
A.No, because his telephone log, as you know perfectly
well,
is in a very abbreviated form that generally leaves
out
the definite article.
Q.Leaves out the context, is that right?
A.No leaves out the definite article, is what I said.
You
can go two lines up, "Verhaftung Dr Jekelius".  It
does
not say "Die Verhaftung Dr Jekelius".
Q.What you are saying, this is your expert evidence, is
that
"Judentransport" could under no circumstances be
translated as "transportation of Jews from Berlin"?
A.That is not quite what I am saying.
Q.Will you accept that it can?
A.Just let me answer.
Q.Just say yes or no.  Will you accept that it can?
A.No, I am not going to say yes or no, I am going to
give
you a full answer.
Q.That is what I am trying to avoid, because we really
are
running out of time.
A.I know you are trying to avoid it, Mr Irving.
Q.We are familiar with your full answers, unfortunately.
A.I did swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing
but the truth.

.  P-58



MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It will not be very long, this answer, I
do
not think.
A.It says "Judentransport aus Berlin".  That is the
context.  Jew transport from Berlin.  It is clear it
means
a single train load of Jews, "Keine Liquidierung".
Q.Are you saying it is clear to because you are now
familiar
from the context of all the other documents we know,
as
indeed I am also now, that that is the correct
translation.  But my question to you is, if you are
faced
just with that one line in a document that you read
back
in 1970, knowing none of the surrounding
documentation,
right, that it would be totally improper and perverse
to
translate that as "transportation of Jews from
Berlin",
which was the sense that I gave?
A.Yes.  That is what I am saying.  And particularly
perverse
to say that it is an explicit order which Hitler has
told
Himmler to transmit that Jews were not to be
liquidated.
No mention of Berlin at all there, Mr Irving. That is
a
clear falsification of this document.
MR IRVING:  Avoiding your renewed smoke screen which you
are
laying across the question I put ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am not going to have you saying that.
The
criticism is that you misrepresented this document in
your
book.
MR IRVING:  That is a separate criticism, my Lord, with
respect.

.  P-59



MR JUSTICE GRAY:  On the contrary, it is the whole point of
the
criticism.  It would not be made unless you had
misrepresented, as the Defendants say you did, this
document.  We not be looking at this document at all.
MR IRVING:  In that case I shall have to ask further
questions
on the question of the meaning of the word, which
I thought I had established superabundantly to the
satisfaction of the court and everybody present, that
a
primary meaning of the word is transportation and,
when
one has no other document to go by, and the court has
not
been shown that at that time I had any other document
to
go by ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I know what your case is, Mr Irving.
I really do, and I do not think you need spend any
longer
on the pure linguistics.
MR IRVING:  In that case I shall move on.
A.In the contemporary dictionary you showed me, Mr
Irving,
the word "transportation" was not there at all.  How
can
it be a primary meaning?
Q.In both Cassell's and Langenscheidt "transportation"
is
given as the primary meaning after "transport".  In
the
Langenscheidt case it is given as the primary meaning.
A.I have not seen these dictionaries.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think we have really spent long enough.
I know what the issue is.
MR IRVING:  When, in your view, did adequate contextual

.  P-60



material in this connection come into the public
domain,
which would have enabled me to correct the misreading,
let
me put it like that?
A.The adequate contextual material is there in the
document
itself and consists of two words "aus Berlin".
Q.Why, in your view, is that adequate contextual
material as
to the nature of the transport or transportation?
A.You said adequate contextual material to correct your
error.  Your error was that you said it is an explicit
order that Jews were not to be liquidated without any
mention of the fact that we are referring to Berlin.
Q.We are still concentrating on the word "transport" and
I am not looking at the "aus Berlin".  Will you now
answer
my question?  When, in your view did adequate
contextual
material, and I am referring to other source
documents,
come to light, come into the public domain, which
would
enable one to put a proper meaning on that?  I am
referring, for example, to the police decodes.
A.I have already given the answer, which is that there
is
adequate material in the document itself to make it
quite
clear that it means "Jew transport from Berlin".
Q.As opposed----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, really we must move on.  I
think
we are spending an absurd amount of time on an issue
which
is quite clear to me, and I know what your case is.
You
have put it perfectly adequately to the witness.  You
do

.  P-61



not gain anything by going on putting it to him time
and
time again.
MR IRVING:  I am trying not to go into the meaning of the
word.  I am asking about when I should have known.
This
is the question.
A.You should have known when you read it.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The witness has said perfectly clearly
that
the context of the whole document, the document, makes
it
clear what is being referred to and that you
misrepresented it in your book.
MR IRVING:  Which is, I respectfully submit, an absurd
answer.
Anybody looking at that one document in 1970 could not
possibly have decided between different meanings of
the
word.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is one of the things I will have to
decide.
A.Mr Irving, you did decide.  You decided that it meant
it
is an explicit order from Hitler via Himmler that Jews
were not to be liquidated.  You refer to it
frequently.
Hitler ordered on November 30th 1941 -- I am quoting
you
here -- incontrovertible evidence that Hitler ordered
on
November 30th 1941 that there was to be "no
liquidation of
the Jews".
MR IRVING:  I am not going to get dragged back into that
argument again because his Lordship will not allow it.
Can we now ask the following question----

.  P-62



A.That is your interpretation of the document.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Professor Evans, you are ONLY provoking A
continuation of what I think has become an exhausted
topic.  So let us move on.
MR IRVING:  When the appropriate material came into the
public
domain, by which I mean the police decodes, SS
documents
and other materials in the 1970s and the 1980s, did I
make
the appropriate adjustment in the publication of the
book
the Goebbels biography?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What page?
MR IRVING:  Well, this is the ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is about 379, I think.  It says 379
towards the foot of the page.
A.At the bottom?
Q.Yes.
A.Well, you made a partial strategic withdrawal, as it
were.
MR IRVING:  A strategic withdrawal, was it, not an
appropriate
correction?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Let the witness finish his answer,
Mr Irving.
A.I will read these two sentences from page 379, if I
may.
"According to one army colonel who witnessed it, a
train
load of Jews from Berlin -- those expelled three days
before -- arrived in the midst of this; Aktion, this
killing of the Riga Jews.  Its passengers were taken
straight out to the pits and shot.  This happened even
as

.  P-63



Hitler, hundreds of miles away in the Wolf's Lair, was
instructing Himmler that these Berlin Jews were not to
be
liquidated.".
  So you accept in that text that it refers to
a
single train load of Jews, but you still maintain the
falsehood that it was Hitler who ordered it, with no
evidence whatsoever.
Q.Would you now answer the question, which is, was this
the
appropriate correction to the matter of one train load
as
opposed to transportation?
A.Yes.  In that respect, it most certainly was.
Q.Will you agree with me that historians or writers or
scholars sometimes differ on the inference they draw
from
identical documents, that you will have one reading on
it
from your political standpoint and I will have another
reading on it from mine?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  We are now going back to what I have said
we
must leave.
MR IRVING:  Well, we now move on to the document of
December
1st.  I now want you to look at the handwritten page,
please.  Can I ask the witness please also to look at
the
original photocopy?  That was the one from which
I worked.  Near the bottom there is a telephone
conversation.  You assume in your expert report that
Himmler telephoned General Pohl, but in fact all we
know
is that there was a conversation.  Is that right?

.  P-64



A.Yes.  As I say, I have revised my views of that as a
result of your pointing this out.
Q.It refers at one point to "Verwaltungsfuhrer der SS
haben
zu bleiben".  Those two phrases are on two separate
lines,
is that right?
A.That is right, yes.
Q.The words "haben zu bleiben" are pretty indistinct or
could you read it easily?
A.Of course, I have read this so often now, it is very
difficult to say what I would see on first coming to
it.
The word "haben" is very distinct, it is very clear.
"Zu"
is pretty readable.  The "bleiben" is a little less
good,
and the "SS" in the previous line is cut off by the
edge
of the page.  But, on the whole, it is pretty
readable.
Q.That is not Latin handwriting, is it?  Do you know the
name for this German handwriting that is used?
A.Italene.  I am very familiar with it.
Q.You are very familiar with it now, or as a result of
having worked on it for many years?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not think it really matters.
A.I have worked on it for many years, Mr Irving.
I published an edition of documents written in it.
MR IRVING:  You agree that not many modern Germans can even
read that handwriting, can they?  No, that is true.
Q.So it is a difficult handwriting to read?
A.No.  Well, it depends.  As an actual style of
handwriting

.  P-65



you have to learn it.  I train my PhD students in it.  It
does not take more than a few weeks and a little bit of practice.


Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor

© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and to combat hatred. Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.

As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.