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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts//day024.19


Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day024.19
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Let us wait and see what his position finally
        turns out to be, and then we can argue about it if needs
        be.  But let me know, please, in the morning and now carry
        on with your cross-examination.
   MR IRVING:  I do not think it is an enormously vital point
        actually in the whole Holocaust denial issue one way or the other.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If it is not a vital point, it may be you
        will keep with your concession.
   MR IRVING:  Mr Rampton is yelping before he is hurt actually.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Do not let's denigrate his motives.
   MR IRVING:  Yes.  Page 62, if you look at footnote 157, please,
        you quoted there a document, a wartime document, in the
        last three lines of that footnote there, a very
        confidential information report:  "The number of Jews in
        this entire area is estimated at 6 million and in the
        course of the coming year they are going to be brought
        across the Urals or otherwise got rid of"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Does that not also indicate that the primary German
        intention was the geographical movement, dumping them
        across the Urals?

.          P-166



   A.   Yes, it says ----
   Q.   Chased across the Urals?
   A.   Yes, it says two things.  First of all, it is referring to
        the biological eradication of the entirety of Jewry in
        Europe -- sorry, I am confused now.  Sorry, those are two
        different documents, yes.  You are looking here at this
        confidential report which are the notes of the reporter,
        so this is from a press conference, from a press
        conference, and under the heading "strictly
        confidential".  So somebody in the press conference said
        that, you know, a way to solve the problem is to bring
        this estimated 6 million across the Urals.
   Q.   Yes.  But does that not indicate that there were two
        things being spoken of at that time, the geographical
        chasing across the Urals, generally spoken of at that time?
   A.   Yes, I think it is quite ----
   Q.   "Failing which we are going to have to liquidate them"?
   A.   This refers to -- yes, somebody in the press conference
        said in November '41, "It is still a feasible way of
        solving this problem to bring these people over the
        Urals".  So that is all I can say.
   Q.   It is a press conference by Rosenberg, right?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   It is not a vitally important point, but there does
        appear, even at that time, to have been a degree of

.          P-167



        uncertainty as to what was going to happen?
   A.   Yes, but one should then also, if one speaks about this
        press conference, one should not leave out the words, you
        know, Rosenberg's words, "biological eradication of the
        entirety of Jewry".
   Q.   They are both second-hand reporting, are they not?  One is
        by the [German]?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Who is that?  I forget who that was, Rosenberg, but,
        anyway, it is a second-hand report, is it not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Over the page, of course, page 63, we have something that
        is very first-hand.  This is the vital Heinrich Himmler
        note of 18th December 1941.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   You probably know what I am going to ask you, if you have
        the phrase Judenfrager als partisan and ausurotten, what
        does that mean?  How would you translate that into
        English?  Als partisan and ausurotten?
   A.   Well, to be extirpated as partisans.
   Q.   Yes.  I think there is no question in this case that it
        has a homicidal meaning, does it not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   And what does one normally do with partisans in warfare?
        Are they shot?
   A.   I do not know what one normally does, but from the -- the

.          P-168



        orders were here clear.  I mean, I refer to this orders at
        the beginning.  The orders here were clear that a civilian
        who would, you know, actually -- a civilian who ----
   Q.   "Who takes guns up"?
   A.   --- who takes guns up, yes, would be shot on the spot.
   Q.   That is the basic laws of war, the Frank tireur(?) are
        shot.  The Americans did it, we did it.
   A.   Well, I only can answer this question as far as the German
        Army and the war on the East is concerned.  It was, you
        know ----
   Q.   If it had said the partisan and ausrottung, that would
        have been to be shot like partisans ----
   A.   Yes, it would be different.
   Q.   That would have been a totally different meaning, would it not?
   A.   It would be different, yes.
   Q.   Does the meaning of that sentence as it stands imply that
        these were Jewish partisans who were to be shot as partisans?
   A.   No.  "Juden to be extirpated as partisans".  It does not
        mean that only Jews have recognized as partisans were
        shot, they are just Jews were shot as partisans.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  "As if they were partisans", that is what it
        comes to?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   That is your evidence?

.          P-169



   A.   Yes.
   MR IRVING:  Although it does say "as partisans" and not "like
        partisans", if I can put it in English.  I do not want to
        hang that on the big bell, as you say in German, but there
        is a difference between the two words "als" and "wie", is there not?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, but I think the witness is not accepting
        your interpretation, Mr Irving.
   MR IRVING:  Well, the translation is specific, but he may not
        accept the interpretation of it, of course, the
        conclusions from it.  Paragraph 17.7, you have Adolf
        Hitler, on the fifth line of that, on 30th January 1942,
        saying that it is clear the war can only end with either
        the Aryan peoples being extirpated or the Jews
        disappearing from Europe", "Das Judentum aus Europa
        verschwindet".  That again implies a geographical
        solution, does it not?  This is 10 days after the Wannsee
        conference.
   A.   Well, "das Judentum aus Europa verschwindet", I think that
        this expression, "aus Europa verschwindet", could be seen
        as a camouflage language that actually disappeared from
        the German, from the area under German control, by, you
        know, anyhow.  There was actually no chance how, you know,
        6 million Jews could disappear at this stage from the
        German, from the territory under German control.
   Q.   As you point out just three days earlier in one of the

.          P-170



        table talks, this is now the following page, the second
        indented paragraph:  "The Jew must get out of Europe.  The
        best would be if they went to Russia!  I have no sympathy
        with the Jews.  They will always remain an element which
        stir up the peoples against one another".  Again he is
        talking of a geographical solution even in private, to his
        own private staff?  So why would camouflage be necessary there?
   A.   Well, when you refer to the so-called [German], the table
        talks, one has to take into account that the table talks,
        you know, there were various people present on the table,
        so you could not, you cannot just assume that this is what
        Hitler really thought, that this really, you know, you are
        getting deep insight into his real world.  This is always
        addressed to all kinds of people who were just present
        there.  So he would be very cautious to speak about his
        real intentions, as far as the Jews are concerned.  So
        I would hesitate to draw this conclusion from that.
   Q.   He never had any outsiders at these table talks, did he?
        They were always members of his private staff.
   A.   Yes, but the members of his private staff, I mean, for
        instance, his secretary and others were not to, you know,
        Hitler has very specific rules about keeping secrecies and
        they were not, you know, just because they were his
        coworkers, they were not allowed to share all the secrets
        with him.

.          P-171



   Q.   But on occasion in his table talks he speaks pretty
        tough.  He talks pretty violent language, does he not, in
        the table talk?
   A.   Yes, that is true, but I do not think that the table talks
        are the best, the ideal source to find out, you know, what
        was really going on in Hitler's mind because Hitler was
        very careful, particularly as far as the Holocaust is
        concerned, very careful what he was saying there.
   Q.   Well, the only justification for saying that kind of
        thing, of course, is if you have anything explicit
        anywhere else and there is not, is there?  Is it not
        possible that he is just saying what is in the table talk
        and in Goebbels' diary and elsewhere is an accurate
        reflection of what Hitler really knew?  Is that not a more
        logical explanation?
   A.   Well, I think the Goebbels diaries are different from the
        table talks but I ----
   Q.   Can I take you to paragraph 18.7 which is two pages later,
        page 56?  The last paragraph there, you do not quote
it in
        full, but this is the paragraph, my Lord, that we were
        looking at yesterday which is ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, I remember.
   MR IRVING: --- the deportation to Siberia.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Central Africa too.
   MR IRVING:  Central Africa, yes.  Is that also more camouflage
        and even with Dr Goebbels sitting there who knows very

.          P-172



        well what is going on or suspects what is going on?
   A.   Yes, you know, if we look at the situation what was going
        on in April '42, we know that probably three quarter of a
        million or one million Jews in the Soviet Union were
        shot.  They had started to systematically kill Jewish
        women and children in Serbia.  They had opened the -- if
        this is the right way to say it -- extermination camp in
        Chelmo in December, they had just opened the extermination
        camp in Belzec and were carrying out mass extermination
        there.  So one has to take this into account.
                   Really, I have difficulties, I have to say, to
        find, you know, an easy answer to this document because, I
        mean, they are in the middle of mass extermination and
        Goebbels is quite aware of that, and they are still
        talking about the idea that they could force the Jews out
        of Europe.  I find this really difficult to explain.
   Q.   Can you not see any possible explanation?
   A.   Possible explanation ----
   Q.   That Hitler did not know?
   A.   The possible explanation would be that they just used
        among themselves this kind of camouflage language because
        they did not, they did not -- I mean, I have no trace, no
        evidence, that they spoke among themselves really about,
         "We are going, we are about to kill 6 million people.  We
        are going to kill men, women, children, everybody", so
        they would use this kind of, this kind of language among

.          P-173



        themselves, and, yes, that is the explanation which seems
        most plausible to me.
   Q.   They were in a state of denial then, they were doing these
        things but pretending they were not?
   A.   Among themselves, I think, you know, they were in a way or
        Hitler was in this way using double standards.  He was,
        I think, I am convinced that he was quite aware what was
        happening ----
   Q.   You keep saying that.
   A.   --- but among one of his best friends, so among themselves
        they would use a different language, they would not speak
        about, they would not say, you know, "We are actually
        killing so many children per month".  They would just ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But if he knew, supposing, assuming that
        Hitler knew all about the death camps and all the rest of
        it, what puzzles me a little bit about this camouflage
        theory is I do not quite see why it was necessary to talk
        about the Jews at all.  Would you not keep your mouth shut
        rather than have this pantomime going on?
   A.   Well, if you look into the conversation between, you know,
        Goebbels and Hitler, this was a constant, you know, a
        topic which was constantly raised among them.  It was a
        kind of tour de raison.  They would cover every
        interesting, evert aspect which looked interesting from
        their point of view.  They would speak about the war, the
        conduct of war, they would speak about the -- the

.          P-174



        situation, the foreign policy, and they would cover this
        topic, the Jews, the Jewish question, and they would -
-
        this is my reading of this -- they would encourage
        themselves, "Yes, they are dangerous, we have to do
        something against them, we have to carry on with our
        policy".

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