Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day025.09 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 Q. So once again they are saying, "Well, the other person who knew, he is dead, unfortunately", so it is a very shaky kind of testimony, is it not, so far as Adolf's responsibility is concerned? A. This is, I mean, what I did here, I based this on an analysis of the ereignismeldung and on -- and, in addition, on the basis of evidence we have from testimonies. I think it is my obligation, my duty, to look at this testimony. I just cannot ignore them. Ohlendorf made, and I mention in the report here, he made quite remarkable statements. He never -- I mean, he was hanged by the Americans, but he never actually disputed the fact that his Einsatzgruppen killed 10,000 of Jews. I mean, this was, because this was confronted with the evidence which the ereignismeldung contained ---- Q. We do not dispute that either here. A. --- he did not dispute it. Q. But you also rely on the ereignismeldung, but you said yesterday that only one of them shows it was sent to the Party Chancellory in Munich which is not exactly proof that Hitler saw it, is it? A. Well, we went through this when I think I made it quite clear that not every ereignismeldung has a list of distribution, and I do not have a full picture of to whom . P-110 it was sent. Munich and Berlin, I made this quite clear that the Munich office had a liaison office in Berlin, so I do not think this is a ---- Q. Hitler was in East Prussia, was he not? A. Yes, but, of course, then Bormann was constantly in his -- it was Bormann policy to be constantly in close with Hitler so in order to inform him about everything which he thought he has to be informed of. Q. Will you go to page 40, please, the third paragraph? This is a general statement which is quite useful. In the fall of 1941, the autumn of 1941, you say: "The Nazi regime began to deport Jews from Central Europe into the Eastern European ghettos. From statements by leading representatives of the regime it becomes clear that at this point in time the intention was to deport these people further to the East following upon a victory over the Soviet Union". A. Yes. Q. Is that still your position now? A. Yes. Q. Have you found it, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you. MR IRVING: That is a very useful summary of the position in the autumn of 1941. You are talking about September, October 1941? A. Yes. . P-111 Q. And at that time the Nazi leadership, Hitler, Himmler, everybody else was talking, was ---- A. Well, to deport these people further to the East, and what would happen to the people then further in the East? I do not have -- my argument here is that this intention to send them further to the East had clearly genocidal implication. They would perish there in the East, but they postponed this because originally they thought they had this area under control in the autumn of 1941. Now they realised they had not won the war, so they sent these people first to ghettos in the East and with the intention to send them further to the east, let them perish until next spring. Q. You quote the Greiser letter, do you not, on the following page? A. For instance, the Greiser letter, yes. Q. Yes. Can I just offer a different translation of that first paragraph? A. Yes, where is that, please? Q. The different translation that I offer is in the little bundle, page 13. A. Yes. Q. "The Fuhrer wishes that from the West to the East" -- do you want to follow the German one? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just a minute. I have not found this. MR IRVING: This is September 18th 1941. . P-112 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That I think is not -- yes, it is, 84. MR IRVING: "The Fuhrer wishes that from the" -- I would like this one actually put in the bundle actually. It is a better translation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is in there. I think it is 84 or am I wrong? A. 84. MR IRVING: Mine is, I think, a slightly preferable translation of a rather complicated sentence. "The Fuhrer wishes that from the West to the East, the Altreich" the old Reich, "and the Protectorate be emptied and freed of Jews as soon as possible. Initially, therefore, and during the course of this year, if possible, I am striving as a first stage to transport the Jews out of the Altreich and the Protectorate into the Eastern territories newly accessioned by the Reich two years ago, and then to deport them even further to the East early next year. I intend to convey about 60,000 Jews of the Altreich and Protectorate into the Litzmannstadt ghetto for the winter which has, so I hear, the space to accommodate them". A. Yes, I think there are two mistakes in your translation. Q. Right. A. First of all, you translated, it said in the text here, "nachsten Fruhjahr", next spring, you said "early next year". Q. "Fruhjahr" is not necessarily spring. "Fruhling" is . P-113 spring, is it not? "Fruhjahr" is ---- A. No. "Fruhjahr" and "Fruhling" is the same. It has the same meaning. "Early next year" is quite misleading, but "early next year" could be read as January, for instance. The second mistake you make, if you look at the last sentence here, or not the last sentence, the sentence before the last sentence, it says in the German text:"Ich beabsichtige, in das Litzmannstadter Getto, das, wie ich hore, an Raum aufnahmefahig ist, rund 60,000 Juden des Altreichs und des Prtektorats fur den Winter zu verbringen". So you say here in your translation, "I intend to convey about 60,000 Jews of the Altreich and Protectorate in the to Litzmannstadter ghetto for the winter which has, so I hear, the space to accommodate them". So in the German text it is only -- the German text only says which is as I translated it here in my translation which has at best -- so it does not say in the text, in the German text -- in the German text it only says it is "aufnahmefahig". It does not say that it is specifically "aufnahmefahig had space for them". It only says "aufnahmefahig". Q. Well, if it says "an Raum aufnahmefahig", surely, the inference is that it has adequate space for this task? A. Yes, but it also could receive more people. . P-114 Q. Yes. Now, what is the purpose of that letter from Himmler to Greisler? Is it camouflage or can we believe what he is writing? A. I think one can basically believe what he is writing. Q. So at this time, September 18th, there is no homicidal intent towards the European Jews? A. Well, I said this, I think I made this quite clear in my statement: "From statements by leading representatives of the regime it is clear at this point in time the intention was to deport these people further to the East following up a victory over the Soviet Union". So I draw the conclusion from the sentence it was the intention to send them further to the East. Q. Yes, but there is no camouflage intended in the document. There are none of these camouflage words we have heard so much about in that paragraph. What Himmler wrote to Greiser there is meant, the German Jews, the European Jews, are going to be shipped out to the East. No one is paying much attention to what is going to happen when they get there. No one cares really what happens to them in their new existence? A. Yes. Q. So any decision must have come after that in September 1941. It is an important document, is it not? A. Well, the document says that the Jews are sending, are sent to the ghetto and then in the next spring they will . P-115 be sent further to the East. So that ---- Q. If you go to page 42 of your report: "On 6th October Hitler emphasised that all Jews from the Protectorate needed to be 'removed' - and not into the Generalgouvernement first, but - 'straight on to the East'. That is also part of the same kind of picture, is it not, the East? A. Yes. Q. Now, I think that you and I are agreed that sometimes the Germans used the phrase "the East" in a sinister sense, is that right? They say "the East" and, in fact, they mean to perdition, to their ---- A. Yes, but here I think, I am in a way very cautious in interpreting the language here, and I say I think it is meant here that they are simply sent to the East, to ghettos and to camps to the East. So the East is here, obviously, the Generalgouvernement. Q. We are going to be looking this afternoon at some documents about people who were sent to Auschwitz ready for being sent on to the East or, at any rate, and obviously I am going to be asking your interpretation of those documents ---- A. Well... Q. --- which is quite an important point. A. We are here in a phase where actually in three waves German Jews are sent to ghettos in occupied Poland and the . P-116 occupied Soviet Union. The first wave goes to Losch, the second wave to Riga and Minsk and the third wave in the there spring of 1942 goes to ghettos in the district of Lublin. What has happened to the people is they are not, in general, killed on the spot. So they survive for a couple of weeks, probably a couple of months, until spring 1942 and then they killed them on a systematic basis by sending them to extermination camps or by gassing them. So we are in a kind of transitional phase here we they are still not prepared to kill then on the spot, except the six trains we discussed yesterday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But can I just ask you this? It is not just German Jews that are being talked of in 6th October document, is it? It is all European Jews. A. Well, Germany is here in the sense of a greater Germany, so this includes the annexed territories, Austria, the Czech Jews as well which is a project of ---- MR IRVING: Just in a vague sense, a general question, did the Nazis in some way regard the European Jews as being more valuable material than the Russian Jews, Eastern Jews? A. I do not know what you mean with "valuable material". Q. Well, preserved -- there is a point in preserving them whereas they did not care what happened to the Eastern Jews. A. Generally speaking, they made a kind of distinction between the Eastern Jews and the Western Jews. . P-117 Q. It was never actually spelt out in a document, but this is the inference we can draw, is it not, from the document? A. Well, it is spelt out in documents but they made, in general, in their anti-Semitic -- in the anti-Semitic way they looked at this since they make this different sometimes, yes. Q. I am going to ask one more brief question before the adjournment, my Lord. Page 45, paragraph 15. You say: "Rademacher still assumed at the end of October 1941 that the Serbian Jews would be 'removed by water transport into the transition camps'", the "Auffanglager im Osten", "in the East". So there was this kind of perception among the top level Nazis involved in the programme, in the system, that there were reception camps in the East to which these European Jews were going to be shipped. A. I only say that Rademacher in this letter obviously assumed that they would be removed by ship in the transition camps in the East. I am not, I cannot, I do not want to comment on general perception of this, but I think Rademacher was probably convinced that this would happen. Q. Yes, over the page, paragraph 16, you raise the matter which I have just raised a couple of minutes ago: "Was the deportation of Jews 'to the East' at this time already a metaphor for the planned murder in the extermination camps?" You say, quite frankly: "The state of . P-118 contemporary research does not give sufficient evidence". MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what he said. It is a transitional phase. I think that is his evidence. MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: 2 o'clock. (Luncheon adjournment) (2.00 p.m.) MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord. My Lord, I can say the Defendants' solicitors have very diligently got on to the Wolff document and there is one minor snag over the date, but I am sure we will have it at the end of the weekend. I cannot do better than that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say they got on to it, is it physically in court? MR RAMPTON: Munich cannot find any Wolff testimony for the date, which is 11th May 1952. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am glad we have---- MR IRVING: They are responding positively. MR JUSTICE GRAY: -- tried to find out what the position actually is. MR IRVING: I just hope I did not leave anything important out, of course, but I am sure I did not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we all remember that I would like to know what the outcome of it all is. MR IRVING: I think it is an important document and, as your . P-119 Lordship knows, I relied on it quite heavily at the time. MR JUSTICE GRAY: From your point of view, it is an important document. MR RAMPTON: I do not understand why it is, if I may say so at this stage, so terribly important in Mr Irving's mind if the testimony of von dem Bach-Zelewski must be dismissed out of hand because it is postwar. MR IRVING: You have pre-empted me. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another point about it which I think we ought all to bear in mind, which is that it was not actually available to you, Mr Irving, as I understand it, when you wrote your book because I think you said it had been supplied by a lawyer in Dusseldorf. MR IRVING: It very definitely was, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was? I see. MR IRVING: Oh yes. That is part of my original research. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it was not in your discovery, was it? MR IRVING: It was in a big box called documents on the Judenfrager which they had copied in its entirety. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought you told me this morning it was not in your discovery. MR RAMPTON: The note was, but not the document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will revert to that on Monday. MR IRVING: This is one reason of course why I mentioned Bach-Zelewski because, if my use of Karl Wolff is impugned as a source, who did not have the death of millions or . P-120 thousands of people on his conscience ... MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, back to Dr Longerich. MR IRVING: Back to the document, my Lord. The progress we have made is we are now at page 40 or 45 of an 80 page document approximately, so we have managed to chew our way halfway through the document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the bit that needs more chewing is the latter part rather than the earlier part but there we are. Let us press on. MR IRVING: Have I heard that before in connection with other documents? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, are you familiar with a Canadian historian Michael Marrus? A. Yes. Q. He is a reputable historian, is he not? A. Absolutely. Q. He has written an article on the history of the Holocaust in the Journal of Modern History. I am just going to read one and a half sentences to you. He cautions that Hitler's rhetoric about the Jews should not be seen as what he calls a preview of Auschwitz. He adds "The Nazi leader always spoke in the most cataclysmic terms, was forever calling for the most drastic action, the most ruthless stroke". Would you like to comment on Marrus's view therefore that Hitler sometimes was a loud mouth? . P-121 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you read Marrus's book? A. This was a quotation one and a half sentences from an article, I cannot recall-----. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a book, I think. A. He has written a book and articles. MR IRVING: It is the Journal of Modern History. A. I cannot recall the content at the moment so I am really hesitating to comment on a very short quote from either a book or a lengthy article with about 25 or so pages. Q. Suppose I said it now. Suppose I said it and not Michael Marrus, that the Nazi leader Hitler always spoke in the most cataclysmic terms and was forever calling for the most drastic action, the most ruthless stroke, would you say that I was wrong? A. It is a very general statement. I would see more evidence. To which quotations are you referring? Can you give me some help here? Q. The famous quotation throughout the war where he said September 1st 1939, did he not? That one. A. If you refer, for instance, to speeches about vernichtung ausrotten which he repeated, yes, then it is of course true. Of course he was a politician and he made sure that he addressed the right audience. On some occasions he would just use drastic language, but on other occasions he would be very different. It always depends on the circumstances, on the audience he was addressing. . P-122 Q. Like most politicians, they say what the audience wants to hear. One of the basic rules of politics, is that right? A. I cannot lecture on the basic rules of politics. I think I should only refer to the Nazi regime.
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