Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day025.16 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord. It is not fair to put these very important documents to him. MR RAMPTON: Whether they are important or not is another question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we talking now about the document relating to the French Jews and building another camp? Mr Rampton, what are you talking about when you ---- MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is the one, yes, and, apparently, there is some other document as well but ... I do not know. MR IRVING: I can summarize it, my Lord. The Ahnet document is September 1st 1942. It is a conference on the deportation of French Jews and the need to provide them with blankets, equipment, spades, shovels and food and everything for a camp to be constructed in Russia. This is another indication that they are not going to be sent off to extermination. Then there is a further document which I intend putting to the witness which is referred to again by Gotz Aly which is a very important letter by a man called Walter Furl -- are you familiar with that letter? A. No. Q. Well, I think, my Lord, I am going to suggest ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are not going to finish this witness, are you? . P-200 MR IRVING: We are not going to finish this witness today. I am going to have another half day, unfortunately now, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Half day? MR IRVING: Yes, or possibly less. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, Dr Longerich, you are based in England anyway, are you not? A. Yes, that is true. Q. I am afraid we are going to have to ask you to come back on Monday. A. All right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a bit more time. Nothing is written in stone. MR IRVING: I think will put the Walter Furl of which I do have copies. On this one I am slightly better prepared. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have copies for the rest of us too? Shall we decide where to put this, and indeed at the same time, Mr Irving or probably Miss Rogers actually, the other clip that came first thing this morning? MS ROGERS: I am told by your Lordship's Clerk there is still room in J2. Since the Claimant's documents have gradually been fed in in date order, at the back of J2. I think it is tab 11. If your Lordship does not have tabs we will provide them. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have tabs 1 to 11. MS ROGERS: We will provide you with an 11. . P-201 MR IRVING: This is a minor matter which I think will take five minutes, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have just handed in Aly Gotz. MR IRVING: Yes, and there is an item on it called page 175. Again it is from the book by Aly Gotz or Gotz Aly who is an established authority on the Final Solution. He says in his book that this option of settling the Jews in Russia had already taken on a camouflaging function. This is his spin on the letter which is important. In the letter that Walter Furl, the leading Krakau resettlement organizer, wrote to his SS comrades in June 1942. I am only going to rely on the text of the actual letter. "Only in retrospect can this be seen as an intermediary step on the road to the Holocaust." In letter Furl wrote, and this is what is important, Walter Furl writes in June 1942 to his SS comrades: "Every day trains are arriving with over a thousand Jews each from throughout Europe. We provide first aid here", he was writing from Krakau. "He gives them more or less provisional accommodation and usually deport them further towards the white sea, to the white Ruthenian marsh lands where they all - if they survive - and Jews from ... Vienna or Pressburg certainly won't, will be gathered by the end of the war but not without having first built a few roads. (But we are not supposed to talk about it)." . P-202 Do you see in this any echoes of the Wannsee conference, the road building? A. No. I see something completely different here. I am asking myself what are your standards for quoting documents. This is a part of a document. We do not know where the document is. You know, we do not know in which context it stood. It is quoted by Gotz Aly, and Gotz Aly who has actually researched this area quite thoroughly, is commenting on this document, this is a camouflage document. Q. Yes. A. I think at this stage I am prepared, because he has seen the context and the evidence, I am prepared to follow him here, if I have not seen the other parts of the document. Q. But this is all he quotes. He does not quote any more than this part. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where does he say that it is a camouflage document. Camouflaging function, I missed that. A. I think I trust him here. He is right. MR IRVING: Once again this is a document where even though is a man writing to his own SS comrades ---- A. Yes, that is a ---- Q. --- a private letter? A. Part of a private letter, a quotation probably. I do not know the context of the letter. Maybe it says in the next paragraph: "But this is all nonsense. This is . P-203 camouflage". I do not have the letter. Give me the letter and I am happy to comment on it, but I am following here Gotz Aly's interpretation, because it seems quite reasonable for me and consistent with what I am saying here. Q. I am sorry, Dr K Longerich, quite clearly if Gotz Aly had found any evidence in that letter of the kind you mentioned, he would certainly have put it in, would he not? If there is any other clue in the letter that it was camouflage, then, boy, wouldn't he have put it in? A. I do not know. I cannot speculate about Gotz Aly's attitude here. You are representing a document, only part of a document, no context, and you clearly said that the author did not accept this as an authentic, as a kind of document which reflects the intentions of the Nazis. He says it is a camouflage document, and as long as I have not seen the document itself I think he is quite right in doing so. Q. But is it not another reference to the white sea which is what Heydrich talked about in Prague two months earlier? A. I think I do not have to repeat what I am saying. Yes, but ---- Q. Is it not also a bit of a feeble answer, if I may say so, that every time a document comes up that it does not fit in with your own preconceptions, like the Schlegelberger document or something like that, you say: This is . P-204 unimportant or that is camouflage or you cannot believe what this document says? A. This is not a document. This is a quotation from a book somebody quoted add part of a document. This is not a document. This is a quotation from a book, and the author of the book quite clearly states that he does not believe what -- he thinks that this is a camouflage document and one should not trust what this SS man is saying. Q. Dr Longerich, in your own expert report you have quoted any number of documents printed in other people's books, have you not? A. I have done that, but I have not presented here as evidence for actually, you know -- I have not actually dared presented them here and saying, well, actually I am quoting from a document but I am not going along with the conclusions the author drew from this document. So it is a different case. MR IRVING: My Lord, I do not want to add any more to that document. I have put the document in. I think it is significant. The witness thinks it is camouflage. A. No, I do not have any reason to mistrust Gotz Aly in his comment on this document, on this part of this document. MR IRVING: Does your Lordship wish to comment on it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not. Thank you very much. MR IRVING: In that case, I would respectfully submit that we might adjourn now, it is a useful hiatus point, unless . P-205 Mr Rampton wishes to make a point. MR RAMPTON: No, I do not want to make any points. I am concerned about the length of time everything is taking. It means I think the schedule has to be rewritten. It means probably we will not get to Professor Funke until Wednesday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say that? Another half day and I hope it will be less. MR RAMPTON: Another half day and then I have a day or a day and a half cross-examination. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is half a day more than your previous estimate. MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. I told somebody, I hope it was your Lordship, that I thought it might go over one day, beyond a day. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you Dr Funke lined up for Tuesday midday just in case? MR RAMPTON: Yes, I will. He will be in court on Tuesday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: There is only one other thing. I have from Munich now the relevant transcript which, contrary to the thing that Mr Irving produced, is not dated 11th May but 12th December 1942. It makes it difficult to find things if we do not get the right reference. I will pass them out, if I may. They are the Karl Wolff and it is the whole thing as well, instead of being a redacted version. . P-206 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whilst we have that in mind shall we just have a look and see what it says at the relevant bit? MR IRVING: Yes. I think possibly the witness might like to look at it and be asked if he ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Absolutely, that is what I meant. MR RAMPTON: The relevant page has 4 at the top of it, I think. I would prefer actually, my Lord, if it is possible, it is a good idea of Miss Rogers, that the witness really ought to be given time to read the whole thing. MR JUSTICE GRAY: He can come back to it, but would you mind for my benefit whilst it is in my head just to find -- -- MR RAMPTON: It is the bottom half of page 4. MR IRVING: Page 31 it starts. MR IRVING: I think it is a useful exercise, my Lord, if I translate the entire document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would be grateful if you would translate now for me: "Nach dem rautign Uberglick". I can guess what it means, but I am probably wrong. MR IRVING: On which page is that? MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the bottom of page 4, about eight lines up from the bottom, six lines up from the bottom. MR IRVING: "According to what we know now that it was perhaps 70 people from Himmler to Hirst. MR JUSTICE "GRAY: According to what we know now". MR IRVING: Yes, that is the way I would translate that, or . P-207 seen from the present standpoint. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You would rather have a bit of time to consider this, would you, Dr Longerich? A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to put this immediately after 14A in your clip. MR RAMPTON: The only thing I would point though is that at the bottom of page 4 of what I might call the authentic version there is a sentence relating to Martin Bormann which naturally makes a link with Hitler which is missed out of Mr Irving's version. A. Which page is that? MR RAMPTON: Page 31 at the bottom or 4 at the top, there is a sentence "G.W. Bormann" and so on and that is not in the version that was presented this morning. It is an earlier sentence, two sentences earlier, has been missed out as well. I do not know whether it is significant. MR IRVING: I will translate the entire document and I will fax it through to you at the weekend. A. As far as I can see from the document, he is basically saying two things. He is saying, yes, we carried out the Holocaust, the Final Solution, we killed, we tried and we were able to, we killed millions of Jews. He talks about Millionen Morden on page 5, and on the other hand he is saying, well, actually Himmler did it on his own initiative because he thought that he could fulfil . P-208 Hitler's ideas. So I do not know, I mean I do not know how you put your case, you know, how you want to deal with the document. Are you saying this is a kind of confirmation that millions of Jews were actually killed in extermination camps? I mean what is the way you want to deal with the document? Are you only relying on parts of it and you would then refuse other parts of the documents? MR IRVING: At first blush does the document look self-serving to you? A. Yes, I think so, because he wants to, I mean Wolf's aim was of course to distance himself from the events. So he is saying, well, actually this operation was only carried out by 70 people. So he did not of course admit that it was a much, much larger operation. So there is a kind of self-serving in it. Also this is his personal, the impression he had. He is in talking in 1952 about events ten years earlier. Wolff was of course an admirer of Hitler and he tried to distance Hitler from the Holocaust, from this history. I do not see how much I should -- I mean I can accept this is Wolf's view in 1952, but I do not see how this could destroy the other evidence. Also which part of the story are you accepting, the part that Himmler ordered Millionen Morden, the killing of millions of people, or the other part that Hitler was not involved in? Q. Well, you have accepted that the order of a million Jews . P-209 were killed on the Eastern Front, I think, there is no question about that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Despite your acceptance that it is self-serving, I think it may be quite important to have another look at this on Monday morning. I think it might be as well perhaps to have in my mind on Monday morning the reference when it was first introduced in evidence today, because my recollection is that you put it forward as being a document which could be relied on. MR IRVING: Indeed, my Lord, yes. I certainly will not depart from that. I am just about to ask one final question of the witness. Dr Longerich, this is an interview between Karl Wolff which he has requested to be kept confidential, is it not? A. No, I do not think so. Q. Did you yourself say that the Karl Wolff collection at the time you wished to see it was kept confidential? A. No, you confuse two points. You referred yesterday to memoirs of Karl Wolff, and they are not generally accessible, but the collection S Zeugenschrift, I know this collection quite well, is open, everybody can go in the Institute and make a photocopy and use it. These are the internal interviews the Institute made in the 1950s. By the way, the interviews are in a way not verbatim transcripts. These are a kind summary that the person who made the interviews actually made. . P-210 Q. Were they originally kept confidential, these interviews? A. Not that I am aware of. I am using this since the 1970s and I think they were publicly accessible to everybody. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I notice that Mr Irving's manuscript is - --- A. Not this one, but I know the collection. I spent a lot of time reading this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving's manuscript is headed "Confidential" I notice, but that does not appear to be on the original. A. Where is that? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is page 14 in the clip you got this morning. MR IRVING: Yes. My Lord, access to a lot of these documents is going to be on the basis of confidentiality by the Institute, because these people are still alive. My final question is, this is an interview by an historian and not by a prosecutor, is it not? A. An historian, yes. Q. Would you expect an interview by an historian to obtain other information from a witness than a prosecutor would, a different kind of overall picture? A. One has to discuss the quality of this particular interview. An historian, I do not know this person, I do not know who -- I think it was Wolfgang Ziegel, as far as I can see -- I have my doubts about his quality as a good interviewer I have to say. I think he was sitting . P-211 together with people, chatting with them, and then he was going home and made a kind of summary. It is not an accurate verbatim protocol, a minute of a meeting. Q. Do you have any basis for saying that it is not an accurate protocol? A. It is not a verbatim, it is not countersigned as far as I see from Wolff. So he visited Wolff in Munich in his flat, chatted with him, went back to the Institute and wrote down, you know, his general view about this. Q. Would he have taken notes, do you think, during the interview? A. I do not know. I have no idea. Sometimes interviewees say: "Please do not take notes". I do not know what Wolff's attitude was. I have no indication of that. MR IRVING: Thank you. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will resume on Monday at 10.30. (The witness stood down). (The Court adjourned until Monday, 28th February 2000 . P-212
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