Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day026.11
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   MR RAMPTON:  No, it has not been in the very slightest because
        it leads to this question (and I have not quite finished
        Dr Longerich on this area of the evidence) does it not,
        here you have apparently on the contemporaneous evidence a
        series of meetings between Himmler and Hitler, and you
        have really a massive logistical operation underway,
        taking thousands, literally thousands, of Jews every week
        from various parts of the General Government to these
        three camps which are not work camps.  I ask the question
        again.  As a matter of inference (and it is inference

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        because we do not have the comparable document for the
        General Government) do you think it likely or not that
        Hitler knew because Himmler told him what was happening?
   A.   It is very likely.
   Q.   In your mind, does it matter one way or the other whether
        Himmler said to Hitler:  "This is what I am going to do,
        Adolf" and Adolf said, "Yes, it is sounds a jolly good
        idea" or whether Adolf said to Heinrich, "Heinrich, this
        is what you have got to do"?  Does it matter?
   A.   Well, I think there was a high degree of consensus among
        them, so I do not think it really -- it does not change
        the question of responsibility.
   Q.   Can we then turn to one of Mr Irving's documents?  I pause
        to remind you of this, before we get to Mr Irving's Furl
        letter, in the report of Professor Browning which I expect
        you have read, have you ----
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   -- it was not challenged so I can recite it for you, he
        tells us that at this time and after this time, Jews,
        train loads of Jews, were coming westwards to Belzec from
        Lemberg or Lewolf, westwards from Kolemeer, which is
        southeast of Lewolf by a long way, 225 kilometres, to
        Belzec and from Bialystok westwards to Treblinka.  Does
        that help you assess what kinds of places these might have
        been?  Does it help you to assess the question whether
        they might have been transit camps leading further to the

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        East?
   A.   Well, you have almost answered the question yourself, it
        is the transports from East to the West.
   Q.   That is my job.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Not in re-examination.
   A.   I would not describe this as a -- of course, I would not
        describe this as a movement from West to East.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes.  Can we turn to the page from Gotz Aly's book
        "Endlosen"?  I hope you have it there somewhere.  I have
        it in English.  You have probably got it in ----
   A.   I have it in English, yes.
   Q.   You have it in English?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   The English will do, it seems to me.  I hope you have the
        longer version, the one we had last week, because I, first
        of all, want to draw your attention to the last paragraph.
   A.   Which page is that?
   Q.   It is page 275, Mr Irving tells us.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  175 -- sorry, no, I beg your pardon.
   A.   175 or?
   MR RAMPTON:  Of Gotz Aly's book?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   175 -- you have the German version there?
   A.   I have the English version here.
   Q.   Oh, you do?
   A.   Yes.

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   Q.   I have not so...
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Is it page 175, I think?
   MR RAMPTON:  It is page 175, I think.  Use the bound copy,
        Dr Longerich.
   A.   You are referring to the Furl letter?
   Q.   Yes.
   A.   Yes, I have it here.
   Q.   Before we look at the text of Furl's letter or the bit we
        have there, can we look at the next succeeding paragraph
        which begins "Also in the summer of 1942"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "Also in the summer of 1942, the Germans transported 3,000
        Jews from the eastern Galician town of Droyobic", that is
        an attempt by me, "to the Belzec death camp.  Here too
        they used the excuse that the deportees were needed for
        reclamation of the Pripyat Marshes".  Do you know where
        that place "Droyobic" is?
   A.   It is East, as far as I remember, it is East of the Belzec
        death camp.
   Q.   You are right.  Then look at the text of Furl's letter.
        Ignore the first sentence.  "We provide first aid", or it
        might be some other meaning of that, it does not matter,
         "and give them more or less provisional accommodation and
        usually deport them further towards the White Sea to the
        White Ruthenian marsh lands where they all", and then we
        will leave out the next bit, "will be gathered by the end

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        of the war but not without having first built a few roads
        (but we are not supposed talk about it)".  Do you know of
        any evidence, Dr Longerich, that there were any transit
        camps in the White Ruthenian Marshes?
   A.   No.
   Q.   On the way to the White Sea, which is, we observed this
        morning, right up in the north of Russia?
   A.   No.
   Q.   Do you know of any train schedules showing trains going
        from Cracau or Auschwitz or Warsaw or Lublin to the
        Ruthenian Marshes?
   A.   No.
   Q.   Any orders for lorry loads of Jews to be taken to those places?
   A.   No.
   Q.   Any evidence that the Jews were used to build roads into
        that area of Russia?
   A.   No.
   Q.   In the light of that and all the other evidence we have
        just looked at, how likely does it seem to you that we
        should take this little piece of whatever it is from Herr
        Furl to his SS chums in Berlin seriously?
   A.   Absolutely irrelevant on a reconstruction of the events.
   Q.   Thank you.  Now I want to go to another related topic,
        but, in a sense, slightly separate and those are the
        documents that Mr Irving produced last week about trying

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        to keep the illness down in some of the camps so as to
        preserve the population level.  Do you remember those
        documents?
   A.   Yes, I remember them.
   Q.   Have you got those here?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   The one I would like you to look at first is dated 28th
        December 1942.  It is from Oranienburg.
   A.   I do not think I have it here at the moment.  This is
        concerning the doctors?
   Q.   The doctor's letter, yes.
   A.   I do not have it in front of me unfortunately.
   Q.   It is headed SS.  Then there is a very long German word.
        What does that long German word mean?
   A.   This means economy administration main office.
   Q.   Right.  Who is in charge of that?
   A.   It is Pohl.
   Q.   Did Pohl have any responsibility or jurisdiction over the
        extermination programme?
   A.   As far as the extermination programme was carried out in
        his camps, so it is not for the camps of the Aktion Reinhardt.
   Q.   That was going to be my next question.  His camps being
        those which had workers in them?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Like slave labour?

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   A.   Yes.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am a bit lost.  Pohl was in charge of what
        you might call labour camps?
   MR RAMPTON:  He was head of the SS
        Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt.
   A.   Yes, and there is Ampsgruppe D, this is the subdepartment
        concentration camps, this is a subdepartment, if you want
        to say that.  He was in charge of all the concentration
        camps, and concentration camps, the Aktion Reinhardt
        camps, are different type of camps.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Concentration as opposed to death camp?
   A.   Yes.
   MR RAMPTON:  If we look at the abbreviations in paragraph
        numbered one, lager doctors of the concentration camps,
        the camp doctors of the concentration camps, then we have
        a whole list of abbreviations, including Auschwitz and a
        number of others, do you see any reference there to any of
        the Reinhardt camps, Treblinka, Sobibor or Belzec?
   A.   No.
   Q.   You told us last week that the reference to Lublin would
        be a reference to Maidonek?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Which did have a working facility?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   How many of the Reinhardt camps were operating at the end
        of December 42?

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   A.   All three were still in operation.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Did none of them have a labour side to them?
   A.   No.
   Q.   They were all purely death camps?
   A.   Only a very small number of prisoners were used for labour
        assignments, only several hundred, several dozens.
   MR RAMPTON:  Now I am passing to something completely
        different, Dr Longerich, and that is this.  You were asked
        last week by Mr Irving to comment on the police decodes,
        do you remember, the British police decodes of the
        messages which passed between Himmler and Jeckeln at the
        beginning of December 1941?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   In which it is clear that Jeckeln had done something that
        Himmler was not pleased about, but did not, as you pointed
        out, result in any kind of sanction or punishment against him?
   A.   This is true, yes.
   Q.   There is a document which was disclosed by Mr Irving which
        you may feel needs to be explained.  It is not a document
        which is part of your original report and therefore we
        have not really looked at it before but perhaps one could
        do it now.  You will find it at page 110 of the blue
        file.  I think it is 110.  It is a somewhat fragmentary
        copy of a document that looks a bit like a Nuremberg
        document.  That is 111, sorry.  That is the one I want you

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        to look at first, if you will, 111?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Has it got some words missing from the first line of the text?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Ich habe die (blank) Juden execution, yes?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   I think you were good enough to find us the complete
        version of that, and this is terrible.  The Americans or
        whoever it is even managed to muck up the German grammar
        because in fact it is execution ----.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, I see, you are 111 and 110 is what he
        has found.
   MR RAMPTON:  If you go back to 110, it is the real thing, or
        much closer to the real thing anyway.
   MR IRVING:  109.
   MR RAMPTON:  Sorry.  You are quite right.  I missed a page.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That may be the same as 110. I think we all
        have different pagination.
   MR RAMPTON:  Thank you very much.  It is letter dated 15th
        November 1941, although the 4 is missing from the date
        line, I think from a man called Lohse, who I think is the
        ReichsKommissar for the Ostland, is he not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   That is the Baltic States, essentially, is it not?
   A.   And white Russia.

.          P-102

   Q.   And white Russia.  He has written a letter to the
        Reichsminister for the occupied Eastern territories in
        Berlin, who I think was Rosenberg, was he not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   On the left-hand side we have made a translation -- this
        is a somewhat literal translation.  Does your translation
        start, "I have forbidden the wild executions of Jews in
        Lepeier"?
   A.   I have forbidden the uncontrolled ----
   Q.   Yes, he has the same one as me.  Does your Lordship's
        translation ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I have got "wild executions".  Does it really
        matter in the end?
   MR RAMPTON:  Probably not.  Lepeier is a town in Latvia on the
        coast, is it not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   I will just read it, if I may.  I will read it in the
        version that his Lordship has: "I have forbidden the wild
        executions of Jews in Lepeier because they were not
        justifiable in the manner in which they were carried out.
        I should like to be informed whether your enquiry of 31st
        October is to be regarded as a directive to liquidate all
        Jews in the East.  Shall this take place without regard to
        age and sex and economic interests of the Wehrmacht, for
        instance, in specialists in the armament industry?" Then,
        for some reason, Mr Irving has put in "note in different

.          P-103

        handwriting".  I do not understand that.  Not on the copy
        I have got.  "Of course, the cleansing of the East of Jews
        is a necessary task".  I prefer, Dr Longerich, a "priority
        task".  Is that not a better translation?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "But its solution must be reconciled with the requirements
        of the war economy".  I am sorry, I am reading from my own
        translation.  Is that right in the German?
   A.   Yes, that is right in the German.

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