Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.09 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 Q. It is complicated and I am not going to read it all out. I want you to run your eye down it and I will ask you in advance the questions I am going to ask. Is it evident from at that my daughter Paloma was with me on this tour of Hamburg, tour of Germany, and that she was with me in the car and that she came with me to the function? A. Yes. Q. And that I spoke later that evening at another function to university students? MR JUSTICE GRAY: And that you knew that Michael Kuhnen was . P-79 going to be present. MR IRVING: I beg your pardon? MR JUSTICE GRAY: And that you knew that Michael Kuhnen was going to be present. MR IRVING: Did I say that I would not come if he was going to be present, that this has caused problems? This evoked consternation and I said I was not going to come. The question I am going to ask you is, is there any evidence from the diary entry that I had Michael Kuhnen in the car with me and would I not have mentioned it? A. In the car? Q. In my car, yes. A. I did not know. Q. So you will accept, will you, that he was not with me and I did not arrive with him? A. No, it is just the diary. Q. Will you accept once more that I have never met Michael Kuhnen knowingly in my life? A. As a responsible scientist I have to at least notify that there are other hints and eyewitnesses, so to speak, who say differently. Q. You have one, Michael Schmidt, you are familiar source, Michael Schmidt? A. Yes, it is a very important source, because he is one of the few who is not in the right-wing camp, and could manage it for a time of some years to interact with them . P-80 and even film it, and all the video material is from him. So of course it is an important source. It is a worldwide important source for this kind of camp. Q. But contrasting, shall we say, the postwar memoirs of Michael Schmidt, this left-wing journalist on the one hand, and his recollection that he seemed to think that I arrive with Michael Kuhnen with my diary which shows clearly that I am with my daughter and there is no reference to Michael Kuhnen arriving with me at all, or even being with me, in fact there is no reason why he would have been because I came from a totally different part of Germany, you have to admit that, on balance of probabilities, it is unlikely? A. I cannot say yes or no to that. I read your diary. I was very cautious, but I have to mention that there are other, you know, eyewitnesses of that meeting. Q. One? A. Yes. Q. Yes. Can I take you now to 5.3.16? We have moved on from Michael Kuhnen. One of your other sources, a Miss Benedict, is it, or Mrs Benedict? A. Yes. Q. Says that I received applause from the older members of the audiences, especially SS veterans. How on earth does she know they were SS veterans? A. She stated so. . P-81 Q. Is this not indicative of the kind of things your sources are writing? Were they in uniform? Did they hold up party cards? A. I quote this person and I do not know more. Q. Are you not critical about the sources you use when you write these reports? A. Oh, yes I am very, and Benedict is one of the sources I met often, and she is one of those who knew the scene as intense and differentiated as, for example, Wagner. The problem is with these sources of course ---- Q. Is she one of your social scientists that you refer to? A. Excuse me? Q. Is she one of your social scientists you refer to as being a reliable source? A. Yes. Q. I thought so. A. It is more out of an observational perspective, and she is one of the persons out of East Germany who knew the scene from before '89. So she knew the persons they interacted in the definitive phase between '85 and '90. So she is a very reasonable source. Q. Paragraph 5.2 ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we had got beyond that. MR IRVING: We had got beyond that and I was just going to reassure myself once again, my Lord, this is headed "OPC Observations", that paragraph, it is on page 58, your . P-82 Lordship is paying little heed to OPC observations I trust. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well ---- MR IRVING: That is the German Office of the Protection of the Constitution. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I follow that. We went through this yesterday and it seems to me I make up my mind about these organizations on the basis of what Professor Funke tells me. MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And not what the OPC says. MR IRVING: We did have a discussion about it yesterday, and the impression I got was that your Lordship would attach little weight to what these ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I said yesterday was exactly what I said just now. MR IRVING: I will have to read transcript. 5.3.2, Mr Zundel, footnote 198, there is a reference to Zundel's Maulkorb which is a ---- A. 598? Q. I am sorry, footnote 198. There is a reference to a Maulkorb having been put on Zundel, a dog, what is the word for it ---- A. I did not see it. Q. It is probably not important then. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a classic example of what I did invite . P-83 you not to do, which is to go to some rather obscure footnote and completely fail to put your case in relation to your association or otherwise with Mr Zundel. I thought you accepted that Zundel was somebody with whom you had a close association? MR IRVING: Yes, indeed, but it is just a trivial point I was just going to ask him if he knew why this Maulkorb, this gag, had been applied on Zundel, was it just a legal gag. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is a trivial point let us, please, not bother with it. MR IRVING: Yes. 5.3.26, please, this is Mr Althans who is organizing my tour for me in Dresden and elsewhere. It states that the turnover did not apply, the Umsatz entfallt. Do you know why that was? Are you familiar from the correspondence that I had agreed to donate the entire proceedings for the rebuilding of the Church of our Lady in Dresden? A. So far as I recall, yes. Q. Yes. So there is nothing sinister about that particular arrangement? A. No, it seems not. Q. Paragraph 5.3.7, I am sorry my numbering has gone slightly astray, 5.3.7, you have: "In his report on Irving's court appearance", and you give as a footnote there 218. Is the source you give for that ---- A. Where is 218? . P-84 Q. Footnote 218, would I be right in describing that book that you are using there as being an anti-fascist kind of source? A. Say it again? Where you are, please? MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have now gone back to paragraph 5.3.7. MR IRVING: Footnote 218 about Karl Philipp? A. 5.3.7. Q. I am just commenting on your evidently using what I would call anti-fascist sources. It is footnote 218. The question is purely, is that book you quote there what you would call an anti-fascist source? A. Exactly. Q. Yes. You accept such sources quite uncritically, do you? A. I stated yesterday that I do it for a special purpose in a special situation where these sources seem to be very valid. Of course I have to do it in the case of the Michael Schmidt video, and this is a kind of rewriting of the whole video material Michael Schmidt put to these people. That is why, otherwise I would not, because I have to check again and again, but I could check, especially these sources, by seeing the videos and seeing what it means and what not. Q. Would it not have been preferable to have used the original sources rather than other people's ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, are you challenging the correctness of what Mr Philipp wrote, because if you are . P-85 not, why are we spending a long time discussing whether the source for it is reliable? MR IRVING: We will spend no further time. Paragraph 5.3.19, Professor Funke. We are now on page 66. We are back at the Moers meeting? A. Yes. Q. At 5.3.17 before that, you describe the speech I made at Moers as being demagogic or I describe it as being demagogic? A. Yes. Q. Do you object, demagogic, if you remember the little speech I made at the Leuchter Congress, was that demagogic, although all I was saying was that I am not allowed to speak? A. It refers to your diary. Q. Yes, but, I mean, there is nothing reprehensible about making a demagogic speech inherently or is there? A. Oh, yes. Q. All right. A. My perception of demagogic is not so good as yours. Q. 5.3.19, we are now actually going on to the content of the Moers speech? A. Yes. Q. The Moers speech was organized by Mr Althans, was it? A. Yes. Q. And here I am quoted as saying by the transcript: "Then . P-86 I believed these gentlemen [German historians] who said that something happened at Auschwitz. Now I no longer believe this story at all. Today I say the following: there were no gassings in Auschwitz". Stop there, do you know the difference between Auschwitz and Birkenhau? A. Yes, of course. Q. Have you read either in these court documents or before or since an article published in L'Expresse, a French news magazine of repute, in January 1995 which established that the gas chamber at Auschwitz which is shown to the tourists is fake and that they admit it? A. Give me the evidence, but it was debated very much in this court. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we have been through that several times. It has nothing to do with this witness's evidence. MR IRVING: It is my way just of reminding the court. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, please accept that I remember what you say about the dummies at Dachau and Auschwitz. MR IRVING: The court did interrupt me when I was trying to cross-examine van Pelt about this matter. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Only because you had previously cross-examined him about it. So don't let us spend time with Professor Funke on it. MR IRVING: The topics mentioned in paragraph 5.3.23? A. Yes. . P-87 Q. It is over the page actually, at the top of page 68, there are several topics mentioned there, are any of those topics Holocaust denial or anti-Semitism or are they just plain revisionism? A. I just have to read the sentence. No, it seems not. Q. This is Mr Althans who was organizing this particular tour with these topics? A. Yes. Q. Page 69, half way down the page, the letter was headed with a quote from Irving, the question is what evidence do you have that there was ever such a quote from me? A. To what line are you referring to, please? Q. Effectively, the second half of that page beginning with "The letter was headed"? A. 69? Yes, I have it. Q. This is a letter issued by some organization with an invitation to a speech by me and then it is headed with what is said to be a quotation from me? MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are saying that is something you never said? MR IRVING: That is what I am putting to this witness, my Lord, yes. Have you seen any evidence that that quotation actually comes from anything I wrote or said? A. I know that to a degree you referred to that kind of ideas, that is quoted there, that I know by the bundle of excerpts on anti-Semitism that Mr Rampton brought to the . P-88 court. Yes. But I do not know now, I have to look at the bundles to see. Q. Yes. I do not want to dwell too long on organizations, but there are two or three bodies that you mentioned in that paragraph, 5.3.27, are any of them banned or right-wing extremists to your knowledge? A. 5.3.27? Q. Yes. The Arbeitskreis Deutsche Wahrheit or the Forderverein Junges Deutschland? A. I have to look up, I do not know. Q. Have you heard of them before? A. Not at that point, not at that point, it seems to, not at that point in time.
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