Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day032.04 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Leaving aside the extermination, which is a separate issue and I understand what Mr Irving says about that, you do not understand there to be any argument or dispute between the Defendants and Mr Irving as to the fact that the deportation took place, and indeed also as to the fact that Hitler knew about it, because it is Mr Irving's case that that was all that was involved. MR RAMPTON: No question. Hitler gave the order for it. As your Lordship will have seen, in one of the passages in our long submission, we draw attention, I forget which book it is, to a statement by Mr Irving where he says Hitler was neither consulted nor knew anything about the deportations. Why he should say that, I have absolutely . P-36 no idea, but the fact is that Hitler gave the order. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was Hitler's preferred solution, as opposed to extermination, according to Mr Irving's argument. MR RAMPTON: In 1941 it may or may not be so, so far as the German Jews are concerned. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: So far as the rest, anyway. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I noticed something this morning which I had not noticed before, which is that -- have you got your more detailed written submissions? MR RAMPTON: Yes, I have. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you go to Tab 5 (i)? MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is at page 56, paragraph 4, which seems to continue over the page on page 57. MR RAMPTON: Yes, it does. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The next paragraph is 12. I see what I have done. Yes, there is an 11 somewhere lurking way back. MR RAMPTON: Paragraph 11 is on page 53. It has a large number of subparagraphs. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. The next broad question is this. I am really asking for perhaps a bit of assistance on this. It is what we have called the genesis of the gassing programme, or the extermination programme. MR RAMPTON: Yes. . P-37 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And what you have done, and this is your (ii), is very helpfully to set out what you say are gathered together from various files the various documentary references which demonstrate the setting up of the gassing in the Reinhardt camps and so on. The slight problem I have with this way of dealing with it is that one has to try to confine the judgment within some sort reasonable bounds -- it is going to be horrifically long anyway -- and I do not think it is feasible to even begin to try to incorporate all those references. It would just overload it. MR RAMPTON: No, we were not expecting that your Lordship would, of course not. It seemed to us, though, that now that one -- I mean, I am only a lawyer too -- had the chance to look at the thing with some considerable care, that that table led the eye through the stages really quite well; but if that is not so, then all I perhaps need to do is to refer your Lordship back to the little summary that I have given in this latest statement starting on page 10. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I think the problem is what I would really ideally want to aim at myself in order to give anyone reading the judgment a sufficient but not overextended view of what the documents show to have happened is something in between the two. MR RAMPTON: I think what I am being asked ---- . P-38 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You will think I am by very awkward. MR RAMPTON: No, of course not. I do not know how much time I have, that is all. What I think I am being asked for and will willingly supply -- I might even get Dr Longerich to write it actually -- is really a chronological summary with a bit more detail than I have put in here and a bit less than I have put into the main submission. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is probably right. Really in a way it perhaps will highlight the most significant documents. I think it is right, I mean, as you realize, I have been trying to sort of keep a tag on what the evidence has revealed as it has gone on, so I think I have quite a lot of them, but I suspect I am missing some of the important ones and I would like to ---- MR RAMPTON: Yes, I mean, I do not say I have covered everything either. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I invite you to do that? Not at enormous length, but I think it would be helpful. MR RAMPTON: We will do it in the course of the rest of this week. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And bearing in mind, if I may suggest it, the issues that arise on the genesis of the gassing as opposed to Auschwitz, which I will deal with separately, seem to me to be, firstly, on what scale the extermination took place, and that is not really much of an issue now, as I understand Mr Irving's case. . P-39 MR RAMPTON: Not an issue at all. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But also Hitler's knowledge. So that is the thing to concentrate on, and I appreciate to some extent that may not any longer be as stark an issue as it was. MR RAMPTON: That is covered specifically, not only with what I said today in general terms, but there was an exercise that I did in re-examination with Professor Longerich which is referred back to in here, just that really the month of July and into August 1942, which demonstrates in Professor Longerich's view, which we obviously adopt, that it is inconceivable that while Himmler was supervising the mass extermination of goodness knows how many people in the General Government Hitler did not know about it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. One of the things I was going to ask Mr Irving is whether he accepts the concessions that you attribute to him at various stages of your submission. MR RAMPTON: I have given the reference to it somewhere in here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have, indeed, but I think it is right it should be put to him. MR RAMPTON: I mean, what he says now, his position has changed throughout the case, but really the concessions, if I may say this now, which we have listed in various places in this long submission are those which were first driven out of him by cross-examination, no cleverness on my part, but by the evidence which was presented to him, and it was not . P-40 selective, in cross-examination. His first reaction, eventually in some case, sometimes quite quickly, was to say, "Yes, are you right, it did happen". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I must find out what the up-to-date position is because I think it is fair to say that sometimes Mr Irving has fluctuated. MR RAMPTON: As I say, I do not attach much weight to what I might call back tracking. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. If Professor Longerich can perform that exercise, but also focus, if he would, on the extent of Hitler's knowledge and the reason for saying that he knew about the gassing at Chelmno and all the rest. The next question is a very short one and I think I know what your answer is, but I will ask it all the same: part of your case against Mr Irving is that he is a racist, leaving aside anti-Semitism, that he is a racist and you have a number of quotations from his speeches. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: How does that bear on (a) the words complained of, and (b) the meanings that you seek to justify? MR RAMPTON: I suppose we seek to justify simply that he holds extremist views in the written bit. In the statement of case, I cannot remember. It says something ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a bit right at the back. . P-41 MR RAMPTON: --- rather more specific than that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Perhaps my question really is, there is nothing about racism, is there, in ---- MR RAMPTON: No. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- Professor Lipstadt's book? MR RAMPTON: Perhaps I should ask her. There is some allusion to it, she says. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure there is; if there is, I would like to know what it is. MR RAMPTON: But, maybe your Lordship is right, there is this to be said, perhaps, if a man is and out and out racist which we would propose that it is obvious from his own private jottings, never mind what he says publicly, that Mr Irving is, and if anti-Semitism is a form of racism, which it plainly is, then it is a bit like a case where you accuse a man of grievous bodily harm and at trial succeed in proving that he is a murderer. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I thought that would be your answer, that anti-Semitism is just one form of racism. MR RAMPTON: Yes, indeed. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And, therefore, it is relevant, you would say, by way of justification of an anti-Semitic allegation that there is a general streak of racism to be perceived in what Mr Irving has said and done. MR RAMPTON: It is evidence of his general disposition to disparage and be hostile towards people of different . P-42 colours, ethnic backgrounds and cultures. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Now perhaps, for me, at any rate, the most important question is to be absolutely clear about what you are saying in the section which is section 9, I think, or (ix) towards the back of your written submission about assessing Mr Irving as an historian. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mind turning it up because I just want to be absolutely clear about it this because I think it is exceedingly important. You first refer back to your historiographical criticisms, and I am right in taking it, am I not, it is pretty obvious from what you there say by way of criticism of Mr Irving that a number of the criticisms are criticisms that he has deliberately falsified the record. MR RAMPTON: Every single one. MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, every single one. Now, you do not expressly say so, but you may tell me it is implicit, that when you deal with his partisanship for Hitler which is (ii), you do not expressly say that that is all deliberate distortion and manipulation and so on. MR RAMPTON: No. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But that I understand to be your case, am I right? MR RAMPTON: No, what I say is that he has sought to exculpate Hitler; that he has done that by a massive falsification . P-43 of the underlying historical record on a large number of occasions. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But going beyond what you have selected or Professor Evans has selected as the historical criticisms? MR RAMPTON: Then I say if one looks at the general evidence as an objective, open-minded, careful, dispassionate historian, that Hitler was, indeed, responsible, knew all about it, and authorized it, the conclusion is irresistible that he did. Mr Irving has shut that window, as it were, and has got on with the shut window behind him with the falsification of history so as to exculpate Hitler. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, so this is again another instance of deliberate manipulation which kind of runs through ---- MR RAMPTON: It is a kind of deliberate blindness to the evidence. What he does not like, he ignores. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Deliberate blindness? MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is deliberate blindness. He knows about, he has known for years, about report No. 51, for example. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is telescope to the wrong eye? MR RAMPTON: Yes, and for years, despite report No. 51, until we got him into this court, until he got us into this court, he did not accept that Hitler sanctioned the mass shootings in the East. It is that kind of phenomenon. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that the partisanship. Then Auschwitz, . P-44 well I think it is pretty clear what your case is about that. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not specifically rely on the denials of the Holocaust, but, presumably, you say in relation to those that they are denials which Mr Irving must have known were false when he made them. MR RAMPTON: No, again this is a bit like the sort of general refusal to accept Hitler's knowledge. What I say about that is that his denials of the Holocaust have been made without any reference whatsoever to any reliable evidence. They started to be made on Leichter which is an obviously completely hopeless position for any kind of self-respecting historian or, indeed, anybody else for that matter. Then much later on down the road he adds in one or two other things like the death books and the decrypts. Finally, just before this trial or a year or so before this trial, he comes to the runes. He has never been to Auschwitz. He has never looked at any o the documents or the plans. Such evidence as he knows about he dismisses out of hand as being mere eyewitness testimony. When he comes to see an aerial photograph showing the holes in the roof, he says it is a forgery; the incineration capacity document is also a forgery, and so on and so forth. This means that his denial must have another agenda because it cannot be the product of genuine . P-45 bona fide historical research and contemplation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So his state of mind which is -- and it is important that I am absolutely clear what it is that is being suggested in relation to the various issues that have arisen in the case -- this is an area where you put it as being deliberately perverse blindness and acting in pursuance of what is, effectively, a neoNazi agenda, is that right? MR RAMPTON: Yes, I put it in two ways and I will say it as shortly as I can. I put it forward as evidence of somebody who cannot be regarded as a serious historian, because what he has done is to allow his historical apparatus to be distorted by something beyond -- extrinsic or ulterior. Looking at the way in which he expresses Holocaust denial and the audiences to whom he expresses that denial and the things that he says on those occasions, one is driven to the conclusion that the hidden agenda, the reason for the historical incompetence, if I can I call it that (though there is a much stronger word that I could think of) is that he is at root deeply anti-Semitic and a neo-Nazi, as your Lordship just said. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that raises the last question that I wanted to canvass with you, and it is anti-Semitism and, indeed, the racism and the extremism and all the rest of it. I find it a little, and I find it throughout the case, bit difficult to see how, if at all, those . P-46 allegations against Mr Irving dovetail with the general allegation that he falsifies to an extent deliberately the historical record because it seems to me, and I just want to know how you put it, that if somebody is anti-Semitic, and leave aside racism, but anti-Semitic and extremist, he is perfectly capable of being, as it were, honestly anti-Semitic and honestly extremist in the sense that he is holding those views and expressing those views because they are, indeed, his views. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now, it seems to me that probably, if you come down to it, that the anti-Semitism is a completely separate allegation which really has precious little bearing on your broader and perhaps more important case that Mr Irving has manipulated the data and falsified the record, or do you say that they are corrected in some way and, if so, how?
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