Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day032.13 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 I mention the forensic evidence and that brings . P-151 us seamlessly to the Leuchter report. I am criticised by the Defendants for having relied initially on what is called the Leuchter report, 1988. At the time they levelled their criticism at me the Defendants appeared to have been unaware that subsequent and more able investigations were conducted by both American and Polish researchers. The tests were in other words replicated. First, the Leuchter report. In 1988 I was introduced by defence counsel at the Canadian trial of Ernst Zundel to the findings made by a reputable firm of American forensic analysts of samples extracted from the fabric of various buildings at Auschwitz and Birkenau by Fred Leuchter, who was at that time a professional American execution technology consultant. These and his investigations at the Maidanek site formed the backbone of his engineering report. Since there have been tendentious statements about why the Leuchter report was not admitted in evidence at that trial in Canada I have studied the transcripts of that trial. It emerges that engineering reports are not generally admissible under Canadian rules of evidence unless both parties consent. In this case the Crown did not consent. As Mr Justice Thomas explained, "I get engineering reports all the time (that is in civil cases). That does not make them admissible, because they have prepared reports. They (the witnesses) go in the . P-152 box, they are qualified experts and they testify". So the non-admission of the report by Mr Justice Thomas was no reflection on the worth of the report or on the qualifications of the witness. My Lord, I have to go in some detail into the Leuchter report because of the criticisms levelled at me for having been swayed by it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I do not disagree with that. MR IRVING: Mr Leuchter testified on April 20th and 21st 1988 as an expert in gas chamber technology. He had inspected the three sites (Auschwitz/Birkenau and Maidanek) in February 1988 and he had taken samples which were subsequent sent for analysis by a qualified analytical chemist in the United States, a Dr James Roth of Cornell University, who was not told where the samples had come from. His firm Alpha Laboratories, were told on the test certificates only that the samples were from brickwork. Mr Justice Thomas ruled that Leuchter would give oral evidence but that the report itself should not be filed. He held further that Mr Leuchter was not a chemist or a toxicologist, which are findings, of course, that he is quite entitled to make, but he agreed that Mr Leuchter was an engineer because he had made himself an engineer in a very limited field. A summary of the rest of the judge's findings was that Leuchter was not capable in law of giving the . P-153 expert opinion that there were never any gassings or exterminations carried on in the facilities from which he took the samples. For the same reasons he was not capable of testifying regarding the results of the analysis, because he was not a toxicologist in other words. He was restricted to testifying as to the actual extraction of the samples from the buildings and his own observations on the feasibility of the buildings that he had examined being used as gas chambers. So the Defendant was wrong to write on page 164 of her book, "The judge ruled that Leuchter could not serve as an expert witness on the construction and function of the gas chambers". To give evidence in a criminal trial Mr Leuchter must have been accepted as an expert witness. Further, Professor Lipstadt stated on pages 164 of her book, and 165, "The judge's finding as to Leuchter's suitability to comment on questions of engineering was unequivocal". In fact, the judge's findings referred only to his lack of qualifications to testify on the results of the laboratory tests for cyanide and iron, because that was Dr Roth's area, and he himself (Roth) gave testimony on those matters. On page 169 Professor Lipstadt insists: "The exposure to the elements lessen the presence of the hydrogen cyanide ... Nor did Leuchter seem to consider that the building had been exposed to the elements for more than 40 years so that . P-154 cyanide gas residue could have been obliterated. He also took samples from a floor that had been washed regularly by museum staff". Dr Roth however testified under oath that the formation of Prussian blue, which is a cyanide compound, was an accumulative reaction, that it augmented with each exposure to the gas, and that it did not normally disappear -- in other words, could not be just washed away -- unless physically removed by sand blasting or grinding down. Roth seems then to have changed his mind, to judge by the television film "MR DEATH" which I believe is shortly to be shown on Channel 4, and upon which film both I and learned counsel in the current action partially rely. Zundel's counsel comments, "He (Roth) obviously is frightened now", and no wonder, considering what subsequently was inflicted on Mr Leuchter. Your Lordship will remember that, in order to destroy Roth's absurd argument, which was quoted to the court by Mr Rampton, learned counsel, that the Prussian blue stain would have penetrated only a few microns into the brickwork. I showed a photograph of the stain penetrating right through the brick work to the outside face of one of the cyanide fumigation chambers, where it has been exposed to sun, wind and rain for over 50 years, and where it is still visible, as deep and blue as ever today. Crematorium II has been protected from these outside . P-155 elements. It is possible to crawl beneath the famous roof, the one we were hearing about, the one with the no holes. You can crawl beneath it even now -- about which roof I shall have more to say -- but neither Jan Sehn, nor Fred Leuchter, nor James Roth nor Germar Rudolf, nor any of the subsequent investigations have found any significant traces of cyanide compounds present in the fabric of this building, despite the eyewitness accounts of that same chamber having been used for the gassing of half a million people with cyanide. Moreover, the wood grain of the original wooden formwork (or moulds) can still be seen on the face of the concrete, which is evidence that it has not been sandblasted or grounded down. Now, my Lord, this takes us to the famous roof of Leichenkeller No. 1 of crematorium No. II at Auschwitz. I referred earlier to the expert witness on Auschwitz and Birkenau in this case, Professor Robert van Pelt. He has made unequivocal statements both here and elsewhere about crematorium II at Birkenau. To him it was the factory of death, the mass gassing chamber of Birkenau. He did not mince his language. In the new television film MR DEATH we saw him and we heard him, as the film camera showed Fred Leuchter descending into the hole which was broken post-war through the collapsed . P-156 concrete roof slab and reinforcing bars of Leichenkeller I (morgue No. 1) of crematorium II and we heard him uttering these words, quoting off the sound track: "Crematorium II is the most lethal building of Auschwitz. In the 2,500 square feet of this one room, more people lost their lives than any other place on this planet. 500,000 people were killed. If you would draw a map of human suffering, if you created a geography of atrocity, this would be the absolute centre." The court will recall that on ninth day of this action I cross-examined this witness most closely about this statement and I offered him a chance to change his mind about the pivotal importance of crematorium II and its underground Leichenkeller No. I (morgue No. 1) the chamber which van Pelt alleged had been a mass gassing chamber. IRVING: Very well. You say: This is quoting him from his report ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: You need not read the whole of it. He confirms that it is Leichenkeller I at crematorium II where he says the 500,000 were killed. MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord. The expert witness could hardly have been clearer in his answer. At page 53, I then asked him to identify the buildings referred to on the aerial photographs of Birkenau and crematorium II, so that there could later be . P-157 no doubt as to which precise building he had just agreed was the factory of death at Auschwitz, Auschwitz/Birkenau. The great problem about accepting that this building was an instrument for mass murder is that the evidence produced by Professor van Pelt relies on three "legs", if I can borrow Mr Rampton's word, a handful of eyewitnesses, a few architectural drawings, and a slim file of documents. The eyewitnesses, in my submission, have turned out ---- MR RAMPTON: No, I am sorry, that is one error that cannot be allowed to pass. There is a fourth leg, forensic chemical analysis both in 1945, 1988 and 1994. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just to elaborate that, of Leichenkeller I and crematorium II? MR RAMPTON: Yes, Leichenkeller I at crematorium II by the Krakov forensic laboratory in December 1945, which found traces of cyanide on the ventilation covers by Mr Leuchter's analysts. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Ventilation covers from where? MR RAMPTON: From Leichenkeller I in crematorium II. If one looks at the report, it is as clear as anything. Leuchter himself, of course, in 1988, and Professor Markowitz at Krakov in 1994. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. . P-158 MR RAMPTON: They are all in the evidence. MR IRVING: My Lord, I will ask your Lordship when the time comes to look at that forensic evidence and to ask yourself the obvious question, what is the proof that these items came from that building? MR RAMPTON: Leuchter is certainly proof, because Mr Irving relies on him. MR IRVING: Then we have to look at the actual figures and the concentrations. If I can now continue with my three legs, my three-legged argument? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do. Eyewitnesses? MR IRVING: The eyewitnesses have turned out to be liars, particularly those who testified to the SS guards opening manhole covers on top of the flat roof of Leichenkeller No. I (mortuary No. 1), and tipping tins of Zyklon B pellets in through the holes. One witness was David Olere, an artist who drew sketches years later in Paris, to which Mr Rampton has also referred, obviously intending to sell them. His sketches show flames and smoke belching from the crematorium chimney of crematorium No. II, which goes purely to the credibility of the witness, which was quite impossible. He portrays the victims. Your Lordship will remember that I asked Professor van Pelt to calculate the length, the path, from the furnace doors to the top of the chimney, and how long that flame would have had to be. He portrays the victims of the Nazi killers mostly as . P-159 nubile young females, all naked and sketched in a pornographic way, often clutching naked teenaged children to their breasts. It was Olere I invite the court to remember, who told Jean-Claude Pressac that the SS made sausage in the crematoria out of human flesh (a passage which Mr Van Pelt did not inform us of in his expert report). Another witness is Ada Bimko, who proved at the Belsen trial that she too had lied. Entering another gas chamber building at Auschwitz she said she had "noticed two pipes which I was told contained the gas. There were two huge metal containers containing gas". She evidently did not know that the "gas" supposed to have been used, Zyklon-B, was actually in pellet form, not cylinders. Distorting her account too, van Pelt omitted also this part of her testimony. Dr Bendel, another of van Pelt's eyewitnesses, stated that at crematorium IV the people crowded into the gas chamber found the ceilings so low that the impression was given that the roof was falling on their heads. This too was untrue, as the court has seen how high these ceilings were in the computer-generated "walk through". The court will find that in my cross-examination of van Pelt I destroyed the worth of each supposed eyewitness after eyewitness in the same way, if I can summarize it like that. Let us first look for those holes that they talked about. My Lord, your Lordship will remember that . P-160 I had the big photograph of that roof photographed from a helicopter quite recently, standing here for some days or weeks. The roof pillars beneath the roof were blown up in 1945, and the reinforced concrete slab pancaked downwards into the morgue basement, starred but otherwise intact. By the word "starred" I mean what happens to a pane of reinforced glass that has been hit by a stone. Van Pelt suggested that the Zyklon-B introduction holes in the roof of Leichenkeller I were not much larger in diameter than tennis balls, but the evidence of his eyewitnesses, Henry Tauber and Michal Kula, was that they were closer to the size of manholes -- "70 centimetres square". Kula testified that the wire mesh columns that he had made were of that cross section and three metres (ten feet) tall. One witness said that the concrete covers on top of the roof above these holes had to be lifted off "with both hands," with two hands. As the ceiling height in Leichenkeller I was 2.40 metres, 60 centimetres of each column, which is 3 metres tall, would have had to extend through the holes in the concrete ceiling with about six inches poking up outside. As Professor van Pelt admits in his report, the part I was about to read out when your Lordship stopped me, there is no trace of those holes in the roof today. I am sorry, I was wrong. He did say that. He says it later on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What did I stop you reading? . P-161 MR IRVING: You did not. I made a mistake, my Lord. As he admits in his report, there is no trace of those holes in the roof today. The underside of that roof, which can be inspected and photographed from beneath even today, is intact. Even if one could lose sight of the much smaller three inch diameter holes in the pancaked concrete roof of which van Pelt spoke, and I do not accept that they were that small, one could not possibly have lost sight of four holes as large as manholes. Those holes would be perfectly obvious today on the ground that Auschwitz to any observer using the naked eye, without the slightest possible doubt as to their location, because, of course, Professor van Pelt told us where each hole was supposed to be. It was right next to the supporting columns. Professor van Pelt accepts that those holes are not in that roof slab now. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that is right, is it? I think what he says was that the state of the collapsed roof is so poor now that you simply cannot see where those holes would have been if they were there, which is a slightly different thing. MR RAMPTON: Not only that, my Lord. I sit here, I listen to, quite frankly, a continuous misrepresentation of the evidence of my witness. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us concentrate on this one. MR RAMPTON: I will, but this is serious. Van Pelt said a . P-162 number of things. He said, first of all, the fragmentary condition of the roof prevents any kind of assessment one way or the other. Then he says, anyway, even if it did not, it is the wrong part of the roof. The third, of course, is that there is no evidence on Mr Irving's side of the court one way or the other. Mr Irving has not been there. MR IRVING: May I now continue with preferably fewer interruptions? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think that is not fair. Mr Rampton I think has been restrained. MR IRVING: My Lord, restraint is what I showed. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are the odd things which I have noticed which I do not think are quite borne out. I think the best thing is not to interrupt you, but that is quite an important misstatement of van Pelt's evidence. MR IRVING: I will come to the alleged misstatement in a moment. Of course, I sat with the utmost restraint this morning ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: You did.
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