Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.08 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 Q. That is new, that one? A. Yes. It costs about #70 -- not as much as law books, of . P-64 course, but still quite expensive. Q. I did not buy it. A. It was only published last year. I only obtained it about four months ago. Q. Well, now this is not in any sense a trick or an examination question or anything. Can you look at page 12? A. Yes. Q. And the last entry which I think is probably quarter past 6 -- it might be anyway, might it not? A. The last line or the last entry? Q. No, the last entry. A. 6.15. Q. It looks like it, does it not? Then across the line? A. "SS Gruppenfuhrer ... Berlin". Q. What is the first word of the entry in the right-hand column? A. "Transport Nachersatz". Q. It is the "a" of transport which I ask you to look at. A. Yes, that is the real problem. Q. No, it is not. A. It is because the "a" looks exactly like the "e" in Gothic handwriting. Q. Exactly. In fact, you might think to an English eye it looks like a "u"? A. No. . P-65 Q. "Trunsport"? A. I will explain why it does not. Q. No, no. A. Well, no, please. Q. It might be thought to an English person -- just bear with me, answer my person -- it might be thought to look like a "u", might it not? A. Yes. My Lord, do you have the facsimile in front of you? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am following. MR RAMPTON: Now could you turn to page 14, please? A. 14, yes. Q. In fact, that thing that looks like a "u" to an English person in "transport" is an "a", is it not? A. Yes. Q. Now look at the word which you say you mistranscribed as "Juden" which is three lines up from the bottom of the right-hand column ---- A. Yes. Q. --- on page 14. A. Yes, I have it. Q. It is plainly "haben"; it is the same thing, it is an "a", is it not? A. That is what we call Monday morning quarter back ring. It is somebody who knows what the answer is. If I had given this page to you, say, six months ago, Mr Rampton, and said, "Would you mind reading that word?" . P-66 Q. I would not have had a clue. I cannot read hardly any of it. A. That was the position I was in 34 years ago when I looked at this. Q. Why? But you have never gone back to it? A. I must have gone back to it in the 1970s because I retyped it on my transcript. Q. The third letter, you think that is a "d" or you thought it was a "d"? A. If you look at the word "Juden" which I would ask you to look at variously, for example ---- Q. We will look at it on page 12, if you want? A. Yes. About eight lines from the bottom. In the third line of that entry you have "Judentransport", admittedly, it is a bit ---- Q. It is obscured? A. --- obscured by the word above it. Q. I agree. A. But you can already begin to see that there are distinct similarities in the outline. Q. I am afraid I cannot accept that. Anyway, the point is this, is it not ---- A. Yes, you hasten on, yes. Q. -- you say, you tell us, that you read that word, that entry as reading: "Verwaltungsfuhrer der SS Juden zu bleiben"? . P-67 A. Yes, and I can produce my contemporary index card on which I made that transcription which shows at that time as "Juden zu bleiben". Q. Turn, please, to page 13 of this bundle and there you have it correctly? A. I have corrected it, yes. Q. You tell us to look at the word "haben". One can see if one looks that the letters are squashed? A. It has been typed in subsequently with tippex, yes. Q. Yes, or whatever was existing then because you say that was retyped on a typewriter which you threw away more than 15 years ago? A. Well, between 10 and 15 years ago -- an old IBM typewriter I had. Q. Yes, but before 1991? A. Yes. Q. Now can you take "Hitler's War 1991", please? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you this, Mr Irving? You are fluent in German. If you are trying to write that somebody has to stay somewhere, whether it is Jews or whoever, you would not say "haben zu bleiben", would you? A. They have to stay, "haben zu bleiben" would be the German. Just the same as in English, has to stay, has to remain. Q. Is that right? A. Yes. But, on the other hand, the line "Juden zu bleiben" would be also grammatically correct. . P-68 Q. That is abbreviation, but if you are using a verb at all, you would say "haben" would be appropriate? A. Yes, and you could equally well say the word above it which is "Verwaltungsfuhrer" was a line by itself and a topic by itself which is what I assumed it was in the original transcript. MR RAMPTON: Can you turn now to Hitler's War on page 427, 1991 edition? A. I do not have it in front of me, but if you would just read out the passage. Q. D1(v). I do not have to read very much. My Lord, page 427. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. MR RAMPTON: At the end of the last complete paragraph on page 427 -- is that 1991 you have there? A. You will not believe this, but I am only person who does not have a copy of that book. People visit my house and they think, "Well, that is nice". It has gone! Q. 1991, volume 2, it is D1(v). A. I would be quite ready to concede what you are about to say. We do not really need to go into this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I probably ought to know what you are about to concede. MR RAMPTON: Yes. I do not think we should communicate by telepathy, Mr Irving! A. Very well. . P-69 Q. Now, we have read the first part of this earlier this morning about "Hitler being obliged to telephone from Hitler's bunker to Heydrich the explicit order that these Jews were 'not to be liquidated'". Then you go on after the semi-colon ---- A. Can you tell me what page you are on? Q. I am sorry, 427. I beg your pardon. A. Yes. Q. "... and the next day Himmler telephoned SS Oswohl Pohl, overall chief of the concentration camp system, with the order 'Jews are to stay where they are'." When that was published, you knew it was wrong, did you not? A. Published what. Q. When that was published, you knew it was wrong? A. No. Q. Why not? A. When it was published, yes. You must appreciate this text you are looking at here was set by the Americans, by the American publisher, A1 Books Limited, in probably 1985 or 1986. They published it round about that time, and two or three years later, round about 1990, we approached the English publishers and had this American edition photographed and what is called offset, and reprinted in our own edition which Mr Bateman is holding there, what you call the 1991 edition. So there is very little connection between the . P-70 actual year given as the year of publication and the date when text goes into its final cast in stone form. Q. Tell me that chronology again, Mr Irving. It is rather interesting. When was the American edition of this work written? A. Written or? Q. Written. A. I have to piece it together from extraneous information. I was in Quay West, I was in Florida. It would have been 1985 and 1986 because I did it before I wrote the Rudolf Hess book which was 1987 published, so it was 1985. Q. So when were the references to the Holocaust removed from it? A. The references to the Holocaust? Q. Yes. A. That is a good question. That is a good question because that would, in fact, bring it forward to 1988. Q. Oh, really? A. Yes. Q. You see, Mr Irving, let me put my cards on the table, as I habitually do, your Holocaust conversion, if I can call it that, happened as a result, largely speaking, perhaps, of your encounter with Mr Leuchter and his laboratory analyses? A. Reading the laboratory reports, yes, which was April 6th 1988. . P-71 Q. 1988? A. Yes. Q. As a consequence of that, we have been told by you, not in this court but elsewhere and you will, no doubt, confirm it in due course, this book in that respect ---- A. So the sequence of books is different. I wrote the Rudolf Hess book first and then I went to revise this. Q. If you say so. A. Yes. Q. It was radically altered in that respect as compared with the 1977 edition? A. Taking out the word "Holocaust", yes. Q. Now, here you have an entry, also as you know accept - --- A. Yes. Q. --- completely wrong, but it does not ---- A. Yes, but is it not exactly the same wording? Q. It does not get changed. It is exactly the same wording. A. In other words, I have not actually actively put in something; I have just left something to stand. Q. No, you could have taken it out? A. I could have taken it out, yes. If somebody had come to me and had said at the time, "Oh, Mr Irving, by the way, do you not remember you misread that word and we have now got a better reading", then, believe me, I would have taken it out and I would have contacted the Americans and changed it. But that is not what happens in real life. . P-72 Q. You came to believe in 1988 that the so-called Holocaust, as you call it, so-called, did not happen? A. I have never used the phrase "so-called Holocaust", Mr Rampton. Q. No, no. I am in the difficulty, as you perfectly well understand, Mr Irving, there is no way in the world that I am going to concede that it did not happen. That is not what this case is about. I call it "so-called" because in your eyes by then it was the "so-called Holocaust"? A. You said the "so-called Holocaust, as you call it". Q. No. As you characterize it? A. Yes. Q. Yes -- had not happened so you took steps to have the book altered for its second edition to remove the references to that ---- A. Yes. Q. --- alleged event? A. Yes. Q. You did not bother to remove something which was, first of all, important and, secondly, completely wrong? A. This is a very subordinate matter in the book. It is a piece of secondary information which adds very little to the principal argument. The argument turns out now to have been correct on the basis of the decodes. This is a book of probably half a million words. One word, admittedly, I should have changed because I had some years . P-73 earlier realized that I had misread it. In all the 500,000 words it never occurred to me that there may be words which I still had not actually changed yet. You are absolutely right. Q. Yes. Then I suggest that your failure to remove it, as you could easily have done, it now appears ---- A. Yes. Q. --- was deliberate because you wanted to keep this picture of benign, magnanimous Adolf Hitler holding up his arm to save the Jews before the public? A. I do not think so, and I do not think you can suggest that just on the basis of that one line. The Jews have to remain, have to remain where? Have to remain in concentration camps.
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.