Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.18 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 A. But I believe it is the next part you wish to continue with. Q. It is the next part. It is what Hans frank is reported as having said when he got back to the General Government on 16th December 1941. This is printed in what one might call the official common place book, would it be right? It is the Tagesbuch. That is an official record, is it not, of some kind? A. It is the abridged version of the multi-volumed diaries and conference records of the General Governor, Hans Frank. Q. And you have used it yourself? A. I used the original manuscript, yes. I did not use the printed edition. It is in my discovery. Q. You have used this passage? A. I have indeed and I used the original manuscript and not the printed version. Q. Maybe so. At the end of this first page, 31, in . P-159 translation, perhaps here the German does not really matter, perhaps you will agree. The first complete paragraph at the bottom of -- sorry, last paragraph on the page: "What is to happen to the Jews? Do you believe that they will be lodged in settlements in Osland?" That is the Baltic countries, is it not, Osland? A. Yes. Q. "In Berlin we were told, 'Why all this trouble? We cannot use them in the Osland or the Reichcommissariat either. Liquidate them yourselves!'". Then goes on, apparently, Governor Frank: "We must destroy the Jews wherever we encounter them and wherever it is possible in order to preserve the entire structure of the Reich". I would ask you to turn over the page, Mr Irving, where at the bottom of page 32 you will find the German of ---- A. That is what I have just been reading, yes. Q. Yes. Has Professor Browning translated it correctly? A. Yes. I used a different translation in my own book, but this is an adequate translation. Q. That is right, is it not? A. Yes. Q. But he has not translated the last two lines on page 32. Would you please read those and tell us what they mean? A. Well, it is an incomplete fragment. Q. He has put an ellipsis? . P-160 A. He has put what? Q. He has put an ellipsis in, has he not, to show that -- -- A. Yes, but it is the second half of a sentence and, as you know, in German, the Germans put their verbs at the end, so it... Q. Yes. Be kind enough just to translate what we have. A. "But if we then undertake incursions which in some way lead to a destructive result or success and, indeed, in connection with the measure -- in connection with the great measure which is to be conferred upon at the Reich" -- this is a reference to the coming Bunzig conference, presumably. Q. That is right. A. It is a truncated sentence it is difficult to find your way into without the beginning. "Vernichtungs Erfolg" is the word you want to see. V-E-R-N-I-C-H-T-U-N-G-S E-R-F-O-L-G. Q. Does it mean this, Mr Irving, at any rate the last part of that first of the two bottom lines: "It will anyway come to a complete or successful destruction", "Vernichtungs Erfolg"? A. That would be a rigid and unacceptable translation. I would say, "If we succeed in wiping them out". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which does "Erfolg" mean? A. "Success", "If we succeed in wiping them out", "Vernichtung" or "If we succeed in destroying them". . P-161 MR RAMPTON: A successful wiping out? A. A successful wipe out, yes, but German sentences you frequently have to break up and recast in order to make them acceptable. Q. I am not playing tricks. I will try to find the whole of that. A. I am trying to help you, Mr Rampton. Q. I am being passed ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just be clear? Are you accepting that what Hans Frank is recording here is what Hitler said in Berlin to the Gauleiter? A. Yes -- no, he has not made a reference to the Gauleiters specifically. Q. I know he has not made a reference to it ---- A. No. Q. --- but he says: "In Berlin we were told", and I rather inferred that Mr Rampton was suggesting that that was from Hitler's speech to the Gauleiter? A. I think it would be quite a dangerous leap to make. Q. Am I wrong about that? A. It is put in ---- MR RAMPTON: No, it is not quite what I had put because I do not have the evidence to make that kind of suggestion. I am suggesting that while Hans frank was in Berlin, somebody told him, and he was there probably amongst other reasons for the occasion of Hitler's speech ---- . P-162 A. Yes. Q. -- somebody told him, it might have been Hitler, it might have been Heydrich, that they have to see to the liquidation of the Jews themselves in the East. That does mean that, does it not? A. I do not think the word they use is "liquidation". He says "wipe out", "If we have a success in wiping them out, destroying them", "Vernichtung", which can done in a number of ways as I gave the instance with Christianity or with drug addiction. Q. I am not sure you are right about that. The word is "liquidiet zi selbe"? A. I am sorry, I was looking at the wrong part. Q. No the quote is: "Man hut uns in Berlin gesagt", "We were told in Berlin"? A. Oh, unquestionably, yes. Q. "Liquidate them yourselves"? A. Yes. Q. So ---- A. And the reason that Browning knows about this is because he found this quotation in my books. I am the first one to have dug it out. Q. Brownie points to you, Mr Irving, but the fact is that Hans Frank is saying on this occasion when he gets back to Poland -- I think this took place in Krakow, did it not? A. His headquarters is in Krakow, yes. . P-163 Q. He is saying: "When we were in Berlin" ---- A. "They told us". Q. --- "they told us, 'We can't solve the Jewish problem for you. We can't house them. Liquidate them yourselves"? A. Yes. Berlin, of course, was the seat of the Reichssicherheits Hauptamt, of Reinhardt Heydrich. Q. I know, that is Heydrich's headquarters too. A. Hitler's headquarters, well, in East Prussia, not in Berlin. Q. Certainly it is though, whether Hitler took part in those discussions or not, I cannot tell you. I do not propose that he did. I do not ---- A. I think it is a very interesting fragment, a verbatim transcript to which one can attach a great deal of importance rather than reported third person subjunctive, non-subjunctive stuff. This is Hans Frank's actual words taken down by a stenographer and that is why I was very pleased to quote them in full. Q. Yes, surely. We are not here necessarily, Mr Irving, talking about the Jews that the Einsatzgruppen found in Russia; rather the contrary, do you not think? A. The German Jews. Q. We are talking about two groups of Jews if we are talking about Hans Frank and the General Government? A. Yes. Q. We are talking about German and other Jews, Slavakia or . P-164 wherever else, French, Dutch, Belgium and so on, that were shipped to East, transported I mean, but we are also talking about the indigenous Jews at Poland, are we not? A. Primarily at this time the indigenous Jews. I do not think that any major shipment of Jews had started from Western Europe in Poland or the General Government at this time. Q. Do you agree that Eichmann said at the Bunzig conference, I think it was he, it may have been somebody else, it may have been somebody else who gave the figure, there were roughly two and quarter, two and a half million Jews living in Poland at that time in early 1942? A. That is almost certainly the right figure, but Eichmann did not speak at the Bunzig conference. He just kept the minutes as I understand it. Q. But that is the figure that was given at the Bunzig conference? A. I will take your word for it, Mr Rampton. Q. You have read it. I am sure you have read the protocal, the minute or whatever it is. So what Hans Frank is saying here is: "The Jews that we are responsible for (getting rid of) numbering roughly two and a quarter million, we have been told by Berlin we have to liquidate ourselves". That is what it is saying, is it not? A. No. What he is saying is: "Do not start dumping Jews on us. We have got no room for the ones we have got. Solve . P-165 your own problems". Q. No, "in Berlin we were told"? A. Yes. Q. Not, "I said to the people in Berlin"? A. Yes. Q. "Man hat" is passive? A. Yes. Q. "Uns gesagt" means "they told us in Berlin"? A. "Why all this bother? Why all this fuss and bother?" Q. That is right. A. They are talking about what they are going to be doing with the Jews that people are talking about now tossing out of Western Europe, and Hans Frank has been fighting hand and foot at having any dumped in his domain. Q. Yes. He has been told he has got to do it himself? A. No, he has been you take what you are given. He is saying, "I don't want them." I know the background to this story, Mr Rampton. Q. What do the words mean, I am sorry, Mr Irving, I thought you had agreed this was an accurate translation? A. It is accurate. Q. "In Berlin we were told, 'Why all this trouble? We cannot use them in the Osterland or Reichskomissariat either. Liquidate them yourselves.'"? A. No. No one is talking about shipping Jews from the Osterland or the Ukraine into Berlin. The shipment is . P-166 going other way round. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What Mr Rampton is putting to you is that that phrase "liquidate them yourselves" is in effect a direction from Berlin to the General Government. A. No, sir. I read it differently both in the original and even now. This is Hans Frank recalling what he told the Berliners saying, "Stop dumping your Jews on us, you solve your own problems, you liquidate them yourselves". MR RAMPTON: I am going to refer you to the full text of what Hans Frank said in a moment. Can you first of all read your own version of this, please, on page 428 of Hitler's War 1991. A. Can we look at it in the earlier version because it is totally unchanged? Q. No, it is not in the earlier version so far as I know. A. It definitely it is. It is in every book that I have written. Which page, Mr Rampton? Q. If you want the earlier version, I am not sure it is in the earlier version, but I will check that. Yes, it is. If you want to use the earlier version, first, I have no problem with that. Page 332. A. Yes, "Yet the blood purge continued". Q. Yes. I am waiting for his Lordship's file to emerge. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hitler's War. MR RAMPTON: It is 1977 Hitler's War, my Lord, I think the first volume. . P-167 MR RAMPTON: It is I think more or less identical to what is in the 1991 edition. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got a reference for that? MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is page 427 it starts, the last large paragraph, the last three lines. I will read. It immediately follows the reference to the Himmler telephone note of 1st December. Mr Irving writes: "Yet the blood purge continued". A. Shall I read it? It is my book.
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