Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.21 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am not sure I got your answer to the initial question which was, does this or does it not show that the instructions were from Berlin to the General Government as to what was to be done in the General . P-186 Government? A. I am sorry, my Lord, if I did not make myself plain. I thought that this in fact supported my version that Hans Frank was saying that they already had all the Jews they could handle. They could not even feed the ones they had got: "So please don't send us any more, get rid of them yourself". MR RAMPTON: So the word "vernichtung serfolg" is not talking about a liquidation? A. If you want to wipe out Christianity you do not have to liquidate the Christians. Q. I do not see anything about Judaism in this passage. It is all about Jews, numbers of Jews, 3.5 million? A. He says here explicitly, "We can't kill", he says, I will translate it for you and it is exactly the same as your translation there. "These 3.5 million Jews, we can't shoot them, we can't poison them, but we will be able to do something which will one way or another lead to a successful wipe out, destruction". Q. Annihilation? A. "We will get rid of them". We are back on that word vernichtung again, which Germans who like using these words in the knowledge they are going to be providing endless humour for lawyers 50 years down the road. Q. I do not think it is very humorous, Mr Irving, I am bound to say, not humorous at all. . P-187 A. That is why I prefer to sit on documents where it is absolutely unambiguous where we do not have to waste time about the meanings of words. Q. You mentioned I think, whether it was this morning or yesterday I am afraid I cannot remember, somebody called Wisliceny? A. Wisliceny, W-I-S-L-I-C-E-N-Y. Q. Yes. He was I think on Eichmann's staff, was he not? A. A member of Eichmann's staff who was responsible for the Final Solution in Slovakia and other countries. Q. He made some statements after the war, did he not? A. Under duress, yes. Q. What do you mean by duress? A. In Allied captivity, inside the gallows, which is about as much duress as you can imagine. Q. You are not saying he was tortured? A. Good Lord no. Q. You say that Rudolf Hess was tortured, do you not? A. I say that he was maltreated. He had a torch rammed into his mouth. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us stick with Wisliceny for the moment otherwise we are going to get confused. MR RAMPTON: That is my fault, my Lord. A. He richly deserved it, people like that. Q. No, I do not agree with that as it happens, Mr Irving. Can you see if you still have Professor Evans' report . P-188 there? It was handed to you in error earlier. A. Yes. Q. I am sorry. Let us turn to page 344, will you? A. Yes. Q. Evans' report. It is at letter G and Professor Evans writes this, Mr Irving. I will not read the heading except to say it says "Testimony of Dieter Wisliceny". A. It also says: "Manipulation and Suppression of Evidence". Q. I was going to save your blushes. Yes, it does, does it not? A. Yes. Q. "As described above, Irving claims that Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann's top officials, described Goebbels' article in Das Reich as a watershed in the Final Solution of the Jewish problem. Once more Irving makes it very difficult to verify claims. According to his footnotes, Wisliceny's postwar report of 18th November 1946 can be found in the IFZ file F71/8. However, this file does not exist and Wisliceny's report has to be located elsewhere." It is a minor point, Mr Irving. Do you accept that you gave a wrong reference? A. No. I saw this file probably 30 years ago, probably before Professor Longerich was born. Q. This is not Professor Longerich. This is Professor Evans. A. Well, even more to the point. That being so, it is . P-189 extremely likely that they changed the reference number since the archives are constantly changing reference numbers. Q. It is a small point. "In his report Wisliceny states that after the invasion of the USSR in June 1941 Nazi policy against the Jews was transformed dramatically in a step-by-step process, completed in the Spring of 1942. One these radicalisng steps was taken in late 1941. As Wisliceny reported: 'The second wave of radicalization began after the USA entered the war. This could clearly be felt in the internal German propaganda too. Externally it was expressed in the introduction of the yellow star as a mark of the Jews. Reference in this connection also to the Goebbels' article that 'Jews are guilty' in an edition of the magazine Das Reich'. "In this period of time, after the beginning of the war with the USA, I am convinced must fall the decision of Hitler which ordered the biological annihilation of European Jewry" -- biologische vernichtung des europaischen Judentums befahl. A. Yes. Q. You are well aware of that passage? A. Yes, and I draw attention to the fact that in order to emphasis that the word "vernichtung" here means killing he adds the adjective "biologische", biological, because without that it does not mean it with sufficient emphasis. . P-190 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us go back on that. MR RAMPTON: You can argue about it. Eventually, you see, Mr Irving, whatever you may think and whatever I may put to you, his Lordship will make a decision about what the natural meaning of the word is in these various contexts. A. But without input from me he will only hear input from you. Q. Of course you must say what you think it means. Whether I or anybody else accepts what you say is quite another matter. A. But I think it is quite useful to say it here in view of the fact that this man obviously thought that "vernichtung" does not mean killing unless he adds the word "biologische" in front of it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is right actually, but I have the point. It is obvious what it means if it has "biological" attached to it. If it has not, you say it does not mean extermination. Mr Rampton says it does. I think we really have thrashed that one. MR RAMPTON: I am afraid I am going to take up, argumentative person that I am, one little point on this. You notice, do you not, that although you stress the use of the word "biologische" to qualify "vernichtung", what is it that is being biologically annihilated? A. Judentums. Q. Judentums? . P-191 A. Yes. Q. European Judentums? A. Yes. Q. What is "Judentums"? A. In this case quite clearly he is talking about the Jews because he has added the word "biological in advance" and you cannot have biological in reference to provision. Q. There is no rule of German which says that the word must mean Judaism. It can easily mean Jewish people or Jewry as a collective, can it not? A. I do not want to labour the point, but this is why dictionaries give orders of priority for the meanings of words, the first meaning, second meaning and third meaning and so on. Q. Wisliceny thinks or says that he things, is reported as saying that he thinks, that the order for the biological annihilation of the European Jews came from Hitler. He is saying that, is he not? A. He could set that conviction of his to music and play it to the mass bands of the Cold Stream Guards, but it does not make it proof. Q. He says it again and again. Is it right that you have consistently ignored what he said? A. What is the date of this report, Mr Rampton? Q. It is 1946, 18th November 1946. A. Just two or three weeks after the unfortunate Nazi . P-192 gangsters have been hanged at Nuremberg. Where is he writing this report? Q. Is the answer to my question, yes? Give the explanation afterwards, please, Mr Irving. The answer to my question is, yes, you have ignored it. Now the reason ---- A. No. The answer to the question is that I have discounted that kind of evidence as being the fact that he does not say he saw an order. He is saying it is his opinion. He thinks that, yes, there must surely have been some such kind of order. What kind of evidence is that given by a man sitting in the face of the gallows just after the Nazi leaders have been hanged at Nuremberg, and he is sitting in Czech Slovac prison knowing that he is going to be hanged as well, and he is sitting down there writing the first thing that comes into his head, and he says: "Well, surely Hitler must have given an order." What kind of evidence is that? What kind of historian would I be who in the absence of any kind of documentation whatsoever of any concrete diamond value of the war archives then decides to pollute his work with relying on this kind of documentation? Material that Wisliceny himself is an expert on -- I remind you of the Trevor Roper criteria, something that he himself has experienced, something that he is in a position to know. That I would accept, but for him to speculate, as he clearly is here, that is neither here nor there. It is information of janitorial level. . P-193 Q. Yes. Janitorial, this is to anticipate something we are going to come to perhaps next week or the week after, Mr Irving, but "janitorial level" is a phrase you often use. Is not "janitorial level" very often the place you expect to find the diamonds? A. Janitorial level is not the kind of place that I frequently inhabit, Mr Rampton. Q. That is very patrician of you, Mr Irving. If you are an historian you must look even in the basement, the sewer, if you want to find the gems, must you not sometimes? A. If one fails to find the gems, my opponents and my jealous rivals they have gone down among the sewers looking for things, but I found the gems because I have done the work. Q. You saw some of them, did you not, in Professor van Pelt's report, "janitorial gems"? A. We shall have great enjoyment discussing this with van Pelt when the time comes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just understand why Wisliceny is being put into the janitorial category at all? He is one of Eichmann's top officials. A. He is one of Eichmann's top officials. Q. And Eichmann was one of the senior officials within the Reich carrying out the extermination programme. A. Mr Wisliceny is a man who is in deep trouble. First of all he is facing ---- Q. That is a different point, if I may say so. He is not a . P-194 janitor. A. He is also a man of very dubious character. He is a man who has been not an officer in the SS, but he has been involved in corrupt schemes, in stealing and robbing and disposing of stolen Jewish property and all sorts of things that got him in trouble even with the SS. He is a man whose character I would not give a fig for. He is sitting in a prison cell in a Slovac prison knowing that he is going to be put on trial for his life. Q. That is a different point. A. I am sorry, let me cut to the bottom line and say what he is actually saying here, I have lost it, he is not saying "I know this for a fact"; he is just saying, "I speculate that probably this happened." I have lost it totally, the actual reference. Q. "I am convinced it must fall the decision of Hitler". A. Yes, but his conviction that something must fall within, I mean, that is not evidence of any kind at all, my Lord, and I am sure no court would accept that kind of evidence in a matter of great seriousness, somebody's conviction that something must surely have happened, not in the total absence of any kind of qualifying documents. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving. Sometimes my questions involve quite a lot of paper chasing. You are quite content to use Dieter Wisliceny when it suits your purposes, are you not? . P-195 A. If it fits the criteria which I mentioned earlier.
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