Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day004.06 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 Q. That can just as easily mean kitchen utensils, can it not? A. Could be kitchen sink. If a photographer comes in mit gerat, then he would be carrying his camera and not his kitchen sink. It is the appropriate appliances. Q. We used to have tinkers in the old days in Scotland, Mr Irving. They would carry utensils with them. Pots and pans. A. The Germans would have a different word for that. It would be klamotten. It would be their things. Q. Anyway, your immediate interpretation of this document, it is clear now, is that this food was to keep the Jews well fed during the journey? A. Well, it certainly was not for just 15 policemen. Q. Mr Irving, how far is it from Berlin to Cogno, do you know? A. Off the top of my head, I would say of the order of a thousand miles. Q. It is about 600, in fact. A. Correct. In other words, a two or three day train shipment in wartime conditions. Q. Those trains went very slowly because they had to keep stopping to give priority to other trains. A. Yes. The journeys took three days. We know the train load of Jews on November 27th. It left Berlin on November 30th, . P-47 it arrived at Riga and they were shot. It is a three day journey. Q. That is Riga. That is about 200 miles further East from Cogno? A. I am trying to give a sense of space and time. Q. I am going to ask you some questions. Again, you have leapt to a conclusion. Have you actually stopped to think what the evidence is that this food was to feed these Jews during that journey? A. None whatsoever. Q. No. A. But it would be perverse to assume that it was not. Excuse me. If a train is provided with provisions, then the provisions are quite clearly for the people on the train. It cannot clearly be for just 15 escort personnel. Q. Mr Irving, would you not be so hasty. Wait for my next question, please. Do you know how many loaves of bread you can make with 3,000 kilograms and 2,700 kilograms of flour? 500 gram loaves of bread, an average size loaf? A. I did exactly the same calculation as you were reading out to me just now, and I thought, if there are a thousand people on a train, they are getting 3,000 kilograms of bread, then this seems to be very substantial provision. Q. In fact, it is about 6,000 loaves from the loaf figure alone, and about another just less than, it is about 5,400 loaves from the flour. . P-48 A. Actually, he is talking about 3,000 kilograms of bread, so that is 3 kilograms of bread per person. Q. What about the flour? Are they going to make loaves on the train? A. Why do we not just stick with the bread for the time being? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, there was flour there too. That is the point. MR RAMPTON: 2,700 kilograms of flour. A. I have no idea what they were going to do with the flour. Q. The point is this, Mr Irving. There is no evidence that this food was going to be eaten by those Jews. I can tell you, if you do the calculation, at half a loaf a person per day, they have enough bread and flour to last them for 24 days, 944 people. A. Yes, but the reason for that is that the people at the receiving end are protesting bitterly. They say, we have food shortages here already and you are dumping these people on us, so the Reich was sending the people not only with the food for the journey, but presumably enough food to get them started when they arrived at the camps they were going to. Q. That is right. A. I am speculating here, I do emphasise. I am just trying to give an explanation that may have escaped your attention. . P-49 Q. No, it had not, you see. I am concerned not with what actually happened, Mr Irving, but your readiness to leap to conclusions in favour of the SS and the Nazis on every single occasion. A. I strongly object to that kind of aspersion. Q. This is exactly what you have done here. A. I strongly object to that. Here is a British telegram, a British intercept of an SS telegram, which has not been quoted by any of your experts, because of course it does not fit into the perception they are trying to create, which presents a subtly different image of how this deportation programme, brutal and cruel though it was, initially was started by the system. The train loads of Jews were sent off with food for two or three days and, as you quite rightly pointed out, enough food to carry on once they arrived at the other end, enough flour to make their own bread. Q. They had enough cornflakes for about eleven days, as it happens, at 30 grammes per serving according to Messrs Kelloggs. A. They were going to arrive in the camp, where presumably the provisions would be inadequate. Q. That is right. They must have eaten their cornflakes dry because there is no milk? A. No doubt there were cows in Riga when they got there, or Cogno. . P-50 A. Of course, how long would milk last on board a train for three or four days? Q. I should have thought in November, in that part of Europe, quite a long time. Would your Lordship excuse me for just one moment? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to ask you this. I do not normally ask a question to which I do not know the answer, but on this occasion I will. Who paid for this food to go on this train? A. I do not know. Q. You do not know? A. No. Q. You have assumed, though, from the way in which you characterized it last Thursday, that it was the Nazis, the SS who paid for it? A. I can go into some detail on this in fact. Before the Jews were kicked out of Berlin, they were robbed. They were robbed blind. Q. So one way ---- A. The German Finance Office asked them to fill in a form listing all their assets. These assets were formally seized by the German state. Page by page of these documents are still in the Berlin Finance Ministry files. They were robbed blind. I am not sure what the relevance is to your particular question, because I cannot prove . P-51 that happened on this occasion. Q. The relevance is this, Mr Irving. A. I stated that in my books, too. Q. Mr Irving, the relevance is this. So far from this being a dent in Holocaust, whatever you call it---- A. Perception. Q. -- Perception, it is quite possible, is it not, that, one way or another, directly or indirectly, this food was paid for by the Jews? A. Quite possible, yes. Q. The kindly SS provision the train so far as they have and the camp when they get there at the Jews' own expense? A. But it is still not the perception we now have of cattle trucks of Jews being shipped across Europe with no food and water for three or four days and arriving half dead at the other end. It may very well have happened in the later phases of the war. Q. Yes. That is the trouble. You are muddling up two pictures are you not, Mr Irving? There is the early stage of the German Jews. They do not even get started on killing the German Jews in a big way until much later on. A. If you wish to talk ---- Q. And then there is the much later, from the summer of 1942 onwards, when we get into cattle truck country, are we not? A. I remember reading in the private papers of Adolf . P-52 Eichmann, which I found in Argentina, that he describes the steps he took to ensure that the trains were properly provisioned when they left Hungary and his indignation when he found that the Hungarian police officials had embezzled a lot of the money and food and so on so that the trains were not being properly provided. This just goes marginally to what you are saying. Undoubtedly, there was a lot of hardship and cruelty and barbarism. But the point I would wish to make is why is it that your experts have not quoted the documents I have put before the court. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you come across any other intercepts or any other messages referring to the provisioning ---- A. There are, my Lord. Q. For the transcript, just wait until I have asked the question -- any other documents evidencing the provisioning of these transports of Jews? A. I have, my Lord, and I have put one or two more into that particular bundle. Q. I have found one more. I am not sure I have seen more than one. A. It is not strictly relevant, my Lord, to the pleadings, otherwise I would have stuffed the bundle with even more paper. Q. But there are more? A. I intend asking Dr John Fox. He is an expert on these . P-53 police decodes and we can ask him about them. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, tell me why you think my experts paid no attention to these documents? A. I certainly have not seen any reference in expert reports to those intercepts relating to the provisioning of the trains. Q. Why would that have any relevance if these documents do not suggest what you say they assert? What if these documents are no more than they appear to be, records of train loads of Berlin Jews going to the East with provisions on board for whom one knows not, but quite possibly to feed the Jews to some extent when they get to the camp before they are shot? What is so significant about that? A. The relevance is, Mr Rampton, that, if your experts are doing their job conscientiously, then it is incumbent on them, according to their own averments at the end of their reports, to do so impartially without fear or favour to either side. They should also have included any materials like those which go against the notion that this was a systematic programme to exterminate the Jews. If you are going to exterminate Jews, you do not send them to the East on trains properly provisioned with tons and tons of food and appliances with which they can set up a new future in the East when they get there, which is the inference which is clearly to be drawn from those decoded . P-54 messages. I would be interested to see if you can draw any other inference from those messages. Q. That is what we are now going to do, as I promised you I was going to do, Mr Irving. Could Mr Irving please be given file H 3 (i)? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. This one I have got. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that is the first volume of Professor Browning's documents. Could we please turn to footnote 8? Again, the document is identified for these purposes not by any stamped or printed or typed number, but by a handwritten F N 8 at the bottom right hand corner of the document. A. Very well, yes. Q. I expect you recognize this document, do you not? A. The Jaeger report. Q. This is the Jaeger report. If you turn to its 5th page, blatt 5 at the top of the page, this is a copy of, I suppose, either an original typed or an original carbon copy, I do not know. You do not have any qualms about the authenticity of this document, do you? MR JUSTICE GRAY: For my benefit, can you say what it is? Is it a report from an Einsatzgruppen. MR RAMPTON: It is a report of one Einsatz commandos, Einsatz Commando 3, which is part of Einsatzgruppe A, and they are in charge. Geographically it runs, A is in Ostland, the Baltic states, and then B is in White Russia, C in the . P-55 Ukraine and D in South Russia, roughly speaking I think. Your Lordship will see at the top of the first page, Mr Irving as well, it has place and date, Kauen um, 1st December 1941. That is perfectly good German, is it not? A. No. Q. So this makes you wonder about this report, does it? A. You are asking me if it is good German. I would say no, a German would say Kauen den aus December einefurtzig (?) Q. But you have seen it elsewhere, have you not? A. No, I have not.
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