Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.17 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 Q. It is the first heading I am interested in under point one or as to point one, urgent transports, I cannot read the next word, can you help me with that? A. Proposed, "polkishen". Q. What does it mean? A. Urgent transport proposed by the Chief of Security Police and by the Security Service. Q. Is that ---- A. Heydrich. Q. --- Heydrich? A. No, at this time it would be Carleton Brunner. Heydrich was killed. Q. How high up is that? A. Directly under Himmler. Q. Directly under Himmler. What he has ordered are ---- . P-150 A. Two trains per day from the district of Walsall to Treblinka; one train per day from the district of Random to Treblinka; one train per day from the district of Krakow to Belzec, and one train per day from the district of Lemberg or the Wolff to Belzec. Q. That makes a total, I think I am right, of 5,000 a day? A. That would be approximately 5,000. Q. Can you for me, please, just complete the sentence because it was not, after Lemberg and then the numbers there is some more, is there not? A. "Could be conducted". Q. Yes. A. That is in the subjunctive. "Waren" with the 200 G- wagen, which are presumably goods trucks, "which have already been placed at our disposal for this purpose by the headquarters of the Krakow Railways, as far as this can be carried out or is feasible". Q. Thank you very much. So they are reporting, what, a proposal or an event or series of events? A. It is an estimate of what we can do with the transport capacity placed at our disposal. Q. Available rolling stock, they can do 5,000 a day to two of these three places in the East, except that the one train a day from Lemberg which, as you say, is what I call "Lavof" which is in what is now the Ukraine and then was Galicia, is going eastwards if it is going to Belzec, is . P-151 it not? A. One train a day is going from Lemberg to Belzec that is on the frontier, yes. Q. It is going eastwards. It is crossing ---- A. Yes. Q. --- from Galicia westwards into the General Government? A. It is right on the Eastern border of the General Government, about two kilometres from the edge. Q. So the Jews of Lemberg, to give it its German name, are being transported eastwards to Belzec? A. To Belzec two kilometres from the border, yes. Q. Yes. No sense then in which Belzec can be regarded as a transit camp, is there, for movement further eastwards? A. These destinations that are in this document which I am seeing for the first time, Treblinka, Belzec, they are all on the border, what I might say the exit door, of the General Government. Q. Yes. A. It is like standing something next to the door where they are robbed. Everything is taken off them by Operation Reinhardt. Then we do not know, on the basis of this document, what happened to them after that. Q. Trains converge on Belzec containing Jews in vast numbers, frankly, from East and West. Belzec most likely, Mr Irving, is in any sense of the word a terminus, is it not? . P-152 A. Did you say they are coming from East and West? Q. Yes. If you look down what is proposed next, the line is bust at the moment, they are going to start up in November, then trains are going to go from Lublin to Belzec? A. Where is that? Q. I am sorry, read the next bit then. A. After the restoration of the railway line from Lublin to Chelm. Q. Yes. A. Probably on about 1st November. Q. Yes. A. "The" other urgent transports will also be, we can also carry out the other urgent transports, namely one train per day from Radom to Sobibor; one train per day from Lublin. Q. Lublin North. A. Lublin North to Belzec and one train per day from Lublin centre to Sobibor. Q. So once that is in operation, which is in about a month's time, five weeks time, Belzec will be receiving Jews both from the West? A. From Lublin. Q. From Lublin and from the East, Lavof? A. Yes. Q. Lemberg? . P-153 A. Yes. Q. I am sorry about this, Mr Irving, but sometimes junior counsel and experts produce aid in a case like this. H1(ix) I think you may already have, unless his Lordship's advice about housekeeping has been rigorously obeyed. My Lord, H1(ix), page 329. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. A. Yes, it is one of the relevant documents. It is still only a transcript, but it is it is more useful. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What tab is it? MR RAMPTON: 329, my Lord. You will find the translations, my Lord, at pages 429 to 30 of Evans. A. If your Lordship has the document, I draw attention only to the security classification which is "Geheim" on page 329. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do I get what the security classification is? A. On about the tenth line, G-E-H-E-I-M. Q. That is secret? A. Yes. It is just the lowest security classification there is, apart from "vertraulich" which is confidential, whereas everything to do with the killing operations, at any rate anything that could be explicitly recognized as killing operations, was a much higher classification. I shall be making that point once or twice. Q. But against that this is not in a sense a compromising . P-154 document on its face. It is simply saying these trains are going to Treblinka? A. I agree, my Lord, but taken in conjunction with the other document in this pair where Wolff writes back saying, you remember, "It's a good thing that 5,000, a chosen few, per day are going that way." I do not know if the reply is also there, is it? Here is Wolff replying in the next one. Q. He is W, is he? A. Yes, he is W. "Dear Comrade, Ganzenmuller", and again this document has no classification at all. This is from my own files, my Lord. This is actually from Himmler's papers and it has no classification rating at all. If you look at the square box, the rubber stamp at the top right-hand corner, my Lord, you will have see on that little bundle I have gave you this morning, I had printed in red there was one such little bundle translated into English and that had the security classification on it. The third line of that box where it says "actung nummer" which would be file number, would have afterwards G-E- H oblique stroke, and then they would write in handwriting the secret file number, if this was a classified document. So neither of these two correspondents, Ganzenmuller or Wolff, considered this matter they were talking about to be secret, and I shall be leading evidence, my Lord, that the SS were very pernickety about . P-155 security classifications on their documents. Q. But there is nothing compromising, as I say, on the face of either of these documents. It is just trans going to Treblinka? A. Even documents that were written as euphemisms had the security classification put on them which was rather self-defeating. MR RAMPTON: I am puzzled by that. I am puzzled for two reasons, Mr Irving. The first document is not an original, I think. It is a Nuremberg reprint, is it not? A. It is a transcript, yes. Q. But that does not tell us anything about what its original classification might be? A. It does, if you excuse me, it has the German classification on it. Q. Which is? A. About the tenth, Geheim, G-E-H-E-I-M, in the centre. Q. What does that mean? A. Secret. Q. Oh, secret? A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But that is a low security classification, that is what Mr Irving has just said. A. The only one lower than that was "vertraulich" which means confidential. Before that there are three or four successive ranks. You have Geheimreichs, . P-156 Geheimschetaffe(?) and (?)offizier which means only an officer can carry it. Q. Very learned, Mr Irving, and it is quite right you should say it. A. Are you sneering at my expertise? Q. No, I am not sneering at your expertise. Actually I am complaining about the way you keep making speeches in answer to questions I have not asked, if you want to know. A. I think his Lordship has indicated in the view of the fact that I am a litigant in person I am allowed a little bit of latitude in making points which I would otherwise have no opportunity to make. Q. Yes, but may I suggest if you are going to do that, to which I have no objection whatsoever, you make your observations to his Lordship and not to me. We are not having an argument. You are answering questions under oath. Now I am trying to find the translation of this document. Yes, I have found it. My Lord, it is the bottom of paragraph 4 of page 430 of Evans, but I dare say there are other versions. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 430 of? MR RAMPTON: Of Evans, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: This is from Ganzenmuller whose precise position is what? . P-157 A. Secretary of State, Staff Secretare, which is the Permanent Under Secretary in the Ministry of Transport. Q. In Berlin? A. In Berlin. Q. Is he a senior Civil Servant? A. A very senior Civil Servant. Q. A very senior Civil Servant. He writes to Wolff? A. Karl Wolff was the personal adjutant of Heydrich Himmler. Q. Yes, and it was Karl Wolff who was quite often, am I wrong, tell me if I am, as it were, seconded by Himmler to Hitler, is that right, or have I got that wrong? A. It was a floating kind of relationship. Karl Wolff was very close to Hitler. He fell out over a marital dispute I think, a matrimonial dispute, but actually his position was Chief Adjutant of Heydrich Himmler. He was never on Hitler's staff. He was on Himmler's staff. Q. No. What I am driving at is obvious I think, Mr Irving. Karl Wolff was in a position if Adolf Hitler should say to him one day, say late August or September or July 1942,, "How is it going in the East?", Wolff is in a position to tell him? A. Undoubtedly, yes. He would have told him about these train loads of Jews being shipped off to Treblinka. Q. You can imagine the conversation. This is pure fancy on my part of course. "Karl, how is it going in the East? Well, we've good news from Ganzenmuller that they're able . P-158 to shift about 35,000 of the chosen people a week to these camps in the East." That is all, as simple as that. A. Yes. Hitler of course never used deprecatory phrases like "the chosen people". Q. No. He used nice complimentary phrases like "parasites" and "bacilli", did he not? A. That is right. But of course this is just your imagination which has no evidentiary value whatsoever in this action. Q. No, of course not, but Wolff was in a position, what I am saying is Wolff was close to Hitler, close to the thrown, was he not? A. He was close to Himmler's thrown. He was on Himmler's personal staff. Q. And Hitler's too. You just old us he was close to Hitler? A. I made it quite specific. He was on Himmler's staff, not on Hitler's staff, but he was a frequent visitor to Hitler's headquarters. Q. Can you look at this letter and tell us what it says, please. It says something about a telephone call on 16th July, does it not? A. Which letter are we talking about? Q. This one from Ganzenmuller to Wolff. A. "Referring to our telephone conversation of July 16th 1942 I inform you of the following report from my general direction of the Eastern Railroads in Krakow for your own . P-159 personal information."
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.