Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.18 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 Q. Then he quotes the report, does he? A. Then he quotes the report: "Since July 27th a daily train load of 5,000 Jews, each is travelling from Walsall via Malkenia to Treblinka, in addition to which two are running each week, a train of 5,000 Jews will run each week from Eprzemysl to Belzec." Q. Yes. A. Do you wish me to continue? Q. No, I do not. I am just wondering whether I was right to agree with you that 5,000 per train was too many. A. If they were in goods trucks, as that September document indicates they have been planning, then they may possibly have packed that many in. Q. Have you still got Professor Brownings' report there? This is inevitable, I am afraid, in a case like this. A. Page 430, is it? Q. No, page 44 of Professor Browning. A. I am constantly marvelling at your cross-referencing. Q. It breaks down all too often. Page 44, paragraph 5.3.11, I will read it. We will look at the documents if you insist, but I do not believe it is necessary: "The trains deporting Jews from Galicia". What is the matter? A. I have it, 44. Yes. Q. 5.3.11, Mr Irving: . P-160 "The trains deporting the Jews from Galicia did indeed go to Belzec as can be seen in the report of Reserve Lieutenant Westermann of the 7th company of Police Regiment 24, whose men helped round up the Jews in Kolomyja", which is, I can tell, you southeast of Lavof, in other words further East than Lemberg, "and nearby towns and then guarded two transports to Belzec on September 7th and 10th 1942. The first contained 4,769 Jews in 50 train cars and went without incident. The second involved 8,205 Jews. Many had been held for days without food and force-marched 35-50 kilometers to the train in blistering heat. They were then packed into train cars, in many cases 180 to 200 per car, virtually without ventilation. As Lieutenant Westermann concluded, 'The ever greater panic spreading among the Jews due to the great heat, overloading of the train cars and stink of the dead when unloading the train cars, some 2,000 Jews were found dead in the train made the transport almost unworkable.' Nevertheless, the train that left Kolomyja at 8.50 p.m. on September 10th finally crawled into Belzec at 6.45 on September 11th". So these figures quoted by Ganzenmuller's subordinate of 5,000 Jews per train ---- A. They are feasible, yes, on the basis of this evidence. Q. Are feasible? A. Yes. . P-161 Q. If that were so, we are talking about even greater numbers, are we not? A. In what respect greater numbers? Q. Well, greater numbers than I had originally supposed. I mean we are originally talking about by the end of the 1943 or whenever it was that these camps were disbanded, well over a million people I would guess. A. May I just remark for the record that of course this Westermann document I have not seen and never had when I was writing my books. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but in a way that is not a particular pertinent observation, because we are really at the moment looking at the scale of the operation. A. My Lord, you did suggest that I should make that quite plain. Q. Fair enough and it is helpful for you to do so, but the criticism is not of the way in which you have dealt with these matters in your books, if you follow me? A. We are just trying to get the picture. MR RAMPTON: Can you turn, while we have it open, to page 46 of Professor Browning's report, please? A. Yes. Q. I had pointed out to you that trains apparently went, we saw it again there, westwards from Galicia to Belzec, and then you see at the top of page 46 of Professor Browning's report: "Surviving fragmentary train schedules also show . P-162 that Jews were deported from northern Lublin district, Radom district, and the Bialystok district to Treblinka as well. The deportations from Bialystok, a district East of Treblinka, are of special significance for two reasons. First, these deportations from Bialystok make clear that Treblinka was not a transit camp for the expulsion of Jews eastwards from the General Government. Rather the tiny village of Treblinka, like Belzec, was a point at which transports of Jews converged from East and West. "Moreover, the fate of the Bialystok Jews in the fall of 1942 was clearly stated in Himmler's report to Hitler of December 31st 1942", that is either that or 29th, it is report No. 51, "the Jews of Bialystok were among the 363,211 Jews executed." A. There I would have to comment of course that that line I would not agree there is any connection, because the 363,000, that report, the Himmler report, is referring only to events within that region and not events within the General Government. Q. You mean that is Jews killed at or near Bialystok and its area, not Jews transported? A. Transported somewhere else out of the region and dealt with somewhere else. Q. You might be right about that. You can take that up with Professor Browning. A. Yes. It is nit-picking. . P-163 Q. No. It may be a fair point and you can take it up with him. It matters not the least to me. The point about this is, we have another example, have we not, of Jews being transported from the East to the West? A. Yes. Q. To a different camp, Treblinka, the one in the North? A. Where we do not know for certain what happens to them. Q. No, but these do not look very much like transit camps, do they? A. I do not know. Let us just leap ahead a bit and say suppose these enormous numbers of Jews had been liquidated in some way, we come up against that familiar word "logistics", what happened to the remains? Q. Well, I suppose what happened to the remains, upwards of whatever I do not know ---- A. We have to think this right through, you see. Q. It is partly a question of evidence and it is partly a question of constructive thinking. It could be that many of them were burnt, the corpses I mean. There is some evidence of that, is there not? It may be that many of them were buried. There is also some evidence of that too, is there not, I mean contemporary evidence? A. Yes, that is as much as we can say. Q. I agree. A. I take that kind of answer, that is as much as we can say, one stage further back in the sequence to say, this is as . P-164 much as we can say: They went there where they then vanished from our general sight. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we had reached the point where we were agreed that it does not really, in a sense, matter terribly much exactly how many, but huge numbers ---- A. Huge numbers were killed. Q. --- were killed in one way or another. In a sense, the Court's problem is only a problem if you are disputing the numbers. A. Precisely, my Lord. The logistical problem is one that we will keep on coming up against. It is a distasteful subject but one you cannot overlook. MR RAMPTON: Just for completeness and for his Lordship's note, in effect so his Lordship really knows where to find it, if you turn over the page two pages from Ganzenmuller ---- A. My Lord, if I could just interrupt, it is one reason why I was entitled to extrapolate, if you remember, from Auschwitz to the other two camps, and we have precisely those logistical reasons which make it improbable that they were factories of death. MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will see Wolff's nauseating reply, if I can call it that ---- A. Which he never expected one day to have read out in open court, I am sure. Q. No, but then he would have been a hypocrite if he had edited it, would he not? On page 331 at the bottom of the . P-165 Evans' document bundle, this is not a retype by the Nuremberg people, I think, is it, Mr Irving? A. No. Q. This is a copy of some sort of original, whether a carbon or not I do not know. A. It is off the microfilm number T175/54, page 620. MR JUSTICE GRAY: 331 of Evans? MR RAMPTON: 331, my Lord, no of H1(ix). A. Can I make a remark against myself? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am sure Mr Rampton will not want to ---- A. Looking back at that rubber stamp, my Lord, on that document where there is no secret classification, it has in its place the two letters AR. MR RAMPTON: Yes. A. It also has the letters AR on the top left-hand corner at the beginning of the handwritten reference number. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What does that mean? A. "Aktion Reinhardt" I would suspect. I would suspect, it is a degree of probability that this was given a separate file for Aktion Reinhardt. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not Geheim? A. But not Geheim. It is a reasonable presumption, although it may be held against me. MR RAMPTON: Tell me this. I think that is an English word. You see the bottom of 331? . P-166 A. Yes. Q. The bottom left-hand corner in a box somebody has written "index". That would be people at Nuremberg? A. No, it would be me. Q. That is you? A. All documents that passed through my possession when I was writing the Hitler book went into a 20,000 card index, and once it had been indexed I would rubber stamp the index so that I did not index it again. Q. I see. The reference to "the chosen people" is in the fifth line, is it not? A. "For your letter of July 28th 1942 I thank you, also in the name of the Reichsfuhrer SS, most heartfelt. With particular joy I have taken cognisance of your information that for 14 days now already every day one train with 5,000 members of the chosen people are going to Treblinka, and that in this way we are being put in the position that we can accelerate the speed of this population movement." MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it probably is really more selective than "chosen", is it not? Is it not just saying these are people who have been selected for the transport? A. My Lord, that is the German for "chosen". MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think it is a sarcastic reference to, I would guess. A. It is the correct German for "the chosen people". MR RAMPTON: "For the chosen people". Mr Irving actually put . P-167 it in his book in that form, did you not? A. As an accurate translation, yes. Q. Why did it cause him, Mr Irving, why did it cause him, Wolff, especial joy? A. I am sure that is just a way of dictating letters. Wolff in particular is an SS Officer. Q. "A rabid anti-Semite is very pleased to be told that 5,000 a day are going off to be massacred." Surely that is the natural interpretation? A. 57,000 are getting their comeuppance, I suppose that is the way he is looking at it, as a good Nazi. MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Comeuppance" meaning? A. Well, just they are meeting their well-deserved fait, whatever it is. They are not specific. Q. Death? A. I beg your pardon. Q. Death? A. He does not actually say it, my Lord. Q. That is what he means? A. Well, I am not going to pin Karl Wolff down on this on there. Q. No, but you are an historian looking at the document, Mr Rampton has put a perfectly fair question to you, is he right? A. I cannot say from this document, my Lord, and I do not think anybody could just looking at this document . P-168 in vacuo. In hindsight we can say that they were going to that place, they never turned up again, obviously something ugly happened to them. MR RAMPTON: Karl Wolff, who I have to correct you I think about in a moment, but never mind, Karl Wolff on receipt of Ganzenmuller's information is overcome with joy that these 5,000 a day are going to their deaths, is he not? A. He does not say that, but that may very well be the reason why. I accept there is the degree of probability. That may be the reason why. Q. This is my second point. I am told, I am not an historian, that Wolff was not simply a visitor or even a frequent visitor to Hitler's headquarters, but was Himmler's liaison officer at Hitler's headquarters? A. For a time he may have been, but I am not sure whether it was at this time. Q. That is a fair point. I will accept that. A. He fell out of favour after contracting an unsuitable marriage and for a long time he was out of favour. Q. But if he is Himmler's liaison officer at the Fuhrer headquarters, whether it is in Berlin or in East Prussia, wherever it might be, his formal role is to pass information and instructions backwards and forwards -- -- A. As a conduit. Q. --- between Himmler and Hitler, is it not? A. He would have acted as a conduit between the two.
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