Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day006.19 Last-Modified: 2000/08/02 Q. Please, Mr Irving. Calm down and let me finish my question. You will find all of this laid out with great care and detail (which I am certainly not going to go through now) ---- A. Has he mentioned the staff evidence analysis sheets? I do not think so. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, does it simplify matters if I say I am prepared to accept that there is good internal evidence that it is March or thereabouts 1942? MR RAMPTON: No, I really think that would be unsafe. There is some internal evidence. MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. Just assume that, but really then it may become a question of what the Judenfrage was? . P-168 A. I agree. But even that I am not ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not clear, sorry, you are getting it from every direction. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. Your Lordship was interrupted by what I call harassment from my right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I harass you and just ask you, where does one find the material on which Professor Evans bases his proposition, namely that the Jewish question that is being discussed is the problem of half-Jews, as I think they were called? MR RAMPTON: This is one of the things that one can see if one goes back to page 464 as a starting point in Mr Irving's book, he himself draws attention to that. A. Oh, yes. What was at that time actuel was the question of who is a Jew, which I think they still cannot decide really. Q. Your Lordship can see the first part of the main paragraph in the middle of page 464 makes reference to this what is called the "Mischling" question. It says, quite correctly, that Heydrich held a second conference all about that on 6th -- it does not give the date, but the date is 6th March. You will find that, my Lord, on page 375. It may be one should start earlier, but this is a long and detailed part of Professor Evans' report and I do not believe that it is going to help anybody if I read out great chunks from it at the moment. . P-169 A. But is it not a reasonable inference that this document, therefore, came after that conference? Q. It is certainly one of the available inferences and it is one which Professor Evans himself has said in his report that he thinks is the likeliest? A. So we have wasted an awful lot of the court's time --- - Q. No, we have not, Mr Irving, because there are problems with that interpretation, and this is my whole point. You will not face up to the problems of the documents which you embrace so enthusiastically. You will just have to be patient until I tell you what I believe the problems may be. My Lord, I wonder if your Lordship might read from paragraph 7 on page 374 and going down to paragraph 9 on page 376? We have the source documents here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: To the end of 9? MR RAMPTON: Sorry, my Lord, end of 9, yes, if your Lordship pleases, yes. That will do fine. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had read that before. That is what I would be interested to know what Mr Irving says about that. MR RAMPTON: So would I, particularly since, as one can see from the original document -- I am not asking your Lordship to look at it -- the conference about the Mischling and the Mischeyer is actually headed "Ent Losung der Judenfrage" whereas one notices that Lammers' statement, or the note of Lammers' statement, refers only . P-170 to the "Losung". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, there would be many Juden frager, would there not? MR RAMPTON: Yes, precisely, of which I have no doubt the mischlinge one was a knotty one, because I think the evidence is that Hitler himself did not think that it was a good idea to split marriages and send what might be called half and halfs off on the trains. That is right, is it not? A. If you were to pursue this line of argument, the document would say that the solution of this Jewish problem would need to be postponed. Q. Exactly, Mr Irving. A. He is talking about the solution of the Jewish problem postponed. Q. That is another problem with the document. You would have expected it to say diese Juden frager? A. Of this Jewish problem, but it does not, of course. Q. I quite agree. A. So that does not help you very much. Q. I am not looking for help, Mr Irving. You see, you have completely the wrong end of the stick. A. I am trying to help you because I am enjoying this. Q. You are not helping me at all because you are always punting to the same end of the pond. I am not. I am in the middle and I am looking at all the lily pads around me . P-171 and wondering what the answer is. I do not think it is clear that this is a general statement by Hitler in the context of the file in which it was found, which would be a floating statement of no significance at all, that Hitler has said yesterday, "Stop all this talk about mischlinge because I have said that the whole Jewish question is to go off to the end of the war". I do not think that is the only possible explanation. I think anybody who leaps on that band wagon and ignores all the others is not being a respectable and competent historian. A. You are not, with respect, being a respectable and competent counsel if you ignore the document that immediately precede this note, which is Schlegelberger writing to Lammas, saying that ugly things seem to be looming ahead, I really think I ought to talk about this with you before we go any further. Lammas then writes back to him saying, no, the Fuhrer does not want to be bothered with this kind of thing. He wants all the Jewish problem postponed until the end of the war. Q. You say, write back. Where is Schlegelberger's signature on that thing? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could I see it, because are you assuming I know. What is this note about ugly things going on because that would be very relevant, it seems to me? A. It is immediately preceding this in the file. MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the web site? . P-172 A. Well, it is certainly in the actual file, which is the file here. While they are looking for it, I will just get it to the front. It would be on the web site definitely. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may not have been reproduced. MR RAMPTON: I am certainly not aware of it. A. It is probably page 1564 of the web site just off the top of my head. Yes, here it is. If I can just read it straight out while you are looking for it, my Lord, it is March 12th 1942. This is six days after the conference. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I have the original German here, I think. Can you just identify it and then give it to his Lordship to look at? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have found it in the web site. MR RAMPTON: I have not got the web site file. I just want to make sure that we are talking about the same document? A. It is from the same Justice Ministry file. It is paginated in that series 01/109, in the original wartime series, it is just two documents ahead of the Schlegelberger note, dated March 12th 1942: "Dear Reichs Minister Dr Lammas, I have just been briefed by my personal assistant on the outcome of the conference of March 6th concerning the treatment of Jews and mixed race Jews. I am still awaiting the official protocol. After the briefing by my personal assistant there appear to be decisions in preparation which for the larger part I consider to be quite out of . P-173 the question, quite impossible, as the outcome of the conferences at which an adviser or a personal assistant of your house has also taken part will form the basis for the Fuhrer's decision. I would urgently request that I can have in good time a conversation with you in person, a personal conversation with you, about the matter. As soon as the protocol of the session is in front of me, I will allow myself to telephone you and to ask you whether and when we can have that talk." MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, that seems to me to run quite counter to the proposition for which you contend because that is dealing entirely with the problem of Juden and mischlinge? A. Jews and mixed race. "The Jews and" I think is significant there. But, be that as it may, my Lord, even if you are right, and I am sure your Lordship is right, I hesitate to say that your Lordship is wrong in that matter, but, even if you are right, what I am saying is, and I have reason for saying this, that the outcome was the note from Lammas to Schlegelberger, which effectively says that the Fuhrer does not want to be bothered about this, he wants this whole thing, he wants the solution to the Jewish problem postponed until the war is over. If I just continue that, we also know from interrogations of people who were at the conferences that Lammas came back to them and said he had mentioned it to the Fuhrer with . P-174 precisely that outcome. The Fuhrer said he did not want to be bothered with this kind of stuff, postpone it all until the war is over. MR JUSTICE GRAY: All of that points, so far as I see it at the moment, to this having been the narrow question of, if one can call it, mischlinge? A. Juden und mischlinge. Q. I follow that that phraseology is used, but that does not seem to me to be tremendously significant, given the whole context of the reference to the conference on 6th March. A. I appreciate this is one possible interpretation if you ignore the fact that the Schlegelberger memorandum says die losung der juden frager (?), the solution of the Jewish problems, not this Jewish problem. Q. I have the point about der rather than dies. MR RAMPTON: That points in one direction, Mr Irving. The other considerations point in the opposite direction, including, if I may -- I do not know, I am completely ignorant but I am told that this is a good point by those like you that have inspected the file. The file number on the top right-hand side of what you call the Schlegelberger memo, I prefer for safety sake to call it the Freisler document, is 153. A. Yes, with the handwritten number 153 on it? Q. No. There is stamp on the one I have. A. Yes, but the one I am looking at is stamped on the left. . P-175 Q. I know you are looking at your web site copy. A. No. I am looking at the one on the left. This is the original document with the stamp on the left. Q. So you say, but the other document with 12th March 1942 has the stamp number 155 on it. A. Well I do not have ---- Q. You will find it in H1 (vii) at page 371. A. Previously, of course, you could not find it. Now you can find it. Yes. Q. There is no evidence, is there, that these file page numbers are contradictory? One is 109 followed by 111. A. This is why we cannot be absolutely certain as to exactly which sequence within the month they are shuffled. Q. You cannot assert with any confidence that the anonymous undated Freisler document was generated or prompted by the dated and signed note of the 12th March 1942, can you? A. Within the space of a month you can be pretty certain. You can say it was after March 6th. Q. If this relates to the question of the mischlinge at all? A. Well, it was within this file and we know where it is placed in the file, and there are no documents outside that time frame, so on a high degree of probability that is the time, and we know when, reasonable from other documents, you know when the conversation took place between Schlegelberger and Lammas. Q. Now, Mr Irving, consider a problem of real substance. . P-176 A. The problem of real substance is that I am the only historian to mention these documents. Everybody else pretends they do not exist, although they have ---- Q. Mr Irving, you have grasped it with your usual boyish enthusiasm because you think it acquits Adolf Hitler of any hand in the mass murder of Jews. A. Which is precisely why the other historians have not even mentioned it. Q. Mr Irving, that was not what I was going to ask you about. The problem you do not seem to have faced up to is this. I am going to ask you a question first. What in your version of history was in Hitler's mind the entlosung (?), and we notice this document does not use that word, to be put into effect after the war in Hitler's mind in March 1942? A. Well, at this time, of course, as you know, I will say he was talking about deportation overseas, or deportation beyond the pale.
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