Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day007.14 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I agree about that. Do you want it asked in parts? MR RAMPTON: My eyes are just not the right focal length for the screen. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will read it. Do you think it is sensible I -- am going to skip the interpolations -- Mr Irving, for a man in your position, who has gone all the way to Canada to give expert evidence on a different aspect of the case, to arrive at so certain a conclusion on the basis of one part evening's reading of one part of a report made by a man like Leuchter? I am slightly fudging the end of the question, but I think it is fair? A. All right. So there are several parts in that question. The question is, what is my value judgment on Mr Leichter? We can deal with that separately, my Lord. This part of the report was of course not produced by Mr Leichter. It was produced by a qualified forensic laboratory, and that I would emphasise at this point. For whatever value it is worth, I would point out the fact that I spent three years at London University unsuccessfully trying to get a degree in physics and chemistry. One thing that I did excel in was quantitative and qualitative chemical analysis. In fact, in the examination which I took I got the correct amount to six decimal points, which was an embarrassment because it looked as though I had been cheating. . P-117 So I am aware of the fact that, unlike the writing of history, where there is a lot of reading between the lines, chemical analysis is an exact science. When I looked at that document, and I probably said it on subsequent occasions, I said that no matter how much historians can interpret documents, as they do one way or the other, perversely or honestly or genuinely, you cannot interpret percentages in any different way than the figures actually speak. We will come to what the figures actually said, I am sure, later on, but, when I looked at those columns of figures, I said to myself, and I accepted of course that I was not being taken in, I was not being given fraudulent figures because they would be very rapidly exposed by the court, I accept that I was being given genuine forensic analysis figures. I would go straight ahead and say to this day I have no reason to doubt that those percentages are correct, and I state that the figures that I saw at that time, spoken in unmistakable language, so unmistakable that any person with even a smattering of knowledge of chemical analysis, quantitative and qualitative, would have to accept that the story, as it had been preached so far, was untenable. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, have you read the Leuchter report with any care since that date? A. The report or the chemical analyses? Q. The report. You have to read the report to understand . P-118 what the chemical analysis is referring to, do you not? A. It is referring to a number of samples taken from the fabric of Auschwitz and Birkenau, various buildings. Q. Did you notice, Mr Irving, before you started making these statements, or indeed since, that the chemical analysis gave a much higher reading of hydrogen cyanide residues for the parts of the camp, whether Birkenau or Auschwitz, which were known to have been used as delousing facilities than it did for those parts which were said to have been gas chambers? Did you notice that? A. It would probably be useful if you were to give us the actual figures, but this was my general impression from memory, that this was the conclusion based ---- Q. Did you notice, Mr Irving, that Mr Leuchter conclusion was based upon the assumption that higher concentrations of hydrogen cyanide would have been needed to have been used in the gas chambers than in the delousing facilities? A. Mr Leuchter was an expert in homicidal gas chambers. Q. Please. This is very important. I wish you would answer my question. Did you notice that Mr Leuchter's conclusion that there were no homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz was based in part upon the assumption that higher concentrations would have been needed to kill people than were needed to kill lice? A. As this appears to be an important point, can we see the precise passage in the report where he states this and the . P-119 language he uses? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, so that there is no misunderstanding because it puzzled me for a while, kill lice in clothing? That is right, is it not? MR RAMPTON: Yes. If you try and do it while the clothes are still on in a concentration of 6,666 parts per million, you are going to kill your people about 22 times over. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You understand why, if that is not made clear, it can be a bit puzzling? A. I think we ought to see what the report actually says. MR RAMPTON: Yes. Perhaps you would like to take your coloured copy and I will use my weary old photocopy. A. I have a colour copy here. This is an abridged version. It is not the one inch thick one that was shown to me. MR RAMPTON: I do not know if your Lordship has the file copy? A. This was the actual discovery copy I want them all back because they are very rare now. Q. You would like them back at the end of the case? A. Yes, please. Q. You will be welcome to them, as far as I am concerned. Page 15 of this glossy -- this is not its original form. This is the Irving publication form? A. This is no doubt an abridged version, certainly much slimmer than the one inch affidavit I was given in the courtroom. Q. But what about the use of ordinary type, bold type and . P-120 bold italic type. A. Mr Rampton, the original version was in my discovery and was available to your instructing solicitors. They could have drawn this kind of comparison. Q. Mr Irving, please listen. In this document, as we see if we look at page 15, leaving the capitals on one side, we see four different kinds of type that are used. There is first of all what you might call ordinary Roman, then there is bold Roman, then there are ordinary italics which we see at the little words "table 3", and then there is bold italics, which is the paragraph fortunately that I want to read. A. Yes. Q. Who made the decision to use those different kinds of type? A. Not I. Q. Not you? A. No. Q. So in the affidavit they have used these sorts of type, have they? A. I do not know. You have in the discovery the original affidavit. Q. Anyway, it was not you? A. No. Q. Do you see the paragraph in bold italics? A. In the second column, the controlled sample. . P-121 Q. That is right. "One would have expected higher" -- do you see that? Q. Do you agree that whoever put that in bold italics thought that it was an important paragraph? A. I cannot see "one would have expected higher". Q. Paragraph, not half sentence. I will read it. A. Yes. Q. "One would have expected higher cyanide detection in the samples taken from the alleged gas chambers, because of the greater amount of gas allegedly utilized there than that found in the control sample. Since the contrary is true, one must conclude that these facilities were not execution gas chambers when coupled with all the other evidence gained on inspection. A. Yes. Q. You must have read that? A. No. Q. You did not read that? A. Not to my knowledge I looked just at the laboratory tables. Q. Does it not occur to you, Mr Irving, that, if in fact, as it is the case, Mr Leuchter has got history completely the wrong way round, then you can reverse the figures in the table? A. If you exclude extraneous factors, which you can talk about later on, the factors which you are not talking . P-122 about, about the fact that the "gas chambers" have been freshly built, they were freshly poured concrete, they sweat, there is a pronounced interaction between humanity and hydrogen cyanide gas which would have led one to conclude there should have been more in the so-called gas chambers, but this was a degree of research that Mr Leuchter did not go into. It has been done since the Leuchter report. This is where I am in difficulty, my Lord, because of course there had been ongoing research into this kind of controversy since then. Q. This is my point, Mr Irving. A. Not by myself, I hasten to add. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. MR RAMPTON: This is one of a one of a large number of absolutely basic school boy errors from an historical point of view, as well as some scientific ones as well. But from the historical and archeological point of view, this is one of the basic school boy errors in the Leuchter report. Fair enough, you are not Mr Leuchter and you did not write the report, but you made the decision to change your mind about the Holocaust, or whatever you like to call it about gas chambers at Auschwitz. A. On the basis of the forensic percentages. Q. On the basis of absolutely no research whatsoever. A. On the basis of no research whatsoever; you are absolutely right. I made the decision to change my mind on the . P-123 percentages of hydrogen cyanide residues, the compounds which were missing from the chambers where they should quite clearly have been present. Q. No, they were not; they were present in smaller quantities which is exactly what you would expect. A. They were present in quantities that are familiar to people doing the laboratory analyses. You guess statistically meaningless numbers. The figures are so low that they are statistically meaningless. They may be there from any external sources. They may be there from the cleaning lady. They may be there from there having been a regular fumigation. The quantities are so low that they are statistically meaningless; whereas in the fumigation chamber, you get a figure that is 1,050 milograms per kilogram of cement, starting with the high figure. Q. Yes, Mr Irving, precisely, which is exactly what, if you know the very slightest thing about this topic, you would expect to find. A. I now know quite a lot about this topic, Mr Rampton, which I was not aware of at the time, and I am not prepared to change my position. Q. Then, Mr Irving, it behoved you, as an historian, brought over as an expert witness, to keep your trap shut until you had done some proper research, I suggest. A. This is the negligence argument again, is it not? . P-124 Q. No, it is not. A. It very clearly is; you are saying I ought to have done it and I did not. Q. No responsible person in your position would give that kind of evidence to a court on the kind of research you had, I should say, not conducted. A. Mr Rampton, I did not give this evidence to court. Q. Let me finish question. A. You just said I gave this evidence to the court -- this court or the court in Toronto? Q. The court in Toronto. A. I not give this evidence to the court in Toronto. Q. That is the starting point, Mr Irving. A. This was the evidence that Mr Leuchter gave. Q. Let me finish my question, Mr Irving, please -- unless that so-called historian had an ulterior motive for diving into a sea on which he had no knowledge, is that right? A. Diving into a sea is rather literally. Can you state specifically what you are trying to say?
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