Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day010.07 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 . P-53 Q. Not likely. Thank you very much. No further questions on this particular matter. I want to go back to the testimony of the witness Bimko, unless Professor van Pelt ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just ask, is there any further material that you rely on, apart from the eyewitnesses, for saying that crematorium (ii) was used as a gas chamber? A. We can go through the documents. If you want the construction documents of the crematoria, this will be quite a long exercise. MR IRVING: Are they explicit as to the use of the building? A. We have documents which -- we have a document, for example, about the Vergasungskeller which you know well. We have a document about the ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: We need not bother with that. We know about that. A. --- the construction, the construction where at a certain moment we get an Auskleiderkellers in the basement. We talk about the introduction of hot hair into morgue No. 1, the proposition being made which breaks down very quickly after it has been introduced. I am happy to go in detail through those letters if you want me to. MR IRVING: We will deal, if you wish, with the introduction of hot air. We have dealt with the undressing room, I believe, earlier in this case? . P-54 A. Maybe you have dealt, Mr Irving, I have not dealt with it and his Lordship asked me if I wanted to introduce other elements. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I just want to get the full picture. I do not want you to spend very long on this, but you deal with this in your report, do you not, at some length? A. In detail, yes. Q. So we could call this corpus of evidence the ---- MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I do think that at some stage Mr Irving has to put it directly to Professor van Pelt what he says about the -- Mr Irving's thesis in cross-examination by me was that it was, indeed, a vergasungskeller, but that it was used for gassing lice or people that were already dead. MR IRVING: The way I put it was that it had alternative other uses. MR RAMPTON: I do think at some stage Mr Irving has to allow Professor van Pelt to deal with that thesis which includes the references to "Auskliederkeller". MR JUSTICE GRAY: So no human killing but delousing? MR RAMPTON: That was Mr Irving's response to my cross-examination and the evidence about the cyanide in the zinc covers and the word "Vergasungskeller", yes, indeed. They used it for gassing, clothes, people. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And objects. MR RAMPTON: And objects. . P-55 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right. I do not when Mr Irving is going to come to that, but I think Mr Rampton is right in saying that that has to be put so that Professor van Pelt has the opportunity of dealing with it. MR IRVING: I certainly had not overlooked the need to do that, my Lord, but I was going to do it in a logical, systematic ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you do it when you want to. MR IRVING: Yes, introducing two or three more documents before we got to that in which we have the word "vergasung", and so on, of a relatively harmless nature. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But what Professor van Pelt has said is that, in addition to the photographs and the drawings and so on which we have been looking at this morning so far, he relies also on what one might call the construction documents. MR IRVING: Yes, which he has just vaguely summarized as inferences to be drawn from them. But if we can just now go back to your reliance on the witness Bimko? Can we, please, have once again the reference in the bundle of documents, Auschwitz 1 or 2, to the Bimko testimony in the Belsen trial? While we are looking for it, can I confirm that that testimony is actually drawn in your version from the book by Raymond Phillips, the trial of Joseph Kramer and 44 others? A. Yes. . P-56 Q. So at the time you wrote your report, you had exactly the same pages in front of you that I have here which are pages 740 to 742 of the Phillips book? A. Yes, I presume so. I mean ---- Q. Yes. A. --- I presume it is only one edition. Q. Your contention is that you left nothing out of the Bimko testimony which was relevant to his Lordship and myself in evaluating the integrity of this witness? A. I have -- Mr Irving, I have said a couple of times yesterday that my intention in giving, in writing down that section was not to bring in Dr Ada Bimko as a major witness on whom I rely. The intention of that section, which contains also other evidence or other descriptions of the gas chambers and crematoria -- for example, the Polivoy account which was proven to be wrong -- was simply to show the development of knowledge about Auschwitz since 1942. It is in three sections. I start in 1942. I try to trace exactly how the knowledge became available and in what way. In that sense, of course, the Lunenberg trial had some importance, but much more importance because of the admissions of the people of Kramer and the others who were actually tried in that case. Q. Can I interrupt you at this point and say so, in other words, you concede that the Pravda account by Polivoy is totally or largely unreliable? . P-57 A. I have written in my report that is -- I do not think it everything, but it is a largely unreliable account as far as the description of the exterminations is concerned. Q. In other words, it is fanciful; it include things which never existed in Auschwitz. A. Oh, yes, I have no problem ---- Q. It is pure propaganda for the Allies or for the Russians? A. I do not think necessarily, Mr Irving, that this is propaganda for the Allies. We are dealing here with a writer, a correspondent, a war correspondent, attached to the Red Army who arrives in the middle of an offensive in a camp which shows, even of what remains there, it shows clear traces of a very big crime. I think that we should remember that in 1945 people had not yet experienced these kinds of installations; that these installations were in ruins and I think Mr Polivoy, partly probably on what he heard people say who had remained there which was largely sick people, and partly on the basis of his own imaginings, tried to imagine what such a place would have been. Q. Among the things the Russians found, was there a hospital full of sick people, including large numbers of sick Jews? A. There were a number of lazarettes in the camp, yes. Q. Hospitals, yes. A. I do not think that a lazarette and a hospital are necessarily the same thing. . P-58 Q. A lazarette is a military hospital? A. The lazarettes were barracks in which people were put. There was no medical equipment. There was nothing really to treat them. There were many descriptions of the way these lazarettes were operated. There are also documents relating to them. So I think I would not want to ---- Q. We do not need to go into the problems caused in the medical conditions in Germany. I am just asking, the Russians did find hospitals or barracks of a hospital nature in which large numbers of sick and unemployable people, including large numbers of sick and unemployable Jews, were housed, for example, the father of Anne Frank was there, is that not right? A. Mr Irving, when the camp was evacuated in the middle of January 1945, indeed, prisoners who were sick were men who could not make the march to the west remained behind. Q. But you appreciate the point I am making that, surely, the legend has it that the Nazis liquidated everybody who fell sick or who was unemployable? A. Mr Irving, in my report I think I have pointed out in response to things you have said about what happened to the Frank family, that by the end of 1944 the situation in Auschwitz had changed, that while until the end -- while throughout the history of the camp there were regular selections of sick, in the lazarettes of sick inmates who when they were considered to be incurable or too weakened . P-59 that they were taken to the gas chamber, that this policy had stopped -- first of all, it had been diminished in late 1944 and at a certain moment stopped. No gas selections were undertaken any more in the lazarettes in the end of 1944. This is one of the reasons that there were a relatively large amount of sick prisoners by the time the camp was evacuated. Q. So the Nazis are feeding large numbers of useless mouths who were Jewish and sick and they were in the jaws of death, they were in the heart of the extermination camp ---- A. Mr Irving ---- Q. --- and they were in hospital? A. --- I would not want to infer any kind of thing about the regular procedures in the camp on the basis of what was happening there in December or January 1944 -- December 1944 or January 1945. Q. Do you now have in front of you the Bimko testimony? A. I do not have it right in front of me now. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, it is H2(ii). It starts at footnote 404 behind the tab 401 to 420. MR IRVING: You have conceded, in other words, that the Pravda account as an eyewitness account is largely unreliable? A. Yes, I have done that in my report so I have no problem with that statement. Q. So systematically we will now continue with the next . P-60 eyewitness. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we on Dr Bimko? MR IRVING: We are now on Dr Ada Bimko, as she was at that time. Her real name now, at any rate, Adassa Rosensacht(?) MR JUSTICE GRAY: She is still alive, is he. MR IRVING: I believe she is still alive. She is a leading figure, or was a leading figure, in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She was an adviser and on their Library Council. (To the witness): Can we look at paragraph 1? A. Which footnote? Q. On page 740. Paragraph 1. This is, of course an eyewitness who is claiming to testify in a capital trial against captured Nazis who were on trial for their lives. She has made this deposition. At the end of paragraph 1, did you read the words when you were doing your research: "I have examined the records of the numbers cremated and I say that the records show that about 4 million persons were cremated at the camp"? A. Yes. Q. Have you any comment to make on the voracity of that statement? A. It is unlikely that it happened, but I do not exactly know what record she was looking at. Q. Could she have looked at any records in Auschwitz and . P-61 found that 4 million people had been cremated? A. I do not know. I do not know exactly what records there were. The 3 or 4 million is very unlikely. Q. Yes. The figure of 4 million was, of course, the original propaganda figure put out by the Polish Government for whatever reason, is that correct? A. Yes -- it was a figure which was established actually, I do not say for propaganda reasons, it was a figure which was established by the Russians after they liberated the camp, the first ---- Q. But, of course, she is not testifying here that she has seen a figure put about by Russia propaganda; she says "I have seen the records and they show that 4 million people had been cremated"? A. So, I mean, if you want to make a point, Mr Irving, that she is wrong there or that she maybe says something which she did not do, that is fine. Q. The point, obviously, which his Lordship will appreciate, as I am working towards this, you have had this document in front of you when you wrote this report. In the very first paragraph, when she is making this statement on oath, she has said a statement which, to your knowledge and to mine and to the court's knowledge now, is quite obviously untrue?
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