Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day012.05
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20

   Q.   Also the passage starting at the bottom of page 256, "Wo
        die Juden sich selbst uberlassen waren", down to the end
        of the first paragraph on the next page, and this is what
        Hitler is recorded as having said, is it not?
   A.   Yes.  It is in the subjunctive, so it is Adolf Hitler
        speaking, quoted in reported speech.
   Q.   Yes.  Whether accurate or not, it is a report by Schmidt
        or the tape recorder or both, the hidden microphone, of
        what both Ribbentrop and Hitler are said to have said on
        that occasion?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But, if it is in reported speech, it cannot
        be a transcript of a tape, can it?
   A.   It is the way the diplomats worked.  It is the same with
        the meeting between Churchill and Stalin.  The interpreter
        would take notes as he went along but, as he interpreted
        between the two of them, he would take down what Hitler
        said, write down a note ----
   Q.   This is not a transcript, you are saying?
   A.   No it is not, but it is a very accurate transcript.
   Q.   It is an account of what was on the tape.
   A.   It also accurate reflects the language used, too.
   MR RAMPTON:  You have used it yourself as being a reliable
        account?

.          P-37

   A.   Schmidt is a very accurate source.
   Q.   It is not in dispute that it is an accurate account of
        what was said.
   A.   He was a professional diplomat of very high calibre.
   Q.   Could I then ask you to look at how you represented this
        meeting on 17th April 1943 between Horthy and Hitler?
   A.   Apart from the mix up on the dates, right?
   Q.   No, there is rather more to it than that, I am afraid,
        Mr Irving.  "Mix up" is not the word that I am going to
        use when we look to see what was said on the 16th, but
        there is more to it than that, I am afraid.  Could you
        look, first of all, please, at Hitler's War 1977, page
        509?  It is the second volume, D 1 (ii).
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   I am going to start, if I may, with the first complete
        paragraph on page 509:
                  "Nor was the language Hitler and Ribbentrop used
        to prod the Hungarian regent into taking a sterner line
        over his Jewish citizens very delicate.  The Nazis found
        it intolerable that 800,000 Jews should still be moving
        freely around a country in the heart of Europe-
        particularly just north of the sensitive Balkans.  For
        many months Germany had applied pressure to the Hungarian
        Jews to be turned over to the appropriate German agencies
        for deportation to 'reservations in the east'".
   A.   Note the quotation marks.

.          P-38

   Q.   Yes.  This is the 1977 version, I remind you, Mr Irving.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.  "It was argued that so long as they remained they were
        potential rumormongers, purveyors of defeatism, saboteurs,
        agents of the enemy secret service, and contact men for an
         'international Jewry" now embattled against Germany.
                  "Events in Poland were pointed to as providing
        an ugly precedent:  there were reports of Jews roaming the
        country, committing acts of murder and sabotage.  The
        eviction of the Jews ordered by Hitler had recently been
        intensified by Himmler's order that even those Jews left
        working for armaments and concerns in the
        Generalgouvernement were to be housed collectively in
        camps and eventually to be got rid as well.  In Warsaw,
        the 50,000 Jews surviving in the ghetto were on the point
        of staging an armed uprising -- with weapons and
        ammunition evidently sold to them by Hitler's fleeing
        fleeing allies as they passed westward through the city".
   A.   They would be Italians.
   Q.  "Himmler ordered the ghetto destroyed and its ruins combed
        out for Jews . 'This (that to say this uprising) is just
        the kind of incident that shows how dangerous these Jews
        are'".
                  To whom in those quotation marks, Mr Irving, did
        you intend to attribute that sentence?
   A.   Presumably to Himmler.

.          P-39

   Q.   Your very next sentence is this: "Poland should have been
        an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler argued".
   A.   Yes.  This is a new paragraph.  This is another topic, the
        first sentence of the coming paragraph.
   Q.   No, Mr Irving. What you are trying to suggest there is
        that Hitler used the Warsaw ghetto uprising, which in fact
        did not happen until two days later, as a means of
        prodding Horthy into taking sterner measures against his
        Jews, are you not?
   A.   No.  I said quite clearly that the Warsaw ghetto uprising
        was about to happen.  In other words, it had not happened yet.
   Q.  "Himmler ordered the ghetto destroyed and its ruins combed
        out for Jews.  'This is just the kind of incident that
        shows how dangerous these Jews are'".
   A.   We are on the point of staging an armed uprising, so it
        has not happened yet.  I can only repeat that.
   Q.  "Poland should have been an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler
        argued.  He related how Jews who refused to work there
        were shot; those who could not work just wasted away".
        The German word is Verkommen, is it not?
   A.   Yes, which means wasted away, to rot away.
   Q.  "Jews must be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, he said,
        using his favourite analogy.  Was that so cruel when one
        considered that even innocent creatures like hare and deer
        to be put down" (the German word was getturtit).

.          P-40

   A.   Put down means killing, does it not?
   Q.   Killed.
   A.   This is a very accurate precis so far of what is in a much
        longer paragraph by Paul Schmidt, I think.
   Q.  -- "To prevent their doing damage?  Why preserve a bestial
        species", the German is die bestien, which means the
        beasts, does it not?
   A.   Yes, but remember we are writing a literary work which is
        by David Irving, not by Paul Schmidt.
   Q.   Well, actually by Adolf Hitler. "Whose ambition was to
        inflict bolshevism on us all.  Horthy apologetically noted
        that he had done all that he decently could against the
        Jews: 'But they can hardly be murdered or otherwise
        eliminated', he protested.  Hitler reassured him: 'There
        is no need for that'.  But just as in Slovakia, they ought
        to be isolated in remote camps where they could no longer
        infect the healthy body of the public;  or they could be
        put to work in the mines, for example.  He himself did not
        mind being temporarily excoriated for his Jewish policies,
        if they brought him tranquillity.   Horthy left
        unconvinced.".
                  Where in that transcript of the meeting of 17th
        April, Mr Irving, do we find that passage?
   A.   Which passage are you talking about?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY: "There is no need for that".
   MR RAMPTON:  From"Horthy apologetically noted" down to "Horthy

.          P-41

        left unconvinced".
   A.   I do not know.  I would have to have time to look at these
        papers.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Take your time, because those words are in
        quotation marks.
   MR RAMPTON:  I would not trouble taking too much time,
        Mr Irving.  It was said on the 16th, as the second piece
        of extract from Schmidt, that you got there will tell
        you.
   A.   On which page.
   Q.   On page 245.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   At the bottom of the fourth paragraph we find words, if
        you want to check the paragraph to see that I am right,
        attributed to Horthy:  [German- document not provided].
        He is saying, "Well, all right, but I do not think that we
        can murder or otherwise kill them", is he not?
   A.   It is difficult because we have only got three pages of
        this transcript here.
   Q.   I have more or less the whole extract if you are fussed
        about that, Mr Irving.
   A.   And, of course, your imputation is that this is the only
        source that I have used, is it not?
   Q.   No.  Carry on reading, please.  You can make your point in
        a moment.
   A.   You asked where I got this quotation from and I was trying

.          P-42

        to answer your question.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Sorry, which quotation are you talking about?
   A.   "They can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated".
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, you se, that seems to be an accurate
        representation of what you have just read out.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes.  What you have done is lifted what was said
        on 16th and put it on 17th to make Hitler look better,
        have you not?
   A.   How does it make him look better if I get the date wrong
        by one day?  How does that make him ----
   Q.   You quote precisely what Hitler said on 16th.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Which is [German - document not provided].
   A.   Yes, well, OK, you have found it.
   Q.   "There is no need for that"?
   A.   You have found it then, good.
   Q.   That is on 16th, Mr Irving.
   A.   As I said about five minutes ago, there was mix up of
        dates when we wrote this first edition by one day.
   Q.   A mix up, Mr Irving?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   What you have done is deliberately to transfer something
        gentler that Hitler said on 16th in order to mitigate or
        water down the brutality of what he said on 17th?
   A.   How could it possibly mitigate it?  It is ridiculous.  And
        what is your evidence for saying I deliberately did it?

.          P-43

        Let me explain, in case his Lordship does not realize,
        that when I wrote this book it was written on the basis of
        20,000 pink filing cards, and it is very easy when you are
        writing a manuscript and you have 25 filing cards to the
        left of your typewriter which you have collected over the
        previous five or 10 years to juxtapose two filing cards so
        you get one date wrong.  There is nothing deliberate about
        that.  These things happen.
   Q.   You transposed an earlier date, it is quite clear -- do
        you have a copy of this Hillgruber book?
   A.   I will write a formal admission for you if you want.
        I got the date wrong by one day, but to say that this is
        deliberately done for a purpose is perverse.
   Q.   You actually repeated it?
   A.   What you do not like is Adolf Hitler saying, "We cannot
        kill them".
   Q.   No, I accept that Adolf Hitler did not say that anyway, he
        said, "That is not necessary"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   I accept that he said that.
   A.   Well, that is what you do not like.
   Q.   I do not mind what Adolf Hitler said.  He is not on
trial,
        Mr Irving.  In a sense, what is on trial here is your
        historiography.
   A.   You are absolutely right.
   Q.   This is a bent piece of history?

.          P-44

   A.   You are absolutely right, but to say that I got the date
        wrong by one and, therefore, this is a deliberate
        misrepresentation of Adolf Hitler's views.
   Q.   No, if you have an entry for 167th and an entry for 17th?
   A.   A filing card for the 16th and a filing card for the 17th.
   Q.   It involves removing from the 16th and transferring to the
        17th something which was said the day before, and you know
        that, do you not?
   A.   Well, maybe you can explain to the court because it
        certainly surpasses my understanding how that in some way
        mitigates Adolf Hitler's guilt or otherwise or how it can
        be said to be a deliberate perversion, the fact that a
        date is wrong by one digit.
   Q.   Ribbentrop, which you do not quote at all in the main text
         ----
   A.   The book is about Hitler, not Ribbentrop.
   Q.   Yes.  Ribbentrop makes a murder reference to a choice
        between extermination and concentration camp.
   A.   In what terms does he make that reference?  Shall we go
        back to it and see.
   Q.   Yes, it is here.  I will read it from Professor Evans
        which you have accepted is an accurate translation?
   A.   Ribbentrop says:  "The Jews must be either annihilated",
        "vernichte", "or taken to the concentration camps.  There
        is no other way".
   Q.   That is right.

.          P-45



   A.   Of course, once again we are up against that word
        "vernichte".

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