Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day016.21 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. The fourth one is a considerable alleviation of the later transporting away of the Jews into a Jewish reservation somewhere outside of Europe? A. Yes. Q. So all of these are a much more modest form of the Final Solution, are they not, not involving killing, being proposed here by the man who drafted the document? A. He lists those as four possibilities. We know, of course, from two things down below he says this all touches on orders and Jager, within a week, is killing all women and children and ---- Q. You are ---- A. --- Stahlecker's own report later ---- Q. You are rushing ahead. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are rushing ahead. Just pause a minute. . P-153 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am only relying on this document purely to show that whoever drafted the document (and the Professor will tell us in a moment who it was) the draft, the typescript draft, is making certain proposals of a very general and non-lethal form for the treatment of the Jewish problem in the occupied Russian areas. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: And that there is then a very important handwritten comment by Stahlecker on which I rely. I will read out the handwritten comment in German first. "Ich halte es ... (reading to the words in German - document not provided)... Stahlecker". Does Stahlecker in that rather complicated final paragraph, that postscript by him, his comment, does he refer to the fact that this conflicts with oral orders ---- A. I think he is saying ---- Q. --- which have been given by a superior agency to him? A. Yes, as I interpret it, he is saying the guidelines prepared by the local civil administration ---- Q. Which is the typed guidelines here? A. No, no. This is his critique of the typed guidelines. The typed guidelines are a different document. This is his letter to Jager who is to talk to the people who have drawn up the guidelines, and that this is his rejection of those guidelines. He says there should not be any guidelines until we have discussed this orally, . P-154 particularly as they touch upon oral orders that from the, you know, that cannot be put in writing. Q. All orders from a von hochster Stelle? A. Yes, from above. Q. Not just from above. A. Or from a higher ---- Q. A higher plain. Have you ever heard Adolf Hitler referred to as a higher plain in documents? A. No, it would be highest. Q. I beg your pardon? A. He would be highest. Q. Thank you very much. That is the answer I wanted. I know it is not very helpful for the Defence, but the correct answer is of course it would be von hochster Stelle, would it not? MR RAMPTON: I am sorry to intervene, I am not saying this is disorderly cross-examination. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is far from being that. I think it is extremely orderly. MR RAMPTON: I agree, but it seems to be heading in what I regard as a impermissible direction. On 17th January, this is the fourth day of the trial, page 94, the cross-examination went like this, line 8: "This is evidence that Hitler gave authority" ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you want me to follow, the page? MR RAMPTON: Day 4, my Lord, page 94. This is why I intervene . P-155 now, because I expressed a fear this morning that this is what was going to happen. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Page 94. MR RAMPTON: Page 94, my Lord, lines 7 to 16. I will read it out in case Mr Irving has not got his transcript here. I will start at line 8, if I may: "This is evidence that Hitler gave authority for the massacre at least2. MR IRVING: Who is speaking? MR JUSTICE GRAY: You. MR RAMPTON: I. "This is evidence that Hitler gave authority for the massacre at least", interruption by Mr Irving, "of Jews". I finish the question because I meant to be precise: "Of Jews in the East?" Answer: "Yes". Question: "Yes". Then there is something about Longerich. Mr Irving says: "I do not think there is any dispute between the parties on this". MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just wanting to see the document that is being discussed. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that may not matter, may it, with respect, in the light of what I have just said? Als partisan als and auszurotten is what I was asking questions about. MR IRVING: Have we not moved on from that document? MR RAMPTON: No. With respect, my question was this: "This is evidence that Hitler gave authority for the massacre of Jews in the East?" "Yes. I do not think there is any . P-156 dispute between the parties on this." MR IRVING: That is absolutely right, but the question is, my Lord, under what title the Jews were being killed, whether they were being killed in this connection as Jews or as partisans. MR RAMPTON: "The massacre of the Jews in the East? Yes". MR IRVING: Yes. MR RAMPTON: With Hitler's authority. MR IRVING: Both statements are obviously correct. I am very sorry you interrupted me at the point where I was making this very important point about con hochster Stelle, from the highest level. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry about that. If Mr Rampton is right, and at the movement it appears to me that he may well be, you would appear to have conceded quite generally that Hitler did indeed give authority for the massacre of Jews in the East. That, after all, is what you are presently cross-examining Professor Browning about. MR IRVING: I do hesitate to cavil about words, but whether he gave authority for the massacre of Jews or of the Jews is what would be the issue here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to hold you to what you said in the course of cross-examination, but I think it is right to observe that you are, I think, shifting your ground because you did appear to concede without any qualification that it was Hitler who gave the authority . P-157 for the massacre of the Jews in the East quite generally. MR IRVING: My Lord, I do not have the text in front of me. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. MR IRVING: But from what was read out it appears that it was an exchange rather than a considered statement. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is true. MR IRVING: With interruptions and "yes" and "yes". MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going, as I say, to pin you down by reference to an answer you gave in the course of an exchange. So carry on, but I think it is fair to say Mr Rampton's intervention was well-founded. MR IRVING: So I will just have to wind back about 30 seconds, so to speak. We were looking at the handwritten footnote by Stahlecker. He is referring to orders that have been given from a higher level to the Security Police, which are being affected by this new draft. My question to you was, can von hochster Stelle or from a higher level ever refer to an order from Hitler? Your reply was, I think you said it would be from the highest level if it was a reference to Hitler? A. If he was getting a direct order, this is an order that comes from higher authority. Q. At which point Mr Rampton decided to interrupt. MR RAMPTON: Yes, and there was a very good reason for it, if I may say so. I do not want to spend a lot of time in this court at my clients' expense listening to . P-158 cross-examination that leads nowhere. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the position, and you can correct me, Mr Irving, if I am wrong about this, is that you have made the concession, and I think that is the right word, that Hitler gave authority for massacre of Jews in the East. That does not prevent you from saying when you are confronted with this document Stahlecker note that as far as this document, Stahlecker's note, that as far as that document goes, that is talking about orders from an authority other than Hitler. MR IRVING: My Lord, it will come as no surprise to you, I am sure, to realize by now that it is not going to be easy to untangle the thicket of conflicting authorities and responsibilities that led to this appalling crime on the Eastern Front, and we are not going to find any simple chain of command. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. MR IRVING: Or any simple written order, and that there will be apparent contradictions where people at one area are acting in one way and there is someone else acting in another way. We have to look for clues as to where people's intentions lie. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: So that is the only use I wish to make of that particular document. A. Can I add something to that? . P-159 Q. Sure. A. If we look at Stahlecker's report of October 15, 1941, which is page 23, paragraph 4.3.10, of those four solutions that he lists he clearly embraces the first and claims, and I quote: "It was expected from the start that the Jewish problem would not be solved solely through pogroms. On the other hand, the goal of the Security Police cleansing work according to basic orders was the most complete removal possible of the Jews. Extensive executions in the cities and flat lands were therefore carried out through special units." In that sense of these four we have another document that shows Stahlecker purely understood his task as to be the first of those four options.
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