Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day020.10 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q. In other words, that I deliberately manipulate, I accept the evidence that I like and all the other evidence I disregard on this rather threadbare pretext of tortures and threats? A. In your book on Nuremberg you refer constantly to -- and again, my Lord, this is in my written response No. 10 on page 6 of my reply to the second set of written questions by Mr Irving, where you talk about "the unsavoury methods of the OSS, intimidatory American tactics appear to have been routine, harassment of the prisoners, a paralysing regime of psychoterror enforced on the defendants", and so on. That seems to me to be general attempts to discredit the testimony at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. Q. Having you investigated the methods used by the Allies and the interrogators at Nuremberg? Are you able to state with confidence to this court that I am wrong? A. You do not present, you present to me -- you present in your book some isolated incidents of maltreatment of prisoners of Streichier(?), I think, and, of course, in the initial interrogation of Hoss, but you do not present evidence in your book that this was general. I do not . P-85 really see evidence there to justify those statements which you make in a general sense. Q. So you have complete confidence yourself, therefore, in the methods used by the allies to obtain ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. This witness has said many times you have to look at all the circumstances and evaluate the particular witness and his evidence. MR IRVING: If you look at your footnote on that page, the second footnote: "Irving in an interview in New Zealand, recording a conversation with SS Colonel Gohler" which I claimed to have had at the end of the war when I would have been a child? A. Yes, I look up the transcript. You said: "I remember right at the end of the war I asked one of Himmler's staff", and so on and so forth, but it is not a very important point. Q. So why did you put it in then? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us move on we all. Agree it is not a very important point. MR IRVING: But you are implying there that I have lied again, are you not, in that footnote? A. No, I am not, no. It is an amusing little mistake that you made. Q. You agree that it is a misreading, therefore, of a transcript? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Don't let us spend time on it, Mr Irving. . P-86 A. No, I do not agree it is a misreading. I think it is just a misformulation of yours, Mr Irving. It is not very important at all. Q. These verbatim transcripts can easily be misread? A. No, I think I read it correctly. I am just saying it is a slip of your tongue, that is all. Q. Or a slip of the punctuation of the person doing the - --- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, will you please move on? MR IRVING: You are still critical, of course, of my methods of obtaining information from Hitler's private staff. Would you see, please, pages 83 to 5 of the little bundle? This is the complete passage from that interview you have just quoted, the one where I was allegedly conducting interviews as a six year old. Why did you not pay more attention to the surrounding three pages of that interview instead of this rather amusing little footnote you put in? Do I not describe in those three pages (and this is the question) how I have persuaded Hitler's private staff to reveal to me ugly secrets of their memories of their times with Hitler, if I can put it like that, and is that not more significant? A. Well, that is not the context here of what I am talking about here at all, Mr Irving. Q. Have you referred to these three pages anywhere in your expert report? A. These are? . P-87 Q. The reference to what Hitler's private secretary told me about the Night of the Long Knives, for example? The reference to what Johannes Gohler told me about Hitler's order to Himmler to liquidate the inmates of Buchenwald? A. The Night of the Long Knives is not a -- I think I do mention the Night of the Long Knives briefly, but it is not really a central point in my report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you made this point on Thursday to this witness. MR IRVING: We did, my Lord, but I am just drawing attention to the fact that he uses the transcripts very selectively to imply that I am lying about the date I conducted an interview, but there are three pages ---- A. I am sorry, Mr Irving, I did not. Q. Will you please not interrupt? A. I did not imply that you were lying. I am quite happy to accept it is a slip of the tongue. Q. But he ignores the three pages ---- A. It is not an important point. Q. --- which show me quite clearly using interviews in the manner that they should be conducted. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you made a perfectly sensible point on Thursday, namely that you often do refer, so you say, to the unfavourable things that the Adjutants and their relations told you about Hitler. You have made that point. I have absorbed it and I have digested it. There . P-88 is no point in going back over it all over again. MR IRVING: My remark goes purely to the selective nature of this expert witness's report and reporting on the basis of the evidence before him. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like to move on now? MR IRVING: Page 162, when we are now dealing with Hans Aumeier, you allege that: "It did not fit into my preconceived notion" - this is three lines from the end - "it did not fit into my preconceived notion that there were no gassings" ---- A. Yes. Q. Is it not, in fact, the case that Hans Aumeier's reports are not eagerly seized upon by the Holocaust historians because he, too, presents information which does not fit in with the standard version, like the gassings times? A. I think that, in fact, the Aumeier documents, which you discovered in the Public Record Office after their release in 1992, were not seen by anybody else. So I do not think there is any suppression there by other people. Q. Yes, but is it not the fact that the Aumeier documents do not fit in with preconceived notions in the way you suggest? MR JUSTICE GRAY: We went through all this with Professor van Pelt, did we not? MR IRVING: On page 163, now, paragraph 41, you ask: "Who could possibly have gone to all the immense trouble . P-89 necessary to fabricate such a vast quantity of documentary material"? What documentary materials were you describing there, just so we can be sure of what you are talking about? A. Well, a number of different things, the memoirs, for example, of Holocaust survivors which exist in substantial number. Q. You are not talking about wartime documents then? A. I do not say wartime documents. In addition, in the course of this trial, you have repeatedly alleged that wartime documents have been fabricated without really saying who would have done it or why, or what opportunity they might have had to do so. Q. His Lordship knows this is not true. I cast suspicion only on one document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid I do not accept that, Mr Irving. MR IRVING: On the June 24, 1943 document, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you cast suspicion on a number of other documents. MR IRVING: I am impugning the integrity of only one document then. Let me put it like that. I raise my eyebrows at certain others, but accept them just for the purposes of argument. In other words, you are not there talking about a vast quantity of wartime documents then. You are talking about a vast quantity of postwar ---- A. I am talking there in a general sense about the evidence . P-90 of all the crimes, for example the existence of gas chambers. Q. But this is important. A. It refers right back to the previous three sections of this particular chapter in my report. Q. I am trying to narrow down here -- this is quite important. If his Lordship is led to believe by a careless statement of the witnesses that there is a vast body of wartime documents, this would be unfair, would it not, because you are not referring to wartime documents? You are referring to postwar documents? A. I am referring to all kinds of documents. Q. You are not referring to wartime documents? A. I am referring to documents including wartime documents, the totality of the written evidence for the Holocaust which you deny. Q. Are you saying there is a vast quantity of wartime documents? A. What I am saying is that there is a vast quantity of documents and material for all aspects of the Holocaust. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I expect you would accept, Professor Evans, just to move on, the number of overtly incriminating documents, wartime documents, as regards gas chambers is actually pretty few and far between? A. Gas chambers, other things such as the systematic nature of the extermination, I am referring to the whole package . P-91 of evidence. MR IRVING: But I am trying to divide that package. A. Wartime, postwar, shootings, gassings, systematic nature and so on. Q. Professor Evans, you accept that we cannot do things that way in this court. We have to divide things up into parcels and look at the Eastern Front, look at the systematic nature, and look at the gas chambers, and look at the documentary basis for each. As his Lordship has said, you do accept that the documentary basis for the gassings, the gas chambers and for the systematic nature of that is thin compared with the documentation of the Eastern Front shootings? A. Yes, but what I am describing here is really -- I am moving on to the totality of all the different kinds of evidence. For example, I have dealt previously ---- Q. I am anxious you do not move on from the questions I am actually asking. A. Have dealt previously in the report in an earlier section with your allegation that Holocaust survivors have made it all up, for example. Q. Can we have a clear answer ---- A. Stabbed their tattoos on their arms themselves and so on. Q. -- so that we can move on. The documentation relating to the gas chambers and the systematic nature of gas chamber killings is sparse compared with the documentation of the . P-92 killings on the Eastern Front, is that right? A. Yes. I think that is correct, that I am referring here to the totality. Q. Paragraph 44 on the facing page. You object to my suggestion that there was a well-financed campaign. A. I say it is a typical Holocaust denier's argument. Q. Yes. If it is a true statement, is that an unjustified statement therefore? A. Let me quote the sentence. In the preface, this is a comment on a quote---- Q. Do not start reading all this out. A. I am sorry, Mr Irving, but I do want to get quite straight what I am actually saying. I do not want the court to rely simply on your gloss on it. Q. It is the question I am asking which you have to answer, I am afraid. A. Yes, I am going to answer it.
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