Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day020.11 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q. Do you agree that it is a well-financed campaign? A. I am trying to -- can I just say what I say in the report, because that will make it much simpler to answer. In the preface to the English edition of the Leuchter report you wrote: "Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved". You go on to say: "Millions of honest, intelligent people have been duped by the well financed and brilliantly successful post war publicity campaign which followed on from the original . P-93 ingenuous plan of the British Psychological Warfare Executive (PWE) in 1942 to spread to the world the propaganda story that the Germans were using 'gas chambers' to kill millions of Jews other 'undesirables'." I go on to say then that this is the typical Holocaust denier's argument that the "myth" of the Holocaust has been kept going by a "well-financed" campaign in order to legitimize the paying of German reparations to the State of Israel. Quite clearly, I do not accept that everyone who has written about the gas chambers in Auschwitz and elsewhere, and the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jews, has been financed in order to legitimize the paying of German reparations to the State of Israel. I think that is an appalling slur on the large numbers of decent and serious scholars who have devoted a large amount of their lives to doing this. I think it is a disgraceful remark. Q. I must insist that you answer my questions briefly because I ask the questions and then I am the one who gets into trouble when you answer at such length. A. Yes, Mr Irving, but your question did not make it clear what I was saying in my report. I felt it necessary to say what I was saying. Q. Have you heard of the phrase "instrumentalization of the Holocaust"? A. I have certainly heard of that, yes. . P-94 Q. Can you answer in two or three lines what you understand by the phrase "instrumentalization of the Holocaust"? A. It is an accusation sometimes levelled at people who make a reference to the Holocaust and are accused of doing so for ulterior motives. Q. Is this the allegation that somebody like Norman Finkelstein makes? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not really think that matters. MR IRVING: Page 168, paragraph 50, line 3, those three dots, you agree, stand for 58 words, five commas, two full stops and a colon, is that right? A. I think we have already been through this. I do not think that is right, actually. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not going to count the full stops. Come on, Mr Irving. You have made your point about selective quotation. MR IRVING: Page 51: This goes to the anti-Semitism element, I suppose, does it not? A. Paragraph 51. Q. Yes. I have made a speech in 1992 and you take exception to my description of the Board of Deputies, and the words that I use. Is any criticism of an organization like that permissible, do you think? A. I do think it is rather over the top to describe the Board of Deputies of British Jews as cockroaches. Q. If you are familiar with the methods that they have used . P-95 to try to destroy a professional historian's career and family, would that professional historian be entitled to use pretty colourful language to describe these people who are secretly trying to destroy him? A. That is a very hypothetical question. I think what you are saying there is that the Board of Deputies of British Jews have been engaged in a secret campaign to try and destroy your livelihood. Q. That is what I said. If the intention is to destroy an author and his family and his career and livelihood by underhand methods or by whatever methods, is he not entitled to defend himself and use occasional lurid language? A. I would have to first of all see evidence to persuade me that such a secret dastardly campaign had been carried out. I do not want to answer a hypothetical question of that nature. I do think that professional historians should be reasonably measured in their language. I do not think that is an appropriate word to use. Q. If the court is shown a document showing that at this precise time that body was contemplating putting pressure on that author's publisher to stop publishing his books and thereby destroy his career and livelihood, and they were doing it behind armour plated doors in their headquarters ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Show the witness the document and then we can . P-96 see. MR IRVING: May I do so, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course. MR IRVING: Would you go to bundle E? A. I am not sure I have this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Bundle E. No, you may well not have. MR IRVING: I am looking for the document. Page 82 in the bundle called Global. A. This is a meeting on 12th December 1991, Education and Academic Committee? Q. The Education and Academic Committee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. Can you read item No. 6 please? A. "David Irving. Concern was voiced over the publication of the second edition of Hitler's War. There was debate over how to approach Macmillan publishers over Goebbels Diary. It was agreed await news from Jeremy Coleman before deciding what course of action to take". Q. I am not going to go into the remaining documents in that bundle, Professor Evans, but, if I put it to you that this is evidence and that other documents will be submitted to court later on, the pressure that was put on my publishers by this body, which is part of the Board of Deputies, which was meeting at their headquarters, am I not entitled to use that kind of language to describe these people? A. Well, to be quite honest, no. This is a meeting of five people, Mr Coleman, Professor Gould, Professor Polonski, . P-97 Mr Nyman and Dr John Fox. It is not a meeting of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Where it takes place I think is pretty immaterial. It says that there is a debate, but they agreed that they are not going to do anything. So I do not think that is justification for calling the Board of Deputies of British Jews cockroaches. MR RAMPTON: What is more, there is another thing needs to be pointed out. That document, which is the first time I have seen, is dated 12th December 1991. It is predated therefore by some months by what Mr Irving said, which apparently was said on 5th October 1991. MR IRVING: Are you ---- A. It post dates it? MR RAMPTON: Yes. The document post dates the Irving statement about cockroaches. A. You said predates. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. MR IRVING: I do not want to hold up the court at this point, but will you accept that that bundle you are holding called Global is about three inches thick, and contains many hundreds of documents? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not a terribly illuminating question. MR IRVING: My Lord I do not really want to read through all the other documents. A. It is not a very contentious statement. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I am not asking you to. Anyway, I think . P-98 we will move on. You have put that document. MR IRVING: Precisely. Witness, will you accept that, on the balance of probabilities, there are other documents of that nature in that bundle? MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may say so, Mr Irving, we must do better than that. MR IRVING: Mr Rampton has suggested that this was it, and so what. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What it comes to is, if there was in existence a document prior to what you said about the British Board of Deputies being cockroaches, which you say justifies you having said that, then put it to the witness. If you have not got such a document, move on, please. MR IRVING: I shall put it to the court in due course, my Lord, the whole bundle, as your Lordship is familiar. If an author is aware that such a campaign is being conducted against him by a body of whatever class or colour or race or religion, is he entitled to use lurid language in private? MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have asked that question many times before and that is a comment. You have not established the factual premise for it, so can you move to the next topic, which means going beyond page 168. MR IRVING: My Lord, you say I have not established a factual premise. To do that I would have to go back to the bundle . P-99 and I do not want to do that at this point. MR JUSTICE GRAY: In that case you cannot ask the question. MR IRVING: The final five lines of that same paragraph: "In April 1998 Mr Irving spoke of American Jews 'moving into the same positions of predominance and influence'", and so on, that they held in the Weimar Republic. This is a quotation, is it not, from my diary in April 1998? A. From your website. Published on your website. Q. It is a quotation from my diary in 1998? A. Published on your website. In other words, it is free to anybody to access, which is what we did. Q. Have you had access to all my private diaries? A. I did not need access to your private diaries to get hold of this quotation. Q. Will you answer the question? A. May I read the whole quotation first to establish what we are talking about? Q. Just answer that question. Have you had access to my diaries? A. I am sorry, I want to read the whole quotation to get clear what we are going to see, then I will answer your question. Q. Will you answer the question first? A. In April 1998 he spoke of American Jews'moving into the same positions of predominance and influence..." Q. My Lord, will you instruct the witness to answer questions . P-100 put to him? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am despairing. Would you let the witness -- and then you can ask the question. Read it out please. A. "In April 1998 he spoke of American Jews 'moving into the same positions of predominance and influence (media, banking, business, entertainment, and the more lucrative professions like law, medical and dentistry) that they held in Weimar Germany, which gave rise to the hatreds and the resulting pogroms; and that this being so, twenty or thirty more years might see in the USA the same dire consequences as happened in Nazi Germany". Extract from Irving's personal diary April 13, 14th 1998, on Irving's Focal Point website. The answer to your question is yes, I have had access to your personal diaries. MR IRVING: Do you have any reason to suspect this is not a genuine diary, what is on my website? A. I think it is as genuine as the Anne Frank diary, yes. Q. I will repeat the question. Do you have any reason to believe that this is not a genuine diary extract? MR JUSTICE GRAY: The answer is no. A. The answer is no. I answered it. MR IRVING: Will you go to page 88 of the bundle which is F? My Lord, the purpose of this is purely to point out, not words left out but surrounding material left out. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, context. . P-101 MR IRVING: Is this the diary as reproduced on my website? A. It looks like it, yes. I have downloaded on 15th February 2000. Q. So it is a description of a lecture that I delivered to students at the University of Washington State in Pulman in 1998? A. Yes, seems to be. Q. The questions are the best part as usual, a German girl student a quiet well spoken 20 year old, the Federal Republic's equivalent of a Rhodes scholar. I carry on now to the next paragraph. The paragraph begins: Several coloured students are there mostly training to become teachers. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This has nothing to do with the context of what Professor Evans quoted. It is completely irrelevant. MR IRVING: They are bright and friendly. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read it all. The context? This adds nothing and subtracts nothing. What is the point, Mr Irving? Why are we looking at this? MR IRVING: I am putting this in connection with the allegation of racism. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, about several coloured students being present? MR IRVING: "Several coloured students were there, mostly training to become teachers. They are bright and friendly". . P-102 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. I thought we were looking at this for context of what Professor Evans quoted. MR IRVING: I used the eye witness testimony of General Walter Bruns, which your Lordship is familiar with. I read out the whole of that document to these students, which goes to the Holocaust denial issue. This is a typical speech by me to university students who are a bright and friendly lot, and we have had just this one passage taken out of context when a Jewish Professor from the floor asked questions and I put to him my take on the present situation in the United States. A. Well, I do think that that is completely irrelevant. If you want a little bit more, the context is: "One questioner addresses the issue that I had raised in discussing the Daniel Goldhagen thesis, that if I were a Jew I would want to see an answer to the vital question why the Jews are so hated within only a few years of their arrival in each host country. He points out that the Jews have now been in the United States in strength for 50 years yet they are not hated. I reply that, on the contrary, my own perception is that they are moving into the same positions", and so on and so forth. That is the context.
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