Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.02 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR RAMPTON: I have the original discovery copy and it has lots of pencil marks on it, or what appear to be copies of pencil marks, to be exact. MR IRVING: Can I take you to the little bundle of documents? We will jump several stages in this case, my Lord. Towards the end of the little bundle of documents probably on the second page ---- A.Sorry, you will have to tell me which little bundle, Mr Irving. I have plenty here. Q.The one I gave you this morning. A.Let me try and find it. Yes. Q.About two pages from the end, is that a letter from me to . P-10 somebody called Mrs Weckert dated June 3rd 1979? A.It is. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry. I wonder if I am looking at the wrong thing? MR IRVING: It is two pages from the end of that little bundle, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it has found its way here. It does not appear in my clip, at any rate not two pages from the end? A.This is the one with 693 in the top right hand corner. Q.Does the 693 indicate that that letter was in my discovery? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am sure it does. MR IRVING: Am I replying in that letter to a sehr ausfuhrliche Darstellung which this lady has sent to me? A.Yes. Q.I am thanking her for a very ---- A.Extensive. Q.Extensive description. A.Yes. Q.Will you accept that this was a description of the events of the Kristallnacht as she has researched it up to that point? A.I accept that that is her tendentious account of the Reichskristallnacht. Q.Very well. Will you look in the second paragraph and see . P-11 that I make criticisms already of her account and suggest that I am not going to go along with everything that she writes? You cannot just dismiss the report of the SA Group -- do I write that? A.You write that, yes. Q.This will certainly interest you most of all? I also refer to the diary of von Hassell, the diary of Grosfort and other contemporary sources? A.Yes, Mr Irving. As I have already said, I do not say that you take over all her ideas. You do not, for example, depict, as she does, the pogrom of the Reichskristallnacht as devised and put forward by Zionists in order to cast opprobrium on the Nazi regime and cause it to fall. Even you have some scruples, Mr Irving. Q.Is possible that an amateur historian like Ingrid Weckert will succeed by her obsessive diligence in turning up items, or documents, or conversations with people that she conducted, that would be use to the general body of historical opinion? A.I would not regard her as an amateur historian, Mr Irving. Q.An amateur writer, an amateur chronicler? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Answer the thrust of the question, Professor Evans. A.There is always a possibility, yes, of course, that anyone can do that. MR IRVING: Is this the kind of correspondence you would expect . P-12 to see between one writer and another where one writer is saying, "I found this kind of thing", and the other writer writes back and says, "well, I think you got this right but you got that wrong, here are some documents that I have got" -- does this go on? A.I have not said that you take over all her ideas, or that you agree with absolutely everything she says. The fact remains, Mr Irving, that in your accounts of the Reichskristallnacht some years later than 1979, and after she had published her work in the course of the 1980s, you do adopt a number of her ideas. Q.Have you seen the lengthy Darstellung that she sent me? It was in the discovery. A.We used her book and her ---- Q.You have used her book? A.Wait a minute, and the articles with the pencil lines in the margin. Q.You have used her articles, but have you seen the lengthy typescript letter she sent me with all the details of the research that she had done? A.We have not used that in the report, Mr Irving. We have used her -- this is not a report about Frau Weckert and her works. Q.But quite a lot of it is about her, is it not? A.The report is about you, and your use of her work. There are one, two, three, four, five, about half a dozen pages . P-13 here about your reliance on aspects of her work rather than on your own research. Q.The inference you are giving in your report -- I am going it move on very shortly from this -- is that I have relied on her book. You go in great detail into her book. You say that her book has been black listed by the Germans. It has been put on the censorship list, has it? A.It is illegal to sell or lend it to any person under the age of 18 because it is regarded by the authorities as an anti-semitic work which is liable to corrupt young minds, and also shows no evidence of even minimal attempts at truthfulness and objectivity. Let me say once again, Mr Irving, that what I demonstrate in my report is that you have taken some, although not all, of Ingrid Weckert's ideas from her writings, from her articles, which then were reprinted and put together as the book. Q.But you have not made no reference at all to the fact that I had from her a lengthy special Darstellung which she wrote at my request and which has no reference to her book, which is the thing that has been banned and on which I pass critical comment? A.Are you claiming that this is entirely different from the book and the articles, it says completely things and that that is what you use in your book, Mr Irving? I do not think so. Q.In the corner of the world where you come from, Professor . P-14 Evans, do you agree with the censoring of books, blacklisting of books? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think we need to get into that. A.That is an entirely different matter. MR IRVING: Why did you mention it then in this report? A.Because the German authorities have investigated her work and decided after the investigation that it is anti-semitic, corrupting and shows no evidence of even minimal attempts at truthfulness or objectivity. Q.As you said earlier, have we anything---- A.What they do as a result of that is a matter for them. Q.Have we anything to learn from Germany in this last century about freedom of speech? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that question helps, Mr Irving. A.I take that as a rhetorical question, Mr Irving. Q.Yes. Leave me to deal with the question. MR IRVING: In paragraph 10 on page 308 you object to the fact that I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date. What on earth is wrong with that? A.Sorry, where is this? Q.In paragraph 10 on page 308. You say he unilaterally alters the date of arrival of Goebbels back in Berlin. I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date. What is wrong with that? A.Let me just read back here. I am afraid this might . P-15 require ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, if this is a point that you do not really place much reliance on, I think I would say so. MR IRVING: Again it is an allegation that I have relied on the book, and the wrong date in the book. In fact, of course, I have relied on the correct date from other sources. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does appear to me, Mr Irving, that whether you actually relied on the book is, in a sense, a bit of a side issue. Even if you have not, the criticism that is made of you, and you have not really addressed it, is that you are content to cite a source who Professor Evans says is anti-semitic and not a worth while source for a reputable historian to use. MR IRVING: Let me address that point now, my Lord, by way of a response to your Lordship. This is to say that there may be some historians with a political bent who will disregard entirely evidence coming from people of whose politics they disprove. If we were to do that with all sources, of course, we would be left without a very large body of historical documentation, for example, the works of all the Nazi war criminals, somebody like Rudolf Hoess, Kommandant of Auschwitz, who clearly was not very pro-Semitic, to disregard the writings as somebody on the basis of the fact that they have expressed anti- semitic views, or racist views, or any other views of which the . P-16 researcher personally disapproves, is a very poor criterion for selectivity of documentary materials, in my submission, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see. Would you like to comment very briefly on that? Turn that into a question, if you see what I mean, and give your answer. A.I do not think anybody suggested that Rudolf Hoess was an historian. MR IRVING: Very well, if that is your answer. Now will you go down to page 309 and the justification for my having dealt with that previous matter at such length, my Lord, is the first line of paragraph 1, "another instance of Irving's poor scholarship is". In other words, you are saying that all the aforegoing is evidence of my poor scholarship? A.Indeed, yes. Q.Although you now admit that I did not use the book, I have not got the book? A.Do we have to go over this all over again, Mr Irving? I have already given my answer about five times to that. Q.I think I have made my point. Page 312, line 6 of your report? A.Yes. Q.My Lord, I necessarily have to leap forward onto little mountain peaks like this, because otherwise we will get bogged down in the minefield. MR JUSTICE GRAY: As long as they are mountain peaks. You also . P-17 must explain to me in what context if you go to the middle of a paragraph. We are on now the testimony of Shirmeister and Fritsche. MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you objected to the fact that I have mentioned the figure of 91 deaths in the Reichskristallnacht in the previous paragraphs, or are you going to insist that we look for the actual references? A.Well, it is not a very important point, Mr Irving. Q.Can you allow me to decide what is important? A.No. Please, I think I am entitled to say what points in my report I regard as important, and what I do not regard as important. You may disagree with that. That is another matter. But I am perfectly entitled to say that. This is not a particularly important point ---- Q.Do you agree you spent an entire page describing this? A.Will let me speak, please, Mr Irving? I am getting very fed up with these constant interruptions. I will read this out, OK? "In the War Path, published in 1978, Irving gave the official figure of 91 killed, arrived at by the Nazis themselves. Of course, this figure is still far too low, and does not account for suicides, of which there were 680 by Jews during or shortly after the pogrom in Vienna alone. Others were killed after their transport to the concentration camps. However, many other historians have quoted the figure of 91 deaths, and Irving's account . P-18 in 1978 at least gives some insight into what happened during the pogrom". Q.Will you please now stop? That is all we need? A.This is intended to comment relatively favourably, or to sort of find some redeeming features in the account you gave in 1978. It is not a very important criticism. Q.You say it is not an important criticism. You devote an entire paragraph, an entire page, to the suggestion that my entire portrayal is designed to diminish the suffering of the Jews. You pick on the figure of 91 and it turns out many other historians have quoted precisely the same figure. A.Mr Irving, let us read on a bit, shall we?
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