Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.13 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q.Can I ask you to go, in that case, please, to pages 15, 16 and 17 of the bundle? This is a little bundle of documents issued by a British authority, the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, even earlier than that Staff Evidence Analysis sheet, November 16th, 1945? A.Yes. Q.Does it show as the final item which they have typed a copy of, actually the contents of the Schlegelberger memorandum, typed out in full with all the initials and everything else? A.Yes. Q.So it existed at that time, the British had it, but by the time the Americans got their hands on the file of photocopies, this particular item had somehow vanished? A.Yes, or been mislaid. Q.Or been mislaid? A.Could not be located. So there was no indication that it still existed. Q.How high would you rate the importance of this document in the order of things as an historian? Was the document linking Adolf Hitler by name with the Final Solution, or with the solution of the Jewish problem? Is it an authentic document? Do you accept that? . P-114 A.Well, I think this raises the question of your double standards in the evaluation of documents. If we turn to the document itself, we have heard you in the course of this trial, Mr Irving, using the most nit-picking flimsiest excuses to try and discredit documents you do not like. Here we have a document which has no security classification, no date, no signature, no reference number. It is clearly in a file that was made up after the war, because the British Foreign Office list the documents as documents found among the files of the Ministry of Justice. So we do not actually know where it came from. It is merely conjecture to say that it was written by Schlegelberger, who was the acting Minister of Justice in 1942. There is no letter head on it at all. And, of course, as evidence of Hitler's views, it is third hand. That is to say, it is somebody, possibly Schlegelberger, reporting on what Lammers had told him about what Hitler had said. There is no indication of actually who wrote this. Q.Can you answer the question? A.If we were to apply your criteria, one would cast tremendous doubt upon this document. But, of course, you have not done that yourself because it is a document that supports your own views. Q.Can you now answer the question? Does the document appear to be authentic? Have you any reasons to doubt its . P-115 authenticity? A.It appears to be an authentic document. Q.Can you agree that this document comes with an amazing pedigree by way of all the documents indicating where it has been and in whose hands ever since the end of the war, which we do not have in one single case in connection with the documents whose integrity I have impugned? A.No. You said yourself it went missing for a long time. But that is an amazing pedigree, Mr Irving? Q.Yes. Can you agree that the document is referred ---- A.It is? A document has gone missing for many years. That is an amazing pedigree. Q.Can you look back to page 22, please, which is the letter from the National Archives to me in 1972? In the final paragraph does it say: "The documents are black photostatic reproductions of originals certified by R M W Kempner to have been located among the Justice Ministry files at the Ministerial Collection Centre in West Berlin"? A.Yes. They describe it as an alleged note on Hitler's intentions and so on. Q.We are looking just at the pedigree of the document. A.That is part of it. Clearly the National Archives do not want to accept that it actually exists because they cannot find it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could we proceed on the assumption that it . P-116 has a lot of odd features, but you are prepared to accept that it does appear to be authentic? A.Yes, certainly. MR IRVING: To repeat my previous question, does this document come with a somewhat better pedigree by way of documents tracing its provenance than the document whose integrity I have impugned? A.No. Q.On which basis do you place that statement? The document whose integrity I have impugned dated June 24th 1943 has come without any pedigree whatsoever, it is just a document which has turned up in the Auschwitz Museum Archives, having been delivered to them by East Berlin? A.This document is the document that has turned up in a postwar file, claimed to have been located amongst the files of the Ministry of Justice. We do not know. We do not have that original pedigree. Q.I am not going to spend much more time questioning this, but have you seen correspondence between myself and Mr Kempner, who was the Deputy Chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, in which he accepts that this document was genuine? A.I am accepting it is genuine, Mr Irving. Q.So the whole of that was just a bit of a ---- A.No. It was an answer to your question. Q.The question I asked was, do you accept that this document . P-117 is authentic, and now we have a yes from you? A.Yes. The question you asked, Mr Irving---- MR RAMPTON: That is not fair because the question was two barrelled, or sometimes five or six barrelled. The question also was, do you accept this has a better pedigree than the document which actually comes from two archives, in two different forms, that Mr Irving impugns? The answer to that is no. MR JUSTICE GRAY: True, but that was another question. Yes, I accept that. Anyway, we have now got to the point where Professor Evans accepts, despite the odd feature, that it is an authentic document. Shall we now see what it actually means? MR IRVING: Very well. Professor Evans, would you propose a translation, or read to us the translation you have given of the document on page 364, of the Schlegelberger memorandum? A.Yes. Q.Audibly so that the courtroom can here, please? A.I hope I always do this. Do I mumble, Mr Irving? It is in the sort of past reported speech, which makes it somewhat difficult to translate exactly. Q.Past reported speech? A.Yes. Herr Reich Minister Lammers informed me that the Fuhrer had repeatedly, or has repeatedly, declared or explained to him that he, well, wanted, literally wanted . P-118 to know. Q.You can read out your translation on page 364, if you want. A.-- wanted the solution of the Jewish Question put back until after the war. Accordingly, the present discussions possess a merely theoretical value in the opinion of Reich Minister Lammers. But he will be in all cases concerned that fundamental decisions are not reached by a surprise intervention from another agency without his knowledge. Q.Yes. It is actually written in the subjunctive, is it not? A.That is right. It is reported speech. Q.You indicate it as reported speech. A.Yes. Q.It is the equivalent of the perfect tense, I suppose. In other words, "he has said", "the Fuhrer has repeatedly stated", you have said "had" but, if we cannot agree on that, we will move on to the next one. A.Yes. Q.The initials that are on the bottom left hand corner, is that where you would normally expect on a German document the distribution list to be, who the document is addressed to? A.Yes. Q.It is addressed to State Secretary Freisler? A.Not necessarily. I think a possible reading of that is . P-119 "17.7.Freisler" or, in other words, 17th July, which would make it 17th July 1941. It is rather difficult, because the S looks to me like "17.7.Freisler". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say 1941? A.Because that more likely would fit in for other reasons. Q.I see, for extraneous reasons. MR IRVING: I missed this. Where do we see the 41 then? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I have just asked. MR IRVING: Thank you very much, my Lord. A.I said it said "17.7", which would be 1941 in more likelihood. Q.Do you not accept that the first hieroglyph is the Zutelin German handwriting S, followed by a T, followed by another S, which is the correct abbreviation for State Secretary, which is what his rank was? A.Very obscure, but I think it is a possible reading of it, that it is a 17.7. Q.Yes. If it was Freisler and if he was State Secretary, you would not expect to see him there without a rank in front of his name, would you? You would not expect somebody just to write down just "Freisler"? A.It is rather peculiar. It looks almost as if there is a capital F, and then somebody else has written in after it the rest of his name. It is not his initials, it is not the normal way in which he would himself indicate that he received it. It is another peculiarity of this document. . P-120 Q.Could you answer the question? You would not expect, if he is the second most important man in the Ministry, that he would be happy to get a document addressed to him just as Freisler? A.Well, we do not know who has put this on this. It might well be somebody else at some other time. Q.This goes back to my earlier question. Is this the place where, on German Civil Service documents the distribution list was always placed, on the bottom left-hand corner? A.Normally. It has two, seems to be UB4 and U something 5 underneath it, UB5, which would be presumably divisions where it was going to be sent to. Q.Would I be right at this point in suggesting that your reluctance to make progress with this document is because you are very unhappy about this document? A.No. I am trying to point out, Mr Irving that, if you did not like this document's contents, you would be saying everything that I am saying and no doubt a great deal more. It is normal on a document, this is a kind of scrap of paper with no letter heading, no date, no signature, it would be normal actually on a formal important document to type the distribution list on the bottom, particularly if it was relating to a decision that was made. Q.Have you worked ---- A.This looks like some kind of note made by somebody to themselves as a kind of aide memoire. . P-121 Q.A minute? A.Yes, a minute. It is not a formal minute. It is clearly a kind of aide memoire of a rather informal sort, as it does not have any of the normal things that you get with a formal document. Q.Yes. It has some kind of paginated number in the top left, which appears to be, as you state in your expert report, probably put on there by the Nuremberg authorities, is that correct? A.Yes, crossed out. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we were proceeding on the assumption that it is accepted to be authentic? A.Yes. I am happy to go along with that. MR IRVING: Yes. So it is a memorandum that has been drawn up, unless I am wrong, for the attention of State Secretary Freisler and two other departments of the Justice Ministry? A.Yes Freisler certainly seems to have been, I guess, an addressee of it. Q.Somebody is passing on to him the information from Hans Lammers, who is the head of the Reichschancellory, is that correct? A.Yes. His own information about a meeting or a phone conversation or something with Lammers. That is what he is passing on. His own report on a meeting with Lammers. Q.In which Lammers has passed on the not insignificant . P-122 information that the Fuhrer has repeatedly said he wants the solution of the Jewish problem postponed until the war is over. A.Yes,. Q.So it would be interesting, would it not, to find out when this memorandum came into existence? A.Exactly, yes.
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