Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day023.12
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

     MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, I know you do not, I am asking the
         witness, where is the document that you are quoting from.

    A.   It is in the Berlin document centre.  It is cited in a
         book by Richard Brightman called The Architecture of
         Genocide.  It is not -- I mean, it does not play a very
         important part in the report, I have to say I am not quite
         concern why Mr Irving is asking about it.

    MR IRVING:  It is in the report, I am entitled to ask you, what

                                 .          109


          do you think --

     A.   Of course you are entitled to ask, I am not --

     Q.   -- what do you think our most secret wishes are at that
          time?  Do you have any indication from the document that
          the secret wishes concern the homicidal disposal of the Jews en masse?

     A.   -- I think that is one possible interpretation of that --

     Q.   One possible interpretation --

     A.   -- given the fact that that is what Labotsnik was doing.

    Q.   -- is it not evident from the September 22nd document, the
         handwritten agenda, that the discussion between Hitler and
         Himmler in which Labotsnik was mentioned was in fact the
         resettlement of the Lublin area with the ethnic Germans
         and this might equally well have been the most secret wish?

    A.   Well, the two were, of course, combined, and in fact on
         18th July 1942 Himmler had ordered that the Jews must
         finally disappear from Lublin, which is on page 495 of the
          Himmler calendar.  So very shortly before this the
         disappearance of the Jews from Lublin to make way for
         these ethnic Germans moved in there, of course was to be
         undertaken by Labotsnik and involved sending them off to
         Treblinka where the killing started on the 23rd July.  So
         I think it is reasonable to assume that he is talking here
         about the whole package.  These two things are very
         intimately connected.

                                 .          110


     Q.   There is one possible inference, right?

     A.   I think it is a reasonable inference.

     Q.   But the document obviously does not tell us anything else
          more specific, otherwise it would have been quoted, would it not?

     A.   Yes, that is what I think he is talking about.  He is
          talking about the killing, mass killing of Jews to make
          way for the people resettling the Lublin area from
          Bessarabia, Lorraine and Bosnia, ethnic Germans.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Would Labotsnik have had a particular wish to
         see Lublin being cleared of the Jews as quickly as possible?

    A.   I think, yes, I think that is certainly the case, yes.

    MR IRVING:  Would it have been a security wish? Was he chief of
         police in that region?

    A.   That is right, yes.

    Q.   The remaining messages in that paragraph, you do accept
         that I have adequately used them or referred to them in my
          biographies of Hitler and Goebbels?

    A.   Goodness, you do cite them, yes.

    Q.   Despite their very ugly language --

    A.   You certainly cite them --

    Q.   -- the reference to the 5,000 members of the chosen people and so on?

    A.   -- yes, you cite them.

    Q.   Page 433 of your report, please, in the last indented


                                 .          111


          passage on this page, it is admitted that the plaintiff
          did not draw attention to this minute, in fact, I did, did I not?

     A.   Yes.

     Q.   I quoted from it?

     A.   I think you were doing yourself an injustice.

     Q.   Yes.  So I quoted the lines of Himmler's September 1942
          agenda in full in Hitler's War on page 392, I just merely
          left out the reference to Globos, did I not?

    A.   Yes, that is right, on paragraph 3, page 434, I note in
         going through the pleadings in the case both the defence
         and Irving are, in fact, wrong in claiming that Irving has
         not used the note by Himmler in his work.

    Q.   Page 435, paragraph 4, I am again going to have ask you
         something from your memory, if you do not know the answer
         then just say so.

    A.   Yes, OK.

    Q.   Can you give one example where austvanderung as opposed to
          "evakuieren" or "umsiedein" is used explicitly by Hitler
         or anybody else as a euphemism for killing?  If you do not
         know the answer then just say so.

    A.   Well, let me draw attention to the passage we looked at a
         little bit earlier, where he talks about that and says
         that 75 per cent of those who emigrated from Germany in
         the 19th century died.

    Q.   Yes, well, they were killed or they died of natural

                                 .          112


          causes?

     A.   Well I think it is clear he means that they were
          transported in conditions so brutal and murderous that it
          came to the same thing.

     Q.   That they died because of privations?

     A.   Deliberately inflicted on them, yes.

     Q.   I do not really want to follow that up, I do not it really
          advances it.

                    Page 441.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If we are moving to a new topic it would help
         me, Mr Irving, if you put it in context rather than just
         going to some rather small point on the text.

    MR IRVING:  Your Lordship has rightly noticed that we have now
         moved to the Horthy meetings, Hitler and Horthy of April 1943.

                   (To the Witness) Your contention is, is it not,
         that I deliberated transposed the two sentences referred
         to on page 441?

     A.   Yes.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am sorry, I did not catch... which page, 441?

    MR IRVING:  Page 441 of the report.

    A.   The point here is that Hitler and Ribbentrop met the
         Hungarian leader, Admiral Horthy, on 16th and 17th April
         1943, and the minutes of the meeting make it clear that
         Hitler and Ribbentrop failed to get their message across


                                 .          113


          that the Hungarian Jews should be delivered to the Germans
          for killing, on the 16th.  And, in fact, seemed to have
          failed to make clear that killing was what was actually
          involved.  So on second day, the 17th April, they put much
          more pressure on Horthy, and were much more explicit, and
          on the 17th April, for example, Ribbentrop said the Jews
          had be annihilated or put in concentration camps, and
          Hitler said the Jews in Poland were shot if they were
          unable to work and he uses the usual language of
         tuberculous, bacilli and killing them and shooting hares
         and deer he talks about.  On the previous day, on the
         16th, Hitler, when Horthy had "surely you do not mean kill
         them", Hitler had said "there is no need for that".  But
         on the 17th he does not, he is much more explicit "they
         must be killed", and what is done in the account of this
         in Hitler's War is that phrase, "there is no need for
         that", is placed after an account of what Hitler on the
         17th, removing also Ribbentrop's remark about the
          concentration camps or killing into the footnote.  So, in
         other words, it makes it look as if Hitler is opposing the
         killing of Jews, whereas, in fact, he was advocating it.
         That is the nub of the case.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is very clear.  Thank you very much.

    MR IRVING:  A very useful summary.  But now let us cut down to
         the bottom line. Firstly, does it change the burden of
         Hitler's remark one bit whether it is uttered on the 16th

                                 .          114



          or 17th April 1943?

     A.   Yes, it does, yes, I have already explained that Hitler
          and Ribbentrop were much more explicit on the 17th because
          they had failed to get their message across to Horthy who
          was either too dim or too old or too devious to get the
          message on the 16th, so they were more explicit on the 17th.

     Q.   So on April 16th when Horthy apologised that he had done
          all he decently could against the Jews and continued "but
         they can hardly have been murdered or otherwise
         eliminated" Hitler reassured him, and there is dispute
         between us on that, "there is no need for that"?

    A.   Yes.

    Q.   In other words, there is no need for them to be murdered
         or otherwise eliminated?

    A.   That is right.

    Q.   Is he not being perfectly explicit there on April 16th as
         to what Adolf Hitler's position is?

     A.   No.  He is drawing back from the actual brutality of
         saying "yes, that is what I do mean".  He is trying to
         throw up a bit of smoke screen there.  In saying "give us
         your Jews", as it were, and Horthy says, "well, we do not
         really want to do that if they are going to be killed" and
         Hitler "says all right, that is okay, just give them to us".

    Q.   Did you find any support for this homicidal intent by


                                 .          115


          Adolf Hitler in the Hungarian version of this meeting?

     A.   Ah, right.  This is on pages 443 to 446 of my report,
          these are much less explicit, though they do not say what
          you claim that they say.

     Q.   What we are looking for is some reference in the Hungarian
          record to killing Jews.  "Adolf asked us to kill our Jews
          and we put up a strong fight against it", is there
          anything in that sense?

     A.   Well, the Hungarians were very careful about being
         explicit about this.

    Q.   Why should they have had to be?

    A.   Horthy, Horthy put in -- drafting a letter with the
         phrase -- and we are back to "ausrotten" here again, "Your
         Excellency", writing back, it was a follow up to the Nazi
         leaders, "further approached me that my government did not
         proceed in the extermination or extirpation of Jewry with
         the same radicalism with which this had been carried out
         in Germany".  That is also regarded -- desired for other
          countries too, but in fact he crossed that out.  He
         thought that was really too blunt and too brutal.

    Q.   Does this indicate that Hitler and Ribbentrop told Horthy
         about the radicalism that they were carrying out the
         operation in German?

    A.   That seems to have been the case, yes, on the 17th April.

    Q.   Is there any hint of that in Schmidt's report of their
         meeting that they had this lengthy disquisition to the

                                 .          116


          Hungarians on how they were killing all the Jews?

     A.   Yes, now on the 17th, when Horthy says again "what should
          he do with the Jews" after he had pretty well taken all
          means of living from them, because Horthy was anti-semitic
          too, although in a somewhat less extreme sense than
          Hitler.  "He surely could not beat them to death", the
          Reichs Foreign Minister replied that "the Jews must either
          be annihilated or taken to concentration camps, there was
          no other way".  The alternative given there, that is
         footnote 8, page 441, and the alternative given there
         makes it quite clear what "vernichten" means, it means "killed".

    Q.   So the word that is used there is "vernichten" again
         annihilated?

    A.   Yes.  He cannot be talking about anything else.  He gives
         the alternative, it is a sort of alternative of "work" or "death" again.

    Q.   You have read the entire Nuremberg transcript of the
          examination and cross-examination of Ribbentrop and
         Schmidt on the Horthy meeting?

    A.   Yes.

    Q.   Was there any admission at any point by either of those
         people, either by Ribbentrop or the interpreter, that
         there had been talk of annihilating in the murderous
         sense, the homicidal sense?

    A.   This statement by Ribbentrop was regarded by the


                                 .          117



          prosecution as an extremely damning piece of evidence,
          that Ribbentrop had been responsible for mass murder and
          therefore Ribbentrop, of course, in his own interests disputed this.

     MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Standing back from the documents, this is the
          Germans really soliciting Horthy to agree to the Hungarian
          Jews being transported to the General Government?

     A.   Yes.

     Q.   Looking at it, as it were, from Horthy's point of view,
         what would he have thought that the Nazis' interest in
         doing that was?

    A.   He is trying to find out, my Lord, and this is why he is
         asking repeatedly, "surely, you do not want to beat them
         to death? You do not want kill them?"  I have done
         everything that I can, he says.

    Q.   What other motive would the Nazis have in relation to
         Hungarian Jews?

    A.   None that I can imagine, my Lord.  They certainly do not
          say that they want to take them away for labour.

    Q.   Labour would be the alternative?

    A.   Would be the only other possible motivation that they
         could have.  But it is quite clear here they have got to
         be annihilated or taken to concentration camps.  And the
         whole language which is used, "bacilli" and giving a
         humane death to wild animals and so on makes it quite
         clear what they are talking about.


                                 .          118


     Q.   Yes, but I was thinking, leaving aside the documents, what
          the sort of thinking must have been on the two sides, the
          Nazi and the Hungarian side?

     A.   From Horthy's point of view, of course, he did, in fact,
          deport non-Hungarian Jews who were then killed.  But he
          objected on grounds of sovereignty to Hungarian Jews, his
          Jews, as it were, even though he put all sorts of legal
          discriminations on them to being taken away by a foreign power.

    Q.   Sorry, Mr Irving.

    MR IRVING:  Right, now I have to ask you two very clear
         questions following up on his Lordship's very
         well-informed questions; it is true that the Nazis not
         only wanted Hungarians as slave labour, but they also
         perceived (this is not evident from the Schmidt
         transcripts) the very large Jewish population of Budapest
         and the environments of Hungary as being a serious
         security problem within the boundaries of Hitler's empire,
          if you can put it like, that they regarded the Jewish
         population in Hungary as being a serious security threat
         or problem; is that right?

    A.   Let us have a look.  Where can we see this?  Where does he
         say this?  I am not disputing it, I just want to know what
         passage you are referring to in the Schmidt's minutes.

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