Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.06
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I agree.  I have just said, I take
        Mr Rampton's point, that you are perfectly at liberty to
        say that you have left out a particular entry is
        significant for one reason or another, but I have the
        picture from the selected extracts and all I am asking you
        to do is to ----
   MR IRVING:  Speed things up.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  --- help on the overall association rather
        than go through individual diary entries.

.          P-49



   MR IRVING:  We have one more specific episode here, April 29th
        1992, there is a fax from Althans, and I say ----
   A.   April 19th?
   Q.   '92?
   A.   No, 19th.
   Q.   April 29th 1992.
   A.   Excuse me.
   Q.   "Fax from Althans with an horrendously tasteless
        invitation to my Tuesday press conference"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Then on May 4th, from the diary again, 1992 ----
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "The Manager of the Bahlscheroff has cancelled the booking
        because of Althans' horrendous invitation leaflet"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   So to turn to my original question which his Lordship
        wishes me to ask you, it is clear that relations with
        Althans were brittle?
   A.   I would say yes.
   Q.   Yes.
   A.   But intense.
   Q.   So although you quite rightly say there were contacts
        between myself and Althans, and his Lordship has seen an
        ongoing correspondence ----
   A.   But very intense.
   MR RAMPTON:  The witness was cut off he said intense, brittle

.          P-50



        but intense, is that right.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Thank you very much.
   MR IRVING:  Well, in the sense that our relations with Adolf
        Hitler during World War II were brittle but intense, is
        that correct?
   A.   This comparison does not hold.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, do not dealt with it at length because I
        do not think it helps either.
   MR IRVING:  Paragraph ----
   A.   Because may I add that I not caught into a wrong
        perception of my answer, it was intense co-operation based
        on the interaction with Zundel and others, and also, as
        I said, the Kuhnen connection, with which Althans has also
        very intense relationships at that time.  So they often
        came twice, like both of these groups or persons, to the
        same meetings where you attended.  So I see this
        collection of references that show that you have problems
        with him more on a tactical basis, you know.  You said he
        is unprofessional, he did wrong invitations.  So...
   MR IRVING:  Horrendous?
   A.   Or he messed the things up.  So, with respect to your
        efficiency to put your things down to the German audience,
        yes, he was not efficient, but because of the contents you
        shared it was at the beginning and in the coming year, you
        know, at the beginning, a very helpful and very intense
        relationship and co-operation.

.          P-51



   Q.   Until one learns more about the man and then you tend to
        break away from someone, would that be possible?
   A.   Yes, of course.
   Q.   Yes.  In paragraph 5.1.5, you mentioned once again there
        incidentally, Professor Funke, the name of "Kuhnen".  You
        do accept that I have never met Kuhnen, never had a single
        word exchanged with him and never written to him?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  He has already accepted that.
   A.   I have to even question this because I do not know, but
        there are hints that, for example, but, you know -- your
        Lordship, am I allowed just to do ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  We dealt with this yesterday.
   A.   Yes.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I have the impression that you accept you
        have got no evidence that Mr Irving has met Kuhnen or
        corresponded with Kuhnen?
   A.   They were at the same march.  That is not getting
        slippery.  He was on the same march, maybe only two or 20
        minutes, you know, you do not know ----
   MR IRVING:  Which march was this?
   A.   --- he was in the same meeting of the march to the
        Vertherren Halle, the famous, the second famous, as you
        say, and he was, so far the records are there, he was --
        Kuhnen was at the 3rd March '90.  But as long as we do
        not -- it is, you know, these groups are conspiracy.
   MR IRVING:  Conspiratorial.

.          P-52



   A.   Conspiratorial.  These groups, the Kuhnen connection, one
        of their main points is to act conspiratorially.  So they
        use you as a kind of the most political outsider, as
        Christian Worch told it in the letter in June '90, so
        there was a special interaction.  So this conspiratorial
        things, you even are not in their perception allowed to
        talk about this event, what really happened at 3rd
        March '90.  So you even from their perspective had to
        sanitize your diary.  There is nothing about the whole
        event at 3rd March of '90, and the lie.  So there is,
        I just have to say it, I have just to say that there are
        sources that said Kuhnen, Worch and Mr Irving were there,
        but, you know, as long as we have not the ----
   Q.   We are going to look at the sources later.
   A.   --- definitive proof, I have to be cautious at that.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, he is not on the list.
   MR IRVING:  Kuhnen?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No.
   A.   I did not know.
   MR IRVING:  Is Kuhnen not ----
   A.   He was on the list.
   MR IRVING:  He was on the list yesterday, I believe.
   MR RAMPTON:  That is a mistake.  I mean, I will have in the end
        to be guided by the evidence of the witness.  If the
        witness, under pressure from Mr Irving, refuses to concede
        that the link between Althans and Kuhnen is illusory,

.          P-53



        well, then he has to go on the list.
   MR IRVING:  It is the link between me and Kuhnen that we are
        interested in.
   MR RAMPTON:  I do not find that very difficult either, I have to say.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, on a point of law, I would like to be
        reminded of here, if a grave allegation is made in libel,
        do we have to expect an enhanced degree of proof and it is
        not just the balance of probabilities.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am not quite sure why you raise that point
        now, but the answer is yes.
   MR IRVING:  I just wanted to remind myself, in other words,
        what I can now be confident your Lordship is paying
        attention to.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  At the moment it seems to me that the link
        with Kuhnen is extremely tenuous and if there are not
        better fish to fry, if I can put it that way, then I am
        not impressed.  I really think we must move on.
   MR IRVING:  Paragraph 5.15, we have Remer who is one of the
        people on the list.  Will you accept just in two lines or
        one line that this July 22nd meeting with General Remer on
        the evidence which has been before the court, do you have
        it, Professor Funke?  It is on page 53.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   At this meeting with Remer at Flotto was a conversation
        with him for the purpose of interviewing him for my

.          P-54



        Goebbels biography.
   A.   Yes, it seems so, yes, and you did attend later on as
        I see.
   Q.   Yes, and although we have seen evidence that he may have
        been in the audience of some meetings I addressed, there
        is no other evidence of contact between us?
   A.   So far I see, yes.
   Q.   Paragraph 5.1.5, when I in line 2 of that describe
        somebody as being a bit of a right-wing friend of someone,
        a rather right-wing friend, does that ----
   A.   Where is it?
   Q.   Line 2 of paragraph 5.1.5.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   If I described somebody as being a rather right-wing
        friend of somebody, does that tell you something about my
        attitude to right-wingers?
   A.   No.
   Q.   It does not?  Does it not imply that I hold right- wingers
        at arm's length slightly?
   A.   No.  There are other statements that you describe yourself
        as a right-winger, but we come to that later.
   Q.   5.1.6, this demonstration, this little
        demonstration, which organize rather wickedly outside the
        German Sender Freies Berlin ----
   A.   Right.
   Q.   --- television station, of which we have seen the

.          P-55



        photograph, Pedro Varela was there, was he not?
   A.   I do not know.  This is photograph, yes, then he was there.
   Q.   He was next to me holding a placard calling German
        historians liars and cowards?
   A.   Yes, right, yes.
   Q.   How do you know that it was because of the repugnance of
        my views that the historians refused to debate with me,
        Jaeckel and the other historians who have been invited on
        to this panel?
   A.   So far I know it is because of your radicalization of your
        revisionist viewpoints since you endorse the so-called
        Fred Leuchter report.
   Q.   Like the Second Defendant in this case, all these
        historians refuse to debate with people who have different opinions?
   A.   No, say it again.
   Q.   These historians refuse to debate with people who hold
        different opinions to themselves?
   A.   No, not at all, not at all.  They are very informed and
        debatable, debating scholars, like Jaeckel, for example.
        I know him very well.
   Q.   There is a footnote on the previous page 53, 158, you
        refer to a letter that I say that I am brushing up my
        Holocaust vocabulary?
   A.   It is on?

.          P-56



   Q.   Page 53, because I am about to go to Spain, am I not, and
        go on a lecture tour organized by Mr Varela?  This is footnote 158.
   A.   Excuse me.
   Q.   In the meantime, I will freshen up my Holocaust vocabulary?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   If you were going to make a lecture tour in Spain, in
        Spanish, would you also want to know how to translate
        words ----
   A.   Yes, of course.
   Q.   --- and you would make sure you have the correct words?
   A.   Of course.
   Q.   That is what that refers to, in other words?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   There was nothing sinister about it.  Paragraph 5.1.7,
        this is still about the Berlin demonstration, and I say
        that some of the people who are turning up on our behalf
        are some quite rough in my private diary, is it not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   What was the political situation in Berlin at that time?
        Was there a violent left-wing scene?  I mean, the
        anarchists, were they an extremely violent gang of thugs
        who went around brutalising people?
   A.   That period of time I was in Berkeley, California.
   Q.   Well, Berkeley was much the same, was it not?

.          P-57



   A.   Not, at that point of history.
   Q.   It was when I spoke there.
   A.   No.
   Q.   But in Berlin?
   A.   So I do not feel, you know, endangered by this.
   Q.   I am sure you do not, but, well ----
   A.   As a normal person ----
   Q.   What is the word ----
   A.   --- and also my friend.
   Q.   What does the word "Chaoten" mean to you?  It is
        C-H-A-O-T-E-N?
   A.   Chaoten?  You want a good translation?
   Q.   Well, I just want to know what image does it conjure up?
        It is frequently used by the press, is it not, to describe
        people to breaking up demonstrations?
   A.   Yes.  They bring up demonstrations and doing it too often,
        this is a kind of subtext of it.
   Q.   So if you were organizing any kind of demonstration, even
        on the smallest scale in Berlin, you would want to go
        along and make sure that you were not going to be beaten
        to a pulp, you would have people there who were able to
        protect your suit or whatever?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, you have lost me completely.
        I just do not know what point you are seeking to make.
   MR IRVING:  The witness has referred to the fact that,
        obviously, I made a note in my diary that some of the

.          P-58



        people who were coming along to our demonstration that
        night were rough necks, some quite rough, I think are the
        words, and I am just pointing out there was obviously a
        reason why we were glad to have one or two people with
        shoulder muscles there.
   A.   Was there a kind of violent interaction?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, Professor Funke ----
   MR IRVING:  We have moved on.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  --- don't let us spend time.
   MR IRVING:  Paragraph 5.1.8, please?  "Irving told
        journalists", towards the end of that paragraph, "'The
        result of this report is final.  There was no mass murder
        with poison gas'"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Do you accept that this was not a verbatim transcript of
        that particular press conference
   A.   It was not a what?
   Q.   Verbatim transcript, it is not a worlaut protokol?
   A.   There was no mass murder with poison gas.  "Es gab keine
        Massentotung durch Giftgas".
   Q.   Yes, but you accept that this is not necessarily a
        verbatim protocol of my actual words as spoken at that
        press conference
   A.   Yes, it is a summary, it seems to.

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