Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.15
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

.          P-137

        you did or did not have an association with him, and if
        you did what it consisted of.
   MR IRVING:  Thank you, my Lord.  My Lord, it is helpful to know
        what questions we need answers for, I think, in this
        case.  Will you, please, therefore, answer the question
        suggested by his Lordship, what meaningful contacts did
        I have with Mr Schwierzak, to your knowledge?  I insert
        the word "meaningful" as a means of slimming the answer down.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, I do not think I have got my
        message across at all.  The burden of Professor Funke's
        evidence -- I have said this many times -- is that you had
        associations with a number of individuals, including
        Schwierzak, and that those individuals are ----
   MR IRVING:  Extremists.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  --- in one way or another extremists.
   MR IRVING:  Yes.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is his case.  Mr Schwierzak is on this
        famous list.  He is said to be connected with the National
        Offensive.  I do think that it is for you to put to this
        witness what your case is.  You know what contacts you had
        or whether you had any contacts with Schwierzak and I,
        therefore, think it is not exactly candid of you to ask
        him what evidence he has got.
   MR IRVING:  Well ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The evidence is set out in tab 13.  I know

.          P-138



        what the evidence is, you know what the evidence is, but
        what is your case?  That is what the object of
        cross-examination is.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, we are looking at events that happened 11
        or 12 years ago.  These names mean nothing whatsoever to
        me for the most part.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So you are not conscious of having had any
        communication with Schwierzak at all?
   MR IRVING:  And I am perfectly prepared to be educated to the
        contrary if this expert witness knows quite simply off the
        top of his head, "Mr Schwierzak organized 20 meetings for
        you in Munich, do you not remember?"
   A.   It is stated here, I mean.
   Q.   But he just given an answer which I would have found quite
        acceptable that, apparently, Mr Schwierzak was involved in
        organizing one meeting for a very tiny group called the NO
        which was not an illegal body, had not been banned, am I right?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But what is your case, Mr Irving?
   MR IRVING:  That is the case.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Is it you cannot remember the man and do not
        know him from Adam or not?
   MR IRVING:  That is quite clearly the case.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is?  Well, I am afraid I am probably the
        only one in court who did not realize, but I did not
        realise that you were saying that you had no idea who this

.          P-139



        man is.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, at the beginning of yesterday's evidence,
        your Lordship will remember that I showed the witness a
        list of 6,500 names of people with whom I have had
        meaningful contacts over the last, well, since 1993, if I
        can put it like that, and to remember one single name out
        of that is a fluke, particularly if I have only had one
        meeting organized by him and I was speaking at this time
        at 160 meetings per year.  I will just ask this question.
        You say that the NO was a relatively small organization or
        diminutively small organization?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Was it illegal at that time?
   A.   No.
   Q.   Had I any way of knowing that it might sometime be banned?
   A.   Yes, you could have.
   Q.   My Lord, I really do not see the point of wasting time on
        Mr Schwierzak.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, you corresponded with Mr Schwierzak.
        That is what puzzles me.
   MR IRVING:  Maybe I should look at bundle E sometime and
        refresh my memory.
   A.   I mean we can do it now.  It is stated here.
   MR IRVING:  But, I mean, when these bundles are dropped on me
        from a great height as they were on a weekend ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  With that, of course, I am sympathetic.

.          P-140



   MR IRVING:  I am preparing my cross-examination simultaneously
        and running a family and a business.
   A.   It is stated in the report, it is in your diary, and here
        just you can, it is one page, it is a shortening, a letter
        to Althans stating something about Schwarzik, so you did
        not know the right name at that moment.  But then a
        circular by Plaintiff addressed, amongst others, to
        Michael Schwierzak, again in January '92.  Then the letter
        Worch to Plaintiff suggesting to Plaintiff that Schwierzak
        might be able to provide two dates in South Germany on
        Plaintiff's tour.  Letter, Worch to Plaintiff, assuring
        Plaintiff that Schwierzak can provide two dates outside
        Frauberg.  Letter Schwierzak to Plaintiff.  Plaintiff
        records speaking at NO meeting outside Stuttgart in
        Singlfingen.  Then letter, Plaintiff to Ernst Zundel,
        complaining about NO with good reasons I have to say.
        Then Schwierzak to Plaintiff.  That Schwierzak to
        Plaintiff.
                  So it is all out of your disclosure, letters
        Schwierzak to Plaintiff enclosing an article that will
        surely interest you in '95.  So it is between '91 and '95
        and it will refresh your memory if you read it.
   Q.   Professor Funke, if somebody is receiving sometimes 100
        letters a day, right, and if somebody is writing 50
        letters a day, is he likely to remember 10 years later the
        names if the people with whom he has corresponded?

.          P-141



   A.   That is why we refresh your memory.
   Q.   All right.  Can I suggest that if I asked that question,
        Mr Schwierzak is a man who played no part whatsoever in my
        political horizon, is that likely, and then I will ask you
        a bit about his alleged extremism which is also going to
        be useful.  In other words, let me phrase the question
        differently.  If  cannot remember the man's name 10 years
        after the event, is it likely he was very important to me
        or to anybody else?
   A.   It depends on the structure of your memory, I have to say.
   Q.   All right.
   A.   I do not know.  Of course, it can be that you lost the
        memory about this person because ----
   Q.   Will you tell us what you know about this man's
        extremism?  On what do you base the suggestion that he is
        an extremist in the sense as used in this trial?
   A.   The National Offensive is quite of the same political
        structure and to have the same ideas like the NL, the
        Nationalist in Hamburg.  It is a southern part of this
        neoNational Socialist cadre organizational stuff in the
        early '90ss.  You have NO there, you have the NB nearby in
        Bavaria, you have the National Bloc, you have the
        Nationalist, you have the GA, the German Alternative, the
        Deutsche Alternative.  These are the various, you know, in
        their language gau.
   Q.   Gau?

.          P-142



   A.   Yes, gau.  Yes, it is really the National Socialist, what
        we are talking about.
   Q.   What is the evidence that himself had extreme opinions,
        apart from the opinion of your consensus and the social
        sciences, is there any evidence?  Did he engage in any
        extremist acts?  Did he publish any extreme literature?
   A.   Oh, yes, he did so.  Yes, he did so.
   Q.   Did he write any extremist books?  Did he throw pigs into
        other people's gardens or do any of those other extreme things?
   A.   He did something together with his whole bunch of people,
        and I have to go to the details in looking up what he else
        did aside of this group.  But then it cost some time.
   Q.   Can you not remember what he did?  Was he not very
        important in your memory either?
   A.   He is as important as -- you know, Schwierzak was ----
   Q.   Totally unimportant, in other words?
   A.   As important as Worch, aside of the leading position he
        got after the death of Kuhnen, as important as Thomas
        Dienel.  So they were not important for me because before
         '89 whatsoever were not important, but since they got
        this influence in East Germany to lead violent skinheads
        and took part in the revisionist movement, they got
        important and influenced the people to a high degree.  So
        that in the course of these years the death rate of
        foreign peoples rose, the destroying of Jewish cemeteries

.          P-143



        rose, the criminal acts against of right-wing extremists
        rose to a height of 88,000.
   Q.   Was he prosecuted for any of these actions?
   A.   Oh, they organized that in this cadre, in this way of
        right-wing extremist cadres are doing it ----
   Q.   But you do not mention this in your report?
   A.   Propagating ideas of extreme nationalist sort and the like.
   Q.   You do not mention any of these prosecutions of
        Mr Schwierzak in your report, do you?  You say that he was
        given a suspended sentence for trying to revive an
        organization he had previously set up and which had been
        banned, which appears to be a pretty mild kind of offence
        to me.
   A.   I referred, I know, I do not know what I am referring,
        what is in the report, I referred, I know that the NO
        because of this National Socialist ideas was banned in the
        same year, in '92, right, so there is a record on that.
   Q.   Yes, but you tried to give the impression in response to
        my question as to what extremist acts he had committed or
        thoughts he had expressed, you start talking about violent
        acts and murders and so on, and yet when I ask you in
        detail was he prosecuted, then the answer is no?
   A.   It is, no, I did not say this.  It is the very
        organizational capacity of this NO, tiny as it is, it
        instigated hatred against foreigners, it instigated

.          P-144



        anti-Semitism and fuelled these kinds of activities of
        skinheads in that area where he was active.
   Q.   What evidence do you have for these statements or are you
        just saying it for the court at present?  Do you have any
        evidence to back up these allegations?
   A.   Yes, it is the reasoning of the Minister of Interior to
        ban this group, it is the reasoning ----
   Q.   Is that the Federal Ministry for the Interior or the
        Bavarian Ministry of the Interior?
   A.   It is the Federal Minister of Interiors, so far I recall.
   Q.   Is that a Socialist Minister?
   A.   No, I think it was at that time Manfred Kanter who was a
        more right-winger within the central political scenery.
   Q.   So in response to my question as to whether you know
        anything in detail that Mr Schwierzak has done, you come
        up with just vague stories about what the NO or the
        right-wing groups to which the NO was associated has done?
   A.   No, it is very decisive.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  He founded the NO, so it is not unreasonable
        to suppose that there was a link between what the NO did
        and Mr Dienel -- and Mr ----
   MR IRVING:  Was the NO to which I spoke at any time an illegal
        or banned organization?  We have had that.
   A.   The NO, yes, it was, it get banned end of '92, as I said.
   Q.   When did I speak to it, Professor Funke?
   A.   Before.

.          P-145



   Q.   The year before that, right?
   A.   I know that and I said it.  I did not say anything
        different.
   Q.   Am I right in saying that you find difficulty in
        remembering any details at all about Mr Schwierzak, any
        concrete, meaningful details apart from vague
        associations?
   A.   It is not a vague association to know that he is the
        leading person of this association, NO.
   Q.   But never prosecuted for any illegal acts?
   A.   Not personally so far.
   Q.   Yes, thank you.  My Lord, he is the last person on the
        list with whom I have not dealt.  We have knocked out all
        the names, effectively, except for some of the bigger
        names.  Karl Philipp who is very little on ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, do not make a speech now.  I mean, if
        that concludes your cross-examination?

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