Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.18
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20

   Q.   OK.  Now would you get your Goebbels' book please, if you
        have it to hand, and turn to after page 332.  Sorry,
        I will have to count the pages.  I will count them as
        double:  1, 2, 3, 4.  On the left-hand side page there is

.          P-157

        a picture of Hitler wearing what looks like a bathrobe in
        the bottom of the picture or it might be a dust coat, I do
        not know, with a hat on.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   On the right-hand side there are some pictures with the
        heading "Isidor's Torment"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "From the moment of his arrival in Berlin on November 28th
        Dr Goebbels wages a remorseless war against the city's
        police chief, Dr Bernhard Weiss. Weiss sues him forty
        times, mostly for calling him Isidor", of course his name
        was not Isidor.  "Nazi caricaturist Mjolnir portrays him
        as a donkey skating on thin ice.  After a judge rules the
        cartoon defamatory, Goebbels' newspaper announces: Judge
        agrees donkey does look like Isidor."
                  I do not know what that is doing in that book.
        Perhaps you would tell us?
   A.   In this book?
   Q.   Yes.  You have put a picture of Dr Weiss or whatever he was.
   A.   If you have read the book ----
   Q.   He was chief of police, was he not?
   A.   I am sure his Lordship has read the book, although may not
        have.  Goebbels' arch enemy during the years when he was
        Gauleiters of Berlin before the Nazis came to power, was
        in fact Bernhard Weiss who Goebbels mocked and called

.          P-158

        "Isidor".  He raged this remorseless campaign against him
        in the newspapers he controlled resulting in no fewer than
        40 libel actions brought against him by the police chief,
        and this is a page devoted to that particular episode.
        Goebbels was obviously completely incorrigible.  He had
        utter contempt for the law courts in Berlin.  He repeated
        the libels.  Weiss fled to England after the Nazis came to
        power, and I believe his daughter is still alive in North London.
   Q.   She may still be.  We knew that she was in 1994.
   A.   Yes, I approached her to try to obtain a more flattering
        photograph of her father.
   Q.   Can I just read what you wrote, it saves us getting out
        yet another file.  This is revelations from the Goebbels'
        diary in the Historical Review for January/February -- no,
        I am reading from the wrong thing -- it is 1995.  My Lord,
        the reference is K3, tab 18, pages 7 to 8.  Mr Irving,
        I expect you will want to look at the full text.
   A.   I am sure we can take it if you just read it out.
   Q.   You publish a picture of Dr Weiss or Mr Weiss or
        Superintendent Weiss or whatever he was.
   A.   Yes, I went to some pains to try to get a better
        photograph of him.
   Q.   You write this, the right-hand column on page 7: "Isidor
        Weiss", and you retain Goebbels' nomenclature and you put
        the two quotes round the name.

.          P-159

   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "When Goebbels arrived in Berlin as Gauleichter in 1926 he
        was confronted by a city with 179,000 Jews, one third of
        all Jews in Germany and he made use of this fact. The
        Berlin population already receding because of the presence
        of these Jews.  In the coming years Goebbels repeatedly
        explained to foreign diplomats that the problem there was
        the usual one in which the Jewish population
        disproportionately controlled all the lucrative
        professions.  This rankled the Berlin's non-Jewish
        population of course and Goebbels, whether deliberately or
        by instinct, zeroed in on this as a wound that he could
        work on to promote the Nazi cause."
                  You seem to accept in that paragraph that
        Goebbels was right in thinking that the professions were
        disproportionately controlled by the Jews?
   A.   Well, it was not just Goebbels; the German Federal
        Statistical Office has provided me with the figures.
   Q.   I am putting a marker down because this is something which
        you are going to have to argue with Professor Evans
        about.
   A.   What the German Statistical Office told me?
   Q.   No.  About what the fact was.
   A.   Which fact?
   Q.   The one you have stated here.
   A.   In other words, the disproportionate ----

.          P-160

   Q.   "The Jewish population disproportionately controlled all
        the lucrative professions".  I put a marker down.  I am
        not going to argue about it now.
   A.   We are just going to argue about the word "all", are we?
   Q.   No.  Read the report, Mr Irving.
   A.   Well, can I suggest that Professor Evans also reads what
        President Roosevelt said about precisely the same
        situation in Germany when he said, in fact he made the
        completely impossible statement that if he had been the
        Germans he would have acted in exactly the same way
        because of this disproportionate, this imbalance.
   Q.   I do not know about Professor Roosevelt.
   A.   President Roosevelt.
   Q.   I am sorry.  Everybody in this court is a professor except
        you and me, Mr Irving.  "He was aided in this endeavour by
        the fact that his chief opponent there, Berlin's Deputy
        Police Chief who acted as though he was police chief, he
        was a real police chief, referred to him as being a chief,
        Dr Bernhard Weiss, a Jew, Weiss looked so much like a
        Jewish character, but his photographs did not need to be
        retouched by the Nazis.  He was stereotypically semitic in
        feature, short with rounded ears and hooked nose and
        wearing spectacles."
   A.   This is a description I took out of one of the
        contemporary Western newspapers I believe.
   Q.   We are not to take that as being any kind of endorsement

.          P-161

        by you, are we, Mr Irving?
   A.   No.  There is actually a very good book on Bernhard Weiss
        written by a Professor of history Cologne University whose
        name escapes me, and he made precisely that point, that
        because of his appearance he was unfortunately doomed to
        become a target of the Nazis.
   Q.   He deserved to be persecuted by Dr Goebbels.
   A.   That is not the words I used, Mr Rampton.  But this is
        precisely the reason why I went to great lengths to locate
        his daughter in London and tried to obtain a different
        photograph of her father than the one the Nazis used.
   Q.   I have one more reference I think in this, maybe more than
        one I do not know, in this file K4, tab 4, page 33 at the
        bottom of the clip, my Lord.
   A.   We are going to go out with a whimper.
   Q.   I doubt that, Mr Irving.  It is not my style.  We are not
        going to go out with a whimper.  Page 17 at the top.  This
        is you speaking to, and I will tell you who you are
        speaking to, somebody or people at Bow in London on 29th
        May 1992.  You say: "I had a lot of trouble with Simon
        Wiesenthal yesterday, and I remember that three or four
        years ago I had the unnerving experience sitting in my
        rental car after I had been speaking in London, not London
        England but London Ontario, which is about 200 miles west
        Toronto and I had driven back to Toronto that night, the
        speaking was very exhausting and I got back in Toronto at

.          P-162

        half past 2.00 on this November morning and as I drove up
        something street in Toronto, which is the main artery of
        Toronto, I pulled up at the traffic lights and glaring at
        me from the car next to me in the traffic lights was Simon
        Wiesenthal himself, his face hideously contorted by
        rage".  So, evidently, Mr Irving, some things make him
        cross too.  "I got a real shock because he looked into me
        through my driver's window and there was Mr Wiesenthal,
        this hideous, leering, evil face glaring at me, then
        I realised it wasn't Simon Wiesenthal, it was a Halloween
        mask [Applause].
                  "Now, those of who you have seen Mr Wiesenthal
        will know what I'm talking about.  Mrs Wiesenthal who has
        seen Mr Wiesenthal many times, of course, and she says to
        him at Halloween, 'Simon, please keep the mask on, you
        look so much nicer with it on'".  That is just pure racist
        abuse, is it not, Mr Irving?
   A.   On the contrary, the word "Jew" is not mentioned there
        from start to finish.  The racism is in your mind,
        Mr Rampton.  This is a reference to a person who is not
        one of the world's most attractive people.  He is known
        for not being particularly attractive.  Whether he is
        Jewish or not does not play any part at all.
   Q.   Mr Irving, really!  Will you turn back to ----
   A.   If I pick on any other name and put that name to this,
        then it would never have occurred to suggest, if I pick on

.          P-163

        any other race, but because Mr Wiesenthal is apparently
        Jewish, I do not know, but he presumably is Jewish,
        therefore, you say it is anti-Jewish.  It is not.  It is
        anti-ugly.
   Q.   Mr Irving, now we are going to end with a bang.  Turn
        back, please, to the top of page 16, will you?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "I have found governments being involved in trying to
        silence me in Canada and South Africa and Australia and
        I never used to believe in the existence of an
        international Jewish conspiracy".  Pause there.  Who is
        Simon or Simon Wiesenthal?  Who is Simon Wiesenthal?
   A.   He is an Austrian who has no connection at all with the
        Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
   Q.   Is he Jewish?
   A.   I presume he is, yes.
   Q.   Right, and so now we are going to see the context in which
        you put his Halloween mask.  "I never used to believe in
        the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy, and
        I am not even sure even now if there is an international
        Jewish conspiracy.  All I know is that people are
        conspiring internationally against me and they do turn out
        mostly to be" -- in fact, the word must have been "Jews",
        must it not?
   A.   I do not know.  It does not say.
   Q.   Oh, come on.  Look at the syntax of the sentence.

.          P-164

   A.   OK, let us assume it was "Jews", yes.
   Q.  "Applause, applause"?
   A.   But that is precisely what we are going to be
        demonstrating to the court in the next few days, how much
        this international endeavour has been, unfortunately,
        guided by the self-appointed leaders of that community.
   Q.   If you are going to attempt that, you will have to give me
        notice.  It is no part of your pleading and I shall have
        something to say about it because it has nothing to do
        with Mrs Lipstadt.
   A.   Well, you will see -- oh, and indeed it does and that is,
        undoubtedly, the reason why I have put in bundle E global.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, that is a digression.  We may have to
        come back to that.
   MR RAMPTON:  A digression.  But that inspiring observation,
        Mr Irving, was greeted with applause.  Do you see that?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Do you know why?
   A.   Probably because they thought it was funny or that they
        were applauding the fact that I said there was no
        international Jewish conspiracy or because -- I do not
        know.  What is your theory?
   Q.   They are very pleased that, in fact -- it is another of
        your clever, little sarcastic racist jokes about the Jews
         -- though you do not know there is an international
        Jewish conspiracy, it turns out most of the conspirators

.          P-165

        are Jews?
   A.   So, in other words, I am not allowed to criticise the fact
        that this community's self-appointed leaders around the
        world have set about trying to suppress freedom of speech,
        to abrogate my right to travel freely around the world,
        I am not allowed to criticise that because they are
        Jewish, is that right?  On the contrary, if I find any
        person or any body of people, whether they are black or
        yellow or Asian or French or Germans or leading counsel,
        indeed, who are trying to abrogate my rights to freedom of
        speech and free right to travel, then I will criticise
        them without fear or favour.  And the fact that this
        comment happens to be Jewish is neither here nor there. It
        cannot be construed as anti-Semitic.
   Q.   Shall we read on and see whether we agree with that,
        Mr Irving?  "We have one basic problem and this is, apart
        from the literature displayed on the table over there, we
        have no national" -- I do not know who "we" are -- "organ
        that we can read to find out what is going on.  I am not
        ashamed to say that I read the Jewish Chronicle to find
        out what they are doing because they seem pretty well
        informed".  This is the sort of Aryan Defence League
        against the Jews, the "we", is it?
   A.   Where do you get "Aryan Defence League" from?

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