Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day023.08
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

    Q.   Well, just a simple answer will ----

    A.   No, I cannot give a simple answer because it is a loaded
         question.  That is the problem with your questions,
         Mr Irving.  I have already been through this document and
          I have noted that when Hitler states that Germans
         emigrated, which is the meaning of the word "auswanderer",
         from Germany in the 19th century, in his view 75 per cent
         of them died.  It is a deadly process.  We have no
         evidence for that.  It is a completely absurd idea, they
         did not, but that is his view of emigration.  There is a
         clear connection there.

    Q.   Yes, but do you ----

                                 .          69


     A.   And then he goes on to talk about the way in which he
          thought that Jews drove Germans to emigrate in a way that
          describes exactly the way, in fact, that the Germans drove
          the Jews to emigrate.

     Q.   This is purely and etymological exercise, Professor.  How
          would you translate then "Jewish emigration" in the
          emigrating sense, not the killing sense?

     A.   Yes, I mean, you enter reservations about the point of
          indulging in purely etymological exercises ----

    Q.   Can you just answer the question?   Would it be "Juden Auswanderung"?

    A.   --- given the misuse that you make of them.  But, of
         course, it means "emigration".  I have said that
         repeatedly.  That is the literal meaning of the word "Auswanderung".

    Q.   What German word would you use for "Jewish emigration"?
         "Juden Auswanderung"?

    A.   Something like that, yes, "Judische Auswanderung",

          whatever.

    Q.   Is that not precisely the word used in the September 1942
         document that we are going to be looking at later?

    A.   Well, let us have a look at it.

    Q.   Can we tackle things in sequence, Professor ----

    A.   Well, you are the one who introduced the September
         document, Mr Irving, I did not.

    Q.   --- otherwise we are not going to complete today.  We will

                                 .          70


          come to that document in sequence and in the order that
          I dictate and not the order that you dictate.

     A.   You have just said you want to discuss it now, Mr Irving.

     Q.   I am discussing it now.

     A.   Now you are accusing me of bringing it up out of
          sequence.  This is ridiculous.

     MR JUSTICE GRAY:  This is all degenerating.

     Q.   I am discussing it now ----

     MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Professor Evans, do not be provoked and,
         Mr Irving, can we try to get on?

    MR IRVING:  Yes.

    A.   It is very hard, my Lord.

    MR IRVING:  My Lord, the reason I did it here is because in
         this one footnote the word "Auswanderer" is used five or
         six times in the clearly emigrating sense.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  We have been over this many times.
          "Auswanderung" can be used euphemistically, but it is not
         always used euphemistically.

     MR IRVING:  It is a rubber word.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But can I ask just about a general question
         which I think can be answered quite briefly?  The table
         talk on page 407 of your report and the Goebbels diary
         entry on page 408 talk in terms of getting the Jews out of Europe?

    A.   Yes.

    Q.   Do you regard either of those documents because that is

                                 .          71



          what they are, as being on their face sinister?

     A.   Yes, I do, my Lord.  I mean, I think by this time -- --

     Q.   Because it is euphemistic or for some other reason?

     A.   It is euphemistic and particularly in the table talk in
          May 1942 this linkage of mass death with emigration, not
          to mention the statements about beating racial pests to
          death.  I mean, they are wrapped up -- he is, of course,
          trying to be euphemistic and then spins these ridiculous
          fantasies about the climatic, supposed climatic,
         resilience of Jews and so on.  But they are both rather
         sinister, particularly when you take into account what was
         happening in the extermination camps at this time.

    MR IRVING:  With respect, I suggest the word "sinister" is
         wrong.  "Homicidal" is probably what his Lordship meant.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I was using a euphemism as well, if you like,
         but I thought everybody understood what the term meant.
    A.   Yes, I certainly did.

    MR IRVING:  But would you not expect precisely this kind of
          conversation to happen around the dinner table if somebody
         said, "Adolf, we are getting word from the BBC and from
         Voice of America, whatever it is, that killings are
         happening and that the Jews are dying like flies in the
         East", whereupon Hitler says, "So what!  Look at the way
         our people suffered"?  Is it not exactly that kind of
         conversation that you are looking at here?  It is a "so
         what" conversation, is it not?


                                 .          72



     A.   I am not sure I follow the argument there.

     Q.   Is it not Adolf Hitler being tough, talking tough to his
          dinner table people saying, "Show these people no mercy.
          Look at how our people suffered when the boot was on the other foot"?

     A.   He certainly is saying that, yes.

     Q.   So, in other words, although it is tough talk, it is not
          necessarily Adolf Hitler saying, "Yes, we are killing them
          too like flies"?

    A.   That does not follow at all, Mr Irving.

    Q.   Yes, thank you very much.

    A.   When I say "it does not follow at all", I mean your
         conclusion does not follow at all.  Let us get that quite
         clear what I mean by that.  I think you might have
         misunderstood it.  I do not think that because he is
         talking tough, it is just tough talk, that there is a
         reality behind it with which he is quite aware.

    Q.   Yes, but there is no evidence for that in these lines.  I
          do not want to start nit-picking, but it is just tough
         talk that is recorded at this dinner table conversation?

    A.   Well, this is the leader of ----

    Q.   Ugly talk?

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  We can go through it, Mr Irving, if you want
         to, but I have the witness's answer and I know you do not
         agree with it, but I have the witness's answer.

    A.   The question is that Goebbels, of course, was quite aware


                                 .          73



          that resettlement meant that the Jews were being killed --
          60 per cent of them were being killed, he says in his
          diary -- and so why would he have described Hitler's views
          as being radical and unrelenting if that had only meant
          emigration?  The fact that he knew it involved killing
          must, surely, have meant that Hitler's views were in
          favour of yet more killing.

     MR IRVING:  On page 410 of your report -- we are slowly chewing
          our way forward -- line 3, you say there is a large number
         of instances where Hitler spoke openly about
         exterminating  ----

    A.   In my letter of 10th January -- I am sorry to interrupt  ----

    Q.   You have withdrawn that, have you?

    A.   --- I have withdrawn the word "openly", yes.  That was
         rather careless.

    Q.   Very well.

    A.   It is open to misinterpretation.

     Q.   Three lines from the bottom of that same page, you quote
         the Goebbels diary:  "It would end with the annihilation
         of the Jews".  Once again we have that old, familiar,
         rubber word "vernichtung", do we not?

    A.   Yes, I think "annihilation" is an exact etymological
         translation of that.  I tried to be careful to render it
         in that terms.  "Nicht" means "nothing", so "vernichtung"
         means "making nothing of" or "annihilation", in other

                                 .          74


          words.

     Q.   On page 412 of your expert report we have all those old
          words again.  On line two you have the destruction of the
          Jewish element, which again is the "Vernichtung" is it
          not?  That is in the Mufti conversation.

     A.   Yes.  That should mean annihilation then.

     Q.   You did not give us the German text of that, did you?

     A.   No, I did not.

     Q.   But you will find that I provided you with the German text now?

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  To save time, are you prepared to accept that
         is "vernichtung".

    MR IRVING:  At page 33.

    A.   Let us have a look at the German text, my Lord.  This is very easy.

    MR IRVING:  Page 33 of my bundle.  I went to the original
         microfilm last night and transcribed the passage in
         German, so it is "vernichtung" there again?
     A.   Yes, that is "vernichtung".  I am quite happy to render
         that as annihilation.

    Q.   On December 12th, the indented passage two lines down,
         they would experience their own annihilation.  We have
         "vernichtung" again.

    A.   Indeed, yes.

    Q.   By way of variety, three lines from the bottom, "the
         extirpation of Jewry", that is now "Ausrottung"?


                                 .          75


     A.   Yes.

     Q.   We have the whole kaleidoscope of words being used there
          by the Nazis?

     A.   By Hitler, not by the Nazis.

     Q.   Over the page, page 413, line 4 of the indented passage,
          we have once again January 25th 1942.  That is just five
          days after the Wannsee conference, is it not?

     A.   Yes.

     Q.   All Hitler is saying is the Jews have to get out of
         Europe.  Four lines lower down, "I am just saying, he has
         to go".  It does not really very homicidal to me.

    MR RAMPTON:  Well, read on.

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.

    A.   Let me read out the whole passage.

    MR IRVING:  Then comes the tough talk.

    A.   Of course.  When it gets tough, it is just talk.  When it
         is not tough, then it is real.  That is your view.

    Q.   He is not saying we are setting about- he said if they die
          on the way ---?

    MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Let the witness read it.  Please do not let
         us have this batting backwards and forwards.

    A.   Hitler says in this table talk 25th January:  "If I take
         the Jews out today, then our bourgeoisie becomes unhappy:
         what is happening then with them?  But have the same
         people troubled themselves about what would become of the
         Germans who had to emigrate?  One must do it quickly, it

                                 .          76


          is no better if I have one tooth pulled out by a few
          centimetres" -- he does say centimetres but I think he
          means millimetres -- "every three months, when it is out,
          the pain has gone.  The Jew has to get out of Europe.
          Otherwise we get no European understanding.  He incites
          the people the most, everywhere.  In the end:  I do not
          know, I am colossally humane.  The Jews", carries on
          Hitler "were maltreated at the time of the Pope's rule in
          Rome.  Up to 1830 eight Jews were driven through the city
         every year with donkeys.  I am just saying, he has to
         go".  That is, the Jew has to go.  "If he collapses in the
         course of it, I can't help there.  I only see one thing:
         absolute extermination, if they don't go of their own
         accord.  Why should I look at a Jew with other eyes than
         at a Russian prisoner of war?  Many are dying in the
         prison camps because we have been driven into this
         situation by the Jews.  But what can I do about that?  Why
         then did the Jews instigate the war?"  So he is
          threatening absolute extermination if the Jews do not go
         of their own accord, and he is talking about the Russian
         prisoners of war, many of them dying in the same context
         as he is talking about Jews.  The murderous character of
         that conversation could hardly be clearer.

    MR IRVING:  What is the phrase for "absolute Ausrottung"?  You
         are quite incorrigible.  What is the German he uses?

    A.   You just said.

                                 .          77


     Q.   "Absolute Ausrottung"?

     A.   Yes.

     Q.   You translated that as "absolute extermination"?

     A.   Yes.

     Q.   Quite clearly it is absolute rooting up, is it not?  Have
          you never had to uproot?

     MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Again, we have had that point.  I am well
          aware of the argument.

     Q.   It is these tendentious translations on which he relies.

    A.   I do not think it is a tendentious translation.
         "Ausrottung" means extirpation, uprooting, rooting out or
         total -- if you look up "extirpation" in the Oxford
         English dictionary, you will to try and it will mean----

    Q.   And you translate it every time ----

    A.   Let me finish, Mr Irving.  If you look up "extirpation" in
         the Oxford English Dictionary, which you obviously have
         not done, then you will to try and the translations
         include "total destruction".  If you look it up in the
          Cassell's 1936 English German dictionary, you will to try
         and "Ausrottungskrieg" is translated as a "war of
         extermination".  It is a perfectly legitimate
         translation.  There is nothing tendentious about it.  In
         connection here with all the things he is saying about
         killing Russian prisoners of war, deaths in the prison
         camp, and so on, it is quite clear what it means.

    Q.   He says they are dying, he does not say they are being


                                 .          78



          killed, does he?  He says they are dying in the prison camps.

     A.   Yes, that is right.

     Q.   You are calling this extermination.  You take the third or
          fourth meaning of the word.

     A.   I think it is a reasonable conclusion to draw, that the
          Russian prisoners of war, of whom 3 or 4 million died in
          the prisoner of war camps in the Second World War, are
          being exterminated by the Nazis.  Why they are dying in
         the prison camps?  Hitler knows perfectly well, because
         they are not being given food or sanitation.  They are
         dying of typhus and starvation.  He is aware of that.

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