Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.17
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   Q.   And tell me whether you think, or perhaps with the help of
        the interpreter, tell me whether you think that that is a
        fair -- what the English says is a fair version of what
        the German says.
   THE INTERPRETER:  We are just comparing the two.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes, please.
   THE INTERPRETER:   I would say it should be added "they are all
        nothing but dummies".
   Q.   Nothing but?
   A.   Yes, it is not translated literally.
   MR IRVING:  All just dummies.
   MR RAMPTON:  Just dummies?
   A.   And the things --
   Q.   All just dummies?
   A.   -- yes, the things in Auschwitz and probably you also in
        Mydanik Treblinka and in the other death camps.
   Q.   Yes, extermination camps?
   A.   So-called.
   Q.   So-called?
   A.   In the East, all just dummies.
   Q.   Mock ups, fakes, dummies.  Thank you very much.
                  Then we go back to page 61, if we may, paragraph

.          P-157



        5.3.7, in his report on Irving's court appearance Philip
        wrote: In his statement the researcher of contemporary
        history, Irving, when into the Leuchter report and
        reaffirmed his view according to which it was not
        possible to there to have been gas chambers for killing
        people in Auschwitz, Birkenhau or Mydarnik".
                  Mr Irving was invited by the judge to challenge
        that statement, the question he did not.  The question I
        have of you, have you any reason to doubt that that is an
        accurate report of what Mr Irving said?
   A.   I have no question about that.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, your Lordship's invitation did not refer
        to that statement, it was to another one.
   MR RAMPTON:  Could the witness please be given file K3.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, is it accepted that was not a statement
        that was challenged?
   MR RAMPTON:  I do not know.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, we certainly looked at that, and to be
        honest I actually cannot remember.
   MR RAMPTON:  No, I cannot either, but that was my note.
   MR IRVING:  I do not want it to go in the transcript that I
        allowed that -- specifically allowed --
   MR RAMPTON:  Well, we can see from the transcript whether it
        was or it was not.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The transcript will tell us what has happened
        anyway.

.          P-158



   MR IRVING:  There is a difference between my, for various
        reasons not having wanted to slow up the
        cross-examination, picking on paragraph after paragraph,
        and specifically to declining an invitation to comment on
        a paragraph.
   MR RAMPTON:  Does your Lordship have K3 in court?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, I do.
   MR RAMPTON:  Tab 12, please.
   A.   Thank you.  Yes.
   Q.   If you look at the beginning of tab 12, this is an
        interview in English between somebody called Roley Levin.
   A.   Right.
   Q.   And Mr Irving, unedited this interview, so we need not
        worry about that, dated 28th November '91, and Mr Levin
        starts off by saying: You made a very powerful speech
        tonight, what is the message you are trying to get
        across?  I am sorry, what is the message you are trying to
        get across to an audience of Germans like this".  So it
        looks as though, does it not, it is a reference to some
        speech that has been made in Germany.  Do you happen to
        know which speech it was that it is referring to at this
        date?  I could not trace it in the --
   A.   No.
   Q.   -- in the material I have got.
   MR IRVING:  Could I have a copy of this while we are doing this?

.          P-159



   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Have you not got K3?  You have not brought it
        with you.
   MR RAMPTON:  Certainly, you should have that.
   MR IRVING:  What is the reference again?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  K3, tab 12.  It is a television programme, is
        it, that is the date of the television programme?
   MR RAMPTON:  That is the date of the interview perhaps or
        television programme, but what Miss Rogers is suggesting,
        I bet she is right, the film crew apparently followed
        Mr Irving round during the Halle period, which was on the
        9th, and probably did an interview with him that same day.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The problem with that is the speech was not --
   MR RAMPTON:  (Pause while counsel confer) She knows far more
        than I do.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Halle was in the middle of the day, was it
        not.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes, that is right, and apparently his speech was
        on 6th and 7th November as well.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Right, well, it may not matter anyway.
   MR RAMPTON:  It may not matter very much, but what I am anxious
        to ----
   THE WITNESS:   The NPD meeting in Hamburg of the 7th November?
   Q.   Yes, that is right, that is it?
   A.   Maybe that is it.
   Q.   All I am anxious to establish is that this is a reference

.          P-160



        to what Mr Irving said in Germany, which apparently it is,
        now can you turn to page 5, you will find that in small
        print at the top right hand corner of the page.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   I will start, if I may, with the second quote from
        Mr Levin it is: One of your themes when you talk to an
        audience like this is that the Holocaust never happened,
        that the gas chambers were a fiction.  Can we pause
        there.  Assuming that records the theme, or one of the
        themes that Mr Irving dealt with on this occasion in
        Hamburg, do you have any knowledge of the content of that
        speech beyond what we find in this interview?
   A.   No.
   Q.   Right.  Irving: Well, those are two separate things.
        I mean by the Holocaust, do you mean the gas chambers?  If
        by the Holocaust, which is this rather unpleasant kind of
        Madison Avenue image that the Jewish community have
        developed, the Holocaust with a capital H, you imagine
        that you are going to see the letter R after it as kind
        registered trademark.  I am not allowed to use the word
        Holocaust in my books to describe any other tragedy.  Now
        my editors say, no, that is reserved for what happened to
        the Jews.
                  Levin: But you told your audience tonight that
        the gas chambers [plural], were a fiction:
                  Irving: Oh, yes, the gas chambers are a very

.          P-161



        clear piece of propaganda, that we British very cunningly,
        cunningly cannived at and contrived during World War II
        and that is my considered opinion as a British historian
        and I think in two, two or three years people will accept
        you I am right again.
                  Levin: The idea of the gas chambers was invented
        by the British during the war, and then the so-called gas
        chambers at -- again he uses the plural that perhaps not
        his fault at Auschwitz were built by the Poles after the
        war in order to deceive people.
   MR IRVING:  Can you read the next paragraph, please.
   MR RAMPTON:  I am going to read the next three paragraphs,
        actually: "Certainly the gas chamber [single] that is
        shown to tourists in Poland now in Auschwitz is built by
        the Polish government after the war and the director of
        the Auschwitz museum and director of Auschwitz museum
        archives, Dr Piegel (?), has admitted this in private
        talks with other historians that it is in fact a fake."
        I am not sure that quite fair on Dr Piegel.
   MR IRVING:  Just leave it as it is without any interspersed remarks.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Quite right.
   MR RAMPTON: "Levin:  It is important to you to get across to a
        German audience like this that people are told lies about
        the gas chambers [plural] or they never really happened.
        I prefer, says David Irving, I prefer the word legends.

.          P-162



        In fact, it is in fact a lie.  Propaganda is basically
        lying.  What is is now going around is not a lie, it is a
        legend.  There is a difference.  A legend is something
        that people, innocent and ordinary people believe and in
        turn retell to other innocent and ordinary people."
                  Professor Funke, are you aware of any evidence
        that the whole gas chamber story, the gas chambers,
        plural, were nothing more then a clever piece of
        propaganda that the British invented?
   A.   There is no evidence for that.
   MR IRVING:  Can he be asked if he is aware of any evidence that
        what is shown to the tourists is a fake or reconstruction?
   MR RAMPTON:  That is common ground, Mr Irving, we all know that
        it is a reconstruction, the Stammlager gas chamber at
        Auschwitz, that never been in contention.
   MR IRVING:  Never been in contention?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Never been in contention, the only only
        question is whether --
   MR RAMPTON:  If Mr Irving had read Professor van Pelt's report
        properly he would have understood that it was never in
        contention --
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, I was fined $20,000 for saying that, that
        is the contention in my book.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Honestly, I attach no importance, I am
        afraid, it must be painful for you, but it is not relevant

.          P-163



        to my task that you were fined, and I know perfectly well
        what was constructed at Auschwitz, and, personally, as
        I have told you before, and I will say it again, I see
        nothing remotely objectionable.  But to say that they are
        all dummies seems to me to be different matter altogther.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes and all invention of British propaganda, that
        is what Mr Rampton --
   MR IRVING:  I am answering in terms here, one gas chamber - -
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You can make that comment later on, this is
        re-examination, so do not --
   MR IRVING:  If I can comment later on.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, please.
   MR RAMPTON:  Now one of the things that you were cross-examined
        about, Professor Funke, is to be found at page 69 of your
        report.  Again, I do not remember offhand whether or not
        this was challenged, in paragraph 5.3.27.
   A.   Just a second.
   Q.   So sorry, you will need to keep that file K3 for just a
        moment.  We need page 69 of your report.
   A.   Yes I have both.  Yes.
   Q.   Before you go to the indented quotation there is some
        German in square brackets (German spoken); yes?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Above that you it is translated at:  "The letter was
        headed with a quote from Irving, hundreds of millions of
        honest, intelligent people are being duped by extremely

.          P-164



        financially strong and brilliantly made postwar propaganda".
                  Can you turn, please, back to tab 5 of K3 and to
        page 20, I think it is.
   A.   K3?
   Q.   Yes.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Same blue file.
   MR RAMPTON:  K3 tab 5, it is the speech in Moers and this time
        it is in English?
   A.   Yes, just a second.
   Q.   Tab 5, page 20, the bottom of the page.  Bearing in mind
        as you look at this what we just read in your report on
        page 69, which you attributed Mr Irving, we see this, and
        this is Mr Irving speaking, this is his speech at Moers on
        9th March 1990.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   In the middle of the page there is a line which
        begins "and this Holocaust religion"; do you see that?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   He says this: "In this Holocaust religion is gaining
        credence in the meantime, has hundreds of millions of
        credible and decent people, millions of Jews amongst them,
        firmly believing that 6 million of their co-religionists
        were murdered and no one is asking them the important
        question: How come there are so many millions of Jews
        again if so many millions of them are exterminated?  No

.          P-165



        one asks themselves that question because you simply do
        not question a religion, it is a sort of blasphemy." Do
        you see any resonance or similarity between what Mr Irving
        there said and what he said in the middle of page 69 of
        your report?
   A.   Oh, yes.  It is a kind of attacking what he calls a
        legend, or what he may call also a lie, that became a
        religion, so-called religion, of millions of honest
        people.  So it is a kind of way of thinking that because
        he says the essence of the Holocaust is a lie, and the
        people do not believe that it is a lie, but it is the
        truth, this truth is a religion.
   Q.   The whole story?
   A.   The whole story.
   Q.   The whole story --
   A.   The whole history of the Holocaust is a religion.  They
        believe in, although it is not true in the essence, and
        this goes with a lot of -- and to say this is a kind of
        blasphemy is, of course, a very cynical reference, cynical
        sentence to those who really survived, and still are
        living, and, of course, to those who died by this mass
        killings.

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