Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.10
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   Q.   As we discussed earlier today in this court, recent
        discoveries have very little bearing on your competence or
        honesty as an historian.  Page 86 Mr Irving.  What is it

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        that Professor Fleming is reciting on the top of that page?
   A.   He is referring to the Muller document, about which of
        course I have made representations to this court, dated
        August 1st 1941.
   Q.   Yes.  The Muller document saying the Fuhrer is to have
        running or continuous information, or reports, about the
        work of the Einsatzgruppen in the East.
   A.   Got to be kept au courant.
   Q.   Laufend is the German.
   A.   I was using a French phrase on the work of the
        Einsatzgruppen in the East, yes.
   Q.   Do you remember that I put it to you in cross-examination
        that, contrary to what you said in court, you were indeed
        familiar with the Muller order of 1st August?
   A.   You put to me, yes.
   Q.   Are you saying you did not read this passage in Fleming's book?
   A.   I have to say that you are asking me about something 18
        years later but I can say with great confidence that, as
        there are no kind of markings on those pages, then, with
        the high degree of probability, I did not read them.
   Q.   Then I asked you by reference to this very passage, "Have
        you read Gerald Fleming's book?" And your answer is,
        "I have not read that book".
   A.   I have not read the book as such, no.  But may I also say

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        that had I seen that passage about the Muller document,
        which is very interesting, obviously, I would have written
        to my friends at the Institute of History or the very next
        time I went there, because that is the source he gives
        there, footnote 172, and on my next visit to Munich after
        1982 I would have said, "Can I, by the way, have a look at
        that file, please?" and, obviously, that is one indication
        that I did not see that document.  But I have to say that
        I will have submissions to make about that document when
        the time comes unless the Defence can produce the exact
        file of where it is stated to be.
   Q.   Do not worry; we are working on it, Mr Irving.  Don't you
        worry about that.
   A.   Well, I am just reminding...
   Q.   We have plenty of time and lots of contacts.  Many rabbits  ----
   A.   Well, I need time after I have been told the file number,
        of course, to make use of it.
   Q.   There are many rabbits in this burrow.  Do you remember,
        Mr Irving, that in your account of the conference on 16th
        and 17th April 1943 you transposed a remark made by Hitler
        on 16th as though it had been made on the 17th?
   A.   Yes, that is one of the two errors I have corrected in the
        new edition of my Hitler book.
   Q.   I am pleased to hear it.  My reason for asking you that is
        this.  You have been aware of what the true chronology was

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        at least since 1977, have you not?
   A.   Yes -- wait a minute, wait -- yes, since 197.
   Q.   Martin Broszat pointed it out to you?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Do you remember writing to a Mr Ashton on 31st December 1978?
   A.   Oh, yes, clearly.  What did I say?  Can we see the letter, please?
   Q.   I will but I will just read it out.
   A.   I am being sarcastic.
   Q.   We may not need to get it out.  "As for your views on the
        1943 Horthy document, I believe I have replied to you
        quite fully about this, drawing your attention to Hitler's
        explicit remark to the Reichs vorweise" one day previously?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   --- "to the effect that nobody was asking him to kill the Jews"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   So in 1978 you were fully conscious that Hitler's remark,
         "There is no need for that" ----
   A.   Was one day earlier.
   Q.   --- was made on a previous day?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   And you never corrected it, did you?
   A.   No.  But you know my views on that, Mr Rampton, that

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        whether the remark is dated in my book on April 6th or
        April 17th, I think that is a very flimsy peg and the hat
        falls on the floor ----
   Q.   I hear what you say, Mr Irving.
   A.   I beg your pardon?
   Q.   I said I hear what you say.
   A.   Well, you interrupted me before I had finished.
   Q.   That was the excuse, if I can put it like that, that you
        gave us last time.
   A.   In fact, it is one of the errors I corrected in the latest
        edition because it is a minor error, but it is worth picking up.
   Q.   Yes.  I want to ask you about another document from 1942.
        My Lord, this is the Kinner Report from Zamosk in Poland
        on 16th December 1942.  I believe your Lordship will find
        that in file K2, tab 4, page 19A (vi).  For once, my Lord,
        we have the English as well as the German.  This is an
        English translation, Mr Irving, but you would probably
        prefer to use the German, I do not know.
   A.   I have them both here.
   Q.   It concerns, does it not, a transport of 644 Poles to the
        work camp at Auschwitz on 10th December 1942, am I right?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   If you turn to look at the second page under the
        subheading or by the underlined subheading "arbeit
        Einsatzfahigskeit".

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   A.   In German, yes, I have that.
   Q.   Yes, or the English.  "Capacity for employment as
        labour".  We find this:  "SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Halmeier",
        in fact, that is a mistake for Almeier, "explained that
        only Poles capable of work should be delivered so as to
        avoid as far as possible any useless burdening of the camp
        and also of the delivery traffic.  In order to relieve the
        camp, limited people, idiots, cripples and sick people
        must be removed", the word is "entfernt", "from the same",
        that is the camp, "by liquidation".  The word there is
         "liquidation", is it not?
   A.   Yes -- very explicit.
   Q.   It is very explicit.  There again we see another example,
        as in Himmler's closing speech of 4th October 1943, of
        removal and liquidation, evacuation and extermination
        being used synonymously, do we not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "This measure", that is to say liquidation, "however
        becomes more difficult to implement because, according to
        an order from the RSHA", the English is translated as "in
        opposition to"?
   A.   "In contrast to", I think.
   Q.   Yes, "in contrast to", I was going to suggest that, "in
        contrast to the measures applied to the Jews, the Poles
        must die a natural death."  Does that not mean, Mr Irving,
        in fairly unvarnished terms, that whereas Poles must be

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        kept alive until they die, the Jews can be killed?
   A.   I think that is the interpretation on those words, yes.
   Q.   And this is in relation to procedures at Auschwitz, is it not?
   A.   It is in relation to Auschwitz, yes.
   Q.   Yes, because Aumeier was at Auschwitz, was he not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Is that not some sort of rather powerful evidence that
        Auschwitz, so far as Jews were concerned, was so far from
        being a work camp a place where they were being
        exterminated, liquidated?
   A.   Well, I am not saying they were being exterminated; it is
        a place where they are not being protected and ----
   Q.   They can be killed at will, can they not?
   A.   That is right, yes, according to this document.
   Q.   Are you mistrustful of this document?
   A.   No.  I am not challenging the authenticity of the document
        at all, but it is ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But are you challenging what is said here,
        that the policy appears to have been, in relation at least
        to this transportation, that any Jews who were not fit for
        labour would be liquidated?
   A.   The comment I would I make on this document, and obviously
        it is an important document, I am not challenging that
        respect, but is written by an SS, what, Untersturmfuhrer
        which is, what -- I have to look at my military dictionary

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        and see the rank, but it is an SS corporal, I think.
   Q.   Well, he is quoting an SS Haupsturmfuhrer which is going
        slightly higher up the hierarchy.
   A.   He is what?
   Q.   He is quoting Aumeier.
   A.   But the actual document has written or drafted by an SS
        corporal and we have had this kind of problem with
        documents before, that you have to be very careful if you
        are going to look at actual words used or actual senses
        conveyed, and I do not want to put it more strongly than
        that, just to say that -- I do not want to put it more
        strongly than that.  I just want to say that it is -- the
        corporal's language, he is not a lawyer drafting a document.
   MR RAMPTON:  No, if he had been, Mr Irving, he might have used
        rather more guarded language?
   A.   No, I do not ----
   Q.   That is the advantage of these janitorial documents, is it
        not, that one sees the truth?
   A.   I agree it is an important document.  It says the Jews are
        being killed at Auschwitz and this has not been denied.
   Q.   The word is actually "liquidate"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "Liquidation".
   A.   Yes.  Well, that is why I say that this is the kind of
        language the corporals would probably have used to each

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        other.
   Q.   Yes.  Now we are going to go even further back in time,
        Mr Irving.  We are going to go back via your book Goebbels
        1935, 33, 34, and 32, but we are going to do it in one
        sentence, as it were.  Have you got your Goebbels book, Mr Irving?
   A.   Yes.  My Lord page.
   Q.   My Lord, page 46 of Goebbels.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   My Lord, this relates to pages 692 to 698 of Professor
        Evans' report.  It has to do with criminal statistics in
        Berlin and to some extent Germany but Berlin in 1932 to
         '35, and the way in which Mr Irving has represented the
        Jewish share of those criminal statistics, if I may put it
        like that.
                  Generally speaking, in this part of the book you
        are discussing, in general terms, how it was that Goebbels
        came to be so radical and anti-Semite?
   A.   No.
   Q.   This is general context, is it not?
   A.   I do not think so.  I am explaining how Goebbels came to
        be so successful in Berlin with his anti-Semitism, if
        I can put it like that?
   Q.   OK.  It does not matter.  It is all about Berlin, is it not?
   A.   Yes, and why his anti-Semitism found a fertile audience.

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   Q.   Yes, in the first, second and third paragraphs on page 46
        there are some references to the Jewish deputy police
        chief, Dr Wernhart Weiss, and then at the bottom of the
        page, it starts:  "Dr Goebbels would shun no libel to
        blacken his", that is Dr Weiss's, "name.  Instinctively
        carrying on an ancient tradition of name calling he seized
        on Dr Weiss' nickname of 'Isidor' and commissioned the
        scurrilous Nazi marching song about him.  He would
        highlight", that is Goebbels, "every malfeasance of the
        criminal demimondes and identify it as Jewish.  In these
        closing years of the Weimar Republic he was unfortunately
        not always wrong."
                  So now, Mr Irving, we are getting a recitation
        of the true facts as opposed to Goebbels' propaganda.
                   "In 1930 Jews would be convicted in 42 of 210
        known narcotics smuggling cases; in 1932 69 of the 272
        known international narcotics dealers were Jewish.  Jews
        were arrested in over 60 per cent of the cases concerning
        the running of illegal gambling dens; 193 of the 411
        pickpockets arrested in 1932 were Jews.  In 1932 no fewer
        than 31,000 cases of fraud, mainly insurance swindles,
        would be committed by Jews".  Then we are referred to
        footnote 29 which we will find on pages 547 to 548.
                  The footnote for that last statement "In 1932 no
        fewer than 31,000 cases of fraud, mainly insurance
        swindles, would be committed by Jews", footnote 29 on page

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        547 says:  "Interpol figures" ----
   A.   Excuse me.  The footnote refers to everything ----
   Q.   OK.
   A.   --- prior to that.

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