Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day008.24
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20

   MR RAMPTON:  I am sorry, Mr Irving, it is the same file as the
        one from the Leuchter press conference.
   A.   Now we have it.

.          P-22



   Q.   Before we look at this, Mr Irving, tell me when you went
        to Syracuse, as you call it.
   A.   I would have to look at my notes to see precisely when
        I went to Syracuse in fact on two or three occasions.
   Q.   You wrote to us on 21 December 1999.  You said -- my
        Lord, this is inter partes correspondence --
        "I originally read Judge Biddle's papers at Syracuse in
        about 1988"?
   A.   Off the top of my head, that may have been correct.
        I went to Syracuse two or three times because they have
        many collections of papers there.
   Q.   So, when you are speaking at the Leuchter press conference
        in 1989, that is not more than a year after you have seen
        the notes, is it?
   A.   In that event, yes, but I will come back with further and
        better information, if you want to know the exact date.
   Q.   This speech in Toronto which I am now asking you to look
        at, was made in August 1988?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   And on page 18 you say this.  Actually, we had better
        start on page 17 because this may be important.  Can you
        read, please, from about the beginning of the second
        quarter of the page, there is a sentence: "Let me just
        read out the kind of material that was given in the
        witness box in Nuremberg".  Then you mention Judge
        Biddle.  Have you got that on page 17?

.          P-23

   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Would you read to yourself please, not out loud if you do
        not mind, all of the rest of that page and down to the end
        of the first complete paragraph on page 18?
   A.   (Pause for reading) Yes.  I clearly had my notes in front
        of me when I was saying this.
   Q.   You give some sort of an account of many things about
        which the French lady testified.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   You finish that account with the piece about the
        prostitution, and then you say: "Here Judge Biddle writes
        in brackets in his diary 'all this I doubt'.  Why did he
        not say it at the time, for heavens sake but he just sat
        there with his face motionless because he is an American
        judge, but in his private diary he writes", you repeat it,
         "all this I doubt", and so it goes on, and I am not going
        to read the rest of it.
   A.   Right.  I had my notes in front of me.
   Q.   That is not what Judge Biddle said, is it?
   A.   But I am just stating quite clearly I had my notes in
        front of me when I was making this statement, and I added
        the word "all", but I would aver that that is precisely
        what I said in my earlier statement, that he has clearly
        referred to all that has gone before.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, but he did not say that.
   A.   He did not say that, my Lord.

.          P-24

   MR RAMPTON:  Do you not see the difference between "all this
        I doubt" which I quite agree with you might certainly have
        reference to the evidence given to date by that lady, and
        the words "this I doubt" in parenthesis against a single
        statement in a single paragraph?
   A.   This is precisely what I said in my previous statement.
        My conclusion from reading his diary was that he was
        referring to the foregoing, all these incredible stories
        which are here listed in summary form in my speech about
        the baby saying, "can I walk now I have had my leg torn
        off?"  and all this kind of thing.
   Q.   I am going to suggest to you that you made that speech in
        Toronto on the same visit to North America as when you
        first saw the Biddle notes.
   A.   No.  I think from the way it is constructed, the fact that
        the passages in my speech here follow closely at first
        glimpse anyway the actual notes that I typed on to the
        index cards that I clearly had the index cards in front of
        me when I was making this statement.
   Q.   You distorted what they said, did you not.
   A.   I added the word "all" to make it more literate for an
        audience.
   Q.   Yes, you added the word "all"?
   A.   This is not a distortion of what my own perception was of
        that paragraph, that he was clearly referring to all the
        foregoing.

.          P-25

   Q.   Very well.  I will just tell you for the sake of record.
   A.   Clearly, he would not just have put in this unusual
        parentheses just because she is talking about a house of
        prostitution.  It was well known at that time that there
        were brothels in all the SS concentration camps camp, in
        Dachau and everywhere else they had brothels for the use
        of the prisoners.  This was well known at Nuremberg, so he
        certainly would not have put that in brackets "this
        I doubt" at that point.  That refers to what he has heard
        up to this point.
   Q.   Even now, Mr Irving, you will not or cannot read the words
        in front of you.  Actually the sentence which precedes the
        parenthesis is "all camps used the same system", is it not?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, and it might well have been a reference
        to that.
   MR RAMPTON:  Exactly.
   A.   It might well have been, but that was not my reading of it.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Anyway ----.
   A.   On the basis of my knowledge of the Biddle papers and on
        the basis of this particular one.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes, Mr Irving.  Just for completeness, your diary
        tells us that you were in Syracuse on August 11th 1988,
        you made this entry, "worked at Syracuse University all
        day, very hot, private papers yielded little but the

.          P-26



        Nuremberg trials collection of Judge Francis Biddle had
        some gems, including his diary (with comments of I do not
        believe) comments you put in the plural, on one Auschwitz"?
   A.   That clearly shows that I took that as being a reference
        to all his comment and not just the previous comment.  I
        am indebted to you for pointing out exactly when I saw it,
        which was a few days before this which means I was
        carrying those index cards with me at the time I went to
        this lecture.
   Q.   On that occasion in Toronto in the press conference, in
        London the following year and in your Nuremberg book, you
        told a lie about what the notes said, did you not?
   A.   The difference clearly is that in Toronto, I have driven
        up from Syracuse to Toronto probably two or three days
        later and made the speech with the cards in front of me,
        whereas at the Leuchter press conference I am giving the
        sense of it from memory, and that is clearly the sense, as
        I have told the court, I had from that comment made by
        Judge Biddle in his own private papers.  Listening to this
        witness with her incredible stories about beating machines
        and all the rest of it, he writes down in brackets "this
        I doubt".  Frankly, I do not think there is very much
        mileage to be made out of that.
   Q.   Now we are going to go to Leuchter, Mr Irving.  If you put
        that file on one side, I am coming back to it in a moment,

.          P-27



        the file of what you said about Leuchter.  Before I do
        that, I would like you to look at the Leuchter report
        itself, which is the first divider in the first Auschwitz,
        file K 1.  It has a cover and an inside page headed Ernst
        Zundel.  Have you got that?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   At the bottom of the page you write what the cover
        pictures are, because there are four of them.
   A.   You are stating that I wrote this?
   Q.   I do not know who wrote this.
   A.   I am the publisher of this, not the writer of it.
   Q.   Who writes the information?
   A.   I wrote the introduction.
   Q.   About what the pictures represent?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So this is not the report submitted to the
        Canadian court?
   MR RAMPTON:  No.  I do not believe I need to use that if I have
        Mr Irving's own published version.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am not being critical.  I am just trying to
        ensure that I know what I am looking at.
   MR RAMPTON:  I do not know if I have ever seen that.
   A.   You have.   It has been in the discovery and it is very
        much more comprehensive than this.
   Q.   That does not mean that I have seen it, Mr Irving.  This is
        published by Focal Point Publications, London, June 1989.
   A.   Yes.  The notice said published by, not written by.

.          P-28



   Q.   My question was, do you see that in effect on the inside
        page somebody has provided captions for the cover pictures
        under the line at the bottom of the page?  It is not very
        easy to read.
   A.   On the inside page?
   Q.   Yes.  That is right.  There is a picture of some machinery
        I think, by the look of things.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Which page are you on now?
   MR RAMPTON:  My Lord, there is a cover and on the next page
        there is a picture of what looks like machinery.  Cameras.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Cameras, yes.  It is Monday morning!
   MR RAMPTON:  I know it is Monday.  This is a rotten copy.  It
        could be anything.  It could be a sheep shearing station?
   A.   Or a beating machine.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Let us get on.
   MR RAMPTON:  The line at the bottom of the page, underneath of
        the line are provided captions for the cover pictures on
        the front cover.  What I ask you is who wrote those captions?
   A.   I do not know.
   Q.   You do not?
   A.   It was not me.
   Q.   Well, you published this thing.
   A.   There is a distinction between publishers and authors.
        I explained it to you.
   Q.   I know that, but a publisher normally has to organise the

.          P-29



        printing of the pictures.  He has to make sure that the
        pictures are properly identified and he usually knows who
        does it, does he not?
   A.   For purposes of this court, it would satisfy you if I say
        on oath that I did not write that, surely?
   Q.   Not necessarily, no, Mr Irving.  Look at the one in the
        bottom right hand corner.
   A.   The picture?
   Q.   No.  First of all, caption.  It says bottom right that an
        actual fumigating chamber was used to delouse inmates'
        clothes.
   A.   You have lost me, I am afraid.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You have lost me too.
   A.   You have lost us both.
   MR RAMPTON:  Then I will have to come back to it the copy you
        have is not the copy that I have.  It is on Mr Julius's copy.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Maybe I am looking in the wrong place, but
        I do not think I have it.
   MR RAMPTON:  I just want to make sure the Foreword is the same
        before we get completely --
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not think there is any problem about
        that.  It is about six pages in.  Foreword by David
        Irving.  Have you got the Foreword now?
   A.   Yes.
   MR RAMPTON:  You wrote the Foreword, it appears, in May 1989?

.          P-30



   A.   Yes.
   Q.   It is copyright?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   David Irving.  You start: "Unlike the writing of history
        chemistry is an exact science", yes?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   I am not going to read the whole of it by any manner of
        means.  There are only some small parts that I need for
        this purpose.
   A.   I rely on the whole Foreword and not just on the parts you
        are going to read.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Rely on me to read them.

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