Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day027.14
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   Q.   Did it not make great headlines in Germany about three or
        four years ago when the two judges were dismissed and sent
        to early retirement for having come up with the wrong
        conclusion?
   A.   So far as I recall, yes.
   Q.   This was a decision of the Ministry of Justice in Germany
        for the judges that come up with an undesirable verdict?
   A.   Give me the evidence.  Then I can look.  But now you are
        not interested in the overall picture.
   Q.   I am interested in whether Gunter Deckert is somebody of
        with whose friendship one can be comfortable, namely
        somebody who has been acquitted by two judges before they
        themselves are penalised, or whether in fact he is the
        kind of neo-Nazi extremist that is of interest in this matter.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think the point that the Professor has made
        is that he was leader of the NPD from 1991 to 1995.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, we will come on to the character of the
        NPD in the course of the more regular cross-examination on
        the basis of his report, but I was looking at the person
        of Dr Gunter Deckert himself, which was touched upon in
        the little preview given by Mr Rampton this morning.
        Mr Rampton took you briefly through the matter of whether
        the Jews had themselves to blame.  I do not want to dwell
        on that in great detail because it is not a part of your

.          P-123



        expert report, but in fact it is a matter which has caused
        I think, inflamed passions here in the courtroom.  I was
        going to ask you if, in your answers, you would agree
        there is a difference between something being explicable
        and something being excusable?  If I can put it in a
        totally non-Jewish context, I can say that what happened
        to Dresden was explicable, but not excusable?
   A.   I understand the differentiation you are opting to do with
        these two words.
   Q.   Yes.  You understand there is a difference?  Can you say
        that perhaps what happened to the Jews in the Baltic
        states was explicable but of course not in the least bit
        excusable?
   A.   I think this is done in the court procedures with various
        historians, and I am not an expert on that.  With respect
        to the prejudices against Jews, I have to say that, if the
        dimension of explicability and excusability comes
        together, are linked, then we get a problem.  I would say
        that some of the statements you made, for example, and are
        made, generally spoken, of those who are against Jewry,
        who are anti-Semites, exactly make this problem, that
        these persons say, OK, they are the disliked, it is caused
        by them, so they have a kind of partial or full guilt of
        what happened with them, and this is at the core of a
        very, very intense anti-Semitism, at the time in the 30s,
        and again in the 90s, throughout to this century.

.          P-124



   Q.   You have read all my diaries, have you not?
   A.   Not all.  No, not possible.
   Q.   They have been made available to you.  Have you found any
        examples of anti-Semitism in my diaries that you can remember?
   A.   Not in the diaries, so far as I recall.  Maybe there are
        some exceptions, but it is not dominant.
   Q.   By anti-Semitism, of course, we are not referring just to
        somebody saying a critical remark about a Jew in
        particular, or about a particular group, we are talking
        about a visceral unreasoning blind hatred?
   A.   Right, and I was here in the courtroom when Richard
        Rampton asked you about a bundle of quotations of speeches
        and statements and interviews that you gave.  My personal
        judgment was he quoted racist and anti-Semitic statements,
        a lot of them, so I was really shocked at that minute in
        the courtroom.
   Q.   We are all shocked.  I was shocked too but of course, when
        you put things in these contexts sometimes, the shock
        factor diminishes.
   A.   Can I add ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, I am not going to stop you --
        forgive me, Professor.
   MR IRVING:  I have his report now open, my Lord.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It just seems to me that, in a way, I know
        what the Defendants rely on and it is for me to make up my

.          P-125



        mind whether the charge of anti-Semitism ----
   MR IRVING:  As soon as the witness used the words "in his
        judgment" I could hear bristling coming from the bench.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Good.  Anyway, you have said you are going to
        his report, and I think that is a good thing.
   MR IRVING:  I want to ask you a few general questions first.
        The first question is that it is quite obvious from your
        expert report, Professor Funke, that you do not like
        right-wingers, do you?
   A.   I am asked to define right-wing extremism, and to do
        research how far you are connected with them, or said
        extremist views.  That was my duty.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Professor, I think it is a fair question,
        though.  He is asking you really your own personal
        opinion.  I think that is legitimate.
   A.   OK, but I have to separate it with respect to the report.
   Q.   Of course, but I think he is entitled to ask the question
        even so.
   MR IRVING:  I can say straightaway that I do not think he is
        biased, my Lord.  There is certainly no bias here that
        I would detect.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Then you are not entitled to ask the
        question.  The only relevance to the question was to
        suggest that he is biased.  If you are not suggesting
        that, then you do not need to ask the question.  I think
        that must be right.  Tell me if I am wrong.

.          P-126



   MR IRVING:  How far right of centre does this dislike start?
   A.   Say it again?
   Q.   How far right of centre line would this dislike of the
        right-wingers start?  It would have to be very extreme
        right-wing before Professor Funke starts disliking him, or
        Mrs Thatcherish, or Helmut Kohlish?
   A.   The problem is the same your Lordship raised, so I am a
        bit in a problem.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Can I try and clarify it because maybe I have
        not understood Mr Irving correctly.  Professor Funke's
        personal political position seems to me to be relevant if
        and only if you are making the suggestion that he has been
        influenced in his report by his own political leanings.
   MR IRVING:  If I can put ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If you are suggesting that, then I understand
        the line of questions.  If you are not ----
   MR IRVING:  I am. Would I be right, Professor, in suggesting
        that your report can be summarized under the title of a
        hostile view of the right-wing as viewed from the far left?
   A.   No, I cannot agree.  What I did, if I may answer in two or
        three sentences, is to refer to the state of research, and
        to the state of social sciences and to the definitions of
        the offices for the protection of the constitution, where
        right-wing extremism is defined.  You could read it and it
        was a kind of sober account, to my judgment.  Then

.          P-127



        I looked through these various developments and political
        organizations through the course of the Federal Republic
        from 45 onwards to the early '90s, and especially for that
        period that is of interest for the court.
                  So this is the layer and the criteria of this
        definition I set out in the first pages.  It is related to
        how far these right-wing extremists attacking the core of
        the institutions of the liberal democracy of the 45 period
        of Federal Republic, how far they are striving, acting,
        going for authoritarian state, how far this is linked with
        anti-Semitism, is this linked with foreign hatred, and
        within the right-wing extremism how far it is clear cut
        for the re-establishment, or the establishment, to put it
        differently, of a pure Aryan race based state.  So a
        Fuhrerstadt and so forth.  These are the definitions that
        are laid out in the social sciences, and you may say these
        social sciences I quote are hostile to whatever.
   MR IRVING:  Yes.  That takes me to my next question which is,
        if I have understood your report correctly, your major
        basis for your statements, apart from my own discovery,
        are either the reports of the office for the protection of
        the constitution, which you describe as the OPC, or the
        consensus of opinion of social scientists, if I put it
        like that.  You refer to the opinions of the social
        sciences.  So we are up against now the consensus problem,
        that is all you social scientists who are saying

.          P-128



        right-wing extremism is that, plus the opinion of the
        government security agency, and you rely on that
        definition, do you, of right-wing extremism?
   A.   I put it my way.
   Q.   Those are the two sources?
   A.   It is a kind of distorting of my presentation of the first
        20 pages.
   Q.   I am going to be asking you in a minute to look at the
        offices of the protection of the constitution, and what
        kind of body it is, but I want to take you through one or
        two other matters first. First of all, a simple question
        that I have asked all the other witnesses.  Are you under
        any kind of contract to Yad Vashem?  Do you owe them any
        kind of money?  Do you have any kind of outstanding
        obligations to them at all?
   A.   To Yad Vashem?
   Q.   Yes.
   A.   I would like, but I have not.
   Q.   On page 6 of your report -- we are actually digging into
        it now -- first line, Hajo Funke (that is you) has written
        a book or an article called "The Republicans" in a book
        called "The Brown Danger".  That is a reference to the
        Nazis, is it not?
   A.   You can say so, yes.
   Q.   Does not the title "The Brown Danger" imply that it is
a
        kind of a left wing book, a left wing look at things?

.          P-129



   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, Mr Irving, let us press on.  I do not
        think that is an appropriate question.
   MR IRVING:  You have also written an article on Martin Walser
        and Ignatz Bubis in the General Jewish Weekly, the
        Allgemeine Judische Wochenzeitung?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   What was the problem about Martin Walser and Ignatz Bubis,
        if you can summarize it in three lines?  Martin Walser is
        a German novelist, a very famous novelist, is he?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Did he find fault with something about Ignatz Bubis?
   A.   Maybe, if it is of value for ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not think it really is helpful, no.
   Q.   Not helpful?  Right.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is a question of priorities really, is it
        not?  I think you have to tackle the ----
   MR IRVING:  The people, yes.  If you look now at the second
        paragraph from the bottom which you have numbered 14, we
        have something here about Ewald Althans.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   You say that a man called Althans sells and distributes
        books, videos and cassettes of mine.  Now, as of today,
        1,430 shops deal directly with me, selling my books,
        videos and cassettes, and large numbers of major
        distribution companies do, too.  So do you rely very
        heavily on the fact that this man Althans sold books of

.          P-130



        mine?
   A.   It is in the context of your interaction with Ewald
        Althans.  It is not only this kind of selling.
   Q.   You do not attach much importance that he was a book
        seller.  In paragraph 15, the next paragraph, you refer to
        the fact that I have been deported from Austria, and you
        make something of that.  I do not blame you.  That was
        June 26th 1984, was it not?
   A.   Yes, so far as I recall.
   Q.   That I was complemented out of the country, as they say.
   A.   Yes.  You were then in November '89 and you had to leave.
   Q.   Can we remain with the 1984 one?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Can you tell the court what was the role of the Austrian
        Minister of the Interior, Karl Blecher, in that?  Did he
        do that personally?
   A.   I do not know exactly.  I read it, but it did not go into detail.
   Q.   Do you know the role of the Austrian documentation archive
        of the Wiedestant in securing my deportation, of the
        resistance archive?
   A.   I know the archive, but I do not know the role.
   Q.   Can you characterize this Austrian resistance archive,
        what its politics are?  Has it got strong communist
        leanings?  Is it known as a communist body?
   A.   I do not know.

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