Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.21
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   MR RAMPTON:  No, it is a matter of what it says, I agree.  It
        is matter of comment and it is a matter in the end for

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        your Lordship what its drift is.
                  My final question is this, having regard
        Professor Funke, to the content of those little extracts
        that we have from the meeting at Hagenau, yes?  According
        to your knowledge of right-wing extremism and neo-Naziism
        in Germany, are these sorts of things which are said here,
        whether by Mr Irving or by Mr Zundel, are they in any way
        characteristic of the views and attitudes of neofascists
        in Germany?
   A.   I have to give a differentiated answer.  It is in that
        intensity of radical racist anti-Semitism, not a common
        language of all right-wingers.  Parts of the right-wing
        extremists are more soft alluding to some aspects of what
        I said is a second anti-Semitism.  So they criticise
        Galinski and nowadays Jewish leaders.
                  So this kind of openly rage-based anti-Semitism,
        this full scale of contempt like in the word Juden Pack,
        this absolutely cynicism with which Irving is referring to
        the most deep causing sorrows of the people of the Jewish
        descent, this kind of extreme radical racist, post
        Holocaust anti-Semitism is more at the core of these
        groups that I call neo-National Socialists and those who
        are influenced as skinheads, as youngsters by these
        groupings, and what I have to say, according to social
        sciences surveys that are done in the Institute of anti-,
        to analyse anti-Semitism in Berlin is that this kind of

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        radical anti-Semitism, let us say where it is researched
        in the Branbuch area around Berlin is widespread within
        these circles.  So you have on different levels,
        especially among male youngsters of middle education, you
        have this kind of anti-Semitism widespread.  This is the
        very reason that the amount of destroying Jewish
        cemeteries, for example, the very well-known Wiesensee
        Cemetery or the grave, is it right, the grave of Heinz
        Galinski by a bomb attack, that this is caused by this
        kind of widespreading new kind of aggressive anti-Semitism
        within these circles.
   MR RAMPTON:  Thank you very much indeed, Professor.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think that should go, just so that we know
        where it is, in tab 15 of RWE 2, page?
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes, page 18A and B but only the Hagenau bit
        because attached to it is some Munich, I think.  The
        Leuchter conference -- well, that is Munich.  Oh, a
        different Leuchter.  It is not the Leuchter Congress.  It
        is the Leuchter Conference.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, may I question for five minutes, please?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Of course.  One of the documents was the
        letter to Dr Frey?
   MR IRVING:  Yes, on each of those documents, but in reverse
        order.  I think that is the most helpful.

                  (Further Cross-Examined by Mr Irving.)

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   MR IRVING:  Professor Funke, you said that these kinds of
        remarks addressed to skinheads and youngsters are liable
        to lead to attacks on synagogues and so on, is that
        the  ----
   A.   Say it again.  Excuse me.
   Q.   Referring to my remarks at Hagenau (which I will discuss
        with you in a moment) "addressed to skinheads and
        youngsters", that was your phrase, would be liable to
        cause the kind of circumstances you referred to there,
        like tombstones being overthrown, synagogues attacked, and so on?
   A.   This kind of rhetoric, yes.
   Q.   Can I ask you just to have a look at the photograph,
        please, on page 15 of the bundle of photographs which is
        the audience at Hagenau and tell me how many skinheads and
        youngsters you can see in it?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well...
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, he said, it is a hypothetical thing, "If
        these remarks had been addressed to skinheads and
        youngsters, that would have been the outcome".
   A.   No, it is researched.  It is researched.  It is the
        [German] research -- you may know it -- about the
        widespreading of anti-Semites within male youngsters who
        are often the same token very violent.
   Q.   Answering Mr Rampton's question, you said that these
        remarks addressed to skinheads and youngsters would have

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        these undesirable effects and you are probably right.  But
        if you look at the audience who were listening ----
   A.   Yes, of course, the audience is different.
   Q.   Middle aged?
   A.   Yes, with the exception of Christian Worch and his gang.
   Q.   Right.  I am only going to refer briefly to the one man
        gas chamber.  If I am lecturing an audience on the
        improbabilities of aspects of the Holocaust legend and, as
        this court well knows, I criticise the quality of a lot of
        the eyewitness evidence, and if one of the eyewitnesses,
        and we know there is a lot of lurid eyewitness evidence
        that we can discard, has described this rather improbable
        contraption, would that fit the description of what I have
        described in that speech?
   A.   What you are doing here is that you pretend that the
        eyewitnesses are excessing ----
   Q.   Exaggerating?
   A.   --- exaggerating and producing legends, but I have to be
        now very personal.  I did a book of those, it is called
        "Other Memory" of those who left Germany because of the
        pressure and later on the torture by the Nazi
        authorities.  Social scientists, like Eric Ericson,
        Zaufriedlende, and what I learned as the essence of this
        encounter in the late '80s and at the time we are talking
        about, is, and I quote Zaufriedlende of the historian, the
        famous, that all those, excuse me ----

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   Q.   Can you just answer the question about this being a piece
        of lurid eyewitness evidence?
   A.   That all those -- I do -- that all those who went through
        this horror ----
   Q.   The trauma?
   A.   --- the trauma -- right, thank you -- cannot do this kind
        of research just as an objective historian.  They have to
        do the objectivity and, on the other hand, they have to
        always rely to the experiences they themselves or their
        families went through.  So, in other words, I would say no
        to all those who discard eyewitnesses.  That does not say
        that the reconstruction of the Auschwitz horror, the
        cosmos of death -- if you go there you would see, you
        would sense it even today -- that the essence of this
        trauma and terror done by these Jews there, the mass
        gassing included, that this has been reconstructed by
        various means, and I think Peter Longerich did an awful
        good witness statement and paper to that, together with
        Mr Van Pelt.  And so it is very clear that you cannot only
        count on the description of the eyewitnesses, although it
        is especially for the subjectivity what they went through
        very decisive.
                  So to quote your reference to Dresden, the
        Dresden thing are horror for a lot of people and you refer
        to the ashes of Dresden, but you cannot do it only -- you
        can do it only if you refer in the same token to the ashes

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        of Auschwitz.
   Q.   Right, but now let me put it like this.  If in a speech
        I make a number of references to the appalling horrors
        undoubtedly suffered by the victims of Auschwitz, and
        I have never made any attempt to minimize them and I
        have referred to the shootings in Russia, I have quoted
        the Bruns report, and, on the other hand, I then mock the
        eyewitnesses who have obviously lied for whatever reason
        and dreamed up these totally ludicrous stories about the
        one man portable gas chamber, is it not dishonest, in your
        view, for somebody to take just that passage out and put
        that as a representation of my entire speech?
   A.   It is, what you are doing is again and again.  Look at the
        40 pages that was with the help of our assistant, Thomas
        Robins and Dunn, on the anti-Semitic or the rhetoric you
        did on this issue.  So I recall just another quotation of
        you.  So if it would be one time, we can cross over, but
        you did it again and again, and you just minutes ago
        referred that mass gassings did not happen.  So if this,
        as long as this is the case, I cannot say yes to any of
        this kind of cynicism that you put to the public.  Let me
        just recall this other quotation.
   Q.   If it is relevant, please?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is relevant to the question ----
   A.   It is.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  --- but we do not want a lot of speeches?

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   A.   It is very short.  It is like that you say, OK, this kind
        of survivors of the Holocaust, and you put it up in the
        way that you can quote it as "assholes".  This cannot be.
        If you honestly, if you seriously, are saying that you
        realize the trauma of those who went through, if they
        survived.
   MR IRVING:  Can I now take you to the letter dated 30th January
        1991 which has been introduced by Mr Rampton?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Firstly, the question of the date.  I do not know whether
        Mr Rampton meant it seriously or not, but as he said it
        I have to comment on it, if the letter is dated 30th
        January 1991, and if you look at the very top line, it
        is  ----
   A.   Excuse me, I missed it.  9th November or?
   Q.   30th January?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  30th January 1991, Dr Frey?
   A.   Yes.
   MR IRVING:  Yes.  If you look at the very top line, the fax
        line, it was faxed at 1.13 p.m. on the following day.
        Then the letter was probably written on January 30th,
        right?
   A.   Right.
   Q.   OK.  If you turn the page, please, do you see I describe
        there that a number of great Germans I intend to talk
        about, the Nobel Prize winner, Otto Hahn and

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        Wernerheisenbger?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   They are not leading Nazis, are they?
   A.   No, no.
   Q.   And the great ----
   A.   Although some of them I partially ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Not leading Nazis, the answer is no?
   A.   Not leading Nazis, right.  Excuse me.
   MR IRVING:  The final sentence of the letter above the
        signature, I say:  "Of course, as always at DVU functions,
        I am not going to mention the Jews or the concentration or
        extermination camps with one word"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Then the final sentence of the PS is:  "I will most
        painfully keep within the laws of Germany, the Federal
        Republic"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Yes?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   On the general matter, the proposition raised by
        Mr Rampton, that it is right-wingest to look to reunify
        Germany and all the rest of the things that he said, can
        I remind you of what the German constitution says every
        German citizen is beholden to do?  Do you know the passage
        I am referring to?
   A.   Tell me.  I have the constitution here.  What do you

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        mean?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, I do not think we need to...
   MR IRVING:  Is not every German citizen held to strive for the
        reunification of the German territories?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think you are not doing justice to
        Mr Rampton's point.  He was not just talking about
        the reunification of Germany.
   MR IRVING:  I was once again dealing with it piecemeal.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I know it is difficult.
   MR IRVING: And I am sorry that that was not appreciated.
   THE WITNESS:  It never meant unification includes parts of
        Poland, it never meant.
   MR IRVING:  Thank you very much, Professor.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Thank you.  Professor Funke, that completes
        your evidence.  Thank you very much.

                     (The witness withdrew)

   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Rampton and Mr Irving, can I just mention
        that, in addition to the remaining cross-examination,
        there are several other outstanding things.  I am sure you
        have them in mind.  There is an argument about whether the
        expert reports of Eatwell and Levin can go in.
   MR RAMPTON:  No, I do not want them.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, I was about to make the opposite concession.
   MR RAMPTON:  I do not mind.  I do not want them.
   MR IRVING:  My friend said that if Mr Rampton had argued on the

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        basis of those authorities that he was entitled to, then
        who were we to argue against him?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is kind, but if he does not want to,
        then the question ends.  I have feeling there are some
        loose ends on Civil Evidence Act Notices in relation to Moscow?
   MR RAMPTON:  No, I do not think so.  I think all the Moscow
        evidence I need has come from Mr Irving actually probably.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Good.
   MR RAMPTON:  It is only the American factual witnesses and they
        are in proper condition because they have had Civil
        Evidence Act Notices.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  We need to at any rate identify those and  ----
   MR RAMPTON:  I need them for the underlying material in due
        course, but whether I do any cross-examination is a
        different matter.
   MR IRVING:  At what stage can I make submissions on the
        American factual witnesses, my Lord?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You do not, I think, have much of a legal
        submission you could make.  They are overseas.  You have
        had a notice, but I am not saying do not, but at the
        moment I do not quite see how you can keep those
        statements out.
   MR RAMPTON:  What Mr Irving is entitled to ----
   MR IRVING:  I do not want to keep the statements out, but I

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        want to make certain representations about the quality of
        their evidence, their criminal records and the rest of it.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That, I think, is a matter for you to deal
        with in your evidence.  It is not a ground for objecting
        to the statements going in under the Act.
   MR IRVING:  I mean I wanted to put it in by way of submission.
        That is what I suppose I was trying to say.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I will not prevent you doing that, whatever
        the form is.
   MR RAMPTON:  That is what I was going to say.  There is a
        provision that allows where a witness is not being called
        under the Civil Evidence Act for what one might call
        rebuttal material to be put in and, of course, and comment
        that can be made about the internal condition ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The reliability of the evidence.
   MR RAMPTON:  Exactly.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Quite.  Good.  So 10.30 tomorrow morning.

(The court adjourned until the following day)









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