Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day032.11
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

                  This campaign had been coordinated.  In some of
        its members, it seems that the illiberal spirit of
        Dr Goebbels lived on behind the Board of Deputies'
        facade.  Meeting behind locked doors at their headquarters
        in December 1991, December 12, a body identified as the
         "Education and Academic Committee of the Holocaust
        Educational Trust, registered as a charitable body, held a
        conference, including point 6:

                   "David Irving:  Concern was voiced over the
        publication of the second edition of Hitler's War".  This
        is 1991, 14 years after the first edition.  "There was
        debate over how to approach Macmillan publishers over
        Goebbels Diary".  That was the other book they were going
        to publish of mine. "It was agreed to await new[s] from

.          P-127

        Jeremy Coleman before deciding what action to take."

                  We know more of this meeting from the statement
        to this Court by my witness Dr John Fox, who was present
        at this cabal in his capacity as editor of The British
        Journal of Holocaust Education.  He testifies as follows:

                  "As an independently-minded historian, I was
        affronted by the suggestion concerning Mr David Irving
        [...] At a certain point in the meeting, attention turned"
         -- do you wish to suggest I move on?

   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No.  I am reading around what you are reading out to me.

   MR IRVING:  Yes.  "At certain point in the meeting, attention
        turned to the subject of Mr Irving and reports that the
        publishing company of Macmillan would be publishing his
        biography of Goebbels.  Mr Ben Helfgott ... turned to me,
        the only non-Jew present at the meeting, and suggested
        that 'John'", John Fox, "'could approach Macmillan to get
        them to stop publication'. I refused point-blank to accede
        to that suggestion, arguing that in a democracy such as
        ours one simply could not do such a thing.  That amounted
        to censorship ...

                  Nevertheless, as the Committee minutes make
        plain, it was planned by some to consider further action
        about how best to scupper Mr Irving's publishing plans
        with Macmillan".

                  The clandestine pressure on Macmillan's began at

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        once.  My editor at Macmillan's, Roland Philipps, noted in
        an internal memorandum of January 2nd 1992 that they
        should reassure prospective authors that they had turned
        down many other book proposals from me, and had no plans
        to continue publishing me after Goebbels.  It was not the
        bravest of postures to adopt, you might think.  The
        memorandum continues:  "If this helps you to reassure any
        prospective authors we are happy for you to say it
        (although not too publicly if possible)".  The desire of
        Macmillan's to stab in the back, for this stab in the back
        to be secret from their own highly successful author,
        myself, is understandable.  In fact, their ultimate stab
        in the back was to come in the summer of 1992.

                  In May 1992, meanwhile, we find Deborah Lipstadt
        providing a list of her personal targets, victims,
        including now myself to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
        in Washington; she advised the Museum to contact Gail Gans
        at the Research Department of the ADL (about whom we have
        heard) in New York City for additional names, and to "tell
        her I told you to call her".  This establishes that the
        Defendants consider that that museum, which is a US
        taxpayer-funded body, was actively participating in their
        network, and the museum duly provided press clippings from
        London newspapers relating to me, which have now turned up
        in the Defendants' files.

                  The attempts to suffocate my publishing career

.          P-129

        continued.  I mention a second arm of this attack.  Since
        my own imprint, my own publishing imprint, which I had set
        up myself some years earlier, would not be intimidated as
        easily as Macmillan's, or indeed at all, the hostile
        groups applied pressure to major bookselling chains
        throughout Britain to burn or destroy my books and in
        particular the new edition of Hitler's War.  Some of the
        press clippings reporting this nasty campaign are in my
        discovery.  They include reports of a sustained campaign
        of window smashing of the branches of Waterstone's
        bookstores in the biggest Midlands cities, after
        complaints were made by local groups.

                  Waterstones informed one Newcastle newspaper
        that they were taking books off public shelves "following
        a number of vandal attacks on book stores across the
        country".  The Nottingham Waterstones took the book off
        display after a brick was thrown through its window.  The
        campaign clearly coordinated from London.  None of this
        was reported in the national press, but one would have
        thought that these groups would have recognized the bad
        karma in any campaign of smashing windows or burning books.

                  I wrote privately to Tim Waterstone, the head at
        that time of Waterstones, guaranteeing to indemnify his
        chain for their costs of any uninsured claims.  But he
        refused to be intimidated by the campaign and, my Lord,

.          P-130

        that is one reason why I took the names of four
        Waterstones branches off the list of Defendants in this
        action at a very early stage.

                  I am turning the page now, my Lord:
        Demonstrations organized outside by property, violent
        demonstrations, police were frequently called.  The same
        newspaper reported -- this is halfway down that following
        page -- that the Anti-Nazi League and its parent body, the
        Board of Deputies, were applying pressure to The Sunday
        Times to violate its contract with me which was the
        contract to obtain the Goebbels diaries from the Moscow
        archives.  Again, the reason why I mention all of this may
        be apparent, it is when I make remarks about by my
        critics, occasionally using vivid language, I sometimes
        had reason.  As an indication of the pressure ----

   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, I am just wondering, and I am
        sorry to interrupt you and I am not going to stop you at
        all, but reading on to about page 54, you describe, do you
        not, the continuation of what you see as being this really
        worldwide attempt to close you down as an historian and
        attacks on your house and pressure of various kinds being
        brought to bear all over the world.  I just wonder whether
        there is any particular benefit -- tell me if you there is
         -- in reading out the next seven or so pages?  If there
        is any particular point you want to make, do, but I feel
        myself we could probably move on to the middle of page

.          P-131

        54.

   MR IRVING:  I will move on to 51, my Lord.  When I found out -
        too late - that this fake evidence had been planted on
        Canadian files, which resulted in my being deported from
        Canada in handcuffs on November 13th 1992, I was angered
        and astounded that a British organisation could be
        secretly doing this to British citizens.  It turned out
        from these files that academics with whom I had freely
        corresponded and exchanged information, including Gerald
        Fleming, had been acting as agents and informants for this
        body.  I submit (which is why I am reading this out) that
        these are the bodies that collaborated directly or
        indirectly with the Defendants in the preparation of the
        book and that the Defendants, knowing of the obvious
        fantasy in some of what they said, should have shown
        greater caution in accepting their materials as true.

                  There was an immediate consequence of this fake
        data planted on Canadian files.  One data report recorded
        the "fact" that I had written 78 books denying the
        Holocaust which, of course, is totally untrue.  In August
        1992 a docket was placed on Canadian immigration files
        about me saying, among other things, this is a secret
        file, "Subject David Irving is Holocaust denier, may be
        inadmissible" to Canada with the result, of course, that
        precisely that happened.  I was arrested on October 28th
        at Vancouver, making a speech on freedom of speech,

.          P-132

        deported permanently from Canada on November 13th causing
        me great financial damage and loss.  Access to the Public
        Archives of Canada was as essential for my future research
        as access to the PRO in Kew or to those archives in Italy.
        My Lord, this goes, of course, to the damage that has been
        caused to me by this general libel at being called a
        Holocaust denier.  That is one proof of the direct and
        immediate cost of the pernicious label "Holocaust
        denier".  And the same thing, they made the same attempt
        to get me banned from the United States but failed.

                  Page 54, my Lord.  I now come to Macmillan's
        final stab in the back.  The hand on the blade was
        Macmillan's but the blade hade been forged and
        fashioned by all the Defendants in this courtroom, and by
        their hidden collaborators overseas.

                  On July 4th 1992, as this Court knows, I had
        returned Moscow with the missing entries of the Goebbels
        Diaries exclusively in my possession, having gone there on
        behalf of The Sunday Times.  This hard-earned triumph
        caught my opponents unawares.  Newspapers revealed that
        the Anti-Defamation League and its Canadian collaborator,
        the League of Human Rights, sent immediate secret letters
        to Andrew Neil at The Sunday Times demanding that he
        repudiate their contract.  On Sunday, 5th, the London
        Sunday newspapers were full of the scoop - and also with
        hostile comment.  On Monday, July 6th, The Independent

.          P-133

        newspaper reported under the headlines "Jews attack
        publisher of Irving book", that a UK body which it
        identified as "the Yad Vashim Trust" with which we, of
        course, were we familiar, was piling pressure on to
        Macmillan's to abandon its contract with me to publish
        Goebbels, failing which they would urge booksellers not to
        stock or promote it.

                  Macmillans finally took fright that same day, as
        I only now know.  After their directors inquired, July 6th
        1992, in an internal memo, how many of my books were still
        in their stocks, and having been given totals of several
        thousand copies of all three volumes of my Hitler
        biography, representing a value of several hundred
        thousand pounds, my own editor, Roland Philipps, on July
        6th issued the secret order reading:  "Please arrange for
        the remaining stock of [David Irving's Hitler biographies]
        to be destroyed.  Many thanks".  Book burning.  They
        prepared a "draft announcement", but it was not released.
        Although still a Macmillan author, I was not told.  The
        royalties due to me on the sale of those books were books
        were lost and destroyed with them.  The Defendants'
        campaign to destroy my legitimacy as an historian, of
        which the book published by the Defendants became an
        integral part, had thus reached its climax.

                  My Lord, I now pass over the next pages to page 57.

.          P-134

                  The same thing happened in Australia.  I spoke
        in the Munich.  Final paragraph:  Opponents released --
        I am sorry, yes.  Opponents released to Australia
        television the heavily edited version of Michael Schmidt's
        1991 video tape of me addressing the crowd at Halle about
        which we have heard from Mr Rampton this morning, the Sieg
        Haels and the rest of it.  As edited, it omitted my
        visible and audible rebuke to a section of the crowd for
        chanting Hitler slogans.  Grotesque libels about me
        swamped the Australian press, printed by various
        organisations including the New South Wales Board of
        Deputies and various newspapers.  One example was an
        article by a lecturer in politics.  He wrote: "Irving has
        a history of exciting neoNazi and skinhead groups in
        Germany which had burned migrant hostels and killed people
         ... Irving has frequently spoken in Germany at rallies...
        under the swastika flag ... himself screaming the Nazi
        salute..."  This is how these stories begin.
        Unsurprisingly, Australia then banned me too.  I was t6 be
        refused a visa, they announced, on February 8th 1993 as
        I was a "Holocaust denier".  They had thus adopted the
        phrase that the Second Defendant, Professor Lipstadt,
        prides herself in having invented.

                  This new and very damaging ban on visiting
        Australia made it impossible for me to work again in the
        National Library of Australia in Canberra.  At great

.          P-135

        personal expense I appealed to the Australian Federal
        Court.  The Court declared the Minister's refusal of a
        visa illegal.  The government in Canberra therefore
        changed the law in February 1994 to keep me out.  We note
        from Professor Lipstadt's own discovery that the
        immigration minister faxed the decision to keep me out
        direct to one of her source agencies that same afternoon.
        The same kind of thing happened.

                  In July 1994, as the resulting fresh legal
        actions which I started against the Australian government
        still raged, the Second Defendant was invited by
        Australian organisations, all expenses paid to visit their
        country; she was hired to tour Australia, and to slander
        my name and my reputation and add her voice to the
        campaign to have me refused entry.  The court, my Lord,
        you will probably remember the Australian TV video which
        I showed entitled "The Big Lie" in the early days.

   MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

   MR IRVING:  Broadcast in July 1994, it showed both the expert
        witness, Professor van Pelt, and Mr Fred Leuchter.  It
        showed Fred Leuchter standing on the roof of crematorium
        No. II, about which we are going to hear more, crematorium
        No. II at Auschwitz which van Pelt declared to be the
        centre of the Nazi genocide, and the Second Defendant
        being interviewed while still in Australia (and refusing
        once again to debate with the revisionists, just as she

.          P-136

        has obstinately refused to go into the witness stand here
        and be questioned).  Thus I found myself excluded from
        Australia.  We have had now Germany, Canada, South Africa,
        Australia, New Zealand as well, I lost the ability to
        visit my hundreds of friends down under and my own
        daughter too, who is an Australian citizen; and I lost all
        the bookshop sales that this ban implied in Australia -
        where my Churchill biography had hit the No. 1 spot in the
        best seller lists earlier.

                  Over the page:  My lecturing engagements in the
        British Isles came under similar attack.  I had often
        spoken to universities and debating societies, including
        the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, in the past, but now in
        one month, in October 1993, when I was invited to speak to
        prestigious bodes at three major Irish universities, I
        found all three invitations cancelled under pressure and
        threat of local Jewish and anti-fascist organisations.
        The irony will not elude the court that these Defendants,
        on the one hand, have claimed by way of defence that
        I speak only to the far right and neo-Nazi element, as
        they describe it, and yet it turns out that their own
        associates are the people who have done their damnedest to
        make it impossible for many others to invite me.

                  The Second Defendant, Deborah Lipstadt, had
        meanwhile made progress with her book.  She told her
        publisher that she had written a certain statement with

.          P-137

        the marketing people in mind.  In other words, sometimes
        money mattered more than content, in my submission.

                  She had revealed in September 1991 in a letter:
         "I have also spoken to people in England who have a large
        cache of material on David Irving's conversion to denial".
        We do not know who the people are, but we can, of course,
        readily suspect who in this case those people were.  She
        is once again not presenting herself for
        cross-examination, so there are many things we cannot ask
        her about, including and I would have asked her, in fact,
        most tactfully the reasons why she was refused tenure at
        the University of California and moved downstream to the
        lesser university, in my submission, in Atlanta where she
        now teaches religion.

                  In the light of Mr Rampton's strictures on my
        now famous little ditty -- your Lordship will remember the
        little ditty which I am supposed to have hummed to my nine
        month old daughter, the racist ditty, which went around
        the press because Mr Rampton issued a press release --
        supposedly urging my nine month old little girl not to
        marry outside her own people, I should also have wanted to
        ask questions of Professor Lipstadt's views on race had
        she gone into the witness box.  We know that she has
        written papers, and delivered many fervent lectures, on
        the vital importance of people marrying only within their
        own race.  Quotation:   ("We know what we fight

.          P-138

        against...", she wrote, "intermarriage and Israel-bashing,
        but what is it we fight for?")  She has attracted, in
        fact, much criticism from many in her own community for
        her implacable stance against mixed marriages, marrying
        outside their own race.  In one book Professor Lipstad
        quotes a Wall Street Journal interview with a Conservative
        rabbi, Jack Moline, whom she called "very brave" for
        listing 10 things that Jewish parents should say to their
        children:  "No. 1 on his list", she wrote (in fact it was
        No. 3) "was 'I expect you to marry Jews'."  She considered
        that to be very brave.  My one little ditty which I hummed
        to my nine month old daughter, Jessica, was a perhaps
        tasteless joke.  Professor Lipstadt's repeated
        denunciation of mixed marriages addressed to adults was
        deadly serious.

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