Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day021.19
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

   MR IRVING:  The chain of documents, the chain of evidence.  It
        is complete, apart from the Schlegelberger document,
   MR IRVING:  Now we turn the page perhaps.
   A.   I am just wondering if ----
   Q.   If you turn the page to page 2 of that document, the first
        paragraph, is it right to say that from this time onwards
        for two or three years Adolf Hitler was talking about a
        geographical solution, he wanted to deport them, out of
        sight out of mind?
   A.   Yes, we have been through this ending up with the
        Madagascar solution, this is what he says here.
   Q.   The first paragraph of this says, and I translate: "The

.          P-173

        Fuhrer points to the possibility that the States who are
        interested in this should find or take some spot in the
        world and put the Jews there, and that these Anglo-Saxon
        humanitarian weeping people states should then say: Here
        they are, either they are going to hunger or put your
        final words into practice"?
   A.   No, not quite, Mr Irving.  I think that is wrong.  [German
        spoken].
   Q.   "You have to say to them", that is correct?
   A.   So, it is to say to them, yes.  So, States which are
        interested in getting rid of their Jews should pick out
        any tiny spot in the world, flecks, a spot of dust really,
        a tiny island, and saying:  Here you are, either starve to
        death or put your many speeches in these Anglo-Saxon - ---
   Q.   So in his nasty Nazi way he is still talking about the
        geographical solution; there is no talk about liquidation
        here, is there?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Not in 1939.
   A.   "Starve to death" does not seem to me a particularly nice
        thing to say.
   MR IRVING:  Is this five or six days before Adolf Hitler made
        his famous speech in the Reichstag, on January 30th 1939,
        nine days?
   A.   His prophecy, yes.
   Q.   His famous prophecy saying that if they start a new world
        war ----

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   A.   That is right.
   Q.   --- it will end with their destruction, vernichtung?
   A.   He already makes another prophecy we see in the first as
        sentence of this extract:  "On 9th November 1918 the Jews
        had not done that in vein.  This day would be avenged".
   Q.   Yes, but it is correct that Hitler uses the same kind of
        terminology in that famous speech to which he then later
        refers so often, is that correct?
   A.   That is right, yes.
   Q.   Can you turn the page now.  We are now in August 1940,
        because not very much happens, does it?  The emigration
        continues until the end of 1939, is that right?
   A.   That is right, yes.
   Q.   About how many Jews actually emigrate from Germany?
   A.   About half the Jewish population.
   Q.   Are you including Austria, two thirds altogether, about
        200,000 out of 300,000?
   A.   Yes, it is about 200 to 250,000 is it not?
   Q.   Did most of the emigration begin after the night of broken glass?
   A.   No.  A lot did.  It began in 1933 and it kind of went in
        waves.  But there was certainly a major emigration after
        November 1938, because the situation had quite clearly
        changed so much for the worse.
   Q.   These two notes now are dated August 3rd 1940.  They are
        from my card index, but they refer to a meeting that he

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        had with Hitler, Otto Abetz.  Who was Otto Abetz?
   A.   You have to tell me I am afraid.
   Q.   Otto Abetz was the German ambassador in France in Paris,
        would you accept that?
   A.   Sure, yes.
   Q.   That he visited Hitler and on August 3rd 1940 he had a
        meeting with Hitler, and the first document does it show
        Otto Abetz swearing an affidavit saying that he had talked
        with the Fuhrer about the Jewish problem, and then follows
        the quotation:  "He said to me that he wanted to solve the
        Jewish question generally for Europe, and in fact by a
        clause in the peace agreement, the peace treaty"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "In which he made a condition of the vanquished countries,
        the defeated countries, that they agreed to transport
        their Jewish citizens outside Europe", is that right?
   A.   Yes, exactly.
   Q.   So again it is a geographical solution he is talking about?
   A.   Quite right, yes.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You can take this quite rapidly because you
        are pushing at an open door.
   MR RAMPTON:  I do not understand where this is going.  Nobody
        on this side of the court has suggested anything else up
        to 1941, and not even then until late 1941 do we get into
        murder on systematic scale.

.          P-176

   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is exactly why I said you can take this
        quite quickly.
   MR IRVING:  We are taking it at enormous speed, my Lord.
   A.   Let us keep going then.
   Q.   In that case we will skip the second file.  We are now in
        15th November 1941.
   A.   Right.
   Q.   This is apparently a retype by the Nuremberg authorities
        of a presumably rather damaged or illegible original, a
        letter addressed to the Minister for the Occupied Eastern
        Territories by somebody in the Baltic States, the
        Reichskommissar, the Office of the Reichskommissar for the
        Ostland, stating: "I have forbidden the Jewish executions
        in Liebau because it was quite unbearable or irresponsible
        for them to be carried out in the manner that they were
        being carried out".
   A.   Irresponsible, yes.
   Q.   Irresponsible.  "I asked to be informed whether your
        question of October 31st is to be interpreted as a
        directive" ----
   A.   "Your enquiry".  "Your enquiry".
   Q.   "Your enquiry of October 31st is to be interpreted as a
        directive that all the Jews in the Baltic are to be
        liquidated.  Is this to be done without regard to their
        age and race and to our economic interest or to economic
        interests?  For example, the Wehrmacht's expert skilled

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        workers in the arms factories"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Does this indicate -- then the final paragraph: "Neither
        from the directives on the Jewish problem in the brown
        file nor other decrees allow me to assume that there is
        such a directive"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Does this indicate that at the very highest level in the
        Baltic there was no indication by October 31st or November
        15th 1941, rather, of any kind that they were floundering,
        they did not know what on earth was going on and what they
        should be doing and what they should not be doing?
   A.   It is not very clear who this is from or to.  Can you just
        remind.
   Q.   It is from the Reichskommissar.
   A.   The Reichsminister, that is right.
   Q.   To the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
        who was Rosenberg, was it not?
   A.   That is right.  Who is the Reichskommissar?
   Q.   The Reichskommissar for the Ostland was, I believe,
        Lohse.  If this a genuine document, and it appears to be a
        Nuremberg document, then from this rather fragmentary
        document we can conclude that on November 15th 1941 at
        least there was no kind of directive from above as to what
        was to happen with the Jews being sent out there, and the
        man who is the asking the questions is saying: "What are

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        we supposed to be doing?"
   A.   That is not quite so.  He is says he has not been able to
        find one in his brown file.
   Q.   Yes, which appears to have some kind of great importance.
   A.   You also left out a sentence [German spoken].
   Q.   It says that it is quite a laudable task cleansing the
        Eastern Ostland of Jews, but if we are going to do it we
        have to do it in a way that it does not damage our
        economic interests?
   A.   That is right, yes.  There is a great deal or a
        considerable amount of argument about the economic
        responsibility.
   Q.   The fact that I rely on is that apparently there is brown
        file which appears to contain directives from top level,
        and he has delved into that file and cannot find any kind
        instructions at all?
   A.   That is right, for all the total liquidation, as he says,
        of all Jews in the Osland in the Eastern territories,
        without any exceptions, and particularly without reference
        to economic interests, and there is a good deal of
        discussion, you find references in the Himmler
        appointments and telephone diaries, for example, to the
        discussions that went on about what should be done about
        Jews who were working, for example, in armaments
        industries, you see references here.  So what he is really
        saying is:  "Do we have to kill these people too? We must

.          P-179

        surely square this perfectly acceptable cleansing", as he
        puts it, "of the Osland, Juden, this cleansing of the
        eastland of Jews, that is all right, but it must be
        economically OK".
   Q.   His Lordship will appreciate the reason that I attach
        importance to this is the absence even at this date of any
        order, systematic order, shall we put it like that.  He
        has looked for a directive, he has looked for a decree,
        there is nothing there, and so he is asking up the proper
        channels, saying:  "What should we be doing?"
   A.   There is no legal decree, that is right.  "Alas" is a
        legal decree.
   Q.   My Lord, I do not propose putting to this witness the
        documents on the November 30th 1941 phone call, because we
        have been over that in very great detail, Himmler to
        Heydrich, transport of Jews from Berlin not to be
        liquidated, and the intercepts which then followed.
   A.   It is not necessarily Himmler to Heydrich, is it, because
        we do not know from these who phoned whom?
   Q.   Well, a conversation between Himmler and Heydrich.
   A.   "Oustenbunke" of course is not necessarily from Hitler's
        bunker because there were quite a large number of bunkers
        in that Wolffschansser.  Apart from those two points,
        I think we have been over that very thoroughly.
   MR IRVING:  I am seeking his Lordship's guidance on this.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, you do not need to go over that again.

.          P-180

   MR IRVING:  I will go straightforward, therefore, to July 1942.
   MR RAMPTON:  May I say this?  Your Lordship might be helped,
        I do not know -- Professor Evans' evidence on this is
        perfectly clear, that both these file notes of Himmler
        have been deliberately misrepresented by Mr Irving.  He
        gives his reasons for that in his report.  I am a little
        concerned that Mr Irving should think, he avoids that
        confrontation simply by passing it by.
   MR IRVING:  That would be a different matter then which I would
        then come back to.  I think this is properly the right way
        to do it, my Lord, that we will skip at this time as being
        part of the chain, but on the question of the relevance of
        these documents, these specific documents, we will take in
        our stride when we deal with the pages in the report.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Eventually, sorry, Mr Rampton, go on.
   MR RAMPTON:  It was not so much the relevance of the particular
        documents.  It is, first of all, their transcription.
   MR IRVING:  These are different issues, of course, are they not?
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes, and also once they have been properly
        transcribed their true interpretation or what I might say
        their fair objective interpretation.  I think those are
        probably two questions which are too important to be bypassed.
   MR IRVING:  We can deal with it here perhaps.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What I am expecting at some stage, and

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        I think there are about ten of them or at any rate the way
        I see it there are about ten of them, criticisms made by
        Professor Evans of your historiography.  They are fairly
        sort of clear cut separate topics.  Mr Irving, I am not
        absolutely certain but I think Mr Rampton is right that
        keine liquidierung is one of them.
   MR IRVING:  Yes, we have been over it exhaustively.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, but I am not sure you have
        cross-examined Professor Evans about it.
   MR IRVING:  Yes, if it will advance the matter.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You can certainly cross-examine shortly, and
        I am encouraging you to do that, but I do not think skip
        it altogether.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, my questions are very short.  It is the
        other half of the cross-examination that takes the time.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What I am saying is you do not need to ask a
        lot of short questions on any of these topics, but I must
        hear you put your case.
   MR IRVING:  Very well.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I do not say you have to do it now because
        you may want to carry on with the exercise you are
        embarked on at the moment, but you cannot just skip the
        specific topics on which you are criticised by Professor Evans.

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