Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.01
Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.01
Last-Modified: 2000/07/29
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London
Thursday, 13th January
2000
Before:
MR JUSTICE GRAY
B E T W E E N:
DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING
Claimant
-and-
(1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
(2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
Defendants
The Claimant appeared in person
MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport
Lyons
and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
Second Defendants
MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons)
appeared on
behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
(Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry
Counsell
& Company, Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
PROCEEDINGS - DAY THREE
. P-1
< DAY 3 Thursday, 13th January
2000
MR DAVID IRVING, Recalled.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
MR IRVING: May it please the court, with your Lordship's
permission, I have brought the bundle of the documents
that we were referring to last night. Unless your
Lordship would see any reason against, I propose
rapidly
stepping through these documents, pausing at the ones
which are significant as far as we can determine so
far
from the direction and thrust of the cross-
examination.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You are in the middle of your
cross-examination. So, in the ordinary way, we will
wait
and see when the documents became relevant to Mr
Rampton's
questions.
MR IRVING: They have been in discovery throughout, my
Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. But I suspect most of
them
are going to become relevant to the answers you are
going
to be giving to some of the questions Mr Rampton
is asking.
MR IRVING: I do apprehend it will be useful to the court,
I
appreciate that it is your Lordship's court, but I
believe
it will be useful.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: You may well be right. I cannot really
tell,
I have only glanced at it. Shall I ask Mr Rampton --
because he is cross-examining, so, on the face of it,
he
has the right to continue to cross-examine.
. P-2
MR RAMPTON: I have no objection. In a sense, it is either
evidence-in-chief in anticipation of cross-
examination, or
it is what one might call "premature re-examination".
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
MR RAMPTON: One way or the other it is going to make no
difference.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you are happy I will not stand in the
way.
Before that happens I wonder if I could
mention
one or two administrative points? The first is, I
think
we are all agreed through nobody's fault, this is not
a
very suitable court and I am very concerned that there
are
members of the public who, I think, are not able to
get in
and listen and want to. Having made enquiries, as I
said
I would, I think there are two possible courts to
which we
could move which were not available or were not
thought to
be available when we started. One is court 73, which
I have looked at and looks to me to be much better
than
this in almost every respect. There is, apparently,
another one, which is in Chichester Rents in Chancery
Lane, which is even bigger. I think I would have some
slight personal preference for 73, but what I wanted
to
ask you is that I think we should move anyway, because
this is not satisfactory and it seems to me, unless
you
are going to tell me there are insuperable problems,
tomorrow is the day to do the move. Are you in
agreement
that that is the right thing to do?
. P-3
MR IRVING: I would have suggested doing it over the
weekend
although I have no logistical problems myself --
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think they have a lot of problems
ahead of them, but I think it is better to do it now
than
to struggle on and regret it every day from hereon.
MR RAMPTON: That would suit us awfully well, if we could
make
a fresh start in what I call a "proper big court" on
Monday morning.
MR IRVING: Not a fresh start.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will decide -- not a fresh start.
MR RAMPTON: No, thank you.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will decide during the course of today
which it is going to be and, obviously, let you know.
We
will take it that on Monday we will be in a different
court.
MR RAMPTON: May I ask where exactly 73 is?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is where all those new Court of
Appeals
are.
MR RAMPTON: In the East Building.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
MR RAMPTON: In the end I would have to say, my Lord, it
is a
matter for you.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is, if you have strong
feelings.
MR RAMPTON: No, I do not know Chancery Lane much at all
anyway.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is point one.
. P-4
The next relates to the TA Law Transcripts
which
are being done. Really, I think I am saying this on
behalf of the lady who is doing the transcribing. She
is
having the most appalling task. She is here all day,
and
she is by herself, as it were. It would help her if we
could slightly slow down. Mr Irving, you speak fairly
rapidly anyway. That is not a criticism at all.
MR IRVING: I thought I was speaking slowly.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you can bear in mind there is somebody
trying to take down what you say, if we can try to
remember to spell out the German names when they crop
up
for the first time. That is going to make everybody's
life much easier.
There is one other point on the transcripts.
The Day 2 transcript starts at page 104. My own
feeling
(and I do not know whether you share it, Mr Rampton)
is
that it would be better if every day started at 1, so
you
have Day 2, page 1, rather than page 104. I am told
that
is physically possible. So that is what I think we
will
have in the future.
That is all that I wanted to raise except
that,
Mr Irving, I have seen (and I do not know whether
Mr Rampton has) your letter about the letter to me
about
the article in the Stuttgart press. Do you know about
it?
MR RAMPTON: No.
. P-5
MR IRVING: I was going to ask, my Lord, I might, having
given
the Defendants time to consider it, if I might address
the
court briefly on the matter after the lunch
adjournment?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you would like to do that, that is
fine.
Mr Rampton?
MR RAMPTON: I have no comment until I have seen it.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not suppose you will, even when you
have.
MR RAMPTON: I see. My Lord, the only thing I would
mention
about the transcript, I do not know what the cure is.
Is
that, normally speaking, of course, one can deduce
what it
was, but here and there -- this is not a criticism of
the
transcriber, far from it -- one sees in square
brackets
the word "German" which represents something that has
been
said in German. That is going to repeat itself
indefinitely in that case. I do not know what cure
is.
Whether the word should be spelt out each time. It is
a
terribly laborious way of dealing it, or whether we
supply
at some stage when it is important a list of what we
suppose was the word used. As I say, most of the time
one
can deduce it.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it actually going to be all that much
of a
burden to spell it out or, at any rate, spell out the
key
words in the document? I am thinking yesterday
"liquidierung". One can spell that out.
MR RAMPTON: There is going to be more of that today.
. P-6
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow.
MR RAMPTON: Perhaps spell it out?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am inclined to think so. I think that
is
the best way. It is going to slow things down. Would
you
prefer it, both of you?
MR RAMPTON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is going to slow things down, but it
needs
to be done that way. So, Mr Irving, would you like to
take me through the...
MR IRVING: Page 1, my Lord, this is a letter -- the sole
purpose of this letter is that it indicates the date
when
I really made use of the Himmler telephone notes,
being
1974; some 25 years ago, 26 years ago.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you this? You there
transcribe judentransport, J-U-D-E-N-T-R-A-N-S-P-O-R-
T, in
the singular, and that is in 1974.
MR IRVING: We have check the original in the German. You
are
absolutely right, my Lord. You are absolutely right.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
MR IRVING: In a very vague, and, of course, I am still
considering myself to be under oath as I make these
remarks, in a very vague way my recollection is that
time
I regarded the word "transport" as not just meaning
like a
transport train or one consignment, or a transport
ship in
the way that you would talk about a convoy of 26
transports but also in the sense that transportation.
. P-7
I consider that the words judenstransport meant
"transportation of Jews".
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I note that you make that point.
MR IRVING: This is an alternative inference but now I am
quite
happy to accept that this particular discussion from
external evidence only referred to one particular
transport of Jews, and I am indebted to your Lordship
for
having reminded, or took me back into the mind set of
26
years ago.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
MR IRVING: As you know, my presumption is, I will just
read
the middle paragraph that Hitler had become an active
knowledge bearer or accomplice in the destruction of
the
Jews only in 1943. This is of course a translation of
the
following page, my Lord. From the attached page,
which is
a facsimile, which we will see in a minute, it is
evident
that Himmler, arriving at midday on November 30th,
1941,
in the Wolf's Lair, which I explain was Hitler's
headquarters in East Prussia, after a brief
conversation
with Hitler immediately had to telephone Heydrich in
Prague, and then comes the phrase, "judentransportest
aust
Berlin keine liquidierung", which I believe the
shorthand
writer already had from us.
If you take this in conjunction with various
other entries, e.g. that of 17th November 1941, in
which
Heydrich informs the Reich Fuhrer, that is Himmler, on
. P-8
conditions in the general Uberman, Poland.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is SS Reich Fuhrer.
MR IRVING: Well, Reich Fuhrer SS would be the full title.
There was only one Reich Fuhrer in German --
conditions in
the general government Poland-geting rid of the Jews,
Beseitigung, this can only indicate that Himmler has
been
rapped across the knuckles by Hitler. This
conversation
note has until now evidently slipped through the
fingers
of the historical research community, as you might
call
it.
Then the other two lines at the bottom are
not
without interest in the chain of documents I refer to,
my
Lord. Himmler had to issue a similar "holt" order in
April 1942 on account of the liquidation of the
gypsies,
again after a brief visit to Hitler. "I thought this
might be of interest to you." You will see that
document
too, my Lord, in this bundle. Because it is false to
try
and draw inferences from one document without looking
at
other documents in the series. I appreciate in court
it
is difficult to do this.
My Lord, the next document I am going to
draw
your Lordship's attention to is 03 at the foot of the
page. This is another document that was in discovery.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read that. That is you asking
Professor Hinsley whether he has any more information.
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2008
