Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day011.19
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20

   MR RAMPTON:  I think that Pressac's book must originally have
   A.   No.  This is the only edition.
   Q.   Did he write it in English or did someone translate it for
        him?
   A.   It translated by Behalteklasse Foundation.
   Q.   Have you got the introduction to chapter 3?
   A.   Part 3, chapter 3, yes.
   Q.   Can you read that to yourself.  We will all read it at the

.          P-166

        same time to ourselves.  Then I will ask you ----
   MR IRVING:  Could you give me a page number, please?
   MR RAMPTON:  I am sorry, it is 481 of Pressac.
   A.   Introduction?
   Q.   Introduction.  Just read the introduction to yourself.
   A.   "The testimony by Henrich Tauber ..."
   Q.   Not out loud.  Just read it to yourself.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It does not really matter.
   MR RAMPTON:  Tell us when you have finished.
   A.   I have read it.
   Q.   You have read it?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   That, if I may summarize it, is Mr Pressac's on view of
        Tauber as it comes off the written page, is it not?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Is it an assessment with which you agree or disagree?
   A.   I agree with that.
   Q.   If I may summarize, the effect is that Tauber is a modest,
        sober and careful witness, is that right?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   You have to say yes because otherwise the tape cannot read
        your mind.  At the bottom he says: "Henrich Tauber's
        deposition enabled me at the last moment to authenticate
        the testimony of Dr Paul Bendal that I was on the point of
        invalidating." Do you see right at the bottom of the
        introduction?  Do you have that?

.          P-167

   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Do you know what it was in the testimony of Dr Paul Bendal
        that Pressac was on the point of invalidating and that
        Tauber validates?
   A.   I do not remember any more.  It is sometime since I read
        Pressac.
   Q.   Right.  Another piece of disorder I am afraid, Professor.
        Can you turn to pages 110, 111?
   A.   Of what?
   Q.   Of your report.
   A.   I am there.
   Q.   Towards the top of page 110 you are writing about a number
        of people who are known to have died at certain times from
        disease at Auschwitz?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Then you say this: "It must be remembered, however, that
        the mortality figures which the concentration camps sent
        to Berlin only apply to the deaths of registered
        prisoners", and you have already told us that.  Then you
        make reference to the evidence of SS, he was a General was
        he not, Oswald Pohl?
   A.   Yes, he was I think Obergruppenfuhrer by that time.
   Q.   Whatever, he was in charge of the concentration camp
        system as a whole, is that right?
   A.   Yes, he was the kind of -- officially he was called the
        Economic Director, so some way off the SS, and that really

.          P-168

        ran the concentration camps.  He was not the inspector of
        the concentration camps.  As a business adventure, yes.
        By a business venture he was.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, this of course is not matter that was
        raised in the cross-examination.  So I am puzzled.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It may turn out to be.  That is the problem.
        You never know where ----
   MR IRVING:  As long as your Lordship is alert to that.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  --- it is going.
   MR RAMPTON:  I had understood that Mr Irving relied on the
        death books and the decrypts as showing that the number of
        people who died at Auschwitz was very small.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.  I think that is right, although there
        was not any cross-examination on that.
   MR RAMPTON:  I know, but it may be convenient.
   MR IRVING:  The only mention of the death books is when I was
        querying the character of the deaths, the age spectrum,
        rather than statistics.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is part of your case, is it not, that the
        death books give a very different picture from the sort of
        figures that Professor van Pelt speaks of?
   MR IRVING:  It is a subtly different picture on the question of
        the killing of the old and sick.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If it is part of your case, and I do not
        criticise you for not cross-examining to it, I think it is
        for Mr Rampton to be able to put these questions.

.          P-169

   MR IRVING:  This specific document of course is not one that I ----
   MR RAMPTON:  Anyhow, it does arise indirectly and quite
        immediately out of the questions which were put about
        selection to which I am immediately coming after this.
                  Did in fact the head of this system General Pohl
        say at his trial in Nuremberg that the people who were
        directly exterminated were never registered?
   A.   He says that no information about it has been transmitted
        to Berlin.
   Q.   His subordinate was Dr Lolling?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Who was in charge of the inspectorate presumably.  He
        said, the last answer at the top of page 111, in answer to
        his own counsel, his own attorney: "The figures about
        exterminations were not reported to the inspectorate at
        all, and constantly Dr Rolling could not evaluate them for
        his statistics."
   A.   That is true.
   Q.   Thank you.  Now I want to ----
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, that was very definitely not a matter
        which I raised in cross-examination of this witness.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I tried to explain why I think it is
        legitimate.  In a way we are having to take short cuts in
        this case.  You have lots of points which, in a perfect
        world, I would have said to you, Mr Irving, you must put

.          P-170

        that point to Professor van Pelt, but we be would here to
        Christmas and beyond if we did that.  So we are not
        requiring you to put all those points.  But it does not
        mean Mr Rampton cannot get evidence from this witness,
        especially if it is in his report, which bears on the
        point that you are going to take, although you have not
        cross-examined to it.
   MR IRVING:  My understanding was re-examination is only
        permitted on matters that I cross-examined on.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  In a normal case that is true.  I am not
        bending the rules in Mr Rampton's favour.  I am in fact
        bending them in your favour, because I have not required
        you to cross-examine on this point, do you follow me?
   MR IRVING:  Very well.
   MR RAMPTON:  Normally in the old days, and I thank goodness we
        are not in the old days any more, if the point had not
        been taken in cross-examination, I would have to say to
        the Judge:  Well, I am afraid it cannot be taken in
        closing.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is what I mean by taking short cuts in
        this case.
   MR RAMPTON:  I do not say that.
                  Does that evidence of General Pohl reflect upon
        the death books figures so-called that have emerged from Moscow?
   A.   No.  It suggests, I mean Pohl only talks about of course

.          P-171

        information being transmitted to Berlin, but certainly the
        question is how would information be gathered in
        Auschwitz, and then of course we get other corroborating
        information like, for example, that of Pery Broad who
        worked in the political department who said that there was
        no registration of people who were not admitted to the
        camp.  That is information that once the transport had
        arrived, and once basically the people had been sent to
        the gas chamber, all records, all traces of these people
        also in the records were removed, or at least, you know,
        there was maybe some record about a number of people that
        had arrived but they were not registered.
   Q.   Does it also reflect, tell me if it does not, on the
        so-called Hinsley decrypt question?
   A.   In the way it has been posed by Mr Irving, yes.
   Q.   Yes.  To put it another way, would you expect to find
        references to the extermination of unregistered prisoners
        in decrypts going from Auschwitz to Berlin?
   A.   No.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is the same point, is it not?  The Hinsley
        decrypt point is the same point about non-registration of
        those who were going allegedly to be exterminated.
   MR RAMPTON:  You told us some time ago, Professor, last week,
        that upon arrival to begin with the transports were
        divided up for selection at the old Judenamter which was
        between the two camps?

.          P-172

   A.   Yes.
   Q.   But that by the time of the Hungarian action in 1944, the
        Summer of 1944, they had built one spare right up through
        Birkenhau towards the two crematoria 2 and 3?
   A.   Yes.  The spare had been in construction for a longer
        time, but it was completed in I think March, March 1944.
   Q.   Yes.
   A.   Late March, maybe early April.
   Q.   Could you take that file H2 (vi) again, please?
   A.   H2(vi), where is that?
   Q.   In tab 4 we find something called the "Auschwitz Album".
        That is not its official title in any sense.  Can you say
        briefly what this Auschwitz album actually is?  I will ask
        you about the photographs in a moment, but if you could
        tell us what the book is?
   A.   This is a book which was found on the evacuation of the
        camp by a person called Lily Meyer as the camp was being
        evacuated.  It is a picture book made either for an
        individual SS man or maybe for the Auschwitz SS, recording
        a couple of arrivals and subsequent kind of delousing
        registration into the camp, and also the fate of other
        people, at least until any come to the crematorium, of
        Hungarian Jews.
   Q.   Right.  So the photographs which we find inside are,
        therefore, of what date?
   A.   They are of the Summer 1944.

.          P-173

   Q.   By whom were they taken?
   A.   They were taken by an SS man.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  How do you know they are the Summer of 1944?
   A.   Because that is when the Hungarian action occurred.
   Q.   That is circular, is it not?
   A.   But the book itself identifies this.  It identifies the
        action as a Hungarian action.
   MR IRVING:  That was surely May 1944.
   A.   May 1944, whatever, yes.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, it may not matter.
   MR RAMPTON:  It does not sound as though it is controversial.
        It is in fact quite a well-known book.  These photographs
        have been known about for a very long time?
   A.   Yes, apart from -- there are three basically sources of
        photographs, at least from Birkenhau, which is the
        Bauleitung photographs we saw today a few of, showing the
        construction, showing the construction of the buildings in
        Birkenhau.  Then we have a number of photos, a small
        number of photos which would have been made illegally by
        prisoners, probably a sonderkommando who found a camera in
        what was left over in the undressing room.  These are very
        shaky photographs where you see people running and you see
        some burning of bodies in a kind open pit.  Then this one
        which is a large collection made by the SS, one does not
        really know for what reason, except ----
   MR IRVING:  Where is the second collection from, is it Moscow?

.          P-174

   A.   The second collection.
   Q.   Yes.
   A.   There are three or four photographs.  I think they are the
        original negatives.  No, there are no negatives.  Original
        prints on Auschwitz.
   MR RAMPTON:  The particular pages that I want to refer to are a
        little bit difficult to find, because the bundle has not
        been paginated, but at the bottom of each photograph there
        is usually a printed number.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   If you turn the file sideways, I hope you can find a
        photograph which has a printed number 15 at the bottom?
   A.   15?
   Q.   Yes.
   A.   15.
   Q.   Yes, 15.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, I am again nervous about this introduction
        of fresh evidence of the re-examination phase.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, this does arise of out
        cross-examination.
   MR RAMPTON:  This arises directly out of questions about
        selection.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Do you remember questions about where the
        selection process took place and how it changed from being
        on the railway platform, I think it was originally, and
        then they built the spare and it was sometimes done

.          P-175

        there.  Is that a fair summary of the evidence?
   MR RAMPTON:  There is a very direct and relevant point to be
        made at the end of this little exercise, if Mr Irving will
        be patient.  Do you see that photograph, Professor?
   A.   Yes, I see.
   Q.   Just tell me, I will make a suggestion and answer then
        I will ask for information.  Am I looking northwards?
   A.   No.  You are looking towards the West.

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