Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day021.20
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

   MR IRVING:  I will deal with it now.  Professor Evans, will you
        look at the telephone conversation of November 30th 1941?

.          P-182

   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Do you have two versions of it there, the typescript
        version followed by the facsimile?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   The typescript version is my own very amateurish attempt
        about 15 years ago.  What we need is on the facsimile.  We
        can agree, can we not, that this is record kept by
        Heinrich Himmler in handwriting of his telephone
        conversations, can we?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   That it is headed with the word "Wolffschansser"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Was that the name of Hitler's headquarters?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Is the following line "from the train"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   And then in a similar kind of layout three or four lines
        further down "from the bunker"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Underneath that we have the words 1330 SS Oberguppenfuhrer
        Heydrich in Prague or Prague?
   A.   Can I have a copy of the Himmler Dienstager book edition,
        would that be possible please?  That is it.  Right.  Yes?
   Q.   Does this show that at 1330 he had a telephone
        conversation with Heydrich?
   A.   Yes.

.          P-183

   Q.   Does the diary which you have now just been handed, the
        appointment book, indicate that for about an hour or two
        that morning he worked?
   A.   Yes, it would seem -- yes, that is right.
   Q.   "Gute arbeit"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   From 12 until 13 ----
   A.   That is right.
   Q.   -- He saw an SS officer and then he worked?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   During that work do you think it is possible that he would
        have telephoned people or received telephone calls or
        actually met people?
   A.   I would not have thought so.  I would have thought
        "gearbeit" just simply means sat down and did papers,
        because when he telephones people it appears in his
        telephone log, and usually when he meets people that
        appears in his appointments diary.  So I would take
        "gearbeit" as meaning he just sat down at his desk and
        signed forms or wrote stuff or whatever, read.
   Q.   Do you think that when he arrived by train in Hitler's
        headquarters he would not receive, he would not inform
        Hitler that he had arrived in some way?
   A.   I would imagine, no, because he had a lunch appointment
        with Hitler at 2.30, so Hitler must have known he was coming.

.          P-184

   Q.   Is there an indication of what was discussed between
        Himmler and Heydrich at 1.30 p.m.?
   A.   Yes, it is on the right-hand column, is it not?
   Q.   Is the first line translated:  "Arrest Dr Jakelius"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   In the second line: "Alleged or apparent son Molotov"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   The third line:  "Jew transport from Berlin"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Full stop.  Is that a full stop there?
   A.   Yes, in the edition it is.  Here it is too, yes.
   Q.   Is the next line: "No liquidation"?
   A.   That is right, yes.
   Q.   What interpretation do you put on the last two lines, Jew
        transports from Berlin and no liquidation?
   A.   That it was agreed between Heydrich and Himmler on the
        phone that the transport of Jews which had left on 27th
        November from Berlin to Riga should not be killed.
   Q.   Had there been previous conversations between those two
        parties about such matters?
   A.   Not that I am aware of ----
   Q.   Can you turn back from that book to ----
   A.   But it may be wrong.
   Q.   --- to 17th November.  It is on page 265.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Is there a telephone conversation at about the same time

.          P-185

        between the same two people which contains the two lines
        "getting rid of the Jews"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   The previous line: Conditions in the generalgouvernenent?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   So they did talk about this kind of thing more than once?
   A.   Oh, yes.  I thought you meant an order not to liquidate.
   Q.   On the following day, on December 1st, before we go back
        to 30th, is there a telephone conversation again between them?
   A.   I am sorry it is not clear that "Beseitigung der Juden"
        means ----
   Q.   Getting rid of?
   A.   --- means killing, does it?
   Q.   Well, getting rid of is ----
   A.   Well, getting rid of, yes.
   Q.   --- a neutral way of putting it.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   On December 1st 1941 is there a telephone conversation
        between Himmler and Heydrich on page 280 at 1.15 p.m.  of
        which the second topic is: "Executions in Riga"?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Do we know that the train load of Jews from Berlin was
        actually full of Jews who were executed in Riga?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Who do you think ordered there should be no liquidation of

.          P-186

        the Jews on that particular train, if that is the
        inference we can draw?
   A.   I would imagine it is Himmler, because he was entitled to
        give orders to Heydrich and not the other way round.
   Q.   Yes.  Why would he have ordered the train load of Jews
        from Berlin not to be liquidated?
   A.   Because at this time there had been no general decision to
        kill Jews who had been transported from Berlin, and
        because this is at a time when the killing of the local
        Jews who had been herded into the ghetto in Riga was being
        managed, was being carried out.  They were being shot in
        their totality in fact over these few days at the end of
        November, beginning of December, and this transport of
        Jews from Berlin landed in the middle of this and was shot
        as well.
   Q.   Was this a matter of life and death, this telephone call?
   A.   For the Jews, certainly.
   Q.   Yes.
   A.   But I think, to answer your question, if I may, the reason
        is because this would be very alarming to those Jews who
        were still in Berlin and still in Germany.  Rumour would
        get back. It was a very public kind of going on and this
        was not desired at the present moment.  Indeed subsequent
        to this for some months transports of Jews from Berlin to
        the East why not shot.
   Q.   This is pure speculation on your part about the need not

.          P-187

        to cause alarm among the remaining Jews in Berlin, is that right?
   A.   No, it is not pure speculation.  It refers to another
        document which it is the Bruns' document which you know,
        which has been discussed.
   Q.   Does that refer to alarm in Berlin?
   A.   That says, if I recall rightly, that, here we are, this is
        Bruns saying that someone showed him a piece of paper that
        sanctioned the shootings; they just had to be carried out
        less conspicuously in the future.
   Q.   Is that not because they do not want to cause alarm in the
        local city, on the East, in Minsk or in Riga or wherever?
        Would not be the reason for that?
   A.   No, because these are Jews from Berlin.  They carried on
        shooting the Jews in Riga.
   Q.   Why did he make this telephone call from the bunker in
        Hitler's headquarters?  Why did he not make it from the
        train?  Is there any significance in that fact?  He made
        the previous two telephone calls from the train, and yet
        this was a phone call, would you agree, as a matter of
        life and death he makes from Hitler's bunker?
   A.   Well, as I say, we do not know whether it was Himmler who
        called Heydrich or the other way round.  That is one of
        the problems with the phone log, it does not say who
        phoned whom.  So it may well have been that Heydrich
        phoned up Himmler to let him know what was going on and a

.          P-188

        decision was made as a result of that.  It is also
        possible that the SS man he had seen previously, Gunter
        Dalequin, from 12.00 to 1.00, who was reporting about the
        travelling he had done on the East in the SS Political
        Division and the Totenkopf Division who are concentration
        camp guards, that he might have informed Himmler.
   Q.   Have you any evidence that Gunter Dalequin in fact was
        reporting back from the Baltic countries?  Were those
        divisions based in the Baltic or were they in fact on the
        Eastern Front?
   A.   It is difficult to say or difficult to say who could have
        told him.  One of the problems with this log, as you know,
        is that it is very brief and rather cryptic.  So one has
        to use conjectures here a little bit.
   Q.   The information ----
   A.   But that is certainly possible if one imagines why that
        happened.  It seems to be the case that previous
        transports of Jews from Berlin had been shot and that this
        one that alarm was being raised in Himmler's and
        Heydrich's minds about this.
   Q.   In Himmler's and Heydrich's minds?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   But it is totally irrelevant the fact that this
        conversation did not take place because Himmler got to
        Hitler's bunker?
   A.   It does not say Hitler's bunker.  It says "aus dem Bunker"

.          P-189

        and there are I think 29 bunkers on that site, ten in a
        circle.  I actually have a plan here of the bunkers which
        illustrates that example.
   Q.   Can you tell us what date that plan is?
   A.   This is from 1944, the second one.  The first one is from
        the whole covering the period 1941 to 1944.
   Q.   Are you aware of the fact that the bomb that exploded
        under Hitler's table on July 20th was at first taken to be
        the work of the local building men building lots more
        bunkers at the Fuhrer's headquarters?
   A.   Yes, that is the case.
   Q.   So the Fuhrer's headquarters had original existed in the
        middle of 1941 from the Barbarossa, was of a much more
        modest scale, is that right?
   A.   Sorry.  Well, obviously it grew over the years, but you
        are not presenting evidence to say that this is from the
        Fuhrer bunker.  Indeed, as he says later on, he has a
        midday meal with the Fuhrer, and then from 4 o'clock to
        8 o'clock, gearbeit, it worked, and it seems likely to me
        that he would work at his own desk or at the desk of his
        adjutant Wolff in his bunker.  I mean even in 1941 I do
        not think there is just one bunker there.
   Q.   So you take refuge in the fact that this may not have been
        Hitler's bunker at the Wolf's lair that Himmler was
        phoning from?
   A.   I am saying you do not have any evidence to show that it

.          P-190

        was in Hitler's bunker.
   Q.   Right, and it would be perverse to assume that it was, is
        that what you are saying?
   A.   I think it is going well beyond the evidence, yes.
   Q.   What about on the balance of probabilities?
   A.   Balance of probabilities, not.
   Q.   If he has come here to ----
   A.   If he is working, gearbeit.
   Q.   If he has come here to see Hitler and these important
        phone calls take place from bunker at Hitler's
        headquarters?
   A.   But you yourself have said that Hitler's bunker was rather
        small, so it is difficult to think that Himmler had a kind
        of permanent desk there to work at.  Surely he went into
        his own quarters or his those of his adjutant with Hitler
        to do this work.
   Q.   On December 1st there is another telephone conversation
        which we just looked at about the executions in Riga, is
        that right?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Is that reference to these executions, in your opinion?
        Had there been any other executions on December 1st apart
        from these 5,000?
   A.   I think that is the last one, is it not?  I am trying to
        find this.
   Q.   December 1st, it is on page 280, line 8 approximately.

.          P-191

   A.   Execution in Riga, yes.  This probably refers to the one
        the day before.
   Q.   Are you familiar with the background of that second
        telephone call or conversation?
   A.   Do put it to me, Mr Irving.
   Q.   Can you turn, therefore, to the next items, turn the page
        until you come to an item headed on the top right "PRO file".
   A.   HW16/32?
   Q.   That is right.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   This is a translation, and you can look either at the
        original German three pages later and it is item 24, of an
        intercept by the British decoders of a coded message from
        Himmler's staff to the chief murderer in Riga, SS
        Oberguppenfuhrer Jackelm?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Does it say: "The Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler summons you to
        him for a conference on December 4th"?
   A.   Yes.

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