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Subject: David Irving interview: 2GB Transcript
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TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH DAVID IRVING BY 
RON CASEY, SYDNEY RADIO STATION 2GB 
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8, 1996   

RON CASEY:	

I've got on the line now David Irving, the international author
and historian.  Good afternoon, our time, Mr Irving.

IRVING:		

Yes, hello.  It's three in the morning in London of course, but
that makes no difference.

COMPERE:		

All right.  I'm sorry to worry you at such a late hour. You may
remember me, and I don't think you would, because I interviewed you last
time you were in Australia on this station.

Look, I've got to ask your reaction today to the news that you will not be
allowed to enter Australia.

IRVING:		

My immediate thought is, what are they frightened of?  I mean, are
they frightened I am going to point my typewriter at someone? It's
ludicrous.  I use words.  I use my fountain pen.  I write books. My books
are published in the world's leading publishing houses, all the book
stores.  So what are people frightened of if I come down here?

I mean, I received from the Minister the letter faxed through to me about
25 minutes ago here in London in which Philip Ruddock explains the reasons
why he's banning me and he talks about my having lied to Courts in Canada
and having been convicted of crimes in Germany and all this kind of thing,
and frankly, I've never been subjected to such an onslaught in my life.

COMPERE:		

I think at this stage, I know of your conviction in Germany and
also in Canada.  I'd like you for the listeners, to tell what those
convictions involved.

IRVING:		

In 1990 or 1991, it's so long ago I can hardly remember now, I
made a public speech in Germany in a private meeting to about 2,000 people
in the course of which I said one sentence which was a criminal offence in
Germany.

And this sentence was, and I can repeat it to you because it's not a
criminal offence in Australia. The sentence was, "The gas chamber in
Auschwitz, which they show to the tourists, is a fake built after the War
by the Poles."  Now the Poles have since admitted this.

The Polish government has admitted that what I said is true, but I was
fined by the German government 22,000 Australian dollars for saying those
few words and that gives me the criminal record.
			And you see the Philip Ruddocks and the John Howards of the Australian
Government saying that is sufficient reason to call me a blackguard and a
liar and a man of bad character.

COMPERE:		

Well, I am pleased to be able to give you the opportunity to
explain exactly what that criminal offence involves, because it is not fair
that you be labelled as a criminal when all you did was to make an
allegation.  Now, whether that allegation is true or not is up to you to
substantiate and you claim you have.

Could I put this question to you, because I've had some dealings with the
Jewish community here in Sydney in recent weeks and also, I've visited
their Holocaust Memorial in Darlinghurst.  Could I ask you this question? 
Do you realise what pain and suffering you bring to Jewish communities here
in Australia with your allegations that the Holocaust was not as
devastating and didn't involve the numbers that the Jewish community now
claims?

IRVING:		

Well, why don't they come clean?  Why don't they debate fairly and
squarely with me and prove me wrong?

I may be causing them pain and inconvenience as they say, but why don't
they debate with me?  Why don't they show me up as a charlatan if I'm
wrong.  All they come - they come and they whine and wail about the pain
and inconvenience and how horrible it is that I say these terrible things.

They've been saying it, now, for six or seven years and, yet, they haven't
produced any evidence that I'm wrong.

All they do is they use this appalling smear campaign and, of course, these
brute force methods - I can understand you want to keep Gerry Adams out
because he uses bombs and pistols, but somebody who uses fountain pens and
typewriters, what's Australian frightened of?

COMPERE:		

Could I ask you this?  If you came to Australia, if this decision
was reversed, would you be willing to undertake a television debate with
some of your accusers?

IRVING:		

I would indeed.  I'd be delighted to, but I would be extremely
surprised if even one of them accepts to debate in public.  They won't do
it, they're frightened to debate.  They've said in public, "We don't
debate", because they can't debate.

COMPERE:		

Well, would you issue a challenge to - and you don't have to come
to Australia for this - for an international satellite hook up for a
television debate on this very subject in which you would debate someone
nominated by the Holocaust Society or by the Jewish community, to debate
the issue and make your case in a logical, fair way and also, have the
opposing view - that is the Holocaust Survivors to be able to put their
case forward too?

IRVING:		

Provided it didn't develop into a shouting match.  I'd be more
than happy to.  If it can be done in a reasoned atmosphere of logic but all
I've been offered by these people - they say if Mr Irving comes to
Australia, there'll be violent scenes and ugly demonstrations and that's
the only language they seem to know, but to accept your point, I'd be more
than happy to accept a debate.

COMPERE:		

Yes, the last time you were here and we had our interview which
I'm not being sarcastic, I honestly don't expect you to remember, because
you do so many interviews, but you did say to me that the figures of the
victims of the Holocaust was h igher than you had previously admitted.

Now, I don't recall exactly the figure that we settled on, but it was
higher than you claimed - than you had previously claimed.

IRVING:		

I think the real figures probably are about a million or less. 
I'm not saying only a million, of course, it's still an appalling crime. 
But apparently the six million figure is a figure which is holy and
somebody who challenges that six million figure is committing some kind of
blasphemy and that I don't wear.  I don't think that that's a package
you're not allowed to open.

COMPERE:		

Can I tell you - to put a personal twist on our interview Mr
Irving -I visited the Holocaust Museum last week here in Sydney and I was
shown around by a lady, a very lovely lady, Olga, and she was actually a
survivor of the Holocaust and she told me as we looked at the - I won't
call it memorabilia, but at the exhibits in thiks display - she actually
recalled in detail and gave me a story about her sister being hidden, but
her sister was caught and she survived and all that, and I constantly kept
thinking to myself, how can there be any doubt that there was a Holocaust
because this woman was just an ordinary, nice person explaining her
experiences to me.

Have you had that experience of facing someone who is a Survivor?

IRVING:		

Oh yes, oh yes.  Repeatedly.  And I talk with them, but I think if
we have a basic problem when we're talking with Survivors and eye witnesses
and I think this problem is recognised by the Israeli Supreme Court when
they refuse, when they overturned the conviction of John Dunyumuk which was
based entirely on such survivor evidence.

They said this is not safe evidence, it's certainly not enough to hang a
person on.

A fair story - and you're faced with - I think any Australian policeman
will nod his head in agreement and say, "Yes, survivors, eye witnesses,
they're not very reliable testimony".


COMPERE:		

Well, I must say this. I find it very difficult to understand how
a memory, only the broader sense, can be retained over a fifty year period,
and in a court of law, of course, that would make it most doubtful, would
it not?

IRVING:		

Well, I try and think back to things that happened when I was at
university thirty years ago and all I can remember is one or two stark
events and the rest is just a grey blur.  And I would have to say if
somebody came and started questioning me about my life at university, I'd
be very embarrassed and I realise how wrong it is for me to go and
question, for example Adolf Hitler's (indistinct) about what happened
because their memory too - you're not remembering events any more, you're
remembering memories of events.  It's like second or third order memories.

COMPERE:		

Let's go back to the Poles - according to you, building a gas
chamber, etc. for tourist reasons.  Do you believe that all the
concentration camps dotted throughout Germany, in the Second World War and
before, do you believe that some of them existed or not all of them, or
none?

IRVING:		

Oh, yes, oh yes, there's not the slightest doubt.  And as far as
Auschwitz is concerned, I've said in my latest book, the Dr Goebels
biography, there's no doubt that Auschwitz was a brutal, slave labour camp
with an appalling mortality rate.  That tens of thousands of people died in
Auschwitz from one cause or another. There's no doubt that these places
existed, but "m not going to buy the whole package and that's why I -
frankly I'm anathema to the Jewish population of Australia and other
countries because I refuse to buy their whole package, I want to open it
and examine it.

 COMPERE:		

Is it possible in these death camps for six million people to
have been cremated, to have been killed in gas chambers, is it possible
physically in terms of - and I hate to put it like this - but to put these
people through the process of killing and disposing - is it possible in the
time span of the years of the Holocaust for it to have happened?

IRVING:		

Well, that's where you get down to the nitty gritty of it and our
opponents don't want the discussion reduced to this scientific level at
all.  But you asked a question, they say a million people were killed in
Auschwitz, my question is what happened to those one million people?  Were
they cremated?

Well, the answer is you couldn't have cremated them, there wasn't
sufficient crematorium capacity, there wasn't enough coke.  It would have
taken forty thousand tons of coke and you've got the aerial photographs of
Auschwitz, nowhere are they are mountains of coke.  Were they therefore
buried? Well, it would have taken a pit the size of a football field and
once again, the aerial photographs show no such pit.  Why aren't the pits
excavated and exhumed?

Now to disprove people like me.  After all, the Americans are exhuming
the mass graves in Bosnia now.  But nobody wants to go and do it to
Auschwitz.

So that's why I think that these figures are very suspect indeed and
(indistinct) proven to the contrary.  And I'm quite willing to be proved to
the cont rary.  I've got no axe to grind in this, believe me.

COMPERE:		

Look you sound so reasonable about it all to me that I am
wonderfing if you make these claims, and if your claims are open to
discussion, it's beyond me why you're not allowed into Australia to be able
to debate it, because I haven't got the knowledge to be able to prove you
wrong, but at the same time, after visiting the Holocaust Museum and
talking to these people that I did meet only last week by coincidence, I'm
totally convinced and if there is this doubt in my mind, now, I'd like the
doubt to be cleared up and the only way to do it is to - via a head to head
confrontation.

Now, you can't come to Australia, the way to do it might be with a
satellite interview so as the rest of the world can make up its mind about
what exactly is the answer.   Because, as it is now, all we've got is
doubts.

IRVING:		

I agree.  And that's one reason why they build these Holocaust
Museums because they are so cleverly put together to convince the sceptics
and they build the Holocaust Museums with the one hand and every town and
city around the world, now, and on the other hand, they keep the doubting
Thomas's like myself, the Historians who have actually been in the Nazi
archives, they keep us out so we can't talk.

COMPERE:		

Excuse me, I've got to ask you one last question because you've
been very kind with your time.

In your Goebels book, do you enter the German psychic to understand why
this irrational hatred of another ethnic grouping, why it developed?  Do
you deal with that?

IRVING:		

I do in one specific episode.  This concerns the man who took the
extraordinary - the gorgeous colour photographs that are in the book - he
was Hitler's film cameraman, he took a lot of coloulr photographs, and he
described to me how he went and actually saw a mass shooting of Jews on the
eastern front.  And I described this in the book and he told me, he said,
that it happened because the evening before Heinrich and the Chief of the
SS said Mr Franz, how would you like to go and witness a mass shooting
tomorrow morning?  We're going to be shooting a few thousand Jews?

And this photographer said, "Yes, sure I'd love to go along". Now, an
Englishman wouldn't have said that.  An Englishman, I think, would have
said "Mr Himler, tomorrow is a bad time for me. Any other day of the week,
I'd love to come and watch what you want to show me".

The Germans, I don't know, they seem to be a different mentality and I'm
afraid I've got to - I have to agree to a certain extent with that author,
Daniel Goldhargen who wrote a book suggesting that the German mentality is
somewhat different.  It's not going to make me friends, of course.

COMPERE:		

Well, you won't make any friends with me because I've got a
German wife and born in Germany but, now living here in Australia with me,
and I'm telling you she's one of the kindest people in the world.

IRVING:		Yep.  Well, that's

COMPERE:		

I know I've led her in the chin by asking the question but - and
her mother and father ae two of the most beautiful people I've ever met.

IRVING:		Mm hm.

COMPERE:		

So, I don't understand your broad generalisation about Germans.

IRVING:		

I agree.  It's wrong to generalise about any people and that goes
for the Germans, that goes for the Jews and I'm sorry if I've offended
either of them.

COMPERE:		

All right.  Good to talk to you again, Mr Irving.  
David Irving, the author and historian who's been banned by the Australian
Government today, from visiting this country because he will upset the
Jewish community.

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