Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.05 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 A. So I have added no colour, I have turned up no volume. These are the extraordinary words used to describe me by the Defendants. They say, "that the Plaintiff", myself, "is an historian who has inexplicably misled", in other words, the word "inexplicably" is in the original book, "misled academic historians like Ernst Nolte into quoting historically invalid points contained in his writings", my writings, "and who applauds the internment of Jews in Nazi concentration camps". I am accused of having applauded . P-139 the internment of Jews in Nazi concentration camps which is a particularly perverse allegation in my view. No. (iii) "that the Plaintiff", David Irving, "routinely perversely and by way of his profession, but essentially in order to serve his own reprehensible purposes ideological leanings and/or political agenda", and here are the allegations, "distort accurate historical evidence and information; misstate; misconstrue; misquote; falsify statistics; falsely attribute conclusions to reliable sources; manipulate documents; wrongfully quote from books that directly contradict my arguments in such a manner as completely to distort their author's objectives and while counting on the ignorance or indolence of the majority of readers not to realize this". Q. May I interrupt and ask you this? Am I right in thinking (and I may be quite wrong) that really that is the imputation against you which causes you the most concern? A. Professionally, clearly so, my Lord. Q. Yes. A. I mean, the name calling is neither here nor there and your Lordship may make of it what your Lordship wants, I submit. Clearly, some of the name calling will stick, but it would be a real waste of this court's time if I take each of the names I have been called in turn and try to prove that is not so. This is what has cost me my career, unless the court disposes otherwise at the end of . P-140 this trial, my Lord. I complained that the work complained of describes me as an Adolf Hitler partisan who wears blinkers and skews documents and misrepresents data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions specifically those that exonerate Hitler. I am accused of being an ardent admirer of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, an ardent admirer of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler; that I conceive myself as carrying on Hitler's criminal legacy and that I placed a self-portrait of Hitler over my desk; that I have described a visit to Hitler's mountain top retreat as a spirit experience; that I have described myself as a moderate fascist. These are the allegations contained in the book. Further, that before the Zundel trial began in 1988 in Toronto, I, the Plaintiff, compromising my integrity as an historian, and in an attempt to pervert the course of justice and one Faurisson, Robert Faurisson whom we saw in the video, that I wrongfully and/or fraudulently conspired together to invite an American prison warden and thereafter one Fred Leuchter, an engineer who is depicted by the Defendants as a charlatan, to testify as a tactic for proving that the gas chambers were a myth". The loaded words in that sentence, my Lord, are . P-141 words that are actually contained in the book. "That the Plaintiff after attending Mr Zundel's trial in 1988 in Toronto, having previously hovered on the brink now denies the murder by the Nazis of the Jews". So I deny the murder by the Nazis of the Jews, this is one of the allegations. That I described the memorial to the dead at Auschwitz as a tourist attraction; that I was branded by the British House of Commons as "Hitler's Heir", and that I was denounced by the same British House of Commons as a Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler apologist and accused by them of publishing a fascist publication, and that this marked the end of my reputation in England. My Lord, it may possibly not be familiar to the Defendants that there is a distinction between an early day motion being put in the House of Commons by a group of disgruntled members of Parliament and the House of Commons actually voting and reaching a decision. It is nothing more than a propaganda move by people who wish to draw attention to something within the privileged atmosphere. It is rather like the privileged atmosphere that exists in this court, my Lord; people can say what they want about me and the newspapers are free to print it. Q. Yes, well, I certainly do know about early day motions, so.... A. That some other person had discovered in a Russian archive . P-142 -- this is the allegation in the book -- that some other person had discovered in the Russian archive in 1992 the Goebbels' diaries, that it was assumed that these would shed light on the conduct of the Final Solution, but that I was hired and paid a significant sum by the London Sunday Times to transcribe and translate, although I was a discredited and ignominious figure and, although by hiring the Plaintiff, the newspaper threw its task as a gatekeeper of the truth and of journalistic ethics to the winds and, although there was thereby increased the danger that the Plaintiff would in order to serve his own reprehensible purposes misstate, misconstrue, misquote, falsify, distort and/or manipulate these sets of documents which others had not seen, namely, the Goebbels' diaries; I would do all that in order to propagate my reprehensible views and that I, the Plaintiff, was unfit to perform such a function for this newspaper. Finally, the book contained the allegation that I violated an agreement with the Russian archives, and that I took and copied many plates without permission causing significant damage to them and rendering them of limited use to subsequent researchers. Q. Mr Irving, the first of those imputations that you say that Professor Lipstadt makes against you in her book is one that links you with Hamas and Hezbollah, and again I think you indicated earlier on that you wanted to say . P-143 something about those organizations? A. My Lord, I put to your Lordship a small bundle of documents ---- Q. Yes. A. --- on those organisations. Q. I have read it. A. It is probably not necessary for me to go in detail through them. I will indicate to your Lordship that reliable sources, like the BBC or other news media organizations, have consistently described the Hezbollah and Hamas, which are two Muslim fundamentalist terrorist organizations, as being criminal organizations whose members are not allowed into other countries and are actively pursued by the forces of law and order and, indeed, actively pursued with less law and order by the forces of the Mossad, who sometimes dispose of them by jabbing the aforementioned hypodermic needle laden with nerve gas into their neck which is one of the documents which I put before your Lordship. Q. Yes, I have read them. A. So anybody who is described in this reckless way as being a member of the Hamas or the Hezbollah or some other similar terrorist organization is at risk of being declared fair game with the forces of law and order or, at the very least, for the immigration authorities and countries who already look askance upon people for various . P-144 reasons and, at worst, they are having their life put at risk or they are going to be ruffed up in the street by people who disagree with the Hezbollah or the Hamas. I do not share your Lordship's earlier opinion at the pretrial review that is a matter which falls under section 5 of the Act, my Lord. Q. I did not express any concluded view, obviously. A. I am sorry, my Lord. This was totally misquoted. Q. Can you help me on something else? You will have the opportunity to make submissions about that later on. You supplied documents relating to the bombing in Oklahoma City. Does that feature in Professor Lipstadt's book? A. It does not feature in the book, my Lord, but I thought this was the appropriate bundle to put them, in February 1996 the media in the United States, where such allegations can be made with impunity, raised the allegation that I had supplied the trigger mechanism for the Oklahoma City bomb. Now, the Oklahoma City bombing features in some of the documents quoted, I believe, by Professor Evans or by Professor Brian Levin, because they quote from my diary on that particular day; and to be accused of having anything to do with that crime was something I found particularly repugnant and I regard it as being part of the general campaign to vilify me and blacken my name which originated from the same sources which have funded . P-145 the Defendants with the material they have used to smear me. It is no more directly associated with them than that. Q. Thank you very much. A. But it is like trying to put a hook into a custard pie. You cannot really pin anything down until you stand back and you see the whole continuum of the onslaught to which I have been subjected. Q. The next thing you might want to deal with, Mr Irving, is the effect that that the publication of the book of which you complain has had on you. I have seen what you say in your witness statement about that, but if you want to expatiate on that, then please do. A. My Lord, people have said to me, "Why have you picked on that book and those particular Defendants?" and the simple answer is because it is an open and shut case. I have been accused of doing things which they cannot justify. If we admittedly find it more difficult to disprove the subjective claims, ad hominem statements that are made, there are certain specific claims that are made, like the Adolf Hitler portrait or like the misquoting of documents or deliberate and reprehensible mistranslation or distortion, which are easy to disprove and they are the ones which reflect on my professional integrity and on my career and on my livelihood, which is precisely what the Defamation act, as I understand it, is about. . P-146 This is one reason why I decided that the time had come after 30 years to take some kind of action which I did with the utmost reluctance because Penguin Books, the First Defendants, have published books of my own in the past and you are not eager to go and sue people who have published your own books. The book, undoubtedly, had caused me serious damage. When I consider, admittedly, this was not damage within the jurisdiction, and it is possible the Defence counsel objected and it is, therefore, relevant, but in view of the fact that the publication of this book and the author of the book were widely quoted in justification by the American publishers for cancelling my Dr Goebbels' biography, which was for me a particularly wounding and injurious event, when I wrote the biography of Dr Goebbels, it was a task of nine years, my Lord. We have just spent three years preparing this case, writing that one book which your Lordship has seen took me nine years. It went through, I think, six different drafts; the first draft entirely in handwriting, the drafts of the manuscript which the Defendants have seen fills some ten cubic feet of boxes, as it was refined and refined and then finally totally rewritten when I came into possession of the diaries. The book was set to restore my reputation completely until the United States, because your Lordship may well agree that the book cannot . P-147 be described as "anti-Semitic", the book, in my submission, cannot be described as justifying the Holocaust or admiring Hitler or exonerating Hitler in any kind of way, the book was, I consider, one of the most well-founded and well-researched and watertight accounts of the higher leadership of the Third Reich that I have ever written. It was the crowning point of my career. We waited with the utmost eagerness for publication day in the United States, shortly before which the publishers contacted me and said, Mr Irving, we are beginning to come under attack from all quarters. One of the quarters was from the second Defendant. Q. Your evidence is, is it, that the -- I think you said "the author" did you mean... A. The Second Defendant. Q. The American publishers of the Goebbels book told you that Professor Lipstadt and -- A. No, my Lord, media accounts have linked Professor Lipstadt with this particular event.
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