Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.06 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. -- media accounts, rather than the American publishers? A. This is true, my Lord, and it is very unsatisfactory that we are not going to be able, as I understand it, to question Professor Lipstadt about what contact she may have had. If I may state at this point also, one would have liked to have seen in her discovery, had her . P-148 discovery been complete, and I am going to submit her discovery was incomplete, any correspondence that she might have had or any communications she might or might not have had with the publishers' concerns, St Martins Press, or with the people who were putting pressure on the publishers, because the Second Defendant was certainly instantly quoted as an authority on the reasons why the book should be suppressed. Q. Yes, but you are entitled to make applications for discovery, but let us focus on your evidence. If you want to make that application we can deal with that at the beginning or the end of the day. A. It is not an application, my Lord, it is an allegation. I was informed by the second Defendants' lawyers when your Lordship will have seen that I succeeded in obtaining an order that the Second Defendant should be required to swear a list on affidavit. When that occurs, as your Lordship is aware, I am not allowed to go behind the affidavit until the trial of the action. I was repeatedly reminded of this by the defendants' solicitors, who said you will be able to cross-examine Professor Lipstadt when the time comes, on her affidavit, and, of course, now we will not. Q. Yes. A. That is not the last time I shall refer to that, my Lord. I find it an unfortunate state of affairs. . P-149 So the book anyway in the United States did not appear. The just proceeds of that book not appearing were denied to me. But not only the just proceeds of that book but as it seems now all future books, because all the publishers with whom I previously dealt in the United States have pointed to that episode in grief and terror and said we cannot afford that to happen to us. The chairman of the St Martin's Press was obliged to resign six weeks later over the scandal and nobody wanted to go through that again. Q. Yes. So that is your evidence about the effect of what has been published by these Defendants. Now -- A. Specific details, yes, my Lord, of course, there is a long-term effect in this country as well. Q. -- describe that. A. The book, which has been published by the First and Second Defendants has been not just sold through the normal outlets, it has been placed on the Internet on two different website locations. I have no way of knowing whether they are active participants in that or not because we cannot cross-examine them on that. I, the Defendant, but the book has been made available in other words to 200 million Internet users. They can download it free, the entire book, and review probably regardless of whatever injunction your Lordship sees fit to make at the end of this trial that book will continue in perpetuity in . P-150 cyber space. The book has been donated to very large numbers of university libraries around the world. One of my correspondents at the University of Durham has found no fewer than three copies in Durham University library with library plate gummed into the front saying "donated by Friends of Durham University History Society". There is no such Society. So it has been actively propagated by who knows whom. The book is relied on as a source. It is an authoritative source by people who wish to attack me further. So it has an ongoing rolling effect far beyond the effect it has just on the one customer who picks it up at his local Barns & Noble or Waterstones bookshop, my Lord. Of course, the book is a very much more serious libel -- vehicle for a libel then a newspaper. When newspapers have libeled me or defamed me in the past and people have come to me wringing their hands in grief as you will see from one of the speeches I made. I said, fear not because today is already Monday and what appeared yesterday is already wrapping fish and chips or being flushed down the drains in some paper processing plant. Whereas books go into libraries. But simultaneously, as your Lordship will have seen from the witness statement of Professor Evans, when he went to the British Library and asked to obtain a copy of my book he was told that it had mysteriously been put . P-151 in the pornographic book section and was not freely available. The book which I have on the desk in front, my book "Hitler's War". It is quite ingenious campaign, my Lord, I would aver that on the one side my book is being suppressed and squirreled away, hidden out of sight so people cannot see what I actually wrote. Pressure is put on publishers so they do not publish my books and simultaneously a campaign is launched by very well qualified writers and very gifted writers, armed with ammunition from all around the world in an attempt to defame me which I then cannot answer. Has your Lordship further questions on ---- Q. Not on that aspect, and I do not want to impose any kind of rigid pattern to your evidence if you do not want it to emerge in that way? A. My Lord, I find it is very useful that you ask me these questions because it is like an examination in chief. Q. I hoped you might. Yes, that is what it is really intended to be. What I was going to suggest you deal with now, is the plea of justification because that is obviously the main issue. If it is not inconvenient to you it would be most helpful to me if you were to deal perhaps quite briefly with the various allegations that are put against you in the Defendant's summary of case, because I think everybody agrees that superseded the original defence, we discussed that at pretrial review? . P-152 A. Yes. Q. I think it is a convenient summary of the allegations that are made against you and can you deal with it briefly or at greater length. It is a matter for you. I have no doubt you will be cross-examined about it anyway, but would it be appropriate to go through -- A. If I can find it in this bundle. Q. -- the topics. I have it in a separate file. I do not know whether if you have it in the same form I have, the Defendant's summary of case? MR RAMPTON: We have it. Does your Lordship have it in a separate file? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That may be something I did and have forgotten about. MR RAMPTON: It is in the pale green thing. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got it? A. I have the summary of the Defendants case, yes. Q. Well, as you recall it is divided into sections, and the first section, which is quite a short one, is the allegation that is made against you by the Defendants that you are what is called a "Holocaust denier". A. My Lord, I think I led, or at any rate I gave my reply to that allegation in my opening statement yesterday at some length, and I am not sure there is very much more I can add to that in chief, so to speak. Perhaps the ---- Q. Can I just put a little bit of flesh on the bones of that? . P-153 A. Yes. Q. The way the Defendants put their case is to quote quite a large number of, mostly speeches, that you have made? A. Yes. Q. Usually in North America, and to say that you have denied that there were any Jews killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz and so on, and refer to Auschwitz in dismissive terms. The first question, I suppose, is to what extent you accept that you are accurately quoted. I am not asking you to go into the detail of it, but do you accept that you have said that sort of thing, in general, whether the quotation is accurate? A. In general, those quotations are accurate, my Lord. Of course, I am quite unhappy about the use of word "holocaust" without having had it very closely defined. It is a very elastic expression. Q. You state what you understand it to mean? A. The Holocaust was the tragedy that befell the Jewish people during World War II. I would set it as broadly as that. One could even set if more broadly and say the Holocaust was whole of World War II and that the people who died and suffered in that Holocaust were not necessarily confined to the Jewish religion, but any number of innocents, whether gypsies, homosexuals, the people in Coventry, the people in Hiroshima. I think it is otiose to try and define the Holocaust just the way you . P-154 wish to define it in order to snare somebody, which appears to be what happens in a case like this. They set it as wide as they want when it is a concern, for example, of taking money from the Swiss banks. I will justify that statement in a moment, and they set it very narrowly when they then try to snare a writer who is dangerous to them, as they put it. The reference to the Swiss Bank is justified as follows. I have in my files and I can produce it to your Lordship if you wish probably five or ten whole page advertisements inserted in the newspapers around the world, and your Lordship may well have seen them, inviting people in entitled to compensation for their suffering in the Holocaust to come forward, and for the purposes of that advertisement those people are defined as any person who was persecuted in Germany during the periods of the Third Reich, or in Nazi occupied territories, by virtue of his religion or by virtue of being a minority. He did not have to be in a concentration camp. He did not have do work in a slave labour factory. The mere fact of being within the frontiers of those countries justified that man to Holocaust compensation. That, of course, is, in my submission, an offensively wide description of the word and I think that the two line description I gave, the Holocaust is -- I would prefer to see it defined for the purposes of this court, this trial, the Holocaust is the . P-155 tragedy that befell -- that undoubtedly befell the Jewish people during the Third Reich, not even just during World War II. Q. Well, do not let us be too bothered about labels, but can I just ask you this; I understand what are you saying about the Holocaust being a term you could apply to the World War II generally, but if you take it as meaning, for the purposes of this question anyway, a systematic programme of exterminating Jews, conducted by the Nazi regime -- A. My Lord, I think the difference -- Q. -- can I just ask you this, do you accept that there was any such programme first; leave aside the issue of gas chambers? A. -- no, I do not. I think this is the defect, with respect, in your Lordship's definition. The systematic programme to exterminate the Jews is the cause, whereas the Holocaust, the word "Holocaust" as I would see it is the effect, the result, the tragedy that results. When we are looking at the Holocaust we are looking at the victims. We are looking at the mass graves. We are looking at the people being machine gunned into pits. The Holocaust in my submission is not the machinery which produced the result, it is the suffering and not the murderer, shall we say. Q. So I want to be clear on this, because it is obviously . P-156 important. A. It is very important indeed, my Lord.
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