Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.15 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Yes. Right, now, will you please, just so that we can clear up this, I will not use the word, just this little dispute, please keep your finger where you are and turn to . P-227 tab 11 which is something you said apparently on the unedited transcripts of an interview on 15th and 28th November for the "This Week" programme and I think Irving and Leuchter at the Chelsea Town Hall was a press conference you gave announcing your publication of the Leuchter Report, am I right? A. It was a lecture that we organized at the Chelsea Town Hall, yes. Q. Can you turn to page 2, please, of this transcript? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Rampton. This contains two separate things, this tab, does it? One, the press conference and the other a television interview? MR RAMPTON: It does. A. What I am I supposed to be looking at? MR RAMPTON: Page 2 of the transcript which is at tab 11, please. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is the press conference. MR RAMPTON: This is the press conference and there is a passage time at 0014.25. A. I only have tape 191 in this book. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what you are meant to be looking at. MR RAMPTON: Page 191. A. Tape 191. MR RAMPTON: Tape 191. Please turn to the second page of the transcript and look at the last paragraph on the second page. . P-228 A. 1425 right? The time? Q. Yes, 1425. You told his Lordship this morning that, so far as you could tell, these were accurate transcripts of what you had said. I will read the sentence and you tell me whether you want to ---- A. Excuse me, you just said that I told his Lordship that these were accurate transcripts of what I have said. Q. So far as you could tell, I think, yes. He asked you that question. A. I said with reservation, with the reservation that some of them have been subjected to editing. Q. Well, just let us have a look at this one sentence and then you can tell his Lordship whether you think it has been edited and in some way crafted to misrepresent what you said? A. The one sentence, yes. Q. The one sentence: "The biggest lie of the lot, the blood libel on the German people, as I call it", that is you, "is the lie that the Germans had factories of death with gas chambers in which they liquidated millions of their opponents"? A. That is an accurate transcription of what I said. Q. You did say that? A. Yes. Q. And did you regard that proposition, that the Germans had factories of death with gas chambers, plural, in . P-229 which they liquidated millions, plural, of their opponents, at this date in November 1991 as a lie? A. A big lie, yes. Q. A big lie? A. Yes. Q. It is that proposition, is it not, Mr Irving, which most people regard as representing not in any accurate or meticulous, historical sense, but generally understood as the Holocaust? A. I disagree with that. I have made quite plain that in my mind most people when they think of the Holocaust think of everything they are shown on television. Mostly nowadays it is people being made to walk to the edge of a pit and being bumped off by soldiers holding rifles. That is the visual image that people now have. Q. Right. So that does not represent the Holocaust, millions of people being killed in gas chambers in factories of death. A. It represents a part of the Holocaust story. Q. So will you please go up the page two paragraphs to the words "timed at 1213", and explain what you meant by what you here said? "If you look at my great Adolf Hitler biography here, this bumper Adolf Hitler biography that we have only just published, in fact, it literally arrived off the printing process today, you will not find the Holocaust mentioned in one line, not even a footnote. Why . P-230 should we? If something didn't happen, then you don't even dignify it with a footnote"? A. That is correct. The word "The Holocaust" you will not find in that book. Q. What was the Holocaust that did not happen that you meant to signify by those words? A. The way I then I specify it two paragraphs later which is the millions being killed in the gas chambers. This makes it quite plain it is all part of the same story. Q. So what it comes to is that the Holocaust, your own words ---- A. Yes. Q. --- has been denied by you, does it not? A. No. The Holocaust as defined here by me later on, the description of people being killed in factories of death. This is the description here which I say you will not find in the book and you will not find the word "Holocaust" in the book which you will not, because I think it is very confusing to use words like that. I mean, this is where the confusion has come from, that instead of you asking me a question about the shootings and a question about the gassings, you are asking a question about a vague concept called "the Holocaust" knowing that you will get me one way or you will get the other, rather like Mortimer's Fork. I think it would be more forensic if you were to ask specifically about what you mean rather than ask about . P-231 vague concepts. Q. Thank you for your advice about how to conduct my case in court, Mr Irving. I am grateful for that. What do you think was the Holocaust about which Professor Lipstadt wrote in her book? A. Which Holocaust are we talking about? Q. I am ---- A. The broad definition? Q. --- asking you to answer my question, what is it in her book that you object to in the words "Holocaust denier"? A. The word "denier" that is attached to it. That is what I object to it. Q. You did not deny the Holocaust in that passage ---- A. I denied the gas chambers. I denied that the Germans killed millions in gas chambers and we are going to have a great deal of interest when we get to that phase of this trial. Q. How many people do you think -- I mean innocent people, I am not talking about bombing raids, Mr Irving, I mean innocent Jewish people do you think the Germans killed deliberately? A. You mean like Anne Frank? Q. I do not mind whether they are like Anne Frank or not. How many innocent Jewish people ---- A. Well, I mean, she is a typical example and a very useful example to take because everybody has heard of Anne . P-232 Frank. She was innocent. I have daughters of my own and if what happened to her happened to one of my daughters, I would be extremely angry. Q. Oh, I see, so Mr or Mrs Frank might not have been innocent, is that what you are trying to say? A. But I asked you about Anne Frank; I did not ask about her parents. Q. No, I am sorry, Mr Irving. The procedure in this court is that you do not ask questions, I do. I asked you how many ---- A. I did not ask a question. I just said, I mean, shall we talk about Anne Frank? Q. No, I do not want to talk about Anne Frank. A. You want to talk about nameless, unspecified Jews so that later on we can say, "Well, I was not meaning those ones, I meant those ones"? The reason you do not want to talk about Anne Frank, of course, is because she is a Jew who died in the Holocaust and yet she was not murdered, unless you take the broadest possible definition of murder. Q. Mr Irving, this is becoming somewhat comical. We will get to Anne Frank along down the road, I assure you. She is part of Professor Evans' report, apart from anything else, for a completely different purpose. I said "deliberately killed". How many innocent Jewish people do you say that the Nazis deliberately killed during the course of World War II. That was my . P-233 question. A. Now, you heard me say in my opening statement, Mr Rampton, that I am not an expert on the Holocaust. What I would now say would be a figure without any value whatsoever. It would be just an assessment off the top of my head. I can say what did not happen because you can apply certain logistical principles, but I cannot say what did happen. It would be a waste of this court's time for me to make an assessment. Q. Let us break down your Holocaust denial then, so far as you will accept that you have made it. You dispute the word "millions"? A. I dispute the word "millions"? Q. Yes. A. No. I do not think I have disputed the word "millions". Q. So "millions" is only wrong so far as the gas chambers are concerned, is that right? A. Yes. Q. So there are no gas chambers, I think we know that, do we not? A. Mr Rampton, if I may, I will not venture a question, but I will make a statement. A million people weigh 100,000 tonnes. We are talking of a major logistical problem here. Q. We are not -- I think, Mr Irving, we are at cross-purposes. I am trying to understand what it is that . P-234 you deny, not your reasons for denying it. That will come much later on. A. I am denying that any kind of multiples of millions of people were killed in the gas chambers at Birkenhau. Q. Articles then of -- no, that is not what you have said here. A. I am very being very specific which makes it much easier to nail me down. Q. No, "factories of death" is plural. A. Well, there were several factories of death, allegedly, at Birkenhau, the crematoria. Q. What you do you say about Sobibor, Treblinka, Belsac and Chelmo? A. Nothing at all. I am not an expert. Q. Do you deny that they were killed in gas chambers in those places? A. You did not hear what I said, Mr Rampton. I am not an expert. Q. You have no opinion about that at all? A. Except what I have read from other people. If other people come and tell me that, for example, there is no trace of any mass graves at Treblinka even now, then I begin to get suspicious about the story. Q. Let me understand it, Mr Irving. By "factories of death" in this sentence on page 2 of tab 11, you had no intention of including in that phrase "factories of death" the . P-235 installations, whatever they were, at Belsac, Treblinka, Sobibor or Chelma, is that right? A. Mr Rampton, you are asking me a question about a verbal statement I made nine years ago and, if you wish, I will look to see what the rest of the statement is and I will tell you which parts of the universe I was talking about. But ---- Q. Your answer just now -- it may have been too quick an answer; it was not, perhaps, your best answer -- was, "Oh, when I said 'factories of death' here, there were factories of death at Birkenhau"? A. Well, I presumed that as we are still talking about the Auschwitz phase of the cross-examination, you are talking about Auschwitz and Birkenhau. Q. No, I am talking about what I call your Holocaust denier here you write a sentence or you speak a sentence, presumably written out before: "The biggest lie of the lot is the lie that the Germans had factories", plural, and I said that when I read it to you first time, "of death with gas chambers in which they liquidated millions of their opponents"? A. Yes. Q. Let us get back to the present. Which of those elements in that statement "factories", plural, "of death with gas chambers", plural, "in which they liquidated millions", plural, "of their opponents", which of those elements do . P-236 you still deny? A. The millions in gas chambers. Q. Yes. A. Because, among other reasons, which we will come to later on in this trial, the logistical problems for a start. Q. But you do deny it?
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