Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.13
Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.13
Last-Modified: 2000/07/29
Q. And the questions which followed it. You remember -- you
need not look it up, but it is on page 24, if you want of
. P-111
tab 30, internal page 24, not final page 24 -- I drew
your
attention towards the bottom of the left-hand column
to
the words in quotes as a report of what Bruns had said
that Altemeyer had said: "These mass shootings have
got
to stop at once". Do you remember that this morning?
A. Yes.
Q. And I think your answer was to this effect, that it
was
justified anyway but you could not rely on a
transcript of
an extemporary answer to a question. I am
summarizing.
I am not quoting your words directly.
A. On this transcript of my extemporary answer?
Q. Yes, on this example?
A. Yes, that it would be -- yes, continue.
Q. Is it right, Mr Irving, that, in fact, before this
version
of your words as printed in this way, you went through
them and approved them?
A. Occasionally I did.
Q. This particular article?
A. I am sure, Mr Rampton, you will be able to refresh my
memory; if I did, then I did.
Q. You have recently told us so in your answers to our
requests for information.
A. I do not want to be specific about this one, and I am
not
being clever, but frequently they would send me a
transcript to read, and sometimes I would proof read
it
and send it back and sometimes I would not.
. P-112
Q. You are right to be cautious, Mr Irving, not because I
am
setting traps, but because memory is fallible. You
served
on us, that is to say, our side, something called ---
A. "Answers to requests for information".
Q. "Some answers".
A. Yes.
Q. Fair enough because there were only some answers, on
27th
December of last year?
A. Yes.
Q. And one of the answers was this. This is No. 13 on
page
5, my Lord. It is tab 9 of the main pleadings bundle,
A1.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do not think I have it.
MR RAMPTON: No, but it does not matter; it is very short.
Is
very short. (To the witness): "In October 1992 I
spoke
at an IHR conference"?
A. Is that this one?
Q. Yes. It is the only one I know of in October 1992.
"As
on previous occasions, I attended my booked table and
paid
no attention to the other speakers. Once again
I corrected the text of my talk before it was
published."
A. Very well, yes.
Q. Also it is right to say, is it not, that the whole of
that, including the questions and answers, appears on
your
web site?
A. The whole of this?
. P-113
Q. Yes.
A. No, it is not correct to say that.
Q. It is not?
A. No, it is not correct.
Q. That particular passage does, does it not?
A. Will you give me the web site address?
Q. Yes, I will. In fact, I had better you see the hard
copy.
A. Www.
Q. File D2(iii). It is HTP.www.fpp.co.uk.speeches.
Speech ----
A. Yes.
Q. --- 111092 HTML?
A. In that case, that is correct, but does this
particular
passage also appear on that or just the speech?
Q. Yes, it does. I have the page here. By all means, I
will
pass it up.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you will take that on trust, I
suspect, will you not?
MR RAMPTON: You can trust me if I say something like that.
A. No, the reason I say that is because in some of the
witness reports things have been said to be on my web
site
whereas, in fact, they are just links on my we site
somewhere else.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, do not let us take more time on
this.
I think it is accepted it is on the web site.
MR RAMPTON: I think the answer is yes.
. P-114
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, it is.
MR RAMPTON: So, first of all, you corrected the transcript
of
the talk before ----
A. Yes.
Q. --- it was published and, secondly, you put the whole
thing in that form on to the web site?
A. Without in any way reviewing it.
Q. No, I understand that, but the fact is we can then
take it
that you have no quibble with the quotation marks
around
the words "These mass shootings have to stop at once"?
A. Not the kind of thing I would quibble about, I do not
think, no.
Q. Quite, good, I an glad to hear. There is one more,
slightly more substantial point that I want to go back
to
which I apologise for having missed this morning. I
am
grateful it has been drawn to my attention. Have you
got
your 1977 "Hitler's War" with you there?
A. 1997?
Q. In 1977?
A. Yes, I have.
Q. I am apt to '97 when I mean 1977, excuse me.
A. This is the English edition of it, yes.
Q. Yes. I think the words are probably the same though,
are
they not?
A. The English and American, yes.
Q. Page 332?
. P-115
A. Yes.
Q. I am not going to read it again. We have heard it too
often. In the middle of the page, there is the
passage
dealing with the Berlin Jews, is there not?
A. Yes.
Q. You have written: "The fate of Berlin's Jews was
clearly
raised". So the context of that passage is, at any
rate,
foreshadowed as being Berlin's Jews, is it not?
A. The context of the paragraph is the prior
responsibility
of the SS for the murders and not Hitler.
Q. Sure.
A. Yes.
Q. But we are talking here in this little bit about a
discussion about Berlin's Jews between Hitler and
Himmler?
A. Yes, in that sentence.
Q. Yes. Then you say in the next sentence: "At 1.30
p.m.
Himmler was obliged to telephone from Hitler's bunker
to
Heydrich the explicit order that Jews were not to be
liquidated"?
A. Yes.
Q. Let me ask you this. You remember what you put in the
introduction?
A. Yes.
Q. When you wrote that, did you mean to say that these
Berlin
Jews or Berlin's Jews in general were were not to be
liquidated, or that Hitler had made a general
prohibition
. P-116
against the slaughter or murder of Jews anywhere?
A. It is nit-picking.
Q. It is not.
A. What I am about to say is nit-picking.
Q. Oh, I see.
A. But there is a period after the word "Judentransport
aus
Berlin", Jew transport from Berlin. In other words,
there
is a full stop at the end of that and a new line.
Then
comes the phrase "Keine Liquidierung" as a separate
phrase. Operating as we were at that time, 1977,
totally
in the darkness about this particular -- we now know a
lot
more, but at that time we were operating totally in
the
darkness. I was going through a jungle of new
documents
that no other historian had set foot in. It was
perfectly
rational to say, is the "Keiner Liquidierung" a phrase
which is attached to the line above, or is it a
separate
subject; just in the same way, if you look, there are
four
lines in that facsimile. The first one is -- I will
say
it in English so we have no problem -- arrest of
Dr Jakelius. The next line after a period is
"Apparently
son of Molotoff" or "apparent son of Molotoff". The
next
line is "Jews transport from Berlin", full stop. The
next
line is "No liquidation".
Q. Yes.
A. I appreciate that in the light of our present
knowledge
the fourth line clearly refers to the third line. Are
you
. P-117
with me, Mr Rampton?
Q. I am absolutely with you, Mr Irving. Carry on.
A. But in the state of my knowledge in 1977, when I am
still
in darkest jungle of new documents, it was perfectly
reasonable to accept the fourth line as being as
detached
from the third line line as were the first and second
lines from each other and from the rest.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: So answer to Mr Rampton's question is
that
you were conveying in that passage what you thought
was an
explicit order relating to Jews generally, not just
Berlin
Jews?
A. Based solely on the fourth line with Jews being the
topic
of conversation, my Lord, yes.
MR RAMPTON: I am coming back to that.
A. That is why the full stop is so important.
Q. You say that, but it has this possible effect as well
which is something evidently you did not even pause to
think about; it might not have had anything to do with
Jews at all, might it?
A. You are absolutely right.
Q. You inflated it on the basis of what one might call a
speculative inference into a general order against the
liquidation of Jews in general, did you not?
A. I object to the word "inflated". I said that
I interpreted that line from the clear evidence that
the
previous topic of conversation had been Jews.
. P-118
Q. Berlin's Jews?
A. Yes, Jews all the same. I interpreted the fourth line
as
being a reference to "no liquidation". We now know
that
this was, in all probability, a reference purely to
that
train load.
Q. We do not want to get ahead of ourselves, at least I
do
not want to get ahead of myself, Mr Irving, though you
should not feel sorry for me.
A. Right, but please do not forget that full stop in the
line
above.
Q. Of course I do not forget it. I can see it in the
original.
A. We had a lot of discussion about whether the "K" of
"Keine" was actually a large "K" or a little "k" among
historians, believe it or not.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you have a full stop, it does not
matter?
A. Well, people wondered if that was a full stop or a
blemish, my Lord. This is the kind of level to which
one
sinks.
MR RAMPTON: The fact is, Mr Irving, that full stop or no,
the
first line of those two lines concerns Jews from
Berlin,
as it happens, one transport?
A. Well, it concerns Jew transport or transportation from
Berlin.
Q. The second line, if it is to be read disjunctively
from
the first line, refers to "no liquidation". No
. P-119
liquidation of what? Businesses, gypsies?
A. It would have to be a very perverse mind indeed which
accepted there was no connection between the fourth
and
the third lines, general topic.
Q. The natural meaning of those two lines taken together,
whether you insert the full stop or not, is that there
is
to be no liquidation of the Jews from Berlin?
A. You say whether you accept the full stop or not; the
full
stop is there.
Q. No difference. It might have been a ----
A. Pardon?
Q. There might have been nothing. It is a note in a
man's
handwritten telephone log.
A. I agree. One cannot put it on the gold balance.
Q. If you say, Mr Irving, the "liquidieren" refers to
Jews at
all, then it is most probable, most probable -- I do
not
have to deal in certainties, you see, Mr Irving --
that it
refers to the Jews referred to in the previous line,
is it
not?
A. Yes.
Q. Yes. So why, what was the warrant for your inflating
this
(and I use that word advisedly because it is an
inflation,
objectively regarded) into a prohibition against the
liquidation of all Jews anywhere?
A. I remind you of your previous question; you are saying
it
is most likely that it was, and you are talking in the
. P-120
present tense, but was it most likely in 1977 when I
wrote
the book or published the book?
Q. I am looking at the German as it was written in 1941.
A. No, are you asking me was it most probable that the
fourth
line referred to the third line in the 1960s when I
wrote
the book? The answer to that is it not so likely, it
is
not so evident because at that time we did not have
the
documents that we do now.
Q. Ignore the extraneous material completely, if you
will,
Mr Irving.
A. You cannot when you are writing books.
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