Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.22 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 Q. If it fits the bill, I would suggest, Mr Irving. A. That is not what I said. I said if it fits the criteria. Q. Have you got your Goebbels' book there? A. Yes. Q. You say on page 379 -- has your Lordship got one? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have. 379, you say? MR RAMPTON: Yes. A. Yes, I have that. Q. We are talking here about an article written by, or probably written by, Dr Goebbels? A. It is one of the two most important articles he wrote. Q. You say that; it was written and published, I think, on 16th December? A. November. Q. I am sorry, November? A. 1941. Q. 1941, as virulently anti-Semitic as anything that Hitler ever said? A. Far more so. Q. You say that, do you? A. Far more so. Q. You say here on page 379 in the last paragraph, the complete paragraph, on the page: "Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann's closest associates, would describe the Goebbels' article in Das Reiche", that is the one I . P-196 have just mentioned, as a watershed in the Final Solution of the Jewish problem". Then footnote 40 is a reference to the Wisliceny Report, date November 18th 1946. That is to be found on page 645. You go on in the text ---- A. I also reference his interrogations I see. Q. You did. A. Yes. Q. "The SS took it as a sign from above Adolf Eichmann would admit in his unpublished memoirs it is quite possible that I got orders to direct this or that railroad to Riga", and I don't know where we go from there quite. Yes, I will read the whole paragraph. "On the last day of November, on the orders of the local SS Commander, Friedrich Jeckelm, 4,000 of Riga's unwanted Jews were trucked five miles down" -- the Germans called that Dinoberg, I think, did they not? A. Dunoberg, yes. Q. -- "a highway to Skiaturbe plundered and machine- gunned into two or three pits. According to one army colonel", this is Bruns, is it not---- A. It is. Q. --- who witnessed it, a trainload of Jews from Berlin, those expelled three days before, arrived in the midst of this aktion. Its passengers were taken straight out to the pits and shot. This happened", and here we go again, even has Hitler's hundreds of miles away, "Hitler", I . P-197 emphasise, hundreds of miles away in the Wolf's Lair, "was instructing Himmler that these Berlin Jews were not to be liquidated. I am not going back to that hoary old chestnut, you will be glad to hear, but I do want to take you back to the beginning of this paragraph. A. It is a remarkable paragraph for a Holocaust denier to write, is it not? Q. I have no idea, Mr Irving, and anyway I am not going to answer your question. "Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann's closest associates, would describe the Goebbels' article in Das Reich as a watershed in the Final Solution of the Jewish problem"? A. Yes. Q. Where did he give that description? A. What, whether he actually used the word watershed? Q. Yes. A. You see that I reference his manuscript written in Bratislava or Presburg and I also reference the interrogations in the associated footnote. Q. But if you read what we find here in Professor Evans' report which is an English translation of some part of the Wisliceny report, what you immediately realize, you do not learn it from Mr Irving's books, you learn it from Professor Evans' report, what you immediately realize is that Dieter Wisliceny did not see the Reich article as a watershed. He saw the watershed as being an order from . P-198 Adolf Hitler? A. Can we have a look at the passage you are relying on, please? Q. The which? A. The passage of the Wisliceny report you are relying upon in the Evans... Q. One would have to go back now to ---- A. I no longer trust your paraphrases, you see, Mr Rampton. Q. --- where I was. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is page 340, I think. MR RAMPTON: Yes. 345, sorry, my Lord. The passage -- I am not going to read it again, I have read it once already. Read what is said there. The German is at the bottom of the page, so if you are going to criticise Professor Evans' translation, say so now. A. The English is a slightly vague translation. I am looking at the paragraph at the top of page 345, where he says this is just simply "reference in this connection also to the Goebbels-article" ---- Q. Yes? A. --- "'The Jews are guilty'". Q. What does the German say? A. The German says: "In this connection, I draw attention also to the Goebbels-article 'The Jews are to blame' in an edition of the newspaper Das Reich" which is possibly a slightly more coherent way of translating it. . P-199 Q. But he is talking about German propaganda, that is to say, domestic propaganda, is he not? A. Yes. Q. After 11th December when Hitler, perhaps rather stupidly, declared war on the United States? A. Yes. Q. He is talking about the Yellow Star and he is talking about the article in Das Reich as examples. He then said: "In this period of time, after the beginning of the war with the USA, I am convinced must fall the decision of Hitler which ordered the biological annihilation of European Jews". So how is it, if that is the piece you were referring to, that that gets converted into Dieter Wisliceny saying that the article by Goebbels in Das Reich was a watershed? A. I beg to differ with you. I think that even this source bears me out. He said the words you omitted in your summary, he says: "The second wave of radicalization began" and the instance of this he gives is the publication of the article. This is what triggered off the off the second wave of radicalization. But you have also overlooked, and I am sorry I tripped you up on this when you referred to the Goebbels' Diaries, would you like to read out the reference for the passage that I gave you? You implied that it relies only on the Wisliceny report. . P-200 Q. No, you refer to something else, but so what? Sorry, I am not following you. A. If you look in the source reference, it clearly says: "Wisliceny report and interrogations of Wisliceny in the national archives" which Professor Evans has obviously not bothered to look at. Q. I am quite open-minded, Mr Irving. If you tell me that in the interrogations, as opposed to the report, there is a positive statement by Wisliceny to the effect that Goebbels' article was the watershed or a watershed, then I will accept it, if you tell me to find it? A. Mr Rampton, I am under oath and I am not going to make a statement from memory for something that I cannot back up without going home and checking the files. All that I do say is that Professor Evans has made no reference to the fact that I used other sources to justify that one sentence and that he, apparently, has not bothered to go and have a look at those interrogations of Wisliceny because they are so many thousands of miles away. Q. We may just have time to go over to the other side of this page in Evans' Report, 346 at paragraph 4. This is a further extract, says Professor Evans -- of course, you may prove that he is wrong about it -- this is an extract from the same document, apparently, where Wisliceny says this: "According to Eichmann's own report, which he . P-201 made to me, Globocnig (sic) was the first to use gas chambers for the mass extermination of humans. Globocnig had set up big labour camps for Jews in his area of command, and he got rid of those who were unable to work in the manner described. As Eichmann explained, this 'procedure' was 'less conspicuous' than the mass shootings". The German is "Massenerschiessungen". Do you remember those words? Do they ring a bell? A. Yes, indeed. Q. Something to do with General Bruns? Does that ring a bell? A. Well, there were mass shootings occurring all over the Eastern Front. It is not specifically a reference just to that one. There were mass shootings at Riga, there were mass shootings at Minsk, mass shootings elsewhere in the Ukraine. So it would be specious just to say this is a reference to the Bruns Report. Q. My point is a slightly different one. Indeed, it is not a reference to the Bruns Report. A. Well, you mentioned the Bruns. Q. Exactly, and I will tell you why. What Bruns said he was told by Altemeyer was to precisely the same effect, "These mass shootings, or mass shootings of this kind, mass shootings, must stop. That must be done more discreetly"? A. Yes. Q. It is almost a mirror image of what Wisliceny reports . P-202 Eichmann having said, this procedure, gassing, was less conspicuous, "unauffalliger" ---- A. Yes. Q. --- than the "Massenerschiessungen"? A. This was the tendency in the SS; they did not like shooting people. Shooting took it out of them. Q. Sure. A. Yes. Q. And that is why they took to gassing people, is it not? MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you accept, do you, Mr Irving, that - --- A. Gassing did occur, yes. Q. --- the Bruns Report corresponds with what is, apparently, recorded in Eichmann's report? MR RAMPTON: In Wisliceny's report, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, in Wisliceny's report. MR RAMPTON: It is double hearsay, if you like, but so what if you are an historian. A. It is indeed and the word "report", of course, is slightly sharpening it up. He is actually just saying, "According to what Eichmann said", he is saying. MR RAMPTON: Do they not echo one another? A. Yes. Q. Bruns is talking about shootings in the Osland in Latvia? A. Yes. Q. Here Wisliceny is talking much more generally, is he not? A. Indeed, yes, and we do not know about what period he is . P-203 talking about, we do not know about what region he is talking about. Q. Do you not detect in the convergence of those two completely otherwise unrelated pieces of evidence ---- A. Yes. Q. --- even a hint of a suggestion that the reality was that mass shootings were embarrassing because they could get out because it upset the soldiers too much, because it was expensive in bullets, a shift in policy from shooting to a more discreet means of disposal, that is to say, gassing? A. I am afraid that was such a long question that I had lost you halfway through again. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think it is the end of a longish day for Mr Irving and I think we will... MR RAMPTON: I will repeat the question first thing on Monday morning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Will you? MR RAMPTON: It will be on the transcript. A. Can you put it in two halves so that ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was a long question. Anyway, we are adjourning now. A. --- a bear of limited brain can follow it, but I lost it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is 10.30 on Monday in court 73. (The court adjourned until 10.30 p.m. on Monday, 17th January 2000) . P-204
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