Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day004.15 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway we have got the ---- A. Well, Mr Rampton keeps on coming back to it like a dog that keeps on digging up an old bone. Q. --- question and the answer. Mr Irving, to learn how to read Himmler's handwriting last night or whenever it was, Friday maybe, which you already knew. Now I want to turn aside or I want to go into the future, rather. Can you have your Hitler's War book of 1991, please? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which part? MR RAMPTON: Part 2, my Lord. Please turn to page 464. My Lord, I had better read from the beginning of where the text comes out of quotation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. MR RAMPTON: "Given his table company", that is Hitler's table company, "Himmler, Lammas and Colonel Hanzeitzer on this occasion, this is surely a significant private discourse by the Fuhrer"? A. Would it not be more to point to read the paragraph? Q. I am not really going to ask you about that, but I will if you want me to? A. Please do. . P-133 Q. On January 25th, we are in 1942, are we not? It starts at the bottom of 463, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you going to be discussing the Roman Jews at this point? MR RAMPTON: No. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I really do not think, Mr Irving, it is going to be relevant. We will obviously read anything that you think is relevant but I do not think ---- A. Well, it is just a passage that is incompatible with the notion that Adolf Hitler was simultaneously giving orders for the liquidation of Jews. MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, well, let us have it. I was trying to save time. MR RAMPTON: We are going to have to come back to it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. MR RAMPTON: Because again it is, what shall we say, to put it neutrally at the moment, it is another crass error by Mr Irving ---- A. Another. Q. --- so we say. "Hitler reflected out loud: 'If I extract the Jews today, our citizens get uneasy, what is happening to him then, but did these same people care one hoot what happened to the Germans", in italics, "who had to emigrate. We've got to get it over fast. It is no better to pull out a tooth a bit at a time over three months. Once it is out, the agony is over. The Jews have got to . P-134 get out of Europe, otherwise we'll never reach a European consensus. He is the worst troublemaker everywhere and really aren't I, in fact, terrifically humane? During the ... ceremony in Rome the Jews were maltreated. Up to 1830 they hounded eight Jews through the city on asses every year. All I say is he has got to get out. If he drops ... in the process, I can't help it. I do see one thing, however, their total elimination, absolute ausrotung, if they won't leave willingly. "Given his table company, Himmler, Lammas and Colonel Hanzeitzer on this occasion, this is surely a significant private discourse by the Fuhrer. On January 27th, he repeated the same arguments over dinner to a different audience, 'The Jews have got to get out of Europe. The best thing would be for them to go to Russia. I have no sympathy with the Jews' "Three days later speaking in the Berlin Sport Palaste he reminded his audience of his prophetic warning to the world's Jews in 1939. "Early in March 1942, Heydrich held a second interministerial conference to examine the awkward problem posed by half and quarter Jews. If allowed to remain, they might, perhaps, be sterilised. The top level opinion, i.e. Hitler, is quoted to the effect that they must draw a sharp distinction between Jews and non- Jews as it would not be acceptable for a mini race of semi Jews to . P-135 be perpetuated in law. This classification process would call for a colossal administrative effort, so the idea was shelved. A subsequent memorandum in Reichjustice ministry file cited this highly significant statement by Hans Lammas headed 'The Reich Chancellory', 'The Fuhrer has repeatedly stated that he wants ... (reading to the words) ... After the war they might be allocated a remote territory like Madagascar as a national home." Much of that, Mr Irving, we are going to come back to later on. This is the bit. I read that by way of chronological introduction: "Dr Goebbels, agitating from Berlin, clearly hoped for a more speedy and ruthless solution although he held his tongue when meeting his Fuhrer. On March 19th he quoted in his diary only this remark by Hitler: 'The Jews must get out of Europe. If need be, we must resort to the most brutal methods'. That Goebbels privately knew more is plain from his diary entry on 27th. 'Beginning with Lublin', he recorded, 'The Jews are being pushed out eastwards from the General Government. A barbaric and indescribable method is being employed here and there is not much left of the Jews themselves. By and large, you can probably conclude that 60 per cent of them have to be liquidated while only 40 per cent can be put to work." "Dr Goebbels recorded further that ... (reading to the words) ... And the cycle started over again. 'The . P-136 Jews have nothing to laugh about now' commented Goebbels, but he evidently, never discussed these realities with Hitler. Thus, this two-faced minister dictated after a further visit to Hitler on April 26th: 'I have once again talked over the Jewish question with the Fuhrer. His position on this problem is merciless. He wants to force the Jews right out of Europe. At this moment Himmler is handing the major transfer of Jews from the German cities into the eastern gettoes." Now, you cited two Goebbels' entries there in part, and you make it clear that it is only in part. The first question, for the entry of 27th March 1942, had you read the whole of the entry? A. I did, and I read it not only in the original paper diaries in the Hoover Library in California where that particular page is now kept, the original, I also read it on microfilm in the American national archive's version that was microfilmed in 1947 because, obviously, this was a very contentious entry and a lot of right wing radicals tried to make out that this was a fake entry in some way, and that the CIA or the OSS or someone had dumped it, had inserted it into the Goebbels' diaries. When I went to Moscow, that was one of the first plates I looked for, just to complete the circle of evidence that it was a genuine entry. So I read it many times. Q. You have, so you have read the whole of that entry? . P-137 A. Yes, indeed. Q. Well, then could I ask that Mr Irving be given ---- A. Of course there is much more to than that. Q. Yes. Can I ask Mr Irving be given Professor Evans' report, please? MR JUSTICE GRAY: You may already have it. I think it is coming up from behind. MR RAMPTON: What about the entry of 26th April? A. You want me to find a particular page in the report first. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think Mr Rampton wants to know whether you have read it? A. Yes, of course. I read that one on microfilm because I have the entire diaries that were then available on microfilm since 1970 about, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: I am going to ask you if you will to look at the translation (and the German is set out there too) at page 400 of Professor Evans' report? A. Are we going to challenge my translation or just the content? Q. No, do not leap ahead, Mr Irving. A. I need to know what I am looking at. Q. You fall at the fences if you do that. Could you just read to yourself, either way round, it matters not to me, first of all or second of all, the English and the German to yourself. I want you to say whether you think the translation is a fair one. . P-138 A. In other words, the translation? Q. I am sure you know the German very well, but I would like you to see whether you agree or not that Professor Evans' translation is a fair one, then we can all get on with the words. A. Well, let us assume that it is a fair translation. If I ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that may save time in the end, I suspect, because you are going to come to particular passages. MR RAMPTON: Yes, I do not want to ask questions about a passage in English which the witness may dispute. That is all. Your quotation if you still have it open on page 464 ---- A. Yes. Q. --- stops, I think, well, as a direct quote it stops, first of all, in the penultimate line of page 464 as a direct quotation? A. Yes. Q. Then you go on to report the next sentence in Goebbels' text? A. Yes. Q. Carefully and unobtrusively you say Professor Evans that does not work too conspicuously? A. Yes. Q. I do not think you have got any of the rest of it? . P-139 A. It is pure Goebbels' waffle, yes. Q. What? A. If you have the read Goebbels' diaries, you know he waffles endlessly. He is dictating to a diligent manservant who takes down everything he dictates. He waffles. If he was writing this in handwriting, he would have done it in half the length. It is the old Goebbels' gramophone record that he is putting on again. Q. There is a reference, if you can go back, please, to Professor Evans' version, again to the Reichstag prophecy, is there not? A. Yes. Q. And he says "that prophecy is beginning to realize itself in the most terrible manner"? A. Yes. Q. "And must not allow any sentimentalities to rule in these matters. If we did not defend ourselves against them, the Jews would annihilate us. It is a struggle for life and death between the areas and race and the Jewish bacillus"? A. Yes. Q. Now, "the Jewish bascillus" was not Goebbels' ugly concept but Hitler's, was it not? A. That is correct. Hitler repeatedly, particularly in 1941 onwards, started talking about the Jewish bacillus. Q. He did indeed. . P-140 A. Which I quoted in my book, of course. Q. He talked about eliminating the Jewish bacillus on a number of occasions? A. Yes, or "combating" the bacillus rather than "eliminating" it. Q. What? Sometimes he uses the word "eliminierum" which I suppose means "eliminate". "No other government and no other regime could muster the strength for a general solution of the question. Here too the Fuhrer is the persistent and the word is "Vorkampfer"? A. "Pioneer", yes. Q. Pioneer? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is "protagonist" really, is it not? A. Even better. MR RAMPTON: "Protagonist"? A. And it would be an accurate, a deliberate, 100 per cent -- excellent. Q. And "Wortfuhrer", is that a spokesman? A. "Champion". Q. A "champion", yes, stronger than "spokesman" of a radical solution of the question -- sorry, "of a radical solution which is demanded by the way things are and thus appears to be unavoidable". You never in this book, or the previous edition of this book, make any reference to that statement by Goebbels about Hitler's position in this general solution, do you? . P-141 A. This is Goebbels reporting Hitler's position. Q. It is indeed. A. Yes, but does it really advance our sum knowledge of what Hitler's position was? Q. Indeed it does, indeed it does, Mr Irving. It at least, one might put it like this, might lead one to be a bit cautious, might it not, about saying that Goebbels kept the ghastly truth from his leader, Adolf Hitler? A. Well, I have a reason for saying that.
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