Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.13 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 Q. Would you read the part of 218 that is printed on that page, and the first part down to the words " geschaffen worden ist" on the next page in German. I am certainly not going to do that. A. You wish me to read it out in German? Q. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there not an English version? This is not a very happy way of doing it, is it? It is terribly laborious. MR RAMPTON: I have not got a translation of this particular book. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not even in Longerich? MR RAMPTON: It is noted in Longerich, as you can see. The document is 9th June 1942. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not in your schedule, is it? MR RAMPTON: It is footnoted. It is not in my schedule, no. . P-111 It is a document I found quite late. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is no alternative, we will have to do that way. MR RAMPTON: Right, I only want to ask one question really about this. That is a report from the Gestapo in Lodsch about movement of Jews, is it not? A. Yes. Q. Yes. What it is saying is, we make space for Jews coming -- I am paraphrasing -- in from the Outreich and the Ostmark by, I do not know whether the word is displacing, resettling, the Jews that are already in the ghetto at Lodsch? A. Yes. This was always the policy. There would be a stage by stage ripple, shall we say. Q. What does the last phrase in the fifth line and sixth lines of 247 mean? "... So das nunmehr fur zirka 55000 Juden Platz im Ghetto geschaffen worden ist"? A. So that we have now generated enough space for about 55,000 Jews in the ghetto. Q. That must mean that about 55,000 Jews more or less have been moved out somewhere? A. Yes, assuming that the ghetto had not been expanded at that time. Q. Sure, but, if you look at the table above, which may indeed have a different source, it may have been translated from the Polish, I do not know, 217, do you see . P-112 the right hand column "Abgang"? A. Yes. Q. And the subheading "Ausgesiedelt"? A. Yes. Q. Which means settled, taken away? A. Yes. Q. The first of the two columns in the middle says nach Kulmhof, does it not? A. To Chelmno, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the same as Chelmno, is it? A. Yes. MR RAMPTON: That is Chelmno. If you total up the figures in that column, they come, I can tell you, to 54,990. A. Yes. Q. So that is where, using a reasonable degree of intelligence and interpretive wisdom, Mr Irving, those 55,000 Jews in this Gestapo report have gone, is it not? A. Effectively, from January to May. Q. That is right, in five months? A. In five months, yes. You are confronting me with these documents. I am seeing it for the first time. I think we are learning together. We are reading them together and I will accept that as an interpretation, yes. Q. Thank you. Are you prepared to say what you think might have happened to those 55,000 Jews that were sent to Chelmno in the first months of 1942? . P-113 A. Not on the basis of just those two documents, no. I think it would be highly irresponsible to do so. I am just looking at where Chelmno is on the map. Q. Do you know anything about what was at Chelmno? A. We know something about what was at Chelmno. There were these gas trucks that were disposing of people at some time during the war, but whether they were operating in these five months, I do not know. I notice that Chelmno is on the border to the East, and an equally plausible interpretation would be that they had been sent there as the first stepping stage to go somewhere East. I am not saying this is what happened. Q. Chelmno? A. Yes. Q. No, no, Chelmno, you are quite mistaken. Chelmno is in the Warthegau. It is about 40 kilometres west-north- west of Lublin. A. It is off this map? Q. No, it is not on the map but I can tell you that it is on every map I have ever looked at. Chelmno is in the Warthegau. A. Of Lublin? Q. Sorry, Lodsch. Did I say Lublin? A. Yes. Q. It will not be on this map then. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought Chelmno was the same as Chelm. . P-114 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought that is what I was told this morning. MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So Chelmno is not here at all. MR RAMPTON: Unless I can find it. I think this is Eastern Poland. I think this is a general Government map. It is not a map of the Warthegau at all. Your Lordship does have some coloured maps. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do. I have found Chelmno on one of them. MR RAMPTON: You will find Chelmno, as I say, about 40 kilometres West. A. Whatever. The precise answer is that, on the basis of these two documents, we can say that that is on the balance of probabilities the identical 55,000 people. Q. I agree. A. But we cannot say on the basis of those two documents what happened to those. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Chelmno is in fact some distance West of Warsaw. MR RAMPTON: Yes, but also West of Lodsch. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: This is a different grouping, if I may call it that, of Jews in some sense. These are the Jews of the Warthegau that no doubt form part of the figure given by . P-115 Dr Korheir in March 1943. A. This is the kind of statistical basis that would have been provided to that statistician, yes. Q. In that document he said that the Jews of the Warthegau, I forget how many, 145,000 I think, had undergone Sonderbehandlung, did he not? A. I am not going to answer that without seeing the document. Q. You remember, we discussed it this morning. You agreed with me. The Korheir report that Himmler had edited? A. Yes, but whether those specific ones -- I know the phrase Sonderbehandlung ... comes into the document but whether it is specifically the Warthegau Jews he is referring to. Q. He referred to 145,000 Warthegau Jews and some whatever million Polish Jews. A. Yes, if that is what the document says. Q. As far as I recall, it does. It is something like that. A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was Chelmno a village like Sobibor? A. I am as ill informed as your Lordship is on this. I am not an expert on these matter but I am prepared to blunder around in the darkness along with Mr Rampton. MR RAMPTON: I think Professor Van Pelt may have something to say about that if asked, and so would, no doubt, Professor Browning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The odd thing about it is that they are going West rather than East. . P-116 A. That point obviously does stand out. MR RAMPTON: If you are going to kill large numbers of people, it does not matter how you do it or where you do it, provided you do it with a degree of concealment or discretion, does it, Mr Irving? A. You are absolutely right. But I repeat, of course, that the conclusions you are drawing are not actually included in the two documents you have so far put to us. Q. No it is a little piece of evidence along the way, Mr Irving. A. After 55 years we are entitled to more than just little bits of evidence, particularly now that the Polish archives and the Russian archives are open to us. Q. We go over this again and again and again, you see. I am not looking for a single document as you are, Mr Irving. I am looking at a jigsaw puzzle and I am trying to fit the pieces together. When I have done that, I look at the picture and I say, as an intelligent historian with an open mind, what does this tell me? A. I think you are absolutely right. I do exactly the same exercise but I think I am applying possibly slightly stricter criteria, because one is always liable to be ambushed ten years down the road by a document which produces a completely different conclusion. The closer you adhere to the original documents, if you possibly can, the less likely you are to be ambushed. For example, when . P-117 the entire Goebbels' diaries came out about 15/20 years ago, I contacted the editors and I said is there any document that proves me wrong because I am quite happy to be proven wrong. That is exactly the kind of nightmare that awaits you, that suddenly some new huge archive may open up like the entire Auschwitz archive, as happened quite recently, and the documents may be there to prove that you made irresponsible conclusions. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But does the responsible historian take account also of the fact that we do know that quite a lot of what you might call the compromising documents were destroyed deliberately as the Russian army advanced westward? A. My Lord, the entire Auschwitz archives were captured by the Russians, as we shall be hearing from the expert witnesses, which is a very substantial trove. It was not just any archives, it was the entire Auschwitz construction archives. The same happened in Mydonek when the Russians captured Mydonek. MR RAMPTON: Can we try to speed up a bit, Mr Irving, because this is uncontroversial. Have you still got that tabular sort of chronology summary document we gave you before the adjournment? A. Yes. Q. We put at the bottom of page 6 that Himmler had lunch with Hitler on 14th July. We took that from the Witte book. . P-118 A. Yes. Q. You in your books say he saw him on 16th. It does not probably matter, does it?. A. It may well be that -- he was constantly in and out. It may well be that I had a letter that Himmler wrote to Berger, for example, in which he said, "Yesterday I had lunch with the Fuhrer". This is the kind of source that you would extract that information from. I have now obtained access to all the private letters that Himmler wrote to his mistress where he describes this very trip to Auschwitz, that kind of material. You are constantly coming across new material. Q. At all events, either one day or three days after meeting Hitler, Himmler goes to Eastern Europe, he goes to Auschwitz first? A. He goes on quite a swing around the occupied territories. Q. On 19th he is in Lublin? A. Yes. Q. Eventually, I think, he winds up in Finland or somewhere like that, but never mind that. He goes to Auschwitz. A. We have, of course, the private shorthand diary of Himmler's personal assistant, Rudolph Brant, for this entire period, about a 300 page shorthand diary, which I had transcribed and to which you have made no reference in this, I see. Q. I did not know about it and I know not whether it has any . P-119 relevance or significance? A. It has been in my discovery and your instructing solicitors have photocopied the entire document. Q. I have no knowledge whether it has any significance or relevance for this case. A. It has negative significance in as much as it is shorthand, it is kept by Himmler's personal assistant, and yet it contains none of the kind of evidence that one would have liked to have found. Q. Now there is a document which I think we need to look at, which is having been to Auschwitz on 17th and 18th July 1942 -- if anybody wants to see it, there is a photograph of the visit in the Witte book. A. Gerald Fleming also publishes it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We do not really need to look at it, do we? MR RAMPTON: I do not think you need to look at it, no, I agree. A. Well, it shows who went. Kamla was there, the man who built Auschwitz. Q. The architect, Bischoff, was there? A. Bischoff was there. Presumably, Dejaco was also there -- all the local notables. Mr Dejaco is D-E-J-A-C-O. Q. Now Mr Irving will need file H3 (ii). MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is a document referred to on pages 63 to 64 of, so I am told -- can I just -- you perhaps would like to have it open in front of you, page 63, my . P-120 Lord? A. Of? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of Browning. MR RAMPTON: Of Browning. Could you turn to page 63, please? I will just read out what Professor Browning says: "An earlier document mentioning Einsatz Reinhard". We can translate that as "Operation Reinhard", can we? A. Not spelt that way though.
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