Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day006.21 Last-Modified: 2000/08/02 Q. It is one of these reprints I think of an Irving speech or presentation or lecture, whatever you call it. It is tab 20, Mr Irving, with page 101 stamped at the bottom, the right-hand side which is page 281 of the document. My Lord, I will start again, I am sorry: "Finally, I think the most cardinal piece of proof in this entire story of what Hitler knew about what was going on, a story of what Hitler knew about what was going on is a document that mysteriously vanished from the Nuremberg files in 1945. It is clear that it was in the files in August 1945 when they were sighted by the Americans in Berlin and catalogued". "Sighted", my Lord, is spelt with an S, it is "sighted". " ... when they were sighted by the Americans in Berlin and catalogued, because it appears as item 4 of a five-item list. It then vanished from the files by the time they reached Nuremberg for the Nuremberg trials, and so could not be produced . P-186 there as evidence, and then reappeared now in the files of the Federal archives in Koblenz. That is the file that it is in, Reichsminister of Justice. The heading is: The Treatment of the Jews." A. The heading of the file. Q. Oh, the file, not the document? A. Yes. Q. It is a document. What is the German, the treatment of the Jews, on this file? A. "Behandlung des Juden", not "Behandlung Mischlinge". Q. No, it is a general file no doubt. The Justice Ministry had problems to resolve in relation to the Jews, I am going to come to that in moment, but that is it right, is it not? A. Yes. Q. "It is a document, a memo, on a telephone conversation inside the Ministry of Justice. From its placing in the file we know that this conversation is about March 1942, two months after the notorious Wunzie conference when all is supposed to have been put in train by Adolf Hitler. The Reichsminister, Hans Lammers, was the Chief of the German Civil Service. He would be rather like the Prime Minister in a normal society. The memo says: Reichsminister Lammers informs me that the Fuhrer has repeatedly told him that he wants a solution of the Jewish problem postponed until after the war is over. And it . P-187 goes on about the fact that for this reason all this talk, all this jaw that is going on at present, is completely superfluous." Then in italics, and these are Mr Irving words: "Hitler has repeatedly said: He wants the solution to the Jewish problem postponed until after the war is over." Out of italics, new paragraph: "Again this is a document which is of extreme embarrassment for the rival school of history. They cannot talk their way around it. They cannot talk their way out of it. They close their eyes and when they open them it is still there. It refuses to go away. Believe me, from this moment on right through to 1943 there are further documents showing Hitler interceding, acting, trying to stop preventing ..." My Lord, I will stop there. You agree, Mr Irving ---- A. Excuse me, you rather hinted that there is nothing more. There is another telephone conversation from Himmler to Heydrich on 20th April 1942, again from Hitler's headquarters. Himmler telephoned Heydrich: "No destruction of the gypsies". It is not without significance that you stopped just before I could read that out. Q. It is 20th April. A. Yes, it is all part of the sequence. Q. It is a bit like Himmler's telephone call to Heydrich of . P-188 30th November 1941, is it not? A. But what quality my records are, Mr Rampton, compared with the quality of the records that you are producing against me. Q. Mr Irving, can we try to keep on the rails. We have not got much longer this afternoon. I want to finish this topic this afternoon. A. Are you implying I am going off the rails? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we can move on. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, that is characteristic, what I just read, of the importance which you attach to this little document, I mean little in terms of significance, not of size, this little document as evidence of, as you propose, the fact that Adolf Hitler neither ordered nor knew about any massacring of Jews, at any rate up until late 1943? A. It has taken Professor Evans eight pages to waffle his way out of it. Q. That is cheap rhetoric, Mr Irving. A. It is not cheap rhetoric. It is exactly correct. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us pass on. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry if Professor Evans irritates you so much. You can take your feelings out on him when he is in the witness box. The position was this, was it not, at this time, Mr Irving, and this is my last but one thing for you to think about if you ever come to reconsider your position on this document. There was at this time a . P-189 squabble going on, and I am paraphrasing, I am using colloquialisms, so please forgive me, the hour is late, between the SS on the one hand who wanted the Mischlinge carted off and the mixed marriages split up, and on the other hand the Ministry of Justice who probably for entirely practical reasons since they would have to make all sorts of laws and decisions, wanted the question left on one side? A. That is absolutely right. Q. Thank you. It is quite natural that Lammers, having thought about it, should say: "Well, I think if I asked Adolf Hitler he would probably say, well, forget the Mischlinge question", and thought to himself: "Well, we all know that in the past Hitler said he wants to postpone the entlosung until after the war. I will just tell Schlegelberger to write that down"? A. But that is not what this document says, Mr Rampton, if I can ---- Q. It says: "The Fuhrer has repeatedly said" or "The Fuhrer had repeatedly said". We all know that the Fuhrer had repeatedly said that way back in 1940 and 41. A. Well, if you attach importance to the tense there I will take expert advice overnight and ask exactly what the English translation of that tense should be. Q. Even if it has, a senior Civil Servant will be well aware of the fact that the Fuhrer has in the past repeatedly . P-190 said that he wants the thing postponed. What the document does not say is that Herr Lammers went into Hitler's office and said: "Look, Mein Fuhrer, there is this squabble going on", and that Hitler said on that occasion: "But you know perfectly well this can't happen. I am not having the Jewish question solved at this stage. It has got to be postponed until the end of the war." Now that last fanciful example is what you have deduced from this document, is it not? A. Mr Rampton, I am going to ask his Lordship's permission to come in tomorrow with a little bundle say of, say, four or five documents on this particular point, which I would ask his Lordship's permission to put before the Court. Q. If you would rather leave it now, I will leave it now. I am just going to propose, you can think about it overnight, one other possibility to you. A. It is just that I would like the chance to bring in the documents which will support my position rather than yours. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, by all means. MR RAMPTON: I think that is perfectly reasonable. A. It will be a very small clip, and not one of my usual bundles. Q. I may need time to consult them with my expert team. I am not an expert. Mr Irving, there is one other possibility, . P-191 is there not, that if this represents, this note, a contemporaneous statement by Hitler about his intentions for the Jews in general ---- A. Yes. Q. --- then it is quite possible that it is not a 1942 document at all for this reason, that up to September 1941, the beginning of the entlosung on Hitler's order had not happened? A. Yes. Q. So it is logically consistent with Hitler's known intentions and statements in the earlier part of 1941 or in 1940, that this document might emanate at that date, is it not? A. A vanishingly small probability that that was possible. To suggest that this 1942 file of documents could contain a stray document out of 1941, flies in the face of the German mentality. Q. Before we stop tonight, Mr Irving, and you collect your thoughts on the things I have been putting to you, does the file which you are talking about, is it an original Justice Ministry file in full integrity, or has it been mucked around with by the Allies? A. I can establish what condition it was in when it came into Allied possession because we have the staff evidence analysis sheet of the contents of that file, listing the contents. . P-192 Q. But the thing you have seen is not, therefore, an original pristine, untouched Reichs Justice Ministry file? A. No. I would just comment, I do not intend just to collect my thoughts tonight. I know precisely where my thoughts are, but I think it would be more useful if I can buttress them with the actual paperwork which establishes that these are not stray thoughts. Q. Is your Lordship content with that? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is a convenient moment, are you saying, Mr Rampton? MR RAMPTON: No, I meant is it convenient for me to stop now? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is what I thought you mind. Can I just mention one or two things? (Administrative Discussion). MR JUSTICE GRAY: Finally, Mr Rampton, can I just ask this. I thought I said something, but I may have forgotten, in which case it is my fault, about maybe having half a page of argument, just so I know what the issue is in advance of tomorrow on this question of Auschwitz. MR RAMPTON: It may only just be a question of my copying out what I said from the transcript in that case. I have nothing more to say. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Even that or the reference. Could you fax through the reference? MR RAMPTON: Yes. The short point is this. It seems to unarguable that on the pleadings, and whether you talk . P-193 about the old pleadings or the new Statement of Case, and on the discovery and everything else besides our case is perfectly clear. It is I hope accurately stated by me I think it was yesterday. I cannot do any better then that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the convergence of evidence point, is it? MR RAMPTON: Yes. There are two separate things about it. Let me take it stages. I am not here to prove that Auschwitz had gas chambers, homicidal gas chambers. I do not need to do that. If you again you have an open mind and you look at the convergence of evidence, eyewitness testimony from victims. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I remember what you said. MR RAMPTON: All of that, perpetrators, and the contemporaneous documentary evidence and the archeological remains, you are drink to conclude, as a matter of probability at the very least, that indeed what the eyewitnesses tell us is true. I am not here to persuade your Lordship of that, save as a preliminary first step to two things. Mr Irving on the back of a piece of so-called research which is not worth the paper it is written on jumped up and said he was perfectly certain that there were never any gas chambers at Auschwitz, and he has said that statement, made that statement repeatedly in circumstances where it is apt to excite the hostility towards Jews of people who are likely . P-194 to be anti-Semitic, which is the political side of this case which we will get to later on. As an insight into Mr Irving's credentials as a so-called historian, it is extremely illuminating, and that is the whole of my argument. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The question which may be capable of being narrowed is the extent to which Mr Irving contests the possible validity of the eyewitnesses' evidence, the survivor's evidence, the camp officials' evidence and so on? MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I do not know what his case is. His case could be twofold: No, Liechter is not rubbish, it is jolly good and what is more there is a whole lot of other stuff besides relating, for example, to coke consumption and incineration capacity and goodness what else, which converges towards the conclusion that everybody has been wrong all this time, that leads me to the conclusion that the eyewitnesses are mistaken or lying. It could be his case. I just do not know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that may be sufficient. We can debate that tomorrow. 10.30 tomorrow. (The witness stood down) (The court adjourned until the following day) . P-195
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