Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day007.09 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. It is written to Muller. Now I need your help -- you are very good at this -- can you please translate the text for us? A. You are too kind. "I ordain that from now on the Jews that are still on hand in France and also of the Hungarian and Rumanian Jews, all those who have influential relatives in America, are to be concentrated in a special camp. There they are, indeed, to work but under conditions that they remain sound and alive. This kind of Jews are valuable hostages for us. I am thinking of a figure of around 10,000" ---- Q. Yes. A. --- "in this connection". Q. 10,000 from all three countries? A. Yes. Q. There are special Jews who are preserved because they have . P-72 skills? A. That is right, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or because they have influential relatives in America? A. That is right. MR RAMPTON: Even suppose we divide 10,000 in three equal parts and subtract it from 600,000, we have the best part of 600,000 still left who have nothing whatever to do with this piece of paper, do they? A. Yes. Q. This is one camp? A. Yes. Q. Einem sonderlager? A. Yes? The hostages' camp. Q. Tell me about the other camps which you say in Germany ---- A. Yes. Q. --- which is the destination for the remaining whatever it is, 597,000? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure he did say that. A. Well, I certainly did not say those figures. I do not think we accept the figures. MR RAMPTON: I said I was challenging the proposition that "Abschaffen" meant "transported" and I think Mr Irving said, "And, what is more, we know where they were being transported to, camps being built in Germany". . P-73 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did we not then ask when French Jews he was talking about was going to Germany? MR RAMPTON: Perhaps he would answer that question? A. The balance ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you elucidate because we are really concerned with the other French Jews and I think I have put the question already. MR RAMPTON: The balance were to be departed to Germany, but that is not a reference to those other Jews, that document, is it? A. Well, Professor Longerich has given us a rather thin gruel of documents on which to draw our conclusions, but I am familiar with the documents that I have read and I am quite happy to bring them to the court on Monday, that special camps were being erected at this time to receive these French Jews who were being deported, not just one camp, but more than one camp. Eichmann is involved in the construction, if my memory is correct -- it is about two or three months sine I read these documents -- and from my own personal knowledge, large numbers of French Jews were put to work in the German Arms industry. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So they all went to camps in Germany, these other, balance of the French Jews? A. My Lord, I am not going to say "all". Q. The vast part? A. That would be something I could not swear to. . P-74 Q. The vast part? MR RAMPTON: I would be very grateful and I am going to leave it there for the moment. A. I shall bring the documents and I will make a note to. Q. If you bring the documents, then it is no good my pouring over documents; may I copy them and given them to my experts to look at? A. Yes. I will fax them over the weekend, the ones that we intend to rely on. Q. Would your Lordship forgive me for one moment? Mr Irving, could you find page 462 of Hitler's War 1977? A. Yes. Q. And page 511 of Hitler's War 1991. If you would look, page 462 of 1977 falls neatly into two halves. I do not need you to read it out and I am not going to either. Could you read that last paragraph on 462? A. "When Heinreich Himmler came to headquarters" ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think to yourself. MR RAMPTON: No, just to yourself. The people in this courtroom are going to get tired of hearing our voices, I would imagine, Mr Irving. A. Yes. Q. Thank you. Now would you read to yourself in the same way the middle paragraph on page 511? A. I am not happy with reading these things to myself because the court transcript does not know what I am reading to . P-75 myself. MR RAMPTON: I see. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It can be determined later what was being read. So can we proceed in this way for the time being? It just saves time. A. Yes. MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is the middle paragraph on 511. A. Yes. Q. It does save time. A. The parenthesis in brackets you are looking at which has vanished between the two volumes. Q. I am looking at two things. In the text of 462 the word "Abschaffen" is translated by you as "remove"? A. Yes. Q. In the footnote it is "dispose of"? A. 462, you mean the end note? Q. Sorry, I call them footnotes. That is very clumsy of me. Yes, the end note. A. I have given the German and the translation that I propose, yes, in each case. Q. But in the text you have, what shall I say, edged away from "disposed of" and replaced it with "removed"? A. I have not edged away from anything, Mr Rampton. I have just used the word "removed" and in the scientific end note I have then given the original German in both versions, once "Abschaffen" which I have translated as . P-76 "disposed of" and I have said: "In his subsequent memo to the Gestapo Chief Muller, however, he used the milder words 'Verhaftet und abtransportieren' "arrested and transported away". Q. But, Mr Irving, you see the word has now been through two processes. It starts off in German. Fair enough, it has to be translated. When that happens in the end note, it is "disposed of". Now it has become "remove"? A. Mr Rampton, are you familiar with the concept that sometimes one word in one language can only be given, you can only get the meaning by giving its three alternative meanings in another language if you do not have an exact synonym between the two languages. Q. But you do not want to go back to the Langenscheit, to my primary meanings; you have been into that trap once already this morning. A. Well, Langenscheit is probably not concentrating on the fact we are talking about people. They are probably talking about Abschaffen of a government or Abschaffen of a condition or a situation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: 511 of what? I am so sorry. I am lost. MR RAMPTON: Of 1991 Hitler's War, my Lord. I was just going to compare the two versions. Then at the bottom, still on 1977, Mr Irving, 462, at the bottom of the page, you have got a parenthesis which you have already spotted, in brackets, "Hitler's notes do not indicate that he . P-77 mentioned to Hitler the alternative fate of the others". You and I can disagree about that, but my question is this, or first question is this. What did you mean by "the alternative fate of the others"? A. We do not know because he did not mention it. Q. I see. A. That is not a weasel answer. I am just saying that there was an alternative fate clearly adumbrated, but we are not told what it was, whether it was being sent for slave labour or sent to the gas chambers or what. Q. Notwithstanding that at this date you still believed in the mass murder of the Jews, including a lot of French Jews? A. I am being very cautious the way I write. This was a very sensitive subject, as you yourself said. I am extremely cautions the way I proceed phase by phase when I write these narratives. Q. When we have got to 1991 on page 511, by which time, on your own admission, you have become a hard core disbeliever so far as the Holocaust is concerned, that little parenthesis has gone, has it not? A. Yes. Q. Why? A. Very simple. First of all, the 1991 edition is an abridged edition. I do not know if you have ever abridged a book, but you go through it cutting out lines which are . P-78 superfluous. My editor, Tom Congden, as I mentioned on a previous day, taught me the basic or retaught me the basic principles of bookwriting. One of them is, don't say what somebody didn't do; say what they did do. This is a classic example of me saying what somebody did not do which is totally superfluous to our knowledge. Q. No, no, Mr Irving. A. So I cut out the reference to what somebody did not do. A classic example of what somebody did not do being cut out because the book has to be shortened by one-third. Q. The truth of the matter, Mr Irving -- it must be really pretty obvious -- is this, is it not? 1977, you still believe in the Holocaust. I use that as shorthand because I do not like to use a whole lot of words where two will do. A. Well, the factories of death. Q. In 1977 you believed in the factories of death. That is four words, I think? A. Yes. Q. In 1991 you do not. You have removed the parenthesis because you fearful that your readers might think that you meant, as indeed you did in that parenthesis, that the fate of the other Jews, the alternative fate of the other Jews, was going to be death? A. You have no basis for making that suggestion other than the purposes of this action which is you are looking, . P-79 I think, I will not say desperately, but you are looking for everything you can seize upon ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, the answer is no. MR RAMPTON: The answer is no. A. The equally and far more plausible suggestion is that we are cutting out what we possibly can out of the book to trim it down to make room for fresh material. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, it will not be for either you or I to say whether your answers are plausible at the end of this case. A. Well, I venture to suggest that this is the least perverse explanation. You are trying find room to put in an extra 200 pages of material into a book that we were already tying to shorten. So if we put in a paragraph here, a parenthesis, which says something did not happen, then that is an obvious candidate for the chop. There are very many sentences cut out on every page if you compare the pages. I would also add the fact that much of the editing was not done by me; it was done by the American publishers or by an assistant who I hired specifically for the job. Q. I am sorry. I have been given something, Mr Irving. I am not being discourteous. I am trying to read it very quickly to find out if I need to ask anything about it. I think not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, can I just ask you this, . P-80 "Abschaffen", you say, is relevant to Hitler's knowledge? MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And is also an example of distortion? MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, it is three things. It is relevance, not just of Hitler's knowledge, but probably of a Hitler, some kind of a, one of these utterances -- well, it is more than that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand how you put it. MR RAMPTON: It is an instruction. That is No. 1. 2, it is evidence of a developing distortion. The distortion is already there in 1977 with the word "remove". We can see that, in fact, from the footnote which uses "dispose" and the parenthesis. In 1991, in the eighth line down in the middle paragraph the word "remove" has been "extract" and the parenthesis has gone. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you. A. To which my response is, of course, that I have given no fewer than three different translations for the word "Abschaffen" in the one volume so the reader can pick his own way, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, for the moment, until I see Mr Irving's other documents on Monday, that is as far as I need take that question today.
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