Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day008.36 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. No, no, but these orders all go to the -- they made furniture and a whole lot of other things. It all goes to Auschwitz. This is not some order to some centralised air raid making department in Berlin, is it? A. This is obviously a company which manufactures air raid shelter doors. Q. You do not find anything about air raid shelters in this document, do you? A. "Deutsche [German]", [German] is equipment factories. Q. Yes. A. It is nothing to do with furniture. Q. In Auschwitz? A. In the town of Auschwitz. As Mr Van Pelt will tell you, Auschwitz was a town. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if all these air raid shelter doors come with a peep hole, why does he have to spell it out in the letter? I mean, he is saying, "I want a peep hole in my door". Why does he say that? . P-136 A. It is the same, you will see, my Lord, when they are ordering electric motors, they also specify exactly what the electric motor has to be. Q. That may be rather different because there are various kinds of electric motor. A. Anyway, when you see the photographs of the doors they are talking about and the doors that are in all the standard Civil Defence manuals, they are the standard air raid shelter door. MR RAMPTON: These doors have been purpose built. He has already got one, has Bischoff, for Leichenkeller 1 in crematorium (ii). He says to the people, the manufacturer in Auschwitz, the manufacturer in Auschwitz: "I want another exactly the same for Leichenkeller 1 in crematorium (iii)", does he not? A. On the face of it, this is a very incriminating and highly sinister and murderous document, but, of course, it is lacking one thing, is it not? Q. What is that? A. Security classification. There is no secret stamp on it. If this is connected to the Final Solution and it is talking about this kind of sinister document, they would have put a "Secret", even the lowest classification on it. This is a document of janitorial level which you are trying to hype up into a smoking gun. Q. Which is exactly why you might find that it does not have . P-137 "Geheim" on it, janitorial level. A. In other words, it is capable of ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are two points. One is that it is not authentic because it is not stamped "Geheim" and the other is that it is janitorial. A. I am not saying -- no, my Lord. I am not saying it is not authentic, my Lord. I am saying the fact that it is given no security classification, even by an SS officer, indicates that it is as harmless as it appears to be. Q. But I would have thought that if it is on a janitorial level, it might be all the more valuable as a clue to what is really going on. A. No, it is ---- Q. What is wrong with that proposition? A. I think that this is looking for conspiracy theories the whole time, my Lord. If you are confronted with an innocent document in which he is ordering an innocent air raid shelter door, it does not occur to anybody to start stamping it "Secret", and it does not occur to him that 50 years down the road the Queen's Bench Division is going to try to make this out into a smoking gun. MR RAMPTON: These are all carbons, are they not, Mr Irving? A. Don't fall for that one. Immediately after the top left where it says "43/KI/Schull", which is the name of the secretary, there would be another "/" followed by "GEH" or "G" or "GKDOS" or "GRS", according to what security . P-138 classification it had. It would be part of the letter book registration number. Q. I just want to pursue the air raid shelter dream a little bit further, if I may, Mr Irving? A. The air raid shelter? Q. "Dream" because it is, I have to suggest, complete fantasy? A. And this list of documents about air raid shelters is also a fantasy from the Moscow archives? Q. The "Deutsche aust" [German - document not provided] Gazelshaft", etc. ---- A. Yes. Q. --- in Auschwitz? A. At Auschwitz. Q. --- at Auschwitz, well, in Auschwitz -- there was a sort of settlement there -- was SS operated and inmate staffed, was it not? A. I will take your word for it -- probably with slave labour, yes. Q. I just want to pursue the air raid shelter a little bit further. How far away is Leichenkeller 1 or how far away are crematoria (ii) -- I will start again. Who was going to go into these air raid shelters of yours? Who were they for? A. I have no idea. Q. For the inmates? . P-139 A. I have no idea. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you have been asked now? A. But my answer ---- Q. Would they have built them for the slave labour? That is really inherent in the question. MR RAMPTON: Yes. I said "for the inmates". A. If we are really interested in this subject, I can inundate the court with paper about the construction of splinter trenches, concrete roof with reinforced concrete beams, bunkers for the inmates and everything. There was a great deal of agitation and work went on providing air raid shelter for the SS and for the inmates ---- Q. Yes. You have advanced ---- A. --- during these months and years. Q. --- the air raid shelter theory? A. Which had, obviously, not occurred to you. Q. Obviously not occurred? We have known about it for years, Mr Irving. It just seems so silly we have not bothered to take it terribly seriously. Perhaps we are wrong. If this is for the SS, this air raid shelter, it is a terribly long way from the SS barracks, is it not? They would all be dead before they ever got there if there was a bombing raid. Have you thought about that? It is about two and a half miles? A. I remember during the war when we got air raid warnings half an hour, an hour, before the planes arrived. . P-140 Q. And you went down to the bottom of the garden, just as I did, and hid in your Andersen shelter, or whatever it was called? A. We had a Morrison. Q. We had one of those first and then we got grand and had an Andersen! MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is enough reminiscing. A. Yes, but what I am saying is that when you were deep in Silesia, you had all the warning from the early warning system in Holland which is where it was based. You had all that time to tell you that enemy bombers were coming overhead heading your way. MR RAMPTON: But, Mr Irving, you do know, do you not, that they draw did actually draw up plans for converting the crematorium at Auschwitz (i) into an air raid shelter for the SS. A. Ah, ah, so this kind of thing did happen? Q. Oh, yes, but that is where the SS ---- A. But you kept it quiet until now? Q. --- that, Mr Irving, is where the SS barracks was. A. Yes, well, I did not say this was for the SS. Q. They could pop out of their living quarters into the air raid shelter. Do you really see a whole lot of heavily armed soldiers running two-and-a-half or three miles from the SS barracks to these cellars at the far end of the Birkenhau camp? I mean, Mr Irving. . P-141 A. It was, I think, common sense to take the only two underground buildings which had reinforced concrete roofs and which had been very heavily constructed at very great expensive to the German taxpayer -- far more expensively built than above ground mortuaries -- and to convert them for use as air raid shelters when the alarm began at the end of 1942. You can see this from the construction files, that they became increasingly concerned about the risk of air raids. Even if it was not just for the Kommandant and his private staff and family, it does not detract from the value of this particular explanation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: How many people could be accommodated? A. Well, we are told 2,000 people could get in, according to ---- MR RAMPTON: The document of 28th June 1943 suggests something, a gassing, sorry, an accommodation per gassing of about 1600 people, sometimes as many as 2,000. Anyway, leave that on one side. I still want to know how you think it is even realistic, never mind credible, to expect all those SS men to run all the way from the barracks at Auschwitz (i) to the far end of the camp at Birkenhau and climb into this air raid shelter before they got squashed by the allied bombs. A. I did explain to you. I do not know who this privileged accommodation is being provided for. Q. Well, they are not going to get 120,000 prisoners into . P-142 such a space, are they, Mr Irving? A. No, but the records show that very large numbers of other air raid protection facilities were being built around the camp at this time from the most primitive nature, which was of splitter trenches with primitive shelter over the top, to the most complicated bunkers. Q. Those are still there today. You can see little sentry shelters, one per person. A. So they made provision for everybody according to their needs, to each according to his needs and to his status, no doubt. Q. Well, my Lord, I have only one more question about air raid shelters and that is to be found on pages 29 and 30 of the same section of the file, Mr Irving. I am not going to struggle with this. I know what it says because I have had it translated for me, but I am afraid I do not have a translation yet. A. Which file? Q. Page 29 of this file. A. 11th February 1943? Q. That is the one. I ask you again. No need to read this out loud. It can be copied into the transcript in due course. I just ask you to read it to yourself. It is a page and a half, if that? MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are probably familiar with it, are you not? . P-143 A. Since yesterday, my Lord. Yes, it was delivered to me yesterday. I have asked all my colleagues around the world what the explanation for all this is and nobody has expressed very great alarm, except that I do draw attention, if I may, to the reference in the third and fourth lines to the provision eventually of two final permanent electric corpse elevators, or lifts, and one temporary corpse elevator which is to be installed as an improvisation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is that on the page? A. Lines 3 and 4 of the first page of the actual letter. MR RAMPTON: Now, you have read that letter? A. Yes. Q. You have seen it. I am sorry it was late coming. We only got it ourselves, I think, on Saturday? A. I got this at 10 past 9 yesterday evening. MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am sorry it is late. MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Leichenaftuk"(?) is that the word for corpse lift? A. Yes, Leichenaftuk. They played quite an important part in the whole of the argument I shall develop when I come to get revenge on Professor van Pelt later on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not the right way of expressing yourself. A. Well, I have had to endure a public flogging now for three weeks. . P-144 MR RAMPTON: Well, Mr Irving, you brought this action, if I may call it that. A. I am very much entitled to, yes. Q. So you must expect to be flogged publicly. If the blows have been a little bit painful, I am sorry, but I am going to go on landing them. Look at the second page of this letter, will you? A. Yes. Q. Am I right that, in effect, the whole of this letter is a frightful -- I am going to use schoolboy language -- blowing up administered by the people of Auschwitz, Bischoff, to the supplier because they are behind in their supplying? A. That is right, yes. Q. And he is saying in the last paragraph but one, is he not: "Unless this stuff turns up quickly", and he is reciting a telegram he has already sent, "we cannot get this thing off the ground, the whole installation"? A. Yes. Q. The second paragraph from the end. That is right, is it not, and he uses the word in the previous paragraph "Dringinschten" which means "most urgent", yes? A. Yes. Q. Why the urgency if it is a mere air raid shelter or a delousing chamber? A. We are at the height of the typhus emergency, are we not? . P-145
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