Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day008.39 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. That includes eyewitness testimony from other people with whom the particular witness has not had any contact, does it not? A. Yes, except indirectly of course through the interrogator. Q. Yes. If the Brits and the Poles put their heads together and produce what we might call a joint questionnaire which is uniformly put to all eyewitnesses, I quite agree with you. Have you any evidence of that? . P-164 A. I did not say that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the answer no? MR RAMPTON: The answer is no, is it not? A. No, but if the same British interrogator questions two people in a row, then there will be a certain amount of cross-pollination between the two reports. Q. But if somebody is being questioned in London and somebody else is being questioned in Norway and somebody else is being questioned in Poland, then unless the interrogators have put their heads together, there is no chance that the witnesses's testimony may be mistaken? A. Yes. Q. But there is no chance that it is going to be deliberately fabricated in that way, is there? A. No, not in that way. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you tell, me and it may be that this is too general a question to be capable of being answered, what you say the motivation of the eyewitnesses who painted a false picture of what had been going on in Auschwitz was? A. I would say it varies, my Lord. It would be partly fear, partly the promise of alleviated punishment, partly torture, partly pecuniary. It depends on when we are talking about, whether it was done recently in connection a Hollywood film or back in 1945 to assist the Polish authorities. . P-165 Q. You sound from that answer as if you are really talking about camp officials? A. I am talking about camp officials. Q. Rather than survivors. What about the motivation of the survivors? A. To my knowledge none of the survivors who are not camp officials claimed to have been in gas chambers, inside them. Q. No, but they give what admittedly would be circumstantial evidence, but nevertheless quite vivid circumstantial evidence ---- A. They give a lot circumstantial evidence. Q. --- about what they infer must have been happening, do they not? A. I really hesitate to set traps for myself by generalizing, my Lord. I prefer to see precisely who we are talking about. When we are dealing with camp officials we have the odd phenomenon that people who would normally be candidates for the gallows somehow survive, and almost entirely coincidentally give statements that undoubtedly Mr Rampton will be relying on. MR RAMPTON: You see, if you read Professor van Pelt's report, Mr Irving, which I think you probably have done, you find evidence from what he calls perpetrators, camp officials, Rudolf Hess, Broad, Altemeyer, Gravno, people like that, which is broadly consistent, is it not, in every detail? . P-166 But that is the nature of eyewitness testimony, Mr Irving. You would agree, would you not, eyewitness testimony which is consistent in every detail is highly suspicious, would you agree? A. It prompts the word "collusion" to mind. Q. Yes, exactly, collusion. But eyewitness testimony, which is broadly consistent but which has differences of detail, is, unless there is reason to think that the person is lying, reliable as an honest account even if it be a mistaken one. Do you agree? A. It depends what you call difficulties of detail. If they are really scandalously large differences, discrepancies, then you have to a ask yourself how and why the discrepancy exists. I am thinking, for example, of the memoirs of Hirst [sic - Hoess]. Q. Yes. Hirst's own various accounts are not consistent amongst themselves, are they? A. Which suggests that one should straightaway, if one is a reasonable historian, discard him as a source completely. Q. No. This would be grossly improper as a reasonable historian, Mr Irving, may I suggest. The right approach to such evidence is to treat it with all caution and to ask oneself, where can I check it against other evidence to see whether it is accurate or not? A. I agree. Q. One can could do that with Commander Hirst. . P-167 A. It is a yellow light, proceed with caution. Q. Yes, proceed with caution. One can do that with Commander Hirst and one can find, unless he has been fed his lines by the polls, corroboration for almost all the important things that he says in his various statements, do you agree? A. I think Hirst and Eichmann are two pitiful characters -- Eichmann is another eyewitness -- where we need to know a great deal almost as psychologists about their mentality of this servile eager to please kind of mentality that we are feeling with. That is why I hate using eyewitness evidence because you have intangible subjective factors coming in, where all your instincts as a historian, as I say, will close to cover on that file because this file is trouble, let us look for something that is more concrete. Altemeyer is another case in mind. Q. I cannot accept that, Mr Irving. You will take as an historian, if you have an open mind that is, such evidence as there is, give it such weight as it may deserve and you will then make a decision whether or not to discard it. A. That is an alternative approach. Q. You do not discard a piece of evidence just because it is rocky in some area. A. In the case of Hirst, you see, you have the following problem. He undoubtedly deserved it. He was brutally treated when he was taken prisoner by the by British in . P-168 March 1946. He was very badly man handled. At the end of the following year, of course, he was then hanged by the Poles and I would be the last person to say he did not deserve it. In between those months, the day of his arrest and the day of his final hanging, execution and hanging, we do not know what went through his tortured mind. We do know that his report is full of the most incredible misstatements so that even Adolf Eichmann, writing in the margin of the Hirst report, and I have this book actually in my hand, because somebody bought it in a second hand book shop, with Eichmann's comments on it, said this man is talking through his hat. This is totally untrue. It renders the whole source document so suspect that either you can use it indiscriminately and say, hey this helps my case and I am going to use every bit I can that is of use and pretend the rest does not exist, which is what the average historian has done, or in my case you say this document is so suspect I do not want to go anywhere near it. That is the way I would treat it. Q. But, you see, the problem is, Mr Irving, that much of what Hirst said is corroborated by other people, is it not? A. You say corroborated but, of course, we do not know how far it has been cross pollinated by reading the newspapers. Q. That is a different point. A. By sitting in the same court house and hearing what other . P-169 people are saying, by being told by interrogating officers, "If you sign this affidavit we have typed up, then we will get you a shorter sentence". This is the kind of thing that went on at Nuremberg, along with a lot of uglier things. These so-called affidavits that these people signed were not written out in their own longhand. They were dictated to them and they were then obliged to sign them. Q. Are you familiar with the testimony which Eric Bauer gave at Ludwigsberg in, I do not know what year it was? A. No, I am not, I can read it though. Q. My Lord, I am looking at page 581 of van Pelt. He is recorded by Professor van Pelt to have testified as follows about the extermination of Jews in Sobibor. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let Mr Irving find it. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. A. Can I say straightaway that I have myself been before the courts in Austria. They do not take verbatim testimony in the manner that we take here with court reporters. The report is drawn up by a court official in abbreviated form so these are not necessarily ---- Q. Well, it is in the first person. I dare say, I do not know, I have not seen the original document. Maybe it is in the file. He said this, he also used the word vergassung as an adjective, he is talking about gassing of Jews at Sobibor, "The doors were sealed airtight and . P-170 immediately the gassing procedure vergassungsforgang commenced". Is that after some 20 to 30 minutes, complete silence in the gas chambers, people were vergassed? A. He is probably accurate. He is probably describing something that really happened there. Q. It is the same formation, is it not, vergassungswagen we see with Eichmann at the top of the page? We notice Wetzel's vergassungsakavater earlier. A. There is no other way you could describe gassing procedure except by the German phrase vergassungsforgang. Q. Then we come to Dayaco and Eiffel, who were tried, I think in ---- A. 1972. I believe I am right in saying that they were both aquitted, oddly enough, were they not? Q. I believe that they were acquitted. A. So obviously the court did not pay much attention to this kind of evidence. They had the chance of cross-examining the witnesses. Q. We should take precedent from that, should we, Mr Irving? A. Certainly, if they hear the same witnesses. We do not have the chance of cross-examining these witnesses that you are giving to me now, but if the court in Vienna acquitted Dayaco and Eiffel, who were the architects of Auschwitz, they were acquitted and set free. They had had the chance of cross-examining these witnesses. Surely . P-171 that should say something to you about the value of the testimony they gave. Q. It says nothing to me at all because I do not know the reason why they were acquitted. A. They were acquitted because they were innocent. Q. There are all sorts of reasons why people can be acquitted. If you are anxious to find out the answer to why they were acquitted, you can ask Professor van Pelt. A. I know why they were acquitted. I know their case quite well. Q. You see, it says both Dayaco and Eiffel, testifying during their trial in 1972, used the term "gassing spaces" vergassungsraume to denote gas chambers. You can see that that is so if you turn back -- I am sorry it is such a long journey -- to page 341 of the same report, my Lord. Would your Lordship at the same time find it convenient to turn up this document? It is in the same file. You might do the same, Mr Irving. In the smaller of the two Auschwitz files, the second one, there is a document at page 2 to which this part of the text of van Pelt refers. A. The smaller of the two Auschwitz files at page 2? Q. Tab 4, sorry, yes. Tab 4, page 2. It is in the same set of originals. A. The same document. Q. Just so that, if you want to, you can look at the original German. . P-172 A. Can I draw attention to the brief number on that document, handwritten number? Q. Yes. A. I do not say these things just to be pig headed about documents arousing my suspicion. Q. At the top of page 341 of van Pelt we see this: "On August 19th 1942 Eiffel chaired a meeting in which members of the Central Construction Office discussed with engineer Kurt Brufer of Topf and sons the creation of four crematoria in Birkenhau. Item 2 mentioned the construction of two triple oven incinerators near the bath houses for special actions". If you look over at the other document, the original German document, it is in paragraph 2 on the first page, first sentence, is it not? A. Yes. Q. Could you read out what it says in German? A. [German spoken- document not provided]. Q. No, I am sorry, I meant translated. A. With regard to the erection of two each three muffle furnaces at the bath house for special actions we propose Engineer Brufer suggested ---- Q. That will do. A. Taking the furnaces ----
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