Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day008.40 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. In fact as you see, if you look at the end of the memorandum, what in fact in the end they decided on was . P-173 I think two four muffle ovens? A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What were sonderhaktiernun, do you think, Mr Irving? MR RAMPTON: Notice that the word [German spoken - document not provided] are in quotes in the original, are they not? A. Yes. Q. I am going to ask you a question about that in a moment, go back to the text of van Pelt the top of 341, if you will. "Item 2 mentions the construction of two triple oven incinerators near the bath houses for special actions. These are the gas chambers also known as bunkers one and two". Van Pelt says that. "On January 21st 1972 Eiffel testified in court that, when he wrote down the word bath houses for special actions, he knew exactly what this euphemism meant 'I knew at the time that this concerned gassing spaces'". Now, that is right is it not? I mean, he said that, do you know? You say you know the trial well. Yes? A. I know the reason why he was acquitted, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Concentrate on the point that Mr Rampton is on. A. Yes. MR RAMPTON: Concentrate on the point. It is at the bottom of page, the German, so we can be sure that you are not going to accuse van Pelt of mistranslation. . P-174 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it did not mean that, I think this is really the point, what did sonderaktionen mean? A. It does not really advance us very far. It just says he knows they were talking about the gassing spaces. Q. That was for clothes? A. Vergassungsraume is always for fumigation of clothes, yes. MR RAMPTON: No. Unless Van Pelt has got it wrong, I do not know, the German seem to say, I knew at that time that this, that is [German spoken- document not provided] concerned gassing spaces. A. I think we can assume that, had Eiffel then been examined further, as no doubt a good counsel would have done, and said what do you mean by [German spoken - document not provided] presumably mean homicidal gas chambers, and he would then have given either yes or no answer, but we are not told because Mr van Pelt has only give us half a sentence here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a fair point. MR RAMPTON: You can take that up with him. It is maybe a fair point. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, at some stage can we elicit something we had planned to elicit, namely to what extent was Mr Irving aware, when he made his statements about the gas chambers not having existed, of this and indeed the other evidence which you are taking him through? At some . P-175 stage we have to know the answer to that, do we not? MR RAMPTON: Actually no, because I have always said, as I have said earlier, I think last week, that he leapt on to Leuchter when it must have been perfectly obvious, if he had been interested in finding out, by thinking about it and asking if the Leuchter was rubbish, he stuck with Leuchter, despite the fact that it is rubbish. He has never taken the trouble to go to Auschwitz and look and I suggest two things flow from that. One is that he is not just a rotten historian but a bent historian because he lends his weight to Holocaust denial without having the materials to do so, and second, that he has an ulterior motive for that disreputable stance. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that, but does the question not need to at least to be asked at some stage? MR RAMPTON: By all means. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well all this evidence is out there. Did you consult it and, if you did, why did you reject it? I think we went through this. MR RAMPTON: I thought that I had done that. He had never been to Auschwitz. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, certainly never been to Auschwitz. MR RAMPTON: Did you ever go to Vienna and look at the record of the trial of these people? A. No. I can simplify the matter by saying that, whenever there is an Auschwitz stamp on a document like this one, . P-176 I have not seen it before the trial. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You follow the point I am trying to get at. There is a lot of evidence which the Defendants point to as demonstrating beyond the shadow of doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and they were used to kill Jews. A. My Lord, I strongly disagree with that statement. Q. When you read Leuchter, I appreciate that you then formed a view, but to what extent did you take into account the other evidence outside Leuchter and his examination of those samples? A. Let me take it seriatim. First of all, I disagree with the fact that we have seen a volume of evidence that there were indeed gas chambers. I do not think that we have seen any evidence yet. We have seen evidence which can be read that way if you are so inclined. Secondly, I am told that I never tried to go to Auschwitz. In 1992 I contacted the director of state archives at Auschwitz, Mr Piper and he refused to assist me. So it was quite evident that I would get no assistance whatsoever from the Auschwitz state archives. MR RAMPTON: We have been through this last week. A. No, we have not. Q. Yes, we have. A. No, we have not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is new to me. . P-177 A. In 1998 when I attempted to go to Auschwitz with the BBC team, Auschwitz ruled that I would not be allowed to set foot on the compound, on their campus or to visit their state archives. MR RAMPTON: I do not want to go over old ground, but I am going to in a minute, Mr Irving. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can he finish the answer? I personally think this is quite important. That was a closed book to you but there are other sources of information. A. I have therefore never seen any documents that have come from the Auschwitz state archives. In 1992 I went to the Moscow state archives where the other major collection is, which I used only in order to obtain the Goebbels diaries. As a result of the machinations of my opponents, the Moscow state archives were thereupon closed to me and I was informed that I would not be allowed to return there, so I am told. So that also closed that avenue of access to any documents which come from the Moscow state archives which were also not known to me until shortly before this trial. MR RAMPTON: I am going to pursue that, Mr Irving. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am so sorry, Mr Rampton. I just want to get the complete answer and then by all means pursue any of it. So that, you say, closed off the Moscow archives as well. But you would accept, would you not, that there is whole lot of material and data to be found in all sorts . P-178 of places, some of which is before the court and a lot of it in Professor van Pelt's report, to which you could have had access, had you been so minded? Is that not right? A. My Lord, the litany of woe continues. I am banned from the Institute of History in Munich, thanks to exactly the same campaign. I am banned from the German federal archives with effect from July 1st 1993, thanks to exactly the same campaign. I have faced mounting difficulties in continuing to do research. When I tried recently to get documents from the Wiener Library in London, which is exactly the same kind of historical archives, the director of the Wiener Library archives said that it would refuse to assist me. Q. So what it really comes to -- forgive me, Mr Rampton, I will stop after this question -- is that really almost every avenue, you say, has been closed to you for one reason or another and at one stage or another? A. At one stage or another. I am not saying that it has been closed over the entire period. It is fair to say that. Q. Might it be said against you that in that case it might have been more sensible, when were you giving talks about whether the Holocaust had happened or not, to make it clear that you really, beyond Leuchter, had almost no historical material available to you? A. My Lord, there had been endless publications about precisely these matters, for example the suspect document, . P-179 which I have paid due attention to. I have not had access to the archives myself, but I have had the opportunity of benefiting from the expertise of others. Q. But my question was, should you not have made that clear to your audiences when you were saying, well, it is plain that battleship Auschwitz had sunk? A. I think I made it quite plain to the audiences that the initial impetus for making that statement was the Leuchter report with the chemical results contained in that report, which I still considered to be a very valuable starting point for the whole controversy. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. Thank you. That now clarifies my mind. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving, I simply cannot accept anything really of what you have said, apart from the fact that you have been banned from various places, but the thrust of it I reject in its entirety. Do you have the first of the Auschwitz files, please, the big one? Can you turn to the correspondence tab (which I think is tab 8) and to a letter of 30th October 1989? I do not have the page number, I am afraid. A. I am hoping his Lordship will read all the letters under tab 8. Q. Yes. I am hoping he will too but that is not the point. It is marked with a 10. Is that a letter from Mr Weber to you? . P-180 A. Yes. Q. Will you turn please to the last page of that letter? Remember that the date is 30th October 1989. A. Yes. Q. Look at the first paragraph on that last page: "Some time ago you mentioned that we might be willing to contribute a Foreword to my book conditional upon reading the manuscript and, even though you are now working on a book of your own about Auschwitz and our work may therefore overlap somewhat, I hope that you are still willing to consider contributing a Foreword. I like to think that all the thoughtful and well documented revisionist work is mutually beneficial and a boost to the overall cause". Now, Mr Irving, were you working on a book about Auschwitz in October 1989? A. No. Q. Why did Mr Weber think that you were? A. I do not know. In October 1989 I was working -- let me think -- I had just delivered the new edition of Hitler's War, I was almost certainly working on the Herman Goring biography. Q. May I suggest that Mr Weber said what he did because either you or somebody else on your behalf had told him that you were working on a book on Auschwitz? A. Mr Rampton, your instructing solicitors have had complete access to all my files, including my entire private . P-181 diaries. If you had found any evidence that I was working on a book about Auschwitz, I am sure you would have had it before the court. Q. I did not say that you were, Mr Irving. You notice I tried to choose my words carefully. A. You were strongly suggesting. Q. -- that somebody had told him, perhaps you, that you were? A. Perhaps. Q. Yes. A. That is not evidence. As I say, you have had complete access to all my private records. Q. It would be evidence, Mr Irving, if you had told Mr Weber that, would it not? Not that you were doing it, but that you said that you were doing it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot quite see why he should, myself? A. He does not say even though you said you are now working on a book. But I can only repeat, had you found any evidence of this in my private diaries or telephone logs or papers, I am sure you would have had it before the court. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, the Leuchter report came to your knowledge in August 1988, did it not? A. April 1988.
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