Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day009.21 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR IRVING: Professor van Pelt, we are wasting our time really, are we not? There were never any holes in that roof. . P-185 There are no holes in that roof today. There were never four holes through that roof. They cannot have poured cyanide capsules through that roof. The concrete evidence is still there. You yourself have stood on that roof and looked for those holes and not found them. Our experts have stood on that roof and not found them. The holes were never there. What do you have say to that? A. I would just say why do we not put up the picture of the roof and look at the roof in the present condition? The roof is a mess. The roof is absolutely a mess. A large part of the roof is in fragments. The concrete has many different colours. You pretend that you are talking about a piece which is intact. It is not. Q. Can I remind what you have written in your book? A. It is impossible to determine nowadays what was the situation of that roof in 1945. Q. Can I remind what you have written in your expert report for this case? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page? MR IRVING: I have page 295, my Lord, but that is my copy which I printed out again. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I imagine it is the same page for us too, is it not. MR IRVING: I would not bank on it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It obviously is not. MR IRVING: Would the witness kindly read out the paragraph . P-186 I have outlined beginning with "Today the four holes cannot be found". A. Can I -- I just want to let -- I will try to find the page number. It is in the Leuchter interrogation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am in your hands about time. You remember I said I would rise whenever was convenient to you after a quarter to 4. MR IRVING: My Lord, you may apprehend that the trap is now sprung and it would be a pity to put the mouse back in its cage. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The trap is what you have just asked? MR IRVING: Precisely it, my Lord. There are no holes in that roof. There were never any holes in that roof. All the eyewitnesses on whom he relies are therefore exposed as liars. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just identifying the trap. A. OK. Now if I am sitting in the trap I will take a little longer to look for the information because ---- MR IRVING: Take as long as you like. A. --- because I prefer to remain in the trap and eat the cheese while it lasts! OK, we are here at page 518, my Lord. MR IRVING: 518? A. Yes. The bottom two lines: "Today, these four small holes that connected the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys cannot be observed in the ruined remains of the concrete . P-187 slab. Yet does this mean they were never there? We know that after the cessation of the gassings in the fall of 1944 all the gassing equipment was removed, which implies both the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys. What would have remained would have been the four narrow holes and the slab. While there is no certainty in this particular matter, it would have been logical to attach at the location where the columns had been some formwork at the bottom of the gas chamber ceiling, and pour some concrete in the hole and thus restore the slab." Q. Hold it there. So what you are saying is with the Red Army just over the River Vistula ever since November 1944 and about to invade and, as we found out earlier this morning, the personnel of Auschwitz concentration camp in a blue funk and destroying their records and doing what they can, some SS Rottenfuhrer has been given the rotten job of getting up there with a bucket and spade and cementing in those four holes, in case after we have blown up the building they show? A. I would like to point out that the gas chamber was removed in November 1944. Q. The gas chamber was removed? A. The gas chamber, the installations were removed. The installations in the gas chambers were removed. Also during the month of November and December 1944, because the Germans were still confident that they could hold back . P-188 the Bolshevik hoard from the East, they were creating gas type air raid shelters in Auschwitz at that moment. They had started constructing these things just before. So there was still some local, small-term, small site construction activity going on. This was very primitive, but certainly the SS would have been able in November 1944, even December 1944, to repair the roof and to remove the evidence of the holes. The invasion, the offensive, only started on January 12th, as we have established before. Q. Professor van Pelt, do you know what the phrase in architecture, "fair face finish" or "fair face concrete" refers to? A. I can guess, yes. Q. It means concrete which is left bare to the public. Are you aware that this is one of the most expensive finishes that an architect can specify? A. Yes. Q. Because -- can you speculate as to the reason why it is so expensive? A. Because it is very difficult to get a very even texture. Q. I know this. I worked for three years in a concrete gang with John Lang working my way through university, so I know how difficult it was to get the concrete right. If it was not properly vibrated and you had a cavity, you had to take down the whole beam because you cannot plaster . P-189 over it in a way that it does not show. Is this not so? A. Yes. Q. So you would expect that it would be unlikely that these panic stricken Germans could have managed to trowel the finish on both the gravel covered side of the roof and the underside of the roof in such a way that nothing would show, you would not see what is called a drying line around the circle where the hatch had once been. Is that correct, you would expect to find a drying line? A. If you would have had this kind of concrete, but, sadly enough, one does not have that kind of concrete in the ceiling of morgue No. 1 of crematorium (ii). There is actually one little place you can go under it, and this is where Mr Leuchter derived some of his samples, and I have been also in that place and, in fact, the formwork is a complete mess. It is a very irregular formwork. You cannot draw any conclusion from that formwork one way or the other of what kind of hole was located where. Q. Is it not so that when you have formwork made of wooden planks, the concrete retains the grain of the wood; you can see the grain of the wood and that too would show that you could not plaster over the holes in such a way that Holocaust deniers years later would not find them? A. Yes, but there is one problem, and that is the column which remains. There is one column remains and it is the second column. The second column of the crematorium . P-190 remains. So it is not a column to which one of these mesh columns was attached. The mesh columns were attached to the first, the third, the fifth and the seventh. Q. Fortuitously, the one that remains was the one that did not have the wire mesh? A. Yes, or sadly so for your case maybe. So, in any case, we cannot draw any conclusions from the nature of the formwork around that column because that is not a column where the wire-mesh column was. So, I mean ---- Q. I am talking about the ceiling. A. There is a one little bit of ceiling only visible. The amount of ceiling is only a few square metre there. You can crawl under the roof of Leichenkeller No. 1. I have done it and I have looked at that roof. Q. Professor van Pelt, would it surprise you to hear that the Poles have made 400 photographs of the underside of that roof in an attempt to map every square inch of it looking for those holes and they failed? A. But the problem is that holes are not under that part. Q. The holes are not under that part? A. I mean, the roof falls back into the ground. Q. Here is a map of the roof as it now is. This is the large yellow page that I gave his Lordship, right? There are no holes in that. It has been mapped from top and bottom. The only holes that exist are where it has been punched through in recent years by people curious about what is . P-191 going on underneath, and you can see that is the case because the steel reinforcing bars have been bent back, and the one place where the pillar has also broken through. The holes that your eyewitnesses refer to, as you correctly say, cannot be found for the simple reason they were never there and there is not the slightest trace of them being there, and I also draw your attention, my Lord, if you go back to page 184 ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: --- about 10 lines down: "The showers were fitted to small blocks of wood sealed into the concrete roof of the gas chamber". We have probably all seen these little blocks of wood that get embedded in the concrete when it is poured, so that things can be screwed to those little blocks of wood. Those little blocks of wood also are not in the ceiling, as you can see, my Lord, as I gave you two photographs in a heap this morning. I gave your Lordship two photographs, colour photographs, in a heap this morning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am just underlining that. MR IRVING: I cannot find mine. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have got ---- MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- the ones you gave me. MR IRVING: One is of the underside of the concrete roof and you can see -- exactly, my Lord -- you can see the . P-192 condition of the concrete roof underneath this messy slab is in. You can see the wooden markings on the concrete where formwork was all these years ago when they built crematorium No. 2 in Auschwitz. You can appreciate that if there had been those holes in the roof, which are the cardinal linchpin of the Defence in this action, they would have been found by now. They have not found them, and so their eyewitness evidence collapses because these people are exposed for the liars they were. My Lord, it is four minutes to 4. Unless Mr Rampton wishes to say something to repair the damage at this point ---- A. My Lord, may I respond to this? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but not until 10 be 30 tomorrow morning. What I would be like to know from you then is what evidence there is from the likes of Taiber about the way in which the pellets were inserted into the gas chamber. In other words, are there other witnesses who describe that? A. There are other witnesses. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will have to deal with Kuhler as well, will we not, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: I think so, my Lord, to have a look at the wire-mesh columns. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hope you will have enough time. If you get into difficulties I will be sympathetic. 10.30 tomorrow. . P-193 (The witness stood down) (The Court adjourned until the following day) . P-194
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