Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day011.19 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR RAMPTON: I think that Pressac's book must originally have A. No. This is the only edition. Q. Did he write it in English or did someone translate it for him? A. It translated by Behalteklasse Foundation. Q. Have you got the introduction to chapter 3? A. Part 3, chapter 3, yes. Q. Can you read that to yourself. We will all read it at the . P-166 same time to ourselves. Then I will ask you ---- MR IRVING: Could you give me a page number, please? MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, it is 481 of Pressac. A. Introduction? Q. Introduction. Just read the introduction to yourself. A. "The testimony by Henrich Tauber ..." Q. Not out loud. Just read it to yourself. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not really matter. MR RAMPTON: Tell us when you have finished. A. I have read it. Q. You have read it? A. Yes. Q. That, if I may summarize it, is Mr Pressac's on view of Tauber as it comes off the written page, is it not? A. Yes. Q. Is it an assessment with which you agree or disagree? A. I agree with that. Q. If I may summarize, the effect is that Tauber is a modest, sober and careful witness, is that right? A. Yes. Q. You have to say yes because otherwise the tape cannot read your mind. At the bottom he says: "Henrich Tauber's deposition enabled me at the last moment to authenticate the testimony of Dr Paul Bendal that I was on the point of invalidating." Do you see right at the bottom of the introduction? Do you have that? . P-167 A. Yes. Q. Do you know what it was in the testimony of Dr Paul Bendal that Pressac was on the point of invalidating and that Tauber validates? A. I do not remember any more. It is sometime since I read Pressac. Q. Right. Another piece of disorder I am afraid, Professor. Can you turn to pages 110, 111? A. Of what? Q. Of your report. A. I am there. Q. Towards the top of page 110 you are writing about a number of people who are known to have died at certain times from disease at Auschwitz? A. Yes. Q. Then you say this: "It must be remembered, however, that the mortality figures which the concentration camps sent to Berlin only apply to the deaths of registered prisoners", and you have already told us that. Then you make reference to the evidence of SS, he was a General was he not, Oswald Pohl? A. Yes, he was I think Obergruppenfuhrer by that time. Q. Whatever, he was in charge of the concentration camp system as a whole, is that right? A. Yes, he was the kind of -- officially he was called the Economic Director, so some way off the SS, and that really . P-168 ran the concentration camps. He was not the inspector of the concentration camps. As a business adventure, yes. By a business venture he was. MR IRVING: My Lord, this of course is not matter that was raised in the cross-examination. So I am puzzled. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may turn out to be. That is the problem. You never know where ---- MR IRVING: As long as your Lordship is alert to that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- it is going. MR RAMPTON: I had understood that Mr Irving relied on the death books and the decrypts as showing that the number of people who died at Auschwitz was very small. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think that is right, although there was not any cross-examination on that. MR RAMPTON: I know, but it may be convenient. MR IRVING: The only mention of the death books is when I was querying the character of the deaths, the age spectrum, rather than statistics. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is part of your case, is it not, that the death books give a very different picture from the sort of figures that Professor van Pelt speaks of? MR IRVING: It is a subtly different picture on the question of the killing of the old and sick. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is part of your case, and I do not criticise you for not cross-examining to it, I think it is for Mr Rampton to be able to put these questions. . P-169 MR IRVING: This specific document of course is not one that I ---- MR RAMPTON: Anyhow, it does arise indirectly and quite immediately out of the questions which were put about selection to which I am immediately coming after this. Did in fact the head of this system General Pohl say at his trial in Nuremberg that the people who were directly exterminated were never registered? A. He says that no information about it has been transmitted to Berlin. Q. His subordinate was Dr Lolling? A. Yes. Q. Who was in charge of the inspectorate presumably. He said, the last answer at the top of page 111, in answer to his own counsel, his own attorney: "The figures about exterminations were not reported to the inspectorate at all, and constantly Dr Rolling could not evaluate them for his statistics." A. That is true. Q. Thank you. Now I want to ---- MR IRVING: My Lord, that was very definitely not a matter which I raised in cross-examination of this witness. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I tried to explain why I think it is legitimate. In a way we are having to take short cuts in this case. You have lots of points which, in a perfect world, I would have said to you, Mr Irving, you must put . P-170 that point to Professor van Pelt, but we be would here to Christmas and beyond if we did that. So we are not requiring you to put all those points. But it does not mean Mr Rampton cannot get evidence from this witness, especially if it is in his report, which bears on the point that you are going to take, although you have not cross-examined to it. MR IRVING: My understanding was re-examination is only permitted on matters that I cross-examined on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: In a normal case that is true. I am not bending the rules in Mr Rampton's favour. I am in fact bending them in your favour, because I have not required you to cross-examine on this point, do you follow me? MR IRVING: Very well. MR RAMPTON: Normally in the old days, and I thank goodness we are not in the old days any more, if the point had not been taken in cross-examination, I would have to say to the Judge: Well, I am afraid it cannot be taken in closing. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I mean by taking short cuts in this case. MR RAMPTON: I do not say that. Does that evidence of General Pohl reflect upon the death books figures so-called that have emerged from Moscow? A. No. It suggests, I mean Pohl only talks about of course . P-171 information being transmitted to Berlin, but certainly the question is how would information be gathered in Auschwitz, and then of course we get other corroborating information like, for example, that of Pery Broad who worked in the political department who said that there was no registration of people who were not admitted to the camp. That is information that once the transport had arrived, and once basically the people had been sent to the gas chamber, all records, all traces of these people also in the records were removed, or at least, you know, there was maybe some record about a number of people that had arrived but they were not registered. Q. Does it also reflect, tell me if it does not, on the so-called Hinsley decrypt question? A. In the way it has been posed by Mr Irving, yes. Q. Yes. To put it another way, would you expect to find references to the extermination of unregistered prisoners in decrypts going from Auschwitz to Berlin? A. No. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the same point, is it not? The Hinsley decrypt point is the same point about non-registration of those who were going allegedly to be exterminated. MR RAMPTON: You told us some time ago, Professor, last week, that upon arrival to begin with the transports were divided up for selection at the old Judenamter which was between the two camps? . P-172 A. Yes. Q. But that by the time of the Hungarian action in 1944, the Summer of 1944, they had built one spare right up through Birkenhau towards the two crematoria 2 and 3? A. Yes. The spare had been in construction for a longer time, but it was completed in I think March, March 1944. Q. Yes. A. Late March, maybe early April. Q. Could you take that file H2 (vi) again, please? A. H2(vi), where is that? Q. In tab 4 we find something called the "Auschwitz Album". That is not its official title in any sense. Can you say briefly what this Auschwitz album actually is? I will ask you about the photographs in a moment, but if you could tell us what the book is? A. This is a book which was found on the evacuation of the camp by a person called Lily Meyer as the camp was being evacuated. It is a picture book made either for an individual SS man or maybe for the Auschwitz SS, recording a couple of arrivals and subsequent kind of delousing registration into the camp, and also the fate of other people, at least until any come to the crematorium, of Hungarian Jews. Q. Right. So the photographs which we find inside are, therefore, of what date? A. They are of the Summer 1944. . P-173 Q. By whom were they taken? A. They were taken by an SS man. MR JUSTICE GRAY: How do you know they are the Summer of 1944? A. Because that is when the Hungarian action occurred. Q. That is circular, is it not? A. But the book itself identifies this. It identifies the action as a Hungarian action. MR IRVING: That was surely May 1944. A. May 1944, whatever, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it may not matter. MR RAMPTON: It does not sound as though it is controversial. It is in fact quite a well-known book. These photographs have been known about for a very long time? A. Yes, apart from -- there are three basically sources of photographs, at least from Birkenhau, which is the Bauleitung photographs we saw today a few of, showing the construction, showing the construction of the buildings in Birkenhau. Then we have a number of photos, a small number of photos which would have been made illegally by prisoners, probably a sonderkommando who found a camera in what was left over in the undressing room. These are very shaky photographs where you see people running and you see some burning of bodies in a kind open pit. Then this one which is a large collection made by the SS, one does not really know for what reason, except ---- MR IRVING: Where is the second collection from, is it Moscow? . P-174 A. The second collection. Q. Yes. A. There are three or four photographs. I think they are the original negatives. No, there are no negatives. Original prints on Auschwitz. MR RAMPTON: The particular pages that I want to refer to are a little bit difficult to find, because the bundle has not been paginated, but at the bottom of each photograph there is usually a printed number. A. Yes. Q. If you turn the file sideways, I hope you can find a photograph which has a printed number 15 at the bottom? A. 15? Q. Yes. A. 15. Q. Yes, 15. MR IRVING: My Lord, I am again nervous about this introduction of fresh evidence of the re-examination phase. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, this does arise of out cross-examination. MR RAMPTON: This arises directly out of questions about selection. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you remember questions about where the selection process took place and how it changed from being on the railway platform, I think it was originally, and then they built the spare and it was sometimes done . P-175 there. Is that a fair summary of the evidence? MR RAMPTON: There is a very direct and relevant point to be made at the end of this little exercise, if Mr Irving will be patient. Do you see that photograph, Professor? A. Yes, I see. Q. Just tell me, I will make a suggestion and answer then I will ask for information. Am I looking northwards? A. No. You are looking towards the West.
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