Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.01 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London Wednesday, 2nd February 2000 Before: MR JUSTICE GRAY B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING Claimant -and- (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED (2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT Defendants The Claimant appeared in person MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and Second Defendants MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell & Company, Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4 Telephone: 020-7242-9346) (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell & Company) PROCEEDINGS - DAY FOURTEEN . P-1 (Day 14 Wednesday, 2nd February 2000. 10.30 a.m.) MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes? MR IRVING: My Lord, may it please the court. Mr Rampton wishes to put the witness van Pelt back in the witness box (and I have no objections) to take further submissions in connection with the challenged document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. MR RAMPTON: My Lord ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: The incineration capacity? MR RAMPTON: Yes, he has done his homework and I am just going to let him tell your Lordship ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whilst we remember what the point is, it is a good idea. MR RAMPTON: Can I, first of all, pass up to your Lordship, as requested, he has given your Lordship a nomenclature guide for Auschwitz and also he has done a hand drawn sketch plan of the whole site. I suggest your Lordship puts that in the front of the Auschwitz file, probably the second Auschwitz file. MR JUSTICE GRAY: K2? MR RAMPTON: Yes, K2. The documents which he will produce in a moment will go in tab 4 of K2, I suggest. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have had these documents, Mr Irving, have you? MR IRVING: Yes, my Lord, I have just received them. . P-2 MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see, this is what I asked for. MR RAMPTON: It is, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. I had not realized what it was. (PROFESSOR VAN PELT, recalled. Further re-examined by MR RAMPTON, QC.) MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor, thank you very much for doing that. Yes, Mr Rampton? MR RAMPTON: Professor van Pelt, just one question. Have you taken up his Lordship's request or invitation to study this document, which is the one we had which is the document of 28th June 1943, which relates to incineration capacity, to study the question whether or not it is authentic ---- A. Yes, I have. Q. Its having been challenged. Will you then please tell his Lordship what conclusions you have reached by reference to this document and any others in this little clip? Can you give that to the judge? A. I have last night with what was still available to me, because I only carry a small bundle of documents I carried with me to London and even some already had been packed I did not want to open the box, but whatever I had, I was going to look at a couple of the challenges which had been made yesterday by Mr Irving. . P-3 Before I go into that, I would like to present, first of all, my copy, my marked copy, which is No. 1 of the document which comes from Moscow. There are some calculations on the back, on the side, which are irrelevant. I have indicated on this, this is page No. 1, on what were the particular issues Mr Irving found important which is the way the date was typed in as 28th June 1943 without a location, without Auschwitz, Achtundzwanzigte Juni Neunhundertdreiundvierzig. The second thing which was challenged yesterday was the code which indicates the Brieftage Buchnumber which is 31550, and then Jahrling, or Jahrling, and then the secretary. The third one was the title of SS Brigadefuhrer Generalmayor der Waffen SS Kammler. On the last point, I did not have find any document where the same mistake had happened. So I cannot explain that or I cannot give any second document, but then I only had one other document with me which was the Vergasungskeller letter of 29th June 1943 where Kammler has got on the right and the correct title. The first document I would like to present which is a new document is No. 2, which is the copy which is in the Domburg archive in the DDR -- the former DDR now - - and which was made available to the Auswenzin archive. This was the document, the copy which actually has been . P-4 published in the 50s, and I have here the original. I have given you a copy of my copy, but I have here the original copy from the Auschwitz archive with the original stamp on it, so I do not know. MR RAMPTON: I do believe his Lordship ought to see that partly because our copy ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a very good copy. MR RAMPTON: It is not a very good copy. There are some colour on that, original colour on that. A. This copy is not much better, but at least it shows the original stamp of the archive. MR IRVING: Just so we can be plain, this one went, in other words, to East Germany and Auschwitz, not the other way round? A. Yes, probably. Q. Where it was stamped? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just to make sure I am following, the one that we have previously been looking at, I thought you said came originally from the Moscow archives? A. That is the Moscow copy, yes. Q. This is DDR? A. Domburg, yes, the Domburg archive, which has been available in Poland since at least -- this was published in the 50s and this is also the document which went to Vienna, this particular copy. A copy of that was made available to Vienna. . P-5 Now, what is important in this second copy, and it is not a very clear copy, but I think the essential information is the same. I mean, the information is the same but the formatting is different. We see when we look at this particular copy, we see at the top it says "Abschrift" which means this is a typed copy. There was no photocopy machine in it. So while the original, the Moscow copy No. 1 is a carbon copy of the original, the second one is actually a newly typed copy, and with all these newly typed copies there would always have been a note at the bottom. It should be signed. It says: "Fur Die Richtigkeit der Abschrift which means for the correct ---- Q. Accuracy? A. --- the correctness of this copy and then there is an initial there. It is very difficult even in my copy to see who actually signed this. The reason that I think this is quite important is that this is a different copy of the Moscow one which is in a different archive. So we have now two different objects, both talking about an incineration capacity of 4,756 persons in the camp. If, indeed, the Moscow -- I mean, I think it is very, very unlikely that somebody who would have falsified this document, made it up afterwards, would have created both a carbon copy of one and then have made a new kind of Abschrift of that same . P-6 document, and then placed it into two different archives. Q. Well, on the contrary, I thought that might have been what a determined forger might have done. A. So that he actually make two different versions of the same copy? Q. I understand your point. A. I disagree with your Lordship on that, but your opinion in the end is more important than mine on this, I think. Q. Your are rather better informed than me. A. This very much takes the format of a typed copy as you find in the Auschwitz archive. So I think that in this case there is a convergence of two different objects, showing in two different archives, that, indeed, we have here, you know, as far as I say with absolute certainty in the original document. But there were other challenges made and, in order to deal with the other challenges, I would like to go to a very short review of the way documents in the Auschwitz archive, both letters and also copies, are dated, and the way the code which shows which file it has to go in is done. So when I go to No. 3, which is a letter from Bischoff, the chief architect to the chief doctor in Auschwitz, of 30th June 1944, about the building of small morgues in Birkenhau, they were built in the existing barracks -- every camp in Birkenhau would get one morgue -- we see basically that the heading says Auschwitz, 30th . P-7 June, "den 30.Juni 1944". It would be the normal accepted way of dating a letter, and then we see the brief type of book number. We see there two numbers and then we see "Jo" which is for Jotam who was at that moment the chief architect, and "Go" without dots, without periods. If we go to No. 4, this is a record of a meeting. We see that the date is again Auschwitz, 30th January 1943, but we see that the secretary who typed this letter in this case has a period behind the initial. If we go to No. 5, which is a letter to Topf u. Sohne, a carbon copy of a letter to Topf u. Sohne, which was done on letter head, we see that there is no place. It says simply 28th February 1943. In this case there are no periods behind the initials of both Jahrling and the secretary. Q. When you say "no place" do you mean no "den" ---- A. No period. It does not say Auschwitz den 28th February. Mr Irving yesterday challenged the authenticity of the Moscow document because there was no place. So this one does not have a place given. Then we have No. 6 which is one of these typed copies, Abschrift, which does not have a place which probably would be, you know, probably would also not have been in the original. But what we see here is that the secretary has again a period behind her name, but the Jahrling thing, we see in this case Jahrling is typed JA . P-8 umlaut H, while in other ones he is only typed as JAH, umlaut, which means now they have added an H. So there seemed to be at least also the way the name has been shortened, there seems to be no kind of agreement on it. Then we go to No. 8 because No. 7 is the --- - Q. Second page? A. --- the second page of that letter. We see that again the secretary has a period and then Dr E has a period. He is one of the doctors in the camp. No. 9 we see again, no place. This is a letter to Hoess from Bischoff and one would have expected this to be probably correct, following the correct format. We see that there is no place indicated. It says 12th February 1943. Again, the secretary has a period but not the Sturmbannfuhrer Pollok, who dictated the letter. But, when we go to No. 10 and No. 11 ---- Q. There is a point on 6. I just wonder whether it is a good point or a bad point? Tell me. The tagebuch number is in typescript, not manuscript. A. Sometimes it is typescript, sometimes manuscript.
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