Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.06 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. We cannot fit that many witnesses into your witness box up there, Mr Irving, I am afraid. Can you turn to the next page, 92, please? It has a 92 in the right hand corner, so that you can identify it. It is a letter from you, London, 4th June 1992 -- it is a facsimile -- to Karl Philip. Just tell me, does it say more or less the same as what your letter to Mark Weber said? A. Yes. I do not know what file I am supposed to be looking at. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is yes, having read through it. MR RAMPTON: It looks like it. My German is rotten but it looks much the same. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who is Philip? MR RAMPTON: That is my next question. Who is Karl Philip? A. He is a German friend of mine. Q. Why would he want to have this information? A. I would have to think back. In 1992 he was publishing a . P-46 newsletter. Q. He is another revisionist, is he not? A. Oh yes. He is a wicked revisionist. Q. No, he is another revisionist? A. But I said yes, he is a revisionist. Q. You said he was a wicked revisionist. Would you like to expand on why he is wicked? A. Apparently all revisionists are wicked. This is a piece of sarcasm on my part which obviously totally escaped you. Q. Mr Irving, revisionists are wicked if they tell deliberate falsehoods about the past. A. Let us hear if you can catch me out in telling deliberate falsehoods on oath, which is of course a serious matter. MR JUSTICE GRAY: On we go, I think. MR RAMPTON: I quite agree. The last three pages in this little clip should be some pages from your book Nuremberg. Do you recognize them? Starting with the page number 245. A. Yes. Q. There is a paragraph at the bottom of page 245 which begins, "in fact Eichmann". A. Yes. I just have the notes here. I have 245, yes, page 6. Q. "In fact Eichmann had no authority to issue orders to Hoess, as they were in different branches..." I will not bother to read that. You are talking about the material . P-47 presented by the Allies at Nuremberg, I suppose, are you? "There is no trace on the Allied aerial photographs either of such burning operations or of the pits themselves. Perhaps for security reasons, the Allies made no attempt to introduce these highly detailed aerial photographs of Auschwitz in this or the later war crimes trial". Those are probably including some of the photographs we looked at earlier in this trial, are they not, Mr Irving? A. Yes. The aerial photographs helped in particular with secrecy by the Americans and the British after the war. Q. Now, the footnote there is 34, and you will find that footnote on the next following page in this little clip of documents. At the bottom of the page, I am afraid the page has lost its number. A. Pages 4 and 5. Q. Yes. It is page 353 of the book. You write: "Nor did they (that is Allies) introduce other compelling evidence about Auschwitz, for example, the testimony of SS Sturmbannfuhrer Kurt Almeyer". In fact I think he is called Hans Almeyer, is he not? A. That I do not know. Q. -- "who had for several weeks acted as deputy Kommandant of Auschwitz. Almeyer was initially as incoherent as Hoess under interrogation by the British in Norway and . P-48 England. The memoirs and manuscripts which he pencilled in the Kensington Interrogation centre commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Scotland also displayed an increasing precision with each week that passed. The final manuscript (or fair copy) signed by Almeyer was pencilled in British Army style with all proper names in block letters. Almeyer was extradited by the British to Poland and hanged." If you write the words "compelling evidence", are you being sarcastic? A. It is compelling. It is very important. I have always been puzzled why that evidence was not introduced at Nuremberg, unless perhaps the experts at Nuremberg said this will harm us more than it helps us because of the figures. Q. How many people were tried at Nuremberg for the sorts of crimes alleged to have been committed at Auschwitz and Birkenhau? A. At the principal trial there were 22 Defendants and in the subsequent actions, there were 12 subsequent actions with the United States, people of the United States against individual groups. Q. How many of the 22 pleaded guilty? A. None of them. Q. Were they all convicted? A. Two were acquitted. . P-49 Q. Was the evidence of, for example, Heinrich Tauber used at Nuremberg? A. I do not think so. I do not know, is the answer to that. Q. Right. I just want to come back to one thing on this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you leave that, I am a bit puzzled, Mr Irving. Can you help me? I had got the impression that you really thought that Almeyer's account was not worthless but really not worth a great deal because of the inaccuracy. A. It is questionable material, but obviously, if you read the whole file, this was a man who was in a position to know. He is an important character, and I am surprised that they did not introduce either his statements or call him as a witness. Q. If it is questionable, why do you describe it in your Nuremberg book as compelling? A. It is compelling evidence which needs to be examined. It is compelling evidence that should have been before the court if they were looking at these atrocities. It is one of the oddities of the Nuremberg War Crimes trial that Auschwitz was hardly mentioned. The prosecution of crimes against humanity was left to the French and the Russian prosecutors, and the actual events in Auschwitz were very skimpily touched upon. The purpose of this footnote, my Lord, is to bring the attention of the Almeyer file to the historical community, to say there is this material, here . P-50 is the file number, it is important stuff, go for it. MR RAMPTON: When was book published? 1996? A. It was written in 1994, yes. Q. When was the first time you went public on Almeyer? You discovered it in the beginning of June 92. A. I drew attention of the fellow historians to it and other writers from 1992 onwards immediately. I found one letter in October 1992 to a Mr Paul Gifford, to whom I sent the entire file on the Holocaust, including the Almeyer material. Q. Who is he? A. He is a British writer. If you are interested in this letter, it was in the discovery. I sent it to him on October 7th, saying this file must be returned within four weeks please. I sent him a reminder on 29th 1992, that is the same year as I found it, saying please now return the file. So it went on. I sent it to Gerald Fleming. I believe I drew Sir Martin Guildford's attention to it, but on that I cannot be certain without looking at my papers. Q. I cannot challenge that. I am in no position to do that. A. I certainly drew the attention of, I would say, half a dozen or a dozen other writers around the world over these years to the Almeyer file. Q. Finally this, Mr Irving, I am reading now ----. A. Quite simply because I was not an expert on it and they were better placed than I was to evaluate it. . P-51 Q. I am reading now from the report of Professor Funker, which you may or may not yet have read, who will be giving evidence, I hope, in about a fortnight's time, about political movements and figures in modern Germany. You know who I mean, do you not? Hyo Funker? A. Yes. Q. I think he is a Professor in Berlin. He tells us this about Karl Philip and I want you to comment on it. A. Yes. Q. You will obviously get the chance to cross-examine him if he is going to be a witness, I mean Professor Funker. Karl Philip NPD: What is NPD? A. It is national something or other. Q. Party Deutschland? A. Yes. Q. Is that a legal political party in Germany? A. What are you suggesting, that he was a member or an official of it? I do not know. Q. Functionary? A. I do not know. That is news to me. Q. You do not know that? In the 1970s and 1980s? A. No. Q. Did you know that in 1990 he received a fine of about 3,600 deutschemark for incitement of the people and defamation? A. I know the expression give a dog bad name and hang them, . P-52 yes. Q. Is it correct that he received a fine, to your knowledge -- if you do not know, say so -- of 3,600 deutschemarks for incitement of the people and defamation? A. This is not known to me, no. Q. It is not known to you? A. When was this? Q. 1990. A. No. Q. When did you first meet Mr Philip? A. 1989, October 23rd or thereabouts. Q. How often do you correspond, speak to or meet Mr Philip, Herr Philip? A. I suppose 1989, for about two years. He was in correspondence with me for those two years. He occasionally sends me emails now. Q. Do you know a newspaper called Die Barenschaft? A. The little magazine, yes. Q. Is a neo-Nazi magazine? A. I do not know. I never opened it. It was sent to me and it went straight into the trash can. Q. Do you know Ahmed Rami of Radio Islam in Stockholm? A. I have had no dealings with him whatsoever. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you leaving Almeyer? MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, is the allegation pursued that . P-53 Mr Irving sat on the Almeyer material until it was discovered by the defendants' solicitors? MR RAMPTON: Since I am in no position to challenge that he wrote to these various people when he says that he did, it obviously is not. He did not go into public print on until the Nuremberg book but he did mention it there. A. The reason I did not go in public with it is because it was my scoop, and although I am known for my generosity in giving my files away to other writers, this particular one ---- Q. What would be the value of a scoop, Mr Irving, when, as soon as you have made the scoop, according to you, you have to throw it away because it has been devalued by being tortured out of the man who provided it? A. No. What would happened, you see, is just the same as the Institute of History in Munich published the Hoess memoirs. I would have contemplated publishing the Almeyer memoirs with suitable surrounding material and documents from the archives, but from 1993 of course this became impossible when I was banned from the German archives on July 1st and banned from German soil on November 9th. Q. It would be a bit like publishing the Hitler diaries and saying, look at this, it not terrific, it is a forgery? It would be absolutely worthless, would it not, according to you? A. I can see no comparison whatsoever. . P-54 Q. Now I want to move to something else, if I may. Again it is only a little point. My Lord, what I am going to do, if I may, is spend a little time just clearing up some loose ends. Loose ends do happen in the course of litigation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course they do. Can you explain to me, as you do so, where the loose ends fit in? MR RAMPTON: I am now going to deal with three documents which Mr Irving Denied in evidence that he had ever seen. A. Can I come back on the Almeyer thing by way of re-examination, so to speak? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. A. Your Lordship very rightly asked if they were upholding that allegation that I sat on it. There is the specific allegation in the van Pelt report that I did not let it be known until I heard that Mishcon de Reya ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was what I was asking Mr Rampton about. A. You did not specifically mention that footnote, my Lord. I think I have established that I put it in the public domain long before Mishcon de Reya started scrabbling around in the archives. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton is not pursuing that allegation. MR RAMPTON: I am not pursuing it, subject to this, that I would quite like to see the letters which he said that he wrote to the various historians. A. Certainly. I will try to find them. I have seven copies . P-55 of it here, if you would like to have this. Q. Being a suspicious bloke, I like to see the chapter and verse. A. This is dated October 7th 1992 and there are seven copies of it which I did at 4 o'clock this morning.
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