Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day021.18 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR IRVING: The chain of documents, the chain of evidence. It is complete, apart from the Schlegelberger document, which is bundle D. Witness, just so you know what the purpose of the remaining cross-examination is about, as you are aware and his Lordship is aware, I have maintained that there is a chain of documents of high integrity which indicate Adolf Hitler intervening, on a greater or smaller scale, on behalf of the Jews rather than against them. A. "The best friend the Jews ever had in the Third Reich" is your phrase, I think. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where shall I put this, just so that I know where its home is going to be? Miss Rogers always answers this question. MS ROGERS: The J files. There should be a J2. I am afraid I do not know which tab we are up to. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Probably 10, I think. MR IRVING: Now, Professor Evans, if you wish to challenge the provenance of any of these documents, please do not hesitate to say so and indicate if you think it is not a genuine document, or that it has in some way been tampered with or distorted or manipulated. Is the first document dated August 20th 1935? I am going to go through these as . P-164 rapidly as I can, my Lord. A. Yes. Q. If you just run your eye over it very rapidly, does this indicate that Hitler has ordered that individual actions against Jews are on no account to take place and will be severely punished? A. That is right, yes. Individual actions or isolated actions against Jews. Q. Committed by members of the Nazi party? A. Or other organizations and so on, or anybody provokes them or whatever is going to be treated very severely, that is right. This is August 1935, that is right. Q. This is actually issued by the Reichsminister of the Interior. A. This is a very interesting example of how Hitler did indeed sometimes step in to try and regain control over anti-Semitic actions when he thought that they were occurring in a way that was piecemeal and not actually steered from the centre. Of course, this is part of the lead up to the infamous Nuremberg laws a few weeks later, which then, in a very characteristic way of the way the Third Reich operated, introduced a legal means, an ordered means of disadvantaging and persecuting the Jews in place of these individual and rather violent actions. It is an exact parallel, well, not exact but a certain parallel there with the relationship between the pogrom of the 9th . P-165 and 10th November and with the legal measures introduced on the 12th. Q. Can we continue by looking at the document and say, does it continue by saying that anybody who does take part in individual actions against Jews or instigates them will have to be in the future treated as a provocator, a rebel and an enemy of the state? A. That is right. Q. "I please request you from now on ruthlessly to take action against any such operations or means to keep law and order and security and so on"? A. Yes. It is a well known document. Q. It is a well known document, is it? A. Yes. Q. So I do not really need to waste the court's time with it? A. No, absolutely. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not assume that I have ever seen it before? A. You made your point, Mr Irving. Q. I have made my point? A. Yes. I accept that this is a document. You need not go on about it. Q. Can we turn to 5th February 1936: On account of the murder of the Swiss party chief or representative Wilhelm Gustlov, what happened to Gustlov? He was assassinated, was he not, by a deranged assassin? Is that correct? . P-166 A. I think so, yes. Q. There were dangers of anti-Semitic outbursts in Germany, and has Hitler ordered in this document there to be no kind of excesses? A. That is right, yes. 1936 was a year in which the Nazis were particularly concerned about their international reputation because of the Olympic games coming up Berlin, and the winter Olympics as well. Q. You mention the Olympic Games of course. Are you aware of the fact that Hitler specifically ordered that Jews and blacks were to be allowed to take part and they were not to be subjected to any kind of indignities? A. Yes. I am not aware of Jewish athletes running for the Germans. Q. But it was not just the Germans taking part, were they? A. No, that is right. As I said, he was concerned about the international reputation of Germany. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mean black people from African countries. MR IRVING: I beg your pardon. MR RAMPTON: No, they would be people like Jesse Owens. A. Jesse Owens, my Lord, the black American runner, Hitler's demonstrably leftie. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point you are making is that Hitler did not just make it an all white Olympics? MR IRVING: He ordered they were not to be subjected to any . P-167 kind of indignities or any of the things that one might have expected, and there is such a document in the file. The last paragraph of that document is possibly worth looking at. Does it say, "It remains reserved to the Fuhrer now as ever, to decide what policy is going to be adopted from case to case"? A. Exactly the point, yes. No individual party comrade may pursue a policy on his own initiative. That is exactly the point. That is what this is all about. Q. The next document is 28th July 1937. A. Yes. Q. That Hitler as Fuhrer Reichschancellor has from time to time himself bent the rules a bit to allow people whose blood was not pure Aryan to remain within the party and remain in full office. As I say, these documents are sometimes of great magnitude and sometimes of minor importance, but they are documents and they all tend in the same direction. Is that roughly the burden of that? A. Yes. It is all about Hitler's ability to sort of rule who is Aryan or not, really, or to make exceptions from the Aryan paragraphs of the party in the case of individual party members. Q. Yes. A. Whatever exactly that means. Q. Are you familiar with the case of Field Marshal Milsch? A. Yes. . P-168 Q. Was he half Jewish? A. I think that is right. Q. His father was Anton Milsch, who was a Jewish apothecary and he rose to the rank of Field Marshal. A. Yes. The Nazis never really decided exactly what to do with half Jews, or so-called Jews of mixed blood. It was a constant problem for them, as you might expect in such an absurd racist ideology, where you draw the line. It is impossible to draw lines. Q. If you now turn the page, we now come to a page which does not really belong in this file but it is there. This is in fact the page of extracts copied from the original unpublished memoirs of von Below, is that right? A. Yes. Q. On which I based my own description, as opposed to the 1980 book. These are the 1947 handwritten memoirs of von Below. A. Well, I will accept that. Q. Yes. There is the reference there. I could not find it previously and there it is. A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did you type this up yourself, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: Back in 1964, yes, my Lord. A. You typed this up yourself? MR IRVING: I sat in his home in Dusseldorf and typed it up, yes. . P-169 A. At least you have three dots there. I find this a very dubious document. Q. You find it a dubious document? A. Yes. I do not necessarily -- we have already been through von Below, Mr Irving. Q. If you are going to say you find it a dubious document, you ought to say why. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point. MR IRVING: I beg your pardon? MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point you have just made is a fair point. A. It is not the original document. Q. You said it is a dubious document. Why? A. Because it is not the original. It is Mr Irving's notes on it, I think, or Mr Irving's account of it, with gaps. That is the first thing. Secondly, of course, I do not believe von Below. He had very good reason to lie. We have been through that before. MR IRVING: There is quite a lot of people today whom you do not believe, are there not? A. Not nearly as many people as you do not believe, Mr Irving. You said that you do not believe any of the survivors of the Holocaust, they are all suffering from mass delusion. Q. We do not believe the survivors of the Holocaust who made quite obvious mistakes, but there are tens of thousands of others whom we have not heard a word from. . P-170 A. I have not seen you give credence to one single Holocaust survivor in all your writings, Mr Irving. All you do is pour scorn on them. Q. Can we proceed now to the transcript of the reception of Chvalkovsky? A. Page number? Q. We are skipping the two that we have already looked at. This is January 21st 1939. A. They are not numbered pages. Yes. Q. This is a printed document, a record taken by Walter Haevel, who was a Foreign Ministry official. Is it right that Hitler begins by saying, "in January 1939 the Juden Viorden Biunst Vernichtert". What does he mean by that? A. I have to read. This is in reported speech, is it not? Q. Yes. A. It is the subjunctive. Q. Yes. A. He is saying the Jews ---- Q. Would be ---- A. I guess, are, I am trying to find what he would have said in the original. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am slightly lost. MR IRVING: It is the very first sentence. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Chvalkovsky, who is he? MR IRVING: Czech foreign minister, my Lord. A. Yes. At that time there was still a Czecho and a Slovakio . P-171 with a hyphen between them. Correct me if I am wrong. I think he saying the Jews are being destroyed, literally are being annihilated, in Germany effectively with us. "On 9th November 1918, the Jews had not done the 9th November 1918 for nothing, this day would be avenged but in Czechoslovakia the Jews were still poisoning the people today". That is the first sentence there. Q. I am sure his Lordship appreciates why, just look at that very first sentence. A. Do you want to go on, vernichtert? Q. I do not really want to look at the rest of the document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us stick with the questioning at the moment. What is the question? MR IRVING: The first sentence is, Juden viorden biunst vernichtert, that is the Fuhrer speaking in the subjunctive, the Jews are being or were being destroyed, our Jews are being destroyed. He uses the word vernichtert? A. Annihilated. Q. What does he mean by that? A. I think he probably -- what date is this? 21st January 1939. I think there he means economically. Q. Economically? A. Yes. Q. So the word vernichtert does not necessarily mean murdered or exterminated then? It can mean something else? . P-172 A. No. You have to look at the context and the time. At this time in the 1930s I do not think it means that necessarily. MR JUSTICE GRAY: How does this go to show that Hitler was pro-semitic, if I can use that term? MR IRVING: My Lord, going through these 2,000 documents last night I came across these and I thought it proper to put them into this bundle and bring them to your Lordship's attention in this manner. A. But he does say in the next sentence, which is really why I quoted him, Mr Irving, by way of explanation that Hitler blamed the Jews in his sort of paranoid ideology for the defeat of Germany and the revolution of 9th November 1918, and as he says here that this day would be avenged. So in the future he is saying it would be avenged. So it is not exactly a pro-semitic document, is it?
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