Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day021.19 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR IRVING: The chain of documents, the chain of evidence. It is complete, apart from the Schlegelberger document, MR IRVING: Now we turn the page perhaps. A. I am just wondering if ---- Q. If you turn the page to page 2 of that document, the first paragraph, is it right to say that from this time onwards for two or three years Adolf Hitler was talking about a geographical solution, he wanted to deport them, out of sight out of mind? A. Yes, we have been through this ending up with the Madagascar solution, this is what he says here. Q. The first paragraph of this says, and I translate: "The . P-173 Fuhrer points to the possibility that the States who are interested in this should find or take some spot in the world and put the Jews there, and that these Anglo-Saxon humanitarian weeping people states should then say: Here they are, either they are going to hunger or put your final words into practice"? A. No, not quite, Mr Irving. I think that is wrong. [German spoken]. Q. "You have to say to them", that is correct? A. So, it is to say to them, yes. So, States which are interested in getting rid of their Jews should pick out any tiny spot in the world, flecks, a spot of dust really, a tiny island, and saying: Here you are, either starve to death or put your many speeches in these Anglo-Saxon - --- Q. So in his nasty Nazi way he is still talking about the geographical solution; there is no talk about liquidation here, is there? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not in 1939. A. "Starve to death" does not seem to me a particularly nice thing to say. MR IRVING: Is this five or six days before Adolf Hitler made his famous speech in the Reichstag, on January 30th 1939, nine days? A. His prophecy, yes. Q. His famous prophecy saying that if they start a new world war ---- . P-174 A. That is right. Q. --- it will end with their destruction, vernichtung? A. He already makes another prophecy we see in the first as sentence of this extract: "On 9th November 1918 the Jews had not done that in vein. This day would be avenged". Q. Yes, but it is correct that Hitler uses the same kind of terminology in that famous speech to which he then later refers so often, is that correct? A. That is right, yes. Q. Can you turn the page now. We are now in August 1940, because not very much happens, does it? The emigration continues until the end of 1939, is that right? A. That is right, yes. Q. About how many Jews actually emigrate from Germany? A. About half the Jewish population. Q. Are you including Austria, two thirds altogether, about 200,000 out of 300,000? A. Yes, it is about 200 to 250,000 is it not? Q. Did most of the emigration begin after the night of broken glass? A. No. A lot did. It began in 1933 and it kind of went in waves. But there was certainly a major emigration after November 1938, because the situation had quite clearly changed so much for the worse. Q. These two notes now are dated August 3rd 1940. They are from my card index, but they refer to a meeting that he . P-175 had with Hitler, Otto Abetz. Who was Otto Abetz? A. You have to tell me I am afraid. Q. Otto Abetz was the German ambassador in France in Paris, would you accept that? A. Sure, yes. Q. That he visited Hitler and on August 3rd 1940 he had a meeting with Hitler, and the first document does it show Otto Abetz swearing an affidavit saying that he had talked with the Fuhrer about the Jewish problem, and then follows the quotation: "He said to me that he wanted to solve the Jewish question generally for Europe, and in fact by a clause in the peace agreement, the peace treaty"? A. Yes. Q. "In which he made a condition of the vanquished countries, the defeated countries, that they agreed to transport their Jewish citizens outside Europe", is that right? A. Yes, exactly. Q. So again it is a geographical solution he is talking about? A. Quite right, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can take this quite rapidly because you are pushing at an open door. MR RAMPTON: I do not understand where this is going. Nobody on this side of the court has suggested anything else up to 1941, and not even then until late 1941 do we get into murder on systematic scale. . P-176 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is exactly why I said you can take this quite quickly. MR IRVING: We are taking it at enormous speed, my Lord. A. Let us keep going then. Q. In that case we will skip the second file. We are now in 15th November 1941. A. Right. Q. This is apparently a retype by the Nuremberg authorities of a presumably rather damaged or illegible original, a letter addressed to the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories by somebody in the Baltic States, the Reichskommissar, the Office of the Reichskommissar for the Ostland, stating: "I have forbidden the Jewish executions in Liebau because it was quite unbearable or irresponsible for them to be carried out in the manner that they were being carried out". A. Irresponsible, yes. Q. Irresponsible. "I asked to be informed whether your question of October 31st is to be interpreted as a directive" ---- A. "Your enquiry". "Your enquiry". Q. "Your enquiry of October 31st is to be interpreted as a directive that all the Jews in the Baltic are to be liquidated. Is this to be done without regard to their age and race and to our economic interest or to economic interests? For example, the Wehrmacht's expert skilled . P-177 workers in the arms factories"? A. Yes. Q. Does this indicate -- then the final paragraph: "Neither from the directives on the Jewish problem in the brown file nor other decrees allow me to assume that there is such a directive"? A. Yes. Q. Does this indicate that at the very highest level in the Baltic there was no indication by October 31st or November 15th 1941, rather, of any kind that they were floundering, they did not know what on earth was going on and what they should be doing and what they should not be doing? A. It is not very clear who this is from or to. Can you just remind. Q. It is from the Reichskommissar. A. The Reichsminister, that is right. Q. To the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories who was Rosenberg, was it not? A. That is right. Who is the Reichskommissar? Q. The Reichskommissar for the Ostland was, I believe, Lohse. If this a genuine document, and it appears to be a Nuremberg document, then from this rather fragmentary document we can conclude that on November 15th 1941 at least there was no kind of directive from above as to what was to happen with the Jews being sent out there, and the man who is the asking the questions is saying: "What are . P-178 we supposed to be doing?" A. That is not quite so. He is says he has not been able to find one in his brown file. Q. Yes, which appears to have some kind of great importance. A. You also left out a sentence [German spoken]. Q. It says that it is quite a laudable task cleansing the Eastern Ostland of Jews, but if we are going to do it we have to do it in a way that it does not damage our economic interests? A. That is right, yes. There is a great deal or a considerable amount of argument about the economic responsibility. Q. The fact that I rely on is that apparently there is brown file which appears to contain directives from top level, and he has delved into that file and cannot find any kind instructions at all? A. That is right, for all the total liquidation, as he says, of all Jews in the Osland in the Eastern territories, without any exceptions, and particularly without reference to economic interests, and there is a good deal of discussion, you find references in the Himmler appointments and telephone diaries, for example, to the discussions that went on about what should be done about Jews who were working, for example, in armaments industries, you see references here. So what he is really saying is: "Do we have to kill these people too? We must . P-179 surely square this perfectly acceptable cleansing", as he puts it, "of the Osland, Juden, this cleansing of the eastland of Jews, that is all right, but it must be economically OK". Q. His Lordship will appreciate the reason that I attach importance to this is the absence even at this date of any order, systematic order, shall we put it like that. He has looked for a directive, he has looked for a decree, there is nothing there, and so he is asking up the proper channels, saying: "What should we be doing?" A. There is no legal decree, that is right. "Alas" is a legal decree. Q. My Lord, I do not propose putting to this witness the documents on the November 30th 1941 phone call, because we have been over that in very great detail, Himmler to Heydrich, transport of Jews from Berlin not to be liquidated, and the intercepts which then followed. A. It is not necessarily Himmler to Heydrich, is it, because we do not know from these who phoned whom? Q. Well, a conversation between Himmler and Heydrich. A. "Oustenbunke" of course is not necessarily from Hitler's bunker because there were quite a large number of bunkers in that Wolffschansser. Apart from those two points, I think we have been over that very thoroughly. MR IRVING: I am seeking his Lordship's guidance on this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you do not need to go over that again. . P-180 MR IRVING: I will go straightforward, therefore, to July 1942. MR RAMPTON: May I say this? Your Lordship might be helped, I do not know -- Professor Evans' evidence on this is perfectly clear, that both these file notes of Himmler have been deliberately misrepresented by Mr Irving. He gives his reasons for that in his report. I am a little concerned that Mr Irving should think, he avoids that confrontation simply by passing it by. MR IRVING: That would be a different matter then which I would then come back to. I think this is properly the right way to do it, my Lord, that we will skip at this time as being part of the chain, but on the question of the relevance of these documents, these specific documents, we will take in our stride when we deal with the pages in the report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Eventually, sorry, Mr Rampton, go on. MR RAMPTON: It was not so much the relevance of the particular documents. It is, first of all, their transcription. MR IRVING: These are different issues, of course, are they not? MR RAMPTON: Yes, and also once they have been properly transcribed their true interpretation or what I might say their fair objective interpretation. I think those are probably two questions which are too important to be bypassed. MR IRVING: We can deal with it here perhaps. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am expecting at some stage, and . P-181 I think there are about ten of them or at any rate the way I see it there are about ten of them, criticisms made by Professor Evans of your historiography. They are fairly sort of clear cut separate topics. Mr Irving, I am not absolutely certain but I think Mr Rampton is right that keine liquidierung is one of them. MR IRVING: Yes, we have been over it exhaustively. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I am not sure you have cross-examined Professor Evans about it. MR IRVING: Yes, if it will advance the matter. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can certainly cross-examine shortly, and I am encouraging you to do that, but I do not think skip it altogether. MR IRVING: My Lord, my questions are very short. It is the other half of the cross-examination that takes the time. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am saying is you do not need to ask a lot of short questions on any of these topics, but I must hear you put your case. MR IRVING: Very well. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not say you have to do it now because you may want to carry on with the exercise you are embarked on at the moment, but you cannot just skip the specific topics on which you are criticised by Professor Evans.
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