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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.13


Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.13
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

Q.Can I ask you to go, in that case, please, to pages 15, 16
and 17 of the bundle?  This is a little bundle of
documents issued by a British authority, the Political
Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, even
earlier than that Staff Evidence Analysis sheet, November
16th, 1945?
A.Yes.
Q.Does it show as the final item which they have typed a
copy of, actually the contents of the Schlegelberger
memorandum, typed out in full with all the initials and
everything else?
A.Yes.
Q.So it existed at that time, the British had it, but by the
time the Americans got their hands on the file of
photocopies, this particular item had somehow vanished?
A.Yes, or been mislaid.
Q.Or been mislaid?
A.Could not be located.  So there was no indication that it
still existed.
Q.How high would you rate the importance of this document in
the order of things as an historian?  Was the document
linking Adolf Hitler by name with the Final Solution, or
with the solution of the Jewish problem?  Is it an
authentic document?  Do you accept that?

.  P-114



A.Well, I think this raises the question of your double
standards in the evaluation of documents.  If we turn to
the document itself, we have heard you in the course of
this trial, Mr Irving, using the most nit-picking
flimsiest excuses to try and discredit documents you do
not like.  Here we have a document which has no security
classification, no date, no signature, no reference
number.  It is clearly in a file that was made up after
the war, because the British Foreign Office list the
documents as documents found among the files of the
Ministry of Justice.  So we do not actually know where it
came from.  It is merely conjecture to say that it was
written by Schlegelberger, who was the acting Minister of
Justice in 1942.  There is no letter head on it at all.
And, of course, as evidence of Hitler's views, it is third
hand.  That is to say, it is somebody, possibly
Schlegelberger, reporting on what Lammers had told him
about what Hitler had said.  There is no indication of
actually who wrote this.
Q.Can you answer the question?
A.If we were to apply your criteria, one would cast
tremendous doubt upon this document.  But, of course, you
have not done that yourself because it is a document that
supports your own views.
Q.Can you now answer the question?  Does the document appear
to be authentic?  Have you any reasons to doubt its

.  P-115



authenticity?
A.It appears to be an authentic document.
Q.Can you agree that this document comes with an amazing
pedigree by way of all the documents indicating where
it
has been and in whose hands ever since the end of the
war,
which we do not have in one single case in connection
with
the documents whose integrity I have impugned?
A.No.  You said yourself it went missing for a long
time.
But that is an amazing pedigree, Mr Irving?
Q.Yes.  Can you agree that the document is referred ----
A.It is?  A document has gone missing for many years.
That
is an amazing pedigree.
Q.Can you look back to page 22, please, which is the
letter
from the National Archives to me in 1972?  In the
final
paragraph does it say:  "The documents are black
photostatic reproductions of originals certified by R
M W
Kempner to have been located among the Justice
Ministry
files at the Ministerial Collection Centre in West
Berlin"?
A.Yes.  They describe it as an alleged note on Hitler's
intentions and so on.
Q.We are looking just at the pedigree of the document.
A.That is part of it.  Clearly the National Archives do
not
want to accept that it actually exists because they
cannot
find it.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Could we proceed on the assumption that
it

.  P-116



has a lot of odd features, but you are prepared to
accept
that it does appear to be authentic?
A.Yes, certainly.
MR IRVING:  To repeat my previous question, does this
document
come with a somewhat better pedigree by way of
documents
tracing its provenance than the document whose
integrity
I have impugned?
A.No.
Q.On which basis do you place that statement?  The
document
whose integrity I have impugned dated June 24th 1943
has
come without any pedigree whatsoever, it is just a
document which has turned up in the Auschwitz Museum
Archives, having been delivered to them by East
Berlin?
A.This document is the document that has turned up in a
postwar file, claimed to have been located amongst the
files of the Ministry of Justice.  We do not know.  We
do
not have that original pedigree.
Q.I am not going to spend much more time questioning
this,
but have you seen correspondence between myself and
Mr Kempner, who was the Deputy Chief American
prosecutor
at Nuremberg, in which he accepts that this document
was
genuine?
A.I am accepting it is genuine, Mr Irving.
Q.So the whole of that was just a bit of a ----
A.No.  It was an answer to your question.
Q.The question I asked was, do you accept that this
document

.  P-117



is authentic, and now we have a yes from you?
A.Yes.  The question you asked, Mr Irving----
MR RAMPTON:  That is not fair because the question was two
barrelled, or sometimes five or six barrelled.  The
question also was, do you accept this has a better
pedigree than the document which actually comes from
two
archives, in two different forms, that Mr Irving
impugns?
The answer to that is no.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  True, but that was another question.
Yes,
I accept that.  Anyway, we have now got to the point
where
Professor Evans accepts, despite the odd feature, that
it
is an authentic document.  Shall we now see what it
actually means?
MR IRVING:  Very well.  Professor Evans, would you propose
a
translation, or read to us the translation you have
given
of the document on page 364, of the Schlegelberger
memorandum?
A.Yes.
Q.Audibly so that the courtroom can here, please?
A.I hope I always do this.  Do I mumble, Mr Irving?  It
is
in the sort of past reported speech, which makes it
somewhat difficult to translate exactly.
Q.Past reported speech?
A.Yes.  Herr Reich Minister Lammers informed me that the
Fuhrer had repeatedly, or has repeatedly, declared or
explained to him that he, well, wanted, literally
wanted

.  P-118



to know.
Q.You can read out your translation on page 364, if you
want.
A.-- wanted the solution of the Jewish Question put back
until after the war.  Accordingly, the present
discussions
possess a merely theoretical value in the opinion of
Reich
Minister Lammers.  But he will be in all cases
concerned
that fundamental decisions are not reached by a
surprise
intervention from another agency without his
knowledge.
Q.Yes.  It is actually written in the subjunctive, is it
not?
A.That is right.  It is reported speech.
Q.You indicate it as reported speech.
A.Yes.
Q.It is the equivalent of the perfect tense, I suppose.
In
other words, "he has said", "the Fuhrer has repeatedly
stated", you have said "had" but, if we cannot agree
on
that, we will move on to the next one.
A.Yes.
Q.The initials that are on the bottom left hand corner,
is
that where you would normally expect on a German
document
the distribution list to be, who the document is
addressed
to?
A.Yes.
Q.It is addressed to State Secretary Freisler?
A.Not necessarily.  I think a possible reading of that
is

.  P-119



"17.7.Freisler" or, in other words, 17th July, which
would make it 17th July 1941.  It is rather difficult,
because the S looks to me like "17.7.Freisler".
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Why do you say 1941?
A.Because that more likely would fit in for other
reasons.
Q.I see, for extraneous reasons.
MR IRVING:  I missed this.  Where do we see the 41 then?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is what I have just asked.
MR IRVING:  Thank you very much, my Lord.
A.I said it said "17.7", which would be 1941 in more
likelihood.
Q.Do you not accept that the first hieroglyph is the
Zutelin
German handwriting S, followed by a T, followed by
another
S, which is the correct abbreviation for State
Secretary,
which is what his rank was?
A.Very obscure, but I think it is a possible reading of
it,
that it is a 17.7.
Q.Yes.  If it was Freisler and if he was State
Secretary,
you would not expect to see him there without a rank
in
front of his name, would you?  You would not expect
somebody just to write down just "Freisler"?
A.It is rather peculiar.  It looks almost as if there is
a
capital F, and then somebody else has written in after
it
the rest of his name.  It is not his initials, it is
not
the normal way in which he would himself indicate that
he
received it.  It is another peculiarity of this
document.

.  P-120



Q.Could you answer the question?  You would not expect,
if
he is the second most important man in the Ministry,
that
he would be happy to get a document addressed to him
just
as Freisler?
A.Well, we do not know who has put this on this.  It
might
well be somebody else at some other time.
Q.This goes back to my earlier question.  Is this the
place
where, on German Civil Service documents the
distribution
list was always placed, on the bottom left-hand
corner?
A.Normally.  It has two, seems to be UB4 and U something
5
underneath it, UB5, which would be presumably
divisions
where it was going to be sent to.
Q.Would I be right at this point in suggesting that your
reluctance to make progress with this document is
because
you are very unhappy about this document?
A.No.  I am trying to point out, Mr Irving that, if you
did
not like this document's contents, you would be saying
everything that I am saying and no doubt a great deal
more.  It is normal on a document, this is a kind of
scrap
of paper with no letter heading, no date, no
signature, it
would be normal actually on a formal important
document to
type the distribution list on the bottom, particularly
if
it was relating to a decision that was made.
Q.Have you worked ----
A.This looks like some kind of note made by somebody to
themselves as a kind of aide memoire.

.  P-121



Q.A minute?
A.Yes, a minute.  It is not a formal minute.  It is
clearly
a kind of aide memoire of a rather informal sort, as
it
does not have any of the normal things that you get
with a
formal document.
Q.Yes.  It has some kind of paginated number in the top
left, which appears to be, as you state in your expert
report, probably put on there by the Nuremberg
authorities, is that correct?
A.Yes, crossed out.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I thought we were proceeding on the
assumption that it is accepted to be authentic?
A.Yes.  I am happy to go along with that.
MR IRVING:  Yes.  So it is a memorandum that has been drawn
up,
unless I am wrong, for the attention of State
Secretary
Freisler and two other departments of the Justice
Ministry?
A.Yes Freisler certainly seems to have been, I guess, an
addressee of it.
Q.Somebody is passing on to him the information from
Hans
Lammers, who is the head of the Reichschancellory, is
that
correct?
A.Yes.  His own information about a meeting or a phone
conversation or something with Lammers.  That is what
he
is passing on.  His own report on a meeting with
Lammers.
Q.In which Lammers has passed on the not insignificant

.  P-122



information that the Fuhrer has repeatedly said he
wants
the solution of the Jewish problem postponed until the
war
is over.
A.Yes,.
Q.So it would be interesting, would it not, to find out
when
this memorandum came into existence?
A.Exactly, yes.


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