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Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

Q.  Yes.  I am not commenting on it.  He talks about 70 Jews
  being killed, 127 Jews.  I am sorry, I am back on page
  10.  Just one general question:  Why is there such a
  disparity in the killing rates or achievements of the
  various Einsatzgruppen, some of them killing tens of
  thousands and some of them just 70 or 100 and so on, if
  there was an overall system from above?
A.  It depends on various factors.  For instance, the number
  of Jews who lived in the area where the Einsatzgruppen
  Kommandos were sent to.  Then there were two different
  types of Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkommandos.  One was

. P-84


  attached to the armies and one was actually active in the
  rear areas.  Then, during the first month of the killings,
  it is obvious that some of the Kommandos were more
  reluctant to actually kill in large numbers Jews.  When
  they went through a kind of learning process they were
  instructed and reminded, so that we have in the end in
  October 1941 a more uniform picture.  It depends also on
  the personal initiative of the leader of each Kommandos.
Q.  Was there any competitiveness between the Einsatzgruppen
  to achieve high body counts?
A.  I would certainly say there was an element of
  competitiveness between them.
Q.  Very minor point:  Would there have been a temptation then
  to inflate figures?
A.  There might be a temptation to inflate figures, but also,
  on the contrary, we know that the Eichnesmeldung do not
  contain all figures.  There are some figures which were
  left out.  For instance, other Kommandos reported to
  different institutions and so on, but yes, one cannot
  exclude this factor.
Q.  Paragraph 2.1.2, on the Jager report now, it is talking
  about executions that have been taking place since July
  4th at Kornas or Kovno.  He quite specifically says they
  were carried out upon my orders and my command by the
  Lithuanian Partisans.  He is not saying it was done on
  Hitler's orders, is he?

. P-85



A.  If you look into, let us say, orders of a Kommando of a
  regiment, of an Army, he would refer to his own orders.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Chain of command, is it not?
A.  It is a chain of command, yes.
MR IRVING:  Did Jager get into trouble carrying out any
  killings round about this time in 1941?
A.  Sorry?
Q.  Did Jager get into trouble for authorising killings in
  1941, the same as Jeckeln?
A.  As far as I am aware, not.  The man who had responsibility
  for killing of German Jews in this area was Jeckeln.  We
  know that he got a nasty letter from Himmler and that was it.
Q.  Which we have gone into in some detail.  Page 13, line 3:
  What is your evidence that all Jewish men in this age
  group had been murdered?  I am looking at your word
  murdered.  Surely they might just have been sent off to
  work details or something like that, the fact that they
  had gone?
A.  No.  The Einsatzgruppen reports refer quite clearly to
  executions, and I think this is something which
  I understood as murder.
Q.  You said that they were just murdering women.  Older men
  and children.
A.  Yes.
Q.  You suggested that this was proof that all the rest had

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  been murdered already.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, where are we going with all of
  this?  Here we have a whole body of reports from
  Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D.  They all talk of hundreds
  or thousands of people, Jews and others, having been
  killed by them.
MR IRVING:  Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What is the point of selecting tiny little
  aspects of one or two of those reports?  If you are saying
  they made it all up, fine, say so.  Put it to the
  witness.  But, if you do not say that, let us move on to
  what matters.
MR IRVING:  My point was that he was drawing an unjustified
  inference on the basis of the evidence in front of him.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You have accepted, and perhaps you are going
  to resile from this, that hundreds of thousands of Jews
  and others were killed by the Einsatzgruppen.
MR IRVING:  Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Why are we going through these reports?  I do
  not understand the point.
MR IRVING:  I am trying to shake your Lordship's confidence in
  this witness's ability to draw proper inferences from
  documents before him.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If there is no dispute between you and the
  witness that there were hundreds of thousands of killings,
  what do I gain from a minute point being taken on a

. P-87



  particular report?
MR IRVING:  The whole report is full of minute points.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But you accept there were hundreds of
  thousands of Jews and others killed.
MR IRVING:  Indeed, my Lord.  If the report had been written in
  global terms like that, then I would have dealt with it in
  global terms, but he has written an excellent report full
  of mosaic stones.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  But you do not quarrel with the picture made
  up of all the mosaic.
MR IRVING:  Paragraph 2.2.4 on page 14. Here you are quoting a
  witness called Otto Bradfisch, who says quite clearly
  there was no express order to exterminate the Jewish
  population in a place or area solely because of its racial
  origin.  What do you make of that statement?  I am looking
  at "no express order".
A.  Well, it says here that----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I have read the whole of it.
A.  "To exterminate the Jewish population in a place or area
  solely and alone because of its racial origin".  I said in
  the same sentence, "Nevertheless in practice the orders
  given by the EKB as the Einsatzgruppen B were so broadly
  conceived that every Jew was regarded as a danger for the
  fighting troops and therefore to be liquidated".  This is
  a statement.  So he is saying that we had to find another
  pretext, another cover, to kill them.  That is the essence

. P-88



  of this statement, I think.
MR IRVING:  Very well.  Dr Longerich, you attach great
  importance, do you not, to this Himmler Hitler
  conversation of December 18th 1941?
A.  I think this is quite a remarkable source, yes.
Q.  You have inferred from that that the als partisan and
  anzusehen is words used by Hitler to Himmler.
A.  It does not say as partisan and anzusehen.
Q.  Ausrottung?
A.  Yes, to be ausrottung as partisans.  This is what it says.
Q.  Yes, and you considered that phrase is used by Hitler to
  Himmler?
A.  Yes.
Q.  Yes, but is it not equally likely that this was a standard
  attitude of Himmler's long before he went to see Hitler,
  that Hitler had always regarded the Jews as partisans and
  to be treated as such?
A.  No, I do not read it like this.
Q.  Can I ask you to look at page 15, line 4?  You have here
  "Himmler had already expressed on his visit to Galestov
  on July 8th that -- I am quoting now -- basically every
  Jew is to be seen as a partisan".  Is that not precisely
  the same phrase?
A.  Yes.
Q.  Your footnote 67 (German) is that not almost exactly the
  same kind of turn of phrase that Hitler has used?

. P-89



A.  Yes.  This line in Himmler's calendar is a confirmation of
  this policy.  It is true that Himmler had started this
  policy earlier.  He started it in the summer of 1941 and
  I will read this as a final confirmation of this policy by Hitler.
Q.  If I take you please to page 22, line 5?
MR RAMPTON:  May I once again ----
MR IRVING:  Oh dear.  Here comes the interruption every time
  I make a point.
MR RAMPTON:  This is going to be a very tedious day if I am
  going to have to keep going back to earlier parts of the
  evidence.  If Mr Irving is now saying, as he appears to
  be, that that entry in Himmler's log for 18th December
  1941 does not record the substance or result of a
  conversation with Adolf Hitler, he had better put it to
  this witness, because it is new.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The suggestion that I understand was just
  made is that in his agenda or appointments book Himmler
  jotted down what Hitler had said months or years before.
MR RAMPTON:  I thought until half a minute ago that that had
  been common ground since the beginning of this case.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So did I.
MR RAMPTON:  Mr Irving is once again shifting his ground.  Now
  he must put it to the witness.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, that must have been the thrust of
  your question.

. P-90



MR IRVING:  My Lord, I would find it very helpful if Mr
  Rampton, with his unerring eye, does not always interrupt
  just when I am zeroing in for quite an important point.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  We have had a huge amount of
  cross-examination on the 18th December document.
MR IRVING:  We now have new material, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It has not been suggested until now I believe
  that the reference to ausrottung the Jews as partisans was
  something that was not even discussed between Himmler and
  Hitler.
MR IRVING:  That is not the point I make.  Can I explain the
  point that I am trying to make?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, do.
MR IRVING:  If we had just that agenda note in front of us, we
  would be entitled to draw the inference which Mr Rampton
  does that Himmler is writing down an idea expressed and
  initiated by Adolf Hitler.  But we here have evidence that
  on two occasions, and this is when I was unfortunately
  interrupted by Mr Rampton, in the summer of 1941 Himmler
  already has that idea embedded firmly in his mind and he
  uses precisely the same turn of phrase when he goes to see
  Hitler, and this may very well have influenced the way he
  recorded the conversation afterwards.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That, I am afraid, is pure equivocation.
  What do you mean it may have influenced the way he wrote
  his note?

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MR IRVING:  That he wrote down his own stock phrase rather than
  quoting what Adolf Hitler had said.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So you are suggesting that that note does not
  represent something that was discussed between Hitler and himself?
MR IRVING:  Certainly they discussed the Jewish problem but
  then Himmler recorded the outcome in his own language
  rather than in Hitler's language, if I can put it like
  that.  The fact that it was his own language is also borne
  out on page 22.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Let us just look at the document.  We really
  have to try to see what the case is that is being made.
  Can somebody give me a reference in the new file?  Page
  183, I think.
MR IRVING:  184, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  184, yes, quite right.  Now, I had understood
  the case has proceeded so far on the basis that, and there
  is a much better copy of this document somewhere than
  this, on the left-hand side -- Mr Irving, would you
  answer the question I am going to ask you at the end of
  this -- Himmler had written down as being the topic he
  was proposing to raise with Hitler when he saw him
  "Judenfrager".
MR IRVING:  Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  And that, and this is what I understood to be
  accepted up until now, the different notation als partisan

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  and ausrottung was what Himmler had written ----
MR IRVING:  Subsequently.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  -- Following his discussion about that very
  topic with Hitler.
MR IRVING:  Very well.  Yes, precisely.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You are now suggesting -- tell me if I am
  wrong about this -- that als partisan ausrottung has
  nothing to do with any discussion between Himmler and
  Hitler, it is something that Himmler recalled Hitler
  having said some time before.  Is that your case now?
MR IRVING:  No, my Lord.  It is completely wrong, completely
  different from what I am suggesting.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Then I do not understand what you are putting
  to the witness.
MR IRVING:  What I am suggesting is that Himmler went to see
  Hitler with Judenfrager written down in his appointment
  book.  Subsequently he wrote down the words als partisan
  and ausrotten, but this was his own phrase that he wrote
  down, because it was a phrase that he had used very
  similarly already twice that summer to summarize the
  conversation.  It is very dangerous trying to extrapolate
  just on the basis of four words anyway precisely what
  happened in a conversation that only lasted 10 or 20 minutes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So are you or are you not saying that the
  notion of killing the Jews as partisans was something that

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  was discussed and agreed between Hitler and Himmler?
MR IRVING:  Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  You accept it was discussed and agreed
  between Hitler and Himmler?
MR IRVING:  Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Then I do not understand what you are seeking
  to suggest to this witness.  We now have that clear so we
  can move on.
MR IRVING:  After that successful interruption by Mr Rampton
  I will not take your Lordship to page 22 where he used it
  a second time.  Page 17 on line 7 after the words, "about
  7,000 Jews were collected and shot by the security police
  in retribution for these inhuman atrocities", you have
  omitted quite a lengthy passage there, have you not, from
  that report?
A.  Yes.  This is why I put these three dots in the text after
  "atrocities".
Q.  Yes.  Do you recall offhand what the lengthy passage?  Was
  it a description of the atrocities in great detail?
A.  I cannot recall at the moment but we probably have the
  document there.
MR IRVING:  My Lord, in the interests of making forward
  progress I do not think I am going to press this point.
  It is a four page description of atrocities committed on
  the Ukranians which were discovered by the Germans when
  they arrived.  Obviously the Germans ran berserk.  It

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  probably does not -- why did you omit this very lengthy
  passage?
A.  I do not see the point you are making here.  They were
  atrocities from the -- where are we here?
Q.  In July 1941.
A.  In Lobov, yes, so there were atrocities committed by the
  Soviet NKVD against Ukranians and, as a result of this,
  the Einsatzgruppen C shot 7,000 Jews.  So I do not see the
  point between the actions and the so-called retaliation actions.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think the suggestion must be this,
  Dr Longerich, that these 7,000 Jews had all been involved
  in some way in the atrocities on the Ukrainians and
  therefore, in a sense, the shooting of them by the
  security police was justified.
A.  Yes.  This was a massacre among the Jewish population of
  this town.  We have details about the way it was carried
  out.  There was nothing like a kind of identifying of
  every of the 7,000 as perpetrators, as one of the people
  actually who instigated ----
MR IRVING:  Was it an active retribution then?
A.  Retribution directed against the Jewish population, so it
  was part of the systematic killing, guided out under the
  pretext of a retaliation action.  If you read the whole
  thing, there is nothing in this text which indicates that
  there was a kind of extermination done by the

. P-95



  Einsatzgruppen to identify among the 7,000 Jews the people
  who might have been responsible for thee atrocities.  The
  idea that they started retaliations against the Jews for
  something the NKVD did, this is the kind of question.
  This shows actually that this is a part of the war of
  racist extermination.
Q.  Yes.  So, when you write on line 4 of page 19, that this
  use of retribution was just a pretence ----
A.  It is a very interesting example.  "In German's polar city
  a quarter of whose population was Jewish in the last few
  days, especially the Jewish women, have shown imprudent
  and arrogant behaviour because of limitations imposed upon
  them.  They tore their own and their children's clothes
  off their bodies.  As provisional retribution the Kommando
  which arrived for the purpose of re-establishing the peace
  shot 50 male Jews".  So I think you get a very good
  insight into this kind of retribution or retaliation.
Q.  Does this kind of thing happen in wars like Vietnam and
  elsewhere?  Is there a lot of brutality on both sides?
A.  I am not an expert on the Vietnam war.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am at a total loss to understand why we are
  going through the detail of the shooting when you accept
  that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the
  Einsatzgruppen.  I do not understand the point, Mr Irving.
MR IRVING:  The reason for asking that is that the witness has
  left out a four page description in the most hideous and

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  ghastly detail of what the Germans found when they got to the town.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  So it served the 7,000 Jews right, did it?
MR IRVING:  He then suggests that the word "retribution" was
  unjustified.  He says here that the retribution was just a pretext.
A.  Yes, exactly.
Q.  Having left out all the evidence that it was not.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, I will simply say to you now that
  you are not serving your own cause well by taking up time
  quite pointlessly on these sorts of questions.

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