The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Ron Casey Interviews
David Irving
November 1996


Transcript of interview with David Irving, by Ron Casey, Sydney, Australia Radio 2GB. November 8, 1996

Ron Casey:

I've got on the line now David Irving, the international author and historian. Good afternoon, our time, Mr Irving.

David Irving:

Yes, hello. It's three in the morning in London of course, but that makes no difference.

Ron Casey:

All right. I'm sorry to worry you at such a late hour. You may remember me, and I don't think you would, because I interviewed you last time you were in Australia on this station.

Look, I've got to ask your reaction today to the news that you will not be allowed to enter Australia.

David Irving:

My immediate thought is, what are they frightened of? I mean, are they frightened I am going to point my typewriter at someone? It's ludicrous. I use words. I use my fountain pen. I write books. My books are published in the world's leading publishing houses, all the book stores. So what are people frightened of if I come down here?

I mean, I received from the Minister the letter faxed through to me about 25 minutes ago here in London in which Philip Ruddock explains the reasons why he's banning me and he talks about my having lied to Courts in Canada and having been convicted of crimes in Germany and all this kind of thing, and frankly, I've never been subjected to such an onslaught in my life.

Ron Casey:

I think at this stage, I know of your conviction in Germany and also in Canada. I'd like you for the listeners, to tell what those convictions involved.

David Irving:

In 1990 or 1991, it's so long ago I can hardly remember now, I made a public speech in Germany in a private meeting to about 2,000 people in the course of which I said one sentence which was a criminal offence in Germany.

And this sentence was, and I can repeat it to you because it's not a criminal offence in Australia. The sentence was, "The gas chamber in Auschwitz, which they show to the tourists, is a fake built after the War by the Poles." Now the Poles have since admitted this.

The Polish government has admitted that what I said is true, but I was fined by the German government 22,000 Australian dollars for saying those few words and that gives me the criminal record.

And you see the Philip Ruddocks and the John Howards of the Australian Government saying that is sufficient reason to call me a blackguard and a liar and a man of bad character.

Ron Casey:

Well, I am pleased to be able to give you the opportunity to explain exactly what that criminal offence involves, because it is not fair that you be labelled as a criminal when all you did was to make an allegation. Now, whether that allegation is true or not is up to you to substantiate and you claim you have.

Could I put this question to you, because I've had some dealings with the Jewish community here in Sydney in recent weeks and also, I've visited their Holocaust Memorial in Darlinghurst. Could I ask you this question? Do you realise what pain and suffering you bring to Jewish communities here in Australia with your allegations that the Holocaust was not as devastating and didn't involve the numbers that the Jewish community now claims?

David Irving:

Well, why don't they come clean? Why don't they debate fairly and squarely with me and prove me wrong?

I may be causing them pain and inconvenience as they say, but why don't they debate with me? Why don't they show me up as a charlatan if I'm wrong. All they come - they come and they whine and wail about the pain and inconvenience and how horrible it is that I say these terrible things.

They've been saying it, now, for six or seven years and, yet, they haven't produced any evidence that I'm wrong.

All they do is they use this appalling smear campaign and, of course, these brute force methods - I can understand you want to keep Gerry Adams out because he uses bombs and pistols, but somebody who uses fountain pens and typewriters, what's Australian frightened of?

Ron Casey:

Could I ask you this? If you came to Australia, if this decision was reversed, would you be willing to undertake a television debate with some of your accusers?

David Irving:

I would indeed. I'd be delighted to, but I would be extremely surprised if even one of them accepts to debate in public. They won't do it, they're frightened to debate. They've said in public, "We don't debate", because they can't debate.

Ron Casey:

Well, would you issue a challenge to - and you don't have to come to Australia for this - for an international satellite hook up for a television debate on this very subject in which you would debate someone nominated by the Holocaust Society or by the Jewish community, to debate the issue and make your case in a logical, fair way and also, have the opposing view - that is the Holocaust Survivors to be able to put their case forward too?

David Irving:

Provided it didn't develop into a shouting match. I'd be more than happy to. If it can be done in a reasoned atmosphere of logic but all I've been offered by these people - they say if Mr Irving comes to Australia, there'll be violent scenes and ugly demonstrations and that's the only language they seem to know, but to accept your point, I'd be more than happy to accept a debate.

Ron Casey:

Yes, the last time you were here and we had our interview which I'm not being sarcastic, I honestly don't expect you to remember, because you do so many interviews, but you did say to me that the figures of the victims of the Holocaust was higher than you had previously admitted.

Now, I don't recall exactly the figure that we settled on, but it was higher than you claimed - than you had previously claimed. [Transcription Note: Mr. Irving "settled" upon the figure of four million. knm]

David Irving:

I think the real figures probably are about a million or less. I'm not saying only a million, of course, it's still an appalling crime. But apparently the six million figure is a figure which is holy and somebody who challenges that six million figure is committing some kind of blasphemy and that I don't wear. I don't think that that's a package you're not allowed to open.

Ron Casey:

Can I tell you - to put a personal twist on our interview Mr Irving -I visited the Holocaust Museum last week here in Sydney and I was shown around by a lady, a very lovely lady, Olga, and she was actually a survivor of the Holocaust and she told me as we looked at the - I won't call it memorabilia, but at the exhibits in this display - she actually recalled in detail and gave me a story about her sister being hidden, but her sister was caught and she survived and all that, and I constantly kept thinking to myself, how can there be any doubt that there was a Holocaust because this woman was just an ordinary, nice person explaining her experiences to me.

Have you had that experience of facing someone who is a Survivor?

David Irving:

Oh yes, oh yes. Repeatedly. And I talk with them, but I think if we have a basic problem when we're talking with Survivors and eye witnesses and I think this problem is recognised by the Israeli Supreme Court when they refuse, when they overturned the conviction of John Dunyumuk which was based entirely on such survivor evidence.

They said this is not safe evidence, it's certainly not enough to hang a person on.

A fair story - and you're faced with - I think any Australian policeman will nod his head in agreement and say, "Yes, survivors, eye witnesses, they're not very reliable testimony".

Ron Casey:

Well, I must say this. I find it very difficult to understand how a memory, only the broader sense, can be retained over a fifty year period, and in a court of law, of course, that would make it most doubtful, would it not?

David Irving:

Well, I try and think back to things that happened when I was at university thirty years ago and all I can remember is one or two stark events and the rest is just a grey blur. And I would have to say if somebody came and started questioning me about my life at university, I'd be very embarrassed and I realise how wrong it is for me to go and question, for example Adolf Hitler's (indistinct) about what happened because their memory too - you're not remembering events any more, you're remembering memories of events. It's like second or third order memories.

Ron Casey:

Let's go back to the Poles - according to you, building a gas chamber, etc. for tourist reasons. Do you believe that all the concentration camps dotted throughout Germany, in the Second World War and before, do you believe that some of them existed or not all of them, or none?

David Irving:

Oh, yes, oh yes, there's not the slightest doubt. And as far as Auschwitz is concerned, I've said in my latest book, the Dr Goebels biography, there's no doubt that Auschwitz was a brutal, slave labour camp with an appalling mortality rate. That tens of thousands of people died in Auschwitz from one cause or another. There's no doubt that these places existed, but I'm not going to buy the whole package and that's why I - frankly I'm anathema to the Jewish population of Australia and other countries because I refuse to buy their whole package, I want to open it and examine it.

Ron Casey:

Is it possible in these death camps for six million people to have been cremated, to have been killed in gas chambers, is it possible physically in terms of - and I hate to put it like this - but to put these people through the process of killing and disposing - is it possible in the time span of the years of the Holocaust for it to have happened?

David Irving:

Well, that's where you get down to the nitty gritty of it and our opponents don't want the discussion reduced to this scientific level at all. But you asked a question, they say a million people were killed in Auschwitz, my question is what happened to those one million people? Were they cremated?

Well, the answer is you couldn't have cremated them, there wasn't sufficient crematorium capacity, there wasn't enough coke. It would have taken forty thousand tons of coke and you've got the aerial photographs of Auschwitz, nowhere are they are mountains of coke. Were they therefore buried? Well, it would have taken a pit the size of a football field and once again, the aerial photographs show no such pit. Why aren't the pits excavated and exhumed?

Now to disprove people like me. After all, the Americans are exhuming the mass graves in Bosnia now. But nobody wants to go and do it to Auschwitz.

So that's why I think that these figures are very suspect indeed and (indistinct) proven to the contrary. And I'm quite willing to be proved to the contrary. I've got no axe to grind in this, believe me.

Ron Casey:

Look you sound so reasonable about it all to me that I am wondering if you make these claims, and if your claims are open to discussion, it's beyond me why you're not allowed into Australia to be able to debate it, because I haven't got the knowledge to be able to prove you wrong, but at the same time, after visiting the Holocaust Museum and talking to these people that I did meet only last week by coincidence, I'm totally convinced and if there is this doubt in my mind, now, I'd like the doubt to be cleared up and the only way to do it is to - via a head to head confrontation.

Now, you can't come to Australia, the way to do it might be with a satellite interview so as the rest of the world can make up its mind about what exactly is the answer. Because, as it is now, all we've got is doubts.

David Irving:

I agree. And that's one reason why they build these Holocaust Museums because they are so cleverly put together to convince the sceptics and they build the Holocaust Museums with the one hand and every town and city around the world, now, and on the other hand, they keep the doubting Thomas's like myself, the Historians who have actually been in the Nazi archives, they keep us out so we can't talk.

Ron Casey:

Excuse me, I've got to ask you one last question because you've been very kind with your time.

In your Goebbels book, do you enter the German psychic to understand why this irrational hatred of another ethnic grouping, why it developed? Do you deal with that?

David Irving:

I do in one specific episode. This concerns the man who took the extraordinary - the gorgeous colour photographs that are in the book - he was Hitler's film cameraman, he took a lot of colour photographs, and he described to me how he went and actually saw a mass shooting of Jews on the eastern front. And I described this in the book and he told me, he said, that it happened because the evening before Heinrich and the Chief of the SS said Mr Franz, how would you like to go and witness a mass shooting tomorrow morning? We're going to be shooting a few thousand Jews?

And this photographer said, "Yes, sure I'd love to go along". Now, an Englishman wouldn't have said that. An Englishman, I think, would have said "Mr Himmler, tomorrow is a bad time for me. Any other day of the week, I'd love to come and watch what you want to show me".

The Germans, I don't know, they seem to be a different mentality and I'm afraid I've got to - I have to agree to a certain extent with that author, Daniel Goldhagen who wrote a book suggesting that the German mentality is somewhat different. It's not going to make me friends, of course.

Ron Casey:

Well, you won't make any friends with me because I've got a German wife and born in Germany but, now living here in Australia with me, and I'm telling you she's one of the kindest people in the world.

David Irving:

Yep. Well, that's

Ron Casey:

I know I've led her in the chin by asking the question but - and her mother and father are two of the most beautiful people I've ever met.

David Irving:

Mm hm.

Ron Casey:

So, I don't understand your broad generalisation about Germans.

David Irving:

I agree. It's wrong to generalise about any people and that goes for the Germans, that goes for the Jews and I'm sorry if I've offended either of them.

Ron Casey:

All right. Good to talk to you again, Mr Irving. David Irving, the author and historian who's been banned by the Australian Government today, from visiting this country because he will upset the Jewish community.


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