Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.04
Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.04
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
It says here in about 1975 Adolf Hitler's
Private Secretary, the late Christa Schroeder, gave me a
small pencil sketch, a self-portrait of Adolf Hitler,
which he had retrieved from his desk in the last days of
the war. She gave it to me as a gift and I keep it. I do
not, of course, have any kind of portrait of Adolf Hitler
on my office hanging on the wall in the way that has been
described.
Am I proceeding in the correct manner?
Q. Yes, I think this is exactly what I think is the right way
of proceeding.
A. I consider myself to be an expert on the careers of the
principal Nazi leaders, including specifically Adolf
Hitler, Goring and Dr Josef Goebbels. I am an expert on
the archives about these people. I am expert on the
current state of research into German and other wartime
persecution and liquidation of the European Jewish
communities.
Q. You said yesterday -- I am sorry to interrupt you--
that
you did not regard yourself as being an historian of
the
Holocaust, can you just in your evidence ----
A. This is true.
Q. --- explain what you mean?
A. There is a subtle difference. I am an expert in the
state
of research but not on their findings, so to speak. I
am
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an expert on the way they go about their research, but
not
so much on the actual details of the Holocaust, and so
on.
Q. When you say "they", who do you mean by "they", the
Defendants?
A. No, my Lord. I am sorry, I should have made myself
clear. I mean the Holocaust historians, the
historians
who specialize in that topic.
Q. Yes.
A. Over the years I have collected a very large archive
of
original documents and copies of original documents,
like
private diaries and papers like that, from the top
Nazi
leaders using various techniques and methods, all
entirely
legal and, as part of my technique, I would then
donate
these papers immediately to the suitable archives so
they
are immediately available to other historians.
My views upon politics are on page 1047.
Q. Yes.
A. The Defendants have chosen to refer to my politics and
they wrongly categorise them. They say that I am
extreme
right-wing or something like that. I have never
belonged
to a political party, left or right, except I think
I joined the Young Conservatives at University.
My father stood as a Labour candidate in the
1945 General Election. I voted for Sir James
Goldsmith,
my Lord, if I can make that point in the last
election, in
other words, neither one nor the other. I regard
myself
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as a laissez faire Liberal. In other words, I do not
really care much about politics so long as they spend
the
money on hospitals rather than Millennium Domes. I
have a
family reason for saying that.
I do not look down on any section of
humanity,
either coloured immigrants, I have regularly employed
them, or females. Your Lordship will appreciate the
reasons why I make these points. I have five
daughters,
in fact -- I am sorry, I had five daughters.
I do not look down on the mentally or
physically
disabled. I admit to having little patience with
smokers
and none at all with drug abusers. This is not to say
that I have applauded -- I have to state this because
I will probably be asked about it -- I cannot say that
I
have applauded the uncontrolled tide of commonwealth
immigration into this country.
Like most fellow countrymen of my background
and
vintage, I regret the passing of the Old England.
I sometimes think, my Lord, that if the soldiers and
sailors who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944
could
see what England would be like at the end of this
century,
they would not have got 50 yards up the beach. I
think
they would have given up in disgust.
Q. You said you are getting towards paragraph 23 of your
witness statement, 1048?
A. My reputation as an historian.
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Q. You said you wanted to develop that and I think now is
probably the appropriate time to do that, if you want
to.
A. I have, of course, a very large collection of ring
binders
of Press clippings which have been made available to
the
Defendants and in which they have not shown the
slightest
interest. Reviews in all the leading newspapers of
the
world of the books that I have written. I believe I
have
written about 30. I could have produced all those
reviews
to the court, but if I just summarize and say that
they
are largely very favourable reviews, the kinds of
reviews
that made publishers line up to publish my books until
the
turning of tide.
Obviously, there were some reviews that you
could describe as the curate's egg, but, by and large,
the
reviews were exceptionally favourable. It may be said
that the reviewers were not as clever, perhaps, as the
expert witnesses whom the Defendants have summoned for
this case. That may be one argument; maybe they had
not
seen though me, perhaps. Arguments like that will be
advanced, but I submit this is not the case. These
were
book reviews written by experts in their own field,
like
Captain Steven Roskill who was an eminent naval
historian,
Professor MRD Foot, who is another official historian,
Professor Sir Frank Hinsley. If I just summarize it
as
briefly as that, my Lord?
Q. Yes, I think that is sufficient.
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A. If you wish to question that, of course, I will be
quite
happy to put in all the evidence to support the
contention, but Defendants have not shown any interest
in
these statements.
Q. Can you help me because I have not alighted on them.
Are
they in one of the files?
A. They were within my discovery. They were disclosed to
the
Defendants in proper form. Admittedly, I did not do
an
index of the entire set, but they were shown 16 ring
binders full of chronologically organized, properly
pasted
up reviews and Press clippings in which, who knows,
they
might have found some goodies they could have used
against
me, I do not know, but they did not bother with them.
Q. Take your own course, Mr Irving, but do you now want
to
deal with the publication of "Denying the Holocaust"?
A. The publication of the book. I paid no attention to
that
book, my Lord, until 1996. It did not come into my
ken
until 1996. I believe it was published in 1994, but
in
April 1996 we published in this country my book the
Goebbels' biography, "Goebbels. Mastermind of the
Third
Reich". Your Lordship will be aware this is the only
book
that I requested that your Lordship study in some
detail
because it is a book that I am particularly proud of.
When we began marketing that book in the
United
Kingdom, which meant literally that I and my publisher
imprint rented a van and visited approximately 980
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bookstores up and down the length and breadth of the
country, which is a very enjoyable exercise. I do not
do
it out of tedium; it is very interesting to visit the
bookstores and their managers. We marketed the book
directly to them and we sold many thousands of copies
in
this manner, but we came across the phenomenon that in
a
number of bookstores, particularly in the Waterstones
chain, the head of the history department took an
aversion
to me.
After visiting a number of the bookstores,
it
became quite plain that the reason for the aversion to
me
was the fact that they were selling the book "Denying
the
Holocaust", published by the first Defendant and
written
by the Second Defendant. This book was being believed
by
Waterstones or by their employes and by, no doubt,
other
bookstores too. It was causing me considerable
concern
because these bookstores were thereupon refusing to
stock
my books.
So I thereupon during that tour began to
purchase copies of "Denying the Holocaust" as evidence
that the book was on sale within the jurisdiction. I
put
the publishers on notice. I put the author on notice.
I put certain of the book sellers themselves on notice
because under the Defamation Act anybody in the
distribution chain can be held liable for the peddling
of
libels. I subsequently, of course, separated those --
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I discontinued the action against the book sellers for
reasons that need not occupy the court.
At the beginning of September 1996, which is
that same year, which had been a very harrowing year
for
me, as I had seen my American publishers, St Martin's
Press, in conjunction with my big American publisher,
Doubledays, simultaneously deciding, we now learn,
upon
representations made by the Second Defendant not to go
ahead with publication of my Goebbels' biography,
I decided that I had no recourse but to take libel
action
against this book which was, obviously, part of the
cause
of my problem.
So I issued the writ, after taking usual
procedural steps, the letter before action and so on,
I think it was dated September 6th 1996.
Q. Yes. Now, you have selected for complaint a number of
particular passages from the book and I think it would
be
appropriate if you were to deal with them, and where
you
best find them, I do not know, but certainly they are
to
be found in your Statement of Claim, but it may be you
would rather deal with it in some other way.
A. May I return my papers and collect the Statement of
Claim?
Q. Yes, of if you point out where they are, perhaps
somebody
can do it for you rather than having you go backwards
and
forwards?
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A. They are in the ring binder.
Q. Thank you very much.
A. My Lord, I was defamed and libelled on a number of
pages
in the book. I do not propose to read out, unless
your
Lordship wishes otherwise, the specific passages.
Q. No. You are entitled to take your own course about
that
but I think what you ought to do is just give an
indication of ----
A. I will read out ----
Q. --- why you object to the passages that you have
selected
for complaint.
A. If I go to paragraph 9 of the Statement of Claim which
is
"The natural or ordinary meaning of the words
complained
of"?
Q. Yes.
A. I contend that the passages meant, and were intended
to
mean and understood to mean, firstly, "that the
Plaintiff", meaning myself, "is a dangerous
spokesperson
for Holocaust denial ... for denial forces who
deliberately and knowingly consorts and consorted with
anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial forces
and
who contracted to attend a world anti-Zionist
conference
in Sweden in November 1992, thereby agreeing to appear
in
public in support of and alongside violent and
extremist
speakers, including representatives of the violent and
extremist anti-Semitic Russian group, Pamyat, and of
the
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Iranian-backed Hezbollah and of the fundamentalist
Islamic
organization Hamas and including the black Muslim
leader
Louis Farrakhan, born Louis Eugene Walcott, who is
known
as a Jew-baiting black agitator, as a leader of the US
Nation of Islam, as an admirer of Hitler and who is in
the
pay of Colonel Gaddafi".
My Lord, the wording that I use in this is,
of
course, very closely related to the wording used in
the
work complained of. I have not chosen those words
myself. I have merely distilled them out of the
Defendant's text and adhered as closely as possible to
the
original wording.
Q. Yes. You are just paraphrasing really?
A. I am not even paraphrasing, my Lord. I am gluing the
words together into a complaint form using the words
actually used by the Defendants in the work complained of.
Q. That is what I meant by "paraphrase".
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