Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.08
Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.08
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
. P-165
A. My Lord, there are copies made. I had all this bundle
ready to be produced tomorrow.
MR RAMPTON: Can I help?
A. Because of the importance ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think Mr Rampton knows where it is.
MR RAMPTON: I do not know if it is he same document. From
its
wording I very much suspect it is, but on page 353 of
Professor Evans' report at paragraph 6 ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor who?
MR RAMPTON: Professor Evans page 353, paragraph 6, he has
a
quotation from a document: "The Jews have been
resettled
out of the territory of the "Ouslander" (?) only to be
dealt with in accordance with guidelines issued by me
or
the Reich Security Head Office on my authority. I
will
punish individual initiatives and contraventions.
Signed H. Himmler", and it is annotated as being
Himmler
to Joachim, 1st December 1941 at 7.30 p.m. in the
Public
Record Office HW16/32.
A. That is correct.
MR RAMPTON: It is the same document.
A. Does he also have the following message, let me ask
Mr Rampton, where he instructs Joachim to report to
headquarters immediately?
MR RAMPTON: I do not have that document.
A. Clearly the significance of that is even more
important
than this rap on the knuckles about the arbitrary
. P-166
reactions and acting against authority and disobeying
the
guidelines. On December 1st, the day after the
killings,
the same day as these telegrams, here is in Himmler's
own
handwriting a telephone call at 1315 to SS General
Heinrich about the executions in Riga which everybody
agrees is referring to this appalling atrocity where
the
Jews had been shot into the pits. The significant
feature
is, as all the historians on both sides now agree,
that
from that time on the killing of German Jews stopped
for
many months. The fact that this instruction had come
in
the first instance from Hitler's bunker and on the
following day from Heinrich Himmler who had been to
see to
Hitler who sends him a message that I would describe
as
"panic stricken" to General Joachim saying "any
further
actions of this nature, any arbitrary actions against
the
guidelines, will be severely punished and you are
ordered
to report to Hitler's headquarters", is a matter which
I think is so serious that this is the reason why I
was
preparing a very detailed bundle on it, my Lord, with
complete facsimiles and translations for your
Lordship's
attention, because it goes very closely to the central
issues in this case: How far was Hitler personally
involved and what were his intentions?
Q. In relation to the shooting?
A. Of European Jews as opposed to Russian Jews.
Q. Yes, but in relation to death by shooting.
. P-167
A. And also in relation to my contention, as your
Lordship
will be aware, that there is a chain of documents of
varying magnitudes of integrity and weight which
indicate
that Hitler was a negative force in this matter,
whereas
there are no comparable documents indicating the
opposite. I know it is barely credible, but if one
comes
to this with a open mind and then 20 years later one
comes
across yet another document like this extraordinary
British intercept, this decode of the SS message from
Himmler to the man on the spot who had done the
killings,
saying any further such actions will be subject to
punishment and ordering him to report to Hitler's
headquarters. It is an extraordinary episode and I
find it
also highly significant that the German historians
have so
far not been prepared to refer to this episode with a
single line as far as its significance is concerned,
because they are mortally terrified under the
consequence
of the new laws passed in Germany. It has been the
foreign historians, like myself, who have drawn
attention
to this exchange of documents.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your case really, as I understand it,
that
that particular example of the transport from Berlin
demonstrates what you say was Hitler's role in
relation to
it?
A. My Lord, it is one indication. It is not the only
evidence that I rely upon, my Lord.
. P-168
Q. No, that is what I meant by "demonstrate",
"illustrates"
is a better word?
A. I am careful there, because when I introduced in my
previous book, the November 30 handwritten annotation
by
Himmler, my opponent said, "this is his only evidence,
this is what he relies on", and it was not, I had
more.
My Lord, we shall be hearing at a later stage in these
proceedings Dr John Fox, who is an expert, among other
things, on these police decodes, and I shall be asking
him, with your Lordship's permission, the condition of
these decodes and are they wall to wall? Is
everything
there, or are there gaps? If one finds an item like
this,
of course, it is a nugget, one is not entitled to
expect
to find it, but one find it and here it is, suddenly
in
our faces, you cannot ignore it. There are several
documents like that, my Lord.
Q. Well, I was going to invite you to perhaps pass on now
from the shootings of the Jews and to skip section 3,
which is the Leuchter Report?
A. While I am in full flood can I move on to another
Hitler
document just three months later?
Q. Yes, of course.
A. After the Danzig Conference, which was an
interministerial
conflict on the executive measures for the Final
Solution,
whatever it was, there was a lot of paperwork in 199 -
-
Q. In 1942?
. P-169
A. In 1942, the Danzig Conference was held on January
20th
1942, my Lord. After the Danzig Conference the
ministries
engaged in a lot of paperwork, and at one stage the
necessity was ventilated of bringing up this matter
with
Adolf Hitler, whatever the Final Solution was, the
Ministry of Justice began to get uneasy about it,
because
they could see it had ugly connotations; there were
illegalities being adumbrated, and the head of the
German
Civil Service, Dr Hans Lammers, who was a minister, a
Reich minister, telephoned the head of the German
Ministry
of Justice, whose name was Schlegelberger, we shall be
hearing quite a bit about the Schlegelberger document
and
in this telephone conversation which Schlegelberger
wrote
a minute on, or what a lawyer would probably call an
"attendance note", Lammers said "the Fuhrer", Adolf
Hitler, "the Fuhrer", Adolf Hitler, "has repeatedly
said
he wants the solution of the Jewish problem postponed
after until the war is over". This is a document that
is
caused my opponents immense difficulties. The
difficulties they solved initially by pretending it
did
not exist, by which I mean they did not quote it.
They
did not adduce it in their history books, and when
that
thorn in the flesh, David Irving, kept on reminding
them
of existence of this document, which tripped them up
whatever their hypotheses were, that is when the real
battle began, the skirmishing began. But I think your
. P-170
Lordship will appreciate that I am entitled to point
to
that document as being another document in that chain
of
evidence, unless of course I have deliberately
mistranslated it, or misconstrued it.
Q. No, I do not think that is suggested.
A. Yes, but it is clearly a very important document. A
wartime document written by a lawyer on a phone call
from
the head of the German Civil Service, who is the next
one
up to Adolf Hitler, saying the Fuhrer has repeatedly
said
he wants the solution of the Jewish problem postponed
until after the war was over, which was typical Adolf
Hitler, anything like that he wanted put on the back
burner he had fought this ghastly war through. There
were
several problems like that, the church problem was
another
one.
Q. What was Schlegelberger's position?
A. He was at that time, as I understand it, Secretary of
State, which is the equivalent of a permanent Under
Secretary in a British ministry. In the Ministry of
Justice, his Minister was Dr Franz Goertner, who I
believe
had died recently at that time, so he was effectively
in
charge of the Ministry, Schlegelberger, and the minute
he
wrote was directed to a few notorious names including
Rowland Friessler. It is quite an interesting
document
and interesting about the document, my Lord, is at the
time of the Nuremberg trials it vanished. It remained
in
. P-171
original in the Ministry files, but the photocopies
provided to the lawyers at Nuremberg, this
extraordinary
document, vanished. It was not there, and it gave me
a
lot of trouble locating the original eventually.
Q. Yes. Would you like to pass on now, do you accept
that
the Leuchter report is plainly part and parcel of the
Auschwitz issue?
A. Yes.
Q. I think that must be right. Then the next section in
the
Defendant's summary of case, which is --
A. The Leuchter Report, of course, exists in two
incarnations, my Lord. The original Leuchter Report
was an
affidavit drawn up as an expert report for the
Canadian
courts and what we published was a glossy version
truncated and streamlined.
Q. -- but it was basically the same?
A. Made the same allegations and on the same contentions.
Q. We will leave that on one side, shall we.
A. Yes.
Q. I can see it comes in in some other context. Then
there
is a heading called "Historiography", this is really
the
section where there are a whole series of detailed
criticisms made of you, it being alleged that you have
skewed documents and generally behaved in a --
A. Reprehensible --
Q. -- disreputable way as a historian in your treatment
of
. P-172
the evidence. Now it is up to you how you deal with
it,
you can either deal with it generally, or you can make
some specific points on the instances that are cited
against you?
A. -- well, the general statement I would say is Mandy
Rice-Davies, they have to say this, my Lord, they
would
say, would they not? My opponents, who I could also
categorise as my rivals, dislike the fact that I get
to
the documents before them. For 30 years I have been
the
one to dig out the diaries.
By way of a general remark I would say I
that
I would visit the widows and obtain the papers, not
because I was more industrious than them, but purely
because I took the trouble. I visited the widow of
State
Secretary Anstrom Wiedsecher, who had been
Ribbentrop's
State Secretary. She was Baroness Marianne von
Wiedsecher,
who was subsequently the mother of the State President
of
Germany, President von Wiedsecher and it turned out
that
she had all her husband's diaries and letters, which
she
made available to me, and was rather puzzled that she
had
not made them available to the German historians and
her
reply was, "Mr Irving, they never asked". It was the
same
with very many other historians -- many other
historical
sources. Purely by virtue of visiting the widows or
next
of kin or digging around I have obtained these diaries
and
private papers.
. P-173
Q. But leaving aside digging out the evidence.
A. Well, this generated the envy and jealousy which is
unfortunately what has fuelled lot of the criticism.
Q. I hear you say that, but what about the criticism of
the
use that you make the evidence once you have got it
because what is said against you is that you pick and
choose?
A. My Lord, this is almost certainly something which can
only
be dealt with on piecemeal basis, they will put
individual
documents to me in cross-examination and to their
delight
I may occasionally concede that, yes, I got something
wrong. I will concede that I misread the word
"harbun" in
Himmler's appalling handwriting, and if you were to
have a
look at his handwriting you will see how very similar
it
is. I will provide the documents to your Lordship
tomorrow to the alternative word. This kind of thing
happens.
Q. Well, if I may say so, I think you are right that this
particular topic has to be dealt with on a ...
A. Piecemeal basis.
Q. Well, case by case basis, I think that is it probably
right, but if you want to say anything more generally at
the moment about your --
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