Irving v. Lipstadt
Transcripts
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 3: Electronic Edition
Pages 193 - 198 of 204
| << 1-6 | < 187-192 | 199-204 > | 198-204 >> |
Just two or three weeks after the unfortunate Nazi
1gangsters have been hanged at Nuremberg. Where is he
2writing this report?
3Q. [Mr Rampton] Is the answer to my question, yes? Give the explanation
4afterwards, please, Mr Irving. The answer to my question
5is, yes, you have ignored it. Now the reason ----
6A. [Mr Irving] No. The answer to the question is that I have discounted
7that kind of evidence as being the fact that he does not
8say he saw an order. He is saying it is his opinion. He
9thinks that, yes, there must surely have been some such
10kind of order. What kind of evidence is that given by a
11man sitting in the face of the gallows just after the Nazi
12leaders have been hanged at Nuremberg, and he is sitting
13in Czech Slovac prison knowing that he is going to be
14hanged as well, and he is sitting down there writing the
15first thing that comes into his head, and he says: "Well,
16surely Hitler must have given an order." What kind of
17evidence is that? What kind of historian would I be who
18in the absence of any kind of documentation whatsoever of
19any concrete diamond value of the war archives then
20decides to pollute his work with relying on this kind of
21documentation? Material that Wisliceny himself is an
22expert on -- I remind you of the Trevor Roper criteria,
23something that he himself has experienced, something that
24he is in a position to know. That I would accept, but for
25him to speculate, as he clearly is here, that is neither
26here nor there. It is information of janitorial level.
1Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Janitorial, this is to anticipate something we are
2going to come to perhaps next week or the week after, Mr
3Irving, but "janitorial level" is a phrase you often use.
4Is not "janitorial level" very often the place you expect
5to find the diamonds?
6A. [Mr Irving] Janitorial level is not the kind of place that
7I frequently inhabit, Mr Rampton.
8Q. [Mr Rampton] That is very patrician of you, Mr Irving. If you are an
9historian you must look even in the basement, the sewer,
10if you want to find the gems, must you not sometimes?
11A. [Mr Irving] If one fails to find the gems, my opponents and my jealous
12rivals they have gone down among the sewers looking for
13things, but I found the gems because I have done the work.
14Q. [Mr Rampton] You saw some of them, did you not, in Professor van Pelt's
15report, "janitorial gems"?
16A. [Mr Irving] We shall have great enjoyment discussing this with van
17Pelt when the time comes.
18MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just understand why Wisliceny is being
19put into the janitorial category at all? He is one of
20Eichmann's top officials.
21A. [Mr Irving] He is one of Eichmann's top officials.
22Q. [Mr Justice Gray] And Eichmann was one of the senior officials within the
23Reich carrying out the extermination programme.
24A. [Mr Irving] Mr Wisliceny is a man who is in deep trouble. First of
25all he is facing ----
26Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is a different point, if I may say so. He is not a
1janitor.
2A. [Mr Irving] He is also a man of very dubious character. He is a man
3who has been not an officer in the SS, but he has been
4involved in corrupt schemes, in stealing and robbing and
5disposing of stolen Jewish property and all sorts of
6things that got him in trouble even with the SS. He is a
7man whose character I would not give a fig for. He is
8sitting in a prison cell in a Slovac prison knowing that
9he is going to be put on trial for his life.
10Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is a different point.
11A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, let me cut to the bottom line and say what he
12is actually saying here, I have lost it, he is not saying
13"I know this for a fact"; he is just saying, "I speculate
14that probably this happened." I have lost it totally, the
15actual reference.
16Q. [Mr Justice Gray] "I am convinced it must fall the decision of Hitler".
17A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but his conviction that something must fall within, I
18mean, that is not evidence of any kind at all, my Lord,
19and I am sure no court would accept that kind of evidence
20in a matter of great seriousness, somebody's conviction
21that something must surely have happened, not in the total
22absence of any kind of qualifying documents.
23MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving. Sometimes my questions
24involve quite a lot of paper chasing. You are quite
25content to use Dieter Wisliceny when it suits your
26purposes, are you not?
1A. [Mr Irving] If it fits the criteria which I mentioned earlier.
2Q. [Mr Rampton] If it fits the bill, I would suggest, Mr Irving.
3A. [Mr Irving] That is not what I said. I said if it fits the criteriA.
4Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you got your Goebbels' book there?
5A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6Q. [Mr Rampton] You say on page 379 -- has your Lordship got one?
7MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have. 379, you say?
8MR RAMPTON: Yes.
9A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I have that.
10Q. [Mr Rampton] We are talking here about an article written by, or
11probably written by, Dr Goebbels?
12A. [Mr Irving] It is one of the two most important articles he wrote.
13Q. [Mr Rampton] You say that; it was written and published, I think, on
1416th December?
15A. [Mr Irving] November.
16Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, November?
17A. [Mr Irving] 1941.
18Q. [Mr Rampton] 1941, as virulently anti-Semitic as anything that Hitler
19ever said?
20A. [Mr Irving] Far more so.
21Q. [Mr Rampton] You say that, do you?
22A. [Mr Irving] Far more so.
23Q. [Mr Rampton] You say here on page 379 in the last paragraph, the
24complete paragraph, on the page: "Dieter Wisliceny, one
25of Eichmann's closest associates, would describe the
26Goebbels' article in Das Reiche", that is the one I
1have just mentioned, as a watershed in the Final Solution
2of the Jewish problem". Then footnote 40 is a reference
3to the Wisliceny Report, date November 18th 1946. That is
4to be found on page 645. You go on in the text ----
5A. [Mr Irving] I also reference his interrogations I see.
6Q. [Mr Rampton] You did.
7A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8Q. [Mr Rampton] "The SS took it as a sign from above Adolf Eichmann would
9admit in his unpublished memoirs it is quite possible that
10I got orders to direct this or that railroad to Riga", and
11I don't know where we go from there quite. Yes, I will
12read the whole paragraph. "On the last day of November,
13on the orders of the local SS Commander, Friedrich
14Jeckelm, 4,000 of Riga's unwanted Jews were trucked five
15miles down" -- the Germans called that Dinoberg, I think,
16did they not?
17A. [Mr Irving] Dunoberg, yes.
18Q. [Mr Rampton] -- "a highway to Skiaturbe plundered and machine-gunned
19into two or three pits. According to one army colonel",
20this is Bruns, is it not----
22Q. [Mr Rampton] --- who witnessed it, a trainload of Jews from Berlin,
23those expelled three days before, arrived in the midst
24of this aktion. Its passengers were taken straight out to
25the pits and shot. This happened", and here we go again,
26even has Hitler's hundreds of miles away, "Hitler", I
1emphasise, hundreds of miles away in the Wolf's Lair, "was
2instructing Himmler that these Berlin Jews were not to be
3liquidated. I am not going back to that hoary old
4chestnut, you will be glad to hear, but I do want to take
5you back to the beginning of this paragraph.
6A. [Mr Irving] It is a remarkable paragraph for a Holocaust denier to
7write, is it not?
8Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no idea, Mr Irving, and anyway I am not going to
9answer your question. "Dieter Wisliceny, one
10of Eichmann's closest associates, would describe the
11Goebbels' article in Das Reich as a watershed in the Final
12Solution of the Jewish problem"?
13A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14Q. [Mr Rampton] Where did he give that description?
15A. [Mr Irving] What, whether he actually used the word watershed?
16Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
17A. [Mr Irving] You see that I reference his manuscript written in
18Bratislava or Presburg and I also reference the
19interrogations in the associated footnote.
20Q. [Mr Rampton] But if you read what we find here in Professor Evans'
21report which is an English translation of some part of the
22Wisliceny report, what you immediately realize, you do not
23learn it from Mr Irving's books, you learn it
24from Professor Evans' report, what you immediately realize
25is that Dieter Wisliceny did not see the Reich article as
26a watershed. He saw the watershed as being an order from
1gangsters have been hanged at Nuremberg. Where is he
2writing this report?
3Q. [Mr Rampton] Is the answer to my question, yes? Give the explanation
4afterwards, please, Mr Irving. The answer to my question
5is, yes, you have ignored it. Now the reason ----
6A. [Mr Irving] No. The answer to the question is that I have discounted
7that kind of evidence as being the fact that he does not
8say he saw an order. He is saying it is his opinion. He
9thinks that, yes, there must surely have been some such
10kind of order. What kind of evidence is that given by a
11man sitting in the face of the gallows just after the Nazi
12leaders have been hanged at Nuremberg, and he is sitting
13in Czech Slovac prison knowing that he is going to be
14hanged as well, and he is sitting down there writing the
15first thing that comes into his head, and he says: "Well,
16surely Hitler must have given an order." What kind of
17evidence is that? What kind of historian would I be who
18in the absence of any kind of documentation whatsoever of
19any concrete diamond value of the war archives then
20decides to pollute his work with relying on this kind of
21documentation? Material that Wisliceny himself is an
22expert on -- I remind you of the Trevor Roper criteria,
23something that he himself has experienced, something that
24he is in a position to know. That I would accept, but for
25him to speculate, as he clearly is here, that is neither
26here nor there. It is information of janitorial level.
. P-193
1Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Janitorial, this is to anticipate something we are
2going to come to perhaps next week or the week after, Mr
3Irving, but "janitorial level" is a phrase you often use.
4Is not "janitorial level" very often the place you expect
5to find the diamonds?
6A. [Mr Irving] Janitorial level is not the kind of place that
7I frequently inhabit, Mr Rampton.
8Q. [Mr Rampton] That is very patrician of you, Mr Irving. If you are an
9historian you must look even in the basement, the sewer,
10if you want to find the gems, must you not sometimes?
11A. [Mr Irving] If one fails to find the gems, my opponents and my jealous
12rivals they have gone down among the sewers looking for
13things, but I found the gems because I have done the work.
14Q. [Mr Rampton] You saw some of them, did you not, in Professor van Pelt's
15report, "janitorial gems"?
16A. [Mr Irving] We shall have great enjoyment discussing this with van
17Pelt when the time comes.
18MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just understand why Wisliceny is being
19put into the janitorial category at all? He is one of
20Eichmann's top officials.
21A. [Mr Irving] He is one of Eichmann's top officials.
22Q. [Mr Justice Gray] And Eichmann was one of the senior officials within the
23Reich carrying out the extermination programme.
24A. [Mr Irving] Mr Wisliceny is a man who is in deep trouble. First of
25all he is facing ----
26Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is a different point, if I may say so. He is not a
. P-194
1janitor.
2A. [Mr Irving] He is also a man of very dubious character. He is a man
3who has been not an officer in the SS, but he has been
4involved in corrupt schemes, in stealing and robbing and
5disposing of stolen Jewish property and all sorts of
6things that got him in trouble even with the SS. He is a
7man whose character I would not give a fig for. He is
8sitting in a prison cell in a Slovac prison knowing that
9he is going to be put on trial for his life.
10Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is a different point.
11A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, let me cut to the bottom line and say what he
12is actually saying here, I have lost it, he is not saying
13"I know this for a fact"; he is just saying, "I speculate
14that probably this happened." I have lost it totally, the
15actual reference.
16Q. [Mr Justice Gray] "I am convinced it must fall the decision of Hitler".
17A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but his conviction that something must fall within, I
18mean, that is not evidence of any kind at all, my Lord,
19and I am sure no court would accept that kind of evidence
20in a matter of great seriousness, somebody's conviction
21that something must surely have happened, not in the total
22absence of any kind of qualifying documents.
23MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving. Sometimes my questions
24involve quite a lot of paper chasing. You are quite
25content to use Dieter Wisliceny when it suits your
26purposes, are you not?
. P-195
1A. [Mr Irving] If it fits the criteria which I mentioned earlier.
2Q. [Mr Rampton] If it fits the bill, I would suggest, Mr Irving.
3A. [Mr Irving] That is not what I said. I said if it fits the criteriA.
4Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you got your Goebbels' book there?
5A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6Q. [Mr Rampton] You say on page 379 -- has your Lordship got one?
7MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have. 379, you say?
8MR RAMPTON: Yes.
9A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I have that.
10Q. [Mr Rampton] We are talking here about an article written by, or
11probably written by, Dr Goebbels?
12A. [Mr Irving] It is one of the two most important articles he wrote.
13Q. [Mr Rampton] You say that; it was written and published, I think, on
1416th December?
15A. [Mr Irving] November.
16Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, November?
17A. [Mr Irving] 1941.
18Q. [Mr Rampton] 1941, as virulently anti-Semitic as anything that Hitler
19ever said?
20A. [Mr Irving] Far more so.
21Q. [Mr Rampton] You say that, do you?
22A. [Mr Irving] Far more so.
23Q. [Mr Rampton] You say here on page 379 in the last paragraph, the
24complete paragraph, on the page: "Dieter Wisliceny, one
25of Eichmann's closest associates, would describe the
26Goebbels' article in Das Reiche", that is the one I
. P-196
1have just mentioned, as a watershed in the Final Solution
2of the Jewish problem". Then footnote 40 is a reference
3to the Wisliceny Report, date November 18th 1946. That is
4to be found on page 645. You go on in the text ----
5A. [Mr Irving] I also reference his interrogations I see.
6Q. [Mr Rampton] You did.
7A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8Q. [Mr Rampton] "The SS took it as a sign from above Adolf Eichmann would
9admit in his unpublished memoirs it is quite possible that
10I got orders to direct this or that railroad to Riga", and
11I don't know where we go from there quite. Yes, I will
12read the whole paragraph. "On the last day of November,
13on the orders of the local SS Commander, Friedrich
14Jeckelm, 4,000 of Riga's unwanted Jews were trucked five
15miles down" -- the Germans called that Dinoberg, I think,
16did they not?
17A. [Mr Irving] Dunoberg, yes.
18Q. [Mr Rampton] -- "a highway to Skiaturbe plundered and machine-gunned
19into two or three pits. According to one army colonel",
20this is Bruns, is it not----
22Q. [Mr Rampton] --- who witnessed it, a trainload of Jews from Berlin,
23those expelled three days before, arrived in the midst
24of this aktion. Its passengers were taken straight out to
25the pits and shot. This happened", and here we go again,
26even has Hitler's hundreds of miles away, "Hitler", I
. P-197
1emphasise, hundreds of miles away in the Wolf's Lair, "was
2instructing Himmler that these Berlin Jews were not to be
3liquidated. I am not going back to that hoary old
4chestnut, you will be glad to hear, but I do want to take
5you back to the beginning of this paragraph.
6A. [Mr Irving] It is a remarkable paragraph for a Holocaust denier to
7write, is it not?
8Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no idea, Mr Irving, and anyway I am not going to
9answer your question. "Dieter Wisliceny, one
10of Eichmann's closest associates, would describe the
11Goebbels' article in Das Reich as a watershed in the Final
12Solution of the Jewish problem"?
13A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14Q. [Mr Rampton] Where did he give that description?
15A. [Mr Irving] What, whether he actually used the word watershed?
16Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
17A. [Mr Irving] You see that I reference his manuscript written in
18Bratislava or Presburg and I also reference the
19interrogations in the associated footnote.
20Q. [Mr Rampton] But if you read what we find here in Professor Evans'
21report which is an English translation of some part of the
22Wisliceny report, what you immediately realize, you do not
23learn it from Mr Irving's books, you learn it
24from Professor Evans' report, what you immediately realize
25is that Dieter Wisliceny did not see the Reich article as
26a watershed. He saw the watershed as being an order from
. P-198
| << 1-6 | < 187-192 | 199-204 > | 198-204 >> |