Irving v. Lipstadt

 1MR IRVING:    We are not going to finish this witness today. I
 2am going to have another half day, unfortunately now, my
 3Lord.
 4MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Half day?
 5MR IRVING:    Yes, or possibly less.
 6MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Well, Dr Longerich, you are based in England
 7anyway, are you not?
 8A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Yes, that is true.
 9Q. [Mr Irving]     I am afraid we are going to have to ask you to come back
10on Monday.
11A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     All right.
12MR JUSTICE GRAY:    There is a bit more time. Nothing is written
13in stone.
14MR IRVING:    I think will put the Walter Furl of which I do have
15copies. On this one I am slightly better prepared.
16MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Do you have copies for the rest of us too?
17Shall we decide where to put this, and indeed at the same
18time, Mr Irving or probably Miss Rogers actually, the
19other clip that came first thing this morning?
20MS ROGERS:    I am told by your Lordship's Clerk there is still
21room in J2. Since the Claimant's documents have gradually
22been fed in in date order, at the back of J2. I think it
23is tab 11. If your Lordship does not have tabs we will
24provide them.
25MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I have tabs 1 to 11.
26MS ROGERS:    We will provide you with an 11.

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 1MR IRVING:    This is a minor matter which I think will take five
 2minutes, my Lord.
 3MR JUSTICE GRAY:    You have just handed in Aly Gotz.
 4MR IRVING:    Yes, and there is an item on it called page 175.
 5Again it is from the book by Aly Gotz or Gotz Aly who is
 6an established authority on the Final Solution. He says
 7in his book that this option of settling the Jews in
 8Russia had already taken on a camouflaging function. This
 9is his spin on the letter which is important. In the
10letter that Walter Furl, the leading Krakau resettlement
11organizer, wrote to his SS comrades in June 1942. I am
12only going to rely on the text of the actual letter.
13    "Only in retrospect can this be seen as an
14intermediary step on the road to the Holocaust." In
15letter Furl wrote, and this is what is important, Walter
16Furl writes in June 1942 to his SS comrades:
17    "Every day trains are arriving with over a
18thousand Jews each from throughout Europe. We provide
19first aid here", he was writing from Krakau. "He gives
20them more or less provisional accommodation and usually
21deport them further towards the white sea, to the white
22Ruthenian marsh lands where they all - if they survive -
23and Jews from ... Vienna or Pressburg certainly won't,
24will be gathered by the end of the war but not without
25having first built a few roads. (But we are not supposed
26to talk about it)."

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 1    Do you see in this any echoes of the Wannsee
 2conference, the road building?
 3A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     No. I see something completely different here. I am
 4asking myself what are your standards for quoting
 5documents. This is a part of a document. We do not know
 6where the document is. You know, we do not know in which
 7context it stood. It is quoted by Gotz Aly, and Gotz Aly
 8who has actually researched this area quite thoroughly, is
 9commenting on this document, this is a camouflage
10document.
11Q. [Mr Irving]     Yes.
12A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     I think at this stage I am prepared, because he has seen
13the context and the evidence, I am prepared to follow him
14here, if I have not seen the other parts of the document.
15Q. [Mr Irving]     But this is all he quotes. He does not quote any more
16than this part.
17MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Where does he say that it is a camouflage
18document. Camouflaging function, I missed that.
19A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     I think I trust him here. He is right.
20MR IRVING:    Once again this is a document where even though is
21a man writing to his own SS comrades ----
22A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Yes, that is a ----
23Q. [Mr Irving]     --- a private letter?
24A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Part of a private letter, a quotation probably. I do not
25know the context of the letter. Maybe it says in the next
26paragraph: "But this is all nonsense. This is

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 1camouflage". I do not have the letter. Give me the
 2letter and I am happy to comment on it, but I am following
 3here Gotz Aly's interpretation, because it seems quite
 4reasonable for me and consistent with what I am saying
 5here.
 6Q. [Mr Irving]     I am sorry, Dr K Longerich, quite clearly if Gotz Aly had
 7found any evidence in that letter of the kind you
 8mentioned, he would certainly have put it in, would he
 9not? If there is any other clue in the letter that it was
10camouflage, then, boy, wouldn't he have put it in?
11A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     I do not know. I cannot speculate about Gotz Aly's
12attitude here. You are representing a document, only part
13of a document, no context, and you clearly said that the
14author did not accept this as an authentic, as a kind of
15document which reflects the intentions of the Nazis. He
16says it is a camouflage document, and as long as I have
17not seen the document itself I think he is quite right in
18doing so.
19Q. [Mr Irving]     But is it not another reference to the white sea which is
20what Heydrich talked about in Prague two months earlier?
21A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     I think I do not have to repeat what I am saying. Yes,
22but ----
23Q. [Mr Irving]     Is it not also a bit of a feeble answer, if I may say so,
24that every time a document comes up that it does not fit
25in with your own preconceptions, like the Schlegelberger
26document or something like that, you say: This is

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 1unimportant or that is camouflage or you cannot believe
 2what this document says?
 3A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     This is not a document. This is a quotation from a book
 4somebody quoted add part of a document. This is not a
 5document. This is a quotation from a book, and the author
 6of the book quite clearly states that he does not believe
 7what -- he thinks that this is a camouflage document and
 8one should not trust what this SS man is saying.
 9Q. [Mr Irving]     Dr Longerich, in your own expert report you have quoted
10any number of documents printed in other people's books,
11have you not?
12A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     I have done that, but I have not presented here as
13evidence for actually, you know -- I have not actually
14dared presented them here and saying, well, actually I am
15quoting from a document but I am not going along with the
16conclusions the author drew from this document. So it is
17a different case.
18MR IRVING:    My Lord, I do not want to add any more to that
19document. I have put the document in. I think it is
20significant. The witness thinks it is camouflage.
21A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     No, I do not have any reason to mistrust Gotz Aly in his
22comment on this document, on this part of this document.
23MR IRVING:    Does your Lordship wish to comment on it?
24MR JUSTICE GRAY:    No, I do not. Thank you very much.
25MR IRVING:    In that case, I would respectfully submit that we
26might adjourn now, it is a useful hiatus point, unless

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 1Mr Rampton wishes to make a point.
 2MR RAMPTON:    No, I do not want to make any points. I am
 3concerned about the length of time everything is taking.
 4It means I think the schedule has to be rewritten. It
 5means probably we will not get to Professor Funke until
 6Wednesday.
 7MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Why do you say that? Another half day and
 8I hope it will be less.
 9MR RAMPTON:    Another half day and then I have a day or a day
10and a half cross-examination.
11MR JUSTICE GRAY:    That is half a day more than your previous
12estimate.
13MR RAMPTON:    No, it is not. I told somebody, I hope it was
14your Lordship, that I thought it might go over one day,
15beyond a day.
16MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Can you Dr Funke lined up for Tuesday midday
17just in case?
18MR RAMPTON:    Yes, I will. He will be in court on Tuesday.
19MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Yes.
20MR RAMPTON:    There is only one other thing. I have from Munich
21now the relevant transcript which, contrary to the thing
22that Mr Irving produced, is not dated 11th May but 12th
23December 1942. It makes it difficult to find things if we
24do not get the right reference. I will pass them out, if
25I may. They are the Karl Wolff and it is the whole thing
26as well, instead of being a redacted version.

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