Irving v. Lipstadt

 1MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Whilst we have that in mind shall we just
 2have a look and see what it says at the relevant bit?
 3MR IRVING:    Yes. I think possibly the witness might like to
 4look at it and be asked if he ----
 5MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Absolutely, that is what I meant.
 6MR RAMPTON:    The relevant page has 4 at the top of it,
 7I think. I would prefer actually, my Lord, if it is
 8possible, it is a good idea of Miss Rogers, that the
 9witness really ought to be given time to read the whole
10thing.
11MR JUSTICE GRAY:    He can come back to it, but would you mind
12for my benefit whilst it is in my head just to find ----
13MR RAMPTON:    It is the bottom half of page 4.
14MR IRVING:    Page 31 it starts.
15MR IRVING:    I think it is a useful exercise, my Lord, if
16I translate the entire document.
17MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I would be grateful if you would translate
18now for me: "Nach dem rautign Uberglick". I can guess
19what it means, but I am probably wrong.
20MR IRVING:    On which page is that?
21MR JUSTICE GRAY:    It is the bottom of page 4, about eight lines
22up from the bottom, six lines up from the bottom.
23MR IRVING:    "According to what we know now that it was perhaps
2470 people from Himmler to Hirst.
25MR JUSTICE "GRAY:    According to what we know now".
26MR IRVING:    Yes, that is the way I would translate that, or

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 1seen from the present standpoint.
 2MR JUSTICE GRAY:    You would rather have a bit of time to
 3consider this, would you, Dr Longerich?
 4A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Yes.
 5MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I am going to put this immediately after 14A
 6in your clip.
 7MR RAMPTON:    The only thing I would point though is that at the
 8bottom of page 4 of what I might call the authentic
 9version there is a sentence relating to Martin Bormann
10which naturally makes a link with Hitler which is missed
11out of Mr Irving's version.
12A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Which page is that?
13MR RAMPTON:    Page 31 at the bottom or 4 at the top, there is a
14sentence "G.W. Bormann" and so on and that is not in the
15version that was presented this morning. It is an earlier
16sentence, two sentences earlier, has been missed out as
17well. I do not know whether it is significant.
18MR IRVING:    I will translate the entire document and I will fax
19it through to you at the weekend.
20A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     As far as I can see from the document, he is basically
21saying two things. He is saying, yes, we carried out the
22Holocaust, the Final Solution, we killed, we tried and we
23were able to, we killed millions of Jews. He talks about
24Millionen Morden on page 5, and on the other hand he is
25saying, well, actually Himmler did it on his own
26initiative because he thought that he could fulfil

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 1Hitler's ideas. So I do not know, I mean I do not know
 2how you put your case, you know, how you want to deal with
 3the document. Are you saying this is a kind of
 4confirmation that millions of Jews were actually killed in
 5extermination camps? I mean what is the way you want to
 6deal with the document? Are you only relying on parts of
 7it and you would then refuse other parts of the documents?
 8MR IRVING:    At first blush does the document look self-serving
 9to you?
10A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Yes, I think so, because he wants to, I mean Wolf's aim
11was of course to distance himself from the events. So he
12is saying, well, actually this operation was only carried
13out by 70 people. So he did not of course admit that it
14was a much, much larger operation. So there is a kind of
15self-serving in it. Also this is his personal, the
16impression he had. He is in talking in 1952 about events
17ten years earlier. Wolff was of course an admirer of
18Hitler and he tried to distance Hitler from the Holocaust,
19from this history. I do not see how much
20I should -- I mean I can accept this is Wolf's view in
211952, but I do not see how this could destroy the other
22evidence. Also which part of the story are you accepting,
23the part that Himmler ordered Millionen Morden, the
24killing of millions of people, or the other part that
25Hitler was not involved in?
26Q. [Mr Irving]     Well, you have accepted that the order of a million Jews

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 1were killed on the Eastern Front, I think, there is no
 2question about that.
 3MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Despite your acceptance that it is
 4self-serving, I think it may be quite important to have
 5another look at this on Monday morning. I think it might
 6be as well perhaps to have in my mind on Monday morning
 7the reference when it was first introduced in evidence
 8today, because my recollection is that you put it forward
 9as being a document which could be relied on.
10MR IRVING:    Indeed, my Lord, yes. I certainly will not depart
11from that. I am just about to ask one final question of
12the witness. Dr Longerich, this is an interview between
13Karl Wolff which he has requested to be kept confidential,
14is it not?
15A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     No, I do not think so.
16Q. [Mr Irving]     Did you yourself say that the Karl Wolff collection at the
17time you wished to see it was kept confidential?
18A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     No, you confuse two points. You referred yesterday to
19memoirs of Karl Wolff, and they are not generally
20accessible, but the collection S Zeugenschrift, I
21know this collection quite well, is open, everybody can go
22in the Institute and make a photocopy and use it. These
23are the internal interviews the Institute made in the
241950s. By the way, the interviews are in a way not
25verbatim transcripts. These are a kind summary that the
26person who made the interviews actually made.

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 1Q. [Mr Irving]     Were they originally kept confidential, these interviews?
 2A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Not that I am aware of. I am using this since the 1970s
 3and I think they were publicly accessible to everybody.
 4MR JUSTICE GRAY:    I notice that Mr Irving's manuscript is ----
 5A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Not this one, but I know the collection. I spent a lot of
 6time reading this.
 7MR JUSTICE GRAY:    Mr Irving's manuscript is headed
 8"Confidential" I notice, but that does not appear to be
 9on the original.
10A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     Where is that?
11MR JUSTICE GRAY:    That is page 14 in the clip you got this
12morning.
13MR IRVING:    Yes. My Lord, access to a lot of these documents
14is going to be on the basis of confidentiality by the
15Institute, because these people are still alive. My final
16question is, this is an interview by an historian and not
17by a prosecutor, is it not?
18A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     An historian, yes.
19Q. [Mr Irving]     Would you expect an interview by an historian to obtain
20other information from a witness than a prosecutor would,
21a different kind of overall picture?
22A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     One has to discuss the quality of this particular
23interview. An historian, I do not know this person, I do
24not know who -- I think it was Wolfgang Ziegel, as far as
25I can see -- I have my doubts about his quality as a good
26interviewer I have to say. I think he was sitting

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 1together with people, chatting with them, and then he was
 2going home and made a kind of summary. It is not an
 3accurate verbatim protocol, a minute of a meeting.
 4Q. [Mr Irving]     Do you have any basis for saying that it is not an
 5accurate protocol?
 6A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     It is not a verbatim, it is not countersigned as far as
 7I see from Wolff. So he visited Wolff in Munich in his
 8flat, chatted with him, went back to the Institute and
 9wrote down, you know, his general view about this.
10Q. [Mr Irving]     Would he have taken notes, do you think, during the
11interview?
12A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]     I do not know. I have no idea. Sometimes interviewees
13say: "Please do not take notes". I do not know what
14Wolff's attitude was. I have no indication of that.
15MR IRVING:    Thank you.
16MR JUSTICE GRAY:    We will resume on Monday at 10.30.
17< (The witness stood down).
18(The Court adjourned until Monday, 28th February 2000
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