David Irving |
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2009
© Focal Point 2009
More women died on the back seat of Senator Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in that gas chamber at Auschwitz.
March 1, 2009 (Sunday)
Windsor (England)A CORRESPONDENT sends me links to Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times articles about Bishop Williamson. Not bad and, I expect on legal advice, they now studiously avoid calling me a "Holocaust denier," while working round that smear as nastily as they can. I send a reader's letter to the Sunday Telegraph at nine a.m :
The actual statement was "More women died on the back seat of Senator Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in that gas chamber at Auschwitz" - the one shown to the tourists. It was built in 1948, as the Polish inscription outside now admits.The Williamson controversy is in its last throes, I think.
B. is here and we agree details of a mini tour of the Midlands -- Oxford 13th, Birmingham 14th, Manchester 15th, Halifax 16th. We now have to postpone Norway until that replacement Visa card comes. How ridiculous.
6:10 p.m Ryan Kisiel of the Mail phones impatiently -- am I going to send him the things he wants for the Hitler article in the Daily Mail or not? I say quite bluntly that I am not going to help him, because they will not be paying, and so there is nothing in it for me. He replies sharply, with a rude edge on his voice, "David, you've got to realize that Fleet Street newspapers will never, ever, pay any money to you."
I chuckle out loud and say they just have, and hang up. I should have mentioned to him that his bosses at The Daily Mail paid me ten thousand in 1983 for a couple of pages of the fake Hitler Diaries, a lot of money in those days. I am sorry I wasted my time on him. Thumbs up from Jae, who overhears this brief conversation.
At six-thirty pm I drive Jessica back to B.; we are delayed on the M4 for over an hour by somebody's serious pile-up in Chiswick. Then turn straight round and back to Windsor, getting back home at nine p.m. A stranger, D., has donated $500 online, says he admires my efforts on behalf of Williamson. The Bishop has a myriad of supporters worldwide.
Roland Kapferer of Australian Broadcasting Commission emails: "Thank you very much for agreeing to do our interview on March 18 at the ABC studios." I pick up on that: "Did I? at the ABC studios? when?" He was supposed to be doing it out here. That will involve a whole day wasted in London, plus costs.
March 2, 2009 (Monday)
Windsor (England)Úlfur Engil writes in a letter about Richard Walther Darré:
I am looking forward to the third volume of Churchill's War. I remember, while working at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, four years ago, there was a professor who actually utilised volumes I and II as part of his curriculum. Also, the endeavour with writing a biography on Himmler must be a challenge, particularly when it comes to the more 'esoteric' side.That's nice.
I chide Michele Renouf (left) about things. "Great articles, M., but you gotta stop cc-ing letters to a long list -- you reveal all their names, and […] is not a good person to be pally with, perhaps?" She replies stoutly: "[He] is a very good person to be pally with …!" "You are incorrigible," I respond: "I like [him] as a person, and played tennis with him [ca 1995]. His views are very extreme, however, and can well sink you. That's how the enemy operates. Don't make it too easy for them."
9:30 a.m Kapferer phones again from South Africa, just leaving for Ghana; still wants to do the interview in ABC studios, London; I ask for a fee then, and he sounds a bit taken aback but is then accommodating.
Paloma queries from Madrid: "Hi Daddy, Did you manage to put a cheque into my account after all?" Little has changed with daughters. When she was a child I joked that her name PALOMA stood for "Please A Lot Of Money -- At once".
THERE is a phone call from Ori Golan -- I did not catch his name at first -- who says he's a reporter from Australia and in consequence I mistakenly start off being civil to him. But it turns out he's from Israel, "that sh*tty little country in the Middle East", wanting to know if I have offered my books to an Israeli. I say no, but he says he hears I've tried to engage an Israeli literary agency.
This is true, we did write to a Ms. Efrat Lev, Foreign Rights Director of the Deborah Harris Agency in Jerusalem (email [email protected]). She has sent copies of our letter around. I suspect that Efrat stands for Female Rat.
Ori is whining on, sounding outraged. Why should I think that any Israelis might be interested in my books? I say they have been best-sellers in many countries, and I receive many inquiries from Israel. But Jews… he continues, spluttering more outrage. His tone is deeply offensive, and I decide to tell him what I think; Jae, seated at her desk across the room, beams appreciatively as the invective rises.
Why should he think that Jews are any different? I tease him. Do they really need special treatment? He chokes with rage. I advise him that if he wishes to conduct interviews in future with us "normal people", namely non Jews, he might try a less offensive approach. Sounds of mounting fury churn out of the phone.
I mention that Jews around the world have not only praised my books, but also published them -- I mention Tom Bower, Professor Loewenheim of Texas U., Lord Weidenfeld, David Kahn -- but he is off screaming with more outrage at me. Why am I doing it? I suggest in mild terms that if he is indeed a journalist, he probably does it for money; and that as I am a professional writer it's not impossible that I also write books to earn money:
"Now, you folks know about money, right?" I say."It's what you cherish above all else? Folks like Bernie Madoff, who has made-off with fifty billions belonging to others?" Spluttering sounds come into my ear. "I expect that now that I am talking of money," I tease, "you are drooling and your tongue is lolling out of the corner of your mouth down to the floor."
This is one of the great benefits of a judge having called me an anti-semite: I am not, but I can speak it like it is. You people are incorrigible, I tell him; and, if you really must continue to be violently offensive, you must .. not .. be .. surprised .. if .. people .. after .. a .. while .. just .. hang .. up.. on .. you. Click.
I wonder if Brown or Blair ever spoke to a Jewish journalist like that.
March 3, 2009 (Tuesday)
Windsor (England)MESSAGES of support for Bishop Williamson pour in and I forward them, e.g.:
I have followed matters concerning you from a distance. I suppose I could say I have sympathised with you, but never really closely studied what you were saying. Then I have noticed that Bishop Williamson sought advice from you. Now Bishop Williamson is a man I regard very highly. This has spurred me on to read what you are saying, and I am currently reading 'Banged Up' on the internet. It has moved me a lot and opened my eyes too.Your incarceration was totally unjust and your account was very moving. Please can you tell me if you have any plans to come to Ireland, north or south. I would love to hear one of your lectures.
I tell him I shall speak at the University of Galway on the nineteenth. -- Things gradually become clearer. An Australian correspondent writes: "I remember in one of [Professor] Konrad Kwiet's tutorial classes, a student asked him, Why does everybody hate Jews?
There must be something wrong with them. He called her a racist and told her to leave the class. So much for developing young enquiring minds in Universities."
I reply: "Konrad Kwiet was the first professor to write to the Australian government in 1992 and demand that I should be refused a visa. Now that is hate."
Professor Peter Longerich [Deborah Lipstadt's highly paid "neutral expert" at her 2000 libel trial] delivers a one-hour talk on Himmler, Hitler and the Holocaust, which is why I am here: I am always willing to listen to others, particularly if they may be more expert than I.
After all, although I am pretty certain that Longerich has spoken to none of Himmler's staff or officers, let alone his brother Gebhard as I did in 1971, he has published a 1,000 page tome on the man. He even quotes, without of course any attribution to me or Hitler's War, from the diary of Otto Bräutigam which I discovered in the Library of Congress manuscripts division. But the whole talk is very wishy-washy and short on documentation.
It "seems certain", he says, that Hitler was behind the order, but he can offer no more closely argued evidence than that Hitler and Himmler had appointments with each other a few days before or after certain events -- as though they had naught else to talk about. He omits all the documents which demolish his case, but what else is new with the conformist historians of today?
Longerich has aged since the occasion when I first saw him in this same room in 1998, when I tried to ask him about the Schlegelberger document, and the same chairman as this evening rose with alacrity to explain to the audience that the Herr Professor had asked him to state that he was not willing to accept any questions from Herr Irving.
This is the same Longerich who, his English less fluent than now, just two years later in January 2000 swore on oath under my cross-examination that he had no feelings against me and that he was neutral between the parties in the Lipstadt Trial (as is required by the law on expert witnesses).
Trotting out the usual psycho-babble, he hints that Himmler may have suffered sexual abuse as a child, and that this may have conditioned his adult behaviour as a mass murderer. Jae turns round and sees several members of the audience asleep. As I find myself wondering if he ever spoke with Himmler's daughter Gudrun, as I have, I notice a thick cream envelope protruding from his inside pocket, gradually sliding obliquely out and eventually plopping onto the table; he tucks it rapidly away, his honorarium for this evening, paid for by the German taxpayer.
His eyes glassily fixing on me from time to time -- I am unmistakable, sitting with my friends in the front row, barely six feet away -- Longerich skates past the difficult topics, especially the reprimand which Himmler levelled at SS Obergruppenführer Jeckeln on Hitler's instructions in November 1941 after a massacre of Jews at Riga [accusing him of "exceeding the guidelines laid down by myself and Heydrich"] and then reaches the end of his talk, thankful no doubt that I have not so much as quietly sniffed in disbelief.
Hitler was undoubtedly behind the "genocide", Longerich has said, after frankly admittiung that there is not a single document to back up this statement. In fact he rightly states that Himmler's remarks in the October 6, 1943 speech at Posnan to SS officers reveal that "he himself took the decision" to kill the Jewish women and children -- no mention of Hitler here. All rather awkward for him. He has raised, in answer to a question, the fact that Himmler also locked away homosexuals, criminals and other undesirables, and not only Jews; but he does not mention gypsies, so I tuck my document away, unmentioned.
THEN comes the surprise. As the function comes to an end, the Director, Dr Andreas Gestrich, affably invites all present to socialise over a drink -- "of wine," he adds. "But we do not wish to extend this hospitality," he states, squirming slightly, "to those who deny the Holocaust, and they are requested now to leave."
I cannot forbear to ask him to spell out this discourtesy more clearly to all present. "Would you please be more specific? To whom, by name, are you referring with that smear, so that there can be no doubt?"
"To you," he says, pausing and lowering his voice slightly. "David Irving."
I admit that this juvenile reprimand is unexpected. He is behaving like the small boy at school who invites his whole class to his birthday party, except for one -- whom he wishes to injure and insult by the exclusion. A German is sending me to Coventry; after his fellow Germans have bombed it.
There are mild-mannered protests. One man calls out that in that case he will not stay for their drinks either. "I have read his books. I agree with them. So I guess I am not invited either."
I stand up and face the audience, and state that this is of course the way that Germany has always behaved -- they have had a troubled relationship with free debate for a hundred years or more.
As the function breaks up, a tall thin man jabs a finger at me and sneers, "Nobody should ever read your books!" I remind him that this very Institute currently houses some thirty of my books on its shelves. "No doubt you will now withdraw them," I tell the Director, "and you will want to burn them too."
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Ori Golan in The Sydney Morning Herald: Irving tries to enter Israeli market
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