Notes and comments by David Irving on the Frontline article April, 2000.

1. As the documents in Discovery proved, Lipstadt was paid $25,000 by the Yad Vashem institution, an Israeli government Agency in Jerusalem, to write the manuscript on which her book was based.

2. The reference is Day 18 (Feb 10, 2000) at page 33. The journalist has gravely misquoted the exchange. The full text runs:

Irving. You attach great importance to the objective use of sources, is that right?

Evans. I do, yes.

Q. Yes.

A. I think the sources, as it were, have a right of veto on what one can and what one cannot say.

Q. Express.

A. But within the area that is covered by the sources that you use, there is, of course, scope for some disagreement.

Q. You have done a certain amount of research into the Nazi period, have you not?

A. Yes.

Q. This was not originally your speciality, was it? Originally, you came from a different era of history?

A. Yes, I have researched on eras of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Q. For some reason the Nazi era is a profitable era of research if one writes books? I do not mean this in any sense as a criticism.

A. Well, I have to say the only book that I have done that is based on archival research on the Nazi period, a book called "Rituals of Retribution" on the issue of capital punishment in Germany since the 17th century, has sold very badly. It is far too long and I am told that Penguin regard it as something of an albatross.

Q. It contains acres of sludge, does it?

A. I would not describe it as sludge myself, no.

3. The private diary of my 1987 trip to South Africa was posted on this website in 1998. The reference quoted in truncated form by the journalist (and by Rampton) is from the entry for November 10. The full text reads:

Around 8 p.m. my name was paged: Claire B-- had come to see me with her rather quiet fiancé Burridge, a doctor in Swaziland. We gossiped for an hour, she bristling a bit about some of my more blatant chauvinism, he talking most interestingly about the AIDS epidemic in Black Africa; says he thinks that the Black population in all Africa will die out within a very short space of time.

He attributes the incredibly high AIDS incidence among Blacks to their sexual activity, few Blacks apparently engaging in less than five sexual acts per night. He says the astonishing sexual activity among Black men accounts for why a large number of white female intellectuals and students like having Black boyfriends, which now, of course, they will regret. God works in mysterious ways, but here, He appears to be working remorselessly towards a Final Solution, which may cruelly wipe out not only the Blacks and homosexuals but a large part of the drug addicts and sexually promiscuous and indiscriminate heterosexual population as well.

He says the virus is clearly the same as one known for a long time to have affected the monkey population. -- "The only weapon against AIDS," I suggest, "is an aspirin: clenched firmly between the knees at all times."

And then see what Defence Counsel Richard Rampton makes of this entry in a private diary in his scathing cross examination on Day 14 (Feb 2, 2000) at page 102. It is noteworthy that today, 13 years later, the full scale of southern Africa's AIDS catastrophe (with 70 percent of the whole world's HIV-positive cases) has at last reached the attention of the outside world through the efforts of President Thabo Mbeki. Note that in his Judgment Judge Gray wrote at 13.106: "The manner in which Irving speaks of the AIDS epidemic wiping out blacks, homosexuals, drug addicts and others has in my view a distinctly racist flavour. " And at 13.107: "I cannot accept that the various explanations put forward by Irving for what he said and wrote deprive his words of their racist quality... I reject Irving's explanations... of his comments about the spread of AIDS in Africa..." I find it hard to find the slightest trace of racist sentiment in the diary entry quoted in full above; quite the reverse ("cruelly").

4. The reference will be found on Day 18 (Feb 10 ) at page 99:

Irving. Yes. Reverting to standards on anti-Semitism, what do you know about the statements made by leading politicians on the Jews during the war? Were they anti-Semitic in any degree, people like Winston Churchill or Anthony Eden or Lord Halifax? Are you familiar with any of the things that they said?

Prof. Evans. I am not, no.

Q. No. I just want to put to you a little clip of extracts that I made from some of their private diaries, and I do not propose to read these out.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you just help me ----

MR IRVING: It is headed: "Anti-Semitism in the diaries".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- as to their relevance?

MR IRVING: The relevance? It is arguable, my Lord. I was going to say on a scale of 1 to 10 is Lord Halifax mildly anti-Semitic if these ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but what if he is? I mean, help me about that.

MR IRVING: Then the question I was going to say is on the scale of what you know from my private diaries, what number do I reach? 1, 0.5?

MR RAMPTON: I mean, the fact that these well-known people are, as I can plainly see, having looked at some of this stuff, guilty of the same kind of blatant anti-Semitism as Mr Irving takes us nowhere.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a "so what?" point really?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is a "so what?" point with a big question mark.

In my view it was wrong for Judge Gray to have disallowed my introduction of this comparative material, showing how shockingly antisemitic Britain's wartime statesmen were. See too Day 28 (March 1) page 33.

5. Long before Mr Rampton and Prof. Lipstadt, and even before Mr Himmler and his Auschwitz, the phrase "the truth shall set you free" was propagated by the Holy Scriptures. (St John 8:32.)

6. This is the phrase that most alarmed the defence, and they and -- unwittingly Judge Gray, by forbidding argument on the topic -- went to great lengths to kill the evidence that Crematorium 1 at Auschwitz, to which Mr Irving is referring in this speech, is a fake built by the Poles in 1948. On Day 10 at page 212 et seq. Judge Gray resolutely (and totally unexpectedly) refused to allow me to lead evidence or cross examine Pelt the expert witness, on this precise point, to establish that Krema I is a fake. (He reasoned that what happened after 1945 was neither here nor there. He even said: "So what!") Rampton, no doubt unable to believe his good luck, at once chimed in in the same vein.

 7. For the full transcript on this "Sieg Heil" "Mein Führer" passage of my closing speech see Day 32 (March 15, 2000) at page 193:

Irving: When the off-screen chanting of slogans begins at 18:18:59 I am clearly seen to interrupt my speech, shake my head at them and gesticulate with my left hand to them to stop, and I am clearly heard to say, "You must not", because they are shouting the "Siegheil" slogans, "Mein Führer", and things like, "you must not always be thinking of the past". I am heard clearly to say: "You must always be thinking of the past. You must not keep coming out with the slogans of the past. We are thinking of the future [voice emphasised] of Germany. We are thinking of the future of the German people. As an Englishman I have to say ...", and so on.

Related page: Letter from a correspondent on this episode: he was in court that day.