David Irving vs. Penguin Books & Deborah Lipstadt

David irving vs. Penguin Books & Deborah LipstadtDAY 25: Thursday, 24th February 2000.[This transcript has been spellchecked, but hyperlinks have not yet been added — Webmaster, FPP]

(10.00 a.m.)

[DR LONGERICH, recalled.]

Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: May it please the court. My Lord, you requested yesterday that I should state my position on the Einsatzgruppen and I place before your Lordship a two-page summary of my position. I do not know whether your Lordship wishes to address it now? I gave a copy to Mr Rampton. If Mr Rampton wishes to address it now, then I would be perfectly happy to discuss with him.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is sensible to have a look at it now because it just could affect some of the cross-examination later today. (Pause for reading) I am bound to say that I think that differs very, very substantially from the position that you seem to have adopted in your cross-examination by Mr Rampton.

MR IRVING: Does it? In which respect?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems to me that this is a rather partial acknowledgement of Hitler’s knowledge and therefore responsibility for what went on in the Eastern territories.

MR IRVING: Of course I did not mention the October 1943 watershed, that is true.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry about that because you accepted

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everything, as it were, after that. Mr Rampton?

MR RAMPTON: I regard it as a fairly enormous step backwards. However, it does not trouble me in the very slightest, I have to say, because by a combination of the actual evidence of what was happening at the time and what Mr Irving said when first confronted with it, I am quite happy to leave that matter to be made by way of submission at the end of the case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right and it seemed to me that, when you were saying you might have to recall Browning and so on, I do not think that is right.

MR RAMPTON: No, it was off the cuff and it was not meant in terrorem, but it was a thought that occurred to me. I think actually, having regard to this, that this is so inconsistent, in my submission, with what was first said in cross-examination, that I am happy to leave it like that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is a matter for comment later on. Mr Irving, that must be right. To the extent that there is a difference between the position you took in cross-examination and this document, then Mr Rampton obviously must be entitled to make whatever comment he thinks fit.

MR IRVING: Or indeed to cross-examine me further on that document.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He may want to do that, I do not know.

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Probably not I guess. Anyway, I have that now. Again I think it is sensible to try to work out where it should go. I think probably it goes in — this is really for the transcript so that everybody knows where it is —

MR IRVING: L, was it not?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was thinking more, because in a way it is statement of your case, I wonder whether it belongs in C or, indeed, in the pleadings. I think that is right. I will tuck it behind your defence in bundle A.

MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much for doing that anyway. When I say “defence”, I mean, of course, reply, tab 4. Yes. Is there anything else before you resume?

MR IRVING: No, I can begin cross-examination. Dr Peter Longerich, recalled Cross-examined by Mr Irving, continued.

Q. Dr Longerich, good morning.

A. Good morning.

Q. We touched yesterday briefly on the existence in the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte of manuscripts written by Karl Wolff. You said that it was of a confidential nature and that it was not open for general research. I stated that in my discovery there had been extracts or a transcript of part of that. Can I ask you to look at the little bundle I just gave you? My Lord, this is on page 14 of the little bundle which is in sections.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this a manuscript? Manuscript, Karl Wolff, I see.

MR IRVING: Yes. If you go to page 16, which is the last page in that little clip, you will see a handwritten version of it. That is the original German. Page 14 is the original German transcript.

A. May I ask, is this your transcript?

Q. Yes, that is my handwriting.

A. So I have to rely on Mr Irving’s summary?

Q. Yes, extracts.

A. I have to say I am not happy with that because, as we experienced yesterday, Mr Irving tends to shorten documents and I do not agree with him on the principles in the way he shortens documents. I am not very happy to comment on his transcripts or excerpts from documents. I would like to see the original.

Q. If you look at line 6, you will see that I have put three dots, and line 7 I have three dots.

A. Yes, but I have not seen the original, so I cannot —-

Q. You stated, of course, that you were not permitted to see the original because it was a confidential document.

A. Yes. Still I would like to see the original.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I know what the problem is. Where is the original, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: It is in the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: To which Mr Irving does not have access.

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I take your point entirely, Dr Longerich, but shall we just see what the question is and see whether you can cope. If you do not feel you can —-

MR IRVING: My position would be of course, my Lord, that this was the document that was before me when I was writing my book, this handwritten extract.

A. But you were allowed to make photocopies from the document. I would really prefer to see a photocopy instead of your handwritten notes on the document.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have a photocopy, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: No, my Lord. I was not allowed to make photocopies on this particular one.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Proceed fairly cautiously. What is the point?

MR IRVING: If you will now look at the translation, which is on page 10, this is an explanation, is it not? It is an extract, first of all, from a confidential manuscript by Karl Wolff dated May 11th 1952, and he is referring to the effect on Himmler of the assassination of Heydrich. In the second paragraph Wolff expresses the rather extraordinary view that perhaps 70 men all told from Himmler to Höss were involved in the extermination of the Jews.

Then there is something which I put in quotation marks. The inference is that it is actually words from the document: “Bormann and Himmler probably represented the view that the Jewish problem had to be dealt with

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without Hitler getting his fingers dirty on it.” Then the next paragraph says: “After the mass epidemic at Auschwitz, the idea of deliberate mass deaths probably occurred. Himmler was in his way bizarre and religious and held to the view that for the greatest war Lord and the greatest war of all times he had take upon himself tasks which had to be solved to put Hitler’s ideas into effect without engaging him”, that is Hitler personally —-

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am sorry, I am going to interrupt you now. This is, it seems to me, of fairly central potential importance.

MR IRVING: In two ways, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not know what it was going to say. It is wholly unsatisfactory, is it not, to have your manuscript rendition, if that is the right word, of parts of this document? Is there an insuperable problem about getting hold of a photocopy of it?

MR IRVING: I will ask the Institute if they will provide me with a photocopy.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or even the Defendants might get a more helpful reaction to a request for a photocopy of this document.

MR RAMPTON: We might, but I have to say this is a note of something that Karl Wolff, a high ranking SS officer close to Himmler and Hitler, said in 1952.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is potentially self-exculpatory, I can see that.

MR RAMPTON: That is a comment that I would make about it. The reason I say that now is that I do not know that I believe that it is worth, frankly, our time and trouble going to get the original from Munich.

A. Can I make a comment here, or a question?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, please do.

A. This is your interview with Karl Wolff?

MR IRVING: Good Lord, no.

A. You referred yesterday to a confidential manuscript by Karl Wolff. This is not a part of the confidential manuscript. This is part of the collection of testimonies collected by the Institute in the 1950s. You can recognize it by these reference numbers shown in German. It is an open class. I think, if you phone the Institute, you can get a photocopy within three hours or so.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I would have thought.

A. It is open class. There is no need to rely on handwritten excerpts, anything of this kind.

Q. You see, I am a bit unhappy, I will be frank, Mr Irving, that there are dots immediately before and immediately after the passage that you rely on.

MR IRVING: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is satisfactory and I think the witness is entitled to take the position,

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“I am not prepared to comment unless I have the entire document in front of me”. Whether it has any weight or not is another matter.

MR IRVING: The only weight that it might possibly have is of course that I relied heavily on my extracts from the Wolff manuscript in writing my books.

A. This is not the Wolff manuscript.

MR IRVING: Your Lordship will recognise passages from this manuscript as they are represented and summarised in the Hitler’s War.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: My response to that is whether an objective historian could and should have placed weight on this document must depend on the whole terms of it, not just on selective extracts.

MR IRVING: Of course I saw the whole document when I sat there making the extracts.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course you did, but I think we need to see the whole document to see whether you should have attached the weight you say you did attach to it.

MR IRVING: I will try to obtain it, but of course I cannot obtain it today.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am wondering whether, if it really is a matter of three hours, and I do not see why it should not be, as Dr Longerich says, somebody could not perhaps even go and place a telephone call now.

MR RAMPTON: The best person to do that is the gentleman in the

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witness box. I may be speaking out of turn but I think he is the one that carries the clout so far as the Institute in Munich is concerned. It may be that one of my German researchers would be able to do it and see if we can get it before close of play today.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I was hoping. I will leave it to you. I think I am going to ask you to leave this document and come back to it. We will come back to it anyway but come back to it if we get the proper document.

MR RAMPTON: I am told that they do not feel they can do it. Could I have permission to speak to Dr Longerich about it at the adjournment? Maybe he can make a telephone call at lunch time.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, if it really cannot be done before then.

MR RAMPTON: I am told, I do not know reasons are, that it would be difficult for anybody but him to do it. Perhaps I could be a little unorthodox and ask him now?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, why not? Do you mind, Mr Irving? It is a bit unorthodox.

MR RAMPTON: Could you make a telephone call at lunch time?

A. If you give me a phone.

MR RAMPTON: We will give you a phone.

A. Yes, Sir.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

A. (After a pause) Sorry, is this a break?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, it is not. Mr Irving, carry on.

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MR IRVING: While you still have that bundle in front of you — my Lord, this is just by way of putting documents in — page 1 is a German document which is a conference dated August 6th 1942, on the face of it. Right? It is from an American microfilm T 501 which is the records of the military government, the Generalgouvernement. Is it a record of the conference of 6th August 1942, Dr Longerich?

A. Again, I have to say I got this document five minutes ago and I should really have the time to read it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us read it together. I am sure we will be able to manage.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I am just really going to pay attention to the title of the document and in the most general terms. Is this a document relating to increasing air raid precaution measurements in the government general?

A. The translation is guidelines for the building up of air raid defence in the area of the command of the military force in the Generalgouvernement. That is the title.

Q. The remaining four pages just give guidelines for how to do this, to build air raid shelters because of the increased danger of British air attacks?

A. It does not say British air attacks. I think it could also refer to Soviet or American attacks but I just trust you that this is the case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just so that I understand the relevance, this is back to Auschwitz?

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MR IRVING: Back to Auschwitz, my Lord, yes, crematorium No. II. The next document I want you to look at briefly is on page 5. First of all, I draw your attention to the SS runes on the first line under be Abschrift. Do you have page 5?

A. Yes.

Q. You see the SS runes after Reichsführer SS?

A. Yes.

Q. So this is probably a genuine wartime document? I have to put it like that.

A. Probably.

Q. Are you familiar with this document, signed by the chief of the concentration camp system, Pohl?

A. I cannot recall the document. I am really curious to know from which archive the document is. I also have to say I did not have the time to read the document. So would you say where this document is from, from which archive you have that?

Q. It has been provided to me by a lawyer in Düsseldorf who is heavily involved in wartime cases.

A. So you cannot say from which archive.

Q. I will obtain it for the court.

A. It is difficult for me to comment on the document if I do not know where the original is.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see that. Was this in your discovery, Mr Irving?

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MR IRVING: My Lord, no it was not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought not. It is typical of last minute documents being provided to me by lawyers around the world and they know these things. If your Lordship has any objection, then I would not take it further.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not. I think this document is rather different from your manuscript and I think we will proceed cautiously, but for the moment let us assume it is authentic.

MR IRVING: If you just look at the first page of this document and run your eye over it, is Pohl sending a message to all the concentration camp commandants, 19 of them, saying: “It is time to stop the rough and ready measures with prisoners. We are losing them like flies. We need their manpower. Look after them better”?

A. Well, first of all, I have to express my reservations about this document. I do not know the context. I do not know the archive. But on the assumption that this is an authentic document, yes, it is a letter to the 19 heads of the concentration camps, and obviously the document is saying that they have to improve their measures to keep prisoners alive, so which is a kind of reference to what happened in the camps before, I think.

Q. Indeed, and paragraph 5 of that first page says: “Not from any false sentimentality but because we need their arms and legs because those are helping the German people

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to get to a great victory. That is why we have got to start paying attention to the welfare of the prisoners”?

A. Yes. That is stated here in this document.

Q. Then the next page, page 2, the heading is, “Foodstuffs, food, feeding”?

A. I do not have the time to read now.

Q. Well, I am just asking you to look at the headings. That all we need, I think. Page 2 he is talking about the feeding. The following page, paragraph 2, is called “Clothing”. Then down to the bottom of that page, “Natural Medications” or “Health” —-

A. Yes.

Q. — “stuff”.

A. Well, I cannot, you know, I cannot read so fast but under “Clothing” it is stated here: “I decide that during the winter, as far as far as available, prisoners should wear coats, pullover, socks”, so that should give you an idea about the standards which actually existed in the concentration camps before this letter arrived, and it says, it says “as far as available”, so it does not actually say, “Give the men, you know, proper clothing”.

It is saying, you know, “You can give them socks if they are available and nothing more”. So I think this gives you a kind of an idea of this.

Q. Over the page, paragraph 4 is called “Avoiding unnecessary exertions”. For example, these frequent parades were they

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[Pages 15-22 are omitted from this edited transcript as they are duplicated –Editors]

held standing for hours while they were counted Zählappelle —-

A. Yes.

Q. — are to be kept as short as possible, and so on. In other words, there seems to be a reversal of existing policy because they are losing prisoners like flies to what I would call non-violent causes.

A. That is your interpretation, yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what is yours?

A. Well, they started in the concentration camps a programme which they called “extermination through work”. So they

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used hard labour as a tool, as a means to kill prisoners. This was the practice before. Now, at October ’43, it is not really surprising they are a bit cautious here and they are trying to improve as far as they can, trying to improve in some sense the general conditions of the prisoners. But, of course, this is a document, I mean, this document is, of course, sent to the head of the concentration camps — nothing to do with the extermination camps, for instance.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going to ask you about that.

A. Yes. So, as far as Auschwitz is concerned, it concerns the slave labours within the camp. It does not say anything about the people who were deported to the camp and selected in front of the camp. If one, you know, if I have to — if I were in the position to give you a kind of expert’s opinion on the condition in the concentration camps at the end of 1943, I would not completely rely on this document. It would be completely unprofessional to rely on this one document.

One has to look, of course, at all kind of circumstances. One has to look at the death rates. They had statistics on the death rates and I had to look at those, and so on. You know, the problem with this kind of document is that if you have not seen the file, in the file in the next bit you could find a document which says, “Well, I recall my order from last week”. If you do not have the context, it

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is difficult to make, you know, a general statement as an historian about the condition in this camp, and whether they really, you know, in the way gave up this idea of extermination through work in the end of 1943 and how far they still carried on with this policy.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you one question? You refer to the death rates and they were being reported, for example, from Auschwitz on a regular basis?

A. Yes.

Q. Death rates of those in the camps?

A. Yes.

Q. The inmates in the camps?

A. Yes, exactly.

Q. Do you recall, in general, whether the death rate reduced around October 1943?

A. I cannot — I think I should not speculate.

Q. No.

A. I do not have the statistics here and I cannot answer.

MR IRVING: You do actually because they are just in one of the other documents in the bundle, my Lord. We are coming to the death rates in a minute.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we? Good.

MR IRVING: Yes. Can I ask, if you have finished with your replies, Dr Longerich, now to look at the loose page No. 15? This is from the same kind of source, is it not, the administration of the concentration camp system, dated

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December 28th 1942, and this is a letter addressed to the camp doctors of the concentration camps. Let me tell you where this comes from. It comes from a book called “Macht ohne Moral”. It is, obviously, not a wartime transcript. It has been transcribed, presumably, from a microfilm or something.

A. Yes, it is, I think somebody —-

Q. Typed a copy?

A. — typed a copy, yes.

Q. But it is a letter written to the camp doctors of the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. That is the fifth one. Ravensbrück, Flossenbürg and Natzweiler and I can see there Mauthausen at the end. It is saying to them in the second sentence, is it not, well, it begins by saying, “I am attaching”, which is not attached here, “a list of the current editions and departures in all the concentration camps for your attention.

From the latter,, you can see that of 156,000 arrivals, around 70,000 have died”. He goes on to say: “This is completely unacceptable and the camp doctors have to stop their rough and ready measures and they have to start making sure the prisoners survive”. What would you make of that kind of document? Are there any other passages you want to read from that document or translate?

A. Well, it says here that one can read from the statistics that from 156 prisoners who came into the camp, 70,000

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died, and with this kind of high death rates, one is not able to keep the number of prisoners on the same level. I think this is the main concern, to keep, because the people died in the concentration camps, it is not possible to keep, you know, to keep this number of prisoners in the camp. This is nothing to do, of course, with extermination and gas chambers in Auschwitz. It is what happens in the camp.

MR RAMPTON: Can I, perhaps, interrupt and ask Dr Longerich, not Mr Irving, Dr Longerich, to translate the rest of that paragraph when he has read it?

A. Yes. “The concentration, the camp doctors have to make sure with all means at their disposal that the death rate in the single camps has to decline, not the one is the better doctor in the concentration camp who believes that through unresponsible, that he has to”, well —-

MR IRVING: “Inappropriate callousness”?

A. “Inappropriate”.

Q. “Harshness” or “hardness”?

A. “Harshness to, he has to…”

MR RAMPTON: Maybe the lady translator can do it.

THE INTERPRETER: Yes. “Not he is the better physician or doctor in a concentration camp who believes that through inappropriate, that he has to stand out through inappropriate hardness, but he who achieves, he who maintains the ability to work in the various workplaces

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through supervision and exchange on a level as high as possible”?

A. Yes, and I think “exchange” is here the key word, so what they are trying to achieve is they are trying to keep a certain number of prisoners to use them as slave labours to work them to death, but, of course, unfortunately, they have too many people died in a too short time, so they have to make sure they got supply from outside. This is, I think it is quite, the reference is here, “exchange of prisoners”, yes?

It is not the duty of the doctors to, you know, keep the people, to keep the prisoners on life — alive, sorry, alive, so I think this is —-

MR IRVING: Is this document declaring war on the callousness of the camp doctors?

A. I do not think they would be — just reminded them, the document reminded them to perform their duties as concentration camp doctors, and it is quite clearly what their duties are.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, to keep them alive?

A. Well, to maintain that always, you know, there is the same number of prisoners in the camp, yes? So to make sure that the effectiveness of a worker is, the effectiveness of the work-force is as high as possible by supervision and exchange of individual workers. So his responsibility is to care for the entire camp population, but not for the single worker. He has to make sure that the individual

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workers are exchanges so that the number of workers in the camp is a kind of —-

Q. Well, that has nothing do with the doctors, has it, really?

A. Well, of course, the doctor has to — this is the prime responsibility of the doctor.

Q. No, I mean the exchange is not really the doctor’s responsibility?

A. No, but he is part of this process.

MR IRVING: Can I now, if Mr Rampton does not mind, translate the next sentence which is: “Camp doctors have more than hitherto to supervise the nourishment of the prisoners and to make suggestions for improvement in accordance, in conformity, with the administration of the camp commandants”. Then further down that paragraph, does it not say, “The Reichsführer SS”, that is Heinrich Himmler, “has ordered that the mortality rates are without question to be held down.

They have got to be reduced”. So that is the overall tenor of this letter. The camp doctors are not doing their job properly. They have got to pay attention to the feeding and the health of the prisoners. Himmler is getting angry because they are losing so much of their valuable slave labour through whatever.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do you get Himmler from?

MR IRVING: The Reichsführer SS. It is the last sentence but

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one, my Lord. Der Reichsführer SS hat befohlen.

A. The bottom line for me is “The programme to exterminate prisoners for work is going too fast. We have to make sure that we do not kill too many in a short time-frame. I think this is the context of the document”.

Q. Dr Longerich, it does not actually say that in the document, does it? That is the spin you have put on it.

A. No, but again, you know, if you ask me as an expert and you just put one document in front of me, I have to say that you have to see it in the context of the history of the concentration camps, and it is not the prime responsibility — this was not the prime responsibility of concentration camps doctors to look for the health and welfare of the prisoners. One has to say that, and you cannot —-

Q. To your knowledge, was there a large camp hospital in Auschwitz?

A. I would not call it a hospital. It was a Krankenbaracke. So this is a place where sick prisoners, sick prisoners, were forced to go to the great victory and, of course, there the main purpose of this so-called hospital was, of course, to select the prisoners not fit for work and to send them into the gas chambers. So the whole notion of a hospital, I think, is rather bizarre, as far as prisoners are concerned. I have to say I am not really an expert for

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Auschwitz. We had an expert here and I think I cannot do it —-

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think his answer was more or less the same as yours.

A. Yes, I cannot actually — I do not have more expertise, definitely not more expertise than he.

MR IRVING: I am not going to ask you questions about Auschwitz. This is about the entire concentration camp system or the extermination system, as you would describe it. Obviously, I do not want to flood the court with documents of this nature, but had you seen documents —-

MR RAMPTON: No, I am sorry. I do not believe that is what the witness has said. What the witness has said is that this concerns, to use Mr Irving’s phrase, slave labour in the concentration camps which includes a whole lot of camps in Germany which have nothing to do with extermination.

The witness has specifically said that these documents have nothing whatever to do with the extermination programme which took place at Birkenau which is not mentioned in any of these documents or in the Reinhardt —-

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is, undoubtedly, what the witness has been saying, none of this touches on the ones who were not selected for —-

MR IRVING: My Lord, it is remarkable the way the Defence sometimes says that Auschwitz covers both camps and sometimes they say it does not. That is all I would say

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there. Can we now look at the third document, please, which is the only other one I am going to trouble the court with on this particular matter, document No. 16, which is a four page document with tables dated September 30th 1943 from the same kind of man, is it not? It is signed actually by Pohl himself, chief of the camp system, and here he actually attaches statistics, does he not, for deaths just in one month, August, 1943? The third page is a table of death in August 1943.

A. Do I have chance to read the document? Give me, please, five minutes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take your time.

A. Yes.

MR IRVING: First of all, the covering letter is a bit triumphant, is it not? It says: “In consequence of the hygienic measures we have introduced, and the better feeding, the better clothing, the death rate has gone down in the camps”.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us just see, would you mind, would the translator very kindly translate the first paragraph just so we get the order of the mortality?

THE INTERPRETER: The first paragraph?

Q. Would you mind?

THE INTERPRETER: “Since during the month of December 1942 mortality was still at — whereas, in the month of December 1942 the mortality was still at around 10 per

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cent, it already was reduced in the month of January 1943 to 8 per cent, and proceeded to go down further. This is mainly — this reduction of the mortality is mainly attributed to the fact that the hygienic measures which had been asked for for some time have now at least been implemented to a large extent.

Moreover, in regarding the feeding, the nourishment, it was ordered that a third of the food should be added to, should be added just before the distribution of the meal in its raw state, to supplement the cooked food. It was avoided to kill the food by cooking it. In addition, sauerkraut and similar food was distributed.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think that will do. So they were 10 per cent mortality.

MR IRVING: Horrendous mortality rates when you look at the figures, my Lord. That is 10 per cent per month.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are now very pleased with themselves because they have got the death rate in Auschwitz down to 48,000 men in one month?

MR IRVING: No, it is not. That is the actual number. The first column is the number on hand, my Lord. The second column is the deaths that month, 1442.

A. I mean, you said this has a kind of triumphant, this letter has a kind of triumphant attitude, and the triumph here is that the death rate, the monthly date rate, is reduced from 10 per cent in December to 8 per cent in

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January. So this is the success of these measures. So 8 per cent, eight people of 100 would die each month in the slave labour camps, nothing to do, of course, with the extermination, extermination.

Q. This is what you say, is it not, but we are just looking at figures in Auschwitz —-

A. It is absolutely —-

Q. — of men and women?

A. — Auschwitz had two functions. It was a slave labour camp and it was an extermination camp, and this clearly relates to the — clearly relates to the slave labour camp.

Q. What are they dying of?

A. Well, as I am trying to say, in the slave labour camp they had a programme of extermination through work, and the life expectancy of a prisoner in the death, in the slave labour camp was a couple of weeks or probably a couple of months, and they died — you can see actually see it from the document itself because the documents state, you know, what has to be improved. The food has to be improved because the conditions, the food conditions, are completely insufficient.

It says in the document, for instance, that prisoners are allowed to wear a coat outside during the winter. So this gives, I think, a very clear answer that prisoners in the camp would die because they do not have the efficient, they do not have

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sufficient clothing, and there are, of course, epidemics in the camp and, of course, there is a regular process of selection. The people unfit for work, the sick and the weak prisoners would be selected and sent to the gas chambers. I think, if you read the document with a reference to actually the conditions in the camp, the conditions in, let us say, August 1943, you have a very good idea of what the conditions were. August ’43, 1442 people died, for instance, in the camp.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you explain what “durch Mittelbelegstärke” is?

A. This is the average number of prisoners.

MR IRVING: Average camp strength.

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Average prison population?

A. Yes.

MR IRVING: So the five columns, my Lord, average prison population of each of those camps. The next column is the numbers of deaths which, in the case of Auschwitz and one or two of the other camps is being divided up as to men and women, separate figures. The next column is the percentage —-

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the rest is clear.

A. Yes. It is quite clear because the numbers here were separated because Auschwitz, the slave labour camps, was

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divided into a women’s camp and into a men’s camp, so this gives you an indication that this relates clearly to the slave labour camp and nothing to do with the extermination installations.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which camp would be meant by “Lublin”?

A. This is the — this is Majdanek, complex of camps really.

MR IRVING: If you go now to the next page after that statistical table, you have three pages showing a graph showing how over the three or four years, 1940 to 1943, the mortality has soared from various causes. There are quite visible peak. There is a big peak around about March 1943 which is on the second page.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you explain for our benefit what this covers? Is it all concentration camps?

MR IRVING: It is all the camps. I draw the witness’s attention first to the third of three pages. It has a rubber stamp. The senior doctor on Pohl’s staff. In other words, he is the head doctor or, I suppose, the surgeon general of the concentration camp system. It has Himmler’s initials on this document on the third page.

A. Where is that? Which page?

Q. Do you have the graphs?

A. Yes.

Q. It will be the last page but one before the big yellow sheet. Do you see, it has a rubber stamp saying that, effectively, it is the surgeon general of the

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concentration camp system?

A. Yes.

Q. On the right it has Heinrich Himmler’s own initials, so it has been submitted to Himmler?

A. Yes, yes.

Q. And it is a graph showing, the bottom two curves are the percentage figures, the middle curve is a percentage figure, the bottom curve appears to be numbers of death per month and the upper curve appears to be a cumulative figure. But it is difficult to interpret, and I am not a statistician, all I am going to say is there are quite clear peaks. They have gone through crises. Would you accept that that is a fair statement?

A. There were differences in the monthly death rate, yes, I can see that.

Q. And the final page is the yellow page right at the end which is a contrast of the mortality rates in the concentration camps in the second half year of 1942 compared with the second half year of 1943. Again you can see in August and September 1942 and in August and September 1943 they have gone through a serious crisis of some kind. There have been 11,000 deaths, 12,000 deaths, in the concentration camp system in corresponding August and September of both years.

So I am only going to ask one or two general questions now from what you have seen. In other words, there was a very high mortality rate in

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these concentration camps?

A. Yes, indeed.

Q. How did they dispose of the bodies?

A. Well, I am actually not prepared to — I mean, I am not prepared here to comment on the concentration camps, but, as far as I know, they burnt the bodies in crematoria.

Q. In crematoria, yes. If these deaths had been caused through epidemics, would that be an appropriate way of disposing of the bodies?

A. Yes, I think so.

Q. Have you any indication as to what the major cause of deaths in Auschwitz was in 1942 or 1943?

A. I do not think I should guess at what I think. As far as I recall it, it was typhus, but I am not sure. I am not absolutely…

Q. Have you even seen any references to this epidemic in the police decodes at the Public Record Office or in the United States?

A. No.

Q. Have you seen any references to the camp at Auschwitz being quarantined of what is called a lager spare?

A. I cannot recall that.

Q. My Lord, that is the only questions I have to put on the death statistics.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that you are really putting what I suspect may be your case. Are you suggesting (and

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I am not sure this is the right witness anyway) that the crematoria were solely being used in order to burn the corpses of those who are shown on this graph to have died from typhus?

MR IRVING: Let me put two or three more questions in that direction then, my Lord, to nail it down.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, because if that is your case, you must put it fair and square and it may be Dr Longerich will say, “Well, I am not the right person to ask”.

MR IRVING: But he is not the right expert, yes. Dr Longerich, from your knowledge of the concentration camp system or its workings, who would have the job of disposing of the bodies in the crematoria? Would that be the Sonderkommandos?

A. I think so, yes.

Q. And would they remove all the gold and valuables from these bodies first?

A. Yes.

Q. Would it be a very grisly and memorable task?

A. I would suppose so, yes.

Q. I do not think really, my Lord, I can ask any further questions on that.

A. I am not sure, I am not really sure, I am also — actually I am not prepared to go into details about the history of Auschwitz, and if this is a kind of, I do not know, I am not too sure about the Sonderkommando here, and I should

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probably — we had expert in Auschwitz and I should probably simply say I am not sure here.

MR RAMPTON: Can I make a suggestion? If these documents be thought important, and if it be Mr Irving’s case (which, by implication, I suppose it must be, forget all the other camps mentioned in these documents as they are nothing to do with this case) that the reference to Auschwitz is a reference to Auschwitz Birkenau, then I think maybe the right thing to do, I do not know what your Lordship thinks, this gentleman is not an expert on Auschwitz, is to send these documents to Professor van Pelt

and get him to put something in writing as a supplement to his report by of commentary on these documents.

MR IRVING: Together with the appropriate part of the cross-examination.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, certainly.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The first thing, though, is to get clear and, I mean, it is what I was trying to do, and I think Mr Rampton is also wishing for clarification, quite what you are making of these graphs. They are new and I have no doubt there are good explanations why they were not put to Professor van Pelt.

But are you suggesting, just take Auschwitz because we have not gone into detail in the other camps, that the deaths that one infers were taking place at Auschwitz from these graphs were the reason why the crematoria were being employed in the way that various

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witnesses have described they were being employed?

MR IRVING: Let me put one more question then to the witness.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I do not think the witness is really going to be very happy to answer. I am really asking you to tell me and tell the Defendants.

MR IRVING: In that case, if you look at the statistical table, my Lord, which is the third page, it would be page 18, I suppose.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, the yellow one?

MR IRVING: No, the table with columns. You see that in one month, August, 1943, there were 2400 deaths in Auschwitz from whatever cause, and for the argument I would accept it is Auschwitz and not Birkenau, then that is 2400 bodies that have to be disposed of in that 31 days period. It is 200 tonnes of bodies which is a memorable task for the Sonderkommandos who had the wretched task of cremating them.

The suggestion I am making is that it is not beyond the bounds of probability that this is what they are recalling when they see — one question which I think van Pelt would have to answer, if this question was to put to him, is did the Auschwitz camp, as opposed to Birkenau, have the cremation capacity for disposing of bodies on that scale at this time or would the bodies have been sent to Birkenau to be disposed of?

MR RAMPTON: This is a terrible confusion in Mr Irving’s mind, that the greater part of the workers, as opposed to what

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I might call the murderees, who were put into the labour section after selection, were housed at Birkenau.

MR IRVING: So this is Birkenau then we are talking about?

MR RAMPTON: No, no. When one talks about the extermination facility at Auschwitz, one is talking mainly but not exclusively of the two bunkers and the four crematoria where the people went immediately after they got off the train. They never went into the work camp. The work camp part housed the majority of the slave labour at Auschwitz Birkenau. That has been clearly described by Professor van Pelt.

We have seen the picture of the wire with the gate through it into the women’s camp, and that is where the majority of those Auschwitz Frauen would have been housed. That evidence is already in court.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have to be clear, you see, you did not really, I think, actually quite explain, Mr Irving, what it was that you were saying was not beyond the bounds of possibility. I think we must really be absolutely clear about this. Are you saying that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that all the evidence that we have heard about bodies being burnt in the —-

MR IRVING: The eyewitness evidence.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: — crematoria, whether at Birkenau or at Auschwitz, was the burning of bodies of those who had died through disease?

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MR IRVING: Of whom there are clearly a very large number.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but what is the answer to the question?

MR IRVING: The answer is yes.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, again I think this is unsatisfactory for this witness, I really do, because —-

MR IRVING: Except, of course, that I do accept that there were gassings on a small scale in Auschwitz as well.

MR RAMPTON: This is most unsatisfactory because the evidence of Professor van Pelt is, whether it be right or wrong, which this witness may or may not know but he is not the right person to deal with it, the incineration capacity in crematoria 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 at Auschwitz Birkenau was by June 1943 something in the region 4,700 bodies a day, and this is a monthly figure.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand the point you are making, and that will be a point you will, no doubt, make later on, but I think we have got clear now from Mr Irving, because I am anxious that he states clearly what his case is and then it can be addressed by Professor van Pelt, but I think it is clear now that the suggestion is that, apart from a small number of gassings, which is something that has already been accepted by Mr Irving, he says that the crematoria were being used to —

everywhere were being used solely for the purpose of burning the bodies of those who died through disease or from overwork, I suppose.

MR RAMPTON: Maybe, but on what appears to be, if we are right,

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a relatively insignificant scale.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is obviously the point to be made, but I have not misrepresented your case, have I, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: No, that is correct, although I am not sure this was the way to have elicited it. Let me ask two more related questions then.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you said that the prisoners who arrived at these camps they were selected and some were sent to work and others were exterminated without being registered, this is the common consensus, is it not, among historians?

A. Yes.

Q. Why would the Germans have gone to such enormous trouble to list down to the last digit the numbers of those who were dying in the camps if just 100 yards down the road in the same camps they were killing them like flies without any kind of registry at all?

A. Well, I think it is difficult to answer this question, you know, actually to reconstruct the rationality of this system. I think what — they had a kind of proper concentration camp system. They wanted to know who was in the camp. They wanted to control whether people actually were able to flee from the camp, for instance, and they did not keep statistics about the people they were going

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to kill, as far as I am aware of.

Q. This generates two further questions, Dr Longerich. Have you heard of Dr Conrad Morgan, the chief Judge of the SS system?

A. Yes, I have heard of him, yes.

Q. And he was a lawyer in Frankfurt after the war, was he not? He was not prosecuted for war crimes, just so we can establish his credentials.

A. Yes.

Q. He was an investigating judge who carried out investigations for the SS about atrocities in concentration camps, is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. And were any concentration camp commandants hanged by the SS as a result of having committed what I would call wild atrocities?

A. Yes, as far as I remember, Koch was, for instance, among them.

Q. Buchenwald? The commandant of Buchenwald?

A. Yes.

Q. The husband of the notorious Ilse Koch?

A. Yes.

Q. He was hanged in front of the prisoners of his own camp for having committed atrocities?

A. I do not recall the circumstance, but I know that he was punished.

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Q. And the commandant of the infamous camp at Plaszkow which figured in the film Schindler’s List, was he also penalised, punished, by the SS for committing atrocities?

A. I do not recall the details.

Q. Did Conrad Morgan report back to Berlin that large numbers of illegal killings had been carried out by these Commandants?

A. Yes, I remember that.

Q. Is this not an extraordinary business, in the light of the whole story of the Holocaust now, that the SS was conducting its own internal enquiries within its own jurisdiction?

A. Well, Himmler himself refers to this incident in his speech in Posnan. He said actually, “We are proud that we carried out this operation in a proper way, except some exceptions”, and he is clearly referring to these people. So they had an idea that one had to kill people properly, and what, you know, they did not hang Koch because he killed prisoners in the camp.

They were extreme, the conditions in the camp were extremely, for instance, the amount of looting and the amount of actually — what is the expression in German? [German]

MR IRVING: Embezzling, corruption?

A. Corruption. “Corruption” is the key word here. These things played a role in the particular circumstance in these camps, I mean, it is clearly that the SS did not

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prosecute Koch because he was killing prisoners. This was not, I mean, we have extraordinary, I mean, commandants of concentration camps like, for instance, Eicke, extremely cruel and sadistic persons, but they were not prosecuted because they were killing prisoners in the camp.

Q. Was Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz, under investigation by Dr Konrad Morgen also?

A. I do not recall this now.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, even if he was, did anything happen to him as a result of Morgen’s investigation?

MR IRVING: My Lord, the witness said he does not know.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was just wondering what the point of the question was.

MR IRVING: I know, but, I mean, I cannot really give evidence on that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, again I am not really sure you are putting your case. Are you suggesting, Mr Irving, and please say so if you are —-

MR IRVING: This was going to be the next question.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: — please listen to the question. That the SS conducted a serious investigation and anyone who was found to have illegitimately killed any inmate in any concentration camp was punished by the SS. Is that the suggestion?

MR IRVING: A number of the Commandants were prosecuted and

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severely punished for carrying out wild killings.

A. May I draw the attention to this document, to the statistics. We have here the initials of Heinrich Himmler, and statistics say that we have a death rate in the camp in the second half of 1942 of 8.5 per cent in July, 10 per cent in August, more than 10 per cent in September. So Himmler was prepared to accept this high death rates with his own initials here. So he knew about it and he then, well, tried in a way to keep the death rate down to a certain extent.

But, as we said, as we heard, you know, they accepted at a success, you know, actually to keep the monthly rate down from 10 to 8 per cent. So this is a kind of…

MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you are not suggesting that these are homicidal killings, are you? These statistics here are non-homicidal.

A. I think killings are always — I mean, I think a killing is a killing.

Q. These are people who died from the reasons stated in the covering letter, bad conditions?

A. But there is something like a system of concentration camp invented by the Nazis in the 1930s and —-

Q. Now, this is the word that I was going to pick on before —-

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you interrupted the witness. Just finish your answer.

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A. Here, this system was more and more, well, they worked on this system and elaborated the system. They introduced this idea of extermination through work at the beginning of 1942. So it was actually — the purpose of the concentration camp was not to keep prisoners alive and to, like — the purpose of the concentration camp here was, clearly, to put people to death and to use their ability to work for a certain period of time. This is the idea behind this system.

It was not, you cannot compare it with a prison or anything in a civilised country.

MR IRV