Day 11 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial

Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 10.2)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London Friday, 28th January 2000 Before: MR JUSTICE GRAY B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING Claimant -and- (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED (2) DEBORAH E.

LIPSTADT Defendants The Claimant appeared in person MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and Second Defendants MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell &Company, Clifford’s Inn,

Fetter Lane, London EC4 Telephone: 020-7242-9346) (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company) PROCEEDINGS – DAY ELEVEN

<Day 11 Friday, 27th January 2000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes? MR IRVING: Good morning, my Lord. This morning I believe the witness is going to make a presentation to us, but before he does so, I believe I am right in saying, my Lord, that the Defence learned counsel wishes to make some kind of submission to your Lordship. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does he? Right. MR RAMPTON: It is not really a submission; it is about Professor McDonald.

I do not know if your Lordship has had a chance to read his two statements. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Glanced at it this morning, but only one actually I have seen. MR RAMPTON: Well, there is a new version. It does not really matter because they are all to the same effect. I am not submitting that he should not be called, but I am a little bit concerned that Mr Irving has told my instructing solicitors that he thinks Professor MacDonald will be in the witness box for three days.

Professor MacDonald tells us in paragraph 4 of his paragraph first this: “The main point of my testimony is that the attacks made on David Irving by the Deborah Lipstadt and Jewish organizations, such as the Anti-defamation League, should be viewed in the long term context of Jewish/Gentile interactions”.

I have a great deal of difficulty seeing how that main point has anything much to do with the issues in this case. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, this is very much a first impression because I have only glanced at it, but I did wonder, looking at it, to what extent he can really assist. But, having said that, for obvious reasons I am anxious to give Mr Irving as much latitude as possible. It may be that something admissible and helpful will emerge when he comes actually into the witness box.

MR RAMPTON: As I said, I am not saying he should not be called, but I am concerned about how it is that Mr Irving thinks that Professor McDonald should be in the witness box for three days when it is quite likely that I will have little or nothing to ask him in cross-examination. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We need to, perhaps, thrash it out a little because of the timetable. MR RAMPTON: Precisely.

I have at the moment got Professor Browning scheduled to give evidence on 7th February which is the beginning of the week after next. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, as I said, certainly we must have him and hear what he has to say, but there is, I think, some force in what Mr Rampton says about how much he is able to assist. MR IRVING: I hear what you say. When I stated that Professor McDonald (who is, in fact, our guest in the court today)

would be here for three days, this was purely to make sure that the Defence had adequate opportunity to cross-examine him. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see. MR IRVING: Your Lordship will certainly not be surprised to hear that I do not intend, even with your Lordship’s permission, if I am given that permission, to examine him in chief at any great length.

If I do so, it will be purely for the purpose of putting before him, as a way of introducing them to the court, a number of documents which I have not been able yet to put before the court. This as one of the very points I was going to discuss with your Lordship this morning for a few minutes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, can you assume (because it will be the case) that by Monday I will have read and, hopefully, digested what he says, although I have only at the moment only got one statement from Professor MacDonald. MR IRVING: My Lord, you will have been given Professor MacDonald’s expert report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the one I have looked at.

MR IRVING: I believe that in one of the bundles I also included a double column preparation which he made as more of a way of explaining what he is doing here, as I see it like that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had better try to identify that so I know what I ought to read.

MR RAMPTON: I got it some days ago. MR IRVING: About five days ago, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I probably got it, but I did not realize what it was. MR RAMPTON: It is behind one of Mr Irving’s letters, a letter dated 23rd January. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me see if I have it here.

MR IRVING: I do not really intend to labour this point very much when Professor MacDonald is giving evidence, but there are a number of documents (probably three or four in total) which I would wish to put to him which do highlight and, in fact, draw the connection directly between his evidence and this case, which will make it easier for your Lordship to reach a determination on its relevance. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. I do not think Mr Rampton is going to quarrel with that.

But, as I say, proceed on the assumption that I will have read it so that you do not need to take him through it. MR IRVING: I certainly shall not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But with all he experts, a bit of supplemental questioning is inevitable. MR IRVING: Perhaps I can just sketch the character of the document which your Lordship will be funded with when the time comes. They will show to my mind that there is a clear connection between the book that is the basis of

this case, the publication complained of, and these organizations who provided the material, that they did so following an agenda and that this may well have tainted the information which the author and the publisher relied upon. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not immediately obvious to me how that really impacts on the questions I have to decide. MR IRVING: Very well. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But let us wait and see how it can comes out when he comes to give evidence.

MR IRVING: That brings us rather neatly, my Lord, to the question which I was going to discuss, if I might, for three or four minutes this morning which is the burden of proof. I have handed your Lordship just two quotations from documents with which I am sure your Lordship, being an eminent barrister in your previous incarnation, will be thoroughly familiar with. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: In Gatley we learn that the standard of proof in a civil procedure is not just the balance of probabilities really, but there is a sliding scale, depending on how grave the allegations were. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am very familiar with that line of authorities. MR IRVING: “The gravity of the issue”, if I may read these three lines, “becomes part of” — this is Ungoed-Thomas in

Re Dillows Will Trust — “the circumstances in which the court has to take into consideration in deciding whether or not the burden of proof has been discharged. The more serious the allegation, the more cogent is the evidence required”.

The reason I am saying this is because dealing with crematorium No. (ii) and the mortuary No. 1, which the Professor in evidence has agreed is really the pivotal point of the whole Holocaust allegation —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think he has, but, anyway, leave that on one side. MR IRVING: That is my submission, as your Lordship is aware. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know it is your submission.

MR IRVING: We are being offered evidence which, in my submission, falls far short so far, and it may well be that the witness will come up in the remainder of my cross-examination with evidence which satisfies these criteria —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not want to get side tracked into an argument at this stage.

Let me make it clear that my interpretation of those authorities is that the issue where the standard of proof may be higher than the ordinary civil standard of proof, is the issue whether the Defendants have justified their allegation against you. We do not start applying different standards of proof to the individual items of evidence as to whether or not

there were gas chambers at Auschwitz. That has got nothing to do with the authority that you just referred to. That applies only to the standard of proof to be applied in relation to the plea of justification. MR IRVING: But, surely, the allegations about the individual mosaic stones of their own Defence and plea of justification have to meet the same criteria as the overall allegations about myself?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again, so that you are clear the way I am thinking at the moment anyway, the overall question I have to decide is whether you have conducted yourself in the way that an honest, conscientious historian would conduct himself. The question that you have not is, I agree, a serious suggestion to be making, so it may require to be proved to a slightly higher standard than the ordinary civil standard.

But one tests the proposition against the totality of the evidence, and the evidence may be good, bad or indifferent, if you see what I mean? MR IRVING: Your Lordship will pardon me for occasionally waving a red flag when I am worried about —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have done that very effectively and I have your point. MR RAMPTON: Can I wave my own, I do not think red, perhaps amber flag?

I have said it before and I had the impression your Lordship agreed with me, but I will say it again because I do not know that Mr Irving has understood

it or that, if he has, he agrees with it. It is this. I do not undertake in this court the burden of proving that the Holocaust happened. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. MR RAMPTON: Or that there were gas chambers in Auschwitz. I undertake the burden of proving that Mr Irving made the statements he did about the gas chambers in Auschwitz from 1988 onwards without any proper foundation for what he said.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really what I was seeking to put to Mr Irving, but I think you have put it more clearly and, if I may say so, correctly. MR IRVING: That is very helpful, my Lord. In other words, it is the “ought to” allegation rather than the “had before him but disregarded”, if your remember, the negligence rather than the deceit element. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have that well in mind. MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord.

Having said that, I have no further submissions to make except I dealt with the point that your Lordship will allow me to put to Professor McDonald three or four documents when he is in the box? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Depending on what the documents are, yes. MR IRVING: Yes. Thank you very much, my Lord. Having said that, I believe the witness now wishes to make —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is notionally cross-examination, but it is going to be a long answer to a question you have raised.

MR IRVING: Would your Lordship like to phrase the question to the witness which he can now respond to?

Part II: Cross-Examination of Professor Van Pelt by David Irving continued, Morning Session (10.3 to 152.14)

Section 10.3 to 29.23

< PROFESSOR VAN PELT, Recalled < Cross-examined by MR IRVING, continued. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the question is this, I will put it very shortly.

Is there anything to be derived or inferred from the blueprints relating to the construction of the gas chambers — sorry, from a construction at Auschwitz which entitles one to infer that provision was made for gas chambers generally and, in particular, perhaps for the ducts into which these Zyklon-B pellets are alleged to have been poured? MR IRVING: On the roof. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That, I understand, to be the broad issue which you are now going to address, is that correct, Professor?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Yes, my Lord, and I have a question, because we have been talking about crematorium (ii) and, by implication, crematorium (iii) until now, as Mr Irving has said, indeed, in the gas chamber of crematorium No.

(ii), in my judgment, most of the people, I mean, at least half of the people killed in the gas chambers were killed in that particular space; but, of course, if we go back to the document recording the meeting of 19th August 1942, a point I made in my presentation on Tuesday was that it

were actually crematoria (iv) and (v) which were designed in immediate response to what I see as the change of purpose of Auschwitz. Now, if you think that this is irrelevant because we have only been talking really about the design of the adaptation of morgue No. 1, I will not talk about it, but in case you think it is useful, I do have prepared also walk through of crematorium (i) and a discussion on the blue prints of crematorium (iv) and (v).

MR JUSTICE GRAY: My reaction to that, and it is subject to anything Mr Irving may want to say or Mr Rampton, is that you can take whichever crematorium you wish or, I suppose, really Leichenkeller you wish, because if you are able to establish — I do not know whether you will or you will not — that they were designed to be gas chambers or that there was a duct through which the pellets could be poured, it seems to me it is likely to be the right inference that a similar plan was

contemplated in relation to the other morgues. So Mr Irving, unless you wish to dissuade the witness, I think he is entitled to look at any of the so-called gas chambers. MR IRVING: In theory, yes, my Lord, but does it not rather fly in the face of your response to my remarks about proof, that I am not required to establish everything about the Holocaust.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not dealing with proof at all at the moment. We are dealing with how this witness chooses to the question that I re formulated for him.

MR IRVING: But if by a shifting of his ground now from the one where he originally said 500,000 people died in this gas chamber, and this was the centre of the universe of atrocities, and he now wishes for whatever reason to shift his ground away from there to 4 and 5, this, I would submit, cannot really go to the issue of my negligence or deceit. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it can, it is relevant.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just answer that and then, of course, Mr Rampton? Supposing he answers the question by reference to 4 and 5, you can then pick up your cross-examination and say, “Well, come on, that is 4 and

1. I thought we were talking about 2″.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I certainly shall do when the time comes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do. MR IRVING: But I just wish to wave a little red flag and say that they are now changing the rules. They are changing not only the rules, but they are changing the football ground halfway through the game. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a point you are entitled to make. MR IRVING: This certainly lowers the standards of evidence, but let us take that when we come to it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am sorry? MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord, I was interrupting and I should not have done. I do believe again that Mr Irving has completely misunderstood the nature of the case. Mr Irving chose to focus on Leichenkeller 1 in crematorium (ii). That is fine.

Professor van Pelt’s evidence-in-chief, which is in his report and which, if he disputes it, Mr Irving will have to challenge, is that there were, in fact, at least seven homicidal gas chambers in use at Auschwitz and Birkenhau at various times up to the autumn of 1944.

Two of the most important of those buildings are crematoria (iv) and (v) which Professor van Pelt tells us in his report were purpose-built as gas chambers, and it is only for the case of coherence, if anything else, that he should, in my submission, explain what he says about those to your Lordship as relevant. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

Having said what he wants to say about crematoria (iv) and (v), it is, of course, open to Mr Irving to say, “Well, that does not prove anything in relation to crematorium (ii)”. MR RAMPTON: It may not do. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know whether it does or it does not, but he can cross-examine on that. MR RAMPTON: It is a question of the cumulative effect of the evidence.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Quite. MR IRVING: My Lord, the allegation really is the factories of death allegation.

If I have denied the factories of death, which is the nub of the allegation against me, and if I have successfully established to the court’s satisfaction that this building was not what has been claimed over the last 55 years, and there is not the slightest shred of reliable and plausible evidence for that, then I would submit that I have discharged my obligations to the court in a satisfactory manner as far as my own reputation is concerned —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: — regarding the factories of death. If they come along with subsidiary allegations and say, “Yes, but a lot of Jews of gypsies were killed in this building too”, I would say I have never denied that there were killings in Auschwitz. What I have denied is this mass production of factories of death allegation, this churning out 2,500 bodies per day kind of allegation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are beginning to give me a foretaste of what we call your final speech.

MR IRVING: My Lord, like any good advocate, I have been preparing my final speech from the moment this case began. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure you have, but what I am really saying is that we are on the evidence at the moment and not on speeches. So let us get on with the evidence,

shall we? MR IRVING: You allowed learned counsel some leeway on this matter, my Lord, and I was only claiming the same amount of leeway. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton probably has not started his final speech yet. MR RAMPTON: Absolutely right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now, Professor? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: There are two issues. First of all, if we can have the override —- Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I know the problem. I think we have solved it, I hope.

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: And I would like, my Lord, there is going to be one particular detail which I do not have a sight of, but I refer to it when I come to it which is actually in Auschwitz 2, core file Auschwitz 2, the picture file, trial bundle, and it is actually in tab 1, No. 3B. It is actually to be seen in two pictures; detail B and the little colour version of detail B which is right below there.

Now, I will point out, since I do not want to come over to you and point on your document and then on Mr Irving’s document and Mr Rampton’s document, exactly which detail, but certainly I will put my finger on the thing in the slide which is not visible in the slide, but it visible actually in your enlargement right here. I want you to be prepared for that. Is it OK that I move

to the screen? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course, yes. Thank you very much. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: My intention when the lights go out is very simple. It is very simple. It is to make the blueprints intelligible. There are a couple of things which are not in the blueprint, two things which are not in the blueprint, but we know from other sources, from correspondence which were installed, and I will tell those when we go through.

But there are already in the document which was submitted by Mr Irving, I already point them out, it is the drawing by Kate Mullen, my student, then submitted by Mr Irving in evidence to you and I will just point them out. These are the columns which are not in the blueprints. So that the first thing. The second thing is the duct which was going to bring the hot air from the ventilator rooms to the gas chambers which is in the document of 6 March 1943.

So what I am going to do now is introduce a new set of images of which copies, I have given copies to Mr Rampton, and I will start with this one, very simple above ground incineration room, coke stores, space, administration offices, toilets, chimney, ventilator mounted, an original design for a fresh ventilator, not installed, but it was installed in crematorium (iii) and the dissection rooms. That is difficult for me to actually focus to

see whether it is really in focus or not. That would seem to be in focus. If you tell me when it is not in focus? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fine now. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Here are the dissection rooms. Morgue No. 1, gas chamber, morgue No. 2 and an outside entrance with two staircases that slide in between. Now I am going to the images which were produced quite recently and — can somebody mark, can you focus for me? I cannot see. It is blurred.

The first ring, if you can control the first ring. OK. We are going back to this. I am going to make — we are going — the first thing I am going to do after just showing the kind of diagrams you are going to get later, I am first going to actually walk you through the building, around the building, in a reconstruction made on the basis of the blueprints. I am just going to flag a few major things.

It is exactly the same perspective as we had before was included here and which we tried to make very clear is really the ventilation systems as they were. The ventilation systems which are in green which is right here, above the incineration room and alongside the ceiling of the undressing room or the morgue No. 2 is indicated in green, and all of the systems came into this chimney. Then there was a second part of the ventilation system.

This is called the entluftung system, a second system, and this is basically coming into the ceiling of

morgue No. 1 and that is blue. So blue is bringing fresh air in, green is taking foul air out and whatever is in there, and that we will come later back to that would have been that duct for hot air based — reconstructed on the basis really of two documents but no blueprint. Then here the pink stuff, basically the funnels for going to the chimney below the ground from the incinerators.

If you want me to slow down at any given moment or point out any detail, explain, please do so because I am going to walk through this. This is what the building as it would have been seen when one is at the end of the railway track. This is crematorium (ii), so, more or less, when you enter the compound in which the crematorium was placed.

This is the main chimney with the place, the extension, the projections of the building in which the waste incinerator was originally projected, the incineration room sits more or less here. This is the coke store space, and the dissection rooms are there. I am going to make actually two entries into the building, one along a staircase which is still there right here, and the staircase which goes to the basement and we really concentrate our presentation on the basement.

Later we see here the kind of slightly high elevation of the underground morgue No. 2. We will enter the building through that entrance there, an entrance which was made in 1943.

We come closer to the building. Here we see the staircase going down. This is an entry to the autopsy rooms right there. We will actually go down the staircase, and since it was very difficult to model that situation, how to go down, the people who did it, two architects, chose to show actually a kind of section of the building. Here is the grate level. We have here the underground morgue and we see actually the staircase going down.

Basically, the soil has been cut away with the entrance right here going into this little vestibule. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the undressing room on the right, is it? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This will be then the undressing room and then the alleged gas chambers would be seen here, but you will see in more detail. You already can see here the two chimneys, the chimney of the beiluftung and the entluftung, of fresh air coming in, foul air coming out.

We see in green where the systems are sitting. This is one of the pipes, that is one of the pipes, and this is then a probable reconstruction where that hot air would have come in, but again we do not have any blueprints for that. Then one would have come into this little corridor and then into this large morgue No. 2. If one takes that entry right under the autopsy rooms, this is what one would have seen. But was here at the site, based on the drawing of Olaire, we knew there was a ventilation

system in that thing, but we did not know how it looked like because it is not in the blueprints. It was brought in later. But Olaire depicted to, I have used Olaire as, basically, the depiction of the undressing as room as the basis for this thing. I am very sorry for the way the lighting has been depicted.

This has been, basically, standard 1999 kind of light fixtures, and this is certainly not how it would have looked, the kind of way these light fixtures would have looked, but one gets a sense of how much light would have been in this room. This is the later staircase. This is the staircase which goes to the outside which was constructed in late 1943.

What I am going to do now is actually go around the undressing room morgue No. 2, and take the second entrance which was the entrance which was used in the Hungarian action after it was constructed to get a more logical flow of people into the underground space. This entrance is also still there. You can see it. One would go down here and then enter in this underground space and, of course, see it then from a different perspective.

Now you come into this large underground space and now, of course, the ventilation is on the right side instead of on the left side. MR IRVING: My Lord, can I ask occasional questions while we

have him on a particular picture? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Try not to interrupt the flow otherwise we will get lost, but, yes, I think that is not unreasonable. It is cross-examination. MR IRVING: If we could just go back to the previous picture? Can you go back? What kind of door would have been on that entrance?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: We do not know because there is one — the door is not there and the entrance is available in two blueprints called “Zeichaufnahme” which means a picture, a description, of the actual situation, but these two blueprints do not show actually what kind of door. Q. [Mr Irving]: So it could have been an air raid shelter door? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: I do not know. Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well.

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: So we are now in this underground space, what became the undressing room, as the Defence maintains. Now we go outside — sorry, I will just go back. We go — actually behind the columns there is an exit door and comes out in the little vestibule, and originally where I stand was the original entrance into this vestibule from above.

That is the first staircase when we went down, and we see here the chimney going up, the entluftung chimney, taking the foul air out, and we see here a kind of computer model, this computer model, we see here basically the pipe coming off the undressing room going into that chimney, and we see

the second, we see a second pipe — actually, I do not know why it is red right now, but in some way the ventilation system of the gas chamber would also have connected to this. We see here an elevator. Again I have to tell you they took kind took 1990’s language for it, and then here the entrance into the morgue No. 1.

Now, at that point again we have something of a difficulty, and the difficulty is that you see that there is one panel of the door is open, but the second one actually is closed. It is fixed. The blueprint shows, the last blueprint we have shows basically the double panelled door opening.

But there is at a certain moment an order for this particular door, and from that order it is clear that only one of the panels moves and that the second thing was actually either closed by masonry or by the fixed panel. We can interpret that later, but in some way again I just want to point out at the moment what is in the blueprints, what is in inferred out of other documents and what, ultimately, is on the basis of eyewitness testimony.

So this particular reconstruction is made on the basis of a combination of the blueprint and a particular order for this gastur, as it is called, of one metre by 100 — one metre by almost two metres high, 192 centimetres high. We are now in the gas chamber or in morgue

No. 1. We have just walked in and this was the space one would have seen. There are, basically, the entluftung system, the foul air is being taken out at the bottom connected to that chimney, and we have here the fresh air being brought in from the top. Now, I will show you the blueprints in a moment because this only is to aid interpreting the blueprints. And then added in this particular thing which is not in the blueprints are three of the four Zyklon-B insertion columns.

Now, so there is none at first column, at third column, right there in the fifth column, they are alternating on the left and the right side. I just want to go back for a moment. The sub-division of this room in two rooms which happened later in 1943 would have occurred on this line here, on the fourth column, halfway. Again, there is no blueprint for that. Then we go back into this elevator space and we see here the elevator, there were actually doors brought in.

There were no doors and we see here this platform going up. MR IRVING: It is a bit like a builder’s hoist, is that correct? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Yes. That is what they actually used because they were not able to get the right elevator. Then this would have been the incineration room, of which we actually also have

photos. These are the incinerators, these triple muffle incinerators. At the back is the coke supply. This is also the fire grate and this is where the ashes are taken out. So at a certain moment there is a description in Tauber. What happens is that he has put in here, but what he says is that actually they start to fire, not that they put a fire in the ash muffle. So he is not actually being burned directly, and so, if you read his description, this is the ash kind of muffle.

One drawing which is important is this. Could you see from the inside of the incineration room, the roof of the morgue No. 1?

We have introduced on here, I think a little high, I must admit, these alleged insertion points, but certainly, because Tauber says that he is inside the incineration room, and I asked my student to actually step back a few steps from the window, so he does not stand right at the window but, if he was standing back at say a metre and a half into the space, look through the window, would he have been able to see anything?

He actually describes the situation and this is what he could have seen at those points. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another witness who describes looking out from the incineration room, is there not? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: I think that only Tauber does that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought there was another one. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: There is another one who sees it from the outside.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe I am confused. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This is the question. It is, from the inside of the incineration room, what do you see? We go now back to the diagrams and I am going to turn the diagrams around in four basic exposures, every 90 degrees we turn around, first without the heating duct and then with the heating duct. So again, we have here the incineration room, the flues going to the chimney.

We have here the entluftung, which is all green, going from the bottom of the gas chamber or morgue No. 1, and we have here the one system, only one pipe attached to the ceiling of morgue No. 2, all connected to this one chimney. It is clearly indicated in the blueprints except this one which was constructed later. We have here the chimney house, so to speak. We have here the Beiluftung going from the second little chimney going in.

Then we have here the staircase with that slide in between, just indicated again rather vaguely. We tried to create a wall transparent so that you can get some sense of what is happening there. Then I am going to show the same thing. I am going slowly to rotate it every ten seconds or so. One can look at from a different perspective. Now we are looking at it from the west almost, and one can see very clearly again the size of the undressing room. If I am going too fast, please tell me because

I will stop. Here we have the staircase going into the basement, second staircase added later. Underground flues again. It is important of course in relationship also to crematorium 1 where there was an underground flue connecting the building to the chimneys. The chimney seems to be standing separately, does it mean it is not connected? OK, so that was the reconstruction. So, with that in mind, I feel that we can go to the actual blueprints and so this is a heading of one of the typical ones.

Is there anything you would like to see again before we go in here? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No but one thing did occur to me as you were going through. Was there any heating in the undressing room? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: There was no heating in the undressing room. MR RAMPTON: Could I ask one question before we leave the picture? It is out of order, I know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think that is sensible, do you not? MR IRVING: Perfectly, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not exactly playing by the rules at the moment. MR RAMPTON: Professor van Pelt, can I do it now before you come to the plans and the documents? You showed us the

new entrance to the undressing room in 43. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know of any document which refers to gas tight doors for Leichenkeller 2? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: No, I do not. The only document which refers to a gas door quite literally is in relationship to morgue No. 1, not to morgue No. 2. MR RAMPTON: It arose out of what your Lordship asked. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: So this is a typical heading.

This is one of the original blueprints in early 1942 because we are dealing here with an adaptation. What is very important — I am going now to introduce, and I am very sorry, I do not think they are actually in my expert reports, and I do not really know how to do it, but this is the very, very first sketch which was ever made. It was made in October 1941. It is in my book. It shows basically the same arrangement. The crematorium is slightly different.

They are a number of things, but we are here at the ground floor. You see incineration hole. You see here you the autopsy rooms, the elevator more narrow than in the final one but there is the elevator. There is the entrance to the side which is the one with the slide and the two stairs, the coke storage. We have the office here, we have some bathrooms and so on, and then here we have the sauzuanlage as it says, which means the ventilators, not three around the

chimney but one system preceding the chimney, the chimney standing asymmetrically, and here the trash incinerator. So this is the very first design. As you probably realize now, the design was changed a little bit. What is quite important in this first design is the particular arrangement of the underground space.

The only access to the underground space at this moment, and we do not know what has happened here or there, but I do not think there is any access on that side, but we have here the stairs going down with the slide, and then of course the elevator coming down right there. MR IRVING: Would you like to explain the significance of the slide please, the chute? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: The chute is something one has in every underground morgue. For example, one can go to Satzenhausen today.

There is a morgue and above it a dissection room and there is an outside entrance into that underground morgue, and what happens is that the slide can be interpreted both in a more or less kind of gross manner.

One of the things is that the slide can be used actually to slide corpses down, which is probably the more unusual way to do it, but the other thing is that, if one carries a corpse down on the stretcher, then in this case one had people on the left and the right of the stretcher, and the stretcher can actually go over the middle. So this is more or less the width of the stretcher with two people on each side

carrying it. But one could also slide the corpse down. I think that is probably the more unusual thing to do. In the Auschwitz museum one has actually a picture in the model one created of actually a truck unloading corpses in that way. Now I do not know what the evidence is for that but —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the slide anyway. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Yes. So what is important here is the way the doors open into the morgue.

So there is a very large morgue here like morgue No. 2, and this is morgue No. 1, and the doors open inwards into the morgue in the original design. Now we come to the first set of blueprints as it was actually drawn up, and now I have turned them. We have here the incineration room with the five triple muffle ovens. This is the chimney. Around the chimney the three sauzuanlage, the forced draught which becomes important with the proposal to heat morgue No. 1.

Then these are motor rams, this is actually for the engine, to run these ventilators. This was then the trash incinerator, the coke storage offices and here we have the dissection rooms with in this case again the slide, and we have the stairs at the side. There are no stairs at this side right now.

Section 29.24 to 43.21

MR IRVING: Professor van Pelt, would you estimate for the court the distance from the closest furnace to the mouth of the chimney in terms of feet or metres?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Sorry, this furnace? Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, either as shown on this drawings or as finally built, just in rough terms. Would it be 70 feet? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: From this furnace? Q. [Mr Irving]: It would be fair to take the shortest. What is the shortest path? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: The shortest path? This is 3 metres. Quite literally, this is 6 metres. It is 20 feet. Let us say this is 10 feet.

Q. [Mr Irving]: I am talking about from the entrance to the actual furnace. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This one here? Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This is 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet. Q. [Mr Irving]: Then up the chimney another 30 or 40 feet? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Higher than that, I think. I do not think have the thing right now. Q. [Mr Irving]: Just in rough terms. You say the total path travelled would be about 80 or 90 feet?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: I do not really know exactly the height of the chimney right now, because you are below ground in the chimney so it is also a problem. You enter through the entrance below ground, so if the chimney is visible above ground you need to add another 6 feet for that. Q. [Mr Irving]: So in simple terms a flame would have to travel about 90 feet before it emerged?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Whatever. I presume so. I do not know exactly the behaviour of flames in chimneys. But there is a considerable distance, yes, which of course is important to create the draught. Now I want to go back to the original design because we are going to the basement, which I have now turned around to be exactly in the same position as we are looking at the rest of the blueprints, doors open very clearly inwards. Q. [Mr Irving]: They open inwards into the mortuary?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Into the mortuary, yes, which comes later as the defence alleges, the gas chambers. That is in accordance with the way the doors open in these other spaces. Now we get the second blueprint. The problem in this particular point of the presentation is that this image, this black and white slide, was made for me at the museum in 1990, and it is very difficult to see exactly what happens here.

But, when you go to the archive right now and look very carefully and that is what we have done, actually that is a detail I was shown, one can actually see there a door, that the door in this original copy of the final blue print of 1942 still opens inwards, but in fact at a certain moment the way the door opens inwards has been scratched out, but I show the remains of it. This is what I tried to photograph with my assistant in these details. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that on this map?

The one you are showing us? On this

drawing? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Yes. It is in this particular copy not visible. But it is in the trial bundle. Q. [Mr Irving]: May I approach the screen and have a closer look, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, please do. You are talking about photograph 3 on 3B? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Yes. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, for reference at page 3B of section 1 of the second Auschwitz file, there is a small colour enlargement. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it open.

MR RAMPTON: When the light comes back on again, one can actually see quite clearly, as the Professor has said, at any rate one half of the door opening inwards. It is probably difficult to see in this light, but it can be seen. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You need proper light. I follow. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: That is exactly why I wanted to show this so that we all know exactly what we are talking about, this thing, and what we will see is the remains basically of the door opening inside.

MR IRVING: Approximately when was the alteration made in your opinion? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: We will look at that at the next slide. This is the blueprint for that, for the alteration of December 1942. I would like to show at the moment also some of

the other details. How do we know where the entluftungskanal was, how the ventilation system works? For example, you see here, this is at the bottom of the thing, this little dotted line, which is the entluftungskanal. It says right here, entluftungskanal. Its also says right there entluftungskanal. This dotted line goes here and goes right there into the chimney. It is very clear. This one ultimately is connected over the gas chamber to this one. Q. [Mr Irving]: Into which chimney?

Into the main chimney? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: No, into the chimney for the entluftung, for the vent for taking out the foul air. Q. [Mr Irving]: You have what is called a stack effect? We will come to that in a moment. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: OK. Then there is a second chimney here, but it does not go down to basement level so it is not depicted at basement level.

What is very important here is that we have the staircase, we have another staircase and we have these two entluftungskanal, and we have here the columns. Of course we do not see these Zyklon-B insertion columns because this drawing is from early 1942. Now, one of the things which happened is that in these drawings they always use the same set of blueprints.

When they create modifications at a certain moment, they only make a small drawing of the particular modification, which is put literally on top of it, because

it is transparent originally. We see also that one more morgue has been included, we see here quite clearly how the door opens inwards. It opens inwards here. At least where I stand it is very clear. So this was never taken out with some razor blades. You see, by the way, just at this level we see also very clearly these underground flues. As they then are joined these two are then connected above with one particular sauzuanlage going into the chimney.

Here we have then the elevation and we are now looking at the elevation of the building. Just here in the original 1942 drawings we see here the elevation of morgue No. 1. It is a little higher. We are now going to look in section at the same thing, so first one needs to flip it up. Now we are looking in section. The first section, we see here the slide, the staircase, side entrance going down into the little vestibule. We see here the elevator shaft.

Then here we see, and we will get much better ones in a moment, the section through morgue No. 1. What is important is that the section is exactly at the point where the connectors are between the ventilating systems which are on the left and the right of the thing, so it is not so that there is a hollow space all above, or all below, above the ceiling or above the floor. It is only at two points that that actually

occurs, to connect those systems. We will come back to that later. MR IRVING: The next one is even better, in fact, Professor. While we have that picture up, could you estimate the thickness of that concrete roof slab? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This roof slab? Q. [Mr Irving]: The reinforced concrete roof slab over mortuary No. 1? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: We have actually the one which is here. Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the actual reinforced concrete?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This is the reinforced concrete. It is actually indicated. The problem is it is written right here and it is almost impossible to read. Q. [Mr Irving]: About 12 inches, do you think? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: No. This says 38 centimetres right here. 038. This is 38 centimetres. So we are talking here about probably 20 centimetre. Q. [Mr Irving]: 20 centimetres? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This is 20 centimetres thick roof. Q. [Mr Irving]: Steel reinforced concrete?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Steel reinforced concrete, yes. So this whole thing is 2 metre 5, so this is clearly around 20 centimetres. It is a pity I cannot read this right here. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that the double door? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This is 50 centimetres wide there, so probably even less than 20 centimetres, probably more. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that the double door that your hand was over?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This is the original double door, yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any kind of indication of what kind of door it is, or what kind of handle? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: The only indication we have is that it was a gastur, which means a gas door. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not from the blueprint? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Not from the blue print, that is from the documents. MR IRVING: In fact, of course, these are not blueprints, are they? They are drawings.

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: We call these things blueprints. Q. [Mr Irving]: Architects do not. They call them drawings. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: They are copies and this happens to be a colour copy. None of the originals, which was drawn on basically vellum, actually exist any more. These are all basically copies made in the normal way, and then they were dispersed.

The originals were probably in Berlin because as far as we know they were kept and openly sent to the SS headquarters, and they were boxed. I just want to show here that the most important thing is against the ventilation system sitting in the wall, this is the entluftungsanlage, this is taking out of air. This is the beiluftungsanlage, and here we are at what is the normal situation where they are not connected.

The left and the right is not connected but in this one we see them connected at a particular point. This is just to show how you only need ultimately —

because the left is connected to the right and then the right is connected to the chimney. You do not have to have a special connection from the left side to the chimney, or connected to one ventilator. I just want to point out, because we probably are going to go there, that the thickness, if indeed we agree the thickness of the slab, was around maximum 20, probably closer to 18 or 19 centimetres.

If one looks also at the kind of support given by this column, one may of course at a certain moment ask to compare this, if indeed the challenge or the suggestion is being made that this is an air raid shelter, if this indeed follows the kind of normal structural strength of an air raid shelter. Now we come to a first declat. The first declat is not very important from an argument, except that it is a piece in a sequence.

What we see is that the first modification has already been made, and in this declat this was created by putting basically tracing paper on top of the original. One of the things which is not of any interest to the architect at the moment — but he does not actually draw any doors in so we do not know how the doors are hung. What is important here is that we have this sort of little leichenkeller, which is now much smaller. We have the leichenkeller No. 1.

What we do have here is a kind of rather gruesome modification because this is called office. This is called vault. This is either gold

arbeite or gold arbeiten, or this could be gold workers or gold works. The question of course is what would they do right here? Q. [Mr Irving]: What would you infer from that? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: That dental gold was being probably —- Q. [Mr Irving]: Extracted? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Not extracted. It would not have been extracted here. The dental gold would have been basically worked at and would have been stored here. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, a matter of the utmost secrecy, of course?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: I do not know how secret it was. This whole building was in a completely isolated compound. Q. [Mr Irving]: We will see if that is true later on when I show you some photographs. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: OK. This is by the way, that connection piece right above there connecting the pipes of the side to the other side. We see here the staircases. Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the overall width of that staircase from wall to wall?

A. [Professor Van Pelt]: The overall width of the staircase from wall to wall? Now you have me. Q. [Mr Irving]: Roughly about eight feet? A. [Professor Van Pelt]: This thing here? Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. A. [Professor Van Pelt]: Yes, I presume something like 8 feet. Q. [Mr Irving]: The other end of that space is the elevator, is it not?

Source Information
Original Publication: 2000-01-27
Digital Archive: Focal Point Publications
Accessed: June 4, 2026

See Also

• David Irving v Penguin & Lipstadt — Jan 1995 (Article)
• Index: Lipstadt Trial Documents (Article)
• The defeat of the denierDanuta Kean reports on how Penguin p (Article)
• Irving v Lipstadt: Trial Documents (German language) (Article)
• Documents on David Irving's early clashes with Professor Deborah Lipstadt (Article)