Day 22 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial

Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 1.26)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London Thursday, 17th February 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 TWENTY-TWO

Part II: Professor Richard Evans’ Cross-Examination by David Irving continued, Morning Session (2.1-108.24)

Section 2.1 to 28.11

<Day 22. (10.35 a.m.) Thursday, 17th February 2000. < Professor Evans, recalled. < Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: May it please the court. My apologies for this late start. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is quite all right. MR IRVING: My Lord, today we will certainly advance to the end of 1942 and I will certainly finish on Monday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. MR IRVING: So that is the target that I have set. Professor Evans, good morning. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Good morning. Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you please go to page 306 of your report?

If we could just before that go briefly to page 302 on paragraph 4? It is a minor point but we will take in our stride. You criticise on line 4 of paragraph 4 that “Irving all too often provides inaccurate references or no source references at all”. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, on the facing page on the bottom you have quoted three documents from the Public Records Office, Foreign Office, archives? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you find those yourself or were they from my discovery

or from my —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: These were found by one of my researchers in the Public Record Office. Q. [Mr Irving]: In the Public Record Office. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where there are documents that I found in your discovery, I have said so. Q. [Mr Irving]: So they made no use of the identical documents in my discovery provided to your solicitors then or of the reference numbers that I gave in the footnotes of my books?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, we went straight to the Public Record Office. Q. [Mr Irving]: How did they know which of these tens of thousands of files to look in if it was not from the source references I gave in the book? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That was, I presume, how we knew. Q. [Mr Irving]: We now advance to page 306.

You, of course, have strong criticism —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If I may just add to that, that I think these concern British Ambassadorial reports, that is right, and I note at the top of page 301 that you footnote those reports. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, thank you. In other words, I give sufficient references for you and your research to find documents like that? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In some instances, yes, in some instances you do not.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, well, we will come to those instances later on. I do not think it is enormously important, but one or two I am

going to pick off like a sniper. You have general criticism of a lady called Ingrid Weckert. You consider that her work is anti-semitic and that she is a neo-Nazi, and these are reasons why one should not use her, is that right? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: She is not a serious historian. Her work is anti-semitic propaganda.

Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to labour the point, but we had a discussion several days ago, you may remember, in which I asked you do revisionists ever turn up anything useful? Do they ever do any useful research or would you totally ignore the body of evidence the revisionists provide? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would ignore it unless —- Q. [Mr Irving]: Ignore it? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — I mean, unless you count yourself as a revisionist.

Q. [Mr Irving]: This was going to be my — well anticipated. Do you consider me to be a revisionist whom you would ignore the work I do? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what you call yourself. I mean, I have said repeatedly that you have turned up in the course of your career a number of documents of varying value, but some are valuable. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are slightly missing the point on Ingrid Weckert, are we not?

I think the point that Professor Evans makes (and you may want to deal with this) is that she is, as he describes her, not a serious historian but

an anti-semitic propagandist and you cite her seven times in, is it Goebbels — yes, Goebbels. MR IRVING: My Lord everyone is anticipating very well what I am about to ask this morning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Except me. MR IRVING: I was going to get on to this. At the beginning of paragraph 6 on page 306, you tend to talk a great deal about the book by Ingrid Weckert? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, why do you do this?

Is there any evidence at all that I have had the book or I that I have used the book or that I have relied on the book? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, there is. Q. [Mr Irving]: What is this book then? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is a — in a number of my footnotes —- Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you referring to footnote 162? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 154 and 160. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And —- Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a book?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And 158 and 162, and I understand that these are articles which were put together then to make a book. Q. [Mr Irving]: You reference the actual book on footnote 159, is that right? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any evidence whatsoever that I have had that book

or used that book or relied on that book in any degree? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, because in footnote — I mean, you are really splitting hairs here, Mr Irving —- Q. [Mr Irving]: No, I am talking about your paragraph No. 6. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you will allow me to answer the question, please? It is only two minutes into this and you are already interrupting me, Mr Irving.

As I have said, you have in your discovery, in the documents you made available to the Defence, some articles by Ingrid Weckert with pencil margin lines, presumably by yourself. These articles went together to form a book, though that, I mean, the articles in the book are, essentially, the same thing. Q. [Mr Irving]: I think it would be useful if we, therefore, have a look at this article that I am supposed to have done with the alleged pencil lines on it. It is in bundle H1 (vi).

Do you have that? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not have that here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you do, Mr Irving, can I be clear why we are doing this? Is it to show that she is not an anti-Semitic propagandist? MR IRVING: No, my Lord, it is because I have repeatedly been accused in this report of relying on an inaccurate book and of drawing pencil marks in an article to indicate that I have relied on the article. First of all, we are dealing with the book.

I have asked him to say, is there any evidence at all that I have even had the book in my

possession and, of course, there is not. So everything he says about the book is totally irrelevant. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, Mr Irving. I have already explained twice why it is not irrelevant. MR JUSTICE GRAY: He says, Mr Irving — he may be wrong, but what he says is that the articles you do quote or cite are really regurgitated in the book. Is that what you are saying, Professor Evans? I do not know whether it is right or wrong.

MR IRVING: Can I draw your attention —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, not simply regurgitated. MR IRVING: Can I draw your Lordship’s attention to footnote 160 which is one typical example where the witness says: “The testimony of Naumann, discussed later in this Report, is taken over by Irving from Weckert, but only mentioned in her book”. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in the two articles by her which he has included in his discovery.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But this is also, Mr Irving, I mean, in your account of the Reichskristallnacht, you have concealed where you get your material from. You cite simply “the author Ingrid Weckert” or “Ingrid Wecker” without giving a precise reference to where your material comes from. If one looks at some of the more extraordinary assertions you make in your account of the Reichskristallnacht, they occur in

Ingrid Weckert’s work and it is a fair inference that you have derived from her. Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have stated specifically —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying that you take over all of her extraordinary ideas, but you take over some. Q. [Mr Irving]: To cut the matter short, can we accept, can we agree that you now accept that I have not used her book? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, you cannot. MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has just said the opposite.

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already explained three times that the articles are substantially the same as the book. MR IRVING: But you criticise me for what is in her book and I have asked you to agree that I have never had her book? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us have a look at some —- Q. [Mr Irving]: This should be a matter briefly disposed of. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — let us have a look at some of the ideas.

I mean, this is all extremely vague at the moment. Q. [Mr Irving]: First of all, can you point to the pencil lines on the article to which you refer? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right, well, can you refer me to the page, please? Q. [Mr Irving]: It is page 646 of bundle H1 (vi). A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 600 and? Q. [Mr Irving]: 46. That is where it begins I believe. H. MR RAMPTON: It may be your Lordship will find it in L2. MR IRVING: H1 (vi) is the copy that I have used.

MR RAMPTON: Yes. That may be, but what is it called?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is Kristallnacht 1938, the great anti-German spectacle, and this may be taken directly from the journal and not —- MR RAMPTON: I do not know. Your Lordship will find it in L2 at tab 6. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. MR RAMPTON: Without the pencil marks, I think. MR IRVING: Without pencil marks? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Without pencil marks.

Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the point of putting in a footnote 162, see the pencil lines, if we cannot see the pencil lines? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You deny that there are pencil lines, Mr Irving. Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking you to show them to us. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have the original copy, then, please? Q. [Mr Irving]: I have just given you the reference. It is H1(vi) 646. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, the original.

Q. [Mr Irving]: So we have now established that I did not use the book? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, Mr Irving. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have not established that. MR IRVING: I am not getting a clear answer from the witness, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure what it is I am looking at in L2. Is this extract from the book or one of the articles? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an article. MR IRVING: It is not the reference I gave.

The reference I gave was H1 (vi) 646, which is the way the documents

were given to me? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the same. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am bound to say I do not really find this terribly helpful. The nub of the criticism, I will say it again, is that you have used and cited as a source for events succeeding Kristallnacht a lady who is alleged by this witness to be worthless as a historian and an anti-Semite. You have various answers to that.

Either you can say I think she is a serious historian and you can put to the witness why, or you can say that the material you cited has no signs of any anti-Semitism, but really burrowing through the documents to see whether there are pencil sidenotes on an article seems to me to be a waste of time. MR RAMPTON: I have the original discovery copy and it has lots of pencil marks on it, or what appear to be copies of pencil marks, to be exact.

MR IRVING: Can I take you to the little bundle of documents? We will jump several stages in this case, my Lord. Towards the end of the little bundle of documents probably on the second page —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, you will have to tell me which little bundle, Mr Irving. I have plenty here. Q. [Mr Irving]: The one I gave you this morning. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me try and find it. Yes.

Q. [Mr Irving]: About two pages from the end, is that a letter from me to

somebody called Mrs Weckert dated June 3rd 1979? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry. I wonder if I am looking at the wrong thing? MR IRVING: It is two pages from the end of that little bundle, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it has found its way here. It does not appear in my clip, at any rate not two pages from the end? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is the one with 693 in the top right hand corner.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the 693 indicate that that letter was in my discovery? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am sure it does. MR IRVING: Am I replying in that letter to a sehr ausfuhrliche Darstellung which this lady has sent to me? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: I am thanking her for a very —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Extensive. Q. [Mr Irving]: Extensive description. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that this was a description of the events of the Kristallnacht as she has researched it up to that point? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I accept that that is her tendentious account of the Reichskristallnacht. Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. Will you look in the second paragraph and see

that I make criticisms already of her account and suggest that I am not going to go along with everything that she writes? You cannot just dismiss the report of the SA Group — do I write that? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You write that, yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: This will certainly interest you most of all? I also refer to the diary of von Hassell, the diary of Grosfort and other contemporary sources? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, Mr Irving.

As I have already said, I do not say that you take over all her ideas. You do not, for example, depict, as she does, the pogrom of the Reichskristallnacht as devised and put forward by Zionists in order to cast opprobrium on the Nazi regime and cause it to fall. Even you have some scruples, Mr Irving.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Is possible that an amateur historian like Ingrid Weckert will succeed by her obsessive diligence in turning up items, or documents, or conversations with people that she conducted, that would be use to the general body of historical opinion? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not regard her as an amateur historian, Mr Irving. Q. [Mr Irving]: An amateur writer, an amateur chronicler? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Answer the thrust of the question, Professor Evans.

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is always a possibility, yes, of course, that anyone can do that. MR IRVING: Is this the kind of correspondence you would expect

to see between one writer and another where one writer is saying, “I found this kind of thing”, and the other writer writes back and says, “well, I think you got this right but you got that wrong, here are some documents that I have got” — does this go on? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not said that you take over all her ideas, or that you agree with absolutely everything she says.

The fact remains, Mr Irving, that in your accounts of the Reichskristallnacht some years later than 1979, and after she had published her work in the course of the 1980s, you do adopt a number of her ideas. Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen the lengthy Darstellung that she sent me? It was in the discovery. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We used her book and her —- Q. [Mr Irving]: You have used her book?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Wait a minute, and the articles with the pencil lines in the margin. Q. [Mr Irving]: You have used her articles, but have you seen the lengthy typescript letter she sent me with all the details of the research that she had done? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have not used that in the report, Mr Irving. We have used her — this is not a report about Frau Weckert and her works. Q. [Mr Irving]: But quite a lot of it is about her, is it not?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The report is about you, and your use of her work. There are one, two, three, four, five, about half a dozen pages

here about your reliance on aspects of her work rather than on your own research. Q. [Mr Irving]: The inference you are giving in your report — I am going it move on very shortly from this — is that I have relied on her book. You go in great detail into her book. You say that her book has been black listed by the Germans. It has been put on the censorship list, has it?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is illegal to sell or lend it to any person under the age of 18 because it is regarded by the authorities as an anti-semitic work which is liable to corrupt young minds, and also shows no evidence of even minimal attempts at truthfulness and objectivity.

Let me say once again, Mr Irving, that what I demonstrate in my report is that you have taken some, although not all, of Ingrid Weckert’s ideas from her writings, from her articles, which then were reprinted and put together as the book.

Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have not made no reference at all to the fact that I had from her a lengthy special Darstellung which she wrote at my request and which has no reference to her book, which is the thing that has been banned and on which I pass critical comment? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Are you claiming that this is entirely different from the book and the articles, it says completely things and that that is what you use in your book, Mr Irving? I do not think so.

Q. [Mr Irving]: In the corner of the world where you come from, Professor

Evans, do you agree with the censoring of books, blacklisting of books? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think we need to get into that. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is an entirely different matter. MR IRVING: Why did you mention it then in this report?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because the German authorities have investigated her work and decided after the investigation that it is anti-semitic, corrupting and shows no evidence of even minimal attempts at truthfulness or objectivity. Q. [Mr Irving]: As you said earlier, have we anything—- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What they do as a result of that is a matter for them. Q. [Mr Irving]: Have we anything to learn from Germany in this last century about freedom of speech?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that question helps, Mr Irving. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I take that as a rhetorical question, Mr Irving. Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes. Leave me to deal with the question. MR IRVING: In paragraph 10 on page 308 you object to the fact that I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date. What on earth is wrong with that? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, where is this? Q. [Mr Irving]: In paragraph 10 on page 308.

You say he unilaterally alters the date of arrival of Goebbels back in Berlin. I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date. What is wrong with that? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just read back here. I am afraid this might

require —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, if this is a point that you do not really place much reliance on, I think I would say so. MR IRVING: Again it is an allegation that I have relied on the book, and the wrong date in the book. In fact, of course, I have relied on the correct date from other sources. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does appear to me, Mr Irving, that whether you actually relied on the book is, in a sense, a bit of a side issue.

Even if you have not, the criticism that is made of you, and you have not really addressed it, is that you are content to cite a source who Professor Evans says is anti-semitic and not a worth while source for a reputable historian to use. MR IRVING: Let me address that point now, my Lord, by way of a response to your Lordship. This is to say that there may be some historians with a political bent who will disregard entirely evidence coming from people of whose politics they disprove.

If we were to do that with all sources, of course, we would be left without a very large body of historical documentation, for example, the works of all the Nazi war criminals, somebody like Rudolf Hoess, Kommandant of Auschwitz, who clearly was not very pro-Semitic, to disregard the writings as somebody on the basis of the fact that they have expressed anti-semitic views, or racist views, or any other views of which the

researcher personally disapproves, is a very poor criterion for selectivity of documentary materials, in my submission, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see. Would you like to comment very briefly on that? Turn that into a question, if you see what I mean, and give your answer. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think anybody suggested that Rudolf Hoess was an historian. MR IRVING: Very well, if that is your answer.

Now will you go down to page 309 and the justification for my having dealt with that previous matter at such length, my Lord, is the first line of paragraph 1, “another instance of Irving’s poor scholarship is”. In other words, you are saying that all the aforegoing is evidence of my poor scholarship? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Although you now admit that I did not use the book, I have not got the book?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do we have to go over this all over again, Mr Irving? I have already given my answer about five times to that. Q. [Mr Irving]: I think I have made my point. Page 312, line 6 of your report? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I necessarily have to leap forward onto little mountain peaks like this, because otherwise we will get bogged down in the minefield. MR JUSTICE GRAY: As long as they are mountain peaks. You also

must explain to me in what context if you go to the middle of a paragraph. We are on now the testimony of Shirmeister and Fritsche. MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you objected to the fact that I have mentioned the figure of 91 deaths in the Reichskristallnacht in the previous paragraphs, or are you going to insist that we look for the actual references? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is not a very important point, Mr Irving.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you allow me to decide what is important? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Please, I think I am entitled to say what points in my report I regard as important, and what I do not regard as important. You may disagree with that. That is another matter. But I am perfectly entitled to say that. This is not a particularly important point —- Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree you spent an entire page describing this?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Will let me speak, please, Mr Irving? I am getting very fed up with these constant interruptions. I will read this out, OK? “In the War Path, published in 1978, Irving gave the official figure of 91 killed, arrived at by the Nazis themselves. Of course, this figure is still far too low, and does not account for suicides, of which there were 680 by Jews during or shortly after the pogrom in Vienna alone.

Others were killed after their transport to the concentration camps. However, many other historians have quoted the figure of 91 deaths, and Irving’s account

in 1978 at least gives some insight into what happened during the pogrom”. Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you please now stop? That is all we need? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is intended to comment relatively favourably, or to sort of find some redeeming features in the account you gave in 1978. It is not a very important criticism. Q. [Mr Irving]: You say it is not an important criticism.

You devote an entire paragraph, an entire page, to the suggestion that my entire portrayal is designed to diminish the suffering of the Jews. You pick on the figure of 91 and it turns out many other historians have quoted precisely the same figure. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, let us read on a bit, shall we? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just read on, Mr Irving. Let me try and get some sort of sense into this.

If you read that page, I do not think Professor Evans is criticising your use of the figure of 91. What I think he is saying is (and he is being critical here) that after you used that figure in ‘The Warpath’, you then reduced it when you came to publish your book on Goebbels. Now, I take that to be the gist of the criticism. It is probably not the most important criticism made, but that is the criticism. So let us address that rather than something that is not being criticised.

MR IRVING: I will address it briefly because I do not think it is a just criticism. Are you suggesting that in the book

on Goebbels I left the final death roll at 35? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, in the book on Goring published in ’89, the book on Goebbels ’96, you cite a figure of 35 or 36 basing it on an early incomplete report by Heydrich. Q. [Mr Irving]: You are suggesting that I left it at that figure? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And I cite Goring page 237, if you want to have a look at that? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, show him the passage where you bump the figure up again.

MR IRVING: My Lord, you are one who has brought this matter up and I am not prepared to answer that at short notice, but I will look into it and I will bring the figure and the source material out. The point that I was making with that is that on several previous occasions he has criticised my figure of 91 in the Goebbels book, and here he says, “Well, lots of other historians have had the same figure”?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And my point, Mr Irving, as his Lordship has quite correctly said, that reduce the figures to 35 or 36 in your later work. Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 309? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Going back? Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Do you rely on the testimony of Schirmeister and Fritzsche and the fact that page numbers and dates are wrong as being one more instance of David Irving’s poor scholarship?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me read that paragraph. You give a footnote on page 281 of Goebbels. Q. [Mr Irving]: I summarise it for you? Are you suggesting that I got the dates wrong of the testimony and the pagination wrong which caused your researchers some difficulty? MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is one of the tiniest points I would have thought in the entire report that Professor Evans has —- MR IRVING: My Lord, it is a barrage of tiny points. It is death by a thousand cuts.

I am picking on some of them which I can with relative ease amend the damage. MR RAMPTON: Can I intervene because that reflects on something I raised yesterday. I am very concerned about this because it put me in a difficulty. We had passed through Reichskristallnacht yesterday, I would have thought. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So did I. MR RAMPTON: We have now come back to it for what I might call pinpricks.

One huge section, major section, of Professor Evans’ of Mr Irving’s treatment of Reichskristallnacht was the Heydrich telex at 1.28 and we have not touched on it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have said just now — I am trying to guide you, Mr Irving — that you were concentrating on the mountain peaks. Absolutely right. That is what you must do. Professor Evans has taken some what I agree are pretty tiny points, but you must not forget about the mountain peaks altogether.

I mean, the Heydrich telex is

a crucial part of the criticism that is made of your rendering of the accounts of Kristallnacht. I think Mr Rampton is right and I think I am right in saying that you have not really challenged that part of the report. MR IRVING: I can deal with the Heydrich telex in two lines, quite simply by pointing to the 2.56 telegram that came subsequently. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry?

MR IRVING: By pointing to the 2.56 document issued by the officer Rudolf Hess which came subsequent to that which clarifies that matter. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What do you mean, it clarifies? MR IRVING: I mean which renders the 1.20 telex, in my view, of much less significance. MR RAMPTON: No, it is not a question of history, my Lord. It is the question of how it is written by Mr Irving. I am looking at the bottom of page 276 of Goebbels and I see what Mr Irving wrote about it.

Then if I look at the actual document, I think I am looking at two completely different things. That is the criticism made by —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is the criticism Professor Evans makes. MR RAMPTON: Yes. Mr Irving has not even touched on it. Maybe he accepts it as being a fair criticism. That is what I need to know. MR IRVING: Maybe I find these —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, there are two points here and they

are separate points. One is whether you have accurately reported what the telex or the message or the order or whatever it was said, and the second point is whether it matters one way or another. I quite understand you say you can forget about it because things moved on an hour and a half later. MR IRVING: Am I right in understanding that if I do not challenge or traverse something here in cross-examination, then it could be taken as accepted? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the mountain peaks, yes.

You cannot chase every single tiny point, and I would not dream of criticising you for not doing so. MR IRVING: To be accused of poor scholarship, my Lord, is not a tiny point. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that, but what I would be critical of is if you did not pick up in cross-examination major criticisms. It is terribly easy to see what the major criticisms are — at least I believe it is.

MR IRVING: We will come to them, and I am not aided by the lengthy discourses which are caused by the very frequent interruptions by Mr Rampton. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think they are very frequent and if they are justified, then Mr Rampton cannot be criticised for making them. MR RAMPTON: Can I add, while I am on this subject, that is one major criticism which seemed to me to have, I do not know

what the word is, bypassed a mountain peak. Another one appear to have been bypassed yesterday, and again it puts me in a difficulty because I am bound to say at the end of the case, if these mountain peaks are not tackled, I shall say that Mr Irving has conceded them. Another one was the Himmler log entry for 1st December 1941. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think Mr Irving must take his own course. MR RAMPTON: I agree. MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the end, he must cross-examine on what he wants to.

I am not going to take anything as conceded because it is not cross-examined to, but I —- MR IRVING: Unless I expressly concede it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: — I think it is right that I should take into account the fact that he has not challenged it. I have to make up my own mind in the end. I do not think I can say that the point goes by default.

MR RAMPTON: I am using a shorthand; I would if he were a professional advocate, he is not, but I am bound to say that I will place considerable weight on the fact that he makes no challenge. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I can see why you would. MR IRVING: Of course, they have been extensively dealt with in my cross-examination of me. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think that is a sufficient answer. I said yesterday (and I will say it again) you

must cross-examine to the mountain peaks if you want to challenge what Professor Evans says but you can do it briefly. MR IRVING: Yes, I shall certainly do so. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just going back, let us use the Heydrich message of 1.20, or whatever it was —- MR IRVING: As an example. MR JUSTICE GRAY: — as an example; if you want to say that what you said about it in Goebbels is entirely accurate and no sensible person can criticise your account of it, you can put that very briefly.

MR IRVING: My Lord, the submission that I intend to make on a number of those matters is, apply the following test: if that sentence or that error or that flaw or that misreading be taken out of that book, does it in the slightest alter the thrust or the weight of the arguments? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very good point, but that is a point for final submissions —- MR IRVING: Yes, and that is why —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: — not for cross-examination.

MR IRVING: — it may well be that I shall readily concede the points when the time comes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So be it. That, in a way, rather tallies with what Mr Rampton just said. But you must make a judgment about that, but it is very important you

understand how I see the important points and what should do if you are going to challenge Professor Evans’ criticisms. MR IRVING: My Lord, it is revealing no secrets if I say that in my final speech I shall not be addressing all the issues; I shall be strongly addressing to your Lordship that a number of the issues are of far less moment. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I quite agree.

MR IRVING: And that the major issues like poor scholarship, distortion, manipulation, Holocaust denier and so on are the ones to which I shall attend in the final speech. That is why, with your Lordship’s permission, I intend to dwell on matters like poor scholarship in a way that may appear infuriating to you, but I can only pick on the examples that are given in this report.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I am getting the impression — I am Judge alone, I can say this and I do not have to worry about the Jury — I get the slight impression that you are cherry picking your way through and alighting on some really rather minor points. I mean, the point about Schirmeister and Fritzsche, if I may say so, with respect to Professor Evans, it be could have been omitted from his report without doing any injustice to the Defendants’ case.

MR IRVING: Let me just ask two brief questions then, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course.

MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you find criticism with the fact that the pagination of the references to the testimony did not tally?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me read everything I say about this: “Another instance of Irving’s poor scholarship is the footnote reference given on page 281 of Goebbels: ‘Mastermind of the “Third Reich”‘ to back up his claim that ‘Goebbels however would brag that he had proved that the Jews could be eliminated from the economy, whatever Funk said to the contrary’.

When we turn to pages 190-1 and 235-7 of volume 17 of the Nuremberg Trials documents, cited by Irving as the location of the ‘Testimony of Schirmeister and Fritzsche, June 28, 1946′ in support of his statement, we find that the reference for pages 190-1 refers to June 27 not June 28, that Schirmeister is never mentioned on these pages, and that Fritzsche’s testimony deals with a completely different subject”. I am bound to say this is a very minor I point.

I thought it, on balance, worth putting in. I was not advised that it should be taken out, but it really is not an important, not a desperately important, point. Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you just one brief question? Are you aware of the fact that there are two parallel editions, one German and one English? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you — well, in order — if you really want to go into this, Mr Irving, we will have to look up both editions and

have to have copies of both editions of the Nuremberg Trial documents here and a copy of your book, “Goebbels: Master mind of the Third Reich” which I have here. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do we really want to go through this? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Speaking for myself, I do not think I would. I would forget it. This is not going to feature in any conclusions that I come to in this case.

MR IRVING: The allegations of poor scholarship, my Lord, rest substantially on these trivial complaints. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept that, Mr Irving.

Section 28.12 to 40.25

Q. [Mr Irving]: Pages 321 to 322. We are now back in Riga at the shootings. Can I ask you just a brief, simple question to start with? Professor Evans, do you challenge my account of the shootings at Riga, the actual shootings

on November 30th 1941, and if so, why? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Tell me what your account is, where it is, what you are referring to exactly. Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read, in pursuance of your duties as an expert witness, the account I have given of that in various books including Hitler’s War volume 2 — the second edition, rather, and the Goebbels biography? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you point me to one of these, please?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can do that quite quickly. MR IRVING: My problem here, my Lord, is once again the fact that this is not the right witness to ask these questions

of. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why not? MR IRVING: Because this was certainly the matter to be addressed to the Holocaust witness rather than to this witness, but he has spent a page and a half looking at this episode, and I am just trying to deal with this summarily. Does he accept my account is right? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is a very sensible question to start with actually.

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, well, turn to pages 347 and 348 of my report, and there you will see my criticisms. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That should give us the reference too for the … MR IRVING: The manipulation of statistics? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can somebody find us the passage in Hitler’s War? It is not very good on its index. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is also Goebbels, page 645.

MR IRVING: Shall we just dwell on the Goebbels one which is a more recent one? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is page 645 or thereabouts. MR IRVING: Yes, the footnotes. (To the witness): Do you suggest, witness, that I have given the wrong overall total for the number of Jews killed in Riga or on this specific day? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: First of all, you say that on 30th November 1941 5,000

Jews were killed. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Whereas there is a documentation to indicate that 10,000 were killed and after the war the court accepted that the number was actually between 13 and 15,000. You then claim, when you are confronted with this evidence, that each ditch into which these unfortunate people were dumped, shot, would have held 1 or 2,000 victims without having any evidence at all about the size of the ditches. That is the first point.

Then the second point is that in the main narrative in Goebbels you do not say anything about the second massacre on 8th December. You do, however, as I say, in the footnotes say that 27,800 Jews are executed in Riga, but you then claim that that is possibly an exaggeration. Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we take those two points? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And that is — yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, take them one by one. MR IRVING: Take them one at a time. So we are now on pages 347 and 348?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: You say: “Faced with this evidence”, five lines from the bottom, right, of page 347? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: “Faced with this evidence, Irving offers a further

argument”. Why do you say “faced with this evidence”? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do you not mention this evidence? Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you find these documents that you referred to earlier in that paragraph in my discovery or are they referenced in my footnotes? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just have a look. This is the Bruns and then there is the —- Q. [Mr Irving]: The evidence for the figure of 10,600 shot on that day which was a book published in 1989.

You have no evidence that I was faced with that evidence, do you? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What you do, what you say is that they will have held 1 or 2,000 victims each. What you are aware of, you see, in the second — let us leap to the second account here — is that Einsatzgruppen A reported that a total of 27,800 Jews were executed in Riga, which seems to be a pretty accurate estimate and that is the evidence that you are faced with.

Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the second part of the question? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And are you saying that you —- Q. [Mr Irving]: And you object to the fact that I say that this is possibly exaggerated? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, there is this — you say that is possibly exaggerated, yes, you try to cast doubt upon it, and then you mention the size of the ditches without mentioning their depth. Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come back to the size of the ditches.

You take exception to the fact that I say that 27,800 is possibly

exaggerated. You are familiar with the historian Ezergailis, the Baltic historian who is, I think we both agree, an expert on this matter? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I cite him in footnote 75. Q. [Mr Irving]: And at the end of that paragraph 2 you say that he has arrived at figures of certainly almost 25,000 Jews killed? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: So 27,800 is about 12 per cent more than that, is it not?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The estimates by the court in Hamburg is about 25 to 30,000. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is Ezergailis, Andrew Ezergailis, who, as you say, used various methods of calculating the victims arrived also at figures of certainly almost, in other words, less than, 25,000 less killed? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, when you saw possibly an exaggeration, you do not mean to suggest to the reader that it might have been a couple of thousand or 2,800 less.

Q. [Mr Irving]: 12 per cent? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you are casting in your usual, a way that you frequently employ, you are trying to cast a general doubt on these figures. “Possibly an exaggeration” does not mean that it is within that range of possibilities. I think you are trying to suggest it could be a gross exaggeration. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just, I am trying keep an eye on the wood rather than looking at the trees. The first

criticism, if I remember what you said a few minutes ago, was that if anyone just read the text in Goebbels, he would get the impression that there were only 5,000 killed. Am I right so far? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And that is page 379 of the text? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I cannot find a reference to 5,000. I can find a reference to 4,000. MR RAMPTON: It is 1,000 plus 4?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 1 plus 4. 1,000 from Berlin and 4,000 from Riga. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you saying — Mr Irving will, no doubt, ask you a question if you are wrong about it — that there is no reference in the text to any more Jews having been shot at Riga than the 5,000? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. MR IRVING: But the reference is there in the end notes at the back to 27,800, is that right?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, where you frequently put embarrassing things in footnotes hoping, no doubt, that the common reader will not consult them. Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would I put footnotes in a book if I hoped that the reader would not consult them? Would it not just be simpler not to put them in at all? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is a matter of what strategy you are adopting to try to make your work plausible to those, that minority of

readers who will consult the footnotes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Which of us has the minority of readers? Me with my best selling books or you with the 10,000? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not what I meant. Q. [Mr Irving]: The suggestion that I put footnotes in a book in the hope that nobody will read them is rather implausible, is it not? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I think that the average reader does not consult the footnotes.

You are addressing yourself to two audiences, as I think you yourself said under cross-examination. You are addressing yourself to the general reader, but also to people who have a more specialized knowledge.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that if you are writing a book which has a strong chronological flow and you are dealing with an episode that in happened in November, it would be disruptive to the reader to be told about things at the end of December and that it, therefore, makes sense to put in footnotes the overall result of this kind of murder operation? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not the end of December, Mr Irving. It is 8th December. That is a week later.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but would you accept that it is confusing for —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not a huge chronological gap. Q. [Mr Irving]: — a reader to be —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I will not accept it. I think you have a duty to give an accurate estimate of the numbers killed, and not to

partly underestimate it and then hide the actual final number in a footnote and cast doubt on it in a footnote. Q. [Mr Irving]: Are there better ways of hiding things than printing things in books; you can hide them by just dropping on the floor, like the Schlegelberger document? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have asked that question and I think you have got the answer. MR IRVING: I have, my Lord, and I will I move on now to the pits.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, would you, because I have not quite got the picture on that. MR IRVING: Do you agree that General Bruns in his gripping and harrowing account of the mass shootings that occurred

on November 30th 1941 — you remember the girl with the flame red dress that he had in his mind’s eye just before she was shot? Do you agree that he describes that there were two or three pits of a certain length and a certain width. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: And can we not calculate from that in a rough — can we not do a check sum to work out the feasibility of numbers of bodies that would fit into those pits?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, you cannot, unless you know the depth. Q. [Mr Irving]: How deep can a pit be dug, do you think? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, goodness! I mean, any depth. I would not want to make an estimate, I mean.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept that I am expert in digging pits, having worked in my early years as a student as a navvi for many years in order to finance my way through university? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, come on. You can dig a pit as deep as you have got the energy to dig it. MR IRVING: My Lord, that is a very hazardous operation if you are standing at the bottom of the pit and you dig it without any kind of shoring.

I would now draw your Lordship’s attention to one such pit which is photographed in the little bundle I gave you. It is the last item in the bundle. It provides a useful check point for the depth that these pits go when they are only three metres wide. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And you are saying, are you, Mr Irving, that this is one of the pits in Riga? This is an authenticated photograph of one of them?

Q. [Mr Irving]: This is, well, as you can tell by the British soldier standing around with machine guns, this is probably Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald, where the victims of Nazi atrocities are being buried by some of the perpetrators. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And what does that tell us about the pits in Riga, Mr Irving? Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry, my Lord. You do not have the photograph? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think maybe I am missing a few pages off the back of this little clip.

MR IRVING: This is the photograph from my collection of

original photographs that I have assembled over the years of Nazi atrocities. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the question? MR IRVING: Yes. Do you have the photograph in front of you? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I will take it out again. Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you give a rough estimate as to how wide and probably how long that pit or, at any rate, how wide the pit is? A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, I am not — this is not one of the pits at Riga.

This is no relevance whatsoever to the matter we are dealing with. Q. [Mr Irving]: It is relevant to the matter of how deep you can dig a pit in circumstances like this —- A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You can dig pit any depth you like, Mr Irving. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that your expert evidence as a pit digger or can we apply some common sense?

A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As it happens, I have been having my house reconstructed, Mr Irving, recently —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is as may be. A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and people have been digging pits and I have watched them, so I do know something about digging pits.

MR IRVING: Can I ask my Lord, did your Lordship consider that it is possible now using that photograph to make some basic assumptions about the kind of pits and graves that were dug and whether they had layers of soil on top of them and… MR JUSTICE GRAY: Put your case briefly for saying that the