Day 29 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial

Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 12.2)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London Thursday, 2nd March 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-NINE

(10.30 a.m.) MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton and Mr Irving, before we start today, I wonder if I can hand to you now a list of issues? MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I did mention earlier that it might be helpful — it is up to both of you — if we could perhaps take the issues in more or less the order in which I have set them out, if that is not inconvenient?

I also want to make sure that I have got everything in that I need to cover, and that I have not included things that really are no longer live issues. Do not take time with it now. MR RAMPTON: No, I will not. There is one item in (i) of four which is still to come today from Evans, which will need to be added. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. It is just that either at a later stage today, or perhaps tomorrow, it might be worth spending a few minutes just going through that.

MR RAMPTON: I do not think I will finish my cross-examination today. MR IRVING: That is very useful, my Lord. There are four or five minor points that I wish to raise before Mr Rampton resumes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: The first point is that I have repeatedly asked the

Defence to provide me with the speeches, the transcripts on disk, most recently about 10 days ago by letter. It would obviously assist me in responding to and rebutting these juicy morsels that they are tossed out of their cage into the courtroom, like yesterday. If I had such a thing on disk, and I am entitled to it of course under the rules, once the documents have been pleaded, I am entitled to have them in digital form.

There is no reason for this delay other than a deliberate and wilful attempt to impede my response. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that I am clear what you are asking for, is it a disk containing the speeches that you have made that the Defendants rely on? MR IRVING: No, it is a disk containing the transcripts. They are put into court by way of their pleadings in evidence. Obviously it exists in digital form. It is no great burden on them. It is five minutes work to do, just pressing one button.

They could have done this 10 days ago, if not, indeed, when I first asked for them. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not sound an unreasonable request. MR RAMPTON: I have no idea. I do not deal in disks, I am afraid. I deal in paper. I will pass on that request. I am surprised it has not been responded to. If it is anybody’s fault, I apologise for it on their behalf. If these transcripts — and I think Mr Irving means the transcripts that are in the K files —-

MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, which is racism, anti-Semitism, or allegedly so. MR RAMPTON: — which are mostly his own words. If they are on a disk, which I imagine they must be, then by all means, if it is easier. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I know they are on disk because I am not — well, anyway, if it can be done, it should be done soon because Mr Irving needs it. MR RAMPTON: If it is possible, it should be done before the weekend.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before the weekend, I agree, yes. MR IRVING: A not unrelated matter is that the Defence solicitors are still sitting on a number of my microfilms and papers. They keep promising to return them. When they returned my previous boxes of papers, they returned them in a totally disheveled state, which has not assisted me —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is something I do not really want to get into now. Raise that, but perhaps at a later stage.

MR IRVING: The third point, my Lord, is the Eichmann manuscripts. I gave the undertaking which your Lordship very properly required. The manuscript has now been placed in the public domain. It is on, for example, the website of Der Spiegel and elsewhere. I would ask that the undertaking which I gave should now be rescinded or

annulled, if Mr Rampton has no objection, in order that I am not—- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I suspect he may not really know the score on that. MR RAMPTON: I do not know the score. I am told that that version, which is the electronic version, that came to us from the Israeli Government cannot be used for any purpose but this trial. If it is on some website or other, then perhaps we can have our disk back so we can give it back to the Israeli Government, and people can use the public domain copy.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well … MR IRVING: Without wanting to compare the public domain version word for word with the version given to me, I see that it has been published in the Guardian yesterday, for example. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have seen reports which make it appear that you may be right. MR IRVING: Having given the undertaking —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am not in a position to judge is whether the whole of it is in now in the public domain.

If the whole of it is, then it seems to me that you should be released from your, undertaking, but I am not going to release you now. I do not think this is really in a way Mr Rampton’s problem. MR RAMPTON: My problem is that I am merely the conduit pipe

for this material. I gave my own personal undertaking in order to get the material released; I do not really feel I can break it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: To save time, what I am inclined to say is this. It does appear to me that there is good reason for supposing that it is in the public domain. If that be right, I do not see it is realistic to maintain the undertaking.

I am therefore inclined to think it should be lifted, but I would like to give an opportunity to whoever it may be to make representations, whether through you or in some other way. MR IRVING: I do not want to be held in contempt. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course you do not, but the undertaking will stay until tomorrow morning. If somebody tomorrow morning wants to say that the undertaking should remain in place, I will hear argument then. MR IRVING: My Lord, tomorrow is Friday.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, but I suspect your cross-examination is going to continue until tomorrow. MR RAMPTON: I do not know that there is going to be any difficulty at all. The only difficulty I can see, and it is mere conjecture, is that there may be parts of the electronic version which has been given to Mr Irving for the purposes of this case and no other purpose. There may be parts of that which are not in the copy which has been released.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be. MR RAMPTON: — in which case I would have to maintain my position so far as those other parts are concerned. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say I am not sure that I understand why the Eichmann diaries are relevant because, if they were not, and they by definition were not, available to Mr Irving, I am not sure how they can be used by way of criticism. MR RAMPTON: I may say I rather agree with that.

It is not my intention contention today at any rate to make any reference to them in this court. The fact is they do contain, as anybody can see if they read the public report, some statements made in 1960 something which, if reliable, demolish Holocaust denial really at one fell swoop, but so what. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see that there is a way in which they could be capable of being used in this trial, but I will leave you to take whatever course you think is right.

MR RAMPTON: My present inclination, I am not saying it is the final inclination, is that this is something for the historians to argue about, rather than the lawyers in this court, but I will reserve my position for the present at least, if I may. I do not know, Mr Irving may have further things? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there is one other point. MR IRVING: There are two other points, my Lord. One is the

video of the Halle meeting on 9th November 1991. I wish to make submissions to your Lordship next week about the admissibility of that video, because it was the subject of a bitter dispute between myself and the instructing solicitors for the Defendants. It was a matter of withheld discovery, fraudulently withheld discovery. In fact, I was reminded of this by the OSS this morning. I put a complaint into the OSS over undertakings broken by the solicitors, and so on.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who are the OSS? MR IRVING: Offices for the Supervision of Solicitors in Leamington Spa; a rather toothless body which watches over malfunctions by solicitors. So I would like permission to make a submission about the admissibility of the video as such. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Do that when you like. In some ways it ought to be perhaps done sooner rather than later.

MR IRVING: I had prepared a little bundle on this many, many weeks ago and I was just reminded of this actual matter this morning by this phone call from the OSS. The final matter is the little bundle I put before your Lordship headed “Documents on Mr Irving’s 1991 arrest”. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: This is the Lowenbraukeller meeting. It is a matter of my truthfulness, whether I am right or whether

the Defence submissions are correct, namely that I was a participant in an illegal demonstration or not. These are three or four documents on the police file which contain the statement that was made at the time of arrest and so on, which I have summarised in the two-page translation at this beginning. Either your Lordship can say now that you attach no importance to the issue of the submissions made yesterday as to whether I was telling the truth or not.

It bulked quite large in the cross-examination but your Lordship may very well say you attach no importance to it. If your Lordship does attach importance to it, then I would ask permission to put these documents to Professor Funke, who is in the court this morning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it matters a row of beans whether it was an illegal demonstration, or whether it was not. MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The relevance, as it appears to me —- MR IRVING: The question is my truthfulness. MR JUSTICE GRAY: — is simply whether you did either participate in, or in some other way associate yourself with, the demonstration that one sees on the video. MR IRVING: I appreciate that point, my Lord, but the other point is my truthfulness. If I state something which is then disbelieved by the Defence and they maintain their position despite my several invitations to accept that

they are wrong, and here are the documents that clearly show from the police files that I am right, namely what time it was, the fact that it was an hour after the function in the Lowenbraukeller ended that I was apprehended, the fact that we were heading northwards, so to speak —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am going to do, subject to Mr Rampton, is — I do not know whether he is going to cross-examine you about this? MR RAMPTON: No.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think there is any reason — I do not think it has anything do with Professor Funke. He was not there. I do not see any reason why you should not very shortly, as it were, put this in evidence through your own mouth, as it were, or indeed by way of submission, I do not mind. MR IRVING: Very well. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That can be done either straightaway or it can be done later on. Mr Rampton, I do not know whether you are going to touch on this in cross-examination?

MR RAMPTON: No. For the most part, right-wing extremism to my way of thing, has been done and dusted. I have very little cross-examination left on that, and it certainly does not concern Germany. As to these new document, I am completely neutral because I do not know what they say. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That suggests to me that probably this ought

to be done at a later stage. MR IRVING: By way of submission. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Perhaps first thing tomorrow or at the end of cross-examination tomorrow, if we go into tomorrow. MR RAMPTON: I will need to have them looked at by German speakers in the usual way.

MR IRVING: There are two or three more letters from me to German Embassies and people like that, which show that I went about things in a perfectly proper way, asking whether the bodies that invited me to speak were legal and lawful and constitutional and so on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We do not want to get disproportionate about it.

MR RAMPTON: I would only say this about that kind of material, whether it advances the matter one way or another, I rather doubt, but self-serving protests by Mr Irving are not evidence that it did not happen. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate that. MR IRVING: I did not catch that, but it is my veracity which I am concerned about that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You are obviously concerned about that. I have indicated the way I think we ought to deal with it so we will leave it until tomorrow.

That concludes the points you wanted to raise? MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the next step is for you to go into

the witness box, please. You are obviously still under oath.

Part II: Rampton Cross-Examines Irving, morning session (12.3 to 106.25)

Section 12.3 to 37.24

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, before I start, I announce the first thing, if I may, that I am going to do. Your Lordship will remember the short sequence we had from the negationists, or whatever you call it, meeting at Hagenau in Azas in November 1989, and the reference to the sedan chair and the telephone box.

What I am now going to do, with your Lordship’s leave, is show a short section from a speech that Mr Irving made at Milton, Ontario, on 5th October 1991, that is to say almost two years after the Hagenau event. Its transcript is at K3, tab 10. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this what is called the Moers speech? MR RAMPTON: No, it is not Moers. This is Milton, Ontario, which I think is in Canada. It is more of the same.

Then I shall ask Mr Irving some questions about it in the light of the questions he asked Professor Funke yesterday. < Mr Irving, recalled. < Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC continued. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think the relevant part of the transcript is pages 17 and 18. Have I got that right? The television seems to be defunct. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we need to start with this, Mr Rampton? MR RAMPTON: It is a question of continuity, and it is fresh in everybody’s mind from yesterday.

I find it difficult to cross-examine with the witness box overrun by

technicians! (Video played) MR RAMPTON: Stop there, thank you. Mr Irving, that is the same story in a rather more expanded version that you told to your audience at Hagenau in November 1989, is it not? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where does it come from? A. [Mr Irving]: There are — which ones are you talking about? The conveyor belts, the swimming pool, the electric shock that comes from Pravda, February 1945? Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving.

A. [Mr Irving]: There is a whole bundle of these, there is a whole series of these eyewitness accounts which have been given in various postwar trials, 1945, 1946, 1947. These are the accounts that are not quoted by the Holocaust historians for obvious reasons. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where did the telephone box come from? A. [Mr Irving]: Which part of the story are you asking for, about the box, the one man —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Telephone box. MR RAMPTON: The telephone box?

A. [Mr Irving]: The telephone box? Q. [Mr Rampton]: The telephone box. “Well, the answer is”, says Irving, “it is disguised as a telephone box, this one man gas chamber. This is the mentality of the people who invent these eyewitness stories. It is a disguised as a

telephone and if I am a man who has escaped from Auschwitz, a harrowing experience, and I am standing around in the Polish countryside and suddenly a telephone box” —- A. [Mr Irving]: Appears from nowhere, yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: — “where there was not one a few minutes ago and two German soldiers standing around looking like nothing, nothing is going to get me inside that phone box. The eyewitnesses, plural, say they got you to get inside by having the phone inside ringing”.

Where does that little anecdote come from? How many sources? A. [Mr Irving]: The phone ringing is an embellishment. But the disguised as a telephone box is in the eyewitness account. Q. [Mr Rampton]: How many eyewitness accounts and who were the people that told those stories? A. [Mr Irving]: Alleged survivors of Auschwitz. Q. [Mr Rampton]: How many? A. [Mr Irving]: Certainly one account. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Eyewitnesses, plural? A. [Mr Irving]: That, obviously, is a slip of the tongue.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, it is not. It is a deliberate exaggeration, is it? You got some good laughs with this little story? A. [Mr Irving]: I think it is such a ludicrous story and it so clearly exaggerates the problem, it so clearly illustrates the problem with the eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz —- Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, really?

A. [Mr Irving]: — this and the other similar accounts. There is the conveyor belt, there is the swimming pool, there is the electric shock, there is the killed in steam chambers, all these stories which come out of the earlier accounts, if you read the account published by Pravda, I think

on February 2nd 1945, there is the first description of the conveyor belt. These are never quoted by the modern historians. Even the Gerstein report that you have which is an alleged eyewitness account had, of course, 130 foot high mountain of shoes. These details need to be brought to the attention of the public so they can see what the problem is and how selectively the historians use the eyewitness accounts.

They take the ones that they like and they ignore the ones that are obviously baloney. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, do you see any purpose in a serious historian, I mean a serious, reputable historian, reciting simply for the purpose of knocking it over, a story, if it indeed is a story, which is quite obviously untrue?

A. [Mr Irving]: Well, as we have heard in this court, Mr Rampton, the factory of death story, as far as crematorium (ii) in Auschwitz is concerned, relies on three legs, it is a stool with three legs, one is the eyewitnesses, one is the discrepancies between the blueprints or the architectural drawings and the other one is the German documentation. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Quite a lot more than that. A. [Mr Irving]: Well, you will have time to say that when you make your

closing speech. If the eyewitnesses turn out to be partly baloney, and they are a body of evidence that, in my opinion, should, therefore, be discounted, I am entitled to make this point as forcefully as I can by drawing attention to the ludicrous elements contained by some of the eyewitness accounts. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Did you tell this audience about the evidence, the eyewitness testimony, of Henrich Tauber, for example?

A. [Mr Irving]: Probably at that time it was not known to me, but I would certainly have done so and I would have drawn attention to the discrepancies in his account as well. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why do you think your audience in Milton, Ontario, find these little anecdotes, fables, if you like, so funny? A. [Mr Irving]: There are two ways of addressing an audience.

One is in an academic climate where you are enveloped in professors’ robes and speaking to students who have no obligation but to sit there with their notepads on their lap, and then you can dictate to them all the documents and all the material you want until the bell rings and it is time for them to go out.

The other way is to make or deliver a talk or a lecture in such a manner that you capture and hold your audience’s attention, and you do that repeatedly by interlacing the serious documents that you want them to listen to with material to keep them awake, if I can put it like that.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: How long, is it, Mr Irving, since any, if ever, reputable historian has paid any attention whatsoever to this kind of material? A. [Mr Irving]: I would say within living memory shall we say within four weeks in this very courtroom we have listened to account after account from Professor van Pelt who relies on Ade Bimco, who relies on Henrich Tauber, who has relied on five or six eyewitness, all of whom have elements of total distortion. Ludicrous elements.

For example, the Gerstein report. Ludicrous elements contained in their — Christopher Brown, he had to put back into the Gerstein report the stuff that he had omitted, the mountains of shoes and shirts, and these ludicrous elements which disqualify the eyewitness from any source value whatsoever, just as they disqualified finally the allegation that there were gas chambers in Dachau. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Like your old chum Karl Wolff, for example?

A. [Mr Irving]: I have never met Karl Wolff in my life except once when he was pushed under my nose by a Sunday Times cameraman at a function in Schattenburg. Q. [Mr Rampton]: An eyewitness in some sense to the events in this part of German history, would you agree? A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I do not understand. What is the question?

Q. [Mr Rampton]: You rely on him to exculpate Hitler, so far as the conversation, reported conversation, between him and Himmler in August 1942 is concerned, do you not?

A. [Mr Irving]: I relied on Karl Wolff who was the adjutant of Heinrich Himmler for a period of about 10 or 15 years, if my memory serves me right, who wrote in this confidential manuscript an account of his own personal impressions of the character and nature of this rather weird man, Heinrich Himmler, who came from humble origins and turned into one of history’s biggest mass killers.

He was an interesting, obviously a man very well placed, Karl Wolff, to describe Heinrich Himmler in his underpants, so to speak. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You put that passage from Karl Wolff’s interrogation in 1952 —– A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: — by Dr von Siegler, I think his name was, before this court because you wanted to rely on a single passage where Karl Wolff, effectively, in your eyes, exculpates Adolf Hitler in relation to the Holocaust, is that not what you did?

A. [Mr Irving]: No. I put it before the court because I am accused of having invented or manipulated or distorted without any fundamental or documentary basis whatsoever, and I cannot help it if your historians and experts either did not know of these sources or knew of them but decided not to use them. Q. [Mr Rampton]: In your eyes, is Karl Wolff a reliable witness? A. [Mr Irving]: In some respects he is and in some respects he is not.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: So when he talks in unvarnished terms about the Juden

ausrottung, the extermination of the Jews — your translation — is he reliable or not? A. [Mr Irving]: It depends precisely what he is saying. As I said, he is in some respects reliable and in some respects he is not. If you let me see the passage you wish to ask me about, then, of course, I will comment on it. Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is a very short line. You translated it yourself only a very few days ago.

We are not going back to —- A. [Mr Irving]: Please, if you wish me to comment on a passage, my Lord, I think —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are two points. You can have it if you like, but I think the two points are (1) is the reference to millions of Jews having been killed and the other is a reference to gassing. We can look at the document if you like? A. [Mr Irving]: I probably have it in front of me here somewhere.

I promise I am not going to use the tactics that have been used by the Defence witnesses throughout this case of constantly relying, asking to see the documents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, well, if you want to see it, we can see it. A. [Mr Irving]: In this particular case, I am asked for an impression and I ought to have a look at the original document. MR RAMPTON: If you would like to look at page 5 of your own translation, it is just above and below your page reference 00032.

I am quite happy with your translation,

so we need not bother with the German. A. [Mr Irving]: Page 5, right? Q. [Mr Rampton]: Fifth page. I do not know where it is. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I have it. It is page 00031 or 32. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. A. [Mr Irving]: “From what we survey today”, is this right?

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I will read it, if I may: “From what we survey today, there were perhaps 70 men, all told, from Himmler to Hoess who were involved in the extermination of the Jews”, and you give the German, Juden ausrottung. “General Wolff also saw Bormann who was definitely actively involved in these things together with Hoess, the former Famer murderer.

Bormann and Himmler”, handwritten insert “Wolff probably”, “represented the view that the Jewish problem had to be dealt with without Hitler getting his fingers dirty in the process. The gassing idea”, and that means gassing of human beings, does it not? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: “… probably emerged when a genuine epidemic broke out in the Auschwitz camp and mass dying resulted”.

Can we rely on General Wolff as telling the truth in that passage so far as the extermination of Jews by gassing is concerned? A. [Mr Irving]: It is the curate’s egg, if you know the expression, Mr Rampton. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, Mr Irving, I am nearly as old as you are. A. [Mr Irving]: The figure of 70 is clearly wrong. That is clearly an

understatement. Far more than 70 men all told were initiated in the mass killing of Jews by the Nazis. Depending on what he means by that, regardless of what he means by that, whether he is talking about just the Auschwitz and the killings of the western European Jews or if he is talking about the shootings on the East. I think here he is talking about the first. He is talking only about the killing of the European Jews. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Come on. He uses the word “gassing”.

A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. That is precisely what I am mentioning. That is why I am saying that. The gassing idea. Now, that part I think he is clearly commenting on what he now knows, 1952, after seven years of reading newspapers. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Oh really? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. But also he is involved — if he read the Harold Turner letter, of course, from Serbia, then he would have been aware of gassings on a small scale in Serbia.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not in relation, Mr Irving, to a reference to Auschwitz as having been the source of the gassing because, if it was Auschwitz and disease there that gave rise to the idea, as General Wolff suggests, then the substance used for the gassing in consequence of the realization of that idea would have been prussic acid, would it not? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, Zyklon-B. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you. Now I want to go back to this Milton thing.

I am going to make a suggestion, you will deal it with it

and then we can pass on to something else. I suggest to you that, so far from, as it were, approaching this matter as a serious historian would be and asking your audience to be critical about eyewitness accounts, had you done that, you would have paid attention to the serious eyewitness accounts, so far from doing that, what you are doing is feeding the anti-Semitism of your audience by mocking the survivors and indeed the dead from the Holocaust?

A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think that in that fragment we saw, and of course I do not know else is in the rest of the speech. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Assholes? A. [Mr Irving]: I think I am right in referring — do you wish me to deal with that matter or the matter you just asked me about? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Finish your answer. MR RAMPTON: You finish the answer and I will draw your attention to that. Carry on. You finish your answer, I am sorry.

A. [Mr Irving]: I think that the word “Jew” or the reference to “Jews” was not made in that fragment, and of course very many other people suffered the torment of Auschwitz. I do not know why you just single out the Jews for this particular comment. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I see. Here we are talking about Polish gentiles, are we? This telephone box and the sedan chair and all that kind of thing?

A. [Mr Irving]: I think the reference is to Poles, yes. Thank you for reminding me. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you, because I am not quite clear, Mr Irving? You say there was one eyewitness who told the story about the mobile telephone box? A. [Mr Irving]: There are sheaves of stories like this which came out in various trials, right up to the to 1960s. Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Focus on my question.

I think you did say earlier on, in answer to Mr Rampton, that there was one eyewitness who told the story of the telephone box? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, that is one of the stories that is told. Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes. I just want you to focus on that one eyewitness. Did you read it or hear it? How did you come to know about it?

A. [Mr Irving]: This was probably ten years ago and I have to say that, having read large numbers of documents at that time and having read very large numbers of documents more recently, I cannot say whether I saw the actual eyewitness interrogation, or whether it has become part of the law through being quoted in the Frankfurt trial by the defence or prosecution.

It is certainly part of the folk law, if I can put it like that in a non-derogatory way, surrounding the Auschwitz killings, rather like the conveyor belt and the rest of it, that is known to historians on both sides of the divide. Yesterday evening, when I got home, I did put out an appeal to my

world wide circle of historian friends to say, who can provide me with the actual document. Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Has anything come up as a result of that? A. [Mr Irving]: By this morning, when I checked the e-mails, one person came up with a reference to a one man portable low temperature chamber that was being developed and that was being spoken. Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is obviously not it, is it? A. [Mr Irving]: Not yet, no.

Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You have not been able to pinpoint where this comes from? A. [Mr Irving]: No, but obviously I have put wheels in motion to obtain the actual document, because of the value it would have for the court. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Sorry, Mr Rampton. MR RAMPTON: I just put these remarks of yours in context, if I may, Mr Irving. You say you were talking only about gentile Poles that escaped from Auschwitz. Let us read on on page 18.

A. [Mr Irving]: I did not say I was only talking about Poles. My actual remark was that I did not talk about Jews in that particular fragment. You then said Poles. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Shall we put the fragment in context, Mr Irving? On page 16, the page before the one we were looking at, there is a lengthy reference at the bottom of the page to somebody call called Ely Wiesel. Is he a Polish gentile or is he a Jew?

A. [Mr Irving]: I think he is a very well-known Holocaust propagandist, if I can put it like that. MR RAMPTON: That is not an answer to my question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is he a gentile or is he a Jew? A. [Mr Irving]: He is Jewish, so far as I know. MR RAMPTON: Then let us have a look at page 18, from where the video stopped. It is the top of page 18 after the note that there was applause. A. [Mr Irving]: I do not have the transcript in front of me and perhaps I should. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry.

Then you will need it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you should. MR RAMPTON: It is K3, tab 10, page 18. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Ely Wiesel, of course, is one of the people I call the spurious survivors of the Holocaust like Benjamin Wilkormierski and others, who have made a living out of it.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sandwiched between that Jewish gentleman whom you characterize as a spurious survivor of the Holocaust and the next passage, which is also about spurious, in your view, survivors of the Holocaust, is all this stuff about the telephone box. So let us read page 18, shall we: “Let me give you an example of why I think it” — that is to say this imaginary experience — “is a psychiatric problem.

Let me give you a little parable here, a biblical parable almost, because in Israel, now the

Ministry of Justice, announced three or four weeks ago the British newspaper, the Independent, reported this news communique, that every year 200 tourists go to Jerusalem, which is, of course, that magnificent city, this crossing point of three different religions and cultures. They are so overwhelmed by these cross currents, these, the vibes of the city of Jerusalem, that every year 200 tourists go there and believe that they are the messiah reborn and returning to Jerusalem.

They cannot all be the messiah. At most one of them can be the messiah”, and you are not talking about Jesus of Nazareth, are you? A. [Mr Irving]: It is quite clear that I am. This is a genuine statement released by the Israeli government. Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. A. [Mr Irving]: Carry on. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You are talking about the messiah, for whom the Jewish people are still waiting, are you not? A. [Mr Irving]: This reminds me of mathematical equations.

You said the letter E in an equation can be the exponential factor but need not be. These people could be the messiah, but need not be, if I can put it like that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You call it a parable, do you not? Come on. MR RAMPTON: “They cannot all be the messiah. At most, one of them can be the messiah, so 199 of them are liars”. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: “But they have had this immense religious experience, and

it is rather the same kind of trauma as people who went to Auschwitz, or people who believed they went to Auschwitz, or people who can kid themselves into believing they went to Auschwitz, and the only way to overcome this appalling pseudo-religious atmosphere that surrounds the whole of this immense tragedy called World War II is to treat these little legends with the ridicule and the bad taste that they deserve. Ridicule alone is not enough. You have got to be tasteless about it.

You have to say things like more women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquidick than died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz (applause)”. A. [Mr Irving]: The applause drowned the rest of the sentence, unfortunately, which is “in the gas chambers of Auschwitz which are shown to the tourists”. I always say exactly the same thing. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh no, you do not, Mr Irving. We went through that before. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it on the video?

MR RAMPTON: This is on the video. Would your Lordship like to see it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, unless it is going to take ages to get it going. MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. It is only the rest of this page really. Just go from where it is. (The video was shown).

MR RAMPTON: Stop there, please. A. [Mr Irving]: You are right. You are absolutely right. In that particular one I did not put in the rider that that is the one they show the tourists. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You did not. Frequently you have not. Not only have you not put in the rider, you have added other gas chambers elsewhere, Treblinka, Belzec. Not here. In the documents we were looking at yesterday. A. [Mr Irving]: You are adding them now verbally into my speech. Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I am not.

A. [Mr Irving]: Shall we just abide by the speech that I was speaking here? Q. [Mr Rampton]: You said a moment ago that you never make any reference to any gas chamber but the one which was reconstructed by the Poles after the war. That is simply false, is it not? A. [Mr Irving]: The one that is faked by the Poles after the war. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, whatever you like. It is simply a false statement, is not, Mr Irving? We saw a whole lot of statements by you yesterday, did we not?

A. [Mr Irving]: Will you please ask the question again because you —- Q. [Mr Rampton]: Your statement that you never make reference to any but what you call the fake gas chamber at Auschwitz (i), gas chamber singular, is a false statement, is it not? A. [Mr Irving]: I frequently refer to gas chambers elsewhere, yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. A. [Mr Irving]: But in what connection?

Q. [Mr Rampton]: In the context of saying that they never existed. A. [Mr Irving]: In Dachau, for example. We now know that eyewitnesses reported there were gas chambers in Dachau, and we now know the German government has confirmed there were never any gas chambers in Dachau. That is a typical example. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, I do not believe you have that bad a memory. I really do not. A. [Mr Irving]: You just asked me a question and I have answered it.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: In that case I am going to have to remind you of what you were shown but yesterday. Laborious, but necessary. A. [Mr Irving]: Dachau is typical example of survivors who were caught out lying. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You will have to be patient with me, Mr Irving. I will find it. This is just an example from page 156 of yesterday’s transcript, if you have yesterday’s transcript. This is a speech by you at Moers that we looked at yesterday.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like a copy of it? A. [Mr Irving]: If it is not going to be too tedious. MR RAMPTON: I will read it out. You said: “The dummies are still standing in Auschwitz, because the German government has no sway there”.

Page 156, line 8. “The dummies are still standing in Auschwitz because the German government has no sway there, and understandably that is problem for you” — that is the Germans — “that you have a government in Bonn that allows its own people to be

defamed by all countries of the world, although in the meantime it is cried out that these things in Auschwitz, and probably in Maidonek, Treblinka and in other so- called extermination camps in the East, are all dummies”. That is a direct quote from your speech in Moers. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Are you quoting the speech to me? Are you going to quote something from the exchange that follows?

If so, I cannot quite understand why we are looking at yesterday’s exchange rather than looking at the actual speech. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because it was the easiest way to what you said in Moers. I have it in the file. A. [Mr Irving]: Of course, if you do it that way, we do not know exactly what was said in the actual speech. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can track it down, I am sure. MR RAMPTON: Page 3, tab 5, Mr Irving.

A. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps we can just wait to see what the question is and then it may not be worth the effort. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have put the question already. You made a statement not more than a couple of minutes ago that you never make reference to the non-existence of gas chambers except in relation to what you call the fake gas chamber at Auschwitz (i). That statement was false, was it not?

A. [Mr Irving]: “The dummies were still standing in Auschwitz, these things in Auschwitz and probably in Maidonek, Treblinka and in the other so-called extermination camps”. I think

the word “probably” therefore has to be looked at and emphasised. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Carry on. Read on. A. [Mr Irving]: In other words —- Q. [Mr Rampton]: Read on. The fact is that Auschwitz we know that what they show the tourists is fake because the Poles have no now admitted it. I am sorry, “reconstructed” is what you call it. Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?

A. [Mr Irving]: But the other places, Maidonek, Treblinka and so on, my hands are tied in really dealing with that because, for the purposes of this court action, I am not challenging them. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we are getting a bit confused here. A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, perhaps I can help? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, because I may have misunderstood the position.

I think it all arose out of your saying to Mr Rampton earlier that, whenever you refer to no Jews, or virtually no Jews, having died in concentration camps, you add the rider that you are really talking about what you call the dummy constructed after the war at Auschwitz. A. [Mr Irving]: I hesitate to allow your Lordship to put words into my mouth. MR RAMPTON: Let us go back on the transcript for today and we will find it.

A. [Mr Irving]: I am much more specific than that, and I say that, in this

rather tasteless way, more women died on the back seat of that car than died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz, meaning the one they showed the tourists. MR RAMPTON: It is when I was reading the transcript before we saw the video. We will get the exact words, my Lord. A. [Mr Irving]: It is part of the gramophone record, if I can put it like that. MR RAMPTON: In the light of yesterday’s evidence from Professor Funke — I cannot read that.

Now, Mr Irving, I am going to read you back your answer. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 24. MR RAMPTON: Page 24 of today. This what gave rise to

all of this, you see, Mr Irving. You made yet another, shall I say courteously — “The applause drowned the rest of the sentence, unfortunately, which is, ‘in the gas chambers of Auschwitz which are shown to the tourists’. I always say exactly the same thing”. It was a false statement, that, was it not? A. [Mr Irving]: It was clearly wrong. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. A. [Mr Irving]: But not deliberately wrong.

I have this same part of my speech that I deliver again and again and it is possible that, in the heat of this particular speech which was spoken without notes, as you will see —- Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving. A. [Mr Irving]: — to a non-skinhead audience.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: What was false is that you always say exactly the same thing. You do not. You frequently refer to the non-existence of any gas chambers in the plural. A. [Mr Irving]: I think you will have to show me the passages where I frequently say this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point is you deny the existence of gas chambers and, when you do that, you do not talk only of the dummies such as the one that was constructed after the war at Auschwitz. That I think is the point.

A. [Mr Irving]: If that is the point he is trying to make, then of course he is wrong because I have made it quite plain earlier in this case that I accept that in Auschwitz Birkenhau gas chamber experiments were conducted, for example, in the bunkers, the two buildings called the bunkers, and to that degree I certainly do not deny it. MR RAMPTON: I expect you have been reading the Eichmann memoirs, have you not? A. [Mr Irving]: Not yet. If you know how little time I have.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you do a word search on them, look for the word “Vergasungslager”. A. [Mr Irving]: I take your tip. Thank you very much. “Vergasungslager”? Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, “Vergasungslager”, gassing camps, Mr Irving. A. [Mr Irving]: I will tell you the result of that when I come here tomorrow. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am just going to finish. My Lord, unless your Lordship

wants me to —- A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, if you intend to rely on that particular word, I think you should show me the passage so I can comment on it now, rather than just leave it hanging in mid air. MR JUSTICE GRAY: At the moment we have not gone to the Eichmann diaries at all, and I do not know whether we are even going to. MR RAMPTON: I am going to continue, my Lord, if I may, with page 18 of the transcript, unless your Lordship would like to see it on the screen.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think not. A. [Mr Irving]: That is certainly not the way to introduce the Eichmann memoirs, to do it like that, just to throw one word out. MR JUSTICE GRAY: They have not been introduced, Mr Irving. Let us go back to page 18. MR RAMPTON: After the statement that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquidick than died in the gas chambers (plural) at Auschwitz, there is some applause which did not drown out anything else you said.

You then continued: “Now” you think that is tasteless. What about this? I am forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps. It is called the Auschwitz Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars Assholes”, and you spell it out for them so that they get the joke. “Cannot get more

tasteless than that but you have got to be tasteless because these people deserve all our contempt and in fact they deserve the contempt of the real Jewish community and the people, whatever their class and colour, who did suffer.” I do not know that I need to go on. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I got something wrong, of course. Q. [Mr Rampton]: What was that? A. [Mr Irving]: The title of that association.

It is the Association of Spurious Survivors of the Holocaust, but, once again, in the heat of the talk, I got it wrong. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am awfully sorry about that. The fact is, Mr Irving, what you are doing here, as you were at Hagenau and on other occasions that we have seen —- A. [Mr Irving]: Mocking the liars. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh yes, Mr Irving, but why the applause? A. [Mr Irving]: Because I am a good speaker, Mr Rampton. Q. [Mr Rampton]: What? A. [Mr Irving]: I am a good speaker.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, Professor Funke had you bang to rights, did he not? What you are doing is appealing to, feeding, encouraging, the most cynical radical anti-Semitism in your audiences, are you not? A. [Mr Irving]: Do liars not deserve to be exposed as such? If you saw the audience as you saw them in that film, did you see any skinheads or extremists or people wearing arm bands? I did not. They looked like a perfectly ordinary bunch of

middle-class Canadians. Q. [Mr Rampton]: No doubt they too, Mr Irving, will spread the word, if I may use that terminology? A. [Mr Irving]: Is that evidence or are you asking me a question? Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am asking you a question. That is what you are hoping, is it not? A. [Mr Irving]: Spread the word that there are elements of the Holocaust story that need to be treated with scepticism, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, an I ask you this?

Of these eyewitnesses, are you saying that they have come to believe what they say about their experiences and that is why they need psychiatric treatment? Or are you saying that they are collectively telling lies, deliberate falsehoods? A. [Mr Irving]: Different people have different motives or different reasons. There are different reasons why they tell stories that are not true in this particular context.

We saw the witness Professor van Pelt in the video and in his report talking of the almost mystical and religious awe in which he holds the site of Auschwitz. I can well understand that. It has become very central to their existence as the Jewish people. It has become an important part of their social awareness. It has become very close to religion in some aspects, in my view. It has become almost blasphemy to trample on any part of that ground. It has become holy ground, both in the physical

concrete sense and in the metaphysical sense. As with any religion, there are hangers on, people who believe they were there, people who believe they touched the cloth, if I can put it like that. There have been an increasing number in recent years — Benjamin Wilkormierski is one example Ely Wiesel is another — who have capitalized on, or instrumentalized, the Holocaust.

Now, I am not a psychologist, I am not a psychiatrist, but I have looked into some of the learned psychiatric texts that have been written about this phenomenon of the man who believes he is a survivor, the man who has been through a traumatic experience and either puts himself in the middle of an experience that he was on the periphery of, or who puts himself into an experience when he was not there at all. That is what the reference to the psychiatric problem is in this.

It is put admittedly in the most tasteless possible way. Nobody can accuse me of not having been tasteless, and I probably deserve to be horse whipped for it, but the fact is that I am dealing here with a serious problem concerning the eyewitness accounts from Auschwitz. MR RAMPTON: And your audience absolutely love it, do they not, Mr Irving? It is music to their ears, is it not? A. [Mr Irving]: They travel 200 miles sometimes to come and hear me speak, yes.

Section 37.25 to 60.13

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Good. Now I want to ask you about the National Alliance, if I may. For this purpose you will need Bundle A. It is

the request for information and the answers that the witness will need. Page 79 of the request first of all, question 23, in the middle of the page under the main heading, the National Alliance. We asked you the questions, Mr Irving. I hope you have got it: “Do you agree that the National Alliance is responsible for the material contained in the appendix to Rebecca Goodman’s witness statement?

Do you agree that it is the largest and one of the most influential neo-Nazi organizations in the United States of America, being extremely right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic? Do you agree that it publishes and/or advertises through national vanguard publications which are extremely right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic”? Then we asked you: “Do you agree that you spoke at various National Alliance events”?

You will find your answers to questions 23 and 25 in a document in tab 9, I think I am told, page 7. Can I ask you this? When you receive a document like this in the course of legal proceedings, and I know this is not the first time you have litigated, do you take the questions which are asked seriously? Do you take this to be a serious event in the course of the proceedings? A. [Mr Irving]: Well, in view of what happened to Mr Aitken, I take it very seriously indeed, yes.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: So your response to the first question about your knowledge of the National Alliance is this: “I have no