Day 8 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial

Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1-11.26)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London Monday, 24th January 2000 Before: MR JUSTICE GRAY B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING Claimant -and- (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED (2) DEBORAH E.

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

Fetter Lane, London EC4 Telephone: 020-7242-9346)

• Transcript not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry

Counsell & Company PROCEEDINGS – DAY EIGHT

<Day 8 Monday, 24th January 2000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: May it please the court. I have three very small matters that I would just like to bring to the court’s attention —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: — and to try to keep it within the five minutes that I have set out. Your Lordship has before you a very small heap of documents which, as far as I am concerned, can be disposed with immediately afterwards.

They are purely to draw attention to certain points I wish to make. The first one is headed August 17th 1942, on the right, a translation. It is a two-page document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: We were dealing, your Lordship will remember, with the deportations from France which were discussed between Hitler and Himmler at the end of 1942, and the question was what was going to happen to them, and there was reference to a Sonderlager, a special camp.

Your Lordship will see within the first paragraph of the translation the second sentence: “At first”? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: “At first the evacuated Jews will be accommodated in the Auschwitz concentration camp, but a special reception camp is to be erected in the Western Reich territory.” If I may summarize the rest of the document,

it says: “We will continue deporting train loads of Jews from France to avoid this lengthy journey to Auschwitz. Can we please set up camps inside the Reich to house these deportees?” MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is an odd movement, is it not? MR IRVING: It is a very odd movement. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sending them all the way from France to Poland and then back again. MR IRVING: And then back again.

I cannot speculate as to the reason why they should engage in this movement, except that Auschwitz does appear to have had a transit camp character about it. It had facilities there for stealing, robbing; it had facilities there for fumigating and checking; it had also the big slave labour camp that was attached to the Molovitz factory.

There are two reasons, your Lordship has quite rightly spotted that fact, and that is I wanted to hint at the possibility this may have been the kind of movement — remember your Lordship drew attention to the fact that people were coming back from the East, from Lemburg to one of the camps on the border.

Of course, the special reception camp, that is, Bezonderes Auffanglager, you will see on the next page, my Lord, in line 4, “Bezonderes Auffanglager”, a special reception camp, is clearly the Sonderlager to which reference is later made, in my submission.

If I can move rapidly on to the next document, my Lord, it is headed “Pocket Dictionary”. It is three or four pages. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I have that. MR IRVING: In that case —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang ob. I probably have it somewhere. MR IRVING: It will be in white, my Lord, with a green corner tab. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Oddly enough, that has not arrived.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I went to some trouble over the last few months obtaining contemporary a German dictionary by which I mean a wartime Third Reich German dictionary so we can see what the meaning of words were at that time, rather than the modern Langenscheidt being used and relied upon by the Defence. This is a 1935 dictionary, my Lord, which is this one here. I have just looked up at random some of the words we are interested in.

The first page is “Entfernen” which means “to remove”. It has no subsidiary sinister meanings. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think anyone is suggesting, except in a euphemistic way, that it means anything other than to remove or distance. MR IRVING: My Lord, I believe the Defence is relying heavily on the fact that I have mistranslated and distorted. In my submission, if I use the correct wartime translation of the word, then this destroys that particular Defence

justification. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: The next page is “Vernichten”, a very sinister word, “annihilate and destroy”. The next page is “Abschaffen” which is quite significant in connection with the French movements, you will remember, my Lord, because Himmler wrote next to the figures “Abschaffen” in his handwriting, and this means “to dismiss”. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the difficulty with “Abschaffen” is that it would not normally be applied to people.

Is that not a fair point? MR IRVING: You are right, my Lord. It could apply to a body of people, perhaps, to dismiss them, and I shall be making, obviously, my closing speech submissions at some length summarising this question of the translations which is a thorny one, I appreciate, but in view of the fact the Defence do rely on it so heavily for the distortion element of their justification; and, finally, my Lord, on page 33 of the dictionary we have the famous “Ausrotten” and there the

1935 meaning of the word is quite clearly “to root out”, as you would imagine, the word “Ausrotten”; whereas I quite readily accept that nowadays in 1999/2000, the word “Ausrotten” quite clearly means “liquidate”. It has become that, the same as words change their meaning over the years. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: My Lord, finally, I come to the little bundle of documents. It is a rather arcane matter, but again I believe the Defence rely heavily on my choice of language. Your Lordship will remember the rather heated remarks I made about certain Jewish fraudsters and racketeer in the United States, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and so on. I suggested they were hiding behind, they were insulating themselves from public criticism by the use of the Holocaust.

This is what is now scientifically or academically referred to as the instrumentalisation of the Holocaust. This is one particular example which came to our attention. Mr Melvin Murmelstein, who may well be mentioned later on in the case, started a claim against the Hertford Insurance Company. His lawyers warned the insurance company that, as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II, this matter is extremely important to Mr Murmelstein. That is page 2, my Lord.

On page 6, the insurance company’s own lawyers warned them, warned the insurance company, to settle the $100,000 being claimed, saying, “The lawyer argues that a jury will be sympathetic to a man who has survived a Nazi concentration camp”, and so on. So this is the kind —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not quite the same point, is it? The point that I think you were making in that talk that we looked at on Thursday was that Jews who get up to some

sort of financial or other misconduct then used the Holocaust as a kind of shield against their own criminality. MR IRVING: My Lord, it may well be that I shall lead —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a slightly use or instrumentalization of the Holocaust. MR IRVING: It is an insulation which goes on.

Perhaps it is automatic — we all have the utmost sympathy with victims of the Holocaust, and that includes myself, and I want to say that here; but I want to get this one instance in now because of the rather ugly note we closed on on Thursday evening, and it may well be I will lead further evidence which will go more closely to the matter actually raised. With that, I end my submission, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will put these into, just so we know where they are going, J.

I think we have got to 8, but there is a problem with these loose documents. So that completes what you wanted to say about that, Mr Irving. MR IRVING: I have completed my submission, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, you do not want to say anything about this matter? MR RAMPTON: No, I do not want to say anything about any of them at the moment. I may have to come back to some of them in due course, but certainly not today. J8, my Lord, says Miss Rogers.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could I mention something that I would like to do, I think probably first thing tomorrow morning, if that is convenient, and that is to have a look and see what the future timetable is looking like, as far as one can judge it. I would appreciate there are witnesses to be accommodated. We might need to discuss what topics need to be cross-examined to and possibly some do not need to be. MR RAMPTON: I agree. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And timing generally.

MR RAMPTON: I mean, I quite agree with that. One reason, if I may respectfully say so, I would say it was a good idea to do it tomorrow is that today is a bit uncharted, I am chartered, but I do not know where my charts will lead me today. But there is also the very good question your Lordship has raised on how much more of Evans do I have to do? Of course, essentially, that is a question for me, subject to being told not to.

There are only, I think, two big topics left in Evans, that is ReichsKristallnacht — three, ReichKristallnacht early anti-Semitism of Hitler with the Nuremberg rules and Dresden. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there is another heading post Kirstallnacht, is there not? MR RAMPTON: Yes, but that is all part of the same subject. MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I mention something which I think

I have mentioned before, which is this, that it would be convenient to us if we could have our reading day on Thursday rather than Friday of this week for the reason that Professor van Pelt has to go to Stockholm on Thursday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: For a day or for a weekend? MR RAMPTON: Only for a day. He is going in the morning and coming back in the afternoon, but there is a conference that he has been asked to attend and thinks that he should.

So if we could possibly have —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not see any problem with that. Does that cause you any difficulty, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: My Lord, we were going to call Dr John Fox as our expert witness on that day, but I can easily postpone him. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very accommodating. Thank you. We will do that first thing Thursday morning, if that is all right with both of you? So we can now press on with cross-examination.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I am calling Mr Peter Miller as a witness tomorrow, but he will be relatively brief, I think, on the events in Moscow. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That raises a question that I have canvassed before. To what extent are we going to have to go through quite voluminous evidence on the Goebbels’ diaries? To some extent I am in both of your hands. I have made no secret of the fact that whilst I understand, Mr Irving,

your complaint about it, and I have seen the way the Defence is put, in the end is it a topic that we benefit by spending a very great deal of time on? MR IRVING: On the Goebbels’ diaries. MR JUSTICE GRAY: On the Goebbels’ diaries and the breach of the agreement or whatever it was. MR IRVING: My Lord, I am accused of having breached agreements in Moscow. This is what I will certainly ask Peter Miller to evidence on.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is really in a way addressed to Mr Rampton as he will understand. MR RAMPTON: There are really only two points left in Moscow. There is an admission that plates were removed without permission. The question, was there any significant risk they might be damaged? Second, how many plates? Now, whether that is more than about half an hour’s cross-examination — nothing more than that, I doubt. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, well and good.

That is, I think, all it really merits, frankly. MR RAMPTON: That is how I see it. There is the additional point, of course, that Moscow would be, if it fell anywhere in the case, a section 5 question. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what you say. MR RAMPTON: That is what I believe, and it may be against everything else I will take a view (and it will be my decision) that it pales into insignificance.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really why I have said what I have just said. I do appreciate, Mr Irving, you do not accept that it is an insignificant point because you say you are accused of breaking an agreement. MR IRVING: Well… MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not sound as if Mr Rampton is really pursuing that at all. MR RAMPTON: Yes, but without permission. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but without permission does not mean breaking an agreement necessarily.

MR RAMPTON: That is a question of terminology really. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am in both your hands about that, but I personally do not think we should spend a lot of time. MR RAMPTON: That is my present view, but I am not committing myself now. But I think your Lordship can reasonably expect that Moscow will not take up a lot of the court’s time, as far as I am concerned. MR IRVING: My Lord, if they were to put Moscow into section 5 as well, I think that bucket is beginning to overflow.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very vivid way of putting it. MR IRVING: We can put the whole of his Hizbollah and Farrakhan into section 5. MR RAMPTON: That is not section 5. That is common sting which is different. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, anyway, let us get on. That disposes of that. Yes, do please come back, Mr Irving.

Part II: Rampton examines Irving (morning session) (12.1 to 100.12)

Section 12.1-35.13

< MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there are three new bundles. They are not new in any surprise sense. They are new in that we have composed them for ease of reference for this part of the case. There are two Auschwitz core bundles; the first consisting of what one might call material arising out of the Leuchter Report, and it has the Leuchter Report at the beginning of it. The second Auschwitz core bundles are the original drawings and documents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: The third new file, again composed from other sources, are statements by Mr Irving about Leuchter and the Leuchter report. That has been extracted from a range of the D files, D1 and 2 and 3. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Many of which we have been through? MR RAMPTON: Yes, exactly, but not the specific reference and I am hoping to cut that short this morning, if I possibly can.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to be tedious about it, but can we perhaps give these bundles a slightly more convenient means of identification? MR RAMPTON: We started off by calling them “K”. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, why not? MR RAMPTON: All right. K1, 2 and 3 then. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is just going to make life simpler later

on. MR RAMPTON: Certainly, of course we will. The first fat one is K1, the second one which has not got as much material in it is K2, and the Claimant’s statements are K3. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: (To the witness): Mr Irving, could you turn open the first tab in the first of those files? That should be the Leuchter? A. [Mr Irving]: It is, yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I would rather you use the one in the file because it has the appendices. Before I do that, I want to do something else.

May I? I am sorry about that, my Lord, I had forgotten what I intended to do. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is all right. MR RAMPTON: It is Monday morning. Could you, Mr Irving, turn up in the third file, K3, tab 4? This is a transcript of the press conference that you gave, introducing the Leuchter in your published edition on 23rd June 1989. Could you turn to page 21, please? I will start, if I may, at the bottom of page 20.

You are being asked questions, Mr Irving, and somebody says at the bottom of page 20: “So they fabricated this evidence?” You say: “Oh, we fabricated a lot of evidence at Nuremberg. I am very familiar with the private diaries”, etc., “of Robert H Jackson and the American Judge Biddle.” Page 21 at the top: “They fabricated the

evidence?” asked the questioner? A. [Mr Irving]: “This evidence”. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry, “this evidence”.

You are quite right, Mr Irving: “No, but I am familiar with how things like the figure of 6 million were arrived at because that is dealt with at great length in their private diaries.” Then you say this: “Judge Biddle, however, sitting in judgment at Nuremberg, he looked at one Auschwitz survivor all day, a Frenchman — I am sure you know her name, she gave a heartbreaking testimony about what she had survived — and in his diary at the end of that day Judge Biddle privately wrote:

‘I don’t believe a word of what she is saying. I think she is a bloody liar’.” Mr Irving, he did not say that in his diary? A. [Mr Irving]: You are right. He did not write those words. Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. Those are your words, are they not? A. [Mr Irving]: This is my gloss on it, yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: And he did not say it, did he, about the whole of her testimony? A. [Mr Irving]: I think he did.

He sat there listening to the testimony and after a time when he could stand it no longer, he wrote in brackets in the middle of her testimony words which gave precisely this meaning to me as the reader. You must remember I have read the entire notes of Biddle in the archives in the United States. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to show you the notes of Judge Biddle and what

you wrote about them on your little index cards in a moment. Can I just draw attention — you do not need to get it out — the woman in question was a lady called Marie-Claude Valliant-Courturier, was she not? A. [Mr Irving]: A French Communist yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: A French Communist. As she said, a member of the Resistance? A. [Mr Irving]: Well, exactly, a member of the Resistance and a French Communist.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you remember in your Nuremberg book — if you would like to get it out, you shall — you published a lot of pictures, quite a good selection of pictures really, after page 182? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: A caption to a picture of that lady, Madame Valliant-Couturier, reads as follows: “Credibility problems.

As Madame Marie-Claude Valliant-Couturier below left testifies about her ordeal as a Communist interned at Auschwitz, Judge Francis Biddle notes that he does not believe her”? A. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps it would assist the court if you were to read out some of this lady’s testimony to the Nuremberg court? Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, it would not in the very slightest, Mr Irving. A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it certainly would because you can see yourself how totally incredible her testimony was.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving, I am sorry. You can do that later in

re-examination of yourself if you wish? A. [Mr Irving]: I certainly shall because all those things taken together indicated why the Judge wrote down those words in his notes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Could his Lordship and Mr Irving please be given the original transcript, or whatever it is, of Judge Biddle’s notes and also Mr Irving’s noted form of that document on his index cards? A. [Mr Irving]: These were provided by me to your solicitors. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are they going to go?

There is another loose document coming, floating in. Where shall I put it? MR RAMPTON: The back of core file Auschwitz K2. It will be tab —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is really a core bundle document, is it? MR RAMPTON: It is an Auschwitz document in a sense, but actually on this little exercise for mismisrepresentation. MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is Biddle’s notes of Madame Couturier. MR RAMPTON: That is right. 28th January 1946. This is his notes of her evidence.

A. [Mr Irving]: “Sang the Marseillaise when the gas trucks started to move”. Q. [Mr Rampton]: On page 3, Mr Irving, if you turn to page 3 — I marked it tab 7 in K2, my Lord, if that is convenient? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.

MR RAMPTON: At the top of page 3 of his actual notes there are two sentences: “SS distributed punishment in form of 50 blows of stick on back by a sort of machine. Endless roll calls and gymnastics”. Then a new paragraph, Mr Irving. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, which page. MR RAMPTON: Page 3, my Lord. 3 at the top or 34 at the bottom.

Then there is a new paragraph: “House of prostitution for SS selected young women as they were washing for maids or camps used the same system. (This I doubt).” Then he starts a new paragraph. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: The only thing. Mr Irving, that he is doubting is her statement about the prostitution. A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think you have any justification for saying that. Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is perfectly obvious.

A. [Mr Irving]: In the previous paragraph we have heard about the SS having a machine for beating people with, which on the face of it is totally implausible, and we now know it to be totally untrue.

By this time, this Judge Biddle, who is a very, very level headed American, as I know from his private papers, is so fed up with this woman’s testimony that he finally can stand it no longer and he dictates in parenthesis into his report — this, you remember, is not in typing or handwriting, this is him dictating to a secretary so we do not know where the paragraphs begin or end in his dictation. He says, “This I doubt”.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, will you look at your own note of this document? You came upon these in Syracuse in New York State, I think? A. [Mr Irving]: The Americans call it Syracuse. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I beg their pardon. But that is right, is it not?. A. [Mr Irving]: This is correct, at the university of Syracuse. Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is a little clip, two pages, of your own index card notes — have I got it right? A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: On the second page, in the top right hand corner, you report this part of Judge Biddle’s note and, wherever you are, as it were, missing something out, you put quite properly an ellipse with three dots. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: At the bottom of that box on the right-hand side, which I assume is a card, you write: “… House of prostitution for SS selected young women as they were washing for maids.

All camps used the same system (this I doubt). …” A. [Mr Irving]: The reason why I write down about the house of prostitution is because this was referred to as a sonderhouse and sondergeboide and so, for people who are interested in the Holocaust, you noticed the word sonder as being attached to something which was not connected with gassing, and that is why I quoted that particular paragraph but, once again, I submit that this dictated

parenthesis by Biddle refers to everything he has heard up to this point. It is getting more and more implausible and, when he hears about the machine for beating people, his patience snaps. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, that must be complete nonsense, must it not?. Look at the little paragraph in Judge Biddle. A. [Mr Irving]: He did not say, “new paragraph Miss Smith”, he just dictated.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: What warrant did you have for inflating that side note about one little paragraph about prostitution into a general doubt by Judge Biddle about the credibility of the whole of this lady’s testimony. What warrant was there for that? A. [Mr Irving]: I sat for either one or two days in the university library of Syracuse University.

Reading all Judge Biddle’s notes on the testimony given by the witnesses that I was interested in, and also his notes on the deliberations on the judgment, whether to hang or sentence to life imprisonment and so on. So you get a very good feeling for the sense of the way a judge is thinking and, if he did not make this kind of comment about the other witnesses and suddenly at this point he does, then this is what said to me that this was a witness who tested his own credulity.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask because I am not quite sure that I am following this? You interpret those three words

in parenthesis, appearing where they do in the summary of this lady’s evidence, as the judge casting doubt over the totality of it? A. [Mr Irving]: Up to that point, yes. There is no reason for him to doubt really the house of prostitution but there certainly is reason to doubt what comes in the paragraph before about the special machine for caning people. We did not even have that at public school.

Everything up to this point he has been listening, as judges do, I am sure your Lordship also does sometimes, with mounting impatience, and he made a little mental note that he dictated that evening to a secretary, “(this I doubt)”. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you know perfectly well, do you not, that you have done what you have so often done?

You have taken one little phrase which is applied to one proposition made by the witness about prostitution when the judge has put a parenthetical note that he doubts this proposition, and the word “this” is very specific in English. It means that which we are now talking about, does it not?

A. [Mr Irving]: What they were now talking about was the SS distributed punishment in the form of 50 blows by a stick on the back by a machine, and all the other stories about the orchestra playing music as people went into the gas chambers, all these other stories that this witness generated in her testimony. There is a great deal of it

in these five pages and you have been very careful not to read out the five page so that people can hear exactly how ludicrous this witness’s statement was, as we now know with hindsight. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Give us one other example. The machine for beating you have described. Just so that I have the flavour of it.

A. [Mr Irving]: Dogs tore at their legs and killed, set on by SS guards, corpses in the courtyard, a hand or head would now and then stir in the corpses seeking to free itself, the heap moaned from morn till night in all languages “Water water”, huge rats everywhere, and so on. I think there is a reason why the judge is dictating this kind of material: In order to get the flavour of what this witness is saying. He finally then writes down “(this I doubt)”.

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I simply cannot accept that. A. [Mr Irving]: This is frankly why I think eyewitness evidence is so dangerous. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, maybe you do, Mr Irving. I am not on about eyewitness. I am on about a deliberate distortion of what the text of Judge Biddle’s note actually says.

A. [Mr Irving]: I agree and I concede, for what it is worth, that what I said in the press conference, no doubt four or five years after reading Judge Biddle’s notes, or possibly even ten years after I read Judge Biddle’s notes, I cannot

remember precisely when I saw the papers. Q. [Mr Rampton]: What about what you said here in the picture caption? A. [Mr Irving]: About the credibility of the witness? Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. A. [Mr Irving]: I think that is absolutely justified. If he says that he doubts her, then ipso facto her credibility has been maligned. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Would you turn back to tab 2 in the third of those files, the same files as you have the Leuchter press conference? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is page 18. My Lord, this is a speech at Toronto in August 1988. Turn to page 18, please. A. [Mr Irving]: I cannot see any pagination. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Bottom of the page? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 2. Are you in the right tab? A. [Mr Irving]: I am in the right tab but there is no pagination in mine. However — MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you in the right volume? A. [Mr Irving]: It is the district court of Ontario. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry about this. Tab 2, page 18.

It is Toronto August 1988. A. [Mr Irving]: What is the page number? MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the wrong file. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving, it is the same file as the one from the Leuchter press conference. A. [Mr Irving]: Now we have it.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Before we look at this, Mr Irving, tell me when you went to Syracuse, as you call it. A. [Mr Irving]: I would have to look at my notes to see precisely when I went to Syracuse in fact on two or three occasions. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You wrote to us on 21 December 1999. You said — my Lord, this is inter partes correspondence — “I originally read Judge Biddle’s papers at Syracuse in about 1988″? A. [Mr Irving]: Off the top of my head, that may have been correct.

I went to Syracuse two or three times because they have many collections of papers there. Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, when you are speaking at the Leuchter press conference in 1989, that is not more than a year after you have seen the notes, is it? A. [Mr Irving]: In that event, yes, but I will come back with further and better information, if you want to know the exact date. Q. [Mr Rampton]: This speech in Toronto which I am now asking you to look at, was made in August 1988? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: And on page 18 you say this. Actually, we had better start on page 17 because this may be important. Can you read, please, from about the beginning of the second quarter of the page, there is a sentence: “Let me just read out the kind of material that was given in the witness box in Nuremberg”. Then you mention Judge Biddle. Have you got that on page 17?

A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Would you read to yourself please, not out loud if you do not mind, all of the rest of that page and down to the end of the first complete paragraph on page 18? A. [Mr Irving]: (Pause for reading) Yes. I clearly had my notes in front of me when I was saying this. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You give some sort of an account of many things about which the French lady testified. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: You finish that account with the piece about the prostitution, and then you say: “Here Judge Biddle writes in brackets in his diary ‘all this I doubt’. Why did he not say it at the time, for heavens sake but he just sat there with his face motionless because he is an American judge, but in his private diary he writes”, you repeat it, “all this I doubt”, and so it goes on, and I am not going to read the rest of it. A. [Mr Irving]: Right.

I had my notes in front of me. Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is not what Judge Biddle said, is it? A. [Mr Irving]: But I am just stating quite clearly I had my notes in front of me when I was making this statement, and I added the word “all”, but I would aver that that is precisely what I said in my earlier statement, that he has clearly referred to all that has gone before. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but he did not say that. A. [Mr Irving]: He did not say that, my Lord.

MR RAMPTON: Do you not see the difference between “all this I doubt” which I quite agree with you might certainly have reference to the evidence given to date by that lady, and the words “this I doubt” in parenthesis against a single statement in a single paragraph? A. [Mr Irving]: This is precisely what I said in my previous statement.

My conclusion from reading his diary was that he was referring to the foregoing, all these incredible stories which are here listed in summary form in my speech about the baby saying, “can I walk now I have had my leg torn off?” and all this kind of thing. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to suggest to you that you made that speech in Toronto on the same visit to North America as when you first saw the Biddle notes. A. [Mr Irving]: No.

I think from the way it is constructed, the fact that the passages in my speech here follow closely at first glimpse anyway the actual notes that I typed on to the index cards that I clearly had the index cards in front of me when I was making this statement. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You distorted what they said, did you not. A. [Mr Irving]: I added the word “all” to make it more literate for an audience. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, you added the word “all”?

A. [Mr Irving]: This is not a distortion of what my own perception was of that paragraph, that he was clearly referring to all the foregoing.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Very well. I will just tell you for the sake of record. A. [Mr Irving]: Clearly, he would not just have put in this unusual parentheses just because she is talking about a house of prostitution. It was well known at that time that there were brothels in all the SS concentration camps camp, in Dachau and everywhere else they had brothels for the use of the prisoners.

This was well known at Nuremberg, so he certainly would not have put that in brackets “this I doubt” at that point. That refers to what he has heard up to this point. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Even now, Mr Irving, you will not or cannot read the words in front of you. Actually the sentence which precedes the parenthesis is “all camps used the same system”, is it not? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, and it might well have been a reference to that. MR RAMPTON: Exactly.

A. [Mr Irving]: It might well have been, but that was not my reading of it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway —-. A. [Mr Irving]: On the basis of my knowledge of the Biddle papers and on the basis of this particular one. MR RAMPTON: Yes, Mr Irving. Just for completeness, your diary tells us that you were in Syracuse on August 11th 1988, you made this entry, “worked at Syracuse University all day, very hot, private papers yielded little but the

Nuremberg trials collection of Judge Francis Biddle had some gems, including his diary (with comments of I do not believe) comments you put in the plural, on one Auschwitz”? A. [Mr Irving]: That clearly shows that I took that as being a reference to all his comment and not just the previous comment. I am indebted to you for pointing out exactly when I saw it, which was a few days before this which means I was carrying those index cards with me at the time I went to this lecture.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: On that occasion in Toronto in the press conference, in London the following year and in your Nuremberg book, you told a lie about what the notes said, did you not?

A. [Mr Irving]: The difference clearly is that in Toronto, I have driven up from Syracuse to Toronto probably two or three days later and made the speech with the cards in front of me, whereas at the Leuchter press conference I am giving the sense of it from memory, and that is clearly the sense, as I have told the court, I had from that comment made by Judge Biddle in his own private papers.

Listening to this witness with her incredible stories about beating machines and all the rest of it, he writes down in brackets “this I doubt”. Frankly, I do not think there is very much mileage to be made out of that. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now we are going to go to Leuchter, Mr Irving. If you put that file on one side, I am coming back to it in a moment,

the file of what you said about Leuchter. Before I do that, I would like you to look at the Leuchter report itself, which is the first divider in the first Auschwitz, file K 1. It has a cover and an inside page headed Ernst Zundel. Have you got that? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: At the bottom of the page you write what the cover pictures are, because there are four of them. A. [Mr Irving]: You are stating that I wrote this? Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know who wrote this.

A. [Mr Irving]: I am the publisher of this, not the writer of it. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who writes the information? A. [Mr Irving]: I wrote the introduction. Q. [Mr Rampton]: About what the pictures represent? MR JUSTICE GRAY: So this is not the report submitted to the Canadian court? MR RAMPTON: No. I do not believe I need to use that if I have Mr Irving’s own published version. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not being critical. I am just trying to ensure that I know what I am looking at.

MR RAMPTON: I do not know if I have ever seen that. A. [Mr Irving]: You have. It has been in the discovery and it is very much more comprehensive than this. Q. [Mr Rampton]: That does not mean that I have seen it, Mr Irving. This is published by Focal Point Publications, London, June 1989. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. The notice said published by, not written by.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: My question was, do you see that in effect on the inside page somebody has provided captions for the cover pictures under the line at the bottom of the page? It is not very easy to read. A. [Mr Irving]: On the inside page? Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. That is right. There is a picture of some machinery I think, by the look of things. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which page are you on now?

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there is a cover and on the next page there is a picture of what looks like machinery. Cameras. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Cameras, yes. It is Monday morning! MR RAMPTON: I know it is Monday. This is a rotten copy. It could be anything. It could be a sheep shearing station? A. [Mr Irving]: Or a beating machine. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us get on. MR RAMPTON: The line at the bottom of the page, underneath of the line are provided captions for the cover pictures on the front cover.

What I ask you is who wrote those captions? A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not? A. [Mr Irving]: It was not me. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, you published this thing. A. [Mr Irving]: There is a distinction between publishers and authors. I explained it to you. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I know that, but a publisher normally has to organise the

printing of the pictures. He has to make sure that the pictures are properly identified and he usually knows who does it, does he not? A. [Mr Irving]: For purposes of this court, it would satisfy you if I say on oath that I did not write that, surely? Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not necessarily, no, Mr Irving. Look at the one in the bottom right hand corner. A. [Mr Irving]: The picture? Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. First of all, caption.

It says bottom right that an actual fumigating chamber was used to delouse inmates’ clothes. A. [Mr Irving]: You have lost me, I am afraid. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have lost me too. A. [Mr Irving]: You have lost us both. MR RAMPTON: Then I will have to come back to it the copy you have is not the copy that I have. It is on Mr Julius’s copy. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe I am looking in the wrong place, but I do not think I have it.

MR RAMPTON: I just want to make sure the Foreword is the same before we get completely — MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think there is any problem about that. It is about six pages in. Foreword by David Irving. Have you got the Foreword now? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. MR RAMPTON: You wrote the Foreword, it appears, in May 1989?

A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is copyright? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: David Irving. You start: “Unlike the writing of history chemistry is an exact science”, yes? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not going to read the whole of it by any manner of means. There are only some small parts that I need for this purpose. A. [Mr Irving]: I rely on the whole Foreword and not just on the parts you are going to read. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rely on me to read them.

MR RAMPTON: Ask his Lordship to read it, but I am not going to read it all out. It is a waste of the court’s time and of my vocal chords. If you go please to the first column, five paragraphs down, you write this: “Nobody like to be swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved (since 1949 the state of Israel has received over 90 billion deutschemarks in voluntary reparations from West Germany, essentially in atonement for the “gas chambers of Auschwitz)”.

Gas chambers in plural. Then you go on: “This myth will not die easily.” Then you go on about how it was an ingenious plan invented by the PWE during the war. Please go to the next column, second paragraph. I will start at the first paragraph first complete paragraph:

“Yet I have to admit” — this is you Mr Irving — “that it would never have occurred to me to subject the actual fabric of the Auschwitz concentration camp and its “gas chambers” – the holiest shrines of this new 20th century religion – to chemical tests to see if there was any trace of cyanide compounds in the walls.

The truly astonishing results are as set out in this report: While significant quantities of cyanide compounds were found in the small delousing facilities of the camp, whether proprietary and lethal compounds were used, as all are agreed, to disinfect the plague ridden clothing of all persons entering these brutal slave labour camps, no significant trace whatsoever was found in the buildings which international opinion – for it is not more than that — as always labelled as the camps’

infamous gas chambers. Nor, as the report’s gruesomely expert author makes plain, could the design and construction of those buildings have made their use as mass gas chambers feasible under any circumstances”. Then in the next paragraph you write that you have reservations about his methodology, but they are reservations which you quickly, if I may suggest, abandon.

You end the paragraph: “The video tapes made simultaneously by the team – which I have studied – provide compelling visual evidence of the scrupulous methods that they use”. Then you finish up: “Until the

end of this tragic century there will always be incorrigible historians, statesmen and publicists, who are content to believe, or have no economically viable alternative but to believe, that the Nazis used “gas chambers” at Auschwitz to kill human beings. But it is now up to them to explain to me as an intelligent and critical student of modern history why there is no significant trace of any cyanide compound in the building which they have always identified as the former gas chambers”.

A. [Mr Irving]: “The building” is in the singular. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, “in the building which they always identified as the former gas chambers. Forensic chemistry is, I repeat, an exact science. The ball is in their court.” Mr Irving, just so that we do not get tangled up in singular or plural gas chambers, please turn quickly to —- A. [Mr Irving]: You rather skated over the paragraph, of course, in which I drew attention to the flaws in the report.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: You can draw attention that in your re-examination, Mr Irving. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but several days will pass between now and then. Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am trying to make progress. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a reference to the sentence where you say you prefer to have seen more rigorous methods used in identifying and so on?

A. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, my Lord. I accept already at this time that the report is flawed. MR RAMPTON: As will you see, Mr Irving, as time goes by, your reservations seem to vanish into thin air. A. [Mr Irving]: Completely the opposite.

If you read the correspondence in this very bundle which you put before the court, there are letters between me and Mr Zundel and other people saying that engineers have now drawn attention to the serious flaws in the Leuchter report, and we have to address them. Q. [Mr Rampton]: We are going to look at that. The point is this, Mr Irving. A. [Mr Irving]: My reservations did not vanish.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: What you say privately to people like Mark Weber and Ernst Zundel is quite different from what you say publicly. That is my point and this is where we are going to go today. A. [Mr Irving]: Good. Q. [Mr Rampton]: You say publicly that which you know to be untrue about the value of the Leuchter report. A. [Mr Irving]: In the meantime, of course, we have other reports to back up the original conclusions of the Leuchter report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us get distracted.

You have made your point about the flaws in the methodology. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. MR RAMPTON: Just so we do not have any more confusion about

this at all, had you read this version of the Leuchter report when you wrote your introduction? A. [Mr Irving]: No. I had read, of course, the original affidavit, the full length affidavit of which this is a precis. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Had you read this version of the Leuchter report before your press conference in June 1989? A. [Mr Irving]: No. Why should I read the abridged version when I had already read the full version length version?

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because you are the publisher, Mr Irving. It is a very short document. A. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry to disappoint you, but that does not necessarily follow. I had read the original one inch thick version.

Section 35.14-50.9

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just look on page 15. A. [Mr Irving]: Had I attended in greater detail to this, there are certain things that I would not have tolerated, for example the sideways printing I would not have liked, things like that. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just look at page 15 of this version of the Leuchter report. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is published by you in the right hand column under the heading “Forensic considerations of HCN cyanide compounds…” in the bottom right hand corner. A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the second paragraph.

A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Q. [Mr Rampton]: “31 samples were selectively removed from the alleged gas chambers (plural) at Kramers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, a control sample was taken from delousing facility no 1 at Birkenau “. Let us not have any more of this nonsense that, when you talk about the gas chambers at Auschwitz and the value of Mr Leuchter’s report, you are talking simply about the reconstructed gas chamber at Auschwitz. A. [Mr Irving]: I never said that.

On the contrary, this is exactly what I have denied saying. We are referring to all the buildings which are now claimed to have been gas chambers, from which these samples were taken.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you look at the next paragraph, while we have it open and I shall not have to come back to it, you write in bold, or it is printed in bold under your imprint: “The control sample was removed from any delousing chamber in a location where cyanide was known to have been used and was apparently present as blue staining. The chemical testing of control sample No. 32 showed a cyanide content of 1,050 milligram per kilogram, a very heavy concentration”. Perfectly right.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: And sample No. 32 is the one taken from the Birkenhau delousing facility. Is that right? MR RAMPTON: Yes. When Professor van Pelt gives evidence, he will make it a good deal clearer but, if your Lordship looks at page 26 of this report, this time the page is on

the left hand corner, there is a plan of Birkenhau at the bottom of the page. On the right-hand side of that plan is a key and F in the key is delousing facility No. 1, where Mr Leuchter says he found concentration of over 1,000 milligrams per kilogram of some kind of cyanide compound. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is bottom left. MR RAMPTON: Exactly. That is the building known as BW 5A. It is a brick building and it is in what became the women’s part of the camp at Birkenau.

It is there to this day. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is on your case the first gas chamber? MR RAMPTON: No, it is not a gas chamber at all. That is a delousing facility. If your Lordship wants to look at where the gas chambers are, they are K 2 on the left-hand side and K 3, and then in the middle of the page towards the top there is K 4 and K 5. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not found K 2 and K 3. MR RAMPTON: On the left, my Lord, you see the compass. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Up there yes, I see.

MR RAMPTON: If one goes southeast of the compass, they are side by side, either side of the railway track. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is all Birkenhau? MR RAMPTON: This is all Birkenhau, as it says in the bottom left hand corner. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, sorry. That was my enquiry. MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship should ignore the little (f) at the

top of the page. That is not Mr Leuchter’s (f). That is an (f) from the original plan and that is a separate delousing facility that was built in 1944, and which was hardly used in the Zyklon bay at all, mostly steam autoclaves as are shown in the front of the report. Then I will read on, if I may, Mr Irving, on page 15: “The conditions and areas from which these samples were taken are identical with those of the controlled sample, cold dark and wet.

Only Kramers 4 and 5 differed in the respect that these locations had sunlight, the buildings had been torn down, and sunlight may hasten the destruction of uncomplex cyanide. The cyanide in the mortar and brick becomes ferro-cyanide or Prussian blue pigment, a very stable iron cyonide complex”. Are you aware of the errors in that paragraph, Mr Irving? A. [Mr Irving]: I am not a chemical expert. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you aware of the errors in the description of the state of the buildings?

A. [Mr Irving]: No. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then he says the locations from which the analysed samples were removed are set out in table 3. A. [Mr Irving]: If you are going to say there are errors, perhaps you ought to explain to the court what the errors are. Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving. If you do not know what they are?

A. [Mr Irving]: You just claimed there were errors. Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, there are errors. Van Pelt’s report is full of errors identified, for example, crematoria 2 and 3 are open to the skies, the ruins. A. [Mr Irving]: I have very big photographs taken recently of those crematoria which I will show to the court this afternoon, if the court pleases. Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is fine, Mr Irving. They are open to the skies. They were blown up in early 1935 just before the Russians got there.

They are ruins. The delousing facility BW 5A in the women’s camp is a perfectly intact building with a roof on it. A. [Mr Irving]: I beg to differ. The morgue No. 1 of crematorium II may have been blown up but it is intact inasmuch as the roof just pancaked downwards and it is possible to crawl underneath the roof, which is what I believe Mr Leuchter did. Q. [Mr Rampton]: What about crematorium III? He took samples there too, did he not? A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look what he found. “It is notable that almost all the samples were negative and that the few that were positive were very close to the detection level, one milligram” — he has misprinted printed this, it is not KP but KG — “per KG, 6.7 milligrams per K G at Kramer 3, 7.9 milligrams per kilogram at Kramer 1″, that is in the old