Day 8 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1-11.26)
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Monday, 24th January 2000
5
6 Before:
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY
8
9 B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING
10 Claimant -and-
11 (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
12 (2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
13 Defendants
14 The Claimant appeared in person
15 MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya)appeared on behalf of the First and
16 Second Defendants
17 MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18 MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19 the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
20
21 (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell & Company, Clifford’s Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22 Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
23 * Transcript not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry
Counsell & Company
24
25 PROCEEDINGS – DAY EIGHT
26
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1 <Day 8 Monday, 24th January 2000.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
3 MR IRVING: May it please the court. I have three very small
4 matters that I would just like to bring to the court’s
5 attention —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
7 MR IRVING: — and to try to keep it within the five minutes
8 that I have set out. Your Lordship has before you a very
9 small heap of documents which, as far as I am concerned,
10 can be disposed with immediately afterwards. They are
11 purely to draw attention to certain points I wish to make.
12 The first one is headed August 17th 1942, on the right, a
13 translation. It is a two-page document.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
15 MR IRVING: We were dealing, your Lordship will remember, with
16 the deportations from France which were discussed between
17 Hitler and Himmler at the end of 1942, and the question
18 was what was going to happen to them, and there was
19 reference to a Sonderlager, a special camp. Your Lordship
20 will see within the first paragraph of the translation the
21 second sentence: “At first”?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
23 MR IRVING: “At first the evacuated Jews will be accommodated
24 in the Auschwitz concentration camp, but a special
25 reception camp is to be erected in the Western Reich
26 territory.” If I may summarize the rest of the document,
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1 it says: “We will continue deporting train loads of Jews
2 from France to avoid this lengthy journey to Auschwitz.
3 Can we please set up camps inside the Reich to house these
4 deportees?”
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is an odd movement, is it not?
6 MR IRVING: It is a very odd movement.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sending them all the way from France to
8 Poland and then back again.
9 MR IRVING: And then back again. I cannot speculate as to the
10 reason why they should engage in this movement, except
11 that Auschwitz does appear to have had a transit camp
12 character about it. It had facilities there for stealing,
13 robbing; it had facilities there for fumigating and
14 checking; it had also the big slave labour camp that was
15 attached to the Molovitz factory.
16 There are two reasons, your Lordship has quite
17 rightly spotted that fact, and that is I wanted to hint at
18 the possibility this may have been the kind of movement —
19 remember your Lordship drew attention to the fact that
20 people were coming back from the East, from Lemburg to one
21 of the camps on the border. Of course, the special
22 reception camp, that is, Bezonderes Auffanglager, you will
23 see on the next page, my Lord, in line 4, “Bezonderes
24 Auffanglager”, a special reception camp, is clearly the
25 Sonderlager to which reference is later made, in my
26 submission.
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1 If I can move rapidly on to the next document,
2 my Lord, it is headed “Pocket Dictionary”. It is three or
3 four pages.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I have that.
5 MR IRVING: In that case —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang ob. I probably have it somewhere.
7 MR IRVING: It will be in white, my Lord, with a green corner
8 tab.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Oddly enough, that has not arrived.
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, I went to some trouble over the last few
11 months obtaining contemporary a German dictionary by which
12 I mean a wartime Third Reich German dictionary so we can
13 see what the meaning of words were at that time, rather
14 than the modern Langenscheidt being used and relied upon
15 by the Defence. This is a 1935 dictionary, my Lord, which
16 is this one here. I have just looked up at random some of
17 the words we are interested in. The first page is
18 “Entfernen” which means “to remove”. It has no
19 subsidiary sinister meanings.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think anyone is suggesting, except
21 in a euphemistic way, that it means anything other than to
22 remove or distance.
23 MR IRVING: My Lord, I believe the Defence is relying heavily
24 on the fact that I have mistranslated and distorted. In
25 my submission, if I use the correct wartime translation of
26 the word, then this destroys that particular Defence
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1 justification.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
3 MR IRVING: The next page is “Vernichten”, a very sinister
4 word, “annihilate and destroy”. The next page is
5 “Abschaffen” which is quite significant in connection
6 with the French movements, you will remember, my Lord,
7 because Himmler wrote next to the figures “Abschaffen” in
8 his handwriting, and this means “to dismiss”.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the difficulty with “Abschaffen” is
10 that it would not normally be applied to people. Is that
11 not a fair point?
12 MR IRVING: You are right, my Lord. It could apply to a body
13 of people, perhaps, to dismiss them, and I shall be
14 making, obviously, my closing speech submissions at some
15 length summarising this question of the translations which
16 is a thorny one, I appreciate, but in view of the fact the
17 Defence do rely on it so heavily for the distortion
18 element of their justification; and, finally, my Lord, on
19 page 33 of the dictionary we have the famous “Ausrotten”
20 and there the 1935 meaning of the word is quite clearly
21 “to root out”, as you would imagine, the word
22 “Ausrotten”; whereas I quite readily accept that nowadays
23 in 1999/2000, the word “Ausrotten” quite clearly means
24 “liquidate”. It has become that, the same as words
25 change their meaning over the years.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
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1 MR IRVING: My Lord, finally, I come to the little bundle of
2 documents. It is a rather arcane matter, but again
3 I believe the Defence rely heavily on my choice of
4 language. Your Lordship will remember the rather heated
5 remarks I made about certain Jewish fraudsters and
6 racketeer in the United States, Ivan Boesky, Michael
7 Milken, and so on. I suggested they were hiding behind,
8 they were insulating themselves from public criticism by
9 the use of the Holocaust. This is what is now
10 scientifically or academically referred to as the
11 instrumentalisation of the Holocaust. This is one
12 particular example which came to our attention. Mr Melvin
13 Murmelstein, who may well be mentioned later on in the
14 case, started a claim against the Hertford Insurance
15 Company. His lawyers warned the insurance company that,
16 as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War
17 II, this matter is extremely important to Mr Murmelstein.
18 That is page 2, my Lord. On page 6, the insurance
19 company’s own lawyers warned them, warned the insurance
20 company, to settle the $100,000 being claimed, saying,
21 “The lawyer argues that a jury will be sympathetic to a
22 man who has survived a Nazi concentration camp”, and so
23 on. So this is the kind —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not quite the same point, is it? The
25 point that I think you were making in that talk that we
26 looked at on Thursday was that Jews who get up to some
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1 sort of financial or other misconduct then used the
2 Holocaust as a kind of shield against their own
3 criminality.
4 MR IRVING: My Lord, it may well be that I shall lead —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a slightly use or instrumentalization
6 of the Holocaust.
7 MR IRVING: It is an insulation which goes on. Perhaps it is
8 automatic — we all have the utmost sympathy with victims
9 of the Holocaust, and that includes myself, and I want
10 to say that here; but I want to get this one instance in
11 now because of the rather ugly note we closed on on
12 Thursday evening, and it may well be I will lead further
13 evidence which will go more closely to the matter actually
14 raised. With that, I end my submission, my Lord.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will put these into, just so we know where
16 they are going, J. I think we have got to 8, but there is
17 a problem with these loose documents.
18 So that completes what you wanted to say about
19 that, Mr Irving.
20 MR IRVING: I have completed my submission, my Lord.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, you do not want to say anything
22 about this matter?
23 MR RAMPTON: No, I do not want to say anything about any of
24 them at the moment. I may have to come back to some of
25 them in due course, but certainly not today. J8, my Lord,
26 says Miss Rogers.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could I mention something that I would like
2 to do, I think probably first thing tomorrow morning, if
3 that is convenient, and that is to have a look and see
4 what the future timetable is looking like, as far as one
5 can judge it. I would appreciate there are witnesses to
6 be accommodated. We might need to discuss what topics
7 need to be cross-examined to and possibly some do not need
8 to be.
9 MR RAMPTON: I agree.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And timing generally.
11 MR RAMPTON: I mean, I quite agree with that. One reason, if
12 I may respectfully say so, I would say it was a good idea
13 to do it tomorrow is that today is a bit uncharted, I am
14 chartered, but I do not know where my charts will lead me
15 today. But there is also the very good question your
16 Lordship has raised on how much more of Evans do I have to
17 do? Of course, essentially, that is a question for me,
18 subject to being told not to. There are only, I think,
19 two big topics left in Evans, that is ReichsKristallnacht
20 — three, ReichKristallnacht early anti-Semitism of
21 Hitler with the Nuremberg rules and Dresden.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there is another heading post
23 Kirstallnacht, is there not?
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but that is all part of the same subject.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.
26 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I mention something which I think
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1 I have mentioned before, which is this, that it would be
2 convenient to us if we could have our reading day on
3 Thursday rather than Friday of this week for the reason
4 that Professor van Pelt has to go to Stockholm on
5 Thursday.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: For a day or for a weekend?
7 MR RAMPTON: Only for a day. He is going in the morning and
8 coming back in the afternoon, but there is a conference
9 that he has been asked to attend and thinks that he
10 should. So if we could possibly have —-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not see any problem with that. Does
12 that cause you any difficulty, Mr Irving?
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, we were going to call Dr John Fox as our
14 expert witness on that day, but I can easily postpone him.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very accommodating. Thank you. We
16 will do that first thing Thursday morning, if that is all
17 right with both of you? So we can now press on with
18 cross-examination.
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am calling Mr Peter Miller as a witness
20 tomorrow, but he will be relatively brief, I think, on the
21 events in Moscow.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That raises a question that I have canvassed
23 before. To what extent are we going to have to go through
24 quite voluminous evidence on the Goebbels’ diaries? To
25 some extent I am in both of your hands. I have made no
26 secret of the fact that whilst I understand, Mr Irving,
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1 your complaint about it, and I have seen the way the
2 Defence is put, in the end is it a topic that we benefit
3 by spending a very great deal of time on?
4 MR IRVING: On the Goebbels’ diaries.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On the Goebbels’ diaries and the breach of
6 the agreement or whatever it was.
7 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am accused of having breached agreements
8 in Moscow. This is what I will certainly ask Peter Miller
9 to evidence on.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is really in a way addressed to
11 Mr Rampton as he will understand.
12 MR RAMPTON: There are really only two points left in Moscow.
13 There is an admission that plates were removed without
14 permission. The question, was there any significant risk
15 they might be damaged? Second, how many plates? Now,
16 whether that is more than about half an hour’s
17 cross-examination — nothing more than that, I doubt.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, well and good. That is, I think, all
19 it really merits, frankly.
20 MR RAMPTON: That is how I see it. There is the additional
21 point, of course, that Moscow would be, if it fell
22 anywhere in the case, a section 5 question.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what you say.
24 MR RAMPTON: That is what I believe, and it may be against
25 everything else I will take a view (and it will be my
26 decision) that it pales into insignificance.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really why I have said what I have
2 just said. I do appreciate, Mr Irving, you do not accept
3 that it is an insignificant point because you say you are
4 accused of breaking an agreement.
5 MR IRVING: Well…
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not sound as if Mr Rampton is really
7 pursuing that at all.
8 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but without permission.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but without permission does not mean
10 breaking an agreement necessarily.
11 MR RAMPTON: That is a question of terminology really.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am in both your hands about that, but I
13 personally do not think we should spend a lot of time.
14 MR RAMPTON: That is my present view, but I am not committing
15 myself now. But I think your Lordship can reasonably
16 expect that Moscow will not take up a lot of the court’s
17 time, as far as I am concerned.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, if they were to put Moscow into section 5
19 as well, I think that bucket is beginning to overflow.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very vivid way of putting it.
21 MR IRVING: We can put the whole of his Hizbollah and Farrakhan
22 into section 5.
23 MR RAMPTON: That is not section 5. That is common sting which
24 is different.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, anyway, let us get on. That disposes
26 of that. Yes, do please come back, Mr Irving.
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Part II: Rampton examines Irving (morning session) (12.1 to 100.12)
Section 12.1-35.13
1 < MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.
2
3 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there are three new bundles. They are
4 not new in any surprise sense. They are new in that we
5 have composed them for ease of reference for this part of
6 the case. There are two Auschwitz core bundles; the first
7 consisting of what one might call material arising out of
8 the Leuchter Report, and it has the Leuchter Report at the
9 beginning of it. The second Auschwitz core bundles are
10 the original drawings and documents.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
12 MR RAMPTON: The third new file, again composed from other
13 sources, are statements by Mr Irving about Leuchter and
14 the Leuchter report. That has been extracted from a range
15 of the D files, D1 and 2 and 3.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Many of which we have been through?
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, exactly, but not the specific reference and
18 I am hoping to cut that short this morning, if I possibly
19 can.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to be tedious about it, but can we
21 perhaps give these bundles a slightly more convenient
22 means of identification?
23 MR RAMPTON: We started off by calling them “K”.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, why not?
25 MR RAMPTON: All right. K1, 2 and 3 then.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is just going to make life simpler later
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1 on.
2 MR RAMPTON: Certainly, of course we will. The first fat one
3 is K1, the second one which has not got as much material
4 in it is K2, and the Claimant’s statements are K3.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 MR RAMPTON: (To the witness): Mr Irving, could you turn open
7 the first tab in the first of those files? That should be
8 the Leuchter?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: It is, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I would rather you use the one in the file because it has
11 the appendices. Before I do that, I want to do something
12 else. May I? I am sorry about that, my Lord, I had
13 forgotten what I intended to do.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is all right.
15 MR RAMPTON: It is Monday morning. Could you, Mr Irving, turn
16 up in the third file, K3, tab 4? This is a transcript of
17 the press conference that you gave, introducing the
18 Leuchter in your published edition on 23rd June 1989.
19 Could you turn to page 21, please? I will start, if
20 I may, at the bottom of page 20. You are being asked
21 questions, Mr Irving, and somebody says at the bottom of
22 page 20: “So they fabricated this evidence?” You say:
23 “Oh, we fabricated a lot of evidence at Nuremberg. I am
24 very familiar with the private diaries”, etc., “of Robert
25 H Jackson and the American Judge Biddle.”
26 Page 21 at the top: “They fabricated the
. P-13
1 evidence?” asked the questioner?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: “This evidence”.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry, “this evidence”. You are quite right,
4 Mr Irving: “No, but I am familiar with how things like
5 the figure of 6 million were arrived at because that is
6 dealt with at great length in their private diaries.”
7 Then you say this: “Judge Biddle, however, sitting in
8 judgment at Nuremberg, he looked at one Auschwitz survivor
9 all day, a Frenchman — I am sure you know her name, she
10 gave a heartbreaking testimony about what she had survived
11 — and in his diary at the end of that day Judge Biddle
12 privately wrote: ‘I don’t believe a word of what she is
13 saying. I think she is a bloody liar’.”
14 Mr Irving, he did not say that in his diary?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: You are right. He did not write those words.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. Those are your words, are they not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: This is my gloss on it, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And he did not say it, did he, about the whole of her
19 testimony?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I think he did. He sat there listening to the testimony
21 and after a time when he could stand it no longer, he
22 wrote in brackets in the middle of her testimony words
23 which gave precisely this meaning to me as the reader.
24 You must remember I have read the entire notes of Biddle
25 in the archives in the United States.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to show you the notes of Judge Biddle and what
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1 you wrote about them on your little index cards in a
2 moment. Can I just draw attention — you do not need to
3 get it out — the woman in question was a lady called
4 Marie-Claude Valliant-Courturier, was she not?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: A French Communist yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A French Communist. As she said, a member of the
7 Resistance?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, exactly, a member of the Resistance and a French
9 Communist.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you remember in your Nuremberg book — if you would
11 like to get it out, you shall — you published a lot of
12 pictures, quite a good selection of pictures really, after
13 page 182?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A caption to a picture of that lady, Madame
16 Valliant-Couturier, reads as follows: “Credibility
17 problems. As Madame Marie-Claude Valliant-Couturier below
18 left testifies about her ordeal as a Communist interned at
19 Auschwitz, Judge Francis Biddle notes that he does not
20 believe her”?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps it would assist the court if you were to read out
22 some of this lady’s testimony to the Nuremberg court?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, it would not in the very slightest, Mr Irving.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it certainly would because you can see yourself how
25 totally incredible her testimony was.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving, I am sorry. You can do that later in
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1 re-examination of yourself if you wish?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I certainly shall because all those things taken together
3 indicated why the Judge wrote down those words in his
4 notes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Could his Lordship and Mr Irving please be given the
6 original transcript, or whatever it is, of Judge Biddle’s
7 notes and also Mr Irving’s noted form of that document on
8 his index cards?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: These were provided by me to your solicitors.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are they going to go? There is another
11 loose document coming, floating in. Where shall I put
12 it?
13 MR RAMPTON: The back of core file Auschwitz K2. It will be
14 tab —-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is really a core bundle document, is
16 it?
17 MR RAMPTON: It is an Auschwitz document in a sense, but
18 actually on this little exercise for mismisrepresentation.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is Biddle’s notes of Madame Couturier.
20 MR RAMPTON: That is right. 28th January 1946. This is his
21 notes of her evidence.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: “Sang the Marseillaise when the gas trucks started to
23 move”.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On page 3, Mr Irving, if you turn to page 3 — I marked
25 it tab 7 in K2, my Lord, if that is convenient?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.
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1 MR RAMPTON: At the top of page 3 of his actual notes there are
2 two sentences: “SS distributed punishment in form of 50
3 blows of stick on back by a sort of machine. Endless roll
4 calls and gymnastics”. Then a new paragraph, Mr Irving.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, which page.
6 MR RAMPTON: Page 3, my Lord. 3 at the top or 34 at the
7 bottom. Then there is a new paragraph: “House of
8 prostitution for SS selected young women as they were
9 washing for maids or camps used the same system. (This
10 I doubt).” Then he starts a new paragraph.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The only thing. Mr Irving, that he is doubting is her
13 statement about the prostitution.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think you have any justification for saying that.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is perfectly obvious.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: In the previous paragraph we have heard about the SS
17 having a machine for beating people with, which on the
18 face of it is totally implausible, and we now know it to
19 be totally untrue. By this time, this Judge Biddle, who
20 is a very, very level headed American, as I know from his
21 private papers, is so fed up with this woman’s testimony
22 that he finally can stand it no longer and he dictates in
23 parenthesis into his report — this, you remember, is not
24 in typing or handwriting, this is him dictating to a
25 secretary so we do not know where the paragraphs begin or
26 end in his dictation. He says, “This I doubt”.
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1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, will you look at your own note of this
2 document? You came upon these in Syracuse in New York
3 State, I think?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: The Americans call it Syracuse.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I beg their pardon. But that is right, is it not?.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: This is correct, at the university of Syracuse.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is a little clip, two pages, of your own index card
8 notes — have I got it right?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On the second page, in the top right hand corner, you
11 report this part of Judge Biddle’s note and, wherever you
12 are, as it were, missing something out, you put quite
13 properly an ellipse with three dots.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: At the bottom of that box on the right-hand side, which
16 I assume is a card, you write: “… House of prostitution
17 for SS selected young women as they were washing for
18 maids. All camps used the same system (this
19 I doubt). …”
20 A. [Mr Irving]: The reason why I write down about the house
21 of prostitution is because this was referred to as a
22 sonderhouse and sondergeboide and so, for people who are
23 interested in the Holocaust, you noticed the word sonder
24 as being attached to something which was not connected
25 with gassing, and that is why I quoted that particular
26 paragraph but, once again, I submit that this dictated
. P-18
1 parenthesis by Biddle refers to everything he has heard up
2 to this point. It is getting more and more implausible
3 and, when he hears about the machine for beating people,
4 his patience snaps.
5 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, that must be complete nonsense, must it
6 not?. Look at the little paragraph in Judge Biddle.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: He did not say, “new paragraph Miss Smith”, he just
8 dictated.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What warrant did you have for inflating that side note
10 about one little paragraph about prostitution into a
11 general doubt by Judge Biddle about the credibility of the
12 whole of this lady’s testimony. What warrant was there
13 for that?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I sat for either one or two days in the university library
15 of Syracuse University. Reading all Judge Biddle’s notes
16 on the testimony given by the witnesses that I was
17 interested in, and also his notes on the deliberations on
18 the judgment, whether to hang or sentence to life
19 imprisonment and so on. So you get a very good feeling
20 for the sense of the way a judge is thinking and, if he
21 did not make this kind of comment about the other
22 witnesses and suddenly at this point he does, then this is
23 what said to me that this was a witness who tested his own
24 credulity.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask because I am not quite sure
26 that I am following this? You interpret those three words
. P-19
1 in parenthesis, appearing where they do in the summary of
2 this lady’s evidence, as the judge casting doubt over the
3 totality of it?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Up to that point, yes. There is no reason for him to
5 doubt really the house of prostitution but there certainly
6 is reason to doubt what comes in the paragraph before
7 about the special machine for caning people. We did not
8 even have that at public school. Everything up to this
9 point he has been listening, as judges do, I am sure your
10 Lordship also does sometimes, with mounting impatience,
11 and he made a little mental note that he dictated that
12 evening to a secretary, “(this I doubt)”.
13 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you know perfectly well, do you not,
14 that you have done what you have so often done? You have
15 taken one little phrase which is applied to one
16 proposition made by the witness about prostitution when
17 the judge has put a parenthetical note that he doubts this
18 proposition, and the word “this” is very specific in
19 English. It means that which we are now talking about,
20 does it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: What they were now talking about was the SS distributed
22 punishment in the form of 50 blows by a stick on the back
23 by a machine, and all the other stories about the
24 orchestra playing music as people went into the gas
25 chambers, all these other stories that this witness
26 generated in her testimony. There is a great deal of it
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1 in these five pages and you have been very careful not to
2 read out the five page so that people can hear exactly how
3 ludicrous this witness’s statement was, as we now know
4 with hindsight.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Give us one other example. The machine for
6 beating you have described. Just so that I have the
7 flavour of it.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Dogs tore at their legs and killed, set on by SS guards,
9 corpses in the courtyard, a hand or head would now and
10 then stir in the corpses seeking to free itself, the heap
11 moaned from morn till night in all languages “Water
12 water”, huge rats everywhere, and so on. I think there is
13 a reason why the judge is dictating this kind of
14 material: In order to get the flavour of what this
15 witness is saying. He finally then writes down “(this
16 I doubt)”.
17 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I simply cannot accept that.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: This is frankly why I think eyewitness evidence is so
19 dangerous.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, maybe you do, Mr Irving. I am not on about
21 eyewitness. I am on about a deliberate distortion of what
22 the text of Judge Biddle’s note actually says.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I agree and I concede, for what it is worth, that what
24 I said in the press conference, no doubt four or five
25 years after reading Judge Biddle’s notes, or possibly even
26 ten years after I read Judge Biddle’s notes, I cannot
. P-21
1 remember precisely when I saw the papers.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What about what you said here in the picture caption?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: About the credibility of the witness?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I think that is absolutely justified. If he says that he
6 doubts her, then ipso facto her credibility has been
7 maligned.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Would you turn back to tab 2 in the third of those files,
9 the same files as you have the Leuchter press conference?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is page 18. My Lord, this is a speech at Toronto in
12 August 1988. Turn to page 18, please.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I cannot see any pagination.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Bottom of the page?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 2. Are you in the right tab?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I am in the right tab but there is no pagination in mine.
17 However —
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you in the right volume?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: It is the district court of Ontario.
20 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry about this. Tab 2, page 18. It is
21 Toronto August 1988.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: What is the page number?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the wrong file.
24 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving, it is the same file as the
25 one from the Leuchter press conference.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Now we have it.
. P-22
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Before we look at this, Mr Irving, tell me when you went
2 to Syracuse, as you call it.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I would have to look at my notes to see precisely when
4 I went to Syracuse in fact on two or three occasions.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You wrote to us on 21 December 1999. You said — my
6 Lord, this is inter partes correspondence —
7 “I originally read Judge Biddle’s papers at Syracuse in
8 about 1988″?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Off the top of my head, that may have been correct.
10 I went to Syracuse two or three times because they have
11 many collections of papers there.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, when you are speaking at the Leuchter press conference
13 in 1989, that is not more than a year after you have seen
14 the notes, is it?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: In that event, yes, but I will come back with further and
16 better information, if you want to know the exact date.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This speech in Toronto which I am now asking you to look
18 at, was made in August 1988?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And on page 18 you say this. Actually, we had better
21 start on page 17 because this may be important. Can you
22 read, please, from about the beginning of the second
23 quarter of the page, there is a sentence: “Let me just
24 read out the kind of material that was given in the
25 witness box in Nuremberg”. Then you mention Judge
26 Biddle. Have you got that on page 17?
. P-23
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Would you read to yourself please, not out loud if you do
3 not mind, all of the rest of that page and down to the end
4 of the first complete paragraph on page 18?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: (Pause for reading) Yes. I clearly had my notes in front
6 of me when I was saying this.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You give some sort of an account of many things about
8 which the French lady testified.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You finish that account with the piece about the
11 prostitution, and then you say: “Here Judge Biddle writes
12 in brackets in his diary ‘all this I doubt’. Why did he
13 not say it at the time, for heavens sake but he just sat
14 there with his face motionless because he is an American
15 judge, but in his private diary he writes”, you repeat it,
16 “all this I doubt”, and so it goes on, and I am not going
17 to read the rest of it.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Right. I had my notes in front of me.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is not what Judge Biddle said, is it?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: But I am just stating quite clearly I had my notes in
21 front of me when I was making this statement, and I added
22 the word “all”, but I would aver that that is precisely
23 what I said in my earlier statement, that he has clearly
24 referred to all that has gone before.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but he did not say that.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: He did not say that, my Lord.
. P-24
1 MR RAMPTON: Do you not see the difference between “all this
2 I doubt” which I quite agree with you might certainly have
3 reference to the evidence given to date by that lady, and
4 the words “this I doubt” in parenthesis against a single
5 statement in a single paragraph?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: This is precisely what I said in my previous statement.
7 My conclusion from reading his diary was that he was
8 referring to the foregoing, all these incredible stories
9 which are here listed in summary form in my speech about
10 the baby saying, “can I walk now I have had my leg torn
11 off?” and all this kind of thing.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to suggest to you that you made that speech in
13 Toronto on the same visit to North America as when you
14 first saw the Biddle notes.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: No. I think from the way it is constructed, the fact that
16 the passages in my speech here follow closely at first
17 glimpse anyway the actual notes that I typed on to the
18 index cards that I clearly had the index cards in front of
19 me when I was making this statement.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You distorted what they said, did you not.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I added the word “all” to make it more literate for an
22 audience.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, you added the word “all”?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: This is not a distortion of what my own perception was of
25 that paragraph, that he was clearly referring to all the
26 foregoing.
. P-25
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Very well. I will just tell you for the sake of record.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Clearly, he would not just have put in this unusual
3 parentheses just because she is talking about a house of
4 prostitution. It was well known at that time that there
5 were brothels in all the SS concentration camps camp, in
6 Dachau and everywhere else they had brothels for the use
7 of the prisoners. This was well known at Nuremberg, so he
8 certainly would not have put that in brackets “this
9 I doubt” at that point. That refers to what he has heard
10 up to this point.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Even now, Mr Irving, you will not or cannot read the words
12 in front of you. Actually the sentence which precedes the
13 parenthesis is “all camps used the same system”, is it
14 not?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, and it might well have been a reference
16 to that.
17 MR RAMPTON: Exactly.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: It might well have been, but that was not my reading of
19 it.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway —-.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: On the basis of my knowledge of the Biddle papers and on
22 the basis of this particular one.
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes, Mr Irving. Just for completeness, your diary
24 tells us that you were in Syracuse on August 11th 1988,
25 you made this entry, “worked at Syracuse University all
26 day, very hot, private papers yielded little but the
. P-26
1 Nuremberg trials collection of Judge Francis Biddle had
2 some gems, including his diary (with comments of I do not
3 believe) comments you put in the plural, on one
4 Auschwitz”?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: That clearly shows that I took that as being a reference
6 to all his comment and not just the previous comment. I
7 am indebted to you for pointing out exactly when I saw it,
8 which was a few days before this which means I was
9 carrying those index cards with me at the time I went to
10 this lecture.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On that occasion in Toronto in the press conference, in
12 London the following year and in your Nuremberg book, you
13 told a lie about what the notes said, did you not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: The difference clearly is that in Toronto, I have driven
15 up from Syracuse to Toronto probably two or three days
16 later and made the speech with the cards in front of me,
17 whereas at the Leuchter press conference I am giving the
18 sense of it from memory, and that is clearly the sense, as
19 I have told the court, I had from that comment made by
20 Judge Biddle in his own private papers. Listening to this
21 witness with her incredible stories about beating machines
22 and all the rest of it, he writes down in brackets “this
23 I doubt”. Frankly, I do not think there is very much
24 mileage to be made out of that.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now we are going to go to Leuchter, Mr Irving. If you put
26 that file on one side, I am coming back to it in a moment,
. P-27
1 the file of what you said about Leuchter. Before I do
2 that, I would like you to look at the Leuchter report
3 itself, which is the first divider in the first Auschwitz,
4 file K 1. It has a cover and an inside page headed Ernst
5 Zundel. Have you got that?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: At the bottom of the page you write what the cover
8 pictures are, because there are four of them.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: You are stating that I wrote this?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know who wrote this.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I am the publisher of this, not the writer of it.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who writes the information?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I wrote the introduction.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: About what the pictures represent?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So this is not the report submitted to the
16 Canadian court?
17 MR RAMPTON: No. I do not believe I need to use that if I have
18 Mr Irving’s own published version.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not being critical. I am just trying to
20 ensure that I know what I am looking at.
21 MR RAMPTON: I do not know if I have ever seen that.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: You have. It has been in the discovery and it is very
23 much more comprehensive than this.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That does not mean that I have seen it, Mr Irving. This is
25 published by Focal Point Publications, London, June 1989.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. The notice said published by, not written by.
. P-28
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: My question was, do you see that in effect on the inside
2 page somebody has provided captions for the cover pictures
3 under the line at the bottom of the page? It is not very
4 easy to read.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: On the inside page?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. That is right. There is a picture of some machinery
7 I think, by the look of things.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which page are you on now?
9 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there is a cover and on the next page
10 there is a picture of what looks like machinery. Cameras.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Cameras, yes. It is Monday morning!
12 MR RAMPTON: I know it is Monday. This is a rotten copy. It
13 could be anything. It could be a sheep shearing station?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Or a beating machine.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us get on.
16 MR RAMPTON: The line at the bottom of the page, underneath of
17 the line are provided captions for the cover pictures on
18 the front cover. What I ask you is who wrote those
19 captions?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: It was not me.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, you published this thing.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: There is a distinction between publishers and authors.
25 I explained it to you.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I know that, but a publisher normally has to organise the
. P-29
1 printing of the pictures. He has to make sure that the
2 pictures are properly identified and he usually knows who
3 does it, does he not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: For purposes of this court, it would satisfy you if I say
5 on oath that I did not write that, surely?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not necessarily, no, Mr Irving. Look at the one in the
7 bottom right hand corner.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The picture?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. First of all, caption. It says bottom right that an
10 actual fumigating chamber was used to delouse inmates’
11 clothes.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: You have lost me, I am afraid.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have lost me too.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: You have lost us both.
15 MR RAMPTON: Then I will have to come back to it the copy you
16 have is not the copy that I have. It is on Mr Julius’s
17 copy.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe I am looking in the wrong place, but
19 I do not think I have it.
20 MR RAMPTON: I just want to make sure the Foreword is the same
21 before we get completely —
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think there is any problem about
23 that. It is about six pages in. Foreword by David
24 Irving. Have you got the Foreword now?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 MR RAMPTON: You wrote the Foreword, it appears, in May 1989?
. P-30
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is copyright?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: David Irving. You start: “Unlike the writing of history
5 chemistry is an exact science”, yes?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not going to read the whole of it by any manner of
8 means. There are only some small parts that I need for
9 this purpose.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: I rely on the whole Foreword and not just on the parts you
11 are going to read.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rely on me to read them.
13 MR RAMPTON: Ask his Lordship to read it, but I am not going to
14 read it all out. It is a waste of the court’s time and of
15 my vocal chords. If you go please to the first column,
16 five paragraphs down, you write this: “Nobody like to be
17 swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are
18 involved (since 1949 the state of Israel has received over
19 90 billion deutschemarks in voluntary reparations from
20 West Germany, essentially in atonement for the “gas
21 chambers of Auschwitz)”. Gas chambers in plural. Then
22 you go on: “This myth will not die easily.”
23 Then you go on about how it was an ingenious
24 plan invented by the PWE during the war. Please go to the
25 next column, second paragraph. I will start at the first
26 paragraph first complete paragraph:
. P-31
1 “Yet I have to admit” — this is you
2 Mr Irving — “that it would never have occurred to me to
3 subject the actual fabric of the Auschwitz concentration
4 camp and its “gas chambers” – the holiest shrines of this
5 new 20th century religion – to chemical tests to see if
6 there was any trace of cyanide compounds in the walls.
7 The truly astonishing results are as set out in this
8 report: While significant quantities of cyanide compounds
9 were found in the small delousing facilities of the camp,
10 whether proprietary and lethal compounds were used, as all
11 are agreed, to disinfect the plague ridden clothing of all
12 persons entering these brutal slave labour camps, no
13 significant trace whatsoever was found in the buildings
14 which international opinion – for it is not more than that
15 — as always labelled as the camps’ infamous gas
16 chambers. Nor, as the report’s gruesomely expert author
17 makes plain, could the design and construction of those
18 buildings have made their use as mass gas chambers
19 feasible under any circumstances”.
20 Then in the next paragraph you write that you
21 have reservations about his methodology, but they are
22 reservations which you quickly, if I may suggest,
23 abandon. You end the paragraph: “The video tapes made
24 simultaneously by the team – which I have studied –
25 provide compelling visual evidence of the scrupulous
26 methods that they use”. Then you finish up: “Until the
. P-32
1 end of this tragic century there will always be
2 incorrigible historians, statesmen and publicists, who are
3 content to believe, or have no economically viable
4 alternative but to believe, that the Nazis used “gas
5 chambers” at Auschwitz to kill human beings. But it is
6 now up to them to explain to me as an intelligent and
7 critical student of modern history why there is no
8 significant trace of any cyanide compound in the building
9 which they have always identified as the former gas
10 chambers”.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: “The building” is in the singular.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, “in the building which they always identified as
13 the former gas chambers. Forensic chemistry is, I repeat,
14 an exact science. The ball is in their court.”
15 Mr Irving, just so that we do not get tangled up
16 in singular or plural gas chambers, please turn quickly to
17 —-
18 A. [Mr Irving]: You rather skated over the paragraph, of course, in which
19 I drew attention to the flaws in the report.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You can draw attention that in your re-examination,
21 Mr Irving.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but several days will pass between now and then.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am trying to make progress.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a reference to the sentence where you
25 say you prefer to have seen more rigorous methods used in
26 identifying and so on?
. P-33
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, my Lord. I accept already at this time that the
2 report is flawed.
3 MR RAMPTON: As will you see, Mr Irving, as time goes by, your
4 reservations seem to vanish into thin air.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Completely the opposite. If you read the correspondence
6 in this very bundle which you put before the court, there
7 are letters between me and Mr Zundel and other people
8 saying that engineers have now drawn attention to the
9 serious flaws in the Leuchter report, and we have to
10 address them.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We are going to look at that. The point is this,
12 Mr Irving.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: My reservations did not vanish.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What you say privately to people like Mark Weber and Ernst
15 Zundel is quite different from what you say publicly.
16 That is my point and this is where we are going to go
17 today.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Good.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You say publicly that which you know to be untrue about
20 the value of the Leuchter report.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: In the meantime, of course, we have other reports to back
22 up the original conclusions of the Leuchter report.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us get distracted. You have made
24 your point about the flaws in the methodology.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 MR RAMPTON: Just so we do not have any more confusion about
. P-34
1 this at all, had you read this version of the Leuchter
2 report when you wrote your introduction?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: No. I had read, of course, the original affidavit, the
4 full length affidavit of which this is a precis.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Had you read this version of the Leuchter report before
6 your press conference in June 1989?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: No. Why should I read the abridged version when I had
8 already read the full version length version?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because you are the publisher, Mr Irving. It is a very
10 short document.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry to disappoint you, but that does not
12 necessarily follow. I had read the original one inch
13 thick version.
Section 35.14-50.9
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just look on page 15.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Had I attended in greater detail to this, there are
16 certain things that I would not have tolerated, for
17 example the sideways printing I would not have liked,
18 things like that.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just look at page 15 of this version of the Leuchter
20 report.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is published by you in the right hand column under
23 the heading “Forensic considerations of HCN cyanide
24 compounds…” in the bottom right hand corner.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the second paragraph.
. P-35
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “31 samples were selectively removed from the alleged gas
3 chambers (plural) at Kramers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, a control
4 sample was taken from delousing facility no 1 at
5 Birkenau “. Let us not have any more of this nonsense
6 that, when you talk about the gas chambers at Auschwitz
7 and the value of Mr Leuchter’s report, you are talking
8 simply about the reconstructed gas chamber at Auschwitz.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: I never said that. On the contrary, this is exactly what
10 I have denied saying. We are referring to all the
11 buildings which are now claimed to have been gas chambers,
12 from which these samples were taken.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you look at the next paragraph, while we have it open
14 and I shall not have to come back to it, you write in
15 bold, or it is printed in bold under your imprint: “The
16 control sample was removed from any delousing chamber in a
17 location where cyanide was known to have been used and
18 was apparently present as blue staining. The chemical
19 testing of control sample No. 32 showed a cyanide content
20 of 1,050 milligram per kilogram, a very heavy
21 concentration”. Perfectly right.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And sample No. 32 is the one taken from the
23 Birkenhau delousing facility. Is that right?
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes. When Professor van Pelt gives evidence, he
25 will make it a good deal clearer but, if your Lordship
26 looks at page 26 of this report, this time the page is on
. P-36
1 the left hand corner, there is a plan of Birkenhau at the
2 bottom of the page. On the right-hand side of that plan
3 is a key and F in the key is delousing facility No. 1,
4 where Mr Leuchter says he found concentration of over
5 1,000 milligrams per kilogram of some kind of cyanide
6 compound.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is bottom left.
8 MR RAMPTON: Exactly. That is the building known as BW 5A. It
9 is a brick building and it is in what became the women’s
10 part of the camp at Birkenau. It is there to this day.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is on your case the first gas chamber?
12 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not a gas chamber at all. That is a
13 delousing facility. If your Lordship wants to look at
14 where the gas chambers are, they are K 2 on the left-hand
15 side and K 3, and then in the middle of the page towards
16 the top there is K 4 and K 5.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not found K 2 and K 3.
18 MR RAMPTON: On the left, my Lord, you see the compass.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Up there yes, I see.
20 MR RAMPTON: If one goes southeast of the compass, they are
21 side by side, either side of the railway track.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is all Birkenhau?
23 MR RAMPTON: This is all Birkenhau, as it says in the bottom
24 left hand corner.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, sorry. That was my enquiry.
26 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship should ignore the little (f) at the
. P-37
1 top of the page. That is not Mr Leuchter’s (f). That is
2 an (f) from the original plan and that is a separate
3 delousing facility that was built in 1944, and which was
4 hardly used in the Zyklon bay at all, mostly steam
5 autoclaves as are shown in the front of the report.
6 Then I will read on, if I may, Mr Irving, on
7 page 15: “The conditions and areas from which these
8 samples were taken are identical with those of the
9 controlled sample, cold dark and wet. Only Kramers 4 and
10 5 differed in the respect that these locations had
11 sunlight, the buildings had been torn down, and sunlight
12 may hasten the destruction of uncomplex cyanide. The
13 cyanide in the mortar and brick becomes ferro-cyanide or
14 Prussian blue pigment, a very stable iron cyonide
15 complex”.
16 Are you aware of the errors in that paragraph,
17 Mr Irving?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I am not a chemical expert.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you aware of the errors in the description of the
20 state of the buildings?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then he says the locations from which the analysed samples
23 were removed are set out in table 3.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: If you are going to say there are errors, perhaps you
25 ought to explain to the court what the errors are.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving. If you do not know what they are?
. P-38
1 A. [Mr Irving]: You just claimed there were errors.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, there are errors. Van Pelt’s report is full of errors
3 identified, for example, crematoria 2 and 3 are open to
4 the skies, the ruins.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I have very big photographs taken recently of those
6 crematoria which I will show to the court this afternoon,
7 if the court pleases.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is fine, Mr Irving. They are open to the skies.
9 They were blown up in early 1935 just before the Russians
10 got there. They are ruins. The delousing facility BW 5A
11 in the women’s camp is a perfectly intact building with a
12 roof on it.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg to differ. The morgue No. 1 of crematorium II may
14 have been blown up but it is intact inasmuch as the roof
15 just pancaked downwards and it is possible to crawl
16 underneath the roof, which is what I believe Mr Leuchter
17 did.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What about crematorium III? He took samples there too,
19 did he not?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look what he found. “It is notable that almost all the
22 samples were negative and that the few that were positive
23 were very close to the detection level, one milligram” —
24 he has misprinted printed this, it is not KP but KG —
25 “per KG, 6.7 milligrams per K G at Kramer 3, 7.9
26 milligrams per kilogram at Kramer 1″, that is in the old
. P-39
1 camp, Auschwitz I.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: “Close to the detection level” means of no significance,
3 in other words no statistical significance.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I thought you were not a scientist?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: You asked me what I know about ferro-cyanides and
6 uncomplex cyanide compounds. I am afraid I am way out of
7 my depth there.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You know it is wrong that it is very stable, do you not?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Ferro-cyanide is so stable that it is used as a dye stuff,
10 Prussian blue.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not if it is exposed to the elements over a period of 40
12 years.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: We will produce photographs to the court to show just how
14 stable it is.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It goes on: “In the absence of any consequential readings
16 at any of the tested locations as compared with the
17 controlled sample reading of 1050 milligrams per kilogram
18 supports the evidence that these facilities were not
19 execution gas chambers. The small quantities detected
20 would indicate that at some point these building were
21 deloused with Zyklon bay as were all the buildings at
22 these facilities. Additionally, the areas of blue
23 staining show a high iron content indicated ferro cyanide
24 no longer hydrogen cyanide.” Then in italics in bold,
25 which we have seen before but I will just read it again
26 now, “One would have expected higher cyanide detection in
. P-40
1 the samples taken from the alleged gas chambers because of
2 the greater amount of gas alleged to be utilized there
3 than that found in the controlled samples. Since the
4 contrary is true, one must conclude that these facilities
5 were not execution chambers when coupled with all the
6 other evidence gained on inspection.”
7 Leave it there, will you, for the moment?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask this question because we are
9 plundering into this and I do need to, sort of, understand
10 the big picture. Is this the passage which struck you
11 when you first saw the affidavit which led you to have
12 your change of mind?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: The statistical table, quite simply, the contrast between
14 the enormous quantities in the delousing chamber and the
15 infinitesimally insignificant quantities in the alleged
16 homicidal gas chambers where, allegedly, 500,000 people
17 had been gassed to death.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: My question is whether it is the text or whether —-
19 A. [Mr Irving]: It is.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — it is the tables. This is the bit of the report
21 which —-
22 A. [Mr Irving]: The argument, I would say, rather than the actual bit of
23 the report. When you come away, having looked at that,
24 you say, well, if those are the figures, if that is the
25 argument, I am wow’d by it, I am impressed, because, as
26 I said in my introduction, that is an exact science we are
. P-41
1 talking about. We do not have to read between the lines
2 of German documents and try to look for euphemisms.
3 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, before we go back to the Leuchter
4 report, just so there shall not be any doubt about what
5 you have been saying since it came out, this is merely one
6 example, there are about at least a dozen, maybe 20, if we
7 turn to tab 20 of the third of these new files?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I can quite simply right now my position has remained
9 unchanged from that day to this on precisely these
10 grounds.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Despite the fact that you have communicated reservations
12 about this question, in particular, to your friends,
13 Mr Zundel and Mr Weber, a consequence of having received
14 critical reports from outside people?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: The critical reports, if my memory is correct, were
16 relating to Mr Leuchter’s other rather superfluous
17 calculations, like how many people can fit into one square
18 metre, and this kind of calculation which I thought
19 detracted from the —-
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, be careful.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We are going to look at what Mr Beer, for example, wrote
23 to you in January 1990 in a moment.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, we are looking at a letter written 10 years ago.
25 I am quite happy to be surprised by what I wrote then.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving. In 1995 at Tampa, Florida, for example,
. P-42
1 you were as categorical in your dependence on
2 Mr Leuchter’s findings as to the relative amounts of
3 residues as you ever have been?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: And I still am.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Despite having known that they were rubbish?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I still am. My position on the significance, the global
7 significance, of those discrepancies between the residues
8 is the same now as it was then and I will be justifying
9 this when the time comes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you please take the first of those files, Auschwitz
11 files, and it is in the same file as the Leuchter report
12 which we are going to come back to in a moment, and turn
13 to tab 5?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are leaving the Leuchter now?
15 MR RAMPTON: No, this is all to do with the Leuchter. My Lord,
16 what I am interested in is not the objective value of the
17 Leuchter report, which I hope we need not go into in this
18 court — we may have to — but Mr Irving’s treatment of it
19 in the light of the knowledge which he had and which is
20 itself contained in the report to which I am coming back,
21 but only for that purpose.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: His position is really very simple, is it
23 not? It is this particular aspect of the report which
24 caused him to engage in what you have described as the
25 volte-face, and he maintains that position. So, in a
26 sense, his position could not be more sharply defined.
. P-43
1 MR RAMPTON: He knows it is wrong.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the point, obviously, that needs to
3 be pursued.
4 MR RAMPTON: He knows there is a whole lot else wrong with this
5 report. He knows, for example, the densities in the gas
6 chambers is wrong.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may or not be an issue; I suspect not.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The what in the gas chambers?
9 MR RAMPTON: The density of people in the gas chambers.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, the density of people.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Leuchter’s assumptions about that are complete rubbish,
12 are they not?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, of course, this is precisely one thing that
14 I challenged in my correspondence behind the scenes with
15 people saying, “He is wrong on this and we have got to
16 watch that he does not” —-
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you ever made that statement publicly before today?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: No, because that was not the crucial element of the
19 Leuchter on which I relied. The crucial element is the
20 scientific findings. As I say, chemistry is an exact
21 science; you cannot get round it. The courts are
22 convicting people the whole time on the basis of
23 chemistry.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, Mr Irving. Sometimes they are. It is not quite as
25 exact as you may think, I think. However, that s beside
26 the point. Chemistry is an exact science. You get small
. P-44
1 residues, or you call them insignificant, traces in the
2 gas chambers remains and much bigger traces in the
3 delousing remains. That is the position, is it not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the position.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have known that all along?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and it has been confirmed by subsequent tests, even
7 by the Poles.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, I know that. They found that out and Professor
9 Markievitch found it out in 1994. You know that?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: He did not actually carry out the tests himself. He had
11 others carry out the tests.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now please turn to —-
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Tab 6 or tab 5 did you say?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I think it is tab 5.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: “Critique of forensic examinations”.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This you received — I am just checking the date of the
17 letter you wrote to Mr Weber, 12th January 1990?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You write actually to Mr Beer, from Florida, and you say:
20 “Dear Mr Beer, thank you so much for sending me that
21 anonymous treatise on the Leuchter report”?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Rampton, I was distracted.
23 Where are you now? I thought you said you were tab 5.
24 MR RAMPTON: I will try to do a little of bit of history
25 first. If it is not the way round, then it makes sense,
26 perhaps, to do it chronologically. In tab 8, my Lord,
. P-45
1 there is a short bundle of correspondence, and I do not
2 know if your Lordship’s pages are paginated?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, they are.
4 MR RAMPTON: Mine are not. Then it is a letter which has 12th
5 January 1990 on it, page 12?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Page 12, yes. My Lord, this, of course, is not an agreed
7 bundle in any sense. We are just seeing the documents
8 that the Defence —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is any document in it that you for
10 one reason or another challenge, then please say so.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: No, my Lord, but, of course, it is just a very loaded
12 selection of documents. Of course, they have not put any
13 documents that would support my case.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You have not seen this file until today?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Not until this morning, but I am quite happy to rest on
16 these letters.
17 MR RAMPTON: “Dear Mr Beer”, you write on 12th January 1990,
18 “Thank you so much for sending me that anonymous treatise
19 on the Leuchter report to which I wrote the introduction.
20 Incidentally, that is all that I wrote. My involvement in
21 the project is no larger than that” —-
22 A. [Mr Irving]: So why did you suggest that I had written the rest of the
23 report?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I did not. I wanted to know who had written the captions,
25 Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: You wanted to know who wrote the report.
. P-46
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I know it is very tempting, but if
2 we chase every hare we are going to be here until …
3 MR RAMPTON: And then you say this, Mr Irving: “I agree” — we
4 will look at the criticisms in a moment — “agree, in
5 fact, with many of your friends’ criticisms and ascribe
6 most of the shortcomings to the fact that engineers, like
7 trade unionists, do not share the facility of expressing
8 themselves in English that writers and poets have. Having
9 said that, let me make a few general and specific
10 points”. Then I need not read the first three sentences,
11 I think.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I would rather you do.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will if you want: “In October 1989, a follow up mission
14 went to Auschwitz and brought back their findings in video
15 form and they will shortly be published as a video.
16 Again I have provided a German spoken introduction. The
17 quality is magnificent and enables the viewer to see where
18 somebody, the Poles(?) has attempted to falsify cavities,
19 openings, etc. in the ‘gas chambers’ to make them accord
20 with eye witness testimony”.
21 Now this is the sentence that I am interested
22 in: “I think your friends’ strictures about the 3,200
23 parts per million argument are right, but cannot agree
24 that you should automatically go right to the other end of
25 the scale 100 parts per million”.
26 Mr Irving, that shows, does it not, that you
. P-47
1 knew perfectly well that Fred Leuchter’s assumption that
2 the Nazis would have used a concentration of 3,200 parts
3 per million to kill their victims was a nonsense?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: No, not a nonsense, but probably not justified on the
5 figures.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now —-
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Not to go right to the other end of the scale.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It goes down to about 300, I agree. It does not go as far
9 as 100.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do I not need to see what the strictures
11 were?
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I am just going to show your Lordship. The
13 best way, my Lord, of doing this — it is at tab 5, my
14 Lord — maybe the best way of dealing with this, because
15 it is quite important, I would suggest —-
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can understand it is.
17 MR RAMPTON: — that your Lordship reads the whole of it.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The critique?
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: And this letter to Mr Beer, please.
21 MR RAMPTON: And the whole of the letter to Mr Beer as well,
22 I quite agree with that, because it will save time when
23 I then come back because I can ask —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want me to do that now?
25 MR RAMPTON: I think it would help before I start asking
26 questions about it because your Lordship will only find
. P-48
1 that I am jumping too far ahead. It will take quite a
2 little bit of time. Whether your Lordship would like to
3 leave court for five minutes?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I suspect that there would be some who would
5 welcome that. Perhaps I shall. It should not take up
6 more than five minutes.
7 MR RAMPTON: It should not, but it is not something to skim, if
8 I may say so?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: I agree. If your Lordship will also pay attention to the
10 marginal notes in the left-hand margin of the critique?
11 They are handwritten notes by me at the time.
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes, that, certainly. Unfortunately, mine have
13 been cut off.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think they have been cut off.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I can just very rapidly say at the first page it says
16 “totally untrue”; the second page it says “vernouwi
17 effect” which is something in liquid dynamics; the third
18 page says “this is a bit too pretty” — these are my
19 comments — then “important” I have underlined and then
20 “no”, I cannot read the next one.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When did you put those comments on?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: The day I received it, my Lord.
23 MR RAMPTON: Is there another “important” on the fifth page?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I have no idea what they refer to. I just…
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Against paragraph 7 in a bracket on page 5, I cannot make
26 anything of that. Mine has a hole punched through it
. P-49
1 apart from anything else. This small handwriting.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I very probably then quoted it in my letter to
3 Mr Beer because that is what I appear to have done.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: All I can see is an exclamation mark.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will go and read it. It will probably take
6 me between five and 10 minutes.
7 MR RAMPTON: Shall we come back at 10 to 12?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will let you know.
9 (The court adjourned for a short time)
Section 50.10-66.12
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read the critique and the letter to
11 Mr Beer.
12 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am grateful. Then, Mr Irving, I need
13 only ask this, I hope. That report sent to you by
14 Mr Colin Beer, I think it was, at the beginning of January
15 1990 was, in fact, a demolition of the Leuchter report,
16 was it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: He calls it a critique. It is not an extermination or
18 even an annihilation. It is a critique.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Fundamentally flawed?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes, fundamentally flawed. I will read the last
22 paragraph of his conclusions. “The evidence of the
23 Leuchter report when taken in the context of the times and
24 in full consideration of all other evidence is consistent
25 with that other evidence and together strongly supports
26 both the fact and scale of the massacres in the gas
. P-50
1 chambers at Birkenhau, provided the assumption is made
2 that the gas chambers operated at a relatively low toxic
3 concentration.”
4 That is the key to it, is it not, Mr Irving?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If there is a low concentration used in the gas chambers,
7 a number of consequences flow, do they not? First, the
8 need for a ventilation system, if any, is much reduced?
9 Yes?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, the ventilation system in mortuaries as prescribed
11 by the architectural handbook.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not an answer to the question.
13 MR RAMPTON: It is not a mortuary. If it is a gas chamber,
14 Mr Irving, and the concentration used is contrary to what
15 Mr Fred Leuchter unjustifiably assumed, contrary to its
16 being 3,200 parts per million, it is something around 300
17 parts per million or, as Mr Beer suggests, 100 parts per
18 million, then any need to pay serious attention to
19 ventilation is much reduced, is it not?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: That would be a logical conclusion, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It will be a logical conclusion, would it not, that the
22 risk of contamination of water in the sewers is much
23 reduced, perhaps to complete insignificance?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: That would be another logical conclusion.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It would be a logical conclusion that the need for the
26 people administering the poison gas to take what I might
. P-51
1 call strong security precautions, safety precautions, is
2 much reduced, is it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: That would be a logical conclusion to your hypothesis,
4 yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It means, does it not, Mr Irving, that the time which has
6 to be waited before the sonder commander can go in and get
7 the bodies out, whether or not they are wearing gas masks,
8 is much reduced, is it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: This would be the logical conclusion of your hypothesis,
10 yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Above all, it means this, does it not, that the discovery
12 by Mr Leuchter of the small traces of cyanide compounds in
13 material taken from the walls of the alleged gas chambers
14 at crematorium (iii) in Birkenhau is entirely consistent
15 with a low concentration having been used in the first
16 place?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: You have to take various other factors into
20 consideration. It is a totally false logic. We know from
21 the other documentation that your witness is going to
22 present that these buildings had been freshly constructed,
23 they were made of concrete. You are shaking your head.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because only one building has been reconstructed.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Freshly constructed at the time they were put in —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Freshly” not “re”.
. P-52
1 MR RAMPTON: I see.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: They were made — they were raw, they were green
3 concrete. The concrete was still sweating. You are
4 shaking your head.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am shaking my head, Mr Irving, simply because you are
6 plain wrong. If you had taken the trouble to go to
7 Birkenhau, you would have seen on the walls of the
8 Leichenkellers in (ii) and (iii) remains, quite
9 substantial remains, of a coating on the walls, plaster or
10 cement.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: We shall be producing photographs of the interior of
12 Liechenkeller (1) and the other buildings which show quite
13 clearly there is no coating on the walls.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, look at it this way. Suppose that — some of
15 the coating has fallen off, I quite agree.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: No. This is the original interior.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, I have seen it. Do not argue with me. Argue
18 with Professor van Pelt. If you are going to produce —-
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I am providing an answer to your points. You may not like
20 the answers, but these are the answers you get from me.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, if you are going to produce evidence that there
22 is no coating to be found on any of the remains of
23 LiechenKellar (1) in crematoria (ii) and (iii) at
24 Birkenhau, I am happy to see it. I shall admit fault if
25 you are right. Mr Irving —–
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I continue with the point I was making?
. P-53
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: This is fresh concrete. Fresh concrete sweats, I know.
3 I have worked in a concrete gang myself for three years
4 with John Lang. Concrete is very alkaline. You have to
5 wear gloves when you are working with it unless you want
6 your fingers to end up rotting away. Hydrogen cyanide is
7 an acid. They react fiercely, even in small quantities.
8 You would expect to see precisely the kind of chemical
9 compounds and changes which would have produced permanent
10 lasting results —-
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: — even in small quantity, even in small dosages.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: (A) not if the walls are coated, and (B) not probably if
14 the concentration is as low as 300 parts per million.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: There are we are in terra incognita —-
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, you are.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: — Mr Rampton, because we do not know what the scientific
18 qualifications of this particular author are. We know all
19 about the scientific qualifications of Professor van
20 Pelt. We know about the scientific qualifications of
21 other experts in this case. It would be very dangerous
22 indeed to attach as much weight as you are seeking to do
23 to this critique of forensic examinations by an anonymous
24 correspondent who does not give us any details of his
25 chemical or scientific qualifications purely because he,
26 hostile to the Leuchter report, puts in the paragraph at
. P-54
1 the end saying deeply flawed. You cannot do that kind of
2 weighing up. You have to — yes, my Lord.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In a way, you are slightly perverting the
4 argument. I do not mean that in a critical sense. The
5 point that is really being made by the South African
6 engineer, Crabtree, is really that the fundamental premise
7 of Leuchter’s argument can be, as it were, turned on its
8 head so that really Leuchter’s conclusions are
9 diametrically wrong. Is that not what Crabtree is saying?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: This is what he says, my Lord. And let me just, if I can
11 just turn the wheel back very slightly and remind you of
12 the last words of my introduction to the Leuchter report?
13 The ball is now in their court. This report is very much
14 intended to provoke precisely the kind of discussion which
15 is now arising.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, but my trouble with your evidence — let me make it
17 clear — is that you are, as it were, criticising
18 Crabtree’s conclusion that the level would have been 100
19 ppm or 300 ppm?
20 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is Beer, not Crabtree, this one.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry.
22 MR RAMPTON: Crabtree is an earlier one. I may go back to him.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but are you criticising Beer’s
24 conclusion that it would have been 100 to 300 ppm, when
25 really what we should be addressing is whether Leuchter’s
26 assumption of 3,200 ppm was a legitimate and sensible
. P-55
1 assumption to be making; is that not right?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I completely agree with you.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Do you follow the point I am putting to you?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: I completely agree and you are absolutely right. There
5 are probably concessions have to be made at both ends of
6 this scale.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That may well be right, but let us focus on Leuchter’s
8 assumption of the very high concentrate?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, you will see that in the bundle of correspondence
10 which your Lordship has read only one item under No. 8,
11 I wrote to all parties concerned saying: “Clearly, these
12 criticisms I am now receiving have to be taken on board
13 and we have to do something about it”. Back came the
14 objection from Mr Zundel: “This is a court affidavit
15 which we cannot publish it in an altered form. We can
16 only continue to publish it in the form as originally
17 submitted”. So we are at a slight — over a bit of a
18 barrel there. It is not as easy as your Lordship thinks.
19 The other point that I thought I had made is
20 that the Leuchter report was intended to provoke precisely
21 the discussion which we have succeeded in provoking at
22 every level, including the scientific discussion.
23 MR RAMPTON: But, Mr Irving, I am diverting slightly. I am
24 coming back to Leichenkeller (1) in crematoria (ii) and
25 (iii) in a moment. You have never ever publicly
26 acknowledged the powerful — no, I am going to use this —
. P-56
1 cogent, very cogent, critiques which you have received of
2 the Leuchter report?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Because, in the meantime, of course, Leuchter had been
4 replicated by other experts. At the very press conference
5 that you read excerpts out from, I was challenged on this
6 point, and I said, “If you don’t like Leuchter’s results,
7 go and do the tests yourself and prove that I am a
8 nincompoop”, I think was the word I used.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Professor Markievitch did just that and did prove that you
10 were a nincompoop, did he not?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Are you going to put his report in evidence to the court?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is here.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Shall we say that when we get to it?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, we will look at it. It is not done until 1994.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: There is also an earlier report conducted in 1945.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is in German and we are certainly going to look at
17 that. That is the one from Cracow in December 1945. Go
18 back to this question.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: And, of course, Gelmar Rudolf did a much more detailed
20 scientific test.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sure you will refer to that in your evidence at some
22 stage.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: It cannot be ignored. He is a qualified scientist. The
24 only reason he did not get his doctorate was precisely
25 because of coming up with politically incorrect findings
26 on this matter.
. P-57
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, the fact is, though you evidently do not know
2 it, that the walls of Leichenkeller I and crematoria 2 and
3 3 are not made of concrete at all.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: We are talk about the roof, the ceiling.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You are talking now about the roof, are you?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: The cyanide was not exactly selective about where it
7 settled.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you agree with me that, if the concentration needed to
9 kill lice is 22 times greater than that needed to kill
10 human beings — I am not suggesting this is an exact
11 proportion — it is more likely that you will find 40
12 years later or whatever it is, 50 years later, you will
13 find residual traces of hydrogen cyanide in the delousing
14 facility than you will in the supposed gas chamber?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: They carried out controlled tests on buildings where there
16 had been no cyanide used whatsoever, not just in these
17 camps but also in for example in Bavaria, and found
18 exactly the same in significant levels.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that that is an answer to the
20 question at all.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Very well.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want the question repeated?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: If those figures are correct, then obviously you would
24 expect substantially more. This is correct, but you
25 certainly would not expect nothing significant in the
26 alleged homicidal gas chambers and that is what all the
. P-58
1 tests so far have established.
2 MR RAMPTON: Would you please turn to tab 9 of this bundle? It
3 is a very short extract?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, yes, Dr Roth.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Tell me who Dr Roth is?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Dr Roth was the forensic analyst who was employed by Ernst
7 Zundel’s defence team to carry out the quantitative and
8 qualitative analysis of the 30 odd samples which were
9 brought back by Mr Leuchter from his visit to Auschwitz in
10 February 1988.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you very much. Now I will read out what he said in
12 a television—-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, you are assuming quite often more
14 knowledge on my part than I possess. You are now looking
15 at tab 9?
16 MR RAMPTON: Tab 9, my Lord, Dr Roth.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know nothing about Dr Roth at all.
18 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving has just said that he is the chemist in
19 charge of the Leuchter analysis.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: He was the one who actually carried out the tests on the
21 samples that Leuchter brought back.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is the chemist from the independent
23 company?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: In New England, yes. The Cornell University or something.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does sometimes help me if I have a little
26 more context. My Lord, this transcript is, I believe from
. P-59
1 the film Dr Death, Mr Death, so we do not know if it is a
2 complete transcript or not, but I accept for the purposes
3 that it is.
4 MR RAMPTON: This is what Dr Roth said when he was interviewed
5 for that programme, last year or something like that. He
6 said this:
7 “I do not think that the Leuchter results have
8 any meaning. There is nothing in any of our data that
9 says those services were exposed or not. Hindsight being
10 20/20, the test was not the correct one to have been used
11 for the analysis. Leuchter presented us with rock samples
12 anywhere from the side view of thumb up to half the size
13 of your fist. He broke them up with a hammer so that we
14 could get a subsample, placed it in a flask, add
15 concentrated sulphuric acid and undergoes a reaction that
16 produces a red coloured solution. It is the intensity of
17 this red colour that we can relate with cyanide
18 concentration. You have to look at what happens to
19 cyanide when it reacts with a wall. Where does it go, how
20 far goes it go? Cyanide is a surface reaction. It is
21 probably not going to penetrate more than 10 microns. A
22 human hair is 100 microns in diameter. Crush this sample
23 up. I have just diluted that sample 10,000, 100,000
24 times. If you are going to look for it, you are going to
25 look on the surface face only. There is no reason to go
26 deep because it is not going to be there. Which was the
. P-60
1 exposed surface? I did not have any idea. That is like
2 analysing paint on a wall by analysing the timber that is
3 behind it.”
4 Now Mr Irving, that is the man that did the
5 analysis?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Can I add that he also said on a part that is not in
7 the film, “Had I known that these samples came from
8 Auschwitz, I would have come up with completely different
9 figures”.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the significance, you say, of that?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I suggest that he is not entirely subjective not.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You mean objective?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Not entirely objective.
14 MR RAMPTON: Maybe. Mr Irving, what this suggests is, to use
15 one of your words, it is absolutely shattering, is it not?
16 Despite the absolutely hopeless methodology that Fred
17 Leuchter used to obtain his samples, the fact is that the
18 sample from the Leichenkeller in crematorium 3 still
19 produced traces of hydrogen cyanide, did it not?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which samples is he talking about here?
21 MR RAMPTON: He is talking about the ruins of Auschwitz which
22 Fred Leuchter surreptitiously removed on his visit and
23 brought back to be analysed in America.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: From the gas chambers or the delousing
25 chamber or both?
26 MR RAMPTON: Both, as far as I know. He did the whole lot and
. P-61
1 that is the where the figures in the Leuchter report come
2 from, my Lord. It is from Dr Roth’s analysis.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Dr Roth says that it is less than one tenth the thickness
4 of a human hair that the cyanide will penetrate into the
5 brickwork.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Exactly. If you are going to do the test scientifically,
7 you need carefully to scratch or scrape the surface and
8 put it in a plastic bag, take it back and have it
9 analysed. What Fred Leuchter did was to hack great lumps
10 out of the fabric, did he not?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, I am not just going to go annihilate evidence
12 from Dr Roth, I am going to exterminate it when the time
13 comes, when we produce the photographs.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Make a start now.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, we have photographs taken of the outside of some
16 of these buildings, I emphasise the word “outside”, and
17 the blue stain from the cyanide has gone right through the
18 brickwork, inch after inch after inch. You can see the
19 outside of the building is stained blue with a stain that
20 turns out to be Prussian blue from the cyanide that has
21 come right through the brickwork.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is the delousing chamber, is it?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: The delousing chamber, my Lord, yes and also a gas chamber
24 at Stutthorf outside Dansig.
25 MR RAMPTON: How long, Mr Irving, does it take to delouse a
26 set, I call it a set, of clothing of, let us say, 1500
. P-62
1 people in a delousing chamber using Zyklon B?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: That is neither here nor there. Dr Roth had not spoken
3 about the length of time. He says it goes less than one
4 tenth of the thickness of a human hair into the brickwork.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How long does it take to disinfect, using Zyklon B,
6 delouse the clothing of 1500 people?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think Mr Rampton is right, that the way it
9 is put here, and it is not perhaps the most satisfactory
10 way to present Dr Roth’s views, if this is a television
11 interview, is that cyanide is only ever a surface
12 reaction.
13 MR RAMPTON: Yes indeed.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, these photographs will be in evidence later on
15 this week.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is really a chemistry point, not a
17 photograph point.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: An image is worth a thousand words, perhaps.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe.
20 MR RAMPTON: It depends. The camera never lies, of course,
21 does it, Mr Irving? Have the outside surfaces of that
22 building which you say has the blue staining on it been
23 tested?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, by Mr Gelman Rudolf. He has carried out very
25 intensive tests on them.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, these criticisms by Mr Beer were cogent, were
. P-63
1 they not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: They were, yes, of course. I did not ignore them at all.
3 I immediately contacted all relevant parties as the
4 correspondence under flag 8 or 9 shows, and said we have
5 to take these on board.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What about the general public?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, you must realize, by this time you also have the
8 other collateral evidence.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: By what time? When did your so-called collateral evidence
10 come to light?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, it was coming in the whole time. As soon as the
12 Leuchter report was published, people starting contacting
13 us and telling us about other such things.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What do you mean by collateral evidence?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: For example, we know that both of a forensic nature,
16 somebody sent us a copy of the Krakow report by the Jansen
17 Institute which the Auschwitz state museum immediately
18 commissioned after the Leuchter report was published, and
19 they did not like the findings, and so they pigeonholed
20 it. They put it in a safe and locked it away, because it
21 basically substantiated what Mr Leuchter had said. Then
22 the original Jansen report was also supplied to us, the
23 1945 report.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Us? Who is “us”?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Us?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You said “supplied us”?
. P-64
1 A. [Mr Irving]: A copy was supplied to me, a copy was supplied to the
2 Institute of Historical Review in California, and in fact
3 it was supplied to us surreptitiously. Somebody in the
4 Auschwitz archives photographed a copy and sent us a copy
5 of what the Auschwitz archives were concealing from.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I still do not know who “us” is?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Is it material?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I think it probably is, in the light of this
9 correspondence which we are going to look at more in a
10 moment.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: A copy was sent to me, a copy was sent to Mark Weber
12 probably of the Institute of Historical Review.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And one no doubt to Ernst Zundel?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I think I sent a copy to him, if my memory is correct.
15 These things were shuffled back and forth. Sometimes
16 I got them, sometimes the others got them and then we
17 would collaborate. We put our heads together. Obviously
18 there is no point rushing into print with some kind of
19 conclusion this way and that. It would be looking like
20 headless chickens if you come out with first one thing and
21 then another thing.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have never publicly acknowledged any of these reports,
23 critiques and so on which cast doubt, sometimes 100 per
24 cent doubt, on your utterances about the gas chambers at
25 Auschwitz.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not agree. I think that the central chemical
. P-65
1 conclusions of the Leuchter report, although flawed, have
2 now been substantially confirmed by a whole string of
3 other reports in the meantime, both the one kept secret by
4 the Auschwitz authorities and the earlier 1945 one, and
5 the Gelmar Rudolf one, and other reports that have been
6 conducted since then. Obviously the numbers do not
7 exactly match, and you would not expect them to, but the
8 broad trend is the same, very large quantities in the
9 fumigation clambers, cyanide residues and not the
10 quantities you would expect in the buildings where
11 allegedly hundreds of thousands of people have been gassed
12 to death with cyanide.
Section 66.13-82.19
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you say. In order to set the scene, this has become a
14 little bit disorderly, Mr Irving, because you keep
15 referring to some documents we have and others that we do
16 not. Leave that on one side for the moment. We are just
17 going to do, if we may, a little bit of arithmetic.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: These documents have all been in my discovery. None of
19 them have been concealed.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not suggesting you are hiding anything from this
21 court, Mr Irving, in the way of documents. Can you please
22 turn in the Leuchter report in the front of your bundle.
23 You may be better to use the copied one unless that has
24 all 12 appendices. Appendix 12 to the copy of the
25 Leuchter report that I have, my Lord, in the bottom right
26 hand corner should be page No. 49.
. P-66
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
2 MR RAMPTON: This is Mr Fruisson’s name written on the top of
3 it, if you turn it sideways, has it? It has Fruisson
4 written beside Appendix 12. Please turn to page 51,
5 bottom right hand corner, that is the internal page number
6 of the report. This is a document produced by the firm of
7 Degesch, do you agree, who are the manufacturers of Zyklon
8 B? I am not suggesting this is a wartime document.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: They are not the manufacturers. The manufacturers were I
10 G Farbon. Degesch were the people who controlled the
11 supplies and Tesh were the company who allocated the
12 supplies.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The distributors?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you look at page 55, you can see a picture of some tins
16 of Zyklon B. That is only just mentioned in passing, so
17 one can see there are three different tin sizes. I do not
18 know what the rates were. If you look at page 51, in the
19 left-hand column under hydro cyanic acid, which is the
20 active agent in these pellets, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: At the very bottom of the column we see that one part per
23 million of hydrogen cyanide, that is a concentration, is
24 equivalent to .0012 grammes per cubic metre.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now, if you turn backwards in this file to appendix 3, we
. P-67
1 come to a translation of a wartime document. My Lord, it
2 is page 23, which I think is a Nuremberg document, is it
3 not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, from the industrial case N I.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And we see that it is issued, I do not know the exact
6 date, but it was issued presumably during the war, it must
7 have been during the war, by the Health Institution of the
8 Protectorate of Bohemia and Morevia in Prague. We find
9 that on page 25. If you turn to the second page of this
10 document, page 24, and look at IX towards the bottom of
11 left hand column, we see there:
12 “The strength of gas and the time required for
13 it to take effect depends on the type of vermin, the
14 temperature, the amount of furniture in the rooms, the
15 imperviousness of building. With inside temperatures of
16 more than 5 degrees centigrade it is customary to use 8
17 grammes of Prussic acid, that hydrogen cyanide, per cubic
18 metre. Time needed to take effect 16 hours, unless there
19 are special circumstances such as a closed in type of
20 building which requires less time. If the weather is
21 warm, it is possible to reduce this to a minimum of 6
22 hours. The period is to be extended to at least 32 hours
23 if the temperature is below 5 degrees centigrade. The
24 strength and time as above are to be applied in the case
25 of bugs, lice, fleas, etc. with eggs, larvae…”
26 If, Mr Irving, .0012 grammes per cubic metre
. P-68
1 produces a concentration of one part per million, 8
2 grammes per cubic meter produces, I can tell you, a
3 concentration of 6,666 parts per million.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Wrong.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Wrong.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: You are talking about hydrogen cyanide.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, that is what they are talking about.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: But we are talking about pellets, and pellets only contain
11 a small quantity of hydrogen cyanide sucked into them.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who is talking about pellets, Mr Irving? I am certainly
13 not.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: OK, carry on.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where does it say anything here about pellets?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: If later on you start talking about tins of Zyklon B.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I am reading from the wartime document.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: All right. As long as we are clear there is a distinction
19 between the weight of cyanide and the weight of the
20 pellets.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Degesch is talking in the other document we looked at
22 about concentrations of cyanide parts per million of air.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So is this document. Customary to use 8 grammes of
25 Prussic acid per cubic metre?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Hydrogen cyanide supplied.
. P-69
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Nothing about pellets. So I am right, am I not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I do accept the point that it takes less Zyklon B or
3 hydrogen cyanide to kill the vermin in fumigation chambers
4 at lower concentration than it does to kill human beings.
5 I accept this point.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you look at the Leuchter report, Mr Leuchter knows
7 this, does he not? If you look at page 12, right hand
8 column, the toxic effects of H C N gas under the bold
9 heading, “medical tests show that a concentration of
10 hydrogen cyanide gas in an amount of 300 parts per million
11 in air is rapidly fading. Generally for execution
12 purposes concentration of 3,200 parts per million is used
13 to ensure rapid death.” Mr Irving, that has nothing to do
14 with this case, has it?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I am lost.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am completely lost.
17 MR RAMPTON: Page 12 of the Leuchter report.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know what it is that, after a great
19 many questions, Mr Irving said he accepted.
20 MR RAMPTON: That you need higher concentration to kill lice.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we established that about three
22 quarters of an hour ago.
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I am interested in the figures though. That
24 is why I wanted to do the arithmetic.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am lost on the figures.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I am lost on figures and I am not sure they are all that
. P-70
1 important.
2 MR RAMPTON: You need a concentration in air of over 6,000
3 parts per million to kill lice. Now look at what
4 Mr Leuchter says at the bottom right hand column of page
5 12: “Medical tests show that a concentration of hydrogen
6 cyanide gas in an amount of 300 parts per million is
7 rapidly fading.” So you need to kill human beings
8 approximately 22 times lower concentration than you do to
9 kill lice? That is right, is it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. You are overlooking certain theoretical
11 considerations, though.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Such as?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: If I put a tin of Zyklon B over there by the door or by
14 one of these pillars, it can be there all day and there
15 would be very little trace of cyanamide over on this side
16 of the room. So the concentration on that side has to be
17 much higher for it to have a lethal effect on this side of
18 the so-called gas chamber. You appreciate that? There
19 will be a gradient of concentration across the room. They
20 would not have circulating fans in the room to make sure
21 it —-
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If it so happened that this room had four columns running
23 the length of room and you dropped the pellets down each
24 of those four columns, why then you would get an even
25 distribution, would you not, Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Not to the outer edges of the room. If you wanted the
. P-71
1 lethal concentration at the further reaches of the room,
2 then you are going to have to have a higher than minimum
3 amount. Let me put it like that. Does your Lordship
4 understand the point I am trying to make?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I understand the point you are trying to
6 make. I am just wondering where you got the point from?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: From my own common sense, my Lord.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is rather what I thought.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: It stands to reason.
10 MR RAMPTON: The fact is, Mr Irving, as you may or may not
11 know, I do not know, according to eyewitness accounts, by
12 that I mean the people who did the killing, and some of
13 the sonderkommando, for precisely that reason amongst
14 others, the SS used somewhat greater quantities of the
15 product than were needed to produce a strict concentration
16 of only 300 parts per million.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Ah, so this is a concession on your part?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is not a concession at all.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is departing from Dr Beer, if he is a
20 doctor.
21 MR RAMPTON: It is what?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is departing from Dr Beer.
23 MR RAMPTON: No. The point is, my Lord, whether it is Dr Beer
24 who it or whether one works it out, as I did, from the
25 contents of Leuchter report itself, whichever way one
26 goes, the fact is that the concentration required to kill
. P-72
1 human beings is very significantly less, even if you have
2 to make allowance for the circumstances, than is ever
3 needed to kill lice. Lice are very difficult to kill.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I comment? The pillars, we have just referred to the
5 four pillars, next to which this or down through which the
6 Zyklon B was poured, are still standing, and from those
7 very pillars the — you are shaking your head.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, have you read Professor van Pelt’s report?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: In great detail, we have photographs of those pillars now,
10 and samples were taken from that concrete and also tested.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not think you can have read it with much care, Mr
12 Irving, because, if you had, you would know that the
13 eyewitness account, particularly of the prisoner Michael
14 Kulan, also of Heinrich Taiber who worked there —-
15 A. [Mr Irving]: He had totally worthless witnesses, as we shall shortly
16 show.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You say so, Mr Irving, but their testimony is not that the
18 Zyklon B was poured down the centre of a concrete pillar,
19 it was poured into wire mesh attachments to the concrete
20 pillars. You knew that, did you not?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I do indeed. I know exactly what they said.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why are you going on about solid concrete pillars? They
23 have nothing to do with the case at all.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: You yourself mentioned the four pillars down the centre of
25 the room.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because we were talking about an even distribution.
. P-73
1 Mr Irving, you are not trying very hard to deal with my
2 questions, I do not believe.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: The transcript will show exactly what you said,
4 Mr Rampton. Those were the pillars that we tested.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You know perfectly well, Mr Irving, that the fact that the
6 pillars or the remains of pillars, I know you have never
7 been there, that you can now see in the gas chambers at
8 Birkenhau, the fact they are solid concrete has nothing
9 whatever do with the case.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: We will have something to say about the wire mesh columns
11 of which there is talk and we will have a great deal to
12 say about those witnesses you mentioned.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now we will go back, if we may. I wish you would tell us
14 what it was, Mr Irving. Time is getting short.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: When I try —-
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is all terribly discursive. I am just
17 wondering where we are really getting with this. I have
18 read Professor van Pelt with interest obviously.
19 I understood the points that he was making. What I am not
20 feeling I am getting much benefit from is the
21 cross-examination at the moment. I am not of course
22 stopping it for a single moment, but I just wonder whether
23 it is the way to deal with this part of the case.
24 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, the only point of this part of the case
25 is that, as ever, Mr Irving dives off the top board
26 without giving any acknowledgment publicly of what he
. P-74
1 knows to be the fallacy of what he is saying. That is all
2 that it is about. The concentration point goes no further
3 than that. He must have known, and he certainly knew it
4 when he heard what Mr Beer had to say, that Fred Leuchter
5 completely reversed the significance of the
6 concentration. So the principal brick falls straight out
7 of Fred Leuchter’s report.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That seems to me to be the thing to
9 concentrate on because, if you are right about that or, to
10 put it more accurately, Mr Irving, as a conscientious
11 historian should have appreciated that that was, arguably
12 at the very least, a huge fallacy in the Leuchter report,
13 well, I understand how you put your case. But does it go
14 wider than that?
15 MR RAMPTON: It depends how much further I have to go. On
16 concentration I do not have to go any further than that.
17 The only consequence of the low concentration that
18 Mr Irving has not accepted is that you would expect to
19 find lower residual concentrations 40 years later but that
20 is so obvious that I am not going to pursue it.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I think you to ought ask these questions to give me a
22 chance to answer them.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am anxious you should have an opportunity
24 to answer what needs to be answered. As I understand it,
25 you have understood the point that is made on Leuchter and
26 it has been made by reference to Mr Beer. I have not been
. P-75
1 told who Mr Beer is but anyway—-
2 A. [Mr Irving]: His credentials, precisely.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But you have also, I think you have to have the
4 opportunity to develop this if you want to, said, well
5 although I understand the criticism that is made of
6 Leuchter and his assumption, his key assumption,
7 nevertheless matters have moved on and Leuchter’s report
8 has been, as you put it, replicated.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: It has been overtaken by other better reports.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: If that be right and if that is your case, then I think
11 you ought to have the opportunity to develop that at some
12 stage. I do not want to take Mr Rampton out of order.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps Mr Rampton wanted to avoid asking precisely those
14 questions that your Lordship has now asked.
15 MR RAMPTON: Oh, Mr Irving, I do not need to avoid asking you
16 anything at all. This is not the time for you to give —
17 if you chose not to give me the documents and give
18 evidence-in-chief about it, you will have to do it later.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, all these documents have been in discovery,
20 and I can summarize very briefly. I accepted the Leuchter
21 was flawed on its figures and on its methodology. It was
22 a pioneering report. It was the first kind of examination
23 that had ever been conducted to our knowledge of the
24 Auschwitz site. It was replicated afterwards. It has
25 been superseded. Everybody on the incorrigible
26 revisionist wing says Leuchter is a good old chap, but he
. P-76
1 got bits wrong and, in the meantime, there are other much
2 more solid reports that have replaced it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause there for a moment. Just so that
4 I have it clear because I have in the end to make sense of
5 all this, what do you say is the report or reports which
6 replicate Leuchter’s conclusion?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: There have been a series of reports and I can summarize
8 them in this way. In 1945, it subsequently turned out,
9 the Poles had themselves conducted a test or tests on
10 artifacts found at Auschwitz, including a metal grating, a
11 metal grating and human hair. After the Leuchter came
12 into public — came to public attention, the Auschwitz
13 authorities themselves carried out a secret replica of the
14 tests, came up with unsatisfactory results and kept their
15 report secret.
16 Subsequently Gemar Rudolf went to Auschwitz and
17 wrote a report which is known as the Rudolf Report. Now,
18 Rudolf is a qualified chemist and he conducted the tests
19 on a much more scientific basis. He came up with figures
20 which broadly confirmed the conclusions that Leuchter had
21 originally reached.
22 After criticisms were expressed of the Leuchter
23 report, which are under one of these tabs which your
24 Lordship has read some of, we took the appropriate
25 action. We discussed among ourselves how far these
26 criticisms had to be taken seriously and what should be
. P-77
1 done about them. We did not do that in public. I do not
2 think anybody — a scientific institute would have done it
3 in public. We certainly did not ignore the criticism. We
4 did not just go charging ahead like a blind bull.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. So it is Polish tests in 1945,
6 Auschwitz authorities sometime in the late 80s/early 90s.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: 1989 or ’90, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And Mr Rudolf?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: And then Mr Rudolf since then, yes. I think there have
10 been other tests conducted also since then. The bone has
11 been repeatedly chewed over, and if the Leuchter achieved
12 anything at all, it was an open discussion of this very
13 awkward matter.
14 MR RAMPTON: Then, I am afraid, this is inevitable, Mr Irving,
15 in the light of those answers or that evidence you have
16 now given. Turn to what you said in Tampa, Florida.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am so sorry to be
18 interrupting. I have to understand the validity or the
19 invalidity of the criticisms of Leuchter. What he said
20 about it seems to me — we have seen plenty of quotes
21 where he says, “Leuchter has convinced me that they never
22 existed, these camps”.
23 MR RAMPTON: No, but, my Lord, I think what he has just told
24 your Lordship is this, is it not: “I accept”, although he
25 has never said it publicly, “that Leuchter was flawed, his
26 methodology was poor, his logic was wrong”, or whatever it
. P-78
1 is, “but, of course, he has since been validated by other
2 work”, including two documents which I am shortly going to
3 show him. It is surprising, in the light of that answer,
4 that in 1985 he still adheres to Leuchter as though it
5 were gospel.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can certainly look and see what he says in
7 Tampa.
8 MR RAMPTON: That is tab 20 of the new file 3, page 19.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Of course, if I may leap ahead and say that if, at the end
10 of the day, it turns out that you were right all along
11 about these buildings, then all of this discussion is
12 superfluous.
13 MR RAMPTON: No, Mr Irving, it is not because we are not
14 concerned in this court with proving or disproving what
15 happened in Auschwitz. We are concerned with your state
16 of mind and your standards of, what shall I say, truth
17 when it comes to reporting history?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: You are quite right, but, of course, my state of mind does
19 not rely solely on scientific reports or chemical
20 analyses.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not dignify Fred Leuchter’s report as a scientific
22 report, I am afraid, Mr Irving?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did you say tab 19?
24 MR RAMPTON: 20, my Lord, page 19. Second paragraph on the
25 page after the break. “Fred Leuchter who wrote the report
26 here which is one of the most telling reports on the
. P-79
1 Auschwitz case”?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: On what page are we, I am sorry?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, page 19, bottom of the page. “Fred Leuchter who
4 wrote the report here which is one of the most telling
5 reports on the Auschwitz case, if you may remember, Fred
6 Leuchter was the American consultant on the gas chamber
7 design. He designs and gives advice on the building of
8 gas chambers by American … He was nominated by every
9 governor of every American penitentiary as a defence
10 consultant for a law case in Canada which hinged on the
11 Nazi gas chambers. You have seen it in the OJ Simpson
12 case. They call in experts; experts on DNA, experts on
13 footprints or whatever, and that expert then gives expert
14 evidence, and the expert in this Canadian case was Fred
15 Leuchter”.
16 Pausing there, Mr Irving, it is not true, is
17 it? He was not allowed to give expert evidence about
18 Auschwitz, was he?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: He was called as an expert evidence — he was allowed to
20 give expertise. If you read the transcript of the trial,
21 you will see what areas he was allowed to give expert
22 evidence on.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “And the Canadian lawyer sent Fred Leuchter actually to
24 Auschwitz in Poland and said, ‘You are a gas chamber
25 expert. Tell us what you think about the buildings in
26 Auschwitz. Would they have worked?’ Well, the short
. P-80
1 answer”, note that, “is Fred Leuchter came back and proved
2 there had never been any cyanide gas or compounds in those
3 buildings. He brought back 40 samples and had those
4 samples of brickwork tested in laboratories”, plural, “in
5 the United States with the result there was no trace of
6 cyanide compound whatsoever in all the brickwork samples
7 except one. You can see it here. There was one building
8 in Auschwitz where clothing was fumigated with cyanide and
9 you could see the blue stain coming through the brickwork
10 from the cyanide gas which was used in that building 50
11 years ago, and the blue stain has permeated right through
12 the brickwork to such a degree that you can actually see
13 the stain there 50 years later.
14 “When the Leuchter report was published, it
15 produced a howl of rage from the traditional enemy of the
16 truth”. Who is the traditional enemy of the truth,
17 Mr Irving?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, I see them every now and then outside my building in
19 Duke Street. I am woken at 3.00 in the morning by the
20 police unloading barricades. I look out of the window and
21 they are all standing outside holding up their signs
22 saying, “Gas Irving”, screaming and shouting. That is the
23 way I envisage the traditional enemy of the truth.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You go on then to talk about Gemar Rudolf, it is perfectly
25 true. But the fact is in that little passage that I have
26 just read in October 1995, according to you, Leuchter is
. P-81
1 still gospel?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: He wrote the most telling report. It was the one that
3 started the whole avalanche.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not a word there of any of he flaws, and they are
5 fundamental flaws, which you knew then, if not before,
6 certainly by the early 1990s, late 1980s, the Leuchter
7 contained?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: By this time, of course, we have had probably two or even
9 three of the backup, the replica tests carried out by
10 other groups or organizations which showed that Fred
11 Leuchter had, broadly speaking, got it right. So why
12 I should mention the fact that there were the cosmetic
13 flaws like when you said you could not get 10 people
14 standing on a square metre of floor and this kind of
15 thing?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Fred Leuchter is complete bunk, his report, is it not?
17 I am going to go through the criticisms because his
18 Lordship has asked me to.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, repeating that sentence 20 or 30 times a day —-
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is what matters. That is why I
21 have said it.
22 MR RAMPTON: It is not only what matters. There are two sides
23 to Mr Irving, my Lord. There is the public face and the
24 private face. I think I have done that exercise so far as
25 the public face is concerned. Your Lordship should,
26 however, see one or two of what I call the private face
. P-82
1 documents.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am much more interested in the validity or
3 invalidity of the criticism. At the moment, I will be
4 candid with you, Mr Irving, it seems to me that Mr Beer
5 had an extremely good point on Leuchter, but he started
6 off from a fundamental false premise.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I agree, my Lord, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is the way I am seeing it at the moment. There is no
9 point in my concealing it.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: And what else should I have done than what I immediately
11 did? I immediately forwarded the Beer report. We did not
12 know who Beer was. We do not know what his credentials
13 are. He may be a toxicologist, he may be a chemist, he
14 may be gardener for all I know.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I would be interested to be told.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, we were not told, but I immediately forwarded this
17 report to the people concerned, including those who had
18 written the report, and said, “This is a criticism we have
19 to take on board”. You do not immediately rush into print
20 and start tearing something apart because of one criticism
21 or because of two criticisms.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And something you then learned told you that Leuchter’s
23 assumption was a justified one or —-
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, as I mentioned, my Lord, we then obtained the
25 additional reports which showed that Leuchter had been not
26 barking up the wrong tree, but barking up the right tree,
. P-83
1 and I do draw attention again to the fact that as early as
2 my introduction to that report, I said this is a flawed
3 report. There are things in it that I would like to have
4 seen done differently. The whole purpose of the report
5 was to put the ball in the court of the other side so they
6 come back and convince us.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is as may be, but I am interested to know what it was
8 that emerged that told you that Leuchter was right,
9 because at the moment it seems to me there is a
10 fundamental problem with his report.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: In that case, when my turn comes to lead evidence, I shall
12 lead evidence introducing these other reports if
13 Mr Rampton is reluctant to put before the court.
Section 84.14-100.12
14 MR RAMPTON: May I invite your Lordship — it will save time,
15 it will save me having to do it now — just to read — not
16 now, I do not mean, when it is convenient to your Lordship
17 — the little bundle of correspondence that is in tab 8
18 of the first of the new bundles, K1?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I already requested his Lordship to do that.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I already requested that his Lordship should do that.
22 MR RAMPTON: Not now, my Lord. There are some quite
23 significant letters in there, we would say, and then I
24 need not ask questions about them unless your Lordship
25 invites me to do so. Before I come to the Leuchter report
26 itself, though, there are two things I want to get out of
. P-84
1 the way, Mr Irving. In 1945, the forensic laboratory at
2 Cracow made a report on two different things: (1) metal
3 covers with holes in them taken from what they call the
4 gas chambers at Birkenhau. They were covers on the
5 ventilation openings, so the report said — I am sure you
6 know it well?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: It may be useful if we actually had the report before us.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Very well. My Lord, that is in tab 6.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or possibly Professor Pelt’s —-
10 MR RAMPTON: There is only —-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, van Pelt.
12 MR RAMPTON: There is only a summary of it in van Pelt, my
13 Lord.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that not going to be — I do not know.
15 Take your own course.
16 MR RAMPTON: No, because I know what is going to happen, we are
17 going to wind up looking at the report anyway, if we are
18 not careful.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Tab 6, you said?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Tab 6 of this new file, K.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: This is the one in German?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, this is the report of 15th December 1945.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 6.
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, tab 6. This, I think, Mr Irving, is perhaps
25 — Mr Irving, I can tell you this a copy made for the
26 court in Vienna when the Auschwitz architects were on
. P-85
1 trial in, I think, 1971 or 2.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this in German?
3 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It does not matter.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it not simple letter to look at Professor
5 van Pelt? Can you give me the reference, at any rate, so
6 that I can follow it there?
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It cannot be 931. No, it is in the text of
9 his report because I think that will probably have the
10 guts of it and if Mr Irving does not agree, he will say
11 so. I think it is 611. Is it 611?
12 MR RAMPTON: It is in two places, I think, actually.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think I have any problem with this document at
14 all. I will concede that they found in the ventilator
15 grating taken from mortuary No. 1 of crematorium (ii)
16 remains of cyanide.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes. How do you account for that, Mr Irving?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Because that particular room was used as vergasungskeller,
19 as a gassing cellar.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Gassing what?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I think the evidence is clear that it was used as a
22 gassing cellar for fumigating objects or cadavers.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Fumigating cadavers?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What makes you say that?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: That is what that room was for. That is what mortuaries
. P-86
1 are for. In mortuaries you put cadavers.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is news to me, Mr Irving. What is the evidence for
3 that?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is the evidence that they used that for gassing
6 corpses?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: That is what it was built for.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, this seems a crude question, but
9 what is the point of gassing a corpse?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Because they came in heavily infested with the typhus
11 bearing lice that had killed them.
12 MR RAMPTON: So why would it need a gas type door with a peep
13 hole with double eight millimetre thick glass and a metal
14 grill on it?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I think you will have to show us the evidence for
16 this.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will do.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: And the evidence that this door was intended for that
19 particular room and the evidence it was possible to obtain
20 doors without the peep holes and the evidence that the
21 room was not intended to be used for other purposes too.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving. You see, I do not have to prove anything.
23 I am testing your, I have to say, slightly bizarre
24 suggestion that you put Zyklon B into a room where the
25 people are already dead. You tell me, “Oh, well, that is
26 because they wanted to delouse the corpses”. Then I asked
. P-87
1 you, “Why then does it need a gas type door with a peep
2 hole and a metal protection on it?”
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Because at this time in the war most of Germany was coming
4 under the, it was feeling the weight of Royal Air Force
5 bomber commands forays. We were bombing all over Eastern
6 Europe. Our bombing raids were extending further and
7 further into Central Europe. You will see from the
8 Auschwitz construction department files an increasing
9 concern about the need to build bomb tight shelters and
10 gas tight shelters because of the danger of gas attack.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now it is an air raid shelter, is it?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In early 1943, Mr Irving, the first bombing raid anywhere
14 near Auschwitz was not until late ’44?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, if the court so pleases, I will tomorrow
16 produce to you an index of all the documents in the
17 Auschwitz construction department files from late 1942
18 onwards dealing with the necessity to build air raid
19 shelters, gas tight air raid shelters and other similar
20 constructions on the Auschwitz compound and on the
21 Birkenhau compound for precisely the reasons that I have
22 mentioned.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is either a cellar for gassing corpses, is it,
24 Mr Irving, or else it is an air raid shelter?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Did I say either or?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Both. If it is an air raid shelter, Mr Irving, why would
. P-88
1 the doors open outwards? It only has a single door.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: If an air raid shelter, why would the doors open outward?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. You have the SS sheltering from the allied bombs.
4 No bombs had been near Auschwitz yet in the war, not for
5 another year —-
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I will produce this clip of documents tomorrow,
7 Mr Rampton, to satisfy even the most incorrigible counsel
8 that, yes, our air raids were beginning to be felt in that
9 part of Europe.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We shall be pleased to see them is all I will say at the
11 moment, Mr Irving.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just see where we have got to? I still
13 have not been provided with the reference in Professor van
14 Pelt.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: We have plunged deep into basement No. 1.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It just helps me to follow what is not always
17 immediately clear.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, can I show you?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is 1945 Polish investigation?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I show you a picture of the building we are talking
21 about? This is the crematorium No. (ii), the whole
22 building.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: And this is the Leichenkeller No. 1, which is the mortuary
25 No. 1. You can see the roof is pancaked downwards, but it
26 is still possible to crawl underneath it just so you get a
. P-89
1 kind of visual impression of what the building looks like
2 now. You can see the tourists down there looking at it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you. I thought I had found the
4 reference at page 611, but I do not think that is it.
5 MR RAMPTON: Miss Rogers tells me, my Lord, that there are
6 references to the 1945 Polish report, but, as I
7 had originally thought, there are only sort of what one
8 might call passing references?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Shall I just very briefly translate the first page?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, not yet. I am in the middle of trying to tell his
11 Lordship why it is not profitable to look in the report
12 itself because the substance of the report as a whole is
13 not reproduced or summarised.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying for the purposes of eventually my
15 note to —-
16 MR RAMPTON: Would your Lordship like to look at page 198?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of Professor van Pelt?
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes, since that was your Lordship’s question.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I wanted to know whether that is what
20 you were referring to. I have 198.
21 MR RAMPTON: Cracow, my Lord, appears on page 198 and just a
22 line at the top of 199.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is Dawidowski, is it?
24 MR RAMPTON: No. This is a set of tests done by the forensic
25 laboratory at Cracow, and their report was dated 15th
26 December 1945. It may have been have part of
. P-90
1 Zane/Dawidowski exercise, but it is, in fact, a separate
2 document, and it is the document which is at tab 6 of the
3 new file.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the reference to that report is note
5 310, is it not?
6 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot for the life of me see where the
8 evidence that you say one derives from your tab 6 is to be
9 found in Professor van Pelt’s report.
10 MR RAMPTON: Well, because, my Lord, the first page under
11 [German- document not provided] reports that they took —
12 were sent to them four complete and two damaged covers,
13 clasps or grilles from the ventilation openings which
14 during inspection of crematorium No. (ii) in Birkenhau
15 were found and which from the ventilation openings of the
16 gas kammer, Leichenkeller No. 1, of this crematorium came
17 from.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am probably being very thick,
19 but what is the significance of that?
20 MR RAMPTON: In 1945, in May 1945, the Cracow laboratory was
21 sent some zinc covers from the ventilation openings
22 described by Michael Kula in his testimony: “Ventilation
23 openings from the gas chamber of crematorium (ii) at
24 Birkenhau”. They tested them and they found that there
25 were traces of hydrogen cyanide.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do I get that from tab 6?
. P-91
1 MR RAMPTON: You get that at the end. It is page —-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think Professor van Pelt makes that
3 observation at all.
4 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, he does. Page 3, that is right. He
5 reports, does Professor van Pelt, that the zinc covers
6 (which I just told your Lordship about) were “dislocated
7 when the demolition squads dynamited the gas chambers, but
8 six of them were retrieved in the rubble of crematorium
9 (ii) and sent for analysis in the forensic laboratory in
10 Cracow. The laboratory report noted that these were
11 covered with a thin white colour of the strongest smelling
12 deposit. The laboratory retrieved 7.2 grammes of the
13 deposit … (reading to the words)… Sulphuric acid was
14 added to this solution and the resulting gas was absorbed
15 in an absorbent material. This was divided into two and
16 subjected to two different tests” which your Lordship can
17 see described on pages 2 and 3 of this document, “each of
18 which revealed the presence of hydrogen cyanide”.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. That is what I needed
20 and I have now got it, thank you. That you accept,
21 Mr Irving, do you not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 MR RAMPTON: They also retrieved a paper sack, and this is the
24 second paragraph on the first page of the report, which
25 had marked on it a weight of 25.5 kilograms of hair, which
26 they say was taken from the corpses of females after
. P-92
1 gassing and before burning in the crematorium ovens in
2 Birkenhau. “Shorn” is the word, or “shaved off”. They
3 tested that too and in that also they found traces of
4 hydrogen cyanide. That is not in van Pelt, but it is in
5 the report.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, do you want to say anything about
7 that?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I do not think that the human hair takes us any
9 further, my Lord, because the Germans did subject
10 everything that went through the camp to fumigation.
11 So —-
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, why would human hair have been fumigated?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Because they processed it.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: What, after the death of the person concerned?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, we do not know when this human hair was actually cut
16 off, my Lord, whether it was cut of — the evidence that
17 I have is when the prisoners arrived as part of the
18 hygiene methods — Mr Rampton is shaking his head.
19 MR RAMPTON: No. Do you know where it was found, Mr Irving?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the gas chamber, the alleged gas chamber.
21 MR RAMPTON: No, that is where it was “gischoren”, that is
22 where the killing was killed?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, that is what it says in the report, but, of course, I
24 have not accepted that paragraph.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you know, Mr Irving, where this 25.5 kilo bag of hair
26 was found?
. P-93
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It does not actually say in the report.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It will not help you to look in the report; you will not
3 find it there?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Then I do not know where it was found, no.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not know?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Would it surprise you that it was found in the part of the
8 camp called “Canada”?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: That is where all the stolen property was kept.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is correct.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then what is this worth as evidence?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Everything from Canada was fumigated.
13 MR RAMPTON: What is it worth as evidence? Well, what it shows
14 is, my Lord, this is hair, as the report says, taken from
15 people after they had been gassed.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: As the report alleges. This is a prosecution report being
17 prepared for the prosecution of criminals.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 25.5 kilograms of hair in total is the hair of about,
19 what, 500 women?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know. I have not done any calculations. It
21 seems to me, I think that he is being very cautious about
22 that weight. As he himself says, that is the weight
23 marked on the bag, but I think that you would have had to
24 have a bag the size of an elephant to make it weigh 50lbs
25 of human hair.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But, you see, Mr Irving, you have accepted that that is
. P-94
1 what it says. You may not like it, but that is what it
2 says. Can I ask you to turn — I am sorry about this, my
3 Lord, but it is necessary because Mr Irving commented on
4 this report to his friend, Mr Zundel, in September 1989.
5 My Lord, that is in tab 8 —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of which of these files?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: The same file.
8 MR RAMPTON: The same one as the report, K1. Have you got a
9 page there? I have not got a page on mine. It is your
10 letter of 19th September.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You write to Mr Zundel: “The two enclosures appear to
13 be” — has your Lordship got that? It has a 1241 in the
14 top right-hand corner. 7, my Lord, I think.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
16 MR RAMPTON: “The two enclosures appear to be an initial
17 counter attack on the Leuchter report. It may be that we
18 have to take them seriously, particularly if the Polish
19 one when translated contains firm evidence of cyanide in
20 the hair of the young Jewish women or in the zinc
21 basket”. That is plainly, is it not, Mr Irving, a
22 reference to this 1945 Cracow —-
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Unquestionably, yes, which at that time we only had in the
24 Polish, I think.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why do you use the words, “It may be we have to take this
26 one seriously”? What is that meant to mean?
. P-95
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I think that is underlined in suggestion B, we have to
2 take it into account the possibility that this is a
3 product of communist cold war propaganda.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you any evidence that it was?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: No, but we would derelict in our duty if we did not take
6 into account the possibility that it was the product of
7 cold war propaganda. Jan Sehn was a notoriously political
8 lawyer. He was the Polish Vyshinksky, so this possibility
9 cannot be entirely discounted coming from that neck of the
10 woods, shall we say.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But would you accept, being as open-minded as you can,
12 that much the likelier of the two possibilities set out in
13 this letter is A?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I have not put it that way. I said there are two
15 possibilities.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am asking you whether you would not accept, as an
17 open-minded historian, that A is much the likelier of the
18 two possibilities?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: At this time I had not read the report. I just had a
20 Polish document in front of me from which I could pick out
21 a few words indicating what it was about. Again, totally
22 wrong of me to start drawing up conclusions about which
23 version is correct.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If it is right that it contains firm evidence of cyanide
25 in the hair of the young Jewish women or in the zinc
26 basket, what is it that that evidence implies with all
. P-96
1 that that implies as you write, what does it imply?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Your first instinct is, undoubtedly, the impression that
3 you gained when you read this report; you think to
4 yourself, well, there you have it, there you have chapter
5 and verse —-
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: — but then you realize that it came from, the hair, in
8 fact, came from the, as you yourself now say, from Canada,
9 which was the collecting centre for all their loot, and so
10 there are all alternative explanations. I mean, this is
11 — one’s first instinct, which is absolutely right, but
12 then you settle back and you say to yourself, “This is a
13 new document. Whenever you see a new document, you must
14 not rush at it and let it bedazzle you. You have to take
15 it into account and analyse all possibilities carefully”.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But, you see, you have known about this document now,
17 Mr Irving, since September 19th 1989 or before.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, and this is one reason why, of course, the
19 Leuchter report by itself by now does not stand by itself.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why, Mr Irving, do you not accept the report for what it
21 is, that is to say, that zinc covers taken from the
22 crematorium, the alleged gas chamber at crematorium (ii),
23 had traces of hydrogen cyanide on them. Six of them,
24 I think there were, four complete and two damaged?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Why do I or why didn’t I?
26 MR RAMPTON: Do you.
. P-97
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do accept it, you have said that?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I do. I said that to help shorten the whole argument,
3 yes.
4 MR RAMPTON: Then the implication is obvious, is it not, that
5 gas was used in that room?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: We are going to establish that later on, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And the only question then remaining, Mr Irving —-
8 A. [Mr Irving]: This is why it is called a “sonderkeller” also in other
9 documents.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Indeed, it is. The only question then remaining is who or
11 what or what was gassed in that room, is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it is for you to establish that point.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. No, Mr Irving —-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, do not let us debate about who has to
15 establish what. I think we know what the position is and
16 Mr Irving says that it was to gas corpses.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, or objects, yes, clothing or something like that.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
19 MR RAMPTON: My Lord —-
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is probably a convenient moment.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, I am afraid that means that if
22 Mr Irving is to contend that there is evidence for that
23 suggestion (which is the first I have ever heard of it, if
24 I may say so) we will have to go into some of the detail,
25 I am afraid.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, detail of the reasons for doubting
. P-98
1 Leuchter?
2 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that I can do very quickly.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. That seems to me to —-
4 MR RAMPTON: But Mr Irving has made a statement in the witness
5 box. I can simply say, “Well, I am sorry, I do not accept
6 that” and leave it at that and then say at the end of the
7 case to your Lordship, “Well, look, this is actually what
8 all the evidence is”, and leave it at that, or (which
9 I much prefer not to do) I can take him through all the
10 contemporaneous documentation which is noticed, both plans
11 and typewritten documents, to show why he must be wrong
12 and why any open-minded person would accept that they are
13 wrong, but since this is, so far as he is concerned,
14 apparently, a new position, I think it may not matter very
15 much.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, he accepts that it is evidence of
17 gassing having taken place.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I know, but it is a question of what, gassing
19 what?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but what evidence are you going to be
21 able to adduce on that?
22 MR RAMPTON: I mean, there is eyewitness testimony.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 MR RAMPTON: There are all the documents.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I put it the other way round.
26 MR RAMPTON: I do too.
. P-99
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe this is the first question at
2 2 o’clock, what evidence can you point to to support the
3 notion that it was corpses being gassed rather than live
4 people?
5 MR RAMPTON: I hoped your Lordship would say that because my
6 position is that the evidence is overwhelming. If he
7 wants to say that it is wrong, let him show me how.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is, in a way, dealt with in that ruling
9 I gave last week.
10 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I agree.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good, 2 o’clock.
12 (Luncheon adjournment)
Part III: David Irving’s Cross-Examination by Richard Rampton, continued, Afternoon Session (100.13 to 187.3)
Section 100.13-120.6
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, I do not know whether it is better to do
14 it from here or from the witness stand. Just before the
15 adjournment we were talking about the danger of air
16 raids. I told your Lordship that I would bring evidence
17 tomorrow. In fact, by chance—-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I interrupt you? Why do you not go back
19 and then you can give the evidence that I think you were
20 wanting to give before the adjournment about air raids in
21 1943.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: By chance I have two copies of a three page extract I did
23 from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s catalogue of the
24 Moscow records of the Auschwitz construction office, and
25 I did this three page extract purely relating to records
26 on the air raid precautions in Auschwitz camp. I have
. P-100
1 given a copy to Mr Rampton, which I also have by chance.
2 It contains files, for example, 1943 to 1944, on means of
3 defence against bombs.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are these Russian bombers?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Western?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a good question, my Lord.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I think it might have been.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: It could have been either. They did have Soviet air raids
10 on Berlin, certainly.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Anyway, it says, does it, that there were air raids going
12 on in 1943?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: It actually goes back to August 1942 my Lord, the various
14 files, detailed instructions on how to build air raid
15 shelters and protect buildings against incendiary bombs,
16 equipping of bunker, down at the bottom of the page more
17 exchanges of notes and memos about various camp
18 construction projects, many having to do with providing
19 air raid shelters.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes. I think that is probably enough.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: There are quite a lot of files relating to plans for air
22 raid shelter, estimates and accounts for construction of
23 bomb shelters and so on. It was very much in the air, if
24 I could put it like that, from August 1942 onwards.
25 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I will not come back to that at the
26 moment. I have not read it. I need to take instructions
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1 on it. It is, I think, a redacted version of the
2 documents in question in any event.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, can I, before you continue, make
5 a request which is that, when one gets to a new Auschwitz
6 topic, if you or your team could provide me with the
7 Professor van Pelt reference for it, even if you are not
8 going to necessarily use it for cross-examining, it helps
9 me for my purposes.
10 MR RAMPTON: They will. Actually all those references are in
11 the statement of case, in fact. But that is not much use
12 to you.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not on a running basis, if you see what
14 I mean. Miss Rogers can do the looking up.
15 MR RAMPTON: I think they are also in the request for
16 information that we served.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, if you could bear that in mind
18 please.
19 MR RAMPTON: I think I am probably not going to need that, but
20 I say that. No doubt my hopes will be dashed. My Lord.
21 Before I go to the Leuchter report itself, there are three
22 questions I would like to ask Mr Irving about something he
23 said this morning, which is the first I have heard of it.
24 Mr Irving, you said, I think this morning, words to this
25 effect, I do not have the exact words, that it is your
26 thesis that the Corpse Cellar 1 in crematoria 2 and 3 had
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1 a dual purpose function, used for gassing corpses and for
2 gassing clothes. Did you say something like that this
3 morning?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Gassing corpses or objects, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: First question: If that were so, why did Mr Leuchter not
6 find similar concentrations of hydrogen cyanide residue in
7 those rooms as he did in the delousing facility?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Frankly, I do not know the answer to that.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If they were used for gassing corpses, I wonder if you can
10 help me to understand the point, because shortly after
11 they were in the mortuary they went to be incinerated?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What would be the point of gassing a corpse that was
14 shortly going to be incinerated?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: The corpses arrived in a state of fully clothed. Before
16 they were cremated they were undressed, and various other
17 bestialities were performed on them. I believe the gold
18 teeth were taken out and other functions were performed.
19 As the corpses cooled, the lice that may have been on the
20 body crawled off the body because lice were seeking heat.
21 As the body cooled, they crawled off so you had an
22 infestation problem.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I am not sure saying this off the top of my head,
25 Mr Rampton. I have taken advice on this.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where would the infestation problem arise, Mr Irving?
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1 A. [Mr Irving]: Anywhere between the place of death and the Leichenkeller.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. You were talking about gassing corpses in
3 Leichenkeller 1, beside which is a lift straight up to the
4 incineration chamber?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Think about it. Why would you gas a corpse that was going
7 straight up to be cremated?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I thought I gave the explanation.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not understand the explanation because,
10 as I understood it, the undressing took place before the
11 gassing.
12 MR RAMPTON: The undressing took place before the gassing?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: That is not the evidence that I gave, my Lord.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought it was. Tell me if I am wrong.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: We have not had any evidence as to that, my Lord.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, but I have read the report. Am I wrong about that?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I shall certainly be questioning —-
18 MR RAMPTON: You are absolutely right, my Lord. On the
19 evidence, if one can look at the evidence rather than at
20 some bizarre version of it, the bigger room is the
21 undressing room. They are then shepherded through into
22 the smaller room where they are gassed. When they are
23 dead, they are taken out through double doors that open
24 outwards on to the lift and up into the crematorium, to
25 put it crudely.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I am having difficulty, my Lord. I have not been given a
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1 chance to comment on this rather global presentation of
2 what Mr Rampton alleges to have happened.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Comment now. Now is your chance.
4 MR RAMPTON: Now is your chance.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, we need to know what basis the evidence is put
6 on. I apprehend that this is based on eyewitness evidence
7 and I shall have something to say about each of the
8 eyewitness reports on which Mr van Pelt bases his
9 statement. I think the proper place to do that is in the
10 cross-examination of Professor van Pelt.
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I agree with you, Mr Irving. Having taken
12 his Lordship’s indication before the adjournment, my
13 position is this. Professor van Pelt provides an account
14 of the evidence which no open minded person would deny led
15 to the probable conclusion that this was a mass
16 extermination by gassing that was going on.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: That is conclusion of the closed mind. The conclusion of
18 the open mind is to look for alternative explanations
19 which are supported by the documents, and you have not
20 even asked me what the documents to support my case are.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know what the documents are that support your
22 case.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: If you ask, you shall learn.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You can put them to Professor van Pelt in his evidence,
25 Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I think your Lordship might like to hear about just one
. P-105
1 document which supports my “bizarre hypothesis”, as you
2 call it.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not going to spend my time on cross-examination on
4 that topic. Mr Irving, there is one other question.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: May I not state what this one document is, my Lord.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you talking about the fumigation aspect?
7 Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Please do.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: There is an invoice which is in our possession provided by
10 the firm which was responsible for the construction and
11 erection and installation of these crematoria, namely the
12 top firm, for the provision of manpower, and equipment for
13 the tarring of the entwesungsanlage in precisely this
14 building. The entwesungsanlage was the disinfestation
15 plant in this building. It has no alternative meaning.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know —-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid the significance of what you have
18 just said escapes me.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: That is precisely what my contention is, what this room
20 was being used as. They had installed this room
21 Liechenkeller 1, as a disinfestation, room, as a
22 sonderkeller for treating the infested bodies which were
23 delivered to the crematorium during the appalling plague
24 which hit Auschwitz in 1942 and 1943.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So you are saying that this invoice, or whatever it is,
26 can be tied in to the chamber from which the zinc covers
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1 came?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to try and establish a complete link in that
3 linkage in that manner, my Lord. I was only asked to
4 support my “bizarre hypothesis”, as Mr Rampton calls it,
5 that an alternative use of this room was not just a
6 mortuary but also as a disinfestation chamber.
7 MR RAMPTON: Where is this document?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I will produce it to you tomorrow morning. Had I known
9 you were going to lead this evidence —-
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You cannot do that, Mr Irving. You must produce it now.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If he cannot, he cannot.
12 MR RAMPTON: You have never disclosed this document, have you?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: The document only came into our possession in the last
14 three weeks once we had read all the latest reports.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The last three weeks?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, you have been bombarding us with documents over the
17 last few months.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: According to you, Mr Irving, this is a key document, which
19 proves your case that these were never homicidal gas
20 chambers, merely licicidal.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: You have asked for one document which supports this
22 “bizarre hypothesis”. I have given you one document.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, I do not ask for the document. You offer the
24 document in proof of your “bizarre hypothesis.” Why have
25 I not seen it before?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: His Lordship said before lunch, Mr Rampton, that he would
. P-107
1 ask me to support or justify, rather than asking you to
2 justify the homicidal version, his Lordship asked me to
3 justify the fumigation version and the air raid shelter
4 version.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: May we have a copy? I am not going to make any comment
6 about it until I have seen it and until Professor van Pelt
7 has seen it.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I will fax to you this afternoon and I will bring it
9 tomorrow morning.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you just tell me its date?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It was early 1943.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Early 1943, thank you very much. I have one final
13 question, to which I am sure I know the answer. In
14 January 1942 an SS doctor at Auschwitz wrote an internal
15 memo to the Kommandatur at Auschwitz, on the one hand
16 making requests for the detailed provision for the
17 dissection room in the new crematoria, and on the other
18 hand requesting that there should be in the keller rooms,
19 cellar rooms, of that edifice an undressing room. Why
20 would the SS doctor want an undressing room next to the
21 dissection room?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I have to admit that I am not very well versed in practice
23 of morticians and pathologists, but I can well imagine
24 that corpses which are infected would be undressed in one
25 room, which would be regarded as a dirty room, and then
26 cleaned, and then taken into the dissection room for
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1 dissection. This again is purely commonsense operating
2 and not specific knowledge.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is in this bundle but I am not asking you to look at it
4 now unless you actually want to. Your thesis is that the
5 reference to an auskleideraum in this document is to the
6 undressing of people who are already dead. Is that right?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I am not sure if you have read Neufurt, which is the
8 standard architects handbook in Germany over the last
9 seven or eight decades? Both Professor Jan van Pelt and
10 I have obtained a wartime copy of Neufurt, one each, and
11 the layout of mortuaries and crematoria is described in
12 some detail in this architects handbook, and it does
13 include an undressing room. So, in other words, this is
14 nothing unusual in a properly designed mortuary.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We will, if we may, Mr Irving, go back to the Leuchter.
16 I hope we can take it quickly. I would like you to turn
17 to page 13, my Lord, to tab 1 of the first and largest of
18 the new files. In the right hand column on page 13, do
19 you have it under “Design and procedures at the alleged
20 execution gas chambers” and does your Lordship have it?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
22 MR RAMPTON: I will jumped to the bold paragraph: “The on site
23 inspection of these structures indicated extremely poor
24 and dangerous design of these facilities if they were to
25 have served as execution gas chambers.”
26 The first point: There is no provision for gas
. P-109
1 fitted doors windows or vents. That as a matter of
2 history is just wrong, is it not, Mr Irving?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know. I have never been to Auschwitz.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: As I said, as a matter of history, not archaeology.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: You have read the documents, I expect, have you?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Which document are you referring to?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, the documents, there are repeated references, for
8 example as we discussed this morning, to the need for a
9 gas tight door with a peep hole?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In the Auschwitz documents there are repeated
11 references to this, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry, I meant Auschwitz documents?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So that is a piece of Leuchter which has no foundation in
15 history?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I think what he is saying is that nothing was to be seen
17 when they inspected on site.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That may be.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is a gas fitted door.
20 MR RAMPTON: It is a door which has seals so that air cannot
21 come in and gas cannot come out, if you see what I mean.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Round the jamb?
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes, round the jamb.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Gas proof really?
25 MR RAMPTON: Gas proof. It might be rubber, it might be
26 felt. “The structures are not coated with tar or other
. P-110
1 sealant to prevent leakage or absorption of the gas.” Do
2 you accept or not, Mr Irving, that he missed, if it is
3 there, the traces, not traces, actually they are quite
4 large patches of cement or plaster that is to be found on
5 the walls?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Of the Leichenkeller.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. There is plaster on ordinary mortar plaster on the
9 walls, but there is no treatment on top of the plaster.
10 It is just bare plaster and this is in fact what is
11 recommended for mortuaries, to be just bare plaster with
12 some kind of whitewash.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “The adjacent crematoria are a potential danger of
14 explosion”. That is complete nonsense, is it not?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is nonsense on a certain assumption about
16 the level of concentration.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that not a more accurate way of putting
19 it?
20 MR RAMPTON: It is a nonsense unless the concentration used was
21 something in the order of 60,000 parts per million, is it
22 not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I believe I am right in saying, and I am sure Professor
24 Jan van Pelt will correct me if I am wrong, that on many
25 of the architectural drawings of crematoria 4 and 5, there
26 are provisions for explosionsgelichte, in other words
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1 explosion proof light switches to be installed in some of
2 these chambers, or am I referring to the fumigation
3 chambers?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know, Mr Irving. You will have to explain that
5 to Professor van Pelt.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But, from the level of concentration used, even for
8 gassing lice, at a concentration of 6,666 parts per
9 million, there was no danger of explosion?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: They certainly installed explosion proof switches in the
11 fumigation buildings because they are specified on the
12 architects drawings.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And then, writes the good Mr Leuchter, “The exposed porous
14 brick and mortar would accumulate the H C N and make these
15 facilities dangerous to humans for several years”. That
16 is nonsense too, is it not? If it is Prussian blue, you
17 tell me it is stable?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: It becomes stable, yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well it was not porous, in any event, if it
20 was plastered. Is that right?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: A lot of it is brickwork, too, my Lord, you can see some
22 of it.
23 MR RAMPTON: No. That is postwar deterioration, Mr Irving.
24 Assume that the inside of the gas chamber is covered or
25 whatever it was, at least covered with plaster or cement,
26 then the brickwork is not exposed at all, is it?
. P-112
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not cement, it is a lime plaster.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Lime plaster would not be porous, would it?
3 It would not be porous brick and mortar anyway.
4 MR RAMPTON: Mr Leuchter writes: “The exposed porous brick and
5 mortar” — he is talking, rather as Mr Roth did in his
6 rather graphic way, about analysing the surface of the
7 wall by looking at the timber behind it?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is logical and it is not even scientific. It is just
10 logical rubbish, is it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It does strike me as being unscientific, that particular
12 sentence, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Krammer 1 is adjacent to the SS hospital in Auschwitz and
14 has floor drains connected to the main sewer of the camp,
15 which would allow gas into every building in the
16 facility. That is nonsense, too, is it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I think the use of word “gas” is wrong. I would say it
18 would allow hydrogen cyanide into the sewer.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you know whether Mr Leuchter actually verified the
20 existence of a mains sewer at Auschwitz?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: One thing I have asked Professor van Pelt to produce from
22 the Auschwitz records is the sewage plans.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And, Mr Irving, the answer is, perhaps, I do not know —-
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know. I do not know what Mr Leuchter had, no.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. He has just made it up. He has made yet another of
26 his wonderful assumptions, has he not?
. P-113
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It maybe that it was a logical assumption, I do not know.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The answer is, I think, that Professor van Pelt, who is
3 perhaps the most knowledgable person in the whole world
4 upon this topic, will say that it is not known whether
5 there was a main sewer.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: There should be, because the construction office will
7 certainly have had sewer plans, and our suspicion would be
8 that the water outflow from these buildings would have
9 gone eventually to the water treatment plant, which is
10 visible on all the air photographs.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “And safely dissolved in low concentrations into a harmless
12 solution.” Yes?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am not going to talk about the percentages because
14 I do not know what percentages we are talking about.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: OK. “There were no exhaust systems to prevent the gas
16 after usage”. Complete nonsense, is it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Which building are we talking about, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He has listed them all, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: There was certainly a ventilation system in the building
20 I am interested in, which is crematorium 2, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And numbers 4 and 5 each had seven little windows 30
22 centimetres by 40 in the outside, and each of the two
23 outer rooms had big doors opening into the open air, did
24 they not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Numbers 3 and 4?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, 4 and 5. No, 2 and 3 were sealed. They had but one
. P-114
1 door and therefore needed a ventilation system. So this
2 is another piece of assertion by Mr Leuchter which is just
3 plain wrong, is it not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will skip the next one because it is controversial. “The
6 facilities are always damp and not heated”. You have seen
7 the letter, have you not, concerning the provision of
8 preheating mechanisms for Leichenkeller 1?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Wrong again?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “The chambers are too small to physically contain
13 the occupants claimed”. Wrong again?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I disagree on that.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He assumed 9 foot per person, did he not?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but even on lower figures you still cannot put 2,000
17 into those.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: As a matter of fact you can, but we will not argue about
19 that. He assumed 9 square feet per person, did he not?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: He did, yes. If you say so, that is. I mean, without
21 being told where he says it, I do not know.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, it is somewhere in here?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I think the nine — yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is the figure which is used for judicial
25 execution — I do not like that — legal execution in
26 the United States. “The doors all opened inwards” — that
. P-115
1 is wrong too, is it not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: On all five of them? I do not know.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: All doors opened outwards, which is why they are not air
4 raid shelters.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Air raid shelters doors always open outwards.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why? What if the rest of the building tumbles down
7 outside and you cannot get out?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The reason is because the blast from a bomber exploding
9 outwards will blow the door in if it opens inwards. Air
10 raid doors always open outwards.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They do not all open inwards, they all open outwards.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Air raid shelter doors, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, the doors of these rooms.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I take your word for it.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We can look at the plans Mr Irving, but do take my word
16 for it. It is what Professor van Pelt has already told us
17 and will say again if you challenge him.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, can you go back to the bottom of
19 page 13, “With the chambers fully packed with occupants
20 there would be no circulation of HCN within the room.”
21 MR RAMPTON: I have not got to that yet, but by all means, your
22 Lordship, ask Mr Irving about that.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to understand the point that
24 Leuchter thinks he is making there at the bottom of page
25 13.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: There is actually a more valid point than that. That is,
. P-116
1 if you pack 2,000 people into a chamber the size of this
2 room as Bruno Tesh, who was later hanged, the man who
3 produced the Zyklon B, said you would not need cyanide to
4 kill them, they would suffocate in a very short space of
5 time anyway.
6 MR RAMPTON: Maybe. I do not know that I think that that is an
7 answer to his Lordship’s question. Perhaps that is no
8 business of mine. He goes on: “Additionally, if the gas
9 eventually did fill the chamber over a lengthy time period
10 those throwing Zyklon B in the roof vents and verifying
11 the death of the occupants would themselves die from
12 exposure to H C N”.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I would have thought it was rather unscientific also.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is complete rubbish, is it not? H C N is slightly
15 heavier than air, is it not, and they wore gas masks, and
16 all they did was lift up the vents and drop the pellets in
17 and quickly close the vents?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: The ones on top of the roof, right.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So what is left of this report, Mr Irving?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: The forensic statistics which are what I base my
21 conclusions on.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is precisely consistent with what Professor
23 Markievitch found in 1994, and what Krakov found in 1945,
24 is it not?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Small traces?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: What I have always said, Mr Rampton, is that the report is
. P-117
1 flawed and in my letters to associates I clearly said what
2 a pity Leuchter started speculating about things that were
3 beyond his ken when the chemical figures are all that can
4 be relied upon and that speak the real language.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, the position is this, is it not? You know as
6 well as I do that this Leuchter report is not worth the
7 paper it is written on. You know that he got the crucial
8 concentration completely the wrong way round and therefore
9 drew false conclusions from it. You know that the true
10 measurement of concentration is consistent with what
11 Krakov found in 1945 and with what Markievitch found in
12 1994. Your only way round that is to assert that these
13 were indeed gas chambers, but not for killing people. Is
14 that not right?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Designed as, yes. But what I do not accept is your
16 suggestion that the Leuchter report is totally valueless.
17 The most important part of the Leuchter report was the
18 forensic results which were done in fact not by
19 Mr Leuchter but by Dr Roth.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is precisely consistent with the kinds of
21 concentrations in residue which you would expect to find
22 if on the one hand there are low residue areas with
23 homicidal gas chambers, and on the other hand the high
24 residue areas were delousing chambers?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Not entirely. That is going to extremes and you are not
26 entitled to go to total extremes like that.
. P-118
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Broadly consistent?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think even broadly so.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have known this since —-
4 A. [Mr Irving]: The total discrepancy in these figures is so eclatant, is
5 to dramatic, that there has to be some explanation for
6 them.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you say. You can put that to Professor van Pelt.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: So I say and so I believe.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I go back to an answer you gave a minute
10 ago? Mr Rampton asked this question: You know that the
11 measurement of concentrations is consistent with what was
12 found in 1945 and 1994; your only way round that – this is
13 the question – is to assert that these were indeed gas
14 chambers but not for killing people, is that not right?
15 And then you said “designed as, yes”. Can you elaborate a
16 little on that?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: We do not know to what degree they were then subsequently
18 used.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Do you mean by that that these chambers were designed as
20 gas chambers for killing people?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I did not mean that, my Lord. I meant that we know
22 that this particular one, the crematoria 2, the one which
23 interests me, Leichenkeller 1, the mass one where
24 Professor van Pelt says 500 thousand people died, that the
25 documentary evidence shows that it was also designed with
26 dual functions as an air raid shelter and as a fumigation
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1 chamber. We do not know whether it was used in either of
2 those capacities.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Designed as a fumigation chamber?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: That is what I should have spelt out. We have not really
5 been told what these other reports say yet.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, I am waiting to hear.
Section 120.7-132.23
7 MR RAMPTON: There is one other part of this report, Mr Irving,
8 which is not dealt with in that list of the bullet points
9 — I would say that they were blanks rather bullets — in
10 Mr Leuchter’s report. It is incineration capacity.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He got that completely wrong, did he not?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Incineration capacity has been a matter of great debate
14 among…
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I know that, but answer my question. Leuchter got it
16 wrong, did he not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I would not be surprised if he got it wrong.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Completely wrong?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I would not be surprised if he got it wrong. There are
20 very widely different opinions. Even the experts cannot
21 agree what the capacities were.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Notwithstanding this catalogue of fundamental errors in
23 Leuchter, you publicly, in your public role, have adhered
24 to it as though it was the gospel of St John, have you
25 not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: If you have read correctly what I said in my public
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1 utterances, I have always relied on the chemical forensic
2 part of the Leuchter examinations and not on any of his
3 other rather absurd statements which I regarded as if —
4 in fact, I never even read those statements except when I,
5 in general, took on board the fact that he was an engineer
6 and he was venturing outside his proper field.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, you knew that at the time, did you not?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Knew what at that time?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That he was venturing outside his expertise which was
10 extremely limited?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I said so in my correspondence at the time. I said
12 if only —-
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Correspondence, I am not interested in your
14 correspondence.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, the correspondence shows my state of mind at the
16 time, Mr Rampton, which is material in this court.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, in private, in your mind, I suggest to you, you had
18 received material from Beer, Crabtree, Wegner, which, in
19 effect, completely discredited Leuchter, but you never
20 gave that any public notice at all, did you?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I was not under any compulsion to give private
22 correspondence public notice. When you are an author, you
23 are constantly receiving letters from members of the
24 public suggesting you have got things wrong. Sometimes
25 you ignore them, and I know a lot of people ignore lots of
26 things. A lot of the experts in this case have ignored
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1 lots of documents until they finally come up in this
2 trial. But when you are conscientious, then you will put
3 those objections to other people who are probably better
4 informed than yourselves and say, “What do you say about
5 this?” This is precisely what I did.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, I have got very little left on this Auschwitz
7 question now. Can you tell me this, because the answers
8 to these questions, I am not going to cross-examine you
9 about them if your answer be yes. I leave you to raise
10 them with Professor van Pelt by way of rebuttal of what
11 I would characterize as the overwhelming evidence in
12 favour of his thesis.
13 First, do you see the coke supplies at Auschwitz
14 as being significant?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Coke?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Coke” did you say?
17 MR RAMPTON: Coke, C-O-K-E, which in those days meant what it
18 said!
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I assumed that.
20 MR RAMPTON: You are going to raise that with Professor —
21 I need to know because he has to prepare himself, you see?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you going to raise the question of coke supply?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: We shall raise that because if Holocaust denial is said to
25 be minimising or reducing the scale of the tragedy in a
26 numerical sense, then we are entitled to look at the coke
. P-122
1 supplies.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you going to deal with incineration capacity?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Cremation capacity, the various crematoria.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am talking about burning corpses in ovens or in pits.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, in my side of the courtroom you call it “cremation”
6 rather than “incineration”.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Call it what you like. Are you going to raise that with
8 Professor van Pelt?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: I think so, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you going to raise the question of the Hensley
11 decrypts?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but also I shall be doing that with Dr Jean Fox as
13 well.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sure you will. Are you going to raise the question
15 of the so-called “death books”?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you going to raise the question of the supplies of
18 Zyklon B to Runinberg and also to Auschwitz?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I am going to be raising the general question of the
20 production rate of Zyklon B by the factory.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: And its delivery and to specific quantities delivered to
23 various camps, yes. I shall also be raising the question
24 of the authenticity of the eyewitnesses.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Certainly.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Their integrity.
. P-123
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think what Mr Rampton was really
2 doing, if I understand him right, was investigating with
3 you what other positive pointers you feel exist towards
4 the non-existence of gas chambers.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: The eyewitnesses come into that. I suppose that is
6 negative. That is negative.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You say they are negative. I think what Mr Rampton really
8 would like you to say is, is there anything else that you
9 are positively relying on, as it were, against the
10 existence of gas chambers? Do you understand the
11 question? I hope it is not —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not really understand that.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — obscure.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, I think you agreed with me that Mr Rampton has just
16 run through various topics which you are going to raise
17 because in your —-
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Of course, we are relying on the architectural evidence,
19 my Lord, what Mr Rampton will call the archeological
20 evidence.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Right.
22 MR RAMPTON: That is fine, my Lord. With your Lordship’s
23 leave, at present — I may come back to it by way of
24 re-examination — I see no purpose in my dealing with
25 those what I call rebuttal topics in cross-examination.
26 If your Lordship wishes me to do so, I easily can, but it
. P-124
1 will take time and we are going to go round the houses all
2 over again when Professor van Pelt gives evidence because
3 what I put in cross-examination is only what Professor Van
4 Pelt will say from the witness box.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Will Professor van Pelt be actually giving
6 evidence-in-chief or will he be relying on his report?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a question for me and the answer is
8 he will be relying on his report.
9 MR RAMPTON: I am going to ask his Lordship about that in a
10 moment because I have now finished, my Lord, so far as
11 Auschwitz is answered.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but, I mean, in answer to the question,
13 750 pages is enough to speak for itself.
14 MR RAMPTON: I am not going to read it all out your Lordship —
15 which your Lordship has read once, if not more often. It
16 seems to me that, really, we have reached the position
17 now, if your Lordship agrees, where all I really need to
18 do — I had had in mind a sort of nice graphic demo and
19 screens and all that kind of thing for Professor van Pelt,
20 but I no longer think it necessary because, apart from
21 this question of concentration and the chemical analysis
22 results, it seems to me, I may be wrong, that really
23 Mr Irving has abandoned Mr Fred Leuchter and his report in
24 toto. That being so, I do not need to go through the
25 proofs.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is probably right. You will
. P-125
1 though, presumably, have to deal, and I think probably in
2 general terms only, with the other bodies of evidence,
3 categories of evidence, for the existence of the gas
4 chambers? For example, we have had a bit of evidence
5 about eyewitnesses, but we have not had anything, for
6 example, about the drawings made by — I cannot remember
7 his name, the Frenchman.
8 MR RAMPTON: Dayaco and Eiffel who were two of the Auschwitz
9 architects.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I was thinking actually of the inmate.
11 MR RAMPTON: Oh, Dave Olaire.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Olaire. Things of that kind will have to be
13 put in general terms, will they not, as to whether
14 Mr Irving knew about them, whether he attached any
15 credibility to them.
16 MR RAMPTON: I suppose so, though, frankly, given his public
17 stance in relation to Leuchter, I am not sure it any
18 longer has much point. I am not here to debate whether
19 the gas chambers existed. To my mind, I may be wrong —
20 your Lordship may disagree and we have still to hear the
21 cross-examination — van Pelt demonstrates that with
22 admirable clarify.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I agree, but I do think one or two
24 questions, and I hope it does not come to much more than
25 that, along the lines of, well, the evidence does not
26 consist only in, as it were, rubbishing Leuchter’s report;
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1 there is a whole body of positive evidence which you have
2 put forward as establishing beyond the possibility of
3 doubt that the gas chambers did exist, so that Mr Irving
4 can then make either a general or a more detailed response
5 to that.
6 MR RAMPTON: I will start in the most general way. (To the
7 witness): Ignoring the eyewitness accounts, Mr Irving, do
8 you agree that the most suggestive effect of the
9 contemporaneous documentary evidence, by which I mean the
10 plans, the memoranda and the correspondence, retrieved
11 from Auschwitz, the most suggestive effect of that is that
12 these were, indeed, homicidal gas chambers?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why not?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: From the Auschwitz archives and from the Moscow archives,
16 historians have now retrieved many hundreds of thousands
17 of pages of documents, and we are entitled to at least one
18 explicit, non-ambiguous, non-reading between the lines,
19 non-euphemism type of document which would gives us the
20 clear smoking gun. That document does not exist.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, it is bit like the order by Adolf Hitler for the
22 beginning of the Final Solution: Since it does not exist,
23 it did not happen; is that right?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I did not say that.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I thought that was nature, the effect of your
26 evidence —-
. P-127
1 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — about Hitler and the Final Solution?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I am saying that because two bodies of documents — you
4 may not appreciate this point — of such integrity have
5 been captured, presumably intact, on the one hand, there
6 in the Auschwitz state archives, on the other hand, they
7 are captured by the Red Army, the entire records of the SS
8 construction unit, and now they linger in the Moscow
9 archives ever since, and, presumably, no incriminating
10 documents have been removed by anyone, one would have been
11 entitled to expect that by now when historians have had
12 some 10 years to go through every single page many times,
13 they would have found a document slightly more
14 incriminating than those you have so far been able to
15 surface.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Leaving aside the absence of an actual document
17 saying, “Now we must build some homicidal gas chambers at
18 the order of SS Reichfuhrer Himmler —-
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I try to avoid sarcasm like that. I try to look at it at
20 a more serious and objective level.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, but, I am sorry, it does seem to me perhaps
22 appropriate to use sarcasm in this area?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Sarcasm is the last resort of the scoundrel.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Leaving that on one side, do you agree that otherwise the
25 tendency of the surviving contemporaneous evidence — by
26 this I include the remains of the buildings such as they
. P-128
1 are — is to suggest that, yes, indeed, these were
2 homicidal gas chambers?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: The tendency of?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Surviving documentary evidence and the ruins is to suggest
5 that these were, indeed, homicidal gas chambers?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I do not agree that.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why not?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Because there are alternative explanations which are
9 equally plausible.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I am talking about tendency.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It depends how tendentious you are.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We have dealt with the word “vergasungskeller”?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which you say means, oh, well, that was only for gassing
15 clothes or corpses?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps I can put it the other way round. A German would
17 never translate “gas chamber” “vergasungskeller”, never
18 ever. Not any German in this room would translate the
19 German word “gas chamber” by “vergasungskeller”.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What do you take to be the meaning of the phrase found in
21 Wetzel’s letter to Lohse of 25th October 1941,
22 “vergasungsapparate”?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Gassing equipment — whatever it was.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You saw on the second page of that letter, did you not,
25 the statement to this effect, “We have no objection if you
26 use that equipment to dispose of Jews who are unable to
. P-129
1 work”?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Now, you have drawn a link between the
3 “vergasungsapparate” and the second page which does not
4 exist. I am familiar, you remember, with the Tesh trial.
5 Bruno Tesh himself went to Riga, as the head of the Zyklon
6 B manufacturing company, to train the staff in the
7 operation of the fumigation chambers which were installed
8 in Riga. So we know precisely what the vergasungsapparate
9 were.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What would a German mean — I am not in any sense
11 deferring to you on this, Mr Irving, I am afraid; I just
12 want to know what your answer is — what would an ordinary
13 German, who actually did not even get his grammar right,
14 by saying that he had concreted the floor in gaskammer?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we see that document, please?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, if you like. It is —-
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Because, of course —-
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is the time sheet of a humble workman at crematorium
19 (iv) in March 1943, 2nd March 1943.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, every German in this room will be able to tell you
21 what is wrong with that phrase, of course.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We know that he has the gender wrong.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not the kind of thing one gets wrong.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is, perhaps, if you are a humble workman in southern
25 Poland. It perhaps is the sort of mistake which our
26 humble workmen, if I may call them that without offence,
. P-130
1 sometimes make: “I ain’t been there today”?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we see the actual document, please?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is “im”, is it?
4 MR RAMPTON: “Im”, he has just got the wrong gender.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Kammer” is “das kammer”.
6 MR RAMPTON: “Kammer” is feminine.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is feminine? “die kammer”, is it?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: No, die kammer, “in der gaskammer” it should be
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes, exactly. He has made a grammatical mistake.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we have a look at the document and see how much else
11 is ungrammatical about it?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is in the second volume new 3 and it is in tab 4 at
13 page 38. Unfortunately, the photograph we have has been
14 cut off. I assure you that the word is “gaskammer”
15 because I have the reproduction.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You said tab 4?
17 MR RAMPTON: Tab 4, my Lord, page 38. It is a coloured
18 photograph of a handwritten entry in a time sheet. Page
19 38. One of the numbers on it is 35, unfortunately, but
20 the one to look out for is a new handwritten No. 38. In
21 the third line from the end he has written something about
22 “fussboden”, something or other, in gaskammer?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, with the two Ss in the “gass” as well.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Two Ss in the “gass”, G-A-S-S, kammer.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Quite right.
. P-131
1 A. [Mr Irving]: What does the other “S” stand for, do you think?
2 Gasschuts? Gas protection?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You tell me.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know. I am just drawing attention to further
5 errors in this document.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: But, in view of the fact that I have stated that the odds
8 are that the vergasen to which reference is made is
9 Leichenkeller 1.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is to do with crematorium (iv)?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: And this is, therefore, in all likelihood, the
12 entwesungsanlager to which the document refers which
13 I shall be showing you tomorrow.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Leave aside the grammatical mistakes and the misspelling,
15 Mr Irving, what does a German mean by the word
16 “gaskammer”?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: “Gas chamber”. But this is almost certainly a reference
18 to the building they are making at this time, namely
19 entwesungsanlager to which reference is made in the
20 document I referred to earlier, the fumigation equipment.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not have that document.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it will below all these things right out of the
23 water tomorrow.
Section 134.24-151.1
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We look forward to it. I am still a little puzzled why
25 the gas chamber or, sorry, the vergasungskeller at
26 crematoria (ii) and (iii) need — now could you please
. P-132
1 turn to page 44?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it needs a steel door with a peep hole, right?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. I want to look at the first paragraph first.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Right.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That relates to the crematoria (iv) and (v), does it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: BW 30B and 30C, and there is an order for three gas type
8 doors?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Ignore the “M”. That is a misprint. It should be “turn”
11 and “gas type towers” is what the person has written?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is another error?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, “gas type doors”.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The second paragraph says that they have — you read it to
16 me and tell me what it says?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: “On this occasion we remind you of a further order dated
18 March 6th 1943 for the supply of one gas door, 100/192,
19 for the mortuary No. 1 of crematorium No. (iii), the
20 construction project 30A, which has to be manufactured
21 precisely according to the type and scale of the cellar
22 door, basement door, of the crematorium No. (ii) which is
23 directly opposite with a peep hole with a double eight
24 millimetre glass with a rubber gasket and mounting”.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Steel, a metal mounting, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right, yes.
. P-133
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now, why would you need that for a room which was to be
2 used either for gassing corpses or clothes?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: You remember the third alternative use which I suggested
4 this morning.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, you mean it might be an air raid shelter?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: With no emergency exit?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: This was one of the few underground buildings in
9 Auschwitz. It was built almost entirely subterraneously
10 with a concrete roof, a cast concrete roof, reinforced
11 concrete roof, ideally suited as an air raid shelter. The
12 door described here, and the door which is, indeed, found
13 in Auschwitz, is a typical air raid steel door, a gas
14 tight door, of the kind which was standard throughout
15 Germany at that time.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you need a gas type door for an air
17 raid shelter in 1943?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Because they did not know that we were not going to use
19 poison gas, and all air raid shelters in Germany from this
20 time onwards were being built with gas tight doors.
21 MR RAMPTON: If it be the case, Mr Irving, that the metal
22 grille —-
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Excuse me a minute. My Lord, tomorrow I will produce the
24 appropriate German air raid manuals producing pictures of
25 precisely these doors with the peep holes.
26 MR RAMPTON: Two things puzzle me about this, well, there are
. P-134
1 three. The first is the absence of any kind of emergency
2 exit which I had been led to believe de rigour in German
3 air raid shelter design. Second, if it be the case that
4 the metal protection for the peep hole was on the inside
5 of the door, that does not speak of air raid shelter, does
6 it?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know what the standard at that time — you see,
8 the problem is they do not make these doors ad hoc. There
9 is —-
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They do.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: If — the air raid shelter doors are all supplied with
12 peep holes, all the gas tight doors had peep holes. It is
13 rather like the ATM machines which have a little braille
14 pad on them, whether or not it is even a drive by ATM
15 machine, it still has the braille pad on it, although,
16 obviously, drivers are not blind, because that is the
17 cheapest way to make ATM machines. They do not make —-
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, I rather think you are making things up as you
19 go along. This is an order from Bischoff?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who is the head of the architectural department, building
22 department?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: To the work shop in Auschwitz?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They made these things to order?
. P-135
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Excuse me, no. It is being sent to the Deutsche [German].
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. That is in Auschwitz. Look.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: All it just says is the factory, Auschwitz, Obeschlazien.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look, and [German – document not provided] “OS”?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: “Obeschalzien”. It just says, “The factory at Auschwitz”
6 which is the town of Auschwitz.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Exactly.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: It does not say, “Concentration camp, Auschwitz”.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, no, but these orders all go to the — they made
10 furniture and a whole lot of other things. It all goes to
11 Auschwitz. This is not some order to some centralised air
12 raid making department in Berlin, is it?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: This is obviously a company which manufactures air raid
14 shelter doors.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not find anything about air raid shelters in this
16 document, do you?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: “Deutsche [German]”, [German] is equipment factories.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: It is nothing to do with furniture.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In Auschwitz?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: In the town of Auschwitz. As Mr Van Pelt will tell you,
22 Auschwitz was a town.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if all these air raid shelter
24 doors come with a peep hole, why does he have to spell it
25 out in the letter? I mean, he is saying, “I want a peep
26 hole in my door”. Why does he say that?
. P-136
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It is the same, you will see, my Lord, when they are
2 ordering electric motors, they also specify exactly what
3 the electric motor has to be.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That may be rather different because there are various
5 kinds of electric motor.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Anyway, when you see the photographs of the doors they are
7 talking about and the doors that are in all the standard
8 Civil Defence manuals, they are the standard air raid
9 shelter door.
10 MR RAMPTON: These doors have been purpose built. He has
11 already got one, has Bischoff, for Leichenkeller 1 in
12 crematorium (ii). He says to the people, the manufacturer
13 in Auschwitz, the manufacturer in Auschwitz: “I want
14 another exactly the same for Leichenkeller 1 in
15 crematorium (iii)”, does he not?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: On the face of it, this is a very incriminating and highly
17 sinister and murderous document, but, of course, it is
18 lacking one thing, is it not?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is that?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Security classification. There is no secret stamp on it.
21 If this is connected to the Final Solution and it is
22 talking about this kind of sinister document, they would
23 have put a “Secret”, even the lowest classification on it.
24 This is a document of janitorial level which you are
25 trying to hype up into a smoking gun.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is exactly why you might find that it does not have
. P-137
1 “Geheim” on it, janitorial level.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: In other words, it is capable of —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are two points. One is that it is not
4 authentic because it is not stamped “Geheim” and the other
5 is that it is janitorial.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I am not saying — no, my Lord. I am not saying it is not
7 authentic, my Lord. I am saying the fact that it is given
8 no security classification, even by an SS officer,
9 indicates that it is as harmless as it appears to be.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But I would have thought that if it is on a janitorial
11 level, it might be all the more valuable as a clue to what
12 is really going on.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: No, it is —-
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: What is wrong with that proposition?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I think that this is looking for conspiracy theories the
16 whole time, my Lord. If you are confronted with an
17 innocent document in which he is ordering an innocent air
18 raid shelter door, it does not occur to anybody to start
19 stamping it “Secret”, and it does not occur to him that 50
20 years down the road the Queen’s Bench Division is going to
21 try to make this out into a smoking gun.
22 MR RAMPTON: These are all carbons, are they not, Mr Irving?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Don’t fall for that one. Immediately after the top left
24 where it says “43/KI/Schull”, which is the name of the
25 secretary, there would be another “/” followed by “GEH”
26 or “G” or “GKDOS” or “GRS”, according to what security
. P-138
1 classification it had. It would be part of the letter
2 book registration number.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I just want to pursue the air raid shelter dream a little
4 bit further, if I may, Mr Irving?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: The air raid shelter?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Dream” because it is, I have to suggest, complete
7 fantasy?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: And this list of documents about air raid shelters is also
9 a fantasy from the Moscow archives?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The “Deutsche aust” [German – document not provided]
11 Gazelshaft”, etc. —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — in Auschwitz?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: At Auschwitz.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — at Auschwitz, well, in Auschwitz — there was a sort
16 of settlement there — was SS operated and inmate staffed,
17 was it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I will take your word for it — probably with slave
19 labour, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I just want to pursue the air raid shelter a little bit
21 further. How far away is Leichenkeller 1 or how far away
22 are crematoria (ii) — I will start again. Who was going
23 to go into these air raid shelters of yours? Who were
24 they for?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I have no idea.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: For the inmates?
. P-139
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I have no idea.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you have been asked now?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: But my answer —-
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Would they have built them for the slave labour? That is
5 really inherent in the question.
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I said “for the inmates”.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: If we are really interested in this subject, I can
8 inundate the court with paper about the construction of
9 splinter trenches, concrete roof with reinforced concrete
10 beams, bunkers for the inmates and everything. There was
11 a great deal of agitation and work went on providing air
12 raid shelter for the SS and for the inmates —-
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. You have advanced —-
14 A. [Mr Irving]: — during these months and years.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — the air raid shelter theory?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Which had, obviously, not occurred to you.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Obviously not occurred? We have known about it for years,
18 Mr Irving. It just seems so silly we have not bothered to
19 take it terribly seriously. Perhaps we are wrong. If
20 this is for the SS, this air raid shelter, it is a
21 terribly long way from the SS barracks, is it not? They
22 would all be dead before they ever got there if there was
23 a bombing raid. Have you thought about that? It is about
24 two and a half miles?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I remember during the war when we got air raid warnings
26 half an hour, an hour, before the planes arrived.
. P-140
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And you went down to the bottom of the garden, just as I
2 did, and hid in your Andersen shelter, or whatever it was
3 called?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: We had a Morrison.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We had one of those first and then we got grand and had an
6 Andersen!
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is enough reminiscing.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but what I am saying is that when you were deep in
9 Silesia, you had all the warning from the early warning
10 system in Holland which is where it was based. You had
11 all that time to tell you that enemy bombers were coming
12 overhead heading your way.
13 MR RAMPTON: But, Mr Irving, you do know, do you not, that they
14 draw did actually draw up plans for converting the
15 crematorium at Auschwitz (i) into an air raid shelter for
16 the SS.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Ah, ah, so this kind of thing did happen?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, yes, but that is where the SS —-
19 A. [Mr Irving]: But you kept it quiet until now?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — that, Mr Irving, is where the SS barracks was.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, well, I did not say this was for the SS.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They could pop out of their living quarters into the air
23 raid shelter. Do you really see a whole lot of heavily
24 armed soldiers running two-and-a-half or three miles from
25 the SS barracks to these cellars at the far end of the
26 Birkenhau camp? I mean, Mr Irving.
. P-141
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It was, I think, common sense to take the only two
2 underground buildings which had reinforced concrete roofs
3 and which had been very heavily constructed at very great
4 expensive to the German taxpayer — far more expensively
5 built than above ground mortuaries — and to convert them
6 for use as air raid shelters when the alarm began at the
7 end of 1942. You can see this from the construction
8 files, that they became increasingly concerned about the
9 risk of air raids. Even if it was not just for the
10 Kommandant and his private staff and family, it does not
11 detract from the value of this particular explanation.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How many people could be accommodated?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, we are told 2,000 people could get in, according
14 to —-
15 MR RAMPTON: The document of 28th June 1943 suggests something,
16 a gassing, sorry, an accommodation per gassing of about
17 1600 people, sometimes as many as 2,000. Anyway, leave
18 that on one side. I still want to know how you think it
19 is even realistic, never mind credible, to expect all
20 those SS men to run all the way from the barracks at
21 Auschwitz (i) to the far end of the camp at Birkenhau and
22 climb into this air raid shelter before they got squashed
23 by the allied bombs.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I did explain to you. I do not know who this privileged
25 accommodation is being provided for.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, they are not going to get 120,000 prisoners into
. P-142
1 such a space, are they, Mr Irving?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: No, but the records show that very large numbers of other
3 air raid protection facilities were being built around the
4 camp at this time from the most primitive nature, which
5 was of splitter trenches with primitive shelter over the
6 top, to the most complicated bunkers.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Those are still there today. You can see little sentry
8 shelters, one per person.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: So they made provision for everybody according to their
10 needs, to each according to his needs and to his status,
11 no doubt.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, my Lord, I have only one more question about air
13 raid shelters and that is to be found on pages 29 and 30
14 of the same section of the file, Mr Irving. I am not
15 going to struggle with this. I know what it says because
16 I have had it translated for me, but I am afraid I do not
17 have a translation yet.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Which file?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Page 29 of this file.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: 11th February 1943?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is the one. I ask you again. No need to read this
22 out loud. It can be copied into the transcript in due
23 course. I just ask you to read it to yourself. It is a
24 page and a half, if that?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are probably familiar with it, are you
26 not?
. P-143
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Since yesterday, my Lord. Yes, it was delivered to me
2 yesterday. I have asked all my colleagues around the
3 world what the explanation for all this is and nobody has
4 expressed very great alarm, except that I do draw
5 attention, if I may, to the reference in the third and
6 fourth lines to the provision eventually of two final
7 permanent electric corpse elevators, or lifts, and one
8 temporary corpse elevator which is to be installed as an
9 improvisation.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is that on the page?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Lines 3 and 4 of the first page of the actual letter.
12 MR RAMPTON: Now, you have read that letter?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have seen it. I am sorry it was late coming. We only
15 got it ourselves, I think, on Saturday?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I got this at 10 past 9 yesterday evening.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am sorry it is late.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Leichenaftuk”(?) is that the word for corpse
19 lift?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, Leichenaftuk. They played quite an important part in
21 the whole of the argument I shall develop when I come to
22 get revenge on Professor van Pelt later on.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not the right way of expressing
24 yourself.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I have had to endure a public flogging now for three
26 weeks.
. P-144
1 MR RAMPTON: Well, Mr Irving, you brought this action, if I may
2 call it that.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I am very much entitled to, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you must expect to be flogged publicly. If the blows
5 have been a little bit painful, I am sorry, but I am going
6 to go on landing them. Look at the second page of this
7 letter, will you?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Am I right that, in effect, the whole of this letter is a
10 frightful — I am going to use schoolboy language —
11 blowing up administered by the people of Auschwitz,
12 Bischoff, to the supplier because they are behind in their
13 supplying?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And he is saying in the last paragraph but one, is he not:
16 “Unless this stuff turns up quickly”, and he is reciting
17 a telegram he has already sent, “we cannot get this thing
18 off the ground, the whole installation”?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The second paragraph from the end. That is right, is it
21 not, and he uses the word in the previous
22 paragraph “Dringinschten” which means “most urgent”, yes?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why the urgency if it is a mere air raid shelter or a
25 delousing chamber?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: We are at the height of the typhus emergency, are we not?
. P-145
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. This is in February 1943. It has all gone. It was
2 the summer of ’42?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. And there would have been no more typhus
4 emergencies?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There was not one in ’43.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: But did they know there was going to be no typhus
7 emergency?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, of course not. But this is mid winter in southern
9 Poland, it is 11th February 1943, and he wants it all
10 finished by 6th March. Have I got an answer?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Are they not having problems at this time with the other
12 crematoria?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: With?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: With the other crematoria?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not so far as I know.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: They had run into other crematoria being rendered unsafe
17 by chimney fires, this kind of problem?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not so far as I know. Professor van Pelt will tell you
19 yeah or nay if you ask him that question.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: All I can say is that I have read the three letters. This
21 is one letter of three that were sent to me last night in
22 conjunction with each other. Bischoff, who is at
23 Auschwitz, is, as you say, tearing strips off his
24 suppliers for repeatedly failing to deliver on time, and
25 supplies come back to him and say: “We will give you a
26 ten horse-power motor instead of a seven horse-power motor
. P-146
1 which will do the job as well”. I do not read any great
2 significance into them saying “urgently” as the kind of
3 thing I say to printers when I want books printed
4 urgently. What I say is that I urgently need. What I did
5 notice on one of the letters (I cannot put my finger on
6 which one it was – I am sure Miss Rogers can help us on
7 this) is Topf, the company that is supplying the equipment
8 to Auschwitz, saying that we cannot get the priority for
9 our shipments, we cannot get the railroad priority, which
10 seems an odd thing if this is the Final Solution they are
11 talking about, and the company who is supplying the
12 equipment says, “We cannot get the priority to put our
13 stuff on the trains”.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In February or March in Southern Poland, Mr Irving, I
15 should think, I do not know, but I should think the
16 temperature is pretty low, is it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but I also think and I am not an epidemiologist, but
18 I do happen to know typhus epidemics are most prevalent in
19 precisely these months of the year. They come and go in
20 cycles. The early months of the year is when typhus
21 epidemics are considered to be the most prevalent.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That was not the experience in 1942, was it, in this
23 place?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: It began in 1942 and got out of hand in early 1942 until
25 it reached its peak, I think, in about August 1942.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We have now abandoned really air raid shelters, have we
. P-147
1 not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: As a topic for questioning, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We can forget air raid shelters. You do not get a letter
4 like this, “must complete, you are late, we cannot use the
5 installation until these motors arrive, these ventilation
6 motors”, if we are talking about air raid shelters?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Like any other building that has been newly erected in
8 Germany, no doubt in England, they are not allowed to put
9 them into operation until they meet the building
10 inspector’s standard. This equipment was undoubtedly
11 considered to be essential before the building could be
12 put into use. German buildings, just like any other, had
13 to be passed by a building inspector. I think Professor
14 van Pelt makes this point also.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have a piece of paper and I ask you simply to note, you
16 can take it up with Professor van Pelt later on, a piece
17 of paper which tells me that the mortality from the typhus
18 epidemic during the summer of 1942 was, it looks like,
19 about 20,000, about 20,000 — 8,000, sorry 8,000, that is
20 from the epidemic, and that there was virtually no typhus
21 during 1943. Do you accept that?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Not necessarily. I would have to see the figures for
23 myself, but also here we are in February 1943, they have
24 had the most ghastly experience in 1942, and they are
25 taking, to my mind, responsible precautions in case the
26 same thing happens in 1943.
. P-148
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But in the light of all the —-
2 A. [Mr Irving]: They are getting ready and prepared and they have lost two
3 of their crematoria by this time I believe.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you say. You must put that to Professor van Pelt. In
5 the light of all the evidence, the reference
6 gasungskeller, to a gaskammer, to all the rest of the
7 documentary evidence, and of the eyewitness testimony,
8 Mr Irving, the likeliest explanation for a document of
9 this kind is this, is it not: “We want to start the big
10 extermination programme in March, get on with it”?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: If I was to write a book and based that conclusion on a
12 document like that I would rightly stand before a court
13 like this for manipulation and distortion.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving, you know that is not a proper answer to my
15 question.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Of course it is a proper answer.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I said in the light —-
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I am being accused of basing my hypotheses on what you
19 describe as flimsy lines like Judentransport and keine
20 liquidierung, and the conclusions I drew on those two
21 lines I am accused of having distorted and manipulated,
22 and yet you are trying to read into this one document —-
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. You did not —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you have not understood what the question
25 was. Mr Rampton’s question expressly — will you listen,
26 please — expressly referred to all the other evidence,
. P-149
1 including eyewitness evidence and the rest. You know what
2 he is talking about.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, precisely as I did —-
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: He is saying in the light of all of that evidence would
5 you not accept that gas chambers is the likely
6 explanation?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: The short answer is no, and I would add to say, add the
8 remark that is precisely what I said when I was accused of
9 having drawn adventurous conclusions on the documents laid
10 before me. I said remember I have the basis of my entire
11 expertise and all the other documents I had, and I rely on
12 them too. This is precisely the argument being used by
13 Mr Rampton to justify this as being a smoking gun. This
14 is a very flimsy document indeed.
15 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I do not say that this document —-
16 A. [Mr Irving]: With no security classification on this document either.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but it was not being put on that document
18 alone. That is the point, but let us move on.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, you appreciate the point I am trying to make?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I certainly understand the point, but I think you may have
21 underrated Mr Rampton’s question.
22 MR RAMPTON: I think you have also, as you so often do, made a
23 false comparison about the point I am making with the
24 point I make against you in relation to Berlin Jews.
25 However, I pass now from these documents. I think, my
26 Lord, that is perhaps enough for the moment. We may come
. P-150
1 back to them in Professor van Pelt cross-examination.
2 I just ask you to look at page 49 before I leave this.
3 This is a letter I think, Mr Irving. It is dated 20th
4 June 1943.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: 28th June.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, 28th June 1943, to Kammler who is the head of
7 Waffen SS Supply Department in Berlin, am I right?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: From Bicshoff, though it has not got his signature in and
10 that is no doubt because it is an office copy, setting out
11 what he perceives to be or is reporting to be the
12 theoretical capacity of each of five crematoria at the
13 time when he writes in a 24-hour period. Have I got it
14 right?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that is 4,756 corpses in 24 hours.
17 MR RAMPTON: That is 4,756 people corpses — I must not suggest
18 they were alive — 4,756 corpses to be incinerated by
19 these five installations in a 24-hour period. If you
20 multiply, Mr Irving, 4,756 by 7 you get something like
21 33,000 in a week; and you if multiply that by 4 you get
22 something like 130,000 a month; and if you multiply that
23 by 12 you get about 1.6 million in a year. What,
24 Mr Irving, did they need that kind of capacity for?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we discuss the document first?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: By all means.
. P-151
1 A. [Mr Irving]: This is one of the few documents whose integrity I am
2 going to challenge.
Section 151.2-162.13
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Ah! On what basis, please tell us?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I prefer to discuss this with one of the expert
5 historians who you are calling as witnesses.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.
7 MR RAMPTON: No, absolutely not, Mr Irving. Do not keep your
8 cards in your pocket, it is not allowed.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have to explain why now.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, as I explained already to the court and we discussed
11 this briefly with Professor Watt, all German documents of
12 this character had to follow a standard layout, a German
13 Civil Service layout, if you can put it like this. They
14 were typed in a certain way. They had certain
15 characteristics like the security classification and so on
16 put in. Certain things were written in by hand. Certain
17 things were typed in. There are I think five or six
18 different versions of this document I have seen in the
19 files over the last couple of years, and there are a
20 number of discrepancies. I am only going to point to one
21 discrepancy and this is right in the top left. The
22 “31550” has been typed in,.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why is that a discrepancy?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, if you go back to page 39 you will see that
25 characteristically it would start off with “Brief
26 Tagebuch” BFTGB. This is a very good one for comparison.
. P-152
1 Then you follow with a handwritten number 24365 which
2 always handwritten on the documents, followed then by the
3 “43” which is the year and that is missing in this page
4 49, the year is missing and the year is always there
5 normally, followed by JA, and if it is supposed to be
6 “Janisch” it should be a JA with an umlaut, followed on
7 page 49 by NE full stop, dash, and there is no other
8 document in the entire Auschwitz archives which has a
9 secretary initial “NE”.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say that is the secretary?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: The last initials to come there would always be the
12 secretary who has typed the document. The one before it
13 is the one who has dictated it. So that is the
14 discrepancy, just in that one line. The line above the
15 date we are missing the word “Auschwitz”. So this is a
16 document that I am very unhappy with, not to mention the
17 fact that the figures do not tally with any of the
18 established figures that are provided by the top company
19 who actually manufactures these crematoria.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes, Mr Irving. That is what happens, is it not?
21 You come across something absolutely insuperable, so
22 immediately you cast doubt on its authenticity?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I have been careful not to do this with any other
24 documents, Mr Rampton.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the provenance of this document,
26 Mr Rampton, do you know.
. P-153
1 MR RAMPTON: It has on my copy “reproduced from the holdings of
2 the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives”, but —-
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I think it is —-
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — but at the bottom of the page there is a signature or
5 the handwritten word “Jahrling” or it might be “Jahrling?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: “Jahrling”.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It has the umlaut on it there at the bottom of the page,
8 has it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but the typist obviously did not bother to put it in
10 because on a German typewriter it is a different letter.
11 I think it first surfaced in about 1950 when it was
12 supplied by the East German Government to the Auschwitz
13 Museum which is a rather odd way round for it to go.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you know that?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: From studies — I am not reproducing my own conclusions on
16 this document. I am not an expert on these documents, but
17 I have read a study on it. But I have subsequently heard
18 from someone that it did actually surface in Soviet hands
19 back in the 1945 period.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Let us suppose for a moment it is an authentic document so
21 we can get on a bit faster. You can take it up with
22 Professor van Pelt probably tomorrow.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I just want to say it is a suspect document, but I am
24 quite happy to accept that I may be wrong on that.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Let us —-
26 A. [Mr Irving]: It has things that would make my —-
. P-154
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Let us assume you are wrong. Why do you think, if you are
2 wrong, that they contemplated that kind of capacity?
3 I mean they are contemplating incinerating more than the
4 whole population of the camp once a month?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, that again is a pointer to the totally absurdity of
6 the document frankly.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh no, it is not, Mr Irving. If they are incinerating
8 people who will never form part of the population of the
9 camp at all, it is not absurd in the very least bit.
10 People who are selected on arrival for being killed and
11 incinerated, they never get registered in the camp, do
12 they?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: The entire population of the camp is going to be between
14 150,000 and 200,000 people.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, it is projected at some stage. I will have the
16 projection figures for you tomorrow, but if these are
17 registered people that are being talked about here, then
18 I quite agree, it is utterly absurd. If, however, what is
19 contemplated is that the majority of these people who are
20 going to be incinerated are never registered at all but
21 are merely killed on arrival off the train, why then it is
22 not the least bit absurd, is it?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: It is absurd when you look at the individual figures and
24 you know that those figures wildly exceed anything that
25 the top company who actually designed and specified the
26 crematorium furnaces had provided for by many multiples.
. P-155
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not at all. We will get to the figures. You will
2 probably get to the figures with Professor van Pelt, but
3 that is the whole point about the design of these top
4 multiple muffle ovens, is that you can incinerate up to
5 four corpses at a time in any one muffle. Do you know why
6 you do that, Mr Irving? Because they self-combust. You
7 mix fat corpses with thin corpses and then you do not need
8 much coke supply; it keeps going under its own steam?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, you are not mortician. I am not a mortician,
10 but one thing I do know is that bodies are largely made up
11 of water, not fat. Nine tenths of a body is water, and
12 unless you find a way of burning water then they are not
13 going to self-combust.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We might have to look at the patent application. Did you
15 read that in these papers, Mr Irving?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: The patent for the furnaces actually installed?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, it is in this bundle.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you about to leave the document which
19 Mr Irving challenges?
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you one question, Mr Irving?
22 If for the sake of argument it is an authentic document,
23 it is about as incriminating as one could possibly find?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord —-
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: When I say “incriminating” you know what I mean?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it looks incriminating until you realize the trauma
. P-156
1 they have been through in 1942, with people who were dying
2 at the rate of 400 or 500 a day and not knowing what lies
3 before them in 1943 when conditions are undoubtedly going
4 to get worse because the camp is expanding.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So you think they might, in order to guard against a
6 repetition of 1942, have been constructing crematoria
7 capable of taking nearly 5,000 people a day?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not accept these figures could possibly be true for
9 other considerations, from the coke consumption
10 considerations alone. It takes 30 kilograms of coke to
11 burn one body, whatever Mr Rampton is about to say now.
12 There is no provision for coke supplies on this scale in
13 the entire encampment.
14 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, the top patent application runs in two
15 parts it is, but it runs from pages 6 to 18 in this part
16 of the file. It is much to long for us to struggle
17 through this afternoon. It is all in German. It is cited
18 by Professor van Pelt in his report.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 539 did you say?
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Mr Irving, if you have not read it already
21 I suggest you read it overnight in case you are going to
22 fall out with Professor van Pelt about its effect.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Is it suggested these were crematoria actually installed?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Then what on earth is the relevance?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is suggested is that this is the model for, this is
. P-157
1 the patent application after all, the prototype or model
2 for those which were actually installed, yes, and the key
3 to it was that you had to keep, well, I will start at the
4 beginning. Under German law, Mr Irving, correct me if
5 I am wrong, you had to burn only one corpse at a time,
6 because you had to be able to identify the ashes at the
7 end of the operation?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Even in 1940 Himmler ordered this was to be the situation
9 in concentration camps too, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This was a direct breach of German law, no doubt
11 sanctioned by the SS, because what they were proposing was
12 to incinerate more than one corpse at a time?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: On account of conveyor belt system by the look of it.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, absolutely right, and what they observe in their
15 patent application is that if you do not keep the process
16 continuous you hit problems. If you operate it
17 periodically it does not fully satisfy. That is how,
18 Mr Irving, they can reach such high numbers. It is also
19 how — I have made a mistake. The patent used — I made a
20 mistake. Anyhow it is the description of the process I am
21 interested in.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I cannot quite see the relevance of this to what is
23 before us, because you yourself say these were not ever
24 installed in Auschwitz.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I may have to come back to that.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: It is grisly and gruesome stuff to read, but, believe me,
. P-158
1 my brother was Regional Commissioner in Wiltshire and he
2 tells me what we were planning for the event of nuclear
3 war in this country and that was equally grisly and
4 gruesome as to what to do with the bodies that would come
5 from a nuclear war. They are planning for worst case
6 contingencies here.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, the reason why it was possible to contemplate
8 such a large daily incineration was that they could burn,
9 according to the design of these ovens, one more than one
10 corpse at a time in each muffle?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, a zigzag or something like that.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, they were just laid in lines.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is number one.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: But it was never installed, this is the whole point.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, that is exactly. If you read the eyewitness
17 descriptions, if you go and look at the wretched things in
18 Auschwitz, that is exactly what they are. They are
19 multi-muffle ovens.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But having read the extracts that Professor
21 van Pelt has cited in his report, it seems to me that they
22 are at best of equivocal significance on this question of
23 whether human fat will cause them to incinerate more
24 frequently. It is page 540 just about the middle.
25 MR RAMPTON: What I think I misunderstood —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the theory of the thing rather than
. P-159
1 whether it is the particular relevant patent.
2 MR RAMPTON: But the eyewitness testimony, Mr Irving, of, for
3 example, Henrich Tagebuch tells us that that is exactly
4 what they did.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: We will see what we have to think of Henrich Teuer when
6 the time comes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The time has now come for you to outline, if you will, but
8 I just want to ask one more thing before I move to the
9 eyewitness evidence.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Let me say just briefly about Henrich Teuer. He was
11 clearly briefed as to what to say.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are coming on to that.
13 MR RAMPTON: You can tell me in a moment about Mr Teuer,
14 Mr Irving. I am sure we should like to know because then
15 Professor van Pelt can deal with it. The other reason why
16 it is an efficient process, if indeed it worked in the way
17 in which we have been told that it did, is that of course
18 you need much less fuel, do you not?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: We know exactly how much fuel on average is required to
20 cremate one corpse in existing crematoria.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Please listen to my question. If it works in this way,
22 that the corpses fuel one another and so the continuous
23 combustion process, then you need less coke?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: This is yet another “if” on which you base your case, but
25 unfortunately these were not the muffles actually
26 installed in Auschwitz and we know precisely what their
. P-160
1 efficiency was.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you say, Mr Irving. I am sorry, I just do not believe
3 that you know what you are talking about on the question
4 of what muffles, I am sorry, what quantity of corpses were
5 put into each muffle.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: We know because we have precise figures relating to the
7 these types of crematoria in, for example, the Gusen
8 concentration camp. We know precisely how many tons of
9 coke were needed to burn how many hundred bodies, and we
10 have I think an average of 30.5 kilograms of coke per body
11 being cremated.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that in a single body crematoria?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: They were the identical muffles that were installed in
14 Auschwitz, the identical crematoria, is my understanding.
15 MR RAMPTON: But are you saying that in that crematorium at
16 Gusen they burnt more than one body at a time in a muffle?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: They were the identical furnaces.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not answer my questions, Mr Irving, too often. Are
19 you saying that they burnt more than one body at a time in
20 those muffles?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I should certainly, if you attach importance to that, go
22 back and look at it, but I do not see what the difference
23 is —-
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is critically important.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: — because if it is an average figure and you need that
26 much coke to burn one body, then stuffing them in four at
. P-161
1 a time is not going to make it any better.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are missing Mr Rampton’s point.
3 MR RAMPTON: You are missing the point.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the reason you are missing it is
5 because you just do not know really the answer, whether
6 you do burn one body —-
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I would have to go and check up on the sources.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — more quickly if you have another body being burnt
9 simultaneously.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: I said repeatedly I am not a Holocaust expert. I did not
11 want to become a Holocaust expert. I have to defend my
12 position here.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: We cannot take it any further I think.
Section 162.14-175.21
14 MR RAMPTON: I agree, we cannot take it any further. My Lord,
15 I will ask one question and Mr Irving can put in what he
16 likes to say about Mr Teuer or anybody else. I will ask
17 one question about the eyewitness evidence, and then
18 I believe I am in a position where I can sit down on this
19 part of the case.
20 Mr Irving, what do you say about all the
21 eyewitness evidence about Auschwitz for a start?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: What an extraordinary question.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, is it —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, answer it. Do not worry about whether
25 it is extraordinary or not.
26 MR RAMPTON: It is not an extraordinary question at all.
. P-162
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Answer it.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: All can I say in general is that I would attach less
3 importance to the eyewitness evidence than I would to the
4 British intercepts, to the aerial photographs, to the
5 concrete evidence, literally the archeological evidence,
6 to the documents I find in the archives, way down all the
7 documents of that sort, sources of that nature, I would
8 put way down believe that whatever any eyewitnesses might
9 say.
10 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, if it be the case that the eyewitness
11 evidence is broadly consistent with the documentary — it
12 is an “if” I know, so do not say “if” — if the eyewitness
13 evidence is broadly consistent with the documentary
14 evidence, then we can pay quite a lot of attention to the
15 eyewitness evidence, do you not agree?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Except on one premise.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: If the eyewitnesses have been briefed on the basis of the
19 documents as to what to say.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Of course.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Right.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If they have been sitting in a room with a pistol to their
23 head and they have been shown a document and said, “That
24 mean it’s a gas chamber, doesn’t it?”, and they have said
25 “Yes, of course”?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: If, for example, they describe as having seen a building
. P-163
1 which turns out to have existed only on paper, then we
2 know they have been shown the architectural designs and
3 they are describing what they have seen on the design and
4 not what they have actually seen in real life or concrete.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, you do not know that.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, we do. There is one particular case, Mr Teuer.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There may be one particular case, but you do not know that
8 a person who is shown a drawing does not recognize it as
9 what he has seen in real life, do you?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Except if the drawing was never actually put into effect
11 in that shape but was subsequently amended.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: One has to be very cautious about eyewitness testimony,
13 particularly when it is remembered sometime after the
14 events in question, does one not, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And one will test it by reference to material by which it
17 cannot have been contaminated, yes?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That includes eyewitness testimony from other people with
20 whom the particular witness has not had any contact, does
21 it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, except indirectly of course through the interrogator.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. If the Brits and the Poles put their heads together
24 and produce what we might call a joint questionnaire which
25 is uniformly put to all eyewitnesses, I quite agree with
26 you. Have you any evidence of that?
. P-164
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I did not say that.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the answer no?
3 MR RAMPTON: The answer is no, is it not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: No, but if the same British interrogator questions two
5 people in a row, then there will be a certain amount of
6 cross-pollination between the two reports.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But if somebody is being questioned in London and somebody
8 else is being questioned in Norway and somebody else is
9 being questioned in Poland, then unless the interrogators
10 have put their heads together, there is no chance that the
11 witnesses’s testimony may be mistaken?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But there is no chance that it is going to be deliberately
14 fabricated in that way, is there?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: No, not in that way.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you tell, me and it may be that this is
17 too general a question to be capable of being answered,
18 what you say the motivation of the eyewitnesses who
19 painted a false picture of what had been going on in
20 Auschwitz was?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I would say it varies, my Lord. It would be partly fear,
22 partly the promise of alleviated punishment, partly
23 torture, partly pecuniary. It depends on when we are
24 talking about, whether it was done recently in connection
25 a Hollywood film or back in 1945 to assist the Polish
26 authorities.
. P-165
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You sound from that answer as if you are really talking
2 about camp officials?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I am talking about camp officials.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Rather than survivors. What about the motivation of the
5 survivors?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: To my knowledge none of the survivors who are not camp
7 officials claimed to have been in gas chambers, inside
8 them.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, but they give what admittedly would be circumstantial
10 evidence, but nevertheless quite vivid circumstantial
11 evidence —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: They give a lot circumstantial evidence.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — about what they infer must have been happening, do
14 they not?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I really hesitate to set traps for myself by generalizing,
16 my Lord. I prefer to see precisely who we are talking
17 about. When we are dealing with camp officials we have
18 the odd phenomenon that people who would normally be
19 candidates for the gallows somehow survive, and almost
20 entirely coincidentally give statements that undoubtedly
21 Mr Rampton will be relying on.
22 MR RAMPTON: You see, if you read Professor van Pelt’s report,
23 Mr Irving, which I think you probably have done, you find
24 evidence from what he calls perpetrators, camp officials,
25 Rudolf Hess, Broad, Altemeyer, Gravno, people like that,
26 which is broadly consistent, is it not, in every detail?
. P-166
1 But that is the nature of eyewitness testimony,
2 Mr Irving. You would agree, would you not, eyewitness
3 testimony which is consistent in every detail is highly
4 suspicious, would you agree?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: It prompts the word “collusion” to mind.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, exactly, collusion. But eyewitness testimony, which
7 is broadly consistent but which has differences of detail,
8 is, unless there is reason to think that the person is
9 lying, reliable as an honest account even if it be a
10 mistaken one. Do you agree?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It depends what you call difficulties of detail. If they
12 are really scandalously large differences, discrepancies,
13 then you have to a ask yourself how and why the
14 discrepancy exists. I am thinking, for example, of the
15 memoirs of Hirst.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Hirst’s own various accounts are not consistent
17 amongst themselves, are they?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Which suggests that one should straightaway, if one is a
19 reasonable historian, discard him as a source completely.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. This would be grossly improper as a reasonable
21 historian, Mr Irving, may I suggest. The right approach to
22 such evidence is to treat it with all caution and to ask
23 oneself, where can I check it against other evidence to
24 see whether it is accurate or not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I agree.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: One can could do that with Commander Hirst.
. P-167
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a yellow light, proceed with caution.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, proceed with caution. One can do that with Commander
3 Hirst and one can find, unless he has been fed his lines
4 by the polls, corroboration for almost all the important
5 things that he says in his various statements, do you
6 agree?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I think Hirst and Eichmann are two pitiful characters —
8 Eichmann is another eyewitness — where we need to know a
9 great deal almost as psychologists about their mentality
10 of this servile eager to please kind of mentality that we
11 are feeling with. That is why I hate using eyewitness
12 evidence because you have intangible subjective factors
13 coming in, where all your instincts as a historian, as
14 I say, will close to cover on that file because this file
15 is trouble, let us look for something that is more
16 concrete. Altemeyer is another case in mind.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I cannot accept that, Mr Irving. You will take as an
18 historian, if you have an open mind that is, such evidence
19 as there is, give it such weight as it may deserve and you
20 will then make a decision whether or not to discard it.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: That is an alternative approach.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not discard a piece of evidence just because it is
23 rocky in some area.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: In the case of Hirst, you see, you have the following
25 problem. He undoubtedly deserved it. He was brutally
26 treated when he was taken prisoner by the by British in
. P-168
1 March 1946. He was very badly man handled. At the end of
2 the following year, of course, he was then hanged by the
3 Poles and I would be the last person to say he did not
4 deserve it. In between those months, the day of his
5 arrest and the day of his final hanging, execution and
6 hanging, we do not know what went through his tortured
7 mind. We do know that his report is full of the most
8 incredible misstatements so that even Adolf Eichmann,
9 writing in the margin of the Hirst report, and I have this
10 book actually in my hand, because somebody bought it in a
11 second hand book shop, with Eichmann’s comments on it,
12 said this man is talking through his hat. This is totally
13 untrue. It renders the whole source document so suspect
14 that either you can use it indiscriminately and say, hey
15 this helps my case and I am going to use every bit I can
16 that is of use and pretend the rest does not exist, which
17 is what the average historian has done, or in my case you
18 say this document is so suspect I do not want to go
19 anywhere near it. That is the way I would treat it.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But, you see, the problem is, Mr Irving, that much of what
21 Hirst said is corroborated by other people, is it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: You say corroborated but, of course, we do not know how
23 far it has been cross pollinated by reading the
24 newspapers.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is a different point.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: By sitting in the same court house and hearing what other
. P-169
1 people are saying, by being told by interrogating
2 officers, “If you sign this affidavit we have typed up,
3 then we will get you a shorter sentence”. This is the
4 kind of thing that went on at Nuremberg, along with a lot
5 of uglier things. These so-called affidavits that these
6 people signed were not written out in their own longhand.
7 They were dictated to them and they were then obliged to
8 sign them.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you familiar with the testimony which Eric Bauer gave
10 at Ludwigsberg in, I do not know what year it was?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I am not, I can read it though.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: My Lord, I am looking at page 581 of van Pelt. He is
13 recorded by Professor van Pelt to have testified as
14 follows about the extermination of Jews in Sobibor.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let Mr Irving find it.
16 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I say straightaway that I have myself been before the
18 courts in Austria. They do not take verbatim testimony in
19 the manner that we take here with court reporters. The
20 report is drawn up by a court official in abbreviated form
21 so these are not necessarily —-
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, it is in the first person. I dare say, I do not
23 know, I have not seen the original document. Maybe it is
24 in the file. He said this, he also used the word
25 vergassung as an adjective, he is talking about gassing of
26 Jews at Sobibor, “The doors were sealed airtight and
. P-170
1 immediately the gassing procedure
2 vergassungsforgang commenced”. Is that after some 20 to
3 30 minutes, complete silence in the gas chambers, people
4 were vergassed?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: He is probably accurate. He is probably describing
6 something that really happened there.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is the same formation, is it not, vergassungswagen we
8 see with Eichmann at the top of the page? We notice
9 Wetzel’s vergassungsakavater earlier.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: There is no other way you could describe gassing procedure
11 except by the German phrase vergassungsforgang.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then we come to Dayaco and Eiffel, who were tried, I think
13 in —-
14 A. [Mr Irving]: 1972. I believe I am right in saying that they were both
15 aquitted, oddly enough, were they not?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I believe that they were acquitted.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: So obviously the court did not pay much attention to this
18 kind of evidence. They had the chance of cross-examining
19 the witnesses.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We should take precedent from that, should we, Mr Irving?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Certainly, if they hear the same witnesses. We do not
22 have the chance of cross-examining these witnesses that
23 you are giving to me now, but if the court in Vienna
24 acquitted Dayaco and Eiffel, who were the architects of
25 Auschwitz, they were acquitted and set free. They had had
26 the chance of cross-examining these witnesses. Surely
. P-171
1 that should say something to you about the value of the
2 testimony they gave.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It says nothing to me at all because I do not know the
4 reason why they were acquitted.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: They were acquitted because they were innocent.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There are all sorts of reasons why people can be
7 acquitted. If you are anxious to find out the answer to
8 why they were acquitted, you can ask Professor van Pelt.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: I know why they were acquitted. I know their case quite
10 well.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You see, it says both Dayaco and Eiffel, testifying during
12 their trial in 1972, used the term “gassing spaces”
13 vergassungsraume to denote gas chambers. You can see that
14 that is so if you turn back — I am sorry it is such a
15 long journey — to page 341 of the same report, my Lord.
16 Would your Lordship at the same time find it convenient to
17 turn up this document? It is in the same file. You might
18 do the same, Mr Irving. In the smaller of the two
19 Auschwitz files, the second one, there is a document at
20 page 2 to which this part of the text of van Pelt refers.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: The smaller of the two Auschwitz files at page 2?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Tab 4, sorry, yes. Tab 4, page 2. It is in the same set
23 of originals.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: The same document.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just so that, if you want to, you can look at the original
26 German.
. P-172
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw attention to the brief number on that document,
2 handwritten number?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not say these things just to be pig headed about
5 documents arousing my suspicion.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: At the top of page 341 of van Pelt we see this: “On August
7 19th 1942 Eiffel chaired a meeting in which members of the
8 Central Construction Office discussed with engineer Kurt
9 Brufer of Topf and sons the creation of four crematoria in
10 Birkenhau. Item 2 mentioned the construction of two
11 triple oven incinerators near the bath houses for special
12 actions”.
13 If you look over at the other document, the
14 original German document, it is in paragraph 2 on the
15 first page, first sentence, is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Could you read out what it says in German?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: [German spoken- document not provided].
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I am sorry, I meant translated.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: With regard to the erection of two each three muffle
21 furnaces at the bath house for special actions we propose
22 Engineer Brufer suggested —-
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That will do.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Taking the furnaces —-
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In fact as you see, if you look at the end of the
26 memorandum, what in fact in the end they decided on was
. P-173
1 I think two four muffle ovens?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What were sonderhaktiernun, do you think, Mr
4 Irving?
5 MR RAMPTON: Notice that the word [German spoken – document not
6 provided] are in quotes in the original, are they not?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to ask you a question about that in a moment,
9 go back to the text of van Pelt the top of 341, if you
10 will. “Item 2 mentions the construction of two triple oven
11 incinerators near the bath houses for special actions.
12 These are the gas chambers also known as bunkers one and
13 two”. Van Pelt says that. “On January 21st 1972 Eiffel
14 testified in court that, when he wrote down the word bath
15 houses for special actions, he knew exactly what this
16 euphemism meant ‘I knew at the time that this concerned
17 gassing spaces'”.
18 Now, that is right is it not? I mean, he said
19 that, do you know? You say you know the trial well. Yes?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I know the reason why he was acquitted, yes.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Concentrate on the point that Mr Rampton is
22 on.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 MR RAMPTON: Concentrate on the point. It is at the bottom of
25 page, the German, so we can be sure that you are not going
26 to accuse van Pelt of mistranslation.
. P-174
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it did not mean that, I think this is
2 really the point, what did sonderaktionen mean?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: It does not really advance us very far. It just says he
4 knows they were talking about the gassing spaces.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That was for clothes?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Vergassungsraume is always for fumigation of clothes,
7 yes.
8 MR RAMPTON: No. Unless Van Pelt has got it wrong, I do not
9 know, the German seem to say, I knew at that time that
10 this, that is [German spoken- document not provided]
11 concerned gassing spaces.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I think we can assume that, had Eiffel then been examined
13 further, as no doubt a good counsel would have done, and
14 said what do you mean by [German spoken – document not
15 provided] presumably mean homicidal gas chambers, and he
16 would then have given either yes or no answer, but we are
17 not told because Mr van Pelt has only give us half a
18 sentence here.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a fair point.
20 MR RAMPTON: You can take that up with him. It is maybe a fair
21 point.
Section 175.22-191.26
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, at some stage can we elicit
23 something we had planned to elicit, namely to what extent
24 was Mr Irving aware, when he made his statements about the
25 gas chambers not having existed, of this and indeed the
26 other evidence which you are taking him through? At some
. P-175
1 stage we have to know the answer to that, do we not?
2 MR RAMPTON: Actually no, because I have always said, as I have
3 said earlier, I think last week, that he leapt on to
4 Leuchter when it must have been perfectly obvious, if he
5 had been interested in finding out, by thinking about it
6 and asking if the Leuchter was rubbish, he stuck with
7 Leuchter, despite the fact that it is rubbish. He has
8 never taken the trouble to go to Auschwitz and look and
9 I suggest two things flow from that. One is that he is
10 not just a rotten historian but a bent historian because
11 he lends his weight to Holocaust denial without having the
12 materials to do so, and second, that he has an ulterior
13 motive for that disreputable stance.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that, but does the question not need
15 to at least to be asked at some stage?
16 MR RAMPTON: By all means.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well all this evidence is out there. Did
18 you consult it and, if you did, why did you reject it?
19 I think we went through this.
20 MR RAMPTON: I thought that I had done that. He had never been
21 to Auschwitz.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, certainly never been to Auschwitz.
23 MR RAMPTON: Did you ever go to Vienna and look at the record
24 of the trial of these people?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: No. I can simplify the matter by saying that, whenever
26 there is an Auschwitz stamp on a document like this one,
. P-176
1 I have not seen it before the trial.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You follow the point I am trying to get at.
3 There is a lot of evidence which the Defendants point to
4 as demonstrating beyond the shadow of doubt that there
5 were gas chambers at Auschwitz and they were used to kill
6 Jews.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I strongly disagree with that statement.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: When you read Leuchter, I appreciate that you then formed
9 a view, but to what extent did you take into account the
10 other evidence outside Leuchter and his examination of
11 those samples?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Let me take it seriatim. First of all, I disagree with
13 the fact that we have seen a volume of evidence that there
14 were indeed gas chambers. I do not think that we have
15 seen any evidence yet. We have seen evidence which can be
16 read that way if you are so inclined. Secondly, I am told
17 that I never tried to go to Auschwitz. In 1992
18 I contacted the director of state archives at Auschwitz,
19 Mr Piper and he refused to assist me. So it was quite
20 evident that I would get no assistance whatsoever from the
21 Auschwitz state archives.
22 MR RAMPTON: We have been through this last week.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: No, we have not.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, we have.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: No, we have not.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is new to me.
. P-177
1 A. [Mr Irving]: In 1998 when I attempted to go to Auschwitz with the BBC
2 team, Auschwitz ruled that I would not be allowed to set
3 foot on the compound, on their campus or to visit their
4 state archives.
5 MR RAMPTON: I do not want to go over old ground, but I am
6 going to in a minute, Mr Irving.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can he finish the answer? I personally think
8 this is quite important. That was a closed book to you
9 but there are other sources of information.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: I have therefore never seen any documents that have come
11 from the Auschwitz state archives. In 1992 I went to the
12 Moscow state archives where the other major collection is,
13 which I used only in order to obtain the Goebbels
14 diaries. As a result of the machinations of my opponents,
15 the Moscow state archives were thereupon closed to me and
16 I was informed that I would not be allowed to return
17 there, so I am told. So that also closed that avenue of
18 access to any documents which come from the Moscow state
19 archives which were also not known to me until shortly
20 before this trial.
21 MR RAMPTON: I am going to pursue that, Mr Irving.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am so sorry, Mr Rampton. I just want to
23 get the complete answer and then by all means pursue any
24 of it. So that, you say, closed off the Moscow archives
25 as well. But you would accept, would you not, that there
26 is whole lot of material and data to be found in all sorts
. P-178
1 of places, some of which is before the court and a lot of
2 it in Professor van Pelt’s report, to which you could have
3 had access, had you been so minded? Is that not right?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, the litany of woe continues. I am banned from
5 the Institute of History in Munich, thanks to exactly the
6 same campaign. I am banned from the German federal
7 archives with effect from July 1st 1993, thanks to exactly
8 the same campaign. I have faced mounting difficulties in
9 continuing to do research. When I tried recently to get
10 documents from the Wiener Library in London, which
11 is exactly the same kind of historical archives, the
12 director of the Wiener Library archives said that it would
13 refuse to assist me.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So what it really comes to — forgive me, Mr Rampton,
15 I will stop after this question — is that really almost
16 every avenue, you say, has been closed to you for one
17 reason or another and at one stage or another?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: At one stage or another. I am not saying that it has been
19 closed over the entire period. It is fair to say that.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Might it be said against you that in that case it might
21 have been more sensible, when were you giving talks about
22 whether the Holocaust had happened or not, to make it
23 clear that you really, beyond Leuchter, had almost no
24 historical material available to you?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, there had been endless publications about
26 precisely these matters, for example the suspect document,
. P-179
1 which I have paid due attention to. I have not had access
2 to the archives myself, but I have had the opportunity of
3 benefiting from the expertise of others.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But my question was, should you not have made that clear
5 to your audiences when you were saying, well, it is plain
6 that battleship Auschwitz had sunk?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I think I made it quite plain to the audiences that the
8 initial impetus for making that statement was the Leuchter
9 report with the chemical results contained in that report,
10 which I still considered to be a very valuable starting
11 point for the whole controversy.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. Thank you. That now clarifies my
13 mind.
14 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, Mr Irving, I simply cannot accept
15 anything really of what you have said, apart from the fact
16 that you have been banned from various places, but the
17 thrust of it I reject in its entirety. Do you have the
18 first of the Auschwitz files, please, the big one? Can
19 you turn to the correspondence tab (which I think is tab
20 8) and to a letter of 30th October 1989? I do not have
21 the page number, I am afraid.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I am hoping his Lordship will read all the letters under
23 tab 8.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I am hoping he will too but that is not the point.
25 It is marked with a 10. Is that a letter from Mr Weber to
26 you?
. P-180
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Will you turn please to the last page of that letter?
3 Remember that the date is 30th October 1989.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the first paragraph on that last page: “Some time
6 ago you mentioned that we might be willing to contribute a
7 Foreword to my book conditional upon reading the
8 manuscript and, even though you are now working on a book
9 of your own about Auschwitz and our work may therefore
10 overlap somewhat, I hope that you are still willing to
11 consider contributing a Foreword. I like to think that
12 all the thoughtful and well documented revisionist work is
13 mutually beneficial and a boost to the overall cause”.
14 Now, Mr Irving, were you working on a book about Auschwitz
15 in October 1989?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why did Mr Weber think that you were?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know. In October 1989 I was working — let me
19 think — I had just delivered the new edition of Hitler’s
20 War, I was almost certainly working on the Herman Goring
21 biography.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: May I suggest that Mr Weber said what he did because
23 either you or somebody else on your behalf had told him
24 that you were working on a book on Auschwitz?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, your instructing solicitors have had complete
26 access to all my files, including my entire private
. P-181
1 diaries. If you had found any evidence that I was working
2 on a book about Auschwitz, I am sure you would have had it
3 before the court.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I did not say that you were, Mr Irving. You notice
5 I tried to choose my words carefully.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: You were strongly suggesting.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — that somebody had told him, perhaps you, that you were?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: That is not evidence. As I say, you have had complete
11 access to all my private records.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It would be evidence, Mr Irving, if you had told Mr Weber
13 that, would it not? Not that you were doing it, but that
14 you said that you were doing it.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot quite see why he should, myself?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: He does not say even though you said you are now working
17 on a book. But I can only repeat, had you found any
18 evidence of this in my private diaries or telephone logs
19 or papers, I am sure you would have had it before the
20 court.
21 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, the Leuchter report came to your
22 knowledge in August 1988, did it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: April 1988.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I beg your pardon, April 1988. When did you first make an
25 attempt to look at any of the archive documents, whether
26 in Auschwitz or in Moscow?
. P-182
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I cannot tell you off the top of my head, but certainly,
2 when I went to the national archives in Washington,
3 I would have read more intensively in the papers of
4 Heinrich Himmler or the SS and, when I went to any other
5 places, for example the Public Record Office, I started
6 also paying more attention to Auschwitz at that time.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: When was that?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, again I cannot, I have been to the Public Record
9 Office in London probably 50 or 100 times.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You were going in August ’89 I think, ’88, and you said,
11 I do not know what this is from, this is a speech in
12 Toronto:
13 “I am going to visit in this four-month swing
14 around the entire United States, East Coast and West
15 Coast, probably about 40 different Government and private
16 archives on various projects, and everywhere I go I am
17 looking into the archives to see what they have got on
18 Auschwitz.”
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Now what was to prevent you making a similar trip to
21 Poland at that time?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: 1988?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In 1988.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: It was behind the Iron Curtain.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So what?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: The Iron Curtain had not come down.
. P-183
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Humble Mr Pressac got there in ’82, ’83. Professor van
2 van Pelt was there in 1990.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you seem to forget I am not a Holocaust
4 historian. I have to keep on reminding you of this. I am
5 an historian of the top Nazis. I write about Goring and
6 Hitler and Rommel and Hess. To do that you do not have to
7 go to Auschwitz. I read Professor van Pelt’s book with
8 enormous interest as a book. One of the first books I
9 read from cover to cover.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is where I thought we were going to get to. So the
11 fact that in due course you would have been unable to go
12 to Auschwitz because of a ban, is quite beside the point.
13 You never had any intention of doing so, did you?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I never had any need to go there. I am not a Holocaust
15 historian for the hundredth time.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then, may I suggest, that it was wholly improper of you to
17 give Leuchter such a high profile, given your supposed
18 position as an historian of repute?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think so. You say “high profile”, how many lines
20 of each speech did I deliver? Shall I do a calculation
21 tonight of how many per cent, what fraction of 1 per cent
22 of my speeches concern Mr Leuchter over the last ten
23 years? I would suggest it is less than 1 per cent. You
24 have read out just the lines dealing with him.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: His Lordship has in front of him the entire bundle and he
. P-184
1 can see how very low he barked on my horizon.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving, it will not do. You actually went to the
3 trouble of publishing your own glossy version of the
4 Leuchter report nine months, no more, over a year after
5 the Zundel trial, and of announcing its birth to the world
6 with a press conference?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, what is the point of that?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: I think it produced an extremely valuable stimulus to the
10 entire research community. Without the Leuchter report
11 there would have been none of these in depth
12 investigations in archeological tests and searches and so
13 on. It has been an extremely useful report in that
14 respect. That is why I said in the introduction, I said
15 the ball is now in their court. It is very much intended
16 as stimulus to further research.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Without your having taken the least trouble to investigate
18 the question yourself?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I am a publisher in this respect.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, in this guise you are a publisher. You are only an
21 historian when it comes to Adolf Hitler and that sort of
22 thing, is that right?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think I actually said that. Certainly you asked
24 me about the Leuchter report and I acted as the
25 publisher. I was not the author. You have seen the
26 letters in which I say I did not write a single line of
. P-185
1 it, except the introduction. I merely provided the
2 publishing facilities.
3 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I do not think I can usefully ask any
4 more questions in relation to Auschwitz at all, unless
5 I am told that I must.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think that is right.
7 MR RAMPTON: I really do. I will come back now finally to
8 where I started I think last week.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My only hesitation is, and it is a problem
10 because Mr Irving is in person, that he plainly is
11 wanting, as I understand it, to say there are various
12 later developments post Leuchter which confirmed in his
13 original conclusion that Leuchter was really a dramatic
14 new piece of evidence which really did clinch the argument
15 against the Holocaust affirmers, as it were. Do you want
16 to leave that hanging in the air until re-examination?
17 You do not have to ask any questions, but there is
18 something to be said for seeing —-
19 MR RAMPTON: About the new evidence?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 MR RAMPTON: I have a question about the new evidence, because
22 he mentioned, I think, really only one specifically which
23 was a report by somebody called I think Germer Rudolf?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: The Rudolf report.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was not only that, but certainly that was
26 one of the things.
. P-186
1 MR RAMPTON: What else is there, Mr Irving?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Something in 1945, Auschwitz.
3 MR RAMPTON: 45 was the Polish report we looked at.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure it was.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: There was no another Polish after the Leuchter report.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, in 1945.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: No, in 1989.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was there not another one in 1945 that you
9 are relying on.
10 MR RAMPTON: No, the only 1945 report is the report your
11 Lordship has seen. There was a preliminary report by the
12 forensic people in about 1991 in response to Leuchter. It
13 was unsatisfactory. They redid it under Professor
14 Markovic’s aegis and that produced positive results.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: The first one was politically incorrect, so they put it
16 away in the safe and they produced a new version.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say that. When are you proposing to deal
18 with that?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord I am going to have to ask for instructions from
20 your Lordship as to how I can put this material. I was
21 proposing to do this kind of thing in the — I was going
22 to put these documents to the experts and I thought that
23 would be an appropriate way of doing it.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not disagreeing about that, but you
25 obviously want to say something on these topics.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I certainly do not like leaving it.
. P-187
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am content to deal with it that way.
2 MR RAMPTON: I am too. The only thing I am not content about,
3 since I have finished maybe I can say this now, I am not
4 content about is (A) I have not had time and nor, I dare
5 say, has Professor van Pelt who has been sitting in court,
6 to review the new material we were given this morning; and
7 (B) I have never seen the Rudolf report because it is not
8 in Mr Irving discovery.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it is.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am told it is not.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: If it is not then I humbly apologise. It certainly should
12 have been, and I will provide copies immediately.
13 MR RAMPTON: Miss Rogers is the most reliable person in the
14 world when it comes to these matters and she says it is
15 not. So I am going to rely on her for the moment.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I will eat humble pie today provided —-
17 MR RAMPTON: If reliance is to be placed on it then we need
18 time to look at it.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor van Pelt needs time particularly
20 because he will be the one who has to deal with it. How
21 easy would it be for you to dig it out?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I can have it couriered around this afternoon.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That would be helpful. I think he ought to
24 have it.
25 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that leads to my final enquiry of your
26 Lordship. Other things being equal I would want Professor
. P-188
1 van Pelt to go into the witness box sometime tomorrow, but
2 plainly if he does Mr Irving must keep off the new
3 material until Professor van Pelt has had a chance —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He may have time because Mr Irving has just
5 said he is going to be able to get it round this
6 afternoon.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, there are two things. The Rudolf report is one
8 and also on your Lordship’s instructions I have allowed
9 the Defence sight of an expert critique I received from an
10 architect on his report.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that what you gave me this morning?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: It is what I gave your Lordship this morning, yes.
13 MR RAMPTON: It has no name on it.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: You are not entitled to this man’s name, with respect.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid that is a matter for me and I do
16 not at the moment understand why you say that.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: This man is obviously in a leading position in the world
18 of architecture and he is, frankly, frightened because he
19 knows what the people backing the Defendants in this
20 action are capable of doing to people of stature.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang on, are you proposing to call him to
22 give evidence?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I am not. He is purely a person who has advised me in
24 private on some of the technical matters, the
25 architectural matters, which are involved in this case, as
26 the nature of correspondence.
. P-189
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then, subject to Mr Rampton, I think you can
2 put the propositions contained in whichever document you
3 are talking about, because I do not think I have seen it,
4 and I do not think there is any reason why I should compel
5 his identity to be disclosed.
6 MR RAMPTON: Absolutely not. As I now understand it, all
7 I think has happened is that we have been given a brief
8 for cross-examination.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, which is what you asked for and you have
10 now got it.
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I do not think Mr Irving is asking your
12 Lordship to receive it as evidence, because you cannot do
13 that.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: No, it is not, but your Lordship did say that this kind of
15 thing was disclosable to the Defendants.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say I was under a slight
17 misapprehension. I thought you were talking about
18 material that was going to be led by you through the mouth
19 of an expert witness. If I had known it was simply —-
20 A. [Mr Irving]: It is more of the nature of correspondence between
21 ourselves.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — simply material for you to cross-examine on, I think I
23 would not have had said you had to hand it over.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: We have no reason not to show it to them. It is just that
25 unfortunately he have now been obliged to disclose some of
26 our cards.
. P-190
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there may have been a
2 misunderstanding.
3 MR RAMPTON: I misunderstood. I thought what we were being
4 given was some sort of expert’s report. As it is not so,
5 may I in front of Mr Irving endorse what your Lordship
6 said. I do not want to see anything which has not been
7 tendered in evidence or otherwise relied on.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You hear that, Mr Irving?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, with luck Professor van Pelt can give
11 evidence tomorrow. He is here.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. Then you are going to resume
13 again afterwards.
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am then going back to Irving stuff.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we have the discussion tomorrow about
16 the future programme? I suspect you would rather do that
17 then than now. Mr Irving has had a long day just as you
18 have.
19 MR RAMPTON: I need to take instructions.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I thought, yes. So I think we
21 will adjourn a little earlier, unless there is anything
22 else that can usefully be covered.
23 < (The witness stood down)
24 (The Court adjourned until the following day)
25
26
. P-191