Day 19 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 4.6)
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, 14th February 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 (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company)
24 PROCEEDINGS – DAY NINETEEN
25
26
. P-1
1 <Day 19) Monday, 14th February 2000
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving.
3 MR IRVING: May it please the court. I have given your
4 Lordship a little bundle of documents. That is a bundle
5 of translations, my Lord, is that right, which your
6 Lordship asked for, the Kommissar order and various other
7 documents. I do not think your Lordship needs to look at
8 it now, but your Lordship did ask for the translations.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very kind of you. Thank you. The
10 usual question, where should it go?
11 MR RAMPTON: We do not have them.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the Kommissar order in German?
13 MR IRVING: I have a set of copies for the Defence, but
14 I forgot to bring them.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could somebody look out where the Kommissar
16 order is in German?
17 MR RAMPTON: We do not have the translations, so I do not know
18 what document it is.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you remember the Kommissar order being
20 referred to? I am not actually sure we have it in German
21 either. Anyway, can I leave it with you?
22 MR IRVING: Yes, guidelines and Kommissar order.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
24 MR RAMPTON: The one of May 1941, is that the one?
25 MR IRVING: That is correct, yes.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: June, I think.
. P-2
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, I have also given you a little bundle
2 which I have called temporarily bundle F, Professor
3 Evans. These are documents which, in the course of
4 cross-examination, I intend to put to Professor Evans.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is very helpful to have them all in one
6 place.
7 MR IRVING: I have provided the defence with four or five sets.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
9 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, there is something I should wish to
10 mention, if I may. I do it now because time is getting
11 short.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
13 MR RAMPTON: I received on Sunday, yesterday, what purports to
14 be a further witness statement of Dr Fox.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
16 MR RAMPTON: Has your Lordship been sent that?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think so, no.
18 MR RAMPTON: I think your Lordship should be given a copy.
19 MR IRVING: I have a copy but in fact I decided not to call
20 that witness. I should say that now in fact.
21 MR RAMPTON: That is helpful. I can sit down and be quiet.
22 MR IRVING: Quite simply, the witness was going to testify on
23 two matters. One was what Mr Rampton referred to as
24 freedom of speech matters, and I was also going to add to
25 that the police decodes, but I decided on balance that
26 I know as much about the police decodes as he does. We
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1 have both worked on the same body, so I think it would
2 help to save the court’s time if we do not call him and
3 just rely on his written statement.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a matter for you, obviously.
5 MR IRVING: My Lord, I now wish to continue the
6 cross-examination of Professor Evans.
Part II: Professor Evans Cross-Examined by Irving (4.7 to 113.22)
Section 4.7 to 20.16
7 < PROFESSOR EVANS, Recalled
8 < Cross-examined by MR IRVING, continued.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Professor Evans, come back into the
10 witness box. I wondered before you start, Mr Irving, if
11 I might ask one question that is in my mind of Professor
12 Evans. It is this. You were asked, you remember, on
13 Thursday what material of Mr Irving’s you had been
14 studying in order to arrive at the conclusions you arrived
15 at in your written report.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Your answer was that you had focused, at any rate, on what
18 Mr Irving described as the chain of documents on which he
19 relies for his contention that Hitler was relatively
20 friendly towards the Jews. I should know myself the
21 answer to this, but where does Mr Irving make his
22 reference to the chain of documents? I think it is his
23 phrase, is it not?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I simply cannot remember where and when he made that
26 reference.
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1 MR IRVING: My Lord, perhaps I can help? I have made reference
2 in various speeches to the chain of documents of course,
3 and talks, and probably in the introduction to —-
4 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will find it on page 220 of
5 Professor Evans’s report at paragraph 4.3A(1).
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now that is on the transcript, that may
7 really be enough, but can I go to it?
8 MR RAMPTON: BBC Television in June 1977.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is sufficient, Professor Evans.
10 Thank you. Yes, Mr Irving. Do you want to pause and find
11 it? It will be quicker if you have it, I suspect.
12 MR IRVING: I made a number of sets for the gentlemen of the
13 press this morning so that they can follow what we are
14 doing, because there were complaints about that, my Lord.
15 Today I intend to continue to explore in general, if I can
16 just in two lines tell you what I am going to be doing,
17 the credibility of the witness with special reference to
18 the remarks that he has made about my methodology in the
19 introductory parts of his report. We will certainly cover
20 the first 100 to 150 pages of the report today, my Lord.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You must take your own course, but bear in
22 mind in the end I am anxious to look at the individual
23 criticisms as well as the general comments.
24 MR IRVING: Yes.(To the witness): Professor Evans, today is
25 the 55th anniversary of the air raid on Dresden. Would
26 you have described that as a Holocaust?
. P-5
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I could have described that as “a” Holocaust, but
2 I would, of course, make a distinction between that and
3 “the” Holocaust as it has come to be known. One can use
4 the term “Holocaust”. It is, I believe, used for any
5 event which involves large scale fire or burnings commonly
6 used in every day reporting. That is a distinct thing
7 from “the” Holocaust which I think has a special meaning.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the etymology of the word. It means “consumed by
9 fire” or “sacrificed by fire”. Are you aware that in your
10 report the phrase “Holocaust denier” occurs 261 times?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to confess I did not count.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: In fact, the words “denier” or “denial” occur 352 times,
13 which is a degree of repetition, would you agree? Are you
14 obsessed with Holocaust deniers?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I most certainly am not. I have to say I have not really
16 confronted the phenomenon until this case but, of course,
17 it is at the centre. It is perhaps the central issue in
18 this case and so I think, since I was asked to write about
19 it in my report, it is inevitable that that phrase occurs
20 many times.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say you were not confronted with it until this trial.
22 Do you normally write about things you have not studied in
23 any kind of depth?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that historians always need to move on to new
25 subjects, face a new challenge, otherwise they would be
26 endlessly repeating themselves.
. P-6
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw your attention to page 206 of the book which
2 you wrote? Do you recognize the book that you wrote?
3 This is the American edition?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, indeed.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will just read out a passage, if I may, of your own
6 words from page 206: “Holocaust denier literature which
7 declares that six million Jews were never murdered by the
8 Nazis and that Auschwitz and similar extermination camps
9 are fabrications of a postwar anti-German proJewish
10 political lobby” — is the way you still define Holocaust
11 denial, the statement that Auschwitz and the other camps
12 did not exist?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have a look at that passage, please?
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. It is on page 206 of the book.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Thank you very much.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: What I am asking you is has your position changed in view
17 of the —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page and what?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: 206. It is the paragraph beginning “Extreme relativism”
20 and towards the end of that paragraph, I repeat: “Thus
21 ‘Holocaust denial literature’ which declares that six
22 million Jews were never murdered by the Nazis and that
23 Auschwitz and similar extermination camps are fabrications
24 of a postwar anti-German proJewish political lobby”. My
25 question is this. Is this the way you define Holocaust
26 denial now or have you changed?
. P-7
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That is rather carelessly phrased, I am afraid.
2 I think I was trying to say there — “extermination” is
3 the central word there, that such camps were used mainly
4 or exclusively for extermination. I can see what you
5 mean. It is slightly carelessly phrased, I have to admit.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it possible to accept that the Nazis murdered in the
7 most brutal manner very large numbers of Jews by whatever
8 means and still be a Holocaust denier, in your view?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That depends on what you mean by “very large numbers”.
10 I think I defined in my report what I mean by Holocaust
11 denial.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Like one or two million people. Would that be acceptable?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you have to take the different — I have listed
14 four what I think are central elements of the Holocaust
15 denial.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And those four elements I think go together, they do
18 include a minimisation of numbers.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So any reduction of the numbers, whatever, is a denial?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is difficult to be very precise about this.
21 I say in my report that the generally accepted number by
22 historians is between 5 and 6 million, and there are a
23 number of disputes about that, but it does go together
24 with the three other conditions of Holocaust denial which
25 I lay out in my report. Of course, I think I do say in my
26 report that some people would, as it were, fall into one
. P-8
1 category of the four, but not into the others.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Were these four categories arbitrarily set up by
3 you, like to make them fit like a shoe the Claimant in
4 this present case, or did you always have these categories
5 in mind long you before you were commissioned to be an
6 expert witness in this case?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Neither, to be honest. When I was commissioned to be an
8 expert witness, of course the first thing I did was to
9 study the literature on Holocaust denial, and from that
10 literature, as you can see from my report, I go through it
11 at some length. There are varying different definitions
12 of conditions by the different political scientists and
13 historians who have written about it, but those four
14 I think are common to all of the definitions that I looked
15 at in the course of preparing this report.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. They do vary, though, do they not, these four sets
17 of definitions by the different authors?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think these four sets really vary. Of course
19 they are put in slightly different ways and different
20 authors add on other conditions, some of them peculiar to
21 the time at which they were writing.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, if somebody was to knock off two or three million
23 arbitrarily from the figures, that would be Holocaust
24 denial?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If it is arbitrary, then I think it involves an element
26 therefore of falsification of history, which then I think
. P-9
1 falls into that category, but I do want to stress that
2 these four conditions should be taken together.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not all or nothing, is it? You can get
4 somebody who is an outright 100 per cent denier and
5 somebody who perhaps does not deny it to the same full
6 blooded extent?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly, my Lord, it is not a hard and —-
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I think arguing about definitions is not hugely
9 productive?
10 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord. We should not really be asking
11 an expert witness about meanings of words, I appreciate
12 that, my Lord, but I am working towards something. You
13 have a little bundle of documents in front of you, a loose
14 bundle called F?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not, actually.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you turn to page (it should be) 37, which is a
17 photograph?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are numbered on the bottom?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are numbered on the bottom, the one after that
20 please?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that that says it is a plaque, is that
23 correct, a memorial plaque?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you recognize that plaque?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not, to be honest, no.
. P-10
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you agree that it says: “4 million people suffered
2 and died here at the hands of the Nazi murderers between
3 the years 1940 and 1945″?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is what it says.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you now turn the page please? Is that another
6 plaque?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you recognize that plaque?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not now that I can see what it is.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it appear to be in the same place as where the
11 previous plaque was?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will take your word for it.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree this one says: “Never let this place be a
14 cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis
15 murdered about one and a half million men, women and
16 children, namely Jews from various countries of Europe”?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this also Auschwitz?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are both in Auschwitz, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: So somebody has arbitrarily reduced the figure from 4
21 million to about 1.5 million? Is that Holocaust denial?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not agree that the reduction was arbitrary.
23 I think inevitably in the immediate aftermath of the war
24 there was an enormous amount of uncertainty about the
25 numbers who had died. This does not have a date on it,
26 but I think the 4 million is a plaque which was erected
. P-11
1 very shortly after the war and, as research progressed,
2 then the true number of people who died in Auschwitz was
3 more closely approached, so it is an arbitrary reduction.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the first figure, which is the figure of 4 million, in
5 any way associated with the figure of 4 million that was
6 propagated by the Soviet Union in the first postwar years
7 for the victims in Auschwitz, in your opinion?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say I do not know enough about Auschwitz. I am
9 not an expert on Auschwitz. You had an expert on
10 Auschwitz here.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will keep it in general terms. If you were told (as we
12 have heard) that Dr Piper, the director of the Auschwitz
13 State Museum at the time that first plaque was in
14 existence, and who arranged for it to be removed and
15 replaced by the second plaque, has stated that the first
16 plaque was purely propaganda, would you accept that this
17 is evidence of politicization of the Holocaust and the
18 figures connected with it?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, well, I would have to see Dr Piper’s statement
20 before I could accept that is what he said, of course. I
21 mean —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw your attention back we — will leave that
23 subject. Can I now take you back to your book, please?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have not got your answer yet. I think
25 the object of the exercise is to get the answer to the
26 question, Mr Irving.
. P-12
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, his answer was the now familiar one that
2 he has not seen the document.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, well, he was actually going on to say
4 something else. Would you like to complete it?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Obviously, I accept that there is an element of
6 propaganda in the official memorialization by the Soviet
7 Union and its satellites in the period of Communism. That
8 is particularly evident, for example, in the absence of
9 any mention of Jews in this first plaque, whereas in the
10 second one it does say mainly Jews. I think it is the
11 case that in the postwar years the Soviet Union and the
12 authorities in Communist Eastern Europe did want to
13 minimise the element of Jewish dead amongst the —-
14 MR IRVING: As evidence of general Polish anti-semitism or?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not think that is true. I think it is a number
16 of different things. It is not that.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: While you have your book in front of you, Professor Evans,
18 will you remain on page 206 and look at the next paragraph
19 briefly, which begins with the words: “A leading
20 authority”. I am sorry, my Lord, that I should have
21 provided your Lordship with the lines I am going to refer
22 to, but it is very brief.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will read it out: “A leading authority on this
25 literature, which is Holocaust denial literature,
26 Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt”, that is the Second
. P-13
1 Defendant in this case?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: “… of Emery University, Atlanta, Georgia, consistently
4 refuses to take part in public debates with the deniers on
5 the ground ‘to do so would give them a legitimacy and a
6 stature that they in no way deserve”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you any comment on this refusal to debate? Is it a
9 position of strength or a position of weakness, do you
10 think?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is a position of principle.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: A position of principle?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it is a tactical consideration, in my
14 understanding of it.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it a principle that you, as an academic, would
16 willingly adopt?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, yes, I do not think that Holocaust deniers are
18 academics or scholars or academically or scholarly
19 respectable, and I would not take part in seminars or
20 discussions with them on that basis.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: So Holocaust deniers, as you once again use this favourite
22 phrase of yours, are a form of low academic life or low
23 life, in fact, because most of them who have not been
24 academics find themselves cast out? Is that your
25 opinion?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not agree with any of those statements. First of
. P-14
1 all, it is not a favourite phrase of mine. It is a phrase
2 which I have to use because it is at the centre of this
3 case, as I make no apology for that. I do not like using
4 phrases like “low life” or “low form of life” and, to my
5 knowledge, I have never used those phrases. The problem
6 is not that they are not academic; the problem is what
7 they are engaging in, in my view, is a politically
8 motivated falsification of history, and that is why
9 I think, on the whole, I would endorse and accept
10 Professor Lipstadt’s position.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: But is it not equally arguable that the use that is made
12 of the Holocaust and that immense tragedy inflicted on the
13 Jews during World War II has just been equally politicized
14 for other purposes, whether good or bad?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think there is, obviously, a political element in a
16 great deal of historical writing, if not all historical
17 writing, to some measure or other, but I would distinguish
18 between the historians’, as it were, control of that
19 through reference to the documents and through the attempt
20 to arrive at an objective interpretation which is in
21 accordance with the documents, on the one hand, and
22 deliberate falsification and invention on the other.
23 I think the Holocaust deniers belong to the latter
24 category.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you consider —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And, of course, in academic and scholarly discussions, one
. P-15
1 puts aside political aspects and concentrates on the
2 issues.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it is a commonly held view, even among Jewish
4 academics, that the Holocaust is being abused for
5 political purposes now. Are you aware of the writings of
6 Norman Finglestein, for example? Do you have any opinion
7 about his qualifications as an academic or as a writer?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have — I am eagerly awaiting his book. He has written
9 an article and a couple of reviews which I think give some
10 foretaste, but I would not want to make a judgment on
11 these views.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you, by any chance, read what he wrote in The Times
13 Literary Supplement, I believe it was, in January,
14 suggesting that the whole of the Holocaust propaganda
15 campaign started around about the time of the 1967 June
16 war?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that both Finglestein and Peter Novic, whose book
18 I have read with great interest, and Tim Cole.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you identify Peter Novic, University of —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The University of Chicago, yes, and another similar book
21 by Tim Cole of the University of Bristol, I think — are
22 talking about the public presentation of the
23 Holocaust —-
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are they —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and the political —-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: — Holocaust deniers in your book?
. P-16
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, they are not because they are not, they are certainly
2 not denying that i happened in the terms in which
3 I described it in my report. They are talking about the
4 public presentation of history, as in these memorial
5 plaques that you have illustrated. That, I think, is a
6 different thing from the scholarly working up of history.
7 None of them would fall into any of the four, or satisfy
8 any of four, conditions that I have laid down for
9 Holocaust denial. They do not minimise the numbers. They
10 do not deny the use of gassing to kill large numbers of
11 Jews. They do not deny that is systematic, and they do
12 not claim that the evidence was invented or fabricated.
13 They are talking about something quite different which is
14 the public presentation and use which, indeed, of course,
15 by its very nature is going to be subject to political
16 influences.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. They are all American academics, are they?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Tim Cole is a British academic. Finglestein, I am
19 not sure, I think he is American.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Would they be able to propagate their views safely
21 in this country or in France or in Germany, do you think,
22 without fear of either losing their academic privileges or
23 even arrest and prosecution?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I do not think that is a question
25 that is really going to help in this case, if I may say
26 so.
. P-17
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am just trying to establish that
2 Holocaust deniers, if I can adopt the witness’s phrase, do
3 not have it easy to propagate their views, and if the
4 debate seems lopsided, it is because, on the one hand,
5 people refused to debate and, on the other hand, the
6 people are arrested and locked away.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you had rather veered off Holocaust
8 deniers to the historians who take the view that there has
9 been some politicization of the Holocaust from 1967
10 onwards.
11 MR IRVING: In that case, may I just revert very briefly to
12 Professor —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I mean, my answer is yes, if that helps. I mean, Dr Cole
14 has not suffered at all from his book and Professor
15 Novic’s book is about to be published in this country.
16 MR IRVING: You have expressed words of distaste for Professor
17 Faurisson who, of course, is no longer a Professor?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where do I do this?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: When you were last standing and the witness box on
20 Thursday. I mentioned his name. You said you did not
21 consider him to be an academic and you —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think — I am not sure I said that. I would have to see
23 the transcript.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Are you aware of the damage that was inflicted on
25 Professor Faurisson for holding his principles and views,
26 for holding to his principles as a Holocaust denier?
. P-18
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am aware that he was deprived of his university post,
2 most certainly, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you turn, please, to page 57 of the bundle, the
4 little bundle? I am very sorry, it is at bundle E, my
5 Lord.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I know.
7 MR IRVING: The global bundle. I am afraid that you may not
8 have the photographs there.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I only have 55 pages, I am afraid.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So have I.
11 MR IRVING: In that case I will produce two pages to you. That
12 is Professor Faurisson after he was taught a lesson for
13 his principles and views. Is this the way you think
14 academics should be dealt with?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Most certainly not, no.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you very much. The reason I am asking that, my
17 Lord, is evident because I wish to bring to the attention
18 of the court the dangers that befall somebody in public
19 life who is accused of being a Holocaust denier.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do it, by all means. I am not quite sure
21 that I see how that advances your case here.
22 MR IRVING: Oh, very definitely, my Lord, I submit. I have
23 already suggested it in connection with the Hamas and
24 Hisbollah allegation; I have been exposed to very severe
25 risks. In connection with being accused of being a
26 Holocaust denier, I have been exposed to the risk of what
. P-19
1 happened to Professor Faurisson. His jaw was smashed so
2 badly, it was wired together for six weeks and he had acid
3 poured in his eyes, and he was a man slightly older than
4 myself.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have tried to explain to you
6 earlier that all this sort of thing can be relevant to
7 damage, but it has to be linked to the Defendants.
8 MR IRVING: I shall be making a submission on damages later on.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just bear in mind that that is the way I am
10 seeing it.
11 MR IRVING: As this witness did refer to Professor Faurisson in
12 terms of rebuke, I thought it appropriate to show him
13 photographs of what happened to people who stick to their
14 principle at the other end of the scale.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think you can make me responsible for what
16 happened to Professor Faurisson.
Section 20.17 to 32.15
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. Witness, you have read or your researchers have read
18 very large parts of my diaries and private papers and
19 lectures and speeches?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you at any time in any of those readings come across
22 any evidence whatsoever that I was associated with the
23 Hamas or the Hisbollah terrorist leaders or with Lewis
24 Farakan, the notorious black American anti-semite?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that was not what I was asked to do, so we did not
26 read them for that purpose.
. P-20
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Even so, can you answer?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We read the material in order to, well, I am trying to
3 explain that my expertise may be not very good at that
4 particular level, there were other expert witnesses who
5 were asked to do that. I did collect information which is
6 on page 174 and afterwards of my report, which is about
7 your connections with Holocaust deniers, and I did find —
8 I am trying to find it in my report — connections with
9 Ahmed Rami, page 198.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell the court what these alleged connections
11 were?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. You appeared on the same platform as him in the
13 so-called Leuchter Congress, 23rd March 1991.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reason why I should have recognized Mr Rami,
15 in your opinion?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think if one appears on a platform with other speakers,
17 one knows who they are.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any connection at all between this Mr Rami and
19 the gentleman, Mr Farakan that I mentioned, or the
20 Hisbollah and the Hamas?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to claim that I do not have any direct expertise on
22 that. I cannot say.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you found any kind of correspondence between myself
24 and Mr Rami? Has any been shown to you?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not to my recollection.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: So apart from this —-
. P-21
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But, as I say, that is not what I was really looking for.
2 I am really concerned with looking at connections between
3 you and people whose main business is Holocaust deniers.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So the answer to the original question,
5 whether you have discovered any links, as it were, is no?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is no, that is right. That is not to say that there is
7 not any but…
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, but you have not come across it?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not come across it, no. I mean, he, Rami, occupies
10 about four lines of my report.
11 MR IRVING: Yes. Is there any particular reason why you
12 mentioned Rami in this connection? Is he a terrorist or
13 an extremist? I mean, to me, he unknown. I know nothing
14 at all about him.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I find that difficult to believe since you appeared
16 on the same platform as him in a meeting, a public
17 meeting. He is an extremist who runs an extreme
18 anti-semitic website which I have looked at.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: When you say that he appeared on the same platform, do you
20 have photographs of him standing shoulder to shoulder with
21 me or are you just saying that he was there one day and I
22 was there the next day?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you challenge having been on the same
24 platform as him?
25 MR IRVING: I want to know what he means by this, my Lord.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I am asking am asking you because you
. P-22
1 have to put your case, Mr Irving. I mentioned that on
2 Thursday. Is it your case that you have never appeared on
3 a platform with Mr Rami?
4 MR IRVING: Never knowingly appeared.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Never?
6 MR IRVING: If I can put it like that, my Lord.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I footnote video tape 201.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Never knowingly appeared? I see.
9 MR IRVING: Well, quite simply, because when is this video
10 taped alleged to have been?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 23rd March 1991.
12 MR IRVING: 1991. So it is nine years ago and this is somebody
13 who has, apparently, stood near me on a platform and this
14 is good as the connection gets?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you were both speakers. As I say, this is not a
16 very important part of my report; it only occupies a few
17 lines.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you turn to page 37 of your report, please? We are
19 now moving on, my Lord. Paragraph 244. You talk about
20 the unreliability of Hitler’s former aids as a source?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, effectively, my gullibility in falling for everything
23 they said?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I would not accuse you of being gullible, Mr Irving.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: My lack of critical nous, shall we say, in accepting what
26 Hitler’s Adjutants and secretaries and people have told me
. P-23
1 — is that the burden of that paragraph 244?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Critical intention, I think.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept, however, that on numerous occasions I have
4 persuaded Hitler’s private staff and the Adjutants and
5 their juniors to reveal to me matters which were against
6 their interest, or against the interest of Adolf Hitler
7 which is probably more significant? Do you accept this is
8 true? Do you remember from The War Path where Hitler’s
9 private secretary, Krista Schroeder, describes to me on
10 the night of the long knives, June 30th 1934, when they
11 returned to the Chancellery afterwards Hitler vanished and
12 had a shower?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I remember that.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you remember what Hitler said to her when he
15 reappeared, roughly?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Very vaguely. You would have to remind me of the exact
17 words.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: “So Fraulein Schroeder, now I have had a shower and I feel
19 as clean as a new born babe”?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you feel that speaks highly for Adolf Hitler, that he
22 murders his closest compatriots and has a shower and
23 washes himself clean?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not. But you do say in a document which I quote
25 on page 604 that, once the former members of Hitler’s
26 staff, once you had won their confidence I think you mean,
. P-24
1 they thought well now at last they were doing their chief
2 a service. So it seem to be your view that you persuade
3 them that they were doing Hitler a service by talking to
4 you.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think the sense is that they were doing history a
6 service.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not what you said.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: They were telling the story — what are the exact words
9 that I used?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The exact words were, and I think you have reversed the
11 sense here a bit, once they had won your confidence —
12 I think you mean once you had won their confidence — and
13 they knew you were not going to go and report them to the
14 State Prosecutor, they trusted you and they thought well,
15 now at last they were doing their chief a service.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. How would they be doing their chief a service if
17 they told me details of how Hitler had ordered the
18 liquidation of the inmates of a concentration camp?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not what Krista Schroeder said, was it, to you?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am giving specific examples now. You said that
21 I persuaded these people to talk, but that I then fell for
22 them, so to speak, and that I did not manage to use my
23 methods, my oily greasy methods, shall I put it like, in
24 fact to get from them information against their self-
25 interest which is what I contend I did.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oily and greasy are not my words.
. P-25
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are words I put in — I oiled these remarks out of
2 them, shall I put it like that? If I put this one example
3 to you, that I persuaded an SS officer who was on Hitler’s
4 staff to describe to me the meeting between Hitler and
5 Himmler in April 1945, where Hitler gave the order to
6 liquidate all the inmates of Buchenwald if they could not
7 be evacuated in time, do you remember that episode?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was that in any way — did it reflect well on Adolf
10 Hitler, do you think?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it certainly did not, but obviously there are some
12 places in which they do reveal things, at which some of
13 them reveal things, which are not —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will give you only one further example because I do not
15 wish to test his Lordship’s patience but it is important
16 here because I am accused of having exonerated Hitler and
17 fallen for the Adjutants’ wiles. You are familiar with
18 the colour photographs that are in some of my books of
19 Adolf Hitler’s staff, are you?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that these photographs were taken by
22 Hitler’s film cameraman whose name was Walter Frentz?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: He described to me, did he not, a visit to the Eastern
25 Front with Heinrich Himmler in August 1941 where they
26 witnessed a mass shooting outside Minsk, to which shooting
. P-26
1 you also refer of course, do you not?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: This man Walter Frentz was present. Are you aware that he
4 described to me in great deal at 2 o’clock one morning the
5 whole episode, including how Himmler told him to take
6 photographs of the shootings, and other very vivid
7 details?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was that in any way in his own interest to tell me that
10 story?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We are moving slightly away here. What we are talking
12 about, of course, is their attitudes to, or what they
13 report of, Hitler and Hitler’s views, and in that case it
14 really does not apply to that.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will move on to Hitler’s views in this connection in a
16 minute, but will you just answer my question? If Walter
17 Frentz told me this story, how he was with Himmler and
18 witnessed a mass shooting, and took photographs of it, did
19 that in any way reflect well on either himself, the
20 witness, or on Adolf Hitler, for that matter?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would think no, but then he might have thought something
22 different.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I now tell you that Frentz took photographs back to
24 Hitler’s headquarters and showed them to Hitler’s Chief
25 Adjutant, and the Chief Adjutant said, “If you know what
26 is good for you, you will destroy these photographs,
. P-27
1 Mr Frentz”, is this a significant contribution to a
2 historical debate which I, with my methods, obtained, do
3 you think?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The answer is, if that is the case, then yes. I am not
5 denying, Mr Irving, that your interviews with Hitler’s
6 former staff have contributed in some ways to historical
7 knowledge, not at all.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: So your judgment against me in that paragraph is
9 overhasty, would you agree?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not agree. I think, taken as a whole, your
11 interviews with Hitler’s staff, as I show in a chapter of
12 the report, are uncritical, and in some cases also involve
13 elements of falsification of what they actually said, or
14 of the nature of their sources that you used.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will come to those particular episodes later on, but in
16 general?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is a general statement which is a conclusion drawn
18 from the detailed cases that I look at later on in the
19 report.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have said that I used these statements only in the
21 service of their chief, so to speak, and I did not put in
22 material from the Adjutants or the secretaries which was
23 unfavourable, and that I was uncritical in my assessment
24 of these sources, and I have given you three episodes
25 where quite clearly I persuaded members of Hitler’s staff
26 to reveal from their innermost memory things that they
. P-28
1 probably told nobody else.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where do I say the things that you say I say?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think the word “always” is to be
4 found, Mr Irving. I think that is the difference between
5 you.
6 MR IRVING: That is why I suggested that the phrase overhasty
7 was probably justified, and overhastily rushed a judgment
8 on me, which is not borne out by all the evidence my Lord.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The evidence I think I am hearing from
10 Professor Evans is that usually — that may be an under
11 statement — you are portraying these Adjutants as having
12 told you things which are in Hitler’s favour, but
13 sometimes not. Is that a broad summary?
14 MR IRVING: To use one of Mr Rampton’s favourite phrases,
15 I would say “so what”? Quite clearly, if these Adjutants
16 have sat for many hours talking to me, I have used all the
17 information they have given me, and some of it has been in
18 favour and some of it has not. What I have not done, and
19 this is my question now to the witness, did I make
20 appropriate use of the information that I obtained from
21 these various witnesses, in your opinion?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you mean by “appropriate”.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did I make appropriate use? In other words, did I rely on
24 them solely, shall we say, for important episodes of
25 history when I could not find any documentary
26 substantiation?
. P-29
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, they form an important part of your case that Hitler
2 did not know about the extermination of the Jews, at least
3 before the autumn of 1943, because what you argue about
4 the Adjutants is that they all say that Hitler never
5 actually discussed the extermination of the Jews with
6 them, and in the sense that, if you look at their
7 statements carefully, and I detail some of these later on
8 in the report, you will see that they do not infer from
9 the fact that this was not discussed as they claim, the
10 fact that Hitler did not know about it. That is your
11 inference. Indeed, a number of them explicitly stated
12 that they were pretty sure that Hitler did know.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is a typical example of that, Albert Speer. Did
14 Albert Speer say to me it was never discussed in front of
15 him, but did he then go on to say that in his opinion
16 Hitler must have known, roughly?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I recall, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that not an illogical kind of position for an
19 intelligent man like Speer to adopt, that it was never
20 discussed but somebody must have known? If it was never
21 discussed, how could he guess?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I recall, Speer argued at some length, and there is a
23 degree of self-exculpation here, I think, in Speer, that
24 Hitler simply did not want this to be talked about in his
25 inner circle.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: My final question on this particular angle is this. When
. P-30
1 you have read, as you or your researchers have, my
2 interview notes on all these ladies and gentleman on
3 Hitler’s private staff, did I conceal anything detrimental
4 that they told me? In other words, the Walter Frentz
5 episode, the shootings at Minsk, Hitler’s remark to Krista
6 Schroeder, “now I have had a shower and I feel as clean as
7 a new born babe”, did I conceal that or did I properly use
8 it in my books?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You did not conceal either of those two things, no.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So what I found I used?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in every case. There is an example in detail later on
12 which we can discuss.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell us what that example is from memory?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not from memory, I am afraid.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Perhaps we can wait until we get to it. There is
16 one further question. Has any other writer apart from me
17 got as close to these members of Hitler’s private staff?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think that is quite right.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, if I had not done it, then a body of information would
20 have been lost for the world of academics and scholars?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have discussed this before. I do not dispute the fact
22 that you have obtained a great deal of material, not just
23 interview material but also documentary material, which
24 other historians have not obtained.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were any of these Adjutants interrogated at Nuremberg?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is an awful lot of them, there is about 25 of them.
. P-31
1 I am sure you know more than I do about their
2 interrogations at Nuremberg. Some of them of course were
3 put on trial or were witnesses in subsequent trials.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very few of them.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Karl Wolff is the obvious one.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not right that Karl Wolff was not put on trial until
7 the 60s because a secret deal had been reached between him
8 and the Americans?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know about the secret deal but he was not put on
10 trial until 1964, I think.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you not heard of Operation Crossword in which Karl
12 Wolff was engaged in Italy at the end of the war, his
13 negotiations with the OSS?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to provide me with documentary evidence for
15 a deal, I think.
Section 32.16 to 62.16
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am going to go on to page 38, my Lord. Now we are
17 dealing with the Hitler’s diaries forgeries, paragraph
18 246.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that once again I came into early possession
21 of unusual materials? In this case they turned out to be
22 fake.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Were these the materials which you purchased in
24 October 1982 and were intending to sell to McMillans?
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is your evidence for the word “purchased”?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is in audio cassette 75, where you said you bought
. P-32
1 them from the forger and then you recognized them as
2 forgeries after examining them.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can I interrupt and make this
4 enquiry of you, really? . I realize that Professor Evans
5 refers to the Hitler diaries in his report. I am just
6 wondering what relevance they have to the issues in this
7 action. Can you help me? I am sorry to interrupt you but
8 are obviously starting on a fresh point.
9 MR IRVING: If I am familiar with Professor Evans’ arguments of
10 having flipflopped, changed my position on them, and ipso
11 facto being unserious, is that right, Professor Evans?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not use the word “unserious”, but I derive from
13 Robert Harris’s book, which seems to me to be a reliable
14 book, written I think partly in co-operation with you,
15 certainly with use of materials you supplied to him, the
16 fact that having declared that the diaries, quite rightly,
17 were forgeries, you then subsequently declared that they
18 were genuine. If you tell me that that is not true, of
19 course I would have to accept it.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us see where we are going with this.
21 This is not, I do not think, any part of the pleaded
22 case. Mr Rampton, that is right, is it not?
23 MR RAMPTON: That is right, my Lord.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are in the difficult position, Mr Irving,
25 because here is the principal expert witness for the
26 Defendants making this criticism of you and it is a
. P-33
1 serious criticism, but it is not one that in the end plays
2 any part in the Defendants case.
3 MR IRVING: I read your Lordship’s mind as being that you will
4 pay no attention to this. In that case I will move on.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will not.
6 MR IRVING: In the next paragraph 247 you mention Gerhardt
7 Weinberg.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he one of the historians whose views you accept?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On what?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he an eminent historian? He is not a Holocaust denier,
12 is he?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is an eminent historian.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: In fact, he is now retired and his chair is occupied by
15 Christopher Browning, is it not?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is the case, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am going to be looking at Professor Jackeln, my Lord,
18 Professor Aberhard Jackeln, who is a historian whose name
19 will come up I think more than once over the next few
20 days. He played a part in the Hitler diaries. I am not
21 going to look at the Hitler diaries as such but I am going
22 to ask questions which I think have relevance to
23 establishing the reliability of Professor Jackeln. Is it
24 right that Professor Aberhard Jackeln very early on came
25 into possession of one of the diaries, the 1935 Hitler
26 diary?
. P-34
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: From what I remember of Mr Harris’s book, which is the
2 source of my information, yes. That is to say, I do not
3 rely on Professor Jackeln in my report.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Really I am trying through you to find out what we know
5 about Professor Jackeln as far as reliability goes, as far
6 as his credentials go.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It does not really play a role in my report. That
8 is to say, I am not writing about Professor Jackeln’s
9 reliability.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you write that Jackeln authenticated some of the
11 Hitler materials?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not, no. It is my understanding from Mr Harris’s
13 book that he had doubts about him. Of course I am aware
14 of the fact that Professor Jackeln did include some forged
15 material in a book that he edited of Hitler’s writings.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are not familiar with the fact that he authenticated
17 the 1935 Hitler diary on behalf of a Stuttgart
18 millionaire?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not, but if that is in Mr Harris’s book —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You mentioned the other materials. He believed that a
21 very large number of poems and handwritings apparently by
22 Hitler were genuine, is that correct?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We seem to be back on the Hitler diaries. I
24 thought we had agreed —-
25 MR IRVING: No we are now off that. We are now on Jackeln,
26 very firmly on Jackeln, my Lord.
. P-35
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is correct.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he publish these in a semi-official volume called
3 Hitler’s Entire Manuscripts?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed he did.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did it take him a substantial length of time to confess
6 that these were from the same source, the forger Konrad
7 Kujau?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you tell me it did, then yes. He certainly in the end
9 I think recognized that they were forgeries.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: In fact he wrote a report, did he not, in the Journal of
11 Contemporary History in which he admitted that 4 per cent
12 of that volume was fake, only 4 per cent? Is that
13 correct?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do not recall it but I will accept your word for
15 it.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: In your little bundle of documents which I gave you this
17 morning, would you just turn rapidly to page 41, which is
18 a photograph of a train?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: The large endless train of wagons with people stuffed in
21 like cattle, is it not?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They do not appear to be —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Several hundred people to each coal wagon?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not say like cattle. They do not appear to be
25 grossly overcrowded. They are full.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware Professor Jackeln used this photograph as an
. P-36
1 illustration for Rumanian Jews being shipped to the gas
2 chambers at Auschwitz?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: On a television programme. Can you confirm that that is
5 fact Hamburg railway Station after the war?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Very difficult to say.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I tell that the rubber stamp on the back of the
8 original photograph says Hamburg — it is in the Hamburg
9 Railway Station archives now, in their picture archives.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: What would your opinion be of a historian who uses
12 photographs in that manner, photographs of a postwar
13 scene, and says that it is a photograph of Jews being
14 shipped off to Auschwitz?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am a bit bewildered by this, Mr Irving.
16 You said “so what?” to me not very long, “so what?” to
17 you. Why does whether Professor Jackeln mistook Hamburg
18 Railway Station for a convoy taking Romanian Jews to a
19 concentration camp matter? It is your reliability, not
20 Professor Jackeln’s that is in question.
21 MR IRVING: If Jackeln’s words are going to be used against me,
22 as they will be, in expert reports, then I am entitled, in
23 my view, to put to the court the qualifications that
24 Professor Jackeln has.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again, you are in the difficulty that
26 Professor Evans has relied on other historians in his
. P-37
1 report, but in the end it must be Professor Evans’ view,
2 whether I accept it or not, that counts.
3 MR IRVING: Yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not actually going to stop you, but
5 I really do not think at the moment, until we get to a
6 point where Professor Evans says, “Jackeln says this, ergo
7 it must be right”, that this is really helpful. There is
8 an awful lot of material to be covered in Professor Evans’
9 report, but we have not really begun to grapple with it
10 yet.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me answer the question. Of course, what I think of
12 him depends in this instance on whether he knew that that
13 was a picture of Germans in Hamburg on a shopping trip to
14 the Ruhr in 1946 and then deliberately presented it, and
15 falsely presented it, as Rumanian Jews being shipped off
16 to Auschwitz, or whether it was a genuine mistake. You
17 yourself have said in the course of this trial that
18 historians make many errors, and that one wants to correct
19 them, and one attempts to do so. You pointed out an error
20 in your own 1991 edition of Hitler’s War, the absence of
21 your name on the title page, so we all make mistakes.
22 There is a distinction which I drew on Thursday, which I
23 would hold to, between, as it were, genuine mistakes and
24 errors, which unfortunately historians are all prone to,
25 on the one hand, and deliberate falsification on the
26 other.
. P-38
1 MR IRVING: I have to let you get away with that, because I am
2 not allowed now to ask any further questions about the
3 photograph or about —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did say I was not stopping you, but I was
5 telling you that at the moment I do not find it very
6 helpful. Do not say you are not allowed to; you are
7 allowed to.
8 MR IRVING: Is Professor Jackeln a recognized authority on
9 Hitler and the Holocaust? Has he written books and
10 articles about it?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, he has written books and articles about Hitler in
12 particular, Hitler’s views.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it diminish him in your esteem that he has fallen
14 repeatedly for forgeries produced by a notorious forger,
15 that he has he published them, that he did not willingly
16 confess that they were forgeries or where they came from,
17 and that he has relied on a dubious photograph?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you mentioned one instance in which he fell for
19 material from a notorious forger. If you can show me
20 there are many others, then I will accept the word
21 “repeatedly”.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that, in dealing with your treatment of the
23 Hitler diaries, you accused me of liking the Hitler
24 diaries and believing they were genuine because they gave
25 a favourable impression of Hitler?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Again, I am following Mr Harris there. Let me quote him
. P-39
1 in explaining why you endorsed them at a late stage,
2 “Finally there was the fact that the diaries did not
3 contain any evidence to suggest that Hitler was aware of
4 the Holocaust”. Really I am following Mr Harris’s
5 argument there.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: On what basis do you say —-
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That was one of a number of reasons which he puts forward
8 for your having endorsed them at a late stage.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: On what basis do you say that these fake diaries showed
10 Hitler ordered a stop to the Reichskristallnacht?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I did say quite a long time ago
12 that I am not going to pay any attention to the Hitler
13 diaries because it is not any part of the Defendants’
14 case. Really these questions are directly focused on the
15 Hitler diaries, so I do now say you must move on.
16 MR IRVING: In paragraph 2.4.9, lines 5 and 6, there is a
17 sentence there beginning, “If an obvious forgery like the
18 Hitler diaries gives credence to my views, I will use
19 it”. Is that not a reflection — am I allowed to say
20 that, my Lord?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have already told you in the clearest
22 possible way that I am not going to place any reliance in
23 forming my judgment on what did or did not happen in the
24 case of the Hitler diaries, so questions about it can only
25 do you harm.
26 MR IRVING: Three lines from the bottom of that page 40 you
. P-40
1 accuse me of rendering my footnotes deliberately opaque.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you think of any reason why a researcher or writer who
4 has spent a lot of his private funds, who is not a tenured
5 professor, who is entirely reliant on his professional
6 income, obtaining access to sources, might wish to leave
7 his footnotes opaque?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Either in the case of your extremely vague
9 references to the author Ingrid Weckert in your account of
10 the Reichskristallnacht, because that source is
11 discreditable, because she is an anti-semitic politically
12 motivated falsifier of history upon whom you rely in part
13 of your account —-
14 MR IRVING: Do you consider that anti-semitic —-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him finish his answer and then ask you
16 next question.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Or that the sources do in fact, if anybody goes to the
18 immense trouble of tracking them down as in the instance
19 we already mentioned on Thursday, the evidence of the
20 policeman Hoffmann at the 1924 trial of Hitler, if that
21 source in fact contains things which you do not want to
22 appear and you do not want people to know about. So it is
23 a kind of judgment call on your part that you need to give
24 a source, but you do not want people to find out too
25 easily what is there.
26 MR IRVING: Can you think of no innocent explanation why the
. P-41
1 aforementioned author might leave his sources opaque?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the kind of scholar and academic who
4 will pretend that he has done the research, who will
5 pretend that he too has been to Canberra and Ottowa and
6 Washington and Moscow, he will quite the file and he will
7 quote the document number and even the page number in that
8 file to give the impression that he has been there and
9 done the work?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Give me an example.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am just asking you if are familiar with that kind of
12 scholar?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot think of any examples. Try and give me one.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that legitimate, I really do not know as a
15 matter of a historian’s proper approach? If you have seen
16 some other historian give a reference for a
17 particular proposition as being File X in the Washington
18 archive or wherever, is it then illegitimate for the next
19 historian simply to cite that as being the authority
20 without actually going to the Washington archive and
21 looking for himself?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is normal, my Lord, to say file so and so in the
23 archive as cited in such and such a book. If you simply
24 say file so and so in the archive, that does suggest you
25 have been there. It is what I would call slightly sharp
26 practice.
. P-42
1 MR IRVING: If, for example, you found in a book by David
2 Irving on Winston Churchill unusual sources and you were
3 an academic and a scholar, if you did not want to be
4 associated with him, would there be a temptation just to
5 use that file in the French National Archives or whatever
6 it is and pretend you had seen it yourself, but not of
7 course that you had it from David Irving’s book? Would
8 there be that temptation?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not be tempted. I can only answer for myself.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would not be tempted to use the source?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would want to go, if that was the work I was doing, to
12 the archive and check the source. I would not take it on
13 trust as it appears in your work.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Even if you could go to some archives like the Institute
15 of History where I did in the meantime deposit all the
16 records so that you could check it out? Do you appreciate
17 that there might be an innocent reason on the basis of
18 what I have said, on the basis of my questions, why an
19 author might sometimes wish to make it slightly less easy
20 for a crooked scholar to steal his brain work?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to show that there were crooked scholars
22 around who are all desperate to steal your brain work.
23 I do not believe that that is the case, so I do not really
24 accept that there are innocent reasons. It is quite
25 straightforward. If you cite an original or any source,
26 if you use a source in your work, you footnote it in order
. P-43
1 to enable other historians to go and find it and you are
2 as helpful as possible to them. It is part of the kind of
3 checks and controls which historians have, and this
4 curious way we have to enable other people to challenge
5 our own work and to falsify it and say that we are wrong.
6 It is part of what I would call being an objective
7 historian is.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that there are two kinds of books? There are
9 the super academic works as submitted for PhDs or for some
10 other kind of academic qualifications where everything has
11 to be rigorously footnoted according to a standard scheme,
12 and books which are sold in Books Etc. and Waterstones
13 where books have to fit in within a reasonable size,
14 number of pages, and that, if you put all the footnotes in
15 to that scheme, you are going to end up with an
16 uncommercial book. Do you agree with that proposition?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not really, no. I think there is a large kind of scale of
18 books, or a spectrum of books, from the academic PhD
19 theses which is not really publishable as a book in many
20 cases and has to be rewritten, where everything has to be
21 all the Is dotted and all the Ts crossed all the way down
22 to very general non-fiction books which do not have any
23 footnotes in at all and everything in between. So I think
24 there is a very wide spectrum. In respect of your works,
25 Mr Irving, Hitler’s War is over 800 pages long. It is a
26 very long book, and the claim that you make for it is that
. P-44
1 it is based on an enormous mass of research and there are
2 a lot of footnotes in it. It does give the appearance, as
3 your other books do, of being a scholarly work. You make
4 a great deal of the fact that you use a large number of
5 source.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, when your researchers were researching in
7 my files at the Institute of History in Munich, did they
8 come across a thick file there which was about 1,000 pages
9 long, consisting of the original annotated footnotes of
10 Hitler’s War which were referenced by number to every
11 single sentence in that book?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was not part of the published corpus, it was part of
14 the original manuscript, but it was chopped out because of
15 the length.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, we did not see that.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen isolated pages of that in my discovery in so
18 far as it related to episodes which were of interest, like
19 the Reichskristallnacht?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not, to be honest, recall, but that does not mean to
21 say that we have not seen them.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: You said that my footnotes are opaque because they do not
23 always give the page reference. Do you agree that, on a
24 page which we are going to come across in the course of
25 this morning, of your own expert report, you put a
26 footnote in just saying “see van Pelt’s report”, see
. P-45
1 expert report by Robert van Pelt, and that expert report
2 is about 769 pages long, is it not?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is not an opaque footnote?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, because, when one says see this or see that, that
6 means that you are not relying on that for what you say.
7 It is simply a further reference directing the reader, if
8 the reader wants to gain further information about that
9 particular topic, to go there. If I were relying on
10 Professor van Pelt’s report for anything I say in my own,
11 which I am not, then I would footnote it as precisely as
12 I could.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why are you not?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Why am I not relying on Professor van Pelt?
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Is there a reason?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, his report is about something different from mine
17 and I thought I should reach my own conclusions on the
18 basis of my own work, but I do cross-reference other
19 expert reports in so far as I think it is useful.
20 MR IRVING: It is a strange kind of cross-reference that just
21 says “See expert report” by somebody.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, can you point me to the page?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come to it later on. I am just looking for it and
24 I do not want to hold up the court. If you would you go
25 now to page 41 of the expert report, please, paragraph
26 251? Can I ask that you be given bundle H1(i), please, so
. P-46
1 we can see what you have omitted from the quotations? It
2 is a passage where you say: “They are not lies, what I
3 have published, they are true. At any rate, the truth as
4 I perceive it”. Then you omit bits.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where is this — yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: That should be H1(i) at page 94?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page 94. Yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts on the page, bottom of the page,
9 is it?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is near the bottom of the page.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
12 MR IRVING: Do you not admit a passage there about how it gets
13 far more expensive the closer you approximate towards the
14 truth, that it is quite easy to find out 90 per cent of
15 the truth, and then it gets a bit more expensive to get 95
16 per cent of the truth, and to get absolute truth is
17 impossible, but it gets more and more and more expensive?
18 That is roughly the sense of it. I do not have it in
19 front of me, but I am familiar with the speech.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is where you say it is a shame that we lost the
21 United States.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. “They are not out lies, what I have published, they
23 are true, at any rate, the truth as I perceive it”?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then you left out the explanatory bit?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. “Even the most erudite and hard working historian”, I
. P-47
1 say, “is never going to obtain 100 per cent truth. He is
2 only going to approximate it”, and that, I think, gives
3 the sense of what you are saying. I come back to the
4 point, I echo the point that you have made about your own
5 work, this report is already 740 pages long, and in this
6 quotation, I think I give the essence of what you are
7 saying there.
8 Moreover, of course, I do put the ellipse in,
9 three dots, to tell the reader that I am leaving something
10 out there so the reader can do, as you have done, go back
11 and cheek the speech and see if I have left anything out
12 that I should not have left out. That is not the case in
13 quite a number of the cases in which you abbreviate
14 quotations from the original sources, as I have shown in
15 my report.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but —-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it is fair to say Mr Irving does go on
18 really to say he is one of those writers who does try to
19 get the extra 10 per cent and get 100 per cent accuracy?
20 I think that is the burden of the passage as a whole.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, indeed, yes.
22 MR IRVING: Unfortunately, not everyone has our patience to go
23 and look up the original document to see what has been
24 replaced by the three dots. There is another passage,
25 while you still have that H1 in front of you, please, can
26 I ask you to go to page 106 of H1(i)? This has a rather
. P-48
1 more important kind of material that has been left out of
2 the indented paragraph?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the middle of page 41 of the expert report, my Lord.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it.
6 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will see that the witness has omitted
7 all the reference to the organized campaign of window
8 smashing and so on that went on around this country to
9 persuade Waterstones not to stock my books and other
10 booksellers. He then goes on to mock me for suggesting
11 that there is a campaign, having cut out the material
12 relating to it out of the quotation.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, where do I mock you?
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 42 at 254: “Irving does not appear to believe that
15 other historians can rise to the challenge; rather he
16 believes that there is an international campaign organized
17 by the Jewish community in many countries to stop him from
18 speaking and selling his books”?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is my sense of what you believe. I do not see
20 anything mocking in that. I am trying to convey your own
21 point of view there. Once again, of course, in this
22 passage that you mention, there are ellipses to denote
23 that I have omitted some material, and really what I am
24 trying to do here is to describe your view of history.
25 I am not really concerned with all the details that you
26 give here about the campaign which you allege is being
. P-49
1 conducted against your work. That is not what I am
2 concerned with.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Here you go on about the campaign I allege has been
4 conducted against my work, but you have deprived his
5 Lordship of knowing details of what that campaign is; the
6 fact that there was an organized campaign of window
7 smashing in the big book stores to persuade them not to
8 stock my books.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: How is that relevant to my report? I really do not see
10 it.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because you say (as you have just said) that I allege
12 there is a campaign and you say in paragraph 2.5.4 that
13 I seem to believe that there is a campaign to stop me
14 selling my books, and yet you have cut out of that
15 quotation concrete evidence of the campaign that has been
16 going on?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But it is not my concern in this report to deal with the
18 campaign. I have given your view here that there is a
19 campaign, and I think in the context of a report which is
20 about your treatment of historical subjects, that that is
21 enough. If I went, if I had gone in this report into
22 every issue like that, it would have been enormously long
23 and I really do not think that is relevant to what was
24 asked to do.
25 MR RAMPTON: I should intervene. Mr Irving actually misread
26 the report. It is only so that it gets on the
. P-50
1 transcript. The report actually did not say “he seems to
2 believe”.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “He believes”.
4 MR RAMPTON: It says “he believes”.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did notice that.
6 MR IRVING: If had omitted any reference to book burning from a
7 passage about the Nazi activities in 1933, that would have
8 been duplicitous, would it not?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you are trying to write about the Nazi
10 activities in 1933.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: They were suppressing books that they disapproved of.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you are writing a dissertation about the Nazi policy
13 towards the Civil Service or the Nazi policy towards the
14 Bau(?) in 1933, then I do not think book burning would
15 necessarily have been a relevant consideration.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I had omitted the book burning in Berlin in March 1933
17 from my Goebbels’ biography, then this would have been
18 duplicitous, would it not, and if I had just said, “Well,
19 that did not really belong”?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is certainly true since Goebbels was centrally
21 concerned with it.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I had omitted the window smashing, which is very
23 apposite, from the Kristallnacht, that would also have
24 been duplicitous, would it not?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Absolutely, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: So why is it not duplicitous that you omitted that passage
. P-51
1 from that passage you quoted?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand your point, but the fact is in
3 paragraph 254 Professor Evans does refer to your belief
4 that there is an international campaign to prevent you
5 from speaking and selling your books. So he is not
6 actually concealing it, is he, in his report? Anyway,
7 I understand the point, but let us go on to the next
8 point.
9 MR IRVING: Many paranoid people have beliefs which are not
10 supported by evidence, my Lord, but if there is a campaign
11 of window smashing which is in the discovery, which is in
12 the documents before the court, the witness should not
13 have cut it out of the part that he quotes.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that is the criticism you make
15 of him, yes.
16 MR IRVING: That is my submission. That I regard as earning
17 all the adjectives that have been heaped on me by this
18 witness.
19 (To the witness): In that same paragraph, 254,
20 we are back to your report, Professor. You say: “Irving
21 does not appear to believe that other historians can rise
22 to this challenge, rather he believes there is an
23 international campaign ordered by the ‘Jewish community
24 (our traditional enemies)'”?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What entitles you to equate those two as though I had said
. P-52
1 that the traditional enemies of the truth or free speech
2 are the Jewish community?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, on your website you list, you have a section where
4 you list the traditional enemies of free speech.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which includes the Jewish community leaders, yes.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Nearly all of them. I think there is only one
7 organization there which is not a Jewish organization.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you put the words “Jewish community” in quotation
9 marks as though you are taking it out of some document of
10 mine?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not want to imply that there was a Jewish community
12 in that sense. That is why I put it in inverted commas.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: You refer quite correctly to my website where I have a
14 menu of traditional enemies of free speech, some of whom
15 are specific organizations which are Jewish in character?
16 That is correct?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Nearly all of whom — all apart from one.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got the reference for this either in
19 your own report or in the website file because I would
20 quite like to see it if the point is being taken. It is
21 difficult —-
22 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is page 168 of my report, my Lord, where I detail a
24 number of cases where Mr Irving has equated — I quote
25 here a speech in 1992: “‘Our old traditional enemies …
26 (are) the great international merchant banks are
. P-53
1 controlled by people who are no friends of yours and
2 mine’, who were ‘annoyed’ friend by” —-
3 MR IRVING: What paragraph is that?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 168, paragraph 50.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there an ellipsis in the middle of that?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you please look at the document and see the four
8 sentences, three fullstops, four semi-colons and 86 words
9 that those three dots represent?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you direct me to —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And see if that is a genuine quote?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — the document, please?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is fair.
14 MR IRVING: That is the document, I am very familiar with that
15 quotation.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you direct me to it, please?
17 MR IRVING: This is highly illuminative and illustrative of
18 this witness’s methods.
19 MR RAMPTON: I think it is the Clarendon Club. I think your
20 Lordship has probably already seen that, in fact.
21 Unfortunately, mine is not here.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: D2(ii).
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is K4, tab 5, Clarendon Club.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure this is actually going to be
25 the answer to the question, but that may be wrong.
26 MR IRVING: The question is what do those three dots represent?
. P-54
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: K4?
2 MR RAMPTON: K4, tab 5.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, 5, I have that.
4 MR RAMPTON: This is the Clarendon Club in September 1992 which
5 I think is the reference we have here?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Our old traditional enemies”.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Bottom of page 3 of 13.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Right, shall I read that out, if you would not
9 mind?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
11 MR IRVING: My first question is —-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I read that out then?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is just going to read it first and then
14 ask the question.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is about Andrew Neil, the Editor of the Sunday Times,
16 and the Goebbels’ diaries which he was publishing in your
17 — from you, and that he had come under pressure “‘from
18 our traditional enemies, pressure not just from the
19 advertising industry, pressure not just from the
20 self-appointed, ugly, greasy nasty, perverted
21 representatives of that community, he came under pressure
22 from the international community too because the Sunday
23 Times, like many other newspapers, needs international
24 capital to survive and the international capital is
25 provided by the great international merchant banks, and
26 the great international banks are controlled by people who
. P-55
1 are no friends of yours and mine'”.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That appears to be Andrew Neil speaking.
3 MR IRVING: What I am looking at is what those three dots
4 represent which is not just —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause a moment. We will get to that in a
6 second.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I take that to be Mr Irving’s paraphrase and version and
8 gloss on what Mr Neil was saying.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So the answer is yes, but it is a gloss?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: A very heavy gloss, my Lord, I think, and it goes on to
11 say, “And Andrew Neil found that these 60 foot long
12 posters had annoyed these people, and they put immense
13 pressure on him, and we know this because from all over
14 the world I have been getting press clippings”, and so on
15 and so forth.
16 MR IRVING: Where do the three dots end and the sentence
17 resume?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “‘… are the great international'” — “our old
19 traditional enemies are”, it is three lines up from the
20 bottom of page 3 and the sentence resumes four lines down
21 from the top of page 4, so that is, five lines are omitted
22 there.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: My point is, my Lord, that when you see three dots in the
24 middle of a sentence like that, you are entitled to assume
25 that a few words have been left out of a sentence, not
26 that two words have been taken from one sentence and then
. P-56
1 sentences later they have been glued on to.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think the point, and bear in mind we
3 are not really concerned with your criticisms of Professor
4 Evans, rather the other way round, but the point is
5 whether anything has been left out that materially affects
6 what is quoted. It seems to me that in this particular
7 instance what has been left out by Professor Evans really
8 makes no difference. Indeed, in many ways he might have
9 made his point more strongly if he had put in what he had
10 left out, the reference to “the self-appointed, ugly,
11 greasy, nasty, perverted representatives of that
12 community”.
13 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord, but my point is that if I had
14 adopted that kind of abbreviation in a paragraph, and I
15 had cut out three or four sentences, full stops,
16 semi-colons and 86 words and replaced them by three dots,
17 it would have been completely reprehensible and it would
18 have been rightly pounced on by all the witnesses in this
19 case.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would not have thought it was reprehensible
21 unless it did some injustice to what remains quoted.
22 MR IRVING: If I can put it another way? If I were an editor
23 in a reputable publishing house and I caught one of my
24 authors doing that, then I would sit on him like a tonne
25 of bricks and say, “You cannot do this”.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, let us move on.
. P-57
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. If I can just say, my Lord, the point that I make
2 repeatedly in my report is that the three dots, as it
3 were, are missing from Mr Irving’s manipulation of
4 quotations. He does not —-
5 MR IRVING: Have you found one instance where I have not
6 replaced missing materials with the appropriate ellipses,
7 I ask you, Professor.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Plenty, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you have referred to them actually in your report?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: We shall take that when we come. Can you give one example
12 from memory?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: For example, in your — yes, from memory, your account of
14 the discussions between Admiral Horthy and Hitler and
15 Ribbentrop in 1943, when you actually mix up, when you
16 transpose a phrase from Hitler from one day to the other
17 in order to make him look better without any indication
18 that you have actually done this.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is totally different from the question I asked you.
20 Have you found one instance where I left words or a
21 passage out of a document and did not replace it with
22 ellipses?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly, then that is exactly my answer.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: No.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid it is, Mr Irving. Shall we turn to the
26 pages —-
. P-58
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Please do, yes.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — in question?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is around page 440. I think it is 444,
4 but I may be wrong.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The point here is that you transpose the sentence
6 from —-
7 MR IRVING: We are not talking about transposition here.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, what we are doing is that you leave out the entire
9 gap, the entire enormous passages, between the discussions
10 of 16th and discussions of 17th of April 1943, and
11 you —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think you are deliberately obscuring the issue. This is
13 not the answer to my question.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, I am not deliberately obscuring —-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, let him give it and then you can, of
16 course, make the point that it is not an answer to the
17 question. Sorry, Professor Evans, carry on.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Here is your — you simply go straight on, what you said,
19 “‘They can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated’,
20 he protested. Hitler reassured him there is no need for
21 that”.
22 MR IRVING: Are you suggesting I left material out of that
23 sentence?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That implied, that implies, that there was no gap at all
25 between these two sentences.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: You know as well as I do, Professor, what the etiquette
. P-59
1 for use of ellipses is. Is that correct?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is not an appropriate place for the insertion of
4 ellipses. One has not left material out.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have taken a Hitler statement from one day and
6 transposed it to another.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are not talking about transposition.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have an left enormous amount of material out there and
9 given a completely misleading impression of the
10 discussions which took place.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, would you accept that if you quote one sentence
12 from a report, by definition, you are leaving out the
13 whole of the rest of the report, and you do not replace
14 the rest of the report with ellipses, is that correct?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends how you do it. I mean, for example, I could
16 have done in my report, instead of having and indented
17 quote with ellipses in, I could have had a number of
18 separate quotes as you do here, separated by your own or
19 my own commentary, but the effect is the same.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the case instanced here it would not have worked, would
21 it, because you said “the merchant banks …” and then you
22 go on using the verb of another sentence.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do not think that what I have left out, had it been
24 put in, would have given what you said, another
25 impression, a different meaning.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why do you say that I equate the traditional enemies of
. P-60
1 free speech with the “Jewish community”, in quotation
2 marks, when it is quite plain from everything that I have
3 written that they are part of the bundle of people who try
4 to suppress free speech, either by refusing to debate, or
5 by smashing windows, or by putting pressure on publishers,
6 or by inserting filters in the Internet or whatever?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already given my answer to that, the fact that on
8 your website your list of the traditional enemies of free
9 speech includes —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is entirely Jewish, is entirely Jewish community, is it?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 90 per cent, I think.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I wish we could find it because, if Professor
13 Evans is right, it is an answer to the question and it is
14 quite an illuminating answer.
15 MR IRVING: I agree, it is. Would you agree that the
16 Australian Government is one of the people listed on that
17 pull down menu?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to see the list.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that Cyber Patrol which is a filtering
20 system for the Internet Surf Watch?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Until and until we find it, Mr Irving, this
22 is a bit difficult, is it not?
23 MR IRVING: I am trying to put some ideas in your Lordship’s
24 mind, that this witness is not accurate when he says 90
25 per cent of the representatives on there are. Obviously
26 and finally one further question on this, would you agree
. P-61
1 that in view of the fact that these particular bodies are
2 the ones who have inflicted most damage on me over the
3 last 10 years —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just quote, Mr Irving, another quote from page 168
5 from a speech you made in the Clarendon Club again, 29th
6 May 1992 —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this relevant to the questions that we have asked?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “I never used to believe in the existence of an
9 international Jewish conspiracy”, you said, “I’m not even
10 sure now if there’s an international Jewish conspiracy.
11 All I know is that people are conspiring internationally
12 against me, and they do mostly turn out to be”.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: …
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “… (drowned out by laughter and applause) which I think
15 it is fairly clear that the next word was going to be
16 “Jews”.
Section 62.17 to 96.18
17 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not able to put bundle E to this
18 witness and ask him questions on the documents which will
19 substantiate what I just said in that speech, but
20 certainly when we come to submissions which I am going to
21 make, then I will justify that particular element.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure why you say you are not —-
23 MR IRVING: Because your Lordship has said that this is not the
24 appropriate time to introduce bundle E with the documents
25 on the global endeavour to suppress my rights to publish
26 and write.
. P-62
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, and the reason I said was that it seemed
2 to me that the point went to the damage that you say you
3 suffered as a result of what you say are libels. That is
4 something you can deal with in your evidence or in
5 submissions. But if you are challenging — but, you see,
6 it is coming in a slightly different context. I think
7 really, and when one gets to the bottom of it, it is
8 further evidence — I think this is the thrust of what
9 Professor Evans is saying at the moment — of an
10 anti-semitic attitude.
11 MR IRVING: I agree, if left alone.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On that, you are entitled to cross-examine.
13 I hope you do not understand that one document may be
14 relevant on two issues. On one issue —-
15 MR IRVING: I will not use the licence that your Lordship has
16 given me.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On any reliance that Professor Evans places
18 on particular documents as showing your anti-Semitism, you
19 are perfectly entitled — I make this absolutely clear —
20 to cross-examine. So if you want to show him that
21 document from your bundle E, then please do, or your clip
22 E. It has not become a bundle yet, has it?
23 MR IRVING: It is quite substantial. Do you have bundle a
24 bundle E in front of you? That is how big it is. It has
25 been quite a major conspiracy. This is only a part of it.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not encouraging you to go right the way
. P-63
1 through it. It is simply that if there is any —-
2 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, but I think, firstly, one or two
3 general questions.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page, Mr Irving?
5 MR IRVING: I am going to ask him one or two general questions
6 first to set the scenery. (To the witness): Witness, is
7 it your opinion that that remark you just quoted is
8 evidence of an anti-semitic state of mind?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, which remark was this?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: You one that you decided to read out about the
11 international conspiracy.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Conspiracy, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is criticism of Jewish people or community permitted for
14 whatever reason?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We had this yesterday. I do not think we
16 need to traverse that ground again.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When I say “yesterday”, I mean Thursday.
19 MR IRVING: If you are shown scattered evidence of a concerted
20 endeavour by representatives of that community to abrogate
21 my rights to write and publish, over a period of, say, 25
22 years, around the world, would you be satisfied that that
23 was a justified comment to make in those conditions?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is a very hypothetical question. In order to
25 be — I mean, I am constitutionally disinclined to believe
26 in international conspiracies, and it would take a very
. P-64
1 great deal to persuade me that there was an
2 internationally orchestrated conspiracy of this kind. It
3 is the belief in an international Jewish conspiracy is a
4 central element, in my view, of the most extreme forms of
5 anti-Semitism.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You talk about an international Jewish conspiracy, you are
7 just talking about the kind of protocols of a Zion
8 conspiracy, are you, or is one entitled to believe in a
9 specific endeavour to achieve a certain aim, namely to
10 silence David Irving as being a particularly dangerous
11 historian? Is that an acceptable concept in your mind?
12 Can you believe there is such an endeavour —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not myself believe there is such an endeavour, no.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: If —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But I have to say that it has not been a part of my task
16 to investigate whether there has or not. I am not
17 speaking, in other words, as an expert when I say that.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I am wondering what use it is going to be to put
19 these documents piecemeal to this witness. I do not think
20 it is at this point.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: None at all. I mean, his position is very
22 clear. He does not believe that there is an international
23 Jewish conspiracy. Therefore, he thinks that when you
24 talk of one, you are displaying evidence of anti-semitism.
25 That is the end of it as far as this witness goes, I
26 think.
. P-65
1 MR IRVING: Yes. As long as your Lordship appreciates that the
2 time will come when I will justify whatever remarks
3 I made.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Absolutely.
5 MR IRVING: The only problem is we have a rather unruly
6 witness, I think, who —-
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, that is not an appropriate comment at
8 all.
9 MR IRVING: Well, I think it was not necessary really for him
10 to have read out that passage if he was not prepared
11 really to be cross-examined on it in depth on his own
12 knowledge.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it happened. It was not unruly
14 behaviour.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Thank, my Lord.
16 MR IRVING: Do you accept that this phrase “the enemies of free
17 speech” to which the full phrase applies, “the traditional
18 enemies” includes governments, political groups, trades
19 unions and others as well the Jewish community leaders and
20 other organizations?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, where is the passage then where you say that? Are
22 we back to the website again?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, I am back to your reference in that paragraph, to
24 paragraph 2.5.4 to “the Jewish community” which you now
25 admit is a phrase that I do not use.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have we got the reference in the website?
. P-66
1 MR IRVING: Paragraph 2.5.4, my Lord, of his report: “Irving
2 believes that there is an international campaign
3 orchestrated by the ‘Jewish community’ (‘our traditional
4 enemies’)” as though there is an equation between the two,
5 an equation, shall we say?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, Mr Irving, you do in your speeches repeatedly refer
7 to “our traditional enemies”, and I think it is clear, in
8 my judgment, that by “our traditional enemies” you mean,
9 essentially, the Jews.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not true that the phrase that I use is “the
11 traditional enemies of free speech”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not always, no. You refer to “our traditional enemies” on
13 a number of occasions.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not obvious that one is the short form of the other?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Our traditional enemies” is three words and “the
17 traditional enemies of free speech” is five or six words.
18 One is the short form of the other?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I quote on page 168 “our traditional enemies”, “our old
20 traditional enemies”, and so on.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you appreciate that when you are speaking you do
22 not use again and again and again exactly the same phrase,
23 you modify it slightly. Sometimes you use the long form
24 and sometimes you use the short form?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I have gone through a number of your speeches,
26 Mr Irving, and you do use exactly the same phrases on a
. P-67
1 number of —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The traditional enemies of free speech”?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — because you speak in a number of different places,
4 “our traditional enemies”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: And “the traditional enemies of free speech”.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have used both of those formulations.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and “the traditional enemies of free speech”, as I
8 formulated them both in public and on my website, include
9 the people who are trying to censor the Internet, is that
10 correct?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, Mr Irving — correct me if I am wrong — you have
12 taken to talking about the traditional enemies of free
13 speech more recently. In the early 1990s, it was — you
14 were much more inclined to talk about our traditional
15 enemies.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have any evidence, any kind of statistical
17 evidence, for that or that just a gut feeling you have
18 that makes you say that?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is just an impression I have on looking at and
20 reading your speeches and your writings.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have no evidentiary basis for that apart from your
22 recollection?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is my impression from having read your material.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you now answer my question and say, is it true that
25 on my website and elsewhere I have listed as the
26 traditional enemies of free speech, governments, trades
. P-68
1 unions and people who are censoring the Internet?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Again, Mr Irving, we are back to the problem —-
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: And there are separate dossiers on each of those people?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — that we need to look at that page of your website
5 where you —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are going to have to pause until somebody
7 has been able to find it. I do not mean pause altogether,
8 I mean come back to it.
9 MR IRVING: I have one more question.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All I can say is that when I checked out, the list
11 provided of some traditional enemies of free speech, there
12 were virtually all Jewish.
13 MR RAMPTON: Can I intervene because it involves a technical
14 problem which is beyond me. Could I ask Miss Rogers to
15 explain it?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you mind, Miss Rogers?
17 MS ROGERS: My Lord, what happens is if you click on the
18 website, there is what is called down a pull down menu
19 which lists the organizations under a heading, but I am
20 told — I cannot do it– by others as well it is not
21 possible to print the pull down menu.
22 MR IRVING: On Mackintosh it is.
23 MS ROGERS: What one could do, one could either type out the
24 list, or perhaps your Lordship, with assistance, could go
25 on Mr Irving’s website and have a look and see the list.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will do that. Is it possible to give me a
. P-69
1 reference to where I will find it on the website?
2 MR IRVING: Www.fpp.co.uk/trial.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is very easy, my Lord, to find it on the website. It
4 is a very clearly organised website.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, thank you very much, Miss Rogers. I
6 am not surprised you —-
7 MR IRVING: So that each of these particular things has a
8 dossier, right? Each of these organisations, the
9 Anti-Defamation League, the Board of Deputies, each of
10 them has a dossier?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, shall we leave it that I will have
13 a look, and I know what the question is, whether they are
14 mostly Jewish organizations or whether they are not.
15 MR IRVING: My Lord, you are just going to have a look at the
16 menu, are you not, is that correct?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to browse generally through
18 the Internet. No, I did not mean that in any way
19 critically of it. I just am not going to; there is plenty
20 else to be doing.
21 MR IRVING: Because there are 53 megabytes of information on
22 that and I have idea which particular part of the forest
23 you are going to get lost in.
24 (To the witness): Do you accept that there is
25 concerted campaign by the traditional enemies of free
26 speech to refuse to debate with people like me?
. P-70
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept the concept of traditional enemies of free
2 speech, to start with. I do not accept that there is a
3 concerted campaign. No, I have not seen evidence for
4 that.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the number of times I have been
6 invited to speak at universities over the last 10 years
7 and the university has then come under pressure to cancel
8 the invitation?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not, no, but I can quite believe that that is the
10 case.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Has this happened to other historians like John Charmley?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not regard you as an historian, Mr Irving. Let me
13 make a distinction between universities and other venues.
14 By appearing at a university and speaking in a university,
15 I think you lay a claim to being an academic or being a
16 scholarly historian which you receive an endorsement from
17 by the fact that you appear at a university.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am careful not to create the impression that I am a
19 scholar. Nothing would frighten me more.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you try and give that impression in your books.
21 You may have a different definition of “scholarship” from
22 the one that I have. There is a distinction to be made,
23 surely, if you take United States of America where nobody
24 stops you from going around making speeches wherever you
25 want to apart from universities.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar that I have lectured at the National
. P-71
1 Archives in Washington?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On what occasion?
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: About five years ago on Hermann Goring.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not familiar, no.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that I have lectured at
6 Harvard on Adolf Hitler at the invitation of the Master of
7 Harvard, Dr Richard Hunt?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On what occasion was that?
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: This was 1977, I lectured on Hitler’s War.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I am familiar with the fact that you have talked to
11 many academic institutions in the 1970s, including my own
12 college in Cambridge, I believe.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Indeed. I have spoken at Caius and I have spoken at
14 various other colleges around the world until the problems
15 arose. Are you familiar with the fact that these problems
16 were generated by outside organisations?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to be provided with evidence of that,
18 I think.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that I was in the
20 University of Cork in Southern Ireland?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, how is it going to help me that
22 you were addressing the University of Cork? We really
23 must keep an eye on the ball. We have spent a very long
24 time deal with these preliminary passages and I can
25 understand why, for forensic purposes you are
26 concentrating on those earlier passages, but in the end we
. P-72
1 must get to the specific criticisms because on that really
2 Professor Evans is hanging his case against you. It
3 stands or falls by that.
4 MR IRVING: I agree, but we have just this witness say, “I do
5 not consider you to be a historian”, and then it turns out
6 that large numbers of academic bodies consider me to be a
7 historian whom they would willingly hear, were it not for
8 the violence that is threatened if I do attend. This is
9 the reason that I mentioned that fact, my Lord.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
11 MR IRVING: Go to page 44 of your report, please, 2.5.6. Do
12 you accept that the Board of Deputies of British Jews in
13 1919 acknowledge that I am “one of the world’s most
14 thorough researchers and an exciting and readable
15 historian”? You put it in quotation marks.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think I can accept that, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you did —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not dispute the fact that you are a thorough
19 researcher. I have not disputed that in this case.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You agree that that report does exist?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I accept your word for it. I have not seen it myself.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept that the report is currently lodged in
23 the files of the Canadian government where it was placed
24 by an organization with the intention of getting me denied
25 access to Canada?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That I would require evidence, I think particularly with
. P-73
1 the intention. Since I have not seen the report, I am
2 only citing it second hand here, for the purposes of
3 talking about your reputation as an historian, as
4 a researcher, I am not concerned with any other aspects of
5 the report which, as I say, I have not read myself.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: On paragraph 2.5.8 on the same page, once again you are
7 coming down pretty heavily on the historical profession,
8 are you not? I wonder sometimes what your colleagues say
9 in your common room when you go back to Caius about the
10 way you are blackening the name of historians whom you
11 disagree with.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point out to me the blackening of historians’
13 names?
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are saying that those with the general knowledge have
15 been kind to me, whereas those who are experts like
16 yourself are rightly rude — is that the burden of that?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Let me read you the sentence. I am making a
18 distinction between different kinds of historians with
19 difference kinds of expertise in reviewing and commenting
20 on your work. I quote here: “Those with a general
21 knowledge have mostly been quite generous to Irving, even
22 where they have found reason to criticise him or disagree
23 with his views; but they have also seldom been entirely
24 uncritical of Irving’s work and his methods”. Is that
25 blackening their name?
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw your attention to footnote 34?
. P-74
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the New Statesman 1977. Is that not ten years
3 before I published my biography on Winston Churchill?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That, I take it, is a review of your book on Hitler.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, so my views on Churchill are neither here nor there
6 in such context.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They appear in your work on Hitler.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you now to turn to page 45, where there is once
9 again reference to my attempt to show that Hitler urged
10 restraint in the Reichskristallnacht?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you consider this to be a completely ludicrous version
13 of history, that Hitler was the restraining influence that
14 night? Is this your conclusion?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It depends exactly what you mean by “restraint” but
16 I think I am summarizing what Hinton Thomas says in that
17 review there. I think that is probably his phrase.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you devoted quite a lot of this report — my Lord, I
19 think this is something we can dwell on for a moment or
20 two, which is the Kristallnacht?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are certainly going to have to spend some
22 time on Kristallnacht. Whether this is the right context
23 to do it I do not know, because in the end, as I say quite
24 often, it is Professor Evans’ views and his criticisms
25 that matter, not what other historians may have felt.
26 MR IRVING: Oh dear. I will see how far I get with this one
. P-75
1 then.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is for me to make up my mind, when I know
3 what the criticisms are and I know what your answer is,
4 whether I think it is well founded.
5 MR IRVING: The allegation is that I have been perverse, if I
6 may put it like that, in suggesting that Hitler was a
7 restraining influence that night of all nights. It turns
8 out — would you turn to page 48 of your little bundle
9 please, which is F?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that the one with the pictures?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the one with the pictures. On Thursday we found
12 out that you knew who Professor Burrin, a Frenchman, was.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Burrin, a Swiss, I believe.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: You said that yes, he is an academic, an acceptable
15 historian with the highest credentials. Is it right that
16 he is Professor of International History at the Graduate
17 Institute of International Studies in Geneva?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will accept your word for it.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. If we go to page 57 of his work, which I have
20 extracted in that bundle for your Lordship, do we not find
21 there that he expresses precisely the same view as I do?
22 In fact, two years before I did in my Goebbels biography,
23 so it cannot be derivative in the slightest way, he seems
24 to have been surprised by the extent of the destruction,
25 Hitler?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 57? Do you mean that?
. P-76
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page 48 of the bundle, my Lord, which is page 57 of the
2 book Hitler and the Jews, the Genesis of the Holocaust.
3 By Philip Burrin, who is an intentionalist historian.
4 Would you explain what an intentionalist historian is in
5 the great debate?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a functionalist historian. I think
7 I know the answer.
8 MR IRVING: Very good.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
10 MR IRVING: Your Lordship has grasped it quicker than I ever
11 did.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us get on.
13 MR IRVING: Page 57 on this book?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure I would describe Burrin as an out and out
15 intentionalist in his book on Hitler and the Jews.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Whilst Hitler could only have endorsed the concept of
17 exacting reprisals, namely on the Jews, he seems to have
18 been surprised by the extent of the destruction . Soon he
19 will be able to gauge its impact. (Jump a sentence) In
20 each case Hitler covered for Goebbels who did not derive
21 the hoped for benefits from the affair.” Is this
22 Professor perverse, do you think, for adopting that on the
23 basis of—-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say I do not agree with that interpretation.
25 I do not agree at all.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you would not describe him as perverse?
. P-77
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It really comes down to how he has arrived at that, the
2 methods he has used to arrive at that conclusion.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of course, he did not have the Goebbels diaries then.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Without looking at this in detail, it is very difficult to
5 say.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My criticisms of what you have to say about the
8 Reichskristallnacht depend to a large extent on the
9 methods you have used to arrive at the conclusions you
10 arrive at. I think this is only a brief — if I recall
11 rightly and I may be wrong — paragraph in a work which
12 is almost entirely devoted to the wartime. It is part of
13 a very brief broad summary.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: So what are you saying is that this view that Hitler was
15 taken by surprise by it and that he covered for Goebbels
16 but did nothing else, it is not perverse when it is stated
17 by a professor of international history, but it is
18 perverse when it is stated by David Irving?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: First of all, he does say that Hitler authorized the
20 holding of spontaneous demonstrations, whatever that
21 means. He was surprised by the extent of the
22 destruction. I do not accept either of those points of
23 view but, as I say, I do not know to what extent this
24 rests on his own research, or to what extent this is just
25 a very brief summary. I suspect this is just a single
26 paragraph. Knowing what I recall of the book, it is
. P-78
1 nearly all about the years 1939, 1940, particularly 41 and
2 42.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a pretty revolutionary statement for a Professor to
4 make though, is it not, at that time, to come out you and
5 say that he thought that Hitler was not behind the
6 Kristallnacht?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think he says that.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is not exactly a throw away line, is it?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He says that — it is speculative , is it not — he could
10 only have endorsed the concept of exacting reprisals. I
11 have to say simply I do not agree with that point of view.
12 It really comes down to how you arrive at that and the
13 documentary basis for it.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Moving on to the next paragraph in the middle of that page
15 45 back in your report, you refer to my omitting key
16 passages of this kind from his discussion of documents
17 such as Hitler’s Political Testament. Is this Hitler’s
18 Political Testament that I am holding in my hand?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me say I do not refer to that. I am referring to Sir
20 Martin Gilbert review and I am saying what he says. In
21 all this passage I am simply trying to summarise what
22 other historians have said.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not necessarily endorse every single point they have
25 made. I am trying to establish reputation.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have created a problem. You understand
. P-79
1 that, Professor Evans?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: And I am trying to find the way through it without any
4 unfairness to Mr Irving. Obviously the views of Sir
5 Martin Gilbert command enormous respect, but I say again
6 in the end it is for me to look at the evidence in huge
7 detail, as we are going to have to, and then look at the
8 criticisms, look at your answer and make up my own mind.
9 Obviously it is of importance to note what Sir Martin
10 Gilbert and these others say, but in the end it cannot
11 impact very much on my decision.
12 MR IRVING: In my submission, this witness has relied very
13 heavily on sources of a particular colour, if I can put it
14 like that, and the reliability which I would challenge,
15 then surely I am entitled seriatim to take these sources
16 until your Lordship has really run out of patience.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not see why you have to take it that
18 far, in a way. I have made my view pretty clear.
19 I understand why you are doing this. Professor Evans
20 possibly regrets one or two sections of his report for
21 that reason. Maybe he does not, I do not know. What I am
22 anxious to do, I make no secret of this, is to get on to
23 the specific criticisms and see how much there is in
24 them. Take it rapidly, if you would, Mr Irving.
25 MR IRVING: I will put on seven league boots. Did Sir Martin
26 Gilbert rely on this book, Hitler’s Political Testament?
. P-80
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really cannot say. I cannot answer for Sir Martin
2 Gilbert.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have criticised me through him for not relying on
4 Hitler’s Political Testament?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought it necessary, since you made a great deal of
6 this in your reply to the Defence initially at the
7 beginning of this whole case a couple of years ago, of
8 your reputation as a historian, to go into that, and that
9 is what I am talking about here.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar that Hitler’s Political Testament is a
11 forged document, and I know the Swiss gentleman who forged
12 it in his own handwriting? There is every reason
13 therefore why I should not have relied on that document.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not really relevant to what I am saying here.
15 What I am saying here is that you have been criticised by
16 other historians.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: 2.5.10, please. I am sorry, the last lines of 2.5.9. Do
18 you remember you are quoting Michael Howard criticising me
19 for not crediting other historians where they had done the
20 work?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I, in view of the fact that you have not done so, call
23 the court’s attention to the review that Michael Howard
24 wrote, which is in the little bundle at page 33? Does
25 your Lordship have it?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
. P-81
1 MR IRVING: I think in your Lordship’s copy I may have
2 highlighted a few sentences in yellow.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 33 of your E?
4 MR IRVING: Of F.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure you have, and it is very helpful
6 when you do. I will read out the passages you have
7 highlighted in my copy if you like.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I read out the passage in my report in full? The
9 military historian Michael Howard … praised the ‘very
10 considerable merits’ of The War Path and declared that
11 Irving was ‘at his best as a professional historian
12 demanding documentary proof for popularly held beliefs'”.
13 That is very positive and I am trying to convey there the
14 positive impression that Howard gives. Then I go on to his
15 criticisms: “Howard pointed out that Irving’s account of
16 an episode such as the enforced resignation of Generals
17 Blomberg and Fritsch before the outbreak of the Second
18 World War was not as original as he claimed and added
19 nothing to the story already told by other historians.
20 ‘It would be nice’, he wrote, ‘if Mr Irving occasionally
21 recognised that other men had been there before him and
22 done a competent job of work'”. This is not a damning
23 review. I am not trying to convey the impression that it
24 is. Of course, since, Mr Irving, you say you never read
25 other historians’ work, that last criticism of Sir
26 Michael’s is really not very surprising.
. P-82
1 MR IRVING: Oh dear. I wish you had not said that. Can I now
2 draw your attention to the next item in that bundle, which
3 is page 34? That is a letter from me to the newspaper
4 that published that review.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you direct me to the bundle?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 34 of the slim F.
7 MR IRVING: Now you will see what has happened, will you not?
8 Can I show you the book? First of all, is this the book?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have the point.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes I have the point too. That is one historian. Many
11 other historians —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think climb down on that one.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will climb down on Professor Deutsch, but he is not the
14 only historian who has written about this subject.
15 MR IRVING: Just so that the people behind me know what has
16 happened, is this the book to which you were referring by
17 Professor Harold Deutsch?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What you say in that letter, as you point out, Professor
19 Deutsch in his book had based his account on material that
20 you had supplied to him.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let me get a lot mileage out of this. First of all, is
22 Professor Deutsch Jewish?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have no idea.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Take it from me that he is a very good old Jewish friend
25 of mine who is one of the United States old guard of
26 historians?
. P-83
1 MR RAMPTON: There comes a time, even when it is a litigant in
2 person, where we cannot have continually, we have had it
3 all the time, evidence from counsel’s row. I do not
4 really mind. I am really standing up for rather a
5 different reason. We have done 45 pages in a day and a
6 half. At that rate Professor Evans will be in the box for
7 another three weeks.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am very conscious of that. I do not know
9 the shape of what is to come. I have not counted my
10 interventions, but they have pretty numerous. The
11 difficulty, Mr Rampton, if I may explain, is that
12 Professor Evans has made reference to these other
13 historians and their views. That does rather open up
14 cross-examination.
15 MR RAMPTON: It only does if those references are (a) likely to
16 be relied on by me, which is not very likely, and (b) and
17 much more important, if they are likely to influence your
18 Lordship. This is not a jury trial. If your Lordship
19 were to make it clear, if it be the case, that this part
20 of the report is not an important part —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have made that clear effectively on
22 a large number of occasions.
23 MR RAMPTON: I had thought so, and it does seem to me that this
24 is a rather futile game of ping pong that is going on at
25 the moment, and far better to get on to the detailed
26 criticisms. Professor Evans has said a number of times
. P-84
1 why he does not regard Mr Irving as a reputable
2 historian. It is because of the way he treats his
3 material. Then we ought to be looking at that, in my
4 submission.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, that really is very much what I
6 think I have been trying to say to you very often. I am
7 giving you, as I have said many times before also, as much
8 latitude as I reasonably can, but I do think you really
9 must get on to the specific criticisms. We are going
10 very, very slowly and this morning I really have not found
11 hugely helpful in terms of the task that I am eventually
12 going to have to perform. That is my problem.
13 MR IRVING: I am trying to undermine your Lordship’s confidence
14 in this witnesses as being somebody who has the ability
15 and the impartiality and the historical background to pass
16 judgment on myself.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may say so, that is a perfectly
18 legitimate thing to do, but in the end you cannot just
19 attack credibility. You have to get on to the nuts and
20 bolts of the report and show why they are not credible, as
21 opposed to attacking Professor Evans’ credibility on a
22 more broad brush basis. Do you see what I mean?
23 MR IRVING: In that case it would have been well if Professor
24 Evans had not written the initial 100 pages in his report.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I said that myself and I do rather
26 take that view. He did. You know my view of it. You are
. P-85
1 a litigant in person and you are, if I may say so,
2 handling your task extremely well, but one of the things
3 that you do learn is to take hints if you are doing it
4 professionally . I understand how difficult it is for you
5 because there is stuff in those first 150 pages which you
6 understandably take fierce objection to.
7 MR IRVING: It sets my teeth on edge, a lot of it.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not going to bulk very large in my
9 thinking.
10 MR IRVING: Your Lordship knows how your Lordship is thinking
11 but, with respect, I do not. You have a poker face and a
12 complete mask like demeanour which keeps me totally in the
13 dark. People ask me when I go home how have you done and
14 I say I not know.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is probably best. Anyway, I have given
16 the hint yet again. Mr Rampton is going shortly to ask me
17 to make a ruling about it and, if I have to make a ruling,
18 you know the way I am thinking at the moment, so let us
19 get on.
20 MR IRVING: Can we leap forward to page 47 of your report,
21 please? Harsh words on John Charmley now, a right wing
22 historian at the University of East Anglia.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What is harsh about that? He is right-wing. I do not
24 think he makes any secret of that. He is a former
25 colleague of mine.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does that disqualify somebody if they are right-wing?
. P-86
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, certainly not.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is enough about Mr Charmley. On to your
3 next point. I am not being flippant at all, but there is
4 nothing there for you, Mr Irving, I do not think, so come
5 on.
6 MR IRVING: Can I ask your Lordship to go to page 26 of the
7 little bundle, please? Recently received, but if your
8 Lordship feels it is irrelevant, then I shall move on.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He pays you a warm tribute and wishes you
10 well in your libel action.
11 MR IRVING: Can I take you to page 49, please?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am just saying that I quote Professor Charmley and
13 saying that he admires Mr Irving in my report.
14 MR IRVING: My Lord, if I am referred to as some kind of pariah
15 in the academic community whose views are worth nothing,
16 I find myself —-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not the way I approach it. I am
18 trying to find a way round this problem because I can see
19 you are not going to take my hint. I have seen plenty of
20 evidence, you have shown me a lot of evidence, from very
21 distinguished people like Lord Trevor-Roper paying you
22 tributes and, as a military historian, I certainly accept
23 the evidence that I have heard about the number of people
24 who have a very high regard for you. But in the end it is
25 not as a military historian that you are appearing really
26 in this trial. You are appearing for the very specific
. P-87
1 detailed criticisms of your approach made by Professor
2 Evans, and those are what matter.
3 MR IRVING: You are talking about assassinations, is this right
4 Professor?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, where is this.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 49, and the suggestion which is implicit in that
7 paragraph that the British did not carry out
8 assassinations, that I should not have hinted that we did,
9 and Irving’s claim that the democracies had no hesitation
10 about killing their foreign opponents. Do you accept that
11 the British did carry out assassinations in World War II?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am describing Trevor-Roper’s view of your work, and I am
13 recounting what he says in a section that is about your
14 reputation as an historian, where I try and lay out what
15 your reputation amongst professional historians has been
16 and is. I am not responsible for justifying every last
17 detail of what every historian I quote has written about
18 your work.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you reference the assassination of Chancellor Dollfuss
20 in 1934?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am not going to go into the
22 assassination of the Austrian Chancellor in 1934. It has
23 nothing to do with this case at all. You have to move on,
24 Mr Irving. I really am not going to let this case grind
25 almost to a halt on peripheral material.
26 MR IRVING: I am moving on. A 700 page report has been dumped
. P-88
1 on me by this expert witness in which he has used this
2 material to blacken my name and set my teeth on edge. It
3 has been very widely quoted and I do not know what your
4 Lordship is attending to or not.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not attending to other historians’ views
6 about the issues I have to decide. In the end they are
7 for me to decide, apart from those who have provided
8 reports.
9 MR IRVING: Move to page 57, please. I have leapt 20 questions
10 there, my Lord.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do realize you have. I recognize that.
12 MR IRVING: 2.5.29, please. The allegation that I invented
13 sources by Mr Charles Sydnor.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Once again, this is still in a section that is discussing
15 your reputation amongst other historians.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you feel quite comfortable in throwing these kinds of
17 reports or allegations or opinions of other historians at
18 me to criticise my reputation without investigating how
19 true they were?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not a central part of my report, Mr Irving. I am
21 simply trying to establish that some historians have been
22 extremely critical of your methods. That includes
23 particularly Sydnor and Brozsat. I am aware of the fact
24 that you replied to Sydnor and I dealt with that in my
25 response to the written questions which you submitted.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you adopt Sydnor’s criticism? This is
. P-89
1 Mr Irving’s problem and I am not unsympathetic towards
2 it. You recite the criticisms that Sydnor makes and then
3 you in some way seem to rather disavow them when you come
4 to give evidence. Are you saying that what Sydnor said is
5 a justified criticism? Or are you simply giving it as
6 background, as it were, to your own criticisms? That is
7 his problem as you, I am sure, understand.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I can see the problem.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: If you say well, no, I am not making that any part of my
10 case, then it may be that Mr Irving will feel we can
11 forget about Mr Sydnor.
12 MR IRVING: Yes. We could do that with a whole number of my
13 critics.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I am saying, trying to be as precise about it as
15 possible, is that it seems to me that Sydnor is an
16 authoritative critic, but of course I cannot say that
17 every one of his criticisms is justified. It is not in
18 the end part of my case at all. I am not taking up these
19 points and making them in my own treatment of your work.
20 I make a whole set of separate points about your work.
21 This is to do with your reputation amongst historians.
22 MR IRVING: Can I draw your attention to the middle sentence
23 where you say: “In his efforts to present Hitler in a
24 humane light”, which is one of the allegations against me,
25 “Irving, wrote Sydnor, manipulated sources, invented
26 incidents” — that is a pretty serious allegation —
. P-90
1 “(such as Hitler’s supposed rebuke of the Judge Freisler
2 at the conspirators’ trial) and once more, as so often,
3 failed to give proper documentary references”.
4 Professor, in your work at the Institute of
5 History in Munich though my papers, did you not find the
6 papers of Hitler’s Adjutant Schaub?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, you did not respond to that criticism in your
8 reply to Professor Sydnor in Central European History.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but, I think, Mr Irving, you may not have
10 heard or digested what Mr Irving said. He said: “It is
11 not in the end part of my case at all. I am not taking up
12 these points and making them in my own treatment of your
13 work. I make a whole set of separate points about your
14 work”.
15 I understand that really to mean that it is what
16 appears from about page, I do not know, 120 onwards which
17 Professor Evans relies on and he does not rely, unless
18 they happen to be in both, on the criticisms by Syndor.
19 I would have thought that that is sufficient for you to be
20 able to say, “Well, right, I can forget about the
21 recitations of other historians’ views and get on to what
22 matters”.
23 MR IRVING: Except that I would have submitted, my Lord, that
24 in every single instance where he has produced such an
25 episode, I am able to justify myself, as, for example, and
26 this is not without significance as far as his credibility
. P-91
1 as a witness is concerned and his credit worthiness.
2 I will take him to one further episode and then we will
3 skip another 20 pages. (To the witness): Page 59. You
4 applaud, shall we say, John Lukacs’ attack on me, is that
5 right, for having invented sources and all the usual
6 allegations?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not applaud it. I am summarizing it as part of a
8 discussion of your reputation amongst historians.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Right. He writes: “Mr Irving’s factual errors are beyond
10 belief. He says that ’40 per cent of the prisoners in
11 southern France turned out to be Russians” as one example
12 of how erroneous and factually erroneous I am?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we go very rapidly to make progress, not just to the
15 review which we will have a look at, but to page 23 of
16 bundle F?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a telegram from General Devers to General Marshal
19 and General Eisenhower?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the sentence that has been ringed on it say:
22 “Prisoners captured are between 1,500 and 2,000 of which
23 about 40 per cent are Russians”?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, if I just explain that this telegram was issued on
25 17th August. It notes that the 6th Army Corp. were ashore
26 by 1800 hours. “They occupied all small towns in this
. P-92
1 area which they say delineated by map references, and they
2 are advancing on Toulon which the 3rd Division expects to
3 reach by the morning and landing operations were
4 continuing. The prisoners captured are between 1500 and
5 2,000 of which about 40 per cent are Russians”.
6 So the first point is that — well, there are
7 many points — the document does not say that 40 per cent
8 of the prisoners in southern France turned out to be
9 Russians. It just says that 40 per cent of the prisoners
10 taken in a small area of southern France, Near Toulon, in
11 the first few hours of an American landing were Russians.
12 It does not say the Russians were volunteers. So it seems
13 to me that this is an egregious misinterpretation of this
14 document. You are blowing up a small report into a large
15 generalization.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the report by the Commanding General in command of
17 the entire sector, the entire landing operation, in
18 southern France. I do not really want to spend more time
19 on this than to say that, quite clearly, the reference in
20 my book depended solely on this telegram from Eisenhower’s
21 personal papers.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, it is right, is it not? I
23 mean, this is from the Advanced Detachment of Allied
24 Forces Headquarters for the attention, for his eyes only,
25 to Generals Marshall and Eisenhower. It can hardly be a
26 reference to some little skirmish. I mean, it must be a
. P-93
1 global report. Is Mr Irving not entitled to make the
2 point?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My Lord, he is talking about a few hours of a landing in a
4 relatively small area with 1500 and 2,000 captured
5 prisoners which is really a very small number. I do think
6 it is a manipulation of this source to generalize about 40
7 per cent of the prisoners in southern France which must
8 refer, surely, to the whole of the southern half of France
9 over the whole period in which the fighting was going on.
10 MR IRVING: No I think you will find —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think this is a classic example of —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: — before the words —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — of Mr Irving’s blowing up a small source into a large
14 generalization.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think you will find that before the words “40 per cent”
16 the phrase is “in the initial phase of the attack 40 per
17 cent”, but he has cut those words out?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you present me with the document, I would be happy to
19 concede that if he has manipulated that.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very good illustration of the
21 problems we run into. You have not got the war between
22 the Generals here, have we?
23 MR IRVING: No, I have not got it here with me, my Lord, but we
24 have a much more serious problem with this witness, and
25 this is that he has repeatedly relied on documents which
26 are not in the H1 series —-
. P-94
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, but the fact remains they were not
2 volunteers. Russians who joined the German armies were in
3 many cases, effectively, forced to do so.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: They were called Hilsswillige, were they not?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They were not volunteers.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Hiwis”, is that right?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That, of course, is a classic piece of Nazi rhetoric.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not true that they joined with the intention of
9 fighting the Bolsheviks and then found they had been sent
10 to another front?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in all cases, not at all, no. They were — Russian
12 prisoners of war in Germany were in extremely difficult
13 conditions. Some 3 million were, effectively,
14 deliberately left to starve and die by the Germans in the
15 course of war, and the alternative to being pressed into
16 the German Army was quite clear to many of them.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: John Lukacs has published a book recently, has he not?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, may I just try to help you because
19 I do see your problem and I am actually sympathetic with
20 it. If I tell you that my approach to these opening
21 paragraphs, pages, where the views of other historians
22 about your work are recited at length and in a very
23 critical vein, if I tell you my attitude to them is going
24 to be that they count for virtually nothing, so far as
25 I am concerned, when I come to judge the criticisms made
26 of you by Professor Evans, and I go a little bit further
. P-95
1 than that, and say it is my view that it is in every way
2 — this is not a criticism of Professor Evans personally
3 — unfortunate that they are there because they could be
4 taken to indicate a preconception about the validity of
5 the criticisms.
6 MR IRVING: I think they are grossly prejudicial, my Lord.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that satisfy you that you really are not
8 going to lose by not spending long, in fact I hope no
9 longer, on these other historians’ views?
10 MR IRVING: But you do accept my belief that they are grossly
11 prejudicial —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I chose my words with a certain amount of
13 care. They are capable of giving rise to the impression
14 that there was a preconception that there were justified
15 criticisms about you. In the end, I think Professor Evans
16 accepts that he has justify his own criticisms in his own
17 terms and as a matter of his own beliefs.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
Section 96.19 to 113.22
19 MR IRVING: Can you turn to page 63? We are now moving on to
20 publishers. I will not deal with any more historians
21 then. 2.5.38, can you accept that, in fact, my main
22 publishers in that era were Macmillan and Hutchinsons and
23 not Penguin? They were my major hard back publishers.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I mention publishing house — your books are
25 published by a variety of mainstream publishing houses,
26 including Penguin Books, Macmillan, Hodder and Stoughton,
. P-96
1 HarperCollins, Grafton Books and Corgi paperbacks.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: But they ceased publishing me, did they not?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is correct, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you implying they ceased publishing me because of
5 inherent faults in my works or because of some other
6 reason? Do you have any knowledge one way or the other?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to see where I describe this. You have no
8 longer been published — since the late 1980s you have no
9 longer been published by major houses, but instead you
10 have brought out your books under your own imprint.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are aware, in fact, that Macmillans continued
12 publishing me until 1992?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you suggesting that Macmillans and Hutchinsons and the
15 other major hard back publishers ceased publishing because
16 they found faults in my work?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I mean, one has to kind of guess really, I think, because
18 I have not had access to any documentation which they
19 have, but, as you know, the normal process among
20 publishers of non-fiction is to have manuscripts and books
21 submitted to referees for comment, and it may well be that
22 that is the reason why they did not. I mean, your views
23 have changed on a number of matters.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you any reason to —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Or did change in a number of matters, particularly on the
26 Holocaust in the late 1980s, and I think it is not
. P-97
1 unreasonable to see a connection between the change of
2 your views that took place in 1988 when I think you became
3 a Holocaust denier, and the fact that within four years
4 major publishing houses were not publishing your work any
5 longer.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it in your knowledge of the publishing industry normal
7 for publishers to come under outside pressure?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you mean by “outside pressure”. As
9 I said, publishers commonly send manuscripts and books out
10 to a variety of referees who report on them. In a sense,
11 if they get adverse reports from those referees, I guess
12 that is outside, that is some kind of outside
13 contribution.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have no knowledge of Macmillan ever having sent any of
15 my recent and final books out to outside referees, do you?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know whether you have submitted your manuscripts
17 to them or not. This is only a very brief reference here
18 in a few lines.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever heard of a major publisher ordering the
20 total destruction of an author’s works under the effect of
21 outside pressure?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Under the threat of legal action.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, not under threat of legal action?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is outside pressure.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Under threat of political pressure?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not to my knowledge, no. That is not to say it has not
. P-98
1 happened.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 63 you refer to the fact that reputable historians
3 do not get themselves arrested and deported and all the
4 rest of it. Is that correct?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I think so. Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is Salman Rushdie a reputable historian?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, he is a novelist.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he reputable?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is a novelist.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Blamed for his own misfortune?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is a novelist. I am not talking about novelists. I am
12 talking about reputable historians.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it reputable to abandon your principles in order not to
14 get arrested and deported?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I find that a difficult question. I mean, that is so
16 hypothetical. I am not quite sure who you are referring
17 to.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you used the word “reputable”.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All I am saying here —-
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, this is getting you nowhere.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All I am saying here is that, as I say: “It is impossible
22 to think of any historian of any standing at all who has
23 been subjected to so many adverse legal judgments”, and
24 also who has —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware there has been only one adverse —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — experienced so many difficulties.
. P-99
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: — legal judgment against me, and that this was in
2 Germany in January 1993? Are you aware what that judgment
3 was for?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought you had an adverse legal judgment against you in
5 the case of your book on the Convoy of PQ17, I think it
6 was called.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, we are certainly not going to go into
8 that.
9 MR IRVING: Are you aware of what the adverse legal judgment in
10 Germany in January 1993 was for?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you tell the court?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it was for Holocaust denial, was it not?
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, it was not for Holocaust denial. It was for saying
15 that the gas chamber at Auschwitz (i) which is shown to
16 the tourists is a fake.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Without seeing a copy of the judgment, I could not confirm
18 that. That is not my understanding of what the judgment
19 was.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Those are the words complained of and that is what I was
21 fined on. Will you comment —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, if I have copy of judgment in front of me, then
23 I will, then I will be prepared to comment on that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you go to page 66 of your report? We now come to
25 Irving and Holocaust denial.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-100
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On that issue, Mr Irving, can I just before
2 we embark on it so that we do not misunderstand one
3 another, I have got now a definition from the Defendants
4 of what they mean by “Holocaust denial” and you have
5 cross-examined about that and I bear in mind the points
6 you have made. I have all the statements that the
7 Defendants say you made which they rely on as amounting to
8 Holocaust denial. I have the context of the denials so
9 that I can see any points you have to make on context, you
10 have given your evidence about what you meant.
11 I am just wondering where we go with the
12 evidence on it. Is it not in the end a question for me to
13 look at what you have said or you are reported as having
14 said and making up my mind whether you constitute a
15 Holocaust denier in the sense the Defendants define that
16 term?
17 MR IRVING: This is true, but I am trying to organize that word
18 in the order of things. This is a useful paragraph to
19 look at because in this paragraph, my Lord, he states that
20 Holocaust denier is the central allegation against me in
21 Lipstadt’s book, in the book by the Second Defendant.
22 I was going to ask whether he does not agree that the
23 allegations about manipulation, distortion and deliberate
24 mistranslation are far more serious for a professional
25 historian.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is a perfectly fair question.
. P-101
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the answer is I say a central allegation, not the
2 central allegation.
3 MR IRVING: Well, nit-picking aside, will you now answer the
4 question? Would you not agree that the allegation about
5 manipulation, distortion and deliberate mistranslation of
6 original records are far more serious to be slapped on a
7 professional historian like myself or a professional
8 writer like myself, if you do not like the word
9 “historian”?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I describe it as a central allegation because it is
11 not the only one. It does, to my mind, as it were,
12 contain within it the allegation that you manipulated,
13 falsified history, and it is an allegation to which in
14 your plea to the court, your written submission to the
15 court initially, you take extremely strong exception, so
16 I felt it necessary to go into it.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: By what — I cannot really question —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure you have answered the question
19 quite.
20 MR IRVING: I beg your Lordship’s pardon?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that the Professor has
22 answered your question quite.
23 MR IRVING: It is important.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is an important question and I
25 think it is worth spending a few moments on.
26 MR IRVING: Because they have not exactly put these ones in
. P-102
1 section 5, so I am entitled to ask how serious these
2 allegations are as seen by an acknowledged historian who
3 is an expert witness on the matter.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, it is an fair question.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: In the end, the sting or the main sting, as it is
7 sometimes called, against Mr Irving is that he has
8 manipulated data and so come to deny the Holocaust in the
9 sense —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Or the other way round, that he is denying the Holocaust
11 and, therefore, manipulated data.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, I follow that.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The two are bound up together, my Lord, and I am trying to
14 unpack them here. So certainly, of course, the allegation
15 that he has manipulated data is in that sense the crucial
16 allegation in Lipstadt’s book.
17 MR IRVING: Professor, are they not separate allegations? They
18 are four separate allegations, are they not? He
19 manipulates, he distorts, he mistranslates and, on top of
20 all that, he denies the Holocaust?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think they are bound — I mean, you can separate
22 them out, and they are also very closely connected.
23 I think the burden of the charges put forward in Professor
24 Lipstad’s book is that Holocaust deniers, by definition,
25 as it were, manipulate and falsify history, falsify the
26 data.
. P-103
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if you were to take for a moment —-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let the Professor finish his answer.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I had, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You had finished?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 MR IRVING: If you were to wrench the Holocaust denial
7 allegation out of the book and just leave the rest of it,
8 the manipulation, the distortion and the mistranslation,
9 that would still be a pretty serious allegation to make of
10 an historian, would it not?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You could not say, “Well, it is OK because we do not
13 accuse him of Holocaust denial which is the big one”?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it would be a very serious allegation if it were made
16 against any historian —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: — in order to prettify the image of Adolf Hitler in
19 history he deliberately distorted. These are serious
20 allegations —-
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, absolutely. I agree.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: — to make? Yes. It would render him virtually
23 unpublishable in the world of serious writers?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: What do you think the Second Defendant meant and the First
26 Defendant in publishing it when they describe me as being
. P-104
1 the most dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial, the
2 word “dangerous”?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I think what was meant by that was that you more than
4 people like, well, I think it is because you had a
5 reputation for being a serious historian in the 1970s,
6 1980s, and that, therefore, that gives you a certain
7 authority which is not the case with, say, Professor
8 Faurisson, exProfessor Faurisson, or the other Holocaust
9 deniers, Arthur Butts, and so on.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So did I suddenly go mad or something that changed me from
11 being a translator who did not distort and did not
12 manipulate, and I suddenly abandoned all my principles and
13 methods and everything I had taught myself and I suddenly
14 went wrong in some way? Is this what the allegation is?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I have just described what I think the allegation is.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Apparently, you say that until the 1970s or 1980s I was
17 OK?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I did not say that. I was talking about your
19 reputation.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Reputation?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Even in that case, and when one goes into it (as I did)
22 and we have been over that, there are some historians who
23 had pointed out in the 1970s and 80s that you did engage
24 in distortion and manipulation. Nevertheless, I think,
25 and I have tried to convey this in talking about your
26 reputation, that you did have quite a widespread
. P-105
1 reputation as an expert historian of the Second World War,
2 and that is I think what Professor Lipstadt meant by
3 saying that you were a dangerous spokesperson for
4 Holocaust denial. You did change your views — you
5 describe yourself how you changed your views as a result
6 of the Leuchter report at the end of the 80s and the court
7 has been into that over the past few weeks.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but the word “dangerous” is what I am looking at.
9 Why is the word “dangerous” used instead of “formidable”
10 or “one to be taken seriously”? The word “dangerous”
11 implies that I am a danger to something, does it not? It
12 presupposes that I am a danger — would you say I am a
13 danger to somebody’s interests? Is this what is implied
14 by that?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not think that is what that means. It is
16 difficult to second guess why the word “dangerous” is used
17 here rather than, as you say, “persuasive” or
18 “formidable”, but I think, in the context of Professor
19 Lipstadt’s book, that means that you are more likely,
20 indeed, to be persuasive than some of the other figures in
21 this scene.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am dangerous to the whole of existing history of the
23 Holocaust? Is that what is implied by that?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is, in the end, a matter for me,
25 what Professor Lipstadt would have been understood to
26 mean, but it seems to me it is pretty clear that the
. P-106
1 danger is that a lot of people will — I was going to use
2 the word “swallow”, that is a bit offensive — accept the
3 denial case.
4 MR IRVING: Yes, or take it seriously and start asking awkward
5 questions, my Lord.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us proceed on that footing.
7 MR IRVING: If you would now turn the page, my Lord, we now
8 come to page 67, and this is where I have to ask your
9 Lordship’s guidance. The expert witness is here giving an
10 opinion on the meaning of words, and all the authorities
11 that I have consulted suggest that this should not be.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am not sure I really agree with
13 that. On the other hand —-
14 MR IRVING: Your Lordship agrees there are authorities that say
15 that expert witnesses cannot give evidence on the meaning
16 of words?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, there are, but, I mean, not in this
18 context. I think Professor Evans is perfectly entitled to
19 say what he understands the Holocaust to be referring to,
20 but is it going to help me because, in a sort of broad
21 sense, everybody knows perfectly well what is referred to
22 by the Holocaust.
23 MR IRVING: I strongly disagree, my Lord, with the utmost
24 respect. We were asked this very early on by Mr Rampton,
25 your Lordship will remember. Your Lordship will remember
26 that I said that, to my mind, the Holocaust is the visual
. P-107
1 image that people have. I, first of all, defined it as
2 being the immense tragedy inflicted on the Jewish people
3 by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II
4 which I think is a very fine definition, but there are
5 countless other definitions.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I would suggest to you is that time in
7 cross-examination of Professor Evans is not going to be
8 well spent by discussing various meanings —-
9 MR IRVING: Meanings of words.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — or definitions of the Holocaust. You can
11 do that in submission, and I think it would be much more
12 sensible to deal with it in that way.
13 MR IRVING: Yes. On page 71, my Lord, you will find the vague
14 footnote that I referred to earlier.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That simply says: “If you want to know more about
17 Auschwitz read Professor Robert Jan van Pelt’s report”.
18 MR IRVING: All 770 pages of it?
19 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, it is only fair to point out that this
20 report is directed at the court and the author of this
21 report, Professor Evans, is entitled to assume that the
22 court will read the whole of van Pelt’s report.
23 MR IRVING: It is a rather superfluous kind of footnote, is it
24 not?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I understand it is a general reference
26 to van Pelt.
. P-108
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am simply trying to say there I really am not —
2 I really do not, I want to save space, I do not want to
3 say too much about Auschwitz because that is a subject
4 dealt with by another report. That is really all that
5 footnote is trying to say.
6 MR IRVING: Page 74 — are we making fast enough progress, my
7 Lord, now?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Faster.
9 MR IRVING: 3.1.14, line 2, you say: “The essential point is
10 that there is wide agreement that there was a systematic
11 attempt”.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, I am nervous. As soon as we have the word
14 “systematic” coming in, of course, then the court pricks
15 up its ears?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is “wide agreement” sufficient proof, in your view, or do
18 you want to be more rigorous with our methods?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to summarize here what the concept of the
20 Holocaust or, well, what I am saying actually is that the
21 term, the word “Holocaust”, is a secondary issue. I think
22 in order to —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are wide agreements always right? There was wide
24 agreement that the earth was flat —-
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We had this almost exact exchange on
26 Thursday.
. P-109
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have had this before.
2 MR IRVING: I am glad that your Lordship is familiar with
3 that. In other words, “wide agreement” is not sufficient
4 evidence alone; we do need more rigorous support, do we
5 not?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I am saying, of course, is that there is wide
7 agreement based on an enormous amount of research into a
8 very large quantity of documentation —-
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, did you say three lines from the bottom —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — which I do not think you can say is true of the belief
11 that the earth is flat.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do say three lines from the bottom: “The Nazi
13 authorities also left an enormous quantity of
14 documentation providing detail of the policy of
15 extermination”.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have we not been hearing now for four weeks that there is
18 no such documentation?
19 MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord, that is simply not right. I do not
20 know if Professor Evans has been in court all the time,
21 I am sure he has not, but your Lordship will recall that
22 Mr Irving himself, on the basis of a very considerable
23 volume of documentation, has conceded — I use that word
24 advisedly — not only that the systematic shooting of vast
25 numbers of Jews in the East, in Russia, happened, but that
26 it happened on Hitler’s authority.
. P-110
1 MR IRVING: Of course we are not talking just about the
2 shootings on the East, are we?
3 MR RAMPTON: Just, no.
4 MR IRVING: We are talking about we have a major problem with
5 what happened elsewhere.
6 MR RAMPTON: We are talking about something like 1.2 million
7 people, on Mr Irving’s figures.
8 MR IRVING: I think that the question I should have asked is,
9 is there a vast body of documentation giving evidence,
10 providing details, of the policy of extermination in
11 Auschwitz and the other camps like that?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not what I say. All I am trying to do here is to
13 advise the court that there is a very large quantity of
14 documentation, something which I am sure the court now
15 realizes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 79 at line 5 you refer to a recent Holocaust
17 denial work. Is this a massive tome by one Barbara
18 Kulaszka with the title: “Did Six Million Really Die”?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot recall whether it is a massive tome.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is about 650 pages, A4 size?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Edited.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Edited. Am I right in saying that this is an account by
23 Barbara Kulaszka of the trial in Toronto on the history of
24 Auschwitz, shall we say?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is right, on the Zundel trial.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Am I right in saying that Barbara Kulaszka, being a
. P-111
1 solicitor of the Court of Ontario, is an officer of the
2 court and well qualified to write this kind of summary?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That, I am not sure. I think she has some kind of legal
4 status. I took this to be a work of Holocaust denial from
5 it contents.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: So that a summary of the evidence for the Prosecution and
7 the Defence in a law court can be taken to be a work of
8 Holocaust denial?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whether it could or it could not, it has
10 nothing to do with this case.
11 MR IRVING: My Lord, the reason I am bringing it to your
12 Lordship’s attention is that I have provided in the little
13 bundle a two-page summary at pages 20 and 21 by this
14 solicitor of the issues of Holocaust denial which is a
15 very useful summary of what is said about it and what the
16 various authorities are. That is from that particular
17 publication. Your Lordship might find it useful at some
18 time just to digest its contents. I put it no stronger
19 than that.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do take Barbara Kulaszka to be an advocate of Holocaust
21 denial from the contents of what she writes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, because a solicitor writes an account of
23 the trial of a Holocaust denier, giving the Prosecution
24 and Defence case, it is the work of Holocaust denial?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me say, I do not think it is a neutral account and the
26 fact that she is a solicitor is neither here nor there.
. P-112
1 MR RAMPTON: No. In fact, I am told that she was Zundel’s
2 solicitor and also Mr Irving’s.
3 MR IRVING: Well, of course, Mr Rampton will be familiar with
4 the concept that she is an officer of the court and is
5 subject to certain basic principles and etiquettes. My
6 Lord, might I suggest that we pause there for our lunch
7 break?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, the time has come, certainly. Where are
9 we going after the adjournment?
10 MR IRVING: We will make future progress into the parts your
11 Lordship is interested in.
12 MR RAMPTON: I have laid hands on (because they have been given
13 to me) some pages showing recent references on Mr Irving’s
14 website, I think it is Mr Irving’s website, to what he
15 calls some “traditional enemies of free speech”.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got a copy?
17 MR RAMPTON: We have had these printed out. It may not be the
18 whole story by any means.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very helpful. Thank you very much.
20 Then you can return to this, if you want to, Mr Irving,
21 briefly at 2.00. So 2 o’clock.
22 (Luncheon adjournment)
Part III: Evans Cross-Examined by Irving, afternoon session (113.23 to 217.26)
Section 113.23 to 126.9
23 (2.00 p.m.)
24 Professor Evans, recalled.
25 Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
. P-113
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, we are now well into Holocaust denial and
2 trying to make forward progress. Professor Evans, have
3 you had any discussion since Thursday with anybody else
4 about the evidence you are giving, or with the instructing
5 solicitors in this case?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: None at all? You know that you are not allowed to, do you
8 not?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do indeed, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you to go to page 89 of your expert report
11 please, looking at paragraph 5: “The murder by shooting
12 of thousands of Jews is not the same as the extermination
13 by shooting, gassing starvation and deliberate neglect of
14 millions of Jews which forms an essential part of the
15 Holocaust as conventionally understood”.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: No doubt you mean the shooting or gassing or starvation or
18 deliberate neglect — is that right?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do accept that I have written in most of my books, in
21 recent years certainly, about the shootings in a way which
22 makes it quite plain that I do not deny that they took
23 place?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we are limiting really the allegations of Holocaust
26 denial to the more narrow front of the fact that I call
. P-114
1 into doubt the existence of gas chambers for mass
2 extermination of Jews.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is one very important element in it. As
4 I say here, there are a number of different elements to
5 Holocaust denial. One of them is what I call here the
6 extermination by shooting, gassing starvation and
7 deliberate neglect of millions of Jews, plus the
8 systematic nature of this, plus the number, the millions
9 of Jews as opposed to thousands, as I put it there, and
10 the allegation of the fabrication of evidence for the
11 Holocaust as conventionally understood. All those things
12 belong together, as I said this morning.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am moving forward now into the hundreds, I think. I did
14 ask you — this is a written question, in fact page 91.
15 You commented once or twice on the index to my books.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that you write the index of your own books?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that most reputable publishers in fact have
20 the index prepared by an outside indexing professional?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Not in the case of scholarly works of history. My
22 experience in research books authors, historians, are very
23 keen to index their own books. In any case, my comment on
24 indexing is simply because, in your written reply to the
25 Defence, you draw attention to index entries in your
26 books, so I assume that that meant that you accepted that
. P-115
1 they were genuine, and accept some responsibility for
2 them. Otherwise you would not have drawn attention to
3 them.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you do accept that, in the case of all my books with
5 the exception of one, I have no part in the preparation of
6 the index?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you say so.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How does that work? I am asking you because
9 you are the witness. How easy is it for the writer of
10 Hitler’s War, for example, to get somebody else to do his
11 index?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, my Lord, correct me if I am wrong, what would
13 happen is that an author would simply say to the
14 publisher, well, employ a professional indexer, and there
15 are such individuals, and take the money off my royalties,
16 something like that, to pay the fee.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I follow how it might work financially, but what I do not
18 understand at the moment is how the professional indexer
19 is going to know what to put in the index.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is a problem. They are professional indexers
21 so they use their own judgment as to what is important and
22 what is not. You start with place names, person names,
23 and then a number of subjects that you think are important
24 in the book.
25 MR IRVING: As the author of some 30 books, perhaps I can
26 explain to your Lordship that there is a professional
. P-116
1 society of indexers and there is actually a British
2 Standard for indexes, believe it or not. The wise author
3 is well advised to leave the index to the professionals
4 rather than to attempt to do it himself. The only book
5 that I have indexed in fact was The Destruction of
6 Dresden, the recent edition?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I disagree with that. I think a wise author should index
8 his or her own books. It is a way you maintain control
9 over what the index says.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Except you cannot draw conclusions from the content of the
11 indexes of my books as to the author of those books, if
12 I say that the author did not write the index.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, you are the one who drew attention to the index
14 in your reply to the Defence of the second Defendant. You
15 cite index entries as evidence of what you write about the
16 Holocaust. That is the only reason why I use the index so
17 you yourself rely on them.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want get sucked into this particular morass.
19 Will you agree that the only reason the index was cited
20 was to draw the attention to pages that were there by
21 reference and not to the actual index itself?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes. Obviously.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you now have a look please at page 93, just going back,
24 you refer to the fact that these editions of Hitler’s War
25 were published under the same cover, line one?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-117
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you will agree with me, do you not, that you comment
2 frequently on my having omitted things from the later
3 edition of my book, that passages were omitted?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, in particular references to the Holocaust.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept that Hitler’s War in the first edition
6 was 959 pages long, that is this edition, the first
7 edition, and that The War Path was 328 pages, and that the
8 1991 all in one edition was less than a thousand pages, so
9 there must have been substantial abridgement in order to
10 fit them all into one volume?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes. It is not the fact of abridgement that I am
12 commenting on but what is excised.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that, in the course of abridgement, by
14 virtue of the task of abridgement, things get omitted?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes, of course. That is what abridgement is.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 93, paragraph 1, two lines from the end, you say, the
17 liquidation programme and the systematic murder
18 are ‘notions’ as much as Hitler’s knowledge of them. Are
19 you suggesting that the word ‘notions’ is mine? You put
20 it in quotation marks.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I quote you here saying that Hitler made statements
22 in 1942 and 3 which are incompatible with the notion that
23 he knew the liquidation programme had begun and that
24 Europe’s Jews had been systematically murdered.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept from me that a digital search of the text
26 for the word “notions” found it only once in a 1940
. P-118
1 reference to the French campaign?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, “notion” is in the singular. That is why the plural
3 failed.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Notion or notions. In other words, once again, you put a
5 word in quotation marks as though it is by me which is not
6 actually by me. It is just your word.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, it is. It is your word.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am just saying it is not, because I have done a
9 word search on the entire text and it is not in there.
10 Will you now carry on to page 93, the last line, that
11 I have removed all mention of the word ‘extermination’
12 from the book.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say I do not accept that. I am quoting your
14 words there, the notion that you knew a liquidation
15 programme had begun. It is in the introduction to the
16 1991 edition.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you look at the last line of that page, please, the
18 introduction to the 1977 edition of the book? I am sorry,
19 in the later edition of the book, I have removed all
20 mention of ‘extermination’, is that correct?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to find this. Where is it?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: The last line of page 93 and the first line of page 94.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The introduction? Yes.
24 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I intervene to correct an error by
25 Mr Irving, no doubt perhaps not for the last time. Page
26 90 of the introduction to Hitler’s War, first complete
. P-119
1 paragraph, “On several occasions in 1942 and 1943 Hitler
2 made in private statements which are incompatible with the
3 notion that he knew that a liquidation programme had
4 begun”.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right, Mr Irving, is it not?
6 MR IRVING: Yes. Will you now go to the last line of 93 and
7 the first line of 94, where you say that I have removed
8 all mention of the word ‘extermination’?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I do not say that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: All mention of —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The introduction — let me read those sentences. The
12 first reference in the introduction on pages 17 to 21 is
13 the defence of Irving’s views of Hitler. “It has already
14 been pointed out above how it differs from the
15 corresponding introduction to the 1977 edition of the book
16 in removing all mention of the extermination of the Jews”.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that the word ‘exterminate’ or
18 ‘extermination’ occurs 29 times in that book?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It depends in reference to who.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the introduction I am talking about.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not hear your answer, Professor Evans.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am referring to the introduction. I am not claiming
23 that the word does not occur in the whole book.
24 MR IRVING: At page 96 you refer to the fact that from the
25 second edition of 1991, the 1991 edition, looking at the
26 first line of paragraph 7, “Even more strikingly the
. P-120
1 testimony of Morgen and Lorenz and the Slovak Jews has
2 entirely vanished”.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which Slovac Jews are you referring to?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Verba and one other.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Verba and Wetzler, is that correct?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it possible that I had learned something between the
9 two editions that made me totally distrust the evidence of
10 Verba?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How can he know that unless you put what it
12 was?
13 MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord, for inviting this. Will you
14 turn to the little bundle, please?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I can cut this short. I footnote this. I explain in
16 footnote 14 on page 97, since having written this book in
17 1977, you said, “I understand that that Slovac report is
18 open to some question”, so I point that out.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. It was not just open to some question.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is what you said.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Could you go to pages 4 and 5 of the little bundle F?
22 This goes to a rather wider issue in fact than just the
23 footnoting. Pages 4 and 5 of the little bundle F, is this
24 an article from the Toronto Star as reproduced on my
25 website?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an article in your website. It is not reproduced in
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1 the original. It is not a photocopy. It is copied.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it purport to be reproduced from an article from the
3 Toronto Star dated January 24th 1985?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does purport to be that, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the headline, “Book an artistic picture, survivor never
6 saw actual gassing deaths”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is the headline, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it an account of testimony given by the afore mentioned
9 Verba in the Toronto trial of Zundel in which, under
10 cross-examination, Verba, and this is the indented
11 passage, “yesterday admitted he was never inside that
12 particular bunker” and Verba had seen, it was the roof he
13 had seen of the mortuary and not a gas chamber. That is
14 the indented passage.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the rest of the article suggest that Verba was not a
17 very reliable eyewitness of what he claimed to have seen
18 or reported on?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It suggests that there are some aspects of what he
20 original originally said were not reliable but he insists
21 that others were, according to the article.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I am sure, if he had been in Auschwitz as he
23 undoubtedly was, he was able to testify to certain aspects
24 of what he had seen, but on the important issue of the
25 goings on in gas chambers, it turned out he was not an
26 eyewitness and was therefore in no sense reliable as a
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1 witness. Is that correct?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I do point that out in the footnote, as I have had
3 said. You understand it is open to some question. It
4 seems to me a fair comment.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your Lordship will appreciate that the reason I have
6 brought that to your Lordship’s attention is it goes to
7 the question of eyewitnesses again. This was an
8 eyewitness of crematorium No. 2, the big building. It
9 turns out that he collapsed under cross-examination in
10 Toronto. Under that circumstance was I right therefore in
11 later editions of the book to omit his testimony or
12 reference to it?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends rather on what testimony you were omitting.
14 For example, he does say that he heard things from
15 reliable sources, that he insisted he had made accurate
16 estimates of the number of murder victims, and so on.
17 But, if those passages which you omitted concerned those
18 which he himself admitted were wrong, then of course you
19 were right to omit them.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you. Can we now go to page 100, where we are now
21 dealing with my biography of Hermann Goring. Do you have
22 that in paragraph 1?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we leaving Hitler’s War?
25 MR IRVING: For the moment.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I realise for the moment. Can I ask
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1 Professor Evans a general question? It may be rather
2 difficult for you because you may not have it all in mind
3 at the moment. In so far as reference was made to the
4 Jews in the first edition of Hitler’s War 1977, and the
5 references to Jews in the second edition 1991,
6 quantitatively and indeed qualitatively, I suppose, did
7 you notice a significant difference? I have just been
8 looking at the indexes in both instances. Are the
9 excisions significant?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, they are. Mr Irving himself said that he removed all
11 references to extermination camps and death factories from
12 the 1991 edition which I quote on page 100 near the top,
13 so they are significant changes.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Sorry, Mr Irving, you are going on to
15 Goring.
16 MR IRVING: Yes. If the witness again says that I removed all
17 reference to extermination camps and death camps, then
18 I draw attention to the fact that the word “exterminate”
19 occurs 28 times in the second edition of the book, my
20 Lord.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not quite the same thing, of course.
22 MR IRVING: Did I understand your Lordship to say that you were
23 comparing the indexes of the two volumes?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I was.
25 MR IRVING: May I draw attention to the fact that the index of
26 the 1991 edition that you have there was prepared by the
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1 American publishing company Avon, which was highly
2 inadequate, whereupon we commissioned a separate index,
3 which I can provide your Lordship. We have that index
4 available. It is about 50 pages long of typescript, much
5 more comprehensive, and a comparison —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that the index being different may
7 have been rather less detailed in one case than the other,
8 but it may be a worth while exercise to see what was there
9 in the first edition and what has come out.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The point, Mr Irving, is that you yourself, as I note in
11 paragraph 2, page 93, drew attention in your written reply
12 to the Defence, you drew attention to the 1991 index
13 entries as evidence that you were not a Holocaust denier.
14 So I am puzzled as to why you should be disputing the
15 accuracy of it.
16 MR IRVING: I draw attention to the pages referenced by those
17 indexes but, of course the actual index itself which his
18 Lordship is doing a statistical comparison with, he should
19 therefore use the correct index rather than this rather
20 cheap index produced by the Americans. The third edition
21 of the book which is going to press this month has an even
22 better index being prepared. But, once again, the index
23 is not — can I now proceed to Hermann Goring?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That was my fault, sorry.
25 MR IRVING: Your question, as I understood, was purely about
26 the comparison between the indexes of the two or the
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1 actual mentions in the book?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was more whether the index would suggest
3 that there was quite a lot that was not repeated in the
4 1991 edition gives a fair impression of whether there were
5 significant omissions and the answer that Professor Evans
6 has given is yes.
7 MR IRVING: The 1991 edition was a very truncated edition in
8 its original incarnation.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That makes it even odder.
Section 126.10 to 160.11
10 MR IRVING: At page 100, please, Professor Evans, we are
11 dealing now with the biography of Hermann Goring. You
12 have in the fourth line of that paragraph noted that the
13 book was published in 1989. What conclusions do you draw
14 from that?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That you had completed it, roughly speaking, a year or
16 slightly less before.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So what you are suggesting is that by that time I had
18 taken on board the Leuchter report, is that right?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That would be my assumption, the way books were
20 published.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You had my diaries available when you wrote your report,
22 or researchers had the diaries available. Can I read to
23 you the entry in my diary of January 11th 1988, which is
24 only one line long, “January 11th 1998, 4.45 p.m. posted
25 rest of Goring by Data Post courier to New York”. Will
26 you take it that that implies that the book was completed
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1 on January 11th 1988 therefore?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, though of course then you have the opportunity to
3 make revisions in the proof.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept therefore that the book was delivered to
5 the publishers three months before I first set eyes on
6 Fred Leuchter or the Leuchter report?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The manuscript yes, but you do have the opportunity to
8 make changes to the proof, do you not?
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that, if I did not make such changes in proof stage,
10 therefore this would invalidate any points you seek to
11 make based on the presumption that I had the Leuchter
12 report information at that time?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is an interesting point, but it does not really
14 affect what I say about the Goring book.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you are seeking to make some kind of watershed around
16 the time that I learned of the Leuchter report as being
17 April 1988, this is significance that the Goring book was
18 completed before the watershed and delivered to
19 publishers. Are you familiar with the fact that
20 publishers frown on any kind of proof stage corrections,
21 their authors’ corrections, charges levied, are you
22 familiar with that?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a matter of negotiation. You can usually make up to
24 about 10 per cent changes. It is matter of negotiating
25 percentages of what you are allowed to change. It depends
26 on the publisher and so on.
. P-127
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you any evidence that the manuscript that I delivered
2 to the publisher in January 1988 was different from that
3 subsequently published in 1989?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, the Goring book counts as a pre watershed
6 book and there is no evidence to the contrary?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Unless what you are telling me is that the watershed might
8 have been slightly earlier than the Leuchter report, which
9 is a very interesting point. What I have to say about the
10 Goring book does not really depend on that. That is, if
11 you like, an assumption on my part which may have been
12 wrong. What is important about it is that you point to it
13 as evidence that you are not a Holocaust denier, and
14 I examine it briefly on pages 100 to 103, and point out
15 that what you say in the book is not incompatible with
16 Holocaust denial.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but at the time you wrote that you presumed that
18 I was post watershed, so speak, and that was why you
19 confidently adopted these interpretations.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I adopted the interpretation on the basis of what
21 I read.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know of any evidence that Hermann Goring was aware
23 of the goings on in Auschwitz, the mass extermination in
24 gas chambers which is part of the Holocaust story?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh goodness.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Any documentary evidence?
. P-128
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not presented any documentary evidence for the
2 court. I am not really concerned with that issue. What
3 I am concerned with in this section are your views on the
4 Holocaust as exemplified by the Goring book.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did I not write in the Hermann Goring book on pages 343 to
6 9, this is your second line at page 101, that in the
7 winter of 1941 to 42 Goring heard rumours of mass killings
8 in the East, which is of course what we all accept
9 happened, that there were these mass killings?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The operative word there I think is “rumours”.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You continue: The surviving documents provide no proof
13 that these killings were systematic, they yield to no
14 explicit orders from above and the massacres themselves
15 were carried out by the local Nazis, by no means all of
16 German, points which I think you have now admitted are
17 wrong.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now that we have access since 1988 when this manuscript
19 was delivered to the police decodes, we are able to
20 establish with much greater detail, is this not correct,
21 precisely how these things happened?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but part of my point is that in 1977 in Hitler’s War
23 you took a rather different attitude to these matters.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Different altitude in which direction?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You accepted much more that there was systematic mass
26 murder of Jews.
. P-129
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the Eastern Front, the shootings or altogether?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Altogether.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, at that time I accepted the whole package
4 uncritically?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, I do not know whether it was uncritical or not. You
6 seem to accept a large part of it, certainly that there
7 were mass murders of many millions of Jews, including the
8 use of gas. I think you did accept that in 1977, and
9 there really is not any evidence in the Goring book that
10 you accept it there.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You appreciate that, when I wrote the Hermann Goring book,
12 I did so on the basis of his as yet unpublished diaries
13 and other documents to which I had had very limited or
14 exclusive access like the entire transcripts of his
15 conferences and documents like that, which other
16 historians had not seen, and therefore I was probably
17 entitled to express a view of my own on the basis of those
18 documents?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It is a matter of how you comment on these things.
20 If you cite, as you do on page 469, Goring claiming under
21 interrogation that the extermination camps were merely
22 propaganda, I always thought he said there were places
23 where people were put to useful work, you do not actually
24 comment on that, you just seem to accept that.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, I should have done what an establishment
26 historian would do and immediately pooh-pooh the notion
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1 that somebody as powerful as Goring could have
2 been unfamiliar with what was going on, should I?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It seems to me a responsible historian should comment on
4 that statement, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: He should just have said, the documents suggest this but
6 common sense suggests differently? Is it perverse not to
7 make such a comment, just to leave the documents to speak
8 for themselves?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What we are dealing with here is the allegation that you
10 are a Holocaust denier, and my point there simply that
11 what you are saying in the Goring book is not incompatible
12 with your being a Holocaust denier, although in your reply
13 to the Defence you say that it is.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we go on to page 106? We have now crossed the 100
15 mark. Professor, will you accept that I have let you off
16 a lot of hooks which I considered were buried in the first
17 100 pages?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That risks undoing the good that you have
19 just pointed out you have done as he will ask what hooks
20 and then we will be back.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I promise not to ask that, my Lord. I will not accept
22 it.
23 MR IRVING: Page 106, halfway down paragraph 1, the second
24 paragraph on the page, you say, “Within a couple of years,
25 however, Irving was declaring himself to be an expert on
26 the subject”.
. P-131
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: When have I declared myself to be an expert? We are
3 talking here about the mid 1980s, are we not? Within a
4 couple of years Irving was declaring himself to be an
5 expert on the Holocaust?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I take that to be 1988, actually.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 1988.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is within a couple of years of 1986, and
10 that is Zundel.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I follow it on by talking about Zundel, where you were
12 appearing as an expert witness.
13 MR IRVING: Was I appearing as an expert witness on the
14 Holocaust or as an expert witness on Adolf Hitler’s role
15 in directing the Third Reich?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I recall, you were appearing as an expert witness on
17 the Second World War.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in other words, not an expert on the Holocaust?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is included. The point in any case is that
20 you were asked on the numbers killed in the Holocaust, you
21 gave your opinion as I quote it there, and therefore you
22 are lending the imprimatur of your expertise to those
23 views. If you did not have any expertise on the numbers
24 killed in the Holocaust, presumably you would have said
25 that you did not have any expertise.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Defence counsel is there putting something to me and
. P-132
1 asking me for a comment, and I begin my reply, the last
2 three lines on that page with, “I am not familiar with any
3 documentary evidence of any such figure”.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. You have the emphasis wrong. “I am not
5 familiar with any documentary evidence”. I think that is
6 fair, Mr Irving, if you read on.
7 MR IRVING: For the purpose of what I am saying, my Lord, it is
8 I am not familiar. I am not claiming to be a Holocaust
9 expert?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, here you claim in the witness box in that
11 particular trial, “I am not familiar with any documentary
12 evidence of any such figure of 6 million, it must have
13 been of the order of 100,000 or more but to my mind it was
14 certainly less than the figure which is quoted, 6
15 million”, and so on. You were giving that testimony as an
16 expert. In August 1988 you told an audience in Toronto,
17 “I have now begun over the last few months going around
18 the archives with a completely open mind looking for the
19 evidence myself because of Auschwitz, just to take that
20 one cardinal tent pole of the case, if Auschwitz itself
21 was not an extermination factory, what is the evidence
22 that it was”? You claimed that you were looking in 40
23 different government and private archives to see what they
24 had on Auschwitz. You were writing a book on Auschwitz
25 according to one of your speeches.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can halt your flood there and say—-
. P-133
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is answering the question.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to answer your question. You said that this
3 final book you claimed you were writing on Auschwitz would
4 pull off a coup even more spectacularly than exposing the
5 Hitler diaries as a fake, and all that seems to me to be
6 evidence that you were proclaiming yourself to be an
7 expert on the Holocaust. You said you had been fined in a
8 German court. In 1992 you said you had been fined in a
9 German court for uttering an opinion, a sincerely held
10 opinion, “an opinion, I would venture to add, which I hold
11 as an expert on the Third Reich”, and the opinion was that
12 the gas chambers shown to tourists in Auschwitz was a
13 fake. That seem to me to constitute a claim for expertise
14 on the Holocaust. You are writing a book about Auschwitz.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I did not say that I am an expert on the Holocaust, did
16 I? I said I am an expert on the Third Reich, is that
17 right?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You were claiming expertise by saying that you were doing
19 an enormous amount of research on Auschwitz.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Excuse me. Is it not right I did not say I am doing it, I
21 have begun recently visiting the archives, is that right?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, and you have —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that immediately? Does one become an instant expert by
24 visiting the archives? Is that the inference one is
25 giving?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You said that your opinion that you were fined for in
. P-134
1 Germany you held as an expert on the Third Reich, which of
2 course includes the policy of exterminating the Jews,
3 although you may not think so.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Proceeding to page 107, paragraph 3, it is your
5 contention, am I right in understanding, that somebody who
6 seeks to suggest that the figures have been exaggerated is
7 a Holocaust denier?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, that is clearly not true. It is a matter of
9 emphasis. As you know, estimates of the figures have
10 varied between about 5.1 and 6.1 or over 6 million.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the individual operations —-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So the person who, like Raul Hilberg, whose opinion
13 I respect, would say that it is in the sort of low 5
14 millions would no doubt think that claims of over 6
15 million were exaggerated, but that does not make him a
16 Holocaust denier.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am talking about the component atrocities like their
18 shootings and so on.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are these figures absolutely cast in stone or is it
21 possible that any of these individual figures have been
22 exaggerated by the officers concerned?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: These are — we are talking about the Einsatzgruppen
24 report, is that right?
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, the body counts by the Einsatzgruppen.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My point here is that you are in paragraph 3, page 107, is
. P-135
1 that you are suggesting without any evidence whatsoever
2 that the numbers of Jews killed listed in the
3 Einsatzgruppen reports were exaggerated by the task force
4 leaders. “Statistics like this are meaningless”, I quote
5 you as saying. “It is possible that sometimes an
6 overzealous SS officer decided to put in a fictitious
7 figure”.
8 All this is — I mean, elsewhere you are
9 extremely concerned to have authentic, authenticated
10 documentary evidence for what you are saying or for, let
11 us say, Hitler’s involvement in the extermination of the
12 Jews, but here you are indulging in what I think is wild
13 speculation unsupported by any documentary evidence at
14 all. That is the point I am making in this paragraph.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So when you see a figure referred to in a decode or in a
16 telegram or in a report, you accept that this figure is
17 necessarily accurate and there is no need to analyse it
18 and investigate the feasibility of such a figure?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I did not say that. I mean, I think obviously one
20 looks for documentary evidence which will corroborate it
21 or falsify it, but I think that is rather different from
22 speculating simply that the officers might have written in
23 phoney figures. There is no evidence for it.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was one of the German Army officers who were put on trial
25 after the War by the British for his part in these
26 atrocities Field Marshal Von Manstein?
. P-136
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read the account of his case by Paget QC who was
3 his Defence counsel?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say I have not, no.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That does not stop you asking the next
6 question if you want to, although I am not necessarily
7 encouraging you.
8 MR IRVING: I cannot lead evidence. We have had this same
9 problem before. I should really bring along the pages and
10 put the pages to the witness. That is the only way to do
11 it, my Lord, I think.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think anyone would mind if you put
13 the next question and just see if you can get an answer
14 from Professor Evans.
15 MR IRVING: Very well. If Manstein’s Defence counsel in this
16 British Army court in Hamburg put it to the prosecutors
17 that the Einsatzgruppen did not have the logistical means,
18 in terms of manpower and truck space, to carry out the
19 killings they claimed to have carried out, would that not
20 be justification for casting doubt on the integrity of
21 some of the figures?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not of itself. I mean, I think one would have to look
23 at the evidence which was presented of the logistical
24 means and weigh it against the evidence for the numbers
25 killed.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: To your knowledge, had any of the historians on the
. P-137
1 Einsatzgruppen carried out this kind of exercise, carried
2 out feasibility studies on the numbers?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot answer that in reference to what the Defence said
4 in the Manstein trial, but certainly there is a great deal
5 of writing about the Einsatzgruppen which goes into
6 enormous detail about what they did.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is. Do you accept that SS officers would have had a
8 motive to try to inflate their achievements in order to
9 compare their prowess as opposed to the neighbouring
10 Einsatzgruppen, if I can put it like that?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not really know of any evidence for that.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was there a similar phenomenon in the Vietnam War that you
13 are familiar with?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really do not know.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Moving on to the famous December 1942 document, the report
16 to Hitler with the 300,000 figure in it, are you roughly
17 familiar, in vague terms, with that document?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not think there is any need to look at it. You
20 comment on the fact that I said that I was unhappy about
21 it because it is an unusual, isolated document. We are
22 now at the top of page 108, my Lord.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is a responsible historian not entitled to be unhappy
25 about a document if it appears to stick out slightly from
26 the rest of the body of documentation?
. P-138
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I think what you — firstly, this is a habit that
2 you have, Mr Irving, of labelling documents that you do
3 not like as being orphan documents. In the course of this
4 trial in your work you have accumulated enough orphan
5 documents to fill half an orphanage. There are many of
6 these documents — I have counted at least half a dozen —
7 and the problem is —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do accept the document is genuine.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — when you encounter, when an historian encounters a
10 document that runs counter to the thesis that he or she is
11 trying to put forward, then you have to take it
12 seriously. You do not try to find every possible means
13 you can of discrediting it and doing away with it. You
14 have to look at it and try to deal with it. That may be
15 it that it means you have to revise the views that you
16 came to the document with.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are there not certain questions that a responsible
18 historian should put when he is facing a document like
19 that look which is egregious, that he should say to
20 himself (a) is the document genuine — well, we have
21 decided that it is — but (b) what about the content of
22 the document? Is it serving a particular purpose which is
23 not what might at first appear. Should he not ask himself
24 questions like that?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you ask all the questions on all documents. You
26 ask the question, who wrote it? What for? Who was it
. P-139
1 addressed to? Is it authentic? And so on.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the more remarkable the document, the more unhappy you
3 should be, if I can put it like that?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you look at all documents — one should look at
5 all documents in roughly the same way.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. You comment on the fact that my books do not publish
7 photographs of concentration camp victims. I am now on
8 paragraph 5, 109.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 109, paragraph 5: “By contrast”, you write, “there
11 re no pictures of concentration camp or extermination camp
12 inmates or victims”. Is this a serious criticism of my
13 works?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I think you have an illustration section in the 1991
15 edition of Hitler’s War where you include three
16 photographs, but over two entire pages, of the victims of
17 allied bombings of German towns, but you have no pictures
18 of concentration or extermination camps’ inmates or
19 victims nor of any of the shootings, and so I add. So
20 that does seem to be me to be evidence of imbalance.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Are you suggesting that I should have included the
22 drawings by David Olaire which have been figured in this
23 case, for example?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not want to go into any particular ones, particular
25 photographs.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept —-
. P-140
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But there are well-known attested photographs of the
2 shootings, for example, which you could have included.
3 There is a selection of photographs you could well have
4 included.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept that as a publisher of books where we
6 attach importance to high quality photographs, we are
7 faced with the problem when it comes to finding
8 photographs of concentration camp or extermination camp
9 victims or mass shootings?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that that was your motive for not including
11 them.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that there are problems, that the archives
13 do not hold such photographs?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I will not accept that. I think there are such
15 photographs of photographs.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are there photographs of unimpeachable quality and
17 integrity?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Quality, some of them, obviously, are not of very high
19 quality, but it is still, I think, incumbent on anyone who
20 wishes to give a balanced view of who were the victims of
21 the Second World War and wants to include photographs of
22 them, to try to give a balanced selection of photographs
23 on both sides, and not just put the German victims of
24 allied bombing raids, and having the only photograph of
25 the Nazis’ Jewish victims is of a train at Riga, a series
26 of passenger carriages, and people handing luggage out of
. P-141
1 the windows.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come back to that picture in a minute. But can I
3 ask you, are you familiar with the scandal surrounding the
4 German photographic exhibition of atrocity photographs
5 recently?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Vermacht Exhibition, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, what was the complaint about most of those
8 photographs?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was, well, this is a complex issue because there are
10 allegations and counter allegations on both sides.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Has the Exhibition been closed down?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It has been withdrawn for — the issue here, my Lord, is
13 that there has been an exhibition, a travelling
14 exhibition, in Germany of crimes of the German Army in the
15 Second World War which includes a number of photographs
16 which it is now alleged by critics of the Exhibition were
17 not, in fact, of victims of the German Army at all, but
18 victims of the Russian NKVD; and there are counter
19 allegations that these allegations have been brought by
20 people with extreme right-wing connections and to
21 discredit the view that the German Army was not behaving
22 properly —-
23 MR IRVING: I interrupt you there and ask —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I am quite interested in that.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and it is an extremely, it is a complex issue. But
26 I think it is clear that some of the photographs there are
. P-142
1 not genuine photograph and not what they purport to be,
2 though it is equally clear that I think that some of them
3 most probably are, and the Exhibition has been withdrawn
4 in order to try to sort all this out by means of
5 research. That does not mean to say, of course, that
6 there are no photographs which you could have used.
7 MR IRVING: Is it not true that the Exhibition was finally
8 closed as a result of two learned papers published in
9 learned journals, one by an Hungarian historian and one by
10 a Polish historian?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, and, according to an article in Das Spiegel —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: And they are not extreme right-wingers?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: According to an article in Das Spiegel, these are two
14 people who have extreme right-wing connections. Now, that
15 does not necessarily invalidate everything they have said,
16 but, as I recall the controversy, that the counter
17 argument is that their criterion for what is a crime of
18 the German Army is extremely narrow. They will not
19 accept, for example, these two authors will not accept,
20 that crimes carried out by local units in Lithuania, or
21 wherever it might be, at the behest of the German Army are
22 crimes of the German Army. So it is a very convoluted
23 debate.
24 But the point at issue is that — to come back
25 to it — are you really saying that there no pictures, no
26 genuine pictures, at all anywhere of any victims of the
. P-143
1 Nazis? You could just as well have put up photographs of
2 people who were killed by the Nazis. You could have had a
3 photograph of Anne Frank, for example.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The case that is being made is that there are
5 no good quality bona fide such photographs. That is what
6 you have put, Mr Irving?
7 MR IRVING: Absolutely right, and I am about to move on to the
8 justification for that in a second.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do not accept that there are no bona fide
10 photographs is my answer to that and that, irrespective of
11 the quality, it does behove a balanced historian who
12 wishes to give an objective account of these events to
13 include something other than just photographs of the
14 victims of allied bombing raids on Hamburg and…
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Before we leave the Exhibition, is it right, have you
16 heard it said that the reason why German historians were
17 frightened to write the learned pages that would expose
18 the Exhibition in the way the Hungarian did is because
19 they would then have been prosecuted under German law?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not heard that, no.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You accept that the photographs that I published in my
22 books, both in the Hitler biography and in the Nuremberg
23 history, are original photographs from original negatives,
24 do you accept that?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It looks like it, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: The photograph which you object to, a photograph of a
. P-144
1 train load of Jews at Riga station — it might be useful
2 if his Lordship sees the photograph?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying it is not genuine.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember it really.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am really not saying it is not genuine. Nowhere do
6 I say that.
7 MR IRVING: Will you accept the photograph was given to me from
8 an album taken —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is not doubting its genuineness.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is perfectly OK.
11 MR IRVING: It is a question of the selection of the photograph
12 and the reason I selected that rather than one of the more
13 traditional pictures which you are familiar with.
14 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship might care to look at the file copy.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I was reminding myself why it is there.
16 MR RAMPTON: The file copy has been skewed because one of the
17 pages is the wrong way round. Can I pass up a copy of the
18 original book?
19 MR IRVING: I am indebted to you. While that is being passed,
20 if I can explain, perhaps, by way of a question that
21 that —-
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have got it, but maybe I am wrong.
23 MR IRVING: My Lord, the son of one of those policemen, you can
24 see on the platform at Riga —-
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it.
26 MR IRVING: The sone of one of those German policemen on the
. P-145
1 platform at Riga has the album of his father, and he
2 provided me with the original negatives to make those
3 prints from. That is why I have picked that particular
4 photograph. It is an identifiable event, an identifiable
5 train load of Jews, arriving at Riga. I do not know what
6 happened to them. One I can only fear the worst for them.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But there is something in the text, I think,
8 about the photograph, is there not, or about this
9 consignment?
10 MR IRVING: This is five days after the famous Bruns episode,
11 my Lord, of November 30th.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I probably have this wrong, but do you not
13 somewhere say that the photographic evidence does not bear
14 out the notion of cattle trucks and —-
15 MR IRVING: I did not say that, no, my Lord. The only comment
16 there you will find is whatever the caption says.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You certainly do not say it in the caption.
18 MR IRVING: I certainly do not say it in the caption, and I do
19 not think we do deny that there were cattle trucks used in
20 the later stages of this atrocity.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is simply that you do not mention it in your
22 caption.
23 MR IRVING: In the caption, of course, I can only point out
24 what is in this photograph. In the Nuremberg book, if
25 I can just jump on one or two pages of your — do you wish
26 to make a comment?
. P-146
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, that is all right.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what you do say in the text — I have
3 just found it; it is all a bit jumbled up in the copy —
4 “A rare original photograph shows the next train load of
5 1,200 Jews leaving for Riga. Except for one uniformed SD
6 officer near the third open carriage door, the escorts are
7 all elderly German police officers with two Latvian police
8 in the right foreground”.
9 MR IRVING: Which rather bears out, my Lord, what one of those
10 decodes said that a train load of 1,000 or 900 Jews was
11 going escorted by 14 local policemen, if you remember?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the point you are trying to make with
13 this photograph, is it not?
14 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. A picture is worth 1,000 words which
15 is one reason why I have supplied so many pictures to your
16 Lordship rather than documents.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
18 MR IRVING: It is an original photograph, high quality
19 photograph, of the tragedy actually happening, and it is a
20 photograph of unquestionable authenticity that was
21 supplied to me by one of the policemen’s sons.
22 The allegation against me on page 109 is that
23 this only picture shows an orderly scene (as though I had
24 deliberately picked a photograph with an orderly scene) of
25 passenger carriages and people handing luggage out of
26 windows, no brutality, no herding and no whips. Well,
. P-147
1 I am sorry. Are you suggesting that I should have
2 abandoned this photograph and looked for a more hackneyed
3 stereotyped photograph, Professor?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid I am, yes. I think that you should have
5 balanced out your picture, your extremely gruesome
6 pictures which you put in the book of victims, emotive
7 pictures of victims of the bombing raids, including a dead
8 child clutching the body of an adult over — a very large
9 reproduced picture. I think you should have balanced that
10 with pictures of the victims of the Nazis. If you only
11 look at the pictures section, the impression given is
12 that, well, how jolly nice this train is at Riga, what a
13 nice time they are having?
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the contrary, is that not a picture of the utter
15 banality of this kind of atrocity, that there are people
16 handing baggage out of windows and stepping on to a
17 platform —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, there is no mention of any atrocity there in the
19 caption at all.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So how do you react to the suggestion that
21 the reason for not including the sort of picture you have
22 just been describing is the utter banality of those kinds
23 of photographs? I think that was the suggestion.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I find that very hard to accept, that pictures of,
25 let us say, the victim, people about to be shot by the
26 Einsatzgruppen lining up in front of a ditch are banal
. P-148
1 pictures. It does not matter how many times they are
2 reproduced, they still remain, I think, very shocking.
3 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, how often have you seen pictures
4 in my books that are familiar to you from other people’s
5 books? Never? Once?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Plenty of portraits, I think, which I am familiar with.
7 You include lots of portraits of individuals which are
8 quite familiar.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Colour ones or black and white?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Some of these pictures are not familiar. I am not
11 disputing that these original pictures that you got, that
12 they are very high quality, and so on. What I am talking
13 about is the balance of the presentation and, indeed, the
14 captions.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You wanted me to include the fact that travel without food
16 and water, for example, if I look at the second line from
17 the end of that paragraph?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not if they did not, no.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: The evidence is from the decodes that they did, that they
20 had the food and water they needed for these journeys?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That the people who travelled in the autumn of 1941 on
22 these particular trains did, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: But that is what this picture shows, is it not?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I am not saying you should not have included that
25 picture. I am saying that you should have had a balanced
26 selection.
. P-149
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: I should have skewed it the other way?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not a question of skewing; it is question of
3 balance. What you have is an illustration section with
4 some very good pictures, original ones that I have not
5 seen before, absolutely authentic, rare, and so on. But
6 that these give the impression, the way they are
7 cumulatively arranged, that there were massive numbers of
8 victims of allied bombings, and that that is, as you say,
9 48,000 people died in devastating Holocaust in Hamburg.
10 You are trying to establish, at the very least, I think,
11 an equivalence, and the impression given by the imbalanced
12 selection of pictures is that it is more — that the
13 bombing of German cities is a more serious crime than the
14 killing of millions of Jews. That is what I take from
15 your — not having seen it before, that is what I take it
16 from your illustration section.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there no equivalence between these crimes — not on any
18 level?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The question is that the bombing by allied
20 planes of German cities is morally equivalent to the
21 extermination that Professor Evans believes took place, is
22 that the question?
23 MR IRVING: In certain circumstances it was and that is
24 certainly…
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is your reaction to that, Professor
26 Evans?
. P-150
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I find that a very difficult question to answer. I am not
2 a moral philosopher.
3 MR IRVING: Do you not later on in your report say that it is
4 totally wrong for me to suggest that Dresden would now be
5 a war crime if it was repeated?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think you say that, you say that it is a
7 certified war crime, I do not believe it has been
8 certified as a war crime. That is not to say that
9 I approve of it, but we are not really dealing here with
10 the moral issues or with what happened. We are dealing
11 with your presentation. In my view, this selection of
12 illustrations is imbalanced.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, go to the next book then, “Nuremberg, the Last
14 Battle”, where once again you find fault with my selection
15 of illustrations, although on this occasion I have
16 included victims of what can loosely be called the
17 Holocaust. I have obtained from a German sale an original
18 soldier’s album from the Balkans showing these German
19 soldiers brutally stringing up obviously defenceless
20 civilians and hanging them. They are the most brutal
21 photographs I have ever seen. They are nightmare
22 photographs. Yet here too you find fault with what I have
23 done.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just read your captions: “Punished”,
25 headline, “… snapshots from a German soldier’s photo
26 album. The daily routine of a cruel warfare in the
. P-151
1 Balkans. A German soldier is found mutilated. The German
2 troops take reprisals stringing up the men folk in the
3 village like washing on a line. One by one, a chair
4 kicked away … (reading to the words) … and then
5 painful death by strangulation. For crimes like these,
6 German Generals are executed at Nuremberg …”
7 Second heading: “And unpunished. No Allied
8 General is ever called to account for the appalling fire
9 raids on Japan, above, or Dresden, left and below. In
10 each of these 1945 raids about 100,000 innocent civilians
11 are burned alive”, and we know that that is a grossly
12 exaggerated figure, “in what is now only universally
13 recognised as a crime against international law” which
14 I do not believe it is.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will leave that one — we will not chase
16 that one.
17 MR IRVING: Professor, you are not an expert on international
18 law. I have a lot of evidence that it is, my Lord, but I
19 am not going to put it to the court.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will not chase that one. I think it is
21 not the point.
22 MR IRVING: Yes, but on the photographs here again, it seems I
23 just cannot do right. My Lord, you do not have the
24 photographs in front of you, do you?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but I think this is not an unimportant
26 point, I think I can get them quite easily. I know
. P-152
1 exactly the ones that are being referred to.
2 MR IRVING: Yes. It is a whole page of photographs, snapshots
3 from a soldier’s album showing the reprisals they have
4 taken against these people in a Balkan village.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, you do make it clear that they are reprisals for what
6 you call the mutilation of a German soldier.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: And I do have to admit that I have not published the most
8 gruesome photographs for obvious reasons of taste.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That did not stop you publishing the photographs of the
10 victims of the Hamburg bombing raid.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Believe me, the ones that I did not publish in the
12 Nuremberg book were unpublishable.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I am trying to establish here is that you are trying
14 to set up an equivalence between the two sides in order to
15 diminish the importance of the Nazi extermination of the
16 Jews.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: If an author has —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And, indeed, I mean, in some sense, I think these captions
19 and illustrations do have the effect of suggesting that
20 what the Allies did was worse than what the Germans did.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Worse?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because they got away with it scott-free.
24 MR IRVING: If an author has sincerely held views —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And because the pictures are more — have larger numbers,
26 more gruesome, and so on.
. P-153
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: If an author has sincerely held views on the morality of
2 what both sides did in World War II, by way of killing
3 innocent people and civilians, is this grounds for him to
4 be held up to public ridicule and opprobrium and obloquy?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is systematic distortion, I think, in your
6 presentation of these pictures, the selection that you
7 make.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is not the systematic distortion that practised by those
9 who have suppressed the evidence of crimes that the Allies
10 committed during World War II? I do not really want to go
11 far down this particular road, his Lordship will not allow
12 us.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not here to defend the bombing of Dresden and the
14 bombing of Hamburg, goodness knows. I do not think that
15 these have been suppressed at all. There has been an
16 enormous amount of debate and discussion about these and
17 passionately argued on both sides.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about an author’s right to write about it if he has
19 these views sincerely, can he do so without fear —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think an author has —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: — of being labelled a Holocaust denier?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I think an author has a view to try to maintain a
23 certain balance when talking about the atrocities, to use
24 that word, committed on both sides.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And I do not think you do that.
. P-154
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have I not had a record ever since my very first book
2 of speaking out against this kind of air warfare right up
3 to the present day in Kosovo, and does this not entitle me
4 to adopt a kind of moral equivalency between the two
5 crimes, although, obviously, there is no comparison on
6 scale?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but what you are doing is to try to establish, both
8 in terms of numbers as I am arguing in this action and in
9 terms of the atrocities, the impression to your readership
10 and your audience that the allied bombing of German cities
11 was as bad as or worse than the Nazi killing of Jews in
12 Auschwitz and elsewhere. That is really what this is
13 about.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: In a few pages’ time you say, “On one particular night we
15 only killed 17,000 people by burning them alive in 20
16 minutes”, is that right?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point me to that passage?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 114.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Line 5, you are suggesting that killing 17,600 people by
21 burning them alive in the space of 20 minutes is in some
22 way, I do not know, not a crime?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. What I say here is that —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Read it out, would you, Professor Evans,
25 since that suggestion is being put?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I will read that out, yes. This refers back to a
. P-155
1 lengthy quote on the previous page where you talk about
2 25,000 people being killed in 25 minutes in Pforzheim by
3 an allied air raid in 25 minutes, and in Auschwitz there
4 were 25,000 killed in four years. “When you put things
5 into perspective like that, it diminishes their Holocaust
6 – that word with a capital letter”, “their” meaning ,
7 presumably, the Jews.
8 I point out in the passage that you cite that
9 your equivalence does not stand up to examination, quite
10 apart from the gross minimization of the Auschwitz figures
11 because you exaggerate the number of deaths caused by the
12 Pforzheim raid, which was estimated in a report of the
13 Statistical Office of the City of Pforzheim in 1954 not as
14 25,000 or 27,000, as you claim, but as 17,600. So you are
15 deliberately trying to say 25,000, 25,000, and, in fact,
16 it is not that equivalence at all.
17 That does not mean to say that I justify the
18 bombing of Pforzheim; that does not come into it at all.
19 I am simply trying to talk about the way that you present
20 these things.
21 MR IRVING: Can we just go back to Nuremberg, please? You
22 suggest that at the end of paragraph 8 on page 110 that
23 the way I juxtaposed those photographs was intended to
24 imply to the careless reader that the perpetrators of the
25 atrocities were Jews, that the atrocities were committed
26 by Jews and that they were getting their — is there any
. P-156
1 justification at all for this suggestion?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It seems to me that that is what seems to be the
3 suggestion.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I had better have a look at that.
5 MR IRVING: I think your Lordship ought to have a look at it
6 because it is a serious allegation.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I could not find the photographs.
8 MR RAMPTON: My Lord —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is between 182 and 183.
10 MR RAMPTON: In Nuremberg it is after 182.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. Where does it come in the
12 great wodge of photographs?
13 MR RAMPTON: It is after a panorama of Nuremberg Defendants
14 with somebody or other giving a — Robert H Jackson giving
15 a speech for the Prosecution, I think.
16 MR IRVING: I will have the actual book brought tomorrow, your
17 Lordship.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton has it; I may have to look at it
19 because I have a slight feeling that —-
20 MR RAMPTON: It is worth looking at the original actually, if
21 I may suggest it?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have a feeling the photograph has not for
23 some reason found its way into my —-
24 MR RAMPTON: I think the witness should have it too.
25 MR IRVING: Again the quality of the photographs is
26 remarkable. They are original colour photographs to the
. P-157
1 Nuremberg trials and this is the standard I am going for.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not really the point, is it?
3 MR IRVING: Well, it is the basis I make the selection of books
4 that I publish.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Actually, I would rather look at the
6 original. Well, the point that Professor Evans is making
7 is, obviously, in reference to the photograph on the
8 left-hand side under the text and they do have a Jewish
9 appearance.
10 MR IRVING: Undoubtedly, they are Jews. Undoubtedly, they are
11 also being swept up into the general Holocaust on that
12 site. But I think to suggest that by the juxtaposition of
13 the photographs I had implied in any way at all that they
14 were guilty for whatever had befallen the German troops or
15 whatever, that is perverse and unjustified and certainly
16 unintentional on my part.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well the caption does say: “A German soldier is found
18 mutilated. The German troops take reprisals”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. But, as you know, the reprisal is just swept up, a
20 round number of males in the area and liquidated them,
21 murdered them?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a question of what the captions and the pictures
23 suggest.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: But nowhere is it suggested in the caption that the Jewish
25 victims on those pictures have been picked for that
26 reason?
. P-158
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is a matter of suggestion really. It was what the
2 pictures suggest. I mean, of their very nature pictures
3 are suggestive, captions are short. As you say, they are
4 very powerful — worth a thousand words.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: To summarise, before we move on, this is a page of
6 photographs of victims of the Nazis, is that right?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I believe I say so, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: So that your suggestion in the previous book that I do not
9 publish photographs of the victims of the Nazis does not
10 always hold up?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I say you — in the previous book I mention that you
12 have a picture of the train at Riga. That is the only
13 picture of the Nazis’ Jewish victims to set aside several
14 extremely graphic pictures of the victims of allied
15 bombing raids.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, somebody who is minimizing something like that in
17 their books is a Holocaust denier, is that part of the
18 element?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What you are trying to do — all of this is about your
20 attempt to establish an equivalence between the two, as it
21 were, to suggest that essentially all sides in the Second
22 World War committed crimes of some dimensions. That is
23 what we are really talking about. I think that is an
24 element in Holocaust denial.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: In Sir Winston Churchill’s books, were there any
26 photographs at all of train loads of Jews at Riga or
. P-159
1 anywhere else on his History of the Second World War, six
2 volumes?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not recall. I am not sure I see the relevance of
4 that in any case to what you do in your books.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is for his Lordship to decide. If someone like Sir
6 Winston Churchill writes a six-volume history without
7 mentioning the Holocaust or the killing of Jews in seven
8 line, does that make him a Holocaust denier or does it
9 mean times have now changed?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we can do better than take time with
11 that question.
Section 160.12 to 184.14
12 MR IRVING: We can indeed, my Lord, we are now going to come to
13 a little piece of gold on page 111. In paragraph 10 you
14 accuse me once again of exaggerating the numbers killed in
15 allied bombing raids. The number of Germans killed in
16 allied bombing raids, is that correct?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you do not distort documents or quotations in order to
19 justify that kind of allegation?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure what you are referring to here.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: All will shortly become plain. Will you go to the next
22 paragraph 111?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Here you say on page 441 of Goebbels: “He describes the
25 numbers of those killed in the bombing raid on Hamburg on
26 27, 26, 28 July 1943 as ‘nearly 50,000′”.
. P-160
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: That was the big fire storm, was it not, that summer?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Operation Gomorrah, the British call it?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is 48,000 in the captions of Hitler’s War which
6 I cite on page 109.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is 48,000 a number that you had seen regularly in
8 connection with air raid victims in Hamburg, that
9 operation, the fire storm raids?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I go into this in the same paragraph, that the
11 probable number, the generally agreed number is between
12 35,000 and 40,000, that 74,000, or nearly twice 74,000 as
13 you put in a letter to The Spectator in 1989, is a wild
14 exaggeration.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you rely entirely on that letter to The Spectator, do
16 you?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, 50,000, I do not know where you get the figure from.
18 It is plucked out of the air of 48,000.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So in 1989 you say he put it far higher than I did,
20 claiming that, while 74,000 people had died at
21 Auschwitz, “nearly twice as many died in the July 1943
22 RAF Dacken Hamburg”?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the quotation from my letter to The Spectator, is
25 it?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-161
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we have a look at that letter to The Spectator; it is
2 worth having a look at?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do we find it?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is in your bundle.
5 MR IRVING: It is not in my letter. I do not know. If we
6 are lucky, it is in the bundle.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think we will get it from E12, page
8 312, will we not?
9 MR IRVING: I do want to see it.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think that is fair.
11 MR IRVING: Otherwise, I can tell you from memory what the
12 actual quotation is.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to see it, I am afraid.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have to see it, you are afraid?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Otherwise, I will tell you from memory and I will bring
17 the letter in tomorrow. There is only one word missing.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can anyone on the Defendant’s side help?
19 MR RAMPTON: We are trying, my Lord; it is a chase to find
20 Irving’s documents.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The trouble is if we come back to it then we
22 have to start all over again, that is the problem.
23 MR RAMPTON: I agree. Let me put it like this. If the word
24 “as” was in after the word “many”, would that change the
25 meaning of that sentence?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course it would.
. P-162
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: If it said, “nearly twice as many as died in the July 1943
2 air raid”, would that change the meaning?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course. That would make it 30, 37, is that
4 right?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it totally deflate the point of the whole paragraph
6 and the paragraph before, as far as exaggerating air raid
7 figures goes?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it would not, because you describe, you give the
9 number as nearly 50,000 on page 441 of Goebbels.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is not the commonly accepted figure for these series of
11 air raids on Hamburg 48,000?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It is between 35,000 and 40,000.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 2, I am sorry, the next page, 112, line 2, you say
14 31,647 dead had been found?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you are familiar with the pictures of what it looked
17 like inside bunkers?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, indeed.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: The flat tyres, the little heaps of ash which had been
20 human beings? Have you seen the photographs on the
21 streets of the heaps ash?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed I have. I take it that that is why official German
23 estimates at the time put the total as somewhat higher at
24 35,000 or even 40,000.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you have never seen a figure of 48,000?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Only in your work.
. P-163
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read the official history of the strategic air
2 offensive against Germany by Nobel Frankland and Martin
3 Webster?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, but I am relying here on work produced in Hamburg by
5 Hamburg historians.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do accept, though, that if my version of that
7 quotation is correct and you accidently or otherwise
8 omitted the word “as”, your entire argument that I have
9 doubled the number of people is unjustified and you are
10 going to have to withdraw that, are you not?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, because, as I say here, I cite it from Eatwell.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we will put the blame on Professor Eatwell?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, if indeed the word “as” is missing.
14 MR RAMPTON: We cannot find it in the Eatwell documents. I am
15 sorry, it is not in the Evans’ documents.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In Eatwell book?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It is in an article.
18 MR RAMPTON: We will check that.
19 MR IRVING: I have the actual original Spectator letter at
20 home. I know that, my Lord, I was looking at it last
21 night.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Bring it in if you would not mind. We are
23 not going to be able to track it down today.
24 MR IRVING: If your Lordship thinks it is relevant.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think in fairness to you, if Professor
26 Evans has misinterpreted what you said, I think it is
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1 right that I should know that. I do not think this is a
2 point that is at the heart of the case, but in fairness to
3 you, you ought to have the opportunity to show it to me.
4 MR IRVING: It is at the heart of the allegation that I happily
5 double air raid figures to make a point.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is one aspect of a broader point
7 that Professor Evans is making —-
8 MR IRVING: Yes.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — about what is described, rather
10 inappropriately, as moral equivalence.
11 MR IRVING: Also it is useful at various other levels all the
12 way down to how easy it is to make simple errors that can
13 totally innocently reverse the meaning of a document.
14 This literally reverses the meaning of that particular
15 document, the one word.
16 So all the rest of that paragraph about the
17 probable number, therefore, is between 35,000 and 40,000
18 (I am on page 112 like 7), “Irving’s wildly invariably
19 categorical statements of 48,000″, just like today I still
20 say 48,000, nearly 50,000 or nearly twice 74,000, that of
21 course is the wrong bit, is it not?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If that is that true of course it is wrong, yes, and I
23 would withdraw it.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I really think we have probably got
25 everything we possibly could out of that paragraph.
26 MR IRVING: Moving on to the next paragraph, we are now dealing
. P-165
1 with the number of people who I suggested unequivocally
2 can be shown as having died in Auschwitz, in the last line
3 I say: “Around 100,000 dead in that brutal slave labour
4 camp”, and, Professor, you take exception to that
5 sentence, do you not?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think the figure should be much closer to 1 million
8 or?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: About that, yes. Slightly more.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: No doubt 20 years ago you would have said the figure would
11 be closer to 4 million?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not 20 years ago, no.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: No?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think so.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you would have discounted what the memorial said?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have already been through this, but that was the
17 product of immediate postwar circumstances when not a
18 great deal was known.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not just go with what the prevailing wind suggests
20 is the latest figure; you do your own independent thinking
21 about it?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not a specialist on Auschwitz, Mr Irving. So
23 I accept what is the general consensus of scholarship on
24 this issue.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yet if anybody does try to analyse the figures on the
26 basis of other sources than what the memorial says or what
. P-166
1 the Auschwitz State Museum says or what Sir Martin Gilbert
2 says, he is a denier?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is not a question of just what they say. There
4 is a very large, substantial amount of work. This court
5 has been spent several days going through a whole mass of
6 evidence about Auschwitz.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but it is the word “analyse” I am looking at. If you
8 look at page 113, paragraphs 13 and 14, I say: “Anybody
9 who wants to analyse any part of the Holocaust story is
10 dismissed and smeared as an anti-semite or at the other
11 end of the scale a pro-Hitler apologist and a Nazi
12 apologist.” You then comment in paragraph 14: “Analyse
13 here is a synonym for refute or deny”?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that seems to me it is. It is a euphemism. You are
15 very careful to avoid the word “denial” as much as you
16 can, or you have been in what you have written and said
17 about the Holocaust, but clearly as it stands this
18 statement is absurd. Historians are analysing the
19 Holocaust story all the time.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: But are they?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It goes on massively.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are they analysing figures all the time?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. There is an enormous amount of work that is in
24 progress. There are hundreds of historians working on
25 this. There are large institutions which are devoted to
26 analysing all different parts of the Holocaust story, and
. P-167
1 nobody is dismissing them as anti-semites or Nazi
2 apologists. What you have here is “analysed” as a
3 euphemism for “deny”.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: So analysing is all right until we look at the figures and
5 then it becomes denial?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Historians are looking at the figures all time.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of historian do you have to be then to avoid
8 that word “denial”? Do you have to avoid my name or do
9 you have to be left-wing or what?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is semantic. We know what the
11 definition of Holocaust denier is as contended for by the
12 Defendants. The issue we are trying to explore is whether
13 you, Mr Irving, fit that definition. I really think
14 semantic discussions of this kind are unhelpful.
15 MR IRVING: I was scene setting with a broad brush, and now we
16 are going to start getting out the small sable and start
17 painting in some of the detail.
18 Professor, if there are either logical
19 calculations that you make or there are bodies of
20 documents that you can make which would enable one to
21 reassess the figures, I am avoiding the word “analyse”
22 now, but to reassess the figures, would that be a
23 justifiable exercise for any historian of whatever colour?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, certainly. For example, new material is becoming
25 available or has become available since the collapse of
26 the Soviet Union in East European archives which has
. P-168
1 helped in reassessments.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In about 19899 Soviet Union released the death
3 books, did they not, of Auschwitz relating not to all the
4 years but some of the years?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you expect these death books, the registers of
7 deaths of people in Auschwitz, to have provided some kind
8 of impetus to this calculation?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are certainly a significant document, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am avoiding the use of the word “analyse”. It would be
11 justifiable to look at those records for any person and
12 try to do some kind of meaningful calculation and try to
13 work out whether these were comprehensive,
14 all-encompassing death books, or whether they were only
15 part of the body of Auschwitz or what?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes. You have to remember, of course, that those
17 large numbers of people who were taken straight to the gas
18 chambers on their arrival at Auschwitz were not entered in
19 the camp registers, and so do not appear in the death
20 books.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is an important part of the Holocaust history, is it
22 not, the notion that a large number of people arrived at
23 the camp, were unloaded and were sent straight to their
24 deaths in the gas chambers, is that correct?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of people were they?
. P-169
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is described as more than a notion.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of people were then selected for death?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I am not an expert on Auschwitz, but my
4 understanding is that the process of selection generally
5 tended to take into the camp or register in the camp those
6 who were considered to be capable of working and those who
7 were not, particularly women and children, were sent to
8 the gas chambers.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Women and children were sent to the gas chambers.
10 Professor, will you have a look at page 35 I think it is
11 in my bundle, the little bundle you were handed this
12 morning? It is another of these pictures speaking louder
13 than words things again. Is that a photograph showing
14 people standing behind barbed wire?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of age are those people?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is very difficult to say. They look like — it is
18 difficult to say. One or two children, some adolescence.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the caption provided by Associated Press say: This
20 is somebody standing among a group of children?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: When the camp was liberated by the Red Army?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would they have had children in the camp?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There could have been any one of a number of reasons.
26 I mean some children were retained for medical
. P-170
1 experimentation, that is a particular reason. There were
2 numbers of allegedly or so-called pure bred gypsy children
3 who were kept. There were a number of reasons.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any indication on the caption that these were the
5 experimental ones or the gypsy ones?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really could not say.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: It just says there were children who were in the camp at
8 the time of the liberation?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is no indication of what they are doing there or why
10 they were there.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You said also the ones who were sick were also selected
12 for death?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the whole, yes.
14 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think this is really a little unfair.
15 Professor Evans is not a Holocaust expert. Professor van
16 Pelt has already told your Lordship, which Mr Irving knows
17 perfectly well, that the gas chambers ceased operation in
18 October 1944.
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, Professor Evans on page 114 has gone in
20 some detail into the death books.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. My own feeling is that we went into all
22 these questions, particularly the camp registers, in great
23 deal with Professor van Pelt. You are right in saying
24 that Professor Evans does mention gas chambers in
25 Auschwitz, but he has told you he does not regard himself
26 as a great expert, besides which Mr Rampton’s last
. P-171
1 observation does seem to be a fair one, does it not?
2 MR IRVING: I completely endorse this, and I always bow to Mr
3 Rampton’s wisdom which is far superior —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not need to do that.
5 MR RAMPTON: I have no wisdom but I have a wizard short-term
6 memory.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is right, is it not, that the gas chambers
8 ceased to exist when they were really destroyed in 1944,
9 so that if there were transports including women and
10 children you would expect to find them within the barbed
11 wire at Auschwitz in 1945?
12 MR IRVING: They must have arrived then as children and they
13 must have avoided selection somehow as children.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be that the selection process stopped
15 when the gas chambers disappeared.
16 MR IRVING: If your Lordship will rule that this witness should
17 not be asked questions about Auschwitz, then I will
18 happily comply.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I cannot do that, because he has referred
20 to Auschwitz in his report and therefore he is, it seems
21 to me, amenable to cross-examination on that topic. But
22 if I were you, I really would not bother to cover the same
23 ground, because you cross-examined Professor van Pelt —-
24 MR IRVING: I agree, but I am in difficulties because this
25 witness has covered the same ground, particularly in his
26 footnote, for example, No. 13 where he says: “As we have
. P-172
1 seen, the camp records did not include those killed or
2 shortly on arrival”.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. That is why I am not going to rule
4 out this cross-examination, but I say again, the bits that
5 matter in Professor Evans’ report start in, I am afraid it
6 is still 30 pages time when he starts to make the
7 historians’ criticisms of you, and that is the meat of his
8 report. But I cannot stop you, it seems to me. I can
9 encourage you to take it quickly.
10 MR IRVING: Which is what I am doing.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can suggest you might not think it really
12 worth doing at all.
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, this is short track I am taking at
14 present.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
16 MR IRVING: If I could take you now to page 115, we are now
17 going to deal with Professor Hinsley. On paragraph 16 you
18 say Hinsley did not claim that nearly all the deaths were
19 due to disease. Professor Hinsley is of course a
20 recognized authority, he is not?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is an official British historian of the British
23 Intelligence Services?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: In volume 2 of his work he published an appendix, did he
26 not, on the police decodes?
. P-173
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the first line you write, in paragraph 16: “All he
3 wrote was that the British decrypts of encoded radio
4 messages sent from Auschwitz did not mention gassings”,
5 but in fact if you look at your footnote 18 on the next
6 page he is slightly more specific, is he not? He says:
7 “The returns from Auschwitz, the largest of the camps
8 with 20,000 prisoners, mentioned illness as the main cause
9 of death”, is that correct?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: “It included references to shootings and hangings”, and
12 then he continues: “There were no references in the
13 decrypts to gassing”.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am sorry, I am going to
15 interrupt you because I think we may be able to take this
16 a bit more shortly. Professor van Pelt said, well, that
17 probably is right and it is not very surprising because
18 the decrypts were talking about what was going on in the
19 camps, and the whole point about the gassing was that it
20 was not going on in the camps in that sense. Mr Rampton,
21 am I wrong about that?
22 MR RAMPTON: That is absolutely right.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was what he said?
24 MR RAMPTON: That is absolutely right.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Therefore, this point — I am not saying it
26 is not a good point on Hinsley and the decrypts, but that
. P-174
1 is the explanation we have had so far.
2 MR IRVING: I must have nodded when Professor van Pelt said
3 that, my Lord, because if he had said that I would
4 certainly queried that and said: Well, where were the
5 gassings takings place then?
6 MR RAMPTON: I can also tell your Lordship, to save coming back
7 to it, this comes from Mr Irving’s website, that on 13th
8 September 1941 Deluge, who was the Chief of the Order
9 Police, sent a message to the forces in Russia about
10 confidentiality and he said this: “That information which
11 is containing State secrets calls for especially secret
12 treatment. Into this category fall exact figures
13 executions. These are to be sent by courier”.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but that is another point. Am I wrong
15 about what I recall Professor van Pelt having said?
16 MR RAMPTON: No, you are absolutely right. What van Pelt,
17 amongst others, has said, it is in his report and I think
18 he also said it in the witness box, is you would not
19 expect to find details of the gassings on the decrypts for
20 two reasons. First, because it was secret, as this
21 message suggests, but much more important because the
22 people who were gassed on arrival were never registered
23 and would not have been subject of the codes anyway.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I thought he had said that. We can look
25 up the reference if you are doubtful.
26 MR IRVING: My Lord, that was a horrendous interruption
. P-175
1 Mr Rampton and I withdraw the nice remarks I said earlier.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not upset Mr Rampton, but I had rather
3 encouraged that, I am afraid it is my fault.
4 MR IRVING: Deluge was only referring to the shootings on the
5 Eastern Front. Deluge was only responsible for the
6 shootings on the Eastern Front. He was in no way
7 responsible for the concentration camp system which came
8 under a completely different hierarchy. I am sure
9 Mr Rampton knows that.
10 MR RAMPTON: No, the point is the same.
11 MR IRVING: But I will move on from there because clearly we
12 are not going to —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you want to take a short break, Mr Irving,
14 at any stage you only have to ask. You know that, do you
15 not?
16 MR IRVING: Can we move on to page 118. We are getting very
17 close now to the —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
19 MR IRVING: You refer to the aerial photographs, but, witness,
20 you are not an expert on Auschwitz, so there is no point
21 really asking you about this at all, is there? I mean all
22 the statements you made about Auschwitz and in these 180
23 pages so far are, effectively, off the top of your head,
24 because you have not studied it to the same degree other
25 witnesses have?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not making statements about Auschwitz. I am making
. P-176
1 statements here about what you write about Auschwitz, and
2 this is a particular section here which is, if I can find
3 the beginning of it, about the figures, the numbers
4 killed, and I am trying to go through what you write about
5 it.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Are you not familiar with the history of the
7 operation of the Haganah in Germany after World War II?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not. My point here is that you claim that the
9 Jews who disappeared did not die but were secretly
10 transported to Palestine by the Haganah and given new
11 identities, rather than have being killed in Auschwitz.
12 I have to say I find that quite a fantastic suggestion for
13 which you provide no documentary basis, even though in
14 other areas, as we have seen repeatedly, you demand the
15 most strictest criteria of documentary support for any
16 statements made about the Nazis policy towards the Jews
17 and what happened to the Jews and so on.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it fair to expand that sentence that you have just
19 read out slightly: He has, for instance, claimed that
20 some of the Jews who disappeared, because obviously I am
21 not claiming that all Jews disappeared went to Palestine?
22 What you meant there was that I am saying that some of the
23 Jews or a part of or a large part of the Jews but not all
24 of, right?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to go back to what you wrote there.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Clearly I have not suggested that all the Jews who
. P-177
1 disappeared went to Palestine, have I? Do you agree?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid I would have to go back and check. I mean
3 where have the bodies gone from — “There is no trace in
4 Allies’ aerial photographs of mass graves in Auschwitz.
5 Where have the bodies gone?” You have supplied more than
6 one answer. So, these answers may cover different groups
7 of Jews of course.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So you accept then that I am talking about a part of
9 the missing Jews?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the implication in what you write is clearly it is a
11 very significant part, as again your claim that some of
12 the missing Jews had fled to Dresden and were killed in
13 the February 1945 bombing raid.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we just stay with the Palestine ones? You say that
15 you are not familiar with the operations of the Haganah in
16 Germany after World War II, operating in conjunction with
17 UNRRA, the Refugee and Relief Agency?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not, no. You do not provide any evidence that
19 they were secretly transported to Palestine by the
20 Haganah.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that there is a very lengthy report on the
22 operations of the Haganah in the American Government
23 archives about 250,000 pages long by the Military Governor
24 of Germany describing how —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, I am concerned with what you write here and
26 what you write is a suggestion which is unsupported by
. P-178
1 anything like that, that large numbers of Jews were
2 secretly transported to Palestine by the Haganah and given
3 new identities, therefore, rendered untraceable, and did
4 not die in Auschwitz and other extermination camps or were
5 not shot and killed.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you maintain that this did not happen? You are casting
7 doubt on it?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not talking about what happened and what did not
9 happen. I am talking about what you present as having
10 happened.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And the evidence for that?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And the evidence.
13 MR IRVING: Yes, but I just tried to put to him this lengthy
14 report in the American Government archives and the witness
15 interrupted me halfway through.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry. What I am trying to say is that irrespective
17 of that, you do not cite that as evidence. You are simply
18 suggesting, as it seems to me out of thin air, that large
19 numbers of Jews were secretly transported to Palestine and
20 did not die in Auschwitz.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that I do not write passages like that out
22 of thin air?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: That in fact I probably have a very good source which for
25 one reason or another I have not identified?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am sorry, I will not.
. P-179
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, you believe that I write this out of thin
2 air, that I make it up?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not see any evidence that you have not made it up.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you are not prepared to accept my suggestion that
5 there is this very lengthy report in the US National
6 archives on the operations of the Haganah written by the
7 American Military Governor?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you can suggest whatever you like now. The point is
9 what I am doing is looking in here, in this report, is
10 looking at what you have written and said in the past and
11 the documentary support or otherwise that you have adduced
12 for it.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us approach from another angle then, Professor. You
14 are aware of the fact that there are now substantial
15 claims being made against the Swiss and American and
16 German companies and so on for compensation? Have you any
17 idea how many Holocaust survivors are now claiming
18 compensation, a figure?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know. It depends what you mean by Holocaust
20 survivors as well.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, if I say that the number of claimants is 450,000 now
22 at the end of the 20th century, the beginning of the 21st
23 century?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know where you get that figure
25 from. I think Professor Evans is entitled to say, well,
26 on what basis are they claiming? Are they claiming
. P-180
1 because they were in Auschwitz, in some other camp, or
2 perhaps in no camp at all, they were dispossessed by the
3 Nazis?
4 MR IRVING: If they are Jewish Holocaust survivors, my Lord,
5 and there is that number of them extant at the end of the
6 20th century, then you can do actuCourier calculations
7 backwards to work out roughly how many would have
8 survived, given certain obvious adjustments you have to
9 make for age and so on, that the older ones would have
10 stayed behind, the younger ones would have emigrated, and
11 you can come up with ball park figures. But the Professor
12 has not done this kind of calculations, so there is no
13 point asking him.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But your suggestion, therefore, is that these
15 are 450,000 true Holocaust survivors in the sense that
16 they come from one death camp or another?
17 MR IRVING: They were Jews who were subject to the Holocaust as
18 I defined it, which is one more reason why my definition
19 is the right one, that they were Jews who were subjected
20 to the Nazi atrocities during the period of the Third
21 Reich of whatever kind.
22 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I simply do not understand this. If
23 this is about claims against Swiss Banks who are holding
24 or have held property taken from victims of the Holocaust,
25 we might be talking about the great grandchildren of
26 people who survived who had a claim on the property.
. P-181
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what was going through my mind.
2 MR IRVING: And also the slave labourers, the great
3 grandchildren of the slave labourers cannot claim
4 compensation.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us go back to where we started. You were
6 suggesting that the bulk, or a very large proportion, of
7 the people in Auschwitz disappeared because they went
8 secretly to Israel and I think Professor Evans —-
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, I have not said either the bulk or a very
10 large portion. I just said part. This is what I was
11 trying to nail the witness down on when he says, “Irving
12 claimed that the Jews who disappeared did not die”, what
13 he meant by the Jews. Obviously it does not mean all of
14 them. He is meaning part of them.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Leave aside the exact number. He is saying
16 that he does not accept that there was any evidence for
17 that statement, and I have not got clear when you first
18 saw this report you have talked about by the Haganah.
19 When did you first see that?
20 MR IRVING: Seven or eight years ago my Lord.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was that the source for your claim?
22 MR IRVING: Yes, very definitely.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And that says? What is its conclusion in
24 terms of numbers?
25 MR IRVING: The American Military Forces described how the
26 Haganah, operating in conjunction with the United Nations
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1 Rescue and Relief Agency, visited all the displaced
2 persons camps, very well organized, with walkie-talkie
3 radios and trucks picking up all the Jewish victims from
4 those camps, loading them on board, and then they vanished
5 sunset.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My question was really about numbers. How
7 many are we talking about?
8 MR IRVING: The report, I would have to have another look at
9 the report to give your Lordship a number, but it was
10 sufficiently important to have a 250-page report on it
11 written by the American Government Military authorities.
12 I adduce this purely as one way in which one cannot look
13 at pure figures, because there are leaks, if I can put it
14 like that.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just make two points, if I may. One is you are
16 presenting evidence of this report which I have not seen,
17 I have not had the opportunity to see, so I do not know
18 whether your account of what is in it is accurate or not
19 and I really cannot comment on it. The second is that you
20 do not cite it when you gave this particular speech. As
21 far as the numbers, again you plucked, you have presented
22 a number of what you describe as “Holocaust survivors” who
23 have claims of one sort or another against banks and so on
24 elsewhere, and I quote you have alleged that large numbers
25 of so-called Holocaust survivors, as you have described,
26 have made it up, put tattoos on their own arms and so on.
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1 MR IRVING: I shall have to turn the tables on you and say
2 that, if you are going to suggest that I said large
3 numbers have done that, then I would ask you to provide
4 any evidence for that assertion.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You said one lady and you said she was not
6 atypical.
7 MR IRVING: I said she may have very well have a genuine tattoo
8 on her name. I think those were the precise words I used
9 about Mrs Altemann, that may very well be a genuine tattoo
10 on your arm. If I can now pick up the other point
11 that I did not provide a reference for this episode in my
12 speech, one does not put footnotes in speeches.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, you but you say where you get the evidence from in a
14 speech.
Section 184.15 to 217.26
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I now move on, in the spirit of his Lordship’s desire
16 for progress, paragraph 21, you say that my allegations of
17 this nature derive ultimately from the Holocaust denier
18 Paul Rassinier.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you any evidence at all that I have ever read the
21 works of Paul Rassinier?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You did write an afterword to one of his books, which
23 I find it difficult to believe you wrote without having
24 read it.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, believe. That is all I can say. That fact
26 that I am invited to write an afterword on a particular
. P-184
1 topic for a book which I then deliver without reading the
2 book should not surprise anyone?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not say very much for your responsibility as
4 historian, Mr Irving.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have no responsibility at all whatsoever for the content
6 of somebody’s book if I am invited to write an historical
7 afterword on it and, if you know the content of that
8 afterword, you see that it no bore no resemblance or
9 relationship to what was in the book at all. Do you agree
10 with that?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You did have some very kind words to say about
12 Mr Rassinier in your afterword. You have a rather obscure
13 but very positive introductory paragraph talking about his
14 work, and I find it quite extraordinary that you would
15 write such a thing without actually having read it.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you tell court what we know about Paul Rassinier?
17 Was he a right-wing extremist?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is in my report. I have a few paragraphs about him a
19 bit further on.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he a right-wing extremist?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was one of the earliest and most important Holocaust
22 deniers.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he a right-wing extremist?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure about his politics.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or was he in fact a communist, a left winger, who was
26 incarcerated in Auschwitz because of his political views?
. P-185
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Initially, yes. I think that is why he went into
2 Auschwitz. I do not think that is how he came out.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is a kind of eyewitness with first hand experience, is
4 he?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, he is a curious and interesting figure.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: A curious and interesting figure?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — who seems to have been, I am trying to find my
8 references to it. It is on page 192 of my report.
9 Rassinier was a Holocaust denier who published his book
10 with Grabert Verlag, which is a well-known Holocaust
11 denial publishing house in Germany.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Everybody in your vocabulary is a Holocaust denier,
13 Holocaust denial, right-wing extremist?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not say right-wing extremist.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let the witness finish his answer.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This what this trial in part is about.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it more significance that in fact he was a left winger
18 who was incarcerated in Auschwitz because of his political
19 views?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It seems that he was beaten up by a communist fellow
21 prisoner for having failed to pay his respects to the
22 former German communist leader Thalmann, who was in the
23 camp, and that this seems to have turned him against the
24 communist party, and that he seems to have been well
25 treated by the an SS guard. Certainly after the war he
26 defended the SS and started to deny the existence of gas
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1 chambers, asserting that the Jews are mainly responsible
2 for starting the second world war and so on.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Unlike yourself and myself, this was a man who had been in
4 Auschwitz and so possibly his word deserves some kind of
5 respect.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure he was in Auschwitz.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Buchenwald, was he not?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Buchenwald I think.
9 MR IRVING: I think he was also in Auschwitz at some stage.
10 Anyway he was in the German concentration camp system and
11 he wrote about it.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is why I consider it a curious case that he had the
13 views that he had.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: And I therefore did the wrong thing by writing an
15 afterword to his book?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I certainly think you did the wrong thing in writing an
17 afterword to his book without actually having read the
18 thing and making statements about the book in that
19 afterword.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did I say in my afterword I have read this book and find
21 it jolly good?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think one assumes it. You said things about Rassinier’s
23 views in your afterword which makes me assume that you are
24 familiar with them.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am familiar with them to the extent that I have just
26 described them to the court. He was a left winger who was
. P-187
1 sent to the concentration camp for his political views.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So you were familiar with his views then on the Holocaust.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have always known the fact that he has been a doubter
4 and I see no reason at all why I should —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I find it difficult to know what we are disputing here in
6 that case.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: What we are disputing is on what basis you say that my
8 views derived from Paul Rassinier?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I said ultimately. I am quite prepared to accept that
10 there may have been intervening stages for his views. For
11 example —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I have never read any of his books, how can my views as
13 far as the death roll and anything else possibly have
14 derived from Mr Rassinier? You now accept that this is
15 just another of your wild and unsubstantiated assertions,
16 is it not?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, because his views then became taken up into the
18 general discourse of this particular — I do not want to
19 keep using the words “Holocaust denial” but I suppose it
20 is unavoidable — that they were represented by a number
21 of other people.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: He just wanted to shoe horn his name in somehow, is that
23 right?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The idea is in his book and in his work it is put forward
25 by you, the same view, and it seems therefore reasonable
26 to conclude that somehow it has found its way from him to
. P-188
1 you, since it has no evidential basis.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 120 now — we will leave Mr Rassinier — at
3 paragraph 24, you say what Irving did concede in his 1992
4 speech was that there were some authorised mass shootings
5 on the Eastern Front.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Unauthorized.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What page?
8 MR IRVING: Page 120, my Lord, of his report. You say that
9 I conceded this in 1992. Had I ever denied that there had
10 been shootings on the Eastern Front? Does not the word
11 “concede” imply that I was now reversing a previously
12 held stand or conviction?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I did not mean it to. I made it quite clear that you
14 say this repeatedly, that there were unauthorized mass
15 shootings of Jews behind the Eastern front.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words you have used the word “conceded” as just
17 another loaded word you can use to help put some spice in
18 the paragraph and flavour—-
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it is that spicey, Mr Irving.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was not before, but you put in a word like “concede” or
21 on the next page 121, first line, “Irving agreed once more
22 conceding that”?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have to put that in the context of what I say in the
24 previous paragraph, which is where you go through the
25 usual litany of stuff about casting doubt on the estimate
26 of the numbers killed. You are trying to say that there
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1 was never any written order from Himmler stating that
2 Hitler decided the Final Solution and so on and so forth.
3 I am using the word “concede” here to balance out what
4 I say in the previous paragraphs. What I am saying really
5 is that your views conform to those of Holocaust deniers,
6 but in this case you do say that there are some
7 unauthorized mass shootings.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The words Holocaust denier are becoming more and more
9 meaningless as we progress. If you look at the first on
10 page 121, “Irving agreed once more”, conceding (this is
11 1995) there again these are loaded words, Irving agreed
12 once conceding that “there is no doubt in my mind that on
13 the Eastern Front large numbers of Jews were massacred by
14 criminals with guns, SS men, Ukranians, Lithuanians,
15 whatever, to get rid of them”. That is a strange kind of
16 Holocaust denier.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I am saying here is that Holocaust deniers, including
18 Monsieur Faurisson, whom I quote on the previous page as
19 saying the same kind of thing, agreeing with you, have
20 always admitted or said that there were unauthorized
21 massacres of Jews behind the Eastern Front. Therefore,
22 that is not evidence of, as it were, not being a Holocaust
23 denier. That has always been a concession they have made
24 to those who have argued that the Nazis killed large
25 numbers of Jews. You yourself have now of course admitted
26 in the course of this trial that there were up to a
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1 million Jews who were shot behind the Eastern Front as
2 part of a systematic plan.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why do you say admitted?
4 MR RAMPTON: Let him finish.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I make a suggestion and see whether you
6 agree with it. Your thesis, whether it is right or wrong,
7 is that Mr Irving denies to an extent the fact and the
8 scale of the extermination and whether it was systematic.
9 It seems to me that, if that is your thesis, when you get
10 Mr Irving, he will not like the word, making admissions or
11 concessions that particular events happened, you are going
12 to describe it as an admission or a concession. Is that
13 why you use the word?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, exactly.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It is not really in any sense intended to be denigratory
16 of you, I think?
17 MR IRVING: I disagree, my Lord. In the context of this report
18 it is used as a loaded and as an emotive word.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not read it that way. I really do not.
20 You can take it from me that I do not.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I certainly did not intend it that way. It is difficult to
22 find another word in this context.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is true.
24 MR IRVING: Page 123, please, paragraph 27, “The standard works
25 on the Holocaust”, you write, “make it clear both that a
26 substantial proportion of those killed were shot or
. P-191
1 starved to death or deliberately weakened and made
2 susceptible to fatal diseases as a matter of policy, and
3 that gassings took place at other centres besides
4 Auschwitz, including notably Belzec, Sobibor and
5 Treblinka”. That is you writing that, is it not, Professor
6 Evans?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: From what part of that statement or cataclysm that you
9 have written down there yourself do you believe I differ?
10 Is there not one line of that statement with which
11 I agree?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it looks at the previous part of that paragraph,
13 where you say that, “The Holocaust with a capital ‘H’ is
14 what’s gone down in history in this one sentence form, so
15 to speak: ‘Adolf Hitler ordered the killing of six
16 million Jews in Auschwitz'”. What I go on to say is that
17 nobody in fact has ever argued that six million Jews were
18 killed by gassing at Auschwitz, or indeed six million Jews
19 were killed in Auschwitz. That is not the common
20 definition of “the Holocaust” and I am trying to say that
21 your notion that that is what the Holocaust with a capital
22 ‘H’ is is a figment of your own imagination.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have now skirted around answering my direct question.
24 The final sentence of that paragraph is your definition of
25 the word “Holocaust” and there is not one line of that
26 with which I disagree, is there?
. P-192
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, there is. Gassings took place at other centres
2 besides Auschwitz, including notably Belzec, Sobibor and
3 Treblinka. You denied altogether—-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a point that his Lordship is familiar with, I have
5 conceded in all my books as well.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I wrote this report before this trial, Mr Irving.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure about Belzec.
8 MR RAMPTON: No. The concession was recently made in the
9 course of this trial.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And conceded Belzec too?
11 MR IRVING: Yes, my Lord, and also in the books as well.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I could not know, Mr Irving, what you were going to
13 concede when I used the word in this trial.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are also in the books, are they not, the fact that
15 these gassings took place, exterminations in Belzec,
16 Sobibor and Treblinka? The only point I am holding out on
17 is that crematorium No. 2, that particular building.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are now. Yes, I agree. I did not realize
19 that you had been conceding this all along, and indeed
20 I thought at the earlier stages of this trial you were not
21 conceding it, but anyway.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is not the case, Mr Irving.
23 MR IRVING: It is an important point.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think it may be. Which books,
25 Mr Irving, can I ask you that? Hitler’s War? Do not
26 answer if it is difficult off the top of your head.
. P-193
1 MR IRVING: It would be time consuming to look it up but I will
2 look up the references overnight, my Lord.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fine.
4 MR IRVING: I have tripled lined that in the margin, that
5 particular part of the report, as being a definition with
6 which I wholeheartedly agree.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My view is that you did not agree with that definition
9 when you said, “The Holocaust with a capital ‘H’ is what’s
10 gone down in history in this one sentence form, so to
11 speak: ‘Adolf Hitler ordered the killing of six million
12 Jews in Auschwitz'”.
13 MR IRVING: That is the popular view, is it not?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: The man on the Clapham omnibus view. If you say to him,
16 “What is the Holocaust?”, he will say, “Is that not that
17 guy Hitler, did he not kill 6 million Jews in Auschwitz?”
18 Is that not the common view of the Holocaust now?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “The Holocaust with a capital ‘H’ is what’s gone down in
20 history in this one sentence form, so to speak: ‘Adolf
21 Hitler ordered the killing of six million Jews in
22 Auschwitz'”. I am not aware of anybody in print who has
23 argued or suggested that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Even when I am quite specific about how huge the figures
25 concerned are, I am looking now at the next paragraph, you
26 dismiss that as being just one occasion when
. P-194
1 I accidentally or inadvertently conceded these huge
2 figures.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me make a couple of point about that. That is
4 the only occasion I could find.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not find any more. And, of course, when you say 4
7 million, then you say that is of course due mainly to
8 barbarity and typhus and epidemics, as you say, and you
9 have many other statements which I cite in my report,
10 where you say the Nazis killed in the order of thousands
11 at a time, not millions, as you said in 1990.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we just —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I also make the point that of course that last statement,
14 the statement before the last one, the last statement
15 I quoted you as saying the Nazis killed of the order of
16 thousands at a time, not millions, as in 1990, and your
17 exceptional figure, the only instance I could find of 4
18 million, where you mentioned barbarity and typhus and
19 epidemics was in 1995. In other words, that is after
20 Professor Lipstadt’s book was published.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we just reel back slightly there? Looking at the last
22 sentence in paragraph 29, the Nazis killed in the order of
23 thousands at a time, not millions. I am not going to
24 bother the court with looking up what the omission is
25 because I will presume it is not important. But it is
26 perfectly correct, is it not, that the Nazis killed them
. P-195
1 thousands at a time, did they not? They did not kill them
2 millions at a time?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I guess it depends what you mean by “at a time”.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, there is one trench with thousands being
5 lined up and shot into it on a particular morning. That
6 statement is accurate, is that right?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In that sense, yes, of course.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: And July 27th 1995 is over a year before the writ was
9 issued in this particular action?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do quote this here, but I do point out that it is
11 after Professor Lipstadt published her book.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you any evidence that I took cognisance of the
13 content of Professor Lipstadt’s book or indeed even of her
14 opinions before the middle of 1996?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I am not suggesting anything. There is no suggestion
16 in my report that you said that because Professor Lipstadt
17 had published her book.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is not the evidence in fact that some time in 1996
19 I obtained a copy of the report of the book round about
20 April when I was marketing the Goebbels biography, and
21 that I immediately wrote a letter before action and took
22 legal steps. So it was 1996 after I made this broadcast?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I am not suggesting anything else. as I said,
24 I repeat myself, I am not suggesting that you said this
25 because of Professor Lipstadt’s book.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this broadcast cannot have been self-serving in any
. P-196
1 particular way in connection with this action?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not concerned with why you made this broadcast.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it be possible that I made those statements because
4 I considered them to be true, in your view?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Perfectly possible, yes. Let me quote the whole statement
6 we are talking about. “I have to say, the figure I would
7 have to give you is a minimum of one million, which is a
8 monstrous crime, and a maximum of about 4 million,
9 depending on what you mean by killed. If putting people
10 into a concentration camp where they die of barbarity and
11 typhus and epidemics is killing, then I would say the 4
12 million figure, because undoubtedly huge numbers did die
13 in the camps in the conditions that were very evident at
14 the end of the war”, and on other occasions, as I go on to
15 say, you have argued that the deaths from disease in the
16 camps were due in large measure to the allied bombing of
17 the factories that made the medicines in Germany.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, have I put this July 1995 broadcast with
19 those figures on my website for the world to see already
20 for a couple of years now?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is here in my report, Mr Irving. I have not suppressed
22 it.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, but is there any indication that it was a one off on
24 my part and I blurted it out by mistake at four in the
25 morning, this is after all Australia I am talking to?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: When did you put it on your website?
. P-197
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, within the last year or two.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is after the beginning of this action.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In other words, there is no reason to suggest that
4 this is a one off broadcast. You said that it is the one
5 recorded episode. There may have been more episodes when
6 I gave the same kind of figures.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the one recorded episode when I wrote this report
8 which I finished last spring, spring last year.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: But in fact the figures I give there are probably pretty
10 accurate, are they not? Killed by all means? Order of
11 one to four million? Hilberg says 5.1 million, others say
12 6 million, does that make me a Holocaust denier because
13 I come down to four?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, in conjunction with the other things — well, let
15 me say two things. First of all, this is an isolated
16 statement by the time I had written this report, and you
17 had not made it before Professor Lipstadt wrote her book.
18 You have many other statements where you give much lower
19 figures, and indeed the interviewer Rawden Casey was
20 extremely surprised that you should give this figure.
21 Secondly, you suggested and you have to take this as a
22 kind of package, that huge numbers died in the camps in
23 the conditions that were very evident at the end of the
24 war, and that epidemics —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come to that in a minute.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and squalor and so on were an extremely important part
. P-198
1 of this. Therefore this is not part of a deliberate
2 systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. So you
3 have to take that together with other things.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you saying that all —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course, four million is a figure that is well below the
6 range of figures which responsible historians of the
7 Holocaust consider, even leaving apart the question of the
8 deliberate and systematic nature of the killing.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: If we look at the 6 million figure or the 5.1 million
10 figure, are they all people who met a violent death?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I guess it depends what you mean by violence.
12 I think the argument is that these are people who were
13 killed as a result of a systematic mass murder by the
14 Nazis.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Privations killed them as much as violence, right?
16 Starvation, epidemic, brutality, exhaustion?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is exactly what I said in the radio interview,
19 correct?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I said, you have to take that in conjunction with how
21 and why you think that people died of typhus and epidemics
22 in the camps.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because I do not buy the whole 6 million, I am a Holocaust
24 denier. I am suddenly not a responsible historian?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you have to take this together with other aspects
26 of what you have said and written about the Holocaust. As
. P-199
1 I say, we are focusing here on one statement you make
2 where quite exceptionally you go up to 4 million, and in
3 many other places you did use before that much lower
4 figures.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are aware that that radio broadcast was subsequently
6 broadcast around the world by the newspapers; it was
7 headlined in Australia and headlined in other countries
8 around the world, and never once did I issue a dementi.
9 I was quite happy to accept that I had stated those
10 figures. Have you seen the press clippings?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not, no, but I am happy to accept that though.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we now move on to the matter you wish to raise, which
13 is the death by epidemics?
14 MR RAMPTON: Before we do that, can I draw your Lordship’s
15 attention to the stated position on the pleadings? I am
16 sufficiently still enough of an anorak occasionally to
17 refer to the pleadings. In relation to Belzec, Sobibor
18 and Treblinka as at 18th March 1997 when the Reply was
19 served, the allegation had been that Belzec, Sobibor and
20 Treblinka were established as extermination camps as part
21 of Aktion Reinhardt, Mr Irving said this:
22 “The Plaintiff was not aware of any authentic
23 wartime archival evidence for the allegations raised in
24 this paragraph. Aktion Reinhardt was named after Friz
25 Reinhardt, the Civil Service, in the Reichs Finance
26 Ministry in charge of exploiting the assets of deceased
. P-200
1 and murdered Jews and other concentration camp victims.
2 It is denied that Aktion Reinhardt was itself an
3 extermination operation.”
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. My recollection is that in the initial
5 stages Mr Irving was not accepting —-
6 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — during his evidence that there was any
8 gassing there, but when pressed he did. His position has
9 evolved, in other words.
10 MR RAMPTON: The position has evolved to this, that he accepts
11 there were Jews killed by gas at those camps. He is,
12 I think to be fair, unsure of the scale.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, my recollection is he has actually had
14 figures put to him which he has accepted.
15 MR RAMPTON: Then your Lordship’s memory is better than mine.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think that that is historically
17 right, for whatever it may be worth.
18 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will undoubtedly refer to the
19 transcripts when the time comes, whatever I said in the
20 transcripts. My recollection of the matter is that in
21 order to speed the trial along we have stream lined a lot
22 of the arguments and concentrated on certain institutions
23 and centres, and left it like that.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR IRVING: It is not a formal concession. It is not a denial,
26 but it helps to speed the process of the trial along. If
. P-201
1 I were to start digging my heels on all the other sites
2 and locations and events and episodes then we would be
3 here until Christmas.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not overestimate the importance of the
5 speed of the trial. Obviously we have a duty not to waste
6 time, but you cannot found your concessions on a wish to
7 keep the trial moving along. They are either concessions,
8 and I use that word I think correctly in this context, or
9 they are not.
10 MR IRVING: My logic there is to say that if I am proved wrong
11 on the main camp, on Auschwitz two, then what happened or
12 did not happen in Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec is neither
13 here nor there. If, on the other hand, I am proved right
14 on Auschwitz two, then equally what happened in Sobibor
15 and Treblinka and Belzec is neither here nor there.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We may have to examine that further, but I am
17 conscious you are trying to sustain a cross-examination
18 and it is very difficult for you to have to argue.
19 Mr Rampton was right, I think, to get up and say what he
20 did. I certainly do not want to take you out of your
21 cross-examination.
22 MR IRVING: He is certainly right to have pointed that out,
23 although he very correctly read out exactly what the
24 pleadings said, and the pleadings did not really justify
25 the burden that he sought to place upon them.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I know what you are getting at. Why
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1 do you not resume your cross-examination. If you are
2 running out of steam —-
3 MR IRVING: I am not running out of steam. There is one other
4 point I believe that the witness wishes to make which
5 concerns the epidemics in Buchenwald at the end of the
6 war.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me go back and say that I quote you on page 106 in
8 saying in 1998, you were asked: If Holocaust is
9 representative of the allegation of the extermination of 6
10 million Jews due to the Second World War as a direct
11 result of official German policy of extermination, what
12 would you say? You replied that: “I am not familiar with
13 any documentary evidence of any such figure of 6 million.
14 It must have been of the order of 100,000 or more”.
15 MR IRVING: I would wish to see, to quote your words, I would
16 wish definitely to see exactly what has been left out
17 there, because that is such a remarkable statement in that
18 form that I cannot accept that is a complete —-
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you have had the opportunity to do so. You have had
20 my report since July I think.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have probably got it. What page were you
22 reading from, Professor Evans?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 106.
24 MR IRVING: 106.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right at the bottom.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have the testimony. Unfortunately we have
. P-203
1 not got a page reference. Yes, we have, page 12.
2 MR IRVING: By looking at the figures I think we are talking
3 about how many are known to have died in Auschwitz.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not the question that you were asked. It is the
5 extermination of 6 million Jews during the Second World
6 War.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is why I want to see exactly what the testimony
8 says. It would be clearly impossible for me to have said
9 that the Holocaust was 100,000.
10 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not, Mr Irving is wrong. The question
11 was: “And if the Holocaust is represented as the
12 allegation of the extermination of 6 million Jews during
13 the Second World War as a direct result of official German
14 policy of extermination, what would you say to that
15 thesis?” Then we get the answer.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are you reading from?
17 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I am reading from the transcript of
18 Mr Irving’s evidence.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have got that, but I have pages running
20 into the hundreds.
21 MR RAMPTON: 204 in the bottom right-hand corner.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to see it, Mr Irving? You asked
23 to see it and you are perfectly entitled to.
24 MR IRVING: I would wish to see the whole of it rather than
25 just two or three lines that have been read out to me by
26 Mr Rampton, to see what the context is.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is fair.
2 MR RAMPTON: Then there was a further question on 205, my
3 Lord: “Do you have any opinion as a result of your
4 research as to the number of Jews who died in
5 concentration camps during the Second World War? I am not
6 sure that an opinion wore here would be of use. I have
7 opinions. I have opinions of the kind of statistical
8 orders of magnitude where you can see there is a minimum
9 number and a maximum number and I can only set these two
10 limits and say that to my mind it must have been of the
11 order of 100,000 or more”.
12 MR IRVING: Yes, in other words 100,000 is the minimum —-
13 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
14 MR IRVING: — of those died in concentration camps.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He does go on to say that certainly less than
16 the figure which is quoted nowadays of 6 million.
17 MR RAMPTON: With the ellipse it is accurately set out in
18 Professor Evans’ report.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is true.
20 MR IRVING: Just once again those three lines quoted in the
21 report do not really give the flavour of the deliberations
22 that go on. If I am being asked as how many Jews died in
23 the concentration camps during the war years, and I do
24 what any scientist would which is give a lower limit and
25 an upper limit which in this particular case are very wide
26 indeed, not less than 100,000, not more than 6 million,
. P-205
1 that is all one can say on the basis of the certainties
2 that we have.
3 Is there anything further you wish to say about
4 that, witness?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you now wish to say something about the epidemics in
7 Belsen and the responsibility of the Allies for them?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I go on in my report to quote you, saying that it
9 was the Allies: “We, the British and the Americans, were
10 partially responsible, at least partially responsible, for
11 their misfortune because we vowed deliberate bombing of
12 the transportation networks, bombardation, deliberate …
13 bombarding the German communications … pharmaceutical
14 industry, medicine factories. We had deliberately created
15 the conditions of chaos inside Germany. We had
16 deliberately created the epidemics and the outbreaks of
17 typhus and other diseases which led to those appalling
18 scenes that were found at their most dramatic in the
19 enclosed areas, the concentration camps, where, of course,
20 epidemics can ravage and run wild”. That is you in 1986.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You dispute that, do you?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do. The conditions of epidemics are created,
23 essentially, by the Nazis who ran camps in such a way that
24 they were extremely unhygienic.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: How can you combat epidemics if you do not have the
26 pharmaceutical products to combat them?
. P-206
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the point is that they — first of all, the major
2 epidemics were well before the end of the war. As you
3 know, there is a major epidemic in Auschwitz in 1942 to 3,
4 I think, and you are talking here as if this is only at
5 the end of war.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you also familiar were the fact that epidemic is a
7 by-product of bombardment of cities, that the water mains
8 are destroyed, the rats feed on the cadavers?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, we are not talking about the bombardment of
10 concentration camps. We are talking about conditions
11 extremely unhygienic in which the particular disease
12 concerned was typhus which is a disease of dirt and lack
13 of hygiene, and there is plenty of evidence that these are
14 the conditions in the camps which the Nazis deliberately
15 created.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What would you make of an historian who says,
17 I suppose, the political party which had rounded up a
18 particular race and put them into camps where typhus broke
19 out and killed huge numbers of them, how do you feel about
20 an historian who says that the person who deliberately
21 created the epidemics was the person who bombed the
22 pharmaceutical factories which might have been able to
23 provide the distribution which might have limited the
24 typhus epidemic, how would you regard?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I feel that that is a reversal of the truth. That is
26 extremely perverse. Typhus is a disease which the Germans
. P-207
1 knew very well how to combat. They had had experience of
2 it from the First World War. There had been a lot of
3 medical intervention by the Germans since well before that
4 combating diseases in Eastern Europe.
5 MR IRVING: How do you combat typhus?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Essentially, by cleanliness. It is by, for example,
7 giving the inmates of a concentration camp fresh clothing
8 and bedding at regular intervals which was not done at
9 all.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the carrier of typhus?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the human body louse.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: And what is used for disposing of this typhus bearing
13 louse?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is a question of prevention to start with, and
15 that is the nub of the question. The concentration camp
16 authorities did very little to prevent it because they did
17 not provide conditions of cleanliness. It was exactly the
18 same about the way in which they treated Russian prisoners
19 of war.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you not familiar with the fact that in all the
21 concentration camps of the Nazi system they had fumigation
22 chambers for cleaning the clothing of the incoming
23 prisoners? They had the clean side, the dirty side, the
24 showers, the baths, the hair cuts, the whole of this
25 system that went with this combatting of the typhus
26 epidemic? Are you not familiar with that?
. P-208
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it was an extremely —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In your statement the Nazis did nothing is, therefore,
3 wrong?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is extremely ineffective and I said did nothing to
5 prevent it. I mean, it certainly did not. The evidence
6 is there.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the fumigation chambers, what they there for if it was
8 not to prevent the typhus plague?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was done in a rather inadequate way. Obviously, there
10 was some incentive on the part of the SS to try to
11 restrict the level and spread of epidemics, but the fact
12 is that unhygienic conditions were part and parcel of the
13 inhumanity of the concentration camps.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we have to keep a slight grip on
15 reality. It is your case that the typhus killed a very
16 large proportion of the Jews who lost their lives.
17 MR IRVING: Yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is difficult in the next breath to say how
19 wonderful the system of fumigating clothes and the like
20 was.
21 MR IRVING: My Lord, that is not the way I put it, but this
22 witness —-
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it comes close to it.
24 MR IRVING: — said the Nazis did nothing to prevent the
25 typhus epidemics.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you were putting to him that they had
. P-209
1 done a very great deal. Well, if they had —-
2 MR IRVING: I picked up the words that they had done nothing
3 and, in fact, we have been sitting here for five weeks
4 listening to nothing but the evidence that they had
5 fumigation chambers for dealing with these epidemics.
6 Particularly in Auschwitz, they went very, very far
7 indeed. I do not have the photographs here any more, but
8 there were the water purification plants they were
9 installing. They went a very long way to try to combat
10 this appalling problem which spread across Central Europe
11 from 1942 onwards and, of course, as the war approached
12 its end, this problem reached its zenith with the total
13 collapse of hygiene, the total collapse of medical
14 facilities, the collapse of transportation, the shifting
15 of tens of hundreds of thousands of people in these
16 unhygienic conditions.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the measures which were undertaken, fumigation and
18 so on, were mostly undertaken after epidemics had broken
19 out to try to limit them, obviously, because the SS in the
20 camps would then feel that they are endangered themselves,
21 and other measures which they did undertake when epidemics
22 broke out were killing the sick by injections or putting
23 them into gas chambers. So they did undertake some
24 measures. But I cannot say that they were in the — that
25 they did very much to prevent the epidemics.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did the Germans not have an Institute of Racial Hygiene
. P-210
1 which did nothing other than combat epidemics? That is
2 what it was created for?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not agree that the Institute of Racial Hygiene was
4 about combating epidemics, no.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Pfannenstiel, was he not a member of that
6 Institute?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The institute of Racial Hygiene was much more concerned
8 with as it suggests, not hygiene in common sense —-
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: But did they not have —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — but it is to do with race.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: — a special body set up doing nothing else than
12 investigating the spread of epidemics because of the
13 damage it was causing to German war effort?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, what I said was that — I am not quite sure what we
15 are arguing about here, but what I said was that the
16 conditions in the camps which favoured — there were
17 conditions in the camps which were deliberately created by
18 the Nazis which were unhygienic, dirty, degrading and
19 encouraged epidemics.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you explain the word “deliberately”? Are you
21 implying that these epidemic bearing lice in some way
22 distinguished between the prisoner, on the one hand, and
23 the SS guard, on the other? They knew which uniform to go
24 for?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would anybody create an epidemic deliberately in a
. P-211
1 camp?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not say they created the epidemic. I said that they
3 created the conditions. I mean, they knew full well what
4 would —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: They deliberately created epidemic conditions?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They full knew what would happen in those filthy
7 conditions which they —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: They negligently created epidemic conditions?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it was a matter of oversight on their part,
10 Mr Irving.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read Professor van Pelt’s book on Auschwitz in
12 which he describes in great detail the negligence of the
13 designers in this respect?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to admit I have not, no.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In what respect in the design of?
16 MR IRVING: The layout of the camp. They said it was inviting
17 epidemics, the way it was designed. The prisoners had to
18 march long distances in order to get to hygiene
19 facilities, and so on.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That would seem to confirm my point of view.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is rather what I thought, yes. I mean,
22 does that not rather suggest that they were not too
23 concerned about epidemics breaking out?
24 MR IRVING: Through negligence they have the camp badly
25 designed is very different from saying that they
26 deliberately created epidemic conditions?
. P-212
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But you just maintained, Mr Irving, that they knew all
2 about epidemics and they had institutes devoted to them
3 and so on. It is rather puzzling that in that case it
4 should be a mere oversight when they are building these
5 institutions.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you agree that there were major epidemics in
7 Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald at the end of the war?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were these deliberately created, is that your contention?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The conditions there were deliberately created by the
11 Nazis, of course. In other words, had they wanted to
12 prevent them, they could have done so.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: But they just let the epidemics run, did they?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. As I have said, they then made attempts (which I have
15 just described) to try to limit the epidemics. You can
16 compare this, if you like, with prisoners of war camps for
17 British airmen and troops in which hygienic conditions
18 were a good deal better.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know how many people died in Dachau concentration
20 camp in the first two months after World War II from
21 epidemics?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: A substantial number.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was it of the order of 20,000 prisoners?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will take your word for it.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Under American control, with the Americans deliberately
26 spreading epidemics too?
. P-213
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, Mr Irving. They were dealing with the consequences.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, this is all getting a little
3 absurd. This all started out because you wrote or said
4 that, “We”, that is to say the Allies, “have deliberately
5 created the epidemics” and maybe I have rather contributed
6 to this by asking Professor Evans whether he thought that
7 was a sensible view for an historian to take. We now seem
8 to have gone the full circle, as it were. Anyway, I think
9 we have probably exhausted the topic.
10 MR IRVING: I do not think I put it exactly they way your
11 Lordship says. I say we deliberately created the
12 conditions of chaos through our bombing campaign,
13 Operation Point Blank and Eclipse and so on.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, may I quote to you, Mr Irving: “We had deliberately
15 quote created the epidemics and the outbreaks of typhus
16 and other diseases which led to those appalling scenes
17 that were found at their most dramatic in the enclosed
18 areas, the concentration camps” — a lecture you gave in
19 1986.
20 MR IRVING: Oh, a speech?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: A lecture? I thought it was from a book.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I presume you accept responsibility for saying that,
24 Mr Irving —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, that is —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — whether you said it or wrote it.
. P-214
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: — from a transcript of a speech made by somebody, is
2 that right?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a video — an audio cassette of a speech.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you not just read out a speech two or three minutes
5 ago which was quite clearly vulgarized, the text?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can, if necessary, look at that speech if
7 you think that the context makes any difference, but
8 I think probably, Mr Irving, we can break off your
9 cross-examination now.
10 MR IRVING: That would be a useful point to break off at this
11 point, my Lord.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I make an enquiry of you which is really
13 to ask, and I expect Professor Evans would like to know
14 the answer, what your estimate is as to the future of your
15 cross-examination?
16 MR IRVING: Two and a half more days.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How many?
18 MR IRVING: Two and a half more days.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Are you going to follow the —-
20 MR IRVING: I am going to follow the —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — structure of his report?
22 MR IRVING: I think it is the only way to do it, my Lord.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think I agree with that. I think you
24 are right. To the extent that there are matters raised in
25 Professor Evans’ report that are not any longer, I think,
26 relied on as part of the Defendants’ case, then you can
. P-215
1 probably not trouble with them or, at any rate, take them
2 very shortly if you want to.
3 MR IRVING: Yes. Has your Lordship in your Lordship’s memory
4 which particular matters those are that are no longer
5 relied on? Sikorsky is one, I believe?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sikorsky is certainly one. Hitler’s
7 adjutants, I think, has rather come back in again.
8 I mean, I think it is probably not sensible for me to try
9 to identify them now because I do not really have them in
10 mind, but if the Defendants let you know whether there are
11 parts in your report that are no longer relied on, that
12 might simplify things all round.
13 MR IRVING: What about Moscow? Is there anything about Moscow
14 in this report?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think there is.
16 MR RAMPTON: Not about Moscow. I have done that anyway.
17 Moscow is certainly a live issue. There is nothing about
18 Moscow in this report, as far as I know.
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, are you going to permit a further
20 cross-examination of me?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have always contemplated there
22 would be a further cross-examination, but it is not
23 open-ended. It is dealing with left over topics.
24 MR RAMPTON: Can I tell your Lordship what I have left? I have
25 got the Fleming book which has a reference to the Muller
26 message to the Einsatzgruppen on 1st August 1941. I have
. P-216
1 got Kinner Zamos report of 16th December 1942. I have got
2 Anne Frank. I have got the criminal statistics which is
3 dealt with towards the end of Professor Evans’ report,
4 pages 692 to 8, and I have got a couple of other things
5 which I am just having checked at the moment. If
6 necessary, I will give notice and, of course, I have the
7 political associations as well.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is very helpful, but if you are
9 able to tell, or Miss Rogers or somebody is able to tell,
10 Mr Irving that there are parts of Professor Evans’ report
11 which are no longer really relied on and, therefore, he
12 need not trouble with them?
13 MR RAMPTON: I think it means we can regard the Adjutants and
14 the Roman Jews as out of the ring.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There may be other bits?
16 MR RAMPTON: Little bits, but those are the two main subjects,
17 yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that help, Mr Irving, a bit?
19 MR RAMPTON: Though I cannot guarantee it will not —-
20 MR IRVING: If I had known we could have torn up the first 120
21 pages of his report, it would have saved a lot of time.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that I would put it quite like
23 that.
24 (The court adjourned until the following day)
25
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