Day 20 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 1.26)
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Tuesday, 15th 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
25 PROCEEDINGS – DAY TWENTY
26
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Part II: Professor Richard Evans’ Cross-Examination by David Irving continued, Morning Session (2.1-114.3)
Section 2.1 to 22.16
1 <Day 20 Tuesday, 15th February 2000.
2 < Professor Evans, recalled.
3 ;< Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving?
5 MR IRVING: May it please the court. I have placed in your
6 Lordship’s bundle F a continuation of about 20 or 30
7 pages, and I have also provided your Lordship, as you have
8 just noticed, with a copy of Nuremberg to which we were
9 referring to yesterday.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see that. Thank you.
11 MR IRVING: And if we can just take up one or two of the points
12 your Lordship requested yesterday? Your Lordship
13 requested a copy of what the pull-down menu says. That is
14 in the bundle which I have just given you, bundle F. It
15 is at the back of bundle F which your Lordship was using
16 yesterday.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The pull-down menu, where do I find that?
18 MR IRVING: If you go to page 93 of bundle F, my Lord, it
19 should be — unless the numbering has gone wrong.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had this in a different form yesterday, did
21 I not, from Mr Rampton?
22 MR IRVING: Well, I did not have it yesterday from Mr Rampton.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did you not? Well, I got something.
24 MR IRVING: It is difficult to obtain, but that is the works of
25 it, in what is called HTML.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Having looked through it, whilst we are on
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1 this, it did appear to me that whatever their titles may
2 be, they are mostly Jewish organisations of one kind or
3 another.
4 MR IRVING: My Lord, that is not correct. If you look at the
5 list, there are 16 items, of which seven are not, if I can
6 put it like that.
7 MR RAMPTON: I do not think we have 16.
8 MR IRVING: That is precisely why your Lordship should be
9 looking at my pull-down menu rather than the one given to
10 you. Shall I read through them?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that would serve any
12 particularly useful purpose.
13 MR IRVING: No. But your Lordship will notice the Australian
14 Government, the Centre for Democratic Renewal, the
15 Coalition for Human Dignity, the German Government.
16 MR RAMPTON: There are only two I think that are not Jewish, my
17 Lord.
18 MR IRVING: Searchlight —-
19 MR RAMPTON: Two National Governments.
20 MR IRVING: Well, Mr Rampton, if you would just allow me to
21 finish reading out those that are not Jewish that are on
22 the list?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You read out the ones you say are not Jewish.
24 MR IRVING: I will start again. Australian Government, Centre
25 for Democratic Renewal.
26 MR RAMPTON: That is Jewish.
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1 MR IRVING: I beg your pardon?
2 MR RAMPTON: It is Jewish.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him read them, Mr Rampton, then we can
4 debate it further, if needs be.
5 MR IRVING: Coalition for Human Dignity, the German Government,
6 Searchlight, and Surf Watch Internet Censorship.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 MR IRVING: Each of those, if you would click on that, you
9 would come to a subindex, my Lord, which has the actual
10 documents which qualified for inclusion in the list of
11 enemies of free speech.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think this is in a way dicing with
13 words because I have actually got the indices supplied
14 yesterday. It appears to me, without knowing in detail
15 what the individual items on the indices are, that really
16 all of these organizations, there is a great deal of
17 interplay, put it like that, between these organizations
18 and what you would, perhaps, describe as the Jewish
19 lobby. Is that not fair?
20 MR IRVING: In some of the documents quite clearly there is, in
21 some of the documents listed on the index, and, obviously,
22 I then have to make the point that this is a website which
23 has been set up in response to the attack on me.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I follow.
25 MR IRVING: So, clearly, this is not a global attempt to
26 address all the world enemies of free speech when,
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1 undoubtedly, you bring in the Chinese Government and all
2 sorts of other ghastly organizations, but these are the
3 bodies that have impinged on my professional career. That
4 is why they figure on my personal list of traditional
5 enemies of free speech.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. I think I interrupted
7 Mr Rampton. Did you want to add anything?
8 MR RAMPTON: I was just going to say, Mr Irving has identified
9 as being not Jewish I think four that, in fact, are
10 Jewish. The only two that are not that we can tell are
11 the Australian and the German governments.
12 MR IRVING: Perhaps you should say which of the four that you
13 consider are Jewish.
14 MR RAMPTON: All the rest are Jewish.
15 MR IRVING: Centre for Democratic Renewal?
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
17 MR IRVING: A Jewish body?
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes — so I am told.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We may or may not come back to that at some
20 later stage. Let us leave it for the moment. I cannot
21 actually find my bundle F.
22 MR IRVING: I asked your clerk, my Lord, this morning to put
23 the fresh documents into it.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I then think I said not for the time being
25 until I know that is what everybody thinks is right.
26 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will need bundle F9, in fact.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not seem to have F. Yes. So I put this
2 in the back?
3 MR IRVING: That is correct, my Lord. Mr Rampton’s
4 intervention, of course, has highlighted the problem that
5 I face in view of the fact that the representative of the
6 Centre for Democratic Renewal and the Coalition for Human
7 Dignity who gave statements relied which have been relied
8 upon by Professor Levin, those statements are not sworn.
9 They are just put in by way of evidence. They are relied
10 on by Professor Levin. Professor Levin is not going to
11 give oral evidence, so I cannot test the validity of any
12 of the statements that Mr Rampton has made or any of the
13 statements these witnesses have made.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Levin, who is not coming to give
15 evidence, I had understood (and perhaps I am wrong about
16 this and perhaps we can clarify now) that his report is no
17 longer relied on.
18 MR RAMPTON: No, that is not right. There is a Civil Evidence
19 Act Notice.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: For an expert?
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes, in respect of that. What weight it has is
22 another question, but it has to be a 1968 Act Notice
23 because this case was started before the 1995 Act came
24 into force. So there is a Civil Evidence Act statement in
25 respect of Professor Levin.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is highly unusual to have an expert’s
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1 report subject to the Civil Evidence Act.
2 MR RAMPTON: It may be unusual but —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know whether I have ever heard of it
4 before.
5 MR RAMPTON: — there is nothing the matter with it in
6 principle.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be right.
8 MR IRVING: It does place me at a serious disadvantage, of
9 course.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. Actually, I thought the disadvantage
11 was less great than it now appears to be because I had
12 wrongly taken it (and I am glad I have now discovered my
13 error) that the Defendants were not any longer relying on
14 Levin and Eatwell.
15 MR RAMPTON: If I can say this, quite frankly, I do not myself
16 believe I need to depend very heavily on Professor Levin
17 anyway for —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is probably right.
19 MR RAMPTON: — quite different reasons. The factual
20 witnesses probably, so far as the United States and Canada
21 are concerned, are more important.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. To help you with your difficulty,
23 Mr Irving, can I suggest this, that when you come to be
24 cross-examined, as you will be I think on —-
25 MR IRVING: Next week sometime.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — the sort of rogues’ gallery point, if
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1 I can rudely call it that, namely your associating with
2 these extremists.
3 MR IRVING: Guilt by association.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, that is the way you put it. I am
5 not sure it is as simple as that.
6 MR IRVING: It is the way Morland J would put it probably too.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you might then take the opportunity,
8 either in cross-examination or perhaps re-examining
9 yourself, to make the points you are wanting to make in
10 reference to Professor Levin or Dr Levin’s report.
11 MR IRVING: I was proposing to make it by way of submission.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. You can do it that way as well or
13 instead, rather.
14 MR IRVING: But is a rather unfortunate halfway house that he
15 is going to partly rely on Mr Levin’s report, and we have
16 no way of knowing which part he is relying on and which
17 part he is not. Either he should or he should not, in my
18 view, my Lord, and your Lordship may wish to make a ruling
19 on that.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you may want to make the application
21 that it is not legitimate for a party to use the Civil
22 Evidence Act machinery to avoid having the expert witness
23 in question called and cross-examined.
24 MR IRVING: Now that we are under the CPR, as we are, I think
25 it should be either or.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well I am not going to that now because
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1 Professor Evans is, no doubt, wanting to get on with his
2 evidence, but if you want to make that application, feel
3 free to do so. But, as I say, I think it is unusual.
4 Yes, now, are we ready to resume?
5 MR IRVING: One more minor matter, your Lordship asked to see
6 the index of the Hitler’s War books, the new version, and
7 that also appended as — it is the very last page of what
8 you have.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say the “new” version, the one that
10 is about to come out?
11 MR IRVING: No, this was an index we commissioned for the 1991
12 edition, in other words, it is a fuller index for 1991.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
14 MR IRVING: It has now been superceded because we are about to
15 do a completely updated edition.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So this is just the extract dealing with…
17 MR IRVING: That, I presume, is the page that your Lordship was
18 interested in.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you are quite right.
20 MR IRVING: Also, finally, my Lord, if you look two items back
21 from that, your Lordship will find The Spectator.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this “as many as”?
23 MR IRVING: “As many as”, yes, my Lord. Your Lordship will see
24 that I was absolutely correct; either Professor Eatwell or
25 Professor Levin or both omitted the word which completely
26 reversed the meaning.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Professor Evans, this is a point at
2 which I think you ought to join in, if I can put it like
3 that. I think, Mr Irving, the point he made yesterday is
4 right?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is right, yes, indeed.
6 MR IRVING: Is it right to say that I, therefore, did not
7 double the death roll by means of the comparison, in
8 fact? I adhered to a death roll in Hamburg of up to or
9 nearly 50,000?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not, I think, your error, but Professor
12 Eatwell’s?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It looks like it, my Lord.
14 MR IRVING: My Lord, the problem is Professor Evans’ report has
15 turned out to be a bit of a dummy minefield. I am
16 advancing into it, but very gingerly, because I do not
17 know where the real mines are and where the dummies are
18 like that one, and this is what is delaying us.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I accept any of that, but let
20 us move on anyway. We have got to about 100?
21 MR IRVING: 128, my Lord, is where I propose to continue, my
22 Lord. I am on 128 at paragraph 4, Professor Evans.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are still on the topic of Holocaust
24 denial, are you not?
25 MR IRVING: We are, my Lord, and we are dealing just briefly
26 with the experiment made with the gas vans. Your Lordship
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1 was concerned that I described this as an experiment in
2 view of the large numbers. So Professor Evans has quoted
3 me as saying, “So I accept that this kind of experiment
4 was made on a very limited scale”. Do you agree that
5 there was, in fact, an experiment, Professor Evans, the
6 use of the gas vans for a limited period of months on the
7 Eastern Front and elsewhere?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You go on to say: “But, I don’t accept that the gas
9 chambers existed, and this is well known. I’ve seen no
10 evidence at all that gas chambers existed”. So what I am
11 saying there in that quotation is that you say that
12 gassing took place on a very limited scale, experimental
13 scale, but, as you say, it was rapidly abandoned as being
14 a totally inefficient way of killing people.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I understand that during the trial you have now admitted
17 that that was wrong, that it was, that gassing was not
18 merely used on a limited experimental scale.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are overlooking the use of loaded words like
20 “conceded” and “admitted”. Do you accept that,
21 therefore, the gas vans were used as an experimental basis
22 for killing, and that they were abandoned then for
23 whatever reason afterwards?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not. They were used for killing on a large
25 scale, as I think—-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did they continue using them throughout the war or did
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1 they stop?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There was a transition to mainly using gas chambers, but
3 they were used on far more than a limited scale, as
4 I believe you yourself have said in the course of this
5 trial.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Looking purely at the word “experimental” at this point,
7 you have agreed that Professor Burrin, the Swiss Professor
8 is something of an expert. He is not an extremist or what
9 you call a Holocaust denier.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is so, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: I just put to you one sentence from his standard work on
12 this. This is on page 112 of Philip Burrin: “The gas
13 truck had been an improvised response to a situation no
14 one had foreseen or imagined”. Would you agree with that?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to see the whole passage. I find it
16 difficult to comment simply on a single sentence taken out
17 of that. In any case, the context of this section of my
18 report is concerned with your denial that gas chambers
19 existed, that gas chambers were used. That is the
20 context.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Before we move on, just a simple answer. You do accept
22 therefore that the gas vans were used and then abandoned
23 at some stage as a means of killing?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, yes. In the end of course the gas chambers were
25 abandoned as a means of killing when they had fulfilled
26 their purpose. I do not accept—-
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I just want to see where we are
2 going occasionally.
3 MR IRVING: That was the end of that.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: At an earlier stage in this case — correct
5 me if I am recollecting wrongly — you were presented
6 with a document which indicated that at Chelmno 97,000
7 Jews were killed in five weeks.
8 MR RAMPTON: Five months, my Lord.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree you did not accept that figure was
10 correct, but I believe you did accept in terms that the
11 gas vans were not used on a solely experimental basis but
12 were used for the systematic killing of substantial
13 numbers of Jews.
14 MR IRVING: They were. I do not agree that they were used only
15 at Chelmno. They were certainly used once at Chelmno
16 because there was an explosion there, but there is no
17 evidence they were used only there.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not say “only there”. I am using that
19 as an illustration of what I had understood you to have
20 accepted earlier in this case.
21 MR IRVING: I am trying to justify the use of the word
22 “experimental” by the virtue of the fact that other
23 historians of reputation have also described this as being
24 an interim phase and it was abandoned, as it proved not to
25 be a very feasible or practical way of doing things.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be rather a different thing from
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1 saying it is experimental, but there we are.
2 MR IRVING: I think that you had fastened on the word
3 “experimental” as being something repugnant in this
4 particular connection and I can appreciate that, but I was
5 just trying to establish what was meant by the word
6 “experimental”.
7 Can we now proceed to paragraph 6 on the same
8 page 128, where we are talking about the subsequent Polish
9 tests which attempted to replicate the Leuchter tests.
10 You say that I allege that there was a refusal of the
11 authorities to call for site examinations and that
12 forensic tests were carried out by the Poles, but the
13 results were suppressed”. Is that correct in the last
14 four lines on page 128?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you suggesting that I have got it wrong somehow?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In this paragraph I am trying to sum up your views as
18 succinctly as I can.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that the Poles did carry out tests and
20 suppress them?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not. I have to say I am not an expert on
22 Auschwitz and there has been a separate, as I call
23 attention to at the top of the next page 130, expert
24 witness report by Professor van Pelt, who is an expert on
25 Auschwitz, who goes into this in very great detail.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So we will not dwell very long on this, but would
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1 you go to page 56 of the little bundle, which is the first
2 page of the Polish report I am referring to. We are going
3 to look at two dates on it.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a Polish document. I am told that the date at the
6 top in Polish means 24th September 1990, and that is the
7 date that the report was submitted by this Polish
8 Institute to the museum at Auschwitz, as you can see in
9 the address line on the top right quarter. If you look in
10 the rubber stamp box, can you see a date on the final
11 line?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, 11.10.1990.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did the Polish State authority, the Auschwitz authorities,
14 at any time thereafter publish that report, or did it sit
15 in their safe for some months and years?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not an expert on this subject. I cannot really
17 comment. I think probably, if one consulted Professor van
18 Pelt’s report, one would be able to clear that up.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: You spent a whole page — again on the foot of page 129
20 you say that Irving went on to claim that Dr Piper, in
21 other words the Auschwitz State Museum, had suppressed the
22 fact and filed the report away.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I say that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: You disqualify the Leuchter report in your view. I have
25 to ask you these questions because it is said that I have
26 relied on the Leuchter report and that this was an
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1 unjustifiable act of a responsible historian.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not have to ask these questions. I
3 have already indicated that on Auschwitz — I know it is
4 referred to in Professor Evans’ report — it does not
5 appear to me that, if I may respectfully say so, Professor
6 Evans’ opinions really bulk very large. I think that is
7 really Professor van Pelt. So do not feel you have to ask
8 these questions.
9 MR IRVING: I would like to ask him purely then about one
10 matter. Is it right that you suggest that the report was
11 not admitted as evidence at the Toronto trial, and that
12 this in some way discredits the report?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I cannot see that in my report. I say it was
14 discredited at the Zundel trial in 1988. That is my
15 understanding, having read some of the transcripts of the
16 trial.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was the report actually admitted as evidence of the Zundel
18 trial?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we know it was, do we not? We can
20 move on.
21 MR IRVING: The point that I am trying to make, my Lord, is
22 that I have had considerable dealings overnight with the
23 Canadian solicitors involved in that action who confirmed
24 to me — I just put the essential three lines of their
25 letter to you. The solicitor Barbara Kulaska has written
26 to me saying that the Leuchter report itself was not filed
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1 as an exhibit for the sole reason that such engineering
2 reports are not generally admissible under Canadian rules
3 of evidence unless the other side consents.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I treat that with a certain amount of
5 scepticism. The evidence up to now is that it was not
6 admitted in evidence at the Zundel trial because it was
7 not accepted that Leuchter was suitably qualified as an
8 expert.
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, with the utmost respect, I have to say
10 that I have a very large bundle here now which contains
11 the actual transcript on that matter between the
12 prosecution and the defence and the court in Toronto.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we put that on one side? I do not
14 suppose Mr Rampton has had a chance to look at what you
15 are referring to me at the moment. At any rate, let us
16 got on with Professor Evans. I am not shutting you out
17 from adducing that evidence.
18 MR IRVING: I am prepared to make this transcript available to
19 the Defence in this matter.
20 MR RAMPTON: I have the transcript. I used it in
21 cross-examination of Mr Irving. It is perfectly clear the
22 judge would not admit Mr Leuchter as an expert.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What you have not seen is what Mr Irving is
24 relying on from the Canadian lawyers giving an entirely
25 different reason why.
26 MR RAMPTON: I have seen it. There is a one page letter
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1 I think in this new bundle.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am suggesting is that Mr Irving
3 follows this up later.
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I agree. I attach no weight to what the
5 lawyer says at all.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather than now.
7 MR IRVING: Whether Mr Rampton attaches weight to it or not is
8 neither here nor there. In that case I shall put it to
9 your Lordship by way of submission later on.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you mind.
11 MR IRVING: At page 130 line 8 you say that my arguments derive
12 from previous work from well-known Holocaust deniers, and
13 then you mention some.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Faurisson. . Are you familiar with the
16 expertise of Germar Rudolf?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I mention Faurisson there. I do not mention Rudolf there.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I can make this very brief. Can you accept that there are
19 a number of other documentary bases on which I base my
20 arguments, for example the air photographs as interpreted
21 by a man called John Ball?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is clear I think that in the documents that I cite you
23 do rely heavily upon Faurisson, whose work you did read in
24 the late 1980s, as you recall in your diary.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which works of Professor Faurisson do you allege that
26 I read?
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1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was an article in your diary entry of 26th July 1986.
2 You wrote “Faurisson’s paper on Auschwitz set me thinking
3 very hard.” I presume that is an article that he
4 published or a paper that he gave to you.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you suggesting that he is my only source, the only
6 basis of my arguments that I do not rely—-
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not. I give that as an example there.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: When is set thinking very hard, as no doubt you have also
9 been occasionally made to think very hard, you then start
10 looking at other sources to see how one should finally
11 align one’s own political or scientific or historical
12 viewpoint.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I say here that it derives from previous work by
14 well-known Holocaust deniers such as Faurisson.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you call Professor Hinsley a well-known Holocaust
16 denier?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that these arguments, the arguments are
18 derived — you misuse Professor Hinsley’s material in your
19 work.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have here referred of course only to Professor
21 Faurisson. Does that imply that he was my only source of
22 any change of mind or new direction of my thinking that
23 I may have adopted?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Such as” are the words used.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Such as”, yes. You were familiar with the brochure, Did
26 6 million really die, by Richard Verul of the National
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1 Front published under the pseudonym of Richard Harwood.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are saying I am very familiar with it. When did
3 I become familiar with it?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You note in 1988 that you said in the Zundel trial in the
5 evidence you gave over 90 per cent of the brochure is
6 factually accurate.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you also read in the diary that the Verul report was
8 given to me to read one day before I gave evidence, and
9 that I looked at it the same as you look at documents here
10 in order to be able to form an opinion of it?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am saying you read it, Mr Irving.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but are you suggesting that I thought it out and read
13 it and then used it as a basis for my arguments?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He cannot possibly answer that, can he?
15 MR IRVING: I mean, the allegation, the suggestion, the
16 imputation, from the witness is that I have read it and
17 used it as a source when, in fact, I read it as an expert
18 witness has to read documents that are put to him.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You just said you were familiar with it,
20 Mr Irving.
21 MR IRVING: I had sufficient familiarity with it on the basis
22 of 24 hours study in order to be able answer questions as
23 an expert witness. This is the point I wish to put to
24 him. If the witness makes a statement like that, which is
25 intended to create an impression, then I am surely
26 entitled to rectify the impression.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you cannot ask him questions to which
2 he obviously cannot possibly know the answer.
3 MR IRVING: My Lord, he can because the reference to this
4 particular report is in my diaries which he has just
5 quoted from and it makes quite plain that the Verul(?)
6 Report was submitted to me. It was put to me by the
7 Defence counsel to read in order that I could answer
8 questions on it when I came into the box.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what is the answer?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure what the question was, my Lord.
11 MR IRVING: Are you familiar with, have you read my diary and
12 do you accept that, in fact, the Verul report was put to
13 me purely for that purpose?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what your diary says. I am familiar with the
15 diary entry. The fact is that you read the report and you
16 judged it 90 per cent correct. Similarly, you are
17 familiar with the work of another Holocaust denier,
18 Dr Wilhelm Steglisch which you have commented on on a
19 number of occasions.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Notwithstanding your desire to move on to other matters,
21 can we deal with one thing at a time and say that a number
22 of documents have been put to you by me in the last few
23 days, is that is right?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you find it repugnant if people said you have
26 relied on these documents that I have put to you and that
. P-21
1 you have read these Irving documents and that,
2 therefore —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please, come on. It is just
4 becoming unhelpful and argumentative. Let us get on to
5 what matters. I say that for, I should think, the 12th
6 time.
7 MR IRVING: 132, Professor, page 132, line 4. I am afraid
8 I have to demolish this witness in detail, my Lord. It is
9 the only way I can do it.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am sorry, I am intervening more
11 than I want to, but I have told you before that on
12 Auschwitz I do not regard Professor Evans as being, if
13 I may say so, authoritative. Therefore, you do not have
14 to ask interminable questions about Auschwitz. What
15 matters starts at about page 150, as I have said many
16 times before.
Section 22.17 to 40.22
17 MR IRVING: If I am accused of putting things into documents
18 which are not in the documents, this goes to the root of
19 one of the principal libels on my name, my Lord. That is
20 in line 4. That is why I will ask this witness now to go
21 to page 57 of the bundle and see the document to which I
22 am referring.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 54.
24 MR IRVING: Page 57. Is this an invoice for the supply of
25 Zyklon-B to Auschwitz concentration camp?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it appears to be.
. P-22
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you in your report say: “It makes no mention at all of
2 pest control”?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you now look at line 5 of the invoice, the typed
5 portion? Do you agree that it says: “This material was
6 sent to Auschwitz Abteilung, Entwesung und” —-
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. My mistake, Mr Irving.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is your mistake?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in other words, I did not fake and I did not distort
11 and I did not insert and I did not manipulate on that
12 particular document?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me read the paragraph. “The plates”, we are still on
14 the plates of your Nuremberg book, and the caption says:
15 “Tonnes of Zyclon-B pellets, containing poisonous
16 hydrogen cyanide, are shipped by the Degesch factory to
17 the Pest Control division of Auschwitz and other camps
18 including Oraneinburg in 1944″. The delivery note, though,
19 only concerns Auschwitz. I agree I overlooked the mention
20 of the pest control in Auschwitz, but it does not affect
21 the other camps.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: It does not affects the other camp? But that is not the
23 point I am making here. It is just that once again I have
24 been accused of distorting and manipulating and you have
25 now admitted that you are wrong?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, no —-
. P-23
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just as on the Spectator letter and other things.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — because you are illustrating, you have an illustration
3 there of a note to Auschwitz and you are making claims on
4 the basis of it about other camps.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not going to put to you all the other invoices which
6 I have in the file which show deliveries to the other
7 camps which makes the point. But the point I am making
8 here, will you accept that, is purely that you wrongly
9 accused me of mistranslating or distorting a document?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I wrongly — and I admit I am wrong on that
11 point, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already admitted that.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Footnote 60, very briefly, you reference there the
15 Gerstein report. Will you now accept that the Gerstein
16 report has been totally discredited by the people you call
17 the Holocaust deniers because of the figures and ludicrous
18 facts it contains?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I will not, no. As I have said, I am not an expert on
20 this subject, but it is a report that is — I will not
21 accept simply on your word, that it has been discredited.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: The next footnote, No. 61, you refer to an interview
23 between me and Radio Ulster, but, unfortunately, is not
24 produced in any of the bundle of documents, so it is
25 difficult for me to judge how accurate this is.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you help about that, Professor Evans?
. P-24
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot, I am afraid.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Do you know where the transcript is?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am unable to locate it, but we can quite well dispense
4 with that. There are plenty of other statements here on
5 which we can rely, as in the very next sentence: “There
6 were no gas chambers in Auschwitz” as you said on 5th
7 March 1990.
8 MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the distinction between
9 Auschwitz and Birkenhau?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think we have been through this in this case, Mr Irving,
11 and that —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, but I am asking you. Are you familiar —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is generally understood that when one talks about
14 Auschwitz, one talks about the whole complex of all the
15 various camps inside covered by the name of Auschwitz.
16 When one talks about Birkenhau, that includes Birkenhau.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you been to Auschwitz?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not been to Auschwitz.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So I cannot ask you and there is no point in my asking you
20 questions about that. You refer on page 133 to the shower
21 baths?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not, really not an expert on this. What I am trying
23 to do here is to assemble evidence that you have denied
24 that there are gas chambers, there were gas chambers
25 in —-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am placed at a disadvantage and I appreciate his
. P-25
1 Lordship’s impatience with this procedure, but you have
2 rambled on for pages in your report about Auschwitz and
3 included numerous false statements and I am trying to
4 proceed at speed, but every time I ask you you say you are
5 not an expert on this.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I am trying to do here is to include and present
7 numerous statements of yours to the effect that gas
8 chambers were not used, did not exist, and so on, at
9 Auschwitz and elsewhere. I presented a substantial number
10 of these statements here. I do not really propose to read
11 them out.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am afraid you will have to do what I ask under
13 cross-examination. One of them is look at line 1 at page
14 134, please.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: “On 8th November 1990 he”, that is Irving, “repeated the
17 same claim to an audience in Toronto: ‘The gas chambers
18 that are shown to the tourists in Auschwitz are fakes’.”
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you now agree that this is true?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is true that you said that.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we have to go through this again? You say
23 fake, Mr Rampton says reconstruction. I have the point.
24 MR IRVING: This is my way of now introducing a cardinal
25 document which is on pages 59 and 60, my Lord, on which
26 I shall very definitely rely. It is a visit by a very
. P-26
1 well-known French news magazine called L’Expresse on the
2 anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. On page 60
3 there is the admission that everything in it is fake, and
4 they do not know how to tell the tourists this.
5 MR RAMPTON: I really do not know where this is going. This
6 was not put to Professor van Pelt who made it perfectly
7 clear that the single gas chamber at Auschwitz (i),
8 Sturmlager, is a post-war reconstruction and he
9 explained —-
10 MR IRVING: It is a postwar reconstruction.
11 MR RAMPTON: He explained how it had been done and that the
12 beginning and the end of that story. How Professor Evans
13 is expected to deal with this, I do not know.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The difficulty, as you know, is that one does
15 have the section on Auschwitz. That is the problem.
16 MR RAMPTON: I know, but, as your Lordship knows, as I have
17 shown your Lordship already and Mr Irving has been in
18 court, again and again Mr Irving has referred to gas
19 chambers in the plural, not just at Auschwitz but
20 elsewhere.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I just have never from the word go
22 understood the point that you make about these so-called
23 fake gas chambers.
24 MR RAMPTON: There are two points, my Lord. First of all,
25 Mr Rampton calls it a “reconstruction”, I call it a
26 “fake”. The second point is if I am accused of having a
. P-27
1 criminal conviction in Germany, which is used against me
2 by the Defence, I am entitled to point out the criminal
3 conviction is for saying precisely this sentence and it
4 turns out to be true.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not remotely interested in your criminal
6 conviction in Germany. I simply am not.
7 MR IRVING: I am indebted to your Lordship for saying that
8 because the Defence has repeatedly referred to it —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am now going to rule that you get on.
10 Please, Mr Irving, this is enough about Auschwitz. I just
11 do not think that there is anything to be gained by any
12 further cross-examination on Auschwitz. You have spent a
13 long time on it.
14 MR IRVING: Just about Auschwitz or about the Final Solution,
15 my Lord?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not stopping you on the Final Solution.
17 MR IRVING: Page 134. “Systematic nature of the
18 extermination”. You take exception to my suggestion that
19 Jews were the victims of a large number of rather
20 run-of-the-mill criminal elements, and I mention there the
21 Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And Austrians.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And Germans.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the report by Jan Karski who was one
26 of the first people to report on the Final Solution?
. P-28
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not — I am not, no.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In that case I cannot ask you about it. On page 135,
3 paragraph 3: “Irving’s view that these local initiatives
4 were excusable”, is the word “excusable” excusable in this
5 context? Have I ever tried to excuse what the Germans are
6 doing to the Jews?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me read what you told the press conference in
8 Australia in 1986 which is the quote beginning halfway
9 down the quote on the previous page where you say, you are
10 questioning whether the killing of Jews “was a tragedy
11 ordered and organized on the very highest German state
12 level, namely by Hitler himself. Because if my hypothesis
13 is correct, it means that all these Jews – and it may be
14 any figure, I don’t look at the figure concerned – if my
15 hypothesis is correct, it indicates that the Jews were the
16 victims of a large number of rather run-of-the-mill
17 criminal elements which exist in Central Europe. Not just
18 Germans, but Austrians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians,
19 feeding on the endemic antisemitism of the era and
20 encouraged by the brutalization which war brought about
21 anyway. These people had seen the bombing raids begin.
22 They’d probably lost women, wives and children in the
23 bombing raids. And they wanted to take revenge on
24 someone. So when Hitler ordered the expulsion, as he did
25 – there’s no doubt that Hitler ordered the expulsion
26 measures – these people took it out on the person that
. P-29
1 they could”.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you say this is somebody excusing the Nazis for taking
3 these ghastly actions against the Jews?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It seems to me that that is the implication in that
5 statement, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not, in fact, a very sloppy use of the English
7 language? What you meant was not “excusable” but
8 “explicable” and there is a very great difference between
9 these two words?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, given your attitude — well, first of all, I find
11 it very difficult to see how Latvians, Lithuanians and
12 Estonians could get so worked up by bombing raids on
13 Germany that they started killing Jews.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that what I say?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the clear implication, “these people”, and in the
16 previous sentence you say, “Not just Germans, but
17 Austrians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians”. “These
18 people had seen the bombing raids begin”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that Jan Karski, the man
20 whom I previously referred to, warned the Polish
21 government of the likelihood of pogroms in the Baltic
22 states, and he had explained the reasons why in a 1940
23 report?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, there is plenty of documentation to show that
25 there were, that Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians and
26 so on were involved in the mass killing of Jews with the
. P-30
1 encouragement of the SS unit and the Einsatzgruppen.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: But are you not by using the word “excusable” suggesting
3 that David Irving said that what had happened to the Jews
4 was right, that I am excusing it, whereas, in fact, I am
5 explaining it and there is a substantial difference. Do
6 you not agree?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not. I am afraid the tenor and tendency of your
8 explanations is to find excuses.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And you go on, and I go on to quote numerous places in the
11 report at some length arguments which you put forward to
12 try to suggest (and sometimes say in so many words) that
13 the Jews were responsible themselves for the misfortunes
14 which befell them.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You still do not appear to appreciate the difference
16 between the word —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think this falls into a pattern.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: — to excuse and to explain. Your use of the word
19 “excusable” implies that David Irving welcomed the
20 Holocaust, that I am excusing it; whereas I am explaining
21 it by saying, “These people had a vengeance, these people
22 had a grudge, these people felt wronged, these people took
23 it out on the people they perceived as being the ones who
24 did it”. Is that an excuse or is that an explanation?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think given the fact that they not been bombed, that is
26 an excuse.
. P-31
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think we can abandon bombing for a moment and point to
2 other things. I do not want to go into the reasons why
3 the Baltic Jews had a particular grudge, but that is
4 neither here nor there.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I think it is very much here or there. If you want
6 to use as an explanation of the massacres of Jews by
7 Baltic peoples, if you want to use in explanation of that
8 allegations that you want to make about their maltreatment
9 by Jews or justified — or in some ways grievances that
10 they had which were in some ways justified, that seems to
11 me that you are excusing it.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, what you are saying is that I welcomed the
13 Holocaust, is that the way you are trying to put it to the
14 court?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not use the word “welcome”, Mr —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am trying to understand why you use the word
17 “excusable”. If something is excusable, then this
18 implies that the person who is making the excuses thinks
19 it is a jolly good thing.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not think that is true actually. Those are two
21 rather different things. Applauding something and
22 excusing it are rather different things, Mr Irving, and
23 I come back to this fact that you say, “These people had
24 seen the bombing raids begin, they’d lost probably women,
25 wives and children in the bombing raids”. So these poor
26 Estonians who had been subjected to allied bombings,
. P-32
1 therefore, felt so angry with the Jews that they took it
2 out on them. Now, I do not think there is evidence that
3 Estonians were heavily bombed by the Allies in 1941.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Forget the bombing raids for the time being.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not forgetting the bombing raids because that is a
6 central passage — a central part of this passage,
7 Mr Irving.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, let me explain the reason why I am dealing with
9 this at length. This is one of the issues pleaded. In
10 the pleadings one of the complaints is that I am accused
11 by the Second Defendant of having, I think, applauded the
12 incarceration of the Jews in the concentration camps.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not believe that she ever has made that
14 accusation. What you are accused of in this part of the
15 report is making excuses for those who took part in the
16 —-
17 MR IRVING: Finding something excusable rather than explicable,
18 and there is a substantial difference there. I find the
19 use of the word “excusable” which I hope the Professor
20 will admit was a slip, but now he is trying to justify it?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will not admit it is a slip, no. I mean, I looked at
22 this passage and it seems to me to excuse these massacres.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Speaking for myself, I think I understand the
24 point you are making, Mr Irving, and I understand the
25 answer as well.
26 MR IRVING: In that case, I will now wish to speak another
. P-33
1 paragraph about the explanation why the Baltic Jews took
2 revenge on their native Jewish population during the brief
3 interregnum between the time the Soviets moved out and the
4 German Army arrived. Did you appreciate that there were
5 substantial killings in that period?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to be provided with evidence, I think, to
7 show that.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you make the allegations without the evidence then?
9 You say that the bombing raids and so on, you say they
10 had, the Nazis, the Latvians and Lithuanians the Estonians
11 had no —-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me set the context here, Mr Irving, is that I am
13 talking about your denial that there was a systematic
14 element in the Nazi extermination of Jews.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are going substantially further; you are saying that
16 I am welcoming it, I am excusing it?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not say you are welcoming it. Welcoming is different
18 from excusing.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, he is not saying you are welcoming
20 it. He is saying you are making excuses for it.
21 MR IRVING: And this is precisely the point that I have to
22 challenge, my Lord, because, of course, what I am actually
23 saying is there are explanations for these pogroms
24 committed by the local population against the Jews, and
25 that is not making excuses for them in any way at all.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have already said, I understand the point
. P-34
1 you are making and I understand the answer.
2 MR IRVING: But it is a repugnant allegation to be made
3 either —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is no point in just using this point as
5 a sort of punch bag and going on and on because I have the
6 point.
7 MR IRVING: Well, I am beginning to feel like a punch bag when
8 I read this report with things being thrown at me the
9 whole time like that, and I find that allegation
10 particularly repugnant. I have described the atrocities
11 committed by the Nazis against the Jews and by their
12 collaborators against the Jews in very much detail in my
13 works and never at any time have I given even the
14 slightest hint of relish or welcoming these things.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not what I am saying, Mr Irving.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have repeatedly tried to argue away the Wannsee
17 conference, you say at the foot of page 137. I am not
18 going to dwell at length on that. If you are an
19 historian, you would, no doubt, know that there is a great
20 debate raging among genuine historians and scholars — to
21 spare you any difficulties here — as to whether the
22 Wannsee Conference was important or not. Do you agree
23 with that?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are arguments about how important it was, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, so if somebody tries —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think anybody has said that it was unimportant.
. P-35
1 It is a question of the level and degree of importance you
2 attach to it.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that there is no reference to the word
4 “liquidation” in the records or to any order by Hitler or
5 to any systematic killing in the Wannsee Conference?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is true.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Middle of page 138, please. You say that I relied on
8 Eichmann’s testimony on other occasions but not when it
9 does not suit me. This is another allegation of
10 manipulation, right?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell me what other occasions I did rely on
13 Eichmann’s testimony? Are you just referring to the
14 episode where he looks through the peep hole in the back
15 of the van and saw the gas vans operating?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is one of them, yes. There are others,
17 I think, which I mentioned in the report.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I relied on it when it suited me — why would it suit me
19 to use Eichmann’s confirmation of something which I, as a
20 denier, am supposed to be denying?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, this comes back to the point that we talked about
22 yesterday, that I made it clear that Holocaust deniers as
23 a group have, on the whole, always admitted, as Faurisson
24 said, there were some small scale, relatively small scale,
25 killings on the Eastern Front of Jews, and that belongs to
26 that.
. P-36
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever read very much of Eichmann’s testimony
2 either in his memoirs or in the subsequent trial in
3 Israel?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have read some, not the whole thing.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the passage where Eichmann,
6 challenged about a particular episode, interrupted the
7 interrogator two minutes later and said words to this
8 effect: “I am sorry. You asked me two minutes ago about
9 that episode, and I have to say now I cannot remember
10 whether I am actually remembering it or just remembering
11 being asked a question about it more recently”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you would have to show me that document.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that sometimes this happens in
14 interrogations, that the interrogator puts questions with
15 such force that sometimes the person being interrogated
16 comes to believe what is being suggested to him by the
17 questions?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is a very general statement, Mr Irving, and
19 I suppose in some integrations somewhere or other that
20 kind of thing takes place.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Going on to page 139, the Commissart Order, and the
22 guidelines for jurisdiction issued to the German Army and
23 armed forces in the spring of 1941. I am not asking you
24 in detail about them, but would you agree that these are
25 documents of a military nature?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, I cannot see this.
. P-37
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: 139, paragraph 11. We are dealing here with the orders to
2 kill Jews, Red Army Commissarts and others in the German
3 Army area?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, yes, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this is a reference to the Commissart order, is it not?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: All I am trying to get from you is a concession that the
8 Commissart order issued by the German High Command of the
9 armed forces was a military document concerned with
10 military measures and that it did not convey a clear and
11 overriding intent to kill the Jews as such?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is, no, it is an order that Red Army Commissarts will
13 be killed. There were orders issued to that effect in
14 its — I mean, it is very hard to describe that as a
15 military order in the sense that it did not seem to me, or
16 to most historians, there to be any military justification
17 for it. It is a political act.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: The simple question there is were they being killed as
19 Commissarts or as Jews?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As Commissarts. The Jews are a separate matter in these
21 orders.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: And do you accept that at this time the Soviet Union was
23 not a signatory of the Geneva Convention on
24 prisoners-of-war and, therefore, the Germans had no
25 obligation whatsoever to treat their prisoners properly?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a rather different matter, Mr Irving, and actually
. P-38
1 issuing an order to the Army to kill Red Army Commissarts
2 is a very different matter from simply not treating people
3 properly.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you accept that when nations become belligerent,
5 they have a choice that they can make, they can agree both
6 sides, they can become signatories and parties of a
7 convention like the Geneva Convention on treatments of
8 prisoners-of-war, and the Soviet Union had specifically
9 opted out of it and, therefore, at no time opted into it,
10 so the Soviet Union, legally speaking, Soviet prisoners
11 could not expect to be treated as prisoners-of-war and, in
12 fact, nor could German prisoners be expected to be treated
13 as prisoners-of-war?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, if you are advancing that argument as an excuse or
15 justification for the order to the Germany Army to kill
16 all the Red Army Commissarts found and for the deliberate
17 killing of between 3 and 4 million Soviet prisoners-of-war
18 by the Germans, then I do not think it is a very strong
19 justification or excuse.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you hear me express it in those terms as an excuse?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That seemed to me what you were saying.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was I not, in fact, just taking up the point you made
23 before I mentioned the Geneva Conventions in which you
24 referred to the illegal killing of these Commissarts?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have lost me, I am afraid.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In paragraph 12 you refer to Holocaust denier, Paul
. P-39
1 Rassinier, and on the following page, the first line of
2 page of 140, you refer to Austin App?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why do you refer to these people? Is it not totally
5 irrelevant to bring in all these names of people?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I am suggesting here that these are familiar — the
7 arguments you are putting forward are familiar arguments
8 from well-known Holocaust deniers, advanced by many other
9 Holocaust deniers.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Unless his Lordship disagrees, what possible relevance
11 does that have to this case that other writers have
12 strange views?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Very, very marginal, in my view, so we can
14 move on.
15 MR IRVING: In other words, I need not prepare to address it?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you do not.
17 MR IRVING: We do, however, on this point come to the important
18 matter of the allegation by me that the Holocaust story in
19 part is an echo of our own propaganda. My Lord, I do
20 think we have dealt with this allegation before, have we,
21 in this court?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.
Section 40.23 to 61.17
23 MR IRVING: It is quite an intricate allegation, and, witness,
24 you disagree with this. Can we take it in stages? Do you
25 agree that the Allies at any time started making
26 propaganda broadcasts to Germany with references to the
. P-40
1 extermination of the Jews?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I certainly agree with that.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you put a rough date on when these broadcasts began?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sometime in 1942.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Sometime in 1942?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I recall.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read the memoirs — do you know who Thomas Mann
8 is?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he a famous German novelist?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Author of I think “Wooden Brooks” and various other —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: — famous novels? Where was he during World War II?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was in the United States.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the United States. Was he engaged by the Allies as a
17 propagandist?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That, I am not sure about, but he certainly did make
19 broadcasts, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read his memoirs and his own diary?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I put to you either now or later passages from the
23 Thomas Mann diary of 1941 in which he describes making
24 broadcasts relating to — here we are —-
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In a way, Mr Irving, you have got your answer
26 because Professor Evans has agreed that there were
. P-41
1 propaganda broadcasts from 1942 about the extermination of
2 the Jews.
3 MR IRVING: I was going to bring you back to 1941. It may seem
4 completely immaterial, my Lord, but — in January 1942
5 Thomas Mann broadcast the following words in German:
6 “[German – document not provided] “400 Young Dutch Jews
7 have been brought to Germany to be used as experimental
8 objects for poison gas in January 1942″. Can you accept
9 that if he writes that in his diary as a propaganda
10 broadcast that he made that there was such a broadcast?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, could I see a copy, please?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we need to take terribly long? This is
13 actually 1942, not 1941, but you have got your answer that
14 there was propaganda use being made of the alleged
15 extermination of Jews.
16 MR IRVING: Right.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: From, at any rate, 1942.
18 MR IRVING: Buttressed with three more sources but we will not
19 go into detail, my Lord. Have you heard of the
20 Ringlebloom diary.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that Ringlebloom makes reference in June
23 1942 in the ghetto to receiving broadcasts about the
24 extermination of Jews with poison gas?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I will accept that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you have read my Goebbels biography, as no doubt you
. P-42
1 have for the purposes of this case, will you agree that
2 the German Propaganda Ministry monitored a wave of
3 propaganda broadcast in November 1942 referring to the
4 gassing, mass gassing, of Germans?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, they were Nazi monitoring reports of the
7 BBC. You yourself, Professor, are an expert because you
8 have written a box on the subject, have you not, of German
9 wartime morale, of the reports? I think you wrote a book,
10 did you not, on the subject of reports on public opinion,
11 morale?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, no. I think the book you are thinking of covered the
13 years 1892 to 1914.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this is the wrong war? In other words —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not even the war at all. It is before the First
16 World War, I am afraid.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are not familiar with the SD reports or with the
18 letter intercept reports or anything like that on German
19 public knowledge?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Slightly familiar, but I would not say that I was a major
21 expert on them. I mean, I know what the SD reports were.
22 I have read a few of them, but I am in no sense a real
23 expert on them.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, you are absolutely right. I am wrong. Your book
25 was [German] was it not? So you have not read any of the
26 corresponding reports on German public morale, public
. P-43
1 opinion, that were gathered by the Gestapo or by the
2 Propaganda Ministry in the war years?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Only those which were cited in publication of other
4 scholars and one or two in the original, but I have not
5 read them thoroughly.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: How much talk was there in Germany during the war years of
7 gas chambers, do you think, in public or in private?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is very difficult to say. We have to
9 remember that there was a great deal of secrecy
10 surrounding them. I think there was a fair amount of talk
11 about shootings behind the Eastern Front, but of course it
12 was against the law, and punished severely, if you spread
13 news about what was going on in concentration camps or
14 extermination camps in Germany.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Given that the BBC made — I am going to keep this
16 brief — repeated broadcasts during 1942 about the Nazi
17 atrocities, and about the extermination of Jews, and about
18 gas chambers, even before the gas chambers began operating
19 on a large scale —-
20 MR RAMPTON: Wait a minute. If Professor Evans is to deal with
21 that, Mr Irving must give some precise dates. One
22 remembers evidence is that the evidence is that Chelmno
23 started killing people in gas trucks 8th December 1941,
24 and that the three Reinhardt camps were in full operation
25 during the summer 1942. I think we need some dates.
26 MR IRVING: With respect, Mr Rampton, I think, in view of the
. P-44
1 fact that Professor Evans has stated himself that he is
2 not an expert on this matter —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Irving, that will not do, will it?
4 You cannot put a question which has as its premise a
5 misstatement about the date when gas chambers began
6 operating. That is the point that Mr Rampton is
7 making. It does not impinge on that objection that
8 Professor Evans may not himself be an expert. If you are
9 going to ask that question, and it is a relevant question,
10 you must premise it correctly.
11 MR IRVING: I was really trying to save the court time.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That will not do either, Mr Irving, if I may
13 say so.
14 MR IRVING: It will certainly take time for me to look up the
15 actual dates and references and I do not want to take up
16 the court’s time shuffling papers.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I reformulate it for you and try and
18 help? Or would you rather do it yourself? Do it
19 yourself.
20 MR IRVING: Your Lordship is much better reformulating
21 questions.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think I must not interfere too much.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can I say that what is at issue here are Mr Irving’s
24 statements that “the British Intelligence Service
25 suggested a propaganda campaign against Germany on the
26 basis of invented allegations of gas chambers”, or another
. P-45
1 quote at the top of page 141, “The story that the Germans
2 are using gas chambers for the mass extermination of Jews
3 is, so and so on forth, psychological warfare, etc, warned
4 the cabinet this is a lie that we ourselves had
5 invented.” That is really what is at issue.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that.
7 MR IRVING: This is very helpful. In fact, the witness has
8 been very helpful and this helps me to zero in on the
9 particular matter. Witness, will you therefore go
10 straightforward to page 148 of your report? You are
11 quoting here from a clip of Foreign Office documents, are
12 you not?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the Public Record Office. They are well-known
15 documents and I am going to rely on the final paragraph of
16 page 148. Is this document dated August 27th 1943?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: At this time does Mr Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, who I
19 think later became Lord Portland, state, “I think that we
20 weaken our case against the Germans by publicly giving
21 credence to atrocity stories for which we have no
22 evidence.” Is that right? Does he write that?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what he says, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: So at this time in August 1943 the British had no evidence
25 of gas chambers, because that what is specifically being
26 talk about in this document?
. P-46
1 MR RAMPTON: The Professor must be allowed to read the
2 preceding two paragraphs that he himself has set out in
3 his report because that is to rip something right out of
4 context.
5 MR IRVING: I thought it would be helpful to go forward to 1943
6 to see what we did not know.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us see what the context is for what
8 Cavendish-Bentinck said.
9 MR IRVING: As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers,
10 that is pretty plain, is it not here? Here is the Foreign
11 Office saying we have no evidence for this, and yet back
12 in 1942 they are making the propaganda broadcasts.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am just trying to read it. Can
14 you just pause for a second (Pause for reading). I am
15 bound to say that I do think that, in fairness to
16 Mr Irving, one of the things about which
17 Cavendish-Bentinck is saying that there is no evidence
18 available to the British at that stage is the putting to
19 death of Poles in gas chambers.
20 MR RAMPTON: Polish children, and the underline is in the
21 original. It is not Professor Evans.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree what is being talked of is killing
23 Polish children, or selling them. But also, as a separate
24 topic, it seems to me a fair reading of this suggests, the
25 putting of Poles to death in gas chambers.
26 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Nothing to do with Jews so far as I can
. P-41
1 tell.
2 MR IRVING: Are Jews Poles? Is there some distinction there,
3 Mr Rampton?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, I see the point. We have now at any
5 rate seen the whole document.
6 MR IRVING: My Lord, now I see that I have your Lordship’s ear,
7 may I now —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I just make a couple of points here? These
9 documents emerged during the formulation of a joint
10 British/American declaration on German crimes in Poland,
11 which is released at the request of the Polish government
12 in exile, so it is focusing on Poles.
13 MR IRVING: Do you agree that the statement concerned is on the
14 facing page 147, and that the sentence causing problem is
15 the allegation on the authority of His Majesty the king
16 that Poles are “now being put systematically to death in
17 gas chambers”, and the word “systematically” figures in
18 that?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That is the first thing. The context of this is
20 negotiations involving the Polish government in exile
21 about German atrocities in Poland. The second point is
22 that of course Cavendish-Bentinck’s position is not
23 necessarily to be accepted as a correct one. He was
24 extremely sceptical, and indeed has been criticised by
25 historians for his negative attitude towards reports. As
26 he says, the Poles and, to a far greater extent, the Jews
. P-48
1 tend to exaggerate German atrocities in order to stoke us
2 up.
3 MR IRVING: Are you saying that he was anti-semitic?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Thirdly, and the really crucial point here is that this is
5 not the same as saying that these stories about gas
6 chambers have been invented, deliberately invented. What
7 he says is: “As regards putting Poles to death in gas
8 chambers I do not believe there is any evidence that this
9 has been done.” I am bound to say that is probably
10 correct. He goes on to say: “There may have been stories
11 to this effect and we have played them up in PWE rumours
12 without believing that they had any foundation”.
13 MR IRVING: What is PWE?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Political Warfare Executive. “At any rate”, he says,
15 “there is far less evidence than exists for the mass
16 murder of Polish officers by the Russians at Katyn. On
17 the other hand we do know that the Germans are out to
18 destroy the Jews of any age unless they are fit for manual
19 labour”. So what he is saying is this. He is not saying
20 we have deliberately cooked up these atrocity stories. He
21 is saying we have received stories which we are using.
22 That is quite a different matter from what say. You say
23 they are invented by the PWE. Secondly, he is saying it
24 is about Poles, and he is making a distinction, saying
25 explicitly that the Germans are out to destroy the Jews of
26 any age unless they are fit for manual labour. That is
. P-49
1 really the context of the quote that you originally gave.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very interesting. Will you now tell the court who Victor
3 Cavendish-Bentinck was?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was a Foreign Office official, I think.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was
6 he not?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he therefore have access to every single scrap of
9 intelligence evidence that came into the British
10 community’s hands?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I doubt very much whether he had that. He would have
12 received more general reports, I imagine, but I am not an
13 expert on British intelligence in the Second World War.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: As Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee he
15 received all the police decodes, all the other decodes,
16 all the intercepts, all the agents reports, all the
17 prisoner of war messages, is that not right?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know, to be quite honest. I am not an expert on
19 British intelligence. That sounds an awful lot for one
20 man to master by himself. As I said, I would imagine that
21 he would have received summaries of some description.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: The fact remains that he states in August 1943, when
23 requested to authorize a government statement signed by
24 Churchill and Roosevelt, that Poles were being
25 systematically put to death in gas chambers on the facing
26 page. He specifically issues a minute to the Foreign
. P-50
1 Office officials, saying, “We weaken our case by publicly
2 giving credence to atrocity stories for which we have no
3 evidence”. He then goes on to say, “These mass executions
4 in gas chambers”, in other words the story of the mass
5 executions in gas chambers, “remind me of the story of the
6 employment of human corpses during the last war for the
7 manufacture of fat, which was a grotesque lie and led to
8 true stores of German enormities being brushed aside as
9 mere propaganda”. He is not pussy footing around with
10 the way he is describing the state of British knowledge on
11 gas chambers in August 1943, and yet you have accepted
12 that during 1942 the BBC and the Americans repeatedly
13 broadcast in German these stories of gas chambers, which
14 must therefore have been invented.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that last statement follows at all.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: He says we have no evidence, so where else could it have
17 come from?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is talking about mass executions of Poles in gas
19 chambers. He says: “We do know that the Germans are out
20 to destroy the Jews of any rage unless they are fit for
21 manual labour.” I think this is a good example, which you
22 have just quoted, of the scepticism which unfortunately
23 was engendered by the belief in many Foreign Office and
24 other officials that a lot of the atrocity stories in the
25 First World War were mere inventions of allied propaganda.
26 MR IRVING: My Lord, this now goes back to the reason for this,
. P-51
1 which is page 141, where the allegation is that I said
2 this with no justification.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have to grapple at some stage, and
4 I think you are inviting my comment, with this, that,
5 whatever may have been the state of knowledge within
6 British Intelligence in 1942 or even 1943, the Defendants
7 say that you have been alleging that the Holocaust is an
8 invention by British Intelligence after all that we now
9 think we know about what went on in the concentration
10 camps has come to light. I think that is really the
11 thrust of their case. You have established, I think, if
12 I may say so, Mr Irving, that propaganda use was made of
13 alleged gassing in gas chambers at a time when the senior
14 officials in British Intelligence had no evidence for it.
15 But you have to grapple with the next stage of the
16 Defendant’s case on this and I am sure you are coming to
17 it.
18 MR IRVING: I appreciate, and this is not the time to do that,
19 but I can only tackle each particular part of the
20 allegations against me piecemeal. I think I have shot
21 that one right out of the water, if I may put it like
22 that, that the allegation was that I had no foundation for
23 saying that the Political Warfare Executive started the
24 gas chamber stories running long before we had any proof
25 for it.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think you are failing to understand
. P-52
1 the Defendants’ point.
2 MR IRVING: I appreciate fully what your Lordship is saying.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, please listen. What the Defendants say,
4 and Mr Rampton will correct me if I have this wrong, is
5 that you are saying that the whole Holocaust story is a
6 lie invented by British Intelligence. You have, as it
7 were, part of the way along your line of argument, but you
8 have to grapple, as I say, with the fact that the
9 Defendants are contending that you have been making the
10 allegation that the whole thing is a lie invented by
11 British Intelligence in the teeth, they say, of all the
12 evidence that it was nothing of the kind.
13 MR IRVING: The gas chamber lie, if I can put it like this, is
14 the story that the Germans gassed to death millions of
15 people in factories of death. I am going to deal with
16 that in a separate manner. We dealt with it partly with
17 the witness van Pelt and I shall deal with it also by
18 submissions on documents, and with further questions,
19 either through this witness or other witnesses. But I can
20 only tackle each element of this piece by piece. It may
21 well be that there are bits of the story that I cannot
22 bridge, rather the same as there are bits of the story in
23 this systematic nature of the killing that the defence
24 cannot bridge. The convergence of evidence here is, if
25 I can establish there were no factories of death and that
26 there were no holes in that roof, to put it bluntly, and
. P-53
1 if I can establish that PWE started the story of the gas
2 chambers running in 1942, then I have got a substantial
3 part of the way towards justifying what I claim, even if
4 there are one or two bricks still left out of the wall, if
5 I can put it like that.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
7 MR IRVING: Moving to page 150 please — we have now dealt
8 with that, my Lord — paragraph 21, witness, do you take
9 exception to my suggestion that witnesses and survivors,
10 by virtue of the ordeal they have been through, have been
11 subjected to some kind of traumatic stress which would
12 affect their powers of recollection?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me see what I say here.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is the final sentences on that page, really.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, where you are asking a question about how you judge
16 the credibility of Holocaust survivors, and you say,
17 “I say that psychiatrists should concern themselves with
18 this matter some time. There are many cases of mass
19 hysteria”. So I do take exception to the view which you
20 put there that all the recollections of Holocaust
21 survivors are the outcome of mass hysteria.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have I had said all the recollections of Holocaust
23 survivors or just a part of them?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is the clear implication of that.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware, witness, that there is a body of medical
26 expertise assembled over the last 50 years into precisely
. P-54
1 these matters of the ordeals suffered by concentration
2 camp and slave labour camp survivors, what they have been
3 through, the undernourishment, the effect this has on the
4 powers of the brain, the bad nutrition, the post traumatic
5 stress and all the rest of it and there have been very
6 many learned disquisitions into this? The sentence which
7 you have quoted was not intended to be some kind of slur
8 on the character of people, the fact that somebody has a
9 psychiatric disorder is in no way to be interpreted in a
10 derogatory manner. It is just an attempt to analyse why
11 sometimes they say things that do not exactly fit in with
12 what the documents show.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you are saying it is more than sometimes,
14 Mr Irving. I am not familiar with the literature you
15 refer to.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in analysing all the eyewitnesses and the sources that
17 one is going to use in writing this kind of history, you
18 cast aside the possibilities of medical problems or
19 medical objections to relying too heavily on these
20 sources?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you would have to look at each case in turn
22 individually.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the case of Benjamin Gilcormesky?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am indeed, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: How you would assess his motivation, shall we say?
26 Obviously he went through some kind of wartime ordeal?
. P-55
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Very difficult to say. The evidence seems to be that he
2 did not in fact.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: That he did not?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. As I understand from what I have read, this is
5 someone who claimed in a book, or wrote a book, called
6 I think “Fragments”, a Swiss gentleman, which was
7 purported to be a story of his incarceration as a child in
8 various concentration camps, and subsequently he was
9 revealed to be an imposter.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was totally spurious, was he not?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was completely spurious. He was not in the
12 concentration camps. Indeed, I think he was born after
13 the war and brought up in Switzerland. He was not Jewish
14 and was not a victim in any sense.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was a spurious survivor of the Holocaust?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is indeed correct, yes, as I understood it.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: He had a tattoo, did he?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have no idea.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he maintain that he had been in Auschwitz?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He maintained all these things, I have already said that.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: He described all the grisly horrors that he had seen?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you have your answer. He made it
23 all up.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What seems to have been the case is that he had read an
25 enormous amount about the Holocaust, and somehow persuaded
26 himself that he had gone through it. That is a very
. P-56
1 unusual case and that is precisely why, of course, it has
2 given rise to such widespread debate and such a number of
3 essays, investigations, writings and so on.
4 MR IRVING: Was not the reason why it attracted widespread
5 attention the fact that he was awarded literary prizes for
6 his work, and that he was then found out to be spurious?
7 Was that not the reason for the widespread attention?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was widely praised when it came out, yes, and therefore
9 the shock when it was discovered to be spurious was all
10 the greater.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think that he is the only such case, do you?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The only one of which I am aware. It is a rather unusual
13 thing to do. I think one has to admit.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: But he made a lot of money out it, did he not?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That I cannot say.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, if he won major literary prizes for his book?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am conscious we are still on
18 page 152. We have about 600 pages to go. It is not a
19 race, but we have to keep an eye on what matters and what
20 does not.
21 MR IRVING: I have said I will finish with the witness in two
22 and a half days, my Lord.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I want you to take your time when we get to
24 what matters. We have not started on what matters, in my
25 view.
26 MR IRVING: What matters is this witness’s credibility, my
. P-57
1 Lord, and your Lordship may or may not have formed
2 opinions about that. On page 153, half way down, line 4
3 of paragraph 26, you refer to the fact that I evade the
4 question by pointing minor inaccuracies in details of
5 these reports. Would you say that the inaccuracies that
6 we have pointed to in the reports by Hoess and Gerstein
7 and Verba and Bimko and Tauber were all minor?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am referring here to a radio interview in June 1989.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. But what you are saying is that I pointed to minor
10 inaccuracies in the reports of people on whom the
11 Holocaust historians rely, the eyewitnesses, and I am just
12 challenging whether these inaccuracies are in fact so
13 minor. Are they not sufficiently large, in fact, to
14 disqualify any reasonable historian from wanting to rely
15 on that source?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not think on the whole they are sufficiently
17 large. One has to reach a balanced judgment, in dealing
18 with testimony after the event, sometimes many years after
19 the event, as to how reliable it is. Of course, that kind
20 of testimony usually contains some inaccuracies. The fact
21 is that one should not use that as a basis for a sweeping
22 dismissal of all this testimony.
23 Of course, there is a larger point here, that
24 you yourself rely quite heavily on the postwar testimony
25 sometimes obtained in interviews which were conducted by
26 yourself of members of Hitler’s entourage, which you do
. P-58
1 not approach in this critical way. You do not point to
2 inaccuracies, and generally speaking accept it as the
3 truth. So I think you have a double standard. You wholly
4 dismiss all the evidence of postwar testimony from the
5 victims of Naziism and you accept the postwar testimony of
6 the perpetrators.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not going to answer that point because this was not a
8 question you were asked. Would you now go to paragraph 29
9 please? You deal there with a French woman called
10 Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier. Did you read her
11 testimony at Nuremberg? Did you form an impression of her
12 credibility?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. This is dealt with at some length on the basis of
14 Professor van Pelt’s report.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: What was her maiden name?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot recall that.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was she the daughter of Lucienne Vogal, who was one of
18 Willi Muntzenberg’s closest collaborators?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will accept that, if you say that.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You know who Willi Muntzenberg was?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he one of the leading commentators and agents and
23 propagandists in, first of all, Russia and then in France?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So she came from these propagandist circles — is that a
26 reasonable derivation?
. P-59
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I do not think, because you are a daughter of a
2 propagandist, that makes you a propagandist.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did she then marry somebody called Paul Vaillant
4 Couturier, who was the editor of Humanite?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will accept that that is the case.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is the Communist Party newspaper in France?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: When she was examined or cross-examined in Nuremberg by
9 one of the defence counsel, Hans Marks, did he ask her
10 whether she had any literary background or any training as
11 a journalist?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to present me with the documentation, I am
13 afraid.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: What inference would you gather Mr Marks was trying to
15 make from this question?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really cannot comment without actually seeing a
17 transcript.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any proof that this woman was ever in Auschwitz
19 at all?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Her testimony.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, purely what she said?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There may be some other evidence, but I am not really an
23 expert on Auschwitz.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not only going to ask one more question. In view of
25 that fact that she testified that at the time she was in
26 Auschwitz she obtained records showing that 700,000
. P-60
1 Hungarian Jews had passed into the camp in 1944, when in
2 fact that was the entire number of Hungarian Jews who
3 existed, was she liable to have been testifying to
4 something from her actual knowledge?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me say the point at issue in this paragraph of my
6 report, I should make clear, is that you rely, and I think
7 the court has been through this already —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, we have.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the notes of Judge Biddle.
10 MR IRVING: On the use I made of Judge Biddle’s notes?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — which you misinterpret in order to discredit this
12 witness.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it likely that Judge Biddle, being no fool, would also
14 have seen through her on the basis of the
15 cross-examination?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we are not going to go through
17 that again.
Section 61.18 to 82.13
18 MR IRVING: Right. At page 155 we come to the Anne Frank
19 diary.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was the Anne Frank diary a diary or a novel or both?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was a diary.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was a diary. Was it one diary or was it several
24 diaries?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That depends what you mean.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, did she write it and then did she rewrite
. P-61
1 it and then did she rewrite it?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I understand it, it is a diary that is written through.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that she wrote it, and then she rewrote
4 it, and then she rewrote it as a novel shortly before she
5 was kidnapped by the Nazis?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is your criticism of my — in fact, I am sorry, page
8 156, line 2 of paragraph 31. You object to my calling the
9 diary a novel, do you not?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yet, if the final version of the diary, as has been
12 determined by the experts in Holland, is described as a
13 novel, then that description by me is not unjustified?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to show me the document of the experts in
15 Holland which describe it as a novel.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: You object to the fact that I suggest that whole pages are
17 written in ball point pen?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if you are relying, just let me
20 say what I am going to say, on what you describe as the
21 determination by experts in Holland that it is a novel, at
22 some stage that will be something you ought really to put
23 to Professor Evans. I cannot find it but I think he deals
24 with Anne Frank and her diary as a substantive criticism.
25 Am I wrong about that?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Pages 156 to 7.
. P-62
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought you came back to it. Perhaps not?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
3 MR IRVING: My Lord, clearly, the reason I am asking these
4 questions is that I understand that I am going to be
5 cross-examined on this.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now is your chance. I suspect — Mr Rampton
7 will tell me if I am wrong — that Professor Evans may be
8 the right person for you to target your cross-examination
9 on the Anne Frank diary.
10 MR IRVING: That is precisely what I was waiting for. Every
11 new subject I adumbrate I am frightened of being stopped.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to stop you when you are on
13 irrelevances. It seems to me Ann Frank is perhaps
14 relevant and therefore do not take that aspect too
15 quickly.
16 MR RAMPTON: It is. The allegation is made against Mr Irving
17 that without any foundation whatsoever he has alleged that
18 the Anne Frank diaries were a fake, or are a fake. What
19 is more, he has since admitted that he was wrong about
20 that.
21 MR IRVING: Well, can we elucidate this matter in my
22 cross-examination rather than your statements from the
23 floor?
24 MR RAMPTON: Certainly.
25 MR IRVING: Witness, will you go to the bundle of documents
26 bundle F, and look at one item there, which is page 86?
. P-63
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, are you aware of the fact that the father
3 of Ann Frank fought a number of libel actions against
4 people who maintained that the diary was suspect?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I think he did.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think three or four libel actions. Are you familiar
7 from the discovery with the fact that I corresponded with
8 the father of Anne Frank on a number of occasions?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: He never of course sued me for libel, did he? Is that
11 correct?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is neither here nor there.
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, in the allegations is the fact that we
14 paid damages, or I paid damages to the father.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be relevant.
16 MR IRVING: That is why I was trying to get this admission from
17 the witness that the father never sued me for libel.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the other way round that may be
19 relevant. If you paid damages because you had alleged
20 that the diary was a fake, that, I would have thought,
21 might be relevant.
22 MR IRVING: If your Lordship had waited, there would have been
23 two questions, with a follow up, but we have not had an to
24 the first one yet.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Ask the question again.
26 MR IRVING: Witness, are you aware of any libel action brought
. P-64
1 by the father against me?
2 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I do not know—-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot understand what the relevance of
4 that is.
5 MR RAMPTON: I do not make an allegation that the father sued
6 Mr Irving for saying that the diaries were a fake. Maybe
7 he could have done but, as far as I know, he did not and
8 I have never said that he did.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to find the passage in my report which you are
10 referring to here.
11 MR IRVING: Can we have an answer to the question?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, because the question, I have ruled, is
13 irrelevant, Mr Irving. Can you please pay some attention
14 to what view I rightly or wrongly am taking about some of
15 your questions. Sorry, Professor Evans, you were about to
16 say something?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, press on. You were asking the
19 witness about page 86.
20 MR IRVING: Are you aware that, in the course of these libel
21 actions, a German court ordered the father of Anne Frank
22 to subject the diaries to chemical and forensic tests?
23 Can I have an answer, Professor?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you are telling me that, I will accept that that is the
25 case, yes. They certainly were subjected to tests.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were the results of these tests leaked to the German
. P-65
1 magazine Der Spiegel in 1980?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will accept your view that they were.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Document No. 86 is a New York Post summary of what Der
4 Spiegel has announced. Do you agree that this states that
5 the finding is, on the second page, the result of the
6 tests performed at the Bundescriminalamtlaboratories show
7 that portions of the works, especially of the fourth
8 volume, are written with ball point pen?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what it says, but this is of course is third hand
10 information. It is a reporter who is reporting another
11 reporter’s view of a report. I think, before accepting
12 that this particular reporter is giving an accurate
13 account, I would need to see the original report.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not really want to get bogged down in this kind of
15 maze. Can I just put it to you like this? Will you
16 accept that, on the balance of probabilities, the
17 Bundescriminalamt did carry out tests on the ink and came
18 up with the surprising conclusion that portions were in
19 fact ball point ink?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you mean by “portions”. I think that is
21 the crucial point. My understanding, having read the
22 summary of the forensic scientific investigations carried
23 out on the diaries, in the introduction to the kind of
24 official standard edition, scholarly edition, is that
25 there were some small stylistic emendations in ball point
26 pen, but that paper and ink and so on were all of the
. P-66
1 diaries themselves were derived from the 1940s, i.e.
2 before the end of the war.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: How long has this been your understanding? Did you have
4 this understanding at the time you wrote your expert
5 report?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just see.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, is this knowledge about portions of the
8 diary being rewritten in ball point ink or whatever recent
9 or some years ago?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I have looked — my knowledge or whose knowledge?
11 MR IRVING: Your knowledge we are talking about.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My knowledge.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the time you wrote this report.
14 MR RAMPTON: Footnote 118.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Thank you. Yes, The Critical Edition, 1989.
16 MR IRVING: My question is, of course, if you were aware of the
17 fact that these tests had been carried out and that there
18 was this, shall we say, ambiguous finding?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it is ambiguous at all, Mr Irving.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I wanted to ask about that.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is quite clear.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, may I put this question to
23 you because then we can get on? Would it be an unfair
24 reading of the report that you have just been shown by
25 Mr Irving that it, in fact, far from confirming that it is
26 a forgery, confirms that it is authentic because it says
. P-67
1 that there are some sections which were added
2 subsequently, but by necessary inference is saying that
3 most of it was genuine and already there and not in ball
4 point? Not very articulately expressed, but do you agree
5 with that proposition?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, yes, and that is my understanding of the forensic
7 investigations which were carried out both by the Federal
8 German Criminal Office and by the Dutch Centre for War
9 Documentation, that the diaries were genuine, but that
10 there were some small stylistic emendations, certainly not
11 whole pages or whole sections, let alone the whole thing
12 being fake or a novel.
13 MR IRVING: Have I ever said that the whole thing was written
14 in ball point pen?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You said whole pages are written in ball point pen.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You said it was a novel, Mr Irving, did you
17 not?
18 MR IRVING: The third version is a novel, my Lord. The third
19 version is a novel with the names changed.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You did say in the Daily Mirror on 27th November 1979:
21 “Many forgeries are among records, including the diary of
22 Anne Frank”. “The Anne Frank” — another occasion in
23 1986: “The Anne Frank diary of which you have all heard
24 is partly written in ball point ink, parts of the Anne
25 Frank diaries are written in ball point ink”.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that the father of Anne Frank in
. P-68
1 one of the libel actions obtained an affidavit from a
2 handwriting expert who testified that the entire diaries
3 were written in the same handwriting of the same person,
4 including, therefore, the ball point passages?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not aware of that.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Whether that is true or not, in other words, this
7 allegation that the entire diaries, or this finding by the
8 expert that the entire diaries were written in one
9 handwriting, was it not reasonable for somebody to say in
10 1979, as I said in the passage you just quoted, that the
11 diaries were suspect?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not quite what you said, Mr Irving. You did not
13 say they were suspect. You said they were fake.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us take it stage by stage.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let the witness answer first. You suggested
16 that you were only saying that they were suspect.
17 Professor Evans, do you think that Mr Irving went further?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do, my Lord. He is saying they are a forgery.
19 MR IRVING: Is that not a reasonable conclusion, if the father
20 himself has produced evidence to the courts that the
21 handwriting is the same the whole way through,
22 graphological evidence by affidavit in one of these libel
23 actions that the handwriting is the same and that the
24 handwriting turns out to be partly in ball point ink?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, you said in 1993 that the diaries were a novel,
26 the handwriting was not hers, whole pages were written in
. P-69
1 ball point pen, a 13 year old girl would not have the
2 nouse to write a document of that sort at all —-
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, can you stick with chronology —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is a long time after the —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let the witness answer.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is well after the official edition had been published
7 in 1989. This is talking, what, four years after that.
8 MR IRVING: Can we stick to the chronology, please? We are at
9 present back in 1979 and 1980, right?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and in my report, Mr Irving, I cite what you say in
11 1989, in 1993.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: And it is very convenient to confuse the chronology, but
13 if we sort things out —-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is not confusing about that chronology at all,
15 Mr Irving. It is quite clear what you say in 1993; you
16 assert that it is, that it is a fake. It is a forgery.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us take this in stages. First of all, will you accept
18 that the third edition written by the daughter of Otto
19 Frank, Anne Frank, is written by her as a novel in which
20 she has changed the names in her own diary into novel
21 form?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, the official edition published by the Dutch Centre for
23 War Documentation is a diary.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that the third eversion she has written is
25 written as a novel with the names changed in novel form?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to at this point confess I am not expertise — I do
. P-70
1 not have the expertise to go into that amount of detail.
2 I have looked at the official edition and it is quite
3 clear to me that that is a diary.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: So if it is a diary, why are the names changed then?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The official edition.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I can think of all sorts of reasons.
7 At the moment I do not understand the significance of Anne
8 Frank —-
9 MR IRVING: Well, because he is emphasising there —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please let me finish. I do not understand
11 the significance of it having been converted into a diary
12 if it be the case that the original was a diary — sorry,
13 into a novel if it be the case that the original was a
14 diary.
15 MR IRVING: If your Lordship attaches no significance to the
16 word “novel”, then I will abandon that particular line.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My impression of the evidence so far is that
18 you have dismissed Anne frank’s alleged diary as being in
19 its totality no more than a novel, i.e. a work of
20 fiction. If I am wrong about that, no doubt you will
21 disabuse me.
22 MR IRVING: If your Lordship is going to attach importance to
23 the word “novel”, then perhaps we should look at precisely
24 what the allegations are and the passages that are
25 quoted. Can I just get the chronology straightened out
26 because this is what the expert witness is, I think,
. P-71
1 seeking to confuse.
2 There are two important thresholds to be crossed
3 here. The first threshold that we cross is the
4 investigation by the German Government laboratory in 1980,
5 and the second threshold is the authoritative
6 investigation by the Dutch authorities which was a few
7 years ago. Now, the question is whether I heeded each of
8 these authoritative enquiries or whether I disregarded
9 them.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And the answer is that you disregarded them.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, let us take it stage by stage. Before 1980, was
12 I entitled to say that because the handwriting expertise
13 said that the handwriting was the same the whole way
14 through this opus and parts of it were in ball point ink,
15 therefore, the whole opus was suspect. Was that a
16 reasonable conclusion?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not think it was because the parts that were in
18 ball point ink were only stylistic emendations.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if they were said by the father to be in the same
20 handwriting the whole way through — this is the point
21 I am trying to make — if he produced expert evidence that
22 the handwriting was unchanged?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you would have to — you would have to present me
24 with the written evidence for the claims you are making.
25 I find it very difficult to deal with it in the way that
26 you are —-
. P-72
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you have set yourself up here as an expert on this
2 particular matter and now each time we come up with an
3 important —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me try to give the context of this again, I am trying
5 to —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 156, the criticism you are making,
7 Professor Evans, is of what Mr Irving said in 1993.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is the criticism.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: There is no point, Mr Irving, in going back to 1980
12 because it was in the late 80s, as I understand it, that
13 the scientific evidence, so the Defendants say, emerged
14 which established that these were authentic diaries. You
15 went on after that to say that they were novels and that a
16 13 year old could not have written such a document.
17 MR IRVING: My Lord —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the point that is made against you.
19 MR IRVING: What exactly is said in this 1993 passage? Your
20 Lordship has it in front of you. It is the indented
21 passage here: “Are you aware that they have made a full
22 report? I say: “Doesn’t surprise me”. This is a very
23 selective excerpt. If there was any specific reference by
24 me in 1993 for saying that the diaries in their totality
25 are a fake, believe me, this expert witness would, surely,
26 have quoted it?
. P-73
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me quote 9th November 1993 broadcast. This is
2 video tape 207, and it is in English in tape 213.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this in your report?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. This is in my response to your written questions, so
5 it is available.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we try to find this? I would quite
7 like to find it if we can.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My Lord. It is in my written response to Mr Irving’s
9 written questions.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, I meant the original. Is it in one of the bundles?
11 1993? Where was the speech? Do you know? Was it in
12 Australia?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is rather complicated, my Lord. It is a — yes, it was
14 in Australia. It is not clear whether it is Australian or
15 American. It is a version of a Danish television
16 programme which is also broadcast in German on German
17 Television, but there should be a transcript of tape 213.
18 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, if your Lordship has got, I do not know
19 what it is called, Evans 2, is it, the file Evans 2?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 MR RAMPTON: Behind tab 1 there are Professor Evans’ responses
22 to Mr Irving’s written questions. On page 5 — sorry,
23 somebody has restamped it. Page 5 is the internal
24 numbering of that document. At paragraph 9 your Lordship
25 will see set out the history, as it were, for the
26 genealogy of this extract in the report. There is a “7”
. P-74
1 stamped at the bottom of the page.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know what you are looking at, but
3 I am looking at, I think, something different.
4 MR RAMPTON: Well, the document is dated 7th February 2000 and
5 it should be in the front of Evans 2.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is the second set of replies to Mr Irving’s written
7 questions.
8 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have I got it?
10 MR RAMPTON: You should have. It should look like that.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry. Yes, I have. I beg your pardon.
12 MR RAMPTON: In tab 1.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 5?
14 MR RAMPTON: Page 5, paragraph 9. Page 5 at the top, paragraph
15 9, it runs over to page 6 is the history of this
16 particular extract.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got this, Mr Irving?
18 MR IRVING: I do not want, but I wish to make some comments on
19 this. Your Lordship will remember that on November 4th
20 when we had the pretrial review, I expressed grave
21 misgivings about the use of edited broadcast programmes
22 with all the, I will not say the chicanery that has gone
23 into it, but all the clever cross-cutting and, unless we
24 see the transcript of the whole programme or, at any rate,
25 very substantial excerpts which are clearly indicative
26 that nothing has been put in or nothing has been cut out,
. P-75
1 I would be very hesitant about allowing this kind of
2 material which may be prejudicial to be put in in this
3 form.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you say that, but if I read to you
5 one of the extracts —-
6 MR IRVING: Yes, please do.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — it is in these terms: “To me, the Anne
8 Frank’s diaries are a romantic novel, rather like ‘Gone
9 With the Wind’ and I would not read something like that”.
10 MR IRVING: As a source, yes.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How can the context really affect what you
12 are saying which is that it is all made up?
13 MR IRVING: I am not saying that at all, my Lord.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Oh, I thought you were saying…
15 MR IRVING: That is certainly not the point of what I am
16 making. The Anne Frank diary, I am sure that your
17 Lordship, like myself, has never had the pleasure of
18 reading that particular work, but I have read a great deal
19 about it, including the official Dutch investigation into
20 it. I had lots of newspaper articles about it and I am
21 quite familiar with its genesis; the way it started off
22 first as a fragmentary diary, it was then rewritten by her
23 in captivity because she had nothing else to do and then,
24 as she grew up, she then rewrote it as a novel.
25 That is what I am saying there, but to take just
26 that one sentence and to hang on that the imputation that
. P-76
1 I am saying the whole thing is a pack of lies, which your
2 Lordship just put on it, I think is a very adventurous
3 forward step.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, do we have the —-
5 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I really do think this is becoming the
6 most frightful waste of time.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, at least it is relevant.
8 MR RAMPTON: I know.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have spent two days on the wholly
10 peripheral matters.
11 MR RAMPTON: I have been as patient as I possibly can be, but
12 now I really cannot sit here any longer because I have in
13 my hand a piece of paper taken from Mr Irving’s website,
14 or through his website, on 7th February of this month of
15 an interview that he gave to something called CNN, which
16 is a satellite news station, and he was interviewed on
17 16th January.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have that. I have read that.
19 MR RAMPTON: This year.
20 MR IRVING: Here we go again. It is another very heavily
21 cross-cut and edited broadcast.
22 MR RAMPTON: Well, I just read these four lines: “Interviewer
23 to Irving: Did you say that the Anne Frank diary was a
24 forgery? Irving: Guilty. Interviewer: Is it a
25 forgery? Irving: No”.
26 MR IRVING: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. Before 1979
. P-77
1 I was of the opinion that it was a highly suspect document
2 for precisely the reasons I have set out, namely the
3 father said the handwriting was the same the whole way
4 through. He produced expert evidence in court to that
5 effect in order to win a libel action. The handwriting
6 was partly in ball point ink. So the conclusions there
7 are absolutely plain.
8 After 1980 we had the German Government
9 investigation which confirmed that the ball point ink was
10 there and it was not until the Dutch carried out their
11 authoritative tests that I was perfectly satisfied I had
12 been wrong with that belief. I have made not the
13 slightest hesitation in admitting that I was wrong, which
14 is absolutely the right way to handle the matter.
15 But to take things out of chronology, which is
16 what this witness has been doing, and to imply that by
17 calling it a novel I am suggesting that the diary is in
18 some way a pack of lies, is I think very unjust and not
19 borne out by the evidence when it is presented in the
20 proper sequence. But I repeat what I said about the
21 prejudicial nature of producing fragments of very heavily
22 edited sound bites from American or German or Danish
23 television programmes. Your Lordship is familiar with how
24 these programmes are concocted. The scissors play an
25 important part.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My Lord, may I make three points?
. P-78
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The first is when you describe something, when one
3 describes something, as a novel, one surely implies that
4 it is fictional, it is not telling the truth. I do think
5 that is a significant use of words.
6 Secondly, in my report on page 156 I quote an
7 interview in 1993: “Interviewer: Are you aware that the
8 Dutch Centre for War Documentation has made a full report
9 about this?” that is to say the allegations of
10 falsification and so on in the diaries. “Irving: Doesn’t
11 surprise me. Interviewer: And they say it’s – they have
12 made public all the diaries, and they examined the
13 handwriting, and all there is to know about it. Irving:
14 Doesn’t surprise me. A lot of money is at stake. The
15 Anne Frank Foundation is a very wealthy political
16 organization in Amsterdam. Interview: We’re talking
17 about the Dutch State War Documentation Centre here.
18 We’re not talking about the Anne Frank Foundation. We’re
19 talking about a public institution. Irving: But I’m
20 talking about the financial interests which are at stake
21 here.”
22 I think, Mr Irving, the clear implication of
23 that is that the full report of the Dutch Centre for War
24 Documentation is a falsification and is not reliable in
25 any sense.
26 The third point I want to make —-
. P-79
1 MR IRVING: Why have you not —-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, there are three points.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And If I can make my third point, is that again in 1993,
4 his Lordship has already quoted part of this interview
5 that you gave, saying that you would not read it, you read
6 certain passages and so on. “We have samples of Anne
7 Frank’s real handwriting in postcards which she wrote to
8 friends in 1940 and 1939. They were recently auctioned in
9 an auction house in the United States about two years
10 ago. That handwriting is totally different from the
11 handwriting in the diaries. They are as different as
12 chalk and cheese and the extraordinary finding is that
13 some of the pages of the diaries have been written in ball
14 point pen which is a pen that didn’t exist in Anne Frank’s
15 lifetime”. 1993, Mr Irving.
16 MR IRVING: Yes, and, quite clearly, the parts that are written
17 in ball point ink in the diaries cannot have been written
18 by the girl who wrote the postcards, am I right?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You are saying some of the pages — that simply is not the
20 case.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: But some of the pages were written in ball point pen, is
22 that correct?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. As I understand it, there were stylistic
24 emendations. There are not whole pages written in ball
25 point —-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have any evidence for the words “stylistic
. P-80
1 emendations”?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — pen. Well, this is — yes, the report of the Dutch
3 Centre for War Documentation which is summarized in their
4 introduction to their Critical Edition which you dismiss
5 as being the product of financial manipulation by the Anne
6 Frank Foundation, whereas a few minutes ago, Mr Irving,
7 you just said that you had accepted that report —-
8 MR IRVING: I do totally.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — in 1989 when it came out —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: And I did and I always have done.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and here you are in 1993 saying that you do not accept
12 it. I cannot accept what you are saying there.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think we have now had enough
14 evidence on the Anne Frank diaries. I think we will move
15 on to the next topic.
16 MR IRVING: My Lord, he made now points.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I have got to introduce some
18 control. We have spent this morning so far dealing with
19 pages, I think you started at 128, is that right, and we
20 have now got to 156.
21 MR IRVING: If this expert report was not so flawed —-
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we have spent nearly two hours dealing
23 with very subsidiary points. We still have not got on to
24 the guts of this report.
25 MR IRVING: If this expert report was not so flawed and bias,
26 then I would not have been bogged down in the marshes,
. P-81
1 shall we say, before we came to the real materials.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have made my ruling. You are going to have
3 the opportunity to answer questions in cross-examination.
4 We are moving on to the this next topic, and I am afraid I
5 am going to have to be much more firm with you than I have
6 been up until now.
7 MR IRVING: If the witness could possibly answer more briefly,
8 then we would not spent so much time on these matters.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, that is not fair.
10 MR IRVING: I advance with the utmost trepidation, my Lord,
11 because I have no idea where —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, advance and then see whether the
13 trepidation was justified.
Section 82.14 to 100.25
14 MR IRVING: One never knows whether the mines are dummies or
15 not. Page 158, the end of paragraph 34, you complain that
16 I state that the witness Hoss made statements which
17 contain egregious anachronisms, inconsistencies and other
18 generally implausible passages. Do you not accept that
19 that is so then?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me — where are we? Yes. Let me read the paragraph.
21 We are talking about the memoirs of Rudolf Hoss, the
22 Kommandant of Auschwitz, and the interrogations of Rudolf
23 Hoss which were made in Polish captivity. In your book on
24 Nuremberg you allege, I say, that Hoss was “manhandled” by
25 those who arrested him and kept without sleep until he
26 confessed. You term this “torture”. You say: “Hoss’s
. P-82
1 confessions contain many deliberate errors to make it
2 clear they were untrue. His memory is patchy about days
3 and places, and about the events of four or five years
4 earlier. There were many inconsistencies in his account.
5 He signed a confession in English although he had no
6 reading knowledge of English. He frequently changed his
7 testimony about numbers. Hoss wrote his memoirs in Polish
8 captivity ‘as a means of postponing his fate’. His
9 statements, Irving charges, contained ‘egregious
10 anachronisms, inconsistencies and other generally
11 implausible passages”.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you now answer the question?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So I am trying to summarize your views there.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you dispute the fact that his statements contain these
15 inaccuracies and implausible statements?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think there is — well, first of all, I do not
17 think there is any evidence that there are deliberate
18 errors to make it clear that what he said was untrue.
19 Secondly, I think one has to distinguish between
20 the interrogations and the memoirs. Hoss says in his
21 memoirs that he was manhandled and very badly treated.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where did he write the memoirs?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He writes his memoirs in Polish captivity, and the
24 confessions, well, the first of his confessions which,
25 admissions, statements, which resulted from interrogations
26 was, therefore, discounted. What I am referring to here
. P-83
1 are the memoirs.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: I only have two questions to ask. Would a confession or a
3 statement obtained by these means ever be accepted by a
4 British court of law?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already said, this is only one statement, the first
6 statement. The memoirs that he wrote were certainly not
7 obtained under duress. They were written in captivity
8 under the imminent prospect of death and, to my mind, that
9 makes them more likely to be honest.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you answer the question? Would it be acceptable in
11 a British court of law, this kind of statement?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to explain the context. The statement which
13 he made under duress, the first of his statements, was not
14 used.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: If he was such a reliable witness and so convincing, why
16 was he not called by the prosecution at Nuremberg when he
17 was actually in the building in a cell?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a question to which this witness
19 cannot possibly know the answer.
20 MR IRVING: On page 160 at line 4 of paragraph 36: “Irving
21 casts doubt on almost all testimony at the Nuremberg War”
22 — is that an exaggeration, that I doubt almost all the
23 testimony produced at Nuremberg?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not what I say.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you say that I say it does not fit my arguments;
26 I say it was obtained by torture and threats?
. P-84
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, no, I do not, Mr Irving. I say: “Irving casts doubt
2 on almost all testimony at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
3 or during the prior interrogations if it does not fit his
4 arguments, alleging it was obtained by torture and
5 threats”. Those are my precise words.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, that I deliberately manipulate, I accept
7 the evidence that I like and all the other evidence
8 I disregard on this rather threadbare pretext of tortures
9 and threats?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In your book on Nuremberg you refer constantly to — and
11 again, my Lord, this is in my written response No. 10 on
12 page 6 of my reply to the second set of written questions
13 by Mr Irving, where you talk about “the unsavoury methods
14 of the OSS, intimidatory American tactics appear to have
15 been routine, harassment of the prisoners, a paralysing
16 regime of psychoterror enforced on the defendants”, and so
17 on. That seems to me to be general attempts to discredit
18 the testimony at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Having you investigated the methods used by the Allies and
20 the interrogators at Nuremberg? Are you able to state
21 with confidence to this court that I am wrong?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You do not present, you present to me — you present in
23 your book some isolated incidents of maltreatment of
24 prisoners of Streichier(?), I think, and, of course, in
25 the initial interrogation of Hoss, but you do not present
26 evidence in your book that this was general. I do not
. P-85
1 really see evidence there to justify those statements
2 which you make in a general sense.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you have complete confidence yourself, therefore, in
4 the methods used by the allies to obtain —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. This witness has said many times you
6 have to look at all the circumstances and evaluate the
7 particular witness and his evidence.
8 MR IRVING: If you look at your footnote on that page, the
9 second footnote: “Irving in an interview in New Zealand,
10 recording a conversation with SS Colonel Gohler” which
11 I claimed to have had at the end of the war when I would
12 have been a child?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I look up the transcript. You said: “I remember
14 right at the end of the war I asked one of Himmler’s
15 staff”, and so on and so forth, but it is not a very
16 important point.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So why did you put it in then?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us move on we all. Agree it is not a
19 very important point.
20 MR IRVING: But you are implying there that I have lied again,
21 are you not, in that footnote?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not, no. It is an amusing little mistake that
23 you made.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: You agree that it is a misreading, therefore, of a
25 transcript?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Don’t let us spend time on it, Mr Irving.
. P-86
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not agree it is a misreading. I think it is just
2 a misformulation of yours, Mr Irving. It is not very
3 important at all.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: These verbatim transcripts can easily be misread?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think I read it correctly. I am just saying it is a
6 slip of your tongue, that is all.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or a slip of the punctuation of the person doing the —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, will you please move on?
9 MR IRVING: You are still critical, of course, of my methods of
10 obtaining information from Hitler’s private staff. Would
11 you see, please, pages 83 to 5 of the little bundle? This
12 is the complete passage from that interview you have just
13 quoted, the one where I was allegedly conducting
14 interviews as a six year old. Why did you not pay more
15 attention to the surrounding three pages of that interview
16 instead of this rather amusing little footnote you put in?
17 Do I not describe in those three pages (and this is the
18 question) how I have persuaded Hitler’s private staff to
19 reveal to me ugly secrets of their memories of their times
20 with Hitler, if I can put it like that, and is that not
21 more significant?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is not the context here of what I am talking
23 about here at all, Mr Irving.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you referred to these three pages anywhere in your
25 expert report?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: These are?
. P-87
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: The reference to what Hitler’s private secretary told me
2 about the Night of the Long Knives, for example? The
3 reference to what Johannes Gohler told me about Hitler’s
4 order to Himmler to liquidate the inmates of Buchenwald?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Night of the Long Knives is not a — I think I do
6 mention the Night of the Long Knives briefly, but it is
7 not really a central point in my report.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you made this point on Thursday to
9 this witness.
10 MR IRVING: We did, my Lord, but I am just drawing attention to
11 the fact that he uses the transcripts very selectively to
12 imply that I am lying about the date I conducted an
13 interview, but there are three pages —-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, Mr Irving, I did not.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you please not interrupt?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not imply that you were lying. I am quite happy to
17 accept it is a slip of the tongue.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: But he ignores the three pages —-
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not an important point.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: — which show me quite clearly using interviews in the
21 manner that they should be conducted.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you made a perfectly sensible
23 point on Thursday, namely that you often do refer, so you
24 say, to the unfavourable things that the Adjutants and
25 their relations told you about Hitler. You have made that
26 point. I have absorbed it and I have digested it. There
. P-88
1 is no point in going back over it all over again.
2 MR IRVING: My remark goes purely to the selective nature of
3 this expert witness’s report and reporting on the basis of
4 the evidence before him.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like to move on now?
6 MR IRVING: Page 162, when we are now dealing with Hans
7 Aumeier, you allege that: “It did not fit into my
8 preconceived notion” – this is three lines from the end
9 – “it did not fit into my preconceived notion that there
10 were no gassings” —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not, in fact, the case that Hans Aumeier’s reports
13 are not eagerly seized upon by the Holocaust historians
14 because he, too, presents information which does not fit
15 in with the standard version, like the gassings times?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that, in fact, the Aumeier documents, which you
17 discovered in the Public Record Office after their release
18 in 1992, were not seen by anybody else. So I do not think
19 there is any suppression there by other people.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but is it not the fact that the Aumeier documents do
21 not fit in with preconceived notions in the way you
22 suggest?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We went through all this with Professor van
24 Pelt, did we not?
25 MR IRVING: On page 163, now, paragraph 41, you ask: “Who
26 could possibly have gone to all the immense trouble
. P-89
1 necessary to fabricate such a vast quantity of documentary
2 material”? What documentary materials were you describing
3 there, just so we can be sure of what you are talking
4 about?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, a number of different things, the memoirs, for
6 example, of Holocaust survivors which exist in substantial
7 number.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are not talking about wartime documents then?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not say wartime documents. In addition, in the
10 course of this trial, you have repeatedly alleged that
11 wartime documents have been fabricated without really
12 saying who would have done it or why, or what opportunity
13 they might have had to do so.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: His Lordship knows this is not true. I cast suspicion
15 only on one document.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid I do not accept that, Mr Irving.
17 MR IRVING: On the June 24, 1943 document, my Lord.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you cast suspicion on a number of other
19 documents.
20 MR IRVING: I am impugning the integrity of only one document
21 then. Let me put it like that. I raise my eyebrows at
22 certain others, but accept them just for the purposes of
23 argument. In other words, you are not there talking about
24 a vast quantity of wartime documents then. You are
25 talking about a vast quantity of postwar —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am talking there in a general sense about the evidence
. P-90
1 of all the crimes, for example the existence of gas
2 chambers.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But this is important.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It refers right back to the previous three sections of
5 this particular chapter in my report.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am trying to narrow down here — this is quite
7 important. If his Lordship is led to believe by a
8 careless statement of the witnesses that there is a vast
9 body of wartime documents, this would be unfair, would it
10 not, because you are not referring to wartime documents?
11 You are referring to postwar documents?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am referring to all kinds of documents.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are not referring to wartime documents?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am referring to documents including wartime documents,
15 the totality of the written evidence for the Holocaust
16 which you deny.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you saying there is a vast quantity of wartime
18 documents?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I am saying is that there is a vast quantity of
20 documents and material for all aspects of the Holocaust.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I expect you would accept, Professor Evans,
22 just to move on, the number of overtly incriminating
23 documents, wartime documents, as regards gas chambers is
24 actually pretty few and far between?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Gas chambers, other things such as the systematic nature
26 of the extermination, I am referring to the whole package
. P-91
1 of evidence.
2 MR IRVING: But I am trying to divide that package.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Wartime, postwar, shootings, gassings, systematic nature
4 and so on.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, you accept that we cannot do things that
6 way in this court. We have to divide things up into
7 parcels and look at the Eastern Front, look at the
8 systematic nature, and look at the gas chambers, and look
9 at the documentary basis for each. As his Lordship has
10 said, you do accept that the documentary basis for the
11 gassings, the gas chambers and for the systematic nature
12 of that is thin compared with the documentation of the
13 Eastern Front shootings?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but what I am describing here is really — I am
15 moving on to the totality of all the different kinds of
16 evidence. For example, I have dealt previously —-
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am anxious you do not move on from the questions I am
18 actually asking.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Have dealt previously in the report in an earlier section
20 with your allegation that Holocaust survivors have made it
21 all up, for example.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we have a clear answer —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Stabbed their tattoos on their arms themselves and so on.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: — so that we can move on. The documentation relating to
25 the gas chambers and the systematic nature of gas chamber
26 killings is sparse compared with the documentation of the
. P-92
1 killings on the Eastern Front, is that right?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I think that is correct, that I am referring here to
3 the totality.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 44 on the facing page. You object to my
5 suggestion that there was a well-financed campaign.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I say it is a typical Holocaust denier’s argument.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. If it is a true statement, is that an unjustified
8 statement therefore?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me quote the sentence. In the preface, this is a
10 comment on a quote—-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do not start reading all this out.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, Mr Irving, but I do want to get quite straight
13 what I am actually saying. I do not want the court to
14 rely simply on your gloss on it.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is the question I am asking which you have to answer,
16 I am afraid.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I am going to answer it.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that it is a well-financed campaign?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to — can I just say what I say in the report,
20 because that will make it much simpler to answer. In the
21 preface to the English edition of the Leuchter report you
22 wrote: “Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where
23 considerable sums of money are involved”. You go on to
24 say: “Millions of honest, intelligent people have been
25 duped by the well financed and brilliantly successful post
26 war publicity campaign which followed on from the original
. P-93
1 ingenuous plan of the British Psychological Warfare
2 Executive (PWE) in 1942 to spread to the world the
3 propaganda story that the Germans were using ‘gas
4 chambers’ to kill millions of Jews other ‘undesirables’.”
5 I go on to say then that this is the typical Holocaust
6 denier’s argument that the “myth” of the Holocaust has
7 been kept going by a “well-financed” campaign in order to
8 legitimize the paying of German reparations to the State
9 of Israel. Quite clearly, I do not accept that everyone
10 who has written about the gas chambers in Auschwitz and
11 elsewhere, and the Holocaust, the extermination of the
12 Jews, has been financed in order to legitimize the paying
13 of German reparations to the State of Israel. I think
14 that is an appalling slur on the large numbers of decent
15 and serious scholars who have devoted a large amount of
16 their lives to doing this. I think it is a disgraceful
17 remark.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I must insist that you answer my questions briefly because
19 I ask the questions and then I am the one who gets into
20 trouble when you answer at such length.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, Mr Irving, but your question did not make it clear
22 what I was saying in my report. I felt it necessary to
23 say what I was saying.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you heard of the phrase “instrumentalization of the
25 Holocaust”?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have certainly heard of that, yes.
. P-94
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you answer in two or three lines what you understand
2 by the phrase “instrumentalization of the Holocaust”?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an accusation sometimes levelled at people who make
4 a reference to the Holocaust and are accused of doing so
5 for ulterior motives.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this the allegation that somebody like Norman
7 Finkelstein makes?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not really think that matters.
9 MR IRVING: Page 168, paragraph 50, line 3, those three dots,
10 you agree, stand for 58 words, five commas, two full stops
11 and a colon, is that right?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think we have already been through this. I do not think
13 that is right, actually.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not going to count the full stops.
15 Come on, Mr Irving. You have made your point about
16 selective quotation.
17 MR IRVING: Page 51: This goes to the anti-Semitism element,
18 I suppose, does it not?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Paragraph 51.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I have made a speech in 1992 and you take exception
21 to my description of the Board of Deputies, and the words
22 that I use. Is any criticism of an organization like that
23 permissible, do you think?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do think it is rather over the top to describe the Board
25 of Deputies of British Jews as cockroaches.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you are familiar with the methods that they have used
. P-95
1 to try to destroy a professional historian’s career and
2 family, would that professional historian be entitled to
3 use pretty colourful language to describe these people who
4 are secretly trying to destroy him?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a very hypothetical question. I think what you
6 are saying there is that the Board of Deputies of British
7 Jews have been engaged in a secret campaign to try and
8 destroy your livelihood.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is what I said. If the intention is to destroy an
10 author and his family and his career and livelihood by
11 underhand methods or by whatever methods, is he not
12 entitled to defend himself and use occasional lurid
13 language?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to first of all see evidence to persuade me
15 that such a secret dastardly campaign had been carried
16 out. I do not want to answer a hypothetical question of
17 that nature. I do think that professional historians
18 should be reasonably measured in their language. I do not
19 think that is an appropriate word to use.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: If the court is shown a document showing that at this
21 precise time that body was contemplating putting pressure
22 on that author’s publisher to stop publishing his books
23 and thereby destroy his career and livelihood, and they
24 were doing it behind armour plated doors in their
25 headquarters —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Show the witness the document and then we can
. P-96
1 see.
2 MR IRVING: May I do so, my Lord?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course.
4 MR IRVING: Would you go to bundle E?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure I have this.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Bundle E. No, you may well not have.
7 MR IRVING: I am looking for the document. Page 82 in the
8 bundle called Global.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is a meeting on 12th December 1991, Education and
10 Academic Committee?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Education and Academic Committee of the Holocaust
12 Educational Trust. Can you read item No. 6 please?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “David Irving. Concern was voiced over the publication of
14 the second edition of Hitler’s War. There was debate over
15 how to approach Macmillan publishers over Goebbels Diary.
16 It was agreed await news from Jeremy Coleman before
17 deciding what course of action to take”.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not going to go into the remaining documents in that
19 bundle, Professor Evans, but, if I put it to you that this
20 is evidence and that other documents will be submitted to
21 court later on, the pressure that was put on my publishers
22 by this body, which is part of the Board of Deputies,
23 which was meeting at their headquarters, am I not entitled
24 to use that kind of language to describe these people?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, to be quite honest, no. This is a meeting of five
26 people, Mr Coleman, Professor Gould, Professor Polonski,
. P-97
1 Mr Nyman and Dr John Fox. It is not a meeting of the
2 Board of Deputies of British Jews. Where it takes place
3 I think is pretty immaterial. It says that there is a
4 debate, but they agreed that they are not going to do
5 anything. So I do not think that is justification for
6 calling the Board of Deputies of British Jews cockroaches.
7 MR RAMPTON: What is more, there is another thing needs to be
8 pointed out. That document, which is the first time I
9 have seen, is dated 12th December 1991. It is predated
10 therefore by some months by what Mr Irving said, which
11 apparently was said on 5th October 1991.
12 MR IRVING: Are you —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It post dates it?
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes. The document post dates the Irving statement
15 about cockroaches.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You said predates.
17 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry.
18 MR IRVING: I do not want to hold up the court at this point,
19 but will you accept that that bundle you are holding
20 called Global is about three inches thick, and contains
21 many hundreds of documents?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not a terribly illuminating question.
23 MR IRVING: My Lord I do not really want to read through all
24 the other documents.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not a very contentious statement.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I am not asking you to. Anyway, I think
. P-98
1 we will move on. You have put that document.
2 MR IRVING: Precisely. Witness, will you accept that, on the
3 balance of probabilities, there are other documents of
4 that nature in that bundle?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may say so, Mr Irving, we must do better
6 than that.
7 MR IRVING: Mr Rampton has suggested that this was it, and so
8 what.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What it comes to is, if there was in
10 existence a document prior to what you said about the
11 British Board of Deputies being cockroaches, which you say
12 justifies you having said that, then put it to the
13 witness. If you have not got such a document, move on,
14 please.
15 MR IRVING: I shall put it to the court in due course, my Lord,
16 the whole bundle, as your Lordship is familiar. If an
17 author is aware that such a campaign is being conducted
18 against him by a body of whatever class or colour or race
19 or religion, is he entitled to use lurid language in
20 private?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have asked that question many times
22 before and that is a comment. You have not established
23 the factual premise for it, so can you move to the next
24 topic, which means going beyond page 168.
25 MR IRVING: My Lord, you say I have not established a factual
26 premise. To do that I would have to go back to the bundle
. P-99
1 and I do not want to do that at this point.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In that case you cannot ask the question.
3 MR IRVING: The final five lines of that same paragraph: “In
4 April 1998 Mr Irving spoke of American Jews ‘moving into
5 the same positions of predominance and influence'”, and so
6 on, that they held in the Weimar Republic. This is a
7 quotation, is it not, from my diary in April 1998?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: From your website. Published on your website.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a quotation from my diary in 1998?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Published on your website. In other words, it is free to
11 anybody to access, which is what we did.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you had access to all my private diaries?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not need access to your private diaries to get hold
14 of this quotation.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you answer the question?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I read the whole quotation first to establish what we
17 are talking about?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just answer that question. Have you had access to my
19 diaries?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, I want to read the whole quotation to get
21 clear what we are going to see, then I will answer your
22 question.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you answer the question first?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In April 1998 he spoke of American Jews’moving into the
25 same positions of predominance and influence…”
Section 100.26 to 114.3
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, will you instruct the witness to answer questions
. P-100
1 put to him?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am despairing. Would you let the witness
3 — and then you can ask the question. Read it out
4 please.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “In April 1998 he spoke of American Jews ‘moving into the
6 same positions of predominance and influence (media,
7 banking, business, entertainment, and the more
8 lucrative professions like law, medical and dentistry)
9 that they held in Weimar Germany, which gave rise to the
10 hatreds and the resulting pogroms; and that this being so,
11 twenty or thirty more years might see in the USA the same
12 dire consequences as happened in Nazi Germany”. Extract
13 from Irving’s personal diary April 13, 14th 1998, on
14 Irving’s Focal Point website. The answer to your question
15 is yes, I have had access to your personal diaries.
16 MR IRVING: Do you have any reason to suspect this is not a
17 genuine diary, what is on my website?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is as genuine as the Anne Frank diary, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will repeat the question. Do you have any reason to
20 believe that this is not a genuine diary extract?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The answer is no.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The answer is no. I answered it.
23 MR IRVING: Will you go to page 88 of the bundle which is F?
24 My Lord, the purpose of this is purely to point out, not
25 words left out but surrounding material left out.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, context.
. P-101
1 MR IRVING: Is this the diary as reproduced on my website?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It looks like it, yes. I have downloaded on 15th February
3 2000.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it is a description of a lecture that I delivered to
5 students at the University of Washington State in Pulman
6 in 1998?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, seems to be.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The questions are the best part as usual, a German girl
9 student a quiet well spoken 20 year old, the Federal
10 Republic’s equivalent of a Rhodes scholar. I carry on now
11 to the next paragraph. The paragraph begins: Several
12 coloured students are there mostly training to become
13 teachers.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This has nothing to do with the context of
15 what Professor Evans quoted. It is completely irrelevant.
16 MR IRVING: They are bright and friendly.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read it all. The context? This adds
18 nothing and subtracts nothing. What is the point,
19 Mr Irving? Why are we looking at this?
20 MR IRVING: I am putting this in connection with the allegation
21 of racism.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, about several coloured students being
23 present?
24 MR IRVING: “Several coloured students were there, mostly
25 training to become teachers. They are bright and
26 friendly”.
. P-102
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. I thought we were looking at this for
2 context of what Professor Evans quoted.
3 MR IRVING: I used the eye witness testimony of General Walter
4 Bruns, which your Lordship is familiar with. I read out
5 the whole of that document to these students, which goes
6 to the Holocaust denial issue. This is a typical speech
7 by me to university students who are a bright and friendly
8 lot, and we have had just this one passage taken out of
9 context when a Jewish Professor from the floor asked
10 questions and I put to him my take on the present
11 situation in the United States.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do think that that is completely irrelevant. If
13 you want a little bit more, the context is: “One
14 questioner addresses the issue that I had raised in
15 discussing the Daniel Goldhagen thesis, that if I were a
16 Jew I would want to see an answer to the vital question
17 why the Jews are so hated within only a few years of their
18 arrival in each host country. He points out that the Jews
19 have now been in the United States in strength for 50
20 years yet they are not hated. I reply that, on the
21 contrary, my own perception is that they are moving into
22 the same positions”, and so on and so forth. That is the
23 context.
24 MR IRVING: That is the context, my Lord, and I think that that
25 substantially softens what might be taken to be the sting
26 of that passage left, as it is, in that rather bald and
. P-103
1 exposed position in the paragraph as quoted in the expert
2 report. I am being asked by a Jewish Professor for my
3 take on the present situation and I am telling him in this
4 semi-academic atmosphere the worries that I would have if
5 I were Jewish.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, to my mind, it does not actually soften it at all.
7 There is no indication here that it is a Jewish Professor,
8 incidentally. What he says is, he quotes you, saying
9 that, if you were a Jew, you would want to see am answer
10 to the vital question why are the Jews so hated within
11 only a few years of their arrival in each host country. I
12 think I have done you a favour by leaving that out.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 170, this is a sentence beginning with the
14 word “fundamentally”. Here you have allowed yourself to
15 say, “Fundamentally, however, as Irving conceded”, there
16 is that word again “conceded”, “he was in basic agreement
17 with Goebbels in his belief that ‘they had it coming to
18 them'”. Who do you mean by “they”?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Jews.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Jews. So you are saying once again that I am
21 applauding the Holocaust effectively?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I use the word “applaud”. There again, let
23 me just read the surrounding context which you are so keen
24 on reading out in your own statements, so I hope I am
25 allowed to do the same with mine.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
. P-104
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In 1996 you recount the view of the publisher who
2 eventually refused to publish the American edition of your
3 book on Goebbels and you said: Maybe … the chairman of
4 St Martin’s Press was right when he said: ‘This book
5 suggests they (the Jews) had it coming to them’. But if
6 he is right, let me say in advance in my self-defence, it
7 is not David Irving who says that, it is David Irving
8 reporting Dr Goebbels who says that. Maybe I did not make
9 it plain enough, or maybe I did not put enough distance
10 between myself and Dr Goebbels or maybe I did not put in
11 all the counter-arguments I should have done to be
12 politically correct”. “Fundamentally, however, as Irving
13 conceded”, I go on, “he was in basic agreement with
14 Goebbels in his belief that ‘they had it coming to them’.”
15 “For, Irving told an audience in Tampa, Florida, on 6th
16 October 1995:”, and then I have a very lengthy quote which
17 I think has already been referred to in the trial, so I
18 will not read it out.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, it has. The short answer is that the
20 Jews did have it coming to them, but there is a longer
21 answer. I think that is a fair summary.
22 MR IRVING: My Lord, what he has left out from this quotation
23 of course — we have not actually looked at it in detail.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have looked at the Tampa, Florida one in
25 detail.
26 MR IRVING: The reference is to this violent demonstration that
. P-105
1 began in one of my speeches in Freeport in Louisiana?
2 Have we had that? The fact that the local community came
3 along and violently disrupted a lecture that I was
4 speaking at, and that that is what has been left out of
5 the middle of this speech, in the middle of this
6 anecdote? I am sure that we have not had that, my Lord.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I have lost you temporarily. You
8 are talking about Louisiana but this is Florida.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is an ellipse in the indented quotation.
10 MR IRVING: There are four ellipses on that page, each of which
11 was serious material and should not have been left out
12 because it explains the remarks that follow.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we deal with that as a matter of
14 submission? We have been through this speech in
15 considerable detail already. I have it reasonably well in
16 mind and I do not think it is going to be sensible to
17 spend ten minutes filling in the ellipses.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have looked at this speech again, my Lord, and the only
19 passage that I considered should be reinstated is listed
20 in my letter of 10th January 2000 with amendments to the
21 report. So there is a short passage there. But otherwise
22 I come back to the fact that this is a very long quotation
23 already, and I think it gives a correct impression of your
24 views.
25 MR IRVING: In that case, let us spend the remaining few
26 minutes before the adjournment examining precisely what
. P-106
1 you consider my views to be, unless his Lordship
2 disagrees.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.
4 MR IRVING: “Irving conceded that he was in basic agreement
5 with Goebbels in his belief that the Jews had it coming to
6 them”. That is, of course, a repugnant statement and you
7 are prepared now to defend that, are you, Professor?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are saying that Irving said that the Jews deserved
10 the Holocaust?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. That is to say, of course, on your
12 interpretation of the Holocaust.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: They deserved the gas chambers, the barbed wire, the
14 millions of deaths, that they had it coming to them, and
15 that this my own personal view? This is your view as an
16 expert witness in this case?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I would not say the gas chambers, since you denied
18 that in 1996 when you made this statement, but for the
19 rest.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Ignoring the cheap laughs.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, I have to make that point.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a repugnant allegation for you to make and you
23 should not be playing to the gallery with cheap laughs.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think Professor Evans is playing to
25 the gallery. I really do not.
26 MR IRVING: If he says I do not mean the gas chambers because
. P-107
1 of course—-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is making the serious point that, when
3 you, as he argues, say that the Jews had it coming to
4 them, you cannot have been meaning that they had the gas
5 chambers coming to them, because at that stage you were
6 saying that there were not any gas chambers. That is the
7 point. It is a serious point.
8 MR IRVING: My Lord, this is characteristic of this witness’s
9 methods, that, when he come up against an awkward
10 question, he attempts to push this particular express
11 train on to a siding, and I am not going down the gas
12 chamber siding, I am not going down that particular road.
13 I am going to nail this witness down on his submission to
14 this court that I applaud the Holocaust, which is what
15 that sentence boils down to.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. That is not quite what he is saying.
17 What he is saying is that you had whatever you meant by
18 the Holocaust, that the Jews had whatever you meant by the
19 Holocaust coming to them. That is what he is saying you
20 said.
21 MR IRVING: With respect my Lord, is that not precisely what
22 I just said?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Carry on with your questions and we will see
24 where you get.
25 MR IRVING: “Irving said that he agreed with Goebbels that they
26 had it coming to them”.
. P-108
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you not see the distinction between an author writing
3 in a book saying Goebbels said that the Jews had it coming
4 to them and he believed they had it coming to them, and
5 the author himself believing the Jews had it coming to
6 them?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I just quoted a lengthy passage where you try and wriggle
8 out of the suggestion made by the chairman of St Martin’s
9 Press that the book suggests that the Jews had it coming
10 to them. The man who was going to publish your book and
11 had read it took that message from the book and you say
12 that maybe you did not make it plain enough, did not put
13 enough distance between yourself and Goebbels. I then go
14 on to quote your speech in Tampa, Florida on 6th October
15 1995, where you say precisely the same thing.
16 MR RAMPTON: Perhaps one could turn over the page for
17 completeness because this theme is completed in paragraph
18 56, and I do resist a lack of context.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In 1991 you said “they (and you mean the Jews) dragged us
20 into two world wars and now, for equally mysterious
21 reasons, they are trying to drag us into the Balkans”.
22 MR IRVING: Can we narrow down—-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is another lengthy quote there, why does it always
24 happen to the Jews, you ask.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we therefore narrow down what your allegation against
26 the author of this book is? Are you alleging that he
. P-109
1 applauded what happened to the Jews?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I am saying here is —-
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: It should be easy to answer. Does he applaud it or does
4 he not, in your view?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us read the text of my report, Mr Irving.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you just answer a simple question?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Fundamentally, however, as Irving conceded, he was in
8 basic agreement with Goebbels in his belief that ‘they had
9 it coming to them'”.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you now answer my question?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what I am saying.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you answer my question?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The word “applause” and “applauded” does not occur there.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just so that everybody in this courtroom can be plain what
15 you are suggesting, are you suggesting that I, David
16 Irving, applauded what happened to the Jews or not?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am saying that you are saying that they deserved what
18 they got.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That answer has been given now three or four
20 times, Mr Irving.
21 MR IRVING: There is a certain amount of wriggling going on
22 here.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you say you never said anything of the
24 kind, put that to the witness.
25 MR IRVING: If what?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you say you never said that the Jews had
. P-110
1 it coming to them, or they deserved what happened to them,
2 put that to the witness.
3 MR IRVING: I am trying to get the witness to state
4 specifically whether he sees a distinction between
5 Dr Goebbels saying in his diaries, as quoted by me in my
6 book, that the Jews had it coming to them on the one hand,
7 and David Irving applauded what happened, the Holocaust,
8 on the other.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a false antithesis because applauding
10 does not come into it. No-one is suggesting you applauded
11 it.
12 MR IRVING: Thank you very much. If the witness would say the
13 same —-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Will you listen, please. What is being
15 suggested is that you have on occasions said that the Jews
16 brought it on themselves. Now, if you say that is not
17 true, put it to the witness, and he will probably go to
18 paragraph 56 of his report in his answer.
19 MR IRVING: Can we take this in two stages? Witness, you have
20 heard his Lordship say nobody says that David Irving
21 applauded the Holocaust. Does that include you?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already pointed out several times I do not say in
23 these paragraphs that you applaud the Holocaust however
24 you conceive of it.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: What you do say is that I state in my Goebbels biography
26 that Goebbels believed that the Jews had it coming to
. P-111
1 them. That is the first question. Goebbels believed they
2 had it coming to them?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that in the following page to which Mr Rampton has
5 drawn attention I go on then to examine that piece by
6 piece and say to what degree was Goebbels right. Is that
7 effectively right?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: For example — I do not want to go over old ground —
10 the Baltic States and so on?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us leave the Baltic States out of it. What you say is
12 that “maybe the chairman of St Martin’s Press was right
13 when he said this book suggests they (the Jews) had it
14 coming to them, maybe I did not make it plain enough and
15 maybe I did not put enough distance between myself and Dr
16 Goebbels, or maybe I did not put in all the
17 arguments, counter arguments, I should have done to be
18 politically correct”. One notes that sneering phrase at
19 the end there.
20 Then you go on in paragraph 55 to recount what
21 you said in a meeting. “I said”, quoting you, “to a
22 leader of the Jewish community in Freeport Louisiana, you
23 are disliked, you people. You have been disliked for three
24 thousand years. You have been disliked so much that you
25 have been hounded from country to country, from pogrom to
26 purge, from purge back to pogrom, and yet you never asked
. P-112
1 yourselves what is it that the rest of humanity does not
2 like about the Jewish people, to such an extent” —-
3 MR IRVING: Witness, we have had all this so many times My
4 Lord, if he is going to read these parts, he must read the
5 other parts as well.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “that they repeatedly put us through the grinder?” —
7 I know you do not want this read out, Mr Irving, but I am
8 going to read it out.
9 MR IRVING: I want all of it read out and not just your
10 selection.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, will you be quiet. The witness is
12 trying to answer your question.
13 MR IRVING: He is not. He is just wasting time.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “And he went berserk”, you go on, this Jewish man. “He
15 said: ‘Are you trying to say that we are responsible for
16 Auschwitz? Ourselves?’ And I said, ‘Well, the short
17 answer is yes'”.
18 MR IRVING: “The short answer is yes”. And?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “The short answer I have to say is yes. If you had
20 behaved differently over the intervening 3,000 years” —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have left out bits, have you not, the whole way
22 through that? You left out four passages from that?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we have been through all this
24 before. We are going to resume at five past two and
25 I hope you will move on.
26 MR IRVING: With respect, my Lord, he should not have been
. P-113
1 allowed to read out the truncated version again.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Five past two.
3 (The Luncheon Adjournment)
Part III: Professor Richard Evans’ Cross-Examination by David Irving continued, Afternoon Session (114.4 to 215.26)
Section 114.14 to 145.9
4 (2.05 p.m.)
5 Professor Evans, recalled.
6 Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
8 MR IRVING: My Lord, I anticipate that in the rest of this
9 afternoon we will get through as far as the
10 Reichskristallnacht and well into it, in fact.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
12 MR IRVING: That is certainly my aim. In other words, we will
13 definitely manage that.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
15 MR IRVING: (To the witness): Professor Evans, on page 171 you
16 quoted this passage. I am not going back to that
17 passage. I have one problem with that quotation you gave
18 us in paragraph 56 — you provided no source for it?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is oversight on my part. The source is given on
20 page 7 of my answers to your written questions, your
21 questions of 2nd January. That is video tape 225,
22 interview in Key West, Florida, 1996, just 33 minutes into
23 the interview.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Tape 225?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have we got that?
26 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, which one is it? I am lost.
. P-114
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tape 225, Key West 1996. Do you want us to
2 look at it, Mr Irving, for context or not?
3 MR IRVING: I will not delay the court. Obviously, I wanted to
4 see what the context was of that and see if there had been
5 any omissions. Professor, when you make omissions from a
6 document, do you always indicate it by ellipses?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course. You will find one there, in fact.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it would be very sloppy not to indicate the omission,
9 would it not?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would be a mistake, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And if I were to do that, of course, you would rightly
12 criticise me?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That would depend on the circumstances. It could either
14 be just an oversight, a misprint, or it could be
15 deliberate falsification, depending on the circumstances.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am anxious to try to shorten your answers. I know that
17 the Welsh are famous for their loquacity, and I hope that
18 this will not be taken by Mr Rampton as yet another
19 example of my racist predilections when I say that, but
20 your answers sometimes do tend to run overboard and his
21 Lordship has given me little assistance in this matter.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, well, I think that is the sort of thing
23 you have to leave to me, Mr Irving.
24 MR IRVING: I am an unskilled cross-examiner, as your Lordship
25 is aware, and if you feel that the witness is overrunning
26 his time, I would be grateful if your Lordship would be
. P-115
1 bring it to the witness’s attention.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course I will. That is one of my jobs and
3 it has not happened yet though.
4 MR IRVING: I say that because we are now going to come to
5 Madagascar briefly at paragraph 57 on page 172. Can
6 briefly say, in your view, whether the Madagascar plan was
7 not a feasible option when the Nazis talked of the
8 Madagascar plan, whether it was a pipe dream or it was a
9 realistic project.
10 MR RAMPTON: Sorry, can I just interrupt? Before we move to
11 Madagascar, my Lord, the reference is, in fact, in K4, tab
12 8. It is an interview called Cover Story on 4th March
13 1997, in fact — that is the date of the programme. It is
14 an Australian television company, and the relevant passage
15 is at page 7 of that transcript.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
17 MR IRVING: Was Madagascar —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, can you pause again? I have a
19 slight problem with my screen.
20 MR RAMPTON: K4, tab 8, page 7.
21 MR IRVING: In that case, before we come to Madagascar, in view
22 of the fact it was an Australian company I was talking to,
23 can I ask you one question? Witness, what is the time
24 difference between Florida and Australia, approximately?
25 Is it about 12 hours?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have no idea actually. I imagine, probably, yes.
. P-116
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: So if an Australian radio station is conducting a live
2 interview in the day time, in fact, you are being
3 telephoned in the middle of the night?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If it is a live interview.
5 MR RAMPTON: No, I am afraid again we have gone way off course
6 somewhere around the end of the world. This is an
7 Australian film crew travelling with Mr Irving in America
8 and doing the interview when they are there.
9 MR IRVING: Right. In other words, this is another of the
10 edited broadcasts which I shall have to pay attention to.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if you want to make a point that
12 the context affects what you said about the Jews bringing
13 it on themselves, then, by all means, go to the full
14 transcript. You have been told where it is. But if you
15 do not make that kind of point, then I think we really
16 ought to get on to Madagascar.
17 MR IRVING: There would be a better time to do it, my Lord, in
18 view of the fact that your Lordship is anxious to make
19 progress. If I were to look at that transcript now, I
20 would have to be provided with a bundle, look it up, sit
21 down and read it and we would lose at least 10 minutes.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So Madagascar?
23 MR IRVING: Madagascar. (To the witness): Was Madagascar a
24 feasible operation, in your view?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the basis of the continued British effective command
26 over the seas, it became clear well into the war that it
. P-117
1 was not. I mean, obviously, it requires the ability to
2 travel across — this is the plan, the solution, the plan
3 to deport the Jews to Madagascar clearly requires command
4 over the seas.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if the war had come to an end and an agreement had
6 been reached with Vichy France or whichever French
7 government was in power?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is getting into extremely hypothetical realms because
9 that makes assumptions about how the war might have come
10 to an end and then about international agreements, and so
11 on.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think the question I am really asking is did the Germans
13 regard it as a feasible operation or was it just baloney?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: At what date? I think that is the relevant
15 part of the question.
16 MR IRVING: At all relevant dates when Madagascar was
17 discussed, in other words, from 1938 in, I think, June
18 when it was first mentioned by Adolf Hitler to Goebbels
19 right the way through to July 24, 1942 when it vanishes
20 from the map of history?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think they certainly took it seriously. There is quite
22 a large amount of discussion about it in 1940 through
23 1941. I think it became increasingly clear in the course
24 of 1941 that the conditions were not right. Of course,
25 the invasion of the Soviet Union changed the picture
26 somewhat and I think by the middle of 1942 it certainly
. P-118
1 was not taken seriously and references to it, I think, can
2 be regarded as camouflage.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were these discussions that you are talking about at
4 Hitler’s level as well?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Including at Hitler’s level, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Including at Hitler’s level. At least for sometime, in
7 your view, the discussions were not baloney, they were
8 meant seriously?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It certainly looks like that from the documents, so
10 whether it was realistic is another matter, but they
11 certainly took it seriously.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not difficult to reconcile that notion with a Nazi
13 ideological desire to exterminate all the Jews they could
14 get their hands on?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, as we know, the Nazi desire to exterminate all the
16 Jews they could get their hands on only became, at least
17 it grew in the course of war. I think while — there are
18 really two answers to that. One is that the systematic
19 extermination of the Jews did not begin until well on into
20 the autumn of 1941, and about the time in which the
21 Madagascar plan began to, as it were, take second rank and
22 then began to fade away.
23 Secondly, of course, I do think that one has to
24 remember that the Madagascar plan, such as it was, I do
25 not think it was ever seriously worked out in detail, was
26 one which deported the Jews across the seas in, one
. P-119
1 presumes, extremely poor conditions, and just dumped them
2 on a large, somewhat inhospitable tropical island in
3 conditions that were entirely unsuited to sustaining a
4 large society of millions of Europeans.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would those conditions have been worse than in a slave
6 labour camp like Auschwitz or better?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept that the conditions in the slave — sorry,
8 I do not accept that Auschwitz was simply a slave labour
9 camp. That is the first thing I would say. The second is
10 that it is very conjectural, but they may well have been
11 comparable certainly in terms of disease, malnourishment.
12 It is sort of a parallel in a way to the ghettoization,
13 I think.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that the population of Madagascar has grown
15 from around 2 million in 1938 to 13 million now?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not see what the relevance that is to — of that is
17 to Nazi plans in 1940 and ’41.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: The final question on this field. What you are saying, in
19 other words, is that Nazi ideology towards exterminating
20 the Jews changed sometime in 1941 from getting them out of
21 sight, effectively, to exterminating them? Is that what
22 you are saying, there was a change in their ideology?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is a sort of continuum. I think that Nazi
24 anti-Semitism always had its murderous elements, as became
25 clear immediately on the invasion of Poland or, indeed, in
26 the Reichskristallnacht and so on. But the systematic
. P-120
1 extermination of European Jews was a policy that only
2 gradually became formulated in the course of 1941 and the
3 early months of 1942.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you turn now to page 173? We will just look very
5 briefly at your four central tenets of Holocaust denial.
6 You think that to be Holocaust denier, you have got to be
7 somebody who says that the number of Jews killed by the
8 Nazis was far less than 6 million? Is that one criterion?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not quite clear about the criteria. Does one have to
11 be a member of each of these four groups or any one of
12 them?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have had this before and the
14 answer is, no, you do not have to be a subscriber to all
15 four views. You can, as it were, adopt one or two of them
16 and you can hold them in a full-blooded way or less so.
17 MR IRVING: So any one would qualify you to be the title.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, you have dealt with this
19 before in your evidence?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have dealt with this before — it is on the transcript,
21 my Lord.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is on the transcript.
23 MR IRVING: Yes, but if his Lordship is right, then his
24 Lordship is, effectively, saying that anybody who says the
25 figure is not 6 million but 5 million or 4 million is a
26 Holocaust denier.
. P-121
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not saying anything. I am saying what
2 Professor Evans said yesterday.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If I may say, sir, what I argued was that you really need
4 all four.
5 MR IRVING: All four?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a package, but that, of course, it is a kind of
7 fluid, and I said earlier on that there are some people
8 who will deny one, deny the other, partially deny one
9 proposition, partially affirm another. It is not
10 something that —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: It sounds to me as though the package is adjusted
12 according to whom you are trying to sling it around the
13 neck of?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, that is not the case.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you are just saying that one has to be a member of
16 all four except in some circumstances when it can be less
17 which seems to be —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, no. What I am saying is that it is a matter of
19 degree and so on, but I would describe Holocaust —
20 I would have no doubt that someone who subscribed to all
21 four propositions was a Holocaust denier in the sense that
22 is generally understood.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And, indeed, appears in Professor Lipstadt’s book.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we rapidly wrap up that passage, the second criterion
26 is that the person says that gas chambers were not used?
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1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: If somebody says they were used in some places but not in
3 other places, does he qualify or —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, no, not if he or she is accurate. I mean, clearly,
5 gas chambers were used in some —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: If somebody says that they were used in a small scale but
7 not on a large scale?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to give you an extremely brief summary of a
9 rather lengthy section of where I go into these in a great
10 deal more detail.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is what is at the root of the case, you appreciate
12 that?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course I do. That is why I have written this section.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, it is quite a brief section and I am trying to
15 establish —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I mean the whole section on Holocaust denial, not this
17 very brief conclusion.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if somebody denies that the gas chambers were used on
19 a mass factories of death basis, but they were used on a
20 smaller scale, wherever, would he be a Holocaust denier?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well I have explained earlier on that this very, that what
22 I mean is that gas chambers were not used for the
23 systematic extermination of large numbers of Jews, that is
24 what…
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: The third criterion is that there was no systematic
26 killing of Europe’s Jews, in other words —-
. P-123
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right, that it was not systematic, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think we all understand what we mean by that.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: If it was haphazard, if somebody accepts it is haphazard
5 but denies it was a government action, State action?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then he qualifies, he is a Holocaust denier. Then the
8 fourth one is the propaganda story, the fact —-
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: — that the Allies invented this story as a propaganda?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. But as you are having difficulty even now in
13 determining to the satisfaction of myself, certainly, and
14 a large number of people in this court, perhaps, exactly
15 what is meant by these four criteria, it is a bit of a
16 vague concept, is it not, but it is like an elephant, you
17 know what it is, you cannot necessarily describe it, is
18 that right?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not having difficulties, Mr Irving.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am having difficulty getting a clear definition
21 from you on any one of these four.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I have been told what the
23 definition is. It is for me to decide whether it is a
24 satisfactory definition, but I am in absolutely no doubt
25 what the definition is. It could not be more clearly set
26 out.
. P-124
1 MR IRVING: You accept that one has to be a member of all four
2 or just one of them?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think I said a few minutes ago when
4 reciting what Professor Evans has said, no, he does not
5 think you have to subscribe to all four view points.
6 MR IRVING: But am I right in believing that it is your
7 Lordship who decides rather than the witness’s
8 definition?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course it is.
10 MR IRVING: Yes. Can we now proceed to “Connections with
11 Holocaust deniers” which is section 3.5, page 174? The
12 burden of the charge you are trying to make here, am
13 I right, is guilt by association? “Tell me who your
14 friends are and I will tell you who you are”, I think is a
15 Spanish expression, is that correct?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not, no.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: You list here a number of names of people who you identify
18 as Holocaust deniers and you say because these people have
19 been seen in the same room as me, effectively, this makes
20 me one too. Is that putting it too simply?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Right. Can we leap straight ahead to page 183 because
23 this, I think, justifies me in doing the leap? Beginning
24 at paragraph 15, we are talking about the institute of
25 Historical Review, is that right?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-125
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you do not consider this is a bona fide Institute at
2 all, do you?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is just comprised of people who have no qualifications
5 and have the wrong views or views you disapprove of?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not say that.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. But what you do make plain at the beginning of this
8 paragraph 15, and I quote: “Irving has denied that he is
9 affiliated to the Institute in any formal capacity, and
10 this is strictly speaking true”?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I go on to say: “He is a member neither of its
12 Board nor of the Editorial Advisory Board of its
13 Journal”. I think it is only fair of me to point that
14 out.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, do you accept that this is true?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: That I have no affiliation whatsoever with that body.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No formal affiliation.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, what other kind of affiliation can there be?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: An informal affiliation.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: What do you mean by informal affiliation? That they send
22 unsolicited materials to me? Is that an informal
23 affiliation?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I go on to describe that in the rest of the
25 paragraph.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: “He has been a frequent visitor”, line 3 on page 184, is
. P-126
1 that correct?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, you have been a frequent visitor.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: “… frequent visitor to the annual conferences organized
4 by the Institute of Historical Review”?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. You spoke.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you estimate how many times in the last 17 years I
7 have visited these conferences to justify the word
8 “frequent”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Why have you chosen 17 as a number?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because it is 17 years.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Since what?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Between — over the period you are talking about.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, I see. Well, it is — you are —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: How many is frequent? 20, 30, 50?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Your contacts of — your speech of speeches —-
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are annual, so it could not be more than
17 17, could it?
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, I can cut to the bottom line, as we say,
19 and say the answer is five. Would you say that the
20 correct number of occasions on which I have attended their
21 annual conference in whatever capacity is five?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, speaking. I say here: “To date you have spoken to
23 audiences at the Institute five times. You spoke at the
24 ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth conferences in
25 succession”. So at that time, therefore, that is in the
26 1990s, I think, am I right, you are —-
. P-127
1 MR IRVING: It is a span of 17 years.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, at that time, that is to say, in the immediate run up
3 to Professor Lipstadt’ book, you were there on an annual,
4 virtually an annual basis. There were also many articles
5 about you in the Journal that the Institute prints and
6 many articles by you.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am picking on this word “frequent” visitor to the annual
8 conferences and it turns out to be five times in 17 years?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You spoke at the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth
10 conferences in succession and at one other conference.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: That sounds like five to me.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is four and one other conference, and at that
13 time you were a frequent visitor. I do not say you are a
14 frequent — I do not say, “He is a frequent visitor at the
15 annual conferences”, I am saying you have been and I
16 then go on to say precisely which conferences you spoke
17 at.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Five times in 17 years does not — but I do not want to
19 keep on hammering this point in otherwise I shall earn a
20 rebuke.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Four times in four years, Mr Irving, that is frequent.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Five times in 17 years is not a frequent visitor, by any
23 reckoning, is it?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Four times in four years is a very frequent visitor,
25 Mr Irving.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What makes you think that the ninth, tenth, eleventh and
. P-128
1 twelfth conferences were on an annual basis?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, you may be — you may have me there. Were they not?
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. But you are assuming that they are?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I thought they were, I must say.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the word “frequent”, in other words, is wrong?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Are you telling me they are not then? Would you like to
7 tell me the dates of those conferences?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are either every two or three years.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So in that case, 17 years, there would be eight, seven or,
10 let me see, eight or nine conferences, so that five visits
11 is actually rather frequent; it is the majority of them,
12 is it not?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that five times in 17 years does not qualify
14 for the word “frequent visitor”?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the point he is making is that if
16 they are every two or three years, you have been to every
17 single one. I mean, that is the result of what you —-
18 MR IRVING: I must have learned English at a different school.
19 The word “frequent” to me does not imply five times in 17
20 years, my Lord.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But, Mr Irving, if you are saying that the conferences
22 took place every two or three years, then in 17 years
23 there can only have been six or seven, or at most eight
24 conferences, and you admitted, you said that you were at
25 five of those, that is almost every one; and that
26 certainly justifies saying that you are a frequent
. P-129
1 visitor. In fact, if that is the case that the
2 conferences were not, as I had thought, annual, then
3 I would have said an “almost 100 per cent attender”, not
4 “frequent visitor”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not a frequent visitor?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Almost 100 per cent attender if they were at greater
7 intervals than one year each. As it is, I say, “He has
8 been a frequent visitor to the annual conferences”. Then
9 I say, I give when these conferences were, the ninth,
10 tenth, eleventh and twelfth conferences in succession.
11 That is frequent to me, that period. I am unclear now as
12 to whether you think the conferences were annual or not.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: The conferences were held (and I can tell you this) I am
14 sure on the basis of once every two years?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And sometimes less frequently.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In that case, in the last 17 years we are talking about
18 majority of the conferences and I think that justifies
19 saying that you were a frequent visitor at them.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Five times is not a frequent visitor and I am sorry to
21 have to keep on —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Five times is a frequent visitor when there have only —-
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is becoming utterly futile —-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — been eight conferences.
25 MR IRVING: Let us move on. We are now moving on. You quite
26 rightly say there have been articles about me in the
. P-130
1 Journal. Are you suggesting that I have in any way
2 engineered these articles about me in the Journal of the
3 Institute?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In the fourth and sixth issues of Volume 13. That shows,
5 I think, that the Journal thought highly of you.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I now start six lines from the bottom: “The first issue
7 of volume 13 included one article by Irving and two others
8 about him. The next issue had another article by Irving,
9 and he also printed two more articles in the first volume
10 of” — have you any evidence that I have on any occasion
11 whatsoever written an article for the Journal?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, we have been through this before, Mr Irving, last
13 Thursday.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and what was the answer?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The answer was that these are edited versions of the
16 speeches you gave at your frequent visits to the
17 Institute’s conferences, and that I presume that these
18 versions appeared as articles in the Journal with your
19 approval and permission since, presumably, they are
20 copyright, its copyrights assigned to you.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Are you suggesting that they appeared without your
23 knowledge and without your permission?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is not the question and you cannot ask me questions,
25 Professor. Are you suggesting that there is no
26 distinction between an article written by an author for a
. P-131
1 journal and a paper written by that journal?
2 MR RAMPTON: I have to say, my Lord, I do find this very
3 trying. Time is passing. I do worry about creatures like
4 Reichskristallnacht and Schlegelberger and all those
5 people down the line. We know from Mr Irving’s own
6 answers in cross-examination that the Journal reprints
7 versions of his speeches which he has edited and approved
8 in advance of publication.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember.
10 MR RAMPTON: It is on the record.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am anxious not to interrupt too much, but
12 Mr Rampton is plainly right.
13 MR RAMPTON: I know that, but I have a duty to the court and
14 also to my clients.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a criticism of you. I think you
16 have been very restrained, but it is very difficult,
17 Mr Irving. I really cannot tell you often enough that
18 I want to get on to the meat of Professor Evans’ report.
19 MR IRVING: I have assured you how far we shall certainly get.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had two full days’ of
21 cross-examination and we still have not got there. We
22 have not even begun.
23 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not responsible for the fact that the
24 instructing solicitors did not instruct the witness to
25 write his report in a way which would be useful to this
26 court.
. P-132
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well —-
2 MR IRVING: I can only cross-examine on the basis of the report
3 which is before your Lordship and myself.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When the Judge tells you time and again that
5 he is not deriving any assistance from the
6 cross-examination on these earlier passages in the report,
7 surely, Mr Irving, it makes sense to get on to what the
8 court wants to hear about.
9 MR IRVING: But if your Lordship were to say to me, “Mr Irving,
10 tear up pages 1 to 250 of the report”, I would willingly
11 have done so.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, on to the next point.
13 MR IRVING: No one would have done so more willingly than I. I
14 have had to devote a lot of very scarce resources to going
15 through these in great deal on the basis that they are
16 before your Lordship also and I cannot allow these —-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me tell you this, Mr Irving, it is the
18 last case I would want to do this, but what sometimes has
19 to happen is that one says after a certain amount of
20 cross-examination, “Right, this is going too slowly. You
21 have X amount of time to complete the cross-examination”.
22 I would be very loath to do that in a case of this kind,
23 but I can see that coming if we do not move to what really
24 is at the heart of Professor Evans’s expert report.
25 MR IRVING: My Lord, I said very clearly yesterday that I was
26 going to ask for two and a half more days. I shall
. P-133
1 certainly keep to that timetable which I think allows
2 possibly sufficient time for re-examination in the
3 remaining half day.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am really interested to hear Professor
5 Evans being cross-examined by you on these points that
6 makes on the historiography.
7 MR IRVING: But he has also made these points on guilt by
8 association, my Lord, and they stand unless I challenge
9 them. He says that Judge Steglisch was once introduced to
10 me at a hotel breakfast, this kind of thing.
11 Page 184, witness. We are still back on 184.
12 You complain about the fact that the IHR sells my books or
13 advertises my books.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not complaining at all. Who am I to complain
15 about that?
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you say that they advertise my books — the second
17 and third lines, the book is obtainable through the
18 Institute.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Look. What he is saying in the whole of that
21 paragraph is that you are closely associated with the
22 IHR. If you want to put to him that you are no more than
23 the occasional speaker at the odd conference, put that and
24 then move on. If that is your case? I do not know what
25 your case is.
26 MR IRVING: It certainly is. Professor Evans, are you familiar
. P-134
1 with any of the other speakers there? Would you agree
2 that John Toland is an occasional speaker at the IHR
3 conferences?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think he has spoken once, to my recollection.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is John Toland a Pulitzer prize winning author on the
6 American literary scene?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Plenty of people have won Pulitzer prizes. It does not
8 mean to say that I think that their views are admirable
9 simply because of that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he a Holocaust denier or right-wing extremist, to your
11 knowledge?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That I do not know presently. I know him only as the
13 author of a biography of Hitler.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that the Canadian liberal
15 journalist and author Jim Back has spoken at the IHR?
16 James Back?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes or no?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I am.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that the Japanese
21 general Hidi Omiki has spoken at the IHR?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just mention James Back because he is an author who
23 has claimed that many, and I go into this on page 186 of
24 my report.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is a Holocaust denier?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is somebody who has written two books now, alleging
. P-135
1 that the Americans murdered six million Germans after the
2 end of the Second World War, that they deliberately killed
3 at least a million German prisoners of war at the end of
4 the Second World War.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Has that book been taken very seriously?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I do not regard him as a serious author and, of
7 course, as I say, his paranoid style of writing based on
8 the manipulation of statistics which historians have
9 easily shown to be totally false, bears a striking
10 resemblance to the pseudo history of the Holocaust
11 deniers, which is no doubt why he has been welcome at
12 their meetings and indeed why you quote his work in your
13 book on Nuremberg.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is a Holocaust denier?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know whether he is or not, but certainly I think
16 his ludicrous —-
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Has he not expressed strong opinions against Holocaust
18 denial, both in the Canadian press and elsewhere?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you can show me documentary evidence of that, I will be
20 prepared to accept it, but not otherwise.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are two other speakers at the IHR, the Japanese general
22 Hidi Omiki, and the CIA senior official, Victor Marcheti,
23 are they Holocaust deniers?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I would need to do to, as it were, make a judgment on
25 the full import of what you are saying there is to see
26 what they actually said at the meetings of the Institute,
. P-136
1 provide documentation of what they said, and if what they
2 said has nothing to do with Holocaust denial, then, either
3 directly or indirectly, I will accept your point. But
4 I do think that Mr Back’s thesis of course, I directly
5 —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not like them, this is plain, right? You do not
7 like the thesis of Mr Jim Back?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not that I do not like them, Mr Irving, it is that
9 they are completely phoney.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you an expert on those matters?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Why do you think that he has alleged that the Americans
12 killed 6 million Germans after the end of the Second World
13 War.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have his books been published by the world’s leading
15 publishers, including St Martin’s Press?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can we please move on? This is a
17 man who says that the Americans killed 6 million Germans.
18 One’s eyebrows rise slightly, do they not?
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not going to go down that particular
20 cul-de-sac and, if I had done, your Lordship would have
21 reprimanded me.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You were suggesting that the man was a
23 respectable historian. I do not know whether he is or he
24 is not, but I really think we must get on, please.
25 MR IRVING: I am in a dilemma there because, if I had taken up
26 that particular red herring, then I would have been
. P-137
1 rightly reprimanded by your Lordship. I have just moved
2 on. Is it right to say therefore that the IHR has a
3 reputation for inviting revisionist speakers with
4 unorthodox views to speak there?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In its own self understanding of revisionism, yes,
6 revisionism in which Holocaust denial is the central
7 element. That not to say of course that every speaker
8 there gives a speech which is purely centrally or wholly
9 concerned with Holocaust denial, but that is what they are
10 about and that is why they invite people like Mr Back.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it is correct to say that sometimes Holocaust deniers
12 speak there, but the fact that people speak there does not
13 make them Holocaust deniers?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, if anyone accepts an invitation to the Institute
15 of Historical Review, it is quite clear to everybody that
16 it is a Holocaust denial Institute with no academic
17 respectability or credentials whatsoever and that
18 therefore, by appearing there, you are approving, at least
19 in part, of what they do.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, if somebody comes and speaks at Caius College, they
21 would be automatically accepting the tenets of all the
22 other professors who have spoken there? Is that the kind
23 of position —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please.
25 MR IRVING: It is such an absurd kind of argument to make that
26 I thought I would highlight its absurdity.
. P-138
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know if that is a question, my Lord.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is.
3 MR IRVING: Page 191, paragraph 4, you state that I published
4 on my website a very lengthy tract by somebody with the
5 pseudonym of Samuel Crowell.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very brief answer: Are you familiar with the difference
8 between publishing something on a website and just putting
9 a link on a website to somebody else’s documents somewhere
10 else in the world, in other words what is called an
11 outlink or hyperlink?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I think I am.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it be the same as being editor of a magazine under
14 the footnote of the magazine saying, readers might be
15 interested in this document by Mr Crowell which they will
16 find in that library somewhere over there? Would that be
17 a comparison?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is a similarity, but of course the link is close in
19 the case of the Internet because you do actually have to
20 trail across to another library or go out to a bookshop to
21 buy the book. You can just flick a switch and it is
22 there.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: But to suggest, as you have, that Irving has published on
24 his website this very lengthy tract is in other words
25 inaccurate? I have posted a link to a document by another
26 author somewhere else.
. P-139
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I understood that it was on the Auschwitz section of your
2 website. My recollection is that that is where I read
3 it. It is on the Auschwitz index, is it not.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you had clicked on it, would you have been surprised to
5 find that you were no longer in my website but somewhere
6 in California?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say I did not realize that, if that is the case.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you are referring to the Auschwitz index, will you
9 agree that that same page also has hyperlinks to
10 organizations like Niscore and Holocaust History Project?
11 Do you know those web sites?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to provide me with a print out so that
13 I could examine it.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I say to you that on those pages you will find a
15 hyperlink to Niscore, do you know what Niscore is?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I know what Niscore is, Mr Irving .
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is Niscore? Is it a body friendly to me?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not. I accepted this on Thursday, Mr Irving.
19 On your website you do include a reference to, or the
20 ability, you say, to make people alert to the fact that
21 there is a Niscore website which gives a contrary view to
22 your own. Indeed, you print the whole text of my own
23 report. That is up on your website. The daily
24 transcripts of this trial are on your website. But you
25 also use your website to disseminate Holocaust denial
26 material, such as that by Samuel Crowell.
. P-140
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is not what I do precisely what a balanced and neutral
2 observer should do? He should provide material on the one
3 side, material on the other side, and easy instantaneous
4 links by Internet to people with a totally contradictory
5 point of view? Is that not what I do? The Holocaust
6 History Project, Niscore, these are web sites with a
7 viewpoint that are completely the opposite and yet I put
8 an instant and easy link to them.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but what you are doing here is suggesting that these
10 are two equal sides of some academic scholarly argument
11 and therefore you, as it were, give yourself credence and
12 respectability by doing that.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your final sentence on that page says, “In other words,
14 Irving is using his website to publicize Holocaust denial
15 material”, but you do agree that I publicize the other
16 side of the story too, do I not?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, you do.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think there is only one side of the story that should
19 be publicised? Is that your viewpoint?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that the Internet should be used to
21 publicise phoney, fake and falsifying material.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would like to see it censored, would you? You would
23 like to have automatic filters installed? Is that what
24 you are saying?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying that at all. I am saying it is your
26 responsibility for what you do.
. P-141
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, to say that I only publicise Holocaust
2 denial material, as you call it —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I do that. I do not say that.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You accept that on my website I also put documents giving
5 the other point of view?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think he said that two or three times.
7 MR IRVING: Yes. Thank you very much. Can you now turn to
8 page 193? I am now going to look briefly at the DVU, the
9 Deutsche Volks-Union, the German People’s Union. Can you
10 estimate approximately how long that political
11 organization has been active in Germany? About 20 years
12 or 30 years?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My Lord, I am not the expert on this. I understand there
14 is another expert report on this.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that Professor Funke?
16 MR IRVING: Yes. That is why I am only going to question you
17 briefly.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is coming. I think he is a better chap to
19 ask about DVU.
20 MR IRVING: I am only going to question him very briefly, my
21 Lord.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am only concerned with it here in so far as it is
23 connected with or purveys Holocaust denial.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not seem to me the best point in the
25 world anyway, so let us move on and leave that for
26 Professor Funke.
. P-142
1 MR IRVING: Just the last line of that paragraph, my Lord, in
2 case Professor Funke does not raise it. “Mr Irving had
3 also been asked by the DVU ‘to do lucrative research in
4 the Berlin Document Centre'”. That is a quotation from my
5 diary. Is that right, May 19th, 1984?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: About 16 years ago. Are you familiar with the lucrative
8 research that Dr Frey of DVU asked me to do in the Berlin
9 Document Centre?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Remind me.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it right that the Berlin Document Centre at that time
12 was an American government organization which held the
13 entire biographical records on all the top Nazis?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Millions and millions of them?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. A lot, anyway.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it evident from my diary and from the papers that have
18 been put before you that the research that Dr. Frey and
19 the DVU asked me to was to weasel out the ex Nazis in the
20 German government, get hold of their biographical records
21 showing they were members of the Nazi party, and is this a
22 despicable thing to have done, or in any way would you
23 wish to criticise that kind of operation?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends for the purposes for which they want to do it.
25 For all I know, they may want to do it to make contact
26 with them and applaud them.
. P-143
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the spirit of his Lordship’s admonition, I shall move
2 on. Just briefly though, you do accept that the German
3 People’s Union has at all times been a legal body and has
4 never ever come up against the legal authorities in
5 Germany?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think this is more a matter for Professor Funke, really
7 but I understand that it has been under constant
8 observation by the Germans, or for a considerable time
9 under observation by the German Office for the Protection
10 of the Constitution at various land branches of that, as
11 I say, an extreme right-wing organization.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 195, we are now on a Mr Anthony Hancock. Again, I am
13 not going to deal with him in any detail because
14 I understand that I am going to be cross-examined on
15 Mr Hancock so that is probably the right time to deal with
16 that unless your Lordship feels I should fill in any of
17 the detail. I am only concerned with the fact that you
18 drag in not only Anthony Hancock, but his father, saying
19 that he was a former member of Oswald Mosley’s
20 blackshirts. Should this be held against him?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I seem to remember that, when I was last in the High Court
23 30 years ago, the judge was Mr Justice Lawton, and he had
24 also been a member of that organization before the war.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My own view of this is, if may say so,
26 Professor Evans, by all means criticise Mr Irving for his
. P-144
1 relationship with Anthony Hancock if he is a member of the
2 National Front and so on, but I cannot for life of me see
3 what relevance his father’s membership of the blackshirts
4 is.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am happy to have that left out. It is of no great
6 importance to my report.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It is gratuitous and I personally do not think it has
8 any significance at all, so I am entirely with you,
9 Mr. Irving, if I may say so.
Section 145.10-164.23
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I understood that both of them published, Did 6 million
11 really die, by Richard Harwood?
12 MR IRVING: What connection has that with me?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a Holocaust denial book and you have an
14 association with Anthony Hancock.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So a printer prints a Holocaust denial book and this is
16 somehow linked immediately to me. Is this the way you
17 have built up your evidence?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. You have an association with Mr Hancock.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, because his father — is that not what the Nazis
20 called sippenhaft, if somebody in a family has done
21 something wrong, you arrest the whole family?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me read the passage from my report: “Anthony Hancock
23 junior Anthony Hancock hired the venue and distributed
24 tickets for a ‘revisionist’ seminar in London on 4th July
25 1992 in which Irving spoke. Hancock’s Historical Review
26 Press printed Irving’s newsletter Focal Point in the early
. P-145
1 1980s and Hancock was filmed at a Holocaust denial meeting
2 in Munich at which Irving was a guest of honour, and there
3 were various mentions in your diary of the older Hancock
4 who is offering funds and facilities to publish the
5 Churchill biography”. I am simply trying to establish
6 there that you have connections with these two Holocaust
7 deniers.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: This word “Holocaust denier” has become quite frequently
9 fixed in your vocabulary, has it not, 300 times in this
10 report alone?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I was asked, Mr Irving, to comment on that.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not rise to the bait.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, we have been through that many times before,
14 my Lord.
15 MR IRVING: Everybody who is sinister is suddenly called a
16 Holocaust denier and it begins to grate after a time. Can
17 you look at paragraph 11 now? This is the next
18 gentleman.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will not rise to that, Mr Irving, on his Lordship’s
20 instructions.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Here we are: “Perhaps the most sinister of the Holocaust
22 deniers with whom Irving has had extensive and long term
23 contacts was General Otto Ernst Remer”. Is that still
24 your view?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the way to cross-examine, if I may
26 say, on this sort of allegation is, I do not know what the
. P-146
1 facts are, but, Professor Evans, do you realize that I
2 have only met the man twice, or whatever? Asking him if
3 it is still his view is not going to help. Just put what
4 you say is wrong with the proposition that you have had
5 long term contacts with him. That is really the quickest
6 way of dealing with it.
7 MR IRVING: Will you turn to page 91 of bundle F, please. Is
8 that a page from my diary dated July 22nd 1989?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, which page?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: 91 or thereabouts.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Something may have gone wrong with the
12 bundle.
13 MR IRVING: It has. Towards the end it has become a bit
14 screwed up. It will be at the end somewhere.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I am sorry, I do not seem to have it.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Bundle F?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think 91, oddly enough, seems to be
18 missing.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I do not have it, my Lord.
20 MR IRVING: It will be one of the last two or three pages, a
21 page headed July 22nd 1989.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not have it. I think it should be after
23 the Spectator letter, and it is not. Some people have
24 it. I am sorry, I just do not have it.
25 MR IRVING: The content is almost immaterial. Have you found
26 it, Professor?
. P-147
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I have not, but I am familiar with it.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a one page entry from my diary July 22nd 1989. Does
3 it refer to my driving to a place called Vlotho, and
4 meeting a general called Remer?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. If it helps, this is dealt with in my written
6 responses. It would hurry things up a bit.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now I come to the question which his Lordship wishes me to
8 ask. Will you agree that this is the only one time or
9 occasion on which I have ever met General Remer and had a
10 conversation with him?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I will withdraw the “extensive and long term
12 contacts”. You had contacts with him in 1989 at that
13 particular occasion that you mention. There Remer was
14 present at Munich on 21st April 1990 when you were
15 speaking. You were to have spoken to a meeting which was
16 cancelled, a meeting alongside side Remer in 1991.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry to halt your flood of rhetoric but can I read
18 out to you your first sentence of paragraph 11, please?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You had plenty of close and repeated contacts with—-
20 MR RAMPTON: I do believe that Mr Irving is occasionally guilty
21 of discourtesy. My Lord. I would not interrupt a witness
22 like that in that aggressive—-
23 MR IRVING: I have to interrupt, Mr Rampton, because otherwise
24 —-
25 MR RAMPTON: I am speaking to his Lordship, Mr Irving. Please
26 remain quiet. I am making an objection to the way in
. P-148
1 which Mr Irving is attempting to harrass the witness.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The objection is entirely well founded.
3 Would you like to pick it up where you left off, Professor
4 Evans, which was you were talking of a meeting in 1991.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and you had repeated contacts with Karl Philip, who
6 was Remer’s assistant in 1989 to 1991, page 1967. I
7 mention the meeting in Munich again, and of course your
8 Action Report website carried an obituary praising Remer
9 as loyal to the old cause. So what I think I say I is
10 that I withdraw “extensive and long term contacts” and
11 I would say that you were in contact with General Remer in
12 the period 1989 to 1991 1.
13 MR IRVING: Can I now read into the record therefore the
14 sentence which you are withdrawing: “Perhaps the most
15 sinister of the Holocaust deniers with whom Irving has had
16 extensive and long term contacts was General Otto Ernst
17 Remer”, and it turns out I had a conversation with him
18 only once. As your Lordship will see from the diary
19 entry, it was an entirely proper conversation where I
20 interviewed him for the purpose of the Goebbels book and
21 all the rest is waffle.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have said I would withdraw “extensive and long term”. I
23 hope that satisfies you.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: On 197, five lines from the bottom, you say: “He (Irving
25 in other words), was active” —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, sorry. That is a mistake. That is Remer.
. P-149
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are not suggesting that I was active in the HIAG?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. That is a misunderstanding on your part, Mr Irving.
3 It refers back to Remer early in the sentence.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: I continue: “He was active in the HIAG, an organisation
5 for ex members of the SS with which Irving also had
6 contacts”.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now what on earth is the source for that particular
9 allegation?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The February 1979 issue of the HIAG house magazine Der
11 Frewillige, volunteer, carries an interview with you by
12 someone called Joachim Cannicht, which I presume is a
13 pseudonym, and one presumes therefore that contact with
14 the magazine and thus with its parent organization were
15 necessary in order to set up and carry out the interview
16 unless you are telling me you did not give the interview
17 or you were not aware of who was doing it.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: So a journalist does or does not have an interview with
19 me, which he then passes on to a magazine which publishes
20 it, which you say has contacts with the HIAG and out of
21 that connection you say I had contacts with the HIAG. In
22 other words, if I gave an interview to the Tablet, would I
23 have contacts with the Pope? Is what you are suggesting?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is very different. This is the house
25 magazine of the Waffen SS Veterans Association, Mr Irving.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is exactly the same, is it not?
. P-150
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not exactly the same.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: If a journalist comes and speaks to me and asks me for an
3 interview, and I give him an interview, and he then passes
4 that interview on to a magazine which is called Der
5 Freiwillige, which I have never heard of from start to
6 finish, and you say that that is the house magazine of
7 HIAG, which may or may not be true, and you say this is
8 evidence of me having contacts (in the plural) with HIAG?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I assume that someone must have set up the interview
10 and that then you must have had the interview. Is this in
11 the court’s record, because I have a photocopy of this
12 here. This is another one of my written answers. I am
13 not quite sure why we are going through all these written
14 answers to your written questions, I do not accept that
15 you were not aware of who was doing the interview or where
16 it was going to be published.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you are suggesting that I have contacts with HIAG,
18 which is a pretty serious and almost indeed a repugnant
19 allegation to make. You are saying I do not have just the
20 one contact through a journalist but I have contacts in
21 the plural with them. You have already withdrawn the
22 previous part of this sinister allegation about being a
23 contact with a sinister denier, Mr Remer, and it turns out
24 that this contact too just turns out to be an interview
25 with a journalist?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it is just a journalist, Mr Irving,
. P-151
1 otherwise why would he have adopted what appears to be
2 —-
3 MR IRVING: What you think is neither here nor there. It is not
4 evidence.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please, Mr Irving, there is no point in
6 asking questions if you constantly interrupt the answers.
7 I expect you have forgotten what the question is; I have
8 certainly forgotten.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. This is not just any old journalist who then gives
10 you an interview and then kind of hawks it around until he
11 somehow, by some extraordinary chance, comes across the
12 house magazine of the Waffen SS Veterans Association and
13 manages to find a spot for it there. This is clearly
14 somebody who is acting on behalf of this organization and
15 its house magazine who comes and interviews you.
16 MR IRVING: Then you invite two further questions. Have you
17 found in my private diaries, to which of course you had
18 complete access for the purposes of this trial, any
19 suggestion of any contact between myself and the HIAG or
20 any of its officials whatsoever?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I have not. That does not mean to say of course that
22 there were not any.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you found in all my files of correspondence, to which
24 of course you have also had complete access by way of
25 discovery, any suggestion of contact between myself and
26 the HIAG whatsoever?
. P-152
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, but it is the sort of thing you would like to keep
2 quiet, is it not?
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: The sort of thing I would like to keep quiet? Are you
4 suggesting that I have destroyed —-?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have just denied all knowledge of this magazine and
6 this interview, and you describe it as “some journalist”
7 who came to you without your knowing what the source was
8 and where he was going to place the interview.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: By your reference to “the sort of thing I would like to
10 keep quiet”, are you alleging that I have destroyed
11 materials instead of properly discovering them?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not understand that to be the
13 allegation.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
15 MR IRVING: Because it is a very serious allegation to make.
16 In fact, it is a criminal charge.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying you destroyed materials, Mr Irving.
18 MR IRVING: Destroying evidence instead of producing it for
19 discovery.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have no evidence that you have destroyed any.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have no evidence whatsoever that I have destroyed
22 material, rather than produce it for discovery?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He did not say that.
24 MR RAMPTON: What he said was it does not appear in the diary
25 and he is not surprised it does not, considering what a
26 tainted piece of information it is.
. P-153
1 MR IRVING: That is not what he said. We were talking about
2 the letters.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: As a matter of fact, it is, Mr Irving, but
4 I am not going spend time reading back the transcript to
5 you because I am very anxious that we move on.
6 MR IRVING: The witness has referred to the obituary of General
7 Remer. Can I ask that his Lordship be shown the actual
8 text of the obituary to General Remer which I published?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is a reason for my doing so, yes.
10 MR IRVING: Because he says I published an obituary of him
11 praising him. In fact, I made it quite plain that he is a
12 reprobate and an unreconstructed Nazi, and I think that
13 words like that should be before the court.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I suppose, yes, if you want me to look
15 at it.
16 MR IRVING: Unless your Lordship wishes to move on, in which
17 case we can move on.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. If you say that is wrong, I had better
19 look at it.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I just read it then? It is quite short.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: General Remer is dead. “Famed German Army General Otto
23 Ernzt Remer, who was forced into exile by Bonn in 1994,
24 died in Spain 1985 on October 4th. Born in Brandenborg on
25 December 18, 1912 Remer played the key role in crushing
26 the uprising against Adolf Hitler by disgruntled officers
. P-154
1 and disaffected aristocrats on July 20th 1924 .
2 Originally sent by the plotters to arrest propaganda
3 minister Dr Goebbels, he learned that Hitler had survived
4 the bomb, recognised His Master’s voice on the phone, and
5 acted swiftly against the plotters. His troops put them to
6 death by firing squad in Berlin a few hours later.
7 Described by baffled newspaper men as an unreconstructed
8 Nazi, Remer remained loyal to the old cause. In 1950 he
9 founded the socialist Reichs party. In March 1952 he was
10 jailed for three months for slandering the July 1944
11 plotters as traitors. The SRP was banned. He allowed his
12 name to be used by German revisionists publishing the
13 Remer despatch in 1994, sentenced to two years jail
14 despite his medals for heroism, advancing years and
15 illness. He was wheelchair bound and breathed with an
16 oxygen pump. He took refuge in Spain. The Spanish
17 government resisted repeated demands by German prosecutors
18 for his extradition, saying that his “offences” did not
19 exist as such under Spanish law. He is survived by his
20 widow Marie Oberstein.”
21 MR IRVING: So I draw attention to the fact that he founded
22 this neo-Nazi party, the Reichs party, and I say that he
23 was described as an unreconstructed Nazi, and you left
24 that out in the references that you published in your
25 report.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: By baffled newspaper men.
. P-155
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think the tenor of that obituary is positive, that is my
3 reading of it.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Proceed now to paragraph 15, please, on page 198, the last
5 sentence on that line. You say that the activities which
6 led to the imprisonment of my friend Gunter
7 Deckert included translating a lecture”.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have got this.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that Gunter Deckert served a
10 seven year prison sentence for translating that lecture?
11 Do you approve of that?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure what the question is meant to elucidate.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just answer the question. Are you aware that he served a
14 seven year prison sentence?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a fair enquiry. So what?
16 MR IRVING: It goes indirectly to the political situation in
17 Germany where all the historians are encouraged to write
18 history one way, and they are sent to prison for seven
19 years if they breathe a word in the other direction or if
20 they even translate a lecture, my Lord.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that has anything to do with
22 this case.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Deckert is not an academic historian. He is Federal
24 Chairman of the National Democratic Party, which is an
25 extreme right-wing political organization in Germany in
26 the early 1990s. He has a number of convictions for
. P-156
1 incitement to racial hatred, insulting the memory of the
2 dead, slandering the Chairman of the Central Council of
3 Jews in Germany, and other similar offences. The
4 activities which led to his imprisonment, I say, included
5 translating a lecture.
6 MR IRVING: Are you answering the question or just making a
7 speech?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am, because you have misrepresented what I said in my
9 report yet again Mr Irving. The activities which led to
10 his imprisonment included translating a lecture given in
11 1991 by Fred Leuchter, denying existence of gas chambers
12 at Auschwitz. Then I quote you, “Dear Gunter”, you write
13 to him, “I am shocked about what the police state has done
14 to you yet again”. You describe him as a freedom fighter
15 and so on, defender of this great cause, which presumably
16 is the cause of Holocaust denial.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say, “presumably is Holocaust denial”?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What else?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this just your interpolation?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What is this great cause that you write about or speak
21 about?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am only going to ask you one question. Do you approve
23 of people being imprisoned for translating?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you do not need to answer that question.
25 MR IRVING: Exactly. I do not really want to ask questions
26 about Deckert here. I think this is not the appropriate
. P-157
1 place to ask questions about Deckert.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we can move on.
3 MR IRVING: I was rather shocked that he was allowed to
4 continue just reading out the whole of that paragraph. In
5 paragraph 16 you summarize. You say: “In general,
6 therefore, Irving’s close association with virtually all
7 the most prominent Holocaust deniers in several different
8 countries demonstrates once more that he is to be counted
9 amongst their number”. How many have you actually dealt
10 with in this chapter? About five people?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Goodness. Do you really want me to count, Mr Irving?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of the order of five or ten? I am not counting their
13 fathers, just the actual people.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think the senior Hancock is a Holocaust denier. Eleven,
15 I think.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Eleven.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are not very many of these people.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: There are not very many, exactly, and we have already
19 discovered that I had no contact with Mr Ahmed Rami, who
20 is paragraph 13.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have dealt with Mr Rami.
22 MR IRVING: I am just saying, my Lord. I am just knocking some
23 off this 13.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We not going to go back through all of them.
25 MR IRVING: We have discovered that General Remer in fact was
26 only talked to once. This is the quality of the evidence
. P-158
1 I am up against. This grandiose closing sentence,
2 “Irving’s close association with virtually all the most
3 prominent Holocaust deniers”.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is cross-examination, Mr Irving, not a
5 speech. So move on to your next question, if you would?
6 MR IRVING: Then on page 200, you conclude at 3.6.1.: “Not
7 everyone who has studied Irving’s writings and speeches in
8 the 1990s has reached the conclusion that he has become a
9 consistent and undeviating Holocaust denier”. You then
10 mention one or two cases, do you not, and immediately bang
11 them on the head for it?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I felt it fair to mention that. I did not want to
13 suppress that fact.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept what they say?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Halfway down that paragraph you say: “Moreover, in the
17 course of his conversation with Rosenbaum”, now he is a
18 Jewish writer, is that correct?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That had not occurred to me actually. If you say he is
20 Jewish, I do not usually think about whether people are
21 Jewish or not when I read their writings.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Answer my question. Is it likely that if he is a Jewish
23 writer he is probably not going to be disposed to me in a
24 very friendly way initially until he gets to know me, is
25 that correct?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it seems to be — I do not accept that, no.
. P-159
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Moreover, in the course of his conversation with
2 Mr Rosenbaum, Irving admitted”, you say, “of some
3 Holocaust deniers ‘that there are certain organizations
4 that propagate these theories which are cracked
5 anti-Semites'”. Does that show that I am a great admirer
6 of these organizations?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do not know. You do not say, or Rosenbaum does
8 not say, what organizations you are referring to, so it is
9 impossible to guess.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you would not expect a Holocaust denier like David
11 Irving roundly to dismiss other organizations of Holocaust
12 deniers as “cracked anti-Semites”?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do you do not mention what those organizations are. It
14 would be more plausible, more plausible if you did.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, what organizations do you think I was talking about
16 there.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you not put to the witness which
19 organizations you…
20 MR IRVING: My Lord, that was going to be the follow up
21 question when he answered, “No, I do not know which ones”
22 and I was going to say could it possibly be — would I
23 have been talking about the Institute of Historical
24 Review?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You do not mention them.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Would I have been talking —-
. P-160
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is impossible to tell who you are talking about.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you surprised to hear somebody —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I say here, you say this without actually saying who
4 you meant by this or what kind of damage or harm you are
5 referring to —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it surprise you to hear that —-
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — the damage done to you.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: — I regard a number of these Holocaust deniers as
9 “cracked anti-Semites”?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not read anything that you have written that refers
11 specifically to any specific individual or organization as
12 being “cracked anti-Semites”, only these very, very
13 general statements which really have very little value
14 because they have no precision, no reference.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: They have no precision, but this is as represented by a
16 neutral observer who has spoken to a lot of authors, and
17 do you accept that — are you surprised to read in a book
18 that I have described Holocaust deniers as “cracked
19 anti-Semites”?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have — some Holocaust deniers. What you say, “there
21 are certain organizations that propagate these theories
22 which are cracked anti-Semites” but it is impossible to
23 say who you are referring to.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, Rosenbaum’s book was reviewed, thank goodness, by
25 Norman Stone who pointed out that Rosenbaum is yet another
26 of these ignorant, negligent reviewers whom have met
. P-161
1 before, is that is correct; that he had not done his
2 homework and he did not know enough to write such a book
3 properly? Is that the next paragraph’s burden, 3.6.2?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just have a look. He says that stone was critical
5 of Rosenbaum. He said he could not follow subjects, he
6 had misunderstood one of books he was writing about. That
7 is certainly the case, yes. It is a critical review.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So why did you mention the Rosenbaum book because
9 you do accept that there are serious authors out there who
10 accept that I am not a Holocaust denier and that I do have
11 differentiated views and that I regard Holocaust deniers
12 as “crack pots” and you could not get passed this?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Nobody says that you regard Holocaust deniers as crack
14 pots. What you say is that there are certain
15 organizations, unnamed, that propagate these theories
16 which are cracked anti-Semites. You do not say that all
17 Holocaust deniers are crack pots.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it matter what the name of the organization is if I
19 just refer to Holocaust —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course it does because this is so vague it is
21 completely meaningless. It is just — I mean, one could
22 read this as just some kind of alibi. It has no reference
23 at all. It is a meaningless statement unless you actually
24 say who you are talking about.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: I could hardly be more specific.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Put to him the organizations that you regard
. P-162
1 as consisting of cracked anti-Semites. Is the IHR one of
2 them?
3 MR IRVING: I did, my Lord, and he waffled. We did not get a
4 clear answer.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me say —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So your case is — I want to be clear about
7 this — you do regard the IHR as an organization
8 consisting of cracked anti-Semites, is that your case?
9 MR IRVING: I think that the correct thing to say there is that
10 it consists of some elements which are cracked
11 anti-Semites. I do not think I would wish to brand an
12 entire organization. As far as I know, some of the
13 officers of that organization, I would regard them as
14 cracked anti-Semites. That is the point I wanted to make
15 plain in my discussion with Mr Rosenbaum, but I
16 would respectfully submit —-
17 MR RAMPTON: I would like to know who those people are. It has
18 some bearing on what is to come.
19 MR IRVING: Your time will come in cross-examination,
20 Mr Rampton, to ask that question, and it would be helpful
21 if you did not interrupt. I would say that —-
22 MR RAMPTON: Perhaps it would have more value, my Lord, if it
23 came directly now, otherwise we may find a list composed
24 later.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, if I may say so, Mr Rampton, since
26 Mr Irving has taken the point that he does not want to say
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1 at this stage in the course of his cross-examination of
2 Professor Evans, I think he is entitled to say that.
3 MR RAMPTON: All right.
4 MR IRVING: And I would respectfully submit —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: However, Mr Irving, if you were, of course — if you do
6 think that the certain organizations that propagate these
7 theories and certain organizations, not individuals, which
8 are cracked anti-Semites and if the Institute of
9 Historical Review is an organization which is cracked
10 anti-Semites, then it is extraordinary that you should
11 have spoken so regularly at their meetings in the course
12 of the 1990s.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you consider this view, as you just stated, expressed
14 to Mr Rosenbaum, as a kind of alibi that I just use to
15 people like him?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, in its vagueness, it sounds rather like that to me,
17 but I am speculating there. I am simply quoting your
18 statements here.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this the only occasion when I have expressed such a
20 view, to your knowledge, having had complete access to all
21 my papers?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think there is one other occasion, but I cannot recall
23 exactly where it is.
Section 164.24 to 185.10
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I suggest you look at page 90 of my bundle, please?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: A letter to “Dear Connie” — does your Lordship have it?
. P-164
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, when you say your bundle, do you mean
2 F?
3 MR IRVING: Bundle F, yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 90, that is a letter.
5 MR IRVING: “Dear Connie””?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have this, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Dear Miss Kadashka” I have got at page 90.
8 MR IRVING: No, it has to be “Dear Connie”.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mine is 89, but it does not matter.
10 MR IRVING: Is this letter dated June 24th 1988?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this about two months after I read the Leuchter report,
13 in other words, two months after the Zundel conference —
14 the Zundel trial?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The trial.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You will have to remind.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right. Take it from me.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that right? OK.
20 MR IRVING: Can I read to you the final paragraph or the bits
21 thereof? First of all, looking at the address at the
22 bottom, am I writing to my publishers, William Morrow &
23 Company in New York —-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: — who published the Goring biography. “I have been
26 invited to speak as a guest speaker at a right wing
. P-165
1 function in Los Angeles next February. They have offered
2 a substantial fee and all my expenses and until now I have
3 adopted a policy of never refusing an invitation if the
4 organizers meet my terms, namely free speech and fat fee.
5 On this occasion I intend to give the audience a piece of
6 my mind about some of their more lunatic views”. Does it
7 say that?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does indeed, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in other words, I do not just express views about
10 crack pot anti-Semites and crack pot ideas or whatever as
11 an alibi, but on the evidence of this letter (which
12 I found in the early hours of this morning by chance) on
13 quite a few occasions I have expressed robust views about
14 people I associate with?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This, Mr Irving, is not evidence of what you actually said
16 at this meeting, if you indeed went to it. It is simply a
17 letter to a publisher, obviously. You do not say what
18 their lunatic views are and there is no evidence here that
19 you have gave them a piece of mind.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who was the right-wing organization holding a
21 meeting in?
22 MR IRVING: That was the IHR, my Lord. That was precisely this
23 body, the Institute of Historical Review, who at that time
24 were under different management, if I can put it like
25 that.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So the lunatic views attached to the old
. P-166
1 management, not to the present regime, is that it?
2 MR IRVING: I shall be submitting to your Lordship at the
3 proper occasion that as the years passed, I tried to
4 persuade them to adopt a more serious profile, to invite
5 respected historians as well as more unorthodox
6 revisionist historians and try to straighten their act
7 out, if I can put it like that. There is correspondence
8 —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you did have an association that enabled
10 you to bring that sort of pressure to bear, did you?
11 MR IRVING: Oh, yes. They looked to me. They were constantly
12 wooing me and I wrote them letters saying, “In my view,
13 you should do this and you should do that”, and I am sure
14 they got similar advice from other people.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
16 MR IRVING: Thank you. So do you accept that on the basis of
17 those two letters I had a robust attitude towards the
18 Institute which indicated I was in no manner travelling in
19 their tow or in their wake?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, what is the other letter?
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, on the basis of the Ron Rosenbaum —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, yes, the interview.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: — matter and this letter.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say that on the basis of having read your
25 speeches or articles in the Institute and its Journal that
26 you did come to them in the 80s for the first time that
. P-167
1 you went to speak at the Institute with what seems to me
2 like a certain apprehension of the fact that your views
3 would differ somewhat from theirs, but this disappears, in
4 my view, entirely in the 1990s when you were a regular
5 attender at their conferences and a regular speaker.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: At their conferences I regularly rubbed their noses in
7 what actually happened in the Holocaust and that I read
8 out the Bruns’ interrogation report in all its gory detail
9 of the shootings on the Eastern Front, and that I was held
10 up to criticism by some of their members for doing this?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You read out parts of the Bruns’ report, excluding the
12 reference to Hitler’s order which we went through sometime
13 ago in this trial. You have a very selective version of
14 it. I think you did say at the beginning of this trial
15 you had not actually read it out before.
16 I do not deny that there were some arguments in
17 discussion (as there always is in discussions) after your
18 speeches, but in the 1990s I think you were purveying the
19 same views as they had on the whole. There were some
20 minor differences between yourself, in particular,
21 Professor Faurisson, but your speeches to the Institute of
22 Historical Review did not meet with jeers and cat calls,
23 as I recall.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: They did not meet with jeers and cat calls. Do you
25 believe that a body like the Institute of Revisionist
26 Historians, or whatever they call themselves, performs any
. P-168
1 useful function at all?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that without the existence of such a body
4 there would have been such major concessions in the
5 Holocaust story that have occurred since the end of World
6 War II?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, to the question and no to the premise.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have there been major concessions in the story since the
9 end of World War II?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to tell me exactly what they were and
11 demonstrate that they were based on the work of the
12 Institute of Historical Review before I accepted that.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it true that the Israeli authority at Yad Vashim now
14 officially agree that the Nazis never manufactured soap
15 from bodies?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that has long been the case. Indeed —-
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you put a date on it?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I cannot, no.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was it about 1989?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to see documentation of that.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that the figure of Auschwitz has been brought
22 down from 4 million to 1.5 million?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have already been through that.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We had this, I think, last Thursday.
25 MR IRVING: I am just trying to look at the concessions that
26 have been made largely as a result of revisionist
. P-169
1 agitation, if I can put it like that?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think, Mr Irving, that that was the result of the
3 work of the Institute of Historical Review which was not
4 founded at the time that that number was changed.
5 MR IRVING: Have you read the work of Michael Berenbaum — I am
6 sorry, of Aberhard Jackeln who states that it was not
7 until 1977 that the whole of this Holocaust research
8 industry began, that the historians started doing their
9 job?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think we have already been through that, I think, when
11 you cross-examined Professor Browning, that certainly
12 I would need to see a copy of that statement by Professor
13 Jackeln, but if he does say that, then he is certainly not
14 correct.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would not agree, therefore, that the revisionists,
16 having created the Aunt Sally which the genuine historians
17 needed, the scholars needed, you do not agree with the
18 premise that the scholar would not have done the job as
19 rigorously as they have had to?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not at all, no. I have to say, on the whole, I do not
21 serious scholars pay any attention to the work of the
22 Institute of Historical Review at all.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I wonder whether the time has not
24 come to move on to what is important which is page 205,
25 what you have written about Hitler.
26 MR IRVING: Well, I, in fact, leapt on to page 207, my Lord.
. P-170
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
2 MR IRVING: Would you look at that quotation at the top of page
3 208?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 208? Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Have you left anything out of that quotation, do you
6 think?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not that I can see.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is about the euthanasia programme, is it not?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I start reading about where it says: “About a quarter
11 of a million hospital beds”, I am going to read it from
12 the book which is the actual source, which is the 1977
13 edition at page 20?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have a copy, please? Page 20?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. “About a quarter of a million hospital beds were
16 required” — this is the actual text — “for Germany’s
17 mental institutions for Germany’s disproportionately large
18 insane population, a result of centuries of lax and
19 indiscriminate marriage laws: of some 7 or 800,000 people
20 all told, about 10 per cent were permanently
21 institutionalized. Others were in and out of hospitals.
22 They occupied bed space and the attention of skilled
23 medical personnel which Hitler now urgently needed for the
24 treatment of the casualties of his coming campaigns”. You
25 missed passages out without indicating it, have you not?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just have a look at this.
. P-171
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Three passages have vanished?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me try to sort this out. Certainly, those two
3 passages, the passage you read and this passage, would
4 seem to indicate that. Now, here I refer to, it is
5 actually pages 227 to 8 of the 1991 edition that I am
6 citing, as you can see from the bottom of the previous
7 page. Could I have the 1991 edition, please? We have 227
8 to 8. No, it is the wrong one. 227 to 8.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: About a third of the way down.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right, let me read this from page 227 of the 1991
11 edition: “About a quarter of a million hospital beds were
12 required for Germany’s disproportionate large insane
13 population: of some 7 or 800,000 victims of insanity all
14 told, about 10 per cent were permanently
15 institutionalized. They occupied bed space and the
16 attention of skilled medical personnel which Hitler now
17 urgently needed for the treatment of the casualties of his
18 coming campaigns”.
19 So I have quoted absolutely correctly from the
20 source that I give without any omissions at all.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have not actually realized that, in fact, the
22 original quotation was fuller and you preferred the
23 abbreviated version to base your —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, really! What sort of a point is
25 that?
26 MR IRVING: Page 209.
. P-172
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I just say, Mr Irving, I think you are entirely right
2 to condense that quotation because the reference to lax
3 marriage laws in 1977 is entirely wrong. German marriage
4 laws up to the middle of the 19th century, in most of
5 south Germany, at least, were extremely strict. As you
6 say yourself, you are condensing all the way along. There
7 is no fault in that.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 209, paragraph 4.1.8 please. This is the Night of
9 the Long Knives?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, could you remind me?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: 4.1.8, 209?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 209? Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: 209, you say in the final sentence of that paragraph
14 4.1.8: “Irving defended the Night of the Long Knives in
15 June 1934″. This is rather like saying I applauded the
16 Holocaust, is it not?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think it is somewhat different.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I “defended the Night of the Long Knives”?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I go on in the next paragraph to outline your views. You
20 say that “the SA was planning to” was underlined —
21 “overthrow Hitler’s government”. “In an act of rare
22 magnanimity Hitler ordered state pensions provided for the
23 next of kin of the people murdered in the Knight of the
24 Long Knives. Even so he began to suffer nightmares and
25 could not sleep” although, in fact, as I point out, Hitler
26 personally marked crosses against the names of
. P-173
1 considerable numbers of people that he ordered to be
2 murdered.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am going to come to that in a minute. The idea of
4 defending the Night of the Long Knives suggests that I
5 defended the murder of people when they were planning a
6 revolution?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the nub of it, of course, is were they planning a
8 revolution or not.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And in any case, and also, of course, the murder, that was
11 done wholly outside the judicial process.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I establish in a biography of Hitler that, in fact,
13 these SA leaders were plotting something, this is not the
14 same as defending their murder, do you agree with that?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is — I am prepared to jettison the word
16 “defending” and say “excusing”. We have been down this
17 road before.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Excusing” is almost as bad as “defending”. But can we
19 now move to the next paragraph where you are saying that
20 the charges were trumped up. Do you not accept that the
21 brown shirt movement were, in fact, planning the overthrow
22 of the Nazi government of Germany?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think the evidence is very thin.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read various works on the subject, for example,
25 by Heinz Werner?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have read some.
. P-174
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you have read some works, but just on the basis of
2 having read some works, you are prepared to say that I am
3 wrong and that these other authors are wrong?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me see what I say. You see: “Most authors have
5 seen the Night of the Long Knives as a shocking violation
6 of moral and legal norms” —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: —- “in which Hitler not only brought retrospectively
9 trumped-up charges against the SA leaders of plotting a
10 coup, but also used the opportunity to bump off
11 politicians, such as Kurt von Schleicher and Gustav von
12 Kahr, who he felt knew too much about his past, or whom he
13 simply strongly disliked, and against whom no conceivable
14 political suspicions could be directed in 1934″.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the basis of your limited knowledge of the Night of the
16 Long Knives, what evidence do you have that Hitler ordered
17 the murder of Schleicher which was an appalling act —
18 there is no question — that Hitler was personally
19 involved in that? Do you have any evidence?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not present it here, no. I would have to do some
21 research on that.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: And what evidence do you have for saying that Hitler
23 personally —-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me respond to that by saying can you present evidence
25 that he did not? Maybe that is the way to go.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the excellent paper on the murder of
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1 General Schleicher that was published by the Institute of
2 History about 35 years ago, giving the entire background
3 of the case?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought you did not read work by other historians,
5 Mr Irving.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: For some historians I make exceptions?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, so you do read work by other historians?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: This was a documentation. You appreciate the difference
9 between a documentation and a book? Two lines from the
10 bottom you say: “Hitler personally marked crosses against
11 the names of scores of people on the night in question”.
12 What evidence do you have for that?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what I understand from my reading. I agree,
14 I cite in footnote 11 the sources which I have used for my
15 extremely brief account of this.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this is one of those cases where the historian has sat
17 in his book lined cave and taken four books off a shelf
18 and written a fifth, effectively?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: He has not really added to our knowledge?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think — oh, you mean me?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, if you can show that they are wrong or somebody can
24 show that they are wrong, then I would be quite happy to
25 accept that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you can take it from me that Field Marshal Milch
. P-176
1 described to me personally, sitting at the Execution
2 Council, together with Himmler and the other leading
3 members of that gang, watching as Himmler read out a list
4 of names and they personally approved and wrote little
5 ticks against the names of those to be liquidated which
6 were handed out through the door to the flunkers who
7 ordered it carried out, that this was the way the
8 Execution Council took place, and that Hitler was nowhere
9 near, would you accept that version? It is contained in
10 one of the books you have read, the rise and fall of the
11 Luftwaffe?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, Mr Irving. That is a recollection a long time after
13 the event. It is not a contemporary document. You
14 yourself would be the first to impugn the reliability of
15 that source if that source if it said something you did
16 not like.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept that Milsche kept diaries throughout that
18 episode and also that Milsche would hardly relate
19 something to me which under circumstances could be taken
20 as counting against himself if he was a participant in or
21 an eyewitness of this Execution Council?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, this is getting rather hypothetical. If you present
23 to me documents that demonstrate that what I say here is
24 wrong, I will be quite happy to accept it.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is not the way it works, Professor.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought it was the way it worked.
. P-177
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are saying here in an expert report which you now
2 concede is written on rather flimsy evidence that Hitler
3 personally —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I did that at all, Mr Irving.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: — marked crosses against the names of scores of people?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think if you are wanting to say that there
7 is documentary support for what you write, Mr Irving, and
8 for what Professor Evans criticises, you really ought to
9 be equipped to show Professor Evans what you rely on. For
10 example, I mean, did you record what General Milsche was
11 telling you about the absence of Hitler, and so on?
12 MR IRVING: I wrote a whole book about it, my Lord. I wrote
13 his biography. He provided his private diaries to me and
14 that has been in discovery and in evidence to the Defence
15 throughout this case, and I really do not want to hold up
16 the matter by producing evidence for that. I have
17 only been delayed by the fact that the witness has
18 admitted that his evidence for these assertions was based
19 on — his own concession — very limited sources.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think so I said that.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think he did, but the point is that
23 it is not terribly satisfactory to have cross-examination
24 by assertion, if you follow me.
25 MR IRVING: Yes.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sometimes I think it is going to be necessary
. P-178
1 to give chapter and verse for what you are asserting.
2 MR IRVING: Yes.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And I know that makes life difficult for you.
4 MR IRVING: It is a flimsy assertion against an even flimsier
5 submission by the witness, if I can put like that. The
6 final sentence there, witness, Professor Evans, is you
7 say, you have quoted where I say: “Hitler ordered state
8 pensions provided for the next of kin of the people
9 murdered in the Night of the Long Knives, as June 30th
10 19934 came to be known”?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have any reason to challenge that statement?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have held it up there for the delectation of his
15 Lordship and others as those it is slightly incredible?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I am giving your views on Hitler here. This is the
17 context.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Should I have cut that out then?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You describe Hitler as a dictator by consent, he had an
20 act of rare magnanimity in ordering state pensions, he was
21 a “friend of the arts, benefactor” — I am quoting you
22 here — “benefactor of the impoverished, defender of the
23 innocent, persecutor of the delinquent” —-
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come to that one in a minute.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — this is what I am trying to establish here.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: But are you suggesting, therefore, that if Adolf Hitler in
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1 this rather odd act of generosity, I suppose, ordered
2 bloated pensions provided to the widows of those he has
3 just murdered that I should somehow suppress this because
4 20 years later Professor Evans is going to stand in a
5 witness box and say, “This is evidence of Mr Irving’s
6 admiration for Hitler” that I should not have mentioned
7 it, therefore.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It seems to me that it is evidence of your admiration for
9 Hitler.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you would not, therefore, have mentioned this
11 document; you would have pretended this document did not
12 exist? Is that the way you would work?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not understand the question there.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: I cannot understand — let me put it —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, I see what you mean.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you were writing a biography of Hitler, would you have
17 left this document out?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which document?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: The reference to the pensions.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I would have to see the document before I could
21 answer that question.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you were writing a biography of Hitler and you came
23 across a document which said: “The Fuhrer has ordered
24 pensions paid to the next of kin of those executed in the
25 Night of the Long Knives”, would you have left it out?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, of course not.
. P-180
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So, in other words, you are criticising me for doing
2 something that you too would have done, is that correct?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is to say, if the document bears, you know,
4 sustains the interpretation you put on it.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, moving on to the final sentence of that paragraph
6 where you mockingly have quoted where have apparently
7 said: “Hitler, according to Irving, was a ‘friend of the
8 arts, benefactor of the impoverished, defender of the
9 innocent, persecutor of the delinquent'”, is this not —
10 my memory may be wrong and his Lordship is already looking
11 it up — a slightly mocking entry at the beginning of a
12 chapter where, having set that out, I then —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, could I have the 1991 edition? The first section,
14 the first file?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Has your Lordship find it?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 109.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have.
18 MR IRVING: Yes. I do not have it in front me, but my
19 recollection is that the way I used that was slightly
20 mockingly offsetting it against what then follows.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that offsets it. This is the “popular
22 dictator, friend of the arts, benefactor of the
23 impoverished, defender of the innocent, persecutor of the
24 delinquent. In an early Cabinet meeting in June 8th 1983
25 he had come out against the death penalty for economic
26 sabotage, arguing, ‘I am against the death sentence
. P-181
1 because it is irreversible. The death sentence should be
2 reserved for only the gravest crimes, particularly those
3 of a political nature'”, and so on. So it does not seem
4 to be a kind of ironic or sarcastic setting off.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then is there what we call a topic sentence for what
6 follows, that having set out the topic sentence, I then
7 hang the meat on it, so speak?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think — I mean, it is there in black and white.
9 “Friend of the arts, benefactor of the impoverished,
10 defender of the innocent, persecutor of the delinquent”.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: But do you agree that what follows then effectively hangs
12 the meat on that particular topic sentence?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it refers back both backwards and forwards. If you
14 like, it is a linking sentence.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Can you now go forward please to page 213?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you leaving the Night of the Long Knives.
17 MR IRVING: I have left it entirely, my Lord, yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask one question? Professor
19 Evans, it seems to me — I may be wrong about this — the
20 sort of main point on the Night of the Long Knives is
21 whether or not Hitler was in any way complicit or involved
22 in the murder of 90 former associates of the Nazi Party?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is correct, my Lord.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Mr Irving has, as I understand it, put to you that Hitler
25 had nothing to do with it, it was Heydrich?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure that is what he says.
. P-182
1 MR RAMPTON: I think the position is in the book Hitler is
2 guilty of seven only —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
4 MR RAMPTON: — out of 82 or 90, whatever it is.
5 MR IRVING: Can I be more specific? He was guilty originally
6 of seven. Eventually, over the next few days he was told
7 it was 84 or 90 and in private he expressed annoyance to
8 the people who brought the message saying, “It has got out
9 of hand” and this is the evidence of the Adjutants
10 Bruchner and Schaub, whose papers I quoted on various
11 occasions, and, in fact, there is a letter written by
12 Victor Lutze, who was the successor of Rume to Himmler
13 four years later harking back to that period saying that
14 the Fuhrer was very angry that so many people had been
15 killed, including some of his closest friends. That is
16 one sentence that sticks in his mind.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So to that extent, I am grateful to you,
18 Mr Rampton, he is disapproving what happened, and I just
19 wanted to know, Professor Evans, whether in the light of
20 your knowledge of what happened, whether that is an
21 account you accept?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Can you elaborate slightly?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry. I have been asked to keep my answers short.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I know. It is very difficult to get it right.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, Hitler was directly responsible for these murders and
. P-183
1 these crimes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. I am sorry, Mr Irving.
3 MR IRVING: In that case I will just have to re-examine briefly
4 on that. You say he is directly responsible. Do you have
5 any evidence whatsoever for that statement on the basis of
6 your admittedly flimsy reading on the matter?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, certainly. I mean I quote this in footnote 11 of
8 page 209.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Other authors. Had any of them had access to the private
10 diaries of Dr Joseph Goebbels covering the Night of the
11 Long Knives which I had?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, Kershaw’s Hitler certainly and Fry’s National
13 Socialist Rule in Germany, both of those. The third book
14 I mention there is not really about that, but about the
15 legal proceedings after 1945 concerned with trying to
16 bring the perpetrators to justice.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read Kershaw’s Hitler in this respect?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I cite it there.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it surprise to you notice that he has made no use
20 whatsoever of the new Goebbels’ diaries, and corresponded
21 with him about this?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In the entire book?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to check that up. I find that difficult to
25 believe.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we now —-
. P-184
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you mean by the “new Goebbels’ diaries”.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, the ones that I found in Moscow, the ones that
3 I brought back from Moscow in 1992.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that is right, Mr Irving.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I shall leave my question as it was, that
6 I corresponded with him about that and does it not
7 surprise you to hear that he told me he had not made use
8 of them?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does because that is not my understanding. You would
10 have to show me the letter before I could accept that.
Section 185.11 to 198.7
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but we are going to make progress now, please, to
12 page 213. We are now dealing with the assassination, with
13 various things on which I appear to have exonerated
14 Hitler. Beginning with the previous page: “Charles
15 Sydnor found that I portrayed Hitler not as a monster but
16 as a fair-minded statesman of considerable chivalry.”
17 Would you have portrayed Hitler as a monster,
18 Professor Evans? Do you think that Hitler should be
19 portrayed as monster?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think I am summarizing Sydnor there.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but I am asking you. Do you think that Hitler should
22 be portrayed as a monster? In other words, am I to be
23 criticised for not portraying Hitler as a monster?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let us take the full sentence there, not as a
25 monster but as a fair-minded statesman of considerable
26 chivalry, who never resorted”, and so and so forth: “Who
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1 never resorted to the assassination of foreign opponents;
2 who never intended to harm the British Empire and wanted
3 peace with Britain after June 1940, and who attacked the
4 Soviet Union in 1941 only as a preventative measure.”
5 This is Sydnor. This is in a section in which I am
6 commenting and begins in the middle of page 210. I am
7 recounting a number of authors who have considered that
8 your position is extremely favourable to Hitler. I think
9 here again I am trying to — I am in a slight difficulty
10 that I am quoting the views of other authors — I am
11 trying to establish that it is not merely a quirk of
12 Professor Lipstadt that she says that you are an admirer
13 of Hitler, because this is a view that has been adopted by
14 a number of other writers. If you want me to say whether
15 Hitler was a monster or not —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: That was the question.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — if you want to put in those terms, yes, he was a
18 monster.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, he was a monster.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is undeniable.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: We now turn the page, the specific allegations are that
22 I said that he never resorted to the assassination of
23 foreign opponents. Is that correct? Is that a true
24 statement?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is what Sydnor says, how Sydnor says you portray
26 Hitler. He is not —-
. P-186
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have quoted him.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I am quoting him.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you on the basis of your knowledge as an
4 historian of that period —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not quoting Sydnor as saying that all these things
6 are entirely wrong.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is where we get into difficulties, is it
8 not?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What we want to concentrate on, Mr Irving,
11 I think is really where Professor Evans states his own
12 views.
13 MR IRVING: Rather than the views of other people about views
14 of other people.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather than the views of other people.
16 MR IRVING: Yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not your fault that you pick up these
18 references to other historians because they are there to
19 be picked up, but what is going to help me is when you
20 tackle Professor Evans about his views about your
21 portraying Hitler in a favourable light rather than more
22 accurately.
23 MR IRVING: Yes. On the facing page — I will try to move
24 forward and your Lordship will appreciate that I am
25 abandoning good points there. I am doing it willingly in
26 the cause of making court progress.
. P-187
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have tried to say that I understand
2 why you are being distracted, as it were, by these
3 references to other historians. That is not your fault.
4 MR IRVING: On the foot of page 214 you have, metaphorically
5 speaking, raised your eyebrows at the fact that one of
6 Hitler’s doctors recorded in his diary the fact that
7 Hitler had described his future biographer in terms that
8 appeared to fit me, if I can put it like that?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. An interesting —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, a very simple question.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — put.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: If that diary does exist then I am perfectly justified to
13 quote that whole passage, am I not?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is an interesting comment on your attitude of your
15 mission.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: A comment on my attitude?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, what you conceive was your mission.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you had got that diary first, you being admittedly not
19 English but Welsh, I suppose you would still feel yourself
20 qualified by Hitler as being an Englander?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that Germans, unfortunately, do include the Welsh
22 amongst the English, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, unfortunately. You would have quite happily have
24 quoted that, would you now, if you were writing a Hitler
25 biography and you came into possession of that diary, you
26 too would quote it, would you not?
. P-188
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have been too embarrassed I think.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Too embarrassed?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I certainly would not want to give the impression
4 that all these things the Doctor says would apply to me.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, some of them do not of course?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a very tempting quotation, but I think I would have
7 added that after the end of it “this is not me”. He
8 records Hitler saying: “Perhaps an Englishmen will come
9 one day who wants to write an objective biography of me.
10 It has to be an Englishman who knows the archives and
11 masters the German language, and that is why you are
12 getting the diaries, Mr Irving, the doctor said.” I think
13 I would have said: Well, I am not going to fit the bill.
14 I am not, as a biography of Hitler, his ambassador in the
15 afterlife.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this explain to you why so often I manage to get hold
17 of these unusual documents, and there was no kind of
18 bribery or promising involved? These people just turned
19 this material over to me?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Does what explain?
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: This kind of episode that I ended up with the good
22 fortune.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have to give a little more detail.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us move on.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure what you mean by that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: The foot of page 216.
. P-189
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The fact that you are English I do not think makes a great
2 deal of difference.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, but the fact that I knew the archives and I have taken
4 the trouble to learn the language as an Englishman?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, obviously it would be pointless if you did not know
6 any German.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the foot of page 216 you state, again without any
8 evidence, that there was massive intimidation of the
9 electorate in the 1938 plebiscite?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have any proof of that?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, this is the context where you simply say that Hitler
13 had risen from nobody, become the admired and respected
14 leader of two great nations. Just five years after 1933
15 he got 49 million Germans to vote for him which was 99.8
16 per cent of electorate. In my response to your questions
17 of 4th January 2000, your written questions, I have two
18 whole pages accompanied by a considerable amount of
19 documentation of the intimidation which took place in the
20 plebiscite of 1938. I am not sure — would it save the
21 court’s time if I could just refer to this without
22 actually going through it?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think so to begin, and then if with
24 Mr Irving wants to follow it up then he can.
25 MR IRVING: Perhaps I can just ask you in general: Was there
26 any evidence that there was not a secret ballot?
. P-190
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, there was. Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In what way do you have that evidence? Is it contemporary
3 evidence?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, there are reports on the plebiscite, official
5 reports from electoral authorities which I quote on page
6 2: “Members of the Election Committee marked all the
7 ballot papers with numbers. During the ballot itself a
8 voters’ list was made up.”
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is was well-known, is it not, but that is not
10 intimidation, is it?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not keep interrupting, Mr Irving. It
12 destroys the whole object of the exercise.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The ballot papers were handed out in numerical order.
14 Therefore, it was possible afterwards with the aid of this
15 list to find out the persons who cast no votes. The
16 Gendarmerie stationed in the Bavarian village of Elsass
17 reported that the ballot papers of people regarded as
18 unreliable had been marked. Reports from the XR
19 leadership of the Social Democrats, so-called day reports,
20 who have numerous instances, they have a whole section
21 which I include here in the documents on the lack of
22 secrecy in the voting.
23 MR IRVING: Is this evidence of intimidation?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It is evidence of lack of secrecy in the voting,
25 which is what you asked the question about.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there evidence of intimidation?
. P-191
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, there is evidence of intimidation. Do you want me to
2 go through it? I list it again here and provide
3 documentation.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: The fact that ballot papers are marked, just as they are
5 in England, and numbered, is not evidence of intimidation
6 of any kind of hanky-panky, is it?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It is evidence of lack of secrecy of the ballots, as
8 the source I quote says, it was possible with the aid of
9 this list to find out the persons who cast no votes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but how would this lead to a 99.8 per cent vote?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, because there was enormous — because, of course,
12 people suspected that, well, this is one element in a
13 number of elements in these elections. People obviously,
14 I think, quite clearly suspected that if they cast a “no
15 vote”, and rightly suspected if they cast a “no vote”, it
16 would be identified as theirs and they would suffer the
17 consequences. In addition, there was a huge effort in
18 which agents of the Nazi Party and various other
19 organisations known as Schleppe or people who drag, really
20 carriers or draggers of voters to the polls, went round on
21 a number of occasions asking people to vote, sending them
22 written warnings if they did not, going to visit them, and
23 then later on, and I quote a number of examples,
24 physically maltreating those who did not vote, taking them
25 off to lunatic asylums, expelling the Catholic Bishop of
26 Rottenburg from his diocese when he refused to take part
. P-192
1 in the vote; dismissal of a street warden in Steischlinger
2 for telling people his boss had said that people could
3 vole whichever way they wanted, which the boss of course
4 denied. There was someone who was identified as voting
5 “no” in another community, according to a by day report,
6 was identified dragged through the local pubs of the brown
7 shirts and put a sign on her back saying “I am traitor”
8 and spat at her. There were numerous arrests of known
9 opponents of the regime before the vote, 250 people who
10 were thought to be opponents of the regime were arrested
11 in Leipzig before the vote and then released just in time
12 to go to polls. So that it is quite clear what the
13 intimidatory effect of that was.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are those kinds of measures sufficient to get a 99.8 per
15 cent turn out in favour of Adolph Hitler, do you think?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a different, that is a somewhat different
17 question. What I say is that I think it is clear that
18 there is no, I do not know of any democratic and free
19 election in which anyone has got 99.8 per cent of the
20 vote.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree there was a mass —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Had the election been free, what the vote would have been
23 is another matter. It is a matter for conjecture. What
24 I am saying, in other words, is that the difference
25 between whatever the result would have been in a free
26 election and the amazing 99.8 per cent is the result of
. P-193
1 intimidation, pressure, lack of secrecy of the ballot.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree there was a massive propaganda effort to
3 lead to this huge turn out?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There was indeed a massive propaganda effort, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that there was in that respect as much carrot as
6 intimidation by your account?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think propaganda is carrot. It is propaganda.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that in fact the overwhelming majority of
9 the German people were by that time, in April 1938,
10 dazzled by Hitler, I suppose that is the correct word, his
11 achievements, full employment?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Well —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: National unification, the Czar land, all these great
14 achievements, and that this is one reason why 99.8 per
15 cent of people could easily be persuaded to sign “yes” to
16 Adolf?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think if you read the SD and by day reports carefully it
18 is clear that fairly soon after 1933 there was quite
19 widespread grumbling and discontent. That is a slightly
20 different matter from what people thought about the union
21 of Germany and Austria. I think, for what it is worth,
22 that —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: There was a plebiscite, was there not?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I finish, Mr Irving? That in the vote a plebiscite on
25 the union of Germany and Austria in 1938, in a wholly free
26 election, it is more than likely that there would have
. P-194
1 been a “yes”. In other words, the majority of people in
2 Germany and Austria were in favour of unions, but I do not
3 think it is 99.8 per cent.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but what you think of course is not evidence.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think — I mean can you name me any free, fully
6 free, fair and secret election in which any side has 99.8
7 per cent of the vote?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are going rather —-
9 MR IRVING: We are going round in circles.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — long. That is the Anschluss vote. I did
11 not realize that.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 MR IRVING: It was not an election, my Lord. It was a
14 plebiscite.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There was a Reichstag election at the same time. What you
16 say, Mr Irving, is that he got 49 million Germans to vote
17 for him, which is 99.8 per cent of electorate.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just —-
19 MR IRVING: Can I ask you, are you familiar with the wording of
20 the vote?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, will you listen to me for a
22 moment, because I think we probably have spent long enough
23 on the 99.8 per cent. There is a danger I think, and this
24 is designed to help you, that we are missing the wood for
25 the trees. The whole of this section of the report, which
26 I think myself is quite important, is on the theme or the
. P-195
1 thesis that you always write about Hitler in terms which
2 portray him favourably. Various examples are given of
3 that and various statements made by you which tend to
4 confirm are recited by Professor Evans.
5 I personally would find it more helpful if you
6 were, perhaps to begin with, to ask a few rather more
7 general questions in which you would set out what your own
8 case is about this. I do not know, but could you not ask
9 Professor Evans whether it is not right that actually you
10 are very balanced and objective in what you write about
11 Hitler? I think you need to set the scene.
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, we know precisely what the answer will be
13 if I ask that. He will say he dislikes me. He has never
14 read the book. He would never have read the book if he
15 had not received this commission from these instructing
16 solicitors. So that would be, frankly, in my submission,
17 a waste of the court’s time.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then you would follow it up, would you not,
19 and give some examples, and this is really what I am
20 asking you for, of events, significant events, when you
21 take a critical line about what Hitler said or did. That
22 is what I am missing at the moment. We are just going
23 down this slightly blind alley of the 99.8 per cent
24 Reichstag vote, whereas one is missing your putting the
25 case in rather broader terms. I am only putting it
26 forward as a suggestion. You do not have to follow it,
. P-196
1 but it would help me if you were to do that.
2 MR IRVING: My method, my Lord, an you may think it totally
3 wrong, has been to graze through this passage and come
4 across these occasionally indigestible rocks where he
5 picks on something where I know I am right and where your
6 Lordship probably does not appreciate that I am right. By
7 virtue of this cross-examination trying to establish it
8 firmly in your Lordship’s mind that out of us two experts,
9 if I can put it like that, on balance, probably I am
10 better right or righter than he is.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may say so, if that is what you are
12 planning to do for the next 550 pages of this report, I am
13 not going to find that helpful. I am sure you are going
14 to find, as you indeed have already found, a number of
15 instances where Professor Evans has got it wrong. But
16 I am not really helped by that. I need to look at it in
17 much broader terms than that.
18 MR IRVING: We are just coming in fact to the
19 Reichskristallnacht, and I did promise that we were going
20 to make substantial inroads into that today.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I personally think the section on
22 what is called “Admiration of Hitler” is quite important,
23 and you do not really seem to have grasped the nettle of
24 what is being said about you by Professor Evans. That is
25 all I am inviting you to consider.
26 MR IRVING: I have looked at the Night of Long Knives.
. P-197
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: True you did. I accept that.
2 MR IRVING: Which was one matter. I thought I read your
3 Lordship’s mind to be that I should not deal with every
4 single episode.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are now getting into the meat of the
6 report, and certainly not every single episode. There we
7 are. I have said what I have said.
Section 198.8 to 215.26
8 MR IRVING: Just one final matter on the plebiscite. Do you
9 know the wording that was on the ballot? You say this was
10 not a plebiscite for Hitler personally. Do you know the
11 wording on the ballot form, on the ballot paper?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, do read it to me. Remind me.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it say words to the effect of: I personally approve
14 of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the greater German Reich
15 and Austria combined and approve of the union of these two
16 countries?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, those are the terms in which it is put.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is in terms of personal approbation of Adolf Hitler
19 then as a person?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed the propaganda effort also emphasised that apsect
21 of it, but of course it was not purely, simply a vote
22 about Hitler. The key part of it was the union of or the
23 creation of the greater German Reich of Germany and
24 Austria.
25 MR IRVING: My Lord, your Lordship does not wish me to look at
26 the Putsch of 1923 and the Hoffman episode again. We have
. P-198
1 been over that already with the other witnesses. We now
2 come on to page 233 to the night of broken glass.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Irving, the last thing I want
4 to do is to prolong this, but if you remember the heart of
5 Professor Evans’ report is that the chain of documents
6 which you rely on as establishing that Hitler did not have
7 any knowledge of, let alone authorization for, the Final
8 Solution, can be at every link in the chain, as it were,
9 attacked. My understanding of the structure of this
10 report is that a step in the chain of reasoning, if I can
11 put it that way, does indeed start with the 1924 trial and
12 you were going to omit that altogether.
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, the chain of documents episode starts on
14 page 220.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, quite.
16 MR IRVING: That is where his heading starts.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The first link in the chain is the 1924
18 trial, is it not?
19 MR IRVING: It is the 1924 trial. If I had appreciated this
20 witness’s remarks and under cross-examination by
21 Mr Rampton your Lordship will remember that we elicited
22 the fact that I was relying on a different set of
23 documents on the original microfilm version of the trial,
24 I did not use the published text.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can I just comment on that, my Lord? They are the same.
26 The published text is the complete verbatim transcript.
. P-199
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you go back to page 230, please? You say that
2 Hofmann’s testimony of Hitler’s trial has little
3 credibility. Is this your view?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: You base that view you on the fact that Hofmann was a Nazi
6 party member?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. As I say, a long-standing Nazi supporter and party
8 official, tried to present Hitler in a favourable light as
9 a law-abiding citizen.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and you suggest that I ought to have known that fact?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed I think you did know that fact, Mr Irving.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: On what document or evidence do you base your suggestion
13 that I knew that fact?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the evidence of Hofmann.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the evidence of Hofmann?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, what he himself stated in this trial?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And who was he was?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. Well, he says in the course of his
20 evidence that he was — first of all, the court says at
21 the beginning of the transcript of his evidence that he
22 had a close relationship with Hitler and was involved in
23 the Putsch, and therefore should hot be required to give
24 evidence on oath. That is the first pointer. Then he
25 goes on to say that he was, and I quote all of this in my
26 report —-
. P-200
1 MR IRVING: Yes, but —-
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — that he was the head of the Nazi Political
3 Intelligence Unit.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: The question is —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That he was frequently with Hitler, and that he took part
6 in the Putsch.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: The question is, what evidence do you have that that
8 evidence was before me when I wrote my book on Hermann
9 Goring?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because you read the transcript, you read the transcript
11 of the trial which is where the evidence is.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: What evidence do you have that I read those pages of the
13 trial?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not a very long testimony and you recount what you
15 must have done, I cannot believe you did anything else,
16 was to start at the beginning of Hofmann’s testimony and
17 go on to the end.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If your case is, Mr Irving, that you did not
19 ever read Hofmann’s testimony, then you should put that
20 because that would be an explanation.
21 MR IRVING: I hope that I was making that point, my Lord.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You were not. You were careful not to put it
23 quite that way. You said: Have you got any got evidence
24 that I had Hofmann’s testimony in front of me? If your
25 case is that you never read it, I think you should put
26 that.
. P-201
1 MR IRVING: If I can explain to your Lordship, my problem is
2 that the entire Hermann Goring book was written on an old
3 fashioned Xerox word processor. I am having those disks
4 converted and I can then prove exactly what part of the
5 testimony was before me, but they have still not been
6 converted yet. It is just a technical problem. But I
7 will now put the question to the witness in this way.
8 Was there any evidence before you that I had
9 read the Hofmann testimony?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The evidence of your book, yes. You quote the testimony
11 in the book.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was there any evidence before you that I had read that
13 part of the testimony relating to his Nazi party
14 membership and to his closeness to Hitler on which you are
15 relying?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not a very lengthy testimony, Mr Irving. It takes
17 about I suppose ten minutes to read it.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you read this in a printed book or did you read it on
19 the microfilm?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I just said that they are the same. I have read it in a
21 volume, a multi-volume or a very large collection of
22 documentary presentation edited by people on the staff of
23 the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you, did this printed volume have an index with
25 names in it?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think so, yes.
. P-202
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do my microfilms with 8,000 pages on film have an index
2 with names on it?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, but it is not difficult to —-
4 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am afraid I think again we are going
5 out into outer space. In cross-examination on 31st
6 January, page 61, Mr Irving said to me: “I knew nothing
7 about Hofmann’s background that was not before the court.
8 I read the entire court transcript which was many
9 thousands of pages which was adequate for writing a
10 biography of Hermann Goring.”
11 MR IRVING: Yes. Do you accept that if some —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is why I think it is important.
13 MR IRVING: I will now clarify this matter.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that bears out, if I may say so, the
15 correctness of what I said to you. If your case was that
16 you had never read the testimony, then you ought to have
17 put it. But it now turns out that actually you have
18 already conceded that you read the whole thing.
19 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, when somebody reads an 8,000 page
20 transcript of a trial for the purposes of writing a
21 biography of a very minor character in that trial, is he
22 going, in your opinion, to pay attention to the background
23 of every single witness who gives evidence at that trial?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, Mr Irving, you read the entire transcript. You read
25 all of Hofmann’s testimony, which is fairly brief. You
26 use it in your —-
. P-203
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you estimate to the court how brief this testimony
2 was in terms of typescript pages?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it takes ten minutes to read, I think?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, something like that. I have actually read it.
5 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, again I intervene. I think sometimes
6 I live in a parallel universe. I asked Mr Irving in
7 cross-examination what that passage in the book was where
8 he says that Goring goggled at the exchange between Hitler
9 and the young lieutenant.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I remember.
11 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving said: “That was Hofmann, was it, that
12 testified about that? Answer: Yes. Yes, the whole
13 episode is based on Hofmann.”
14 MR IRVING: The fact that the whole episode is based on Hofmann
15 does not presuppose that one has read the whole of Hofmann
16 with great detail as to his origins, his party membership
17 number and all the other matters on which Professor Evans
18 is relying.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I have the typed pages here.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: The printed pages or the typescript pages?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, the printed pages.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we now know that they are the same.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The printed version is called [German] which is the
24 verbatim account of the principal proceedings before the
25 people’s court at Munich 1, and Hofmann, in other words,
26 it is a verbatim account, it is the same. Hofmann’s
. P-204
1 testimony begins on this printed version, that is on
2 seventh day, it begins on page 540, and goes on to page
3 545 I think, a little bit further. It is really not very
4 long. In any case, Mr Irving, if you read the entire
5 8,000 pages you certainly must have read those handful of
6 pages.
7 MR IRVING: Will you accept that when one reads 8,000 pages of
8 a transcript of a treason trial one is not paying
9 attention to the political background of the individual
10 members?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, certainly not. It is extremely important. You
12 present yourself as a professional historian who has an
13 extremely critical attitude towards written evidence,
14 particularly in trial testimonies as it happens, and here
15 you have the testimony of somebody in an important trial
16 of Hitler in 1924, a fairly brief testimony, and this is
17 somebody who is the head of a political intelligence
18 section of the Nazi party who is with Hitler a great deal,
19 who is quite clearly a Nazi party member, so closely
20 associated with the Nazis and with the Putsch that the
21 court actually mentions the fact; at the beginning and at
22 the end the judge congratulates Hofmann for being so loyal
23 to his Fuhrer. This right through the evidence, Hofmann
24 makes no secret of it all in his evidence, and you
25 suppress this entirely. You present the evidence of this
26 police officer as an entirely neutral statement. You
. P-205
1 suppress, you deliberately suppress these facts which you
2 must have known from having read this report.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Must have known and ought to have known, is this
4 sufficient evidence for you, Professor, when you write
5 your books?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot put myself inside your mind when you are reading
7 this stuff and say whether or not you closed your eyes
8 when it came to the passages where all these things are
9 mentioned. Even if you did that, even if you fell asleep
10 repeatedly during reading this five or six-page account,
11 I cannot really believe, it still seems to me that it is
12 more than irresponsible. You have suppressed this
13 information. You have not presented it to the reader.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Precisely what information have I suppressed, the fact
15 that he was a Nazi party member, that he was on Hitler’s
16 staff, is that what you are saying?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes .
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this render him incapable of speaking under oath the
19 truth?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you show to me the passage in your book where you
21 mention these facts which is necessary for an assessment
22 of the reliability of his evidence?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it render him incapable of speaking truth under oath
24 in a case like this?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As the court recognized, he did not speak the truth under
26 oath. It dispensed him of having to take the oath because
. P-206
1 he was regarded as a biased witness.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: When you translate the passage, “Es ist ein schones
3 Zeichen von Ihnen, wenn Sie zu Gunsten Ihres Fuhrers
4 aussagen”, you translated that as: It is a nice testimony
5 to you, that you are speaking out on behalf of your
6 leader.” What is the German for “testimony”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I can put a nice sign of you, that is fine, it just does
8 not sound quite right in English.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the German for “testimony”? Is it “zoitnes”?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Something like that, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you have mistranslated a word there?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I disagree. I am trying to find something that reads
13 reasonably well in English. I think the meaning is the
14 same. Can you just to point to me the page?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I cannot find it.
16 MR IRVING: Page 230, paragraph 2, the last line.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, if you want to do it literally it is a beautiful sign
18 of you when or if you speak out in favour of your leader.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: That would be a bit wooden.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It reflects well on you?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It reflects well on you. It is a nice testimony to you.
22 I do not mean by using the word — may I just fish, Mr
23 Irving? I do not mean by using the word “testimony” it
24 has anything to do with the testimony he has given.
25 MR IRVING: But it would be a bit wooden, would it not, that
26 translation if you were to translate it with sign and all
. P-207
1 the rest of it?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it would. “It is a beautiful sign of yours”. I am
3 trying to steer a course here between — we have spoken
4 about this before.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a free translation, but it is an
6 entirely accurate one.
7 MR IRVING: You appreciate the point I am trying to make, your
8 Lordship?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do, but I am afraid I am not very impressed
10 by it.
11 MR IRVING: Not impressed by it? The fact that one is inclined
12 to take liberties in a literary sense with a sentence in
13 order to make it more legible.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: As long as you get the flavour of what is
15 being said right.
16 MR IRVING: Is not the correct translation of that sentence
17 “good for you, good for you that you are speaking out on
18 before of your leader”?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not quite.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If I may say so, the judge was obviously rather pompous
22 and says it in this rather kind of convoluted pompous way,
23 not in that colloquial manner.
24 MR IRVING: Is it not exactly the same as when his Lordship
25 says things like, “You have done rather well, Mr Irving”,,
26 for example, as his Lordship did yesterday, we take it at
. P-208
1 face value and it is not something to be taken all that
2 literally?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What he says is, “It is a beautiful sign of you when you
4 or it is a nice testimony to you or good for you”, if you
5 want to put it colloquially, “it is not just good for you
6 or you have done well; it is good for you that you are
7 speaking out on behalf of your leader”, that is what he is
8 saying, your leader. It is quite clear the presiding
9 judge regards —-
10 MR IRVING: But he is not actually saying —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — regards — may I finish, Mr Irving? May I just
12 finish?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you carry on and on and on?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, come on. This is a witness who is
15 trying to answer a point you have made and let he him
16 finish, if he can remember where he had got to.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is quite clear the judge knows from the start to finish
18 that Hofmann, that Hitler is Hofmann’s leader and he
19 treats the evidence accordingly.
20 MR IRVING: Is it not just a throw away remark by his Lordship
21 in this case to put this witness at his ease, and that is
22 exactly what happens again and again and again in the
23 courtroom, and you have put all this pompous significance
24 on to it in order to try to undermine the value of this
25 police sergeant who is doing his job?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: First of all, I agree of course that it is intended to
. P-209
1 make, it is a nice comment, the judge is trying to be nice
2 to Hofmann. After all, Hofmann whose has not been treated
3 very well. He has not been allowed to present evidence on
4 oath. He has been told that he is too heavily involved in
5 the whole thing, but he says, “it is your leader”, and it
6 is quite clear to anybody who reads this rather brief
7 section of testimony that everybody is perfectly well
8 aware that this man’s evidence is tainted, because Hitler
9 is his leader, not just because of that statement, but
10 also because, as he says, he was with Hitler frequently,
11 he was head of the political section of the Nazi party’s
12 Intelligence Unit, participated in the Putsch, accompanied
13 Hitler for most of the evening of the Putsch.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: But cutting to the bottom line, is there any reason to
15 believe that this witness made the whole story up? Is
16 there any reason, any subjective or objective reason why
17 we should accept that he made the whole story up?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which story?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: The story about how he had been a witness of Hitler,
20 ticking off this lieutenant and throwing him out of the
21 party?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is a serious reason to distrust that testimony.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Purely on the basis of the fact he was a Nazi —-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it was taken very seriously by the court,
25 and I think that a responsible author has to present this
26 particular problem to the readership. If you want to make
. P-210
1 use of Hofmann’s evidence you simply have to say that he
2 is heavily involved in the Putsch, he is a Nazi party
3 supporter and is regarded as such by the court.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your final criticism is that I do not give proper source
5 notes for this, is that correct?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Where is this?
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, that I failed to provide a proper footnote
8 reference. It is the bottom of page 230.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a serious criticism or is just your irritation
11 that you had to go and look in the index of your printed
12 edition of this trial?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is more than that. I think that you have made it
14 deliberately difficult for people to go and check it out.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have made it deliberately difficult?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: In what way?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do you want to have a look at the footnote reference which
19 you provide or do not provide?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not correct that I give the reference as being
21 microfilm version of the trial of the Bavarian people
22 against Adolf Hitler and others?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is 8,000 pages, as you said, Mr Irving. I do
24 think that simply referring to an 8,000 page collection
25 does make it difficult. You could, for example, easily
26 have put the day on which it occurred and given a frame
. P-211
1 number, if there are frame numbers, or a real number, if
2 there are real numbers. There are ways in which you can
3 be more precise.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you take it from me that the American publisher
5 William Morrow asked me to cut 2,000 lines out the proofs
6 of this book. In other words, at proof stage, they said,
7 Mr Irving, please cut 2,000 lines out of this book. Can
8 you accept that?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to see the documentary evidence of that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. If that was the case, what are the first
11 places that you would be tempted to make the cuts?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I agree of course in the footnotes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the footnotes?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But in that case I think you still have to abbreviate
15 footnotes. You have to provide footnote references which
16 will enable other people to go and check up what you have
17 written. You could have, you know, done this in such a
18 way as to achieve that object.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in summary, on the case of this policeman Hoffmann
20 your allegations against me rest on the statement that
21 I ought to have known, or ought to have noticed, there was
22 a Nazi party member and I ought to—-
23 MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord, he did not say “ought to”, he said
24 “must have”, which is quite different.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. He did know.
26 MR IRVING: Very well. In that case I have to ask again, on
. P-212
1 what evidence—-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have been all over that, Mr Irving,
3 really.
4 MR IRVING: Do you have any evidence that I did know?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, Mr Rampton has just reminded you
6 that you accepted that you had read the whole of the trial
7 evidence, including Hoffmann.
8 MR IRVING: Has your Lordship any idea of how many words there
9 are on 8,000 pages of transcript?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have just been through that point.
11 MR IRVING: Yes, but the fact that one reads 8,000 pages of
12 transcript with no doubt many millions of words does not
13 mean to say that one knows everything that is stated about
14 every person in that transcript.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, what I am going to suggest is that
16 you read the transcript of the last 20 minutes again
17 perhaps, if you have time between now and tomorrow, and
18 I think you will understand why I think you will not do
19 any good to your case by going all over it again.
20 MR IRVING: Well —-
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The answer to your question, Mr Irving, is no, my case
22 against you here does not rest solely on that.
23 MR IRVING: On Hoffmann?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the fact that you suppressed your knowledge of the bias
25 in his testimony. I also, as you know, say that you
26 manipulate what he said.
. P-213
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is your evidence for the fact that he was biased in
2 his testimony?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that question has been asked and
4 answered sufficiently.
5 MR IRVING: Except that he stated it as a fact, and of course
6 it is an opinion.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In a sense it is perhaps neither. It is an
8 inference from all the circumstances.
9 MR IRVING: A possible bias, this is true. We now pass to
10 Reichskristallnacht, page 233.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I accept that it is slightly my
12 fault that we spent the last 20 plus minutes on the 1924
13 trial, but frankly I think it was vital that you did
14 address that. But, having got to ten past 4, would it be
15 sensible to start on Kristallnacht tomorrow morning?
16 MR IRVING: It would be sensible, my Lord. Perhaps I can wave
17 a little flag and say I shall reserve the right to come
18 back to Hoffmann on a later occasion with more material,
19 as your Lordship obviously attaches more significance to
20 it than I do.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Only because is it one of the chain of
22 documents.
23 MR IRVING: I intend dealing with the chain of documents in
24 sequence on a different occasion, I think. It makes more
25 sense.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I say in advance that I am going to have
. P-214
1 to rise just a little bit early tomorrow, say about
2 4 o’clock rather than 4.15. 10.30 tomorrow.
3 < (The witness withdrew).
4 (The court adjourned until the following day)
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. P-215