Day 25 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 4.14)
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Thursday, 24th 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-FIVE
26
. P-1
1 <Day 25.
2 (10.00 a.m.)
3 < DR LONGERICH, recalled.
4 < Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving?
6 MR IRVING: May it please the court. My Lord, you requested
7 yesterday that I should state my position on the
8 Einsatzgruppen and I place before your Lordship a two-page
9 summary of my position. I do not know whether your
10 Lordship wishes to address it now? I gave a copy to
11 Mr Rampton. If Mr Rampton wishes to address it now, then
12 I would be perfectly happy to discuss with him.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is sensible to have a look at it
14 now because it just could affect some of the
15 cross-examination later today. (Pause for reading) I am
16 bound to say that I think that differs very, very
17 substantially from the position that you seem to have
18 adopted in your cross-examination by Mr Rampton.
19 MR IRVING: Does it? In which respect?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems to me that this is a rather partial
21 acknowledgment of Hitler’s knowledge and therefore
22 responsibility for what went on in the Eastern
23 territories.
24 MR IRVING: Of course I did not mention the October 1943
25 watershed, that is true.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry about that because you accepted
. P-2
1 everything, as it were, after that. Mr Rampton?
2 MR RAMPTON: I regard it as a fairly enormous step backwards.
3 However, it does not trouble me in the very slightest,
4 I have to say, because by a combination of the actual
5 evidence of what was happening at the time and what
6 Mr Irving said when first confronted with it, I am quite
7 happy to leave that matter to be made by way of submission
8 at the end of the case.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right and it seemed to me
10 that, when you were saying you might have to recall
11 Browning and so on, I do not think that is right.
12 MR RAMPTON: No, it was off the cuff and it was not meant
13 interrorem, but it was a thought that occurred to me.
14 I think actually, having regard to this, that this is so
15 inconsistent, in my submission, with what was first said
16 in cross-examination, that I am happy to leave it like
17 that.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is a matter for comment later on.
19 Mr Irving, that must be right. To the extent that there
20 is a difference between the position you took in
21 cross-examination and this document, then Mr Rampton
22 obviously must be entitled to make whatever comment he
23 thinks fit.
24 MR IRVING: Or indeed to cross-examine me further on that
25 document.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He may want to do that, I do not know.
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1 Probably not I guess. Anyway, I have that now. Again
2 I think it is sensible to try to work out where it should
3 go. I think probably it goes in — this is really for the
4 transcript so that everybody knows where it is —
5 MR IRVING: L, was it not?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was thinking more, because in a way it is
7 statement of your case, I wonder whether it belongs in C
8 or, indeed, in the pleadings. I think that is right. I
9 will tuck it behind your defence in bundle A.
10 MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much for doing that anyway.
12 When I say “defence”, I mean, of course, reply, tab 4.
13 Yes. Is there anything else before you resume?
14 MR IRVING: No, I can begin cross-examination.
Part II: David Irving’s Cross-Examination of Dr. Heinz Peter Longerich, continued (4.15 to 119.6)
Section 4.15 to 30.5
15 < Dr Peter Longerich, Recalled
16 < Cross-examination by Mr Irving, continued.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, good morning.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Good morning.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: We touched yesterday briefly on the existence in the
20 Institut fur Zeitgeschichte of manuscripts written by Karl
21 Wolff. You said that it was of a confidential nature and
22 that it was not open for general research. I stated that
23 in my discovery there had been extracts or a transcript of
24 part of that. Can I ask you to look at the little bundle
25 I just gave you? My Lord, this is on page 14 of the
26 little bundle which is in sections.
. P-4
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this a manuscript? Manuscript, Karl
2 Wolff, I see.
3 MR IRVING: Yes. If you go to page 16, which is the last page
4 in that little clip, you will see a handwritten version of
5 it. That is the original German. Page 14 is the original
6 German transcript.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: May I ask, is this your transcript?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, that is my handwriting.
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So I have to rely on Mr Irving’s summary?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, extracts.
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have to say I am not happy with that because, as we
12 experienced yesterday, Mr Irving tends to shorten
13 documents and I do not agree with him on the principles in
14 the way he shortens documents. I am not very happy to
15 comment on his transcripts or excerpts from documents.
16 I would like to see the original.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you look at line 6, you will see that I have put three
18 dots, and line 7 I have three dots.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but I have not seen the original, so I cannot —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You stated, of course, that you were not permitted to see
21 the original because it was a confidential document.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. Still I would like to see the original.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I know what the problem is. Where is
24 the original, Mr Irving?
25 MR IRVING: It is in the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: To which Mr Irving does not have access.
. P-5
1 I take your point entirely, Dr Longerich, but shall we
2 just see what the question is and see whether you can
3 cope. If you do not feel you can —-
4 MR IRVING: My position would be of course, my Lord, that this
5 was the document that was before me when I was writing my
6 book, this handwritten extract.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: But you were allowed to make photocopies from the
8 document. I would really prefer to see a photocopy instead
9 of your handwritten notes on the document.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have a photocopy, Mr Irving?
11 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. I was not allowed to make photocopies
12 on this particular one.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Proceed fairly cautiously. What is the
14 point?
15 MR IRVING: If you will now look at the translation, which is
16 on page 10, this is an explanation, is it not? It is an
17 extract, first of all, from a confidential manuscript by
18 Karl Wolff dated May 11th 1952, and he is referring to the
19 effect on Himmler of the assassination of Heydrich. In
20 the second paragraph Wolff expresses the rather
21 extraordinary view that perhaps 70 men all told from
22 Himmler to Hoess were involved in the extermination of the
23 Jews. Then there is something which I put in quotation
24 marks. The inference is that it is actually words from
25 the document: “Bormann and Himmler probably represented
26 the view that the Jewish problem had to be dealt with
. P-6
1 without Hitler getting his fingers dirty on it.”
2 Then the next paragraph says: “After the mass
3 epidemic at Auschwitz, the idea of deliberate mass deaths
4 probably occurred. Himmler was in his way bizarre and
5 religious and held to the view that for the greatest war
6 Lord and the greatest war of all times he had take upon
7 himself tasks which had to be solved to put Hitler’s ideas
8 into effect without engaging him”, that is Hitler
9 personally —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am sorry, I am going to
11 interrupt you now. This is, it seems to me, of fairly
12 central potential importance.
13 MR IRVING: In two ways, my Lord.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not know what it was going to say. It
15 is wholly unsatisfactory, is it not, to have your
16 manuscript rendition, if that is the right word, of parts
17 of this document? Is there an insuperable problem about
18 getting hold of a photocopy of it?
19 MR IRVING: I will ask the Institute if they will provide me
20 with a photocopy.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or even the Defendants might get a more
22 helpful reaction to a request for a photocopy of this
23 document.
24 MR RAMPTON: We might, but I have to say this is a note of
25 something that Karl Wolff, a high ranking SS officer close
26 to Himmler and Hitler, said in 1952.
. P-7
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is potentially self-exculpatory, I can see
2 that.
3 MR RAMPTON: That is a comment that I would make about it. The
4 reason I say that now is that I do not know that I believe
5 that it is worth, frankly, our time and trouble going to
6 get the original from Munich.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Can I make a comment here, or a question?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, please do.
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is your interview with Karl Wolff?
10 MR IRVING: Good Lord, no.
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: You referred yesterday to a confidential manuscript by
12 Karl Wolff. This is not a part of the confidential
13 manuscript. This is part of the collection of testimonies
14 collected by the Institute in the 1950s. You can
15 recognize it by these reference numbers shown in German.
16 It is an open class. I think, if you phone the Institute,
17 you can get a photocopy within three hours or so.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I would have thought.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is open class. There is no need to rely on handwritten
20 excerpts, anything of this kind.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You see, I am a bit unhappy, I will be frank, Mr Irving,
22 that there are dots immediately before and immediately
23 after the passage that you rely on.
24 MR IRVING: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is satisfactory and
26 I think the witness is entitled to take the position,
. P-8
1 “I am not prepared to comment unless I have the entire
2 document in front of me”. Whether it has any weight or
3 not is another matter.
4 MR IRVING: The only weight that it might possibly have is of
5 course that I relied heavily on my extracts from the Wolff
6 manuscript in writing my books.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is not the Wolff manuscript.
8 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will recognise passages from this
9 manuscript as they are represented and summarized in the
10 Hitler’s War.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My response to that is whether an objective
12 historian could and should have placed weight on this
13 document must depend on the whole terms of it, not just on
14 selective extracts.
15 MR IRVING: Of course I saw the whole document when I sat there
16 making the extracts.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course you did, but I think we need to see
18 the whole document to see whether you should have attached
19 the weight you say you did attach to it.
20 MR IRVING: I will try to obtain it, but of course I cannot
21 obtain it today.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am wondering whether, if it really is a
23 matter of three hours, and I do not see why it should not
24 be, as Dr Longerich says, somebody could not perhaps even
25 go and place a telephone call now.
26 MR RAMPTON: The best person to do that is the gentleman in the
. P-9
1 witness box. I may be speaking out of turn but I think he
2 is the one that carries the clout so far as the Institute
3 in Munich is concerned. It may be that one of my German
4 researchers would be able to do it and see if we can get
5 it before close of play today.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I was hoping. I will leave it
7 to you. I think I am going to ask you to leave this
8 document and come back to it. We will come back to it
9 anyway but come back to it if we get the proper document.
10 MR RAMPTON: I am told that they do not feel they can do it.
11 Could I have permission to speak to Dr Longerich about it
12 at the adjournment? Maybe he can make a telephone call at
13 lunch time.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, if it really cannot be done before then.
15 MR RAMPTON: I am told, I do not know reasons are, that it
16 would be difficult for anybody but him to do it. Perhaps
17 I could be a little unorthodox and ask him now?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, why not? Do you mind, Mr Irving? It is
19 a bit unorthodox.
20 MR RAMPTON: Could you make a telephone call at lunch time?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you give me a phone.
22 MR RAMPTON: We will give you a phone.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, sir.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: (After a pause) Sorry, is this a break?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, it is not. Mr Irving, carry on.
. P-10
1 MR IRVING: While you still have that bundle in front of you —
2 my Lord, this is just by way of putting documents in —
3 page 1 is a German document which is a conference dated
4 August 6th 1942, on the face of it. Right? It is from an
5 American microfilm T 501 which is the records of the
6 military government, the generalgouvernenent. Is it a
7 record of the conference of 6th August 1942, Dr Longerich?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Again, I have to say I got this document five minutes ago
9 and I should really have the time to read it.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us read it together. I am sure we will
11 be able to manage.
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am just really going to pay attention to
13 the title of the document and in the most general terms.
14 Is this a document relating to increasing air raid
15 precaution measurements in the government general?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The translation is guidelines for the building up of air
17 raid defence in the area of the command of the military
18 force in the generalgouvernement. That is the title.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: The remaining four pages just give guidelines for how to
20 do this, to build air raid shelters because of the
21 increased danger of British air attacks?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It does not say British air attacks. I think it could
23 also refer to Soviet or American attacks but I just trust
24 you that this is the case.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just so that I understand the relevance, this
26 is back to Auschwitz?
. P-11
1 MR IRVING: Back to Auschwitz, my Lord, yes, crematorium No.
2 (ii). The next document I want you to look at briefly is
3 on page 5. First of all, I draw your attention to the SS
4 runes on the first line under be Abschrift. Do you have
5 page 5?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: You see the SS runes after Reichsfuhrer SS?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this is probably a genuine wartime document? I have to
10 put it like that.
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Probably.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with this document, signed by the chief
13 of the concentration camp system, Pohl?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot recall the document. I am really curious to know
15 from which archive the document is. I also have to say
16 I did not have the time to read the document. So would
17 you say where this document is from, from which archive
18 you have that?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: It has been provided to me by a lawyer in Dusseldorf who
20 is heavily involved in wartime cases.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So you cannot say from which archive.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will obtain it for the court.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is difficult for me to comment on the document if I do
24 not know where the original is.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see that. Was this in your discovery,
26 Mr Irving?
. P-12
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, no it was not.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought not. It is typical of last minute
3 documents being provided to me by lawyers around the world
4 and they know these things. If your Lordship has any
5 objection, then I would not take it further.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not. I think this document is
7 rather different from your manuscript and I think we will
8 proceed cautiously, but for the moment let us assume it is
9 authentic.
10 MR IRVING: If you just look at the first page of this document
11 and run your eye over it, is Pohl sending a message to all
12 the concentration camp commandants, 19 of them, saying:
13 “It is time to stop the rough and ready measures with
14 prisoners. We are losing them like flies. We need their
15 manpower. Look after them better”?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, first of all, I have to express my reservations
17 about this document. I do not know the context. I do not
18 know the archive. But on the assumption that this is an
19 authentic document, yes, it is a letter to the 19 heads of
20 the concentration camps, and obviously the document is
21 saying that they have to improve their measures to keep
22 prisoners alive, so which is a kind of reference to what
23 happened in the camps before, I think.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, and paragraph 5 of that first page says: “Not
25 from any false sentimentality but because we need their
26 arms and legs because those are helping the German people
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1 to get to a great victory. That is why we have got to
2 start paying attention to the welfare of the prisoners”?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. That is stated here in this document.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then the next page, page 2, the heading is, “Foodstuffs,
5 food, feeding”?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have the time to read now.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am just asking you to look at the headings. That
8 all we need, I think. Page 2 he is talking about the
9 feeding. The following page, paragraph 2, is called
10 “Clothing”. Then down to the bottom of that page,
11 “Natural Medications” or “Health” —-
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “stuff”.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I cannot, you know, I cannot read so fast but under
15 “Clothing” it is stated here: “I decide that during the
16 winter, as far as far as available, prisoners should wear
17 coats, pullover, socks”, so that should give you an idea
18 about the standards which actually existed in the
19 concentration camps before this letter arrived, and it
20 says, it says “as far as available”, so it does not
21 actually say, “Give the men, you know, proper clothing”.
22 It is saying, you know, “You can give them socks if they
23 are available and nothing more”. So I think this gives
24 you a kind of an idea of this.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Over the page, paragraph 4 is called “Avoiding unnecessary
26 exertions”. For example, these frequent parades were they
. P-14
1 were held standing for hours while they were counted
2 zielappelle —-
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: — are to be kept as short as possible, and so on. In
5 other words, there seems to be a reversal of existing
6 policy because they are losing prisoners like flies to
7 what I would call non-violent causes.
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is your interpretation, yes.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what is yours?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, they started in the concentration camps a programme
11 which they called “extermination through work”. So they
12 used hard labour as a tool, as a means to kill prisoners.
13 This was the practice before. Now, at October ’43, it is
14 not really surprising they are a bit cautious here and
15 they are trying to improve as far as they can, trying to
16 improve in some sense the general conditions of the
17 prisoners. But, of course, this is a document, I mean,
18 this document is, of course, sent to the head of the
19 concentration camps — nothing to do with the
20 extermination camps, for instance.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going to ask you about that.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. So, as far as Auschwitz is concerned, it concerns
23 the slave labours within the camp. It does not say
24 anything about the people who were deported to the camp
25 and selected in front of the camp.
26 If one, you know, if I have to — if I were in
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1 the position to give you a kind of expert’s opinion on the
2 condition in the concentration camps at the end of 1943,
3 I would not completely rely on this document. It would be
4 completely unprofessional to rely on this one document.
5 One has to look, of course, at all kind of circumstances.
6 One has to look at the death rates. They had statistics
7 on the death rates and I had to look at those, and so on.
8 You know, the problem with this kind of document is that
9 if you have not seen the file, in the file in the next bit
10 you could find a document which says, “Well, I recall my
11 order from last week”. If you do not have the context, it
12 is difficult to make, you know, a general statement as an
13 historian about the condition in this camp, and whether
14 they really, you know, in the way gave up this idea of
15 extermination through work in the end of 1943 and how far
16 they still carried on with this policy.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you one question? You refer
18 to the death rates and they were being reported, for
19 example, from Auschwitz on a regular basis?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Death rates of those in the camps?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The inmates in the camps?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, exactly.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Do you recall, in general, whether the death rate reduced
26 around October 1943?
. P-16
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot — I think I should not speculate.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have the statistics here and I cannot answer.
4 MR IRVING: You do actually because they are just in one of the
5 other documents in the bundle, my Lord. We are coming to
6 the death rates in a minute.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we? Good.
8 MR IRVING: Yes. Can I ask, if you have finished with your
9 replies, Dr Longerich, now to look at the loose page
10 No. 15? This is from the same kind of source, is it not,
11 the administration of the concentration camp system, dated
12 December 28th 1942, and this is a letter addressed to the
13 camp doctors of the concentration camps. Let me tell you
14 where this comes from. It comes from a book called “Macht
15 Ohne Moral”. It is, obviously, not a wartime transcript.
16 It has been transcribed, presumably, from a microfilm or
17 something.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it is, I think somebody —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Typed a copy?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — typed a copy, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it is a letter written to the camp doctors of the
22 concentration camps, including Auschwitz. That is the
23 fifth one. Ravensbruck, Flosenburg and Nattsweileicken
24 and I can see there Mauthausen at the end. It is saying
25 to them in the second sentence, is it not, well, it begins
26 by saying, “I am attaching”, which is not attached here,
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1 “a list of the current editions and departures in all the
2 concentration camps for your attention. From the latter,,
3 you can see that of 156,000 arrivals, around 70,000 have
4 died”. He goes on to say: “This is completely
5 unacceptable and the camp doctors have to stop their rough
6 and ready measures and they have to start making sure the
7 prisoners survive”. What would you make of that kind of
8 document? Are there any other passages you want to read
9 from that document or translate?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, it says here that one can read from the statistics
11 that from 156 prisoners who came into the camp, 70,000
12 died, and with this kind of high death rates, one is not
13 able to keep the number of prisoners on the same level.
14 I think this is the main concern, to keep, because the
15 people died in the concentration camps, it is not possible
16 to keep, you know, to keep this number of prisoners in the
17 camp. This is nothing to do, of course, with
18 extermination and gas chambers in Auschwitz. It is what
19 happens in the camp.
20 MR RAMPTON: Can I, perhaps, interrupt and ask Dr Longerich,
21 not Mr Irving, Dr Longerich, to translate the rest of that
22 paragraph when he has read it?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. “The concentration, the camp doctors have to make
24 sure with all means at their disposal that the death rate
25 in the single camps has to decline, not the one is the
26 better doctor in the concentration camp who believes that
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1 through unresponsible, that he has to”, well —-
2 MR IRVING: “Inappropriate callousness”?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Inappropriate”.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Harshness” or “hardness”?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Harshness to, he has to…”
6 MR RAMPTON: Maybe the lady translator can do it.
7 THE INTERPRETER: Yes. “Not he is the better physician or
8 doctor in a concentration camp who believes that through
9 inappropriate, that he has to stand out through
10 inappropriate hardness, but he who achieves, he who
11 maintains the ability to work in the various workplaces
12 through supervision and exchange on a level as high as
13 possible”?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, and I think “exchange” is here the key word, so what
15 they are trying to achieve is they are trying to keep a
16 certain number of prisoners to use them as slave labours
17 to work them to death, but, of course, unfortunately, they
18 have too many people died in a too short time, so they
19 have to make sure they got supply from outside. This is,
20 I think it is quite, the reference is here, “exchange of
21 prisoners”, yes? It is not the duty of the doctors to,
22 you know, keep the people, to keep the prisoners on life
23 — alive, sorry, alive, so I think this is —-
24 MR IRVING: Is this document declaring war on the callousness
25 of the camp doctors?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think they would be — just reminded them, the
. P-19
1 document reminded them to perform their duties as
2 concentration camp doctors, and it is quite clearly what
3 their duties are.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, to keep them alive?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, to maintain that always, you know, there is the same
6 number of prisoners in the camp, yes? So to make sure
7 that the effectiveness of a worker is, the effectiveness
8 of the workforce is as high as possible by supervision and
9 exchange of individual workers. So his responsibility is
10 to care for the entire camp population, but not for the
11 single worker. He has to make sure that the individual
12 workers are exchanges so that the number of workers in the
13 camp is a kind of —-
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, that has nothing do with the doctors, has it,
15 really?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, of course, the doctor has to — this is the prime
17 responsibility of the doctor.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, I mean the exchange is not really the doctor’s
19 responsibility?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, but he is part of this process.
21 MR IRVING: Can I now, if Mr Rampton does not mind, translate
22 the next sentence which is: “Camp doctors have more than
23 hitherto to supervise the nourishment of the prisoners and
24 to make suggestions for improvement in accordance, in
25 conformity, with the administration of the camp
26 commandants”. Then further down that paragraph, does it
. P-20
1 not say, “The Reichsfuhrer SS”, that is Heinreich Himmler,
2 “has ordered that the mortality rates are without
3 question to be held down. They have got to be reduced”.
4 So that is the overall tenor of this letter.
5 The camp doctors are not doing their job properly. They
6 have got to pay attention to the feeding and the health of
7 the prisoners. Himmler is getting angry because they are
8 losing so much of their valuable slave labour through
9 whatever.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do you get Himmler from?
11 MR IRVING: The Reichsfuhrer SS. It is the last sentence but
12 one, my Lord. The Reichsfuhrer SS es hat befuhlen?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The bottom line for me is: “The programme to exterminate
14 prisoners for work is going too fast. We have to make
15 sure we did not kill too many in a short time”. I think
16 this is the context of document.
17 MR IRVING: It is difficult at the last minute when documents
18 are provided to me by lawyers around the world in doing
19 these things. If your Lordship has any objection, then I
20 would not take it further.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not. I think this document is
22 rather different from your manuscript and I think we will
23 proceed cautiously, but for the moment let us assume it is
24 authentic.
25 MR IRVING: If you just look at the first page of this document
26 and run your eye over it, is Pohl sending a message to all
. P-21
1 the concentration camp commandants, 19 of them, saying:
2 “It is time to stop the rough and ready measures with
3 prisoners. We are losing them like flies. We need their
4 manpower. Look after them better”?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, first of all, I have to express my reservations
6 about this document. I do not know the context. I do not
7 know the archive. But on the assumption that this is an
8 authentic document, yes, it is a letter to the 19 heads of
9 the concentration camps, and obviously the document is
10 saying that they have to improve their measures to keep
11 prisoners alive, so which is a kind of reference to what
12 happened in the camps before, I think.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, and paragraph 5 of that first page says: “Not
14 from any false sentimentality but because we need their
15 arms and legs because those are helping the German people
16 to get to a great victory. That is why we have got to
17 start paying attention to the welfare of the prisoners”?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. That is stated here in this document.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then the next page, page 2, the heading is, “Foodstuffs,
20 food, feeding”?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have the time to read now.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am just asking you to look at the headings. That
23 all we need, I think. Page 2 he is talking about the
24 feeding. The following page, paragraph 2, is called
25 “Clothing”. Then down to the bottom of that page,
26 “Natural Medications” or “Health” —-
. P-22
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “stuff”.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I cannot, you know, I cannot read so fast but under
4 “Clothing” it is stated here: “I decide that during the
5 winter, as far as far as available, prisoners should wear
6 coats, pullover, socks”, so that should give you an idea
7 about the standards which actually existed in the
8 concentration camps before this letter arrived, and it
9 says, it says “as far as available”, so it does not
10 actually say, “Give the men, you know, proper clothing”.
11 It is saying, you know, “You can give them socks if they
12 are available and nothing more”. So I think this gives
13 you a kind of an idea of this.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Over the page, paragraph 4 is called “Avoiding unnecessary
15 exertions”. For example, these frequent parades were they
16 were held standing for hours while they were counted
17 zielappelle —-
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: — are to be kept as short as possible, and so on. In
20 other words, there seems to be a reversal of existing
21 policy because they are losing prisoners like flies to
22 what I would call non-violent causes.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is your interpretation, yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what is yours?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, they started in the concentration camps a programme
26 which they called “extermination through work”. So they
. P-23
1 used hard labour as a tool, as a means to kill prisoners.
2 This was the practice before. Now, at October ’43, it is
3 not really surprising they are a bit cautious here and
4 they are trying to improve as far as they can, trying to
5 improve in some sense the general conditions of the
6 prisoners. But, of course, this is a document, I mean,
7 this document is, of course, sent to the head of the
8 concentration camps — nothing to do with the
9 extermination camps, for instance.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going to ask you about that.
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. So, as far as Auschwitz is concerned, it concerns
12 the slave labours within the camp. It does not say
13 anything about the people who were deported to the camp
14 and selected in front of the camp.
15 If one, you know, if I have to — if I were in
16 the position to give you a kind of expert’s opinion on the
17 condition in the concentration camps at the end of 1943,
18 I would not completely rely on this document. It would be
19 completely unprofessional to rely on this one document.
20 One has to look, of course, at all kind of circumstances.
21 One has to look at the death rates. They had statistics
22 on the death rates and I had to look at those, and so on.
23 You know, the problem with this kind of document is that
24 if you have not seen the file, in the file in the next bit
25 you could find a document which says, “Well, I recall my
26 order from last week”. If you do not have the context, it
. P-24
1 is difficult to make, you know, a general statement as an
2 historian about the condition in this camp, and whether
3 they really, you know, in the way gave up this idea of
4 extermination through work in the end of 1943 and how far
5 they still carried on with this policy.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you one question? You refer
7 to the death rates and they were being reported, for
8 example, from Auschwitz on a regular basis?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Death rates of those in the camps?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The inmates in the camps?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, exactly.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Do you recall, in general, whether the death rate reduced
15 around October 1943?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot — I think I should not speculate.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have the statistics here and I cannot answer.
19 MR IRVING: You do actually because they are just in one of the
20 other documents in the bundle, my Lord. We are coming to
21 the death rates in a minute.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we? Good.
23 MR IRVING: Yes. Can I ask, if you have finished with your
24 replies, Dr Longerich, now to look at the loose page
25 No. 15? This is from the same kind of source, is it not,
26 the administration of the concentration camp system, dated
. P-25
1 December 28th 1942, and this is a letter addressed to the
2 camp doctors of the concentration camps. Let me tell you
3 where this comes from. It comes from a book called “Macht
4 Ohne Moral”. It is, obviously, not a wartime transcript.
5 It has been transcribed, presumably, from a microfilm or
6 something.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it is, I think somebody —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Typed a copy?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — typed a copy, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it is a letter written to the camp doctors of the
11 concentration camps, including Auschwitz. That is the
12 fifth one. Ravensbruck, Flosenburg and Nattsweileicken
13 and I can see there Mauthausen at the end. It is saying
14 to them in the second sentence, is it not, well, it begins
15 by saying, “I am attaching”, which is not attached here,
16 “a list of the current editions and departures in all the
17 concentration camps for your attention. From the latter,,
18 you can see that of 156,000 arrivals, around 70,000 have
19 died”. He goes on to say: “This is completely
20 unacceptable and the camp doctors have to stop their rough
21 and ready measures and they have to start making sure the
22 prisoners survive”. What would you make of that kind of
23 document? Are there any other passages you want to read
24 from that document or translate?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, it says here that one can read from the statistics
26 that from 156 prisoners who came into the camp, 70,000
. P-26
1 died, and with this kind of high death rates, one is not
2 able to keep the number of prisoners on the same level.
3 I think this is the main concern, to keep, because the
4 people died in the concentration camps, it is not possible
5 to keep, you know, to keep this number of prisoners in the
6 camp. This is nothing to do, of course, with
7 extermination and gas chambers in Auschwitz. It is what
8 happens in the camp.
9 MR RAMPTON: Can I, perhaps, interrupt and ask Dr Longerich,
10 not Mr Irving, Dr Longerich, to translate the rest of that
11 paragraph when he has read it?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. “The concentration, the camp doctors have to make
13 sure with all means at their disposal that the death rate
14 in the single camps has to decline, not the one is the
15 better doctor in the concentration camp who believes that
16 through unresponsible, that he has to”, well —-
17 MR IRVING: “Inappropriate callousness”?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Inappropriate”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Harshness” or “hardness”?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Harshness to, he has to…”
21 MR RAMPTON: Maybe the lady translator can do it.
22 THE INTERPRETER: Yes. “Not he is the better physician or
23 doctor in a concentration camp who believes that through
24 inappropriate, that he has to stand out through
25 inappropriate hardness, but he who achieves, he who
26 maintains the ability to work in the various workplaces
. P-27
1 through supervision and exchange on a level as high as
2 possible”?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, and I think “exchange” is here the key word, so what
4 they are trying to achieve is they are trying to keep a
5 certain number of prisoners to use them as slave labours
6 to work them to death, but, of course, unfortunately, they
7 have too many people died in a too short time, so they
8 have to make sure they got supply from outside. This is,
9 I think it is quite, the reference is here, “exchange of
10 prisoners”, yes? It is not the duty of the doctors to,
11 you know, keep the people, to keep the prisoners on life
12 — alive, sorry, alive, so I think this is —-
13 MR IRVING: Is this document declaring war on the callousness
14 of the camp doctors?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think they would be — just reminded them, the
16 document reminded them to perform their duties as
17 concentration camp doctors, and it is quite clearly what
18 their duties are.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, to keep them alive?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, to maintain that always, you know, there is the same
21 number of prisoners in the camp, yes? So to make sure
22 that the effectiveness of a worker is, the effectiveness
23 of the workforce is as high as possible by supervision and
24 exchange of individual workers. So his responsibility is
25 to care for the entire camp population, but not for the
26 single worker. He has to make sure that the individual
. P-28
1 workers are exchanges so that the number of workers in the
2 camp is a kind of —-
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, that has nothing do with the doctors, has it,
4 really?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, of course, the doctor has to — this is the prime
6 responsibility of the doctor.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, I mean the exchange is not really the doctor’s
8 responsibility?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, but he is part of this process.
10 MR IRVING: Can I now, if Mr Rampton does not mind, translate
11 the next sentence which is: “Camp doctors have more than
12 hitherto to supervise the nourishment of the prisoners and
13 to make suggestions for improvement in accordance, in
14 conformity, with the administration of the camp
15 commandants”. Then further down that paragraph, does it
16 not say, “The Reichsfuhrer SS”, that is Heinreich Himmler,
17 “has ordered that the mortality rates are without
18 question to be held down. They have got to be reduced”.
19 So that is the overall tenor of this letter.
20 The camp doctors are not doing their job properly. They
21 have got to pay attention to the feeding and the health of
22 the prisoners. Himmler is getting angry because they are
23 losing so much of their valuable slave labour through
24 whatever.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do you get Himmler from?
26 MR IRVING: The Reichsfuhrer SS. It is the last sentence but
. P-29
1 one, my Lord. The Reichsfuhrer SS es hat befuhlen.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The bottom line for me is “The programme to exterminate
3 prisoners for work is going too fast. We have to make
4 sure that we do not kill too many in a short timeframe.
5 I think this is the context of the document”.
Section 30.6 to 56.18
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, it does not actually say that in the
7 document, does it? That is the spin you have put on it.
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, but again, you know, if you ask me as an expert and
9 you just put one document in front of me, I have to say
10 that you have to see it in the context of the history of
11 the concentration camps, and it is not the prime
12 responsibility — this was not the prime responsibility of
13 concentration camps doctors to look for the health and
14 welfare of the prisoners. One has to say that, and you
15 cannot —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: To your knowledge, was there a large camp hospital in
17 Auschwitz?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I would not call it a hospital. It was a kamp
19 baracken. So this is a place where sick prisoners, sick
20 prisoners, were forced to go to the kamp baracken and, of
21 course, there the main purpose of this so-called hospital
22 was, of course, to select the prisoners not fit for work
23 and to send them into the gas chambers. So the whole
24 notion of a hospital, I think, is rather bizarre, as far
25 as prisoners are concerned.
26 I have to say I am not really an expert for
. P-30
1 Auschwitz. We had an expert here and I think I cannot do
2 it —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think his answer was more or less the same
4 as yours.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I cannot actually — I do not have more expertise,
6 definitely not more expertise than he.
7 MR IRVING: I am not going to ask you questions about
8 Auschwitz. This is about the entire concentration camp
9 system or the extermination system, as you would describe
10 it. Obviously, I do not want to flood the court with
11 documents of this nature, but had you seen documents —-
12 MR RAMPTON: No, I am sorry. I do not believe that is what the
13 witness has said. What the witness has said is that this
14 concerns, to use Mr Irving’s phrase, slave labour in the
15 concentration camps which includes a whole lot of camps in
16 Germany which have nothing to do with extermination. The
17 witness has specifically said that these documents have
18 nothing whatever to do with the extermination programme
19 which took place at Birkenhau which is not mentioned in
20 any of these documents or in the Reinhardt —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is, undoubtedly, what the witness has
22 been saying, none of this touches on the ones who were not
23 selected for —-
24 MR IRVING: My Lord, it is remarkable the way the Defence
25 sometimes says that Auschwitz covers both camps and
26 sometimes they say it does not. That is all I would say
. P-31
1 there. Can we now look at the third document, please,
2 which is the only other one I am going to trouble the
3 court with on this particular matter, document No. 16,
4 which is a four page document with tables dated September
5 30th 1943 from the same kind of man, is it not? It is
6 signed actually by Pohl himself, chief of the camp system,
7 and here he actually attaches statistics, does he not, for
8 deaths just in one month, August, 1943? The third page is
9 a table of death in August 1943.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Do I have chance to read the document? Give me, please,
11 five minutes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take your time.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 MR IRVING: First of all, the covering letter is a bit
15 triumphant, is it not? It says: “In consequence of the
16 hygienic measures we have introduced, and the better
17 feeding, the better clothing, the death rate has gone down
18 in the camps”.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us just see, would you mind, would the
20 translator very kindly translate the first paragraph just
21 so we get the order of the mortality?
22 THE INTERPRETER:: The first paragraph?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you mind?
24 THE INTERPRETER: “Since during the month of December 1942
25 mortality was still at — whereas, in the month of
26 December 1942 the mortality was still at around 10 per
. P-32
1 cent, it already was reduced in the month of January 1943
2 to 8 per cent, and proceeded to go down further. This is
3 mainly — this reduction of the mortality is mainly
4 attributed to the fact that the hygienic measures which
5 had been asked for for sometime have now at least been
6 implemented to a large extent. Moreover, in regarding the
7 feeding, the nourishment, it was ordered that a third of
8 the food should be added to, should be added just before
9 the distribution of the meal in its raw state, to
10 supplement the cooked food. It was avoided to kill the
11 food by cooking it. In addition, sauerkrauts and similar
12 food was distributed.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think that will do. So they were 10
14 per cent mortality.
15 MR IRVING: Horrendous mortality rates when you look at the
16 figures, my Lord. That is 10 per cent per month.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are now very pleased with themselves
18 because they have got the death rate in Auschwitz down to
19 48,000 men in one month?
20 MR IRVING: No, it is not. That is the actual number. The
21 first column is the number on hand, my Lord. The second
22 column is the deaths that month, 1442.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I mean, you said this has a kind of triumphant, this
24 letter has a kind of triumphant attitude, and the triumph
25 here is that the death rate, the monthly date rate, is
26 reduced from 10 per cent in December to 8 per cent in
. P-33
1 January. So this is the success of these measures. So 8
2 per cent, eight people of 100 would die each month in the
3 slave labour camps, nothing to do, of course, with the
4 extermination, extermination.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is what you say, is it not, but we are just looking
6 at figures in Auschwitz —-
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is absolutely —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: — of men and women?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — Auschwitz had two functions. It was a slave labour
10 camp and it was an extermination camp, and this clearly
11 relates to the — clearly relates to the slave labour
12 camp.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: What are they dying of?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, as I am trying to say, in the slave labour camp they
15 had a programme of extermination through work, and the
16 life expectancy of a prisoner in the death, in the slave
17 labour camp was a couple of weeks or probably a couple of
18 months, and they died — you can see actually see it from
19 the document itself because the documents state, you know,
20 what has to be improved. The food has to be improved
21 because the conditions, the food conditions, are
22 completely unsufficient. It says in the document, for
23 instance, that prisoners are allowed to wear a coat
24 outside during the winter. So this gives, I think, a very
25 clear answer that prisoners in the camp would die because
26 they do not have the efficient, they do not have
. P-34
1 sufficient clothing, and there are, of course, epidemics
2 in the camp and, of course, there is a regular process of
3 selection. The people unfit for work, the sick and the
4 weak prisoners would be selected and sent to the gas
5 chambers.
6 I think, if you read the document with a
7 reference to actually the conditions in the camp, the
8 conditions in, let us say, August 1943, you have a very
9 good idea of what the conditions were. August ’43, 1442
10 people died, for instance, in the camp.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you explain what “durch mittel
12 Belegstaff” is?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is the average number of prisoners.
14 MR IRVING: Average camp strength.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Average prison population?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
18 MR IRVING: So the five columns, my Lord, average prison
19 population of each of those camps. The next column is the
20 numbers of deaths which, in the case of Auschwitz and one
21 or two of the other camps is being divided up as to men
22 and women, separate figures. The next column is the
23 percentage —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the rest is clear.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. It is quite clear because the numbers here were
26 separated because Auschwitz, the slave labour camps, was
. P-35
1 divided into a women’s camp and into a men’s camp, so this
2 gives you an indication that this relates clearly to the
3 slave labour camp and nothing to do with the extermination
4 installations.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which camp would be meant by “Lublin”?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is the — this is Maidonek, complex of camps really.
7 MR IRVING: If you go now to the next page after that
8 statistical table, you have three pages showing a graph
9 showing how over the three or four years, 1940 to 1943,
10 the mortality has soared from various causes. There are
11 quite visible peak. There is a big peak around about
12 March 1943 which is on the second page.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you explain for our benefit what this
14 covers? Is it all concentration camps?
15 MR IRVING: It is all the camps. I draw the witness’s
16 attention first to the third of three pages. It has a
17 rubber stamp. The senior doctor on Pohl’s staff. In
18 other words, he is the head doctor or, I suppose, the
19 surgeon general of the concentration camp system. It has
20 Himmler’s initials on this document on the third page.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Where is that? Which page?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have the graphs?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: It will be the last page but one before the big yellow
25 sheet. Do you see, it has a rubber stamp saying that,
26 effectively, it is the surgeon general of the
. P-36
1 concentration camp system?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the right it has Heinrich Himmler’s own initials, so it
4 has been submitted to Himmler?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: And it is a graph showing, the bottom two curves are the
7 percentage figures, the middle curve is a percentage
8 figure, the bottom curve appears to be numbers of death
9 per month and the upper curve appears to be a cumulative
10 figure. But it is difficult to interpret, and I am not a
11 statistician, all I am going to say is there are quite
12 clear peaks. They have gone through crises. Would you
13 accept that that is a fair statement?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There were differences in the monthly death rate, yes,
15 I can see that.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the final page is the yellow page right at the end
17 which is a contrast of the mortality rates in the
18 concentration camps in the second half year of 1942
19 compared with the second half year of 1943. Again you can
20 see in August and September 1942 and in August and
21 September 1943 they have gone through a serious crisis of
22 some kind. There have been 11,000 deaths, 12,000 deaths,
23 in the concentration camp system in corresponding August
24 and September of both years. So I am only going to ask
25 one or two general questions now from what you have seen.
26 In other words, there was a very high mortality rate in
. P-37
1 these concentration camps?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, indeed.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: How did they dispose of the bodies?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I am actually not prepared to — I mean, I am not
5 prepared here to comment on the concentration camps, but,
6 as far as I know, they burnt the bodies in crematoria.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: In crematoria, yes. If these deaths had been caused
8 through epidemics, would that be an appropriate way of
9 disposing of the bodies?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I think so.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you any indication as to what the major cause of
12 deaths in Auschwitz was in 1942 or 1943?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think I should guess at what I think. As far as
14 I recall it, it was typhus, but I am not sure. I am not
15 absolutely…
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you even seen any references to this epidemic in the
17 police decodes at the Public Record Office or in the
18 United States?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen any references to the camp at Auschwitz
21 being quarantined of what is called a lager spare?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot recall that.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, that is the only questions I have to put on the
24 death statistics.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that you are really putting
26 what I suspect may be your case. Are you suggesting (and
. P-38
1 I am not sure this is the right witness anyway) that the
2 crematoria were solely being used in order to burn the
3 corpses of those who are shown on this graph to have died
4 from typhus?
5 MR IRVING: Let me put two or three more questions in that
6 direction then, my Lord, to nail it down.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, because if that is your case, you must
8 put it fair and square and it may be Dr Longerich will
9 say, “Well, I am not the right person to ask”.
10 MR IRVING: But he is not the right expert, yes. Dr Longerich,
11 from your knowledge of the concentration camp system or
12 its workings, who would have the job of disposing of the
13 bodies in the crematoria? Would that be the
14 sonderkommandos?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think so, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And would they remove all the gold and valuables from
17 these bodies first?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it be a very grisly and memorable task?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I would suppose so, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not think really, my Lord, I can ask any further
22 questions on that.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not sure, I am not really sure, I am also — actually
24 I am not prepared to go into details about the history of
25 Auschwitz, and if this is a kind of, I do not know, I am
26 not too sure about the sonderkommando here, and I should
. P-39
1 probably — we had expert in Auschwitz and I should
2 probably simply say I am not sure here.
3 MR RAMPTON: Can I make a suggestion? If these documents be
4 thought important, and if it be Mr Irving’s case (which,
5 by implication, I suppose it must be, forget all the other
6 camps mentioned in these documents as they are nothing to
7 do with this case) that the reference to Auschwitz is a
8 reference to Auschwitz Birkenhau, then I think maybe the
9 right thing to do, I do not know what your Lordship
10 thinks, this gentleman is not an expert on Auschwitz, is
11 to send these documents to Professor van Pelt and get him
12 to put something in writing as a supplement to his report
13 by of commentary on these documents.
14 MR IRVING: Together with the appropriate part of the
15 cross-examination.
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes, certainly.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The first thing, though, is to get clear and,
18 I mean, it is what I was trying to do, and I think
19 Mr Rampton is also wishing for clarification, quite what
20 you are making of these graphs. They are new and I have
21 no doubt there are good explanations why they were not put
22 to Professor van Pelt. But are you suggesting, just take
23 Auschwitz because we have not gone into detail in the
24 other camps, that the deaths that one infers were taking
25 place at Auschwitz from these graphs were the reason why
26 the crematoria were being employed in the way that various
. P-40
1 witnesses have described they were being employed?
2 MR IRVING: Let me put one more question then to the witness.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I do not think the witness is really
4 going to be very happy to answer. I am really asking you
5 to tell me and tell the Defendants.
6 MR IRVING: In that case, if you look at the statistical table,
7 my Lord, which is the third page, it would be page 18,
8 I suppose.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, the yellow one?
10 MR IRVING: No, the table with columns. You see that in one
11 month, August, 1943, there were 2400 deaths in Auschwitz
12 from whatever cause, and for the argument I would accept
13 it is Auschwitz and not Birkenhau, then that is 2400
14 bodies that have to be disposed of in that 31 days
15 period. It is 200 tonnes of bodies which is a memorable
16 task for the sonderkommandos who had the wretched task of
17 cremating them. The suggestion I am making is that it is
18 not beyond the bounds of probability that this is what
19 they are recalling when they see — one question which
20 I think van Pelt would have to answer, if this question
21 was to put to him, is did the Auschwitz camp, as opposed
22 to Birkenhau, have the cremation capacity for disposing of
23 bodies on that scale at this time or would the bodies have
24 been sent to Birkenhau to be disposed of?
25 MR RAMPTON: This is a terrible confusion in Mr Irving’s mind,
26 that the greater part of the workers, as opposed to what
. P-41
1 I might call the murderees, who were put into the labour
2 section after selection were housed at Birkenhau.
3 MR IRVING: So this is Birkenhau then we are talking about?
4 MR RAMPTON: No, no. When one talks about the extermination
5 facility at Auschwitz, one is talking mainly but not
6 exclusively of the two bunkers and the four crematoria
7 where the people went immediately after they got off the
8 train. They never went into the work camp.
9 The work camp part housed the majority of the
10 slave labour at Auschwitz Birkenhau. That has been
11 clearly described by Professor van Pelt. We have seen the
12 picture of the wire with the gate through it into the
13 women’s camp, and that is where the majority of those
14 Auschwitz frauen would have been housed. That evidence is
15 already in court.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have to be clear, you see, you did
17 not really, I think, actually quite explain, Mr Irving,
18 what it was that you were saying was not beyond the bounds
19 of possibility. I think we must really be absolutely
20 clear about this. Are you saying that it is not beyond
21 the bounds of possibility that all the evidence that we
22 have heard about bodies being burnt in the —-
23 MR IRVING: The eyewitness evidence.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — crematoria, whether at Birkenhau or at
25 Auschwitz, was the burning of bodies of those who had died
26 through disease?
. P-42
1 MR IRVING: Of whom there are clearly a very large number.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but what is the answer to the question?
3 MR IRVING: The answer is yes.
4 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, again I think this is unsatisfactory for
5 this witness, I really do, because —-
6 MR IRVING: Except, of course, that I do accept that there were
7 gassings on a small scale in Auschwitz as well.
8 MR RAMPTON: This is most unsatisfactory because the evidence
9 of Professor van Pelt is, whether it be right or wrong,
10 which this witness may or may not know but he is not the
11 right person to deal with it, the incineration capacity in
12 crematoria 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 at Auschwitz Birkenhau was by
13 June 1943 something in the region 4,700 bodies a day, and
14 this is a monthly figure.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand the point you are making, and
16 that will be a point you will, no doubt, make later on,
17 but I think we have got clear now from Mr Irving, because
18 I am anxious that he states clearly what his case is and
19 then it can be addressed by Professor van Pelt, but I
20 think it is clear now that the suggestion is that, apart
21 from a small number of gassings, which is something that
22 has already been accepted by Mr Irving, he says that the
23 crematoria were being used to — everywhere were being
24 used solely for the purpose of burning the bodies of those
25 who died through disease or from overwork, I suppose.
26 MR RAMPTON: Maybe, but on what appears to be, if we are right,
. P-43
1 a relatively insignificant scale.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that is obviously the point to be made,
3 but I have not misrepresented your case, have I,
4 Mr Irving?
5 MR IRVING: No, that is correct, although I am not sure this
6 was the way to have elicited it. Let me ask two more
7 related questions then.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you said that the prisoners who
10 arrived at these camps they were selected and some were
11 sent to work and others were exterminated without being
12 registered, this is the common consensus, is it not, among
13 historians?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would the Germans have gone to such enormous trouble
16 to list down to the last digit the numbers of those who
17 were dying in the camps if just 100 yards down the road in
18 the same camps they were killing them like flies without
19 any kind of registry at all?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I think it is difficult to answer this question, you
21 know, actually to reconstruct the rationality of this
22 system. I think what — they had a kind of proper
23 concentration camp system. They wanted to know who was in
24 the camp. They wanted to control whether people actually
25 were able to flee from the camp, for instance, and they
26 did not keep statistics about the people they were going
. P-44
1 to kill, as far as I am aware of.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: This generates two further questions, Dr Longerich. Have
3 you heard of Dr Conrad Morgan, the chief Judge of the SS
4 system?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I have heard of him, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: And he was a lawyer in Frankfurt after the war, was he
7 not? He was not prosecuted for war crimes, just so we can
8 establish his credentials.
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was an investigating judge who carried out
11 investigations for the SS about atrocities in
12 concentration camps, is that right?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: And were any concentration camp kommandants hanged by the
15 SS as a result of having committed what I would call wild
16 atrocities?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, as far as I remember, Koch was, for instance, among
18 them.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Buchenwald? The kommandant of Buchenwald?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: The husband of the notorious Elz Koch?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was hanged in front of the prisoners of his own camp
24 for having committed atrocities?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not recall the circumstance, but I know that he was
26 punished.
. P-45
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the kommandant of the infamous camp at Pleskau which
2 figured in the film Schindler’s List, was he also
3 penalised, punished, by the SS for committing atrocities?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not recall the details.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did Conrad Morgan report back to Berlin that large numbers
6 of illegal killings had been carried out by these
7 Kommandants?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I remember that.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this not an extraordinary business, in the light of the
10 whole story of the Holocaust now, that the SS was
11 conducting its own internal enquiries within its own
12 jurisdiction?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, Himmler himself refers to this incident in his
14 speech in Posnan. He said actually, “We are proud that we
15 carried out this operation in a proper way, except some
16 exceptions”, and he is clearly referring to these people.
17 So they had an idea that one had to kill people properly,
18 and what, you know, they did not hang Koch because he
19 killed prisoners in the camp. They were extreme, the
20 conditions in the camp were extremely, for instance, the
21 amount of looting and the amount of actually — what is
22 the expression in German? [German]
23 MR IRVING: Embezzling, corruption?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Corruption. “Corruption” is the key word here. These
25 things played a role in the particular circumstance in
26 these camps, I mean, it is clearly that the SS did not
. P-46
1 prosecute Koch because he was killing prisoners. This was
2 not, I mean, we have extraordinary, I mean, kommandants of
3 concentration camps like, for instance, Ikant(?),
4 extremely cruel and sadistic persons, but they were not
5 prosecuted because they were killing prisoners in the
6 camp.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was Rudolf Hoess, the Kommandant of Auschwitz, under
8 investigation by the Conrad Morgan also?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not recall this now.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, even if he was, did anything happen to
11 him as a result of Morgan’s investigation?
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, the witness said he does not know.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was just wondering what the point of the
14 question was.
15 MR IRVING: I know, but, I mean, I cannot really give evidence
16 on that.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, again I am not really sure you are
18 putting your case. Are you suggesting, Mr Irving, and
19 please say so if you are —-
20 MR IRVING: This was going to be the next question.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — please listen to the question. That the
22 SS conducted a serious investigation and anyone who was
23 found to have illegitimately killed any inmate in any
24 concentration camp was punished by the SS. Is that the
25 suggestion?
26 MR IRVING: A number of the Kommandants were prosecuted and
. P-47
1 severely punished for carrying out wild killings.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: May I draw the attention to this document, to the
3 statistics. We have here the initials of Heinrich
4 Himmler, and statistics say that we have a death rate in
5 the camp in the second half of 1942 of 8.5 per cent in
6 July, 10 per cent in August, more than 10 per cent in
7 September. So Himmler was prepared to accept this high
8 death rates with his own initials here. So he knew about
9 it and he then, well, tried in a way to keep the death
10 rate down to a certain extent. But, as we said, as we
11 heard, you know, they accepted at a success, you know,
12 actually to keep the monthly rate down from 10 to 8 per
13 cent. So this is a kind of…
14 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you are not suggesting that these are
15 homicidal killings, are you? These statistics here are
16 non-homicidal.
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think killings are always — I mean, I think a killing
18 is a killing.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: These are people who died from the reasons stated in the
20 covering letter, bad conditions?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: But there is something like a system of concentration camp
22 invented by the Nazis in the 1930s and —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, this is the word that I was going to pick on
24 before —-
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you interrupted the witness. Just
26 finish your answer.
. P-48
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Here, this system was more and more, well, they worked on
2 this system and elaborated the system. They introduced
3 this idea of extermination through work at the beginning
4 of 1942. So it was actually — the purpose of the
5 concentration camp was not to keep prisoners alive and to,
6 like — the purpose of the concentration camp here was,
7 clearly, to put people to death and to use their ability
8 to work for a certain period of time. This is the idea
9 behind this system. It was not, you cannot compare it
10 with a prison or anything in a civilized country.
11 MR IRVING: Now, I want to ask two questions, one of which
12 I was about to ask when his Lordship —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Asked you not to interrupt the witness.
14 MR IRVING: No, I am one stage before that actually.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, anyway, ask it now.
16 MR IRVING: The first question — the second question is going
17 to be about your system. The first question — oh, dear!
18 Winston Churchill once said, “Never say there are three
19 important things”. I was going to ask about system. You
20 have used the word “system”. Does not what I said about
21 Conrad Morgan indicate that the whole system was
22 ramshackle from start to finish? If I can ask you to
23 recall that yesterday we saw that Jackeln had obviously
24 overstepped the guidelines and he is called back to
25 headquarters, but he does get some mild reprimand. He is
26 sent back and nothing else happens. Is this not an
. P-49
1 indication of a totally ramshackle system with lack of any
2 real discipline?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I do not feel very happy in this situation. I think
4 if you want to discuss seriously, let us say, the limits
5 of the system that Conrad Morgan saw, then we have to
6 discuss the document, we have to read, for instance, the
7 evidence about, you know, in Koch’s case and so on. But
8 I am not really prepared to make these general statements
9 about single incidents. You see, I do not have the
10 evidence in front of me. I am not prepared to do it.
11 There was no indication that I —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are quite right. I am not going to ask you about
13 things you do not know about because that would not help
14 the court.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but the system, the SS, as you are trying to say
16 here, the idea that the SS had their own, had their own
17 disciplinary measures, and they, of course, punished at
18 the concentration camps, this has to be seen in a context,
19 and I am very unhappy about the idea that I should comment
20 on that without actually having a chance to look at the
21 wordings and so on.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. Let me ask you about this phrase you have used
23 twice this morning now, “vernichtung durch
24 Arbeit”, destruction by labour?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have referred to this on several occasions. Have you
. P-50
1 produced any documents at all in your report where that
2 phrase actually occurs or is it just a deduction you make?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: An inference?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: My report is not about particularly this issue. I think
6 I mentioned it somewhere in my report, I am not sure here,
7 but we have documentary evidence from Himmler in his
8 writings to Pohl and to — that this system was introduced
9 at the beginning of 1942.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you do not actually reference it in your report.
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: At the moment, I would have to look at my report, whether
12 this is here.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I did actually look for it.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: You see, this is a different system separate from the
15 killings, separate from the extermination by gas. This is
16 actually what happens to the prisoners which were sent
17 into the camps actually fit for work, and then they used
18 him for a couple of months, a couple of weeks and a couple
19 of months and then they sent them to the gas chambers.
20 This is a similar, if you want to say, a subsystem of the
21 whole system. But in my report I am dealing primarily
22 with mass executions, with deportations and extermination
23 camps, and so on.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, it does not make much sense, does it, to
25 have a slave labourer who is working for you and work him
26 to death so you then have to replace him with somebody
. P-51
1 else because, presumably, his output drops off as he is
2 dying? Does it make sense?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, in which way do you think it makes sense? I do not
4 understand the question.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, your proposition that they deliberately took a slave
6 labourer for two months and said, “Work him until he drops
7 and then replace him”.
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is what is — actually there is a reference in the
9 document you presented here when you, about the duties of
10 the doctors. They said they have to make sure the
11 exchange of prisoners, this is exactly the process. They
12 fought a war of racist extermination, so they —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, so we hear, yes.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — one of their main aims in this war was to exterminate
15 the Jews in Europe, and they used this as one of the
16 methods, and they worked on the assumption that they had
17 enough slave labourers at their disposal, and if they had
18 exhausted this source, they would use, from their
19 perspective, they would use other sources of slave labour,
20 like, for instance, the Russians or Poles and so on. They
21 work on the assumption that they had, there was an
22 abundance, you know, there was an endless number of slave
23 labourers who they could force to work for them. But this
24 is an irrational and completely wrong assumption, but it
25 is still they are working on this assumption.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: My problem is, Dr Longerich, and this was the reason for
. P-52
1 the question I asked you, that you make this very bold and
2 adventurous statement about a deliberate plan to
3 exterminate by hard labour, and yet you have not actually
4 produced any reference documents or sources to enable us
5 to establish whether —-
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, you have forced me in a way to make —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: — that is your conclusion?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, sorry, but you forced me in a way to make those
9 adventures and bold statements because you put in front of
10 me some documents and asked me for general statements, and
11 my statements may not — may be adventurous, they may be
12 very general, but this is the result of this kind of
13 interrogation.
14 In my report, as far as I see, I dealt with the
15 programme of exterminations and mass executions and
16 deportations into extermination camps, not with this
17 particular aspect.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, in your report, you do on at least two
19 occasions use the phrase “extermination by labour” –
20 Vernichtung durch Arbeit – and you do not give any
21 references for this —-
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Then let us go to the —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we do not know if it is your phrase or a wartime
24 phrase?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Vernichtung durch Arbeit” is a wartime phrase —
26 extermination through labour.
. P-53
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you do not give any references for it in your report;
2 that is the problem we have.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We have to look at the pages are you referring to.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we now go to your report and we will perhaps
5 stumble —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us find the reference to “extermination
7 by labour”.
8 MR IRVING: I am sure Mr Rampton’s staff would have found it a
9 long ago, if it was referenced.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I expect that Dr Longerich probably remembers
11 where it is: Do you Dr Longerich?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Not at the moment.
13 MR IRVING: I have to take care that these slogans do not embed
14 themselves in the court’s subconsciousness without any
15 archival basis.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, in the conclusion, I refer in my report in —-
17 MR RAMPTON: Can I interrupt, please?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
19 MR RAMPTON: It is page 77 of the second part of the report.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. This is the conclusion of my report. So in my
22 report I am trying to explain the systematic character of
23 the killings, and I am trying to explain the emergence of
24 the programme. So I think that in the last section of
25 this, I am referring to, well actually the machinery of
26 mass murder and full operation from 1942 onwards. I base
. P-54
1 my comments here, on my writing here on generally
2 well-accepted work, because I thought it was not something
3 which is really disputed among historians.
4 We also had an expert witness on Auschwitz here
5 who actually was able to fully explain the system. So
6 I think that this idea, that prisoners in the camps were
7 systematically worked to death, is something which is not
8 disputed by historians in this field.
9 MR IRVING: There is a general —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving has put before you this morning
11 documents showing an overall mortality rate of 10 per cent
12 in all the concentration camps. Does that say anything to
13 you, Dr Longerich, about what was intended to go on there?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, this is exactly what I mean. It is an extremely high
15 rate of death and, as we learn from the other document, it
16 was a task of the doctors to make sure there was a proper
17 exchange of prisoners. So this is a machinery to put
18 prisoners to death by work.
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am indebted to you for reminding me of
20 the documents because, of course, is this right,
21 Dr Longerich, the documents do refer purely to
22 nourishment, proper nourishment, proper medication, proper
23 clothing —-
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: — and not being made to stand in these ridiculous three-
26 or four hour-long parades and so on?
. P-55
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. I stated this before that, in the document about the
2 duties of concentration camps, it is quite clear that it
3 is not the duty of the doctor to care for the welfare.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just so that it is a matter of record, Dr Longerich, page
5 77, where you used the phrase annihilation through labour,
6 you give no reference, do you?
7 MR RAMPTON: I was going to interrupt because that is a false
8 point, too. On page 89, three lines up from the bottom,
9 there is, in the bibliography, a reference to a book by
10 Ham and Keienburg called Vernichtung durch Arbeit: Der
11 Fall Neungamma von 1990.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think I made it clear in this final section of the
14 report that the annihilation through labour is part of the
15 extermination system. I was trying to explain the system
16 in a kind of summary because I think that, from 1942
17 onwards, it is absolutely not possible to dispute that
18 there was such a system for extermination.
Section 56.19 to 80.08
19 MR IRVING: Can we be absolutely specific and make quite plain
20 for the record that this phrase Vernichtung durch Arbeit
21 is not a wartime phrase used by SS, but is a title of a
22 post-war book, a secondary source on which you relied, is
23 that right?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, this is one of the major studies about this problem
25 and it refers to a wartime phrase which was currently used
26 among the SS.
. P-56
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have not referenced the actual wartime document, you
2 just referenced somebody’s secondary source, the title of
3 a book?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: My report tries to explain how this system of systematic
5 murder was built up. Maybe it was mistake, and also you
6 did not have the chance to ask me for more evidence for
7 that a month ago, it was not my intention here to explain
8 in great detail the existing system of extermination after
9 1942, because I thought that this is something which is
10 generally acknowledged and there is no major dispute about
11 that.
12 I am trying to explain that the building up of
13 the system mainly through the years 1940, 1941 and 1942.
14 Then the system is in operation and the annihilation
15 through work is one aspect of this system. I am referring
16 to second-hand literature. I did not go into detail here;
17 I am just referring to general works on this topic in
18 which this is described in full detail.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: If there had been one document referred to that secondary
20 literature, which was particularly tempting because it
21 used that actual phrase, you would no doubt have drawn our
22 attention to it, would you not?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: As I said, this is a summary, this is not the main purpose
24 of this report. I actually I wrote a book on the policy
25 of destruction. I had a chapter on this matter in the
26 book.
. P-57
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are all feeding upon each other, all the historians
2 are just feeding upon each other.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is a research process and, of course, you rely, in
4 your central parts of argumentation, on primary evidence,
5 but you do not have to invent the reel every time. This
6 is why i accept that you can rely on the research of
7 others, if their work is generally accepted in the
8 historical profession. This is nothing which is
9 exceptional.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we rely on a German historian’s consensus that the
11 consensus of opinion among German historians. What
12 happends to a German is —-
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is an internationally well-established consensus.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: What happens to a German writer who adopts a different
15 position on Auschwitz in Germany today, can you tell us?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: You are quite free to express if you have — as historians
17 have doubts and you are quite free to express your doubts
18 and to put them down in writing, I do not see what the
19 consequences could be.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to labour the point, but are you familiar
21 with the fact that a number of writers in Germany have
22 been sent to prison for expressing these doubts?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am only aware of the fact that there is a law in
24 Germany, paragraph 130 of the German penal code, which is
25 against the denial of genocide. I do not know whether you
26 refer to this case, but I think if you want me to discuss
. P-58
1 that, you —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: My actual question was more specific. Were you aware that
3 certain historians who have written doubts, shall we say,
4 about Auschwitz and the Holocaut, have been sent to prison
5 for expressing these doubts?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know a historian who actually wrote something on
7 Auschwitz and whose works is suppressed for that.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think we have had better start making progress on his
9 report, my Lord. On page 3 of your report, you refer to
10 an SS General called Bach-Zelewski, and you referred to
11 him again on page 28, 311 — I am sorry 3.1.11. This
12 paragraph on page 28 shows General Bach-Zelewski carrying
13 out the most appalling murderers and atrocities, murdering
14 women and children on a huge scale, 2,208 Jews of both
15 sexes and so on.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In this paragraph, it is only said that one Company of the
17 Police Battalion 322 Mogilev killed, according to their
18 own reports, 2,208 Jews and in this town was
19 Bach-Zelenski’s headquarters and he was —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw attention to the last paragraph?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which paragraph are you on; I cannot see the
22 reference?
23 MR IRVING: 3.1.11, my Lord, on page 28.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, and Bach-Zelewski —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: With these two massacres in Mogilev, Bach-Zelewski began a
26 whole series of further similar Gross Aktionen – major
. P-59
1 actions.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, Bach-Zelewski was the higher SS police leader in the
3 centre, so he was responsible for the killing actions of
4 the —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: A mass murderer on a most horrendous scale.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is your phrase. Yes, I think it is acceptable.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Somebody whose units kill those kinds of women and
8 children, and carried out several such actions?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, It is quite fair to say that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Even one of those murders makes him a murderer?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I would agree, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: He has been used as quite a source by the allied courts
13 and by the historians after the war, has he not? What
14 happened to Bach-Zelewski? Was he immediately hanged at
15 Nuremberg?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, he was not hanged at Nuremberg.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or did he die in his bed?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not sure about this, but the history of his
19 persecution after he was not hanged by the Allies, I think
20 he was prosecuted but, as far as I am aware, he was never
21 sentenced, if I am not wrong.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was prosecuted in 1963, is that right?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: 1963. Yes, that is true.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: About 20 years after the war was, he lived life as a
25 country gentleman in Germany.
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is due to the fact that, in Germany, there was no
. P-60
1 prosecution of Nazi war criminals between 1949 and 1958.
2 It actually started in 1958. It took them five years to
3 get the evidence together and then prosecution started.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am just using this as one example, you appreciate that,
5 but —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Example of what? I am not following what the
7 point is, Mr Irving.
8 MR IRVING: The unreliability of testimony of people like
9 Bach-Zelewski.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not sure here. I do not refer here to Bach-Zelewski
11 but if I refer to —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 3, can I draw your attention to paragraph 4?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In this paragraph, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Former higher SS and police leader Erich von dem
15 Bach-Zelewski testified on this question during the
16 Nuremberg trials.
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but this example is not the only source. I quoted
18 here to say that he referred to a meeting with Himmler and
19 just before the beginning of war against the Soviet Union,
20 and that Himmler stated there that the Slavic population
21 had to be decimated by 30 million.
22 We have other sources for the same fact. There
23 is, for instance, referring them to Goring, the Goring’s
24 remarks to Ciano and particularly important here is
25 meeting of the Secretary of States of 2nd May 1941, and
26 I am referring them to more documents which actually show
. P-61
1 that there was plan in the German leadership to kill
2 millions of Slavs in the war against the Soviet Union. So
3 I am not relying only on Bach-Zelewski’s statement; it is
4 actually —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why do you rely on him at all if at he has such very
6 dubious credentials.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Bach-Zelewski was a witness in the main trial.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am going to interrupt again if
9 I may because I am simply not following the point here.
10 I thought that it was accepted that the object of invading
11 Russia was do decimate the Slav population.
12 MR IRVING: Not by me, my Lord, but that is not the point that
13 I am trying to make. The point I am trying to make is that
14 if we are going to write expert reports, one should avoid
15 sources like Bach-Zelewski like the plague.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I think you can use these statements, if you find
17 that this is — I am mainly relying on documentary
18 evidence but, of course, one can use this postwar evidence
19 if it is supported by other sources. I think this is
20 something which is generally accepted among historians.
21 I am not saying that the plan of the Germans to
22 decimate — we only have Bach-Zelewski as evidence for
23 this plan. We have lot of evidence for that.
24 Bach-Zelewski was a colourful figure, so he said, in his
25 interrogation, that there are other very interesting
26 things, and I think one should follow them, one should not
. P-62
1 just ignore them.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Like Scheherezade, she sang like a canary, did she not, in
3 order to survivor?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is your comparison.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I now take you further down that paragraph No. 4,
6 where are you quoting now the directives which stated
7 that, without doubt, umpteen millions of people will
8 starve to death when we take what we need from the
9 country. The original German, you have rather embellished
10 it, have you not? “Zig Millionen Menschen verhungern”,
11 verhungern, that just means go hungry.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, and then it goes on: “Wenn von uns das fur uns
13 Notwendige aus dem Lande herausgeholt wird” – if you take
14 out of country which is necessary for us.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: What we need, yes, but is it not that they are not
16 starving death? You have embellished that slightly, and
17 that is the whole point.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They are starving to death because they are agricultural
19 products which were taken out of the country. There is
20 nothing left for them so they will starve to death.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Starve to death is: “Ein Hunger tut erleben”, or
22 something like that. “Verhungern” is just “will go
23 hungry”.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The context is quite clear, because “we will take
25 everything out of the country which we need for
26 ourselves”; that is the context.
. P-63
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you agree that that was a bit clever translation by
2 you to make the point you wanted to make?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry this is —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 4, four lines from the bottom, on page 3.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think it is from the context.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is fundamental to your argument, of course.
7 MR RAMPTON: I do wish Mr Irving would stop interrupting. It
8 is very difficult to follow the witness.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I personally would also like to move on,
10 because we are not here concerned with criticising the
11 historical approach of Dr Longerich but dealing with the
12 criticisms he makes of your historical approach,
13 Mr Irving. I think spending a very long time on this
14 paragraph in which he cites really quite a number of
15 sources for what, he says, was the plan to kill the very
16 large number of Slavs. I do not think that is
17 productive. I think there are substantive points that you
18 have to tackle.
19 MR IRVING: If, on the one hand, your Lordship says that there
20 is great deal of evidence for the desire to decimate the
21 Slavs by whatever means, then it turns out that one of his
22 sources is obtained by just a clever translation of a
23 word.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. The meaning of the words becomes clear from the
25 context. It is not the only source. If you read the next
26 sentence, it is the guidelines for the economic
. P-64
1 organization of the East Agricultural Staff Group: “Many
2 tens of millions of people will be made superfluous in
3 this area and will die or be forced to emigrate to
4 Siberia”. I think this is quite clear.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, are you not confusing there the possible
6 consequence with a criminal intent, which are two totally
7 different things?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The intent was to systematically take the agricultural
9 products out of country and to use them for their own
10 purposes, and to let the population in this country starve
11 to death. This was the intention.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. On page 5, paragraph 3.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is the background. I quoted this because this is the
14 background for the Holocaust. I am not making a statement
15 about the starvation of the Slavic population. I think
16 that this is background information that you need to
17 understand the violent and cruel intent of the SS when
18 they invaded the Soviet Union. This is background
19 material.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, do you agree that if I translated
21 “verhungern” as starve to death, then I would have been
22 rightly criticised for mistranslation or distortion?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Probably, but again I repeat myself, I think the context
24 is clear but they just do not starve to death because of a
25 catastrophe; the natural catastrophe is because it is a
26 part of the systematic plan.
. P-65
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 5, paragraph 3, you say that the Einsatzgruppen
2 consisted of 3,000 men. Is that the total number of men?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: About a little bit more than 3,000 I think. Yes, it is
4 3,000. Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: That seems a remarkably small force if we are to believe
6 the enormous statistical figures that have been thrust
7 upon us over the last few weeks.
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know whether it is mentioned in the next
9 paragraph, but the forces who carried out this killing
10 operation consists of the Einsatzgruppen, of police
11 battalions and of the two Waffen SS Breigetz, so
12 altogether this was a force of about 30,000 men. We have,
13 as far as the Einsatzgruppen are concerned, this excellent
14 documentation, the Ereignismeldung uber der SSR, but it is
15 also clear from the documents that also other units like
16 the Order Police units like the Waffen SS Breigetz were
17 active in killing people. We have sources which explain
18 to us that the Wehrmacht, in many cases, was actively
19 involved in these killings, and most important is that the
20 SS and the police built up a force of auxiliary policemen
21 in the area which had a strength in 1942 for about 300,000
22 men. We have a lot of evidence that these men were also
23 actively involved in the killings.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: They were using the locals, were they?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They use the locals as auxiliary police. The general rule
26 was that then the SS, the SD people would carry out their
. P-66
1 killings and so they would shoot people themselves, and
2 use the auxiliary SS to seal off the area. So it is not a
3 problem manpower shortage to carry out this operation.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 6, we are going to look at paragraph 6 which is
5 the Heydrich order of July 2nd 1941. You are familiar
6 with that order, are you not?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is one which, in part for example, said to instigate
9 pogroms or where pogroms were instigated by the locals to
10 turn a blind eye and generally to jolly them along and not
11 to get in the way.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have two questions on this document, Dr Longerich. The
14 first one is where does it come from? Is it from Russian
15 files or from Western files?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Are we talking about the 2nd July document?
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: The 2nd July document.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is a document which comes from the Moscow archive.
19 It was given to the court in Koblenz which dealt with the
20 Heuser case in 1963. It has been available in the Federal
21 archives since 1963.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the authenticity of that document
23 challenged?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 MR IRVING: I just want to ask him a question.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not by you, by Mr Irving.
. P-67
1 MR IRVING: No.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is, challenge it, if it is not, let us
3 move on.
4 MR IRVING: I can only ask the most general questions. I can
5 say, Dr Longerich, are you thoroughly content that all the
6 documents that come from the Soviet Union —-?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Irving, that will not do. Are you
8 suggesting that it is not an authentic document? If so,
9 cross-examine on that basis. If you are not suggesting
10 that it is not authentic, then move on.
11 MR IRVING: Would you look at the last line on that page
12 please: “Jews in Party and State functions”. Will you
13 not accept that this limits the killing of Jews in this
14 document, just the “Jews in Party and State functions”?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have to go back to this point I made yesterday.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There is a mistake here and I have to repeat that —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I remember the point.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The word “all” should be in the first line, so this has to
20 be read as: “All Jews and Party and State functions”, so
21 we know that the Soviet Union was a country where the
22 state played an enormous role. So this would apply to,
23 let us say, teachers, to every Civil, not only to every
24 Civil Servant, it would apply to any manager of a State
25 opened shop, for instance. So I think the number is quite
26 high, it is several hundred thousand. I forgot to say
. P-68
1 when we went through this document yesterday, I think —-
2 MR IRVING: You look at the unsoweiter, do you not?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I forget this yesterday. In the same document Heydrich
4 suggested to instigate pogroms. If you have a pogrom you
5 cannot actually —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Limit it?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Limit it. You do not have any control about who you are
8 going to kill. A pogrom is a wide massacre. So if you
9 encourage the local population to organize massacres, you
10 do not have any control about the outcome of this
11 massacre. So I think I read this, this telegram, or this
12 instruction, sorry, actually in this is a kind of
13 message. You can kill all Jews of party and state
14 function, but there is not a specific definition of the
15 people who are going to be killed. Jews, if they are
16 suspicious, if they are propagandist, etc., you can also
17 go to kill them. There is also a reference in the
18 guidelines on page 5, in the guidelines for the troops in
19 Russia. These are guidelines which are read out on
20 company 11, every company of Wehrmacht. It says in
21 sentence 2: “The struggle demands ruthless energetic and
22 drastic measures against the Bolsheviks agitators,
23 guerrillas, saboteurs and Jews”, and Jews. There is
24 nothing about Jews in party and state position. So every
25 soldier of the Wehrmacht knew that this was a war against
26 the Jews, among others.
. P-69
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: It does not say, that paragraph, “You are going kill all
2 the Bolsheviks agitators”?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, but it says.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: It says just: “Drastic measures, ruthless”?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Exactly energetic and drastic measures, and we know that
6 the Wehrmacht then in the following month was in many
7 cases involved in the killing of Jews civilians.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, I am going to have hold you to the actual
9 wording of that July 2nd telegram. I am going to suggest
10 strongly that you using the word “all” to embrace all five
11 lines is not justified?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: The German is (German spoken). That is the only use of
14 the word “all,” is it not?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just look at it on the page.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In the original the “all” is in the first line.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am interrupting because we must
18 get on. Just look at it on the page. It is page 30.
19 MR IRVING: Page?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is quite impossible to say that “all” —-
21 MR IRVING: Page 30 of what, my Lord?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — this new bundle, reproducing yet again
23 most of the documents called N1, it is quite obvious that
24 “all” qualifies everybody on the list, including Jews in
25 state and party positions. That is beyond argument. Page
26 30, bottom of the page.
. P-70
1 MR IRVING: If your Lordship wishes then we will move on.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that so clear.
3 MR IRVING: Can I just emphasise that the last line in that
4 says: “Jews in party and state functions.” It does not
5 say “all Jews, including those in party and state
6 functions”, does it?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know whether I have to repeat this.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: It just says: “All Jews in party and state functions”?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know whether I have to repeat this, but from the
10 German original it is quite clear that the “all” relates
11 to all the following categories. So it has to be read
12 as “All Jews in party and state functions”, that is quite
13 clear.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is what I am saying. You do not say that it says:
15 “All Jews including those in party”?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, it says: “All Jews in party and state positions”.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is very limited, is it not?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, in a state which has a state-run economy the number
19 is I think relatively, the number is relatively large.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are including everybody in the entire economy?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you have a manager of a firm which belongs to the
22 State, he is a functionary of the state.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: The reason I am saying this, Dr Longerich, is because in
24 your opening sentence in paragraph 7 on page 7, you say,
25 “This order”, in other words, this document, “is
26 certainly not to be interpreted as meaning that Heydrich
. P-71
1 intended to limit the executions to those Jews who held
2 party and state functions.” Why not? That is precisely
3 what it does say?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I give you the explanation in the following sentence.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is very much within the guidelines that Hitler had
6 laid down, saying: “Kill the Jewish intelligentsia”?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but the fact that also this order relates to other
8 radical elements I think makes it quite clear that you
9 could kill Jews under other headings than Jews in party
10 and state positions.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are relying on that?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you look at the Einsatzgruppen reports, they are going
13 to kill in the next weeks, they are going to kill Jews who
14 were not in state and party positions. They were killing,
15 for instance, the Jewish intelligentsia. They were going
16 in the following, they were starting in July 1941 to kill
17 all men of military age. So I try to interpret this
18 instruction in the light of the following events. I think
19 from the following events it becomes quite clear that the
20 intention of instruction is not to limit the executions to
21 Jews in party and state positions. But, let us say, that
22 it is the first group where they would start to kill
23 people, the first group to start with. You see the
24 instructions, I think you have to go back to the context,
25 this is a kind of summary of verbal instructions Heydrich
26 gave to the Einsatzgruppen, and he is just informing the
. P-72
1 highest SS leaders about this verbal instruction. It is a
2 summary. We do not have the verbal instructions. We are
3 trying to reconstruct the verbal instructions, but I think
4 the verbal instructions were different than this here.
5 The verbal instructions tended to include more Jews than
6 this intention.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: So your paragraph 7 relies on three sources: Verbal
8 instructions for which you have no source; the document
9 itself and what you know to have happened, in other words,
10 presumptions backwards towards the document, so to speak.
11 So your opening sentence there about the order is not to
12 be interpreted as meaning, is based on more than just the
13 document itself?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, give me some time, please. I think I refer here and
15 in the following, we have numerous eyewitnesses actually
16 who stated, go so far to state after the war that actually
17 that these instructions of Heydrich were the order to kill
18 all Jews in the Soviet Union. I am trying to, I spent a
19 lot of time, I am trying to reconstruct the context of
20 these verbal instructions.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you go to the next page, please, and look at your list
22 of footnotes on the next page?
23 MR RAMPTON: Could I please intervene once again? Mr Irving is
24 quite incorrigible. This kind of cross-examination would
25 never be permitted in a professional advocate. Can we
26 please go back to page 5, paragraph 2, which Mr Irving
. P-73
1 leapt over.
2 MR IRVING: I am leaping forwards because his Lordship wishes
3 to make progress.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are dotting about. I do not find this
5 very helpful and I have got well in mind what you said in
6 the course of your cross-examination which is why I have
7 not highlighted anything for quite a while now. Anyway,
8 page 5, Mr Rampton.
9 MR RAMPTON: Page 5 which Mr Irving leapt over because it is
10 inconvenient for him, paragraph 2 which is a document
11 dated 19th May 1941.
12 MR IRVING: I think this is a most unhelpful interruption.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It really flows from the way in which you are
14 carrying out your cross-examination. You are dotting
15 about the report and you are cherry picking again.
16 Mr Rampton is perfectly entitled to say, if you are really
17 suggesting, that the instructions to kill the Jews was
18 limited as you have just been suggesting to Dr Longerich,
19 Mr Rampton is certainly perfectly entitled to say, well,
20 you are missing out some of the documents which give the
21 full picture. .
22 MR IRVING: My Lord, we have dealt with these May and March
23 documents exhaustively over the past few days. I am very
24 happy to deal with every single document that is mentioned
25 in this report, but then once again I will fall foul of
26 your Lordships reprimands.
. P-74
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would find it more helpful if you were to
2 deal with it not so much by going to individual references
3 but at any rate to start by a number of broader brush
4 questions. The difficulty in this part of the case is
5 that you are shifting your position. I think there is no
6 doubt about that.
7 MR IRVING: Shifting my position?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR IRVING: I am trying to establish the weaknesses of this
10 expert report as well as I can.
11 MR RAMPTON: It is not permissible to do that, in my
12 submission, by a kind of memory test when the foundation
13 for what the witness has said in a later paragraph is to
14 be found in an earlier paragraph. It is simply cheating.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, Mr Irving, I cannot conduct the
16 cross-examination for you. Dr Longerich, do you regard
17 the guidelines referred to, the 19th May guidelines, as
18 being limited to Jewish intelligentsia, the few holding
19 senior positions in the State or in the Party?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I mentioned this before. I said this is the order which
21 was read out on company level, so every German soldier was
22 aware of these guidelines. It plainly says Jews. It
23 refers to energetic and drastic measures against the
24 Bolshevik agitators, gorillas, saboteurs, Jews. So Jews
25 are here mentioned among partisans and members of the
26 Bolshevik Party.
. P-75
1 MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord. I will cross-examine on that
2 particular document, if your Lordship wishes. Are you
3 familiar roughly with the contents of the Kommissar order?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is not the Kommissar order. The Kommissar order is a
5 different order.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking. Are you familiar roughly with the contents
7 of the Kommissar order?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it perfectly explicit about killing, about liquidating
10 the Kommissars and Jews and the intelligentsia?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. The Kommissar order only refers to Soviet Kommissars.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: The guidelines of March 1941, do they make it quite plain
13 what is going to happen to these enemies of the Nazis when
14 they invade Russia? They are going to be liquidated. It
15 is quite specific, is it not?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The Kommissar order is quite specific, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why does this document here then just talk about energetic
18 measures, if it is perfectly plain?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The document does not say every German soldier is entitled
20 or allowed to kill every Jew on Russian soil. It gives
21 them a guideline how to deal with, let us say, suspicious
22 people. They are entitled, encouraged, to take the most
23 drastic measure. The other important document we have to
24 refer to here are the guidelines concerning the military
25 jurisdiction in the Soviet Union, which says that no
26 German soldier is automatically prosecuted for atrocities
. P-76
1 against the Soviet population, so the message is, if you
2 feel there is something suspicious going on, you are
3 entitled, you are in a way free to take the most drastic
4 measures against Bolshevik saboteurs and Jews. So you can
5 shoot Jews. It does not say you have to.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: It does not say that.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think it becomes clear. You have to see this document
8 in its historical context.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: The context is other documents that quite freely use
10 uncamouflaged words.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you are going to have to start
12 putting what your case is. I am going to put what
13 I understand you to be suggesting. The suggestion —
14 Dr Longerich can deal with it — is that the 19th May
15 guidelines, when they talk of energetic and drastic
16 measures against, amongst others, Jews means some measures
17 other than killing them. Do you accept that?
18 MR IRVING: Not necessarily killing, I would think.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you accept that?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think that the most drastic measures means to kill
21 them. This is the most drastic measures I can think of.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is enough. You do not need to embroider
23 on that answer. Mr Irving, move on.
24 MR IRVING: Does it limit it to killing or does it say any
25 measures, though drastic and ruthless?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think the most drastic measures you can take against
. P-77
1 anybody in a war is to kill him or her. I think this is
2 quite clear.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reason why they should not have said killing
4 in that document if that is what they meant?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am sorry?
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reason why they should not have used some
7 word for killing if that is what they meant? You are
8 entitled to execute or to kill while trying to escape or
9 whatever other things they would say if they did in the
10 other documents?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We discussed yesterday the use of language and I showed
12 you a document which explicitly said that they were
13 particularly cautious to use words like liquidation, for
14 instance.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you are suggesting that energetic
16 and drastic measures means something other than killing.
17 Would you like to put to the witness what exactly you are
18 suggesting those measures would be? Precisely.
19 MR IRVING: Were energetic and drastic measures taken against
20 Soviet prisoners of war?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. That is not what I am asking you to do.
22 You are suggesting that energetic and drastic measures
23 means something other than killing the Jews and the
24 others. What are you suggesting those measures would be?
25 MR IRVING: My Lord, I do not think this witness knows.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am asking you to put to the witness what
. P-78
1 you say energetic and drastic measures means, if it does
2 not mean killing.
3 MR IRVING: Is it not possible that, by using the phrase
4 energetic and drastic measures, the German Army was
5 instructing its lower levels to arrest, imprison under the
6 harshest possible conditions, torture, interrogate, beat
7 up, deprive of their liberty —-
8 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, this is perfectly terrible. The
9 German does not just say energetic and drastic measures.
10 It uses the word rucksichtsloses which is translated as
11 ruthless energetic and drastic measures. Now Mr Irving
12 ought to ask the question again, in my view.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is slightly my fault. I left out the
14 ruthless.
15 MR RAMPTON: I know.
16 MR IRVING: Start again.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not need to start again.
18 Dr Longerich?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I think the answer is quite clear that in English the
20 most ruthless energetic and drastic measures is to kill
21 somebody.
22 MR IRVING: Yes. But there are other measures which are also
23 ruthless and drastic which are not killing, is that right?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes and this is the reason why it said the most drastic.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you now look at paragraph 9, please, on page 7? You
26 say that the Einsatzgruppen received explicit orders —
. P-79
1 this is quite important, is it not — to murder Jewish
2 civilians, and your evidence for that is — is it a
3 document? Are there any such orders in the archives?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We went through these orders just five minutes ago, and
5 there is additional evidence for that if you look at the
6 statements of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen. I am not
7 relying completely on this, but I am trying to put
8 together here documents and eyewitness accounts.
Section 80.9 to 107.15
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Just very briefly, you have listed the eyewitnesses
10 on page 8, have you not, in the footnotes?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: These are all testimonies that are over 20 years after the
13 event, are they not? Every single one. In some cases 30
14 years after the event. Do you attach much reliance on
15 that in German courts?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. Most of them are from the 1970s, 1960s and beginning
17 of 1970s.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, again I am baffled by this part of
19 the case. Are you now suggesting that thousands of Jewish
20 civilians were not shot by the Einsatzgruppen?
21 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. I am attacking his credibility as a
22 witness.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: His credibility?
24 MR IRVING: Yes, his.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have just put to him that these
26 eyewitnesses who say they saw civilian Jews being killed
. P-80
1 are not to be treated as reliable because they gave their
2 evidence so long after the event. How does that go to
3 this witness’s credibility?
4 MR IRVING: If I was to write a history based entirely on
5 testimonies given in court 30 years after the event, I
6 would be derelict.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I repeat, are you suggesting now that
8 thousands and thousands of civilian Jews were not executed
9 by the Einsatzgruppen?
10 MR IRVING: Quite the contrary. We have seen any amount of
11 evidence to show that they were.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So why are you casting doubt on the
13 reliability of these eyewitnesses?
14 MR IRVING: I am casting doubt on the reliability of the report
15 as a whole because it depends on such sources.
16 MR IRVING: It does not depend on those sources. It depends
17 heavily on the contemporaneous—-
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The report as far as the Einsatzgruppen is concerned is
19 based, first of all, on orders. We went through that.
20 Then on accounts of eyewitnesses, and then in the next
21 chapter I am going in fine detail. I am looking at every
22 command and I am showing you, again on the basis of the
23 Eichnesmeldung and other sources, that these orders were
24 carried out and the Einsatzgruppen killed hundreds and
25 thousands of people. I am not relying only on some
26 witness statements made in the 1960s in German courts.
. P-81
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving does not seem to be disputing that
2 so why we are spending so long on it, I do not know.
3 MR IRVING: Let me look at the word orders and ask the specific
4 question which I think probably will help the court. Is
5 there any suggestion that these orders came from Hitler
6 for these particular killings?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Many of these eyewitnesses referred to explicit Fuhrer
8 order they got. We are not able to trace this back.
9 There is no written evidence for that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, this is the reason that I asked the earlier
11 question.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not accept that, but you have asked a
13 relevant question now and I am listening to the answer.
14 MR IRVING: It was actually the follow up question in my list.
15 I shall have to ask it again. In other words, the only
16 evidence which you would advance for any connection
17 between this and the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, giving such an
18 order is eyewitness testimony of 20 or 30 years after the
19 event. Is that right?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think we went through this yesterday. The problem is we
21 do not have a written explicit order signed by Adolf
22 Hitler which says European Jews or the Jews in the Soviet
23 Union —-
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: The answer is yes?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — has to be killed. I do not have this document
26 unfortunately.
. P-82
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What we do have — may I make
2 sure I understand your evidence and then we can move on —
3 is the Muller document, which you have given evidence,
4 rightly or wrongly, which suggests that Hitler wanted the
5 reports from the Einsatzgruppen to go to him, and we have
6 at any rate some reports going to Berlin.
7 MR IRVING: Munich.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Berlin, which set out in great detail the
9 numbers of Jews killed.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. Yesterday we went through the documents and we had
11 Himmler’s entry in this diary, 18th December. You will
12 recall that. We mentioned briefly the report No. 51 which
13 states that actually more than 360,000 Jews were killed
14 and so on. So we can make this connection but, as I say,
15 there is no explicit order on Hitler’s letter head with
16 Hitler’s signature which actually would say that he is
17 ordering the killing of all European Jews.
18 MR IRVING: So the answer to my question was yes, in other
19 words it is just eyewitness testimony 30 years after the
20 event?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not, for the very reason that he has
22 just given, because we have the Muller document followed
23 by reports going to Berlin.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, the Muller document is not a Hitler order. It
25 shows that Hitler is quoted as saying that he wanted to
26 see visual materials relating to the activities of the
. P-83
1 Einsatzgruppen.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we went through this. I bear in mind
3 the concession you made in your cross-examination and the
4 cross-examination yesterday, and I really do not think we
5 ought to spend any more time on this. We have a lot of
6 ground to cover.
7 MR IRVING: On page 10, four lines from the bottom, this goes
8 purely to your translation ability, gewalte Ladung, which
9 you translate as a massive load. In fact that is a
10 military phrase for hand grenade, is it not?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Gewalte Ladung, you put together a dozen or so hand guns,
12 this thing about gewalte Ladung.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 12, paragraph 2.12, this is the Jager report. This
14 is another document from Soviet archives, is it not?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, available since the beginning of the 1960s.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I am not commenting on it. He talks about 70 Jews
17 being killed, 127 Jews. I am sorry, I am back on page
18 10. Just one general question: Why is there such a
19 disparity in the killing rates or achievements of the
20 various Einsatzgruppen, some of them killing tens of
21 thousands and some of them just 70 or 100 and so on, if
22 there was an overall system from above?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It depends on various factors. For instance, the number
24 of Jews who lived in the area where the Einsatzgruppen
25 Kommandos were sent to. Then there were two different
26 types of Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkommandos. One was
. P-84
1 attached to the armies and one was actually active in the
2 rear areas. Then, during the first month of the killings,
3 it is obvious that some of the Kommandos were more
4 reluctant to actually kill in large numbers Jews. When
5 they went through a kind of learning process they were
6 instructed and reminded, so that we have in the end in
7 October 1941 a more uniform picture. It depends also on
8 the personal initiative of the leader of each Kommandos.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was there any competitiveness between the Einsatzgruppen
10 to achieve high body counts?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I would certainly say there was an element of
12 competitiveness between them.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very minor point: Would there have been a temptation then
14 to inflate figures?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There might be a temptation to inflate figures, but also,
16 on the contrary, we know that the Eichnesmeldung do not
17 contain all figures. There are some figures which were
18 left out. For instance, other Kommandos reported to
19 different institutions and so on, but yes, one cannot
20 exclude this factor.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 2.1.2, on the Jager report now, it is talking
22 about executions that have been taking place since July
23 4th at Kornas or Kovno. He quite specifically says they
24 were carried out upon my orders and my command by the
25 Lithuanian Partisans. He is not saying it was done on
26 Hitler’s orders, is he?
. P-85
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you look into, let us say, orders of a Kommando of a
2 regiment, of an Army, he would refer to his own orders.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Chain of command, is it not?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is a chain of command, yes.
5 MR IRVING: Did Jager get into trouble carrying out any
6 killings round about this time in 1941?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did Jager get into trouble for authorising killings in
9 1941, the same as Jeckeln?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: As far as I am aware, not. The man who had responsibility
11 for killing of German Jews in this area was Jeckeln. We
12 know that he got a nasty letter from Himmler and that was
13 it.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which we have gone into in some detail. Page 13, line 3:
15 What is your evidence that all Jewish men in this age
16 group had been murdered? I am looking at your word
17 murdered. Surely they might just have been sent off to
18 work details or something like that, the fact that they
19 had gone?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. The Einsatzgruppen reports refer quite clearly to
21 executions, and I think this is something which
22 I understood as murder.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: You said that they were just murdering women. Older men
24 and children.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: You suggested that this was proof that all the rest had
. P-86
1 been murdered already.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, where are we going with all of
3 this? Here we have a whole body of reports from
4 Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D. They all talk of hundreds
5 or thousands of people, Jews and others, having been
6 killed by them.
7 MR IRVING: Yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the point of selecting tiny little
9 aspects of one or two of those reports? If you are saying
10 they made it all up, fine, say so. Put it to the
11 witness. But, if you do not say that, let us move on to
12 what matters.
13 MR IRVING: My point was that he was drawing an unjustified
14 inference on the basis of the evidence in front of him.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have accepted, and perhaps you are going
16 to resile from this, that hundreds of thousands of Jews
17 and others were killed by the Einsatzgruppen.
18 MR IRVING: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why are we going through these reports? I do
20 not understand the point.
21 MR IRVING: I am trying to shake your Lordship’s confidence in
22 this witness’s ability to draw proper inferences from
23 documents before him.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is no dispute between you and the
25 witness that there were hundreds of thousands of killings,
26 what do I gain from a minute point being taken on a
. P-87
1 particular report?
2 MR IRVING: The whole report is full of minute points.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you accept there were hundreds of
4 thousands of Jews and others killed.
5 MR IRVING: Indeed, my Lord. If the report had been written in
6 global terms like that, then I would have dealt with it in
7 global terms, but he has written an excellent report full
8 of mosaic stones.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you do not quarrel with the picture made
10 up of all the mosaic.
11 MR IRVING: Paragraph 2.2.4 on page 14. Here you are quoting a
12 witness called Otto Bradfisch, who says quite clearly
13 there was no express order to exterminate the Jewish
14 population in a place or area solely because of its racial
15 origin. What do you make of that statement? I am looking
16 at “no express order”.
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, it says here that—-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read the whole of it.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “To exterminate the Jewish population in a place or area
20 solely and alone because of its racial origin”. I said in
21 the same sentence, “Nevertheless in practice the orders
22 given by the EKB as the Einsatzgruppen B were so broadly
23 conceived that every Jew was regarded as a danger for the
24 fighting troops and therefore to be liquidated”. This is
25 a statement. So he is saying that we had to find another
26 pretext, another cover, to kill them. That is the essence
. P-88
1 of this statement, I think.
2 MR IRVING: Very well. Dr Longerich, you attach great
3 importance, do you not, to this Himmler Hitler
4 conversation of December 18th 1941?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think this is quite a remarkable source, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have inferred from that that the als partisan and
7 anzusehen is words used by Hitler to Himmler.
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It does not say as partisan and anzusehen.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Ausrottung?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, to be ausrottung as partisans. This is what it says.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and you considered that phrase is used by Hitler to
12 Himmler?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but is it not equally likely that this was a standard
15 attitude of Himmler’s long before he went to see Hitler,
16 that Hitler had always regarded the Jews as partisans and
17 to be treated as such?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I do not read it like this.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you to look at page 15, line 4? You have here
20 “Himmler had already expressed on his visit to Galestov
21 on July 8th that — I am quoting now — basically every
22 Jew is to be seen as a partisan”. Is that not precisely
23 the same phrase?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your footnote 67 (German) is that not almost exactly the
26 same kind of turn of phrase that Hitler has used?
. P-89
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. This line in Himmler’s calendar is a confirmation of
2 this policy. It is true that Himmler had started this
3 policy earlier. He started it in the summer of 1941 and
4 I will read this as a final confirmation of this policy by
5 Hitler.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I take you please to page 22, line 5?
7 MR RAMPTON: May I once again —-
8 MR IRVING: Oh dear. Here comes the interruption every time
9 I make a point.
10 MR RAMPTON: This is going to be a very tedious day if I am
11 going to have to keep going back to earlier parts of the
12 evidence. If Mr Irving is now saying, as he appears to
13 be, that that entry in Himmler’s log for 18th December
14 1941 does not record the substance or result of a
15 conversation with Adolf Hitler, he had better put it to
16 this witness, because it is new.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The suggestion that I understand was just
18 made is that in his agenda or appointments book Himmler
19 jotted down what Hitler had said months or years before.
20 MR RAMPTON: I thought until half a minute ago that that had
21 been common ground since the beginning of this case.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So did I.
23 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving is once again shifting his ground. Now
24 he must put it to the witness.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, that must have been the thrust of
26 your question.
. P-90
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, I would find it very helpful if Mr
2 Rampton, with his unerring eye, does not always interrupt
3 just when I am zeroing in for quite an important point.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had a huge amount of
5 cross-examination on the 18th December document.
6 MR IRVING: We now have new material, my Lord.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It has not been suggested until now I believe
8 that the reference to ausrottung the Jews as partisans was
9 something that was not even discussed between Himmler and
10 Hitler.
11 MR IRVING: That is not the point I make. Can I explain the
12 point that I am trying to make?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do.
14 MR IRVING: If we had just that agenda note in front of us, we
15 would be entitled to draw the inference which Mr Rampton
16 does that Himmler is writing down an idea expressed and
17 initiated by Adolf Hitler. But we here have evidence that
18 on two occasions, and this is when I was unfortunately
19 interrupted by Mr Rampton, in the summer of 1941 Himmler
20 already has that idea embedded firmly in his mind and he
21 uses precisely the same turn of phrase when he goes to see
22 Hitler, and this may very well have influenced the way he
23 recorded the conversation afterwards.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That, I am afraid, is pure equivocation.
25 What do you mean it may have influenced the way he wrote
26 his note?
. P-91
1 MR IRVING: That he wrote down his own stock phrase rather than
2 quoting what Adolf Hitler had said.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you are suggesting that that note does not
4 represent something that was discussed between Hitler and
5 himself?
6 MR IRVING: Certainly they discussed the Jewish problem but
7 then Himmler recorded the outcome in his own language
8 rather than in Hitler’s language, if I can put it like
9 that. The fact that it was his own language is also borne
10 out on page 22.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us just look at the document. We really
12 have to try to see what the case is that is being made.
13 Can somebody give me a reference in the new file? Page
14 183, I think.
15 MR IRVING: 184, my Lord.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 184, yes, quite right. Now, I had understood
17 the case has proceeded so far on the basis that, and there
18 is a much better copy of this document somewhere than
19 this, on the left-hand side — Mr Irving, would you
20 answer the question I am going to ask you at the end of
21 this — Himmler had written down as being the topic he
22 was proposing to raise with Hitler when he saw him
23 “Judenfrager”.
24 MR IRVING: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And that, and this is what I understood to be
26 accepted up until now, the different notation als partisan
. P-92
1 and ausrottung was what Himmler had written —-
2 MR IRVING: Subsequently.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — Following his discussion about that very
4 topic with Hitler.
5 MR IRVING: Very well. Yes, precisely.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are now suggesting — tell me if I am
7 wrong about this — that als partisan ausrottung has
8 nothing to do with any discussion between Himmler and
9 Hitler, it is something that Himmler recalled Hitler
10 having said some time before. Is that your case now?
11 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. It is completely wrong, completely
12 different from what I am suggesting.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I do not understand what you are putting
14 to the witness.
15 MR IRVING: What I am suggesting is that Himmler went to see
16 Hitler with Judenfrager written down in his appointment
17 book. Subsequently he wrote down the words als partisan
18 and ausrotten, but this was his own phrase that he wrote
19 down, because it was a phrase that he had used very
20 similarly already twice that summer to summarize the
21 conversation. It is very dangerous trying to extrapolate
22 just on the basis of four words anyway precisely what
23 happened in a conversation that only lasted 10 or 20
24 minutes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So are you or are you not saying that the
26 notion of killing the Jews as partisans was something that
. P-93
1 was discussed and agreed between Hitler and Himmler?
2 MR IRVING: Yes.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You accept it was discussed and agreed
4 between Hitler and Himmler?
5 MR IRVING: Yes.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I do not understand what you are seeking
7 to suggest to this witness. We now have that clear so we
8 can move on.
9 MR IRVING: After that successful interruption by Mr Rampton
10 I will not take your Lordship to page 22 where he used it
11 a second time. Page 17 on line 7 after the words, “about
12 7,000 Jews were collected and shot by the security police
13 in retribution for these inhuman atrocities”, you have
14 omitted quite a lengthy passage there, have you not, from
15 that report?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. This is why I put these three dots in the text after
17 “atrocities”.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Do you recall offhand what the lengthy passage? Was
19 it a description of the atrocities in great detail?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot recall at the moment but we probably have the
21 document there.
22 MR IRVING: My Lord, in the interests of making forward
23 progress I do not think I am going to press this point.
24 It is a four page description of atrocities committed on
25 the Ukranians which were discovered by the Germans when
26 they arrived. Obviously the Germans ran berserk. It
. P-94
1 probably does not — why did you omit this very lengthy
2 passage?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not see the point you are making here. They were
4 atrocities from the — where are we here?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: In July 1941.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In Lobov, yes, so there were atrocities committed by the
7 Soviet NKVD against Ukranians and, as a result of this,
8 the Einsatzgruppen C shot 7,000 Jews. So I do not see the
9 point between the actions and the so-called retaliation
10 actions.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the suggestion must be this,
12 Dr Longerich, that these 7,000 Jews had all been involved
13 in some way in the atrocities on the Ukrainians and
14 therefore, in a sense, the shooting of them by the
15 security police was justified.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. This was a massacre among the Jewish population of
17 this town. We have details about the way it was carried
18 out. There was nothing like a kind of identifying of
19 every of the 7,000 as perpetrators, as one of the people
20 actually who instigated —-
21 MR IRVING: Was it an active retribution then?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Retribution directed against the Jewish population, so it
23 was part of the systematic killing, guided out under the
24 pretext of a retaliation action. If you read the whole
25 thing, there is nothing in this text which indicates that
26 there was a kind of extermination done by the
. P-95
1 Einsatzgruppen to identify among the 7,000 Jews the people
2 who might have been responsible for thee atrocities. The
3 idea that they started retaliations against the Jews for
4 something the NKVD did, this is the kind of question.
5 This shows actually that this is a part of the war of
6 racist extermination.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So, when you write on line 4 of page 19, that this
8 use of retribution was just a pretence —-
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is a very interesting example. “In German’s polar city
10 a quarter of whose population was Jewish in the last few
11 days, especially the Jewish women, have shown imprudent
12 and arrogant behaviour because of limitations imposed upon
13 them. They tore their own and their children’s clothes
14 off their bodies. As provisional retribution the Kommando
15 which arrived for the purpose of re-establishing the peace
16 shot 50 male Jews”. So I think you get a very good
17 insight into this kind of retribution or retaliation.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this kind of thing happen in wars like Vietnam and
19 elsewhere? Is there a lot of brutality on both sides?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not an expert on the Vietnam war.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am at a total loss to understand why we are
22 going through the detail of the shooting when you accept
23 that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the
24 Einsatzgruppen. I do not understand the point, Mr Irving.
25 MR IRVING: The reason for asking that is that the witness has
26 left out a four page description in the most hideous and
. P-96
1 ghastly detail of what the Germans found when they got to
2 the town.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it served the 7,000 Jews right, did it?
4 MR IRVING: He then suggests that the word “retribution” was
5 unjustified. He says here that the retribution was just a
6 pretext.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, exactly.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Having left out all the evidence that it was not.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I will simply say to you now that
10 you are not serving your own cause well by taking up time
11 quite pointlessly on these sorts of questions.
12 MR IRVING: Well, risking your Lordship’s wrath, I am going to
13 go to page 22, which is something different, line 5.
14 Again, you have Himmler saying basically every Jew is to
15 be regarded as a partisan. So I must insist therefore
16 that the December 18th document shows the initiative came
17 from Himmler and not from Hitler to regard the Jews as
18 partisans, because this is Himmler stating already back in
19 July. He keeps on saying this, that the Jews are to be
20 regarded as partisans, so what Hitler may then discuss
21 with Himmler in December is neither here nor there
22 really. Would you agree?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a new proposition.
24 MR IRVING: Well, my Lord perhaps I am expressing myself
25 wrongly.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was discussed between Himmler and Hitler
. P-97
1 but that it is neither here nor there?
2 MR IRVING: No. The proposition that I am making, my Lord, is
3 that the initiative for regarding the Jews as partisans
4 came not from Hitler to Himmler, but the other way round.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not suppose Mr Rampton is particularly
6 bothered one way or the other. The point he makes is that
7 Hitler agreed upon it as a policy. Am I wrong about
8 that?
9 MR RAMPTON: I do not care whether Hitler initiated it or
10 whether he ratified it. It does not matter a row of
11 beans. The fact is he was in on it, in on the murder of
12 1.2 million innocent people.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is the point, Mr Irving.
14 MR IRVING: The reason that it matters a row of beans is
15 because we are looking at Hitler’s state of mind and if,
16 as in the Reichskristallnacht, the initiative for that
17 came from Goebbels, and the initiative for this comes from
18 Himmler, tells us something about the likelihood of
19 issuing orders, particularly when in the spring of 1942 we
20 find a weary Fuhrer saying, “For God’s sake, let us leave
21 it all until the war is over”. It helps to justify that.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The issue between the parties which I have to
23 consider in the context of whether you have dealt with
24 this responsibly is not whether it was initiated, all this
25 killing, by Hitler, but whether he knew about it. We are
26 on Hitler’s knowledge, not on whether he was the
. P-98
1 originator of all this.
2 MR IRVING: My Lord, I wholeheartedly endorse the position that
3 your Lordship adopts on that and your Lordship will see
4 from the position that I put in the two pages this morning
5 that I have never challenged that he was involved in every
6 way in the killing of the Jews behind the Eastern Front.
7 However, when this goes to Hitler’s’s state of mind, so
8 that we can judge the likelihood of the Schlegelberger
9 document being an accurate portrayal of his intentions or
10 not, then I am entitled to draw attention to whether the
11 initiative came from Himmler or from Hitler on this
12 particular occasion, I think, if I can put it like that.
13 I regret if I am expressing myself so obscurely that your
14 Lordship does not see the purpose behind my questions
15 sometimes.
16 Page 23, paragraph 2.7.2, it goes really to the
17 same matter. “These shootings were carried out”, you
18 write, “under the pretext of ‘retribution’, punishment for
19 ‘plundering’ or portrayed as a struggle against
20 partisans”. If there was a Fuhrer order to kill Jews, why
21 would they need the pretexts? Surely, that would
22 overwrite any need for any kind of pretext, would it not,
23 if the eyewitnesses are right?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, they in their reports prefer to give specific
25 reasons for the killing. They were not just saying, “We
26 are killing these people because they are Jews”. They
. P-99
1 had, obviously, there was a kind of order to actually
2 attach to each killing a kind of reason which could be, a
3 kind of rational argument, you know, why they killed this
4 particular group. They do not — in their reports they do
5 not refer to a written order by Hitler in these reports.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But when Eisenhower gave orders to kill all the Germans,
7 as he did, he did not say, “We are going to do this as a
8 pretext that they are plundering and looting” —-
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot comment on —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: — the orders from the Supreme Commander were good
11 enough?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot comment on Eisenhower. I am not familiar with
13 the order given by Eisenhower to kill all the Germans,
14 sorry.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: The first two lines of page 24, please. You say: “The
16 behaviour of the units followed a standardized pattern
17 which however was not altogether uniform”. Does that not
18 suggest that there was no system, that there was no
19 systematic order?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I mean, I spent here about 20 pages to describe the
21 actions of the different Kommandos and, as you rightly
22 say, there are, for instance, some differences so far as
23 the numbers of victims is concerned, when actually
24 Kommando A started to kill women and Kommando B started to
25 kill women. So I think one can argue that there is a
26 standardised pattern but it is not completely uniform.
. P-100
1 They did not start on the same day, on the very same day,
2 for instance, the killing of children. It varies a little
3 bit between unit and unit. So I preferred this phrase
4 “pattern”. It is not completely uniform. But it is a
5 standardized pattern.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But not very systematic?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is a standardized pattern and I think it allows us to
8 say that this was a part of a system.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 26, the first three lines, we are dealing now with an
10 explicit order of Himmler which, I suppose, is of
11 significance. You say this is an explicit of
12 Himmler. “All Jews must be shot. Jewish women to be
13 driven into the swamp”?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say: “From a radio telegraph text we can read this”.
16 Now, what is your source for that? Is it the actual radio
17 telegraph text?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, the radio telegraph text is quoted in the wording of
19 the branch(?) record. The whole files of the branch
20 record are kept in the State archive of [German]. I spent
21 two days this summer actually to read this source and
22 I can assure you that this document is in the files of
23 this particular court case.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it an actual radio telegraph text or something recorded
25 by or —-
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, actually it is a copy —-
. P-101
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: — remembered by?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — of the radio telegraph text. The original is kept in
3 the military archive in Feiberg.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have not provided the German text for us so it is —-
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I have not provided the German text for it.
6 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, we have got the text.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see it.
8 MR IRVING: It is quite important.
9 MR RAMPTON: I do not know which report this comes from, it
10 might be Longerich, it might be Browning. I really cannot
11 say.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is important because I think it is
13 Mr Irving’s present position that there was never a stage
14 when all Jews were ordered to be shot.
15 MR RAMPTON: Which document is it?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is note 119, top of page 26.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, well, then the date is 1st August, same day
18 as the Muller order.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not in N1, I do not think.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is page 48.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry. I missed it.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, 48. That is it, yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have looked at this before.
24 MR RAMPTON: I do not know what this document is, mind, but the
25 witness could tell us that, I expect.
26 MR IRVING: It appears to be a genuine carbon copy, does it
. P-102
1 not? Yes, a carbon copy of a document.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I recall that in the — I have seen the copy. This
3 is here a [German]. This is the German, the document,
4 this is the standard German form for a radio message. So
5 the document is there and I have seen that and there is no
6 doubt that this is authentic.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is very difficult to cross-examine on this document
8 because it is so skimpy.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You will have to put your case.
10 MR IRVING: I have to.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you saying that Himmler —-
12 MR IRVING: Are you satisfied that this document accurately
13 reflects an order of Heinrich Himmler?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. He was there, he was there. At this stage he was in
15 the appropriate marches.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who is the SS Obersturmfuhrer who is an adjutant who has
17 signed this document, to your knowledge?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is in the — the court managed to identify this man.
19 I cannot recall the name at the moment.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he on Himmler’s staff on or somebody else’s staff?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is — no, he is the adjutant of the Reitenabteilung.
22 The Reitenabteilung, this is the cavalry, the mounted
23 cavalry, battalion actually of this SS cavalry regiment.
24 The name of the adjutant is known and I just not recall
25 the name at the moment, but he was identified in the court
26 proceedings.
. P-103
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: The question I am asking is, he is not Himmler’s adjutant
2 who is sending the order?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, but Himmler was there. At this time he actually gave
4 the order verbally and this was then included into this
5 telegram and the message was sent.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: What was the range of this order, do you think? Did it
7 relate just to the activities of this particular mounted
8 unit?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, this relates —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Mounted troop?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This relates clearly to the killing, systematic killing,
12 of Jews in the — this was what they called a pacification
13 action, and these are the guidelines given for this
14 pacification action to actually, well, clean the
15 appropriate swamps.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So we are actually referring to the Pripyat marshes
17 then?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am trying to be as objective as possible. I cannot say
19 that this is — you cannot read it as a general, you
20 cannot read it as a general order.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: My question was, what was the range of the order? Was it
22 just directed to this one troop, this one mounted troop,
23 all Jews within their reach, presumably?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, it was actually an order given here to the mounted
25 elements, so that is the best translation of the cavalry
26 Regiment 2. These were about, I think, 800 or 1,000 men
. P-104
1 and they carried then out this action. And you can see
2 I have quoted this on page 25, this was part of the action
3 to kill, in which they killed 14,178 Jews, as they
4 reported.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the scale of partisan warfare in the
6 Pripyat marshes?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: At this stage, at this very early stage, at the beginning
8 of August, there was actually the scale of partisan
9 activity in the Pripyat marshes was low. What actually
10 happened was that some actually, well, some soldiers of
11 the Red Army managed to get into the Pripyat marshes and
12 tried to hide there. But the partisan activity was at
13 this stage relatively low compared with what would happen
14 in ’42 or’43.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Had Marshal Stalin issued early in July a broadcast
16 proclamation to the entire Russian civilian population to
17 rise up in arms against the invaders?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is true, but, on the other hand, they were no
19 organization and preparation made for this kind war, so
20 they had to improvise that and they were at this stage not
21 actually able to fight an organized partisan warfare
22 against the Germans.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the suggestion is, just so that it is
24 clear, that the 14,000 odd Jews who were shot following
25 this order were justifiably shot because they were
26 partisans?
. P-105
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, the report makes a distinction between partisans and
2 Jews, so they were — it is clear that the Jews were
3 killed in the course of anti-partisan action, but they
4 were not identified as partisans.
5 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not making that suggestion. The only
6 substantive question I do want answered properly is what
7 was the scope of the order to kill all the Jews? Was it
8 just all the Jews within the operational area of this one
9 mounted troop?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, the problem is, this is not a mounted troop. It is
11 the fighting elements of a regiment.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Reitenabteilung” is a mounted troop.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, so this is, well, quite, this has quite a size, this
14 mounted element, and this is one document we have where
15 Himmler is very explicit. We know that he travelled
16 through the occupied territories quite frequently and here
17 we have actually this document, and I think it is a clear
18 indication what he was saying to the other units during
19 these other visits.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Here we have one case where we actually have written
22 evidence for that.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you appreciate the reason I am asking the
24 question, Dr Longerich, is if a signal is shown to us
25 saying that Himmler has ordered all the Jews are to be
26 shot, we want to know is he talking about all the Jews
. P-106
1 within the Third Reich or just all the Jews within
2 the —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have your answer about that. It is
4 limited.
5 MR IRVING: If the answer is clear. Very well. Page 35,
6 please. Does this not strike you as remarkable,
7 Dr Longerich, that every time we get an order from the
8 Fuhrer, that there is a Fuhrer befehl, it turns out to be
9 testimony 17 or 20 or 30 years later and there is nothing
10 at all in the documents, even though we have seen
11 documents like the one we have just been looking at, which
12 talk about Himmler orders, there is nothing of a similar
13 quality talking about a Hitler order?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: You are referring to a particular part of this page or?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 35, line 1.
Section 107.16 to 119.5
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, well, to make this — I mean, I think I made my point
17 very clear. I am trying here in this report, I am trying
18 to show you that this was carried out on a systematic
19 basis and, in order to link these events with Hitler’s
20 role, I think we — this has been said yesterday — have
21 this Muller letter from 1st August which shows us that
22 Hitler was quite aware of what was going on because he got
23 on a continuous basis, he get the Einsatzgruppen meldung.
24 And I think this is quite clear that he was informed about
25 it.
26 I do not say, did not say, that I have here an
. P-107
1 explicit order with a letter head of Adolf Hitler and the
2 signature which says that he orders the killing of the
3 Russian Jews, but I think it has been established here,
4 quite clearly, that he was informed about these events.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to labour the point too much, but we do have
6 now, and we have been having it for the last four or five
7 weeks, document after document of this quality which
8 incriminates Himmler and people like him, but not one
9 single document of equal quality which incriminates
10 Hitler.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am sorry to intervene again. You
12 have made that point many, many times. It is accepted by
13 Dr Longerich that there is not a Hitler Befehl in relation
14 to these shootings. He has made it absolutely clear why
15 he says that Hitler knew and approved what was going on.
16 MR IRVING: On the basis of the Muller document —-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is no point in asking that same
18 question again and again. I know your point, there is not
19 a Hitler order that anyone has found, so you need not ask
20 that question again. I have the point. There is not a
21 Hitler order.
22 MR IRVING: Although, logically, there should be one found.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, there are all sorts of reasons why
24 there may not be one, but there is not one. That is the
25 point and you can, of course, develop that in your closing
26 submissions. There no point in going on asking the
. P-108
1 question because you get the same answer that I think I
2 have heard three times from this witness already.
3 MR IRVING: The actual question was, is it not remarkable it is
4 always testimony 20 or 30 years after the event, like this
5 one here, which links it to a Hitler order which is
6 self-serving testimony.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I would not agree this is, you cannot say this is all
8 self-serving testimony because some of the people
9 interrogated are eyewitnesses, but this report is about
10 the systematic nature. The first report we discussed
11 yesterday is about Hitler’s role. The aim of the report
12 is to show you, give you an idea, about the systematic
13 nature of this warfare. It is not the intention of this
14 part of this report to actually prove Hitler’s role.
15 I mean, it is not the focus of the point. It is the one
16 we discussed yesterday.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: For example, in this same paragraph, 3.3.2, if you would
18 just go back over the page to the bottom of page 34, it is
19 the indication that the order came from Ohlendorf. Was
20 Ohlendorf dead at the time of this testimony?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Dead?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In 1969 he was dead, was he not?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. He was hanged in ’48, was he not?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you ever get to see the private papers of Ohlendorf?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, they are not, I think, as far as I am aware, they are
26 not publicly accessible.
. P-109
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: His widow has them.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. I know — yes, sorry.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: So once again they are saying, “Well, the other person who
4 knew, he is dead, unfortunately”, so it is a very shaky
5 kind of testimony, is it not, so far as Adolf’s
6 responsibility is concerned?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is, I mean, what I did here, I based this on an
8 analysis of the ereignismeldung and on — and, in
9 addition, on the basis of evidence we have from
10 testimonies. I think it is my obligation, my duty, to
11 look at this testimony. I just cannot ignore them.
12 Ohlendorf made, and I mention in the report here, he made
13 quite remarkable statements. He never — I mean, he was
14 hanged by the Americans, but he never actually disputed
15 the fact that his Einsatzgruppen killed 10,000 of Jews. I
16 mean, this was, because this was confronted with the
17 evidence which the ereignismeldung contained —-
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: We do not dispute that either here.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — he did not dispute it.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you also rely on the ereignismeldung, but you said
21 yesterday that only one of them shows it was sent to the
22 Party Chancellory in Munich which is not exactly proof
23 that Hitler saw it, is it?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, we went through this when I think I made it quite
25 clear that not every ereignismeldung has a list of
26 distribution, and I do not have a full picture of to whom
. P-110
1 it was sent. Munich and Berlin, I made this quite clear
2 that the Munich office had a liaison office in Berlin, so
3 I do not think this is a —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Hitler was in East Prussia, was he not?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but, of course, then Bormann was constantly in his —
6 it was Bormann policy to be constantly in close with
7 Hitler so in order to inform him about everything which he
8 thought he has to be informed of.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you go to page 40, please, the third paragraph? This
10 is a general statement which is quite useful. In the fall
11 of 1941, the autumn of 1941, you say: “The Nazi regime
12 began to deport Jews from Central Europe into the Eastern
13 European ghettos. From statements by leading
14 representatives of the regime it becomes clear that at
15 this point in time the intention was to deport these
16 people further to the East following upon a victory over
17 the Soviet Union”.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that still your position now?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you found it, my Lord?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.
23 MR IRVING: That is a very useful summary of the position in
24 the autumn of 1941. You are talking about September,
25 October 1941?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
. P-111
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And at that time the Nazi leadership, Hitler, Himmler,
2 everybody else was talking, was —-
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, to deport these people further to the East, and what
4 would happen to the people then further in the East? I do
5 not have — my argument here is that this intention to
6 send them further to the East had clearly genocidal
7 implication. They would perish there in the East, but
8 they postponed this because originally they thought they
9 had this area under control in the autumn of 1941. Now
10 they realised they had not won the war, so they sent these
11 people first to ghettos in the East and with the intention
12 to send them further to the east, let them perish until
13 next spring.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: You quote the Greiser letter, do you not, on the following
15 page?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: For instance, the Greiser letter, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Can I just offer a different translation of that
18 first paragraph?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, where is that, please?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: The different translation that I offer is in the little
21 bundle, page 13.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The Fuhrer wishes that from the West to the East” — do
24 you want to follow the German one?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just a minute. I have not found this.
26 MR IRVING: This is September 18th 1941.
. P-112
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That I think is not — yes, it is, 84.
2 MR IRVING: “The Fuhrer wishes that from the” — I would like
3 this one actually put in the bundle actually. It is a
4 better translation.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is in there. I think it is 84 or
6 am I wrong?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: 84.
8 MR IRVING: Mine is, I think, a slightly preferable translation
9 of a rather complicated sentence. “The Fuhrer wishes that
10 from the West to the East, the Altreich” the old Reich,
11 “and the Protectorate be emptied and freed of Jews as
12 soon as possible. Initially, therefore, and during the
13 course of this year, if possible, I am striving as a first
14 stage to transport the Jews out of the Altreich and the
15 Protectorate into the Eastern territories newly
16 accessioned by the Reich two years ago, and then to deport
17 them even further to the East early next year. I intend
18 to convey about 60,000 Jews of the Altreich and
19 Protectorate into the Litzmannstadt ghetto for the winter
20 which has, so I hear, the space to accommodate them”.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I think there are two mistakes in your translation.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Right.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: First of all, you translated, it said in the text here,
24 “nachsten Fruhjahr”, next spring, you said “early next
25 year”.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Fruhjahr” is not necessarily spring. “Fruhling” is
. P-113
1 spring, is it not? “Fruhjahr” is —-
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. “Fruhjahr” and “Fruhling” is the same. It has the
3 same meaning. “Early next year” is quite misleading, but
4 “early next year” could be read as January, for
5 instance.
6 The second mistake you make, if you look at the
7 last sentence here, or not the last sentence, the sentence
8 before the last sentence, it says in the German text:”Ich
9 beabsichtige, in das Litzmannstadter Getto, das, wie ich
10 hore, an Raum aufnahmefahig ist, rund 60,000 Juden des
11 Altreichs und des Prtektorats fur den Winter zu
12 verbringen”.
13 So you say here in your translation, “I intend
14 to convey about 60,000 Jews of the Altreich and
15 Protectorate in the to Litzmannstadter ghetto for the
16 winter which has, so I hear, the space to accommodate
17 them”. So in the German text it is only — the German
18 text only says which is as I translated it here in my
19 translation which has at best — so it does not say in the
20 text, in the German text — in the German text it only
21 says it is “aufnahmefahig”. It does not say that it is
22 specifically “aufnahmefahig had space for them”. It only
23 says “aufnahmefahig”.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, if it says “an Raum aufnahmefahig”, surely, the
25 inference is that it has adequate space for this task?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but it also could receive more people.
. P-114
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Now, what is the purpose of that letter from Himmler
2 to Greisler? Is it camouflage or can we believe what he
3 is writing?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think one can basically believe what he is writing.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So at this time, September 18th, there is no homicidal
6 intent towards the European Jews?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I said this, I think I made this quite clear in my
8 statement: “From statements by leading representatives of
9 the regime it is clear at this point in time the intention
10 was to deport these people further to the East following
11 up a victory over the Soviet Union”. So I draw the
12 conclusion from the sentence it was the intention to send
13 them further to the East.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but there is no camouflage intended in the document.
15 There are none of these camouflage words we have heard so
16 much about in that paragraph. What Himmler wrote to
17 Greiser there is meant, the German Jews, the European
18 Jews, are going to be shipped out to the East. No one is
19 paying much attention to what is going to happen when they
20 get there. No one cares really what happens to them in
21 their new existence?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: So any decision must have come after that in September
24 1941. It is an important document, is it not?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, the document says that the Jews are sending, are
26 sent to the ghetto and then in the next spring they will
. P-115
1 be sent further to the East. So that —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you go to page 42 of your report: “On 6th October
3 Hitler emphasised that all Jews from the Protectorate
4 needed to be ‘removed’ – and not into the
5 Generalgouvernement first, but – ‘straight on to the
6 East’. That is also part of the same kind of picture, is
7 it not, the East?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, I think that you and I are agreed that sometimes the
10 Germans used the phrase “the East” in a sinister sense, is
11 that right? They say “the East” and, in fact, they mean
12 to perdition, to their —-
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but here I think, I am in a way very cautious in
14 interpreting the language here, and I say I think it is
15 meant here that they are simply sent to the East, to
16 ghettos and to camps to the East. So the East is here,
17 obviously, the Generalgouvernement.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are going to be looking this afternoon at some
19 documents about people who were sent to Auschwitz ready
20 for being sent on to the East or, at any rate, and
21 obviously I am going to be asking your interpretation of
22 those documents —-
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well…
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: — which is quite an important point.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We are here in a phase where actually in three waves
26 German Jews are sent to ghettos in occupied Poland and the
. P-116
1 occupied Soviet Union. The first wave goes to Losch, the
2 second wave to Riga and Minsk and the third wave in the
3 there spring of 1942 goes to ghettos in the district of
4 Lublin. What has happened to the people is they are not,
5 in general, killed on the spot. So they survive for a
6 couple of weeks, probably a couple of months, until spring
7 1942 and then they killed them on a systematic basis by
8 sending them to extermination camps or by gassing them.
9 So we are in a kind of transitional phase here
10 we they are still not prepared to kill then on the spot,
11 except the six trains we discussed yesterday.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But can I just ask you this? It is not just
13 German Jews that are being talked of in 6th October
14 document, is it? It is all European Jews.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, Germany is here in the sense of a greater Germany,
16 so this includes the annexed territories, Austria, the
17 Czech Jews as well which is a project of —-
18 MR IRVING: Just in a vague sense, a general question, did the
19 Nazis in some way regard the European Jews as being more
20 valuable material than the Russian Jews, Eastern Jews?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know what you mean with “valuable material”.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, preserved — there is a point in preserving them
23 whereas they did not care what happened to the Eastern
24 Jews.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Generally speaking, they made a kind of distinction
26 between the Eastern Jews and the Western Jews.
. P-117
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was never actually spelt out in a document, but this is
2 the inference we can draw, is it not, from the document?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, it is spelt out in documents but they made, in
4 general, in their anti-Semitic — in the anti-Semitic way
5 they looked at this since they make this different
6 sometimes, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am going to ask one more brief question before the
8 adjournment, my Lord. Page 45, paragraph 15. You say:
9 “Rademacher still assumed at the end of October 1941 that
10 the Serbian Jews would be ‘removed by water transport into
11 the transition camps'”, the “Auffanglager im Osten”, “in
12 the East”. So there was this kind of perception among the
13 top level Nazis involved in the programme, in the system,
14 that there were reception camps in the East to which these
15 European Jews were going to be shipped.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I only say that Rademacher in this letter obviously
17 assumed that they would be removed by ship in the
18 transition camps in the East. I am not, I cannot, I do
19 not want to comment on general perception of this, but
20 I think Rademacher was probably convinced that this would
21 happen.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, over the page, paragraph 16, you raise the matter
23 which I have just raised a couple of minutes ago: “Was
24 the deportation of Jews ‘to the East’ at this time already
25 a metaphor for the planned murder in the extermination
26 camps?” You say, quite frankly: “The state of
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1 contemporary research does not give sufficient evidence”.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what he said. It is a transitional
3 phase. I think that is his evidence.
4 MR IRVING: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 2 o’clock.
6 (Luncheon adjournment)
Part III: David Irving’s Cross-Examination of Dr. Heinz Peter Longerich, Afternoon Session (119.6 to 203.26)
Section 119.16 to 146.23
7 (2.00 p.m.)
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord. My Lord, I can say the
10 Defendants’ solicitors have very diligently got on to the
11 Wolff document and there is one minor snag over the date,
12 but I am sure we will have it at the end of the weekend.
13 I cannot do better than that.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say they got on to it, is it
15 physically in court?
16 MR RAMPTON: Munich cannot find any Wolff testimony for the
17 date, which is 11th May 1952.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am glad we have—-
19 MR IRVING: They are responding positively.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — tried to find out what the position
21 actually is.
22 MR IRVING: I just hope I did not leave anything important out,
23 of course, but I am sure I did not.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we all remember that I would like to know
25 what the outcome of it all is.
26 MR IRVING: I think it is an important document and, as your
. P-119
1 Lordship knows, I relied on it quite heavily at the time.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: From your point of view, it is an important
3 document.
4 MR RAMPTON: I do not understand why it is, if I may say so at
5 this stage, so terribly important in Mr Irving’s mind if
6 the testimony of von dem Bach-Zelewski must be dismissed
7 out of hand because it is postwar.
8 MR IRVING: You have pre-empted me.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another point about it which I think
10 we ought all to bear in mind, which is that it was not
11 actually available to you, Mr Irving, as I understand it,
12 when you wrote your book because I think you said it had
13 been supplied by a lawyer in Dusseldorf.
14 MR IRVING: It very definitely was, my Lord.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was? I see.
16 MR IRVING: Oh yes. That is part of my original research.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it was not in your discovery, was it?
18 MR IRVING: It was in a big box called documents on the
19 Judenfrager which they had copied in its entirety.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought you told me this morning it was not
21 in your discovery.
22 MR RAMPTON: The note was, but not the document.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will revert to that on Monday.
24 MR IRVING: This is one reason of course why I mentioned
25 Bach-Zelewski because, if my use of Karl Wolff is impugned
26 as a source, who did not have the death of millions or
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1 thousands of people on his conscience …
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, back to Dr Longerich.
3 MR IRVING: Back to the document, my Lord. The progress we
4 have made is we are now at page 40 or 45 of an 80 page
5 document approximately, so we have managed to chew our way
6 halfway through the document.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the bit that needs more chewing is the
8 latter part rather than the earlier part but there we
9 are. Let us press on.
10 MR IRVING: Have I heard that before in connection with other
11 documents?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
13 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, are you familiar with a Canadian
14 historian Michael Marrus?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is a reputable historian, is he not?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Absolutely.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: He has written an article on the history of the Holocaust
19 in the Journal of Modern History. I am just going to read
20 one and a half sentences to you. He cautions that
21 Hitler’s rhetoric about the Jews should not be seen as
22 what he calls a preview of Auschwitz. He adds “The Nazi
23 leader always spoke in the most cataclysmic terms, was
24 forever calling for the most drastic action, the most
25 ruthless stroke”. Would you like to comment on Marrus’s
26 view therefore that Hitler sometimes was a loud mouth?
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you read Marrus’s book?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This was a quotation one and a half sentences from an
3 article, I cannot recall—–.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a book, I think.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: He has written a book and articles.
6 MR IRVING: It is the Journal of Modern History.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot recall the content at the moment so I am really
8 hesitating to comment on a very short quote from either a
9 book or a lengthy article with about 25 or so pages.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Suppose I said it now. Suppose I said it and not Michael
11 Marrus, that the Nazi leader Hitler always spoke in the
12 most cataclysmic terms and was forever calling for the
13 most drastic action, the most ruthless stroke, would you
14 say that I was wrong?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is a very general statement. I would see more
16 evidence. To which quotations are you referring? Can you
17 give me some help here?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: The famous quotation throughout the war where he said
19 September 1st 1939, did he not? That one.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you refer, for instance, to speeches about vernichtung
21 ausrotten which he repeated, yes, then it is of course
22 true. Of course he was a politician and he made sure that
23 he addressed the right audience. On some occasions he
24 would just use drastic language, but on other occasions he
25 would be very different. It always depends on the
26 circumstances, on the audience he was addressing.
. P-122
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Like most politicians, they say what the audience wants to
2 hear. One of the basic rules of politics, is that right?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot lecture on the basic rules of politics. I think
4 I should only refer to the Nazi regime.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just going back briefly to page 40, this general
6 statement, you said in the middle of the third paragraph
7 that, “In the fall of 1941 the Nazi regime began to deport
8 the Jews from central Europe to the Eastern European
9 ghettoes. From statements by leading representatives of
10 the regime it becomes clear that at this point the
11 intention was to deport the people further to the East
12 upon a victory over the Soviet Union rather than
13 exterminating them where they were”.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The fact that I said to deport them does not of course
15 exclude that at the next step they were going to liquidate
16 them.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Do you mean, by saying that, that at this time there
18 were only orders for the deportation, there were no orders
19 for extermination at that time, German government orders?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: When you refer to orders, then the orders were clear about
21 the deportation. But of course it has to be seen in the
22 context of a wider policy, and I think the aim of this
23 policy was in the end to bring about a physical end of the
24 life of these human beings.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are familiar with the fact that your colleagues, for
26 example Professor Browning, suggest that the German
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1 government had decided on extermination by the autumn of
2 1941 and that deportation was for the purpose of
3 extermination?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There is a certain kind of disagreement among historians
5 about this. We are in a research process and there is an
6 agreement. Some historians would suggest summer 1941.
7 Christopher Browning among others would say autumn 1941.
8 I have a different theory about this decision making
9 process. I think some of the decisions were made, but not
10 all decisions were made at this stage.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you reject the judgment in the Eichmann trial in
12 Jerusalem which said that the deportation of the central
13 European Jews to Riga and Minsk which began around this
14 time was specifically for the purpose of extermination?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think if I should comment on the wording of the Eichmann
16 trial, I should have the text of the wording in front of
17 me. But, in general, it was not the intention, according
18 to my research, to kill these people immediately after
19 arrival. There is of course a difference. Of course, in
20 the long term the intention was to let these people, let
21 us say it this way, perish in these areas, but there was
22 no policy, according to my research, at this relatively
23 early stage to kill them immediately after arrival. We
24 discussed yesterday the case of the six trains and
25 Himmler’s reactions to that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: To pick up something you said a few seconds ago, you said
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1 there is still something of a dispute, quite a genuine
2 dispute, between historians of one school and historians
3 of the other school, and it would be quite improper, would
4 it not, to call the people who disagree with you a
5 Holocaust denier?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Absolutely. There is a certain kind of disagreement but,
7 on the other hand, we all respect each other’s views.
8 I would not call anybody, any of my colleagues like
9 Christopher Browning, a Holocaust denier. It would be
10 absurd.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You save that phrase for somebody whose views you do not
12 respect?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. That is for somebody who just makes general sweeping
14 statements, just not accepting historical facts, not
15 basing his expertise on thoroughly reading and analysis of
16 documents. One has to make a strong point here. There is
17 a strong difference between a discussion among colleagues,
18 among historians, and between historians and Holocaust
19 deniers, if you want to say so.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Dr Longerich, am I right in understanding you
21 to be saying that the disagreement between historians is
22 as to when there was an transition from deportation to
23 extermination?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Not whether there was?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
. P-125
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Is that correct?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The question is that the dispute is about whether it is
3 possible to establish a certain day when Hitler made the
4 decision, is it possible and, if it is possible, when was
5 this specific decision.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It is the timing?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, the timing. Nobody in our profession would dispute,
8 come to this absurdity to dispute actually that the
9 Holocaust happened.
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, it may help your Lordship if I say that
11 during the course of the afternoon I will occasionally ask
12 that question, does this dispute constitute a Holocaust
13 denial?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is a perfectly proper question.
15 MR IRVING: If you think it is not proper, then of course
16 I would not do so. It is a piecemeal approach but it may
17 be helpful. Paragraph 1 at the bottom of page 40 — well,
18 it is not any particular paragraph. What I am asking is
19 this. Do you agree that all the German government actions
20 that you describe in this following section, the beginning
21 of the deportations, that is section A, all the actions
22 and statements of Himmler and Heydrich and Eichmann, were
23 pursuant to a programme of deportation and not a programme
24 of extermination? That is the first question. I am only
25 referring to section A, the beginning of the deportation.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Up to page 48.
. P-126
1 MR IRVING: Everything in that section was pursuant to a
2 programme of deportation and not extermination?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: (After a pause) I have to look through the section.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want an ill considered reply. Just take your
5 time. It is not a trick question.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I think as a summary of this paragraph of this
7 section on page 46, paragraph 16 where I said, the state
8 of contemporary research does not give sufficient evidence
9 for the conclusion that at this time the deportation was
10 already a matter for the planned murder and extermination
11 camps.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think this is my view.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: To put it another way, you agree that all the evidence you
15 introduce in that section A does not prove a programme of
16 extermination?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think I have answered this question.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. The answer is yes?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well —-
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is yes?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The answer is yes.
22 MR IRVING: Thank you. Paragraph 2, we are now looking at a
23 man called Uebelhoer, who is the head of the
24 administration of the district of Lodz. Are you aware
25 that, in addition to Uebelhoer, there were other local
26 German authorities like Lohse who also protested about the
. P-127
1 plan to dump central European Jews in their districts, in
2 their areas?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not sure that Lohse protested. Kuger, for instance,
4 had some views about that. I think the best is you give
5 me the reference of the document and I comment on the
6 document.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, it is a bit difficult if we have to keep on looking
8 at documents.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure what the relevance of the
10 question is at the moment.
11 MR IRVING: The relevance of the question is this. If you are
12 in charge of a district like Uebelhoer and you are in
13 charge of the administration there, and you are protesting
14 about having European Jews dumped in your back garden,
15 this clearly presupposes that they are not going to be
16 exterminated, does it not, because, if they are going to
17 be exterminated, then you do not have the problem of
18 housing and feeding them?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is the beginning of the discussions then which went
20 on in the Warthegau, what shall we do with these people?
21 It becomes then clear, if you read further the next
22 section, that at this stage they made a kind of agreement,
23 which meant that they would kill the local Jews in order
24 to make room for the Jews who were coming in from Europe.
25 I am referring in this paragraph to deportations and I am
26 not saying here that at this stage it is clear from the
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1 documentation that deportation meant the killing of those
2 who were deported on the spot. But, if you look into the
3 next paragraph, it becomes clear what I mean here is that
4 they took the decision to kill the local Jews in order to
5 make room for the incoming German Jews.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am tackling this problem systematically and logically.
7 If Uebelhoer, and as we know from other documents Lohse
8 but take just the case of Uebelhoer, if he is protesting
9 at having European Jews dumped in his district, it is
10 because he assumes that they are going to be kept alive,
11 and have to be fed and housed there. He is not assuming
12 they are going to be exterminated, is he, the European
13 Jews?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: He is just faced with a task to take in his ghetto 60,000
15 at this stage sent to Germany. This is the task he was
16 facing, and he is complaining about that. Obviously at
17 this stage he is not given the order to kill these people
18 on the spot. This is my argument. It is a transitional
19 phase.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: As you said in this section A, there is no evidence of
21 extermination, it is all just deportation measures being
22 discussed?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This deals with deportation. I speak only about the Jews
24 from central Europe.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 6 on page 42, this is at a meeting in Prague on
26 October 10th 1941, at which Eichmann was also present. Do
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1 you agree that, when Heydrich suggested that Nebe and
2 Rasch could take Jews into the camps of communist
3 prisoners, this was not a veiled suggestion they could be
4 exterminated in those camps?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think he is referring to the next stage of deportations
6 here.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it was not a prerequisite to the extermination of those
8 prisoners coming in?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not sure about this because he was just talking about
10 the ghetto in Lodz. I think this remark about Nebe and
11 Rasch is probably the next stage, what will happen in next
12 spring.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but it is not camouflage for the extermination of the
14 people coming into those camps?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The problem is that we have not identified these camps.
16 We do not know actually which camps he is speaking at this
17 moment. Probably he is talking about a plan for a new
18 camp which did not exist at this time. I have no idea how
19 to relate this, how to interpret this one sentence.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, it seems to me that you have
21 really got the answer from Dr Longerich which you want for
22 your purposes. He said this is all talking of the
23 deportation of the European Jews, and it did not go beyond
24 that at this stage, according to him. Different things
25 were affecting the Russian Jews at this time, but do you
26 need to trawl through it?
. P-130
1 MR IRVING: No, except that on each occasion I wanted to ask if
2 each of the individual elements constituted a Holocaust
3 denier.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think you have got what you want.
5 MR IRVING: Paragraph 9 on page 44, just to make absolutely
6 certain, “The deportation of the Jews from the German
7 Reich in the autumn of 1941 and the ensuing winter
8 proceeded on the orders of Hitler”. Will you just confirm
9 that those orders were only orders for deportation and not
10 for extermination, not even in a camouflage sense.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has said that already. We are still in
12 section A here.
13 MR IRVING: In that case we will zip forwards to page 48.
14 Paragraph 2, just as a matter of interest, Tiergarten
15 Strasse, after which the action T4 was named, was not part
16 of Hitler’s headquarters, was it?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The building belonged to Hitler’s Chancellery of the
18 Fuhrer.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did the Chancellery of the Fuhrer, despite its name, have
20 any close contact with Hitler? Where was it situated?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This Chancellery of the Fuhrer was situated in Berlin. It
22 was first of all during the 30s mainly responsible for
23 dealing with petitions and things like that, which were
24 addressed to Hitler. But it became in the course of 1939,
25 1940, a clandestine, let us call it, operational centre
26 for the killing actions, the euthenasia programme.
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1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was this because the doctors who carried it out formally
2 had to have petitions for clemency for carrying out
3 criminal acts? Was that the connection?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: The doctors who were required to carry out these killings
6 of the mentally sick and so on, they had to have clemency
7 in advance for car committing a criminal act?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. They had this famous letter Hitler signed.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: He actually signed an order for the mass killing, did he
10 not?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, he did.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: But this was the only connection between Hitler and the
13 Chancellery of the Fuhrer, the fact that it had his name
14 on its letter head, but it was geographically situated
15 somewhere else. It was in Berlin and Tiergarten Strasse.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you take a street plan of Berlin in 1939, you will see
17 that the buildings of government were widely spread
18 throughout the district of Tiergarten and the district of
19 Wilmerstov in Berlin, so the idea that all was situated in
20 one complex would be wrong.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: It would be wrong, would it, in your opinion, to draw any
22 false conclusion from the fact that this agency was called
23 the Chancellery of the Fuhrer?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: To draw —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it be dangerous to draw a wrong conclusion from the
26 fact that the Chancellery is called the Chancellery of the
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1 Fuhrer? Would it be wrong to conclude that therefore it
2 was Hitler’s own personal instrument?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It was definitely Hitler’s, it was one of the five
4 Chancelleries which actually reported directly to Hitler.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought it was common ground that Hitler
6 had initiated the euthanasia programme.
7 MR IRVING: Yes. I am looking at just how closely connected
8 because the euthanasia programme, the operatives in the
9 programme, as your Lordship is probably familiar, later on
10 became involved in selling their expertise, if I can put
11 like that, in the gas vans.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am sorry, I thought you were talking
13 about the euthenasia programme in your last question.
14 MR IRVING: I am trying to break the link between Hitler and
15 the Fuhrer’s Chancellery, if I can put it like that.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Hitler had five Chancelleries. This is one of them. They
17 were directly reporting to Hitler. There was a strong
18 direct relationship between — Hitler had his own
19 Chancellery.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen the files of the Chancellery of the Fuhrer?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have seen some of the files, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are they bulging with correspondence between Adolf and
23 Philip Buhle or Viktor Brach?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I tried to explain this earlier. This was originally an
25 office which dealt with petitions sent to the Fuhrer and
26 things like that. Then it became, in the course of the
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1 euthanasia programme, a clandestine operation centre to
2 carry out the final solution in a way of this question,
3 the euthanasia question.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you now answer my question?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The character of the Chancellery in, let us say, 38 and in
6 1940, if you compare these two years, is completely
7 different. It became a killing centre, and the fact that
8 it was in Tiergarten Strasse 4, it was of course a
9 clandestine operation.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you now answer my question? From your knowledge of
11 the files of this Chancellery, are they bulging with
12 correspondence between Adolf Hitler and the head of
13 Fuhrer’s Chancellery, namely Philip Buhle?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We do not have the complete files, particularly all the
15 files about the euthanasia programme, except some
16 splinters, are lost. The files do not give us a clear
17 view about the whole operation, about the Chancellery. It
18 is basically boring stuff about people who are writing
19 petitions to Hitler. The Chancellery dealt with the
20 petition obviously on behalf of Hitler.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, let me go straight to the bottom line — otherwise
22 I am sure his Lordship will ask me to do so — and say
23 that, when the T4 action then moved over into running the
24 gas vans, is there any evidence whatsoever of a link
25 between Hitler and the Chancellery in this connection?
26 Any documentary evidence that Hitler got personally
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1 involved with the gas van programme?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think there is no such evidence, but the very fact that
3 Hitler stopped the euthanasia programme in 1941 and that
4 more than 100 people employed in the euthanasia programme
5 then went to the district of Lublin and actually were used
6 as the key personnel for the killing of the 1.5 million
7 Jews, probably more, of the generalgouvernement, this
8 gives us a clear idea of the involvement of Hitler. The
9 Party Chancellery did only report to Hitler, so I am
10 asking you who actually gave the order to the Party
11 Chancellery to move this man from the euthanasia
12 programme.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry, you are saying Party Chancellery, you do not
14 mean that?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I mean the Chancellery of the Fuhrer. So actually who
16 gave the order to this man to actually take on this new
17 task in Poland?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is of course pure supposition on your part, is it
19 not?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Based on the fact that this was Hitler’s Chancellery, the
21 office which worked for Hitler.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Philip Buhle, who was the head of the Chancellery, what
23 was his rank? Was he Reichsleiter?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is one rung down from Reichsminister?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Reichsleiter is the highest rank in the party.
. P-135
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he have an SS rank?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not remember at the moment.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: These gas vans — I am now on page 49, my Lord, paragraphs
4 5 to 8 — whose existence we accept, were they only
5 killing Jews or were they originally designed for clearing
6 out the inmates of the Soviet mental hospitals?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is common ground too, is it not?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. They were primarily used for the killing of Polish
9 inmates of these institutions.
10 MR IRVING: Was any plan made to build these gas vans before
11 the beginning of Barbarossa, or was it a kind of ad hoc
12 killing method that was developed during the Barbarossa
13 campaign?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: An interim experimental method of killing people that was
16 developed in the Barbarossa campaign?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The gas vans actually exist since 1940, so they were used
18 in the Warthegau and by Sonderkommando Langer to kill the
19 Polish inmates of institutions for disabled persons in
20 1940. Then in late summer of 1941 they actually
21 transferred this technology to the East.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are there any documents that actually show Sonderkommando
23 Langer operating at Chelmno?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, there are.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Documents as opposed to eyewitnesses?
26 MR RAMPTON: Again I have to say I thought this was common
. P-136
1 ground.
2 MR IRVING: I am sorry, I am not going to question that.
3 MR RAMPTON: I did not think there was any dispute at all about
4 the slaughter of 97,000 people between December and
5 whenever it was, May.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, and indeed that is true also, I think,
7 of Treblinka and Sobibor, is it not?
8 MR RAMPTON: I think so too.
9 MR IRVING: There is dispute about the scale.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, up to a point that is true.
11 MR IRVING: Yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But there is no future in challenging
13 Sonderkommando Langer’s recollection, is there?
14 MR IRVING: There is only point in disputing what
15 Sonderkommando Langer was up to. Are you familiar with
16 the fact that it was also apparently flown, according to
17 Brightman, to take part in operations, I think Novgarod?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. This is the link between the Warthegau killings and
19 the killings in Russia because we know from actually, it
20 is the intercepts I think, we know that Himmler summoned
21 the Sonderkommando to Novgarod where they killed the
22 inmates of a local home for disabled people. This is an
23 essential part of the history of the Chelmno extermination
24 camp. This is the link.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does not the document show that the Sonderkommando was
26 flown to Novgarod?
. P-137
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: How could they have put their van in a plane?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I did not say that they used a van. They killed the
4 people obviously with bottles.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: By some other means?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, with bottles, gas in bottles.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: They did not only use gas vans then. Page 51 paragraphs,
8 10 to 11.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Paragraph 10 are you going to now, did you
10 say? 10. We can start with paragraph 10.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
12 MR IRVING: You refer on line 4 to 600 Soviet prisoners of war
13 being gassed. Is that right?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: At Auschwitz?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you just to have a look at one page from the
18 book by the witness Professor van Pelt which I have
19 included in the little bundle at page 12 this morning.
20 The second paragraph is describing, the paragraph
21 beginning with the words, “A major reason for the slow
22 progress”, it is describing the high mortality rate which
23 has resulted from hygienic conditions in Auschwitz and
24 Birkenhau. There it says in the month of October 1,255
25 Soviets, meaning Soviet prisoners, had died from these
26 hygienic conditions. He does not refer to gassings. What
. P-138
1 is the reason for this discrepancy, do you think?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think if you read the book carefully, you will find a
3 reference to the killing. In the same chapter you will
4 find a reference to the killing of 600.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Indeed. I wrote to him in Mat 1996 asking for an
6 explanation for the discrepancy, that on one part he
7 describes them as being gassed and here on this page he
8 refers to them clearly as —-
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There is no discrepancy.
10 MR RAMPTON: This is a nonsense. I am sorry to have to keep
11 standing up, but this is really such a waste of time.
12 There is no inconsistency in this.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I can see that people were being gassed
14 and people were dying for other reasons.
15 MR RAMPTON: Of course and van Pelt’s evidence —-
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just looking it up.
17 MR RAMPTON: — I say it in his absence and from memory was
18 that either in August or September 1941 there was an
19 experimental gassing with Zyklon-B of 600 Soviet prisoners
20 and others at Auschwitz (i). There is no inconsistency in
21 that.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause a moment.
23 MR RAMPTON: I am afraid I have not got his report here.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have and I am just looking.
25 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, he gives —-
26 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am sorry, but I am going to have to
. P-139
1 stick with what I said, notwithstanding this renewed
2 interruption.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you have just I think challenged what
4 Dr Longerich says about the first —-
5 MR IRVING: 600 who were gassed which is the standard story.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — gassing, well, actually 850, but leave
7 that on one side, as having taken place in September or
8 December 1941. You put to him something that Professor
9 van Pelt wrote, I think, in order to support your
10 challenge and I am just trying to find it but I cannot.
11 MR IRVING: Page 272 of his book, my Lord.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, but I am looking at his report which
13 is possibly more complete, but I cannot immediately. We
14 will have to move on. Perhaps somebody might be able to
15 find the reference.
16 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, try page 105 of van Pelt’s report.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. I would like to track
18 it down whilst we are on this point. 105.
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes, 104, 105.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is in the area where I was looking.
21 Yes. “It is important to note that after the war various
22 witnesses confirmed that in early September the Germans
23 had used block 11, the same block, as an experimental gas
24 chamber”.
25 MR RAMPTON: That was the execution block until the crematorium
26 at Auschwitz (i) was converted into a gas chamber.
. P-140
1 MR IRVING: My Lord —-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So, I mean, van Pelt appears to be at one
3 with Dr Longerich, I think it is fair to say?
4 MR RAMPTON: Absolutely, but there is no inconsistency between
5 an experimental gassing in early September and deaths from
6 something else in October. None at all.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think this is right, Mr Irving, actually,
8 is it not?
9 MR IRVING: I refer only to the fact that the evidence for the
10 gassings is our familiar source, eyewitnesses, and the
11 following sentence in the book which I quoted is — I will
12 read both sentences together — “This contributed to the
13 high mortality rate. In the month of October 1,255
14 Soviets had died. None of this was welcome news to SS
15 headquarters in Berlin where the prisoners, the Russian
16 prisoners, were considered an asset.” What are you
17 gassing 600 assets for?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have Professor van Pelt’s book in
19 court?
20 MR IRVING: I do not have it in court, no, my Lord.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Which page is this in van Pelt’s report?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 105, I think it was.
23 MR RAMPTON: 104 and 105 of Professor van Pelt’s report.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think let us press on.
25 MR IRVING: I will just press on and ask one relevant
26 question. (To the witness): Dr Longerich, the source you
. P-141
1 relied on for the 600 prisoners being gassed and for the
2 further 900 in December are the sources you have given in
3 235, is that right?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: All secondary sources? There is nothing of a primary, no
6 documentary source for that, is there?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think the statement of Brach is probably an eyewitness,
8 partially an eyewitness statement.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 50, you say there were six gas vans. You say in
10 paragraph 8, probably a total of six gas vans. Do you
11 disagree with those who say the total was three, only
12 three were ever built?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I am quite familiar with the Einsatzgruppen.
14 I studied their material and I went through all evidence
15 about the Einsatzgruppen, and my calculation is a minimum
16 of six. There is probably, there is probably some
17 material here mentioned or used by me which has probably
18 not been available to others.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: They did drive around a lot, did they not, from one
20 killing area to another?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. It is referring here to reports by the
22 Einsatzgruppen. They say, “We have one or we have two
23 vans at our disposal at a certain time” and you can easily
24 come to the conclusion they had a minimum of six vans
25 available. I did this for all of the four Einsatzgruppen
26 and it is a minimum. They could have — it could have
. P-142
1 been more but this is as far as I came.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 51, please, paragraph 11, we are looking at a visit
3 by Adolf Eichmann allegedly to Auschwitz where he had a
4 conversation with Rudolf Hoess, the Kommandant?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Where are we? In 55 in?
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: As you comment, they disagree firmly on what the date of
7 that visit was.
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, in fact, Eichmann in his own copy of Hoess’s memoirs
10 dismissed it as fantasy, that there never had been any
11 such meeting. Are you familiar with that?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, he also dismissed it — he was very critical about
13 Hoess in his interrogations in Israel. So we are at the
14 moment at page?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: 51?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: 51, sorry.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you really have to decide which of these two criminals
18 you believe, have you not?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I do not think we have to. You know, the history of
20 the Holocaust is not or the decision-making or systematic
21 character is not based on either the evidence of, you
22 know, Hoess or Eichmann.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 12, you are talking about the construction of a
24 monster crematorium with 32 chambers, furnished chambers.
25 Can you confirm that your source for that is just an
26 article by Gerlach in Holocaust and Genocide Studies?
. P-143
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it is an excellent piece of work. He spent about
2 eight years to study the Holocaust in White Russia.
3 I know him personally, discussed it with him. I think he
4 put, he actually supported his article with a lot of
5 evidence.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any document, any one document, that proves there
7 was a plan to construct an extermination facility there?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. This is a conclusion because they built this large
9 crematorium with 32, 32 chamber furnished, and I think the
10 magnitude of this installation gives you a clear
11 indication that they were planning something very sinister
12 in Mogilev.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it possible there is another non-sinister
14 interpretation like it was going to become a central
15 corpse disposal facility for the whole of the Russian
16 Front or the whole of the area or partisan war or
17 something?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, in this article Gerlach dealt with the suggestion.
19 I did not, I cannot remember the calculation, but the
20 calculation, you know, the corpses they wanted to burn
21 there is extraordinary. It exceeds, as far as I am aware,
22 of the number of —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was it ever built?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, it was a plan.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: A plan. Paragraph 13, I am a bit confused about what you
26 are actually saying in this paragraph. Do you confirm
. P-144
1 that all the various preparations for mass killings you
2 have described were designed for limited regional killing
3 actions only?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, can I comment on this? I think you have to put this
5 in a context. What I am trying to say here is that in
6 phase, autumn ’41 to spring 1942, we have — the killing
7 is extended from the Soviet Union to other regions,
8 particularly to the Warthegau, to the district of Lublin,
9 to — it also extended to Serbia and you have in this
10 period the large mass killings in Riga and in Minsk.
11 You can, if you look at the transfers of the gas
12 technology, the gas killing technology, to the East, you
13 can see that exactly in these areas of the cities they are
14 either building gas killing facilities or they are
15 planning to build them.
16 Lodz, for Lodz you have Chelmo, the first wave,
17 20,000 Jews deported to Lodz. They are building Chelmno,
18 first of all, for there to kill the local Polish Jews.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: The killing of what?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Building a, well, Chelmno, the —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — a station for gas vans. Yes? Then we have evidence
23 that in October 1941 they started to build Belzec, the
24 extermination camp, in the district of Lublin. At the
25 same time they were planning to send German Jews to
26 Lublin. They were planning this to kill the local Jews.
. P-145
1 The same applies to Riga. We have the famous letter, 25th
2 October 1941, where actually the Reisigerhauptamt a gas
3 van — a gas killing installations to Osland. There is
4 this plan in Mogilev.
5 So this I think, in my view, gives a very clear
6 picture. They are sending Jews from Central Europe to
7 certain ghettos in the East and they are either making
8 preparations for gas killing installation at exactly these
9 places, or they have plans to do so.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the confusion because you said that in section A
11 there was no indication during that same time span of any
12 overall plan for extermination?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, the extermination, I am not sure whether I did not
14 say this clearly enough, but the extermination, first of
15 all, relates to the local Jews, so the non-German Jews,
16 the Jews who lived there, the Jews of Lodz, the Jews of
17 the district of Lublin, the Jews of Riga, the Jews of
18 Minsk. They are not at this stage, they are not — they
19 are, obviously, not killing the German Jews on arrival.
20 They are making preparations or are about to kill the
21 local Jews.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: To make space for the arrival of the German Jews?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you want to say it in a cynical way, yes.
Section 146.24 to 165.9
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: So was this an integral part of the German plan to
25 exterminate all Jews, is that what you are saying?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know whether you can call it a plan, but I think
. P-146
1 it gives you an idea of the systematic character of the
2 operation. They are — you have in 1941, autumn 1941, to
3 spring 1942, the killing extended to certain areas, and
4 these are exactly the areas where actually Jews from
5 Germany are deported to or where they are waiting for the
6 trains from Germany. I think if you look at this, if you
7 tie the loose ends together, it gives you an idea that
8 behind this is a system, an idea, to systematically
9 kill —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are going back on your suggestion that section A,
11 during the section A period of your report, there was no
12 overall plan to exterminate?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, because I think — can I just check
14 I understand — your section A was really talking about
15 European Jews?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Central European Jews.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Central European Jews?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And the beginning of the systemized killing that you have
20 described in October or thereabouts of 1941 applied still
21 to the local Jews?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I think that is the way he is putting it. You may not
24 accept it.
25 MR IRVING: Right. Perhaps I can clarify with another
26 question. Are you saying then that all these
. P-147
1 preparations, the exporting of the gas technology, is part
2 of an overall plan to kill all Jews under German control?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I am not trying to perceive as a kind of preplanned,
4 of a kind of blueprint or a plan which actually existed
5 in, let us say, 1940, 1941. I am trying to explain that
6 the killing of the European Jews was a process which
7 emerged, you know, step by step, and we are now in a phase
8 where obviously the killing was extended to other parts of
9 Europe than the Soviet Union.
10 My argumentation, I am simply very cautious.
11 I am saying, here are the facts, we know what happened and
12 I am really hesitant to say this was the result of a plan
13 which existed before the killing actually started. I am
14 just showing you, I am trying to lead you through the
15 different phases of this policy.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Are you aware that the judgment in the Eichmann
17 trial said that all these preparations were part of a plan
18 to exterminate all Jews under German control.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, first of all, again I would like to have the verdict
20 here, but, you see, the Eichmann trial was held in 1960,
21 and we cannot ignore that we have historical research on
22 the subject now for four decades and, of course, in some
23 areas we have much, much more evidence than the Judges in
24 the Eichmann case.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but I think somewhere else in your report you admit
26 that we know virtually nothing. We still do not find any
. P-148
1 orders about extermination — I do not want to turn up the
2 actual page, but I could, I suppose, find it, I
3 have flagged it — and it struck me as odd that here we
4 are, 55 years down the road, and we are still floundering
5 in some respects. That is page 46, paragraph 16. Let us
6 go briefly back to there where you admit that we do not
7 know the answers. So do we know much more than we did in
8 1960?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, we have a lot more evidence.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: The state of contemporary research does not give
11 sufficient evidence, you say, and here we are at the
12 beginning of the 21st century?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, no, I think that is taking, if I may say
14 so, that particular little section right out of context.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. I am referring here to the question whether the
16 deportation of Jews to the East was at this time already a
17 matter for the plan. What I am saying, I do not know.
18 The research does not allow us to make such a statement.
19 MR IRVING: So there are lots of areas where we still, even
20 after 60 years, cannot make a firm statement.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is due to the fact that many of these decisions, you
22 know, were done obviously orally between, you know, Hitler
23 and Himmler. The Nazis systematically tried to destroy
24 the files concerning this question. As far as the files
25 are survived, they are scattered around Europe. We
26 actually have only access to Eastern European archives
. P-149
1 since a couple of years, so it is…
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that not a bit of a cop out, if I can use a phrase, to
3 say that the files have been destroyed and it was done
4 verbally between Hitler and Himmler? Is it not a bit of
5 an ausflugt?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. Himmler said it himself in the speech. This is
7 history which has not been written and will never be
8 written. So they tried systematically to destroy the
9 evidence and to mislead the following generations
10 about —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Having said that, he then had the speech printed in
12 numerable copies and shown to every member of the SS
13 General Staff?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I replied this yesterday. It was not, it was a secret
15 speech. It was not planned to publish it. It was just to
16 have a copy available for internal use.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 53, paragraph 1.3, please? We looked at this
18 document once or twice already. Do you agree that the
19 approval for the mass killing came from Heydrich and
20 Himmler, and that there is no evidence that Hitler himself
21 approved of this operation or, indeed, was even informed
22 of it?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have only can refer to this document and if you read the
24 document, it is only a reference to Himmler.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: And to Heydrich, of course.
. P-150
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that if there had been these verbal discussions
2 between Himmler and Hitler that you refer to, this is the
3 kind of place you would have expected to find reference to
4 it between —-
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Not necessarily.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if there had been general knowledge, and one can
7 assume that Gauleiter Greisler who has carried out this
8 special treatment of 100,000 Jews must have been wondering
9 at the back of his mind, “Is it OK what I am doing?” that
10 Himmler passed on to him the word, “Well, I have cleared
11 it with the boss”?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, Greisler obviously no difficulties to carry out this
13 task. He did not ask for this kind of approval and you
14 know that there were very rules about secrecy, and it was
15 not every — it was not always necessary to mention the
16 name of Hitler in this or to call upon the authority of
17 Hitler in this —-
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you say so, Dr Longerich, but, of course, Gauleiter
19 Greisler, as a Gauleiter, formally came under Hitler, did
20 he not, so where was Hitler in this equation? Here is
21 Greiser dealing direct with Himmler, saying, “I have done
22 what you and Heydrich have authorized”, and there is no
23 mention of Hitler in the document?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. There is no mentioning because Greiser was quite
25 prepared to carry out this, to carry out this task and he
26 assumed that Himmler had the authority to ask him to do
. P-151
1 so.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that Hitler did not order this operation
3 then, that the operation was ordered by Himmler and
4 Heydrich, as the document says?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have no written evidence that Hitler ordered this
6 particular operation to kill these, to kill 100,000 in the
7 Warthegau area.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: If somebody says precisely the words you have just used,
9 would that make them a Holocaust denier?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Not this one sentence, no, of course not.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: The next page, please, paragraph 2.3, are you able to
12 identify any document in support of your assertion that
13 two districts were to take the lead in the implementation
14 of the Final Solution?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, this is mainly, if you look at the, if you look at
16 the history of the two extermination camps, at the two
17 extermination camps, Belzec, if you look at the history of
18 the extermination camp, Belzec, and if you look then, if
19 you go a little bit further, if you do not stop here, and
20 if you go a little bit further and look into spring 1942
21 and look at the deportation, what happened, then it is
22 quite clear that Belzec was particularly built for the
23 killing of the Jews who are labelled non-fit for work in
24 the district of Belzec and to a certain extent in the
25 district of Galicia.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: So once again you are extrapolating backwards from what
. P-152
1 happened to presume an order —-
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but that is something that if you do not have a
3 complete, if you do not have a complete documentation,
4 this is what historians sometimes have to do. They have
5 to draw conclusion what, you know, actually from the
6 following sequence or they have to go back a little bit.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is what I have been saying for some weeks, in fact,
8 and obviously we share the same kind of methods —-
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not sure about that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: — we do not always come up with the same conclusions.
11 Paragraph 2.4, the only sources that you quote for your
12 assertions about the events in East Galicia are the
13 testimony rendered in the 1968 trial and a secondary work
14 Ostgalizien by Pohl?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is a dissertation published three years ago by a
16 colleague I know very much and I know very closely and,
17 I mean, I follow —-
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just like Gerlach, the same kind of thing?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: And this is a first case study about the killing of the
20 Jews of Eastern Galicia. There is a second book written
21 at the same time which came to the same conclusion written
22 by Zan Kuhlack, and I think I do not have to go to the
23 local archives in Galicia to prove that the Nazis killed
24 the Jews of Galicia. It is quite evident. These books
25 have been reviewed. These people have to confront
26 colleagues’ criticism and conferences. I attended those
. P-153
1 conferences and I am of no doubt about their academic
2 qualifications, and I do not have to present, I think,
3 always first-hand evidence or documentary evidence for
4 something which is commonly acknowledged among historians
5 and is not disputed.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you dispute this, Mr Irving? Do you say
7 that this all made up by somebody?
8 MR IRVING: Well, the question I was going to ask is precisely
9 what he just answered. Is he able to identify any
10 documentary evidence in support of his allegations or is
11 it all second-hand?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but would you answer my question? Are
13 you disputing that these indiscriminate killings in
14 Galicia took place?
15 MR IRVING: Not in so many words.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, then let us move on.
17 MR IRVING: The purpose of asking these questions, of course,
18 is to establish, my Lord, the sometimes rather threadbare
19 evidence that this report is based on.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But there is no point in saying evidence for
21 a proposition is threadbare if you accept the proposition.
22 MR IRVING: Well, I am accustomed to working with original
23 documents rather than with secondary and tertiary sources.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It would not make any difference if you had
25 the original documents because you accept what they show.
26 MR IRVING: 2.6, Dr Longerich, once again are you able to
. P-154
1 identify any document that records what Himmler and
2 Globocnik discussed at their meeting on October 13th,
3 other than, presumably, the Dienstkalender?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it is in the Dienst calendar, you have it in front of
5 you probably.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: They were just talking about the einfluss der Juden,
7 I suppose, or something like that?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, and then there is the BBC file of Globocnik and there
9 is a very interesting exchange of letters, and you can
10 come to this conclusion if you read through that.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And on the basis of those two sources, you then say: “It
12 is presumably at this meeting that Globocnik received the
13 assignment to build the Belzec extermination camp”?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Just one second, well, we know that they met and we know
15 that Globocnik from the internal correspondence of his
16 office in Lublin, we know that he was looking for more
17 radical solutions for the Jewish question. Then he met
18 Himmler and after that they started to build the
19 extermination camp of Auschwitz.
20 This is a typical, I mean, in this field we have
21 to rely, what we are trying to do, we are trying to
22 reconstruct the history of the decision-making process.
23 This means that because the evidence is sometimes or is
24 sometimes fragmented, we have to put together pieces and
25 have to draw conclusions from that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-155
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So it is not so easy, you do not have the daily or the
2 weekly records of the conversations between Himmler and
3 Hitler about the Holocaust. We have to use these bits and
4 pieces and put it together and to come to our
5 conclusions.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very interesting.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Of course, I made here, of course, these kind of
8 reservations when I am not absolutely sure that they
9 decided this day, it is an assumption based on documentary
10 evidence that they probably at this day as I think made
11 the decision to build an extermination camp for the
12 district of Lublin which then existed, and there were
13 people killed in this extermination camp which I think is
14 also part of the evidence.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now just a minor diversion here. Am I right in saying it
16 is a perfectly reasonable process as historian or writer
17 you get fragmentary documents, sometimes only half a line,
18 sometimes a scrap of handwriting. You add your own
19 knowledge, you add your experience, the 30 years you have
20 worked in the archives, your general body of information,
21 and on the basis of that you try to represent, in as
22 accurate and genuine a form as possible, what, on the
23 balance of probabilities, those fragments of information
24 mean.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: And you have to include, of course, every piece you find.
26 You cannot neglect anything.
. P-156
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but here you had very little that you could have
2 neglected, because your result said it is very
3 fragmentary, is it not?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sometimes these things are very fragmentary.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: What I just described is the normal process of writing
6 history on the basis of very scant records?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If the record is fragmented, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the writings of Jan Karski? I will
9 ask you about one particular one, page 56, paragraph 2.7.
10 Are you aware of the first report that a Polish emissary
11 called Jan Karski wrote? He gave it to the Polish
12 government in exile early 1940, in which he described a
13 visit in December 1939 to a transit camp for Jews at
14 Belzec?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. A camp existed at Belzec before this. There was a
16 large slave labour camp in Belzec before this time.
17 Belzec was just on the demarcation line between the Soviet
18 and the German sphere of influence in Poland. They
19 employed Jewish slave labour in 1939 and 1940 to build
20 what they called the Buchgraben, the fortification at the
21 river Buch. So there was a camp there and the living
22 conditions in the camp were quite horrid.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Jan Karski describes this —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, before you go on about Mr Karski,
25 I had thought you accepted that at Belzec there were many
26 thousands, tens if not hundreds of thousands, of Jews
. P-157
1 killed by gassing. What is the point of putting that
2 Mr Karski took the view it was a transit camp?
3 MR IRVING: I am looking at the quality of the sources.
4 I appreciate this point. We will just concentrate on the
5 figures then. Is your primary source on Belzec Michael
6 Tregenza article published in the Wiener Library bulletin?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, my primary source is the Belzec verdict in German the
8 court. Of course I am familiar with the article.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is in your footnote 259.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it refers to it but it refers first of all to
11 evidence from German court material.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you accepted in your footnote 259 that Tregenza is
13 reliable?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I just quoted him here. The footnote is about an
15 attempt to reconstruct the history of the setting up of
16 Belzec. So I quoted here different statements from
17 actually people who participated, worked, who actually
18 built this up, and then I said in the footnote Tregenza as
19 well confirmed the statement. He accepted the statement
20 as a kind of additional source, but I am primarily relying
21 on the Polish workers who built there, and who gave us
22 evidence about the history of the camp itself.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you disregarded anything that Tregenza wrote in his
24 report?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I only referred, I think, to his article here. This does
26 not mean I accepted every line that he has written about
. P-158
1 the camp.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, if he had written a number of totally absurd
3 statements that would have implied to you that he had
4 never been anywhere near the place?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is no doubt that Belzec was
6 constructed, is there?
7 MR IRVING: Unfortunately, he is the source for one million
8 being killed apparently?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, not in my report.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you endorse Tregenza’s claim that more than a million
11 Jews were killed at Belzec?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We do not know the exact number. I think best estimations
13 were given in the German Belzec trial. They said between
14 500 and 600,000 people. So I would assume that the number
15 one million could be seen as exaggerated. I am only
16 quoting this article one time and, if he made an absurd
17 statement there, I would not quote the article of course.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: If he made a dozen absurd statements, would you have
19 quoted it?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Please criticise me if I quote him. I think I only quoted
21 him one once and I only quoted that he actually confirms
22 these statements of documents which I found elsewhere.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to keep interrupting but, if I do
24 not understand, I may as well say so. You quote whatever
25 he is called, Tregenza, simply for the date when the
26 construction of Belzec started. You do not rely on him,
. P-159
1 as I understand it, am I right, Dr Longerich, for the
2 number killed there?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, exactly.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You rely on the German court documents for that and they
5 give a different figure. So why are we spending a long
6 time on whether he is a reliable witness?
7 MR IRVING: We are going to spend a short time. I could have
8 spent much longer describing all the absurd statements
9 which make it quite plain that Tregenza was never anywhere
10 near the place and that any reasonable historian, reading
11 Tregenza’s report, would have disqualified that source
12 completely. Paragraph 2.8, page 57, your only source for
13 the claim that Globocnik had an assignment to kill the
14 Jews of the Lublin and Galicia districts is a secondary
15 work again, Pohl’s Lublin?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am stating here that Globocnik had not yet received the
17 order to prepare for the killing of all Jews in the
18 Generalgouvernement, so this is the key sentence here.
19 I came to the conclusion actually by looking at the
20 history of Belzec because Belzec was obviously too small,
21 put it this way, to kill all the Jews of the
22 Generalgouvernement. So I think in my attempt to
23 reconstruct events, Belzec was first of all designed to
24 kill the Jews non-fit for work in the district of Lublin,
25 and in the district of Galicia, but not the killing centre
26 for the whole Generalgouvernement. I came to this
. P-160
1 conclusion by looking actually at the size of this
2 installation.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: In Belzec?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Belzec.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we do not have very much information on the size
6 anyway, do we? We are very ill informed about it.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Because these camps were destroyed systematically by the
8 Nazis at the end of the war.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I just take you back, and I am sure my Lord will
10 understand why, to page 53, paragraph 1.2, the third
11 line. There is a sentence there: “750 Jews were killed in
12 gas vans.” Do you see that? The beginning of the
13 sentence says: “In an action lasting several days at the
14 end of November 700 Jews were killed in gas vans”. So, if
15 it took several days to kill 700 Jews in gas vans, can you
16 estimate how long it would take to kill 97,000?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They were just experimenting at this time. They improved
18 their technique. This statement does not say that they
19 were trying to kill as many Jews as possible. It just
20 says they killed 700 Jews in a couple of days. It does
21 not make any sense to draw conclusions from that to their
22 capacity, to their ability to kill Jews in gas vans.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this was just experimental at this stage, was it?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you like to call the killing of 700 people as
25 experimental, yes, then I have to agree, in comparison to
26 what happened after that 97,000.
. P-161
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, you yourself used the phrase, and I quote
2 verbatim, they were just experimenting at this stage. I
3 did not use the word. You did.
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I tried to put it to you, I have to admit, in a kind of
5 cynical way, to say, well, they were improving, wait a
6 little bit, wait a couple of months and they were able to
7 kill 97,000 people within six months.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: With the same numbers of gas vans? Three gas vans could
9 kill 97,000?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think in the meantime they changed the models. They
11 worked on the models, as the report from June 1942 shows
12 us. They tried their best to extend the capacity of the
13 gas vans. Of course the use of Chelmno was a kind of
14 improvement because they were able to deceive people, to
15 say to them: Well, actually only entering a shower room,
16 the shower room was in fact the gas, so this whole thing
17 was much more effective a couple of months later than this
18 one here.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you sometimes get the impression, Dr Longerich, that
20 some of these figures that are put in letters and
21 documents, or even eyewitness statements, are just fantasy
22 figures? They have very little relation to fact?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is not my general view.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you to page 56 please, line 8. There is a
25 sentence there on line 8 which says: “On 12th October
26 1941, 10,000 to 12,000 Jews were murdered in one town”.
. P-162
1 Is that right?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you likes to comment on the logistics of an
4 operation of that scale? How many men would be involved?
5 How many shooters? How many trucks? How many pits?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I went through the history of mass executions for quite a
7 time. I studied this for the book I wrote extensively.
8 I looked at dozens of German court proceedings and I have
9 a kind of idea how it was feasible to do that. You
10 actually needed to kill thousands of people, even 10,000
11 people, you needed actually —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: In one day?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, on one day.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: It just says on one day.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it was possible. You only needed a quite limited
16 number of people who would shoot these people on the pits.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: 1,000 tons of bodies?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, when I asked you — I am sorry to
19 interrupt — about 20 minutes ago, when we were on this
20 paragraph before, whether you disputed the indiscriminate
21 shootings in Galicia, you said no. You are now putting to
22 him that in some way it would have been impossible to
23 dispose of the corpses and you are now challenging the
24 killings.
25 MR IRVING: Your Lordship may not have heard the introductory
26 question which is does this witness have the impression
. P-163
1 sometimes that these figures are fantasy figures.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you are challenging the figures?
3 MR IRVING: I am challenging globally these kinds of statistics
4 which are in the history books and in the reports on the
5 basis of what is practicable, and what is, on the basis of
6 common sense, likely.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know as far as one can speak about common sense
8 when it comes to mass killings, but this is called the
9 bloody Sunday of Stanislaw. So it is a tragedy which is
10 well-known. It is well-researched.
11 MR IRVING: How many men were involved in the actual killing
12 operation?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think, as far as I am aware, several hundred at least.
14 Is it really necessary that I —
15 MR IRVING: No, I have left that point now.
16 MR RAMPTON: Without deigning to wait for the witness’s full
17 answer, I have to say.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Actually, what you would not have seen is
19 that I rather suggested to Dr Longerich that we might move
20 on from Galicia.
21 MR IRVING: I did not see that either but I had already decided
22 to move on.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are all agreed. Let us move on.
24 MR IRVING: If your Lordship thinks that was not a valid point
25 to make, then I will avoid making points like that in
26 future.
. P-164
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the killings in Galicia are a bit of
2 a side issue, I am afraid.
3 MR IRVING: It is the figures, the statistics, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Even that.
5 MR IRVING: If somebody is accused of Holocaust denial because
6 he says the figures are too high.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are talking about that particular
8 obviously ghastly incident in Galicia, and I do not really
9 think that that is what this case is centrally about.
Section 165.10 to 180.19
10 MR IRVING: Page 59, paragraph 3, please. Two days later
11 Rosenberg spoke at a press conference about the
12 eradication of the Jews of Europe. Was this supposed to
13 be secret or not, this operation?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The operation was secret.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: He orders a press conference and talks about it.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This was quoted yesterday. I quoted this yesterday
17 again. This was under the heading “secret”. The
18 journalists were not allowed to write about it. There was
19 a section of the press conference where it actually was
20 said: This is now confidential, a confidential
21 information, you are not allowed to write about this
22 issue.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to labour the point, but what kind of top
24 secret issue is it? I do not remember General Leslie
25 Groves holding top secret background briefings to the
26 press about the Manhattan project, for example. Either
. P-165
1 something is top state secret or it is not. You do not
2 hold even background briefings with the press about it.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think you have to read the statement very carefully.
4 “There are still about 6 million Jews in the east, and
5 this question can only be solved through a biological
6 eradication of all of Jewry in Europe. The Jewish
7 question will only be solved for Germany when the last Jew
8 has left German territory and for Europe when there is no
9 longer a Jew left standing on the European Continent”. He
10 is not literally saying well, actually, we are killing at
11 the moment people, women, men and children in gas
12 chambers. He is talking about this in very general
13 phrases. It is like Hitler spoke about ausrottung and
14 vernichtung and I quote in the report No. 1. I quote a
15 number of other examples. In every system where you have
16 a principle of secrecy, of course, things are going wrong
17 and people are talking too much to the press, and giving a
18 kind of insight into the process. These things happen.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that, when Rosenberg specifically names the
20 option as being to push them over the Urals as one way of
21 eradicating them, then such expulsion over the Urals does
22 not necessarily mean to kill them?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not sure now about your question, whether it is
24 actually a pronouncement to kill them or not to kill
25 them.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that the Rosenberg reference to
. P-166
1 eradication therefore does not necessarily mean physical
2 extermination or killing?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I look at the German text. I am sorry. Well, he says in
4 the German: “Und dazu ist es notig, sie uber den Ural zu
5 drangen oder sonst irgendwie zur Ausmerzung zu bringen.”
6 For this it is necessary to push them over the Urals or
7 otherwise eradicate them. I think this is quite clear:
8 Otherwise eradicate them. So I think the phrase to push
9 them over the Urals is a clear expression, a metaphor for
10 killing.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, I am looking at my little dictionary from
12 yesterday, the 1935 one, and it says for Ausmerzung — I
13 did not know this but here we are, we take a plunge — to
14 expunge or to eliminate, to expunge them.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: To eliminate, I think, would be the right expression here.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Primary one to expunge?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In this case I think, if somebody speaks about millions of
18 people, Jews, who actually —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are going to boot them out or expunge them?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but you have to look at the context. I think, if you
21 speak end of 1941, after half a million of Soviet Jews had
22 been killed, at least, if a leading Nazi speaks about
23 Ausmerzung, I think the second meaning would here be the
24 better translation.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are extrapolating backwards from your knowledge of
26 what happened to assign a meaning to the word which is
. P-167
1 different from the primary meaning given by the
2 dictionaries.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: What happened at the time, and Rosenberg was of course
4 quite aware about the—-
5 MR RAMPTON: Extrapolating backwards is unfair. Putting two
6 contemporary events side by side and drawing an inference
7 would be more like it.
8 MR IRVING: This press conference was in November 1941,
9 I believe, is that right?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton has rightly said that events happened side by
12 side. At this time, 18th November, had the physical
13 extermination of the Jews of Germany begun?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, but of the Soviet Jews. I think the phrase to push
15 them over the Urals is a very clear hint.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: We now come to the Wannsee conference. A general
17 question: Are you able to identify any documentary
18 evidence that proves that by the time of the Wannsee
19 conference, which is January 20th 1942, the general plan
20 for deportation had changed into one for mass murder?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think the Wannsee conference gives us a clear insight
22 that they are about to change their plan. I think we have
23 to go into the detail to make this point more clear.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: They had not yet changed but they are about to?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They are about to change, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In your opinion?
. P-168
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: So at the time that these gentlemen meet around their
3 table in Berlin Wannsee, the change has not taken place,
4 but sometime sooner or later after that the change will
5 take place?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sooner, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is page 61 now, please, paragraph 2. The passage that you
8 identify as central concerning the general aims of the
9 future Jewish policy is as follows, Dr Longerich: “A
10 further possible solution instead of emigration has come
11 up. After appropriate approval by the Fuhrer, the
12 evacuation of the Jews to the East has stepped into its
13 place”. Let us have a look at that. By “evacuation of
14 the Jews”, do you mean evacuation or killing?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think we have to look at the text of the Wannsee.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to find it. For some reason it
17 is not in N1.
18 MR RAMPTON: We do not have it.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought I had looked at it.
20 MR RAMPTON: It is nobody’s fault. I have asked. There is a
21 version printed in Nokes &Pridham, but I have not even
22 got that.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we had looked at it at some stage.
24 MR RAMPTON: It is an extraordinary state of affairs, but
25 nobody on either side of the court seems to have a text of
26 the Wannsee conference.
. P-169
1 MR IRVING: I do not mind very much because it is not a very
2 important document.
3 MR RAMPTON: I am not concerned with whether Mr Irving minds
4 about that or anything else, to be quite honest. I am
5 concerned that it is not there when your Lordship wants to
6 see it.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it obtainable?
8 MR RAMPTON: It is printed in a well-known three volume history
9 of Nazi Germany by two people from Exeter University
10 called Nokes &Pridham. It is referenced under that
11 heading in a number of the reports, particularly Evans,
12 but it is not in the documents.
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, I can provide immediately an English
14 translation on Monday.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it probably is a good idea to have
16 it.
17 MR RAMPTON: I agree.
18 MR IRVING: It is on my website.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a document that one is going to have to
20 look at quite carefully.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have the English text here in this documentation.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I have it here.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us try and deal with the questions now.
25 MR IRVING: The question was, in your central passage the
26 evacuation of the Jews to the East has stepped into its
. P-170
1 place. Can we accept that evacuation has its real meaning
2 there or is there an innuendo?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is not the central passage. He is referring here to
4 two different things. First of all, he is actually
5 telling the history of how the Nazis tried to solve the
6 Jewish question. He is saying here: “A further possible
7 solution to emigration has come up. After appropriate
8 approval by the Fuhrer the evacuation of the Jews to the
9 East has stepped into its place”. “Into its place” is in
10 the place of emigration. Then it goes on and says: “These
11 actions however must be regarded only as an alternative
12 solution. But already the practical experience is being
13 gathered which is of great importance to the coming Final
14 Solution of the Jewish question”. Now in the next
15 paragraph he is explaining what the coming Final Solution
16 of the Jewish question is. So he is referring to
17 emigration, then to deportation, and then he is saying the
18 next step, we are entering now the Final Solution, the
19 coming Final Solution, and the central passage where he
20 explains (Heydrich) what the coming Final Solution is, is
21 quoted in my report on page 61 in the last paragraph.
22 This is the central passage, I think.
23 MR IRVING: Yes.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is past tense. This is history, the deportation. We
25 are now approaching the coming Final Solution. That is
26 what the Wannsee conference is about.
. P-171
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What you say is that it is what he does not
2 say rather than what he does say in relation to those who
3 are unfit to work which is significant? Have I understood
4 you correctly?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, he is now explaining what the coming Final Solution
6 is. These are these famous sentences: “Under the
7 appropriate direction, the Jews shall now be put to work
8 in the course of the Final Solution. Organized into large
9 work gangs and segregated according to sex, those Jews fit
10 for work will be led into these areas as road builders,
11 whereby, no doubt, a large part will fall out by natural
12 elimination. The remainder who will survive — and they
13 will certainly be those who have the greatest power of
14 endurance — will have to be dealt with accordingly. For,
15 if released, they would, according to the natural
16 selection of the fittest, form the seed of a new Jewish
17 regeneration”. I think the key word in German here is
18 “entsprechend behandelt werden mussen”, to be dealt with
19 accordingly.
20 MR IRVING: Treated accordingly, yes.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is the central passage of the Wannsee conference and
22 this is where Heydrich explains what the coming Final
23 Solution is.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of course it depends how you translate it, does it not?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The German text for me is pretty clear.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about that phrase “bei Freilassung” which originally
. P-172
1 you actually left out in your book? You left those words
2 out entirely, did you not, because it is difficult to get
3 past those words “bei Freilassung”?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I am not sure about the book —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sure because you left the words out of that
6 quotation.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am quite happy that you read my book but we are talking
8 about this text here. If there is a mistake I will
9 correct it.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: You translate it as: For the Jews, if released, would,
11 according to natural selection of the fittest, form the
12 seed of a new Jewish regeneration.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: The word is not “if released”. It is not conditional. It
15 is “bei Freilassung”, which means upon release, does it
16 not?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. In the case of release, bei Freilassung.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Upon release?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is not conditional at all. There is no if and but
21 about it. It says “bei Freilassung”.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, “bei Freilassung”. This is meant in the context as
23 conditional.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think this is probably the key part, in a
25 way, of your report, Dr Longerich. The question, if
26 I have understood it right, is that what Heydrich is
. P-173
1 really proposing is that one would, by a process of
2 natural selection, have the fittest Jews forming the seed
3 of what he is intending should be a new Jewish
4 regeneration. Is that the suggestion, Mr Irving?
5 MR IRVING: That is the danger which they foresee, and so they
6 are going to have to be kept, for example, physically
7 outside the Reich territories. They must be prevented
8 from returning.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but the idea that you are putting that
10 Heydrich has is that there should be a new Jewish
11 regeneration born of the fittest Jews who survive the
12 labour camps.
13 MR IRVING: He fears that they may be. He is not saying they
14 should be. He says that if, upon release—-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Are you suggesting that the true meaning
16 of this passage is that Heydrich is proposing that there
17 should be — all right, outside the Nazi empire — the
18 seed of a new Jewish regeneration? Is that what you are
19 putting?
20 MR IRVING: It is, because on February 4th 1942, which is only
21 a week or two later, Heydrich, speaking in Prague,
22 actually spoke again of the white sea option. He said
23 nothing about the mass annihilation of the Jews. Are you
24 familiar with the book by Gotz Aly?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Final Solution, Nazi population policy, and the murder of
. P-174
1 the European Jews. He prints extracts from this speech by
2 Heydrich in Prague, does he not, February 4th 1942?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but Aly is of course—-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: He says nothing about mass annihilation of the Jews. He
5 reiterates the white sea option, which involves sending
6 the Jews to form a Russian concentration camp and says
7 that this area will form an ideal homeland for the
8 European Jews. Are you familiar with that passage from
9 Gotz Aly?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have not mentioned it, have you?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, but Gotz Aly is among those who actually suggest in
13 the book that the decision to carry out the Final Solution
14 was taken in October 1941. You quote him completely
15 against his own intentions.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am allowed to, am I not? Historians are allowed to take
17 pieces out of other people’s books that do not necessarily
18 fit in with the—-
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but you have also to read his interpretation of this
20 sentence which does not go along with your interpretation.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Dr Longerich, can you just go back to what
22 I believe is the suggestion as to what Heydrich was
23 proposing at Wannsee. Leave aside what happened later.
24 Would you comment on Mr Irving’s proposition?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. I think this passage makes it quite clear what
26 Heydrich’s intentions are. He says that the Jews will be
. P-175
1 led into the East in large labour gangs, segregated
2 according to sex. Thus Jews fit for work will be let into
3 those areas, whereby, no doubt, a large part will fall out
4 by natural elimination. So they will die by hard labour,
5 diseases and so on. The remainder who will survive, and
6 they will certainly be those who have the greatest power
7 of endurance, so they are fit to survive, will have to be
8 dealt with accordingly. Again the German phrase here is
9 “entsprechend behandelt werden mussen”. This is a
10 typical phrase used by the SS, they have to be
11 liquidated. Then, because, if they were released, in
12 contrast to Heydrich’s intention, there would be a
13 selection of the finest and could form the seed of a new
14 Jewish regeneration. This is exactly what Heydrich of
15 course wanted to prevent. He did not want to see after
16 this ordeal a new generation of Jews in his empire. In
17 the Wannsee protocol there are also other references,
18 I think, and other passages which make it quite clear what
19 the intention was.
20 MR IRVING: At the end of that passages does he also have a
21 passage in brackets which you left out, “see the lessons
22 of history”?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry? Here in the text I left something out?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: “als Keimzelle eines neuen judischen Aufbaues anzusprechen
25 ist”. Then there is another passage in brackets which you
26 left out, is it not, in that paragraph, “see the lessons
. P-176
1 of history”?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The lessons of history are we do not want to see actually
3 Jews regenerate from such a catastrophe any more, we want
4 to kill them all. By the way, the logic of this sentence,
5 this idea to lead large labour gangs into the East and to
6 have them diminished by natural selection, and then to
7 deal with the survivors, what about the people who are not
8 fit for work? He does not say that. What about the
9 children and the mothers? What is he going to offer for
10 them in the context of this speech?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that what Heydrich was saying in Prague on
12 February 4th 1942, just a few days later, has no bearing
13 on this, that he makes no mention of mass annihilation,
14 and he is talking about the white sea option and using the
15 Russian concentration camps, which are now emptied of
16 course, to house the Jewish emigres. What is this, just
17 window dressing?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They are speaking here about the coming Final Solution, so
19 it has not started yet. It will start in May 1942.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who was Heydrich speaking to in February
21 1942, Dr Longerich, do you know? Do you know, Mr Irving?
22 May I enquire of you?
23 MR IRVING: I am just checking on the source, Gotz Aly.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, do not worry.
25 MR IRVING: A secret address by Heydrich on February 4th 1942
26 in Prague, page 174 of Gotz Aly, the Final Solution. That
. P-177
1 is the only reference that I have for that.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Again, one should see the whole document. Secret address
3 to whom? I would like to see the full text before I could
4 comment on that.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was not speaking to the Boy Scouts and the Brownies,
6 was he? He was obviously speaking to people who—-
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have seen any transcript or
8 note of what he said on February 4th.
9 MR IRVING: I will obtain it, my Lord. That is all I can say.
10 The whole passage.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you mind? Thank you.
12 MR IRVING: It does seem important because of the value one
13 learns from it to place on the Wannsee conference. Can
14 I just ask, or re-ask, one or two questions about the
15 Wannsee conference? There is no specific mention of
16 killing. You have once again to interpret, you have to
17 read between the lines?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. Again, I tried to show you this here. If you go to
19 the end of the minutes, it is, I think, quite clear. If
20 you look at the remarks of the Secretary of State of the
21 Generalgouvernement, I quoted this in my report, it is
22 page 64, the last paragraph: “In the concluding
23 discussion different possible solutions were talked
24 about. Gauleiter Dr Meyer (the representative of the
25 Ministry for the occupied Eastern territories) as well as
26 Staatssekretar Dr Buhler, Secretary of State of the
. P-178
1 Generalgouvernement, represented the position that certain
2 preparatory measures in the course of the Final Solution
3 should be carried out in the relevant areas themselves,
4 whereby, however, the disquieting of the population must
5 be avoided.”
6 Then the Wannsee protocol makes clears that they
7 were talking about the different solutions they were
8 suggesting here. So what they are doing is they are
9 saying, well, we cannot wait until the Final Solution is
10 coming, we want to start with it now. So they are trying
11 to exempt the killing operations against the Polish Jews
12 and the Soviet Jews from this coming Final Solution.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: These preparations that might have upset or caused unrest,
14 would it be things like drawing up lists of people to be
15 deported? Would that have caused unrest?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, the preparatory measures are the building of killing
17 installations.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: How do you know that?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is my interpretation.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your interpretation?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: From the text and from what happened. They started to
22 build a couple of weeks later Sobibor, they started to
23 build Treblinka and they built gas chambers in Auschwitz.
24 As I said, well, they prefer to use a camouflage
25 language. We also have the statements by Eichmann in his
26 trial when he said at the Wannsee conference they spoke
. P-179
1 quite openly about killing and different ways of killing.
2 I think this is here the passage he is referring to.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are saying that making the preparatory measures in the
4 relevant areas might disquiet the population. Why would
5 creating killing installations in Poland, or wherever the
6 killing is going to be done, upset the population who are
7 going to be rounded up and shipped off to them?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think the fact that they were going to establish
9 extermination camps would upset the local population.
10 They would not like it.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not far more likely that the preparatory measures
12 that they are talking about are things as I mentioned,
13 like rounding up or listing or drawing up black lists of
14 people to be deported, making all the necessary transport
15 preparations, word of which would get out and what would
16 happen then would be the same as happened in Rome, where
17 they start off with 8,000 and only manage to get their
18 hands on 1,000?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think we have to go back to the text here.
Section 180.20 to 203.26
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, can I take you now to paragraph 3 of that page, 61?
21 I am going to suggest to you, Dr Longerich, they are
22 talking about the Final Solution as is going to be
23 implemented after the victory, is that right?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, definitely not. It is saying here in the — it says
25 in the — really, it is a pity that we do not have the
26 full text here —-
. P-180
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let me draw your attention to the last sentence.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him finish the answer.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We have a clear indication in the text that they are
4 expecting the beginning of the coming Final Solution in a
5 couple of months, because it is said here in the text:
6 “The timing for the start of the individual large scale
7 evacuation actions will be largely dependent on military
8 development”. So they —-
9 MR IRVING: “And could only be fully realized after a German
10 victory”?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Is it in the text?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, your paragraph 3.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I am sorry but —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the question I asked you —-
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, just a moment —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the end of paragraph 3.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are talking over each over.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Just a moment. I am not quoting from the minutes of the
19 Wannsee Conference where it clearly said that this
20 deportation could start after the military developments
21 would allow that. This is in a couple of — from their
22 perspective, is a couple of months. The whole operation
23 could, of course, only be, could only be carried out, the
24 whole operation, they talking here about the killing of 11
25 million Jews, including British Jews, Turkish Jews, Swiss
26 Jews, and so on. So the whole operation could, of course,
. P-181
1 only — it is a question of logic — only be dealt to a
2 full extent after the war because the precondition of that
3 is, of course, that they had to win the war.
4 MR IRVING: Precisely.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: But the text gives us a clear indication that they are
6 bound to start this. They are just waiting. They say:
7 “As soon as the military, as soon as the military
8 situation improves, we will start that” and in the end it
9 becomes clear from the comments of Buhler and Meiyer that
10 they cannot wait. They want to start preparatory measures
11 on the spot and —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the answer to my question is, yes, this comprehensive
13 plan was only going to be implemented after final victory?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: To a full extent, but they were quite prepared and were
15 quite keen to start it as soon as possible, as soon as the
16 military situation would allow it to start it.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because if you look further up that paragraph, it says
18 they are going to get their hands on those, the Jews,
19 outside Germany, in Great Britain, Ireland, Portugal,
20 Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Turkey. Now, how are they
21 going to do that, except by some kind of peace treaty?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think I have made my point quite clear.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have, but can I just ask you this
24 and see whether I am taking a bad point. The bit of
25 Heydrich that you quote at the foot of your page 61, says:
26 “Under the appropriate direction, the Jews shall now be
. P-182
1 put to work in the course of the Final Solution”, and so
2 on. The word in the German text is “nun”?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Is he contemplating there that the work gangs of those fit
5 enough to work will be got together straightaway?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And that does not wait until the end of the war or
8 anything of that kind?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Exactly. The “now” is another confirmation that it will
10 start very, very soon — as soon as the military situation
11 allows that.
12 MR IRVING: The entry was, as you say, on paragraph 4:
13 “Initially, the Jews were going to be brought to
14 ‘transit-ghettos in order to be transported from there
15 further to the East’.”
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, before they could start the coming Final Solution.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: But they could not do the whole job though until the war
18 was over and they could sign the peace treaties with
19 Britain and the rest of the countries?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I make my point quite clear, I think. I disagree
21 with that and now I give you one, I give you one quotation
22 and there is another quotation, the word “nun” indicates
23 that it would start very, very soon — now actually.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Part of it starts now, but the final Final Solution is
25 going to be after the war?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I do not want to repeat myself.
. P-183
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, my Lord, there is an important corollary, it now
2 follows?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not want to repeat that. I made it very clear that
4 I quoted now again and again this quotation here —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but can I now put the —-
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — that “The timing for the start of the individual large
7 evacuations action will be largely dependent on military
8 developments”. So as soon as the military situation will
9 improve, they will start it and they actually started it
10 in a couple of month.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I now put the final question in this particular
12 context which is this. If peace broke out and all the
13 Jews of Europe started rolling eastwards into these camps,
14 these transit camps, set up by the Germans, what could the
15 Germans do with them in peace time? They could not run
16 the gas chambers, could they? They could not have these
17 huge extermination operations in peace time, could they,
18 because that kind of thing people get attention of in
19 peace time. You can do things in war time that you cannot
20 do in peace, is that right?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: You are talking here, you are assuming here, a total
22 victory of Nazi Germany in World War II, and I can imagine
23 that in this case they would be able to carry out whatever
24 they want to do in Europe.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are obviously assuming a total victory; they are
26 going to get their hands on Britain’s Jews and even the
. P-184
1 Irish —-
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, of course.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: — not to mention Portugal, the Swiss, all of them?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So they are anticipating total victory, and yet when peace
6 time comes, somehow they are going to keep these gas
7 chambers and the whole paraphernalia of death clanking
8 with nobody noticing?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, they are under full, if they really had won the war,
10 they were under full control. There was nobody who could
11 interfere. Who could actually come and interfere and do
12 anything about that?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: It rather destroys the homicidal nature of the Wannsee
14 Conference, does it not, the idea that it is all going to
15 be put off until peace time, the final part of the
16 Solution?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I made it quite clear that i do not follow this, and what
18 is said here that this operation to a full extent could
19 only be carried out after the war. So they would assume
20 that they, if they had won the war they would starting to
21 kill the British Jews, according to the minutes of the
22 Wannsee Conference. I think it is quite clear here.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 5, line 4, you say that in the case that they
24 should survive these trials and tribulations, they would
25 be murdered. That is just the spin you put on that “dealt
26 with accordingly”, right?
. P-185
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is true, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which might be a legitimate interpretation, but, of
5 course, there might be other interpretations. Do you
6 accept that?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Such as?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think the text is quite clear. They are talking here
9 about killing.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What alternative explanation would you put
11 forward?
12 MR IRVING: Well, I did put this to the witness, my Lord. Is
13 it not possible that these ultrafit, able-bodied
14 survivalist Jews had survived the whole of this appalling
15 experience and emerged at the end of it, that, as Heydrich
16 said, “We are going to have to deal with them separately.
17 We are going to have to make sure they do not come back”?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I think the context makes it clear that Heydrich
19 wants to avoid that these people are the seed of a
20 regeneration of European Jewry. I think from the context
21 it is quite clear he wants to kill them in order to avoid
22 that. He is not talking about building up a kind of
23 recreation camp or something in the East where they can,
24 you know, regenerate and become the core of a Jewish
25 nation or something like that. I think the context is
26 clear.
. P-186
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Apart from Eichmann, have you considered the testimony of
2 any of the participants in the Wannsee Conference?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think I have seen most of them, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are they all unanimous in saying, “Yes, we all discussed
5 killing”?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, of course not. They were taken during the Nuremberg
7 trial, the main trial, and during the so-called [German],
8 that is the trial against the administration, and they
9 were all evasive. I mean, for instance, the Secretary of
10 State, Noimann, said he was not actually there, you know.
11 You have this kind of quality. They were
12 self-exculpatory. This is the largest killing, murderous
13 operation in modern history and this is the key document
14 we have. Of course, everybody who was there, every
15 Secretary of State, every Civil Servant, would, of course,
16 do everything to distance themselves from these minutes.
17 So they had all kinds of —–
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there not evidence that Stuchart, in fact, sold at out
19 Nuremberg to the Americans as a witness, and that if he
20 had been there and he had known of what really happened,
21 he would have been very willing to tell the Americans what
22 happened?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not see where, what is the evidence for that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, are you aware that Stuchart was, when all the rest
25 around him were being sentenced to 10 years, 20 years and
26 the gallows, he was released, sentenced to time served?
. P-187
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: What does it — I cannot see the point.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So what?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: What does it?
4 MR IRVING: Well, the point I am making, my Lord, is there were
5 about 20 participants in the Wannsee Conference. Any one
6 of them would have had a severe temptation to go to the
7 Americans and say, “If you guarantee that I am going to be
8 released in the foreseeable future, I will tell you what
9 you want to hear”.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, that is your speculation. I cannot follow that.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And they all maintained a solid front and said, no, there
12 was no such discussion?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, they find — there was nothing like a solid front.
14 They had all, I mean, all kind of answers to this
15 question, all kinds of evasion, all kinds of different
16 tactics. Most of them, most of them pretended that
17 actually the only issue there was the Mischlinger question
18 which formed the second part of the Wannsee Conference,
19 and that they simply did not realize that Heydrich was
20 talking about killing, and this was what most of the
21 witnesses actually said.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What they said that the January part —-
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — of the Wannsee was all about Mischlinger?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They were referring in their answers, referring to the
26 second part of the Wannsee Conference, yes.
. P-188
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Is there any reference to Mischlinger in the protocol of
2 the January part of the Wannsee Conference?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. The Wannsee conference, the minutes has two parts.
4 First of all, it is Heydrich’s speech, this general speech
5 about the fate of the Jews, and the second part is
6 about — the Wannsee Conference is about how and who, how
7 was the first part and who was the second part?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We do need to have a translation of the
9 minutes.
10 MR IRVING: I have a complete translation on my website site,
11 so it is very easy to provide it. (To the witness):
12 Dr Longerich, the only other point on the Wannsee
13 Conference is statistics, on population statistics that it
14 contains. Are they accurate, in your view?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Not entirely. There are some mistakes in it, I think.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: There are some gross errors, are there not?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Which one?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: The French Jewish population is overestimated
19 substantially?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, what they did, they made a mistake. That have a
21 figure of —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: 700,000?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, and I think an additional figure for the occupied
24 territory of 165 — so this is a kind of confusion. They
25 actually double counted the people in the occupied
26 territory.
. P-189
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about Buhler’s reference to 2.5 million Jews in the
2 Generalgouvernement? Was that an accurate estimate or was
3 it high?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is probably a little bit exaggerated.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that is exaggerated, but, of course, Dr Frank in
6 his famous December 16th 1941 speech talks of 3.5 million
7 Jews?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, he says at 2.5 and they are [German] — the families,
9 their relatives, or everybody, he is talking about, I
10 think he is talking about the so-called mixed Mischlinger
11 or mixed Jews. He gives two figures. I think one is 2.5
12 and then he says, “Well, and their dependents and people
13 that are related to them” and then he comes to 3.5. The
14 figure 3.5 is too high.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: 65. Go to page 65, please, paragraph 4 — page 66,
16 paragraph 5, please. You say: “There is conclusive proof
17 of 43 transports, which as a rule carried 1,000 people
18 each”, but the only source you gave on this is one of your
19 own books?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. There is more research about this in my book. This
21 is, sorry, from where is that from?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: To Lublin, I think.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, to Lublin. In the book I have a — it is a list of
24 the trains. I list every train with arrival dates and so
25 on.
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Is that challenged, Mr Irving? Do you say there were not?
. P-190
1 MR IRVING: No. I am just curious to know what his sources
2 were. Do you agree that the transports were for the
3 purpose of deportation to ghettos and not for
4 extermination?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We are talking now about the spring of 1942, so we are
6 still in this transitional phase, so they have not started
7 what they call in the Wannsee Conference their coming
8 Final Solution. They are still deporting people into
9 ghettos and not directly — German Jews or Jews from
10 Germany, not directly, not directly into extermination
11 camps. They will start this in May 1942.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: 67, paragraph 10. What did Heydrich mean by the
13 resettlement of altogether half a million Jews out of
14 Europe to the East? This is the second sentence from the
15 end of paragraph 10.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I think this is in April.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: 1942?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: April 1942. I think they are, they talked in the Wannsee
19 Conference, they talked about this, the coming Final
20 Solution, about this large programme to deport Jews to the
21 East and to kill them there. And I think this is — they
22 are not going to shift their plans from bringing people to
23 ghettos, and they now shift these plans to the next stage
24 where they are actually about to send Jews directly to
25 extermination camps.
26 So you can see from this document that they are
. P-191
1 in the [German] they are planning on a larger programme,
2 and I think they are just about to make the decision
3 actually that these new transports will go directly into
4 extermination camps, but I have no —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: No proof?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — no final evidence for that. This is a document which
7 was unknown so far. And we will find more and this will
8 add to our knowledge.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is quite unsatisfactory, is it not, that every time we
10 want to deduce an extermination inference, we have to end
11 up by saying, “Unfortunately, there is no proof, it is
12 just one’s own conclusion”?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I do not think I say that.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you accept that hundreds of
15 thousands of Jews were exterminated.
16 MR IRVING: Yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So why are you criticising the inference that
18 Dr Longerich draws that that was what was proposed?
19 MR IRVING: We are looking at the overall figures, my Lord, we
20 have to if we are to avoid the allegation of Holocaust
21 denial.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are on the figure of half a million?
23 MR IRVING: I beg your pardon?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are tackling the figure of half a
25 million?
26 MR IRVING: Yes. That is a substantial number going to the
. P-192
1 East. We needed to know what it is —-
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, well, there is more evidence for that. I made a
3 calculation here. He said in Bratislava this would
4 comprise six countries, that is Germany, Belgium,
5 Netherlands, France and the Protectorate and Slovakia, and
6 if you look at the planning for the deportation at the
7 first phase of deportations in spring 1942, we can see,
8 you know, 55,000 people from Germany, about 70,000,
9 I think, from Slovakia, you can actually look at the
10 different countries, look at the figures and you come to
11 the conclusion that 500,000 is actually what they were
12 going to plan at this time.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is planning? It is not what happened?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is planning. This is planning.
15 MR IRVING: But, you see, the problem is in paragraph 11 now we
16 come to the Dannecker Conference of June 11th 1942.
17 Dannecker was Eichmann’s man in Paris, is that right?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is right.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are talking about shipping Jews from France to
20 Auschwitz or to —-
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: The document here is quite specific. We have the actual
23 German wording, have we not?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: [German – document not provided] “We agree that from the
26 Netherlands 15,000, from Belgium 10,000 and from France,
. P-193
1 including the unoccupied territory, altogether 100,000
2 Jews are to be deported”. The note states that “Himmler”,
3 as you say, on page 68, line 3, “had given the order to
4 ‘provide larger quantities of Jews to the Auschwitz
5 concentration camp, to increase the workforce'”?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: The primary condition is they have got to be able-bodied,
8 between 16 and 40 years old, but the transports are also
9 allowed to include 10 per cent who are not fit for work.
10 Have you any conclusion you want to draw on that?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I think it shows you that they are not at this stage,
12 not only using Jews as slave labour, but they also at this
13 stage have started to include in the transport Jews who
14 are not fit for work. So the plan is, obviously, to kill
15 them on arrival in Auschwitz. So, the coming Final
16 Solution actually started. People are directly deported
17 to extermination camps.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that the only conclusion you draw from that, that there
19 is no other possible interpretation of the 10 per cent,
20 that there may have been a desire there possibly to keep
21 families together or to tell them they are going to be
22 kept together or something like that?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I would not at this stage, if you look at the reality
24 in transition camps and transports at camps, I would not,
25 I cannot agree that they had this humanitarian
26 considerations.
. P-194
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen any documents relating to the building in
2 West Germany of special camps for the French to be housed
3 in? They actually went to Auschwitz and came back from
4 Auschwitz to these special camps.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, there is a small number of Jews who were deported
6 from France, a relatively small number, who were sent to
7 war camps in Upper Silesia. This is, you announce this a
8 couple of, I think two or three weeks ago that you wanted
9 to actually prove that the majority of the Jews who were
10 deported from France were not sent to Auschwitz but were
11 used in a kind of labour programme, but I have not
12 received the documentation yet so I am —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen the document that was used in the trial of
14 Frans Novac, Eichmann’s transportation officer?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, well, again if you have those documents, if they are
16 available, I would like to look at them and to comment on
17 them.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps I could just ask you to look at the two indented
19 paragraphs in that letter, in that document.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, again I am asked here to comment on a text prepared
21 by Mr Irving. It is not an original document.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have no idea what you are looking at. Have
23 you got copies for anybody else, Mr Irving?
24 MR IRVING: If the witness is not prepared to answer a question
25 on that document, then…
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has not said he is not; he has just said
. P-195
1 he has not seen it before.
2 MR IRVING: He is unhappy about it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, I mean, it is a bit unsatisfactory if
4 there are not any copies for anybody else because
5 Mr Rampton would like probably to follow it as well.
6 MR IRVING: I am just hopelessly badly prepared, unfortunately.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you are normally extremely
8 well-prepared. I mean that.
9 MR IRVING: Not having the facilities that the huge team on the
10 other side have.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us try. Yes, well, I know.
12 MR RAMPTON: We do apologise for being huge!
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us try to see whether we can manage
14 without a copy. What is the question, Mr Irving? You
15 probably do not have your own copy now.
16 MR IRVING: No. Could I have it back to ask you a question?
17 I will read it out. The document is a Schnell brief which
18 is an express letter from Himmler to the Minister of
19 Finance, dated August 17th 1942. Your Lordship may
20 remember we have had this document before, before the
21 court, about four weeks ago.
22 MR RAMPTON: I have not seen it.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have to say I do not remember it.
24 MR IRVING: And it is headed: “Costs involved in the
25 evacuation of the Jews from France”. Now, this letter is
26 in the period when you claim that the comprehensive
. P-196
1 extermination period has begun, is it not?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: The relevant sections reads, and it is in German, but I
4 will translate it: “In the framework of the general
5 solution of the Jewish problem and for the security of the
6 occupation forces in the occupied French territories, Jews
7 are continually being transported from France to the
8 Reich. At first the evacuated Jews are being housed in
9 the concentration camp, Auschwitz, but a special reception
10 camp is to be built in the western Reich territory for
11 them. The barracks necessary for this are already stored
12 ready for shipment in the occupied French territory and
13 they can be transported to the Reich immediately after
14 payment of the purchase sum of 340,000 Reichsmarks. It is
15 intended every month to send 13 railway trains with Jews
16 into the Reich territory. By 10th August 1942″, that is a
17 week before the date of this letter, “18 trains from
18 France have gone to the camp in Auschwitz which have
19 involved the following transportation costs, 76,000
20 Reichsmarks as far as the Reich frontier, 439,000
21 Reichsmarks from the Reich frontier and to the camp” —-
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So this letter — sorry.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The costs involved in B can be dramatically reduced or
24 substantially reduced in the future by erection of a
25 reception camp on Reich territory”.
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, this is a letter from — sorry, from —-
. P-197
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: From Himmler to Sherin Krosik, the Minister of Finance.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, so the Finance Ministry, so the Finance Ministry was
3 not — the Finance Ministry, he could not write to the
4 Finance Ministry, “Actually, we are sending Jews to
5 Auschwitz and kill them there” because the Finance
6 Ministry was not officially involved in this operation.
7 So this is purely deception. The second comment I would
8 like to make, show me where is the camp? Where is this
9 besonderes Aufanlage, this reception camp, where is it?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are saying that Sherin Krosik, a Reich Cabinet
11 Minister, is having the wool pulled over his eyes by
12 Heinrich Himmler?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. He was simply lying to him, he was deceiving him and
14 I do not know where is this camp, this camp for the French
15 use?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did you suggest, Mr Irving — I may have
17 misunderstood you — that these French Jews were going to
18 be sent back from Auschwitz to this —-
19 MR IRVING: We had exactly this conversation already four weeks
20 ago, my Lord, and the answer is this is what the document
21 says. They were going to be sent —-
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must say, hearing it read out, it did not
23 seem to me it was saying anything of the kind, but I may
24 be wrong. I thought it was saying, “It is very expensive
25 and a security risk sending French Jews right across
26 Germany, therefore, we will build a camp on the Western
. P-198
1 edge of the Reich and they can go there”.
2 MR IRVING: And the purpose of the letter is to the Minister of
3 Finance: “Please provide the funds because we can save a
4 lot of money by doing it like this”.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, your evidence is this is not really
6 worth the paper it is written on?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We know that about 79,000, I think, Jews were deported to
8 the East and we have 2,570 survivors, I think, who managed
9 to survive in work labour camps. This camp never exists,
10 existed.
11 MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the note made by the member
12 of the Judenreferat in Paris, a man called Ahnert —
13 A-H-N-E-R-T — on a conference at the Reisigerhuptsam on
14 Jewish questions on September 1st 1942 at about this time?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I do not have the document in front of me so — do
16 you want me to comment on that?
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now then —-
18 MR RAMPTON: We have the translation of some of these documents
19 provided some time ago, but really, with this witness in
20 particular, it is essential he sees the original German
21 and the whole of the original German.
22 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you talking now about the document about
24 the French Jews?
25 MR RAMPTON: No. We have the translation, as I said, done by
26 Mr Irving. It looks to me to be a partial translation —
. P-199
1 I mean in the sense it is not a whole translation. With
2 this witness, it simply is not good enough.
3 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord. It is not fair to put these very
4 important documents to him.
5 MR RAMPTON: Whether they are important or not is another
6 question.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we talking now about the document
8 relating to the French Jews and building another camp?
9 Mr Rampton, what are you talking about when you —-
10 MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is the one, yes, and, apparently, there
11 is some other document as well but … I do not know.
12 MR IRVING: I can summarize it, my Lord. The Ahnet document is
13 September 1st 1942. It is a conference on the deportation
14 of French Jews and the need to provide them with blankets,
15 equipment, spades, shovels and food and everything for a
16 camp to be constructed in Russia. This is another
17 indication that they are not going to be sent off to
18 extermination.
19 Then there is a further document which I intend
20 putting to the witness which is referred to again by Gotz
21 Aly which is a very important letter by a man called
22 Walter Furl — are you familiar with that letter?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I think, my Lord, I am going to suggest —-
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are not going to finish this witness, are
26 you?
. P-200
1 MR IRVING: We are not going to finish this witness today. I
2 am going to have another half day, unfortunately now, my
3 Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Half day?
5 MR IRVING: Yes, or possibly less.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, Dr Longerich, you are based in England
7 anyway, are you not?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is true.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am afraid we are going to have to ask you to come back
10 on Monday.
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: All right.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a bit more time. Nothing is written
13 in stone.
14 MR IRVING: I think will put the Walter Furl of which I do have
15 copies. On this one I am slightly better prepared.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have copies for the rest of us too?
17 Shall we decide where to put this, and indeed at the same
18 time, Mr Irving or probably Miss Rogers actually, the
19 other clip that came first thing this morning?
20 MS ROGERS: I am told by your Lordship’s Clerk there is still
21 room in J2. Since the Claimant’s documents have gradually
22 been fed in in date order, at the back of J2. I think it
23 is tab 11. If your Lordship does not have tabs we will
24 provide them.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have tabs 1 to 11.
26 MS ROGERS: We will provide you with an 11.
. P-201
1 MR IRVING: This is a minor matter which I think will take five
2 minutes, my Lord.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have just handed in Aly Gotz.
4 MR IRVING: Yes, and there is an item on it called page 175.
5 Again it is from the book by Aly Gotz or Gotz Aly who is
6 an established authority on the Final Solution. He says
7 in his book that this option of settling the Jews in
8 Russia had already taken on a camouflaging function. This
9 is his spin on the letter which is important. In the
10 letter that Walter Furl, the leading Krakau resettlement
11 organizer, wrote to his SS comrades in June 1942. I am
12 only going to rely on the text of the actual letter.
13 “Only in retrospect can this be seen as an
14 intermediary step on the road to the Holocaust.” In
15 letter Furl wrote, and this is what is important, Walter
16 Furl writes in June 1942 to his SS comrades:
17 “Every day trains are arriving with over a
18 thousand Jews each from throughout Europe. We provide
19 first aid here”, he was writing from Krakau. “He gives
20 them more or less provisional accommodation and usually
21 deport them further towards the white sea, to the white
22 Ruthenian marsh lands where they all – if they survive –
23 and Jews from … Vienna or Pressburg certainly won’t,
24 will be gathered by the end of the war but not without
25 having first built a few roads. (But we are not supposed
26 to talk about it).”
. P-202
1 Do you see in this any echoes of the Wannsee
2 conference, the road building?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I see something completely different here. I am
4 asking myself what are your standards for quoting
5 documents. This is a part of a document. We do not know
6 where the document is. You know, we do not know in which
7 context it stood. It is quoted by Gotz Aly, and Gotz Aly
8 who has actually researched this area quite thoroughly, is
9 commenting on this document, this is a camouflage
10 document.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think at this stage I am prepared, because he has seen
13 the context and the evidence, I am prepared to follow him
14 here, if I have not seen the other parts of the document.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: But this is all he quotes. He does not quote any more
16 than this part.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where does he say that it is a camouflage
18 document. Camouflaging function, I missed that.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think I trust him here. He is right.
20 MR IRVING: Once again this is a document where even though is
21 a man writing to his own SS comrades —-
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is a —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: — a private letter?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Part of a private letter, a quotation probably. I do not
25 know the context of the letter. Maybe it says in the next
26 paragraph: “But this is all nonsense. This is
. P-203
1 camouflage”. I do not have the letter. Give me the
2 letter and I am happy to comment on it, but I am following
3 here Gotz Aly’s interpretation, because it seems quite
4 reasonable for me and consistent with what I am saying
5 here.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry, Dr K Longerich, quite clearly if Gotz Aly had
7 found any evidence in that letter of the kind you
8 mentioned, he would certainly have put it in, would he
9 not? If there is any other clue in the letter that it was
10 camouflage, then, boy, wouldn’t he have put it in?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know. I cannot speculate about Gotz Aly’s
12 attitude here. You are representing a document, only part
13 of a document, no context, and you clearly said that the
14 author did not accept this as an authentic, as a kind of
15 document which reflects the intentions of the Nazis. He
16 says it is a camouflage document, and as long as I have
17 not seen the document itself I think he is quite right in
18 doing so.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: But is it not another reference to the white sea which is
20 what Heydrich talked about in Prague two months earlier?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think I do not have to repeat what I am saying. Yes,
22 but —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not also a bit of a feeble answer, if I may say so,
24 that every time a document comes up that it does not fit
25 in with your own preconceptions, like the Schlegelberger
26 document or something like that, you say: This is
. P-204
1 unimportant or that is camouflage or you cannot believe
2 what this document says?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is not a document. This is a quotation from a book
4 somebody quoted add part of a document. This is not a
5 document. This is a quotation from a book, and the author
6 of the book quite clearly states that he does not believe
7 what — he thinks that this is a camouflage document and
8 one should not trust what this SS man is saying.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, in your own expert report you have quoted
10 any number of documents printed in other people’s books,
11 have you not?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have done that, but I have not presented here as
13 evidence for actually, you know — I have not actually
14 dared presented them here and saying, well, actually I am
15 quoting from a document but I am not going along with the
16 conclusions the author drew from this document. So it is
17 a different case.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, I do not want to add any more to that
19 document. I have put the document in. I think it is
20 significant. The witness thinks it is camouflage.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I do not have any reason to mistrust Gotz Aly in his
22 comment on this document, on this part of this document.
23 MR IRVING: Does your Lordship wish to comment on it?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not. Thank you very much.
25 MR IRVING: In that case, I would respectfully submit that we
26 might adjourn now, it is a useful hiatus point, unless
. P-205
1 Mr Rampton wishes to make a point.
2 MR RAMPTON: No, I do not want to make any points. I am
3 concerned about the length of time everything is taking.
4 It means I think the schedule has to be rewritten. It
5 means probably we will not get to Professor Funke until
6 Wednesday.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say that? Another half day and
8 I hope it will be less.
9 MR RAMPTON: Another half day and then I have a day or a day
10 and a half cross-examination.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is half a day more than your previous
12 estimate.
13 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. I told somebody, I hope it was
14 your Lordship, that I thought it might go over one day,
15 beyond a day.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you Dr Funke lined up for Tuesday midday
17 just in case?
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I will. He will be in court on Tuesday.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
20 MR RAMPTON: There is only one other thing. I have from Munich
21 now the relevant transcript which, contrary to the thing
22 that Mr Irving produced, is not dated 11th May but 12th
23 December 1942. It makes it difficult to find things if we
24 do not get the right reference. I will pass them out, if
25 I may. They are the Karl Wolff and it is the whole thing
26 as well, instead of being a redacted version.
. P-206
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whilst we have that in mind shall we just
2 have a look and see what it says at the relevant bit?
3 MR IRVING: Yes. I think possibly the witness might like to
4 look at it and be asked if he —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Absolutely, that is what I meant.
6 MR RAMPTON: The relevant page has 4 at the top of it,
7 I think. I would prefer actually, my Lord, if it is
8 possible, it is a good idea of Miss Rogers, that the
9 witness really ought to be given time to read the whole
10 thing.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He can come back to it, but would you mind
12 for my benefit whilst it is in my head just to find —-
13 MR RAMPTON: It is the bottom half of page 4.
14 MR IRVING: Page 31 it starts.
15 MR IRVING: I think it is a useful exercise, my Lord, if
16 I translate the entire document.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would be grateful if you would translate
18 now for me: “Nach dem rautign Uberglick”. I can guess
19 what it means, but I am probably wrong.
20 MR IRVING: On which page is that?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the bottom of page 4, about eight lines
22 up from the bottom, six lines up from the bottom.
23 MR IRVING: “According to what we know now that it was perhaps
24 70 people from Himmler to Hirst.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “According to what we know now”.
26 MR IRVING: Yes, that is the way I would translate that, or
. P-207
1 seen from the present standpoint.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You would rather have a bit of time to
3 consider this, would you, Dr Longerich?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to put this immediately after 14A
6 in your clip.
7 MR RAMPTON: The only thing I would point though is that at the
8 bottom of page 4 of what I might call the authentic
9 version there is a sentence relating to Martin Bormann
10 which naturally makes a link with Hitler which is missed
11 out of Mr Irving’s version.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Which page is that?
13 MR RAMPTON: Page 31 at the bottom or 4 at the top, there is a
14 sentence “G.W. Bormann” and so on and that is not in the
15 version that was presented this morning. It is an earlier
16 sentence, two sentences earlier, has been missed out as
17 well. I do not know whether it is significant.
18 MR IRVING: I will translate the entire document and I will fax
19 it through to you at the weekend.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: As far as I can see from the document, he is basically
21 saying two things. He is saying, yes, we carried out the
22 Holocaust, the Final Solution, we killed, we tried and we
23 were able to, we killed millions of Jews. He talks about
24 Millionen Morden on page 5, and on the other hand he is
25 saying, well, actually Himmler did it on his own
26 initiative because he thought that he could fulfil
. P-208
1 Hitler’s ideas. So I do not know, I mean I do not know
2 how you put your case, you know, how you want to deal with
3 the document. Are you saying this is a kind of
4 confirmation that millions of Jews were actually killed in
5 extermination camps? I mean what is the way you want to
6 deal with the document? Are you only relying on parts of
7 it and you would then refuse other parts of the documents?
8 MR IRVING: At first blush does the document look self-serving
9 to you?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I think so, because he wants to, I mean Wolf’s aim
11 was of course to distance himself from the events. So he
12 is saying, well, actually this operation was only carried
13 out by 70 people. So he did not of course admit that it
14 was a much, much larger operation. So there is a kind of
15 self-serving in it. Also this is his personal, the
16 impression he had. He is in talking in 1952 about events
17 ten years earlier. Wolff was of course an admirer of
18 Hitler and he tried to distance Hitler from the Holocaust,
19 from this history. I do not see how much
20 I should — I mean I can accept this is Wolf’s view in
21 1952, but I do not see how this could destroy the other
22 evidence. Also which part of the story are you accepting,
23 the part that Himmler ordered Millionen Morden, the
24 killing of millions of people, or the other part that
25 Hitler was not involved in?
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you have accepted that the order of a million Jews
. P-209
1 were killed on the Eastern Front, I think, there is no
2 question about that.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Despite your acceptance that it is
4 self-serving, I think it may be quite important to have
5 another look at this on Monday morning. I think it might
6 be as well perhaps to have in my mind on Monday morning
7 the reference when it was first introduced in evidence
8 today, because my recollection is that you put it forward
9 as being a document which could be relied on.
10 MR IRVING: Indeed, my Lord, yes. I certainly will not depart
11 from that. I am just about to ask one final question of
12 the witness. Dr Longerich, this is an interview between
13 Karl Wolff which he has requested to be kept confidential,
14 is it not?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I do not think so.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you yourself say that the Karl Wolff collection at the
17 time you wished to see it was kept confidential?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, you confuse two points. You referred yesterday to
19 memoirs of Karl Wolff, and they are not generally
20 accessible, but the collection S Zeugenschrift, I
21 know this collection quite well, is open, everybody can go
22 in the Institute and make a photocopy and use it. These
23 are the internal interviews the Institute made in the
24 1950s. By the way, the interviews are in a way not
25 verbatim transcripts. These are a kind summary that the
26 person who made the interviews actually made.
. P-210
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were they originally kept confidential, these interviews?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Not that I am aware of. I am using this since the 1970s
3 and I think they were publicly accessible to everybody.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I notice that Mr Irving’s manuscript is —-
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Not this one, but I know the collection. I spent a lot of
6 time reading this.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving’s manuscript is headed
8 “Confidential” I notice, but that does not appear to be
9 on the original.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Where is that?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is page 14 in the clip you got this
12 morning.
13 MR IRVING: Yes. My Lord, access to a lot of these documents
14 is going to be on the basis of confidentiality by the
15 Institute, because these people are still alive. My final
16 question is, this is an interview by an historian and not
17 by a prosecutor, is it not?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: An historian, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you expect an interview by an historian to obtain
20 other information from a witness than a prosecutor would,
21 a different kind of overall picture?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: One has to discuss the quality of this particular
23 interview. An historian, I do not know this person, I do
24 not know who — I think it was Wolfgang Ziegel, as far as
25 I can see — I have my doubts about his quality as a good
26 interviewer I have to say. I think he was sitting
. P-211
1 together with people, chatting with them, and then he was
2 going home and made a kind of summary. It is not an
3 accurate verbatim protocol, a minute of a meeting.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have any basis for saying that it is not an
5 accurate protocol?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is not a verbatim, it is not countersigned as far as
7 I see from Wolff. So he visited Wolff in Munich in his
8 flat, chatted with him, went back to the Institute and
9 wrote down, you know, his general view about this.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would he have taken notes, do you think, during the
11 interview?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know. I have no idea. Sometimes interviewees
13 say: “Please do not take notes”. I do not know what
14 Wolff’s attitude was. I have no indication of that.
15 MR IRVING: Thank you.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will resume on Monday at 10.30.
17 < (The witness stood down).
18 (The Court adjourned until Monday, 28th February 2000
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. P-211