Day 26 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 9.13)
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Monday, 28th 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-SIX
26
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1 (10.00 a.m.)
2 < Dr Longerich, Recalled.
3 < Cross-Examined by Mr Irving.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
5 MR IRVING: Before we start, there is one thing I would like to
6 do. Dr Longerich has used me as a post box. I have no
7 idea what these things are. There are some documents
8 I think that he sent for. I cannot speak to him so can
9 I hand them to him now? I do not know what they are.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, it is sensible just to clear
11 this up.
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, I have a problem. I have brought the
13 wrong file with me so I am going to have to go back to
14 Duke Street to get it, which will take half an hour,
15 unfortunately, which is extremely stupid of me.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: These things happen. You have done pretty
17 well so far. Just let us sort out these documents first.
18 MR RAMPTON: Perhaps your Lordship would deal with it. As I
19 say, I have not spoken to Dr Longerich today, They arrived
20 in my chambers this morning.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Dr Longerich, take us through them one by
22 one. Have you got copies, first of all, for Mr Irving and
23 for everyone else.
24 MR RAMPTON: I have copies here, yes.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is just I asked the Institute in Munich to provide me
26 with a number of documents, two or three, concerning the
. P-2
1 vernichtung arbeit in relation to work we discussed on
2 Thursday. If necessary, I can provide these documents,
3 and I can quote from them. I used Mr Rampton’s fax
4 machine because there was no other way to get them here in
5 time.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How do these documents help?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not know. It is just in case if we expand. I do not
8 want to use them. I do not suggest we use them but, if we
9 go and discuss this point further, I am here to provide
10 evidence that the term vernichtung arbeit was used during
11 the war. It is not a post war expression.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think what I will do is suggest that we
13 leave this until re-examination by Mr Rampton. Does that
14 apply to all of the documents you have, what you just
15 said? Is that just one document you are talking about, or
16 the whole lot?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There are two or three.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: There are not any other documents?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, not at the moment.
20 MR RAMPTON: Can I suggest, my Lord, that we use a little bit
21 of re-examination as evidence-in-chief to deal with these
22 documents and then, if Mr Irving wants to ask anything
23 arising out of that, he should do but not now.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not mind when it happens. I do not
25 suppose Mr Irving minds when it happens.
26 MR RAMPTON: Dr Longerich ought to have a chance to read them
. P-3
1 anyway.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you handed in a clip. Should I
3 spend some of the time looking through that or not?
4 MR IRVING: I can tell your Lordship what they are. You asked
5 for a translation of the Wannsee protocol, and that is one
6 of them. I have also provided your Lordship with a
7 complete translation of the Karl Wolff manuscript,
8 and —-
9 MR RAMPTON: Are we allowed to have them?
10 MR IRVING: Yes. I faxed a copy of it to the instructing
11 solicitors over the weekend, but I also emailed it. My
12 Lord, I think this is a proper time to say that at some
13 time today I will be making submissions on the relevance
14 of right-wing extremism. Quite simply, this is, I think,
15 the proper time to do it, obviously not while
16 Dr Longerich, his metre is running, so to speak, probably
17 this afternoon some time, and I shall be asking your
18 Lordship to possibly have a look at the appropriate page
19 of Gatley into which I have read more deeply than Mein
20 Kampf, I have to admit. I think it is page 43 of Gatley
21 that I draw your Lordship’s attention to and I think
22 footnote 88, in particular. Your Lordship will see the
23 relevance of that. It is Devlin L. It is the Butalazi
24 case.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The which?
26 MR IRVING: Butalazi, there was a case on, I am sure your
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1 Lordship is familiar with the kind of authorities.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not perhaps one of the best known
3 cases, but I think I know there was one.
4 MR IRVING: It is purely the question of whether extremism is
5 defamatory, what is meant by extremism. I think we ought
6 really to look at that.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You certainly make your submissions and
8 I agree the timing is best after Dr Longerich.
9 MR IRVING: The other point which I wish to take up with your
10 Lordship, very briefly, is that I am not getting the
11 digital transcript.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
13 MR IRVING: I am only getting a paper transcript. A dispute
14 has arisen with the court reporters over the provision to
15 me of the digital transcript. I have not it since
16 February 3rd. It is a serious disadvantage to me. I have
17 offered them money. I have offered them other
18 inducements. This is a matter which I would like your
19 Lordship to give a friendly word to the court reporting
20 service that —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You will have to tell me a little bit more
22 about the reasons they give for not giving the digital
23 transcript.
24 MR IRVING: Indeed.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, I have a feeling that I know what the
26 problem is but you —-
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1 MR IRVING: I can do that now, my Lord. Quite simply, we
2 started posting the digital transcript on the internet as
3 a public service, totally non-profit making at all,
4 I derive only loss from that. The court reporters quite
5 rightly said there is a property question at issue here.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, a copyright question, yes.
7 MR IRVING: It is between one instructing firm of solicitors
8 and the court reporters. It is in a kind of limbo between
9 them. I have made a cash offer to them over a week ago
10 now on a per day basis. They have not come back to me,
11 and I am being disadvantaged.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
13 MR IRVING: Because clearly —-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I understand the problem, although
15 I suspect one may have to go into it a bit more deeply,
16 but I am anxious if you are not getting the digital
17 transcript because, although it is not all that easy to
18 follow, I found it perfectly possible to make use of.
19 Mr Rampton, do you know anything about this or do you not
20 want to get involved?
21 MR RAMPTON: No. Strictly speaking, it is none of our
22 business.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Except you are paying for it so, presumably,
24 you have some sort of right over it.
25 MR RAMPTON: I know we are paying for Mr Irving to have a
26 transcript for the purposes of the case, the conduct of
. P-6
1 his claim against us. I guess what has happened is that
2 he has been using the transcripts, in all innocence, no
3 doubt — I say that without knowing anything — for some
4 other purpose.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, just putting them on his website.
6 MR RAMPTON: That is an infringement of the transcribers’
7 copyright.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I would have thought it might be.
9 MR RAMPTON: And to do that, you would need to pay for a
10 licence to do it, I guess what has happened.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, so we do not take too long over
12 this, my view would be that it is highly desirable that
13 you should continue to have the digital transcript and
14 I do not understand Mr Rampton to oppose that, but the
15 price may be, if that is the right term, that you should
16 not put it on your website because I think, technically,
17 that is an infringement of their copyright.
18 MR IRVING: Until we reach an agreement.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, if you can reach an agreement, well
20 and good, and I can see in some ways it might be desirable
21 that it should go on the website if you want publicity
22 for —-
23 MR IRVING: Well, it has attracted great attention and I am now
24 being bombarded with E mails from around the world. Some
25 people are accusing me of keeping it off the internet
26 because it is unfavourable to me and all sorts of dubious
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1 motives.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, if you were to offer to — I cannot
3 remember the name of the firm but if you were to
4 offer —-
5 MR IRVING: Harry Counsel.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Harry Counsel, that you will undertake
7 not to put it on your website, unless and until some
8 agreement is reached, but would they please in the
9 meantime let you have the digital transcript, I would hope
10 that they would say yes to that.
11 MR IRVING: I am happy to give that undertaking here.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is a problem, let me know, but
13 I have expressed my wish and that may not count for much
14 but…
15 MR IRVING: But it means that for three weeks I have had no
16 digital transcript which has —-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you should have mentioned it perhaps
18 before now but you have mentioned it now and —-
19 MR IRVING: Well, I have negotiated, or attempted to negotiate,
20 and met with no response.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Is there any way of avoiding you having
22 to go all the way to Duke Street? Is there somebody there
23 who could put it in a taxi?
24 MR IRVING: My Lord, my partner is seriously ill. She is
25 fighting a battle of her own.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you say it is necessary, Mr Irving, I am
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1 perfectly content.
2 MR IRVING: I will try to be back within half an hour, my Lord.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let a message be passed through when you are
4 back.
5 MR IRVING: Yes, thank you very much.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are happy to continue in principle?
7 MR IRVING: Yes. There is no problem.
8 (Adjourned for a short time)
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, it seems I have added to the
10 delay. My room is about as far as it can be from this
11 court.
Part II: David Irving Cross-Examines Dr. Heinz Peter Longerich (9.14 to 70.17)
Section 9.14-51.10
12 MR IRVING: The apologies are do you from me for this one hour
13 delay. I do apologise.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Before I start, could I make some statements. I just went
15 through the minutes of the proceedings of Thursday and
16 I would like to correct three mistakes I make, if it is
17 possible.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have spotted one.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There is one on page 63, line 10, when Mr Irving suggested
20 I translate the German term “verhungern” with go hungry.
21 I think I did not listen carefully enough to him because
22 the translation of “verhungern” is clearly to die of
23 starvation or to starve to death so, if somebody is
24 Verhungerte, he is dead.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you did actually say that. That is
26 my impression.
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1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I just wanted to make it very clear. On page 13 and the
2 following pages we had a discussion on the statistics
3 about the death rates in Auschwitz. I forgot to say the
4 most obvious thing — because I was surprised by this
5 document, I have to say — that these figures all relate
6 to the camp population as a whole and not to the Jewish
7 camp population, and you would come to complete different
8 conclusions if you look at the Jewish camp population.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which page is that?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Page 13 and the following pages.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I do not see quite where we get to the statistics on the
12 pages following page 13.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We talked about the statistics and I should have said here
14 first of all that these numbers are about the camp
15 population, everybody in the camps, and it is not specific
16 about the Jewish prisoners in the camp.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I follow that, but I cannot find where there is any
18 reference to numbers.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. We talked about the monthly death rates in the
20 concentration camps.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I remember that, but that is not here.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I may be mistaken.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It is page 18.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am sorry. The third point is on page 173 Mr Irving said
25 he wanted to translate bei Freilassung with “upon release”
26 and I said bei Freilassung means “if released”. I should
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1 have added here that “upon release” is nach Freilassung in
2 German, “after”.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That would be one way of putting it, would it
4 not?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Pardon?
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Bei Freilassung could be perhaps regarded as a little
7 equivocal, could it not?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Bei Freilassung is, in my view, “if released”.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: “Upon release” might be another translation?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Upon release,” but it is definitely not “after”.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Thank you. That is very helpful. The slip which
12 I thought you may have made, and I do not have the
13 reference for it, is that I think you may have referred to
14 Auschwitz when you meant Belzec, but I will not waste time
15 trying to find that. It is at the foot of one of the
16 pages. It is not terribly important, but I think the
17 context makes it clear that you were talking about
18 Belzec.
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, I have checked four of my dictionaries on
20 “verhungern” and I am ready to concede the primary
21 meaning is “die of hunger”. The secondary meaning is “to
22 starve”. I am ready to concede that point.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
24 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you have now received the complete
25 translation of the Karl Wolff manuscript, the interview
26 with Karl Wolff. Have you received the German text
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1 already?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. Where is your translation?
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you received the German text?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I received the German text on Thursday.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you have not received the English translation which has
6 been prepared of it yet?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. This is the first time I see that.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you questions on the German text? Would you
9 agree that the brief extract which I made some 35 years
10 ago accurately represents the parts that I extracted, if
11 I can put it like that? There was no distortion by me of
12 the extracts that I made?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Except the parts you left out in your extract.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Obviously, if it is a one page exhibit extract from a ten
15 page document, then some eight or nine pages have been
16 left out, have they not?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think you left out passages which are important, which
18 have to be understood in the context of the whole
19 document.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: And I also was surprised or amazed to see that you, in
22 your translation, in your transcript, translated the word
23 “ausrottung” with “extermination”.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts is that? I have the English and
26 I am not sure you have the English.
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1 MR IRVING: That would be on page 1 of the original transcript,
2 my Lord. It is page 00031. If you turn the page, my
3 Lord, it is on line 5. As Dr Longerich rightly says,
4 I have translated it there by the word “extermination”.
5 I have put the German text in brackets afterwards on line
6 5.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think we can be looking at the same
8 document. I am looking at your translation and I have
9 page 31. You say line 5? That talks about the Waffen SS
10 arising as a new guard.
11 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. Page 31 follows. If you will turn
12 the page, my Lord, it will be five lines down on the next
13 page.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. I have it now.
15 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich correctly points out that I have
16 translated the word “Judenausrottung” by “extermination of
17 the Jews”.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Thank you.
19 MR IRVING: Yet it is clear from the context, is it not,
20 Dr Longerich, that this is what Karl Wolff is referring to
21 on this occasion?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I have lined on your copy the passages on which
24 I rely. It begins on the previous page three lines from
25 the bottom, “The assassination of Heydrich at the end of
26 May 1942 had an exceptionally powerful effect on Himmler”,
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1 and it carries on for the next two pages, until the page
2 that is headed with the word “preparations”?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
4 MR IRVING: I am not sure, my Lord, what is the right way to
5 deal with that, whether I should put this to the witness?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, if you can select the main points
7 out of it — do not let us trawl through the whole of it
8 unless we need to — if you can put it as bald
9 propositions, then we can pursue it if needs be.
10 MR IRVING: Yes. Would you start, Dr Longerich, with the page
11 that begins with the words “and declared”, the third or
12 fourth of my translation?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the English.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is talking about Himmler. “He had always regarded it
16 as his task and as his duty to carry out the solution of
17 this task”. Wolff continues with the proposition that,
18 from his viewpoint of 1952, perhaps 70 people were
19 initiated in the ghastly secret, if I can put it like
20 that. Have you any comment on that figure?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is definitely too low.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Too low a figure?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because the people at the killing centres must have
25 known? Is that what you are saying? Not just the camp
26 guards but also the people in all the killing centres?
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1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: He is referring to the people who were involved in the
2 Juden ausrottung.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. If you have read the manuscript, you will see that
4 Karl Wolff suggests that the real guilty culprits were
5 Bormann and Himmler who kept to themselves what they were
6 doing. Have you any comment on that proposition?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think the statement is so far clearly self-serving
8 because Karl Wolff was the liaison officer between the
9 Himmler and Hitler, and of course he wanted to, well, play
10 down, put it this way, the role of Hitler, because
11 otherwise he would be the missing link between the two
12 persons. He would be the man between them, the man who
13 carried messages and would transfer information between
14 these two people. Karl Wolff was sentenced in 1965 by the
15 German court to 15 years’ sentence. Simply the main
16 document, which actually, if I may put it this way, broke
17 his neck, was his exchange of letters with Ganzen Muller
18 in July and August of 1942, which is on pages 262 and 263
19 in the blue bundle.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is 5,000 members of the chosen race being deported?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. So this was his main problem, that somebody could
22 come and find out that he actually was involved in
23 transferring messages from Hitler’s headquarters through
24 the apparatus which carried out the Final Solution.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Could he not equally well have said that obviously Hitler
26 knew what was going on but he discussed that only unter
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1 vier Augen, under four eyes, with Himmler and that he
2 Wolff had no knowledge of it? He could equally well have
3 exonerated himself by saying that, if he was right in a
4 self-serving document, could he not?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I do not think so. I think his strategy was to
6 systematically try to distance himself from everything
7 that happens in Hitler’s headquarters concerning the fate
8 of the Jews.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did he remain loyal to Hitler into the 50s
10 and 60s?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: He was absolutely loyal. At this time he never actually
12 gave up his sympathy for national socialism.
13 MR IRVING: A lot of Germans never did.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You see halfway down that page he describes Himmler as
16 being in his way bizarrely religious, holding to the view
17 that the greatest war lord in the greatest war of all
18 times, in other words Hitler, he had to take upon himself
19 these tasks.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does that fit in with your picture that you have of
22 Himmler’s nature and his character?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There is obviously some truth in this remark, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: The loyal Heiny, the faithful Heiny?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. On page 6 of the German document he is saying
26 Himmler (German spoken – document not provided) Hitler.
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1 I do not know how you translated this.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Himmler was of blind subservience to Hitler.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Which actually is a kind of contradiction to this view
4 that he would actually do it on his own. Also, I find
5 particularly, because I did not have your translation,
6 I studied your transcript, the transcripts you made in the
7 Institute fur Zeitgeschichte and compared it with the
8 German original. Also, in the German original, you find
9 in the central passage that Wolff inserted the
10 word “wohl”.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, handwritten?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So he actually was saying “I am not absolutely sure about
13 this, I think so” (To the interpreter) How do you
14 translate “wohl” in English?
15 MR IRVING: It is on page 7, my Lord, of this same page, the
16 page beginning “and declared”, line 7.
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Which page in the German?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: “General Wolff also saw Bormann who was infinitely
19 actively involved in these things, together with Hoess,
20 the former famed murderer, Bormann and Himmler”, and he
21 has inserted in handwriting the word “probably”, wohl,
22 “represented the view that the Jewish problem had to be
23 dealt with without Hitler getting his fingers dirty in the
24 process”.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is in the German document on page 4.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not quarrel with the translation of
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1 wohl as “probably”?
2 MR IRVING: Probably, or perhaps.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It was not in your transcript. In your transcript you
4 left it out.
5 MR IRVING: Or “may well have”?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. He obviously wanted to say that, well, he is not
7 absolutely sure, he inserted the word “wohl” in the end.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry but in the transcript I did insert it. It is
9 in the second paragraph. The word “probably” is in square
10 brackets inserted. I know, Dr Longerich, it is a
11 difficult concept to grapple with in the witness box but
12 how would this—-
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is difficult for me to deal with three documents at the
14 same time, two in English and one in German, I have to say
15 that.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And to listen to my questions at the same time?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the point Dr Longerich is probably
19 making but I do not know where I find the manuscript now,
20 is that you did not put “probably” in your original
21 manuscript note.
22 MR IRVING: It was, my Lord, and I am sure we will find it.
23 Otherwise, I would not have known how to put it in in the
24 translation.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have no idea where that is.
26 MR IRVING: I am prepared to take strichnine on that one, as
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1 they say in German.
2 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, it is seven lines down in the manuscript
3 notes, I call them.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But where do we put those? That is my
5 problem.
6 MISS ROGERS: It should be in Tab 11, J2, party claimants
7 bundle H.
8 MR IRVING: Has your Lordship found it?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, in square brackets. You are quite
10 right.
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In square brackets, I agree.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you, Mr Irving.
13 MR IRVING:
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In your transcript, if I may comment on it, this is the
15 piece of paper you take home from the Institut fur
16 Zeitgeschichte, you left out the passage where actually
17 Wolff is referring to millions of dead, and also you left
18 out the passage that is referring to the vergassungs, the
19 idea to gassings. So your impression, when you read this
20 document, was that only Wolff dealt here with Hitler’s
21 attitude or non-attitude towards the Jewish question, and
22 you left out these important two paragraphs because you
23 were not interested in them, obviously.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do we find vergassung?
25 MR IRVING: Half way down the English translation, the new
26 translation, “Whenever Himmler uttered such thoughts, as
. P-19
1 he did repeatedly, he never made any concrete reference
2 to, for example, the Jewish problem. But one today well
3 imagine that Himmler ordered the murder of millions of
4 Jews in a kind of crazily perverted idealism permeated
5 with the notion that the lofty objective which Hitler had
6 defined was one that justified the adoption of any means”.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have got that, but what about
8 vergassung?
9 MR RAMPTON: That is in the last line of the English before in
10 square brackets 00032, “The gassing idea probably emerged
11 when a genuine epidemic broke out”.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
13 MR IRVING: Of course I cannot give evidence, but let me ask
14 this question this way, and say is it not likely that
15 Wolff, when he was being interviewed in 1952, had read
16 what every other German had read in the newspapers about
17 millions being gassed?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot say what Wolff read in the newspapers, but he is
19 referring here clearly, he is accepting the idea that
20 millions of Jews were killed, and he is accepting the idea
21 that they were killed by gas. So that is there was no way
22 for him to know. He did not attempt to dispute this. He
23 only tried to, of course, distance Hitler from these
24 events.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you look at the last paragraph on that same page of the
26 translation beginning with the words, “around August
. P-20
1 1942″, “General Wolff undertook a drive from the Fuhrer’s
2 headquarters to Berlin. He found Himmler there in a state
3 of deep depression”. Does this strike you as being
4 something that he is really remembering? Is he describing
5 something vividly that he has in his memory?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is typical for Wolff. We know a lot about Wolff. He
7 gave a lot of interviews. He made statements. He met
8 people who wrote books about him, and he made this kind of
9 very vivid statements. So I think he had a very —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you think this is his imagination at work, or is it his
11 memory?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think it was imagination to a large extent.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: When he is imagining something, he actually says it, does
14 he not? In the middle of the previous paragraph he says,
15 “One can today well imagine that Himmler ordered the
16 murder of millions of Jews”. So he does make a
17 distinction between what he is imagining and what he is
18 remembering.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: To sum this up, I am not in a position to accept this
20 really as a true collection by Karl Wolff.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about the vague hint that Himmler dropped on this
22 occasion: “Wolff could have no idea what one had had to
23 take upon oneself for the messiah of the next 2,000 years
24 in order that this man (in other words Hitler) remained
25 personally free of sin”. Do you think such a remark was
26 made by Himmler to Hitler?
. P-21
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have no idea.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it a significant remark if it was made?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is a hypothetical question. I cannot answer this
4 question.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: He continues by saying, for the sake of the German people
6 and its Fuhrer, he had to burden things on to his own
7 shoulders, of which nobody must ever be allowed to learn.
8 Is this self serving again, do you think, in your opinion?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well —-
10 THE INTERPRETER: Vivid imagination?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think that Karl Wolff had a vivid imagination and
12 I cannot see here — he did not take any notes about these
13 events. He did not read from notes. He did not write a
14 letter about this. It is a postwar statement ten years
15 post factum, and I cannot see how one can accept this as
16 evidence that Hitler was not aware of the final solution.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then I would ask you to turn two pages please. You have
18 in the middle of the page, page 34 in square brackets, the
19 sentence beginning just before that, “The little clique,
20 which effectively carried out the vernichtung of the Jews
21 under cover of Himmler and Bormann, simply declared that
22 they were relying on a Fuhrer order without this ever
23 having expressly been given, and they proceeded in this
24 sense on their own authority in order, as they declared,
25 biologically to rid German territory of the seeds. The
26 announcement of this fait accompli was going to be
. P-22
1 Himmler’s big moment after the victory”. Does this not
2 fit in with some of the documents we have seen?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If you want to refer to documents, I can recall, of
4 course, the expression, the quote on page 32, “burden on
5 my shoulders” is the expression he used then later on.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: It does sound like Himmler speaking, does it not?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is the same phrase, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: It has to be said, we have no documents to contradict this
9 version, do we?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The document contradicts the fact that Himmler spoke to
11 Karl Wolff in August 1942?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, the contradict —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The Hitler order, in other words.
14 MR IRVING: The general hypothesis that Wolff is putting up of
15 Himmler acting in secret behind Hitler’s back and
16 intending to present him with a fait accompli when the war
17 was over.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We went through the documents.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is Pohl and—-
20 MR RAMPTON: I must intervene. That is just not so and
21 Mr Irving knows it is not so. Himmler wrote to Begher on
22 28th July 1942, just before this meeting that Wolff
23 reports and Himmler said that the carrying out of this
24 very hard order has been put on his shoulders by Hitler.
25 MR IRVING: Yes. What is the order that he is referring to,
26 Dr Longerich? Do you remember?
. P-23
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is the order to make the occupied territories of the
2 East free of Jews.
3 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
4 MR IRVING: That is right, yes. Is that an explicit order to
5 exterminate the Jews, or an order to deport them to the
6 East, in your opinion?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: At this stage, if I look at the facts what actually
8 happened in the East, it is clear for me that this refers
9 to the mass killings of Soviet Jews, and to nothing else.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this fit in with the general picture of Heinrich
11 Himmler keeping things secret from people? He is not
12 being specific about what is actually happening. He is
13 writing these camouflage documents. Is this not exactly
14 what Wolff is saying?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say that, Mr Irving, you are really
16 going back, I think, to the communications between Pohl
17 and Himmler, and between Greiser and Himmler, is that
18 right, where it is true, I think, we went through those on
19 Thursday, that there is not any express reference to
20 Hitler’s authority? That is the point you are putting.
21 We have been through it.
22 MR IRVING: Now I will ask one final question on the Wolff
23 manuscript, if I may, Dr Longerich. You worked in the
24 Institut fur Zeitgeschichte for what, eight years? Seven
25 years?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Five years.
. P-24
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Five years, and you have since then written a number of
2 eminent books on the Final Solution of the Jewish problem?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: And of Hitler’s role in this?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever paid any attention at all to Karl Wolff’s
7 manuscript, the document that you are looking at?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Of course. I looked also at Karl Wolff’s role and I have
9 to say that I completely dismissed the statement, because
10 this interview is, first of all, if you look at the
11 technique of the interviewer, for instance, he has a long
12 conversation with Karl Wolff, then goes home and writes a
13 summary of this conversation. It is not a verbatim minute
14 of the conversation. The person who did this interview
15 addressed Karl Wolff in 1952 as General Wolff. So this is
16 for me a quite bizarre atmosphere in which this interview
17 took place. I think, if you look at the history of Karl
18 Wolff and the fact that he in 65 was sentenced to 15
19 years, this statement in this part is self serving. But,
20 on the other hand, for me it is interesting, and I did not
21 recollect that, that he is quite openly referring to
22 millions of people who were actually put to death during
23 the World War II.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are now talking about Dr Ziegler? He was
25 the interviewer, is that right?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Ziegler was the interviewer, yes.
. P-25
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I do not quite understand why this interview came to take
2 place in 1952.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Because the Institute at this stage more or less
4 systematically tried to interview everybody who was
5 interesting for them.
6 MR IRVING: What was the name of the Institute at that time?
7 Do you remember?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Still the same name, Institute fur Zeitgeschichte.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was called the Institute for the Research into Nazi
10 Crimes or something, was it not?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. In the first year, 48 and 49, it was called Institute
12 for the Research of the History of the National Socialist
13 Period, or something like that.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am right in saying that they had a number of trained
15 professional historians who went around Germany
16 interviewing characters like General Wolff and Ziegler was
17 one of them?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. But at this stage researchers were not able to
19 actually confront most of their interviewees with
20 documents that actually challenged their views. So, if
21 Wolff said something like that, this interviewer was not
22 able to refer to documents, the documents which we have
23 now, to say, for instance, that the Hitler speech of 12th
24 December 41 is ordered to Himmler, and so on and so on.
25 So in a way this interview was done in quite a naive way,
26 I would put it like this.
. P-26
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are such interviews totally valueless?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Absolutely not.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you make any use whatsoever of this Karl Wolff
4 manuscript when you wrote your books?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I remember that I read it but I decided not to use it for
6 my books.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: The same as you decided not to use the Schlegelberger
8 document and various other items?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is your comparison. I cannot comment on that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that the Schlegelberger document, this
11 particular manuscript and various other items that have
12 been ignored until I dredged them out of the archives, all
13 tend to suggest a totally different picture to that
14 presented by what you call the consensus of German
15 historians?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If I look at this document here, the interview of Karl
17 Wolff in 1955, I think it does not prove anything.
18 I commented briefly on the so-called Schlegelberger
19 before, because it is a third hand evidence.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to interrupt you. I do not think
21 we need to go through the Schlegelberger document.
22 MR IRVING: Can I ask one more question on this document?
23 There is a reference here to Martin Bormann and Rudolf
24 Hoess, the Kommandant of Auschwitz being old buddies
25 because they had both been in prison for the Famer
26 murders. Is that right?
. P-27
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell the court what the Famer murders were?
3 I could not remember the translation myself.
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In the early 1920s the right-wing circus in Germany tried
5 to build up a secret Army, if you put it this way.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Freicor?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The Freicor and other paramilitary organisations, which
8 was illegal under the Versailles Treaty, and they also
9 engaged in preparing Putsches and other things like that,
10 and they on various occasions actually killed or murdered
11 people in these groups who they thought actually betrayed
12 them or passed information on the state authority and so
13 on.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Like vengeance killing, was it not?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Vengeance killing, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So they were old buddies, they were not just anybody,
17 Martin Bormann and Rudolf Hoess were thick as thieves
18 would you say?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. They spent several months together in a state prison.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the only questions I have to ask on Karl Wolff
21 unless your Lordship has any to ask?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Thank you very much.
23 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you wrote a book called “Politik der
24 Vernichtung”, is that right?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is right.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you remember writing in that book on page 464 — I just
. P-28
1 give it to you.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have it here.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have it there. Your take on the famous Himmler
4 telephone call of November 30th, 1941, this is the way you
5 interpreted it. You have written, if I may say so, a very
6 good account of the deportation of the European Jews, the
7 German Jews, to Minsk and to Riga, and you have reported
8 the fact that large numbers of them were liquidated as
9 soon as they arrived, which is common ground between us.
10 But then you look at the interesting business of the
11 famous telephone call of November 30th 1941. On page 464
12 of your book, the third complete paragraph begins: “The
13 shooting of Jews from the Reichs territory, on the other
14 hand, after some 6,000 in six transports from Kovno had
15 been murdered in Kovno and Riga, was initially stopped.
16 In this connection there is an entry in Himmler’s
17 telephone calendar, which has the Reichsfuhrer SS who was
18 at this time in the Fuhrer’s headquarters making a note on
19 a telephone call to Heydrich, or a telephone conversation
20 with Heydrich, on November 30th. Then there are the
21 famous words, Jew transport from Berlin, no
22 liquidation.” You attribute to this the fact that the
23 killings of German Jews abruptly stopped, to use your
24 phrase in the next paragraph, “der abrupte stop”, this
25 telephone call from Himmler, or this telephone
26 conversation between Himmler and Heydrich, led to the
. P-29
1 abrupt stop.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. No. I am in a difficult position here because
3 I wrote actually an expert report and I do not know how
4 much we shall go back to my book, because in the book it
5 says —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a legitimate question about it, I think
7 that is the answer, Dr Longerich.
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There are two sentences. In the first sentence I say that
9 these shootings were abruptly stopped. In the second
10 sentence I said (German) well, we have an entry —-
11 THE INTERPRETER: Relating to this matter.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So I am trying not to make any conclusions. I am very
13 careful to say the shootings were stopped because Himmler
14 ordered this. I say we have this entry here and it is
15 open. It is actually more or less, it is open for
16 interpretation.
17 MR IRVING: The conclusion you draw on in those two pages, if
18 I am right, is that the killers in Riga had exceeded their
19 authority?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is my interpretation, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: And therefore the killings stopped because of this word
22 effectively from Hitler’s headquarters, as you say?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: From Himmler, who at this time was — I was very careful
24 when I wrote this passage because I know that it is a
25 disputed area. It is a minefield, if you want to say so.
26 It came from Himmler and he was in Hitler’s headquarters.
. P-30
1 I did not say he was in Hitler bunker because I do not
2 know whether he was in Hitler’s bunker or not. So I think
3 it is very careful and I think it is —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not that I know quite what the point
6 is. Is the point, Mr Irving, that you are suggesting that
7 the way it has been written by Dr Longerich in his book is
8 to suggest that “keine liquidierung” actually meant “stop
9 this altogether” rather than just “do not liquidate this
10 transport”?
11 MR IRVING: My Lord, the point that I am making, the point
12 which he makes slightly more strongly in the book than in
13 his expert report, if I am right, that, in consequence of
14 this telephone call from Himmler at Hitler’s headquarters,
15 the killings of Germans stopped because the killers had
16 exceeded their authority.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And that “keine liquidierung” therefore had,
18 according to Dr Longerich’s book, a general application
19 rather than a specific one to that train load?
20 MR IRVING: I am not going to go so far as to say that, my
21 Lord. I just wanted to underline the point once more that
22 this is a document. You do not have to join very many
23 dots to find out what happened here, because of course we
24 had the police decodes the following day, which
25 Dr Longerich obviously did not have at the time he wrote
26 the book. I am now going to move on to another document,
. P-31
1 Dr Longerich. We looked at this very briefly on Thursday,
2 and this is the Furl letter.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You actually have referred to this letter, have you not?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think so.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: No?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we have a reference for it, so that I can
8 follow.
9 MR IRVING: I have given you a translation of it on one page.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you?
11 MR IRVING: Headed page 175, on the top left hand corner
12 somewhere.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: But not from my book.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. You are quite right.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be that this is somewhere in the
16 Defendant’s bundles and, if it is, perhaps we can follow
17 it there.
18 MR RAMPTON: No. I do not think it is. This is a different
19 version from the one that I was given last week. Your
20 Lordship was given it too. It was another of Mr Irving’s
21 clips. This is not a complaint against him, but I do
22 confess to the impossible difficulty of keeping track of
23 these things as they come flooding in.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am having the same difficulty, as it were,
25 on both sides.
26 MR RAMPTON: On I think it was probably Thursday or Wednesday
. P-32
1 last week one got a rather larger extract from Gotz Aly’s
2 book, the same page but a longer extract. It is in the
3 back of J2, says the boss, so that is where it will be.
4 Now we have a different version, I do not know why. I am
5 not suggesting there is anything sinister about having two
6 versions.
7 MR IRVING: You are familiar with the book by Gotz Aly?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. I know the book.
9 MR RAMPTON: The new clip has a printed version of the English
10 edition of Gotz Aly’s book at the back of it. I have not
11 had a place for this new clip allocated yet.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have only one page.
13 MR RAMPTON: Is that the page your Lordship had last week?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have got the first page of last week’s
15 clip.
16 MR RAMPTON: Now comes a new version.
17 MR IRVING: That is more like it. Now we have it. This clip
18 is entirely connected with the Furl letter. My Lord, just
19 so you can see what is the clip, on the first page is the
20 translation of the passages which interest, which is all
21 that we have of that letter. The second and third pages
22 are the two pages from the Gotz Aly book, which is a very
23 reliable authority, which quotes the letter in German.
24 I will just take Dr Longerich, if I may, through the text
25 of the letter. In June 1942 Walter Furl, who is a
26 administrative officer based in Krakow, wrote to his
. P-33
1 comrades in the SS, “Every day trains are arriving with
2 over a thousand Jews each from throughout Europe. We
3 provide first aid here” — I think the word he uses
4 verartsten — “give them more or less provisional
5 accommodation and usually deport them further towards the
6 White Sea to the white Ruthenien marshlands, where they
7 all, if they survive, and the Jews from Vienna or
8 Pressberg certainly will not, will be gathered by the end
9 of the war but not without having first built a few
10 roads. But we are not supposed to talk about it”. That
11 is what I want to ask you about, Dr Longerich. On the
12 following page we have the translation in German, the
13 original German.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have the German here.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Pages 2 and 3. My Lord, obviously the significance of
16 this passage is that the Jews were not being sent from
17 Krakow to Auschwitz, which are just next door, but they
18 were being shipped on to strange locations in the East.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the White Sea?
20 MR RAMPTON: That is up in the north of Russia, beneath the
21 Kola Peninsula, near Mamansk. It is quite a long way
22 away. The white Ruthenien mashes I think are probably the
23 same as the Pripyat marshes as far as I know.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are they?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I think so.
26 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, your contention is, is it not, that
. P-34
1 this letter is camouflage? Like the Gotz Aly contention
2 also?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have to ask you then, first of all, what do we know
5 about Walter Furl? He was an official of the —-
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. He was in fact the Deputy Director of the Department
7 for Population and Welfare in the government of the
8 Generalegouvernement.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Knowing the answer already in advance, can you tell me if
10 any members whatsoever of that department were ever
11 prosecuted after World War II?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have no idea at the moment. I cannot tell you.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: None were prosecuted. Is that correct? You say you have
14 no idea.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is possible, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So they were not engaged in criminal activities?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is a conclusion you draw from this. We know that the
18 German courts, to say the minimum, in the 50s were quite
19 lenient to prosecute systematically German war crimes done
20 by Germans. So this conclusion, I think, does not lead to
21 anything. He was not prosecuted. It does not mean that
22 he was not involved in war crimes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Especially he would not know in 1942 whether
24 he was going to be prosecuted or whether he was not.
25 MR IRVING: No. The point is, my Lord, if the Germans or the
26 Poles or the Russians had determined that this was a
. P-35
1 criminal office, they would have arrested everybody
2 involved, particularly as director, and they would have
3 locked them up for a long time.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: As things turned out, they did not.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: If they were able to find them.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Get their hands on them?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us have a look at the authenticity of the document.
9 If you turn to page 216 and look at footnote 29, am
10 I right in saying that this letter comes from the
11 personnel file of Walter Furl in the Berlin Document
12 Centre, which was run by the Americans after the war, was
13 it not?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. You see, the Berlin Documents Centre, this is
15 personnel. Yes, it is personnel, that is true. But we do
16 not know actually who put these things into his personnel
17 file. It may be that the Americans just put letters
18 referring to Furl into this file, so we do not know who
19 actually —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Sometimes they did that, did they not? They put negative
21 photocopies in these files.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: And other things.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reason to believe that the document had been
24 faked after the war by anyone?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think there is any indication for that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you suggest any reason why Walter Furl, writing to his
. P-36
1 Berlin SS comrades, which is the first line of the
2 footnote, should have wanted to pull the wool over the
3 eyes of his own comrades in the SS?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It was a private letter, not an official letter, and in
5 his letter he is saying in the last sentence: “But we are
6 not supposed to talk about it”. So he is talking about a
7 secret. Also in your translation, you translated the
8 German term “verartzen” with “first aid”. Well
9 “verartzen” could also mean we deal with them in a very
10 general way. It does not mean that they provide first aid
11 and help them in a humanitarian manner. But coming back
12 to your question —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I just interrupt you there before there are any more
14 aspersions cast on my translation, and draw your attention
15 to the second page from the back of that clip which is the
16 English translation in the English edition of the Gotz Aly
17 book? The second line says, “we provide first aid here”.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. It is probably not the best translation.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the literal translation, is it not?
20 MR IRVING: It comes from the route “Arzt” meaning doctor, as
21 your Lordship is aware.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Verarzten” could also mean to deal with.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow what you are saying.
24 MR IRVING: Is there any reason why writing private letters to
25 their SS comrades in a letter where they use very robust
26 language, does he not — he says, who cares what happens
. P-37
1 to the Vienna or Pressberg, which I think is now called
2 Bratislava, Jews? It is a robust language, is it not?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is the matter of camouflage. These officers in the
4 government of the Generalegouvernement tried of course to
5 keep this operation as a secret. What they would admit is
6 they would tell a story about shipping people to the to
7 the White Sea and to the marshes, but they would not say
8 actually, we are going to transport them to Minsk, I think
9 in this case, and they are killed there. I think the
10 interpretation of Aly in this book that it was a
11 camouflage letter, I think this is the most likely
12 interpretation, but also it is possible that at this
13 stage, because he is referring to transports from the
14 Reich to Minsk, and the systematic killings of the persons
15 transported to Minsk from the Reichs, started in May 1941,
16 it is possible, it is not very likely but it is possible,
17 that this information had not filtered through to him. So
18 camouflage is one explanation, but also it is possible
19 that he did not at this stage know about the systematic
20 killings of people transported to Minsk at this stage. It
21 is a letter to SS comrades, not to one. It is not a
22 confidential letter to one of his comrades. It is to
23 comrades, so it was shown to 20 people, 30 people. There
24 were strict rules as far as secrecy was concerned.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you explain what significance you attach,
26 if any, to Furl having written that the Jews from
. P-38
1 Kurfurstendam and Vienna and Pressberg will not survive?
2 What is the implication?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think this is the same implication which we heard on
4 Thursday when we read through the Wannsee protocol. This
5 is the idea of natural dissemination by hard labour so
6 they will not survive. They will not survive the work
7 labour programme they were getting involved to. If you
8 read the last line, “but not without having first built a
9 few roads”. So this is, I think, the same idea which is
10 expressed clearly by Heydrich in the Wannsee conference
11 minutes.
12 MR IRVING: We have a logical problem here, which is best
13 solved by the question do you believe that Furl, who wrote
14 the letter, knew the truth, that he knew what was going
15 on, he was writing a camouflage letter, or that he did not
16 know what was going on?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I think the camouflage letter, he is referring to the
18 official story. The official story is the Jews are sent
19 from Central Europe to the East, and they will be used in
20 slave labour programmes, many of them will die, but some
21 of them will of course survive. This is the official line
22 and he is using this official version of the story. But
23 at the same time the systematic killing of Jews deported
24 from Germany, from central Europe to the East, had already
25 started. So I think the idea Gotz Aly said here that this
26 is a camouflage, still camouflage, is, I think, very
. P-39
1 persuasive.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is one plausible explanation, is it not?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think it is a very good interpretation.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is one possible interpretation, but the other
5 interpretation is that Furl is writing to the best of his
6 knowledge what happens in a very brutal letter to his SS
7 pals?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: As I said, it is possible that this information that the
9 Jews arriving from the Reich in Minsk were systematically
10 killed, it is possible at June that this information had
11 not filtered through to the office in Krakow.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would have noticed that there are two echoes of
13 previous documents here, are there not? There is the echo
14 of having first built a few roads. Does that remind you
15 of the Wannsee conference?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that the language that was used at the Wannsee
18 conference, that they are going to be put to work building
19 roads?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is used there.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: And this idea of sending into the marsh lands, does that
22 remind you of the October 25th 1941 table talk, where
23 Hitler says, “who says we cannot send them to the
24 marshes?”
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, of course, but I cannot fully ignore what happened in
26 Minsk at the same time in other places.
. P-40
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but we are looking here at chain of command and at
2 system and, if you are looking at parallels with the late
3 1941 killings, which turn out to have been carried out
4 without authority, then this would explain how the people
5 who are on the route, shall we say, on the track, the
6 train loads heading East, would think that one thing is
7 happening, whereas the people at the other end who
8 actually receive them with anything but open arms, know
9 that something quite ugly has happened to them.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes but this is not an official letter. This is a private
11 letter from Herr Furl to his SS comrades, so it is nothing
12 to do with the chain of command.
13 MR IRVING: Does your Lordship have a question on that letter?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Thank you very much.
15 MR IRVING: I am anxious, my Lord, from the timetable point of
16 view to leave sufficient time before lunch for
17 re-examination, so that the doctor can leave at lunch
18 time.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry too much about that.
20 MR RAMPTON: I think it unlikely that he will be able to
21 anyway, my Lord.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us wait and see. Do not rush it because
23 the timetable may have slipped a little.
24 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, I am now going to go to a memorandum
25 written by a man called Horst Arneirt. Now, when I asked
26 you about this on Thursday, it seemed unfamiliar to you.
. P-41
1 Have you had time to review your recollection about it?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot recall the document you are referring to at the
3 moment.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You cannot recall it?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was not available on Thursday. That is
6 why we passed over it. Is that not right, Mr Irving?
7 MR IRVING: You did edit a book called (German title)?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: This document is printed in full at the end of this book,
10 pages 240 onwards, and that should be one of the clips
11 that I gave to —-
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It has not arrived yet.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it was faxed and emailed to the
14 Defendants over the weekend. Is that right?
15 MR IRVING: It was faxed to me from Australia this morning.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is not one of the ones that went over
17 the weekend?
18 MR IRVING: No. That was just the Wolff translation.
19 Dr Longerich, will you accept that you published the
20 memorandum of Arniert as document No. 94 in your book?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have it in front of me. Yes, I published the
22 document.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a conference relating to the deportation of the
24 Jews from France?
25 MR RAMPTON: No, I am sorry, this cannot proceed. I do not
26 want to be horrible, but it cannot proceed without our
. P-42
1 having the document.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you not got it?
3 MR RAMPTON: No. I have a piece of Gotz Aly. I have something
4 from a book by Serge Klasfeld and that is it.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is headed “Die Endlosung der
6 Judenfrager” on the front.
7 MR RAMPTON: I have got it. Sorry, my fault.
8 MR IRVING: There are two versions of it, my Lord. One is in a
9 book published by Serge Klasfeld, who is a well-known
10 French lawyer, but this morning I received a copy of the
11 book which is actually published by the witness, edited by
12 the witness, in which the same document appears as
13 an appendix. This is a report by a man called Horst
14 Arniert dated September 1st, relating to a meeting held on
15 28th August, at the SS headquarters, the
16 Reichssicherheitshauptamt, with Adolf Eichmann in the
17 chair, and he informs the participants that the current
18 evacuation programme of the Jews from France is to be
19 completed by the end of that quarter. I am going to look
20 just at some of those paragraphs. You have now a number
21 of paragraphs in the document A, B, C, D and E. A is the
22 reinforcement of the deporting transports in October. B
23 is loading difficulties due to the longer hours of
24 darkness in October. C is provision of blankets, shoes
25 and eating utensils. D is the nationality problem. E is
26 the purchase of barracks. Now I am going to look at C and
. P-43
1 E, in particular, Dr Longerich, and ask you to answer some
2 questions on those paragraphs. First of all, this is a
3 genuine document, is it not?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph C, I am going to translate it and you can
6 correct me if I am wrong: “Giving with them blankets,
7 shoes and eating utensils for the transport participants.
8 The commandant of the internment camp at Auschwitz has
9 demanded that the necessary blankets, working shoes and
10 eating utensils are without fail to be put into the
11 transport, in with the transports. In so far as this has
12 not been done, they are to be sent on to the camp
13 afterwards immediately”?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, if these Jews were being sent to Auschwitz to be
16 liquidated, they would not need blankets, shoes and eating
17 utensils, would they, and there would be no great urgency
18 on the part of the commandant of Auschwitz to have this
19 stuff sent on after the train had arrived.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think we went through this before. It is quite obvious
21 that not all the Jews in Auschwitz were killed on the
22 spot. From late summer 1942 onwards, the trains stopped
23 in a camp called Kausal, it is near Auschwitz, and the
24 people fit for work were actually unloaded and spent
25 several months in slave labour camps in Silesia. Some of
26 them actually survived. So I would guess that the
. P-44
1 reference here to shoes and other things refers to the
2 people they wanted to keep alive for a couple of months.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph E, the purchase of barracks: “SS Major Eichmann
4 has requested that the purchase of the barracks that have
5 been ordered by the commander of the security police in
6 the Hague should be immediately put in hand. The camp is
7 going to be erected in Russia. The departure transport of
8 the barracks can be arranged in such a manner that each
9 transport train can take three to five barracks with
10 them.” What does that tell you about the final
11 destination of where these train loads of Jews were going
12 to go?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have no indication actually that these barrack were
14 actually, you know, in the end were loaded on these
15 trains. It is only said that — Eichmann expresses his
16 intention that this should be done. I have no idea
17 whether they did this or not and I have no idea what the
18 purpose of this barrack was. It is referring here to the
19 commander of the security police in Den Haag, so this
20 relates to the Netherlands, and at the moment I cannot say
21 either whether this happened or what the purpose of this
22 barracks was.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is talking about Dutch Jews, not French
24 Jews?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It refers here under E [German- document not provided].
26 So this refers to the Dutch Jews only. He had no
. P-45
1 responsibility for the Jews in France. So it is obviously
2 — maybe they had a plan to, I do not know, whether they
3 had a plan to build barracks somewhere for Dutch use. I
4 have at the moment no idea.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Like they did for the French Jews?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Definitely here it is nothing to do with the French Jews.
7 MR IRVING: Dr Longerich, you say you have no idea but in your
8 book you reference another document which is in a note by
9 a man call Roethke, R-O-E-T-H-K-T, dated August 26th 1942,
10 instructing him to raise a list of points at a meeting on
11 28th August 1942, which is the one we have been looking
12 at. Here it says, point 8: “When can we count on the
13 construction of the barracks of the Dusseldorf camp? Has
14 construction already been commenced? Where exactly will
15 the camp be situated?” There is a marginal note:
16 “Attended to”.
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have the document in front of me, I have to say.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but that is a document referenced in the book
19 which —-
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I should not comment on the document —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you remember the Roethkt document?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Pardon?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you remember the Roethkt document, the memorandum?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, the book was published in ’89, so I cannot recall
25 every document in the book, and it should not be a big
26 problem to have it in front of me and to read it simply.
. P-46
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And on Thursday, of course, we did look at the other
2 document quoted in the book “Auschwitz [German]” from
3 Himmler to the Ministry of Finance also talking about how
4 nice it would be to have the funds to buy the barracks so
5 we do not have to ship the Jews over to Auschwitz and then
6 back to the barracks they are building in Germany, they
7 would save the transport costs —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it says anything of the kind.
9 I did look at that again. We can go back to it if you
10 want to, but it seemed to me that actually what that was
11 saying was: “There are problems transporting the French
12 Jews right across the Reich to Auschwitz. Therefore, as a
13 sort of security measure we will build barracks for them
14 on the western side of the Reich”.
15 MR IRVING: Which will spare the cost.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which will avoid — no, but the bit I do not
17 agree with is I do not think there is any reference to
18 transporting French Jews back westwards to the barracks on
19 the western side of Nazi Germany, as it then was.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am indebted to your Lordship for having attended to this
21 matter with such concentration. My reading of the
22 document was that they were — I have the quotation here
23 [German- document not provided] “The costs on paragraph
24 B, and paragraph B concerned the section of the trip from
25 the Reich frontier to the Auschwitz camp, can in future be
26 dramatically cut or substantially cut, reduced, by the
. P-47
1 erection of a reception camp in western Germany”, which
2 means they are not going to go to Auschwitz. They are
3 just going to stay at the reception camp.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Quite. They are not going to come back
5 from Auschwitz. That is the point.
6 MR IRVING: That is right. They are trying to avoid this two
7 way trip. We may be arguing about the same thing.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I cannot find the reference.
9 MR IRVING: But I mean the general question which arises is,
10 why are they building all these camps, Dr Longerich, in
11 Russia, the White Sea, Western Germany at Dusseldorf for
12 the deported Jews if the extermination is the homicidal
13 intent of everyone from Hitler downwards?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I cannot comment on this question because I have not seen
15 any evidence, you know, for the building of camps. I have
16 seen some scattered documents which refer to plans or
17 ideas to build camps. One is referring to probably a camp
18 for Dutch Jews in Russia. The other one is referring for
19 an idea to build a camp for French Jews on the western
20 part of the Reich. Then we have a letter from an SS man
21 to his comrades referring to — which is, in my opinion, a
22 camouflage letter. So I do not think we have a story of a
23 number of — you know, we do not have here a story, you
24 know, can establish a story of camp building for Jews in
25 1942.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we look at it in two sections? Suppose we admit for
. P-48
1 the moment that no such camps were built, and I have no
2 idea, can we say that it is evident from the documents
3 which have been put to you on Thursday and today that
4 there was an intention at high level, certainly Adolf
5 Eichmann, certainly the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to build
6 camps and to obtain the barracks, to purchase the
7 barracks, to build reception centres elsewhere than
8 Auschwitz for these deported European Jews, and the
9 intention was there, regardless of whether or not the
10 barracks were actually built?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I would not draw this conclusion from these
12 documents because I only can say Eichmann expressed his
13 view in this letter here that one should actually order
14 barracks, or that the commander of the security police in
15 Den Haag should order barracks. It could also be a part
16 of this camouflage operation, and I cannot see how you
17 connect this document, this quote from Eichmann, with
18 other documents and can build up this story, kind of
19 intention or story that actually they planned to build a
20 system of camps, whereas, on the other hand, we have
21 plenty of evidence what actually happened to the people
22 who were deported from France, from the Netherlands and
23 from Vienna and Bratislava to extermination camps. So
24 I cannot see the kind of alternative history.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but we are looking at intentions here and the
26 possibility that the people at the top level were issuing
. P-49
1 orders and living in possibly cloud cuckoo land, imagining
2 that nice things were happening and that the Jews were
3 being sent, at the worst possible extent, to build roads
4 until they dropped in the White Sea or in Ruthenia or
5 elsewhere, and that they were actually making concrete
6 provisions for it. They were saying, “Send the boots and
7 the shoes and the blankets and the eating equipment and
8 build the barracks and provide the funds to purchase the
9 barracks”, and this kind of thing was going on?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is the official line. This was a part of this
11 system of camouflage. You can probably, if you read, for
12 instance, the official declaration of the Party
13 Chancellory, what happened to the Jews, you find the same
14 sorry. You send them to the East, they will live in
15 barracks, they have to do hard labour. This is the
16 official camouflage story and this is reflected to a
17 certain extent in these documents as well.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it is right, is it not, that there was camouflage
19 evident in the euthanasia programme? There are great
20 similarities between the euthenasia programme and the
21 Final Solution, are there not?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that no one denies that the truth was kept from the
24 parents of the unfortunate mentally disabled children and
25 so on. There was camouflage there, was there not?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
. P-50
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: But here we have the problem that some of the documents
2 seek with brutal frankness about what is going on and a
3 lot of documents which do not fit in with your consensus
4 you dismiss as camouflage, and this is the only way you
5 can get over the other documents. You roundly dismiss the
6 other ones as camouflage?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I would not agree with you and I made my statements
8 concerning these documents, and I do not agree with this
9 view, with this view.
Section 51.11-70.17
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am now going to come to vernichtung durch arbeit which
11 is page 76 of your report, I think. My Lord, I am now
12 just going to pick up a few remaining points on his report
13 and then —-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Just for the transcript, I am putting
15 Arnott, this little clip you have just handed in about
16 Arnott, in tab 13, but I would be grateful if somebody
17 could provide me with another file because this one is
18 bursting.
19 MR IRVING: Page 77, Dr Longerich, you say that the SS invented
20 the expression “annihilation through labour”, “vernichtung
21 durch arbeit”, now you have produced to the court this
22 morning three or four documents you obtained from the
23 Institute of History, is that right?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I did not produce them. I have them with me. I can
25 produce them.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have not had time to scan them in any detail, but I can
. P-51
1 see we have here vernichtung [German – document not
2 provided] and there is vernichtung durch arbeit in one of
3 the documents. Is there reference there to destroying
4 only the Jews through labour or is it —-
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. There was a programme vernichtung durch arbeit, there
6 was an agreement between —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Tirack and Himmler, is that right?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Himmler, and this refers to the killing of so-called
9 asocials and then in the letter it says who the asocials
10 are, and among one of the groups are the Jews actually,
11 people actually kept in German prisons.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just any Jews or Jewish convicts?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Oh, no, convicts.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were they going to be destroyed as Jews or were they going
15 to be destroyed as convicts?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think for the people who were destroyed it
17 mattered, it really mattered, but I think it is clear that
18 the definition asocialist, the definition is given in this
19 document. It says “Asocials are Jews”, and so on in other
20 groups. So I do not think, we cannot make a difference
21 here.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Asocials are Jews or Jewish convicts?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Jewish convicts and others, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: So I have to ask the question again. Which was the most
25 important element in this particular homicidal equation,
26 the fact that they were Jews or the fact that they were
. P-52
1 convicts exposed them to vernichtung —-
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, the fact that they were Jewish convicts made them
3 asocials, so I cannot separate these two issues.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you saying that they said the other convicts were not
5 asocials, the non-Jewish convicts were not asocials?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I think in the letter it is clearly said who
7 actually were the others. I do not have the document in
8 front of me. If you want to read out the others, I think
9 it becomes clear what the definition of “asocials” is.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the word “vernichtung durch arbeit” appear in the
11 other documents that you produced?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, there is a —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have I got the documents you are now
14 referring to?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think so. They just arrived this morning and
16 Mr Rampton gave them to me.
17 MR RAMPTON: I think we made copies of them, my Lord. I am
18 hoping that somebody has got them.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is becoming a bit of a nightmare, this
20 case, with odd documents cropping up and getting slotted
21 in, here, there and everywhere.
22 MR RAMPTON: I agree. I have my own copy which I will
23 willingly surrender.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, do not do it if it is the only one you
25 have. Maybe I have them, but I do not know what they look
26 like.
. P-53
1 MR RAMPTON: They look dirty.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I may have them then. I
3 have certainly some dirty documents. I think I may have
4 them. Have they got 285 written on them?
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes, there are actually three documents. The
6 first one is a four-page document and then there are, I
7 think, two single sheet documents. So far as I can tell,
8 they are three different documents.
9 MR IRVING: I have to say that a rapid scan produces the word
10 vernichtung durch arbeit on the first page, 2864 at the
11 bottom, but I cannot see it on any of the other pages.
12 I am sure Dr Longerich knows —-
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There are two different things.
14 MR IRVING: Yes.
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: There was a programme of vernichtung through work. This
16 was according to the agreement between Tirack and Bormann
17 and, as you said, this was a programme for the murder of
18 asocials and asocials included as a category convicted
19 Jews. I used the expression here just to show you that
20 the expression vernichtung durch arbeit was used during
21 the war by German authorities. I used the term in my
22 report in a wider sense, saying that if you look at the
23 Holocaust, the vernichtung durch arbeit in this wider
24 sense, was a complementary element. So the best — and it
25 was not — the terminology was sometimes different.
26 So the best, I think, proof, the best evidence,
. P-54
1 for this complementary element is the Wannsee protocol
2 because here Heydrich referred to Jews sent to the East
3 used in labour gangs. They would become, they would die,
4 you know, out of natural dissemination and the fittest
5 would survive and have to be dealt with else in another
6 way. So I think this is the best —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: By [German]?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — this is the best evidence I think I have that this
9 method, extermination through labour, was also used on a
10 wide scale to exterminate Jewish, to exterminate Jews as
11 slave labourers.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask this one question? So what
13 you are saying is that you do not think whether the label
14 was being used during the war —-
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — is of particular significance?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is true.
18 MR IRVING: I was about to say exactly the same. I was going
19 to put it like this. The fact is that the phrase
20 vernichtung durch arbeit occurs in scattered documents, is
21 that right?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is true.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, in your opinion, it could be applied to what Heydrich
24 was proposing at the Wannsee conference?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Exactly.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it was not absolutely used in the documents, the
. P-55
1 phrase?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The phrase vernichtung durch arbeit, as far as I know,
3 relates, as the documents relate to this limited
4 programme, if I may say so, the killing of asocials.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not myself think that we need to put
6 these anywhere in the papers.
7 MR RAMPTON: No, I agree. There is one of them which may have
8 some significance in a different context which is the
9 longest of the three.
10 MR IRVING: It is construction of Auschwitz, I think, is it
11 not, or expansion of Auschwitz?
12 MR RAMPTON: It is not the construction of Auschwitz. It is
13 the expansion of Auschwitz which is rather significant
14 because this document is dated 16th September 1942.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, would you like to suggest where it
16 goes? Probably in Auschwitz, will it not?
17 MR RAMPTON: It will best go in the Auschwitz file.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, is that all right?
19 MR RAMPTON: In tab 4 of —-
20 MR IRVING: Indeed, my Lord.
21 MR RAMPTON: Tab 4 of K2, I think it is.
22 MR IRVING: It would be nicer to have a legible copy of it and
23 I am sure his Lordship will agree.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree with that entirely. I do not know
25 whether that is possible.
26 MR IRVING: If a legible copy is provided, I can have it
. P-56
1 translated.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 4, did you say, Mr Rampton?
3 MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is the one with the written documents in
4 it, I think, tab 4, K2. 3A following.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are you suggesting?
6 MR RAMPTON: Tab 4, 3A, B, C, D.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 MR IRVING: Page 77, paragraph 9, Dr Longerich, you say in
9 Auschwitz between February 1942 and January 1945 between
10 900,000 and 1 million Jews were murdered. I have to ask
11 you what documentary evidence do you have for the
12 statement that 900,000 or a million Jews were murdered as
13 opposed to merely being sent there?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: As opposed to merely being sent there?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I followed here because I am not an expert on
17 Auschwitz, and we have an expert here. I followed,
18 basically, the research which was done during the last
19 years, mainly by van Pelt, and also by Piper. So, of
20 course, you have to make a distinction here between the
21 people who died, sent to gas chambers and the people who
22 actually died in the camp.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: From other causes?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: From other causes, but I think the whole working
25 conditions in the camp were such that you can, in general,
26 say that somebody who was transported to Auschwitz and
. P-57
1 died there because of exhaustion, hunger and of other
2 causes was murdered. This was a part of a murderous
3 programme in this general sense, I use the term here.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is important. I think this needs to be fixed,
5 therefore. You are saying, therefore, that the 1 million
6 people who died in Auschwitz were murdered, not
7 necessarily homicidally killed by violence, but you
8 include in that figure the numbers who died from typhus
9 and the other epidemics?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, if you look at the figures, the vast majority of
11 Jews who were sent to Auschwitz were directly sent into
12 gas chambers, and it is — I am referring to, I would
13 definitely say that this was a murderous operation and
14 I would also include the other people who died there.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am not sure you quite really grappled
16 with Mr Irving’s question which was are you actually
17 including in your 1 million figure those who died as a
18 result of forced labour?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
20 MR IRVING: And the starvation, pestilence, plague, epidemics,
21 all the other ancillary causes?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, as far as I am familiar with the history of
23 Auschwitz, this is a situation which was deliberately
24 prepared by the camp authorities. So it is not simply a
25 camp, you know, where things went wrong, but this is a
26 camp designed to systematically kill people, also the
. P-58
1 labour camp.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you basing yourself on basically
3 Professor van Pelt?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Van Pelt also.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Because I am not sure that his evidence was quite to that
6 effect, but at all events that is what you say?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 MR IRVING: Are you aware of the book by Professor Arnott
9 Myard, “Why did the heavens not darken” —-
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: — in which he said, in his opinion, two things, first of
12 all — I will ask you first of all — he said that in his
13 opinion by far the greatest number of deaths at Auschwitz
14 were from what I would call non-homicidal causes?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is definitely not true.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is definitely, in your opinion, not true. In his
17 opinion he said, “The only evidence to the contrary is
18 unreliable, being based on eyewitnesses”?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am afraid to say, Professor Myerd, his book is
20 particularly weak, as far as Auschwitz is concerned. This
21 number here is based on the calculation that about 865,000
22 Jews actually were not registered in the camps. It was
23 865,000 were directly sent to the gas chambers and
24 100,000,, about 200,000 Jews were registered in the camp
25 and of these 200,000, 100,000 died because of the
26 conditions in the camp.
. P-59
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: What documentary evidence do you have — just a brief
2 question — for this non-registering of the ones who were
3 sent directly to the gas chambers?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, these are calculations and estimations based on the
5 reconstruction of the deportations from the different
6 places to the camp. They were done by different scholars
7 at different times in different countries, and this is,
8 I think, the number 900,000 to 1 million, is the best we
9 know at the moment.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this comes back to the first question I asked in this
11 series which is what evidence do you have for the fact
12 that the 1 million who were sent to Auschwitz stayed
13 there, effectively, and were not transported somewhere
14 else? None of them, it was not just used as a transit
15 camp to any effect?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We know that some of the people sent to Auschwitz were
17 actually sent to other camps, but it does not, I think the
18 statement here that between 900,000 and 1 million Jews
19 were murdered represents the knowledge we have at the
20 moment about the events in this camp.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dr Longerich, those are the only questions I have to ask
22 on your expert report, but I am afraid I am going to ask
23 you (as a facility of which his Lordship is aware) just to
24 comment on two documents. One is the Horthy conference
25 with Hitler. Do you have it, April 16th 1943? It is two
26 pages, my Lord.
. P-60
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Just a moment.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it. Thank you very much.
3 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will remember that we were looking at
4 the reasons why they wanted the Hungarians to take steps
5 against the Jews. I was invited to produce evidence that
6 there were reasons. Also, I have translated rather more,
7 in other words, than was put into the expert reports.
8 Does your copy have the German original?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am sorry, I do not find the copy at the moment. I am
10 sure you gave it to me.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks like this. It is headed “Horthy
12 conference with Hitler”. Is there a spare? Yes, there is
13 a spare coming up.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 MR IRVING: Does it have the German original attached to it at
16 the end?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it is not the original, it is —-
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Hilgruber text?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am only going to rely on a few words there. Eight lines
21 down, we have —-
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In your translation or in the original?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the translation. “Germany was standing today with her
24 morale firm because she had removed the Jews of which even
25 those remaining would also soon have vanished to the
26 East.” That is Hitler talking. Is that an accurate
. P-61
1 translation of the words used in the original?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, let us look at the original.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is the last line.
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Which page?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Six lines down on page 240. “Vanished to the East [German
6 – document not provided]”.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: OK. Of course, you would probably say “to the East” is
9 just camouflage, would you?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, what is happening here is that Hitler tries to
11 persuade Horthy to hand over his Jews and he would not
12 actually say in this conversation, “Actually we are going
13 to kill them” because it is an official visit, they are
14 minutes, and Hitler would have avoided that. In these
15 minutes you find the term, you know, “We are going to kill
16 them in the East”. He would use this phrase “They
17 vanished to the east”.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is pressure not actually being put on Horthy not to hand
19 them over but to lock them up, to lock them away?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. I think if you look at the history of deportations
21 from other European countries, it is quite clear what the
22 Germans did at this time. They were sending deportation
23 trains to extermination camps.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Four lines from the bottom of the translation, please, the
25 first page: “For the present war and the shape which it
26 had taken, they”, the Jews, “were responsible particularly
. P-62
1 for the bombing of the civilian population and the
2 countless victims among women and children”. My Lord, you
3 will remember that Professor Evans disputed that bombing
4 was talked about in this conference. You will find the
5 original German on the same page, 240, towards the end of
6 the paragraph.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
9 MR RAMPTON: No, he did not say that.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think what he said was — I am trying to
11 remember — the Hungarians were co-operative or felt
12 resentful against the Jews because of the allied bombing
13 in, I think, Hamburg and places like that. It is a
14 slightly different point, is it not?
15 MR IRVING: I am sure your Lordship will look up the
16 appropriate reference when the time comes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Am I right about that, Mr Rampton?
18 MR RAMPTON: I do not remember that. What I do remember
19 Professor Evans reporting is that Hitler had mentioned the
20 bombing, but had said that it was a bit irritating but
21 trivial.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember that too. Was that in reference
23 to the Hungarians?
24 MR RAMPTON: I think it is in reference to them, but I could be
25 wrong. I think that was the Professor’s evidence.
26 MR IRVING: Well, I remember lecturing Professor Evans on the
. P-63
1 air raids that had taken place on Essen and Nuremberg in
2 the previous days.
3 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I dare say he did not take it too well.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think what Evans said was that it was
5 ridiculous to suppose that the Hungarians could care less
6 about what had happened in Essen.
7 MR IRVING: Well, some days ago.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Some days ago.
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, over the page we now go to the translation
10 at page 245.
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. It is day 23, 21st February, page
12 159, yes. This is Professor Evans, line 15: “Hitler says
13 the attacks themselves have been irritating but wholly
14 trivial”, so the bombing was talked about.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
16 MR IRVING: We are now looking at the second page,
17 Dr Longerich, of the translation. At the end of the first
18 paragraph, this is the famous piece, of course, “He had
19 done, he said, everything one decently could” — this is
20 Horthy — “he had done, he said, everything one decently
21 could against the Jews, but one could not very well murder
22 them or bump them off somehow. The Fuhrer replied that
23 there was no need for that either. Hungary could
24 accommodate the Jews in concentration camps just like
25 Slovakia”. Now, is that an accurate translation of those
26 two sentences? It is on page 245. “One could not very
. P-64
1 well murder them or bump them off somehow to which Hitler
2 replied that there was no need for that either”. Of
3 course, I rely on this following sentence: “Hungary could
4 accommodate the Jews in concentration camps just like
5 Slovakia”.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. At this time — I am sorry to interrupt — at this
7 time the majority of the Slovakian Jews were already
8 killed in concentration camps, extermination camps.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So can I remind you of the little exchange we had a few
10 minutes where I said that the Germans were not pressing
11 the Hungarians to hand over the Jews; they were merely
12 asking them to lock them up?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. They invent this story that all the Slovakian Jews
14 are at the moment still kept, locked in concentration
15 camps. This is the way he tries to persuade Horthy, you
16 know, to hand over his Jews. If he had agreed, he would
17 have done the same, the same with them as he did in 1944
18 when he systematically killed the Hungarian Jews. I do
19 not — I cannot see the point actually of this.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there another explanation for why Hitler would say
21 that?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, he was more explicit than on the meeting on 17th or
23 the 18th.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the following day.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So when actually he used the quite different and quite
26 clearer language a couple of days after that.
. P-65
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: One day later?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: One day later.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it possible that the reason why Hitler compares Hungary
4 with Slovakia is because Hitler does not know what is
5 happening in Slovakia, is that possible?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, that is impossible. It simply defies reason that
7 Hitler at this stage in ’43 does not know what is
8 happening in extermination camps.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: April 1943?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: So everything is camouflage, illogical, defies reason, yet
12 it all seems to be in the same direction; there is this
13 parallel version of history, is there not?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, there is no parallel —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is your version, there is the German consensus among
16 modern German historians and there is this alternative
17 version which is suggested by quite a few documents.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I tried to explain that the Nazis in a systematic
19 way tried to build up a system of camouflage. This is, of
20 course, sometimes reflected in written documents as this
21 one here, for instance. There is no alternative history.
22 I think it is — if one analyses these documents in a
23 careful and systematic way, one can separate the
24 camouflage language from actually their real intentions
25 and their real aims.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, the only last —-
. P-66
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to ask you this (and I think
2 I have asked you before and I have forgotten the answer),
3 the Hungarians Jews were not in the end handed over, were
4 they?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They were handed. In 1944 they were handed over one year
6 later.
7 MR RAMPTON: 450,000 of them were sent to Auschwitz.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the evidence —-
9 MR RAMPTON: In 1944.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the evidence there that they were killed
11 at Auschwitz, that they were gassed?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, the evidence is there.
13 MR RAMPTON: It was called the Hungarian action and 450,000
14 Hungarian Jews, by which time Hungary had been invaded by
15 the Nazis and Horthy put on one side, they were gassed at
16 Auschwitz.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to have asked that question. I
18 forgot —-
19 MR RAMPTON: In the summer of 1944.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In the next, in the meeting which actually, the meeting
21 actually which preceded the German invasion of Hungary in
22 1944, Hitler had literally, you know, threatened Horthy
23 with really physical force. Actually, his life was in
24 danger in 1944. So this was the moment when he more or
25 less had to agree that actually, yes, the Germans were
26 invading his country and the deportation programme was
. P-67
1 then started after that.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have not referred to the Hungarian episode in your
3 expert report, have you?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think only in a very short way in the second report, the
5 systematic character.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not really see any need to cross-examine you on that,
7 unless his Lordship wishes me?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, is it contentious that the Hungarian
9 Jews were—-
10 MR IRVING: Certainly on that scale, my Lord. If you ask
11 Mr Rampton to explain how one could liquidate 450,000 Jews
12 in three weeks, your Lordship will see part of the
13 problem.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not asking you him do that, but I am
15 asking you whether there is a dispute. The answer is yes
16 as to numbers.
17 MR IRVING: The answer is yes.
18 My final question is that if Adolf Hitler was
19 really bent on exterminating all the Jews, then are you
20 aware of his conference with Antonescue at about the same
21 time as the conference with Horthy —-
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Mm-mm.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: — in April 1943? This is related in a book by Seymour
24 Finger who has written a book called “American Jewry
25 during the Holocaust”. It is document NG 5049 which is a
26 Nuremberg document.
. P-68
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have it in front of me.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: But in this record of the talk between Hitler and
3 Antonescue, Hitler approved a proposal to permit 70,000
4 Jewish children to leave Rumania to travel to Palestine.
5 Are you familiar with that episode?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not familiar with this particular episode, but I know
7 that during the end of the war it is quite common that
8 Hitler made exceptions and he allowed groups of Jews to
9 leave his…
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is April 1943?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is not the end of the war, is it?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the height of what you would describe as the
15 homicidal Final Solution, and yet here is Hitler, the man
16 at the top?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes — sorry.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Is it not interesting that it actually needed his personal
20 approval to save these relatively small groups of Jews,
21 you know, from the extermination programme? One had to go
22 to Hitler if one wanted to save a group of Jews. We have
23 presented earlier in those proceedings, you have presented
24 a document actually where Goring complained that he had to
25 go to Hitler to save two Jewish scientists from the
26 deportations. So it shows you this complete and total
. P-69
1 will of extermination. One had to go to Hitler actually
2 to ask him for his permission to exempt a single or a
3 group of Jews from deportations and death.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of course, Hitler’s name would cut through any red tape,
5 would it not?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 MR IRVING: I have no further questions, I do not think.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have timed it very well.
9 MR IRVING: It was not done with that in mind, my Lord. It is
10 literally I have no further questions.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, thank you very much. Mr Rampton, would
12 you rather re-examine after the adjournment?
13 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it probably would be less fragmentary if
14 I start after the adjournment.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is what I would have thought. So
16 shall we say 5 to 2?
17 (Luncheon Adjournment)
Part III: Richard Rampton Cross-Examines Dr. Heinz Peter Longerich (70.18 to 126.6)
Section 70.18-108.22
18 Dr Longerich, Recalled
19 < Re-Examined by Mr Rampton QC.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I have seen the correspondence
21 with Harry Counsel and that seems to have sorted that
22 problem out.
23 MR IRVING: Yes. Thank you, my Lord.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. Yes, Mr Rampton?
25 MR RAMPTON: Dr Longerich, I have some questions. It may take
26 a little bit of time because some of the topics are a
. P-70
1 little intricate. I think on last Wednesday you gave us a
2 description, in general terms, of the relationship between
3 Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler as you saw it. Do you
4 remember doing that?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I remember that.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And you told us really, in essence, this, the idea that
7 Hitler did not know about the systematic extermination
8 which was being carried out by Himmler and the SS was, to
9 use your words, absolutely absurd.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you remember saying that?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I would like to expand on that a little bit, if I may?
14 How often on average during the war years did Hitler and
15 Himmler meet?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, we have a quite clear picture from the Dienst
17 calendar, so I think they met at least once a week,
18 probably more.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How long had they known each other?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They knew each other since at least 1923.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Himmler was part of the 1923 Putsch, was he not?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, indeed.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What was the date of Himmler’s appointment as Reichsfuhrer
24 SS?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is 1929.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And as to the antlosen of the Judenfrager, can you give us
. P-71
1 some dates for Himmler’s acquisition of jurisdiction over
2 the solution of that question, if necessary, by reference
3 to different parts of Europe.
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, jurisdiction —-
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Jurisdiction. The SS were ultimately responsible for
6 carrying out the Final Solution, is that right?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Did Himmler always have complete jurisdiction over this
9 question or did he have to fight for it?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No. The jurisdiction for the responsibility for the
11 Jewish question, or so-called Jewish question, or
12 jurisdiction, laid first with the Minister of Interior and
13 he had in a way to get this responsibility on board. He
14 had to fight for it. There is an entry in the Dienst
15 calendar at the end of 1940: “Judenfrager [German]”. So
16 you can see here that there was a kind of struggle going
17 on between him and the traditional administration in
18 Germany.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And was it resolved in his favour or not?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I think it is clear from 1942 onwards that it was
21 resolved in his favour.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You give that date because of the speech
23 about this “heavy responsibility being put on my
24 shoulders”?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. The difficulty is — it is difficult to answer this
26 question because you get this impression from his entries
. P-72
1 in the Dienst calendar from speeches, and it is not easy
2 to say, you know, the formal responsibility for the Jewish
3 question, you know, was when this was taken over by
4 Himmler.
5 MR RAMPTON: Was there any stage at which Hitler had, as it
6 were, to arbitrate jurisdiction as between Himmler and
7 other people such as the Reichs Commissarts and people
8 like that?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I think you can — it is quite clear throughout 1940
10 and 1942 that Hitler was engaged with this question.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I want to take July 1942 as a particular illustration, if
12 I may, of what you were telling us last Wednesday. Can
13 you take the blue bundle and turn to page 247, please?
14 Here you should find copied — you may need to turn the
15 file round — a run of entries from the Dienst calendar.
16 Have you got 247? It should be an entry for 11th July
17 1942. It may be my page numbering is a little bit — that
18 is right, is it?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we have translations of this or is it not
21 really necessary?
22 MR RAMPTON: Is it what, sorry?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Translations or not necessary?
24 MR RAMPTON: It is not necessary. They are very simple entries
25 — even I can manage! If anybody should want to deal
26 with the footnotes, that is different, but I am not
. P-73
1 bothered with them at the moment. Sonnabend which in
2 those days was German for Saturday, was it not?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sonnabend is Saturday, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is still Saturday?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 11th July 1942. He makes a journey after 12.30 to the
7 Fuhrer headquarters. It does not matter where they are
8 for the moment. Do you know which headquarters Hitler
9 would have been at at that date?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think he is still in Wolfschanze.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And he has a meal, presumably we could call it lunch, at
12 2 o’clock with the Fuhrer?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And if you turn over two pages to 249, on 14th July, which
15 is Tuesday, he speaks to Wolff on the telephone and then
16 — this is the left-hand column — at 12.30 he goes to
17 the Fuhrer headquarters, yes?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And again at 2 o’clock they have a meal together?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And they have a conversation, or Himmler does, with
22 General Thomas and SS Oberfuhrer Werlin. Who were they?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, General Thomas is the head of the wehrmacht armament
24 department and Werlin, if I am not mistaken, is head of
25 Daimler Benz company.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He is an industrialist?
. P-74
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, with an SS rank.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then if you turn over the page once more, I do not know
3 what the page number is, 250 might it be? I do not know.
4 Do you see Friday, 17th July 1942?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The right-hand column. He goes from Berlin to Catovitz in
7 Upper Silesia, do you see that?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And then he meets Gauleiter Bracht who is the Gauleiter of
10 what area?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Of Silesia.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Of Silesia, and some people called Schmaze Kasen Vogel,
13 but also Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And after that he goes to Auschwitz, does he not?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is true, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And he stays in Auschwitz until later on that day when he
18 goes and has a meal with the Fuhrer Heim — that is not
19 Hitler, that is the —-
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, that is the —-
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is the local man, is it not?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Bracht and he spends the evening with Gauleiter Bracht?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Next day, which is again a Saturday, 18th, he goes from
26 Auschwitz to Catovitz and he goes from there to Lublin,
. P-75
1 yes?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where he meets Kruge, Globocnik and somebody called
4 Schelenberg. Is Schelenberg a significant figure in this
5 story or not?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Schelenberg was, as far as I am aware, head of the
7 Auslans, the special espionage service of the SDs — thank
8 you very much.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you turn over the page we see a family photograph on
10 the left-hand side of these people actually in the
11 Stammlager at Auschwitz. Then the right-hand side at
12 9 o’clock in the evening he meets with Kruge Pohl who is
13 head of the concentration camp system, right?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, Kruge is the SS and police leader of the
15 Generalgouvernement.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, right. So he is the SS — and what position is
17 Globocnik then?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, Globocnik is the SS and police leader, so the man
19 who has the overall responsibility for the SS of police
20 forces in the district of Lublin.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Of Lublin. So Kruge is Globocnik’s superior?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, the highest SS police leader.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But Pohl is there in a different capacity because he is
24 the head of the concentration camp system, is that right?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And so we come to the 19th over the page, 252, I think
. P-76
1 I am on, but I may be wrong.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 53.
3 MR RAMPTON: Sunday 19th, he goes to Travniki. What happened
4 at Travniki?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: At this day?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, 8.30 in the morning on Sunday 19th?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, this it says: “Inspection of a schutzmanschaft
8 battalion. This is an auxiliary police battalion. So we
9 know that this Travniki men were used as guards in
10 concentration camps — in particular in extermination
11 camps.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So was it, in effect, a training sort of establishment?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then he goes back to Lublin in the evening and at
15 8 o’clock he has a meal with Globocnik and what is the
16 abbreviation “NSCHL”?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Bottom part of the page, [German- document not provided]
19 Globocnik and then “Anschleisen”?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, Anschleisen, after that.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then there is a meeting or a conversation is it?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, followed by “versprechen” is a —-
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Discussion?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — meeting yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: With Kruge and somebody called Rickert?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
. P-77
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then on Monday, finally, on Monday 20th, he leaves at half
2 past 12 midday back for Berlin, is that right?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: From Lublin?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then if you turn over, please, to page, I think it is 254
7 or 53/54, this is taken from the second part of your
8 report, a letter that Himmler wrote, apparently, to Kruge
9 on 19th July while he was still in Lublin. Do you see
10 that?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you look at the German for us, please?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is in a printed document. It does not matter what
15 it is because there is no dispute about this letter. He
16 says: “I order that the umsiedlung which literally
17 translated means what?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Literally “resettlement”.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, “of the whole of the Jewish population of the General
20 Government shall be ended by 31st — carried out and ended
21 by 31st September 1942″, is that right?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is right.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How do you take the word “umsiedlung” in that context.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, in this context, also dealt with in the glossary,
25 I think, it is quite clear that, it is absolutely clear,
26 sorry, that the term “umsiedlung” means in this sense the
. P-78
1 murder, the killing.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why should it not mean deportation further
3 East from the General Government?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Because it is clear from other sources that in this
5 context the term “umziedlung” is used as a camouflage word
6 for “killing”. And also we know then what happened after
7 the 19th July. The systematic programme to kill the Jews
8 of the General Government started particularly in this
9 month.
10 MR RAMPTON: With a heavy prod from his Lordship, you have got
11 ahead of where I want to be because I am coming to that.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry.
13 MR RAMPTON: No. It is important that this little narrative is
14 done in blocks because it does tell a tale when one has
15 been through it with care. Could you translate for us
16 (because it is not in the text that you have translated in
17 your report) could you with the help of your interpreter,
18 if you need it, the second paragraph in this letter from
19 Himmler to —-
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, the paragraph that starts with “mit dem”.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, that is it.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, “After the 31st” —-
23 THE INTERPRETER: By 31st?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “By 31st December 1942, no person of Jewish origin is
25 allowed to stay in the Generalgouvernement”.
26 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
. P-79
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “The only exception — unless that they are in the
2 sammlager, collective camps, sammlager”.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be “transit”, I do not know.
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, not “transit”.
5 MR RAMPTON: “Collection”?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Collection, collection camps, I would say. “Sammer” in
7 German means “collection”.
8 MR IRVING: “Assembly”?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “Assembly” is a very good translation. “Assembly”, yes,
10 thank you, “assembly camps in Warsaw, Krakau … Lublin.
11 All other —-
12 THE INTERPRETER: “All other work volume”?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: “… work volume which employ Jewish labour have to be
14 ended by this date or if the completion is not possible,
15 they have to be moved into one of the assembly camps, the
16 labour assignments or labour”, what did we say?
17 THE INTERPRETER: The workforce?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, “workforce”, yes.
19 MR RAMPTON: If I have understood it correctly, all the Jews of
20 the General Government, about how many people are we
21 talking about at this date, July ’42?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: In ’42, we are talking about roughly 1.9 million.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And with the exception of some that are in the assembly
24 camps and will be put to work, all the Jews, the 1.9
25 million, have got to be resettled, whatever that may mean,
26 by the end of the year?
. P-80
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is an order from Himmler?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, now let us see what happened next, if we may. If
5 you turn over the page to 258, I think it is, there is
6 another entry, I hope, from the Dienst calendar for
7 Saturday, 25th July ’42, is there? 259. I am sorry. My
8 numbering has gone wrong again. 259. There we see
9 that — I do not know where Hagelvalt or Eichenhan are.
10 Hagelvalt is where he lives, is it not, Himmler?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, they now moved to their new headquarters in
12 Ukrainia, as far as I know. So the Hagelvalt is still the
13 code word for Himmler’s own headquarters, but he edits
14 this Eichenhan to make sure that this is not the same
15 headquarters in Eastern Prussia.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We can see it is a two hour journey. Then once again he
17 has a meal with Hitler. Then there is another of these
18 —-
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, Hagelvalt is some sort of fairly
20 advanced headquarters?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry, maybe I made mistake here. Hagelvalt is the code
22 word for his old headquarters in East Prussia and
23 Eichenhan is, as far as I know, the new code name for his
24 new headquarters in Ukrainia. So I think he moved at this
25 date, he moved from —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, Hagelvalt to Eichenhan?
. P-81
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have to say I am not sure whether Hagelvalt is still the
2 code word for the old headquarter or whether the new
3 headquarter has the same name, is also cold Hagelvalt.
4 I am not sure, I have to say, at the moment.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, he has lunch with Hitler?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 MR RAMPTON: He has lunch with Hitler afterwards?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, sorry, again Hagelvalt is his headquarter. It has the
9 old name Hagelvalt. He was kept, so Hagelvalt is
10 Himmler’s headquarter. It was near Wolfschanze, now it is
11 near Schitomeir(?) —-
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So it is a name he just carries around with him?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, as far as I can see it.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He is a bit like Macbeth’s enemies, he goes with burning
15 wood on his head, as it were?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You may not —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not a particularly close analogy.
19 MR RAMPTON: It is a wood, I think.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I see. Then after he has had lunch with Hitler, he
22 has a discussion or a meeting with Bormann and Speer.
23 What precisely was Speer’s jurisdiction at this date?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Speer was the Ministry for Armament, armament and
25 munition.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then if you turn over two pages, please, three days after
. P-82
1 that meeting with Hitler, we find, do we not, a document
2 that we glanced at this morning, I hope, a letter which is
3 taken off a microfilm of 28th July 1942 from Himmler to
4 Berger, yes?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who was Berger?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Berger was the head of the SS Hauptamt, SS main office.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The second sentence says: “The occupied Eastern
9 territories will be Jew free”, does is it not? Yes?
10 Second sentence [German] — third. Have I miscounted?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The third sentence.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, this is in the first paragraph, the third sentence:
13 “The occupied Eastern territories will be free of Jews”.
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes. “The carrying out of this very hard order
15 has been placed on my shoulders by the Fuhrer”. Is that
16 right?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you think of a reason why if this operation merely
19 involved transporting large numbers of Polish Jews to, let
20 us say, nice work camps in the White Ruthenian Marshes or
21 the Pripyat Marshes, if they are not the same thing,
22 should have seemed to Himmler to be sehr schwer befehr?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, this would not be exceptional because he was
24 responsible for large resettlements of millions of people
25 the years before, so this was not exceptional for him.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It would have been a routine administrative operation,
. P-83
1 would it not?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The limited order though, correct me if I am
4 wrong, Dr Longerich, which you said related only to the
5 Pripyat Marshes was the instructions about driving the
6 women into the swamps, was it not?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, this has to be seen in the context of an operation of
8 this SS —-
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — fragen.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But that was a year earlier, was it not?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This was in ’41, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That was in August ’41?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And it did not succeed because the women would not sink,
16 is that not right?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, this is one of the officers reported back —-
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is right.
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — they could not do it because the —-
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The second SS cavalry regiment.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: — swamps were not deep enough.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The water was not deep enough?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was your reference to the Pripyat Marshes
25 that made me think back to…
26 MR RAMPTON: I know, but I am coming to the White Ruthenian
. P-84
1 Marshes in a moment which I think are the same thing,
2 though I am open to correction on that.
3 MR IRVING: Can we ask what the witness thinks is meant by
4 the phrase “die Bedesten Ostgebiet”?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. “die Bedesten Ostgebiet” are the occupied Eastern
6 territories. This is, in the terminology of this time,
7 the occupied Soviet territories, including the territories
8 the Soviet Union had annexed between 1939 and 1941. So
9 the Baltic states, and so on.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But excluding the General Government?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Normally, the terminology is, “Bedesten Ostgebiet” means
12 the Soviet territories, not the Generalgouvernement.
13 MR RAMPTON: Do you know of any evidence — this is getting a
14 little bit of ahead of myself but I may as well deal with
15 this part of it first — Dr Longerich, whether eyewitness
16 testimony or contemporaneous documents, whether clear or
17 needing interpretation, that speak of large scale
18 transports or deportations of Jews from the occupied
19 Eastern territories further East?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: At this stage, no.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: As a matter of practical reality, is there any evidence
22 that it happened?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you take this document to be an indication that Himmler
25 found the — I think I have asked this already — the
26 administrative task of, I do not know how many Jews that
. P-85
1 there were left in the occupied Eastern territories by
2 this date, do you?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Definitely several hundred thousand.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right, presumably, they have got to go — how Far East had
5 the German Army got by this date?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, this was in summer 1942, they were in their, I think
7 just started their summer offensive so they were quite,
8 I mean, advanced, so they had large parts of Ukrainia, for
9 instance, under their control.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And they were pushing out as far as Koursk and Stalingrad,
11 were they not?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In due course?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So there would have been plenty of room behind them to
16 which to transport all the remaining Jews of the occupied
17 Eastern territories, would there not?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But you know of no evidence that it ever happened?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can we compare for a moment what Himmler wrote in that
22 letter about the very difficult order that the Fuhrer had
23 laid on his shoulders with what Mr Irving relies on as
24 evidence of the truth, the historical truth, which is what
25 Karl Wolff told Dr , I cannot remember, was it Fiegler or
26 Ziegler?
. P-86
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Ziegler.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Ziegler?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Ziegler, sorry.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Von Ziegler in 1952. Have you still got that German of
5 that document —-
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I hope so.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — with you? It is on page 5 of the German and, my Lord,
8 it is the fifth page of the English under the square
9 bracket 00032. Do you mind if I use the English of
10 Mr Irving?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I do not have the — I could not find the…
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not have the document. I am sorry.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are we going to put this?
14 MR RAMPTON: Day 2, tab 11, my Lord. 14A the page number is.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That will do.
16 MR RAMPTON: It is one of the documents that was passed up this
17 morning, I think. It is only short. In your German
18 version, Dr Longerich, it is the second paragraph on page
19 5 with page numbers at the top. It is the sentence which
20 begins “es war im August 1942”. Do you have that? Page 5
21 at the top or 00032 at the bottom.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry, the German sentence begins?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The German sentence begins “es war im August 1942”.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I have the German sentence.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you got that?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
. P-87
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you mind if I read out the English?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But do follow it in the German because you can check the
4 translation at the same time if you want. “Around August
5 942 GW”, that is?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: General Wolff.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: General Wolff, yes, I thought his name was Karl, I must
8 say, “… General Wolff undertook drive from the Fuhrer’s
9 headquarters to Berlin. He found Himmler there in a state
10 of deep depression. To General Wolff’s questions as to
11 what was up, Hitler dropped dark and vague hints. Wolff
12 could have no idea what one had had to take upon oneself
13 for the Messiah of the next 2000 years” — we can say that
14 is Hitler, can we not?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “… in order that this man remained personally free of
17 sin. He, the Reichsfuhrer, was beyond mortal help. For
18 the sake of the German people and its Fuhrer, he had had
19 to burden things on to his own shoulders of which nobody
20 must ever be allowed to learn”. If you have to choose
21 between a postwar interrogation of Karl Wolff, which
22 resulted in that account, and the letter which Heinreich
23 Himmler wrote to Berger at the time in 1942, which source
24 do you prefer?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I would prefer contemporary documents like this source.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then, finally, there is one other document in here that
. P-88
1 I would like you to look at. It is the next document on
2 from the Himmler to Berger in the main blue file?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is part of the same sequence,
4 Mr Rampton, is it?
5 MR RAMPTON: It is, my Lord.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because I want to ask something after you
7 have finished.
8 MR RAMPTON: Absolutely. Then I am coming to the Furl letter
9 in a moment. Do you see that this is some kind of a copy
10 of a letter written by somebody called Guntzen Muller to
11 Karl Wolff on the same day, 28th July 1942, is it?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that it is in front of me.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Does it recount that 5,000 Jews are going every day from
14 Warsaw to Treblinka and twice a week 5,000 from a place
15 whose name I cannot pronounce, it is something like
16 “Schimmel” to Belzec?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Premisul(?) to Belzec, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: To Belzec. So that is a total of 45,000 a week, you can
19 take it from me, at that time. That has been going on,
20 has it not, since 22nd July 1942? Yes?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, this is clear from this letter.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then does the last part of the letter tell us that in due
23 time, I think in October, transports will go from Warsaw
24 via Lublin to Sobibor?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. They do not tell us in what quantities, do they?
. P-89
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, because they are just working on the track, on the
2 railway track.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On the track, yes. The transports are held up from the
4 track. But assume for a moment that that little
5 collection of documents is evidence of a massive
6 extermination programme underway at the General Government
7 and in the occupied Eastern territories, that Himmler is
8 in charge of it, and we have seen the contacts between
9 Himmler and Hitler during this time. How credible does it
10 seem to you that Hitler, Himmler’s old chum, Hitler, did
11 not know what was going on?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I find this absolutely incredible that he should not
13 have known that.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you a question because I am a
15 bit puzzled at the moment. Your evidence is that the
16 order that Hitler gave Himmler related to the Jews in the
17 Ostgebiet?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And they accounted for, I think you said, about 600,000
20 out of about two and a half million?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The thing that is slightly going through my mind at the
23 moment is, well, that leaves a bit of question mark over
24 the remaining, whatever it is, 1.9 million.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry, you are referring to?
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: To the Jews who were in the General Government?
. P-90
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But not in the Eastern territories?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: What was the position, as far as they were concerned? Is
5 there any evidence one way or the other?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am sorry. I am not sure whether I could follow the
7 question.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think you have not followed the
9 question. Perhaps I did not put it very clear.
10 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, perhaps I could deal with it?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, all right, do.
12 MR RAMPTON: Undoubtedly I see the question that your Lordship
13 has asked. Himmler’s letter to Berger deals with the Jews
14 in the occupied Eastern territories, in other words,
15 Russia?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And they have to be cleared by the end of the year?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: These trains which we are talking about here in the letter
20 from Guntz Muller to Wolff are not Russian Jews at all?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, this is the Generalgouvernement, Poland.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is the General government?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And they are going variously in, one might think, rather
25 large numbers from Warsaw, this place Premisul, and so on
26 and so forth, to the three Reinhardt camps?
. P-91
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, are they not?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: My question is where were they going?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, they would be deported to these camps, to the
6 extermination camps, and would be killed there.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you know of any evidence that any of those three camps
8 was at any time a work camp?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, this is particularly, these were particular
10 extermination camps, very small camps, only one purpose,
11 to kill as many people as possible in a very short time.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That does not though actually quite meet the
13 point that I was trying to put. I will try again.
14 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it does partially. We are concerned in
16 this aspect of the case really very much with what Hitler
17 knew and authorized. You have been taken through a series
18 of documents which you have given evidence establishes to
19 your satisfaction at least that Hitler did order Himmler
20 to free the Ostgebiet of Jews by, as Mr Rampton says, the
21 end of December 1942.
22 My question really related to the vastly greater
23 number of Jews who were at that time in the area of the
24 General Government, and what I was really seeking to ask
25 you is do you have any knowledge of any documents or are
26 there any inferences that one can draw as to what Hitler
. P-92
1 said, if anything, about what was to be the fate of the
2 Jews in the General Government?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We do not have the same document for the General
4 Government. We have this document for the 28th July, but
5 not a comparable document for the Jews of the
6 Generalgouvernement. So we are relying here on a
7 construction, a reconstruction, of events and, as
8 Mr Rampton has, I think, lead me through these documents,
9 it is clear that we have a number of important meetings
10 between Himmler and Hitler, and right after these meetings
11 Hitler, sorry, Himmler gave the order to make the
12 Generalgouvernement of Judenfrager until the end of the
13 year. So we do not have the same kind of documentation
14 for the Generalgouvernement.
15 MR IRVING: My Lord, there is, of course, the 22nd September
16 1942 handwritten document, “Judenfrage dies wie wir
17 weiterfahren”, how shall we continue, “Auswanderung”, the
18 Himmler and Hitler plan, 108.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate you say they were going to be
20 dealt with differently, but, I mean, can I ask the
21 question that was in my mind anyway to ask, which is would
22 you think that it is a legitimate inference or not from
23 the fact that there was an expressed Hitler order in
24 relation to the Jews in the Ostgebiet that may be the
25 position was in some way different with regards to the
26 Jews who were to the West of them?
. P-93
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, we only have this, we have this reference by Himmler
2 by chance because he wrote this letter to Berger. We have
3 not, we have not got the full correspondence of Himmler,
4 so it is impossible to answer this question really.
5 MR IRVING: The note I referred to is page 274 of this blue
6 bundle.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
8 MR RAMPTON: I do not want to be — for once in my life, I will
9 not be diverted if it is all right.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It was not intended to be a diversion.
11 MR RAMPTON: No, no, no, by Mr Irving, I meant. It was not
12 intended as a diversion, of course not, but I will not go
13 to that document at the moment.
14 MR IRVING: I was trying to be helpful.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I meant that was not intended to be a
16 diversion by me which you may or may not accept.
17 MR RAMPTON: No, it has not been in the very slightest because
18 it leads to this question (and I have not quite finished
19 Dr Longerich on this area of the evidence) does it not,
20 here you have apparently on the contemporaneous evidence a
21 series of meetings between Himmler and Hitler, and you
22 have really a massive logistical operation underway,
23 taking thousands, literally thousands, of Jews every week
24 from various parts of the General Government to these
25 three camps which are not work camps. I ask the question
26 again. As a matter of inference (and it is inference
. P-94
1 because we do not have the comparable document for the
2 General Government) do you think it likely or not that
3 Hitler knew because Himmler told him what was happening?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is very likely.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In your mind, does it matter one way or the other whether
6 Himmler said to Hitler: “This is what I am going to do,
7 Adolf” and Adolf said, “Yes, it is sounds a jolly good
8 idea” or whether Adolf said to Heinrich, “Heinrich, this
9 is what you have got to do”? Does it matter?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, I think there was a high degree of consensus among
11 them, so I do not think it really — it does not change
12 the question of responsibility.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can we then turn to one of Mr Irving’s documents? I pause
14 to remind you of this, before we get to Mr Irving’s Furl
15 letter, in the report of Professor Browning which I expect
16 you have read, have you —-
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — it was not challenged so I can recite it for you, he
19 tells us that at this time and after this time, Jews,
20 train loads of Jews, were coming westwards to Belzec from
21 Lemberg or Lewolf, westwards from Kolemeer, which is
22 southeast of Lewolf by a long way, 225 kilometres, to
23 Belzec and from Bialystok westwards to Treblinka. Does
24 that help you assess what kinds of places these might have
25 been? Does it help you to assess the question whether
26 they might have been transit camps leading further to the
. P-95
1 East?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well, you have almost answered the question yourself, it
3 is the transports from East to the West.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is my job.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not in re-examination.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I would not describe this as a — of course, I would not
7 describe this as a movement from West to East.
8 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Can we turn to the page from Gotz Aly’s book
9 “Endlosen”? I hope you have it there somewhere. I have
10 it in English. You have probably got it in —-
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have it in English, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have it in English?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The English will do, it seems to me. I hope you have the
15 longer version, the one we had last week, because I, first
16 of all, want to draw your attention to the last paragraph.
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Which page is that?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is page 275, Mr Irving tells us.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 175 — sorry, no, I beg your pardon.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: 175 or?
21 MR RAMPTON: Of Gotz Aly’s book?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 175 — you have the German version there?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have the English version here.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, you do?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
. P-96
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have not so…
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it page 175, I think?
3 MR RAMPTON: It is page 175, I think. Use the bound copy,
4 Dr Longerich.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: You are referring to the Furl letter?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I have it here.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Before we look at the text of Furl’s letter or the bit we
9 have there, can we look at the next succeeding paragraph
10 which begins “Also in the summer of 1942”?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Also in the summer of 1942, the Germans transported 3,000
13 Jews from the eastern Galician town of Droyobic”, that is
14 an attempt by me, “to the Belzec death camp. Here too
15 they used the excuse that the deportees were needed for
16 reclamation of the Pripyat Marshes”. Do you know where
17 that place “Droyobic” is?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is East, as far as I remember, it is East of the Belzec
19 death camp.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You are right. Then look at the text of Furl’s letter.
21 Ignore the first sentence. “We provide first aid”, or it
22 might be some other meaning of that, it does not matter,
23 “and give them more or less provisional accommodation and
24 usually deport them further towards the White Sea to the
25 White Ruthenian marsh lands where they all”, and then we
26 will leave out the next bit, “will be gathered by the end
. P-97
1 of the war but not without having first built a few roads
2 (but we are not supposed talk about it)”. Do you know of
3 any evidence, Dr Longerich, that there were any transit
4 camps in the White Ruthenian Marshes?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On the way to the White Sea, which is, we observed this
7 morning, right up in the north of Russia?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you know of any train schedules showing trains going
10 from Cracau or Auschwitz or Warsaw or Lublin to the
11 Ruthenian Marshes?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Any orders for lorry loads of Jews to be taken to those
14 places?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Any evidence that the Jews were used to build roads into
17 that area of Russia?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In the light of that and all the other evidence we have
20 just looked at, how likely does it seem to you that we
21 should take this little piece of whatever it is from Herr
22 Furl to his SS chums in Berlin seriously?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Absolutely irrelevant on a reconstruction of the events.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you. Now I want to go to another related topic,
25 but, in a sense, slightly separate and those are the
26 documents that Mr Irving produced last week about trying
. P-98
1 to keep the illness down in some of the camps so as to
2 preserve the population level. Do you remember those
3 documents?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I remember them.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you got those here?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The one I would like you to look at first is dated 28th
8 December 1942. It is from Oranienburg.
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not think I have it here at the moment. This is
10 concerning the doctors?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The doctor’s letter, yes.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I do not have it in front of me unfortunately.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is headed SS. Then there is a very long German word.
14 What does that long German word mean?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This means economy administration main office.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right. Who is in charge of that?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is Pohl.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Did Pohl have any responsibility or jurisdiction over the
19 extermination programme?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: As far as the extermination programme was carried out in
21 his camps, so it is not for the camps of the Aktion
22 Reinhardt.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That was going to be my next question. His camps being
24 those which had workers in them?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Like slave labour?
. P-99
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am a bit lost. Pohl was in charge of what
3 you might call labour camps?
4 MR RAMPTON: He was head of the SS
5 Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, and there is Ampsgruppe D, this is the subdepartment
7 concentration camps, this is a subdepartment, if you want
8 to say that. He was in charge of all the concentration
9 camps, and concentration camps, the Aktion Reinhardt
10 camps, are different type of camps.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Concentration as opposed to death camp?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
13 MR RAMPTON: If we look at the abbreviations in paragraph
14 numbered one, lager doctors of the concentration camps,
15 the camp doctors of the concentration camps, then we have
16 a whole list of abbreviations, including Auschwitz and a
17 number of others, do you see any reference there to any of
18 the Reinhardt camps, Treblinka, Sobibor or Belzec?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You told us last week that the reference to Lublin would
21 be a reference to Maidonek?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which did have a working facility?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How many of the Reinhardt camps were operating at the end
26 of December 42?
. P-100
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: All three were still in operation.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did none of them have a labour side to them?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: They were all purely death camps?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Only a very small number of prisoners were used for labour
6 assignments, only several hundred, several dozens.
7 MR RAMPTON: Now I am passing to something completely
8 different, Dr Longerich, and that is this. You were asked
9 last week by Mr Irving to comment on the police decodes,
10 do you remember, the British police decodes of the
11 messages which passed between Himmler and Jeckeln at the
12 beginning of December 1941?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In which it is clear that Jeckeln had done something that
15 Himmler was not pleased about, but did not, as you pointed
16 out, result in any kind of sanction or punishment against
17 him?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is true, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is a document which was disclosed by Mr Irving which
20 you may feel needs to be explained. It is not a document
21 which is part of your original report and therefore we
22 have not really looked at it before but perhaps one could
23 do it now. You will find it at page 110 of the blue
24 file. I think it is 110. It is a somewhat fragmentary
25 copy of a document that looks a bit like a Nuremberg
26 document. That is 111, sorry. That is the one I want you
. P-101
1 to look at first, if you will, 111?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Has it got some words missing from the first line of the
4 text?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Ich habe die (blank) Juden execution, yes?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I think you were good enough to find us the complete
9 version of that, and this is terrible. The Americans or
10 whoever it is even managed to muck up the German grammar
11 because in fact it is execution —-.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see, you are 111 and 110 is what he
13 has found.
14 MR RAMPTON: If you go back to 110, it is the real thing, or
15 much closer to the real thing anyway.
16 MR IRVING: 109.
17 MR RAMPTON: Sorry. You are quite right. I missed a page.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be the same as 110. I think we all
19 have different pagination.
20 MR RAMPTON: Thank you very much. It is letter dated 15th
21 November 1941, although the 4 is missing from the date
22 line, I think from a man called Lohse, who I think is the
23 ReichsKommissar for the Ostland, is he not?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is the Baltic States, essentially, is it not?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: And white Russia.
. P-102
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And white Russia. He has written a letter to the
2 Reichsminister for the occupied Eastern territories in
3 Berlin, who I think was Rosenberg, was he not?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On the left-hand side we have made a translation — this
6 is a somewhat literal translation. Does your translation
7 start, “I have forbidden the wild executions of Jews in
8 Lepeier”?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I have forbidden the uncontrolled —-
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, he has the same one as me. Does your Lordship’s
11 translation —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have got “wild executions”. Does it really
13 matter in the end?
14 MR RAMPTON: Probably not. Lepeier is a town in Latvia on the
15 coast, is it not?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will just read it, if I may. I will read it in the
18 version that his Lordship has: “I have forbidden the wild
19 executions of Jews in Lepeier because they were not
20 justifiable in the manner in which they were carried out.
21 I should like to be informed whether your enquiry of 31st
22 October is to be regarded as a directive to liquidate all
23 Jews in the East. Shall this take place without regard to
24 age and sex and economic interests of the Wehrmacht, for
25 instance, in specialists in the armament industry?” Then,
26 for some reason, Mr Irving has put in “note in different
. P-103
1 handwriting”. I do not understand that. Not on the copy
2 I have got. “Of course, the cleansing of the East of Jews
3 is a necessary task”. I prefer, Dr Longerich, a “priority
4 task”. Is that not a better translation?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “But its solution must be reconciled with the requirements
7 of the war economy”. I am sorry, I am reading from my own
8 translation. Is that right in the German?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is right in the German.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Neither from the orders concerning the Jewish question in
11 the brown file nor from any other ordinance have
12 I hitherto been able to infer or deduce such an order or
13 instruction”. Is that correct as a matter of translation?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What are they actually talking about, Dr Longerich?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They are talking — Lohse is complaining about, as he
17 called it, wild uncontrolled, unauthorized probably,
18 execution of Jews, mass execution of Jews in Lepeier. He
19 says, well, what is the meaning of that, does it mean that
20 all Jews in the Ostland, this is his territory, should be
21 liquidated? This would of course bring the economic
22 consideration of Wehrmacht into danger, and it is not
23 according to the guidelines I have in my own handbook, in
24 the brown —-
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. Can we then turn back to what prompted that letter,
26 which is page 104/105, for which also we have to thank you
. P-104
1 I think. Now this is a very short letter from somebody
2 I think called Librandt?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He is in Rosenberg’s office, is he?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He has written to Lohse, or to somebody in Lohse’s office,
7 saying, in effect, “The RHSA has complained that the
8 Reichs Commissioner for the Ostland has forbidden the
9 execution of Jews in Lepeier in the matter referred to
10 above. I request urgently a report from you”. Yes?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So then we get the response from Lohse saying: “Am I to
13 take (this letter we are looking at) as an order that
14 I have to kill all the Jews?” Is that right?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is that what happened?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So then again we went through the second letter, and then
18 Lohse writes this letter, well, what do you want me to do
19 about that? We just went through the letter.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. He explains that he forbad the executions because of
21 the way in which they were carried out.
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: . Yes,.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Unauthorized or uncontrolled?
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now we can look and see what the response was, which comes
26 on 18th December 1941, I think.
. P-105
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We can find that, curiously enough, the same day as the
3 meeting between Hitler and Himmler, page 181/182, I hope.
4 I do not know what translation you have beside you, but
5 I much prefer you look at the German anyway. This comes
6 from Rosenberg’s office, signed by a man called Brottigan?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Brottigan has signed it.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He is in Rosenberg’s office?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He is writing to Lohse, and he says, “clarification of the
11 Jewish question has most likely been achieved by now
12 through verbal discussions”. Yes?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is that all right?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Economic issues or considerations must fundamentally or
17 generally be disregarded in the settlement or disposition
18 of this problem”?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, generally.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Generally, yes. “As for the rest, moreover, I would ask
21 that any questions arising should be settled directly with
22 the higher SS and police leaders”. Is that right?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This is right, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What historical conclusions do you draw from this exchange
25 of correspondence?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think there was a kind of battle or a kind of conflict
. P-106
1 going on between the SS representatives, through the
2 higher SS police leader, and the civil administration.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The higher SS and police leader was Jeckeln, was it not?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Carry on.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Because the civil administration, in their own handbook
7 they were not aware of the fact that actually the aim of
8 the SS was to kill all the Jews in Ostland, and so this
9 letter first of all led to Lohse stopping these executions
10 in Lepeier, and then asking the ministry for the occupied
11 territories in Berlin, what shall I do? It took them
12 about five weeks to reply, and here the answer is quite
13 clear, the economic considerations do not play a role any
14 more. You can leave this aside and, if there is any
15 further problems, discuss this directly with the higher SS
16 and police leader.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So in effect he is being told to surrender, am I right
18 control over this interpretation?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It would be my interpretation of this exchange.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Surrender control to the SS?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it significant or is it not that this is
24 Geheimerreichsacher?
25 MR IRVING: I am just about to point that out, my Lord.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Were you?
. P-107
1 MR IRVING: Yes. I was wondering how to do so, in fact.
2 MR RAMPTON: Just say it. I do not mind.
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The significance being that, on the face of
5 it, this is not a desperately secret communication?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry?
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: If you take at face value, it is not a terribly secret
8 communication, is it?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think it is quite clear from this communication that, if
10 you take the three letters that this means the death of
11 the Jews in the Generalegouvernement. There is no way the
12 civil administration can interfere any more.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is why they put Geheimer Reichsacher on it?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is what I assume.
15 MR IRVING: Just note who signed that letter. It is Brottigan,
16 is it not?
17 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Brottigan, yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is an adjutant of Rosenberg?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, one of his closest advisers.
20 MR RAMPTON: Rosenberg, Lohse, Brottigan, they are all civil
21 servants, are they not?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
Section 108.23-126.6
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Are you familiar with — I call it the evidence — the
24 conversation of General Walter Bruns, which was recorded
25 by the British when he was in captivity?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I am familiar with this document.
. P-108
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you recall that they recorded him — I am going to
2 torture you with some of my German but it saves getting it
3 out — as having said that a man called Altemeyer, he had
4 been upset, so he said, with these shootings?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They sent somebody back to Berlin they said with a message
7 for Hitler via Canaris. You know the story?
8 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I know the story.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This SS person Altemeyer comes back from Berlin with
10 triumphantly a message, and saying this: Here is (German)
11 do you remember that?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I expect you know it off by heart.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The question is whether that last remark of Bruns has in
16 your mind any resonance with this exchange of
17 correspondence between Lohse and Rosenberg?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Well —-
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The date of Bruns, that was 1st November, was
20 it?
21 MR RAMPTON: He was talking about what had been going on in
22 Riga.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but 1st November being the date when
24 that conversation —-
25 MR RAMPTON: I cannot the remember the date. It was sometime
26 in 1945, I think.
. P-109
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I mean when whatever his name was came
2 back —-
3 MR RAMPTON: Early December, after the message from — I think
4 early December. I think we are agreed about that.
5 MR IRVING: It was a few days later.
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes, after the message from Himmler to Jeckeln.
7 My question is this. Do you see any relationship or
8 resonance between what Bruns said later in captivity and
9 the correspondence between Lohse and Rosenberg about the
10 manner of the shootings?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: This correspondence means, in a way, a carte blanche for
12 the SS to carry on with the executions, so I think it is a
13 complete contradiction to this.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Contradiction?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry, maybe I did not recall the —-
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry, perhaps you should have the Bruns in front of
17 you.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is the problem, is it not, in a
19 way? I am trying to find it and I cannot remember where
20 it is.
21 MR RAMPTON: I am reading it off Mr Irving’s website. Your
22 Lordship has it in J1, tab 4, but not the German. Do not
23 look at the English. It is very bad English. It is a bad
24 translation. Can we just put that in front of witness,
25 please and one for the judge. (Same handed) The relevant
26 piece of German, Dr Longerich, is at the top of the page,
. P-110
1 4 of 5. Do you have it there?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What Altemeyer is reported by Bruns as having said is
4 this, and I will do my best in English: Here is an order
5 come that mass shootings of this kind in future must no
6 longer happen”. Is that all right?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is right.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am getting on like an interpreter. I am doing well
9 today! “That shall be done more discreetly in future”.
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. I was a bit confused at the moment because I did not
11 take the second —-
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I am sorry. It is my fault. You should have had it
13 in front of you.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Because he does not say that the mass executions are
15 supposed to be stopped, but it says clearly this should be
16 done in different, more careful way. So obviously, it
17 does not give any date for that. This is a kind of
18 reaction to the complaints of the civil administration
19 that one should not allow these wild executions to be
20 carried out. I think that is quite clear.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I think we are now are on the same ground. Lohse has
22 stopped the shootings in Lepeier, perhaps elsewhere, one
23 does not know, because of the way in which they were
24 carried out. He is then told by Berlin that that is
25 wrong, in effect?
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
. P-111
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And here comes Altemeyer at about the same time, am
2 I right?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Saying, you must not do it in this way any more, you must
5 do it more discreetly.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do those two pieces of evidence in your mind corroborate
8 each other?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, I think they corroborate each other.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Except for this, that Altemeyer is describing
11 an order which prohibits mass shootings (underlined) on
12 that scale.
13 MR RAMPTON: No, of this kind.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Oh. I am reading from the translation.
15 MR RAMPTON: No. That is why I do not want to use the old
16 English translation, because it is wrong.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Even so, I think the point needs to be
18 answered, of this kind and they need to be carried out
19 more discreetly. You do not find that in the 31st October
20 directive.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a discrepancy between the two. That
23 has to be accepted.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Discrepancy?
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Difference.
26 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Why is there a discrepancy? I do not get the point.
. P-112
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The point I am putting to you is that, if you look at the
2 message from Berlin, the top secret message from Berlin
3 signed by Brottigan, all that is really saying is, well,
4 do not worry about economic considerations, just leave it
5 to the local SS. I think Mr Rampton was really asking you
6 whether Altemeyer was not referring to that message when
7 he triumphantly showed General Bruns the order just
8 issued. That was the question, was it not, Mr Rampton?
9 MR RAMPTON: More or less.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just wondering whether that is well
11 founded, because it appears that he is referring to
12 something slightly different.
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Altemeyer? Who is Altemeyer.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is a junior officer.
15 MR RAMPTON: He is a junior SS officer.
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: So it obviously is not the same letter.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The background is that obviously the civil administration
19 found these mass executions unpleasant, the way they were
20 carried out, and they are looking for guidance from the
21 Ministry for the Eastern Territories, and they come back
22 and say, well, basically these executions have to be
23 carried out and any problem has to be solved together with
24 the highest SS and police leader. So I think this
25 Altemeyer’s response could reflect the same kind of
26 discussions which was going on, that one has to do it in a
. P-113
1 different way. It did not say that the mass executions
2 have to be stopped.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that.
4 MR RAMPTON: That is all. I was anxious to put the two beside
5 each other, because, my Lord, plainly, when they are side
6 by side, what Bruns said about the continuation of
7 shootings implicitly is supported by the contemporaneous
8 documentation.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You did use the word resonance.
10 MR RAMPTON: Yes, resonance. Then I want to ask you about
11 something else very briefly, Dr Longerich. You were asked
12 again last week by Mr Irving in effect this. Did they not
13 always have to have a pretext when they shot the Jews in
14 the East, such as, oh well, they were plundering, or they
15 were partisans and so on and so forth?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It becomes clear from the Einsatzgruppen reports.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You said, well, there was one absurd case where they
18 killed 7,000 Jews because the NKVD had massacred
19 some Ukrainians.
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can we just have a look at the Jager report, with which
22 I know you are familiar. You find that at page 147 of the
23 blue file, I hope. It is awfully long and it is very
24 grisly reading, so I am certainly not going to go through
25 it, but it is Einsatzkommando 3, which is part of
26 Einsatzgruppen A, is it not?
. P-114
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is by the subordinate officer, somebody called Jager,
3 and it reports that by the 1st December, or the end of
4 November, they have succeeded in slaughtering 137,346
5 people. That is on the sixth page.
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Pass over the first few pages to page 3, will you? Now we
8 are in the middle of August 1941, and one needs only to
9 glance at the page, does one not, to see that they are
10 recording the murder of large numbers of Jewish men, women
11 and children without any reference to any kind of pretext,
12 excuse or justification?
13 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Very occasionally, if you turn, for example, to page 151,
15 page 5 of the document, you see a pretext. You also see
16 incidentally, do you not, that some people from Berlin,
17 Munich, Frankfurt, Vienna and Breslow were killed in
18 November, towards the end of November, but you see in
19 brackets, after some of the entries for October and at the
20 bottom of the page, some kind of excuse or pretext, do you
21 not?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sorry, pretext of the killing of the German Jews?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. For example, the last entry for 2nd September 41, a
24 teil kommando in Vilner shot a total of about 3,500 Jewish
25 women and Jewish children in what they called a
26 Sonderaktion because some German soldiers were shot at or
. P-115
1 shot at by some Jews. Is that right?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you know why it is that, throughout this document, such
4 pretexts or excuses are so scarce?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I think the Jager report is simply a different kind of
6 document than the Eignismeldung, so I think the people who
7 had to write Eignismeldung had clear orders to give a
8 reason for every killing. This is a different kind of
9 report. This is a summary report.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then you have partisans listed and then just
11 Jews?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
13 MR RAMPTON: This is the raw material, is it, upon which the
14 Eignismeldungen would have been written, do you think?
15 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: I am not absolutely sure, because the Eignismeldung were
16 written on a daily basis, or on a monthly basis, and this
17 is a summary report. So it is part of a different
18 reporting system, if you want to say so.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who would this have been reported to, do you know? You
20 cannot tell from looking at it.
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It says five copies. I do not know whether it is actually
22 mentioned here.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: My document runs out on page 9 —-
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: One has to look at the end whether there is a list of
25 distribution, but it definitely would go to the
26 Einsatzgruppen R.
. P-116
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: And probably, I do not know, a copy to the civil
3 administration, but I am not sure about that.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What I was driving at is quite a simple point really. Do
5 you think, Dr Longerich, that it is possible that, if this
6 was, as it were, a local document, in other words this
7 document is kept within Einsatzgruppen A’s area, yes,
8 before the figures were compiled and sent to Berlin, that
9 there would be more openness than there was when the
10 figures went on from wherever it was to Berlin?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. I think it is simply the number of copies is very
12 limited.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: We know that the Eignismeldung had 55 and more copies. So
15 I think this is a confusion which is possible.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have one final thing I want to ask you about, which will
17 not take very long, and it is this. You were telling us,
18 I think it was on Thursday last week but it might have
19 been Wednesday, about a system which either was planned or
20 which evolved whereby the Jews and the General Government
21 were deported and killed at the extermination camps to
22 make way for Jews from the West or from the south.
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: At the beginning, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I would like, because I think this will help us all and
25 certainly me, at the end of the day if we could do a short
26 chronology. The gassings in the Warthegau at Chelmno
. P-117
1 began on 8th December 1941?
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is correct.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Who were the Jews that were killed there, first of all?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The local Jews. The Jews from villages from the
5 Warthegau.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And then?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Then the Jews from the Lodz ghetto beginning in January.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The German for Chelmno is Kulmhof?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How is that spelt?
10 MR RAMPTON: K U L M H O F. Chelmno, I call it.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I call it Chelmno.
12 MR RAMPTON: Do you know roughly how many of the local Jews
13 were killed at Kulmhof or Chelmno?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: The estimation is about 140,000 minimum, plus then the
15 German Jews who were —-
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I was coming on to that. Were some German Jews killed at
17 Chelmno in due course?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. We know about one so-called action where about
19 10,000 Jews from Central Europe, Germany, Austria the
20 Protectorate, were killed in Chelmno in May 1942.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In May 1942?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And what about the Reinhardt camps? Belzec was being
24 built in late 41, was it not?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They started to build it in November 1941.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And when did they start killing people at Belzec?
. P-118
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They started in March 1942.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: March 42?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And the other two, Treblinka and Sobibor?
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They started to build Sobibor approximately in February,
6 and it became, what do you say about an extermination, it
7 became operational, I think, in May 1942. Then Treblinka,
8 they started to build Treblinka in May and the systematic
9 killing in Treblinka started in July 1942.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Systematic killings at Treblinka and Sobibor?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Sobibor started a little bit earlier.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did they have the same pattern, Treblinka,
13 Sobibor and Belzec, starting by killing the local Jews?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Then the Jews from Germany?
16 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It is a little bit different from camp to camp. In Belzec
17 they started first of all to kill the local Jews and then
18 later on also, as far as I recall it rightly, other Jews.
19 It is a different operation. Belzec was built first of
20 all to kill the Jews of the district of Lublin whereas,
21 when you move on two or three months, you can see that
22 actually the three Reinhardt camps were there to kill all
23 the Jews in the Generalgouvernement, so it is different.
24 You can see that they moved a step forwards during spring
25 1942.
26 MR RAMPTON: Did they eventually start killing Jews from the
. P-119
1 outReich, the Protectorate and other parts of Europe
2 systematically at these three camps?
3 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Not at these three camps. You can see that the systematic
4 killings of Jews from central Europe started, for
5 instance, in Minsk. It is the same pattern, like in
6 Chelmno. They first of all brought into the ghetto, but
7 then from May 1942 onwards they killed them on the spot
8 before they came into the ghetto in a small concentration
9 camp called Malitrostiness.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: By shooting them?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: By shooting them, yes.
12 MR RAMPTON: Then of course we have left out of account
13 Auschwitz.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Most, I believe I am right, I do not know whether you
16 agree, of the Jews that were taken there were not Polish
17 Jews?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, but I should add this. In Belzec, of course, they
19 started to kill the local Jews and then, a little bit
20 further, the German Jews who were brought into the
21 ghettoes in the district of Lublin. Then, as far as they
22 survived the conditions of the ghetto, taken to Belzec
23 from approximately May/June 1942 onwards.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I just want to look finally, if we may, Dr Longerich, at
25 one document which illustrates, I think, at least
26 I believe I am right, what you have been telling us about
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1 the way this system worked, or how it developed. It is at
2 page 243, I think. This is one document, my Lord, for
3 which I humbly apologise we have no translation.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is unusual in that respect.
5 MR RAMPTON: No. We have improved a lot. A lot of the
6 documents do have translations. Is this a printed
7 version, the document No. 218, of a Gestapo report from
8 Lodz dated 9th June 1942?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, it is.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is a table above it. Do you know who compiled that
11 table?
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They are two different documents.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I know they are.
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It says here, the Meldeburo, the registration office.
15 I think that is probably the registration office of the
16 Jewish Council of Lodz, because they would do the
17 registration work.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is deaths in the ghettoes, is it not?
19 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
20 MR RAMPTON: These are the comings and goings into the ghetto
21 and out of the ghetto, are they not?
22 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There are some people coming in on the left-hand side
24 under zugang?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Ein gesiedelte aus dem Reich und – what is WRTL?
. P-121
1 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Wartheland.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I see. In May 7,000 odd came into the ghetto, but
3 I am interested more in the Abgang column which is the
4 people who had gone for one reason or another. The left
5 hand column, Gestoben, are the dead people, are they not?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then the greatest number by far, a total I think of about
8 55,000, are said to have gone, they have been ausgesiedelt
9 nach Kulmhof?
10 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. Kulmhof is a very small village.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Chelmno.
12 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: That is Chelmno.
13 MR RAMPTON: Some were ausgesiedelt zur arbiet, do you see?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not very many but some were. Then the totals. Can we
16 look at the Gestapo report of 9th June which is just
17 underneath that table. Can I read to you a translation,
18 if you would not mind following it in the German. It is
19 on the subject of the Jews or Judentum, is that right?
20 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You tell me, with the help the interpreter, when I go
22 wrong. “With regard to the Jews” or Jewry “the work of
23 the State police focused on the Gau Ghetto in
24 Litzmanstadt”. That is German for Lodz, is it not?
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, the German name.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Litzmanstadt, “which was to be built according to the
. P-122
1 instructions of the Gauleiter”.
2 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Good. I did not do this translation so I take no credit
4 for it. “Upon instruction of the Gauleiter all Jews not
5 fit for work shall be evacuated and those fit for work in
6 the whole Gau collected in the Litzmanstadt ghetto”. Yes?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “From here larger proportions of Jews shall be used in the
9 Gau area for various kinds of work (building of rail track
10 and roads) and shall be returned into the ghetto again
11 after the end of work. Those Jews remaining in the ghetto
12 shall be without exception used for work there. In the
13 course of building the Gau ghetto, firstly, it appeared
14 necessary to create space for the Jews who were to be
15 settled there. For this purpose a larger number of Jews
16 not fit for work was evacuated from the ghetto and handed
17 over to the sonderkommando”. Correct?
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now I am going to struggle on my own because my
20 translation runs out there: “Of the Polish Jews since
21 16th January 1942 a total of 44,152 were outsettled”. We
22 do not have that word but that is what it means, deported?
23 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Of those from the outReich, the Ostmacht and the
25 Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia who came in October
26 1941, in das hiesige” – what does that mean?
. P-123
1 THE INTERPRETER: The ghetto here.
2 MR RAMPTON: “In the here ghetto”, yes, “who came in, 19,848
3 Jews”, the total that is, “10,993 were evacuated”, yes?
4 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “So that”, nunmehr?
6 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Now.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Now we have made room in the ghetto for about 55,000
8 Jews”?
9 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes, that is correct.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is that correct?
11 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not need to go any further. Does that illustrate
13 precisely the process that you have been describing to us?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, up to a point. What is puzzling me
16 about that is that some of the Jews who were being
17 evacuated out of ghetto, presumably to Chelmno, were in
18 fact Jews from the outReich, 10,000 of them?
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it look like it, nearly 11,000.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems rather an odd way of going about it
21 in a sort of way.
22 MR RAMPTON: Presumably there is pressure from those coming in.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
24 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: It does not say what happens. I would assume that the
25 largest number of the 19,000 Jews are dead at this time.
26 MR RAMPTON: I can tell you that, if you read the text, the
. P-124
1 total number that were ausgesiedelt, whether from Poland
2 or originally from the outReich or whatever, is 54,145.
3 If you look at the table, almost all of those went to
4 Kulmhof, because the total that went to Kulmhof or Chelmno
5 is 54,990.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So they were not dead?
7 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes.
8 MR RAMPTON: They were.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They were dead later.
10 MR RAMPTON: Did this happen quite often, that 11,000 Jews
11 brought in from Berlin in October and other parts of the
12 greater Reich would then be taken off to Chelmno and
13 gassed six months later?
14 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: These are the transport in October 1941, about 20,000 were
15 transported to the ghetto, and a large number of them died
16 during the winter.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I see.
18 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: They then transported 10,000 to Chelmno and the rest of
19 them they could obviously use for work assignments.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: More would come in to take their place?
21 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Yes. They make place for the local Jews in the Warthegau
22 who actually are brought into the ghetto.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is there any more of this report that we need to look at?
24 It is your document, it comes from your report.
25 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: No, I do not think so.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. My Lord those are all the questions I have in
. P-125
1 re-examination.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much, Mr Rampton.
3 Dr Longerich, eventually that concludes your evidence
4 I think.
5 A. [Dr Heinz Peter Longerich]: Thank you.
6 < (The witness stood down).
Part IV: Irving’s Submissions and Concerns (126.7-159.4)
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving. Now are you going at this
8 stage to make the submissions you mentioned this morning
9 about the —-
10 MR IRVING: After two or three other minor points, my Lord.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, all right. Deal with the others first.
12 MR IRVING: Firstly, my Lord, the defendants are relying quite
13 heavily on the Muller document of 1st August 1941. I do
14 feel that I need to see the original, or at least to know
15 where the original is. The Bundesarchive, as I told your
16 Lordship, has told me it is not in the file that has been
17 quoted by the Defendants as the source. We have only been
18 shown transcripts of it. I would like to see either a
19 facsimile or to know reliably where the document is.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just let us have a look.
21 MR IRVING: I showed your Lordship my correspondence with the
22 German Federal Archives in which they said they had
23 checked the file and they have not found the document in
24 the file as stated by the Defendants.
25 MR RAMPTON: I think this has been sorted, but, my Lord, can I
26 just ask Dr Longerich, because I think he probably has the
. P-126
1 answer to this. I think the short answer is, from what
2 I remember of what I was told, is that, when Mr Irving —
3 it is not Mr Irving’s fault — telephoned to look for the
4 document, they looked in the wrong file. I think it is as
5 simple as that. I am quite certain that the document is
6 there and elsewhere. I have a belief that it is at
7 Ludwigsberg, which is the centre for prosecutions, but can
8 I just take instructions?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do.
10 MR RAMPTON: Can we have a small conference, my Lord?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, please do.
12 MR IRVING: Quite simply, my Lord, the reason is that I would
13 like to know what else is in that file, of course.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause a minute and we will see what the
15 result of the huddle is.
16 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry about that, my Lord, but I think I am
17 right. The united brains of German historical research
18 tell me that the file number which was given by Mr Irving,
19 through no fault of his own, to the person at the
20 Bundesarchive was the wrong one. It is in the
21 Bundesarchive, but it is also in the Zentralstelle at
22 Ludwigsberg.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are they both Abschrifts?
24 MR RAMPTON: That I do not know.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because what Mr Irving is really looking for
26 I think is the one that is not an Abschrift, if there is
. P-127
1 one.
2 MR RAMPTON: By picking up the telephone, if Mr Irving’s
3 attempt failed, we will try and have a successful attempt
4 to get it from both places, if it is going to be possible
5 at any rate before the case is finished. Whether it is an
6 Abschrift or not, I do not know.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What you may not have heard Mr Irving say was
8 that he is also interested in knowing what else is in the
9 particular file which it is in, if it is in any file.
10 MR RAMPTON: Then I think he must go and look for that himself.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think he has the problem, at any rate with
12 some of the archives, that he has not got access to them.
13 Is that what you would say?
14 MR IRVING: The German government archives are corresponding
15 with me because I am offering them something by way of a
16 horse trade at present.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you not keep that up? What are you
18 asking me to do?
19 MR IRVING: I need to know the actual file number of course, my
20 Lord. I need to know the correct file number.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fair enough. Mr Rampton, when you
22 have found out which file number or numbers it is in, will
23 you pass that on to Mr Irving?
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, we will let Mr Irving know.
25 MR IRVING: The second problem, my Lord, it is not a problem,
26 is that I learned from yesterday’s Israeli newspapers that
. P-128
1 the Defendants are applying for access to Adolf Eichmann’s
2 private papers.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I saw that this morning.
4 MR IRVING: I welcome this initiative. Would they also apply
5 to the Israeli government for access to Heinrich Himmler’s
6 private diaries which are in the Israeli archives?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That, I am afraid, is something that is
8 beyond my power, because I can only order that things that
9 are within their power be disclosed and I do not think
10 that they have the power.
11 MR IRVING: Perhaps it will resonate off your Lordship on to
12 the defence side and, if they hear from me that Himmler’s
13 diaries are in Israeli hands—-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very flattering to me, Mr Irving
15 but I think it is overstating the position.
16 MR IRVING: The third point is that, once again, the Defendants
17 have dropped on me from a great height on Friday evening
18 several hundreds of pages of documents, expecting me to
19 read them in time for the cross-examination. These are
20 the bundles RWE1 and 2, which your Lordship probably has
21 also received.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am afraid I have not had time even to
23 dip into them.
24 MR IRVING: I apprehend that RWE stands for right-wing
25 extremism, which takes me on to the main point which I am
26 going to make now, the main submission I am going to make.
. P-129
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
2 MR IRVING: My Lord, I have taken the opportunity to go back to
3 the original pleadings to see what the issues are. The
4 issues as pleaded, as set out in my Statement of Claim,
5 I have looked through for any reference to right-wingism
6 and to extremism and, if I can just hand your Lordship
7 this page, it is the only reference in the Statement of
8 Claim to either extremism or right-wingism.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I suggest that the starting point
10 probably is to see what Professor Lipstadt wrote in her
11 book? Would you agree with me that the references to what
12 you might call right-wing extremism is the passage on page
13 14, am I right? Have you got the Statement of Claim or
14 her book?
15 MR IRVING: I do not have the Statement of Claim in front of
16 me. I only have the words complained of and the meaning
17 which I attach to those words.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, yes, the reason for starting with what
19 is written is that what you attach to Professor Lipstadt’s
20 words by way of natural and ordinary meaning is not, as it
21 were, the last word. You have to see also what was
22 actually written by the Defendant.
23 MR IRVING: Yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which is why I suggest you should start
25 with — have you not got the Statement of Claim?
26 MR IRVING: Yes.
. P-130
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall I read to you, and you will remember
2 it, what it says: “The confluence between anti-Israel,
3 anti-semitic and Holocaust denial forces was exemplified
4 by a world anit-Zionist conference scheduled for Sweden in
5 November 19922, and then says it is cancelled, but there
6 were a whole lot of scheduled speakers, including black
7 Muslim leader Ferikan, Faurisson: “Also scheduled to
8 participate were representatives of various anti-Semitic
9 and anti-Israel organizations, including Hamyat,
10 Hesbollah, Hamas, and then I think I am right in saying
11 that later on she returns to the same general topic.
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes, your Lordship might also read 161.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I knew there was another relevant bit.
14 MR RAMPTON: 122 to 130.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a reference to your having appeared
16 at IHR conferences. I do not want to read great chunks of
17 this out.
18 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. It is the extremism we are looking
19 for, and really the relevance of any extremism. I believe
20 the allegation is association with extremists.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
22 MR IRVING: Or extremist associations. I am anxious to try to
23 shorten the whole process, particularly I am anxious to
24 shorten any other public flogging which is held in
25 prospect for me.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us just take in what I hope logical are
. P-131
1 stages. I think I am missing out a passage which may be
2 relevant to this, but anyway those are things that
3 Professor Lipstadt writes. Then you, as you say, put on
4 those words as one of the meanings —-
5 MR IRVING: The only relevant meaning is that in the next
6 paragraph 9.1, that the Plaintiff is dangerous
7 spokesperson for Holocaust denial forces, who deliberately
8 and knowingly consorts and consorted with anti-Israel,
9 anti-semitic and Holocaust denial forces, agreeing to
10 appear in public in support of and along side violent
11 extremist speakers, and I emphasis the words “violent and”
12 because associating with extremists is not in itself
13 reprehensible.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Perhaps one ought just to read to the end of
15 that, because it is all part of the meaning you put on the
16 words.
17 MR IRVING: Indeed, yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Including, to take it shortly, Hesbollah,
19 Ferikan, Jew baiting black agitator, and so on.
20 MR IRVING: That is right.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Admirer of Colonel Gadaffi.
22 MR IRVING: In my submission, if the Defendants intend to
23 cross-examine me in any great detail on either my opinions
24 or state of mind or correspondence or speeches or
25 activities, it is perfectly entitled to go to any
26 associations I have had with violent extremists who are
. P-132
1 not many, if I can put it like that.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why not non-violent extremists?
3 MR IRVING: My Lord, non-violent extremism is not defamatory,
4 if I can put it that way round. If I were to associate
5 with somebody who held extremist views, this would not be
6 in the least bit reprehensible. I could associate, for
7 example, with Lawton LJ or with Cumming-Bruce LJ who both
8 held extreme political views in the 1930s, but nobody hold
9 it the least bit against me if I were to associate them
10 now because of course I believe they sit next to each
11 other in the Court of Appeal. So holding extreme views
12 has never been held to be reprehensible. I think this has
13 been established in law, that it is not defamatory to call
14 somebody a communist. It is not defamatory,
15 unfortunately, to call somebody a Nazi or a fascist except
16 in certain circumstances. The context can sometimes make
17 it defamatory, but per se it is not actually defamatory as
18 such to accuse somebody of having extremist views.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure about that. I think it may be
20 defamatory of somebody to say that he or she consorts or
21 associates with what you might call extreme extremists,
22 i.e., really the lunatic fringe of extremist because.
23 MR IRVING: Without any question, if the extremism is expressed
24 in violence.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me just finish, because, and this is what
26 we call the sting of the libel, you are being, to put it
. P-133
1 mildly, careless in your choice of friends. That is the
2 way in which I think it becomes defamatory to make that
3 kind of allegation.
4 MR IRVING: Careless in their choice of friends, probably all
5 of us is careless in their choice of friends, my Lord, and
6 I would not consider that to be a very severe libel at
7 all.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may not be the most severe libel, but the
9 question we are on at the moment is whether it is
10 defamatory at all.
11 MR IRVING: The real defamation here, and if we are looking for
12 a scale of defamation, the sting of the libel is that
13 I associate with people who are violently extremist, who
14 express their extremism by violent means and whose
15 extremism goes towards the overthrow of the democratic
16 rule of law or the overthrow of governments. That is
17 allegation that is made in the allegation that I consort
18 with Hamas or Hesbollah or terrorists leaders, that I am
19 willing to go on the same platform with them and speak
20 next to somebody like Louis Ferikan. That is the sting of
21 the libel, and to use that as a door to open my private
22 files to the exposure of the public, to suggest, well, he
23 has also got all sorts of other sleezy and unsavoury
24 friends or associates, whether it is true or false, is
25 I think highly prejudicial.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you are making two different points,
. P-134
1 if I may say so. The first question is whether it is
2 defamatory at all to say that you consort with extremists,
3 leave aside what sort of extremists they are, and, as
4 I understand it, the second argument you make is that what
5 actually Professor Lipstadt wrote is that you consort with
6 a particular kind of extremist, namely violent extremists,
7 and that the Defendant’s particulars of justification do
8 not really include those sorts of extremists; they include
9 other extremist but not the violently sort like
10 Hesbollah. Is that a fair summary of the way you put it?
11 MR IRVING: Your Lordship has summarized eminently well. It
12 was precisely the point I was going to make, and I was
13 only going to draw your Lordship’s attention to the
14 authorities given by Gatley.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mind before we go to that, just
16 remind, because I did not at lunch time take with me the
17 Defendants’ Summary of Case, to see how exactly they
18 summarize their —-
19 MR IRVING: I am sure Mr Rampton will.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would rather — not “rather”, that would
21 not be right to say at all, but I think it is helpful to
22 look at this stage at the written document.
23 MR IRVING: What I am asking your Lordship to do is to issue a
24 ruling to the Defendants on how far their
25 cross-examination can go, and what kind of associates or
26 associations or what kind of consorting they are entitled
. P-135
1 to cross-examine on, to have it go into the issues as
2 pleaded.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. The summary: “The Plaintiff”, you,
4 “are associated with right-wing extremists and right-wing
5 extremist groups in Germany, Britain and North America.
6 You have regularly spoken at events organised by
7 right-wing extremist groups, sharing a platform with other
8 right-wing extremists. You are a right-wing ideologue
9 whose participation in public affairs have been part of
10 and has assisted in the cause of Holocaust denial.” The
11 last sentence is not relevant. But you are saying that is
12 not a defamatory meaning at all?
13 MR IRVING: I am inclined to use the words “so what?” Even if
14 true, so what? Even if it was true that I associate with
15 right-wing organized bodies or whatever it is, are they
16 kind of bodies that advocate the use of extreme violence?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We must take this in stages. Are you saying
18 that that assertion is not a defamatory assertion at all
19 to be making about you?
20 MR IRVING: No, I do think so, my Lord. I think your Lordship
21 would agree, although I may be arguing against myself, it
22 is not defamatory for somebody to be called an extremist
23 or to say somebody holds extreme views, that is not
24 really, in law, defamatory.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that is your first submission.
26 MR IRVING: Yes, and to say someone holds right-wing views is
. P-136
1 not defamatory, except in certain circumstances.
2 Obviously if he was in the Soviet Union, then he would
3 probably be defamatory.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In some way you could put your case higher.
5 They are not saying you are an extremist, well, in this
6 part of the case. They are saying you associate with
7 these right-wing extremists. Do you follow the
8 difference?
9 MR IRVING: I would confidently expect your Lordship to say we
10 do not have any guilt by association in this country.
11 MR RAMPTON: I think it only right to remind your Lordship of
12 the summary, because one cannot take this little summary
13 at the beginning —-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another one at the end.
15 MR RAMPTON: There is one at the end in box 80 on page 27 which
16 is really perhaps the nub of it.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Shall I remind you of that, Mr Irving?
18 MR RAMPTON: I am bound to say I think that is highly
19 defamatory.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Claimant is a right-wing pro-Nazi ideologue,
21 as is demonstrated by the views you have expressed in
22 speeches and publications”.
23 MR IRVING: That is something different.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is saying you are a right-wing
25 ideologue, and then the Defendants say they will refer to
26 the anti-Semitic racist and misogynistic tone and content
. P-137
1 of your speech in publications.
2 MR IRVING: That is again something different.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Including those referred to above”. With
4 respect to Mr Rampton, I think that is a slightly
5 different point. That is directing the allegation at you
6 personally.
7 MR IRVING: I can meet that one head on. I have no problem
8 with that.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think maybe your concern is more about what
10 you would describe as “guilt by association”.
11 MR IRVING: Guilt by association for which there is no place in
12 an English court of law, my Lord.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That depends on the case. As to whether it
14 is defamatory, my present view is that it is defamatory,
15 at all events in the context of this case, to say that you
16 associate with right-wing extremists. Try to dissuade me
17 from that view if you want to, but I think in the context
18 of this case that is probably is defamatory.
19 MR IRVING: I have to say that to associate with people who
20 hold right-wing views is not defamatory. To associate
21 with people who hold extreme views, and I gave the example
22 Lawton LJ as one example, is also not defamatory. The
23 allegation, the implication, innuendo is that I associate
24 people like the Hamas or Halbollah’s terrorist leaders or
25 with Jerry Adams, to put it into an English context,
26 somebody like that, who would advocate the use of violence
. P-138
1 or applaud the use of violence. Of course, for that there
2 is not the slightest evidence. I would ask your Lordship,
3 therefore, to direct that the cross-examination should go
4 only to any associates of mine whom they can adduce who
5 have advocated violence or advocated the overthrow of
6 governments by violent means or that kind of extremism.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are on a separate point at the moment.
8 Just to complete the first argument that you are
9 advancing, would you not accept that if the Defendants
10 were able to adduce evidence that you were sitting there
11 on a platform, where others sharing the platform with you
12 and maybe participants from the floor are expressing
13 themselves in the most rabidly and repulsively
14 anti-semitic way, to make that allegation against you
15 could be defamatory of you. It is a hypothetical case.
16 MR IRVING: If they could establish that, yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. It is all a question of degree in a
18 way.
19 MR IRVING: It is a question of what is meant by “extremism”
20 I think. I think “extremism” in the eyes of the libel
21 courts has always been the extent of extremism towards
22 unlawful ends or unlawful means. That is what the
23 innuendo is.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You wanted to go to Gatley in this
25 connection?
26 MR IRVING: I was going to draw your attention to note 88 of
. P-139
1 page 43 of Gatley, where it does make the distinction, the
2 last three or four lines of that note,, after referring to
3 Devlin’s L own ruling, it says:
4 “See Boater v. Moray [1974]”, and the brief
5 summary is: “Not all communists’ methods and techniques
6 are reprehensible”, in other words, calling somebody a
7 communist alone is not necessarily defamatory. But then
8 it points out that in Butalazi the advocacy of violent
9 change is the kind extremism which is held to be
10 defamatory.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. In a way that rather suggests it is all
12 a question of degree.
13 MR IRVING: It is a question of degree, my Lord, and in view of
14 the fact that the Second Defendant specifically instanced
15 Hamas, Hesbollah — and I know they are putting that in
16 Section 5, but I am certainly not — that is what worries
17 me.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you are slightly moving on to your
19 next argument, which is that the sting of the libel
20 actually published by the Defendants is that you associate
21 with these sorts of violent extremists, and that the
22 evidence they are apparently wanting to call does not
23 really link you with violence, although it may link you
24 with extremism. That is your second point.
25 MR IRVING: It may satisfy the court of course to the contrary,
26 that I am linked with violent extremists. It may be that
. P-140
1 is what the intention is. That is why I would ask your
2 Lordship to rule that unless they can produce that
3 evidence or cross-examine on that kind of evidence, then
4 they should limit their cross-examination purely to that
5 kind of association, otherwise we do go into day after day
6 of looking at isolated relationships or happening to be in
7 the same room or whatever, which is very unsatisfactory
8 I think.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand the submission you are making,
10 but I should tell you this, that as I understand, anyway,
11 the law, the Defendants are entitled to put forward by way
12 of justification material which would support any
13 defamatory meaning which the words can bear. If they are
14 able to persuade me that somebody reading Professor
15 Lipstadt’s book could take the view that what she is
16 saying is that you associate with right-wing extremists,
17 even if they are not violent extremists, then it appears
18 to me that, arguably at any rate, the Defendants probably
19 are entitled to rely on this body of evidence.
20 MR IRVING: Except that is not an issue that I have pleaded in
21 my Statement of Claim.
22 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes it is.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have.
24 MR IRVING: My Statement of Claim.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We went through it. That is why it was
26 relevant to go through what Professor Lipstadt wrote as
. P-141
1 well what you complain of as a meaning, because the
2 Defendants are not confined, you must take it from me, to
3 the meaning you put on the words. They are entitled to
4 justify what she wrote in any meaning that the words can
5 bear. This is all a bit technical. I am trying not to be
6 unhelpful.
7 MR IRVING: I appreciate it is technical. I have read the
8 authorities as far as I have been able to. It is just my
9 understanding of the law was that the allegation of
10 extremism alone is not defamatory; holding extreme views
11 is not defamatory, and to be in the same room as people
12 who told extreme views is also not necessarily
13 reprehensible, unless they are advocating the overthrow of
14 governments by violence or something like that.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be a question of degree. Shall I hear
16 what Mr Rampton says and then you can reply?
17 MR RAMPTON: I am going to be both technical and I hope
18 common-sensical all at the same time. First of all, if
19 your Lordship turns to page 2 of the Statement of Claim,
20 probably so-called, as it happens, page 14, one notices
21 that there is nothing, and this is a technical point,
22 about violence at all. The actual drift or thrust of this
23 is: The confluence between anti-Israel, anti-semitic and
24 Holocaust denial forces, including of course Mr Irving.
25 There is no mention of violence there. It may be, I know
26 not, that in the public mind some of the persons mentioned
. P-142
1 there, perhaps Mr Faurisson or perhaps Mr Leuchter,
2 perhaps even Mr Irving, is associated with an intention to
3 commit violence. I doubt it.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And the groups particularly.
5 MR RAMPTON: Sure, but it would have to be pleaded as an
6 innuendo and it is not. That is the technical point.
7 Even if it had been, it would make no difference at all to
8 the Defendants’ right to justify the words which actually
9 appear on the page, which are that Mr Irving has
10 contributed to a confluence between anti-Israel,
11 anti-semitic Holocaust denial forces. It is that
12 contribution which he, along with his associates, has been
13 making these last 10 or 20 years that we wish to set out
14 to prove, showing him not just sitting in a room with
15 whoever might happen to be in a waiting room in a railway
16 station with whoever might happen to be there, but leading
17 a banner-waving bunch of neo-Nazi thugs. Your Lordship
18 will see the video tomorrow.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This would confine you to anti-Israel,
20 anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but anybody who advocates the return of
22 Nazism as a credo or ideology is automatically going to
23 fit all those three categories. The fact that they may
24 also wish to see a return of the Reichsmark or whatever it
25 might be, has nothing to do with the case at all.
26 The fact is that the material which is punted,
. P-143
1 if I may use that word, around these meetings is all
2 anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial stuff. Your Lordship
3 has seen quite a lot of it already. I am afraid to say,
4 whether in German or in English, it is all of the same
5 water. That is the first thing.
6 The second thing is this, that if one goes to
7 the pleaded meaning (i).
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr Rampton, is
9 there anything else that is relevant in the book?
10 MR RAMPTON: In the book, yes, under 161, line 123. These
11 lines are so squashed together I cannot separate them.
12 “An ardent admirer of the Nazi leader, Irving placed a
13 self-portrait”, etc., etc. “Irving, a self-described
14 moderate fascist, established his own right-wing political
15 party founded on his belief that he was meant to be a
16 future leader of Britain, he is an ultra-nationalist”,
17 whatever that may mean, “who believes that Britain has
18 been on a study path of decline accelerated by its
19 misguided decision to launch a war against Nazi Germany”.
20 Hitler apology is one of the leading features of
21 neo-Nazism, certainly in Germany and, in my belief, in
22 other parts of the world as well. It will be seen, and
23 that is one of the features of this material, that its
24 common theme, they celebrate the Fuhrer’s birthday
25 every year; they celebrate the birthdays of his close
26 associates like Rudolf Hess and Martin Bormann. That is
. P-144
1 very much a feature of anti-semitic, anti-Israel Holocaust
2 denial scene, of which I am afraid Mr Irving is very much
3 a figure of in front of the stage, at least was until the
4 mid-1990s.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was just going to ask you if it is right to
6 say that really there is no justification put forward for
7 what one might call the violence sting which might be
8 conveyed even without an innuendo being pleaded.
9 MR RAMPTON: Miss Rogers has corrected me. She says there is
10 strictly an innuendo, but I mind not about that. She is
11 quite right. It is on page 7 of the pleading somewhere or
12 other. Yes, paragraphs 11 and 12. So I was wrong about
13 that, but it does not make any difference because I am
14 still entitled to justify the natural and ordinary
15 meaning.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you are not seeking, which is the
17 question, to justify any meaning that Mr Irving associates
18 with the sort of violent types who one rather infers for
19 most of the membership of Hamas?
20 MR RAMPTON: Maybe. I am certainly not seeking to justify —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe is yes, is it not? You are not?
22 MR RAMPTON: I do not know whether one does or whether one does
23 not associate those people with violence.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you are not justifying that invitation.
25 MR RAMPTON: No, I am not justifying association with
26 terrorists. I am justifying association with the most
. P-145
1 ugly kind of neo-Nazi types, in particular in Germany and
2 in America. One sees how he pleads the case on page 5 at
3 the bottom of the page in (i), that the Plaintiff is a
4 dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial forces who
5 deliberately and knowingly consorts and consorted with
6 anti-Israel, anti-semitic and Holocaust denial forces.
7 One can stop there because the “and who” is then
8 disjunctive.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a bit over the page.
10 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but it is disjunctive.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see why you say that.
12 MR RAMPTON: Because it would to have say “Holocaust denial
13 forces who advocate and resort to violence”, etc., but it
14 does not. It falls into two distinct parts.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. The next question I suppose that
16 arises, I have not looked at RWE 1 and 2 beyond glancing
17 at them, you are saying, are you, that they all come
18 within the umbrella of the confluence of anti-Israel,
19 anti-semitic and Holocaust denial forces?
20 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship has seen some of the material which
21 has come from Mr Irving’s own pen or his own lips on these
22 occasions, and unless I am completely up a gum tree, it
23 does seem to us that that is some of the most virulently
24 racist and anti-Semitic material that one has ever seen.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry about that.
26 MR RAMPTON: No question. That is our case and it is not one
. P-146
1 that I am going to back off very easily, I have to say.
2 Those are the sorts of occasions when like-minded people,
3 and we shall identify them one by way, what the
4 organizations are, what they stand for, who their
5 personnel are, how the personnel all link up together,
6 that you have, in effect, for example in Germany a network
7 of what may properly be called “neo-Nazis” and there is no
8 other word for them, of which Mr Irving is a member.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another aspect which I should have
10 put to Mr Irving and I will in a minute, but I just want
11 to ask you about it. One of the main thrusts I suppose of
12 the libel, and certainly of the way you put your plea of
13 justification, is really the historiographical thrust,
14 namely that —-
15 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — there is misinterpretation, as you say,
17 after misinterpretation, and that races the question of
18 reason —-
19 MR RAMPTON: Motive.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — or motive, yes. Would you say that one
21 may see, I will not say a truer side, but another side of
22 Mr Irving’s approach to these issues, if one looks to see
23 not only what he says himself but what he is prepared to
24 have said by those with whom he has consorting?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I do not mean this in any literal sense, but
26 he has prostituted his skills and his talents, and they
. P-147
1 are considerable, in the service of I can only say a
2 restoration of a kind of Nazi anti-semitic ideology. That
3 is I have always said the obvious motive for the lies
4 which he tells when he writes history about Adolf Hitler,
5 and that is the motive for his Holocaust denial. The
6 whole thing hangs together. If we are allowed to pursue
7 this line of defence, your Lordship will see it, what this
8 is what happens when he goes to these gatherings, whether
9 they are the United States or in Germany or in this
10 country or whether ever it may be.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes,.
12 MR RAMPTON: Then one sees the picture of the whole man;
13 perhaps not the whole man, but three important parts of
14 the man: What he thinks, who he speaks to and how he
15 speaks, and then when he comes to his so-called history
16 how he writes. The three strands together form a powerful
17 picture of a man who is writing, falsifying history
18 because he worships Adolf Hitler, Nazi doctrines and hates
19 Jews and other people of different backgrounds.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am still of the view that what
21 is written about those with whom you consort is defamatory
22 or potentially defamatory. I am also of the view that
23 what the Defendants are seeking to set up by way of
24 justification of that defamatory meaning is something that
25 is open to them. One of the reasons, which I have not
26 asked you about and therefore I ought to put it to you
. P-148
1 now, is that it may well be that all this material, quite
2 apart from being relevant to justify the words, is also
3 relevant or may be relevant to explain how it comes about
4 that these errors to which the Defendants point in your
5 writings, how they can be explained. Do you follow me?
6 It is the point I raised with Mr Rampton.
7 MR IRVING: This is very similar to the idea that I omitted to
8 present your Lordship in the original presentation of the
9 submission, which is that another form of extremism which
10 is illegal is of course extremism in the way of a foreign
11 government, and this would be something similar, holding
12 extreme views in being beholden to —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, in some ways that is another motive.
14 MR IRVING: I appreciate that could be defamatory. I have no
15 objection at all to them leading evidence on that or
16 cross-examining on that kind of matter, but I think that
17 the court should very properly rein in any kind of
18 cross-examination that goes to guilt by association, and
19 I am sure your Lordship would quite clearly be able to
20 identify what any attempt of that is. If they can
21 establish that I have had any kind of associations with
22 any kind of neo-Nazis or Nazi subversists or
23 revolutionaries or people of the kind that Mr Rampton was
24 fantasizing about, then by all means let them try.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I think they are entitled to do is to
26 call evidence to the effect that you have either
. P-149
1 associated with groups that are in themselves right-wing
2 or in some way anti-Semitic or anti-Israel or involved
3 with Holocaust denial, and that they are also entitled to
4 put to you statements made by those who are intimately
5 involved with organizations of that kind or indeed
6 statements made at meetings when you were on the platform
7 or even present.
8 MR IRVING: My Lord, we are faced then with the problem of
9 definition. They say Mr Irving addressed the Women’s
10 Institute of Los Angeles or something which we claim is an
11 extremist neo-Nazi organization, how does your Lordship
12 know? They are not going to put in the expert reports.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I listen to the evidence, is the answer, or
14 look at the evidence.
15 MR IRVING: Yes.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And see what it amounts to.
17 MR IRVING: But for them just to say that a Mr Webber Mr Smith
18 or Mr Bloggs is an extremist and say “Mr Irving has met
19 him, we can prove it, we have photographs of him standing
20 to next to Mr Bloggs”, this is going to be a problem is
21 going to confront the court.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe what we had better to do to cater for
23 that concern, and I do understand it, we cannot have a
24 completely wide, open-ended kind of discussion about all
25 these organizations, unless the ground work is laid, is
26 for me to invite Mr Rampton perhaps to take Mr Funke
. P-150
1 through some of the main organizations, IHR and maybe some
2 of the others, to lay the foundation for saying that they
3 are the sorts of organizations on which the Defendants
4 should be entitled to rely.
5 MR RAMPTON: That is what I had hoped your Lordship might allow
6 me to do, because the tangle of interlocking personalities
7 or personnel and organizations in Germany is a nightmare.
8 Professor Funke is probably the only person in the world,
9 apart from Mr Irving who knows his way round it, and what
10 I had hoped was that I am going to try to show some film.
11 I will have to did it in cross-examination first, I will
12 point out some faces, and your Lordship will see exactly
13 what I have been talking about. Then Professor Funke who
14 will by then have instructed me, I will know who the faces
15 belong to and, roughly speaking, what their political
16 colour is. I can start off in that way. Then your
17 Lordship will find at the back of Professor Funke’s report
18 a list of abbreviations which nobody should have to try to
19 memorize, but much more useful a sort of dramatis
20 personae, that is to say, a short biographical sketch of
21 each of the main right-wing extremists with whom Mr Irving
22 is associated in Germany. That is an extremely useful
23 document.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR RAMPTON: Herr Funke has also produced a short executive
26 summary of his report, explaining the evolution and
. P-151
1 history of neo-Nazi right-wing extremism in Germany. As
2 soon as I get back to the office I will release copies of
3 that.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, there we are. That is the
5 view I take on your submissions. What it comes to is we
6 will look carefully at any organizations, and indeed any
7 individuals statements, on which the Defendants are
8 relying, but in principle, for the reasons I have given,
9 it seems to me they are entitled to advance this as part
10 of their plea of justification.
11 MR IRVING: Yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But we will look at it closely because it
13 cannot get out of hand.
14 MR IRVING: I am very anxious that it should not get out hand.
15 It is liable to turn into a shooting gallery of the most
16 random sort in which any numbers of names are dragged in
17 and presented as being neo-Nazis who happen to have been
18 in the same room as I or in the same continent or in the
19 same county.
20 MR RAMPTON: I would not dream of doing that. It would be a
21 monstrous waste of the court’s time, and anyway it would
22 get me nowhere which is perhaps more important. It will
23 consistent of showing Mr Irving’s intimate relationships
24 over periods of time with individuals, ranging from them
25 turning up at his meetings, this kind of thing, him having
26 dinner with them. It is nothing like finding two people
. P-152
1 in the same waiting room at a railway station. It really
2 is not.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are two propositions, both have to be
4 put together. One is an association.
5 MR RAMPTON: Exactly.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which is a pure question of fact.
7 MR RAMPTON: Then they have to prove who the person is.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then you have to prove the colour of their,
9 whatever it is —-
10 MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is exactly right.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — cut of their gib. It is not an easy
12 area. I think rogues gallery, which is what this in a way
13 comes to, is always difficult. We have to watch it.
14 MR RAMPTON: Rogues’ gallery I have always hated as an
15 advocate. I have always found it difficult, and it is a
16 question of fine judgment in each case. But this is not
17 rogues gallery, if I can prove that Mr Irving is one of
18 the rogues.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is always true of rogues gallery.
20 MR IRVING: My Lord, in response of course, if I am going to be
21 subjected to this kind of public flogging, then course
22 I shall expect or hope for a greater degree of latitude in
23 presenting my own bundle E when the time comes, because
24 that is also a kind of rogues gallery of its own kind.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who are rogues?
26 MR IRVING: The international endeavour to destroy me.
. P-153
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
2 MR IRVING: There are certain parallels there which I would
3 draw.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think this can be approached on the
5 basis of tit for tat, as it were, but I hear what you
6 say. You would be entitled to say, Mr Irving, that you
7 wanted a formal ruling from me. I think as we have the
8 transcript, and as there are a great many other things for
9 all of us to do overnight, as it were, you are entitled to
10 ask for it, do you want me to do a formal ruling?
11 MR IRVING: Not a formal ruling, my Lord, but I would like to
12 know what the timetable is now for the next two or three
13 days so that I can plan.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very good question.
15 MR RAMPTON: I am in your Lordship’s hands. I am in
16 Mr Irving’s hands. I say with not with any pride or
17 whatever, but I do say that we have made very good
18 progress in this case. We are at least four, maybe five
19 or six, weeks short of the estimate even now. We have
20 nearly finished the evidence. I quite agree, those files
21 actually landed on me on Friday too, and my heart sank
22 too. I have in fact read them. They do contain a lot of
23 material about Mr Irving’s activities because they are
24 taken from his diary and from his correspondence and so
25 on.
26 MR IRVING: Selected from my diary.
. P-154
1 MR RAMPTON: Yes, maybe. That is right. The human brain is
2 very good at selection. I would like him, if he needs it,
3 to have the time to read them before I cross-examine him
4 about them. I have got a residuum of cross-examination
5 about history still to do, loose ends. I am entirely in
6 your Lordship’s hands.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it Herr Funke, is it, or Dr Funke?
8 MR RAMPTON: Dr Funke is here.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Presumably, the sensible thing then would be
10 to take his evidence next.
11 MR RAMPTON: Before I cross-examine Mr Irving?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am completely easy. It is just a
13 waste of time, I would have thought, to have Dr Funke
14 hanging about while you cross-examine.
15 MR RAMPTON: Well, they want me to cross-examine first.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us ask Mr Irving because your view
17 counts.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, I would like to cross-examine Dr Funke
19 before my cross-examination. The simple reason is this
20 may enable us to knock out a number of personalities or
21 organizations which would probably be useful. If we
22 establish the number of personalities or organizations are
23 perfectly clean, and not criminal and are non-violent and
24 non-revolutionary and not anti-Semitic and none of the
25 things that Professor Lipstadt has said in her book, then,
26 presumably, your Lordship would not be interested in my
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1 relationship with them.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point. Mr Rampton, do you
3 want to —-
4 MR RAMPTON: No, it is all right.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What Mr Irving has just said (and there is
6 something in it) is that if he manages one way or another
7 to knock out any of the organizations, basically,
8 I suppose in his own cross-examination of Dr Funke, Herr
9 Funke, then he does not need to face cross-examination
10 from you on that particular topic?
11 MR RAMPTON: Well, it may be. On the other hand, from
12 Professor Funke’s point of view and certainly from mine,
13 it is going to be a very great deal quicker, I mean, if
14 Mr Irving is going to be able to knock out an
15 organization, he can do it in answer to my questions.
16 MR IRVING: What I would prefer to do is to put to Dr Funke
17 certain extracts from diaries pre-emptively, if I can put
18 it like that, which shows that I have shown a proper
19 respect and distaste for some of these people and that
20 would be the time to do it.
21 MR RAMPTON: This is all the wrong way round. It is Mr Irving
22 who is the Claimant in this case. I cannot say I have a
23 right because nowadays those sorts of procedural rights no
24 longer exist. But it is unsatisfactory that the Claimant
25 in the case should, as it were, get first shot at the
26 Defendants’ experts.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well —-
2 MR RAMPTON: It should not be that way around.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Save for this, this may be unfair and wrong
4 — if so, tell me — my impression was that you
5 deliberately reserved for a later stage of
6 cross-examination the whole issue of extremist
7 associates. Indeed, I think at one time you were not sure
8 you were going to necessarily want to cross-examine on
9 them.
10 MR RAMPTON: I think that is true. I have not deliberately
11 reserved it. It just got left. I mean, it was going to
12 be last in the queue anyway.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. I think I am going to suggest
14 that Herr Funke gives evidence before you resume your
15 cross-examination of Mr Irving because I think that may
16 have the effect to some extent of short circuiting things.
17 MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship says so. I do believe it will be
18 quicker the other way round, but I am sure Professor Funke
19 can deal with it, but if that is going to happen, then
20 I, with your Lordship’s permission, would want a little
21 bit of time in chief with Dr Funke first.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure that is sensible.
23 MR RAMPTON: Which I think would speed things up. So perhaps
24 we can do that tomorrow or whenever, I do not know.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to, as it were, introduce him and
26 make a start with him?
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1 MR RAMPTON: What, now? Yes, well, no, I do not want to
2 because I have not got the kit together.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.
4 MR RAMPTON: As I was expecting to cross-examine first, quite
5 honestly.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand why you do.
7 MR RAMPTON: We need videos too which we have not got in
8 court.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will have that first thing in the
10 morning?
11 MR RAMPTON: We will have them first thing in the morning.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask for everybody’s benefit what the
13 likely duration of Dr Funke is going to be?
14 MR RAMPTON: As I am not having first shot at him, I am not
15 saying —-
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you will, first shot at Mr Irving, you
17 mean? You are going to have first shot with Herr Funke.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but only in chief. I will only be,
19 I suppose, about an hour in chief.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is what I assumed.
21 MR IRVING: I will take the rest of the day, that is all.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The rest of the day and that is all?
23 MR RAMPTON: Then we can, subject to Mr Irving’s having had
24 time to read those files if he wants to, finish the
25 evidence this week.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is what I was rather hoping.
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1 Good.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In that case we will adjourn now and Herr
3 Funke tomorrow morning at 10.30.
4 (The court adjourned until the following day)
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