-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from; http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/l/lipstadt-deborah/response-to-irving.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/l/lipstadt-deborah/response-to-irving. html">Dr. Deborah Lipstadt response to Irving lawsuit</A> ----- For our archives. Thanks, Michael. Om K ----- Defense: Dr. Lipstadt responds to David Irving (Part 1 of 2) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [UseNet headers trimmed] 1996.--I.--N. In the High Court of Justice QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION Between DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING Plaintiff and PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED First Defendants DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT Second Defendant DAVID CRANK Third Defendant ALISTAIR BABB Fourth Defendant STANLEY BROMLEY Fifth Defendant COLIN ORR Sixth Defendant DEFENCE OF THE SECOND DEFENDANT 1. It is admitted that the Plaintiff is a well-known writer, and the author of a biography " Goebbels, Mastermind of the Third Reich" (hereinafter referred to as "the Goebbels book"). It is denied that the Plaintiff is an historian. Save as aforesaid, paragraph 1 of the Statement of Claim is not admitted. 2. Paragraph 2 of the Statement of Claim is admitted. 3. It is admitted that the Second Defendant is the author of a book entitled D ENYING THE HOLOCAUST, sub-titled The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (the Work), which the First Defendants published within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court in about July 1994. The Second Defendant occupies the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Save as aforesaid, the Second Defendant declines to plead to paragraphs 3 to 7 inclusive of the Statement of Claim, and those parts thereafter of the Statement of Claim which concern the other Defendants to this action. 4. It is admitted that in the Work, the First Defendants published the words (as footnoted but with different numbering) set out in paragraph 8 of the Statement of Claim. The said words formed but part of the Work, to the whole of which the Second Defendant will refer to put the said words into their proper context. It is denied the said words referred to the Plaintiffs save where he was expressly referred to by name. Save as aforesaid, paragraph 8 of the Statement of Claim is denied. 5. It is denied that the said words, whether in their natural and ordinary meaning, or by way of innuendo bore or were understood to bear the meanings pleaded in paragraph 9 of the Statement of Claim. 6. Further, or in the alternative, the said words are true in substance and in fact. The meanings the Second Defendant will justify are : that the Plaintiff has on numerous occasions (in the manner hereinafter particularised) denied the Holocaust, the deliberate planned extermination of Europe's Jewish population by the Nazis, and denied that gas chambers were used by the Nazis as a means of carrying out that extermination; 7. that the Plaintiff holds extremist views, and has allied himself with others who do so, including individuals such as Dr. Robert Faurisson, and Erns t Zundel; 8. that the Plaintiff, driven by his obsession with Hitler, distorts, manipulates and falsifies history in order to put Hitler in a more favourable light, thereby demonstrating a lack of the detachment, rationality and judgment necessary for an historian; 9. that there are grounds to suspect that the Plaintiff had removed certain microfiches of Goebbels' diaries contained in the Moscow archives, from the said archives without permission; and that the Plaintiff lied and/or exaggerated the position with regard to the unpublished diaries on microfiche of Goebbels contained in the Moscow archives, and used by him in the Goebbels book; 10. that in all the premises, the Plaintiff is discredited as an historian and user of source material, and there was an increased risk that the Plaintiff would for his own purposes, distort, and manipulate the contents of the said microfiches in pursuance of his said obsession. P A R T I C U L A R S Meaning (i) - (iii)(v): The Holocaust and the Gas Chambers 11. The Plaintiff has publicly claimed as follows : 12. "There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.... by logical deduction that were no gas chambers anywhere in Germany... But this is not an important issue. I am not a Holocaust Historian. About 100,000 people died in Auschwitz in three years. If we must assume generously that a quarter of them were murdered then we must remember that the British killed 50,000 Germans in one night when they raided Hamburg...." 13. "Auschwitz was not an extermination camp and the Holocaust was a propaganda hoax by the British... That question [the Holocaust] is still wide open. I still maintain Auschwitz was not an extermination camp. There were no gas chambers there, I think they were a figment of British wartime propaganda..." 14. "I also predict that one year from now [1992], the Holocaust will be discredited. That prediction is lethal because of the vested interests involved in the Holocaust industry. As I said to the Jewish Chronicle, if a year from now the gas chamber legend collapses, what will that mean for Israel? Israel is drawing millions of dollars each year from the German taxpayer, provided by the German government as reparation for the gas chambers. It is also drawing millions a year from American taxpayers who put up with it because of the way the Israelis or Jews have suffered. No one is going to like it when they find out that for 50 years they have been believing a legend based on baloney". 15. "I do not think there were any gas chambers or any Master Plan. It's just a myth and at last that myth is being exploded." 16. "Why dignify something (the Holocaust) with even a footnote that has not happened" (when dealing with the new edition of "Hitler's War", written by the Plaintiff and published by the Plaintiff's own imprint, Focal Point in November 1991); 17. "The gas chambers were erected in Poland for the tourists". 18. The said claims were variously false and/or misleading in that: 19. The Nazis established Concentration Camps proper (camps in which persons were imprisoned without regard to the accepted norms of arrest and detention), throughout the Third Reich and the Nazi Occupied Territories: for example, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen; 20. The systematic mass murder of the Jews began in about June 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. In the first place, carried out primarily by the SS Einsatzgruppen, hundreds of thousands of Jews were shot to death; 21. After an experiment on Soviet prisoners of war in the main camp of Auschwitz on 3 September 1941 in which 600 of them were murdered using Zyklon B gas, extermination camps in Poland at Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek were used and/or established with (save for the latter two, which were also labour camps) the sole purpose of murdering every person brought to them, irrespective of age or sex; 22. Chelmo was put into use in December 1941. The victims were killed using gas vans. About 320,000 persons were murdered there; 23. Auschwitz-Birkenau began operating as an extermination camp in March 1942. At its height, it had 4 gas chambers in use, using Zyklon B. Over 1 million Jews were murdered there, as were tens of thousands of gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war, until it was closed in November 1944; 24. Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were established as part of Aktion Reinhard (headed by Globocnik), the murder operation principally aimed at the Jews of the General Government in Poland, and used carbon monoxide gas generated by a diesel or gas engine. About 600,000 Jews were murdered at Belzec, whilst it operated between March and December 1942; between about 250,000 and 500,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor during its operation between April 1942 and October 1943; and between about 870,000 and 1.1 million Jews were murdered at Treblinka between July 1942 and August 1943. 25. The Holocaust, the deliberate planned extermination of Europe's Jewish population by the Nazis, resulted in the murder of millions of Jews in extermination camps as set out above. About a further 2 million Jews were killed in Russia, elsewhere in Poland and in other European countries. 26. On 5 May 1992, the Plaintiff was found guilty by the District Court of Munich of defamation in conjunction with the offence of denigrating the memory of deceased persons. The facts upon which the said conviction was based were as follows. On 21 April 1990, at a meeting attended by about 800 people of the Deutsches Jugendbildungeswerk at the restaurant Lowenbraukeller on Stiglmaierplatz in Munich, the Plaintiff said (inter alia): "We now know, and I need mention this here only by way of footnote, that there were never any gas chambers at Auschwitz.... We now believe that, just as the gas chambers which the Americans built here in Dachau in the days following the end of the war, were a sham, the gas chambers which can now be seen by tourists in Auschwitz were built by the authorities in Poland following the Second World War...For this the German tax payers have had to pay about 16 billion Deutschmarks as a penalty for Auschwitz... For a sham". 27. On 14 January 1994, the 25th Criminal Chamber of the Regional Court of Munich upheld the said conviction of the Plaintiff, and increased his fine (to 200.00 DM for 150 days). During the course of his appeal the Plaintiff claimed that his researches had revealed no evidence of the gassing of the Jews in Auschwitz and scientific opinions had proved the impracticability of gassing. During the course of its judgment upholding the Plaintiff's conviction as aforesaid, the Regional Court further found that (as was the fact): "Anyone denying the gassing and murdering of Jews in the `Third Reich' defames every Jews and slanders the memory of all Jews gassed in Auschwitz. By calling the mass gassing of Jews in Auschwitz an invention, the Accused [the Plaintiff] denies the Jews the inhumane fate to which they were subjected in the `Third Reich' purely on account of their origins...He knew that the so-called Auschwitz lie would be assessed as defamation and prosecuted...The Accused is seeking only superficially to paint a picture at variance with established research and in truth is clearly seeking to deny the mass murder of the Jewish people in the Third Reich...The Accused can only reach his conviction by failing to heed the historical fact of the gassing of the Jews in Auschwitz...and by relying on a few revisionist outsiders and pseudo natural history propaganda magazines apologetic to the National-Socialist cause. Had the Accused applied his endeavours in an unprejudiced manner, not marked by any ideology of the Right, he would always have been in a position to assess accurately the numerous historical sources and witnesses...To the extent that the Accused is relying on his belief, the Criminal Chamber has not taken this into account to reduce the fine...since the gassing of the Jews in Auschwitz is such a publicly known historical fact that only people - like the Accused - who refuse to acknowledge this dreadful truth are able to arrive at such a belief. To the detriment of the Accused it has to be said that a denial of the fate of the Jews in Auschwitz represents a massive insult to Jewish people and a grave defamation of those who died. The Criminal Chamber has also appraised as aggravating the fact that the Accused from his own testimony disseminated the so-called Auschwitz lie even subsequent to the events at issue here.... there is a risk of the generation which did not experience as direct contemporary witness the situation prevailing during the National Socialist period and the persecution of the Jews accepting this line of thinking without questioning it... It also had to be taken into account that the Accused as a writer and historian is also in a position to give the impression that his thoughts are backed up by scientific evidence. There is the risk that by giving voice in this way he will be used by revisionists of the neo Nazi movement as a historical-scientific signboard and thereby introduce above all uncritical young people not versed in history to his ideas...." 28. The Institute of Historical Review ("the IHR") is an ultra-right wing, pseudo academic organisation which is the centre of revisionist activities and publications, and which attracts neo Nazis, anti-semites and racists. The IHR is part of a network that includes the Liberty Lobby which publishes Spotlight, a journal devoted to the Jewish conspiracy theory, and the Committe e for Open Debate on the Holocaust. The IHR holds an annual revisionist conference, devoted to the promulgation of the view inter alia that there was no Holocaust. On its editorial board was Ditlieb Felderer, an Austrian resident of Sweden, publisher of the vitriolic anti-semitic publication "Jewish Information Bulletin", who in 1983 was sentenced to 10 months in prison for distributing hate material (he had sent leaders of the European Jewish community pieces of fat and locks of hair with a letter asking them if they could identify the contents as Hungarian Jews gassed at Auschwitz). 29. In September 1983, the Plaintiff (described by the IHR as "noted British revisionist historian"), lectured to the Fifth said conference. Amongst his fellow speakers was Dr Robert Faurisson, author of numerous revisionist works, and sued (according to IHR literature advertising the conference) for defamation for speaking "independently on the Six Million/Gas Chambers thesis". Dr Faurisson was in fact convicted by the French courts for the libel of denying the Holocaust. Dr Faurisson has claimed the "so-called gassing" of the Jews was a "gigantic politico-financial swindle whose beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism" and whose chief victims were the German people and the Palestinians. He has further claimed that the Nazi decree making it mandatory for Jews to wear a yellow star was a measure to ensure the safety of German soldiers because Jews engaged in espionage, terrorism, black market operations and arms trafficking; and that Jewish children were required to wear the yellow star from the age of 6, because they too were engaged in illicit or resistance activities against the Germans; 30. In February 1989, the Plaintiff lectured to the Ninth said conference. Amongst his fellow speakers were Fred Leuchter, a self-styled engineer, who published a report purporting to prove that the gas chambers at Auschwitz and Majdenek were never used to gas people, speaking on "The `Gas Chambers' at Auschwitz...", and Carlo Mattogno, speaking on "The First Auschwitz Gassings: Genesis of a Myth". At the said conference the Plaintiff said: "They [the Exterminationists] have realised that they are way out of line with the Auschwitz story, and they are frantically engaged in damage control at present. They're pulling their entire army of liars back from the main battlefront, into the second line, because all the artillery that's coming down on the front line now is making it too dangerous for them". 31. In October 1990, the Plaintiff lectured to the Tenth said conference. Amongst his fellow speakers was Dr Robert Faurisson. The Plaintiff's lecture was introduced by Mark Weber. Mr Weber described how at the trial of Ernst Zundel (see (7) below), the Plaintiff had explained in detail why he now accepted the Revisionist view of the extermination story. Mr Weber called the Plaintiff "a kind of one-man IHR", and set out the conclusion of the Plaintiff's address in Dresden on the anniversary of the fire-bombing of that city in which he said: "Ladies and gentlemen, survivors and descendants of the holocaust of Dresden, the holocaust of Germans in Dresden really happened. That of the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz is an invention. I am ashamed to be an Englishman". 32. In the course of his said lecture to the IHR in 1990 (to the whole of which the First Defendants will refer) the Plaintiff said (inter alia): "Just picture me seven years ago, in 1983. I'm at the press conference of the West German Magazine Der Stern, in Hamburg. I'd been smuggled in disguised as a reporter for Bild-Zeitung, which is the opposition newspaper group in Germany. I was very familiar with the Hitler case: I'd spent twenty years of my life studying the story of Adolf Hitler. I'd built up a personal card index on his life - about 30,000 index cards - and when they told me that they were about to publish the Hitler diaries, I knew it was phony! So Bild-Zeitung said: "Will you come along disguised as our press correspondence and attend this damned press conference and blow it up for them"? So I went along. I was the first one at the microphone, and I was the first one to have the chance to ask the people at Der Stern certain questions. I said right out: "The diaries are fake - the Adolf Hitler diaries are fake!" They'd spent nine million deutschmarks on them! And all the German historians had said they were genuine. Eberhard Jäckel had said they were genuine, so they must be genuine - but they weren't. I got the same kind of feeling about the Holocaust. (I'm going to come to Rommel further on). But it's the same story, because when we come to look at the story of Field Marshall Rommel, and the legend that he was a member of the anti-Hitler resistance movement, that he was a hero of the twentieth of July, 1944, a story that has come down for forty years, since World War Two - we find that nobody has bothered to go back and look at the actual records. They all believed what everybody else had written about him. And it isn't until you go back and look at the records that you realise that the truth is somewhere else". This how it was when I was in Toronto a couple of years ago. I was called as an expert witness as a historian to give evidence at the Ernst Zundel case, where Zundel's researchers showed me the Leuchter Report, the laboratory tests on the crematoria and the gas chambers. As a person who, at University in London, studied chemistry and physics and the exact sciences, I knew that this was an exact result. There was no way around it. And suddenly all that I'd read in the archives clicked into place. You have to accept that, if there is no evidence anywhere in the archives that there were any gassings going on; that if there's not one sing German document that refers to the gassings of human beings - not one wartime German document; and if there is no reference anywhere in the German archives to anybody giving orders for the gassings of people, and if, on the other hand, the forensic tests of the laboratories, of the crematoria, and the gas chambers and Auschwitz and so on, show that there is no trace, no significant residue whatsoever of a cyanide compound, then this can all only mean one thing. So how do we explain the fact that for forty-five years since the end of World War Two, we have all, internationally, globally, been beset by a common guilt: the idea that the human race was responsible for liquidating six million human beings in gas chambers? Well, the answer is: we have been subjected to the biggest propaganda offensive that the human race has ever known. It's been conducted with such finesse, with such refinement, with such financial clout, that we have not been able to recognize it as a propaganda offensive - from start to finish. And yet there are these weapons cruising past us on the horizon - in all their ugliness - and the biggest weapon, of course, of all in this propaganda campaign against the truth since 1945 has been the great battleship Auschwitz! And we have now, at last, the historical profession - above all, the Revisionist historical profession - have found as our own task, the major task: "Sink the Auschwitz!" I warned you that I was going to show no respect for tests in the first part of this talk. Sink the Auschwitz! But we haven't had to sink the Auschwitz, because the crew of the Auschwitz, Beate Klarsfeld, the Wiesenthals, Elie Wiesel and the rest of them, have been struggling on the bridge and battling with each other - boxing and engaging in fisticuffs - and the Auschwitz has been steering itself amongst the icebergs, and finally it has begun to scuttle itself. They have begun to haul down the flat of the battleship Auschwitz. They've taken down the placard, they've taken down the memorial to the four million, and they've replaced it with a rather smaller memorial to one million. Of course that's not the end of the story. I'm convinced that it's just the "interim memorial". I think it's on cardboard, if you have a close look, because why waste money on an expensive memorial when you're only going to have to change it again in a few months time! They're going to have to change it because it's quite obvious. I'm not going to say only a million - I'm not going to say only any figure died in Auschwitz. We don't know the exact figures of how many people died in Auschwitz... That's what's happening in Germany now. They're still sticking to the six million figure. And they're still being told that they were gassed. Although all the evidence runs the other way. To me, Auschwitz is unimportant - I'm happy that the ship is scuttling itself. It's vanishing. It's going to be left like the battleship Arizona at Pearl - if you ever go to Hawaii and have a look at it - with just its mast sticking out of the water to mark where once a great legend stood. And when people go there a hundred years from now and say: "Down there is the most incredible legend that people believed for fifty years: it's the great battleship Auschwitz, it was scuttled by its crew!" Why don't we have to believe it? Well, you know about the Leuchter Report". The First Defendants will further rely on a comparison between the use made by the Plaintiff in his lecture of what was said by Professor Arno Mayer in his book " Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?", and what was actually said in the book in context, as an example of manipulation of source material (see (16) and following below); 33. In October 1992 the Plaintiff lectured to the 11th said conference. Amongst his fellow speakers were Arthur Butz, author of "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century", which purports to prove that there was never a Holocaust, Fred Leuchter, Ahmed Rami described by the IHR as a gallant Moroccan who has become a radio apostle for Revisionism in Sweden and who tells of his jail sentence for "lack of respect" for Jews in Sweden, and (by videotape, since he was refused permission to enter the USA) Ernst Zundel, a Canadian neo-Nazi. 34. Ernst Zundel, is the author of "The Hitler We Loved and Why", published by "White Power Publications" which concluded with the proclamation that Hitler's spirit "soars beyond the shores of the White Man's home in Europe. Where we are, he is with us. WE LOVE YOU, ADOLF HITLER!"; and also of the book, "UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons?" which argued that UFOs were Hitler's secret weapons and are still in use at bases in the Antarctic beneath the earth's surface. Zundel advocates fascism, denies that the Holocaust occurred and created Samisdat Publications to reprint and distribute material which was racist, anti-semitic and which denied the Holocaust. 35. In 1988, Zundel was prosecuted by the Canadian Government (for the second time) for stimulating anti-semitism through the publication and distribution of material he knew to be false. (Zundel was convicted on that charge at the first trial, but the conviction was overturned on appeal). The Plaintiff gave evidence at that second trial on Zundel's behalf, purportedly as an expert witness. The Plaintiff was shown by Zundel's researchers, the so-called "Leuch ter Report", ("the Report"). which purported to be an expert report based on a visit by Fred Leuchter and Dr Robert Faurisson to Auschwitz - Birkenau and Majdanek, and which proved (so its author claimed) that there had never been any homicidal gassing at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek. The Plaintiff adopted the said report enthusiastically. As he said at the IHR meeting referred to at (5)(iv) above: "As a person who, at University in London, studied chemistry and physics and the exact sciences, I knew this was an exact result. There was no way round it. And suddenly all that I'd read in the archives clicked into place. You have to accept that, if there is no evidence anywhere in the archives that there were any gassings going on; that if there's not one single German document that refers to the gassing of human beings...and if, on the other hand, the forensic tests of the laboratories, of the crematoria, and the gas chambers and Auschwitz and so on, show that there is no trace, no significant residue whatsoever of a cyanide compound, then this can all only mean one thing..." [no gassings of human beings (at Auschwitz-Birkenau) in gas chambers] 36. In fact, Fred Leuchter had no expertise in the matters upon which he purported to give an expert view in the Report, and his evidence as a self-styled expert was (rightly) rejected (save to a very limited extent) by the Canadian Court, for that reason. Moreover, the scientific validity and methodology of the Report were fundamentally flawed. Though Leuchter claimed an expertise in engineering, he had none. Indeed in June 1991, 2 weeks before Leuchter was due to go on trial in Massachussets for practising or offering to practice engineering without a licence, Leuchter signed a consent agreement admitting that he was not and never had been a professional engineer, and had fraudulently presented himself to various states as an engineer with the ability to consult on matters concerning execution technology. Leuchter further acknowledged that though he was not an engineer and had never taken an engineering licensing test, he had produced reports, including the Report containing his engineering opinions. Henceforth, Leuchter agreed to cease and desist, presenting himself as an engineer and issuing any reports, including the Report. 37. By then the Plaintiff had published under his Focal Point imprint, the English edition of the Report entitled "Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report - The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz", with a foreword written by the Plaintiff. In that foreword, the Plaintiff said: "UNLIKE THE WRITING OF HISTORY, chemistry is an exact science. Old fashioned historians have always conducted endless learned debates about meanings and interpretations, and the more indolent among them have developed a subsidiary Black Art of "reading between the lines", as a substitute for wading into the archives of World War II documents which are now available in embarrassing abundance. Recently, however, the more daring modern historians have begun using the tools of forensic science - carbon-dating, gas chromatography, and simple ink-aging tests - to examine, and not infrequently dispel, some of the more tenaciously held myths of the twentieth century Sometimes the public is receptive to the results, sometimes not. The negative results of the laboratory analysis of the ancient Shroud of Turin is one example: it is not a deliberate fake, perhaps, but nor was it nearly as old as the priests would have had centuries of gullible tourists believe. It is unlikely that the world's public will be as receptive, yet, to the results of the professional and dispassionate chemical examination of the remains of the wartime Auschwitz concentration camp which is at the centre of this report. Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved. (Since 1949 the State of Israel has received over 90 billion Deutschmarks in voluntary reparations from West Germany, essentially in atonement for the "gas chambers of Auschwitz"). And this myth will not die easily: Too many hundreds of millions of honest, intelligent people have been duped by the well-financed and brilliantly successful post-war publicity campaign which followed on from the original ingenious plan of the British Psychological Warfare Executive (PWE) in 1942 to spread to the world the propaganda story that the Germans were using "gas chambers" to kill millions of Jews and other "undesirables". As late as August 1943 the head of the PWE minuted the Cabinet secretly that despite the stories they were putting out, there was not the slightest evidence that such contraptions existed, and he continued with a warning that stories from Jewish sources in this connection were particularly suspect. As a historian, I have, on occasion, had recourse to fraud laboratories to test controversial documents for their authenticity. In the late 1960s I discarded certain diaries of Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, offered to myself and the publishers William Collins Ltd, since Messrs. Hehner & Cox Ltd of the City of London advised me that the ink used for one signature did not exist during the war years. It was I who exposed the "Hitler Diaries" as fakes at Der Stern's famous International Press Conference in Hamburg in April 1983. And yet I have to admit that it would never have occurred to me to subject the actual fabric of the Auschwitz concentration camp and its "gas chambers" - the holiest shrines of this new Twentieth Century religion - to chemical tests to see if there was any trace of cyanide compounds in the walls. The truly astounding results are as set out in this report: while significant quantities of cyanide compounds were found in the small de-lousing facilities of the camp where the proprietary (and lethal) Zyklon B compound was used, as all are agreed, to disinfect the plague-ridden clothing of all persons entering these brutal slave-labour camps, no significant trace whatsoever was found in the buildings which international opinion - for it is not more than that - has always labelled as the camp's infamous gas chambers. Nor, as the report's gruesomely expert author makes plain, could the design and construction of those buildings have made their use as mass gas-chambers feasible under any circumstances. For myself, shown this evidence for the first time when called as an expert witness at the Zundel trial in Toronto in April 1988, the laboratory reports were shattering. There could be no doubt as to their integrity. I myself would, admittedly, have preferred to see more rigorous methods used in identifying and certifying the samples taken for analysis, but I accept without reservation the difficulties that the examining team faced on location in what is now Poland; chiselling out the samples from the hallowed site under the very noses of the new camp guards. The video tapes made simultaneously by the team - which I have studied - provide compelling visual evidence of the scrupulous methods that they used. Until the end of this tragic century there will always be incorrigible historians, statesmen and publicists who are content to believe, or have no economically viable alternative but to believe, that the Nazis used "gas chambers" at Auschwitz to kill human beings. But it is now up to them to explain to me as an intelligent and critical student of modern history why there is no significant trace of any cyanide compound in the building which they have always identified as the former gas chambers. Forensic chemistry is, I repeat, an exact science. The ball is in their court. David Irving London, W1 May 1989" 38. In an Early Day Motion, in the 1988/9 session of Parliament, 92 Members of Parliament condemned the Plaintiff and the Report as follows:- "That this House, on the occasion of the reunion in London of 1000 refugees from the Holocaust, most of whose families were killed in gas chambers, or otherwise by Nazi murderers, is appalled by the allegation by Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler apologist David Irving that the infamous gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdenak did not exist, ever, except perhaps as the brain-child of Britain's brilliant wartime Psychological Warfare Executive; draws attention to a new fascist publication, the Leuchter report, in which this evil column appears; and condemns without qualification such pernicious works of Hitler's heirs." 39. In an Early Day Motion, in the 1991/2 session of Parliament, 43 Members of Parliament condemned the Plaintiff and his aforesaid views and the Plaintiff's activity in smuggling Leuchter, the subject of an exclusion order by the Home Secretary into the United Kingdom. The Plaintiff had done so in order that Leuchter could speak at a meeting organised by the Plaintiff which coincided with the publication by the Plaintiff of the revised version of Hitler's War, held at Chelsea Town Hall in November 1991. The meeting was addressed by the Plaintiff and was attended by prominent members of the National Front and the BNP (which organisations were described by the Plaintiff after the meeting as NCOs and foot soldiers). 40. Whilst publicly denying the Holocaust (for example see (1)(v) and (5)(iv) above) in the new edition of "Hitler's War" in 1991, the Plaintiff wrote extensively about the shooting of hundreds of thousands of Jews, including women and children, by the Einsatzgruppen in the East, mentioned the 152,000 Jews killed at Chelmo on 8 December 1941 only to propose that an official exchange of letters, six months later proved Hitler had nothing to do with them, and referred to the "thousands [of Jews] evidently being murdered", between March 1942 and July 1942, without explaining how they were killed, again emphasising that Hitler knew nothing. 41. The Plaintiff holds extremist views (see above). He described himself as "a mild fascist" (or took no objection to being so described until recently), and said he had visited Hitler's eyrie at Berchtesgarten and regarded it as a shrine. The Plaintiff has also said, "I am more sympathetic to Hitler than others have been ... I may well exchange pleasantries with Andries Tremact but he lacks Adolf Hitler's charisma ...". The Plaintiff has a small self-portrait of Hitler in a glass case in his study, and other Nazi memorabilia. The Plaintiff believes in the benevolent repatriation of immigrants. 42. Moreover, the Plaintiff has strong links with Ewald Althans, the leading neo-Nazi in Munich, who is anti-semitic, and racist (and proud of it). Althans booked the Plaintiff's hotel in Munich for him under a pseudonym in May 1992, and sells and distributes the Plaintiff's books, videos and cassettes. 43. As a result of the Plaintiff's aforesaid views and activities, the Plaintiff has been deported from Austria (inter alia, for his extremist views and his connections with the German extremist group, the DVU); and banned from entering Australia, Canada and Germany. The Plaintiff has also been banned from the German State Archives. Meaning (i)-(iii)(v): "Hitler's War" (unattributed page references are to "Hitler's War") 44. In 1977, the English edition of the Plaintiff's book, " Hitler's War" was published. The purpose of Hitler's War, informing its massive documentary presentation, was to present a revised picture of Hitler by transferring both the political and military errors and the crimes ascribed to him to others: the errors to his generals, the crimes to his political associates. 45. As in the case of the death of Sikorski (see (49) below), the Plaintiff had one vital document, which he declared (p.xiv) was "incontrovertible evidence" that Hitler was not responsible for the extermination of the Jews - indeed knew nothing about it (until October 1943) it was carried out behind his back by Himmler. This "incontrovertible evidence" is an entry in Himmler's telephone log-book recording a call on 20 November 1941 made by Himmler, then at the Führer's Headquarters in East Prussia, to his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, then in Prague. 46. The Plaintiff claimed (at p.xiv): "Many people, particularly in Germany and Austria, had an interest in propagating the accepted version that the order of one madman [Hitler] originated the entire massacre [of the Jews]. Precisely when the order was given and in what form has, admittedly, never been established. In 1939? - but the secret extermination camps did not begin operating until December 1941. At the January 1942 "Wannsee Conference"? - but the incontrovertible evidence is that Hitler ordered on November 30, 1941, that there was to be "no liquidation" of the Jews (without much difficulty I found in Himmler's private files his own handwritten note on this)." 47. This claimed the Plaintiff, (e.g at pp.332, 393 and 504) proved that Hitler positively forbade the murder of the Jews (of which somewhat inconsistently, he was declared by the Plaintiff to be unaware). Thus, the Plaintiff could conclude, the Final Solution, and extermination of Jews in the Gas Chambers were the unauthorised policy of Himmler alone. 48. In fact, the said note proved no such thing. The Himmler note actually read (in translation): "Transport of Jews from Berlin. No liquidation". It is quite clear that the order (even if it was Hitler's) applied (as the Plaintiff must have been aware, since he read it) to a particular transport (i.e. train load) of Jews only: it was an exception. A particular liquidation would not have been forbidden unless it would otherwise have happened. 49. Further, the said document, like any document, has to be seen in its context, from which the Plaintiff detached it. Although the full diary page entry was reproduced in facsimile in a plate in the book, the plate was not transcribed apart from the two sentences set out in (20) above. The lay reader would not have been able to understand Himmler's handwriting (in German) from the plate or the significance of the rest of the diary entry. Additionally, the transportation of Jews from Berlin and their semi-public murder in Riga was causing unrest both in Berlin and among the occupying troops in Riga; and so the order was given that this train-load was not to be liquidated (although in fact it was liquidated since the particular exception arrived too late). [Continued] --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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