When I returned home later that night, I found a large carton on the dining room table. A quick glance at the return address indicated that it came from the Archives of the State of Israel. The hard copy of his memoirs had arrived. The historian in me was itching to read them. Yet, having become so immersed in the details of the killing process—in a way that felt deeply personal—I momentarily recoiled from this direct connection with one of the architects of the killing process.
THE HEROIC NAZI PAST
On Hajo’s second day in the witness box, Irving returned to the question of whether the slogan at the 1990 Munich conference—“Wahrheit macht frei”— was an allusion to Auschwitz’s “Arbeit macht frei.” Judge Gray sat and listened for a while. He looked increasingly troubled. Finally, he admonished Irving that this topic, which had been covered the previous day, could not be debated any longer. Rampton quickly rose to his feet and offered to help resolve the matter. He read Irving’s diary entry from an October 1989 visit to Berlin. “At 11 am, a well attended press conference . . . closed with my new slogan Wahrheit macht frei. The lefty journalists got the allusions.”13 Once again Irving had entrapped himself. His own journal entry revealed that he knowingly used this slogan as a pun on the words under which millions of concentration camp inmates had passed.
After Irving persisted in questioning Funke about all sorts of small details in his footnotes, Judge Gray admonished Irving that his cross-examination was “achieving virtually nothing.”14 Irving, who seemed taken aback by Judge Gray’s comments, quickly turned to a section of Hajo’s report about a dinner party in Munich in 1990. Irving had recorded in his diary how, on April 20—Hitler’s 101st birthday—he had attended a dinner “organized” by Ewald Althans, Ernst Zündel’s closest associate in Germany and a leading right-wing extremist, and attended by an array of extremists and neo-Nazis, including Wilhelm Stäglich, a member of the Journal of Historical Review’s Editorial Committee and Karl Phillip, a leading German denier. Most of the guests were Germans, with the exception of Irving and Anthony Hancock, a major printer and publisher of neo-Nazi material throughout Europe.
Irving noted in his diary that the dinner ended with a “Trinkspruch [toast] spoken by him [Althans], to a certain statesman whose 101st birthday falls today. All rose, toasted; I had no glass, as I don’t drink.” Irving asked Funke about the party: “From the diary entry, is it evident that . . . I did not join in this very tasteless toast?” Rampton jumped to his feet to protest Irving’s description of the toast. “Mr Irving should not lard his questions with interpretations like ‘this very tasteless event.’ There is nothing in the diary about that.” A scowling Irving asked Funke, “[W]ould you consider it to be very tasteless for a German to offer a toast to Adolf Hitler in the presence of two English people?”15 What happened next caught me by complete surprise. Suddenly I heard myself exclaiming: “Otherwise, it would have been just fine!” Unlike my other comments, which were usually whispered to James, this came out of my mouth at full throttle, something I only realized when people in the gallery began to laugh. Heather, grinning broadly, gave me a decidedly un-barrister-like thumbs-up. Rampton nodded his head ever so slightly in my direction and, apparently satisfied that no further objections were necessary, sat down. Embarrassed, but also admittedly satisfied that at long last I had “broken” my silence, I avoided looking in Judge Gray’s direction.
When Rampton reexamined Hajo, he asked him to elaborate on the connection between words and violence. Those who commit violence, Hajo explained, need a “kind of encouragement . . . to do the deeds they are doing.” Irving’s visits provided this form of encouragement. When Rampton suggested that these contemporary “rabble rousers” might be compared to Hitler and Goebbels who never “wield[ed] a club or a gun themselves” but whose words prompted others to do so, Hajo shook his head up and down, indicating a firm “Yes.”16
Rampton noted that when Irving proclaimed at the Halle rally that he did not fear writing about the war crimes “we, the English, committed against the German people,” his words were greeted with applause and cheers. “Does that surprise you, Professor Funke?” “No, not at all,” Hajo responded. The people at this rally identified with “the kind of Nazi past, the past of heroic things.”17
At the Hagenau rally, where Zündel spoke of a Judenpack, Irving had regaled the crowd with his story about the “one-person gas chamber.” Rampton asked Hajo if this kind of rhetoric was “characteristic of the views and attitudes of neo-fascists in Germany?” Hajo observed that this was not “soft” antisemitism, but was “openly rage-based antisemitism.” He then leaned forward in his chair and enunciating carefully, as if to ensure that, despite the somewhat convoluted context of his words, they would be fully understood:
This full scale of contempt like in the word Judenpack, this absolutely cynicism with which Irving is referring to the most deep causing sorrows of the people of the Jewish descent, this kind of extreme radical racist, post Holocaust antisemitism is . . . at the core of these groups that I call neo-National Socialists.18
When Hajo finished, Rampton quietly said, “Thank you very much, indeed, Professor.” Maybe I was projecting my own feelings, but my Scottish-born, Oxford-educated, fly-fishing, cartoon-drawing, and rugby-loving barrister seemed to be thanking Hajo for far more than just testifying at this trial.
Irving then rose to defend his use of the “one-man gas chamber” anecdote. It demonstrated the “lurid” and “totally ludicrous” eyewitness evidence that has been cited to prove the existence of gas chambers. Moreover, he insisted, he had also spoken at the rally of the appalling horrors undoubtedly suffered by the victims of Auschwitz. Wasn’t it “dishonest,” he asked Hajo, for the defense to use “just that passage . . . as a representation of my entire speech?” Hajo, who tends to be a mild-mannered man, angrily observed that Irving had not just poked fun at the survivors this one time, but did it “again and again.” Citing Irving’s promise to form ASSHOLS, an organization of Auschwitz survivors, Hajo insisted that “This cannot be. If you honestly, if you seriously are saying that you realize the trauma of those who . . . survived.”19 Once again in the closing days of this trial, Irving was being called to account. He could not have it both ways—call the survivors liars but deny being a Holocaust denier.
At the end of the day I left the courtroom with James, Rampton, and Heather. As Rampton lit his cigarette, he observed that our worries about Hajo’s English had been unnecessary and that the longer he was on the stand, the more he became a prosecutor of sorts, deftly drawing on moral principles that harkened back to Hajo’s Jesuit education. I told the others that Peter’s and Hajo’s testimony had moved me deeply. They seemed to not just be defending historical truth. They seemed to also be defending their country against political predators. James, who had spent countless hours compiling material on Irving’s right-wing extremism, believed that Irving considered postunification Germany a fertile field for his politics. “His visits to Germany,” James observed, “seem eerily different from his speaking tours in Canada or the U.S.”
As we neared the street, Heather observed, “For the past two months we have been living in the Third Reich. During the past few days we have begun to emerge into the present. The question remains: which is more repulsive?”
EIGHTEEN
ONE-PERSON GAS CHAMBERS AND WHITE PEOPLE’S POLKAS
“So how do you feel, now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel?” Anthony smiled at my question, which I posed as I caught up with him on the stairs to the courtroom. Today was the last regular session. We would then recess for a week to prepare for closing arguments. I told Anthony that I was finding it hard to fathom that we were approaching the end. The team that had worked so closely together was about to disband. I expected him to find this a bit maudlin and to protest—a bit too much—that this was how trials worked, a group comes together, works intensively, and then disbands. Instead, with unmistakable melancholy, he agreed it would be hard. “T
his was a good team and an important battle.” Just then Janet called for silence. Anthony looked relieved.
STRATEGIC TASTELESSNESS
Rampton began by playing a videotape of a 1991 speech Irving had given in Ontario. Irving had repeated for his audience the “one-person gas chamber” anecdote about the telephone booth that, he said, was carried around the Polish countryside by two Germans. Irving claimed that according to “eyewitnesses” the Germans convinced people to get in the gas chamber by ringing the phone inside. His audience laughed. Rampton turned off the tape: “How many eyewitness accounts and who were the people that told these stories?” Irving was emphatic: “Alleged survivors of Auschwitz.” “How many?” Rampton demanded. “Certainly one account,” Irving responded. That was all Rampton needed. Relying on a rhetorical device he had used before, he repeated one word from Irving’s Ontario speech and added his own commentary: “‘Eyewitnesses,’ plural?” Irving brushed away his use of the plural. It was just “a slip of the tongue.” “It is not,” Rampton said. “It is a deliberate exaggeration. . . . You got some good laughs with this little story.” Irving defended telling this anecdote. Not only was it a “ludicrous story” but it illustrated how historians selectively use the eyewitness accounts. “They take the ones that they like and they ignore the ones that are obviously baloney.” Rampton wondered why a serious historian would recite a story that was “obviously untrue.”1
And why, he continued, did the Ontario audience find this anecdote so funny? Irving claimed he kept his audience interested “by interlacing the serious documents that you want them to listen to with material to keep them awake.” Rampton offered a different explanation. “What you are doing is . . . mocking the survivors and, indeed, the dead from the Holocaust.” When Irving insisted he was not mocking survivors, Rampton countered by reading Irving’s comments about the stories spread by people who “went to Auschwitz or . . . who believed they went to Auschwitz, or . . . who can kid themselves into believing they went to Auschwitz. . . .” Irving had told his audience that these “little legends” must be treated with “ridicule and . . . bad taste. . . . [But] ridicule alone is not enough. You have got to be tasteless about it. You have got to say things like more women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”2 Rampton pointedly noted that Irving’s quip had been met with applause.
Rampton’s voice bristled: “Mr Irving, what you are doing here—” Irving interrupted to finish Rampton’s sentence: “Mocking the liars.” Rampton, looking away from Irving: “Oh yes, Mr Irving, but why the applause?” Irving responded, “Because I am a good speaker, Mr Rampton.” His answer caught Rampton off guard. “What?” In a tone suggesting that the answer was self-evident, Irving repeated, “I am a good speaker.” Rampton, having regained his footing, had a different explanation: “You are . . . feeding, encouraging, the most cynical radical antisemitism in your audiences.” Irving shot back, “Do liars not deserve to be exposed as such?”
The judge interrupted this heated interchange to ask Irving to clarify his statement about survivors: “Are you saying that they have come to believe what they say about their experiences and that is why they need psychiatric treatment? Or . . . that they are collectively telling lies, deliberate falsehoods?” Appearing happy to expand upon his views directly to the judge, Irving described Auschwitz as having become akin to a religion. “As with any religion, there are hangers on, people who believe they were there, people who believe they touched the cloth.” Irving admitted he had been tasteless. Rampton interjected, “And your audience absolutely love it. . . . It is music to their ears.” Irving stood up straight and possibly forgetting the context of the question, rather proudly responded, “They travel 200 miles sometimes to . . . hear me speak.”3
Rampton looked like he was about to respond. Then, apparently having decided that Irving’s answer spoke for itself, moved on.
IRVING AND THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE: AN INADVERTENT CONNECTION?
From Irving’s diaries and correspondence files, we discovered that, during visits to the United States, he had spoken on a number of occasions at meetings sponsored by the National Alliance (NA), an organization whose goal was to build societies “throughout the White world which are based on Aryan values” and to thoroughly root out “Semitic and non-Aryan values and customs everywhere.”4 The NA’s founder, William Pierce, authored The Turner Diaries, which had become the underground bible of American far-right extremists.5
In response to our pretrial interrogatory about his NA connections, Irving had denied ever having spoken at any of their meetings. Rampton now asked Irving to concede that this statement was false.6 When Irving insisted that it was not, Rampton reminded him of a video we had found in his collection that showed Irving giving a speech with an NA banner by his left shoulder. Irving insisted he was completely unaware of the banner’s significance, therefore his denial was earnest.
Rampton looked skeptical, but did not challenge Irving’s disclaimer. Instead he introduced a letter Irving had received detailing the arrangements for a June 1990 speech in Ohio. In the corner were the words “National Alliance” and the group’s logo. Irving insisted he had paid no heed to either one. Once again Rampton looked unconvinced, but did not challenge him. He then asked Irving to look at a National Alliance bulletin that reported the following: “On October 1st, the Cleveland unit hosted a very successful lecture by the British historian and revisionist author, David Irving. More than 100 tickets were sold . . .” Irving’s photograph accompanied the article. Irving, assuming he knew what would be Rampton’s question, jumped right in: “Have I ever seen that before? The answer is no.” Rampton asked Irving to be patient and assured him that his question would come, but only after several more documents. Rampton continued and read Irving’s diary entry about the Cleveland meeting: “Fine meeting, around 150 people, many ethnic Germans. Gate of $500 was agreed plus $1700 book sales.” Irving emphatically noted that “there is not the slightest reference either in that diary entry or in any other diary entry . . . to the National Alliance.” Rampton reproved Irving in a tone a parent might use with an obstreperous child: “I asked you to be patient. You have jumped in as you so often do.” Then, rather nonchalantly, Rampton asked Irving to turn to the next document. As he did, Heather passed a copy of it to me. A quick glance revealed Rampton’s strategy. On October 6, 1991, five days after the Cleveland meeting, Irving wrote in his diary: “Drove all day to Tampa. . . . Arrived at the Hotel Best Western. . . . Turned out the meeting here is also organized by the . . . National Alliance” (emphasis added). A flicker of surprised recognition crossed Irving’s face. “It just goes to show how bad my memory is.” Then, trying to extricate himself from this predicament, he continued, “Yes, but it . . . illustrates, does it not, the fact that . . . I had not the slightest notion who these people are.” In a tone I had not heard previously, Irving rather plaintively asked Rampton, “Would that be a proper interpretation to put on that entry?” Not surprisingly, Rampton disagreed. He reread Irving’s diary entry: “‘[T]he meeting here—Tampa—is also organized by the . . . National Alliance.’ In other words you knew that both meetings were organized by the National Alliance?” When Irving declared that he learned who the organizers were after the meeting, Rampton reminded him that in the videotape of his speech in Tampa the host opened the meeting by announcing: “On behalf of the National Alliance and National Vanguard Books I would like to proudly welcome Mr David Irving.” Rampton, rather solicitously asked Irving, “Do you want to revise your evidence?”7 I whispered to James, “Did Rampton just ask him if he wanted to admit he had lied?” James smiled. Irving insisted that the man in the video had simply put in a “plug” for his own organization and that he had not “the faintest notion” of who organized this meeting. Rampton declared, “I take leave, . . . Mr Irving, to inform you that I reject every word of that answer.”8
In 1998, Irving had spoken at yet another
National Alliance meeting. A representative from the American Jewish Committee had attended and picked up National Alliance books and tapes. When Rampton asked Irving to look at this material, Irving dismissed it as irrelevant: “What possible relevance [could] whatever leaflet was on the table 100 feet away from me [have]?” Before Rampton could respond, Judge Gray interjected, “I regard it as being relevant to know what sort of an organization it is that you have addressed on three occasions.” Irving, looking a bit surprised, turned toward the judge and declared, “My Lord, I object to the suggestion that I was addressing an organization. I was addressing my people who had come from all over Northern Florida to hear me speak. . . . I am sure it was a slip of the tongue, but I would hate it to go on the record unchallenged.” Judge Gray ignored Irving’s protest. Rampton did likewise. I wished he had asked Irving what he meant by “my people.”
In an effort to illustrate what the NA stood for, Rampton took out its Statement of Belief. He warned that it sounded like a “modern English American version of Nazi ideology.” Irving protested. “What has that got to do with me?” Rampton angrily responded, “You fuel these people with your thoughts about the Holocaust, Mr Irving. That is why [sic] it has got to do with you.”9
From a section entitled “White Living Space,” Rampton read: “After the sickness of multi-culturalism . . . has been swept away we must again have a racially clean area of the earth for the further development of our people.” On its website the organization promised the creation of an “Aryan Society” in which young men and women would dance “polkas or waltzes, reels or jigs, or any other White dances, but never undulate or jerk to Negroid jazz or rock rhythms.” Rampton asked Irving if the Alliance’s warning about the “sickness of multi-culturalism” resonated to him. When Irving said no, Rampton reminded him of his declaration about “feeling queasy” when he saw blacks playing for the English cricket team, his description of AIDS as God’s Final Solution against black Africans and homosexuals, and his proposal that a black newscaster be “relegated to reading the news about muggings and drug busts.” Irving insisted these were jokes, not “racial in citement.” Rampton looked up at Irving over his gold-rimmed spectacles. His raised eyebrows clearly indicated what he thought of Irving’s explanation.
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