moments
Moments across the trial
Four courtroom exchanges that Mr Justice Gray addresses directly in his April 2000 judgment. Each is paired with the paragraph numbers where the relevant finding appears, so the trial transcript and the judgment can be read against one another.
The 'baby Aryan' ditty
In transcript
Rampton cross-examines Irving on the rhyme he wrote for his nine-month-old daughter Jessica
Gray quoted the diary entry at ¶9.6(ii) as one of eight passages adduced by the defendants as evidence of Irving's racism, recorded Irving's explanation at ¶9.19 (the ditty was an angry response to a Searchlight article that had captioned a photograph of Irving with his daughter and her mother as the "perfect Aryan family"), and concluded at ¶13.106 that the ditty was "undeniably racist in putting into [the child's] mouth the words 'I am a Baby Aryan… I have no plans to marry an Ape or Rastifarian'".
cross-examinationracismdittyJessicaSearchlightevidence-of-racist-views
Day 14 · Cross-examination of Mr Irving by Mr Rampton
Rampton"A quiet evening at home", etc, "Jessica", who is Jessica?
IrvingMy little infant child.
RamptonNine months old in September 1994. "Jessica is turning into a fine little lady. She sits very upright on an ordinary chair. Her strong back muscles, a product of our regular walks in my arms to the bank, etc., I am sure. On those walks we sing the binkety-bankety-bong song. There are two other poems in which she stars: 'My name is baby Jessica. I have got a pretty dressica, but now it is in a messica' and, more scurrilously, when half breed children are wheeled past" and then you go into italics, "'I am a baby Aryan, not Jewish or sectarian. I have no plans to marry an ape or a Rastafarian"?
RamptonRacist, Mr Irving? Anti-Semitic Mr Irving, yes?
RamptonTeaching your little child this kind of poison?
IrvingDo you think that a nine month old can understand words spoken in English or any other language?
RamptonI will tell you something, Mr Irving, when I was six-months old, I said, "Pussy sits in the apple tree until she thinks it is time for tea"?
Justice GrayYou were very precocious!
RamptonI was, but then I burned out at two!
IrvingYes. Perhaps I should set this in its context. The scurrilous magazine "Searchlight" (about which we will, no doubt, hear more) had just published a photograph of myself and Jessica and her mother, who is very blond and very beautiful, and it had sneered at us as being the "perfect Aryan family".
Rampton--- ditty by her perverted racist father.
— recurs —
Evans expert testimony — cross-examination of Professor Evans by Mr IrvingMr Justice Gray re-opens the ditty: 'is the use that is made of the ditty unrepresentative of the diaries?' Evans replies 'There is not a ditty a day, it is one ditty, but there are many other remarks of that sort.'
Irving cross-examined late in the trialIrving raises the ditty himself, defending his decision not to suppress it from his diary: 'the little racist ditty that Mr Rampton thinks I should be horse whipped for.'
Irving closing speechIrving asks the judge to take the 'ugliest example' (implicitly the ditty) and weigh it against his career as a whole.
Mr Justice Gray, ¶13.106
"I have concluded that the allegation that Irving is a racist is also established for broadly analogous reasons. … It appears to me that the sample quotations set out in paragraph 9.6 above provide ample evidence of racism. The ditty composed by Irving for his daughter is undeniably racist in putting into her mouth the words 'I am a Baby Aryan … I have no plans to marry an Ape or Rastifarian'."
The roof of morgue 1 at crematorium 2
In transcript
Day 10 — Irving cross-examines van Pelt on the four Zyklon-B introduction chimneys at crematorium 2: the marks on the 1944 aerial photograph, the construction-period ground photographs, and the surviving roof slab
By late in the trial, Gray records at ¶13.81, "the emphasis of Irving's case on Auschwitz appeared to shift from the absence of cyanide in the brick and plaster to the roof of morgue 1 at crematorium 2." Gray addressed the photographic and structural arguments at ¶¶13.83–13.87 and the documentary basis for the redesign at ¶13.76 ("powerful evidence that the morgue was to be used to gas live human beings who had been able to walk downstairs"). On the cumulative question he concluded at ¶13.91: "no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews."
auschwitzkrematorium-iiaerial-photographszyklon-btar-barrelscross-examination
Day 10 · Irving's tar-barrel argument
IrvingThe substance of Irving's question to van Pelt: what does the witness say about the spacing of the four smudges on the photograph compared with what Irving calls "the tar barrels on the roof"?
IrvingThe marks on the aerial photograph have, in Irving's phrasing, "no connection whatsoever with the protruberances that are visible from ground level" because the spacing is "totally different".
— in reply
Van PeltProduces the contemporary ground photographs showing the chimneys themselves on the roof of crematorium 2, dated to the construction period, and the Bauleitung blueprints showing the four Drahtnetzeinschiebvorrichtungen in their as-built positions.
— bearing across the trial —
Van Pelt evidence-in-chiefThe 762-paragraph report walked through under Rampton's examination — the "convergence of evidence" framework Gray addresses at
¶13.72.
Continued crossVan Pelt's third day under cross. Gray records at
¶7.11 that Irving "modified his position: he was prepared to concede that gassing of human beings had taken place at Auschwitz but on a limited scale."
Mr Justice Gray, ¶13.91
"Having considered the various arguments advanced by Irving to assail the effect of the convergent evidence relied on by the Defendants, it is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews."
Auschwitz: from four million to "approximately 500,000"
In transcript
Days 9–11 — Irving's published Auschwitz death-toll figure modifies under cross-examination of van Pelt
Gray catalogues Irving's public statements at ¶8.20, including the 1991 This Week interview claim that "25,000 innocent people [were] executed by one means or another" at Auschwitz. At ¶7.11 Gray records: "In the course of the trial Irving modified his position: he was prepared to concede that gassing of human beings had taken place at Auschwitz but on a limited scale." Gray's overall assessment of the evidence, at ¶13.78, is that "the various categories of evidence do 'converge' in the manner suggested by the Defendants… Jews were killed in large numbers in the gas chambers at Auschwitz."
auschwitzdeath-tollconcession1986-australiafour-millioncross-examination
Day 9 · Irving on the "extraordinary explanation"
Irving"On the one hand, we are told that 4 million people had been killed in Auschwitz, and yet these people were being put on trial for the murder of 300,000. There is no mention of the other 4 million in round figures."
— context
Irving uses the Soviet four-million figure (long rejected by Western historians) as a rhetorical foothold; van Pelt explains that the 300,000 in the 1947 Cracow trial was a deliberately conservative prosecution charge tied to provable named-victim counts, never offered as a total.
— bearing across the trial —
Rampton plays the 1986 Australia recordingIrving is asked on the record to reconcile his earlier public figure with what he has conceded under cross-examination of van Pelt.
Mr Justice Gray, ¶7.11
"In the course of the trial Irving modified his position: he was prepared to concede that gassing of human beings had taken place at Auschwitz but on a limited scale. However, he continued to assert that it was not… genocidal."
The Schlegelberger memorandum
In transcript
Day 24 — Irving asks Longerich whether the undated 1942 Justice Ministry note is "a key document in the history of the Final Solution"
Gray summarises Irving's reliance on the note at ¶13.33: Irving regards it as a "high-level diamond document" and "the linchpin of his argument that Hitler was the Jews' friend." On the alternative interpretation, Gray finds at ¶13.35 that "it is at least equally likely that the note is concerned with the complex problems thrown up by the question how to treat half-Jews (mischlinge)" — not the Jewish question generally. At ¶13.36 he concludes that Irving "presents the Schlegelberger note as decisive and incontrovertible evidence when, as he should have appreciated, there are powerful reasons for doubting that it has the significance which he attaches to it."
schlegelbergerhitler-orderlongerichmischlingmarch-1942cross-examination
Day 24 · Irving's question to Longerich
Irving"Do you consider the Schlegelberger document to be a key document in the history of the Final Solution?"
— in reply
LongerichThe document is real, the conversation it summarises is real, and the conversation is about a different procedural question (whether the Mischlinge are subject to the deportation regime). Treating the document as a stand-in for "Hitler did not authorise the killing" requires ignoring the simultaneous correspondence approving deportations.
Irving"There is no evidence up to 1941... of any directives by Hitler to exterminate Jews, no order for a systematic extermination of the Jews that you are aware of by the middle of 1941?"
— bearing later in the trial —
Longerich Day 2Continues with the Karl Wolff document on slave-labour conditions and IfZ archival manuscripts that bear on Hitler's knowledge.
Longerich Day 3The linguistic register of contemporary documents (Sonderbehandlung, Aussiedlung) as read by a historian working in the period.
Mr Justice Gray, ¶13.35
"I am persuaded that, for the reasons advanced by Evans, it is at least equally likely that the note is concerned with the complex problems thrown up by the question how to treat half-Jews (mischlinge). … If the Defendants' explanation of the note is correct (and I have held that it is at least as likely an explanation as that put forward by Irving), the note does not possess the significance which Irving attaches to it."