The existence of a systematic programme or policy for killing Jews
Claims made by Irving
8.19 The extracts relied on by the Defendants include the following:
1. ABC Radio 3LO – March 1986
'millions or hundreds of thousands liquidated in WW2 by Germans (or Latvians or Ukrainians) were victims of large number of nameless criminals into whose hands they fell on the Eastern front..acted on their own impulse, their own initiative within the general atmosphere of brutality' (p10-11).
2. Toronto - 13 August 1988
'individual excesses and atrocities and pogroms in places like Minsk and Kiev and Riga' [were] 'crimes conducted for the most ordinary and repugnant motives of greed and thievery. Whatever happened, were the crimes of individual gangsters and criminals who deserved to be individually and separately punished (p 23).
3. 11th IHR Conference – 11 October 1992
'Now you probably know that I'm a Revisionist to a degree, but I'm not a Revisionist to the extent that I say that there were no murders of Jews. I think we have to accept that there were My Lai-type massacres where SS officers – the Einsatzkommandos – did machine-gun hundreds if not thousands of Jews into pits. On the Eastern Front, at Riga, at Minsk, and at other locations, this kind of thing did happen' (p21-22).
'Most of these SS officers – the gangsters that carried out the mass shootings – were, I think, acting from the meanest of motives. ...[refers to Bruns..] And two days later the order comes back from Hitler, "These mass shootings have got to stop at once." So Hitler intervened to stop it. Which again fits in which my theory that Hitler was in the dark that this kind of mass crime was going on. I suspect that the SS officer concerned [Altemeyer] was only 23 or 24. That was the age of the gangs that were carrying out these kinds of crimes. Rather like [US Army] Lt. Calley in My Lai. I don't know why people do that kind of thing' (p24).
4. 12th IHR Conference – September 1994
'Here I want to mention something that I'm always very adamant about. Although we revisionists say that gas chambers didn't exist, and that the 'factories of death' didn't exist, there is no doubt in my mind that on the Eastern front large numbers of Jews were massacred by criminals with guns – SS men, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, whatever – to get rid of them. They were made to line up next to pits or ditches, and then shot. The eyewitness accounts I've seen of this are genuine and reliable' (p15-16).
5. Oakland, California – 10 September 1996
'The people who were pulling the triggers were on one level and the people who were taking the top level decisions were on the highest level and there wasn't necessarily perfect communication between them and anyway who cares because it's only the Jews and nobody liked them. This is the kind of atmosphere in which the decisions would have been taken' (p 26).
Evidence of the truth/falsity of Irving's claims
The arguments of Irving and the Defendants in relation to this issue are also to be found in sections VI and VII of this judgment, so I do not repeat them here.
The numbers of Jews killed
Claims made by Irving
8.20 The extracts relied on by the Defendants include the following:
(i) This Week interview - 9 November 1991
'25,000 innocent people executed by one means or another [in Auschwitz] but we killed that many people burning them alive in one night, not in three years, in a city like Pforzheim. We killed five times that number in Dresden in one night.'
1. Moers – 9th March 1990
'One has to struggle with these problems as a historian in Germany... And that's the problem with Auschwitz. That is the problem which the county court judge in Remscheid hinted at correctly. It seemed quite unbelievable to him that an Englishman should discover the truth, where all the German historians allegedly did not discover this truth. But the explanation is perfectly simple: the Germans simply can't afford to do that,...Not murdered, not gassed – far more than half of the inmates of the concentration camp Auschwitz died of natural causes that means, of diseases, of epidemics, of typhus fever, of typhoid, of hunger, of cold or of being overworked or of various other natural causes , that's what, far more than half of the Auschwitz inmates died of, that means perhaps 30,000 people at most were murdered at Auschwitz. That's bad enough, of course! That none of us want to approve of that in any way. 30,000 people in Auschwitz from beginning to end, that's about as many as we English killed in one night in Hamburg, burnt alive' (p 12).
2. 10th IHR Conference – 13th February 1990
'Let's be generous and say 40,000 may have been killed in Auschwitz over the three years – that's a bad figure! That's a grave crime, it's almost as many people as we British killed in Hamburg in one night' (p 500).
3. Victoria, British Columbia – 27th October 1990
'Let me draw up a comparison, seventy six thousand people killed in Auschwitz is a crime, there's no doubt at all, except they weren't killed in Auschwitz, they died in Auschwitz. The Totenbucher lists the reasons of the deaths in Auschwitz. Arno Meyer, the Professor in Princeton, a Jewish Professor in fact, who published a book called 'Why Did the Heavens not Darken?', he revealed in his book that of all the people who died in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, by far the greatest part died of natural causes, whatever one could call 'natural causes' in wartime, I admit, natural causes in wartime are not what you or I would call natural causes today in Victoria. But they weren't executed, they weren't murdered, they weren't gassed. By far the greatest part of those who died in Auschwitz died of natural causes and I'm quoting Arno Meyer' (p 9).
'Forty thousand people killed in Auschwitz in three years, bad enough. Undoubtedly a war crime, a war crime of the same order of magnitude as Hamburg, July, 1943 where we British killed forty thousand people in one night' (p 13).
4. Latvian Hall, Toronto November 1990
'Ladies and gentlemen, fifty thousand people were killed in Auschwitz, were killed in Auschwitz from 1942 to 1944. That is a crime, as I said. Fifty thousand innocent people. It's about as many people who died in Auschwitz in those three years as we British killed in Hamburg in one night' [Applause] (p 21).
5. Latvian Hall, Toronto, November 1992
'To those of you who are new to my talks. Let me summarise the possible reasons why they are using these extraordinary techniques, these extra-governmental techniques to try and silence me. It is because I am probably the most credible voice in the entire revisionist campaign, or what I call the International Campaign for Real History...And my campaign is being met world-wide by these methods. "Okay," I say, "a hundred thousand people did die in Auschwitz."...Around one hundred thousand dead in that brutal slave labour camp...How many were killed in Auschwitz?...how many had died.'
'Twenty-five thousand killed, if we take this grossly inflated figure to be on the safe side: That is a crime; there is no doubt. Killing twenty-five thousand in four years – 1941, 1942, 1943, and 1944 – that is a crime: there is no doubt.'
'Let me show you a picture of twenty-five thousand people being killed in twenty-five minutes. Here it is, in my book HITLER'S WAR, a vivid picture of twenty-five thousand people being killed in twenty-five minutes by us British [in February 1945] in Pforzheim, a little town where they make jewelry and watches in Baden, Germany. Twenty-five thousand people were being burned alive (p 11).
6. Search for Truth in History (1993)
'25,000 people murdered in Auschwitz in three years. If we take that generous figure and I would say that 25,000 people murdered in Auschwitz in three years is still half the number of people that we murdered in Hamburg burning them alive in one night in 1943' (p 25).
7. Tampa, Florida: October 1995
'But if we were being liberal and generous and said that of the 100,000 deaths for which we have certificates and evidence, acceptable evidence In Auschwitz, say that three quarters died a natural death, by natural I mean typhus, epidemics, starvation, exhaustion, worked to death, froze to death, can't really call it a natural death but it's not murder. If we say that three quarters died that kind of death then as many as one quarter were executed, you come to a figure of 25,000 people who were murdered in Auschwitz by the Nazis in the entire four years of that camps existence and I am going to show you a picture of not 25,000 people being murdered but of 40,000 people being murdered, not in four years but in the space of 20 minutes in Pforzheim. Not Dresden or Hiroshima or Tokyo but Pforzheim, a little town none of you have heard of. A little town in Germany in Badenburg where they make jewelry and watches. Here's a town photographed from the air by a friend of mine, a British Air Commodore with his Kodachrome film camera during the 20 minutes in which 40,000 are being burned alive. One person in four in that town was killed, burnt alive during that air raid, 10 days after the air raid on Dresden, and nobody has ever heard of it. 40,000 being burnt alive in 20 minutes compared with 25,000 people being murdered at the very outside in Auschwitz in the space of four years. It's a thought provoking comparison and the reason why I think it's proper to make this kind of comparison' (pp 13-14).
(ix) 'Cover Story' - 4 March 1997
Irving: Again, that's not what I say. I say there's no proof that six million did die, it's not quite the same thing. You may find it nit-picking.
Interviewer: So you're saying only 100,000 people died in Auschwitz.
Irving: I didn't say 'only'. You can't say 'only' 100,000 people died. If 100,000 innocent people died this is a crime, it's a war crime (p 6).
The Defendants' evidence of the falsity of Irving's claims
8.21 A formidable obstacle in the way of arriving at an accurate number for those killed by gas is that no records were kept by the Nazis of the numbers put to death in the gas chambers or, if they were, none have survived. Records were kept, as I have mentioned earlier, of the number of deaths amongst those who were registered as inmates of the camp. But, for reasons which are perhaps obvious, none of those deaths is recorded as having been due to gassing.
8.22 The difficulty of arriving at an accurate estimate is compounded by the undoubted fact that many inmates died from disease and above all in the typhus epidemics which from time to time ravaged the camp. Whilst the Defendants do assert that these deaths are the result of deliberate genocidal policy on the part of the Nazis, they must of course be discounted in order to reach a correct estimate of the number of deaths in the gas chambers. Initial estimates, largely based on the capacity of the crematoria, ran as high as 4 million. As has been see the camp commandant, Hoss, gave varying estimates, ranging from 3 million to 1.1 million. However, analysis of the numbers of Jews transported to Auschwitz produced a lower estimate of around 1 million. Research carried out more recently, notably by Raul Hilberg and by Dr Piper of the Auschwitz Museum, has concluded that the true figure for the number of deaths at Auschwitz is in the region of 1.1 million of which the vast majority perished in the gas chambers. This figure has, according to the evidence of van Pelt and Longerich, been endorsed by the majority of serious, professional historians concerned in this field. The only significant exception is Jean-Claude Pressac, a French chemist and amateur historian, whose study concluded that the overall number of deaths was 630-710,000, of which 470-550,000 were gassed on arrival at the camp.
8.23 Longerich estimated that between February 1942 and January 1945 between 900,000 and 1 million Jews died at Auschwitz. But he made clear that those figures included those who died otherwise than by being gassed, for example in epidemics. Deaths outside the gas chambers accounted for about 100,000 deaths, leaving 800,000 to 900,000 murders by gassing. Longerich made clear that he regarded all the deaths as genocidal since the conditions in the camp were deliberately prepared by the Nazis.
8.24 It is the contention both van Pelt and Evans on behalf of the Defendants that Irving has consistently under-estimated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust and more particularly at Auschwitz. The Defendants assert that the available evidence demonstrates that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, both at Auschwitz and more generally, far exceeds Irving's estimates (which themselves vary considerably). They contend that he has paid no proper regard to that evidence and that he has carried no or no adequate research into the numbers killed.
[snip]
The scale and systematic nature of the shooting of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen (paragraphs 6.10-59 above)
13.56 I can deal quite briefly with the extensive evidence relied on by the parties in relation to this topic. The reason I can take that course is that Irving, as the case progressed, appeared to accept much of what Longerich and Browning said in their reports and in their oral evidence. In particular Irving agreed that the evidence, principally in the form of reports by the Einsatzgruppen, appears to establish that between 500,000 and 1,500,000 people (including a large proportion of Jews) were shot by those groups and by the auxiliary Wehrmacht units seconded to assist them. My understanding is that the Defendants suggest that the true figure was higher than this. But I do not see that, in the context of this case, any useful purpose would be served by my attempting to assess whether the evidence supports a higher figure.
13.57 Irving further accepted that the evidence indicates that the programme of shooting Jews in the East was systematic, in the sense that it originated in Berlin and was organised and co-ordinated from there. Furthermore Irving conceded that the evidence bears out the contention of the Defendants that Hitler sanctioned the killings. Irving testified that, if he had given audiences the impression by what he said in Australia in 1986 that the killings on the Eastern front had taken place without the knowledge and approval of Hitler and his cronies, he had been wrong to do so. His evidence was that "certainly Hitler sanctioned the killing of the Jews on the Eastern front". The evidence which prompted Irving to make these concessions consisted in the regular reports made by the Einsatzgruppen to Berlin; the preparation by the RHSA in Berlin of Ereignismeldungen (event announcements) and a report numbered 51 dated 29 December 1942 which recorded the "execution" of 363,112 Jews and which (as Irving accepted) was probably shown to Hitler. The Defendants also relied on the so-called Muller order of 1 August 1941 to which I shall have to return later. It appears to me that these concessions by Irving were rightly made. Apart form the existence of the evidence to which I have just referred the vast manpower required to carry out the programme at a critical stage in the war would surely have required the approval of Hitler.
13.58 It inexorably follows that Irving was misrepresenting the historical evidence when he told audiences in Australia, Canada and the US (as he accepted he did) that the shooting of Jews in the East was arbitrary, unauthorised and undertaken by individual groups or commanders.
The deportation of the Jews (paragraphs 6.60-67 above)
13.59 As I have already indicated, there is little dispute between the parties that the policy of deportation emerged and evolved along the lines described in the report of Longerich. I have already rejected Irving's argument that the evidence, whether in the form of the Schlegelberger note or otherwise, supports his contention that in early 1942 Hitler decided that the entire Jewish question should be postponed until after the war. In any event Irving does not dispute that the deportation of the European Jews continued apace in the months and years after the Wannsee conference. The real issue is whether their deportation was a prelude to their extermination and, if so, on what scale such extermination took place.
The scale on which Jews were gassed to death camps including the Reinhard Camps but excluding Auschwitz (paragraphs 6.73-144 above)
13.60 There is no dispute that the use by the Nazis of gas to kill human beings had its origins in the euthanasia programme. When that ended, the gas vans were diverted to the Eastern territories where (as Irving accepts) they were used to kill healthy Jews in substantial numbers. Again there is some argument as to the numbers killed in the gas vans: Irving was reluctant to commit himself to an estimate of the number killed but he accepted that it ran into thousands. In the circumstances I do not intend to explore any further the evidence as to the number of those killed in vans.
13.61 Although strictly the camps at Chelmno and Semlin did not form part of Operation Reinhard, which was confined to the area of the General Government, I shall for convenience refer collectively to those two camps and to the camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka as "the Reinhard Camps". In relation to the Reinhard camps there are two issues: the first is how many Jews were gassed to death at these camps. The second is whether Hitler knew or approved of the extermination of Jews at these camps. (I will deal separately with the evidence about Auschwitz).
13.62 Addressing first the issue of the scale of the killings by gas at the Reinhard camps, it was Longerich's opinion that the policy of exterminating Jews by the use of gas was an extension or development of the programme of shooting Jews which had commenced in the late autumn of 1941. As has been seen, Irving conceded that Jews were shot in enormous numbers over the ensuing months. In paragraphs 6.75 to 6.105 above I have endeavoured to trace and summarise the evidence on which the Defendants rely in support of their case that the gassing which took place at the Reinhard Camps was on a truly genocidal scale. The evidence can be categorised as documentary (although most of the Reinhard documents were destroyed); demographic and the accounts of eye-witnesses. On the basis of this evidence both Browning and Longerich conclude that many hundreds of thousands died in the gas chambers at the Reinhard camps.
13.63 I have summarised at paragraphs 6.106-8 above some of the arguments deployed by Irving for saying that the killing at the Reinhard camps was on nothing like the scale contended by the Defendants. But, as pointed out at paragraph 6.109-110, Irving did ultimately accept that the camps at Chelmno, Treblinka, and Sobibor were Nazi killing centres. He claimed, disingenuously in my opinion, that he made this concession so as progress the trial and thereby to enable the issue regarding Auschwitz to be examined in greater detail. Be that as it may, I understood Irving to accept that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed at the Reinhard camps to which I have referred. I readily acknowledge that he disputed the estimates put on the number gassed to death by Longerich and Browning. But, given the huge number of deaths accepted by Irving, little appears to me to turn on the disparity in their respective estimates.
[snip]
Auschwitz
Identifying the issue
13.68 When the trial started, it appeared from Irving's written statement of case that he was adhering to the position often adopted in his speeches about Auschwitz, namely that no gas chambers were commissioned or operated at the camp and that in consequence no Jew lost his or her life in gas chambers there.
13.69 As I have already observed in paragraph 7.11 above, in the course of the trial Irving modified his position: he accepted that there was at least one gas chamber (or "cellar") at Auschwitz, albeit used solely or mainly for the fumigation of clothing. He also accepted that gassing of Jews had taken place at the camp "on some scale". He did not indicate on what scale. Irving firmly denied the claim advanced by van Pelt that 500,000 Jews were killed in morgue 1 of crematorium 2. The case for the Defendants on the other hand was, as I have said, that almost one million Jews were put to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
13.70 In these circumstances the central question which, as it appears to me, falls to be determined is whether or not the evidence supports the Defendants' contention that the number of deaths ran into hundreds of thousands or whether Irving is right when he claims that the killing by gas was on a modest scale.
The scale of the killing of Jews in the gas chambers
13.71 I have to confess that, in common I suspect with most other people, I had supposed that the evidence of mass extermination of Jews in the gas chambers at Auschwitz was compelling. I have, however, set aside this preconception when assessing the evidence adduced by the parties in these proceedings.
The "convergence" of evidence
13.72 The case for the Defendants, summarised above, is that there exists what van Pelt described as a "convergence" of evidence which is to the ordinary, dispassionate mind overwhelming that hundreds of thousands of Jews were systematically gassed to death at Auschwitz, mainly by the use of hydrogen cyanide pellets called Zyklon-B. I have set out at paragraphs 7.15 to 7.74 above the individual elements which make up that convergence of evidence. I have done so at some length (although not at such length as did van Pelt in his report) because it appears to me to be important to keep well in mind the diversity of the categories and the extent to which those categories are mutually corroborative.
13.73 I recognise the force of many of Irving's comments upon some of those categories. He is right to point out that the contemporaneous documents, such as drawings, plans, correspondence with contractors and the like, yield little clear evidence of the existence of gas chambers designed to kill humans. Such isolated references to the use of gas as are to be found amongst these documents can be explained by the need to fumigate clothes so as to reduce the incidence of diseases such as typhus. The quantities of Zyklon-B delivered to the camp may arguably be explained by the need to fumigate clothes and other objects. It is also correct that one of the most compromising documents, namely Muller's letter of 28 June 1943 setting out the number of cadavers capable of being burnt in the incinerators, has a number of curious features which raise the possibility that it is not authentic. In addition, the photographic evidence for the existence of chimneys protruding through the roof of morgue 1 at crematorium 2 is, I accept, hard to interpret.
13.74 Similarly Irving had some valid comments to make about the various accounts given by survivors of the camp and by camp officials. Some of those accounts were given in evidence at the post-war trials. The possibility exists that some of these witnesses invented some or even all of the experiences which they describe. Irving suggested the possibility of cross-pollination, by which he meant the possibility that witnesses may have repeated and even embellished the (invented) accounts of other witnesses with the consequence that a corpus of false testimony is built up. Irving pointed out that parts of some of the accounts of some of the witnesses are obviously wrong or (like some of Olere's drawings) clearly exaggerated. He suggested various motives why witnesses might have given false accounts, such as greed and resentment (in the case of survivors) and fear and the wish to ingratiate themselves with their captors (in the case of camp officials). Van Pelt accepted that these possibilities exist. I agree.
The documentary evidence
13.75 Vulnerable though the individual categories of evidence may be to criticisms of the kind mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, it appears to me that the cumulative effect of the documentary evidence for the genocidal operation of gas chambers at Auschwitz is considerable.
13.76 The nature of the redesign in 1942 of crematorium 2 appears to me, for the reasons summarised in paragraph 7.59 to 7.63 above, to constitute powerful evidence that the morgue was to be used to gas live human beings who had been able to walk downstairs. Few and far between though they may be, documents do exist for which it is difficult to find an innocent explanation. I have in mind for example the minute of the meeting of 19 August 1942 (paragraph 7.66 above), which refers to Badenanstalten fur Sonderaktionen ("bath-houses for special actions") and the so-called Kinna report (paragraph 7.67 above). As to Muller's letter about the incineration capacity of the ovens (see paragraphs 7.69 and 7.106 above), it does not seem to me that, despite its unusual features, a dispassionate historian would dismiss it out of hand, as did Irving, as a forgery. Van Pelt believed it to be genuine. He pointed out that there are two copies in different archives (in Domburg and in Moscow, where it has been since 1945). It was used at the trial of Hoss in 1948.If it had been forged before 1948, it would have been unlikely that the capacity would have been given as 4,756 corpses per day since that is a lower figure than the figures published by the Russians and the Poles at the end of the war. I accept the reasoning of van Pelt. If the Muller document is authentic, it is further cogent evidence of genocidal gassing because the capacity to which Muller refers cannot have been needed to incinerate those who succumbed to disease. Finally, there is the scientific evidence gathered by the Polish Central Commission in 1945-7 (paragraph 7.2 above) and the evidence of the Markiewicz report (see paragraphs 7.73 to 7.74 above).
The eye-witness evidence
13.77 Whilst I acknowledge that the reliability of the eye-witness evidence is variable, what is to me striking about that category of evidence is the similarity of the accounts and the extent to which they are consistent with the documentary evidence. The account of, for example, Tauber, is so clear and detailed that, in my judgment, no objective historian would dismiss it as invention unless there were powerful reasons for doing so. Tauber's account is corroborated by and corroborative of the accounts given by others such as Jankowski and Dragon. Their descriptions marry up with Olere's drawings. The evidence of other eye-witnesses, such as Hoss and Broad, would in my view appear credible to a dispassionate student of Auschwitz. There is no evidence of cross-pollination having occurred. It is in the circumstances an unlikely explanation for the broad similarity of the accounts in this category.
13.78 My conclusion is that the various categories of evidence do "converge" in the manner suggested by the Defendants. I accept their contention which I have summarised in paragraph 7.75 above. My overall assessment of the totality of the evidence that Jews were killed in large numbers in the gas chambers at Auschwitz is that it would require exceedingly powerful reasons to reject it. Irving has argued that such reasons do exist.
The Leuchter report
13.79 The reason why Irving initially denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz was, as has been seen, the Leuchter report. I have summarised in some detail the findings made by Leuchter at paragraphs 7.82 to 7.89 above. I will not repeat myself. I have also set out at paragraphs 7.104 to 7.108 above the reasons why van Pelt on behalf of the Defendants dismissed the Leuchter report as flawed and unreliable. Those reasons were put to Irving in cross-examination. It is a fair summary of his evidence to say that he accepted the validity of most of them. He agreed that the Leuchter report was fundamentally flawed. In regard to the chemical analysis, Irving was unable to controvert the evidence of Dr Roth (summarised at paragraph 7.106 above) that, because the cyanide would have penetrated the brickwork and plaster to a depth of no more than one tenth of the breadth of a human hair, any cyanide present in the relatively large samples taken by Leuchter (which had to be pulverised before analysis) would have been so diluted that the results on which Leuchter relied had effectively no validity. What is more significant is that Leuchter assumed, wrongly as Irving agreed, that a greater concentration of cyanide would have been required to kill humans than was required to fumigate clothing. In fact the concentration required to kill humans is 22 times less than is required for fumigation purposes. As indicated in paragraph 7.105 above, and as Irving was constrained to accept, Leuchter's false assumption vitiated his conclusion. Irving conceded the existence of many other factual errors in the Leuchter report.
13.80 In the light of the evidence of van Pelt and Irving's answers in cross-examination, I do not consider that an objective historian would have regarded the Leuchter report as a sufficient reason for dismissing, or even doubting, the convergence of evidence on which the Defendants rely for the presence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. I have not overlooked the fact that Irving claimed that Leuchter's findings have been replicated, notably in a report by Germar Rudolf. But that report was not produced at the trial so it is impossible for me to assess its evidential value.
Holes in the roof of morgue 1 at crematorium 2?
13.81 The strength of the criticisms of the Leuchter report may explain why, as the trial progressed, 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. As I have explained in paragraphs 7.91 to 7.93 above, Irving argues that there is no evidence of the presence of the chimneys or ducts by means of which, on the Defendants' case, Zyklon-B pellets were poured down from the roof of morgue 1 into the gas chamber below (where the Defendants claim most of the deaths occurred). In particular Irving relied on a photograph of part of the collapsed roof which displayed no evidence of the apertures through which the chimneys would have protruded.
13.82 As the Defendants point out, this argument has some curious features. Firstly, Irving embraced it relatively recently in late 1998 (so that it cannot have been the basis for his denials before that date of the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz). Secondly, Irving appeared at one stage to accept that there was a gas chamber in morgue 1 at crematorium 2, albeit one that was used for fumigation and not for killing. In that case it would seem that ducts or some other form of aperture would have been required to introduce the pellets into the chamber, since the morgue had no windows and a single gas-tight door. Thirdly, the argument is confined to morgue 1 at crematorium 2. Although Irving spent hardly any time in his cross-examination of van Pelt on the evidence that gassing took place elsewhere at Auschwitz, it is the Defendants' case that gassing took place in other gas chambers, notably at crematorium 3.
13.83 Despite those curious features, Irving's argument deserves to be taken seriously. I have summarised the Defendants' response to it at paragraphs 7.109 to 7.111 above. In the end, the task for an historian is to weigh the evidence of the absence of signs of holes in the roof of the morgue against the opposing evidence that there were chimneys running through the roof. In my view van Pelt is right in his opinion that it is after so many years difficult to verify whether or not holes at one time existed in a roof which collapsed as long ago as 1944. It is unclear how much of the roof can be seen in the photograph on which Irving relies. The roof is in a bad state, so that it is hard to tell if there were holes in it. There is a possibility that the holes were backfilled. There is the evidence of eye-witnesses who observed or at least described pellets being poured down through the roof of the morgue. Olere's drawing depicts clearly the chimneys running up towards the roof the gas chamber. Their appearance in his drawing corresponds with the description of them by Tauber and others. Photographs taken in 1942 (or 1943) and 1944, whilst difficult to interpret, are consistent with the presence of protruding chimneys. In these circumstances, I consider that an objective historian, taking account of all the evidence, would conclude that the apparent absence of evidence of holes in the roof of morgue at crematorium 2 falls far short of being a good reason for rejecting the cumulative effect of the evidence on which the Defendants rely.
Gas chambers for fumigation purposes or to serve as air raid shelters
13.84 I have no doubt that Irving is right that there was throughout a need to have fumigation facilities at the camp. There is documentary evidence of concern about the effect on the labour supply of prevailing mortality levels. As van Pelt accepted, ovens would have been required to cremate the large number who succumbed to disease. But in my judgment there is ample evidence which would have convinced an objective commentator that there were also gas chambers which were put to use to kill humans. In the first place there is the eye-witness evidence to which I have referred. Secondly, there is the evidence of van Pelt that the redesign of crematorium 2 in late 1942 was intended to cater for live human beings to walk down to an undressing room before being led into the chamber and to do away with the corpse-slide previously used to convey dead bodies downstairs. Thirdly, there is evidence that a camp doctor asked in January 1943 for the provision of an undressing-room, which would have been unnecessary if the crematorium were intended for corpses. Finally there is the evidence of the letter dated 31 March 1943 in which Bischoff requisitions, as a matter of urgency, a gas-tight door with a spy-hole of extra thickness. It is difficult to see why a spy-hole would be necessary in the door of a chamber used only for fumigating corpses or other objects. For these reasons I do not accept that an objective historian would be persuaded that the gas chambers served only the purposes of fumigation. The evidence points firmly in the direction of a homicidal use of the chambers as well.
13.85 I turn to Irving's alternative argument that the redesign work carried out in early 1943 was to convert crematorium 2 (and crematorium 3) for use as an air-raid shelter. I accept his claim that there was at the time some concern about Allied air-raids in the region. I am prepared to assume in Irving's favour that it was standard practice to equip shelters with gas-tight doors opening outwards and equipped with a peephole (although probably not with a metal grille on the inside). Nevertheless there appear to me to be cogent pragmatic reasons for a historian to conclude that the evidence does not support the air-raid shelter argument.
13.86 If the redesign was to convert the buildings to air raid shelters, there would have been no reason why the drawings and associated documents should not say so. But there is no hint in the documents that such was the intention. The question arises for whose benefit such shelters would have been built. It appears to me to be unlikely that the Nazis would be concerned to shelter the camp inmates. In any case the shelters would have been too small to accommodate more than a fraction of them. But the shelters would not have been suitable for SS personnel either, since the SS barracks were about one and a half miles way. So I cannot accept that this argument comes anywhere near displacing the conclusion to be drawn from the convergent evidence relied on by the Defendants for their contention as to the object of the redesign work.
"Death books"; decrypts and coke consumption
13.87 Irving advanced a number of subsidiary arguments. I can deal with them briefly because they did not impress me. I do not consider that they would have impressed a dispassionate historian either.
13.88 Irving relied on the fact that the camp registers or "death books" released by the Russians record deaths at Auschwitz, but make no mention of any deaths by gassing. The short answer to this point is that, according to the unchallenged evidence of a large number of witnesses, the books record only the deaths of those who were formally registered as inmates of the camp. The Jews who were selected on arrival to die were taken straight to the gas chambers without being registered. One would not therefore expect to find mention of the cause of death of those Jews in the death books.
13.89 Reports were sent regularly from the camp to Berlin in cypher. They were intercepted and decoded at Bletchley Park. Although these reports often gave the cause of death, they did not mention gassing. In my judgment there are two reasons why little significance is to be attached to this: the first is that there was a strict rule of secrecy about the gassing and the second is that, like the death books, these reports related to registered inmates only.
13.90 Irving argued that the quantity of coke required to burn one body would have been 35kg. He contended that the amount of coke which is recorded as having been delivered to Auschwitz is nothing like enough to kill the number of Jews who the Defendants say lost their lives in the gas chambers. But I accept that the evidence of van Pelt, which was based on contemporaneous documents (see paragraph 7.125 above), that, if the incinerators were operated continuously and many corpses were burnt together so themselves providing fuel, no more than 3.5kg of coke would have been required per corpse.
Conclusion
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.
