MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?

MR IRVING: Good morning, my Lord. This morning I believe the witness is going to make a presentation to us, but before he does so, I believe I am right in saying, my Lord, that the Defence learned counsel wishes to make some kind of submission to your Lordship.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does he? Right.

MR RAMPTON: It is not really a submission; it is about Professor McDonald. I do not know if your Lordship has had a chance to read his two statements.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Glanced at it this morning, but only one actually I have seen.

MR RAMPTON: Well, there is a new version. It does not really matter because they are all to the same effect. I am not submitting that he should not be called, but I am a little bit concerned that Mr Irving has told my instructing solicitors that he thinks Professor MacDonald will be in the witness box for three days.

Professor MacDonald tells us in paragraph 4 of his paragraph first this: "The main point of my testimony is that the attacks made on David Irving by the Deborah Lipstadt and Jewish organisations, such as the Anti-defamation League, should be viewed in the long term context of Jewish/Gentile interactions".

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I have a great deal of difficulty seeing how that main point has anything much to do with the issues in this case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, this is very much a first impression because I have only glanced at it, but I did wonder, looking at it, to what extent he can really assist. But, having said that, for obvious reasons I am anxious to give Mr Irving as much latitude as possible. It may be that something admissible and helpful will emerge when he comes actually into the witness box.

MR RAMPTON: As I said, I am not saying he should not be called, but I am concerned about how it is that Mr Irving thinks that Professor McDonald should be in the witness box for three days when it is quite likely that I will have little or nothing to ask him in cross-examination.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We need to, perhaps, thrash it out a little because of the timetable.

MR RAMPTON: Precisely. I have at the moment got Professor Browning scheduled to give evidence on 7th February which is the beginning of the week after next.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, as I said, certainly we must have him and hear what he has to say, but there is, I think, some force in what Mr Rampton says about how much he is able to assist.

MR IRVING: I hear what you say. When I stated that Professor McDonald (who is, in fact, our guest in the court today)

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would be here for three days, this was purely to make sure that the Defence had adequate opportunity to cross-examine him.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see.

MR IRVING: Your Lordship will certainly not be surprised to hear that I do not intend, even with your Lordship's permission, if I am given that permission, to examine him in chief at any great length. If I do so, it will be purely for the purpose of putting before him, as a way of introducing them to the court, a number of documents which I have not been able yet to put before the court. This as one of the very points I was going to discuss with your Lordship this morning for a few minutes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, can you assume (because it will be the case) that by Monday I will have read and, hopefully, digested what he says, although I have only at the moment only got one statement from Professor MacDonald.

MR IRVING: My Lord, you will have been given Professor MacDonald's expert report.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the one I have looked at.

MR IRVING: I believe that in one of the bundles I also included a double column preparation which he made as more of a way of explaining what he is doing here, as I see it like that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had better try to identify that so I know what I ought to read.

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MR RAMPTON: I got it some days ago.

MR IRVING: About five days ago, my Lord.

MR RAMPTON: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I probably got it, but I did not realise what it was.

MR RAMPTON: It is behind one of Mr Irving's letters, a letter dated 23rd January.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me see if I have it here.

MR IRVING: I do not really intend to labour this point very much when Professor MacDonald is giving evidence, but there are a number of documents (probably three or four in total) which I would wish to put to him which do highlight and, in fact, draw the connection directly between his evidence and this case, which will make it easier for your Lordship to reach a determination on its relevance.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. I do not think Mr Rampton is going to quarrel with that. But, as I say, proceed on the assumption that I will have read it so that you do not need to take him through it.

MR IRVING: I certainly shall not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But with all he experts, a bit of supplemental questioning is inevitable.

MR IRVING: Perhaps I can just sketch the character of the document which your Lordship will be funded with when the time comes. They will show to my mind that there is a clear connection between the book that is the basis of

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this case, the publication complained of, and these organisations who provided the material, that they did so following an agenda and that this may well have tainted the information which the author and the publisher relied upon.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not immediately obvious to me how that really impacts on the questions I have to decide.

MR IRVING: Very well.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But let us wait and see how it can comes out when he comes to give evidence.

MR IRVING: That brings us rather neatly, my Lord, to the question which I was going to discuss, if I might, for three or four minutes this morning which is the burden of proof. I have handed your Lordship just two quotations from documents with which I am sure your Lordship, being an eminent barrister in your previous incarnation, will be thoroughly familiar with.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: In Gatley we learn that the standard of proof in a civil procedure is not just the balance of probabilities really, but there is a sliding scale, depending on how grave the allegations were.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am very familiar with that line of authorities.

MR IRVING: "The gravity of the issue", if I may read these three lines, "becomes part of" -- this is Ungoed-Thomas in

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Re Dillows Will Trust -- "the circumstances in which the court has to take into consideration in deciding whether or not the burden of proof has been discharged. The more serious the allegation, the more cogent is the evidence required".

The reason I am saying this is because dealing with crematorium No. II and the mortuary No. 1, which the Professor in evidence has agreed is really the pivotal point of the whole Holocaust allegation ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think he has, but, anyway, leave that on one side.

MR IRVING: That is my submission, as your Lordship is aware.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know it is your submission.

MR IRVING: We are being offered evidence which, in my submission, falls far short so far, and it may well be that the witness will come up in the remainder of my cross-examination with evidence which satisfies these criteria ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not want to get side tracked into an argument at this stage. Let me make it clear that my interpretation of those authorities is that the issue where the standard of proof may be higher than the ordinary civil standard of proof, is the issue whether the Defendants have justified their allegation against you.

We do not start applying different standards of proof to the individual items of evidence as to whether or not

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there were gas chambers at Auschwitz. That has got nothing to do with the authority that you just referred to. That applies only to the standard of proof to be applied in relation to the plea of justification.

MR IRVING: But, surely, the allegations about the individual mosaic stones of their own Defence and plea of justification have to meet the same criteria as the overall allegations about myself?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again, so that you are clear the way I am thinking at the moment anyway, the overall question I have to decide is whether you have conducted yourself in the way that an honest, conscientious historian would conduct himself. The question that you have not is, I agree, a serious suggestion to be making, so it may require to be proved to a slightly higher standard than the ordinary civil standard. But one tests the proposition against the totality of the evidence, and the evidence may be good, bad or indifferent, if you see what I mean?

MR IRVING: Your Lordship will pardon me for occasionally waving a red flag when I am worried about ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have done that very effectively and I have your point.

MR RAMPTON: Can I wave my own, I do not think red, perhaps amber flag? I have said it before and I had the impression your Lordship agreed with me, but I will say it again because I do not know that Mr Irving has understood

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it or that, if he has, he agrees with it. It is this.

I do not undertake in this court the burden of proving that the Holocaust happened.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.

MR RAMPTON: Or that there were gas chambers in Auschwitz.

I undertake the burden of proving that Mr Irving made the statements he did about the gas chambers in Auschwitz from 1988 onwards without any proper foundation for what he said.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really what I was seeking to put to Mr Irving, but I think you have put it more clearly and, if I may say so, correctly.

MR IRVING: That is very helpful, my Lord. In other words, it is the "ought to" allegation rather than the "had before him but disregarded", if your remember, the negligence rather than the deceit element.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have that well in mind.

MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord. Having said that, I have no further submissions to make except I dealt with the point that your Lordship will allow me to put to Professor MacDonald three or four documents when he is in the box?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Depending on what the documents are, yes.

MR IRVING: Yes. Thank you very much, my Lord. Having said that, I believe the witness now wishes to make ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is notionally cross-examination, but it is going to be a long answer to a question you have raised.

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MR IRVING: Would your Lordship like to phrase the question to the witness which he can now respond to?

< PROFESSOR VAN PELT, Recalled < Cross-examined by MR IRVING, continued.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the question is this, I will put it very shortly.

Is there anything to be derived or inferred from the blueprints relating to the construction of the gas chambers -- sorry, from a construction at Auschwitz which entitles one to infer that provision was made for gas chambers generally and, in particular, perhaps for the ducts into which these Zyklon-B pellets are alleged to have been poured?

MR IRVING: On the roof.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That, I understand, to be the broad issue which you are now going to address, is that correct, Professor?

A. Yes, my Lord, and I have a question, because we have been talking about crematorium II and, by implication, crematorium III until now, as Mr Irving has said, indeed, in the gas chamber of crematorium No. II, in my judgment, most of the people, I mean, at least half of the people killed in the gas chambers were killed in that particular space; but, of course, if we go back to the document recording the meeting of 19th August 1942, a point I made in my presentation on Tuesday was that it

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were actually crematoria IV and V which were designed in immediate response to what I see as the change of purpose of Auschwitz.

Now, if you think that this is irrelevant because we have only been talking really about the design of the adaptation of morgue No. 1, I will not talk about it, but in case you think it is useful, I do have prepared also walk through of crematorium I and a discussion on the blue prints of crematorium IV and V.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: My reaction to that, and it is subject to anything Mr Irving may want to say or Mr Rampton, is that you can take whichever crematorium you wish or, I suppose, really Leichenkeller you wish, because if you are able to establish -- I do not know whether you will or you will not -- that they were designed to be gas chambers or that there was a duct through which the pellets could be poured, it seems to me it is likely to be the right inference that a similar plan was contemplated in relation to the other morgues.

So Mr Irving, unless you wish to dissuade the witness, I think he is entitled to look at any of the so-called gas chambers.

MR IRVING: In theory, yes, my Lord, but does it not rather fly in the face of your response to my remarks about proof, that I am not required to establish everything about the Holocaust.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not dealing with proof at all at the moment. We are dealing with how this witness chooses to the question that I re formulated for him.

MR IRVING: But if by a shifting of his ground now from the one where he originally said 500,000 people died in this gas chamber, and this was the centre of the universe of atrocities, and he now wishes for whatever reason to shift his ground away from there to 4 and 5, this, I would submit, cannot really go to the issue of my negligence or deceit.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it can, it is relevant.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just answer that and then, of course, Mr Rampton? Supposing he answers the question by reference to 4 and 5, you can then pick up your cross-examination and say, "Well, come on, that is 4 and 5. I thought we were talking about 2".

MR IRVING: My Lord, I certainly shall do when the time comes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do.

MR IRVING: But I just wish to wave a little red flag and say that they are now changing the rules. They are changing not only the rules, but they are changing the football ground halfway through the game.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a point you are entitled to make.

MR IRVING: This certainly lowers the standards of evidence, but let us take that when we come to it.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am sorry?

MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord, I was interrupting and I should not have done. I do believe again that Mr Irving has completely misunderstood the nature of the case.

Mr Irving chose to focus on Leichenkeller 1 in crematorium II. That is fine. Professor van Pelt's evidence-in-chief, which is in his report and which, if he disputes it, Mr Irving will have to challenge, is that there were, in fact, at least seven homicidal gas chambers in use at Auschwitz and Birkenau at various times up to the autumn of 1944.

Two of the most important of those buildings are crematoria IV and V which Professor van Pelt tells us in his report were purpose-built as gas chambers, and it is only for the case of coherence, if anything else, that he should, in my submission, explain what he says about those to your Lordship as relevant.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Having said what he wants to say about crematoria IV and V, it is, of course, open to Mr Irving to say, "Well, that does not prove anything in relation to crematorium II".

MR RAMPTON: It may not do.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know whether it does or it does not, but he can cross-examine on that.

MR RAMPTON: It is a question of the cumulative effect of the evidence.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Quite.

MR IRVING: My Lord, the allegation really is the factories of death allegation. If I have denied the factories of death, which is the nub of the allegation against me, and if I have successfully established to the court's satisfaction that this building was not what has been claimed over the last 55 years, and there is not the slightest shred of reliable and plausible evidence for that, then I would submit that I have discharged my obligations to the court in a satisfactory manner as far as my own reputation is concerned ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: --- regarding the factories of death. If they come along with subsidiary allegations and say, "Yes, but a lot of Jews of gypsies were killed in this building too", I would say I have never denied that there were killings in Auschwitz. What I have denied is this mass production of factories of death allegation, this churning out 2,500 bodies per day kind of allegation.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are beginning to give me a foretaste of what we call your final speech.

MR IRVING: My Lord, like any good advocate, I have been preparing my final speech from the moment this case began.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure you have, but what I am really saying is that we are on the evidence at the moment and not on speeches. So let us get on with the evidence,

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shall we?

MR IRVING: You allowed learned counsel some leeway on this matter, my Lord, and I was only claiming the same amount of leeway.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton probably has not started his final speech yet.

MR RAMPTON: Absolutely right.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now, Professor?

A. There are two issues. First of all, if we can have the override ---- Q. I know the problem. I think we have solved it, I hope.

A. And I would like, my Lord, there is going to be one particular detail which I do not have a sight of, but I refer to it when I come to it which is actually in Auschwitz 2, core file Auschwitz 2, the picture file, trial bundle, and it is actually in tab 1, No. 3B. It is actually to be seen in two pictures; detail B and the little colour version of detail B which is right below there.

Now, I will point out, since I do not want to come over to you and point on your document and then on Mr Irving's document and Mr Rampton's document, exactly which detail, but certainly I will put my finger on the thing in the slide which is not visible in the slide, but it visible actually in your enlargement right here.

I want you to be prepared for that. Is it OK that I move

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to the screen?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course, yes. Thank you very much.

A. My intention when the lights go out is very simple. It is very simple. It is to make the blueprints intelligible.

There are a couple of things which are not in the blueprint, two things which are not in the blueprint, but we know from other sources, from correspondence which were installed, and I will tell those when we go through.

But there are already in the document which was submitted by Mr Irving, I already point them out, it is the drawing by Kate Mullen, my student, then submitted by Mr Irving in evidence to you and I will just point them out. These are the columns which are not in the blueprints. So that the first thing.

The second thing is the duct which was going to bring the hot air from the ventilator rooms to the gas chambers which is in the document of 6 March 1943.

So what I am going to do now is introduce a new set of images of which copies, I have given copies to Mr Rampton, and I will start with this one, very simple above ground incineration room, coke stores, space, administration offices, toilets, chimney, ventilator mounted, an original design for a fresh ventilator, not installed, but it was installed in crematorium III and the dissection rooms.

That is difficult for me to actually focus to

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see whether it is really in focus or not. That would seem to be in focus. If you tell me when it is not in focus?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fine now.

A. Here are the dissection rooms. Morgue No. 1, gas chamber, morgue No. 2 and an outside entrance with two staircases that slide in between. Now I am going to the images which were produced quite recently and -- can somebody mark, can you focus for me? I cannot see. It is blurred. The first ring, if you can control the first ring. OK. We are going back to this. I am going to make -- we are going -- the first thing I am going to do after just showing the kind of diagrams you are going to get later, I am first going to actually walk you through the building, around the building, in a reconstruction made on the basis of the blueprints. I am just going to flag a few major things. It is exactly the same perspective as we had before was included here and which we tried to make very clear is really the ventilation systems as they were.

The ventilation systems which are in green which is right here, above the incineration room and alongside the ceiling of the undressing room or the morgue No. 2 is indicated in green, and all of the systems came into this chimney. Then there was a second part of the ventilation system. This is called the Entlüftung system, a second system, and this is basically coming into the ceiling of

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morgue No. 1 and that is blue. So blue is bringing fresh air in, green is taking foul air out and whatever is in there, and that we will come later back to that would have been that duct for hot air based -- reconstructed on the basis really of two documents but no blueprint. Then here the pink stuff, basically the funnels for going to the chimney below the ground from the incinerators.

If you want me to slow down at any given moment or point out any detail, explain, please do so because I am going to walk through this. This is what the building as it would have been seen when one is at the end of the railway track. This is crematorium II, so, more or less, when you enter the compound in which the crematorium was placed. This is the main chimney with the place, the extension, the projections of the building in which the waste incinerator was originally projected, the incineration room sits more or less here. This is the coke store space, and the dissection rooms are there.

I am going to make actually two entries into the building, one along a staircase which is still there right here, and the staircase which goes to the basement and we really concentrate our presentation on the basement.

Later we see here the kind of slightly high elevation of the underground morgue No. 2. We will enter the building through that entrance there, an entrance which was made in 1943.

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We come closer to the building. Here we see the staircase going down. This is an entry to the autopsy rooms right there. We will actually go down the staircase, and since it was very difficult to model that situation, how to go down, the people who did it, two architects, chose to show actually a kind of section of the building. Here is the grate level. We have here the underground morgue and we see actually the staircase going down. Basically, the soil has been cut away with the entrance right here going into this little vestibule.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the undressing room on the right, is it?

A. This will be then the undressing room and then the alleged gas chambers would be seen here, but you will see in more detail. You already can see here the two chimneys, the chimney of the Belüftung and the Entlüftung, of fresh air coming in, foul air coming out. We see in green where the systems are sitting. This is one of the pipes, that is one of the pipes, and this is then a probable reconstruction where that hot air would have come in, but again we do not have any blueprints for that.

Then one would have come into this little corridor and then into this large morgue No. 2. If one takes that entry right under the autopsy rooms, this is what one would have seen. But was here at the site, based on the drawing of Olère, we knew there was a ventilation

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system in that thing, but we did not know how it looked like because it is not in the blueprints. It was brought in later. But Olère depicted to, I have used Olère as, basically, the depiction of the undressing as room as the basis for this thing.

I am very sorry for the way the lighting has been depicted. This has been, basically, standard 1999 kind of light fixtures, and this is certainly not how it would have looked, the kind of way these light fixtures would have looked, but one gets a sense of how much light would have been in this room.

This is the later staircase. This is the staircase which goes to the outside which was constructed in late 1943.

What I am going to do now is actually go around the undressing room morgue No. 2, and take the second entrance which was the entrance which was used in the Hungarian action after it was constructed to get a more logical flow of people into the underground space. This entrance is also still there. You can see it. One would go down here and then enter in this underground space and, of course, see it then from a different perspective.

Now you come into this large underground space and now, of course, the ventilation is on the right side instead of on the left side.

MR IRVING: My Lord, can I ask occasional questions while we

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have him on a particular picture?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Try not to interrupt the flow otherwise we will get lost, but, yes, I think that is not unreasonable. It is cross-examination.

MR IRVING: If we could just go back to the previous picture?

Can you go back? What kind of door would have been on that entrance?

A. We do not know because there is one -- the door is not there and the entrance is available in two blueprints called "Zeitaufnahme" which means a picture, a description, of the actual situation, but these two blueprints do not show actually what kind of door.

Q. So it could have been an air raid shelter door?

A. I do not know.

Q. Very well.

A. So we are now in this underground space, what became the undressing room, as the Defence maintains. Now we go outside -- sorry, I will just go back. We go -- actually behind the columns there is an exit door and comes out in the little vestibule, and originally where I stand was the original entrance into this vestibule from above. That is the first staircase when we went down, and we see here the chimney going up, the Entlüftung chimney, taking the foul air out, and we see here a kind of computer model, this computer model, we see here basically the pipe coming off the undressing room going into that chimney, and we see

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the second, we see a second pipe -- actually, I do not know why it is red right now, but in some way the ventilation system of the gas chamber would also have connected to this. We see here an elevator. Again I have to tell you they took kind took 1990's language for it, and then here the entrance into the morgue No. 1.

Now, at that point again we have something of a difficulty, and the difficulty is that you see that there is one panel of the door is open, but the second one actually is closed. It is fixed. The blueprint shows, the last blueprint we have shows basically the double panelled door opening. But there is at a certain moment an order for this particular door, and from that order it is clear that only one of the panels moves and that the second thing was actually either closed by masonry or by the fixed panel. We can interpret that later, but in some way again I just want to point out at the moment what is in the blueprints, what is in inferred out of other documents and what, ultimately, is on the basis of eyewitness testimony.

So this particular reconstruction is made on the basis of a combination of the blueprint and a particular order for this Gastür, as it is called, of one metre by 100 -- one metre by almost two metres high, 192 centimetres high.

We are now in the gas chamber or in morgue

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No. 1. We have just walked in and this was the space one would have seen. There are, basically, the Entlüftung system, the foul air is being taken out at the bottom connected to that chimney, and we have here the fresh air being brought in from the top.

Now, I will show you the blueprints in a moment because this only is to aid interpreting the blueprints.

And then added in this particular thing which is not in the blueprints are three of the four Zyklon-B insertion columns.

Now, so there is none at first column, at third column, right there in the fifth column, they are alternating on the left and the right side.

I just want to go back for a moment. The sub-division of this room in two rooms which happened later in 1943 would have occurred on this line here, on the fourth column, halfway. Again, there is no blueprint for that. Then we go back into this elevator space and we see here the elevator, there were actually doors brought in. There were no doors and we see here this platform going up.

MR IRVING: It is a bit like a builder's hoist, is that correct?

A. Yes. That is what they actually used because they were not able to get the right elevator. Then this would have been the incineration room, of which we actually also have

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photos. These are the incinerators, these triple muffle incinerators. At the back is the coke supply. This is also the fire grate and this is where the ashes are taken out. So at a certain moment there is a description in Tauber. What happens is that he has put in here, but what he says is that actually they start to fire, not that they put a fire in the ash muffle. So he is not actually being burned directly, and so, if you read his description, this is the ash kind of muffle.

One drawing which is important is this. Could you see from the inside of the incineration room, the roof of the morgue No. 1? We have introduced on here, I think a little high, I must admit, these alleged insertion points, but certainly, because Tauber says that he is inside the incineration room, and I asked my student to actually step back a few steps from the window, so he does not stand right at the window but, if he was standing back at say a metre and a half into the space, look through the window, would he have been able to see anything? He actually describes the situation and this is what he could have seen at those points.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another witness who describes looking out from the incineration room, is there not?

A. I think that only Tauber does that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought there was another one.

A. There is another one who sees it from the outside.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe I am confused.

A. This is the question. It is, from the inside of the incineration room, what do you see? We go now back to the diagrams and I am going to turn the diagrams around in four basic exposures, every 90 degrees we turn around, first without the heating duct and then with the heating duct.

So again, we have here the incineration room, the flues going to the chimney. We have here the Entlüftung, which is all green, going from the bottom of the gas chamber or morgue No. 1, and we have here the one system, only one pipe attached to the ceiling of morgue No. 2, all connected to this one chimney. It is clearly indicated in the blueprints except this one which was constructed later. We have here the chimney house, so to speak. We have here the Belüftung going from the second little chimney going in. Then we have here the staircase with that slide in between, just indicated again rather vaguely. We tried to create a wall transparent so that you can get some sense of what is happening there.

Then I am going to show the same thing. I am going slowly to rotate it every ten seconds or so. One can look at from a different perspective. Now we are looking at it from the west almost, and one can see very clearly again the size of the undressing room.

If I am going too fast, please tell me because

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I will stop.

Here we have the staircase going into the basement, second staircase added later. Underground flues again. It is important of course in relationship also to crematorium I where there was an underground flue connecting the building to the chimneys. The chimney seems to be standing separately, does it mean it is not connected?

OK, so that was the reconstruction. So, with that in mind, I feel that we can go to the actual blueprints and so this is a heading of one of the typical ones. Is there anything you would like to see again before we go in here?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No but one thing did occur to me as you were going through. Was there any heating in the undressing room?

A. There was no heating in the undressing room.

MR RAMPTON: Could I ask one question before we leave the picture? It is out of order, I know.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think that is sensible, do you not?

MR IRVING: Perfectly, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not exactly playing by the rules at the moment.

MR RAMPTON: Professor van Pelt, can I do it now before you come to the plans and the documents? You showed us the

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new entrance to the undressing room in 43.

A. Yes.

Q. Do you know of any document which refers to gas tight doors for Leichenkeller 2?

A. No, I do not. The only document which refers to a gas door quite literally is in relationship to morgue No. 1, not to morgue No. 2.

MR RAMPTON: It arose out of what your Lordship asked.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.

A. So this is a typical heading. This is one of the original blueprints in early 1942 because we are dealing here with an adaptation. What is very important -- I am going now to introduce, and I am very sorry, I do not think they are actually in my expert reports, and I do not really know how to do it, but this is the very, very first sketch which was ever made. It was made in October 1941. It is in my book. It shows basically the same arrangement. The crematorium is slightly different. They are a number of things, but we are here at the ground floor. You see incineration hole. You see here you the autopsy rooms, the elevator more narrow than in the final one but there is the elevator. There is the entrance to the side which is the one with the slide and the two stairs, the coke storage. We have the office here, we have some bathrooms and so on, and then here we have the Saugzuganlage as it says, which means the ventilators, not three around the

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chimney but one system preceding the chimney, the chimney standing asymmetrically, and here the trash incinerator.

So this is the very first design. As you probably realise now, the design was changed a little bit.

What is quite important in this first design is the particular arrangement of the underground space. The only access to the underground space at this moment, and we do not know what has happened here or there, but I do not think there is any access on that side, but we have here the stairs going down with the slide, and then of course the elevator coming down right there.

MR IRVING: Would you like to explain the significance of the slide please, the chute?

A. The chute is something one has in every underground morgue. For example, one can go to Sachsenhausen today.

There is a morgue and above it a dissection room and there is an outside entrance into that underground morgue, and what happens is that the slide can be interpreted both in a more or less kind of gross manner. One of the things is that the slide can be used actually to slide corpses down, which is probably the more unusual way to do it, but the other thing is that, if one carries a corpse down on the stretcher, then in this case one had people on the left and the right of the stretcher, and the stretcher can actually go over the middle. So this is more or less the width of the stretcher with two people on each side

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carrying it. But one could also slide the corpse down.

I think that is probably the more unusual thing to do. In the Auschwitz museum one has actually a picture in the model one created of actually a truck unloading corpses in that way. Now I do not know what the evidence is for that but ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the slide anyway.

A. Yes. So what is important here is the way the doors open into the morgue. So there is a very large morgue here like morgue No. 2, and this is morgue No. 1, and the doors open inwards into the morgue in the original design.

Now we come to the first set of blueprints as it was actually drawn up, and now I have turned them. We have here the incineration room with the five triple muffle ovens. This is the chimney. Around the chimney the three Saugzuganlage, the forced draught which becomes important with the proposal to heat morgue No. 1. Then these are motor rams, this is actually for the engine, to run these ventilators. This was then the trash incinerator, the coke storage offices and here we have the dissection rooms with in this case again the slide, and we have the stairs at the side. There are no stairs at this side right now.

MR IRVING: Professor van Pelt, would you estimate for the court the distance from the closest furnace to the mouth of the chimney in terms of feet or metres?

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A. Sorry, this furnace?

Q. Well, either as shown on this drawings or as finally built, just in rough terms. Would it be 70 feet?

A. From this furnace?

Q. It would be fair to take the shortest. What is the shortest path?

A. The shortest path? This is 3 metres. Quite literally, this is 6 metres. It is 20 feet. Let us say this is 10 feet.

Q. I am talking about from the entrance to the actual furnace.

A. This one here?

Q. Yes.

A. This is 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet.

Q. Then up the chimney another 30 or 40 feet?

A. Higher than that, I think. I do not think have the thing right now.

Q. Just in rough terms. You say the total path travelled would be about 80 or 90 feet?

A. I do not really know exactly the height of the chimney right now, because you are below ground in the chimney so it is also a problem. You enter through the entrance below ground, so if the chimney is visible above ground you need to add another 6 feet for that.

Q. So in simple terms a flame would have to travel about 90 feet before it emerged?

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A. Whatever. I presume so. I do not know exactly the behaviour of flames in chimneys. But there is a considerable distance, yes, which of course is important to create the draught. Now I want to go back to the original design because we are going to the basement, which I have now turned around to be exactly in the same position as we are looking at the rest of the blueprints, doors open very clearly inwards.

Q. They open inwards into the mortuary?

A. Into the mortuary, yes, which comes later as the defence alleges, the gas chambers. That is in accordance with the way the doors open in these other spaces.

Now we get the second blueprint. The problem in this particular point of the presentation is that this image, this black and white slide, was made for me at the museum in 1990, and it is very difficult to see exactly what happens here. But, when you go to the archive right now and look very carefully and that is what we have done, actually that is a detail I was shown, one can actually see there a door, that the door in this original copy of the final blue print of 1942 still opens inwards, but in fact at a certain moment the way the door opens inwards has been scratched out, but I show the remains of it.

This is what I tried to photograph with my assistant in these details.

Q. Is that on this map? The one you are showing us? On this

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drawing?

A. Yes. It is in this particular copy not visible. But it is in the trial bundle.

Q. May I approach the screen and have a closer look, my Lord?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, please do. You are talking about photograph 3 on 3B?

A. Yes.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, for reference at page 3B of section 1 of the second Auschwitz file, there is a small colour enlargement.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it open.

MR RAMPTON: When the light comes back on again, one can actually see quite clearly, as the Professor has said, at any rate one half of the door opening inwards. It is probably difficult to see in this light, but it can be seen.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You need proper light. I follow.

A. That is exactly why I wanted to show this so that we all know exactly what we are talking about, this thing, and what we will see is the remains basically of the door opening inside.

MR IRVING: Approximately when was the alteration made in your opinion?

A. We will look at that at the next slide. This is the blueprint for that, for the alteration of December 1942.

I would like to show at the moment also some of

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the other details. How do we know where the Entlüftungskanal was, how the ventilation system works?

For example, you see here, this is at the bottom of the thing, this little dotted line, which is the Entlüftungskanal. It says right here, Entlüftungskanal.

Its also says right there Entlüftungskanal. This dotted line goes here and goes right there into the chimney. It is very clear. This one ultimately is connected over the gas chamber to this one.

Q. Into which chimney? Into the main chimney?

A. No, into the chimney for the Entlüftung, for the vent for taking out the foul air.

Q. You have what is called a stack effect? We will come to that in a moment.

A. OK. Then there is a second chimney here, but it does not go down to basement level so it is not depicted at basement level. What is very important here is that we have the staircase, we have another staircase and we have these two Entlüftungskanal, and we have here the columns.

Of course we do not see these Zyklon-B insertion columns because this drawing is from early 1942.

Now, one of the things which happened is that in these drawings they always use the same set of blueprints. When they create modifications at a certain moment, they only make a small drawing of the particular modification, which is put literally on top of it, because

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it is transparent originally. We see also that one more morgue has been included, we see here quite clearly how the door opens inwards. It opens inwards here. At least where I stand it is very clear. So this was never taken out with some razor blades.

You see, by the way, just at this level we see also very clearly these underground flues. As they then are joined these two are then connected above with one particular Saugzuganlage going into the chimney.

Here we have then the elevation and we are now looking at the elevation of the building. Just here in the original 1942 drawings we see here the elevation of morgue No. 1. It is a little higher. We are now going to look in section at the same thing, so first one needs to flip it up.

Now we are looking in section. The first section, we see here the slide, the staircase, side entrance going down into the little vestibule. We see here the elevator shaft. Then here we see, and we will get much better ones in a moment, the section through morgue No. 1. What is important is that the section is exactly at the point where the connectors are between the ventilating systems which are on the left and the right of the thing, so it is not so that there is a hollow space all above, or all below, above the ceiling or above the floor. It is only at two points that that actually

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occurs, to connect those systems. We will come back to that later.

MR IRVING: The next one is even better, in fact, Professor.

While we have that picture up, could you estimate the thickness of that concrete roof slab?

A. This roof slab?

Q. The reinforced concrete roof slab over mortuary No. 1?

A. We have actually the one which is here.

Q. This is the actual reinforced concrete?

A. This is the reinforced concrete. It is actually indicated. The problem is it is written right here and it is almost impossible to read.

Q. About 12 inches, do you think?

A. No. This says 38 centimetres right here. 038. This is 38 centimetres. So we are talking here about probably 20 centimetre.

Q. 20 centimetres?

A. This is 20 centimetres thick roof.

Q. Steel reinforced concrete?

A. Steel reinforced concrete, yes. So this whole thing is 2 metre 5, so this is clearly around 20 centimetres. It is a pity I cannot read this right here.

Q. Is that the double door?

A. This is 50 centimetres wide there, so probably even less than 20 centimetres, probably more.

Q. Is that the double door that your hand was over?

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A. This is the original double door, yes.

Q. Is there any kind of indication of what kind of door it is, or what kind of handle?

A. The only indication we have is that it was a Gastür, which means a gas door.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not from the blueprint?

A. Not from the blue print, that is from the documents.

MR IRVING: In fact, of course, these are not blueprints, are they? They are drawings.

A. We call these things blueprints.

Q. Architects do not. They call them drawings.

A. They are copies and this happens to be a colour copy.

None of the originals, which was drawn on basically vellum, actually exist any more. These are all basically copies made in the normal way, and then they were dispersed. The originals were probably in Berlin because as far as we know they were kept and openly sent to the SS headquarters, and they were boxed.

I just want to show here that the most important thing is against the ventilation system sitting in the wall, this is the Entlüftungsanlage, this is taking out of air. This is the Belüftungsanlage, and here we are at what is the normal situation where they are not connected. The left and the right is not connected but in this one we see them connected at a particular point.

This is just to show how you only need ultimately --

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because the left is connected to the right and then the right is connected to the chimney. You do not have to have a special connection from the left side to the chimney, or connected to one ventilator.

I just want to point out, because we probably are going to go there, that the thickness, if indeed we agree the thickness of the slab, was around maximum 20, probably closer to 18 or 19 centimetres. If one looks also at the kind of support given by this column, one may of course at a certain moment ask to compare this, if indeed the challenge or the suggestion is being made that this is an air raid shelter, if this indeed follows the kind of normal structural strength of an air raid shelter.

Now we come to a first Deckblatt. The first Deckblatt is not very important from an argument, except that it is a piece in a sequence. What we see is that the first modification has already been made, and in this Deckblatt this was created by putting basically tracing paper on top of the original. One of the things which is not of any interest to the architect at the moment -- but he does not actually draw any doors in so we do not know how the doors are hung. What is important here is that we have this sort of little Leichenkeller, which is now much smaller.

We have the Leichenkeller No. 1. What we do have here is a kind of rather gruesome modification because this is called office. This is called vault. This is either

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Goldarbeiter or Goldarbeiten, or this could be gold workers or gold works. The question of course is what would they do right here?

Q. What would you infer from that?

A. That dental gold was being probably ---- Q. Extracted?

A. Not extracted. It would not have been extracted here.

The dental gold would have been basically worked at and would have been stored here.

Q. Yes, a matter of the utmost secrecy, of course?

A. I do not know how secret it was. This whole building was in a completely isolated compound.

Q. We will see if that is true later on when I show you some photographs.

A. OK. This is by the way, that connection piece right above there connecting the pipes of the side to the other side.

We see here the staircases.

Q. What is the overall width of that staircase from wall to wall?

A. The overall width of the staircase from wall to wall? Now you have me.

Q. Roughly about eight feet?

A. This thing here?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes, I presume something like 8 feet.

Q. The other end of that space is the elevator, is it not?

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A. Yes, it is the elevator.

Q. Or the hoist?

A. Yes. The space we talked about, the counterweights ---- Q. It is not an extra space at all. It is just part of the actual shaft?

A. Yes. You see that there is some space left so that the weight can go there.

Q. We gained the impression two days ago that there was a separate channel for the counterweight to go down?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not.

A. I did not want to make that impression.

This is the coloured version. What we see here is Ofen, furnace. But interesting of course is that there is no Ofen in the office. We know from eyewitness testimony that of course the dental gold was melted in the crematorium, so is that the Ofen put there in order to melt dental gold? It is a design, nothing more than a design, but certainly they were designing something to that effect.

Q. It would be a Schmelzofen, would it not?

A. That is the official German, Schmelzofen, but Ofen would be a good shorthand for that.

Q. I think it is a very reasonable inference actually.

A. But certainly this Ofen -- one would expect also to have if everywhere there is no heating. My theory is that, if this would be about heating those particular offices, one

P-39

would first have expected one there, and secondly one there, but this is actually the other way round. Why is there no Ofen at that site?

Q. That is a very clear inference obviously, which I agree with.

A. OK. I am going to show a few copies of this. This is a new Deckblatt. Now we see the hand is very different of the Deckblatt. In this case we know actually that the person who drew it was Dejaco himself, which means the chief of the drawing room who was an SS lieutenant. It is very unusual, strangely enough. This man almost never makes a drawing himself.

Q. How do we know that he was the person who drew this?

A. Because it is in the box at the bottom. I am sorry it is not in this picture. In the box at the bottom it always says who draws that, who approves that and then finally the final signing off by Bischoff. Normally what you see is a prisoner number. In this case Dejaco's name is in the first box, and in the second box. He draws it and then he also ultimately red lines it, and then only Bischoff signs off on the third.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it dated?

A. Yes. It is 19th December 1942. So this is quite late.

Now, a number of modifications are in this drawing. It says again it is a Deckblatt number 32 and 33, which are basically for the standard basement plan.

P-40

The major thing is it says (German spoken) which means that the entrance to the basement is going to be moved to the side of the street, street side, which means the side also where people enter. Whoever is going to enter this thing. This is basically the railway side. So we see that the stairs have been removed here and the Rutsche. I will come back to the Rutsche because it is a problem. In crematorium III the Rutsche is still there, I mean the fragment. There is no fragment of the Rutsche right here, but in crematorium III you can see it under a collapsed piece of concrete. We see here now a new staircase. This is a staircase which I depicted in the model. We see the new staircase going down right here, going into the first new vestibule which has been carved out of what was before the bureau, the office. Goldarbeiten is still there right at the side. The bureau has been moved to the left where before it was morgue No. 3 the tiny morgue No. 3. Again, there is a Tresor right there.

Q. You have not explained what the Tresor is, but it is obvious is it not? It is a safe?

A. It is a safe, yes. I thought I had mentioned that before. Then we come into the vestibule. What is very interesting in this drawing is that it very clearly indicates the way the doors are hung. They still open inwards into morgue No. 1, but they have been re-hung in

P-41

relationship to the original design to open outwards.

From morgue No. 2 they go inwards and from morgue No. 1 they open outside. The question, of course, is why would these doors have been re-hung? Why was the design changed?

MR IRVING: May I have a closer look at that, please?

A. Of course.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Go as close as you like. Just walk up to it if you can.

Q. Which are the doors you are referring to?

A. The doors, if you just move a little, these are the doors I am referring to. Those doors.

MR IRVING: Can I make a comment on them, please.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Ask a question.

MR IRVING: Can you see any difference in the way that the door jamb, the concrete has been drawn there, from the way it was previously drawn? Previously it was flush, if I can put it like that, and now it has been rebated inwards to provide a secure flange, so to speak?

A. Yes. We can look at the original, I mean, there is also a photograph, I am quite happy to go back to the original because we -- the nice thing about these things is you can just go -- here we have the same kinds of jambs.

Q. But there is no ---- A. At the inside, but not, but that this side it has been taken out there in the drawing.

P-42

Q. On the inside, yes, but I am looking at the other side of that.

A. This one?

Q. Yes. If you look at the one you just showed us previously, there is like an L shaped step in the frame as though something is going to fit into it, a tight fit?

A. Yes, but at that moment when we still assume the door is opening inwards, that same thing, that same tight fit is right there.

Q. But without that L shaped step?

A. That ---- Q. The section ---- A. --- original of this.

Q. Well, I did look at it quite closely.

A. One sees it right there. This, of course, is very small.

We have drawn, I think, these drawings scale 1:200. So we are talking here about, basically what a pen does over 2 or 3 millimetres -- less because this is very much enlarged.

Q. But there is not the same L shaped step shape flange?

A. We also have a different hand drawing now.

Q. Can I ask you a question now? Would this not be appropriate if you were going to put an air raid door in there which might have to withstand a blast pressure?

A. I do not think this is an air raid door. I do not think that, I mean, if you want to raise the issue if the morgue

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could have been an air raid shelter, I am quite happy to give a presentation on that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we hive it off? I think in a way it is a separate issue.

MR IRVING: It is, but I wanted to draw attention while the picture was on there, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand.

A. So the importance of this door, and that is the major element, it is a question of why would this design have been hung. The answer, I think, is obvious, that this has to do with the transformation now of this building into a gas -- of morgue No. 1 into a gas chamber; and then if that, when the gassing takes place, you do not want to be able and you have, as Mr Irving has said, you have packed, jammed people inside the space, and at least we know from the descriptions with the gas vans that it was a run towards the door when the gas came in, and that from again eyewitness testimony that people tried to get out, and they died right in front of the door. If the door would have hung differently and would have opened inwards, you would not have been able to enter the basement any more.

So again we talk about convergence of evidence.

If you just take this drawing alone and say, "Is this a proof that morgue No. 1 became a gas chamber?" No. But if you take the drawing in relationship to the original designs and which we can follow in the original sketch,

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and any original first official blueprint where the doors are hung exactly the opposite way, and we then at a certain moment are also going to cross-reference this to eyewitness testimony, then, of course, it makes perfect sense.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there any reason of convenience why one might have adapted the design as to the doors opening outwards rather than inwards?

A. In fact, a convenience is actually inconvenient because one of the problems the door has now is that if it opens out like that, it starts actually interfering in some way with the elevator.

Also, the second reason why, when I had assumed when I reconstructed the change of the door from two panels to one panel, that probably one would not have used the second panel anyway because it starts to actually be in the way of the route towards the elevator when one gets a mass transport of corpses, so that the panel which would have been closed in order to use that gas door of one metre wide by 192 centimetres high, that this one would have been closed and this one would have been open. So you have only one panel which can be really securely locked with a number of locks into this one right here, instead of having the whole situation going to depend on, basically, the strength of the bar going up and down into the floor and the ceiling.

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MR IRVING: Is that the only change made on this deck plan?

A. There are two other changes, I already indicated. A second important change is that stair going down. Now, why would the -- why was the slide in this original entrance removed and why was the stairs moved to the other side?

Q. Are you saying that the slide was permanently removed and there was never any slide left there?

A. There is a problem because Tauber at certain moments mentions a slide in his testimony. The big problem with -- the question is, and this is a problematic point in Tauber's testimony because we know that the Sonderkommando of No. II and No. III were able to basically make use of those buildings, that when there were no gassings taking place, that these two compounds were in connection because some of the facilities used by the Sonderkommando No. II were in No. III and in No. III that slide is still there. The slide was actually constructed.

To what extent actually he was in his testimony, I mean, the assumption in his testimony in German is that he talks about two, but if he introduces that, if he describes the subterranean level, if he actually describes something he saw in No. III which is identical except for the fact that left and right are reversed, and it is particularly detail of the slide, it is very difficult to, you know, actually get a real handle on that. One of the

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buildings has a slide, the other buildings does not have a slide.

Q. Just to be perfectly plain, the entrance which is moved to the street side of the building did not have a slide, did it?

A. No. The entrance which is -- this other entrance does not have a slide.

Q. Would it not be a reasonable inference that the architects had decided that, being good architects, they ought to design a building where people had ways of getting in there where they might not have to mingle with corpses going in?

A. Can you repeat that?

Q. They decided that they need, for matters of taste and decency, to have a clean side of the building where people could go in without having to jostle with corpses that might be infected going down the steps and they decided, therefore, for pure hygiene reasons to move the staircase?

A. That would be perfectly -- that would be perfectly fine.

The problem is how do you get then the corpses into the building, because this corpse access seemed to have been removed. So what we have here is that there is no way any more to get corpses into this building, according to this drawing, and that the only way to get corpses into the build is that a staircase which has been narrowed to such an extent that it is certainly very difficult to carry a

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stretcher inside.

I also want to point out to you that in the original design -- sorry again -- there was enough space either when you slide the corpse downstairs or when two men are carrying the stretcher, there is not enough space for you to turn around. However, here, this turn around, I mean, first of all, it is much narrower, as you see. We are talking here about one metre width of, I think one meter 60, one metre 80, there is much less space actually for two people actually carrying a stretcher, there is no slide at all. Then we get the problem actually of turning here. It gets very, very tight.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So do you deduce from that that it is live people who are going to go down to that morgue?

A. Yes.

MR IRVING: But is there not also an elevator or a hoist being installed which, we are told, is capable of carrying large numbers of bodies from the basement up to the furnaces?

Could that elevator not also have been used to carry them down in the first place?

A. Ah, yes, but the problem is how do you get them in that space? I mean, I am happy to go back to the original ground plan which we -- my Lord, do you want me to go back to the original ground plan?

Q. The elevator is just next to your shoulder on that design and there appears to be a lot of space in front of it.

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A. Sorry.

Q. The elevator is just next to your shoulder, is it not?

A. Yes, but if you bring down the corpses by the elevator, and I will go down because again it is an important issue you raise and an important alternative explanation.

Q. A plausible alternative, and you have not established ---- A. The problem of the plausible alternative in this case is that the elevator is here. Now, the only entrance we have now, the only way to get to the elevator, is to go through the entrance here, right next to the dissection room. Go through the foreground, go now into the washing room for the corpses and then turn around into the elevator.

This elevator was meant to give direct access to the washing room. When a corpse comes up, it can be washed and dissected. But I would say that this is an extremely, and especially these doors here -- I mean, how do you actually -- these doors are not wide enough, these are not double doors which you get in the original design right here. This is a double door. So again, stretcher, two people carrying it, four people carrying it, there is enough width here for them all to go down.

But this is a very, very awkward way to get corpses actually in and then down in the elevator. The alternative is that you have to go, there is no direct entrance into the incineration room. The alternative is to go through this door, through this door, walk over the

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coke supply between the incinerators and go to that elevator. Or the third possibility is to -- no, that is actually it. That is it.

Q. Your evidence for saying that there was no corpse slide in the building as built is?

A. It is not in the drawing. In this drawing and it does not seem to be there. So, I mean, I can see it, well, I can still see it in crematorium III.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What would it have been made of? Metal?

A. The corpse slide?

MR IRVING: No, a concrete slide.

A. Concrete.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just a concrete slide?

A. Yes.

MR IRVING: So there is no evidence there was something in the building now and it was never there -- Mr Rampton, I am asking the questions here.

A. We have a blueprint. We have the remains of the building.

Q. Will you answer my question? There is no evidence that there is something in the building now and it was never there?

A. No, and I have not seen any evidence. The only evidence there is -- let me be more precise. There is evidence in Tauber. Tauber says there is a corpse slide. But I have addressed this problem already as a problem in the testimony, that I think he refers back to the corpse slide

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in crematorium No. III which was installed.

Q. But is there not a lot of evidence that Tauber was being questioned on the basis of drawings put to him by Jan Sehn, the prosecutor? When you read his interrogation, he is actually being interrogated on the basis of ---- A. If we would have seen the drawing which was this drawing and was available also to Dawidowski and so to Jan Sehn, then I presume that he would not have invented the corpse slide when it is not in the drawings. See here, the corpse slide is still in this one, in the design.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I suppose Jan Sehn may have used the drawings for crematorium No. III when he was taking Tauber through it, if that is what happened?

A. No, there is not a special set for crematorium No. III.

Q. There is not?

A. Crematorium III, they use the same drawings as No. II, but they just reverse the building.

Q. Yes.

MR IRVING: The same as in the days of the British Empire when we built our buildings in India with blueprints that had been designed for England -- just reversed them, in fact?

A. Yes. I do know exactly what you did there, but they did make a new set of blueprints.

So the first problem is the way the doors are hung.

The second issue, of course, is why is there a

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convenient way of accessing corpses in the morgues removed, and why at least they are bringing in corpses a very inconvenient and awkward way is replaced, but a staircase which seemed to be optimally useful to bring in human beings who are alive.

Q. Can I ask you, were the corpses that resulted from the great epidemic of 1942, where were they cremated?

A. The corpses from the great ---- Q. The typhus epidemic, the 8 or 9,000 that we know about?

A. In August 1942, there were two ways to get rid of corpses and then the question is where these people died? In Auschwitz 1, the crematorium was functioning at the rate, an official rate, of 340 corpses per day. So, certainly, the people who died in Auschwitz 1 -- at that moment Auschwitz 1 was still somewhere in the main camp.

Birkenau had not grown so much here. It was still under construction. So the crematorium in Auschwitz 1, No. I, dealt with the corpses of people who died there. In Birkenau, the major way of getting rid of corpses at that time was to bury them.

Q. And the epidemic of 1943, January 1943, in Birkenau, where were those corpses cremated?

A. They had incinerators that open, these things which had been adopted by the Zentrale Bauleitung in the camp after the trip to Chelmno in mid September 1942 when they went to see Goebbels' ovens.

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Q. The fire grate?

A. So they then created something like that in Birkenau, and that is how they got rid both of the corpses which had been buried earlier ---- Q. But are you telling the court then that no external deaths were brought into this crematorium?

A. No, I do not want to say -- I am talking about the design.

I am talking about their intentions. This crematorium, obviously, undergoes a modification in which it is much more difficult, I do not want to say impossible because everything is possible, much more difficult, where a convenient system of bringing people who have died outside the building has been removed, and a new convenient system has been installed in order to bring people down who had not yet died.

Q. But if you answer my question? Large numbers of people died outside this building, we know that, in the camp in Birkenau?

A. When?

Q. In 1943, from various causes, and how would they have been brought into this building?

A. This is the most likely reason why the slide remains in crematorium No. III.

Q. So, no natural deaths were disposed off in this?

A. We do not know, but, I mean, when I said in the movie which is the clip we saw that, in my judgment, almost half

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of the people who died in Auschwitz, who were gassed in Auschwitz, died in crematorium No. II ---- Q. In this very ruined gas chamber we are looking at here?

A. The gas chamber, it is based on a number of assumptions.

It is not a calculation made on the back of an envelope.

It is made on which building functioned when, during what operation, which building was solely dedicated to bring people in this way, and also at a certain moment, you know, which buildings broke down at what time? There is, of course, a clear problem with crematoria IV and V where the ovens broke done constantly.

Q. So this building is one of the main factories of death in the camp?

A. Yes, but it is a building which, as we have seen now, it was case of adaptive reuse, and here we see exactly that piece of adaptive reuse. I just want to -- I have various kinds of details of this drawing again to show the kind of texture of this particular one. So, I think this is a very, very important drawing in the context of other drawings and in the context of testimony.

Q. But you do accept there could have been perfectly harmless reasons why the basement entrance was transferred from one side of the building to the other? For example, in connection with intensification of the air war, the need to bring people in in a hurry from the street rather than making them go all the way around the buildings, round to

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the back, to a poky little entrance around the back to get into an air raid basement?

A. I think if you want to go, I mean you raise the air raid issue right now, I mean, I do not want to -- I have studied ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think you ought to deal with that because that is really an issue on the drawings. I mean, we have a modification and the point has been put to you.

Is one possible explanation for that that they wanted to make it easier to get in in a hurry when there is an air raid coming?

A. It is a possible explanation, but I also want to point out that since I have to give this answer, but since I am happy to give some, a possible explanation but improbable for a drawing like that to be made in December 1942, since all the other drawings and all the documentation in Auschwitz relating to air raid shelters come from mid and late 1944. So we are two years, a year and a half, more than a year and a half out of synch.

MR IRVING: Profess van Pelt, I showed you about five days ago a list, or I introduced to the court, a three-page list of documents from the Moscow collection which clearly show planning for the air raid precautions in Auschwitz beginning in August 1942?

A. 1942? Mr Irving, I have to disappoint you on this point, that I actually studied that particular file and I have it

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here and I can submit it to the court.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a bit difficult to know when we are getting on to air raid shelters as opposed to the drawings, but shall we leave that until later?

MR IRVING: We will deal with that at a later time.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor van Pelt, have you finished on the blue prints now or are there further points?

A. No. This is crematorium No. II. I just want to -- I want to show some other things because they were raised. Some of the photos, if that is OK, made of the construction.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I do not see why not.

MR IRVING: I think this is a very interesting photograph, my Lord. It shows the reinforcing bars being put down, presumably, on the roof of the crematorium, is that right?

A. No, on roof of morgue No. 2 which later becomes the undressing room. So we are here in the fall of 19942.

Here we see, we see very clearly, the reinforcing bars right there. There is no drawings of those reinforcing bars. I mean, you asked me for those. There are no drawings of the particular thing like that. We see here the slab being finished.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What did they do? Pour concrete on top of the reinforcing bars?

A. Yes. We see already here there seems to be, these actually are tiles, there are some tiles, at the bottom

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there, and you see some of these tiles sort of hanging, kind of hollow tiles, and then you get the reinforcing and then the concrete is poured from that.

MR IRVING: I cannot see any tiles there, but I can see the reinforcing bars very clearly. Professor van Pelt, would there have been the same kind of reinforcing in the roof over the mortuary No. 1 which is displayed here, the collapsed roof?

A. I presume so, yes.

Q. The same kind of mesh of steel bars?

A. Yes. Now we are looking inside the ovens. There is still this construction mess around it. Again, the ovens and here the ash, the place -- the crucible and the ash column.

Q. Will you explain the purpose of those railway lines we can see there? Are they just purely for the purposes of the builders?

A. Which one, this one?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes.

Q. They were not there at the time that the furnace stage was in operation?

A. No. There is actually, these, we have here little, there is a -- originally, there was idea to put actually these rolling little trucks in crematorium No. I, but they were actually never built. So what you have is quite a

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short, like a two metre long, little kind of iron ---- Q. Trolley?

A. --- almost like little tracks going into each of the ovens in the concrete, but that is it.

Q. So when Ada Bimko in her testimony refers to the railway line or the rails bringing the bodies out through the doors and so on, she is lying ---- A. No, that is not necessarily so ---- Q. --- again?

A. --- because we know, for example, that one of the things which was done at crematorium -- and she thinks, I think she is talking about IV or V. There is a difference.

One of the things which happened at the Sonderkommando, when they moved corpses from the gas chambers to the incineration places, and it was clearly done at bunker No. 2, that they actually put in some very, very light track to move them, to move corpses on little trolleys.

Now, there is nothing in the design for that.

Q. We only have the eyewitness testimony, is that correct?

A. Eyewitness testimony, yes. •• Zeigun talks about it, for example. Here we have the photo we discussed yesterday.

Q. With the three objects on the roof.

A. Sorry?

Q. With the three objects on the roof?

A. With the objects on the roof.

Q. Three objects on of roof?

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A. And the thing I pointed out, there is this slight thing of soot up there. It actually becomes more in one of the next drawings. So this is taken in February 1943.

One more to go round, you see here then how we have reconstructed the heating pipes, how they would be connected, the system which was installed which has broke down. Again this is the speculation on the basis of the information on the blueprint and a particular letter of 6th March 1943. The red in this case is the heating and the heating insulation. We have just gone through the attic level and then we brought down right very close to the wall.

Q. Is there some reason why you are telling us about the heating system in the mortuary?

A. The reason is that, of course, while it is not in the blueprint, it is in the letters, and the heating system in the mortuary is, in my opinion, again one of the indications that this building was transformed, that the morgue was being transformed for a use other than to simply store bodies.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you remind me -- I am so sorry, Mr Irving -- of the date of the letter about warming the morgue?

A. It is March 1943.

MR IRVING: So you disagree with Neufert, which is the standard architect's Bible in Germany, ever since before World War II, right up to the present day, that mortuaries need both

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central heating and cooling?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we have had that debate, I think.

MR IRVING: Yes, thank you very much, but I wondered why he was telling the court about the heating.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you asked him.

A. Sorry, the one thing I wanted to point out again is the little, the little ventilation chimneys, very clearly visible there. We go round once more and now we make that trip around. If there is anything -- I am just going relatively fast, if there is anything anyone wants to ---- MR IRVING: Professor van Pelt, can I ask, you mentioned those little chimneys, the ventilation chimneys.

A. Yes.

Q. And I mentioned the stack effect. You asked two days ago where the provision was for cooling the gas chambers or the mortuary or the morgue?

A. Yes.

Q. The stack effect which is known to architects is why they put these chimneys there because the top part of the stack is cooler than the below ground part of the stack, and it generates a draught of its own, a cooling draft. That is one reason why they are there -- so I am informed by architectural experts.

A. So you say that which of these -- this chimney, basically, is the air conditioning system?

Q. They enhance the cooling effect which is already provided

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by the mortuaries having being been built underground to provide cool space?

A. I know that this happened in Middle Eastern countries very often, that you create these things, but I do not know to what extent the kind of controlled cooling and controlled heating which Mr Mulka describes for civilian crematoria in order that the corpses remain nice and pleasant to look at for people who go and pay their last respects would be served by the stacking effect of these chimneys. But I am not a heating or cooling expert, so I am not going to say anything more on this.

Here again, crematorium III, I want to just show again the same. This is the other one at the other side of the road again. These ventilation systems were present in there. This is the cover page of their section on crematoria in the Bauleitung book, the picture book from which all these photos come.

Q. Would you explain us to what significance you attach to the ventilation shafts or what inference you seek to draw?

A. The ventilation shafts are important that the ventilation shaft in combination with the blueprint. The blueprints, when you have blueprints, you never know, of course, if these things were actually constructed. What the photos show is that what is in the blueprint was actually constructed. And so that the ventilation system was a ventilation system in the morgues, and at the outside you

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can see that in, indeed, this ventilation system.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not quite sure that you have answered Mr Irving's question which was what inference do you draw from the fact that there is this ventilation system with ---- MR IRVING: What inference does he seek to draw?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Seek to draw?

A. That morgue No. 1 was ventilated.

MR IRVING: Was?

A. Was ventilated.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I am not sure that is quite answering the question. So what?

A. So that the descriptions that the eyewitness testimony which talks about the fact that the poison gas is being extracted from morgue -- from the gas chamber, indeed, is a very plausible description of ---- Q. So the inference is that there is a system for extracting the poisoned air?

A. Thank you very much.

Q. Is that right? Just so it is clear.

A. Yes. OK. I have done crematorium II, I think. We go to crematorium IV now. OK. This is the very first drawing, this is that drawing of ---- Q. Sorry to interrupt. Do you want a break because this is quite strenuous for the transcriber. Would you like a break? It is probably quite strenuous for you.

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A. I would love a break.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If everybody does not mind just having a five-minute break -- I do not want to break for longer -- but I think it might be a good idea to break at this point, just five minutes.

(Short Adjournment) MR IRVING: My Lord, this is technically my cross-examination.

I mean no disrespect that I sit during this.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course not. It is very sensible.

A. OK. I think it was first the Tuesday or Wednesday that I discussed the sequence of events starting with Himmler's visit to Auschwitz in July 1942, and that the first drawing which has been drawn by the Bauleitung which has no precedent at all of any activity of Bauleitung before that visit of Himmler is this drawing, which is what it says (German), which means an incineration installation in the (German. Kriegsgefangenenlager) which is the official destination of Birkenau is that of a prisoner of war camp. The only thing that this drawing does is actually draw in the incineration part. It does not actually draw in the rest of the building, which is a problem but, as we know, at that time, because it is the meeting of the 19th, it is to prepare for the meeting of 19th August, where Prüfer introduces the idea of using an eight muffle oven. It actually depicts here the arrangement of an eight muffle oven, the Mogilev oven which had been designed, so

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I assume what happened was that Topf sent the plans of these ovens to Auschwitz for preparation into a drawing, and eight muffle ovens sitting between two chimneys, one to the left and one to the right.

I will come back to these drawings later. This is the first one of August. Then we get the meeting in which this building is discussed as being a building to be erected by the Anlage •• Sonderbehandlung. Then there is a second drawing which is from January 1943. These are really the only two drawings we have of this building and there are photos of this building under construction. The problem in this drawing, we will come back to this drawing again after we have had to walk through, is that the plan is reversed in relationship to the elevation. So what is here left is the incineration room, and what is right there is left here. So that is just to warn you.

I am going again to have a walk through to the building. In this case there is nothing in the reconstruction which is not in the blueprint. So in the last case we had the hot air installation and we had the Zyklon introduction columns. This time there is nothing.

There are some pictures of this building under construction. This is crematorium V, and this is actually a post-war post card of a photo of this building.

I actually have never seen, I must admit, the original photo of this one, where actually the building that we see

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here, crematorium IV -- I think it is No. 4, it is difficult to say out of the quality of the photo how far the trees are. In No. 5 there are also trees from this side where we see that the lower part with the fence contains either gas chambers, then here a number of rooms for a doctor or something like that, Sonderkommando rooms, an undressing room but also used as a morgue and the incineration room.

What we are going to do now is look at, first, a number of basically models, actually asymmetrics, from above to get the sense of the building and then we are going to make a walk through. This is the lower part where we have these two large rooms, with these tiny kinds of windows right in there, also between these two rooms and right there and there, and a big entrance vestibule right there, two kinds of rooms to the side here, a very big room in the middle and then after a kind of in between room we get incineration room, and a coke store place and an administration room.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this 4 or 5 or were they identical?

A. This is No. 4. Left equals right.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Otherwise the same?

A. We are going to turn to the model now. What is the important thing is that these are stoves indicated in these rooms. The plan only shows basically a block with a cross through connected to a chimney. I was not present

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when this final thing was drawn, and my ex students have drawn in what are Canadian stoves basically, big iron ones. It would be more likely, given what the design culture was and the means of production in Poland that it would have been a so-called cuttle hole in the design at least. But what we also know is that this cuttle oven that were installed, but at a certain moment also are stories about portable stoves. I do not know really know what to make of that, but they were heated with portable stoves, these spaces, which means the cuttle oven broke down, yes or no.

Q. What were these spaces again?

A. These are the alleged gas chambers right here, and then we have here the entrance vestibule, undressing room, in the winter used as undressing room, but also a morgue installation room. In the summer there are accounts that people undress outside of the building.

MR IRVING: The average gas chambers, how were they designated on the blue prints?

A. They are not designated at all. There is no designation at all. Actually, this room is also not designated. So now we actually are looking at the side we are going to enter very soon. Again, I do not think we need to explain too much, except these chimneys, which are sitting right there, to which these stoves are connected, and also again the small little windows, 30 by 40 centimetres, as the

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plan says, which give access to these throw light or not into those lower spaces.

Q. Can I ask you what was the building made of? Just bricks was it?

A. Bricks, yes.

Q. Quite a flimsy construction, in other words?

A. Yes. I mean flimsy. If you throw a bomb on it, yes.

Certainly these spaces would not have been very useful as an air raid shelter. Now our eye level has gone down and we are now going towards this entrance right here, this vestibule. We have now come into the vestibule. We turn left first inside this very big room which gives access to the Schleude and then the incineration room. This is that very large hole in the middle, which eyewitnesses say were used especially in the winter as an undressing room but also was used as a morgue.

Now we turn around 180 degrees. I want to show you. It is an open roof truss situation there, the vollmar as it is called, V O L L M A R, that is, it is the most economical way to construct a roof in a wartime situation. Now we turn around.

Q. What are those roof trusses made of? Steel or wood?

A. Wood. This was really as cheap as possible and as light as possible.

Q. So it would have been totally unsuitable as an air raid shelter then, this building?

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A. Yes. So we now go back towards the incineration, towards the vestibule. I just want to say that this actually is a detail which is in the photos of the building and not in blue prints, but at a certain moment in the construction they decided to put windows in that room, which are not in the blue print, but they are in the photos.

Q. About how high up are those windows off the ground? Could you see in them?

A. No. They were quite high. You would not see in them.

Q. Which is what you would expect in a mortuary then?

A. Yes, possibly, or another use. So now we have turned around 180 degrees and we are looking back at that door, just before, and I am going back into that space to the right. What I am going to do is take you through these spaces. It is a kind of surreal experience, I must say, but I do not have a picture right now of this space, but immediately go into this space. So I have a view going in here. Then first we have two views inside this space, which is one from the door looking in, and then from that point looking back. Let us call this for a moment No. 1, and this No. 2. Then we look inside this space and from the door looking back. That is room No. 2, so at any given moment we know where we are.

We are now in that second vestibule, and we look here in that space No. 1 to the side, and we have here actually at the end of it an opening which actually gives

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access to the ovens. These ovens were always fired from the back, these cuttle ovens, or they could be. Two or three rooms shared them. So this was to the point where they could be heated and the same is actually right here.

That is what the blueprints indicate but it is not in the picture.

I just want to point out this porthole sitting right there, 30 by 40 centimetres, in the plan. I do not know exactly which blue print we are talking about in the court bundle, but now we are looking in room No. 1.

Again, two of those openings right there, plus an outside door, which by the way opens to the outside.

Q. Before you move on from that picture, Professor can I ask you, is there any provision in this room that the blueprints or drawings inform us for drainage?

A. There is drainage, yes.

Q. Where are the drains in this room?

A. They are not depicted, but the blueprints show them.

Q. You appreciate that, if this is a gas chamber, it would need drainage?

A. Yes, but the blueprint, I did not oversee the final making of these models. They are in some way crude but in the blueprints I am happy to point out the drainage to you.

Q. I would be happy, when you return to the witness box, that you do so because, when people die en mass, it produces unpleasant after effects which need to be cleaned up. If

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there is no provision for drainage, it is a problem we have of course with Leichenkeller No. 1, with the draining provisions there too, which are of course far worse, being underground.

A. We can just look at the blueprints in both cases to look at the drainage, I think.

Now I just walk outside of that door. I just want to show you that we were in this room right there. I just popped outside. We will go back in that room right now. Now we look back to the door we came in and there one sees the stove in the corner, and this port hole right there, 30 by 40 centimetres connecting to the next room.

There we have little detail.

Q. Would you like to tell the court what inference you are inclined to draw from the porthole's presence?

A. The portholes together are obviously the kind of gas tight shutters which I mentioned in one the bills, 30 by 40 centimetres. They are they are being ordered, 12 of them, six for this building, six for the other one, and they are ordered at the size of 30 by 40 centimetres. The plan shows quite literally they are 30 by 40 centimetres. It is in the bundle in detail. We have enlarged it a few times. Then of course a number of these portholes have survived and are installed in crematorium I right now in the back, and can be inspected, and again are 30 by 40 centimetres and obviously they are very thick and they

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have a kind of gas tight design that there is a number of different, I do not want really know, my English starts to reach its limit.

Q. Fasteners?

A. Jambs have a kind of seal in it in the way it is designed so it is very difficult. They are very thick. They are like 20 centimetres thick.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have they been tested for cyanide?

A. They have not been tested for cyanide.

MR IRVING: Would you agree that those shutters that have been found in the Auschwitz camp are in fact standard German air raid shutters supplied by manufacturers to a standard design?

A. First of all, I do not know but it was very clear. What we do know is that these are 30 by 40 centimetres and that the things ordered were gas tight things of 30 by 40 centimetres. The only plan I have where they have twelve of these holes of 30 by 40 centimetres is actually the plans for these rooms at the end of crematoria IV and 5, which obviously were not air raid shelters because the roof construction is too flimsy.

Q. Am I right in suggesting that the inference you are drawing is that through these apertures the toxic substances were thrown?

A. Yes. We go back in the vestibule. We are now moving to room No. 2. The door is open and we see now the stove,

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and again in the room one of these little openings. Now we are in the room, just entered. Here is the stove. We look now to the outside door, two other 30 by 40 centimetres little windows, and we turn around now. We look back at the stove and the door towards the second vestibule, so to speak.

Q. Professor, why would they not have adopted the method they allegedly adopted here and just drilled holes in the roof to drop the substances through?

A. The problem, first of all, is you would have to go on the roof and this building was all above ground.

Q. Yes.

A. This method was used already in bunker No. 2 and bunker No. 1, where they used basically holes or little windows in the side of the building to introduce the Zyklon-B. So it was a proven method.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the evidence for that?

A. For what?

Q. That they injected Zyklon-B through the windows of bunker No. 2 and No. 1?

A. Eyewitness testimony.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I thought.

A. I think in my report I quote Dragon on that, for example.

MR IRVING: You quote who?

A. Dragon. Now we go out. I just want to ---- Q. Am I right in saying that Dragon is one of the principal

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witnesses for the Soviets when they produced their commission report?

A. I think Dragon came in in April. Dragon was not in the original Soviet report, I think. The Soviets produced a report in February or March and Dragon only appears in April.

Q. I am referring to USSR 008, the exhibit.

A. Yes. I do not think Dragon was mentioned there, also that he testified for them when that report came out, in that report. I could be wrong on that but I do not remember Dragon in that context.

Now we are back in the vestibule. Go into the next room, again, and look at the incineration room. In this case we have back-to-back incinerators with the firing pit between them, instead of in crematorium II the firing pits are behind the incinerators.

Now I would like to go back to the blueprint.

In your bundle you have a great magnifications of this one showing, for example, the 30 by 40 size of these openings, which is very important. There is a problem that 12 of these things were ordered, 12 of these gas tight shutters were ordered of 30 by 40 centimetres, in early 1943.

Which were the 12? If you start counting, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, which means by implication that, according to the design, there should have been 16 ordered. So how do we explain the difference

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between 16 and 12? It is very obvious that this room, it was a modification, that is what I call the vestibule, that this was not going to be to be used as gas chamber.

It is also actually described that only two of these rooms in the eyewitness reports were actually used as gas chambers and is not. So then we enter with one, two, three, four, five, six and the same arrangement in crematorium V, which then ends up as 12 gas tight 30 by 40 centimetre shutters. That is very important.

The second important thing, and Mr Irving has already pointed at that, are the drains. This particular blueprint is one which exactly shows the drains. That is why it was created. So we see that on the existing copy we have here a drain, we have a drain there, and these drains are connected right there. There is a drain right there, and they are connected to a pipe.

Q. Can you tell the court what they are connected to on the outside? To the main sewage?

A. They are connected. This continues. This is not a main sewage system there. But this obviously connects back to something.

Q. It does not just go into a hole in the ground, though, does it? They do something with it at the other end?

A. No. This probably goes on right there all the way, yes.

Q. What would environmentalists have to say about kilograms of cyanide being dumped in the sewage system, do you

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think?

A. I think that virtually all the cyanide would have been cleared out of the building.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we had this debate before.

MR IRVING: It is very useful, my Lord, actually to see the drainage system. We only have Professor van Pelt's word for it that all the cyanide would have gone out of the building, none of it would have been washed off down into the sewage system, which is clearly wrong. Neither of us is an architect. We agree on that point. But the evidence of our eyes on that plan is that they had the drainage going into the public sewage system, and 8 kilograms or however many of cyanide being pumped into those rooms to kill people on a lethal scale, and the bodies being washed down, the room being washed down afterwards, and you are telling us that none of that cyanide would have gone into the environment?

A. I certainly think that you are a little over estimated on the eight kilograms, to start with. The gas thing in this building could have been very well done in these rooms with 200 gram tins, maybe two 500 Grammies, maybe a kilo was used, a kilo of cyanide and most of it would have evaporated into the air.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Professor I am going to interrupt you. We must stick to the drawings. We are going down a side track. Of course you can come back to it, Mr Irving,

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but I think it really is going to be confusing if we go into that argument now.

MR IRVING: While we had the drainage map in front of us my Lord, I wanted to---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is established. It is linked up, apparently or possibly, probably I think, to the main sewage system of the camp.

MR IRVING: It goes to the water purification plant.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, not that, I think.

A. So the major point here is that the evidence of the blueprint of these spaces, with these little windows right on top there, converges with the document which talks about the gas tight shutters of 30 by 40 centimetres, converges with eyewitness testimony which talks about SS men getting up a little stool or step ladder there and opening the gas tight shutters and throwing in the contents of a Zyklon-B canister, and it converges also with a detail right here that in fact it is difficult to see in this one that they are actually sealing, sitting right in here. The roof is not open to the rafters but there is no sealant in there. So why actually this very low bit here? It is around 2 metres high. You also start to put a sealing when you do not put the sealing in anywhere else. So this is as much as I want to say right now about crematorium IV.

MR IRVING: Did these eyewitness you talk about see what was on

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the other side of the wall through which this stuff was being tossed?

A. No, they were on the outside.

Q. Yes.

A. This is crematorium No. 1. I think we can leave it. This is at the moment the case I would like to make for crematoria No. 2, and crematorium No. 4, and by implications 3 and 5.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going ask you that.

MR IRVING: While we have that map up, can I ask you which is the fuel supply, which is the room for storing the coke?

A. This is it right there.

Q. The whole of that room. Can you estimate approximately how much coke that would hold, how many tonnes or kilograms?

A. I cannot, I am sorry.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that conclude our looking at the blueprints?

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we can turn the lights on?

A. Yes, unless you want to see more of the same.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think I understand what you tell us about them. Thank you very much.

A. Just for your understanding, in the last discussion quite important are No. 9A and No. 9B in your bundle.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: In tab 2?

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A. In tab 1. The important point is the 30 by 40, which is seen there in the size of these little windows.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving.

MR RAMPTON: Before this cross-examination continues, I need to draw your Lordship's attention to something.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: On Wednesday evening we received a document, which we have never seen before, which I do not believe Professor van Pelt has seen, which Mr Irving has because we sent it to him on Thursday once we had had it translated, and which has a bearing, or your Lordship may think it has a bearing, on this repeated question why are not these documents marked "secret". I do believe that, in fairness to the witness who I believe, I do not know, is not familiar with this document, he and your Lordship should be allowed to read it before the cross-examination continues.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this not re-examination?

MR RAMPTON: No. I could bring it into re-examination but, if your Lordship would read it first, that perhaps is the best thing. It will save time in cross-examination because the witness will then be familiar with the document.

MR IRVING: Are you also offering a translation of this document?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. Have you not got that?

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MR IRVING: I have not. I have only the actual document but not translated. (Same handed).

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the second document, Mr Rampton?

MR RAMPTON: There is another document. The document which is clipped to it is the translation.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have just been handed something headed "Heinrich Himmler".

MR RAMPTON: I do not think that arises now. That will arise in re-examination.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where I shall I put this?

MR RAMPTON: It is the document of 5th May 1943. It can go in at the end of section 4 of K2, just before page 49 if your Lordship wants to put them in date order. That means a different page number. I do not know whether the witness has it? I do not know what he is looking at.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think he is looking at the right thing.

5th May 1943?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, 5th May 1943.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor van Pelt, is that what you are looking at?

A. I know this one, yes.

Q. You know that one?

A. I mean I have seen it. In my files there is a copy of that. I had forgotten about it.

MR RAMPTON: I did not know that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, you have it now. Yes, Mr Irving. I

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am sorry about that interruption.

MR IRVING: Your Lordship will anticipate the first thing I will say, which is that this is not the way to do things.

This was supplied to me yesterday afternoon at 1 p.m. It is a document of great importance, I appreciate that. It is the document which I would have wished to have seen many months ago. We have just heard the witness say that he has had it in his files for some considerable time. If it was of importance, no doubt he would have advanced it already. He may well have reached the same conclusions as I did that there are perfectly plausible explanations for this document which have a bearing only on one room in the crematorium concerned, or the building concerned, and have no relevance for the Final Solution, apart from that very limited aspect.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is sensible to have an inquest as to why it has been produced late. That has been happening on both sides. The fact is we have it. In the end I am not going to ignore it.

MR IRVING: If your Lordship is going to allow it to be produced in this manner, then there must be some manner for me to respond to the document. I seek your Lordship's guidance as to the appropriate means of doing this. By putting questions to the witness on this matter?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course you can. Indeed, why not do it now?

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MR RAMPTON: That is why I produced it.

MR IRVING: Yes, indeed.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: Professor van Pelt, how long has this document been in your possession, in rough terms?

A. I saw this document in 1990 for the first time. I made a copy of it, and I have forgotten since then. My Auschwitz archive is something like that wall there, and I have forgotten about it since.

Q. So you attached little importance to it at the time you first saw it?

A. No, but it was in accordance with other things I had heard in the Ertl Dejaco trial about the way the design office operated and already in the Dejaco Ertl trial they had made a lot about indeed the fact that there was a great limitation to the number of people who could actually be entrusted with these drawings. In some way I did not write in the end a book on the procedures of the Zentralbauleitung. I know that Mr Montonia [Mattogno?] has done so.

So in the end I forgot about it and it has been sitting in my files unseen and unthought of now for the past nine years, I assume.

Q. Would you accept from me that, had I seen a document like this I would certainly have turned it over in my hands for many weeks, pondering the significance of it and wondering whether it was to be mentioned in my major work or at

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least disregarded on a footnote, and not suppressed, shall we say?

A. Mr Irving, I forgot. In the end, I did not write a book on the work of the Zentralbauleitung. I forgot about this document because I addressed other issues.

Q. Very well.

A. So I am sorry that I forgot about it. Maybe it would have helped the case of the defence earlier.

Q. It may not.

A. Or it may not.

Q. Professor van Pelt, would you tell the court where you first saw this document?

A. This document is in the Auschwitz archive.

Q. And it appears to be bound into a volume?

A. They are normally in -- actually I do not know the Hausverfügung it is one of first files. They are all in boxes. What happens is that the first part of the archive, which is where I started working, which was actually boxes 1, 2 and 3, only deals with these kind of procedural matters. They do not deal with design at all.

I think generally they are in folders.

Q. But you agree that this particular one appears to have been part of a bound volume. Was it shown to you in this form or was it shown to you as a loose document?

A. I went through these files. I do not remember at all.

I know there are at a certain moment some loose pages in

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these things but in general they are bound. It does not seem to be a Moscow document, if I have to look at it, but I am not sure even. It could be a copy of it in the Moscow document because obviously this was a document which was produced in many copies.

Q. It has been produced in many copies?

A. Because it was a general rule, so quite often you find many copies of the same document.

Q. So you are not certain in your own mind whether this document actually comes from Moscow or from the Auschwitz state archives.

A. This is the first thing I have heard about this document now it comes up, is right now I have seen it ten years ago. I made a copy. It is somewhere in my big files, on procedures in the architectural office.

Q. Please accept my assurance. I am not trying to catch you out on this document. I am trying to do the enquiry now that I would have done over the last few months if I had had this document earlier.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: As to its authenticity?

MR IRVING: As to its authenticity, my Lord, yes. This is the only means I have to test its integrity.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is fair enough.

MR IRVING: Professor, you will see that the document to me is odd in one respect, that it appears to have no printed heading. All the other documents we have seen, I think I

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am right in saying, have a printed heading saying Auschwitz Zentralbauleitung and so on, Auschwitz Konzentrationslager, whatever. This appears to be just a blank sheet of paper.

A. But all Hausverfügungen, all the internal communication in the camp, and that is also stuff that is coming down for the Kommandantur. So, when Rudolf Höss, for example, creates a canteen for the camp, all of that stuff also comes down to the office. None of these have a heading.

They all have exactly the same heading as you see, that it says Hausverfügungen number, which rule, a house rule or a house order, whatever like that, with a number but never on letter head.

Q. If you had seen the whole file of course, you could have satisfied yourself that there was a No. 107 before this and another 109 after it and so on. You could have tested it, whether it was orphaned or whether it was part of a series, could you not?

A. I could have, yes. I saw the whole file but I did not do that test at the time.

Q. We are not informed as to that. Is the signature at the bottom of the SS Sturmbannführer? Does that look like the signatures you are familiar with?

A. This is Bischoff's signature, yes.

Q. There are no other authenticity marks on it in any way, are there? There are no rubber stamps or initials or any

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other kind of things that we have seen?

A. No. You would never have a rubber stamp on any of these internal Hausverfügungen.

Q. Would they also lack any address list of people they are going to?

A. No, they do not have that. They just appear like this in the file.

Q. Yes. My Lord, I could comment on the registration number at the top, but I am not going to because I can really say nothing about the integrity of this document apart from what I have done.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see you are confronted with a bit of a difficulty because of its late production.

MR IRVING: I am prepared to address the document as though it was genuine and just look at the content.

A. My Lord, this one maybe I can add to the heading on top because the secretary.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Authenticating it?

A. Yes. The secretary in the Zentralbauleitung in 1943 was a certain Eugenie Schulhof, so it seems to be that indeed the S C H U L would be -- that indeed she was a secretary at the office at the time.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving will probably say well, if anyone was creating this document years afterwards, they might have worked that one out.

MR IRVING: My Lord, forgers have a desire often to be caught

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out and they do not do the homework. That is my experience. This is what puzzled us about that cremation capacity document that they picked on initials that are only on that document and not on any other document in the entire record. But to revert to this document, I draw your attention, Professor, to the third full paragraph, beginning with the word in English "furthermore"?

A. Yes.

Q. Let us read out possibly the first two paragraphs: "You are reminded once more of internal instruction No. 35 of 19th June 1942 -- ", which we do not have, Professor, do we, before the court, so we do not know what that was. "As is clear from this internal instruction, Untersturmführer Dejaco is personally responsible for ensuring that all incoming and outgoing plans are registered according to the rules in a book that is to be especially set aside for this purpose, and that loans of such plans (that is an interpolation by the translator) are signed for with the personal signature of the person who has asked for them".

This is indicative, is it not, Professor, of the pernickety bookkeeping that the Germans went in for with their documents, that things were logged in and logged out, is that not true?

A. Yes.

Q. "Furthermore", it continues in the next paragraph, which

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is the important one on which no doubt learned counsel relies, "it must be pointed out that we are concerned here with works that are connected with the war economy and to be kept secret". The words: "Connected with the war economy and to be kept secret" are underlined in the original. "In particular, plans for the crematoria are to be kept under the strictest surveillance. No plans are to be handed out to the individual installation groups, etc.

In connection with the works to be carried out, the responsible construction leader - I suppose that be a foreman - has to give instructions to the corresponding prisoner unit on the spot. I take it as read that all the original plans are to be kept under lock and key by the leader of the Planning Department". Does Mr Rampton wish me to read out any more, or is that sufficient?

MR RAMPTON: Could you just finish the paragraph?

MR IRVING: "Attention is particularly drawn to DV 91", that is "Dienstvorschrifft", is it not?

A. Yes.

Q. In other words, Service Regulation No. 91, confidential Matters. "It is further taken as read that in cases of leave or inability to carry out duties, the leader of the Planning Department hands over the plan room in accordance with regulations to an SS colleague".

We can take it from this therefore, can we not Professor, that they were anxious that the drawings of the

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kind you have been showing us this morning should not be shown to unauthorised persons?

A. Yes.

Q. In fact, it should not be shown to anybody at all who had no need to know?

A. No. In fact, even people who had need to know, it seemed to be that they were unwilling to -- that normally, of course, in a building site, plans and blueprints are readily available to the people who are actually making it, and in this case, they even had difficulty to do that. They use here that the only person who can really instruct these people, they cannot actually leave the plan there, but there must be a "Bauführer" and from the word "Bauführer", it is very clear that this is not an inmate, or must be a German, civilian or German SS men, because the designation Führer was always reserved in this case for a non-inmate. They would have used for inmate always something like Ältester or some kind of designation like that.

Q. We are in agreement that this is a security measure designed to keep these plans that you have been showing us today, that kind of thing, away from prying eyes?

A. Yes.

Q. Can you see no harmless reason for such a regulation?

A. A harmless reason?

Q. Yes.

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A. I presume there is a general harmless -- if we are talking about patents, I could imagine that companies do the same thing with patents. But in this case I do not think we deal really with patent information. So I cannot see what the problem would be. It is remarkable that crematoria seem to be designated here for a particular kind of security, let us call it internal security classification.

Q. They are not being designated as the only ones needing security, are they? They are just to enhance security, shall we say?

A. Yes. It says: "Insbesonders, in der Plane," so in particular, yes.

Q. Is there any kind of security classification on this document itself?

A. There are never on any "Hausverfügung"; this is going to be available to everyone.

Q. Yes, but there is no security classification on this document?

A. No.

Q. So it could have been shown to anyone, could it not, then?

A. Yes. I mean anyone who got a copy of this.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you seen any other similar house order on any other topic in connection with Auschwitz?

A. No. I remember this one. One of the reasons is that this one came up. I am trying to recall the first time I saw it. This was in the Ertl and Dejaco trial, and it came up

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because one of the people who had been in the Bauleitung, who was an inmate who was drawing there, actually went into some detail about the procedure of actually getting a blueprint and saying this was a proof of the criminal intentions, and then this document was produced. I do not know what the court in the end did with this document.

But I remember the testimony of the particular -- I think it was an inmate named •• Plas Kuhrer.

MR IRVING: Did anything in particular happen in Auschwitz one or two days before this document that you are familiar with, or in the neighbourhood? I will give you a clue, air raids?

A. No, there were no air raids in 1943.

Q. Yes, there were. Do you agree that there was an air raid on the Buna plant on approximately 5th or 3rd May 1943?

A. 1944.

Q. 1943. Well, if there is a dispute, obviously --?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The Buna plant at Auschwitz?

MR IRVING: That is right, the synthetic plant being erected.

A. The first air raid, so far as I know, happened in the Spring of 1944.

Q. We will check that later on perhaps. I have only two more questions on this document, my Lord, and this is this. Do you agree that the Germans had reasons to be ashamed of what was going on in this building, shall we say, whatever it was?

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A. No. They certainly had reason to be ashamed of the genocidal use of the buildings, but I mean crematoria, there is no -- you see, the date is 5th May 1943. By that time, these buildings have all been committed to genocidal use. I presume and I am speculating now, and I do not know if you are interested in my speculation, my Lord.

MR IRVING: Try us.

A. OK, my speculation will be the following: that •• "Vorsonderkommando" for inmates before these buildings had been brought into operation. There would have been little reason for them at that moment necessarily to want to steal these plans. We know that the camp resistance actually stole a set of these plans in 1944. There was a Czech woman, who was able -- ultimately working in the Bauleitung. She stole the set of plans in order to warn the outside world.

Q. Which crematorium are we talking about?

A. Crematorium II and I think crematorium IV.

Q. Of the factory -- A. A set of plans, which are smuggled outside of the camp.

There is eyewitness testimony about that, about everything. So my speculation would be -- and it is not more than speculation -- that once these buildings had been committed to genocidal use somebody must have said "we must prevent any information of these buildings getting to the outside world. We want these plans to be

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under lock and key".

Q. -- can I interrupt you at this point and say, was the genocide of the Jews or of the other minorities being liquidated by the Nazis in some way a contribution to German's war economy? I am putting it in your language, it was just part of the Nazi programme, or was it a fundamental contribution to the German war economy? My Lord, you will appreciate why I am asking the question. It is from the document.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think so. I am just wondering in what sense the contribution, you mean mouths to feed, something like that?

MR IRVING: I am reading the words from the document, my Lord, that is before us.

A. Certainly, many trains with valuables of the deportees which had been -- we gathered in Canada one -- and then later in Canada two also were sent back to the Reich.

I do not think -- and, of course, we know from Operation Reinhardt that an incredible amount of loot was ultimately -- Q. Precisely.

A. -- sent back -- Q. Can I draw your attention to the first sentence of the third paragraph: "furthermore, it must be pointed out we are concerned here with works that are connected with the war economy and to be kept secret"; the genocide was not

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connected with the war economy, but the looting of the corpses was, was it not?

A. -- it was not the looting of the corpses, because the looting of the corpses themselves was almost insignificant; what was important, ultimately, was when people were taken off the trains their luggage remained in the trains. Now ultimately that luggage, that stuff, was the important stuff which was being transferred to Canada No. 1. It was the vast bulk of the stuff. Not the stuff which was actually found on the corpses.

Q. Do you not rely on the witness, Dr Bendel, as an eyewitness?

A. No, no, this is --

Q. Will you answer my question, please.

A. -- no, I am not.

Q. You have not relied --

A. For this particular statement?

Q. -- no. You will understand the reason why I ask this question: have you relied on the witness, Dr Bendel?

A. In my book Bendel is only mentioned one, with a description of bunker No. 2.

Q. Are you aware that Dr Bendel has testified under oath that the Nazis extracted 17 tonnes of gold in teeth from their victims? Whatever you make of that figure, would that not be a contribution to the war economy?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What happened to it?

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MR IRVING: My Lord, I respectfully submit that is not material to this issue, the whole point is we are trying to work out what the Germans were ashamed of and what they did not want the outside world to know.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well -- MR IRVING: And if it is something that is a contribution -- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I agree with that; was it still there when the Russians arrived?

MR IRVING: No, of course, not, my Lord. Whatever the quantity was, it went initially to the SS, as part of operation Reinhardt, and we will be introducing the documents to substantiate that along with all the other pathetic, personal effects of the victims; the watches, the fountain pens the spectacles. Everything else was recycled and turned into a mass cash spinning operation by Heinrich Himmler. The gold was a major part of it. Hence that room set aside which you, yourself, showed us drawn on the maps that they want to keep secret, showing a gold working room with the smelting furnace in the corner.

A. If this is a question, my Lord, I am happy to answer.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, it is a question.

A. I think that given the amount of investment being done in building the crematoria and the labour being expended and money being expended and especially the material in the war, in a war economy and a possible yield of that in terms of dental gold, I think that the Germans were, to

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say the least, not very smart in economic sense.

MR IRVING: I have only one final question on this document then; in that case, Professor, will you please tell the court what were the jobs connected with the war economy which had to be kept secret which were connected with the crematorium then? If it was not the genocide and it was not the gold?

A. I mean the question of course we have to face here is, if he means -- if they mean literally war economy. If they mean literally war economy, in 1943 the SS wanted -- they were building a plant right next to Auschwitz No. 1.

Q. That was not in the crematorium, was it?

A. That was not in the crematorium.

Q. This paragraph is purely concerned with the plans of the crematorium, which they are trying to keep away from prying eyes for some reason which they indicate, in my submission, by the use of words "vital to the war economy" or "important to the war economy". My Lord, I have no further questions on this document.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The only question I was going to ask you, I think you may in a way have answered; it is the dating of it is slightly odd, is it not, in a way if this sort of instruction is going to go out, you rather expect it to go out when they are deciding they are going to convert crematorium No. 2 to genocidal use?

A. No, I would say that -- you see I do not think they think

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of everything in advance. What happens is that in March you get the first, the first trial gassing in crematorium No. 2; by May 1943 all of the buildings except crematorium III are in operation. I think it is quite likely that somebody -- that at that moment somebody said "we have a problem". I think that the whole history of (German spoken) and the history of architecture in Auschwitz, construction of Auschwitz, the Germans do not think of everything ahead.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, could I -- it might save my having to come back to it in re-examination -- just draw your Lordship's attention to the first paragraph of that letter, which I think has escaped your Lordship and the witness's.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, even that date is a bit odd too if you think about it, because Himmler was not there until July.

MR RAMPTON: That is why I thought your Lordship might want to pursue the enquiry by reference to 19th June 1942.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but that is a little earlier than you would expect.

MR RAMPTON: Exactly.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is double edged, really.

MR IRVING: Well, I am indebted to Mr Rampton for pointing that out then.

(To the witness) Just one more question in that

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relationship, and that is; have you seen documents under which any SS member involved in operation Reinhardt, or in whatever was happening at Auschwitz, was obliged to keep secret, under pain of death, a number of matters, including -- have you seen such a document?

A. I have not seen a document. I know it from testimony, from... who was it? Was it Hans Stark? I think Hans Stark gave testimony that he had to sign such a document when he came to Auschwitz and that the first thing he did was he was brought to the Political Department and asked to sign such a document, the general rule to remain completely secret. It also came up in the Jacob Ertl trial, when Ertl started talking in mid-1942, he got in trouble over that. He mentioned it.

Q. Will you take it from me, Professor, that there is such a document in Berlin documents relating to a man called Weiss (?). I believe he is a low ranking SS NCO. I have seen this document, and that he was required to sign such a security undertaking.

A. I trust you on that matter.

Q. In that case I cannot ask you details as to what they were obliged to keep secret because if you have not seen the document you cannot tell the court. But I will ask the other witnesses when they come.

Having, I think, disposed of this document, my Lord, we can now resume questioning based on the pictures

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that we have seen.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, dealt with it, anyway.

MR IRVING: Well, not -- I would have said "disposed" actually.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can say that at the end of the case.

MR IRVING: Yes. In my famous closing speech.

(To the witness) How often did Himmler visit Auschwitz? Did he visit Auschwitz again after July 19th or whenever it was, 1942?

A. Now, there is an account by Vrba that he did.

Q. By Vrba, who is one of the eyewitnesses on whom you rely?

A. On Rudolf Vrba. I have used Rudolf Vrba in the book twice, yes. He is, of course, very important in the history of Auschwitz, because he was one of two escapees, three escapees, however, you want to count it, who brought news of the killing of the Hungarian Jews to the outside world in the spring of 1944.

Q. When did Vrba suggest that Himmler visited Auschwitz on a second or further occasion?

A. The third one.

Q. The third occasion; was this 1943 or 1942?

A. No, he talked about it in his account I Cannot Forgive.

Q. This would be 1943?

A. That is -- Q. The visit?

A. -- yes, there is a visit. He says 1943. He actually says -- he remembers it as January 1943 and then says that

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he -- Himmler came to the opening of the crematorium and he said would have been January 1943. In any case, we know he was confused on the date because it would have been March 1943.

Q. Vrba, in fact, am I right in saying this; concertinaed a number of different events and different buildings into one event and one building, did he not, when he wrote his report up from memory?

A. We are talking about the Vrba-Wetzler Report right now?

Q. No, the original one that he wrote when he came out and he dealt I think with a Slovakian Jewish organisation who then re-edited the report for consumption and a lot of details got concertinaed, did they not?

A. Now, the question is I want to know exactly what your question with the verb "concertinaed" because it is a word I normally do not use, so I want to know exactly what you mean.

Q. Sometimes when a person visits a place two or three times in later memory it becomes just either one or two visits and the events of three visits are then concertinaed into one or two. But Vrba was not very precise about dates and times and places, was he?

A. I mean Vrba wrote, certainly his first report, under incredible stress. The Hungarian action was going on. Tens of thousands of Jews per week were shipped to Auschwitz, and he wanted to warn the Hungarian Jewish community that

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what was happening in Auschwitz, what was awaiting them, he had escaped from having been an inmate in Auschwitz for two years, a little over two years, and was recalling from memory his -- you know, tried to make a case that this was a very serious thing and tried to describe the camp as good as he could. Also even tried to describe the crematoria.

Q. But his report is flawed, is it not? A lot of it is bunk?

A. No, I would like -- I mean, if you make a challenge like that I will be willing to go with you over the report in detail. Certainly, the report is not more flawed, and in general terms I would want to say that if I had been Vrba coming out of the situation I am, going to then at a certain moment be, as you said, he was interviewed. He was interviewed by people in Bratislava.

Q. A Jewish community, was it not?

A. These were people of the Jewish community -- Q. Yes, who advised him to rewrite what he had written.

A. -- Mr Vrba had no document when he came out of Auschwitz.

He did not carry with him a document. There was no document.

Q. He prepared a report for them and then they rewrote it with him?

A. I do not exactly know how he was interviewed there, and on the basis of these interviews they made a report. I do not know exactly who wrote and who rewrote. I know that

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the papal nuncio in Bratislava was very closely involved.

Q. Have you read the records of the War Refugee Record in the Roosevelt archives?

A. Which ones? I have read the records as they were printed in -- Q. You have not read the original telegrams that came from McClelland in Bern?

A. From McClelland, I think a number of them I have quoted in my expert report, yes. So I mean they were reprinted in facsimile by David Wyman (?) in his book, Theories About American Reaction to the Holocaust, his documentary collection. So I have looked at those, yes.

Q. -- and you did not notice that the telegrams from McClelland make quite plain that the Vrba Report had been heavily edited or altered by this external committee of Slovakian Jews, for whatever reason? You did not notice that?

A. I remember -- I mean I do not dispute the fact that this report, that this report, the origin of this report, is in Bratislava in 1944 and that members of the Jewish community were involved in that. I do not exactly know what Mr McClelland said again. We can look at the document.

Q. We are in a slightly difficult position with Vrba, are we not, because you rely on him to a certain extent; is that right?

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A. In extent to