Irving’e karşı Lipstadt

    No, certainly not. It is extremely important. You
 1suppress, you deliberately suppress these facts which you
 2must have known from having read this report.
 3 Q. [Mr Irving]     Must have known and ought to have known, is this
 4sufficient evidence for you, Professor, when you write
 5your books?
 6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     I cannot put myself inside your mind when you are reading
 7this stuff and say whether or not you closed your eyes
 8when it came to the passages where all these things are
 9mentioned. Even if you did that, even if you fell asleep
10repeatedly during reading this five or six-page account,
11I cannot really believe, it still seems to me that it is
12more than irresponsible. You have suppressed this
13information. You have not presented it to the reader.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]     Precisely what information have I suppressed, the fact
15that he was a Nazi party member, that he was on Hitler's
16staff, is that what you are saying?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     Yes .
18 Q. [Mr Irving]     Does this render him incapable of speaking under oath the
19truth?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     Can you show to me the passage in your book where you
21mention these facts which is necessary for an assessment
22of the reliability of his evidence?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]     Does it render him incapable of speaking truth under oath
24in a case like this?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     As the court recognized, he did not speak the truth under
26oath. It dispensed him of having to take the oath because

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 1he was regarded as a biased witness.
 2 Q. [Mr Irving]     When you translate the passage, "Es ist ein schones
 3Zeichen von Ihnen, wenn Sie zu Gunsten Ihres Fuhrers
 4aussagen", you translated that as: It is a nice testimony
 5to you, that you are speaking out on behalf of your
 6leader." What is the German for "testimony"?
 7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     I can put a nice sign of you, that is fine, it just does
 8not sound quite right in English.
 9 Q. [Mr Irving]     What is the German for "testimony"? Is it "zoitnes"?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     Something like that, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]     So you have mistranslated a word there?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     No, I disagree. I am trying to find something that reads
13reasonably well in English. I think the meaning is the
14same. Can you just to point to me the page?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY:     Yes, I cannot find it.
16 MR IRVING:     Page 230, paragraph 2, the last line.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     Yes, if you want to do it literally it is a beautiful sign
18of you when or if you speak out in favour of your leader.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]     That would be a bit wooden.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY:     It reflects well on you?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     It reflects well on you. It is a nice testimony to you.
22I do not mean by using the word -- may I just fish, Mr
23Irving? I do not mean by using the word "testimony" it
24has anything to do with the testimony he has given.
25 MR IRVING:     But it would be a bit wooden, would it not, that
26translation if you were to translate it with sign and all

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 1the rest of it?
 2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     Yes, it would. "It is a beautiful sign of yours". I am
 3trying to steer a course here between -- we have spoken
 4about this before.
 5 MR JUSTICE GRAY:     It is a free translation, but it is an
 6entirely accurate one.
 7 MR IRVING:     You appreciate the point I am trying to make, your
 8Lordship?
 9 MR JUSTICE GRAY:     I do, but I am afraid I am not very impressed
10by it.
11 MR IRVING:     Not impressed by it? The fact that one is inclined
12to take liberties in a literary sense with a sentence in
13order to make it more legible.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY:     As long as you get the flavour of what is
15being said right.
16 MR IRVING:     Is not the correct translation of that sentence
17"good for you, good for you that you are speaking out on
18before of your leader"?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     No.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY:     Not quite.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     If I may say so, the judge was obviously rather pompous
22and says it in this rather kind of convoluted pompous way,
23not in that colloquial manner.
24 MR IRVING:     Is it not exactly the same as when his Lordship
25says things like, "You have done rather well, Mr Irving",,
26for example, as his Lordship did yesterday, we take it at

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 1face value and it is not something to be taken all that
 2literally?
 3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     What he says is, "It is a beautiful sign of you when you
 4or it is a nice testimony to you or good for you", if you
 5want to put it colloquially, "it is not just good for you
 6or you have done well; it is good for you that you are
 7speaking out on behalf of your leader", that is what he is
 8saying, your leader. It is quite clear the presiding
 9judge regards ----
10 MR IRVING:     But he is not actually saying ----
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     --- regards -- may I finish, Mr Irving? May I just
12finish?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]     But you carry on and on and on?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY:     Mr Irving, come on. This is a witness who is
15trying to answer a point you have made and let he him
16finish, if he can remember where he had got to.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     It is quite clear the judge knows from the start to finish
18that Hofmann, that Hitler is Hofmann's leader and he
19treats the evidence accordingly.
20 MR IRVING:     Is it not just a throw away remark by his Lordship
21in this case to put this witness at his ease, and that is
22exactly what happens again and again and again in the
23courtroom, and you have put all this pompous significance
24on to it in order to try to undermine the value of this
25police sergeant who is doing his job?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     First of all, I agree of course that it is intended to

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 1make, it is a nice comment, the judge is trying to be nice
 2to Hofmann. After all, Hofmann whose has not been treated
 3very well. He has not been allowed to present evidence on
 4oath. He has been told that he is too heavily involved in
 5the whole thing, but he says, "it is your leader", and it
 6is quite clear to anybody who reads this rather brief
 7section of testimony that everybody is perfectly well
 8aware that this man's evidence is tainted, because Hitler
 9is his leader, not just because of that statement, but
10also because, as he says, he was with Hitler frequently,
11he was head of the political section of the Nazi party's
12Intelligence Unit, participated in the Putsch, accompanied
13Hitler for most of the evening of the Putsch.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]     But cutting to the bottom line, is there any reason to
15believe that this witness made the whole story up? Is
16there any reason, any subjective or objective reason why
17we should accept that he made the whole story up?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     Which story?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]     The story about how he had been a witness of Hitler,
20ticking off this lieutenant and throwing him out of the
21party?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     There is a serious reason to distrust that testimony.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]     Purely on the basis of the fact he was a Nazi ----
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]     I do not think it was taken very seriously by the court,
25and I think that a responsible author has to present this
26particular problem to the readership. If you want to make

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