090125-FN4

As if on cue, authorities in Germany announced that they were studying whether to bring charges against Williamson. They might well also consider whether to bring charges against Justice Gray.

The underlying issue in the Lipstadt Case was whether David Irving had acted with professional competence in advancing various criticisms of the “official” Jewish-Zionist account of Nazi genocide. This issue, turned on whether there was such overwhelming evidence against Irving’s interpretation and in favor of “holocaust orthodoxy” that Irving could be said to have acted “irresponsibly”.

In the end, Justice Gray all but conceded that the facts in favor of orthodoxy were underwhelming, and that evidence of mass gassings at Auschwitz relied on a theory of circumstantial “convergence” -- i.e. that the sum of zeros added up to at least a one. Increasingly even Zionist historians have abandoned the trite linearity of docu-dramas and holo-soaps in favour of circumstantial convergence theories. A few excerpts from a very lengthy opinion will convey the gist of the matter;

Re: Documentary Evidence of Gas Chambers

7.59 None of these drawings refers overtly to any part of the buildings being designed or intended to serve as gas chambers whether for fumigation or extermination purposes. In particular the drawings for Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 in crematorium 2 make no provision for ducts or chimneys by means of which Zyklon-B pellets might be inserted through the roof. However, van Pelt sought to illustrate by means of detailed analyses of certain features of the drawings that it reasonable to infer that certain chambers were designed to function as gas chambers.

7.60 The principal feature identified by van Pelt is the redesign of the doubledoor to [the alleged gas chamber]...

7.65 [and the existence of planned] incinerators near the "Badenanstalten fur Sonderaktionen" [Bath stations for Special Actions]

But

7.75 It is also accepted by the Defendants that in certain respects the documentary evidence, including the photographic evidence, is capable of more than one interpretation. Nevertheless the Defendants argue that the different strands of evidence "converge". [i.e. their interpretation trumps Irving’s]

Re: Numbers Killed

8.21 A formidable obstacle in the way of arriving at an accurate number for those killed by gas is that no records were kept by the Nazis of the numbers put to death in the gas chambers or, if they were, none have survived. Records were kept, as I have mentioned earlier, of the number of deaths amongst those who were registered as inmates of the camp. But, for reasons which are perhaps obvious, none of those deaths is recorded as having been due to gassing.

[But perhaps less “obviously” they weren’t attributed to gassing because ...]

8.22 The difficulty of arriving at an accurate estimate is compounded by the undoubted fact that many inmates died from disease and above all in the typhus epidemics which from time to time ravaged the camp. Whilst the Defendants do assert that these deaths are the result of deliberate genocidal policy on the part of the Nazis, they must of course be discounted in order to reach a correct estimate of the number of deaths in the gas chambers. Initial estimates, largely based on the capacity of the crematoria, ran as high as 4 million. As has been see the camp commandant, Hoss, gave varying estimates, ranging from 3 million to 1.1 million.

However, analysis of the numbers of Jews transported to Auschwitz produced a lower estimate of around 1 million. Research carried out more recently, notably by Raul Hilberg and by Dr Piper of the Auschwitz Museum, has concluded that the true figure for the number of deaths at Auschwitz is in the region of 1.1 million of which the vast majority perished in the gas chambers. This figure has, according to the evidence of van Pelt and Longerich, been endorsed by the majority of serious, professional historians concerned in this field. The only significant exception is Jean-Claude Pressac, a French chemist and amateur historian, whose study concluded that the overall number of deaths was 630-710,000, of which 470-550,000 were gassed on arrival at the camp.

Summation

13.71 I have to confess that, in common I suspect with most other people, I had supposed that the evidence of mass extermination of Jews in the gas chambers at Auschwitz was compelling. I have, however, set aside this preconception when assessing the evidence adduced by the parties in these proceedings.

The "convergence" of evidence:

13.72 The case for the Defendants, summarised above, is that there exists what van Pelt described as a "convergence" of evidence which is to the ordinary, dispassionate mind overwhelming that hundreds of thousands of Jews were systematically gassed to death at Auschwitz,

13.73 I recognise the force of many of Irving's comments upon some of those categories. He is right to point out that the contemporaneous documents, such as drawings, plans, correspondence with contractors and the like, yield little clear evidence of the existence of gas chambers designed to kill humans.

13.74 Similarly Irving had some valid comments to make about the various accounts given by survivors of the camp and by camp officials. Some of those accounts were given in evidence at the post-war trials. The possibility exists that some of these witnesses invented some or even all of the experiences which they describe

[The court effectively gave very little weight to the few allegedly actual eye-witness accounts ]

13.75 Vulnerable though the individual categories of evidence may be to criticisms of the kind mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, it appears to me that the cumulative effect of the documentary evidence for the genocidal operation of gas chambers at Auschwitz is considerable.

13.78 My conclusion is that the various categories of evidence do "converge" in the manner suggested by the Defendants. I accept their contention which I have summarised in paragraph 7.75 above. My overall assessment of the totality of the evidence that Jews were killed in large numbers in the gas chambers at Auschwitz is that it would require exceedingly powerful reasons to reject it.

A Note of Caution: Lipstadt and her backers have gone about trumpetting Gray's decision a legal determination that mass gassings took place. Not so. Because this was a civil libel trial the burden was on Irving to prove that Lipstadt had impugned his integrity. To distill it simply, the ruling from the bench was simply that Irving had failed to prove that Lipstadt's criticism of him was unreasonable. That was a far far cry from ruling, in a war crimes case, that the prosecutor had proved the existence of killing gas chambers beyond a reasonable doubt. Justice Gray's opinion is noteworthy less for its "legal precedent" than as a sober illustration that there are many inferences but few hard facts.

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