Toronto, Ontario
--- Upon resuming on Thursday, October 16, 1997
at 10:07 a.m.
RESUMED: GARY DEAN PRIDEAUX
THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning.
Mr. Christie, please.
MR. CHRISTIE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CROSS-EXAMINATION, Continued
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. You referred at the second paragraph, under the heading "Tab 3. Jewish Soap," to the conclusion that it is pseudo-scholarly. That was your conclusion?
A. That is what my conclusion was, that is right.
Q. "-- in the sense that while it quotes
numerous individuals, documents, and even some books, it fails to provide specific citations and references to any sources, an absolute necessity in real scholarly research."
Is it your understanding that all scholarly research is published with its footnotes included?
A. If there are footnotes to it, yes, or end notes of a line. That is the normal procedure.
Q. Is the Internet a scholarly medium of exchange?
A. It can be.
Q. Not necessarily?
A. Not necessarily.
Q. What I was going to suggest to you -- I would like to show you "1991 Volume Eleven, Numbers 1 through 4 with index" of The Journal of Historical Review and the article entitled "Jewish Soap." Would you mind looking at that and just tell me if that is the same text that you analyzed or if the text that you analyzed is part of that.
THE CHAIRPERSON: What is this? Do you have extra copies?
MR. CHRISTIE: Yes, I do, sir.
MR. TAYLOR: I am sorry, what was your question?
MR. CHRISTIE: I just want him to compare the article entitled "Jewish Soap" to the article that he analyzed.
THE REGISTRAR: Would you like this filed as an exhibit, Mr. Christie?
MR. CHRISTIE: If I could, please.
THE REGISTRAR: The document entitled "The Journal of Historical Review, 1991, Volume Eleven," pages 216 to 227, will be filed as Respondent Exhibit R-1.
EXHIBIT NO. R-1: Document entitled "The Journal of Historical Review, 1991, Volume Eleven," pages 216 to 227
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. What I was going to suggest to you, sir --
A. Can I just finish reading it?
Q. Sure.
A. Yes, Mr. Christie...?
Q. What I am asking you is: Is the article in The Journal of Historical Review the same article that is entitled "Jewish Soap" at tab 3 of the materials that you analyzed?
A. The text except for the footnotes is the same, it seems to me. That is what a quick glance would suggest.
Q. What I am suggesting is that, obviously, what has happened in the process of publishing this article is that the footnotes have been left off. Is that right?
A. The end notes are left off, and also, as far as I can see, there are no footnotes in the text either.
Q. End notes are what? Numbers?
A. No, the ones at the end of the text, at the end of your text.
Q. I see. You are saying that what is in the "Notes" portion of The Journal of Historical Review article are not footnotes; they are end notes?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there anything wrong in a scholarly work with putting end notes as opposed to footnotes?
A. Of course not.
Q. So, in essence, the context of your analysis, when you did not know that the article had been published elsewhere, was correct. Namely, it would appear that the document does not contain scholarly research. Perhaps, in order to know if it did, you would have to know the context of where else it might have been published. Is that a fair statement?
A. I suppose, although just to be real clear, the actual notes themselves are not specified -- that is, the numbers are not specified throughout the text, either, where the notes would have gone.
Q. I see. So, actually, the text does not include the numbers although the text in the --
A. The body of the text seems to be the same.
Q. If you look at the article from The Journal of Historical Review, it does have the numbers that attach to the end notes.
A. In this one, yes.
Q. So, in actual fact, had you known perhaps the whole context of the article -- and, by that, I mean where else it might have been published -- it might have affected your opinion.
A. In fact, on the fifth page of the materials under tab 3, there is an acknowledgement saying that the article was made available courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review. So, my assumption would be that this was the whole article.
Q. Does that affect your answer? My question was: Had you known the whole context -- that is, the history of the article, where else it had been published -- would you still maintain that it showed absolutely no scholarly research?
A. If I had it in this form, it would follow the usual canons of scholarly research in the sense of having citations and references. In this form it does not.
Q. To put this in the context of a thorough analysis, would you not, for example, make an inquiry of the author to see if it was published elsewhere in a different form?
A. Not if it is stated that this is the article. The statement in the acknowledgement is: Here it is. So I would assume that that was it, not an abridged form or a changed form or whatever.
Q. Therefore, if you were looking at it as a scholar, you would tend to disbelieve it because of its form.
A. I would want to know the sources, what is lacking. What are the references and where are they?
Q. But the impact upon you, at least as a scholar, would be less if it had no footnotes than if it did.
A. When assertions and quotes are made, that is right.
Q. Pardon?
A. In places where the footnotes are found -- let us take an example.
In the first paragraph, at the end of the second sentence is where the first footnote appears. There is no citation there of what the sources are. One, under normal scholarly activity, would say, "What are the sources?" This document provides sources; this one does not.
Q. So if you find a document that does not provide sources, you would be less inclined to believe it than one which did?
A. For crucial issues, right.
Q. Or on matters of fact, one would tend to need footnotes.
A. On some matters of fact, that is right.
Q. In your analysis you say:
"The writer implies that (a) the human soap story is a part of established history, --"
A. That is the quote.
Q. And it is your analysis that there was an implication that the human soap story is a part of established history?
A. In the quote that is cited on page 5, beginning "More recently, Jewish historian... 'denied established history'--", from that, I read that the author of the text is talking about something that was established history and then denied.
If the historian, Laqueur, states that the human soap story has no basis in reality, and others, as the author of this has argued, then it is not established history. But the use of "denied established history" invites the interpretation that it was.
Q. And you go on to say that the writer also subscribes to the claim that the story is false. That is what you derived from the passage.
A. Yes.
Q. Then you say:
"In order for the argument to go through, it is crucial to accept (a) --"
Is that right?
A. I am following you.
Q. What do you mean by "in order for the argument to go through?"
A. In order for the thesis that is being maintained here, that the Jewish Soap story was originally taken to be fact and then reputed.
Q. Don't you mean by "in order for the argument to go through," in order for the argument to be logically persuasive?
A. Yes.
Q. That is what I thought it meant. Naturally, you are saying that, in order for the argument to be logically persuasive, you have to know that the premises are true.
A. Yes.
Q. And the premise was that the human soap story was a part of established history.
A. That was the premise. That is my understanding of the premise.
Q. You are analyzing the sentence from the point of view of its logical construction and examining its premise.
A. That is what I attempted to do.
Q. In that circumstance, you then say:
"-- when in fact the story may well not be a part of history, in spite of the various claims and rumors about it."
What are you basing that on -- knowledge or experience or --
A. I am basing it on the text.
Q. No, it is not in the text. You are making a statement there: "-- when in fact the story may well not be a part of history." What makes you say that?
A. I am lifting this from the text, where the author says it is not a part of history. I am accepting his --
Q. No, he is implying, according to your analysis, that the human soap story is a part of established history. That is what you said in (a).
A. That is the scare quote interpretation.
Q. Right.
A. In other words, in order for the thesis to be, in my view, sensible --
Q. Logically persuasive.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Christie, don't -- Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could make my general objection
MR. CHRISTIE: He did say "logically persuasive."
THE CHAIRPERSON: One at a time.
MR. TAYLOR: We had this problem yesterday, and it seems like we are going to have it again today.
Dr. Prideaux is here to give evidence so that you can make a determination. He is here to give evidence to help you. If he is constantly being interrupted or if the record is not clear because two parties are speaking at the same time, then the purpose of his evidence has gone out the window.
A question can be asked -- Mr. Christie is a skilled counsel. He can ask the question. He can wait for the answer. He can listen to the answer, and then he can devise another question if he wants clarification.
To be fair to the witness and to be fair to you, the witness should be allowed to complete his answer and not be interrupted by counsel.
THE CHAIRPERSON: No one would quarrel with that, that he should be allowed to complete his answer. I am not concerned about the questions being asked. Mr. Christie is allowed considerable latitude in cross-examination.
Please proceed.
MR. TAYLOR: But, Mr. Chairman --
MR. CHRISTIE: I apologize. I understand my friend's concern. I am going to try harder not to interrupt.
MR. TAYLOR: Just to be clear, sir, I have no quarrel with his questions or the latitude. I want the information to come out as much as he does. That is not the issue.
The issue is, as you stated yesterday, that, if they are both talking at once, the record will not be clear and it will not be helpful.
THE CHAIRPERSON: I caution both the questioner and the responder to make an appropriate separation between their speeches. Let's try it again.
MR. CHRISTIE: Thank you.
Q. Am I correct in that I understand that you are saying that the premise that the human soap story is a part of established history is by implication from the scare quotes around "denied established history?"
A. Yes.
Q. In your statement -- and I am quoting from your opinion:
"-- when in fact the story may well not be a part of history, in spite of the various claims and rumors about it."
are you saying that that is the writer's view or yours?
A. That is my view.
Q. In expressing that view and questioning whether the soap story was a part of established history, were you relying on some expertise or just the process of questioning?
A. I was relying on the text for information.
Q. And you don't find the information in the text; therefore, you say that the text is lacking support for the premise. Is that a fair statement?
A. I don't find -- sorry...?
Q. You don't find support for the premise in the text and, therefore, you are questioning whether or not it is true.
A. I am saying that, if it is false -- sorry, we are talking about "when in fact." I am saying that it may or may not be true, despite its rumours.
Q. Of course, anything may or may not be true. Right?
A. That is what I said.
Q. So you are not saying that it is not true; you are just saying that there is no evidence to support it.
A. That is right.
Q. You are not claiming to say that there is any reason to doubt the premise; you are just saying that there isn't any support for it in the text itself.
A. I am saying that there is presentation for it -- that is, the author asserts things, and he also quotes from others suggesting that in the end of the analyses everyone seems to agree. That is my conclusion: everyone seems to agree that the story is false, even though there were rumours about it, dating back, as the author says, as early as before the Second World War.
Q. So you are suggesting in your analysis:
"If (a) is false, then there is no substance to its denial by either Laqueur or anyone else, since it is not informative to assert that an acknowledged piece of fiction is a piece of fiction --"
because, in effect, that asserts a tautology.
A. It does.
Q. By virtue of saying that, if your premise is false, your argument is a tautology, you are not advancing anyone's understanding of the meaning of that text, are you?
A. The meaning of the text, in my view, does not reside there. The thrust of the text resides elsewhere--
Q. I understand, but surely -- sorry, I interrupted you again.
A. That is fine.
Q. Surely, the reason you analyzed this portion of the text was because you concluded that it set out the premise.
A. The reason I analyzed this portion of the text, in fact the whole text, is because the article, in my view, without the last sentence simply is an attempt to confirm what others have confirmed. It adds no new information to the discourse.
Q. That is because you reject the premise.
A. I reject which premise?
Q. "The" premise that you identified as "the" premise, namely, that the human soap story is a part of established history.
A. I reject that premise on the basis of this material. In other words, it would appear to me that the human -- may I just lay this out?
It seems to me that the human soap story in this text was a rumour widely circulated, held as truth by individuals, but later argued not to be true, and that argument came from a variety of sources. At one time it might have been felt to be part of established history, but later became not to be a part of established history. That is it.
Q. But you don't know what is the truth about that.
A. I am arguing from the content of the text.
Q. Yes, you are arguing from the content of the text without any knowledge of the factual basis for the assertions.
A. Certainly not any knowledge from the supporting references, that is true.
Q. Do you have any opinions on the truth of the statement? Is that how you base your --
A. I don't really know if the statement is true or false.
Q. But it would not be a tautology if it is true.
A. To assert something that is true and is accepted to be true, to assert that bachelors are unmarried men, or whatever, is to add nothing new to the meaning of that expression.
Q. But this does not assert that bachelors are unmarried men; this asserts that the human soap story is a part of established history. That is the premise, isn't it?
A. That is the frame of reference of the story, certainly.
Q. We had it a few moments ago that you agreed that that was the premise.
A. That is the frame of reference of the story, in my view.
Q. You didn't say a few minutes ago that that was the premise?
A. I am saying it now.
Q. Are you saying it now or not, that it is the premise?
A. I am saying that it is the focus of the text, Mr. Christie.
Q. Well, I just want --
A. The reality of the -- sorry, I interrupted you.
Q. Go ahead.
A. The reality of the human soap story is the issue around which this text revolves. Its truth or falsity is what the text revolves around.
Q. So I can't get you to admit that a few moments ago you acknowledged that the statement that the human soap story is a part of established history was the premise. You don't recall saying that. Is that your evidence?
A. No, I recall saying that. May I amplify it?
Q. I just want to know if you said it and if it was true.
A. If I said it --
Q. And if it was true.
A. My interpretation of this -- am I allowed to give this interpretation?
Q. You are allowed to say anything you like, because I am not going to interrupt you.
A. My interpretation is that at one point in history, apparently from the text, which is the information I have, it was widely held that the human soap story was true, namely, a part of established history. At a later point it came to be held not to be true by lots of scholars. I have not read those scholars' works; I don't know what they said. So -- sorry, go ahead.
Q. My question was: Did you say that that was the premise and was it true to say that that was the premise -- not that the premise is true, but that in logic and in reasoned argument, was that the premise?
A. That is part of the premise; that is right.
Q. Is there any other part of the premise?
A. Yes. I just explained this, Mr. Chair.
Q. What is the rest of the premise?
A. The issue is whether or not the story is accepted to be part of established history at different times.
Q. Where is that stated as the premise?
A. I just stated it.
Q. I thought you had to rely on the text.
A. All right. In the footnote --
THE CHAIRPERSON: Excuse me, what is the difference between saying that it is the premise on the one hand and that it is the frame of reference?
THE WITNESS: The human soap story, in the larger sense, constitutes the thematic content of the passage. It is what the passage is about. Its authenticity is also what it is about, the authenticity of the story, the correctness of the story.
If at one point the view was held that this story was true, then at that point in history it would presumably be accepted as part of established history. If it later came to be found to be false, then it is no longer part of established history.
It was at one time assumed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that was part of established history. Its truth was not the issue, but it was assumed to be part of the nature of things. It later was refuted, so we have a different view about that.
That is the distinction I am trying to draw.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. Isn't this author basically saying that at one time it was part of established history; it was a ridiculous story; it is like other ridiculous stories about the Holocaust?
A. That is right; he is saying that.
Q. If what he said was true, about being part of established history, then it would have some logical significance, would it not?
A. At that point.
Q. At that point. I agree with you that, as you say, what people believe at one time might not be the same as another and, therefore, if it is too removed in time, I suggest, the argument would break down.
A. That is possible.
Q. Is this footnote, which I realize you didn't have because you didn't have the article as published earlier, it says -- and now we are looking at the exhibit, The Journal of Historical Review, 1991, at page 224:
"During the First World War, the London Times was apparently the first Allied paper to report (in April 1917) that the Germans were boiling down the bodies of their dead soldiers to make soap and other products. See: Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (New York: 1975), pp. 105-106. This story was quickly picked up by other papers and widely circulated in the British and American press. In 1925, British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain admitted that the 'corpse factory' story had been a lie. See: Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime (New York: 1929), pp. 102, 111-112; Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: 1988), pp. 8-9."
If that is provided as support for the statement, would it affect your perception of it as being, as you say, possibly false?
A. If I had this material with the footnotes, then I would take a different view toward the analysis, because I would have some documented evidence to support the claims, and the author has provided us with some documented evidence.
Q. Right. When you were asked to do your analysis of the writings that were provided to you by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as a professional interested in an objective analysis of the text, would you think it appropriate to contact the purported author and find out if there is any support for the premises before you analyzed it?
A. Not if the text says that "this article is provided," et cetera. In other words, I assumed the truthfulness of the statement that this was the article.
Q. As we discussed yesterday, articles have to be taken in a larger context, don't they?
A. Explain. I don't understand.
Q. If it is in the context of a historical debate -- and these types of articles appear to be -- surely it would be necessary to know if these articles had been published elsewhere, if there were footnotes available, or even if there was extrinsic material which supported the factual claims.
A. I am taking the goodwill of the author, Mr. Christie, or whoever posted it:
"We wish to acknowledge that the above article was made available courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review."
I assume in that -- it does not say "part of the article," "some of the article." In my analysis of it, it says "the article." The notes are part of the article and the references are part of the article, in my view. This document does not have those components to it. That is what I was trying to make clear.
Q. You actually looked at the reference to the Institute of Historical Review, did you?
A. I looked at the note at the bottom of the document.
Q. I think I know what you mean.
A. I assumed, as one would assume if one says, "This article is reprinted from such and such and so and so or translated from such and such and so and so," that that is the article, not a part of it, not bits and pieces of it, not a reconstruction of it, but the article. That is my assumption. That is a normal assumption to make.
Q. Are footnotes necessarily part of an article, or are they just the support for it?
A. No, they are part of the article.
Q. In a scholarly work that would be crucial; is that right?
A. In a scholarly work that would be very crucial with respect to citing sources.
Q. So, what are we doing here? Criticizing the work for lack of scholarliness?
A. If it purports to be a scholarly article, and that is what I assume --
Q. Why are --
A. Let me finish, please.
If it purports to be a scholarly article, as it appears to be here, and that this is a representation of that article, it is not a representation of it. It is not the complete article.
If one looks at the footnote for No. 1 -- that was the first footnote we looked at -- and we look at the text here, we see:
"Although a similar charge...was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterwards, it was nevertheless revived and widely believed during the Second.1"
Normally, one would say: Where was it? Just cite a reference so that somebody can check it. It is not here.
Q. It is not here in the article you were provided by the Canadian Human Rights Commission?
A. That is correct; it is not. Moreover --
Q. So -- you have not finished, I am sorry.
A. That is all right, Mr. Christie; go ahead.
Q. If there are no footnotes, why do you conclude that what you saw purported to be a scholarly article at all?
A. Because it says at the end of the text:
"We wish to acknowledge that the above article was made available courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review."
Q. So you assume that the Institute is scholarly, then?
A. I assume that the article is a scholarly article in the sense of its form. This is not that article.
Q. If I understand your analysis correctly, you conclude that it might be a tautology, which you say at the end of the penultimate paragraph. You would not say that if you saw the article as a whole.
A. I still think the article is simply re-establishing this information. I would read the article -- I don't think I would read the thrust of the article differently, but I would at least have sources to go to.
Q. Why wouldn't you read the thrust of the article differently?
A. Because the thrust of the article seems to me to say what the last sentence of the article says.
Q. Which is a conclusion.
A. Which is an invitation for a conclusion, yes.
THE CHAIRPERSON: I am sorry, I didn't hear you.
THE WITNESS: I am sorry.
MR. CHRISTIE: It's an invitation for a conclusion.
THE WITNESS: It is an invitation to a conclusion. Let me just go to that.
If you look at the last sentence in the article just above "About the Author" on the fifth page:
"That so many intelligent and otherwise thoughtful people could ever have seriously believed that the Germans distributed bars of soap brazenly labeled with letters indicating that they were manufactured from Jewish corpses shows how readily even the most absurd Holocaust fables can be -- and are -- accepted as fact."
It does not say "how the most absurd Holocaust fable," but it talks about "fables." That is, it invites the understanding of class of such stories.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. Are you saying there is no such class?
A. I don't know if there is a class of fables or not, but the invitation is provided.
Q. Maybe, as you put it, the argument goes through, then. If you don't know that the conclusion is false --
A. No, that is not the point, Mr. Christie.
Q. Oh, I see. Can you tell me what the point is?
A. The point is that the article is used as a token for a class stipulated to exist, namely, Holocaust fables, and the suggestion is that, if this particular Holocaust fable, absurd as it is, is false, then others may well be false as well.
Q. And you say there is a flaw to that reasoning, do you?
A. I say that the stipulation is that there are others of this absurdity.
Q. And are you saying that that is not true?
A. I am saying it is not evident.
Q. It is not proven?
A. That is right.
Q. Why is it not proven?
A. Because the argument is the argument from the part to the whole.
Q. Yes. Isn't that a valid argument at the time?
A. No, not necessarily. Of course not.
Q. Oh, I see. It is not a valid argument to argue that, because something happened in one instance, therefore, it could happen or did happen in other instances.
A. The argument from the part to the whole states that properties associated with the individual token, the part, apply across the board to all other members of the set. That is the argument of the part from the whole, the argument of metonymy.
Q. It is never a valid argument?
A. It may be, but it is not necessarily the case. It may well be the case, for example, that penguins do not have feathers, but that does not mean that all birds don not have feathers.
Q. You say penguins don't have feathers?
A. Penguins don't fly. Maybe penguins do have feathers for all I know.
Q. It does help to know the facts, doesn't it?
A. I would like to know whether penguins have feathers or not, but let us assume the case that penguins do not have feathers.
Q. Now --
A. Excuse me, Mr. Christie, does the argument from the part to the whole make sense?
Q. It is my submission to you that there is no way for you, as a linguist, to tell us whether the argument from the part to the whole makes sense or not. That is a matter of logic. It depends on the fact; it depends on the premises; and it depends on the similarities between the part and the whole, all of which is not something within the field of linguistics, but in the field of logic and in the field of common sense. Isn't that right?
A. Not necessarily, no.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Your analysis of this last phraseology in this article would fall within the category of metonymy?
THE WITNESS: That is right.
THE CHAIRPERSON: In other words, he is dealing with the soap story as fable.
THE WITNESS: Right.
THE CHAIRPERSON: And he pluralizes it.
THE WITNESS: Extrapolating it to other stories.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. In your reasoning to the conclusion that the premise might be false, you said:
"If (a) is false, there is no substance to its denial by either Laqueur or anyone else, since it is not informative to assert that an acknowledged piece of fiction is a piece of fiction."
You were simply analyzing that sentence that precedes that paragraph:
"More recently, Jewish historian Walter Laqueur 'denied established history' by acknowledging in his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, that the human soap story has no basis in reality."
Is that right?
A. I am sorry, Mr. Christie, that was a long passage. Unpack it for me, please.
Q. I said: In your analysis, where you concluded that (a) is false, or if it is false, there is no substance to its denial by either Laqueur or anyone else, since it is not informative to assert that an acknowledged piece of fiction is a piece of fiction, you were analyzing merely the sentence previous that you were quoting.
A. In that instance, yes.
Q. Did you not look at the whole text of the "Jewish Soap" story?
A. Of course I did.
Q. Did it not point to other examples where, in 1941, it refers to U.S. Army Intelligence reports saying:
"The Germans have brought thousands of Polish teachers, priests and Jews there and after extracting the blood serum from their bodies, had thrown them in large pots and melted off grease to make soap --"
A. I read the article.
Q. So he was saying that that was a source of the story in 1941. Right?
A. He said that was a source of the story in 1941.
Q. Then he said:
"Macabre 'Jewish soap' jokes became popular in the ghettos and camps, and many non-Jews on the outside came to believe the story. When trains loaded with Jewish deportees stopped temporarily at rail stations, Poles reportedly would gleefully shout at them: 'Jews to soap!' Even British prisoners of war interned at Auschwitz in 1944 testified later about the wartime rumors that corpses of gassing victims were being turned into soap there."
Did you read that?
A. I read it all, Mr. Christie.
Q. All right. Did you also read that in 1942 Rabbi Stephen Wise, wartime head of the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Congress, publicly charged that Jewish corpses were being "processed into such war-vital commodities as soap, fats and fertilizer" by the Germans?
A. I am following you.
Q. Did you not take that into consideration in saying that there was no support for the premise?
A. I took that into consideration.
Q. So you must have disregarded that or said, "That is not true."
A. No, I took that into consideration.
Q. Why did you say there were no supporting reference points. He gives you the date, the speaker, the substance of the speech. Surely he has given you information that indicates that it was a widely-held view, and he identifies the time.
A. He does that.
Q. Thank you. He then says:
"In late 1942, the Congress Weekly, published by the American Jewish Congress, editorialized that the Germans were turning Jews 'by scientific methods of dissolution into fertilizer, soap and glue.'"
Did you read that?
A. I read it, Mr. Christie. I read the entire article.
Q. Do you still maintain that he was giving no points of reference?
A. I maintain that he was citing no sources.
Q. Reading farther on, skipping a couple of paragraphs:
"After the war the soap story was given important legitimacy at the main Nuremberg trial. L.N. Smirnov, Chief Counsellor of Justice for the USSR, declared to the Tribunal:
'...The same base, rationalized SS technical minds which created gas chambers and murder vans, began devising such methods of complete annihilation of human bodies, which would not only conceal the traces of their crimes, but also to serve in the manufacturing of certain products. In the Danzig Anatomical Institute, semi-industrial experiments in the production of soap from human bodies and the tanning of human skin for industrial purposes were carried out.'"
Doesn't that give you a reference?
A. No. It gives me a quotation; it does not give me a citation. It doesn't tell me where it is from.
Q. You don't know the reports of the main Nuremberg trial?
A. No, I don't.
Q. Do you know that there are books within 100 yards of here that contain that?
A. Mr. Christie, if I were wanting to --
Q. I just -- can you wait for my question? My last question was: Do you know that there are books within 100 yards of here that contain the transcripts of the main Nuremberg trial?
A. No, I didn't know that.
Q. So you call this not a point of reference when a person gives you the name of the speaker, the statement attributed to them and the place where it was alleged to be made. That is not a point of reference?
A. It is not a citation.
Q. It is not a citation; all right.
He then says:
"A human soap 'recipe,' allegedly prepared by Dr. Spanner (Nuremberg document USSR-196) --"
Is that a citation?
A. Where is it?
Q. Actually, he has referred to the main Nuremberg trial, and that is the number for the document.
A. There is no citation to me. Where is it? It is cited, you are right, as exhibit such-and-such.
Q. So is that a citation?
A. If I knew where to find it, it would be.
Q. What difference does it make whether you know where to find it? You might not know anything about where to find it. It's a citation.
A. The point of a citation, Mr. Christie, is to allow the reader to go to the original source and look at that original source, investigate it, do whatever one wants with it, including verifying it. That is the point.
Q. So you have to know what the source is and be able to find it.
A. Let's see if there is a source cited --
Q. Wait until I ask you a question. I am going to put it to you that that identifies the Nuremberg document. It tells you that it is part of the Nuremberg trial transcript and, if you had any knowledge, you could go and find it. Right?
A. Not necessarily, Mr. Christie.
Q. What do you mean, not necessarily? If you had knowledge of where to go and get the Nuremberg trial transcripts, you could find it.
A. I suppose, if I were to go to the library and begin a search for the Nuremberg trial exhibits, I could eventually find it.
One of the points of citations is to facilitate that for readers, so that they do not have to read the mind or whatever of the author. They have a pathway. Let's see if there is a pathway.
Q. Am I interrupting you?
A. No, go right ahead.
Q. You said: Let's see if there is a pathway. I am going to suggest to you that the pathway is identified as the trial transcript of the Nuremberg trials, and the exhibit number is provided: Nuremberg document USSR-196 submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal.
"Finally, a sample of what was supposed to be a piece of 'human soap' was submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal as exhibit USSR-393."
Is that a pathway for you, sir?
A. I am looking, if you will just give me a moment. I am looking for the quote in the new exhibit.
MR. TAYLOR: If I can help you, it is at page 219, Doctor.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. To be fair to me, I am asking you to look at the exhibit without the footnotes because I am suggesting that actually, even without the footnotes and on what you looked at, there is a pathway. So, yes, you can look at 219 if you want, but I was going to ask you to tell me why that is not a pathway, why that is not a citation.
A. It is interesting that the preceding paragraph, the Smirnov paragraph, also cites a Nuremberg exhibit, and there is a footnote for it.
Q. At page 219 it says:
"Smirnov quoted at length from an affidavit by Sigmund Mazur, an Institute employee, which was accepted as Nuremberg exhibit USSR-197."
Where is the footnote?
A. At the end of the paragraph. Is that relevant?
Q. Probably to a different matter because there is a lot of sentences between it. If you want to go and look, go ahead.
A. I am looking, and it refers to the Smirnov statement of February 19, 1946. So I presume it is relevant to that paragraph. So the author saw fit to provide us with a footnote telling us where the documents were found and commenting on them in one instance, but not in the next.
Q. Let's say, for the sake of argument now, that you can find that footnotes would have assisted you to verify the content of the text.
A. That is correct.
Q. Let's assume that there is an error or there are no footnotes in the text, which is what you found.
A. I found no footnotes in the text for whatever reason.
Q. If, through content of the text, you could find the documents yourself, using common sense, what is the loss? Does it make the text untrue? Does it make the argument not go through?
A. It does in several instances. I can see that, with respect to the Nuremberg exhibit, with whatever time and effort I might want to engage in, I could perhaps find that. However, in other instances, where information is provided and is stated as fact and not cited with references, I could not find that. I would not have the foggiest idea where to go to get the content of footnote No. 1, for example. So it does not provide that pathway.
Q. All you are saying is that without footnotes it is not persuasive, even though it might be true?
A. No, I am not saying that.
Q. Isn't that what you are saying?
A. No, it is not what I am saying.
Q. Tell me what you are saying, then.
A. I am saying that in the instances where statements are made without citations that I can check as a scholar, that I can check as any academic would want to check, I have to assume that those are assertions, not citations.
Q. So I put it to you that assertions to a scholar are not as persuasive as citations.
A. Assertions of some sorts are not as persuasive if they are not cited.
For example, if we simply go to the example that I was mentioning. the second sentence of the text, the author's comments:
"Although a similar charge during the First World War was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterwards, it was nevertheless revived --"
And so forth.
If I am reading this -- and I am assuming that the author, for example, provides me with pathways when he or she wants to, but just does not want to bother to give me any assistance in other cases, I am going to treat that with less kind of confidence, I suppose, than if in the contrary.
Q. With less kinds of confidence? Are those your words, "with less kinds of confidence?"
A. With less confidence.
Q. Less confidence?
A. Yes.
Q. Isn't that the same as saying that it is not as persuasive?
A. Not necessarily.
Q. When you say, "I have less confidence in you," doesn't that mean "You are not as persuasive as something else?"
A. I may have less confidence in you for a variety of reasons.
Q. And that results in your not being very persuasive. Right?
A. Not necessarily. It may be; it may not be.
Q. Not necessarily. I say that, logically and necessarily, that in which you have no confidence is not persuasive. Do you agree or disagree?
A. I think that is not a yes/no question.
Q. Can you find books when you get titles and authors? You are a scholar. Can you find books?
A. Can I find books?
Q. Yes. If I tell you the name of the author and the title -- I can find a book. Can't you? If I tell you William Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", I can find the book. Can you?
A. I can find that book. Under the assumption that it exists, I can find it. We share that assumption.
Q. Let's assume that is the case. You could quickly find out if it did not exist, couldn't you?
A. That is an interesting question.
Q. What is the interesting answer?
A. The interesting answer is that sometimes you can't find a book and you still think it exists, or you search for it and you can't find it.
Q. You can't prove a negative. I agree that there could be books that aren't listed --
A. No, I think --
Q. I agree with you. Some books can't be found, that even do exist.
If I was to tell you that William Shirer wrote a book called "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," and he is a supposedly reputable historian and that he has promoted the durable sub-story, you could find that out. That is a point of reference that is not hard to find. Right?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you ever heard of William Shirer and "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?"
A. Yes.
Q. So, even without a footnote, you could find out if, at least as late as that book, the story was being accepted as --
A. Part of established history.
Q. Yes, part of established history. You could check that.
A. I could check that.
Q. If you, as a scholar, wanted to find out if Ilya Ehrenburg had actually written post-war memoirs, I suppose you could find that out?
A. Where is that, please?
Q. On the next page:
"Leading Soviet war propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg wrote in his postwar memoir: 'I have held in my hand a cake of soap stamped with the legend 'pure Jewish soap', prepared from the corpses of people who had been destroyed. But there is no need to speak of these things: thousands of books have been written about them.'"
If you wanted to find out if Ilya Ehrenburg had written wartime memories, could you not find that out?
A. I could try.
Q. Do you know who he was?
A. No.
Q. It says:
"A standard history studies textbook used in Canadian secondary schools, Canada: The Twentieth Century, told students that the Germans 'boiled' the corpses of their Jewish victims 'to make soap.' The Anatomy of Nazism, a booklet published and distributed by the Zionist 'Anti-Defamation League' of B'nai B'rith, stated: 'The process of brutalization did not end with the mass murders themselves. Large quantities of soap were manufactured from the corpses of those murdered.'"
If you wanted to find out about Canadian secondary school textbooks and whether that statement was true, would that be difficult? He gives you the name of the textbook --
A. I am sorry, I don't follow the passage. Can you just refer me to it, please.
Q. Okay.
"A standard history studies textbook used in Canadian secondary schools, --"
A. No, I am asking where it is.
THE CHAIRPERSON: He is asking for the page.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. I am sorry, it is the next page. I just turned the page of the text that I was given. It is apparently printed off at 10:27, I guess.
MR. TAYLOR: It is the third one from the end, if I can be helpful.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. It has the number in the lower right-hand corner, 10:27. I am looking now at the second paragraph from the top.
A. Thank you.
Q. As a scholar, it would be, I suggest, quite easy to find the book called "Canada: The Twentieth Century?"
A. Yes, it would.
Q. If there were references, they usually have an index in textbooks, and you could probably find any references to the Holocaust and look to see if that is true.
A. I could look and see if that is true.
Q. And you could contact the Anti-Defamation League to see if they had published a booklet called "The Anatomy of Naziism" and if it was in there?
A. Could I do that?
Q. Yes.
A. I suppose I could.
Q. So there is enough information there for you to check those statements?
A. There is enough information in the citations that you suggested to do that; that is correct.
Q. If that was true, that those statements were made, it would be true to say that this was a part of established history, wouldn't it?
A. At the time. People were asserting it at that point.
Q. So, as we get up to the present time, 1981, is that a relevant period of time for the statement that it is established history for you?
A. I don't know.
Q. What constitutes established history is anybody's guess, isn't it?
A. No, I think it is not anybody's guess.
Q. It would be a historian's guess.
A. A historian's guess.
Q. And there are many different historians. Right?
A. There is a whole lot of historians.
Q. It says:
"A detailed 1981 work, Hitler's Death Camps, repeated the soap story in lurid detail."
I agree that there is no author attributed there, but there are indexes of titles that you could check for that?
A. Yes.
Q. And it gives you the reference there that
"'some historians claim that the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor'"
I guess it does give you the name of the author.
"Konnilyn Feig nevertheless accepted the story because 'most East European camp scholars ... validate the soap stories, and other kinds of bars made from humans are displayed in Eastern Europe -- I have seen many over the years.'"
You have the name of the author, the date of the publication and the title, and some quotes. That would give you enough to check, wouldn't it, without the footnote?
A. If I were to submit that paper or something like this with the title and author and quote and not cite the work, it would not be accepted.
Q. It would be a serious failure for any scholarly student.
A. That is right.
Q. Because professors don't like to have to check by research of their own.
A. No, that is not the reason.
Q. "New York Rabbi Arthur Schneier repeated
the tale at the opening ceremony of the largest Holocaust meeting in history. In his invocation to the 'American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors,' held in Washington in April 1983, the Rabbi solemnly declared: 'We remember the bars of soap with the initials RJF -- Rein jüdisches Fett, Pure Jewish Fat -- made from the bodies of our loved ones.'"
That is something you couldn't check. Right?
A. I could not check the source in which it was published; that's right. If it was a speech and not published, I could not check it. If it were published, I could.
Q. You would have to know where it was published in order to ascertain if that was true.
A. That is right. May I just inquire if that footnote is here?
Q. That is a good question. Go ahead.
Yes, it is footnote 26, so it gives you a footnote there in the published article from The Journal of Historical Review. It cites:
"This writer was present at the opening ceremony held at the Landover, MD., Capital Center, on Monday evening, April 11, 1983. Schneier was Rabbi at Park East Synagogue, New York City. The crowd of some 15,000 was later addressed by President Reagan."
So we couldn't really check that one, could we?
A. No, we could not.
Q. You have to take the author's word on that.
A. That is right.
Q. And that is supposed to be a Mr. Mark Weber. Right?
A. Yes.
Q. If you want to reach him, I suppose the implication of the article seems to be that you contact the Institute of Historical Review. Is that a fair inference?
A. Yes, if I wanted to contact him,
Q. Is that an inference that you would derive from --
A. No, I am just reading the business at the bottom, which says that he is the Editor of The Journal of Historical Review. I presume I would have access to him.
Q. In this reference to Walter Laqueur in the next paragraph, it says:
"More recently, Jewish historian Walter Laqueur 'denied established history' by acknowledging in his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, that the human soap story has no basis in reality. Gitta Sereny, another Jewish historian, noted in her book Into That Darkness: 'The universally accepted story that the corpses were used to make soap and fertilizer is finally refuted by the generally very reliable Ludwigsburg Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crimes.'"
That gives you an identity for the denial of that story, does it not?
A. It gives me an identity?
Q. A point of reference, I guess, not a citation. You could find out if that is true. With the name of the author and the title of the book, you could find that quote, couldn't you?
A. Yes, if I could find the book, I could find the quote.
Q. It says:
"Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history, similarly 'rewrote history' when she confirmed in 1981: 'The fact is that the Nazis never used the bodies of Jews, or for that matter anyone else, for the production of soap.'"
That clearly gives you the name of the person and the speaker, although it doesn't say where. Right?
A. That is correct.
Q. It says:
"In April 1990, professor Yehuda Bauer of Israel's Hebrew University, regarded as a leading Holocaust historian, as well as Shmuel Krakowski, archives director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, confirmed that the human soap story is not true."
Of course, if you want to contact those institutions through the Internet, you could do it instantly, couldn't you?
A. I don't know if I could. I could try. I don't know if I would be successful.
Q. You could find out if it is true that Yehuda Bauer had alleged that the stories had been circulated by the Nazis. You could check that by speaking to him. You could find him. Right?
A. Perhaps I could; I don't know.
Q. He is identified as the professor of Israel's Hebrew University. Universities are in touch through the Internet, aren't they?
A. The point of the citation, of course, is to facilitate that.
Q. I understand. The difficulty with this article is that, without the footnotes, it is difficult to do the basic research as to whether there is a valid thesis or not.
A. That is right. That is why I presume. incidentally, that in this version the footnotes are included.
Toronto, Ontario
--- Upon resuming on Thursday, October 16, 1997
at 10:07 a.m.
RESUMED: GARY DEAN PRIDEAUX
THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning.
Mr. Christie, please.
MR. CHRISTIE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CROSS-EXAMINATION, Continued
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. You referred at the second paragraph, under the heading "Tab 3. Jewish Soap," to the conclusion that it is pseudo-scholarly. That was your conclusion?
A. That is what my conclusion was, that is right.
Q. "-- in the sense that while it quotes
numerous individuals, documents, and even some books, it fails to provide specific citations and references to any sources, an absolute necessity in real scholarly research."
Is it your understanding that all scholarly research is published with its footnotes included?
A. If there are footnotes to it, yes, or end notes of a line. That is the normal procedure.
Q. Is the Internet a scholarly medium of exchange?
A. It can be.
Q. Not necessarily?
A. Not necessarily.
Q. What I was going to suggest to you -- I would like to show you "1991 Volume Eleven, Numbers 1 through 4 with index" of The Journal of Historical Review and the article entitled "Jewish Soap." Would you mind looking at that and just tell me if that is the same text that you analyzed or if the text that you analyzed is part of that.
THE CHAIRPERSON: What is this? Do you have extra copies?
MR. CHRISTIE: Yes, I do, sir.
MR. TAYLOR: I am sorry, what was your question?
MR. CHRISTIE: I just want him to compare the article entitled "Jewish Soap" to the article that he analyzed.
THE REGISTRAR: Would you like this filed as an exhibit, Mr. Christie?
MR. CHRISTIE: If I could, please.
THE REGISTRAR: The document entitled "The Journal of Historical Review, 1991, Volume Eleven," pages 216 to 227, will be filed as Respondent Exhibit R-1.
EXHIBIT NO. R-1: Document entitled "The Journal of Historical Review, 1991, Volume Eleven," pages 216 to 227
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. What I was going to suggest to you, sir --
A. Can I just finish reading it?
Q. Sure.
A. Yes, Mr. Christie...?
Q. What I am asking you is: Is the article in The Journal of Historical Review the same article that is entitled "Jewish Soap" at tab 3 of the materials that you analyzed?
A. The text except for the footnotes is the same, it seems to me. That is what a quick glance would suggest.
Q. What I am suggesting is that, obviously, what has happened in the process of publishing this article is that the footnotes have been left off. Is that right?
A. The end notes are left off, and also, as far as I can see, there are no footnotes in the text either.
Q. End notes are what? Numbers?
A. No, the ones at the end of the text, at the end of your text.
Q. I see. You are saying that what is in the "Notes" portion of The Journal of Historical Review article are not footnotes; they are end notes?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there anything wrong in a scholarly work with putting end notes as opposed to footnotes?
A. Of course not.
Q. So, in essence, the context of your analysis, when you did not know that the article had been published elsewhere, was correct. Namely, it would appear that the document does not contain scholarly research. Perhaps, in order to know if it did, you would have to know the context of where else it might have been published. Is that a fair statement?
A. I suppose, although just to be real clear, the actual notes themselves are not specified -- that is, the numbers are not specified throughout the text, either, where the notes would have gone.
Q. I see. So, actually, the text does not include the numbers although the text in the --
A. The body of the text seems to be the same.
Q. If you look at the article from The Journal of Historical Review, it does have the numbers that attach to the end notes.
A. In this one, yes.
Q. So, in actual fact, had you known perhaps the whole context of the article -- and, by that, I mean where else it might have been published -- it might have affected your opinion.
A. In fact, on the fifth page of the materials under tab 3, there is an acknowledgement saying that the article was made available courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review. So, my assumption would be that this was the whole article.
Q. Does that affect your answer? My question was: Had you known the whole context -- that is, the history of the article, where else it had been published -- would you still maintain that it showed absolutely no scholarly research?
A. If I had it in this form, it would follow the usual canons of scholarly research in the sense of having citations and references. In this form it does not.
Q. To put this in the context of a thorough analysis, would you not, for example, make an inquiry of the author to see if it was published elsewhere in a different form?
A. Not if it is stated that this is the article. The statement in the acknowledgement is: Here it is. So I would assume that that was it, not an abridged form or a changed form or whatever.
Q. Therefore, if you were looking at it as a scholar, you would tend to disbelieve it because of its form.
A. I would want to know the sources, what is lacking. What are the references and where are they?
Q. But the impact upon you, at least as a scholar, would be less if it had no footnotes than if it did.
A. When assertions and quotes are made, that is right.
Q. Pardon?
A. In places where the footnotes are found -- let us take an example.
In the first paragraph, at the end of the second sentence is where the first footnote appears. There is no citation there of what the sources are. One, under normal scholarly activity, would say, "What are the sources?" This document provides sources; this one does not.
Q. So if you find a document that does not provide sources, you would be less inclined to believe it than one which did?
A. For crucial issues, right.
Q. Or on matters of fact, one would tend to need footnotes.
A. On some matters of fact, that is right.
Q. In your analysis you say:
"The writer implies that (a) the human soap story is a part of established history, --"
A. That is the quote.
Q. And it is your analysis that there was an implication that the human soap story is a part of established history?
A. In the quote that is cited on page 5, beginning "More recently, Jewish historian... 'denied established history'--", from that, I read that the author of the text is talking about something that was established history and then denied.
If the historian, Laqueur, states that the human soap story has no basis in reality, and others, as the author of this has argued, then it is not established history. But the use of "denied established history" invites the interpretation that it was.
Q. And you go on to say that the writer also subscribes to the claim that the story is false. That is what you derived from the passage.
A. Yes.
Q. Then you say:
"In order for the argument to go through, it is crucial to accept (a) --"
Is that right?
A. I am following you.
Q. What do you mean by "in order for the argument to go through?"
A. In order for the thesis that is being maintained here, that the Jewish Soap story was originally taken to be fact and then reputed.
Q. Don't you mean by "in order for the argument to go through," in order for the argument to be logically persuasive?
A. Yes.
Q. That is what I thought it meant. Naturally, you are saying that, in order for the argument to be logically persuasive, you have to know that the premises are true.
A. Yes.
Q. And the premise was that the human soap story was a part of established history.
A. That was the premise. That is my understanding of the premise.
Q. You are analyzing the sentence from the point of view of its logical construction and examining its premise.
A. That is what I attempted to do.
Q. In that circumstance, you then say:
"-- when in fact the story may well not be a part of history, in spite of the various claims and rumors about it."
What are you basing that on -- knowledge or experience or --
A. I am basing it on the text.
Q. No, it is not in the text. You are making a statement there: "-- when in fact the story may well not be a part of history." What makes you say that?
A. I am lifting this from the text, where the author says it is not a part of history. I am accepting his --
Q. No, he is implying, according to your analysis, that the human soap story is a part of established history. That is what you said in (a).
A. That is the scare quote interpretation.
Q. Right.
A. In other words, in order for the thesis to be, in my view, sensible --
Q. Logically persuasive.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Christie, don't -- Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could make my general objection
MR. CHRISTIE: He did say "logically persuasive."
THE CHAIRPERSON: One at a time.
MR. TAYLOR: We had this problem yesterday, and it seems like we are going to have it again today.
Dr. Prideaux is here to give evidence so that you can make a determination. He is here to give evidence to help you. If he is constantly being interrupted or if the record is not clear because two parties are speaking at the same time, then the purpose of his evidence has gone out the window.
A question can be asked -- Mr. Christie is a skilled counsel. He can ask the question. He can wait for the answer. He can listen to the answer, and then he can devise another question if he wants clarification.
To be fair to the witness and to be fair to you, the witness should be allowed to complete his answer and not be interrupted by counsel.
THE CHAIRPERSON: No one would quarrel with that, that he should be allowed to complete his answer. I am not concerned about the questions being asked. Mr. Christie is allowed considerable latitude in cross-examination.
Please proceed.
MR. TAYLOR: But, Mr. Chairman --
MR. CHRISTIE: I apologize. I understand my friend's concern. I am going to try harder not to interrupt.
MR. TAYLOR: Just to be clear, sir, I have no quarrel with his questions or the latitude. I want the information to come out as much as he does. That is not the issue.
The issue is, as you stated yesterday, that, if they are both talking at once, the record will not be clear and it will not be helpful.
THE CHAIRPERSON: I caution both the questioner and the responder to make an appropriate separation between their speeches. Let's try it again.
MR. CHRISTIE: Thank you.
Q. Am I correct in that I understand that you are saying that the premise that the human soap story is a part of established history is by implication from the scare quotes around "denied established history?"
A. Yes.
Q. In your statement -- and I am quoting from your opinion:
"-- when in fact the story may well not be a part of history, in spite of the various claims and rumors about it."
are you saying that that is the writer's view or yours?
A. That is my view.
Q. In expressing that view and questioning whether the soap story was a part of established history, were you relying on some expertise or just the process of questioning?
A. I was relying on the text for information.
Q. And you don't find the information in the text; therefore, you say that the text is lacking support for the premise. Is that a fair statement?
A. I don't find -- sorry...?
Q. You don't find support for the premise in the text and, therefore, you are questioning whether or not it is true.
A. I am saying that, if it is false -- sorry, we are talking about "when in fact." I am saying that it may or may not be true, despite its rumours.
Q. Of course, anything may or may not be true. Right?
A. That is what I said.
Q. So you are not saying that it is not true; you are just saying that there is no evidence to support it.
A. That is right.
Q. You are not claiming to say that there is any reason to doubt the premise; you are just saying that there isn't any support for it in the text itself.
A. I am saying that there is presentation for it -- that is, the author asserts things, and he also quotes from others suggesting that in the end of the analyses everyone seems to agree. That is my conclusion: everyone seems to agree that the story is false, even though there were rumours about it, dating back, as the author says, as early as before the Second World War.
Q. So you are suggesting in your analysis:
"If (a) is false, then there is no substance to its denial by either Laqueur or anyone else, since it is not informative to assert that an acknowledged piece of fiction is a piece of fiction --"
because, in effect, that asserts a tautology.
A. It does.
Q. By virtue of saying that, if your premise is false, your argument is a tautology, you are not advancing anyone's understanding of the meaning of that text, are you?
A. The meaning of the text, in my view, does not reside there. The thrust of the text resides elsewhere--
Q. I understand, but surely -- sorry, I interrupted you again.
A. That is fine.
Q. Surely, the reason you analyzed this portion of the text was because you concluded that it set out the premise.
A. The reason I analyzed this portion of the text, in fact the whole text, is because the article, in my view, without the last sentence simply is an attempt to confirm what others have confirmed. It adds no new information to the discourse.
Q. That is because you reject the premise.
A. I reject which premise?
Q. "The" premise that you identified as "the" premise, namely, that the human soap story is a part of established history.
A. I reject that premise on the basis of this material. In other words, it would appear to me that the human -- may I just lay this out?
It seems to me that the human soap story in this text was a rumour widely circulated, held as truth by individuals, but later argued not to be true, and that argument came from a variety of sources. At one time it might have been felt to be part of established history, but later became not to be a part of established history. That is it.
Q. But you don't know what is the truth about that.
A. I am arguing from the content of the text.
Q. Yes, you are arguing from the content of the text without any knowledge of the factual basis for the assertions.
A. Certainly not any knowledge from the supporting references, that is true.
Q. Do you have any opinions on the truth of the statement? Is that how you base your --
A. I don't really know if the statement is true or false.
Q. But it would not be a tautology if it is true.
A. To assert something that is true and is accepted to be true, to assert that bachelors are unmarried men, or whatever, is to add nothing new to the meaning of that expression.
Q. But this does not assert that bachelors are unmarried men; this asserts that the human soap story is a part of established history. That is the premise, isn't it?
A. That is the frame of reference of the story, certainly.
Q. We had it a few moments ago that you agreed that that was the premise.
A. That is the frame of reference of the story, in my view.
Q. You didn't say a few minutes ago that that was the premise?
A. I am saying it now.
Q. Are you saying it now or not, that it is the premise?
A. I am saying that it is the focus of the text, Mr. Christie.
Q. Well, I just want --
A. The reality of the -- sorry, I interrupted you.
Q. Go ahead.
A. The reality of the human soap story is the issue around which this text revolves. Its truth or falsity is what the text revolves around.
Q. So I can't get you to admit that a few moments ago you acknowledged that the statement that the human soap story is a part of established history was the premise. You don't recall saying that. Is that your evidence?
A. No, I recall saying that. May I amplify it?
Q. I just want to know if you said it and if it was true.
A. If I said it --
Q. And if it was true.
A. My interpretation of this -- am I allowed to give this interpretation?
Q. You are allowed to say anything you like, because I am not going to interrupt you.
A. My interpretation is that at one point in history, apparently from the text, which is the information I have, it was widely held that the human soap story was true, namely, a part of established history. At a later point it came to be held not to be true by lots of scholars. I have not read those scholars' works; I don't know what they said. So -- sorry, go ahead.
Q. My question was: Did you say that that was the premise and was it true to say that that was the premise -- not that the premise is true, but that in logic and in reasoned argument, was that the premise?
A. That is part of the premise; that is right.
Q. Is there any other part of the premise?
A. Yes. I just explained this, Mr. Chair.
Q. What is the rest of the premise?
A. The issue is whether or not the story is accepted to be part of established history at different times.
Q. Where is that stated as the premise?
A. I just stated it.
Q. I thought you had to rely on the text.
A. All right. In the footnote --
THE CHAIRPERSON: Excuse me, what is the difference between saying that it is the premise on the one hand and that it is the frame of reference?
THE WITNESS: The human soap story, in the larger sense, constitutes the thematic content of the passage. It is what the passage is about. Its authenticity is also what it is about, the authenticity of the story, the correctness of the story.
If at one point the view was held that this story was true, then at that point in history it would presumably be accepted as part of established history. If it later came to be found to be false, then it is no longer part of established history.
It was at one time assumed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that was part of established history. Its truth was not the issue, but it was assumed to be part of the nature of things. It later was refuted, so we have a different view about that.
That is the distinction I am trying to draw.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. Isn't this author basically saying that at one time it was part of established history; it was a ridiculous story; it is like other ridiculous stories about the Holocaust?
A. That is right; he is saying that.
Q. If what he said was true, about being part of established history, then it would have some logical significance, would it not?
A. At that point.
Q. At that point. I agree with you that, as you say, what people believe at one time might not be the same as another and, therefore, if it is too removed in time, I suggest, the argument would break down.
A. That is possible.
Q. Is this footnote, which I realize you didn't have because you didn't have the article as published earlier, it says -- and now we are looking at the exhibit, The Journal of Historical Review, 1991, at page 224:
"During the First World War, the London Times was apparently the first Allied paper to report (in April 1917) that the Germans were boiling down the bodies of their dead soldiers to make soap and other products. See: Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (New York: 1975), pp. 105-106. This story was quickly picked up by other papers and widely circulated in the British and American press. In 1925, British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain admitted that the 'corpse factory' story had been a lie. See: Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime (New York: 1929), pp. 102, 111-112; Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: 1988), pp. 8-9."
If that is provided as support for the statement, would it affect your perception of it as being, as you say, possibly false?
A. If I had this material with the footnotes, then I would take a different view toward the analysis, because I would have some documented evidence to support the claims, and the author has provided us with some documented evidence.
Q. Right. When you were asked to do your analysis of the writings that were provided to you by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as a professional interested in an objective analysis of the text, would you think it appropriate to contact the purported author and find out if there is any support for the premises before you analyzed it?
A. Not if the text says that "this article is provided," et cetera. In other words, I assumed the truthfulness of the statement that this was the article.
Q. As we discussed yesterday, articles have to be taken in a larger context, don't they?
A. Explain. I don't understand.
Q. If it is in the context of a historical debate -- and these types of articles appear to be -- surely it would be necessary to know if these articles had been published elsewhere, if there were footnotes available, or even if there was extrinsic material which supported the factual claims.
A. I am taking the goodwill of the author, Mr. Christie, or whoever posted it:
"We wish to acknowledge that the above article was made available courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review."
I assume in that -- it does not say "part of the article," "some of the article." In my analysis of it, it says "the article." The notes are part of the article and the references are part of the article, in my view. This document does not have those components to it. That is what I was trying to make clear.
Q. You actually looked at the reference to the Institute of Historical Review, did you?
A. I looked at the note at the bottom of the document.
Q. I think I know what you mean.
A. I assumed, as one would assume if one says, "This article is reprinted from such and such and so and so or translated from such and such and so and so," that that is the article, not a part of it, not bits and pieces of it, not a reconstruction of it, but the article. That is my assumption. That is a normal assumption to make.
Q. Are footnotes necessarily part of an article, or are they just the support for it?
A. No, they are part of the article.
Q. In a scholarly work that would be crucial; is that right?
A. In a scholarly work that would be very crucial with respect to citing sources.
Q. So, what are we doing here? Criticizing the work for lack of scholarliness?
A. If it purports to be a scholarly article, and that is what I assume --
Q. Why are --
A. Let me finish, please.
If it purports to be a scholarly article, as it appears to be here, and that this is a representation of that article, it is not a representation of it. It is not the complete article.
If one looks at the footnote for No. 1 -- that was the first footnote we looked at -- and we look at the text here, we see:
"Although a similar charge...was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterwards, it was nevertheless revived and widely believed during the Second.1"
Normally, one would say: Where was it? Just cite a reference so that somebody can check it. It is not here.
Q. It is not here in the article you were provided by the Canadian Human Rights Commission?
A. That is correct; it is not. Moreover --
Q. So -- you have not finished, I am sorry.
A. That is all right, Mr. Christie; go ahead.
Q. If there are no footnotes, why do you conclude that what you saw purported to be a scholarly article at all?
A. Because it says at the end of the text:
"We wish to acknowledge that the above article was made available courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review."
Q. So you assume that the Institute is scholarly, then?
A. I assume that the article is a scholarly article in the sense of its form. This is not that article.
Q. If I understand your analysis correctly, you conclude that it might be a tautology, which you say at the end of the penultimate paragraph. You would not say that if you saw the article as a whole.
A. I still think the article is simply re-establishing this information. I would read the article -- I don't think I would read the thrust of the article differently, but I would at least have sources to go to.
Q. Why wouldn't you read the thrust of the article differently?
A. Because the thrust of the article seems to me to say what the last sentence of the article says.
Q. Which is a conclusion.
A. Which is an invitation for a conclusion, yes.
THE CHAIRPERSON: I am sorry, I didn't hear you.
THE WITNESS: I am sorry.
MR. CHRISTIE: It's an invitation for a conclusion.
THE WITNESS: It is an invitation to a conclusion. Let me just go to that.
If you look at the last sentence in the article just above "About the Author" on the fifth page:
"That so many intelligent and otherwise thoughtful people could ever have seriously believed that the Germans distributed bars of soap brazenly labeled with letters indicating that they were manufactured from Jewish corpses shows how readily even the most absurd Holocaust fables can be -- and are -- accepted as fact."
It does not say "how the most absurd Holocaust fable," but it talks about "fables." That is, it invites the understanding of class of such stories.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. Are you saying there is no such class?
A. I don't know if there is a class of fables or not, but the invitation is provided.
Q. Maybe, as you put it, the argument goes through, then. If you don't know that the conclusion is false --
A. No, that is not the point, Mr. Christie.
Q. Oh, I see. Can you tell me what the point is?
A. The point is that the article is used as a token for a class stipulated to exist, namely, Holocaust fables, and the suggestion is that, if this particular Holocaust fable, absurd as it is, is false, then others may well be false as well.
Q. And you say there is a flaw to that reasoning, do you?
A. I say that the stipulation is that there are others of this absurdity.
Q. And are you saying that that is not true?
A. I am saying it is not evident.
Q. It is not proven?
A. That is right.
Q. Why is it not proven?
A. Because the argument is the argument from the part to the whole.
Q. Yes. Isn't that a valid argument at the time?
A. No, not necessarily. Of course not.
Q. Oh, I see. It is not a valid argument to argue that, because something happened in one instance, therefore, it could happen or did happen in other instances.
A. The argument from the part to the whole states that properties associated with the individual token, the part, apply across the board to all other members of the set. That is the argument of the part from the whole, the argument of metonymy.
Q. It is never a valid argument?
A. It may be, but it is not necessarily the case. It may well be the case, for example, that penguins do not have feathers, but that does not mean that all birds don not have feathers.
Q. You say penguins don't have feathers?
A. Penguins don't fly. Maybe penguins do have feathers for all I know.
Q. It does help to know the facts, doesn't it?
A. I would like to know whether penguins have feathers or not, but let us assume the case that penguins do not have feathers.
Q. Now --
A. Excuse me, Mr. Christie, does the argument from the part to the whole make sense?
Q. It is my submission to you that there is no way for you, as a linguist, to tell us whether the argument from the part to the whole makes sense or not. That is a matter of logic. It depends on the fact; it depends on the premises; and it depends on the similarities between the part and the whole, all of which is not something within the field of linguistics, but in the field of logic and in the field of common sense. Isn't that right?
A. Not necessarily, no.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Your analysis of this last phraseology in this article would fall within the category of metonymy?
THE WITNESS: That is right.
THE CHAIRPERSON: In other words, he is dealing with the soap story as fable.
THE WITNESS: Right.
THE CHAIRPERSON: And he pluralizes it.
THE WITNESS: Extrapolating it to other stories.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. In your reasoning to the conclusion that the premise might be false, you said:
"If (a) is false, there is no substance to its denial by either Laqueur or anyone else, since it is not informative to assert that an acknowledged piece of fiction is a piece of fiction."
You were simply analyzing that sentence that precedes that paragraph:
"More recently, Jewish historian Walter Laqueur 'denied established history' by acknowledging in his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, that the human soap story has no basis in reality."
Is that right?
A. I am sorry, Mr. Christie, that was a long passage. Unpack it for me, please.
Q. I said: In your analysis, where you concluded that (a) is false, or if it is false, there is no substance to its denial by either Laqueur or anyone else, since it is not informative to assert that an acknowledged piece of fiction is a piece of fiction, you were analyzing merely the sentence previous that you were quoting.
A. In that instance, yes.
Q. Did you not look at the whole text of the "Jewish Soap" story?
A. Of course I did.
Q. Did it not point to other examples where, in 1941, it refers to U.S. Army Intelligence reports saying:
"The Germans have brought thousands of Polish teachers, priests and Jews there and after extracting the blood serum from their bodies, had thrown them in large pots and melted off grease to make soap --"
A. I read the article.
Q. So he was saying that that was a source of the story in 1941. Right?
A. He said that was a source of the story in 1941.
Q. Then he said:
"Macabre 'Jewish soap' jokes became popular in the ghettos and camps, and many non-Jews on the outside came to believe the story. When trains loaded with Jewish deportees stopped temporarily at rail stations, Poles reportedly would gleefully shout at them: 'Jews to soap!' Even British prisoners of war interned at Auschwitz in 1944 testified later about the wartime rumors that corpses of gassing victims were being turned into soap there."
Did you read that?
A. I read it all, Mr. Christie.
Q. All right. Did you also read that in 1942 Rabbi Stephen Wise, wartime head of the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Congress, publicly charged that Jewish corpses were being "processed into such war-vital commodities as soap, fats and fertilizer" by the Germans?
A. I am following you.
Q. Did you not take that into consideration in saying that there was no support for the premise?
A. I took that into consideration.
Q. So you must have disregarded that or said, "That is not true."
A. No, I took that into consideration.
Q. Why did you say there were no supporting reference points. He gives you the date, the speaker, the substance of the speech. Surely he has given you information that indicates that it was a widely-held view, and he identifies the time.
A. He does that.
Q. Thank you. He then says:
"In late 1942, the Congress Weekly, published by the American Jewish Congress, editorialized that the Germans were turning Jews 'by scientific methods of dissolution into fertilizer, soap and glue.'"
Did you read that?
A. I read it, Mr. Christie. I read the entire article.
Q. Do you still maintain that he was giving no points of reference?
A. I maintain that he was citing no sources.
Q. Reading farther on, skipping a couple of paragraphs:
"After the war the soap story was given important legitimacy at the main Nuremberg trial. L.N. Smirnov, Chief Counsellor of Justice for the USSR, declared to the Tribunal:
'...The same base, rationalized SS technical minds which created gas chambers and murder vans, began devising such methods of complete annihilation of human bodies, which would not only conceal the traces of their crimes, but also to serve in the manufacturing of certain products. In the Danzig Anatomical Institute, semi-industrial experiments in the production of soap from human bodies and the tanning of human skin for industrial purposes were carried out.'"
Doesn't that give you a reference?
A. No. It gives me a quotation; it does not give me a citation. It doesn't tell me where it is from.
Q. You don't know the reports of the main Nuremberg trial?
A. No, I don't.
Q. Do you know that there are books within 100 yards of here that contain that?
A. Mr. Christie, if I were wanting to --
Q. I just -- can you wait for my question? My last question was: Do you know that there are books within 100 yards of here that contain the transcripts of the main Nuremberg trial?
A. No, I didn't know that.
Q. So you call this not a point of reference when a person gives you the name of the speaker, the statement attributed to them and the place where it was alleged to be made. That is not a point of reference?
A. It is not a citation.
Q. It is not a citation; all right.
He then says:
"A human soap 'recipe,' allegedly prepared by Dr. Spanner (Nuremberg document USSR-196) --"
Is that a citation?
A. Where is it?
Q. Actually, he has referred to the main Nuremberg trial, and that is the number for the document.
A. There is no citation to me. Where is it? It is cited, you are right, as exhibit such-and-such.
Q. So is that a citation?
A. If I knew where to find it, it would be.
Q. What difference does it make whether you know where to find it? You might not know anything about where to find it. It's a citation.
A. The point of a citation, Mr. Christie, is to allow the reader to go to the original source and look at that original source, investigate it, do whatever one wants with it, including verifying it. That is the point.
Q. So you have to know what the source is and be able to find it.
A. Let's see if there is a source cited --
Q. Wait until I ask you a question. I am going to put it to you that that identifies the Nuremberg document. It tells you that it is part of the Nuremberg trial transcript and, if you had any knowledge, you could go and find it. Right?
A. Not necessarily, Mr. Christie.
Q. What do you mean, not necessarily? If you had knowledge of where to go and get the Nuremberg trial transcripts, you could find it.
A. I suppose, if I were to go to the library and begin a search for the Nuremberg trial exhibits, I could eventually find it.
One of the points of citations is to facilitate that for readers, so that they do not have to read the mind or whatever of the author. They have a pathway. Let's see if there is a pathway.
Q. Am I interrupting you?
A. No, go right ahead.
Q. You said: Let's see if there is a pathway. I am going to suggest to you that the pathway is identified as the trial transcript of the Nuremberg trials, and the exhibit number is provided: Nuremberg document USSR-196 submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal.
"Finally, a sample of what was supposed to be a piece of 'human soap' was submitted to the Nuremberg Tribunal as exhibit USSR-393."
Is that a pathway for you, sir?
A. I am looking, if you will just give me a moment. I am looking for the quote in the new exhibit.
MR. TAYLOR: If I can help you, it is at page 219, Doctor.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. To be fair to me, I am asking you to look at the exhibit without the footnotes because I am suggesting that actually, even without the footnotes and on what you looked at, there is a pathway. So, yes, you can look at 219 if you want, but I was going to ask you to tell me why that is not a pathway, why that is not a citation.
A. It is interesting that the preceding paragraph, the Smirnov paragraph, also cites a Nuremberg exhibit, and there is a footnote for it.
Q. At page 219 it says:
"Smirnov quoted at length from an affidavit by Sigmund Mazur, an Institute employee, which was accepted as Nuremberg exhibit USSR-197."
Where is the footnote?
A. At the end of the paragraph. Is that relevant?
Q. Probably to a different matter because there is a lot of sentences between it. If you want to go and look, go ahead.
A. I am looking, and it refers to the Smirnov statement of February 19, 1946. So I presume it is relevant to that paragraph. So the author saw fit to provide us with a footnote telling us where the documents were found and commenting on them in one instance, but not in the next.
Q. Let's say, for the sake of argument now, that you can find that footnotes would have assisted you to verify the content of the text.
A. That is correct.
Q. Let's assume that there is an error or there are no footnotes in the text, which is what you found.
A. I found no footnotes in the text for whatever reason.
Q. If, through content of the text, you could find the documents yourself, using common sense, what is the loss? Does it make the text untrue? Does it make the argument not go through?
A. It does in several instances. I can see that, with respect to the Nuremberg exhibit, with whatever time and effort I might want to engage in, I could perhaps find that. However, in other instances, where information is provided and is stated as fact and not cited with references, I could not find that. I would not have the foggiest idea where to go to get the content of footnote No. 1, for example. So it does not provide that pathway.
Q. All you are saying is that without footnotes it is not persuasive, even though it might be true?
A. No, I am not saying that.
Q. Isn't that what you are saying?
A. No, it is not what I am saying.
Q. Tell me what you are saying, then.
A. I am saying that in the instances where statements are made without citations that I can check as a scholar, that I can check as any academic would want to check, I have to assume that those are assertions, not citations.
Q. So I put it to you that assertions to a scholar are not as persuasive as citations.
A. Assertions of some sorts are not as persuasive if they are not cited.
For example, if we simply go to the example that I was mentioning. the second sentence of the text, the author's comments:
"Although a similar charge during the First World War was exposed as a hoax almost immediately afterwards, it was nevertheless revived --"
And so forth.
If I am reading this -- and I am assuming that the author, for example, provides me with pathways when he or she wants to, but just does not want to bother to give me any assistance in other cases, I am going to treat that with less kind of confidence, I suppose, than if in the contrary.
Q. With less kinds of confidence? Are those your words, "with less kinds of confidence?"
A. With less confidence.
Q. Less confidence?
A. Yes.
Q. Isn't that the same as saying that it is not as persuasive?
A. Not necessarily.
Q. When you say, "I have less confidence in you," doesn't that mean "You are not as persuasive as something else?"
A. I may have less confidence in you for a variety of reasons.
Q. And that results in your not being very persuasive. Right?
A. Not necessarily. It may be; it may not be.
Q. Not necessarily. I say that, logically and necessarily, that in which you have no confidence is not persuasive. Do you agree or disagree?
A. I think that is not a yes/no question.
Q. Can you find books when you get titles and authors? You are a scholar. Can you find books?
A. Can I find books?
Q. Yes. If I tell you the name of the author and the title -- I can find a book. Can't you? If I tell you William Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", I can find the book. Can you?
A. I can find that book. Under the assumption that it exists, I can find it. We share that assumption.
Q. Let's assume that is the case. You could quickly find out if it did not exist, couldn't you?
A. That is an interesting question.
Q. What is the interesting answer?
A. The interesting answer is that sometimes you can't find a book and you still think it exists, or you search for it and you can't find it.
Q. You can't prove a negative. I agree that there could be books that aren't listed --
A. No, I think --
Q. I agree with you. Some books can't be found, that even do exist.
If I was to tell you that William Shirer wrote a book called "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," and he is a supposedly reputable historian and that he has promoted the durable sub-story, you could find that out. That is a point of reference that is not hard to find. Right?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you ever heard of William Shirer and "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?"
A. Yes.
Q. So, even without a footnote, you could find out if, at least as late as that book, the story was being accepted as --
A. Part of established history.
Q. Yes, part of established history. You could check that.
A. I could check that.
Q. If you, as a scholar, wanted to find out if Ilya Ehrenburg had actually written post-war memoirs, I suppose you could find that out?
A. Where is that, please?
Q. On the next page:
"Leading Soviet war propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg wrote in his postwar memoir: 'I have held in my hand a cake of soap stamped with the legend 'pure Jewish soap', prepared from the corpses of people who had been destroyed. But there is no need to speak of these things: thousands of books have been written about them.'"
If you wanted to find out if Ilya Ehrenburg had written wartime memories, could you not find that out?
A. I could try.
Q. Do you know who he was?
A. No.
Q. It says:
"A standard history studies textbook used in Canadian secondary schools, Canada: The Twentieth Century, told students that the Germans 'boiled' the corpses of their Jewish victims 'to make soap.' The Anatomy of Nazism, a booklet published and distributed by the Zionist 'Anti-Defamation League' of B'nai B'rith, stated: 'The process of brutalization did not end with the mass murders themselves. Large quantities of soap were manufactured from the corpses of those murdered.'"
If you wanted to find out about Canadian secondary school textbooks and whether that statement was true, would that be difficult? He gives you the name of the textbook --
A. I am sorry, I don't follow the passage. Can you just refer me to it, please.
Q. Okay.
"A standard history studies textbook used in Canadian secondary schools, --"
A. No, I am asking where it is.
THE CHAIRPERSON: He is asking for the page.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. I am sorry, it is the next page. I just turned the page of the text that I was given. It is apparently printed off at 10:27, I guess.
MR. TAYLOR: It is the third one from the end, if I can be helpful.
MR. CHRISTIE:
Q. It has the number in the lower right-hand corner, 10:27. I am looking now at the second paragraph from the top.
A. Thank you.
Q. As a scholar, it would be, I suggest, quite easy to find the book called "Canada: The Twentieth Century?"
A. Yes, it would.
Q. If there were references, they usually have an index in textbooks, and you could probably find any references to the Holocaust and look to see if that is true.
A. I could look and see if that is true.
Q. And you could contact the Anti-Defamation League to see if they had published a booklet called "The Anatomy of Naziism" and if it was in there?
A. Could I do that?
Q. Yes.
A. I suppose I could.
Q. So there is enough information there for you to check those statements?
A. There is enough information in the citations that you suggested to do that; that is correct.
Q. If that was true, that those statements were made, it would be true to say that this was a part of established history, wouldn't it?
A. At the time. People were asserting it at that point.
Q. So, as we get up to the present time, 1981, is that a relevant period of time for the statement that it is established history for you?
A. I don't know.
Q. What constitutes established history is anybody's guess, isn't it?
A. No, I think it is not anybody's guess.
Q. It would be a historian's guess.
A. A historian's guess.
Q. And there are many different historians. Right?
A. There is a whole lot of historians.
Q. It says:
"A detailed 1981 work, Hitler's Death Camps, repeated the soap story in lurid detail."
I agree that there is no author attributed there, but there are indexes of titles that you could check for that?
A. Yes.
Q. And it gives you the reference there that
"'some historians claim that the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor'"
I guess it does give you the name of the author.
"Konnilyn Feig nevertheless accepted the story because 'most East European camp scholars ... validate the soap stories, and other kinds of bars made from humans are displayed in Eastern Europe -- I have seen many over the years.'"
You have the name of the author, the date of the publication and the title, and some quotes. That would give you enough to check, wouldn't it, without the footnote?
A. If I were to submit that paper or something like this with the title and author and quote and not cite the work, it would not be accepted.
Q. It would be a serious failure for any scholarly student.
A. That is right.
Q. Because professors don't like to have to check by research of their own.
A. No, that is not the reason.
Q. "New York Rabbi Arthur Schneier repeated
the tale at the opening ceremony of the largest Holocaust meeting in history. In his invocation to the 'American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors,' held in Washington in April 1983, the Rabbi solemnly declared: 'We remember the bars of soap with the initials RJF -- Rein jüdisches Fett, Pure Jewish Fat -- made from the bodies of our loved ones.'"
That is something you couldn't check. Right?
A. I could not check the source in which it was published; that's right. If it was a speech and not published, I could not check it. If it were published, I could.
Q. You would have to know where it was published in order to ascertain if that was true.
A. That is right. May I just inquire if that footnote is here?
Q. That is a good question. Go ahead.
Yes, it is footnote 26, so it gives you a footnote there in the published article from The Journal of Historical Review. It cites:
"This writer was present at the opening ceremony held at the Landover, MD., Capital Center, on Monday evening, April 11, 1983. Schneier was Rabbi at Park East Synagogue, New York City. The crowd of some 15,000 was later addressed by President Reagan."
So we couldn't really check that one, could we?
A. No, we could not.
Q. You have to take the author's word on that.
A. That is right.
Q. And that is supposed to be a Mr. Mark Weber. Right?
A. Yes.
Q. If you want to reach him, I suppose the implication of the article seems to be that you contact the Institute of Historical Review. Is that a fair inference?
A. Yes, if I wanted to contact him,
Q. Is that an inference that you would derive from --
A. No, I am just reading the business at the bottom, which says that he is the Editor of The Journal of Historical Review. I presume I would have access to him.
Q. In this reference to Walter Laqueur in the next paragraph, it says:
"More recently, Jewish historian Walter Laqueur 'denied established history' by acknowledging in his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, that the human soap story has no basis in reality. Gitta Sereny, another Jewish historian, noted in her book Into That Darkness: 'The universally accepted story that the corpses were used to make soap and fertilizer is finally refuted by the generally very reliable Ludwigsburg Central Authority for Investigation into Nazi Crimes.'"
That gives you an identity for the denial of that story, does it not?
A. It gives me an identity?
Q. A point of reference, I guess, not a citation. You could find out if that is true. With the name of the author and the title of the book, you could find that quote, couldn't you?
A. Yes, if I could find the book, I could find the quote.
Q. It says:
"Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history, similarly 'rewrote history' when she confirmed in 1981: 'The fact is that the Nazis never used the bodies of Jews, or for that matter anyone else, for the production of soap.'"
That clearly gives you the name of the person and the speaker, although it doesn't say where. Right?
A. That is correct.
Q. It says:
"In April 1990, professor Yehuda Bauer of Israel's Hebrew University, regarded as a leading Holocaust historian, as well as Shmuel Krakowski, archives director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, confirmed that the human soap story is not true."
Of course, if you want to contact those institutions through the Internet, you could do it instantly, couldn't you?
A. I don't know if I could. I could try. I don't know if I would be successful.
Q. You could find out if it is true that Yehuda Bauer had alleged that the stories had been circulated by the Nazis. You could check that by speaking to him. You could find him. Right?
A. Perhaps I could; I don't know.
Q. He is identified as the professor of Israel's Hebrew University. Universities are in touch through the Internet, aren't they?
A. The point of the citation, of course, is to facilitate that.
Q. I understand. The difficulty with this article is that, without the footnotes, it is difficult to do the basic research as to whether there is a valid thesis or not.
A. That is right. That is why I presume. incidentally, that in this version the footnotes are included.