The next morning I departed for Auschwitz with Veronica Byrnes, a Mishcon attorney. As we pulled up at the camp entrance, Rampton, Heather, Robert Jan, and Mark, the Penguin attorney, were waiting. As I emerged from the car, Rampton announced, “Aha, ’tis the Author of our Misfortune.”
We began our visit at the archives. When we entered, the architectural plans for the crematoria were already spread out on the table. Some of these meticulous plans had been drawn by inmates, who, Robert Jan pointed out, signed them with their prison numbers, no names. All I could think of at that moment was Primo Levi’s observation about his time in Auschwitz, where a number was tattooed on his arm: “Only a man is worthy of a name.”6
Robert Jan stressed that every decision about this camp had implications for the physical plant. If prisoners were to be housed, barracks were needed. If they were to be stripped of their possessions, storehouses were necessary for sorting the bounty. And if people were to be killed, a cost-effective method had to be devised to do so.7 Looking at the drawings, I remembered a 1943 photograph of the architects and engineers responsible for designing and building Auschwitz. Before the war, some had been civilian architects and town planners. One had trained at Germany’s Bauhaus. In the photograph they are seen smiling proudly. In my mind I tried to reconcile the faces of the men in the picture with the plans in front of me.8 The existence of these architectural plans and records is a fluke. This is how it happened. As the Soviets approached Auschwitz in January 1945, the Germans destroyed the camp command center, and with it much of the documentation on the killing apparatus. In the confusion, they forgot about the camp construction office. Its files housed substantial documentary material, including the working drawings for the crematoria.9 This set of plans had been used at the building site. Stained and torn, they have scribbling and penciled comments on them.
Rampton peppered Robert Jan with questions about doors, windows, elevators, and incineration capacity. Sitting in the archives of the world’s great killing fields, I felt like I was observing a dissertation defense. Robert Jan explained that prior to becoming a place for murder, Auschwitz was a concentration camp. Crematoria were needed for the disposal of prisoners’ corpses. These structures were designed to conform to the German civilian building code. Thus, the architects were compelled to include dissection rooms, even though Auschwitz authorities had not requested them. Eventually the doctors—Mengele best known among them—put them to use for their medical experiments.
When Birkenau, a satellite camp adjacent to Auschwitz, was designated as a killing center, the two crematoria there, known as cremas 2 and 3, were redesigned (crema 1 was in Auschwitz). The morgues were transformed into gas chambers. In December 1942, Walther Dejaco, assistant to the chief of the Auschwitz building office, drew the changes needed for the addition of the gas chambers. Dejaco, who was high enough in the SS hierarchy to be trusted to make the changes, replaced the corpse chute, originally designed for moving bodies to the morgue, with a staircase. Robert Jan observed, “Dead bodies are slid down a chute. Live people could walk to their death.” The staircase led to an undressing room and the undressing room to the gas chamber.10 In January 1943, plans were also drawn up by Dejaco for two new gas chambers, cremas 4 and 5. Since these were not existing buildings that needed to be redesigned, they were built to function far more efficiently. The entire structure was on one floor so the bodies could be moved directly to the crematorium. The roof over the gas chamber was lower than in the rest of the building, allowing for more economical use of gas. Rampton asked why these facilities could not be morgues. Robert Jan pointed to the heating system and asked, “Why would you heat a morgue?”11
The drawings for cremas 4 and 5 called for 30-by-40-centimeter windows through which the Zyklon B was to be thrown. Robert Jan showed us a February 1943 order from the Auschwitz Construction Office for the “production of 12 gas-tight doors [window shutters] approximately 30/40 cm.” He then led us from the archives to a small storeroom in which there were three decrepit 30-by-40-centimeter window shutters. The remnants of a gas-tight seal were visible around their edges. The windows closed from the outside, a decidedly impractical arrangement for any room, unless one wanted to ensure that those inside could not open them. The drawings, work order, and remaining windows constituted a simple but stunning example of the confluence of evidence.
Around midday we headed to the cafeteria. Auschwitz is a tourist site and every such site must have a food facility. Conversation was muted. Everyone studiously avoided discussing what we had just seen. I quietly told Heather, who seemed pale and shaken, that according to Jewish tradition, no object is inherently good or bad. A surgeon will use a knife to save a life while someone else might use it to murder. Architects have used their skills to design great wonders, while the Auschwitz architects used their skills for decidedly different purposes. After lunch we visited Auschwitz I, the concentration camp section of the Auschwitz complex. Throughout the day, Rampton focused like a laser beam on the topic, asking a broad array of questions about the camp.
We were scheduled to spend the night at a hostel in Auschwitz. When we arrived, we learned that there were not enough rooms for all of us. Happy not to have to stay so close to the camp, I volunteered to return to Krakow with Veronica. Robert Jan insisted we all have a drink first. Rampton looked pleased by the suggestion. We piled back into our cars and headed to a local watering hole. Robert Jan assured us it was a good place. “Great vodka. Good food.” I told Robert Jan that while I expected him to know a great deal about the camp, I did not expect his expertise to include Auschwitz watering holes. He explained that one could not spend long stays in this place doing research without finding out where to get a good drink.
After a few glasses of wine, Veronica and I headed back to Krakow. We had dinner in the center square of Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter. Trendy restaurants and jazz clubs were situated next to sixteenth-century synagogues. This was where the Nazis began the liquidation of the ghetto. At dinner I told Veronica that on my trips to London, when I was plagued by jet lag, I watched cricket games even though I did not understand the game. Veronica, a cricket aficionado, explained the rules to me. Midway through her explanation, my mind began to wander and I realized that I wasn’t really interested in the game. I needed, just for the night, to forget Auschwitz-Birkenau and its history.
FORENSICS—NOT MEMORY
The next morning we met at the entrance to Birkenau, the death camp. Robert Jan suggested that we begin by walking around its perimeter. Rampton rather sternly instructed him, “Only ask us to do things which move the case forward. This is not a sentimental journey. It’s for forensics.” I was startled by how he seemed to be able to so explicitly sever one from the other. Robert Jan thought the walk worthwhile in order to give us some sense of the enormity of the place. Rampton very grudgingly agreed. I had visited the camp a number of times and had climbed the main guard tower, from which one can see the vast reaches of the camp. However, I had never skirted the perimeter. The walk gave me a far more tangible perspective on its size. As we traversed the camp, I reflected on Rampton’s comment about this not being a memorializing trip. Clearly, forensics had to rule the day. We had picked Rampton because he was a first-rate barrister. But I did not understand how a trip to these killing fields could not have some element of memorialization, particularly for a first-time visitor. I tried to convince myself that I should be pleased by his unidimensional focus.
In the women’s camp, we stopped at the death barracks. Women destined for the gas chamber were held here until they were murdered. It is a dark, damp room with rows of multitiered barracks and little else. Robert Jan explained that the Germans waited until they had enough people to fill the gas chamber because it operated more efficiently—it used less gas and people died more rapidly—when it was full. In addition, it wasn’t economical to fire up the crematoria until there was a substantial number of bodies to burn. Since these inmates were to be killed, they receive
d no food or water. Our normally garrulous group grew quiet. As we exited the barracks, Rampton tripped and let out an expletive. A smoker with a preference for the French brand Gitanes, he immediately lit a cigarette. When he finished, he lit another.
We proceeded from the death barracks to the delousing building where clothing was disinfected with Zyklon B, the same gas used to kill people. This was the facility where Leuchter had found a concentration of gas residue higher than in the gas chambers. Rampton closely questioned Robert Jan about Leuchter’s findings. As Rampton’s questions grew more aggressive, I became decidedly uncomfortable. He seemed to be demanding that Robert Jan prove that people were murdered in the gas chambers.12 Finally, Rampton asked impatiently, “Isn’t it time trustworthy experts did an extensive scientific study of this place?” I was stunned by Rampton’s apparent conviction that we needed a scientific study to “prove” the gas chambers were killing factories. Unable to contain myself, I burst out, “Why do we need scientific studies? We have the evidence.” Rampton glared at me and, in a tone that conveyed his annoyance, said, “Pardon me, but I need to know.” I said nothing, but inside I was shaking. Unable to fathom why Rampton was shooting these questions at Robert Jan, I slipped to the back of the group.
We left the delousing building and proceeded to the remains of crema 4. Emotionally and physically exhausted, I sat down on one of its brick walls. All I could think about was that the trial seemed destined to morph from an examination of Irving’s abuse of historical records into a debate on whether or not the Holocaust took place. Worse, there was nothing I could do to change this.
I was frightened. Birkenau is a horrible place in any circumstance. Now it felt outright unbearable. When Heather joined me, I couldn’t help but tell her directly, “If this becomes a ‘did the Holocaust happen?’ trial, I am out of here.” I had no idea what I meant by “I am out of here,” but I said it anyway, even though there was no way I could halt the legal process at this point. Her response was empathetic. “David Irving is not about honest inquiry. Demonstrating that to the court is what this trial is about.” She reassured me that the legal team would not allow the trial to become the debate with Holocaust deniers that I had studiously avoided for years. “Everyone involved in this case recognizes that it cannot be that.” Her calm, but determined, manner and her evident empathy gave me some comfort.
We proceeded to inspect the site of the little farmhouses that had served as the first gas chambers. To do so, we had to edge our way across a swampy drainage ditch. There was a narrow concrete ledge with a chain-link fence across the ditch. Trying not to fall into the murky water, I held tight to the fence as I inched my way across. The mosquitoes hovering over the stagnant water took aim and I did not have a free hand to brush them away. By the time I reached the other side, my face and arms were full of red blotches.
Toward the end of the day, when we stood at the ruins of crema 2, I quietly explained that I could not be in this place without an act of commemoration. With Rampton’s admonition about this visit having a legal—not a sentimental—objective ringing in my ears, I self-consciously invited the others to join me for a memorial prayer. We gathered round the remains of the gas chambers. I recited the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, the El molei rachamim, “Oh God full of mercy,” which asked that those who suffered so at this site be granted a restful peace under the sheltering wings of heaven. After saying it in English, I repeated it, despite being conscious of the time, in Hebrew. I was surprised to hear someone quietly joining me. I looked up to see that Robert Jan had covered his head and was repeating the words. Only then did I realize that he was Jewish. Worried about removing the focus from forensics, I did it all rather breathlessly. No one said anything as we walked to our cars.
As we drove out, we passed the Carmelite convent and the cross. We stopped at the rather sparse hostel where the rest of the group had stayed. While we were sitting in the bucolic garden waiting for everyone to retrieve their luggage, Rampton’s cell phone rang. It was his wife Carolyn. I could not help but hear him say, “I have just come from what certainly must be the most awful place on the face of the earth. But we will talk about that when I return.” With that he bid her farewell and we resumed the forensics.
A few hours later, after a swim at our Krakow hotel, a desperately needed shower, and change of clothing, we gathered for dinner in a nice restaurant off Market Square. Rampton, who has a passion for good scotch and even better wine, ordered drinks and a number of bottles of wine for the table. No one refused. Though we tried to talk of other things, the conversation kept coming back to Auschwitz. Rampton noted that there was no room in a civilized world for a place like Auschwitz, even as a tourist attraction. He mused that if he had been assigned to make the architectural drawings he probably would have complied. “Because I am a coward,” he said. No one said anything as he continued: “Why did I have to see this place? Not to learn about it, but to be appalled by it. . . . In the courtroom I will have to memorialize this place.” Mark Bateman, the Davenport Lyons solicitor, said to me in an apologetic tone, “I know some of our questions might have seemed insensitive but we had to ask them in order to prepare for trial.” I thanked him for his concern, assured him I understood, and proceeded to down too many glasses of iced vodka.
Early the next morning, we flew back to London. I headed directly for Mishcon’s offices, settling into a basement conference room to watch videotapes of Irving’s speeches. In one Irving declared that it was time to “sink the battleship Auschwitz.” His statements were greeted by laughter from his audience. One tape showed a neo-Nazi rally and march at Halle, a medieval East German city that was the birthplace of Reinhard Heydrich, who chaired the meeting at Wannsee. Rows of skinhead “bully boys” marched in front of Irving. Their leather jackets, metal-studded belts, and Doc Martens stood in marked contrast to his dark suit. Some marchers carried the Reichskriegsflagge, the Reich battle flag that is often used by German protestors in lieu of the banned Nazi swastika. When Irving stood up to speak, the crowd interrupted his speech with chants of “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” Irving tried to quell the chants with a warning that this was not helpful to their cause.
I turned off the tape and sat quietly for a few moments, trying to process these ghastly scenes. Finally, I went up to James’s office, and told him I was going to the British Museum to see the Assyrian exhibit. James looked perplexed. “Why visit that exhibit when there is so much material you want to review?” I explained that in the eighth century B.C.E., King Sennacherib built a magnificent palace at Nineveh. He boasted of laying waste to “cities without number in Judah,” and receiving heavy tribute from the Israelite king, Hezekiah. “But why,” James asked, still puzzled, “visit it now?” I told him what my friend Grace Grossman, the curator of a major Judaica museum, said to me before I left for London. “Once the Assyrians tried to destroy the Jewish people. Today their remnant is in museums. We’re still here. Remember that when you face David Irving.”
Shortly after my return home, the New York Times ran an article on the case. I knew it was in the offing and awaited it with some anticipation. Anthony and I, believing that it was crucial that the New York Times get the story right, decided to talk to the paper. This would be our first high-profile coverage. I turned to the “Arts and Ideas” section, and stared at the headline:
“TAKING A HOLOCAUST SKEPTIC SERIOUSLY”
Irving, a Holocaust “skeptic”? Surely any reporter who did the least bit of research on Irving knew he was far more than a “skeptic.” Knowing that headlines often fail to accurately convey a story’s content, I read the article. In this instance, the headline truly reflected the substance of the article, which began with a question: “Can a writer who thinks the Holocaust was a hoax still be a great historian?” Written by Don Guttenplan, a London-based freelance writer making his first contribution to the paper, it proposed that the case “poses disturbing questions about the practice of history.” Irving had told him that
“there were never any gas chambers at Auschwitz.” According to Irving, this did not make him a denier because his comments “are true.” Irving had also told Guttenplan, “It may be unfortunate for Professor Lipstadt that she is the one who finds herself dragged out of the line and shot.” Guttenplan seemed unperturbed by Irving’s imagery and passed over these rather startling statements.
Guttenplan had also solicited comments from other historians. Raul Hilberg declared, “I am not for taboos.” Mark Mazower of Princeton insisted that historians cannot restrict themselves to those with whom they are “intellectually akin.” These comments made me wonder how Guttenplan had presented the case to them. I certainly was neither trying to impose a taboo nor silence Irving. In fact, Irving was trying to do that to me. My critique of Irving had nothing to do with intellectual differences, as Mazower suggested. Unless, of course, from Mazower’s perspective, my critique of Irving’s Holocaust denial and antisemitism somehow rendered us intellectual opposites. Though Guttenplan had been told by both Anthony and me of specific instances where Irving had seriously distorted evidence about the Holocaust, he nonetheless depicted this case as two historians slugging it out over historical interpretations. It seemed to me that his reflexive desire to be evenhanded or just provocative overrode and obliterated his knowledge of the evidence.
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