Maggie Davey
On my first day of boarding school, at evening prayers in the chapel, the clergyman played a trick on us.
He whispered something to the people seated in the pews nearest to him and asked them to relay the message to those of us in the back pews; a distance covered of at least 18m. By the time the message got to us it was utterly different to what had been whispered in the first place.
The clergyman was probably teaching us a life lesson or something, using a commonplace example to illuminate for us the evils of gossip and verbal skulduggery. Or how not to entrust your words to the flim-flam chatter at a Sunday service. Or perhaps he simply taught us a primitive lesson in etymology. (The reverend was himself an etymologist of habit rather than note, though he once made the observation that philosophy was an attempt “to screw the inscrutable and eff the ineffable”.)
Revisionist David Irving spent 30-odd days at the Royal Courts of Justice trying to allocate truth to his view of the Holocaust. And all in the name of free speech and what he calls “real history”. As is well-known by now, Irving sued a writer, Professor Deborah Lipstadt and the writer’s publisher, Penguin Books Ltd, for libel. Ironically, a publishing division in the Penguin stable, Viking, was one of Irving’s publishers in the 1980s.
Every once in a while, a writer and a publisher are asked to defend their work and their skills in a court of justice, and in this case the verdict would rest on the meanings of words as understood by an average “fair-minded” person.
Judge Charles Gray in his verdict said: “For the purpose of deciding this issue, it matters not what Lipstadt intended to convey to her readers; nor does it matter in what sense Irving understood them. I am not bound to accept the contentions of either party. My task is to arrive, without over-elaborate analysis, at the meaning or meanings which the notional typical reader of the publication in question, reading the book in ordinary circumstances, would have understood the words complained of, in their context, to bear. Such a reader is to be presumed to be fair-minded and not prone to jumping to conclusions but to be capable of a certain amount of loose thinking.”
“In Cradock is daar twee oud-onderwysers wat as agitators optree. Dit sou goed wees as hulle verwyder kon word [In Cradock two ex-teachers are acting as agitators. It would be good if they could be removed].” When Barend du Plessis said this at a security council meeting in 1984, he was, according to former president FW de Klerk, speaking of “redeploying” Matthew Goniwe to a different area. Goniwe was dead a year later.
“Dit word voorgestel dat [bogenoemde] persone permanent uit die samelewing, as [‘n] saak van dringendheid, verwyder word [It is suggested that the abovementioned persons be permanently removed from society, as a matter of urgency].” This was General Joffel van der Westhuizen’s telegram suggesting the murder of the Cradock Four.
Irving was in South Africa during some of the Truth and Reconcilation Commission hearings and when I asked him for his help in writing this article, he disarmingly replied: “Great idea. They all use euphemisms, these gangsters. When I was staying at Outeniqua, I followed the case of the killings in Durban, and the code language used in the police files at the time to cover these killings, and I was very disgusted.”
The following is an exchange between a Mr Rampton, counsel for the defence, and Irving from Irving’s trial transcript:
Rampton: But do you agree that the translation “disposed of”, that that is a fair translation of Abschaffen?
Irving: Yes, I think it is exactly the right nuance.
Rampton: And the nuance – construct for me, Mr Irving, if you can, an English sentence in which, according to natural, ordinary meaning, “dispose of” as applied to a person or people does not have a connotation of fatality in it?
Irving: Oh, yes, it happens in large companies the whole time, downsizing. Additional staff are disposed of. That does not mean to say they are sent to the gas chambers.
Rampton: No. Disposed of?
Irving: Yes. It is exactly the right nuance that I applied to that word. That is my submission.
Rampton: So, “These Jews are merely redundant and we have to let them go”?
Irving: That is right.
Rampton: I see. Probably with some nice payment or other?
Irving: That is a rather cheap remark, if I may say so.
Abschaffen and verwyder, “dispose of” and “remove”. The expression of these verbs has lead to more death and heartbreak than many other words usually connected with death.
The judgment against Irving was damning. The “fair-minded” reader has refused to pay Irving’s ransom. It makes his denial even more ineffable.