The Case Against Adolf Eichmann

Henry A. Zeiger

• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781786254481
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

Eichmann...
THE MAN,
THE CRIMES.
This book is a documentary presentation of the case prosecuting attorneys could present against the greatly captured Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann.
Using affidavits, testimony from the Nuremberg trials, captured German documents, statements made by ranking Nazis, reports from concentration camp commandants, guards, Einsatz groups and survivors, Henry A. Zeiger tells the whole Eichmann story.
There is a composite portrait of the man himself by the people who knew him intimately—Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann's subordinate in Slovakia...Kaltenbrunner, Head of the Gestapo...Höss, commandant of Auschwitz. We are told how Eichmann, alone among the top-level masterminds of the anti-Jewish conspiracy, managed to escape allied retribution and was finally captured. We learn how the hideous Nazi plan for the mass murder of the Jews evolved. We see the major part Eichmann played in the abortive Nazi attempt to barter the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews for war supplies.
What emerges from the thorough documentation and terse, perceptive commentary is the complete Eichmann story from its historical beginnings to the present moment. It is not only the story of the man who is the current symbol of Nazi barbarism...It is, as well, the story of inhumanity in our time.

CHAPTER ONE—THE HUNT

On the afternoon of May 12, 1960, a middle-aged man got off a bus in a suburb of Buenos Aires. He looked very much like the other men on the bus. He was balding, he was tired, he was a commuter. If you looked closely, you might have seen something wild in his eyes, but you might not. You might have sensed that he was a frightened man, but then many middle-aged men are frightened for no apparent reason. So there was nothing that made this man unusual—nothing different, just another commuter.

As he walked toward his connection, a car suddenly screeched to a halt beside him. Several men got out and roughly dragged the commuter into the waiting car. Maybe he fought, but he could not have fought very hard. He had always known these men would come. He had been waiting for them for fifteen years.

Eleven days later, on May 23, in the midst of debate in the Knesset, the parliament of Israel, the Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, got up and made this announcement:

I have to inform the Knesset that a short time ago one of the greatest of the Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann,...was discovered by the Israel security services. Adolf Eichmann is already under arrest in Israel and will shortly he placed on trial in Israel under the terms of the law for trial of Nazis and their collaborators.

The Knesset cheered this announcement. They too had been waiting a long time for Adolf Eichmann.

The story of the hunt for Adolf Eichmann begins at the end of World War II in Germany. Eichmann, who knew he was on the most wanted list of the Allies, made his way south with a number of his subordinates to Alt-Aussee in a valley of the Salzkammergut. There he saw Ernst Kaltenbrunner, his direct superior, the head of the Gestapo. He asked Kaltenbrunner what he should do and Kaltenbrunner advised him to untertauchen—to duck.

According to one report, Eichmann did an untertauchen with Horia Simak, the head of the Romanian Iron Guard, in the mountains of the Bad Ischl. Eichmann had a large sum of money which he buried during this period. Finally he was picked up by a British patrol wearing the uniform of a German Army private. A few months later he escaped, but was picked up again, this time in an Air Force uniform. On both occasions he used an alias, and on both occasions his captors failed to notice a tattoo under his arm which identified him as an important official of the Third Reich.

While all this was happening, the Nuremberg trials were being prepared. Eichmann, according to these accounts, realized that he had a good thing in being interned under another name when the Central Intelligence Agency was looking halfway around the world for Adolf Eichmann. According to Dr. William Höttl, a Gestapo comrade of Eichmann’s, It seems correct that to this day the American authorities have not realized that the man they had sought so intently had all the time been in their hands for months on end. A search for him in Cairo petered out and the hunt died down.

With the heat off for a while Eichmann again escaped and took to the woods—literally. According to most accounts, he spent the next three years working as a woodchopper in Northern Germany with the brother of a former Gestapo subordinate. Some, however, insist that when he got out for the second time he dug up his treasure and made off for the Arab countries where he had formed important connections during the war years. If this is true, there is as yet no explanation as to why he ever left their welcoming arms.

The next definite trace of Eichmann came in 1952 when he showed up in the city of Tucumán in northwest Argentina. There exists an Argentine police photo of one Ricardo Klement (see photo insert), which is certainly Eichmann. He then moved on to Brazil, and from there to Paraguay where he used the alias Rüdiger. He was back in Argentina in 1955 but got nervous when Peron was ousted and left again. In 1956 he was back in Buenos Aires and then spent some six months in the interior, and in 1958 he moved back to San Fernando, a suburb of Buenos Aires, where he had been when he was discovered.

On the day after the announcement of his capture, the New York Times quoted a reliable source as to how Eichmann had spent these South American years:

“He was always on the move....He traveled from country to country, from city to city. He changed jobs, he changed names. But wherever he went he lived in constant terror of being killed.

He probably saw assassins around every comer....He grew gaunt, nervous and bald. He tried to shroud his life in modest obscurity.

Eichmann had few acquaintances. Even with his Nazi friends he used a false name. He pretended he was Richard Krumey, one of his accomplices during the war.

As the years rolled by, he began to cling more and more to the hope he would be forgotten. But his terror never really subsided.”

The picture of Eichmann’s San Fernando dwelling (shown in the photo insert) is mute testimony to the hard life of a notorious exile. The house had no running water and no electricity. Eichmann commuted over two hours each way from this primitive brick hut to his factory in Buenos Aires. (Some days after he disappeared, a truck and a number of cars drove up to the house, and Eichmann’s wife Vera and their two children, a watchdog, and all the Eichmann worldly possessions were spirited off to an unknown destination. Neighbors reported that the people who came for Frau Eichmann were well-dressed and German-speaking.) A psychologist might have something valid to say on the architectural similarity of this stark house, reportedly built by Eichmann himself, to a brick crematorium.

Why the search? Why the fear? There are literally thousands of German war criminals who have never been punished. It is commonly known that many of them are solidly entrenched in every level of the present West German government. Otto Skorenzy, a man about certain towns, writes books and gives interviews. Heinrich Müller, Kaltenbrunner’s deputy in the Gestapo, seems to have acquired some sort of semi-official position in the East German government. Krupp, who was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler and who made millions from slave labor, is back in control of his industrial empire.

In the weeks following Eichmann’s capture, Israel officially admitted that Eichmann was abducted from Argentina. Argentina, of course, demanded that he be returned; a violation of international law had obviously been committed. But it is unlikely that the State of Israel will ever give up Adolf Eichmann now that he is under their power. The following diplomatic note relative to the capture of Eichmann was sent to Argentina:

“The Embassy of Israel presents its attentive salutations to the Ministry of Foreign Relations and has the honor of communicating the following:

The Government of Israel was ignorant of the fact that Adolf Eichmann had arrived in Argentina since the security services of Israel had not given information to this respect. Only after receiving the telegram of the Israeli Ambassador in Buenos Aires, dated June 1, 1960, the Government investigated the details of the case with the security services which had detained Eichmann and these are the circumstances resulting from those investigations.

1. From the termination of the Second World War, Jewish volunteers (among them some Israelis) began the search for Eichmann....

2. For fifteen years those groups of volunteers searched for Eichmann in different European countries, in Arab countries and on the Latin-American continent without results.

3. Some months ago news reached one of these groups of volunteers engaged in the search that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina under a false name, without the knowledge of the Argentine authorities but with the aid of other Nazis who live in the country. It was not clear to the investigators if this news was reliable or not. But they were able to establish the fact that in Argentina there lived numerous Nazis.

4. The investigations were renewed with more intensity and uncovered the domicile of Eichmann, who lived under a false name. The volunteer groups which were investigating established contact with Eichmann and asked him if he would be disposed to go to Israel to be tried. On realizing that he had been recognized, Eichmann admitted his true identity and related that he lived in Argentina with false documents and under another name; when asked if he was willing to present himself to trial in Israel, he asked for a period of twenty-four hours to reply. That period was granted. The next day he expressed his conformity to go to Israel spontaneously to be tried and, at the same time, turned over to the group which had found him, a letter written in his own handwriting in which he manifested his willingness to give expression without adornment to facts of his last five years of service in Germany, in order that the true picture of the facts be transmitted to future generations.

5. The group of volunteers then took Eichmann, with his conformity, out of Argentina and turned him over to the security services of Israel.

6. The security services communicated the 23rd of May of 1960 to the Israel Government that Eichmann was in their funds and the Government instructed the police and the state attorney general to prepare the trial. Only later was it communicated to the Government that Eichmann had come from Argentina.

7. The text of the letter of Eichmann, translated into Spanish (and retranslated unofficially into English) says:

“I, the signer below, Adolph Eichmann, declare by my own will: Since my true identity is known, I realize that it makes no sense to continue hiding from justice. I declare that I am disposed to travel to Israel to present myself there before a competent tribunal. I understand that I will receive legal help and I will do all possible to express without adornment the facts of my last years of service in Germany in order that a true picture of the facts be transmitted to future generations. I make this declaration by my own will. I have not been promised anything nor have I been threatened. I wish to attain at last my peace of mind (or internal peace). Since I do not recall the details and also I confuse some things, I ask that I be helped by putting at my disposition documents and testimonies in my determination to find the truth.

(Signed) ADOLF EICHMANN, Buenos Aires, May, 1960.”

The photostatic copy will be sent by mail to the Argentine Government for its exclusive knowledge.

8. In case that the group of volunteers should have violated the Argentine law or have interfered in the Argentine sovereign rights, the Government of Israel wishes to express its regret in this respect. The Government of Israel asks that it should be taken into consideration the extraordinary significance which surrounds the fact that there has been brought before the tribunal the man on whom weighs the responsibility for the assassination of millions of persons belonging to the Jewish people, and implores that the fact be contemplated that the volunteers, themselves survivors of the massacre, put this historic mission above any other consideration. The Government of Israel entertains the full certainty that the Argentine Government will show understanding before such historic and moral values.”

Israel has always enjoyed good relations with Argentina and the rest of the Latin American countries. Israel is a small state with few friends and powerful enemies. Yet it is apparently willing to sacrifice this good will for the sake of punishing one man.

Why is this so important to Israel? With so many war criminals unpunished, what did this man Eichmann do that he must be punished fifteen years after the end of the war?

Why did the volunteers in the Israeli security office spend all these years conducting the most relentless manhunt the world has ever seen?

Prime Minister Ben-Gurion tried to explain it in a letter to President Frondizi of Argentina:

“Dear Mr. President:

In this hou...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• FOREWORD
• CHAPTER ONE-THE HUNT
• CHAPTER TWO-THE BACKGROUND
• CHAPTER THREE-PRELUDE IN WARSAW
• CHAPTER FOUR-THE FINAL SOLUTION
• CHAPTER FIVE-THEY WERE KILLING PEOPLE
• CHAPTER SIX-EPILOGUE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY