The Eichmann Trial

by Deborah E. Lipstadt

  Grüber’s testimony also gave expression to something quite chilling about contemporary Germany. It illustrated the extent to which the anti-Semitic views which were fundamental to National Socialism were still extant there. Grüber mentioned, but declined to name, a German who had helped Jews during the war. Grüber explained that the man was still alive, and he wanted to “spare him” any trouble. Judge Halevi, troubled by these comments, asked Grüber if it was not considered an “honor today that one risked oneself to rescue people?” The churchman explained that he was speaking from experience. When the German press reported that he was to testify against Eichmann, he had received a “thick file” of “threatening … [and] insulting letters” from fellow Germans. Before stepping down, the pastor, who had been so badly beaten in the concentration camp that when he returned he could not ascend the stairs without assistance, asked to make a personal statement. As “the first German [citizen] to stand before this high court and one who has found it hard to come here … my heartfelt entreaty [is] that we see to it that forgiving love [in Israel] and forgiven sin [in Germany] shall meet before the throne of God.” Spectators wept. Israelis showered him with thank-you notes. One Foreign Ministry official observed that the Israeli public embraced Grüber as a sign that there was “no need to cry ‘despair’ over the human race and the Christian world.” Martha Gellhorn, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, put it more succinctly, though a bit hyperbolically: “One good man redeemed a nation.”33 He may not have redeemed a nation, particularly one in which people who saved Jews still had to hide their deeds, but he injected a note of hope into the hearts of many people.

  It was in Hungary in 1944 that Adolf Eichmann reached the pinnacle or the abyss—depending on one’s perspective—of his career. In the space of two months, with portions of Hungary on the verge of being liberated by the Soviets, Eichmann organized the dispatch of 437,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approximately 75 percent of them, about 330,000, were gassed. The fate of Eichmann’s deportees gave Auschwitz its legendary status in the annals of genocide. The crematoria, despite having been designed to burn multiple bodies simultaneously, could not handle the load. Fire pits were used to supplement the ovens. The smoke from them was so intense that it was visible in the reconnaissance pictures taken by American planes.

  Until 1944, Hungary, despite being Germany’s ally, had balked at deporting Jews. As the Final Solution entered its final year, Hungarian Jews were still safe in their homes. Then, in March, Germany learned that Hungary, concerned about the Axis’s deteriorating military situation, was contemplating switching sides. Hitler gave Admiral Horthy, head of the Hungarian government, an ultimatum: accept a German-approved government or be deposed as regent. Horthy chose the former. Within hours, SS units entered the country. Among them was the Eichmannkommando, whose job it was to decimate the last large, intact Jewish population under German control. Eichmann had brought with him men who, in the course of rendering much of Europe Judenrein, had perfected the process of deporting large numbers of Jews and confiscating their property with little resistance from the victims and fewer protests from their neighbors. Eichmann had another asset—the enthusiastic cooperation of Hungarian authorities, who, in Eichmann’s words, offered up the Jews “like sour beer.” His men “could not work fast enough.”34 But first Eichmann had to win the cooperation of Jewish leaders; and given his skills at deception and their propensity for being deceived, it turned out to be a relatively simple task. He summoned them to a meeting where, according to the stenographic notes taken by one of the participants, he gave what Hilberg has aptly described as “one of the greatest shows of his career.” He began with directives. Within five days, all Hungarian Jews must wear yellow stars. No one was to travel without his personal approval. People evicted from their homes could live with relatives. The leaders were to create a Jewish Council to control the Jews’ finances, oversee educational activities, establish a newspaper, and conduct a census. Then he reassured them. If the thousands of Jews already incarcerated in terrible conditions at the Kistarcsa concentration camp “behaved,” improvements would be made. Jews who “volunteered” for labor in the Reich would receive “good treatment.” If there were insufficient volunteers, the Jewish Council should draft them. But if the draftees “showed a proper attitude, no harm would befall them.” Then he promised that anything Germans took from the Jews would eventually be returned or compensated for. After the war, “Jews would be free to do whatever they wanted … and … the Germans would again become good natured and permit everything as in the past.” He closed with a warning. If Jews complied, “they would come to no harm … would be protected and enjoy the same treatment and pay as other workers.” He would punish “most severely” anyone who molested them, including German soldiers. Given that he was already planning deportations to Auschwitz, the audacity of his lies was breathtaking. The leaders, either assuaged by Eichmann or believing they had no option, created a Judenrat (Jewish Council), which, after meeting with Eichmann’s approval, directed the local communities to obey their instructions.35

  The roundups were scheduled to begin on the first day of Passover. The Hungarians wanted to start in Budapest. Eichmann, demonstrating his expertise, suggested that they begin in the Carpathian east, where Hungary’s more religious Hasidic Jews lived. This would prevent two of Eichmann’s concerns from coming to fruition. Eichmann felt he could prevent a Warsaw Ghetto–like uprising by leading Budapest’s more assimilated Jews into thinking that only insular Orthodox Jews were being targeted. It would also prevent a repetition of what had happened in Denmark, where the Jews, warned about the forthcoming deportations, had escaped to Sweden. If Jews in the east saw Budapest Jews being deported, they might flee toward the approaching Soviets. With Eichmann’s men in the background, the Hungarians conducted a well-orchestrated reign of terror. Witnesses described for the court how the Jews were packed into temporary ghettos in brickyards, open fields, sausage factories, or stone quarries, where they waited, often with no roofs over their heads and minimal food or water. Hungarian Jew Martin Földi told the court that a Gestapo officer had declared, “Ihr lebt ja hier wie die Schweine”—“Here you live like pigs.” They would live like that until the deportations to Auschwitz began in early May.36

  Hausner then turned to a remarkable course of events. Not long after arriving in Hungary, German officials began ransom negotiations with Jewish leaders. Eichmann quickly took control of this effort and promised to exchange Jews in return for trucks and money. Though aspects of the “blood for goods” negotiations remain obscure, the Germans probably never intended to free any Jews. This may well have been Himmler’s ploy to open negotiations with the British and Americans, make peace on the Western front, and leave the Soviets fighting on their own. Even if the Allies rejected such a deal, the Germans could leak word of it, thereby straining relations with the Soviets. The Germans could also blame the Allies for anything that happened to Hungarian Jewry by claiming that the Germans “offered them” to the Allies, who refused to accept them. That the entire effort was a sham is demonstrated by the fact that, while the negotiations “progressed,” the Germans were murdering Jews at such a rate that, even if the Allies had agreed, there would have been virtually no one left to rescue. Joel Brand, one of the Jewish “negotiators,” described to the court his first encounter with Eichmann.

  I approached the table.… Eichmann stood in front of it, legs astride, with his hands on his hips [and he] bellowed at me. You … do you know who I am? I am in charge of the Aktion. In Europe, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria it has been completed; now it is Hungary’s turn.

  He was prepared to “sell me a million Jews—goods for blood”—and threatened that if he did not receive a positive reply within three days he would “operate the mills at Auschwitz.” In mid-May, Brand left Budapest for Istanbul and then Palestine, where he was to transmit the German ransom “offer” to Jewish leaders. On the same day, Eichmann also left Budapest. He, howev
er, headed to Auschwitz, to ascertain that the camp was prepared for the Jews he was poised to dispatch for extermination. When Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Höss complained that he could not “process” such large numbers into the camp, Eichmann suggested that they all be gassed.37

  After a short stay in Istanbul, Brand reached Egypt, where the British arrested him as a spy. Jewish leaders hoped they would at least give the appearance of contemplating the offer, which might slow the deportation process. The British refused. In the interim, Eichmann continued his so-called negotiations with Israel Kasztner and Brand’s wife, Hansi. Though many people, including Judge Halevi, would condemn Kasztner for negotiating with Eichmann and selling out Hungarian Jews, this had been anything but a level playing field. To speak of it as “collaboration” is to misrepresent what it really was: a desperate attempt to stall and possibly prevent mass murder. At one meeting, Kasztner rose to leave before having been officially dismissed. Eichmann exploded at what he considered to be a tremendous impertinence. “Kasztner, I shall send you off to convalesce at Theresienstadt or perhaps you would prefer Auschwitz?” Eichmann continued: “Hear me, I must clean out the provincial towns from this Jewish dirt [shit], no arguments and no crying will help here.”

  Hansi Brand testified that she had met Eichmann over a dozen times. She soon learned that whenever he promised something “there was always a convenient excuse” for him not to keep his word. “He kept stressing that what a German officer promises, he will always honor. But he did not honor anything.” Many Hungarian Jews remained convinced that the Judenrat members and Kasztner in particular—who, though he was not a member of the Judenrat, directly negotiated with Eichmann—had failed them miserably during this period. They accused Kasztner and the others of knowing the Jews’ fate but failing to warn them. When Hungarian Judenrat member Pinchas Freudiger testified, this anger erupted in open court. A spectator began shouting and accusing Freudiger of being responsible for the death of his family. Landau demanded silence, and the spectator was hustled from the courtroom. But the “damage” was done. With this outburst, shades of the Kasztner trial and its accusations against the Jewish Councils had found their way into the courtroom. The public gallery was not the sole source of such “intrusions.” They also came from the bench. Judge Halevi, whose very presence was a stark reminder of that trial, asked Hansi Brand whether her committee had considered assassinating Eichmann. Implicit in his question was the accusation that those at the top, the leaders who knew precisely what faced their fellow Jews, had failed to take actions that might have stopped the process. Brand seemed flummoxed by Halevi’s question. She recognized, as he seemed not to, that such action would probably not have materially changed matters. “Let us assume … one of us shoots him. What would we achieve by that? … We were a Committee for the Aid and Rescue of our people.… We were not heroes. So what we bore in mind was how we could try to keep people alive.”38

  When Margit Reich took the stand, she brought something with her that bore vivid witness to Hungarian Jews’ desperate state. Her husband had written her a letter that he threw from the train on which he was being deported to Auschwitz. He had scrawled on the outside, “Blessed be the hand which posts this letter.” Some hand did post it, and Margit received it. Precisely seventeen years later, it was read in Jerusalem: “My dear wife and children … We are setting out upon a very long journey.… I shall somehow bear my fate whatever it may be. I do not want to make you sad but I would want very much to live yet in your midst. May God grant us that we may be allowed to achieve that.” He never returned. Reich, emotionally unable to read the letter herself, had asked Assistant Prosecutor Gabriel Bach to read it for her. He was so overwhelmed that he found it hard to continue.

  Martin Földi described for the court how at Birkenau he had one last glimpse of his wife and children, who had been sent to the “left”—that is, the gas chambers. He recalled that, despite the crush of people, he could identify them because of his little girl’s red coat. “The red spot was a sign that my wife was near there. The red spot was getting smaller and smaller.…” He never saw them again.39 Years later, that coat would reappear in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List.

  As news of the deportations spread, the Red Cross and foreign governments decried them. Uncharacteristically, even the Pope spoke out against them, though he did so without mentioning the Jews. In early July, approximately eight weeks after the deportations had begun, Horthy, afraid of his fate in the hands of the Allies, ordered them stopped. Furious, Eichmann sent his men to Kistarcsa to ship a thousand Jews to Auschwitz. The Judenrat alerted sympathetic Hungarian authorities, who stopped the train. Undeterred, Eichmann struck again a few days later. This time, however, he engaged in a bit of subterfuge. He summoned the Judenrat to his headquarters and kept them incommunicado for the day. In the interim, his men returned to Kistarcsa and deported fifteen hundred Jews. When the train crossed the border into Poland, Eichmann released the leaders from his headquarters. A few days later, he shipped yet another trainload of Jews to Auschwitz.

  Hausner was anxious to prove to the court that, in addition to facilitating murder from behind his desk, Eichmann had actually committed murder with his own hands. He contended that, while in Hungary, Eichmann had shot a little boy who had been trying to steal some fruit from the orchard outside his villa. Given the abundance of documents that implicated Eichmann, it is interesting that Hausner felt compelled to prove that Eichmann had personally killed someone. Hausner had not included this specific act in the indictment because, he explained to the court, he saw no need to set the boy “apart from all the millions.” His objective in raising it was to demonstrate to the court the nature of Eichmann’s character. But, the historian Stephan Landsman has rightfully asked, can or should one be convicted for having a vile and nefarious character? Ultimately, Hausner’s efforts regarding the murder were thwarted when questions posed by both Servatius and the judges proved that Avraham Gordon, whom Hausner called as the witness to the murder, could not have observed it.40

  Facing international protests for their collaboration with the Nazis in the annihilation of the Jews, the Hungarian government agreed to release forty thousand Jews to the Swiss, who would allow them to immigrate to Palestine. Furious, Eichmann instructed a subordinate, “Everything possible should be done, in order to delay … and prevent” such “biologically valuable material” from entering Palestine. Upon learning that Hitler supported this plan, Eichmann demonstrated what Cesarani has aptly described as an “astonishing degree of presumption for a Lieutenant-Colonel” and decided to ask him to reconsider. The prosecution introduced a letter by German ambassador Veesenmayer, who Eichmann claimed wielded ultimate power in Hungary, describing how Eichmann proposed sabotaging these efforts by deporting “suddenly and speedily” those who might qualify for emigration. Veesenmayer’s communiqué depicts Eichmann as someone who was far more than just a transportation specialist. “It has been agreed with Eichmann that [if] … additional evacuations of Jews from Budapest will be approved, they are to be started as suddenly as possible and carried out with such speed that the Jews in question will already have been deported before the formalities have been completed.”41 When some Jews managed to obtain immigration permits to Spain, Eichmann contemplated waylaying them as they passed through France. During the final throes of the Final Solution, he remained more committed to its execution than were his superiors. Horthy, under pressure from extremist elements in his government, agreed to restart the deportations on August 25. On the 19th, Eichmann, possibly afraid that the Hungarians might renege, pressed for them to begin sooner. Then the pro-German government in Romania fell. The Romanians left the Axis and joined the Allied side. Horthy, assuming that the Axis were going to lose the war, canceled the deportations.

  Throughout this period, Eichmann kept pushing for faster extermination of the Jews. Himmler saw matters differently and put the decision about restarting the deportations on hold. This did not r
epresent an ideological change regarding the murder of the Jews: the Final Solution could be restarted once the military situation was stabilized. Himmler was also apparently persuaded by his own regime’s propaganda regarding the power of the Jews. He speculated that American and British Jews could convince the Western Allies to make a separate peace with Germany. Eichmann, recognizing that his task was thwarted at this point, returned to Berlin. Then, in mid-October, the Germans engineered a coup by the pro-Nazi Hungarian organization, the Arrow Cross. Within two days, Eichmann returned to Budapest. He summoned Kasztner. The Soviets were already on Hungarian soil, and the Reich was crumbling. Nonetheless, Eichmann greeted Kasztner with noticeable bluster.

  So you see I am back here again! You no doubt thought that the story of Romania and Bulgaria would repeat itself here? Apparently you forgot that Hungary still rests in the shadow of the destruction of the Reich! And our hands are long enough to grasp the Jews of Budapest as well.…

  He then proposed a deal. Budapest Jews would be deported to the Reich, “this time on foot.” But if the Jews “place at our disposal a suitable number of trucks,” they would go by truck. Behind Eichmann’s “offer” lay Berlin’s desperate need for laborers. The Hungarians agreed to transfer fifty thousand Jews to Germany to “replace worn-out Russian and other POW’s.” In the past, when “offered” a portion of a country’s Jews, Eichmann had refused: for him it was all or nothing. This time, he accepted. In truth, he had not retreated from his all-encompassing approach. According to a German Foreign Office report, he intended to keep asking for groups of fifty thousand until he had “secure[d] the final objective of clearing the Hungarian zone.”42