Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

by Bettina Stangneth

  GESTAPO PUSHES FOR EMIGRATION

  Berlin, February 14

  The “Ita” reports that in the last week, 300 Jews in Breslau suddenly received the order from the Gestapo to charter a ship immediately, and emigrate to Shanghai within the week. When the Jewish community in Breslau explained that they did not have the money required to hire the ship, the Gestapo told them that “this was now a legal requirement.” On the same day, the Gestapo confiscated the necessary funds from the three wealthiest Jews in Breslau. The forced emigration plan has temporarily foundered because the shipping company demanded a guarantee in foreign currency for the return journey, in case the transport was not admitted to Shanghai.

  The Gestapo’s pressure on the Jews released from concentration camps to emigrate quickly has not lessened. Thousands of recently released people are besieging foreign consulates and the offices of Jewish organizations, particularly in Berlin and Vienna, in the hope of being offered an opportunity to emigrate, no matter to where and under what circumstances. They are all threatened with repeated arrest and internment in a concentration camp if they do not succeed in leaving Germany within a set period—which is often extremely short.

  It is reported that the Central Emigration Office for Jews being set up in Berlin will open in the coming week. It will be contained in the large building that once housed the Jewish “Brethren Society” and is to be headed by SS Officer Eichmann, known from Vienna by the nickname “Czar of the Jews.”

  Current research shows that the “Ita” (JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, founded by Jacob Landau and Meir Grossmann) had been well informed. From Eichmann’s point of view—judging by his reaction in March 1939—it was rather too well informed. At this exact moment at the beginning of 1939, the Nazis were holding discussions with the Japanese and Chinese consulates to ascertain the likelihood of resistance in those countries to mass Jewish immigration. Eichmann had tasked an old acquaintance, Heinrich Schlie,39 with making these inquiries (bypassing the Foreign Office in a most unbureaucratic way). Schlie, who headed the “Hanseatic Travel Agency,” had been cultivating a close working relationship with the Jewish Office since July 1937, in the expectation of getting a considerable amount of business from it. These diplomatic consultations were a delicate matter: it was vital not to lose this newly discovered way of getting rid of Jews before it could be used, and to use it before competing offices got wind of it. The article’s other details are also correct: Jews were released from concentration camps only if they could show they were able to emigrate, and they were immediately rearrested once the time limit had expired. This procedure was no secret in Nazi circles; on the contrary, it was an effective method of expulsion: intimidation, keeping people “on their toes,” was a consciously chosen strategy. During the Nazi period, the only people propounding the view that forced emigration was a humanitarian campaign, with the full agreement of both sides, worked for the Ministry of Propaganda. The article’s reference to Eichmann’s fame in Vienna is also correct: he certainly hadn’t kept a low profile there.

  So what did Eichmann find so very troubling about this article? It couldn’t have been the epithet Czar of the Jews: such nicknames were openly coveted in Nazi circles. The term bloodhound, cited by Eichmann at the meeting with the Jewish representatives, was one of the most widely used. Alois Brunner and Josef Weiszl, two of Eichmann’s friends and colleagues from the end of 1938, were also known as “bloodhounds.” In Hungary in 1944, Eichmann even introduced himself this way: “Do you know who I am? I am a bloodhound!”40 The sobriquet was even attached to Heydrich, and it was a perfect fit for the SS’s image, which was full of hunting metaphors. The Nazis let their imaginations run wild with these nicknames: in Vienna, Brunner also liked to call himself “Jud Süß.”41 Josef Weiszl, one of the Eichmann group’s most brutal thugs, was in charge of the first Jewish camp, in Doppl, for the Vienna Central Office: he wrote his wife in amusement that he was now being called the “Jews’ emperor of Doppl,”42 while Camp Commandant Amon Göth was the “Emperor of Krakow.”43 In this context, the “czar” nickname suited the tone of the period much better than the “little prime minister.” In the 1950s, Eichmann would indulge in his own flight of fancy: he told Sassen on several occasions that he had been called the “Jews’ pope,” and he also said: “The men in my command had the kind of respect for me that prompted the Jews to effectively set me on a throne.”44 Anyone comparing himself to the king of the Jews has some real issues to work through. To be called the “Czar of the Jews” by the “enemy” was a welcome piece of flattery for Eichmann, not an offense worth getting upset about. Later, Eichmann would admit that he had used the article to preen in front of the Jewish representatives.45

  However, the Reich Central Office in Berlin, whose opening Eichmann announced to the representatives that same day, was a different matter. On January 24, 1939, Göring had given Heydrich the task of setting up a Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, to be headed by Heydrich. In the quarterly report of the Head Office for Reich Security (RSHA) dated March 1939, February 27 was named as the official founding date, with work beginning there from the start of March. The article in the Pariser Tageszeitung appeared on February 15, giving the correct address: Eichmann’s future workplace would be the large Jewish Brethren Society building at 116 Kurfürstenstraße. In other words, the small article was announcing Eichmann’s appointment to a position originally envisaged for Heydrich—the head of the RSHA—at a time when, apart from those directly involved, hardly anyone knew Eichmann had been transferred to Berlin.

  A personnel matter such as this was an exceptionally delicate thing for a Nazi careerist. Eichmann’s superiors doubtless asked him why he had been so reckless as to boast to the enemy about a position he had not yet even been given. An episode like that would have been embarrassing enough to prompt Eichmann’s aggression at the subpoenaed meeting, especially as another of his superiors was present. The pressure he was under made him overreact and focus on the first part of the article (the circumstances of the forced emigration) in his attack on the Jewish representatives, reading into it typical Nazi images like the “bloodhound” and the “Enemy of the Jews, with bloodshot eyes,”46 which the reporter didn’t even mention. It had touched a raw nerve: his reputation within his own camp.

  This press affair casts further doubt on Eichmann’s later assertion in Israel that he had not wanted to leave Vienna and had had to be forced into accepting the transfer to Berlin. It also undermines the witnesses who said (based on what Eichmann had told them) that he had thought of Vienna as the most successful period of his life. His reluctance to return to Berlin cannot have been all that great, if pride and ambition overcame his sense of caution and made him boast about his transfer to people in Vienna. The original source of the information may well have been the Jewish Religious Community in Vienna and not the Jewish community in Berlin. True, Landau at the JTA had just returned from Berlin,47 but the Pariser Tageszeitung also had a source based in Vienna, as later articles reveal. Eichmann must have leaked the information there himself: he then accused Heinrich Stahl and the other Jewish representatives in Berlin of having been on unauthorized visits to Vienna and having spoken to members of the Jewish Religious Community there.

  A Man of Importance

  Eichmann would never tire of talking about his memories, though as is often the case, he recalled only the flattering and the anti-Semitic parts. The “Czar of the Jews” had made it onto the front pages of the international press, achieving the sort of fame that many people still dream of today—even if the “Paris hacks” had “smeared” his “work” rather than celebrating it. And from then on, his file of press cuttings grew steadily: “In this time of peace before 1939, the number of articles about me in the foreign press was so great that Wurm at Der Stürmer (a former teacher) collected them up and gave them to me as a present.”48 We may doubt whether it was really Paul Wurm who compiled the collection, as Eichmann had brought their close working relatio
nship to an end in 1937.49 And Eichmann really had no need of such a source: many departments, including the Jewish Office, collected press articles. Inspecting the “Jewish world press” was one of its daily tasks. Quite likely, Eichmann didn’t want people to suspect that he had created this collection himself, before apparently destroying it in the last months of the war. But you can hear the pride in his voice when he gushes: “Nobody else was such a household name in Jewish political life at home and abroad in Europe as little old me.”50 Among Eichmann’s staff, the prominence of their superior, who was even mentioned in the Reich’s hate sheet, was obviously no secret.51

  According to Eichmann, the next newspaper article about him appeared in relation to the Prague Central Office,52 as he would tell Sassen: “When I was detailed to the Protectorate, some other foreign rag wrote about me.”53 This time the “rag” was Aufbau, the monthly publication for the Jews of the German-Jewish Club in New York. The September 1939 issue carried a small announcement on page 8:

  Prague: The “Emigration Service” headed by Sturmtruppführer Eichmann has commenced the transfer of all Jews in the Protectorate to Prague. 200 Jews must leave the occupied region every day, by any means necessary.

  At this point, Eichmann was an SS Hauptsturmführer. The article’s reference to Sturmtruppführer—which was not a Nazi rank but a military position—was probably one of the mistakes commonly made in other countries in identifying the imaginatively named SS ranks; Eichmann was never deployed as a Sturmtruppführer. Otherwise, this article also comes from a reliable source. After Eichmann finished setting up the Reich Central Office in Berlin, and while still overseeing Vienna, he also became involved with the organization of the Prague Central Office. By this point, Bohemia and Moravia had been incorporated into the German Reich as a “protectorate,” and Eichmann even moved his family to Prague. Adolf and Vera Eichmann, who was heavily pregnant with her second son at the end of 1939, moved into an apartment formerly owned by the Jewish Communist writer Egon Erwin Kisch. Some of her family moved to the same building. Being the wife of a careerist could have unforeseen consequences. There is incontrovertible evidence of Eichmann’s activity in Prague from July 14, 1939, the day he appeared as Walter Stahlecker’s “representative” at negotiations with the protectorate’s government.54 Stahlecker, an SS Gruppenführer and a personal friend of Eichmann’s, introduced Eichmann not only as his representative but as the head of the institutions on which the Prague Central Office was to be modeled: the “Reich paradigm,” based on the examples of Berlin and Vienna. He also invited those present to visit Vienna.55 The representatives of the Jewish community in Prague were aware of who they were dealing with from the outset, and the “exchange” that they were ordered to undertake with their “colleagues” in Vienna would have left no room for doubt.56 In August 1939, barely a month after the founding of the Prague Central Office for Jewish Emigration under Eichmann’s official leadership, the Czechoslovakian intelligence service in London received a detailed and well-informed report on the situation of the Jewish population in the protectorate. It presented a powerful image of Eichmann.

  In July, Oberstuf. Eichmann took over the leadership of the Gestapo department for Jewish questions. He had previously been the official responsible for Jewish questions in Vienna and the Eastern March. Eichmann has been granted extraordinary powers, and is said to report directly to Himmler. After Prague, his next aim is to rid the entire Protectorate of Jews.

  Herr Eichmann immediately threw himself into the fulfillment of this task. Since, as he says himself, he cannot deal with every individual Jew, he has identified a total of 4 people as speakers for Jewry in the Protectorate: these are the people to whom he gives his orders and grants audiences. They are the head of the Jewish Religious Community in Prague, Dr. Emil Kafka, the Community’s secretary, Dr. František Weidmann, and two representatives of the Palestine Office, Dr. Kahn and Secretary Edelstein. The first thing he did was to send Dr. Weidmann to Vienna for 24 hours, to visit the facilities … there. On his return, Herr Eichmann gave the order to establish immediately the emigration department for the Jewish Religious Community in Prague.57

  The “Central Office” was “an office headed by the Gestapo: Herr Eichmann and his colleagues Günther, Bartl, Novak and Fuchs.” Representatives of the individual Czech authorities also worked there, “because Eichmann has decreed that from now on no other office can hand out any sort of permit to the Jews.… The Jewish Religious Community in Prague … vouches to Herr Eichmann that 250 Jews per day will go to the Central Office to apply for permission to emigrate.” This quota was a huge problem, and so, the article continued,

  the Jews are threatened with a real catastrophe, as Herr Eichmann is sure that every Jew will find some way to emigrate once he has been arrested two or three times. Herr Eichmann’s aim is to create a feeling among the Jews that their chance of happiness means being allowed to leave the country, even if they’re almost naked. Support is therefore being given to people and “travel agencies” dealing with the export of Jews en gros. Herr Eichmann has allowed a number of suspicious persons who arrange expensive transport … for a living to move their offices to Prague. These are the notorious, sad, illegal transports to Palestine, South America etc. Detailed reports have appeared in the world press.…

  As well as organizing emigrations, Herr Eichmann is taking all other steps necessary to rid the Protectorate of Jews. The required mood is being created among the Jews so that they become “inclined to emigrate.” First and foremost, he has decreed that all Jews must move to Prague.… This means that their livelihoods are destroyed. Herr Eichmann works on the principle that what these people live on and where they will live is not his concern. If there are 10 or 15 Jews to a room in Prague, they will make more of an effort to move abroad. Herr Eichmann is using the same strategy here in the Protectorate that he used in the Eastern March.…

  Any intervention or explanation is pointless. Whatever verbal order Herr Eichmann gives becomes statutory regulation. And the execution is under way.58

  Whoever the author of this report was, he seems to have been personally acquainted with Eichmann. The extent of the description here shows just how important he thought this SS man was. In contrast to Eichmann-in-Jerusalem, this Eichmann had not the slightest difficulty in saying “I” when it came to giving orders and making decisions. He dispatched, decreed, allowed, took steps, issued orders, and gave audiences. The report leaves his demeanor in no doubt. The resettlement of all Czech Jews to Prague, also reported in the Aufbau article, was part of the same pattern that Eichmann had already followed so effectively in Vienna: all Jews had to relocate to the capital so that they could emigrate from there as quickly as possible. In Prague, he didn’t even try to conceal the reason for this move: the more straitened their living conditions and the more threatening their situation, the greater the pressure on them to emigrate.

  By late summer 1939, Eichmann’s strenuous efforts to expel and disenfranchise the Jews had made him conspicuous to the Jewish communities of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and the so-called “Old Reich.” His steady acquisition of power had not gone unnoticed in his own circles, either: here too he quickly became the man who had “started up the Central Emigration Offices in Vienna and Prague.”59 Eichmann also profited from Heydrich’s career, which was unsurprising in a system built less on rank than on protection. He later gave a memorable description of this “anteroom authority”: “I never had to wait long in Heydrich’s anteroom either. Although it would have been very interesting, because one met all kinds of people there, and once somebody had been seen in Heydrich’s anteroom …, it didn’t matter what his rank was, you knew he was a man of importance.”60 A man like Adolf Eichmann.

  Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

  On the day the little article appeared in Aufbau, the invasion of Poland began, which not only altered the press’s priorities but also resulted in a significant extension of Eichmann’s field of activity. The much-cite
d Lebensraum to the east would contribute more than three million Polish Jews to the “Jewish question” and open up new possibilities for the Nazis’ resettlement plans: now the Jews could not only be blackmailed, robbed, and hounded out—they could also be transported from the margins of society to the still more inhospitable margins of the newly enlarged Reich. Thanks to thorough research, we now know a great deal about the first deportation of Jews from Vienna to Ostrava in October 1939, under Eichmann’s leadership. The plan for a “Jewish reservation” in the east attracted international attention. On October 23 and 24 the London Daily Telegraph and the Pariser Tageszeitung reported a planned “Jewish reservation” in Lublin “to which Jews are to be brought from all over Poland.” The papers also followed “Hitler’s plans for a Jewish state” in their next issues.61 The first articles about the deportation of Jews from Vienna to Ostrava appeared on November 18, 1939, long after the campaign had become mired in teething problems and had been abandoned—but surprisingly early for information that would ordinarily be strictly classified.62

  Eichmann was involved in spreading the news: he had ordered leading representatives of the Viennese and Prague Jewish communities to accompany the first transports into the marshlands, to Nisko on the river San. Benjamin Murmelstein, Julius Boshan, Berthold Storfer, Jakob Edelstein, and Richard Friedman were not to be deported (yet): they had to watch as the murderous project was carried out.63 They therefore became witnesses to Eichmann’s entry into Ostrava and Nisko, where he delivered at least one “welcome address.” In addition to the postwar descriptions of this self-aggrandizing, arrogant performance, we have an article in the Pariser Tageszeitung from November 25, 1939, under the headline “Reservation Guarded by Death’s Head SS,” which ended with the paragraph: