Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

by Bettina Stangneth

  31. For the publication history of the Argentina Papers, see “Aftermath” in this book.

  32. “The Others Spoke,” introduction (pt. 1), p. 1.

  33. Ibid., p. 2.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid., p. 7.

  36. Raphael Gross, Anständig geblieben: Nationalsozialistische Moral (Frankfurt am Main, 2010), p. 191.

  37. “The Others Spoke,” introduction, p. 7. This manuscript page is missing, as Sassen evidently sold the original to Life. The reference to it, and to the contemporary copy, can be found in BA Ludwigsburg, “Miscellaneous” folder.

  38. “The Others Spoke,” pt. 2, p. 1.

  39. “The Others Spoke,” pt. 2: “Re: My Findings on the Matter of ‘Jewish Questions’ and Measures by the National Socialist German Government to Solve this Complex in the Years 1933 to 1945.” The text is quoted from the handwritten pages. “II: Betrifft: Meine Feststellungen,” p. 65; page numbers according to the handwritten original. The manuscript has been reconstructed from the parts contained in the above-named archives, as there was no complete, or completely legible, version in any one collection.

  40. Ibid., p. 1.

  41. Ibid., p. 2.

  42. For the full quotation, see above. Robert H. Jackson’s summation, July 26, 1946, IMT vol. 19, p. 397.

  43. “Re: My Findings on the Matter,” p. 54.

  44. Ibid., p. 57.

  45. Himmler to Müller, January 18, 1943. See also Peter Witte and Stephan Tyas, “A New Document on the Destruction and Murder of Jews during ‘Einsatz Reinhardt,’ ” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15 (2001), pp. 468–86.

  46. Dieter Wisliceny described the “card room” in his handwritten document “Re: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,” Bratislava, July 26, 1946, prosecution document T/89. The descriptions of Rolf Günther’s wall charts, and of the map hung behind Franz Novak’s desk with flags for the extermination camps, come from testimony of Erika Scholz, former secretary in Eichmann’s department, at the Franz Novak trial, March 27, 1972, published as document 46 in Kurt Pätzold and Erika Schwarz, “Auschwitz war für mich nur ein Bahnhof”: Franz Novak, der Transportoffizier Adolf Eichmanns (Berlin, 1994), p. 171.

  47. On the argument about the Korherr Report and other figures, see “The Lie of the Six Million” in this book.

  48. The transcriber of this handwritten text, which found its way into the Sassen transcript as part of tape no. 15, misread rund (around) as und (and). Sassen transcript, Hagag copy, p. 116. The handwriting, however, clarifies the error.

  49. “Re: My Findings on the Matter,” p. 64.

  50. Ibid., p. 65.

  51. Ibid., pp. 63–64.

  52. Tape 67, BA tape 10B 1:01:00.

  53. Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497-90, Bl.1. Sassen probably ensured this note could not be seen on the copies that he prepared to be sold, not wanting to create any difficulties for Eichmann. See “Aftermath” in this book.

  54. Klaus Eichmann, interview in Quick, January 2, 1966.

  55. Eichmann openly calculated, as he was sitting in prison in Israel, that a “monster trial” would turn a simple collection of notes into a best seller. Letter to his family “on the eve of the trial,” April 17, 1961, All. Proz. 6/165.

  56. Eichmann compiled the source material for Heydrich’s lecture at the Wannsee Conference, among others. He explained this to Sassen, as they were discussing the conference transcript. Sassen transcript 47:10 and elsewhere. In Israel, of course, he claimed not to remember this.

  57. “The Others Spoke,” part 3, p. 10.

  58. Ibid., p. 4.

  59. Ibid., p. 3.

  60. Ibid., pp. 5, 6, 7.

  61. Ibid., p. 9.

  62. Ibid., p. 10.

  63. Ibid., p. 7.

  64. Eichmann to Hull, in William L. Hull, Kampf um eine Seele: Gespräche mit Eichmann in der Todeszelle (Wuppertal, 1964), p. 75.

  65. Bettina Stangneth, “Adolf Eichmann interpretiert Immanuel Kant,” lecture at Marburg University, 2002.

  66. Lauryssens, De fatale vriendschappen, p. 137. Stan Lauryssens “quotes” Eichmann as expressing his admiration for Kant in the Sassen circle, but on closer inspection this text combines his words from Israel with sections taken from the Sassen transcript. Nowhere in the transcript, or on tape, or in Eichmann’s Argentine texts, is there the slightest hint of the devotion to Kant that Eichmann exhibited in Israel.

  67. “The Others Spoke,” part 3, p. 10.

  68. Ibid., p. 11.

  69. Ibid.

  70. Sassen transcript, 3:3 BA tape 33:10.

  71. “The Others Spoke,” part 3, p. 3.

  72. Karl Beyer, Jüdischer Intellekt und deutscher Glaube (Leipzig, 1933), p. 28; and Otto Dietrich, Die philosophische Grundlage des Nationalsozialismus: Ruf zu den Waffen deutschen Geistes (Breslau, 1935). There are whole shelves of Nazi literature on the constructs of “Jewish” and “German” philosophy. They can also be found in popular publications, like the later editions of Theodor Fritsch’s Handbuch der Judenfrage (Leipzig, 1943), especially the chapter “Das Judentum in der deutschen Philosophie,” p. 393.

  73. Walter Groß, Der deutsche Rassegedanke und die Welt (Berlin, 1939) (Texts I, 42), p. 30.

  74. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963; reprint New York, 1994), p. 135.

  75. Facsimiles of the redrafting of the closing statement into the form in which it was actually given have been easily accessible since 1996: they can be found in Zvi Aharoni and Wilhelm Dietl, Operation Eichmann: The Truth About the Pursuit, Capture, and Trial, trans. Helmut Bögler (New York, 1997). Robert Servatius demanded comprehensive changes. The closing statement was, in Eichmann’s mind, part of the “Götzen” (Idols) book he was planning. BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6/196.

  76. Avner W. Less, interview, Avner Less Estate, Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, ETH Zurich, NL Less, tape 7.1.IX.

  77. Hull, Kampf um eine Seele, p. 131. Hull was a Christian missionary who described himself as an “unofficial observer on Protestant spirituality.” He visited Eichmann at his own wish, with the aim of setting a man who had been baptized Protestant back on the right path and saving him from damnation. Hull was a devotee of a fundamentalist, revivalist Christianity, that was shaped by an arrogance toward other forms of belief and displayed clear anti-Semitic characteristics. (In an interview with Canadian journalists, he explained that all Eichmann’s Jewish victims would obviously burn in hell anyway, because—in contrast to their murderer—they had not been baptized and had not found Christ.) One of the grotesque consequences of these “conversion conversations” is that Eichmann actually appears in a positive light, having put up a respectable defense against Hull’s aggressive attempt to convert him. As a reader, you feel something like genuine sympathy for Eichmann in the face of such an odious fundamentalist visitation—something you then hold against Hull personally. Still, it is a shame his book is almost never used, despite containing three very interesting letters from Eichmann. In contrast to the back-translated conversation transcripts, made from memory, the letters are undoubtedly reliable sources.

  78. Heidegger’s infamous address to the campaign rally of German academia in Leipzig, November 11, 1933, document no. 132 in Guido Schneeberger, Nachlese zu Heidegger (Bern 1962), and Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität (1934; reprint Frankfurt am Main, 1983), p. 14. Heidegger stands as a representative here for several philosophers who rushed to conform to National Socialist thought.

  79. Eichmann mentions this letter to his brother Robert in his answers to the questionnaire for Paris Match, May 1962, BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6/252, p. 27.

  80. Rosenberg used these words at the memorial celebration for Copernicus and Kant in Königsberg on February 20, 1939.

  81. Shlomo Kulcsár reported that after a brief period of irritation, Eichmann was quite enthusiastic about this new idea and told the psychologist he was correct: “You seem to be right. He was indeed only a Gauleiter (Nazi rank of regional officer) in
Palestine,” and so it was probably appropriate for Eichmann to compare himself to him. I. S. Kulcsár, Shoshanna Kulcsár, and Lipot Szondi, “Adolf Eichmann and the Third Reich,” in Crime, Law and Corrections, ed. Ralph Slovenko (Springfield, Ill., 1966), p. 33.

  82. “The Others Spoke,” part 3, p. 13.

  83. Quoted in Stern, no. 28, November 9, 1960. Eichmann confirmed this was genuine during his interrogation, on September 15, 1960.

  84. Eichmann told Sassen that he allowed the killing of a relative during the extermination campaign, and that he had not even stopped it on the express wishes of a family member. Tape 67—in more detail on tape than in the transcript: BA tape 05B, from 21:00.

  85. “The Others Spoke,” part 3, p. 13.

  86. Rudolf Höß, Kommandant in Auschwitz: Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (1958; reprinted Munich, 2000), p. 194.

  87. He really did write this: “Götzen,” p. 138, A.E. 97.

  88. “Allgemein” (General), handwritten text, Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497-92, p. 2.

  89. Vera Eichmann, interview in Paris Match, April 29, 1962.

  90. “Allgemein” (General), handwritten text, Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497-92, p. 2.

  91. “The Others Spoke,” part 3, p. 14.

  92. Ibid., p. 16.

  93. Ibid., p. 21.

  94. Ibid., p. 23.

  95. Ibid., p. 24.

  96. Ibid., p. 25.

  97. “Regret is something for little children” is much quoted but seldom referenced. Eichmann made this statement in cross-examination, Eichmann trial, session 96, July 13, 1961. He uttered it after denying ever holding the “little closing speech” in Argentina.

  98. The reference Eichmann was looking for is John 4:22.

  99. “The Others Spoke,” introduction, p. 1.

  100. “The Others Spoke,” part 3, p. 26.

  101. Argentine federal police, report on the abduction of Eichmann, June 9, 1960, Archivo General de la Nacíon (AGN), DAE, Bormann files, pp. 77–79; quoted in Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina, rev. ed. (London, 2003), p. 316n543.

  102. On Mildenstein’s postwar career, see Timothy Naftali, “The CIA and Eichmann’s Associates,” in US Intelligence and the Nazis, ed. Richard Breitman (Washington, D.C., 2004), pp. 337–74, based on NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Leopold von Mildenstein.

  103. In 1960–61 Eichmann wrote about the possibility of hiding in Chile, which he had stupidly not made use of. “Meine Flucht,” p. 27, BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6/247.

  104. Franz Rademacher, handwritten note on Felix Benzler’s telegram to the Foreign Office, September 12, 1941, prosecution document T/873. Facsimile in R. M. W. Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen (Zurich, Stuttgart, and Vienna, 1961), p. 291. Identical to IMT document NG-3354.

  105. Shlomo Kulcsár, “De Sade and Eichmann,” Mental Health and Society 3 (1976), p. 108.

  106. Klaus Eichmann, interview in Quick, January 2, 1966.

  107. Avner Less, interview, Avner Less Estate, Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, ETH Zurich, NL Less, tape 7.1.IX.

  108. The last line in Eichmann’s farewell letter to his family reads: “I am now being fetched to be hanged. It is the 5/31/62, 5 minutes before 24:00. Farewell!” (The last words of the letter—“Pfuat Euch!”—were in Austrian dialect.) BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6/248.

  2 Eichmann in Conversation

  1. Sassen transcript 18:8.

  2. Many thanks to Peter F. Kramml, Salzburg City Archive, who was kind enough to look into the registration cards for me.

  3. Rudel (Sassen) mentions Fritsch’s visit to Germany in Zwischen Deutschland und Argentinien (Buenos Aires, 1954). See also “German Farewells 1974,” the obituary in the right-wing publication Deutsche Annalen, Jahrbuch des Nationalgeschehens, year 4 (Leoni am Starnberger See, 1975), unpaginated. The rumors about Fritsch’s Nazi career were started by Fritsch himself: in his letters to Nazi authors, he claimed to have heard them give a reading in person. See, for example, Fritsch’s letter to Werner Beumelburg, February 10, 1948, Werner Beumelburg Estate, Rheinische Landesbibliothek Koblenz.

  4. Saskia Sassen, interview and correspondence with the author (2009).

  5. Fritsch to Werner Beumelburg, April 23, 1948, Beumelburg Estate.

  6. Fritsch to Werner Beumelburg, June 6, 1949, Beumelburg Estate.

  7. Fritsch to Werner Beumelburg, August 19, 1948, Beumelburg Estate.

  8. “German Nationalist and Neo-Nazi Activities in Argentina,” July 8, 1953, declassified April 11, 2000 (CIA-RDP620-00856 R000 3000 30004-4). Uki Goñi also assumes that Rudolfo Freude was a co-owner of Dürer Verlag.

  9. Ibid. In the early years, Fritsch also cooperated with Theodor Schmidt, the owner of the El Buen Libro bookstore. However, this partnership seems not to have lasted long due to financial disagreements, if we believe what Fritsch said about it in his correspondence.

  10. “Argentinisches Tageblatt,” in Asociaciones Argentinas de Lengua Alemana, Argentinische Vereinigungen deutschsprachigen Ursprungs: Ein Beitrag zur sozialen Verantwortung (Buenos Aires, 2007), pp. 589–97.

  11. Saskia Sassen, interviews and correspondence with the author (2009).

  12. Hans Rechenberg, who came into contact with Fritsch after 1960 in connection with the financing of Eichmann’s defense, complained about this attachment to Robert Servatius. See “Aftermath” in this book.

  13. Adolf von Thadden mentioned in a letter that Rudel was the last person to finally turn away from Sassen. Thadden to Gert Sudholt (Druffel Verlag), September 10, 1981, Adolf von Thadden Estate, Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, VVP 39, Acc. 1/98 no. 49, correspondence S.

  14. In trial session 95, Eichmann claimed that Fritsch listened to the conversations only for a short while, then didn’t come anymore. However, the transcripts and tapes show that Fritsch and Eichmann were still in touch during the last recordings.

  15. When it became known that Eichmann had been abducted in 1960, Eichmann’s brothers Otto and Robert met with Eberhard Fritsch straight away. This suggests that they knew one another before this point. See “Aftermath” in this book.

  16. On Sassen’s life until he fled Europe, see Gerald Groeneveld, Kriegsberichter: Nederlandse SS-oorlogsverslaggevers 1941–1945 (Haarlem, 2004), pp. 356–68. See also Sassen’s own literary reworking of his escape in his novel Die Jünger und die Dirnen, chap. 6. For Sassen’s escape and his life in Argentina, see Roelf van Til’s documentaries, and interviews with Inge Schneider and Saskia Sassen (as well as those by Raymond Ley in 2009); Saskia Sassen, correspondence (2009); Francisca Sassen, correspondence (2009); Anthony (Hesselbach, December 1960), “He wrote Adolf Eichmann’s Memoirs,” Kölnische Rundschau, December 16, 1960. Huge thanks to Wolfgang Birkholz and Annette Krieger from the Kölnische Rundschau for their generous help. Stan Lauryssen’s De fatale vriendschappen van Adolf Eichmann (Leuven, 1998) has entertainment value more than anything else, and the interviews with Sassen by Stanislav Farago are clearly fiction. See “Aftermath” in this book.

  17. The source of this information is problematic. Several of Lauryssens’s statements are incorrect, and doubt must be cast on an author who admired the single spire of Cologne’s cathedral (which famously has two spires) on a visit to the city, and who claims to have seen document files in Sassen’s house that existed only in Israel.

  18. Eichmann later emphasized that he had also “fought at the front.” For the sharp divide between members of the Waffen-SS and men like Eichmann in Argentina, see Pedro Pobierzym, interview by Raymond Ley (2009): “Eichmann was no SS man … he was a filthy swine.”

  19. The following details come from Inge Schneider’s recollections (interview with Roelf van Til) and the documentary Willem Sassen (KRO, 2005).

  20. Saskia Sassen remembers that the novel Die Jünger und die Dirnen led to bad blood between her parents. Even without the abstract level of National Socialist ideals, the chapter that deals with their crossing to Argentina, in which Sassen delighted in descri
bing rapes and dying fetuses, clearly indicates why a woman might object to being immortalized in this way. Pedro Pobierzym heard one of these arguments as a guest of the house; interview by Raymond Ley (2009).

  21. Sassen’s files: 186 912/48; Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina, rev. ed. (London, 2003), p. 176. Saskia Sassen, interviews by van Til and Ley (2005, 2009) and correspondence with the author (2009).

  22. Inge Schneider, interview by Roelf van Til for Willem Sassen (KRO, 2005); Saskia Sassen, interviews and correspondence with the author (2005 and 2009).

  23. Saskia Sassen, interview by Raymond Ley (2009).

  24. For his life in Argentina, see Inge Schneider, interview by Roelf van Til (2009); Saskia Sassen, correspondence with the author (2009); and Francisca Sassen, correspondence with the author (2009).

  25. According to Inge Schneider and Saskia Sassen.

  26. Miep Sassen’s critical stance on National Socialism was not simply a projection by her daughter, as evidenced by Inge Schneider’s memories, and Miep’s refusal to take German citizenship, although this would have made it much easier for her to settle down in Europe. There is a reference to Miep Sassen’s brother in supplementary file to case BVerwG 7A 15.10, Saure vs. BND, BND files 121 099, 1853 (note on the background to the Life contract on November 23, 1960).

  27. Eichmann trial, sessions 102 and 105; also Eichmann’s remarks to his lawyer and to Avner W. Less.

  28. Vera Eichmann, interview in Paris Match, April 29, 1962.

  29. Pedro Pobierzym had bought the tape recorders in New York, to sell on in Argentina, “and one of my customers was Sassen.” Interview by Raymond Ley, 2009.