Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer

by Bettina Stangneth

  290. “Morgenthau”: see note 289.

  291. “The cautious bureaucrat” is a quote from the report by Dieter Wisliceny, who applied the label to Eichmann. For an SS man, it was an unforgivable insult. The Sassen circle read and discussed this report several times.

  292. “Your louse” refers to Sassen’s effort to distance Hitler and “the essence of the German race” from anti-Jewish policy, to make it impossible to accuse the Führer and National Socialism of historical mass murder. Eichmann, however, wanted to be recognized as typically German, a good officer following the ideas of “the Führer.”

  293. “Records”: Eichmann had no real interest in technical matters. He understood nothing about the recording technology and frequently chose the wrong terms to describe it.

  294. “Four months”: when it comes to timing, Eichmann is often unreliable. He used such phrases as “decoration” for rhetorical purposes, and liked to cite round or symbolic dates. Even a text that Eichmann wrote, shortly after being incarcerated in Israel, he dated as “15 years and one day” after Germany’s capitulation, although everyone present knew that this was a lie, as he had still been at large in Argentina on May 9.

  295. “Korherr” and “10.3 million Jews” refer to the Korherr Report, which the Sassen circle had discussed in detail, and to which Eichmann had added his own “disinformation”-style commentary.

  296. “Most cunning enemy” corresponds exactly to Hitler’s characterization of the Jews as an “enemy race,” a single homogenous race that posed a genuine threat to the “Aryan race,” whom they must therefore fight for survival. All other races were simply “inferior races” that posed no threat.

  297. “Streicher” refers to Julius Streicher, the anti-Semitic and pornographic rabble-rouser and editor of Der Stürmer who was executed in Nuremberg and was controversial even among anti-Semites. Streicher and Eichmann are known to have met in 1937, when Eichmann was invited to the Nuremberg Party Congress as Streicher’s guest. The direction taken by Heydrich’s outfit was influenced by its opposition to Der Stürmer’s methods: they didn’t want beatings and murder in the streets, but rather a more “respectable” (secret) anti-Jewish policy.

  298. “Schooling”: the SD saw science and scholarship as a Jewish “weapon” in the struggle for world domination, a view based in the National Socialists’ anti-intellectualism.

  299. “Law making” refers to the Ten Commandments. In National Socialist criticism of the church, the Bible itself is considered “Jewish”—a reason for Eichmann to tear apart his wife’s Bible. See “The Lady Visitors” in this book. Eichmann describes the incident in Sassen transcript 3:1.

  300. “Interventionists”: during the Sassen conversations, Eichmann repeatedly gives examples of people who got in the way of his extermination plans. They were often senior figures in the regime who were trying to push through exceptions for friends (or hoping to be remunerated for their efforts). By 1944, Eichmann viewed even Kurt Becher, who was acting on Himmler’s orders, as an obstacle of this kind.

  301. Harry Mulisch, Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann: An Eyewitness Account (Philadelphia, 2009), p. 114.

  302. Sassen transcript 67:11–12. These are two pages that the typist was unable to place, but that Sassen marked as being connected to the “conclusion.” However, before the sale of the transcript, he removed them, together with all the pages that followed, allowing the “Sassen transcript” to end with the pithy conclusion, which was not, in fact, the last word. The two pages remained in Sassen’s own copy of tape 67 and are there today in Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497-65.

  303. The clue to the time of day comes from Sassen transcript 68:15.

  304. BA tape 01A, 7:22 onward.

  305. Sassen transcript 69:2 and 72:1.

  306. The transcript of tape 69 is incomplete, and those of tapes 70 and 71 are missing, making it impossible to tell if they were ever prepared.

  307. “No experiments” was the slogan on Adenauer’s campaign posters.

  A False Sense of Security

  1. “Former SS-Oberstleutnant Arrested,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 4, 1957, but also smaller daily papers like the Hamburger Abendblatt and the Argentinisches Tageblatt.

  2. The following letters from Lothar Hermann have so far emerged: to Fritz Bauer, June 25, 1960, Fritz Bauer Estate, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Bonn, with thanks to Christoph Stamm; published in Irmtrud Wojak, Eichmanns Memoiren: Ein kritischer Essay (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), p. 27. To Friedman, September 17, 1959; November 5, 1959; March 28, 1960; April 27, 1960; May 26, 1960; May 30, 1960; May 1, 1961; May 26, 1961; May 14, 1971; June 2, 1971. To Ben-Gurion, May 20, 1961. All these letters are in Tuviah Friedman, ed., Die “Ergreifung Eichmanns”: Dokumentarische Sammlung (Haifa, 1971), along with a few letters between Friedman and Erwin Schüle. In grateful memory of Tuviah Friedman for the documents. Further letters are in BA Ludwigsburg, Central Office Collection, III/24.

  3. The text is missing from the French edition, Les Vengeurs, which was published in Paris in 1968, before Bauer’s death, and from the U.S. edition, The Avengers. There was no German translation. For Bar-Zohar’s interview with the Associated Press, see “Did Clue from Frankfurt Lead to Finding Eichmann?” Frankfurter Rundschau, February 12, 1969. For the reception outside Israel, see the review “New Story About the Hunt for Eichmann,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 19, 1969.

  4. Isser Harel, The House on Garibaldi Street: The Capture of Adolf Eichmann (London, 1975). From the 1997 English edition, the book has (largely) been published with a key to most of the aliases.

  5. Lothar Hermann to Tuviah Friedman, June 2, 1971, in Tuviah Friedman, Die Ergreifung Eichmanns: Dokumentarische Sammlung (Haifa, 1971).

  6. Carl Schmitt and Hans Dietrich Sander, Werkstatt—Discorsi: Briefwechsel 1967–1981 (Schnellroda, 2008), p. 247.

  7. Aharoni analyzes in detail, among other things, the invented dialogues between Malkin and Eichmann that Harel presents as historically verifiable facts, although everyone involved knew that Malkin and Eichmann didn’t have a common language. Zvi Aharoni and Wilhelm Dietl, Operation Eichmann: The Truth About the Pursuit, Capture, and Trial, trans. Helmut Bögler (New York, 1997), p. 142.

  8. At the press conference for his docudrama Eichmanns Ende in 2010, Raymond Ley reported that in spite of his illness, Klaus Eichmann had recognized Lothar Hermann’s daughter in a photo and reacted positively to the memory of a girlfriend from his youth. Unfortunately, no other statements by the Eichmann family are known. It is difficult to imagine that someone would still think well of a friend if he regarded her as having betrayed his father.

  9. Klaus Eichmann was born in Berlin, in 1936; Silvia Hermann in Buenos Aires, in 1941.

  10. Thanks to Natasja de Winter, Buenos Aires, for her excellent research on the biographical dates and living conditions of the Hermann family. Particular thanks to Raymond Ley, Jasmin Gravenhorst (docstation, Hamburg), and Patricia Schlesinger (NDR), not only for using an academic adviser on the scripts for the docudrama Eichmanns Ende, but also for granting her access to their research findings.

  11. Hermann to Friedman, June 2, 1971, which also contains some biographical information.

  12. Hermann is in the database of Dachau inmates. Thanks to Dirk Riedel from the memorial site for the detailed information. After this point, Hermann’s claims basically tally with information from the available documents.

  13. Even people who claim to have owned this photo have not been able to find it.

  14. Hermann to Bauer, after Eichmann had been abducted, June 25, 1960.

  15. This date is sometimes given as August 27, 1957. Hermann himself only mentioned a letter from the year 1957. The original letter has not been found. According to Wojak, Fritz Bauer gave it to Felix Shinnar. Irmtrud Wojak, Fritz Bauer: 1903–1968: Eine Biographie (Munich, 2009), p. 286. This is problematic, as Bauer (also according to Wojak) did not initially reveal the name of his informant, and Hermann u
sed headed writing paper for all the other letters that have been preserved. The “document” in Dan Setton’s film “The Hunt for Adolf Eichmann” is certainly not the original, as it contains a factual error: “Hermann” describes himself as a “half Jew” in this letter. But according to Nazi criteria, Hermann was a “full Jew” and was also aware of it, as later letters show.

  16. Documents on press affair, Arnold Buchthal Estate, Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, S1/138. See also “The Man Has to Go,” Spiegel, October 16, 1957.

  17. According to Wojak, Fritz Bauer: HHStA Wiesbaden 461, 32 440, File 2.

  18. July 1, 1957, quoted in Heinz Schneppen, Odessa und das Vierte Reich: Mythen der Zeitgeschichte (Berlin, 2007), p. 162. Unfortunately Schneppen does not always cite sources to academic standards, but his access to collections of files is doubtless excellent.

  19. As Eichmann reported in “Meine Flucht,” p. 28, BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6/247. He also accuses himself there of having become too careless, on the basis of this kind of information.

  20. Based on “Terrorism and Concentration Camps on the Nile,” Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden, July 12, 1957; see also “Cairo, SS Rendezvous Point,” Frankfurter Illustrierte, August 17, 1957.

  21. Kai Jensen, “Cairo, SS Rendezvous Point—a Canard!” also appeared in Die Brücke, Auslandsdienst, no. 18, year 4 (1957), pp. 6–8. The article is a surprisingly pedantic refutation of all possible rumors, using details obviously designed to distract readers from the National Socialists who actually were in the Middle East.

  22. NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Adolf Eichmann.

  23. Isser Harel dated the meeting as November 6, 1957; Irmtrud Wojak dated it November 7, 1957, in Fritz Bauer, p. 295.

  24. See Hanna Yablonka, The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann (New York, 2004), p. 15.

  25. Dieter Schenk, Auf dem rechten Auge blind: Die braunen Wurzeln des BKA (Cologne, 2001), p. 302.

  26. Lothar Hermann’s second wife said in an interview in 2009 that after her husband’s death, she had sent all his papers to Germany so they could be kept in an archive. Unfortunately, the old lady didn’t remember who the mail sack had been addressed to—just that she never received a reply.

  27. Hermann to Bauer, June 25, 1960.

  28. Wojak, Eichmanns Memoiren, p. 30.

  29. At least, this is the story told in the Eichmann family to this day. Thanks to Helmut Eichmann for this detail.

  30. Mertig was a former NSDAP member. See Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina, rev. ed. (London, 2003), p. 289, and Holger Meding, Flucht vor Nürnberg? Deutsche und österreichische Einwanderung in Argentinien 1945–1955 (Cologne, 1992), p. 162. Eichmann himself dated the start of his work for Mertig to January 31, 1958: application to Mercedes-Benz, facsimile in Schneppen, Odessa, pp. 160ff.

  31. The records-office card file on Eberhard Fritsch, born on November 21, 1921, in Buenos Aires, begins with his residency application of March 6, 1958. His occupation is given as “publisher, hotel porter.” Thanks to Peter F. Kramml from the Salzburg City Archive for his help.

  32. The issue is labeled as issue 12, 1957, but it contains a reference to March 1958. The publication of Der Weg was not as regular as the issue numbers would have us believe.

  33. François Genoud turned to Eichmann’s family immediately after his trial was announced, with his typical combination of good business sense and responsibility for comrades in need. He wanted to purchase the rights to Eichmann’s story and finance his defense. He found Fritsch with the Linz Eichmanns, when he arrived there a few days after Ben-Gurion’s Knesset speech. François Genoud, interviewed in Pierre Péan, L’extrémiste: François Genoud, de Hitler á Carlos (Paris, 1996), p. 257.

  34. Thanks to Anne-Marie Sana and Jürgen Klöckner from the Konstanz City Archive for the precise information. Unfortunately the copies of the declarations and documents no longer exist. Sassen gave his new address in Munich as Hohenstaufenstraße 12.

  35. Inge Schneider said that Miep Sassen’s determined stance was to her own disadvantage: without German identity papers she wasn’t allowed to work in Germany, although in the summer Inge Schneider had offered her the opportunity to stay with her in Bremen.

  36. The history of the Argentina Papers speaks against any contact between Sassen and the BND. The BND evidently didn’t obtain its copy of the Sassen transcripts from Sassen himself. See “Aftermath” in this book.

  37. Saskia and Francisca Sassen, correspondence with the author (2009); Gerd Heidemann, conversation with the author (2009) about his visit to Sassen in 1979. The BfV files on Sassen and Rudel have not yet been made public. Both of them must contain these notes, as Sassen visited Rudel. Thanks to the BfV for its extremely brief but helpful information. In the case of BVerwG 7A 15.10, Saure vs. BND, the files presented don’t black out Sassen’s reference to the Gehlen Organization and “General G,” which suggests that this was just idle talk from Sassen. The question of what documents about Sassen from 1959 are doing in the Eichmann file with documents before 1960 is more difficult to answer. See supplementary file on the above case, BND files 100 470, pp. 9–13.

  38. Tape 67, BA tape 10B, 1:03:30.

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

  40. Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, and Moshe Zimmermann, Das Amt und die Vergangenheit: Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik (Munich, 2010), p. 608, cited hereafter as Das Amt.

  41. Fritsch’s claims about being denied entry cannot be verified. The Bavarian Ministry of the Interior no longer holds files on these sorts of occurrences, as the file retention period has elapsed for these dates. (The Bavarian border police were responsible for the control of the West German border.) Letter from December 27, 2010. The BfV could confirm only that there was a file on Fritsch. Fritsch’s heroic version of the story was given in his obituary in the Deutsche Annalen, published by Druffel Verlag. For this right-leaning publisher, Fritsch counted as one of the “Great Germans.” “German Farewells 1974,” Deutsche Annalen, Jahrbuch des Nationalgeschehens, year 4 (Leoni am Starnberger See, 1975), unpaginated.

  42. Eichmann trial, 2JS178/56. According to the letters that Fritsch wrote to Robert Servatius, he had exhausted all the legal means to try and get the Lüneberg District Court’s decision reversed, and his appeal against the refusal of his application for a revision finally failed with the Federal Court in Karlsruhe. BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6. The correspondence is divided between the 253 collections and section 4.

  43. When I told Uki Goñi about Eichmann’s contacts in Plata del Mar, he was completely taken aback, not having imagined that Eichmann could ever have afforded a trip to this expensive spot. Eichmann mentioned friends and accommodation here gratefully in his letters from prison.

  44. Eichmann to Avner W. Less, the interrogating officer, June 1, 1960, Avner Less Estate, Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, ETH Zurich, NL Less, 4.2.3.2.

  45. Strictly speaking, we also know little about Müller’s biography in the previous period. Most of what has been said rests on claims by Eichmann—unfortunately not always cited as such—which are notoriously unreliable. A glance at the sources for Andreas Seeger, “Gestapo Müller”: Die Karriere eines Schreibtischtäters (Berlin, 1996), clearly shows how much this biography relied on Eichmann.

  46. Report, March 19, 1958, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Adolf Eichmann: “Adolf Eichmann (201-047132) was born in Israel and became an SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer. He is reported to have lived in Argentina under the alias CLEMENS since 1952. One rumor has it that despite the fact that he was responsible for mass extermination of Jews, he now lives in Jerusalem.”

  47. Thanks to the BfV for allowing me to read and quote the following pieces of writing from the Eichmann file. For the files submitted in the case BVerwG 7A 15.10, Saure vs. BND, see “Aftermath” in this book.

  48. BfV to Foreign Office, “Re: Karl Eichmann, Argentina. Connection: none,” April 11, 1958, V
S-Confidential (downgraded in April 1971 to VS–Official Use Only).

  49. In this regard, the rumors are myriad. For example, Ludolf von Alvensleben is supposed to have lived in a house in Córdoba owned by Fritsch. It was not possible to check.

  50. At least the files in question from the BfV have been classified “archivable,” which gives us the joyous news that they will be given over to the Bundesarchiv over the coming years. It is, however, impossible to know when that will be. Still, I must thank the BfV for taking the trouble to answer my questions. BfV to the author, December 3 and 20, 2010.

  51. Michael Frank, Die letzte Bastion: Nazis in Argentinien (Hamburg, 1962), p. 108.

  52. Foreign Office, July 27, 1960, quoted in Schneppen, Odessa, p. 164.

  53. Ibid., p. 163.

  54. Foreign Office to BfV, July 4, 1958, ibid. Thanks to BfV for a copy.

  55. West German embassy in Buenos Aires to the Foreign Office, August 11, 1954, under 212, no. 2116/54. The Foreign Office passed the information on to the BfV on August 25, 1954 (306212-02/5.20973/54). Quoted at length in the draft replies of August 21, 1958; see note 56 below for details of these drafts.

  56. The two available drafts of the BfV’s reply to the Foreign Office allow us to reconstruct the decision-making process. The first draft contains a request to report any further discoveries in the Eichmann matter to Cologne. This is crossed out by hand. The second draft contains no reference to this apart from the subject heading. BfV to Foreign Office, draft with handwritten corrections and additions, VS-Confidential (downgraded to VS–Official Use Only in April 1974) and draft with censored date, but with a revision date of August 21, 1958 (VS-Confidential). It isn’t clear whether the letter, which also contained a few remarks on the case of Franz Rademacher, was sent in this form.