Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer
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130. Eichmann to Robert Eichmann, February 22, 1961, Letters to the Family. A copy entered the BND files by return of mail. See also the CIA report dated October 17, 1961, NA, RG 263, CIA Name File Adolf Eichmann (nonscanned files, declassified May 2009).
131. Some caution is therefore advisible in using this copy, because not all the handwritten notes were made in Argentina. This is true for the large question marks and crossed-out words in particular.
132. Thanks to Francisca Sassen for this idea.
133. Friedrich Schwend, a friend of Klaus Barbie’s who lived in Lima, Peru, spread the story that Sassen didn’t even know the SS ranks, and because an SS man would never forget something like this, Sassen (whom he called “Sasse”) could not be one. HIS, Schwend collection, 18/89, Lima, May 6, 1965.
134. Schwend to Obermüller, Ciudad, January 7, 1966, HIS, Schwend collection, 38/27, 47.
135. Zvi Aharoni, interview by Dan Setton in Josef Mengele: The Final Account (SET Productions, 2002), and Zvi Aharoni and Wilhelm Dietl, Operation Eichmann: The Truth About the Pursuit, Capture, and Trial, trans. Helmut Bögler (New York, 1997).
136. Thanks to Gerd Heidemann for his willingness to tell me about this stay with Sassen, from which there are also tape recordings and photographs. Unfortunately I have not yet had the opportunity to listen to this material, which is still in Heidemann’s possession.
137. Nation Europa 31, no. 2 (1981), pp. 60–61. Thanks to Dr. Sudholt for this reference to the review, about which he is still genuinely annoyed today. In this connection, two letters from Thadden to Sudholt, which can be found in Thadden’s estate, are illuminating: they contain even clearer criticism of Aschenauer. Thadden took up a central position, as he recognized the extermination of the Jews as a fact, but tended toward an unrealistically low death toll. Letters of December 10 and 17, 1980, Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, VVP39, Acc. 1/98, No. 49.
138. David Irving’s website, The Eichmann Papers, http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Eichmann/Buenos_Aires_MS.html.
139. Even without access to the Aschenauer manuscript, Leni Yahil managed to write an excellent essay: “ ‘Memoirs’ of Adolf Eichmann,” Yad Vashem Studies 18 (1987), pp. 133–62.
140. Irving’s quotes (Eichmann Papers, Irving’s website) allow a very precise identification of the pages he mentions. There are no references to previously unknown Eichmann texts in the bundle of papers he found. The value of this source lies in the rediscovered missing parts of the Sassen texts it contains.
141. Irving talks about “eight unpaginated chapters of a biographical work, numbered from V to XII,” but the chapter that was released had both obvious page numbers and the chapter number IV.
142. In several places, this chapter relativizes, decontextualizes, or twists Eichmann’s words to serve Sassen’s aims: idealizing Hitler and presenting the extermination of the Jews as the result of Jewish manipulation. Anyone wishing to see this for themselves can find very obvious misrepresentations of what Eichmann said in IV, pp. 15 and 19.
143. The reference even stopped researchers like David Cesarani and Irmtrud Wojak from looking at the Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497, which they both noted. Use of the Druffel edition unfortunately means that Cesarani and Wojak’s books also contain “Eichmann quotes” that are actually quotes from Langer, Sassen, or Alvensleben. In particular, recent large-scale works on Rudolf Kasztner, and the people forced to become Eichmann’s Jewish negotiating partners, were also written without the four “missing” tapes on this very topic. This is the case for Ladislaus Lob, Reszö Kasztner (London, 2009); Anna Porter, Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust (New York, 2007), p. 324; and Christian Kolbe, “ ‘Und da begann ich zu überlegen’: Adolf Eichmanns zwiespältige Erinnerungen an sein ungarisches ‘Meisterstück,’ ” in Im Labyrinth der Schuld: Täter, Opfer, Ankläger: Jahrbuch 2003 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 2003), pp. 65–93.
144. The Ludwigsburg film copy displays much of the same damage as the Israel copy, which suggests that the Ludwigsburg film and the Israel copy come from the same line of copies.
145. Tape 7 did not exist, according to one of Sassen’s notes, and was probably typed up under tape 8 by accident—a possibility suggested by the number of pages there. The transition from tapes 6 to 8 shows that there is no missing text.
146. The short piece obviously belongs with tape 61. Sassen apparently started recording using the wrong tape but quickly realized his error.
147. These are filed with the Eichmann papers, and their real author was overlooked. Probably not even Sassen remembered, as he took all the rest of his notes out of the papers.
148. Isser Harel, The House on Garibaldi Street (New York, 1997).
149. They can be found under shelfmark B206/1986.
150. In January 2011 I was able to see the file collection in the context of this case. Here I would like to thank Hans-Wilhelm Saure, his lawyer Christoph Partsch, and Rosa Stark for an intensive and enjoyable weekend of work in Berlin, and the opportunity to cross-check my book. All quotes from the file are with the kind permission of Christoph Partsch.
151. You must forgive a dedicated academic this observation, but academics don’t like to be told by someone with other interests why files on their topic, which has not interested anyone else until this point, cannot be important, because everything that has been found “has only marginal relevance for the information interests of the claimant [Gaby Weber seeking information on the Eichmann case]” (p. 9). Only someone currently pursuing a research project can determine what is interesting for it, not anyone else: not the staff of a national institution, and in many cases not even other subject specialists.
152. Most are documents from the Israeli police and prosecutors, which haven’t been made public because they weren’t used by the prosecution in the trial. On the practice of blacking out, and the construction and extent of the files presented, see Bettina Stangneth, “Kurzgutachten zu den Akten BVerwG 7A 15.10. aufgrund der Sichtung der Beiakten zum Verfahren BVerwG 7A 15.10 mit den Signaturen 100 470, 100 471, 121 082, 121 099 am 21. und 22. Januar 2011” (Hamburg, January 25, 2011), seven pages, with document appendix.
153. I expressly refuse to entertain the idea that a Federal German intelligence service could have made efforts to keep Adolf Eichmann a free man, for the psychological reason that I would find it unbearable.
154. As Gaby Weber is demonstrably one of these resourceful researchers, the argument can’t be made that this statement was not written for public consumption.
155. Even Zvi Aharoni, who tracked down Eichmann in Argentina and was part of the abduction team, said that he had tried in vain to get Eichmann to talk about Mengele. This remarkable refusal is all the more surprising when you consider that Aharoni was one of Mossad’s most feared interrogation specialists, whose nickname was “the Grand Inquisitor.” In later years, he even managed to persuade Willem Sassen to help in the search for Mengele, in an interview that lasted over ten hours. See Aharoni and Dietl, Operation Eichmann; Zvi Aharoni, interview by Dan Setton for Josef Mengele: The Final Account (SET Productions, 2007); Wilhelm Dietl, interview by Roelf van Til for Willem Sassen (KRO, 2005).
156. Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, BND: Der deutsche Geheimdienst im Nahen Osten: Geheime Hintergründe und Fakten (Munich, 2007), p. 94.
157. Deutscher Bundestag, Stenografischer Bericht, 83. Sitzung, January 19, 2011. http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btp/17/17083.pdf. Thanks to Jerzy Montag’s office.
158. Supplementary file to case BVerwG 7A 15.10, Saure vs. BND, BND files 121 099, 1665.
159. Willem Sassen, interview broadcast on Edicion plus (Telefe Buenos Aires, 1991).
160. Willem Sluyse (Willem Sassen), Die Jünger und die Dirnen (Buenos Aires, 1954), pp. 51–53. The text is slightly abridged here.
161. According to Saskia and Francisca Sassen, their father left no incomplete manuscripts.
Sources
Document Collections
Archiv des Bundes der Verfolgten des Naziregimes, Berlin
Deutsche Reichspartei Collection
Archiv der Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte (The Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg, Archive), Hamburg
Archiv der Sozialen Demokratie, Bonn
Fritz Bauer Estate
Archiv der Universität, Vienna
Doktorandenlisten (list of doctorate degrees)
Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
Avner W. Less Estate
JUNA Archive
Berlin Hoppegarten
Die Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former GDR)
Archive material HA IX/11 1933–45
Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde
BDC-Bestände (formerly U.S. Berlin Document Center)
Bundesarchiv Koblenz
Alliierte Prozesse (All. Proz. 6), Servatius papers, Eichmann Trial
N/1497 Eichmann Estate
R/58 RSHA
Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg/Zentrale Stelle
Eichmann Trial files
Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes
General files III, Correspondence Tuviah Friedman
Trial report by Dietrich Zeug for the Central Office
Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem
A/W IKG-Archiv Collection, Vienna
Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris
Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem
Deutsches Literatur Archiv, Marbach
Hans Grimm Estate (Correspondence with Eberhard Fritsch)
Ernst Kernmayr Estate (Correspondence with Eberhard Fritsch)
Deutsches Rotes Kreuz Archiv, Berlin
Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Frankfurt am Main
Eine Epoche vor Gericht
Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung
Schwend Collection
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Section 461
Holocaust Memorial, Washington, D.C.
Uki Goñi Collection
Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt
Arnold Buchthal Estate
Israel State Archives
“Götzen” (Idols)
Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Hanover, Magazin Pattensen
Adolf von Thadden Estate
Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna
E/1797 Hermann Langbein Estate
Rheinische Landesbibliothek Koblenz
Werner Beumelburg Estate (Correspondence with Eberhard Fritsch)
Russian State Military Archive
Formerly the Central State Archive of the Soviet Army, Moscow
Simon Wiesenthal Archive, Vienna
Correspondence
Státní oblastní archiv Litomerice (National Area Archive in Litomerice), Czech Republic
MLS (International Law Collection), Lsp 441/47
Karl Rahm
Stadtarchiv Bergen (Bergen City Archive)
Eversen Register, Shelf 585, No. 2
Stadtarchiv Salzburg (Salzburg City Archive)
Meldekartei (Record Office Card Index)
Státní ússtreédní archive Praha (Prague National Central Archive), Czech Republic
AGK Warsaw
Syracuse University, New York, Special Collections
Francis Biddle Papers
U.S. National Archives
RG 263, CIA Name Files
RG 319, Dossier XE 004471, Adolf Eichmann
Yad Vashem Archive
O–1 K. J. Ball-Kaduri Collection
O–3 Verbal Witness Statements Collection
O–51 Nazi Document Collection (DN)
Tr. 3 Documents from the Eichmann Trial (numbered B06/xxx)
Interviews
With many thanks for interviews to Uki Goñi, Martin Haidinger, Raymond Ley, Roelf van Til, and Natasja de Winter: Altensalzkoth, Buenos Aires, Coronel Suárez, 2009 and 2010, Rafael Eitan, Wilhelm Höttl, José Moskovits, Pedro Pobierzym, Inge Schneider, and Saskia Sassen.
1978 (Erscheinungsform Mensch): Simon Wiesenthal, Isser Harel, Avner Less, Zwi Wohlstein, Israel Gutman, David Franko, Gideon Hausner, Gabriel Bach, Benjamin Halevi, Shlomo Kulcsár, Willem Sassen.
Adolf Eichmann’s Texts (in Chronological Order)
Pre-1945
“Das Weltjudentum: Politische Aktivität und Auswirkung seiner Tätigkeit auf die in Deutschland ansässigen Juden” (World Jewry: Political Activities and Impact of Its Activities on Jews Resident in Germany), 1937.
Lecture at the conference of SD Advisers on Jewish Affairs on November 1, 1937, in SD Main Office, Berlin. (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv—Russian State Military Archive, Moscow 500/3/322.) Published in Michael Wildt, ed., Die Judenpolitik des SD 1935 bis 1938: Ein Dokumenation (Munich, 1995), document 19, pp. 133–38.
Argentina Papers
Marginal notes in books
A few originals in Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497. Others quoted in Stern, June 26, 1960. Commentary in Interrogation, pp. 1026–35.
Commentaries on books
Originals and notes typed by Sassen in Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497; others in BA Ludwigsburg (B162).
“Die anderen sprachen, jetzt will ich sprechen!” (The Others Spoke, Now I Want to Speak!)
A large manuscript. Original handwritten pages, partial typed copies, films and copies distributed among: Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497; Servatius Estate, BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6; and BA Ludwigsburg (B162), folder labeled “Diverses” (Miscellaneous).
Part of the manuscript is entitled “Betrifft: Meine Feststellungen zur Angelegenheit ‘Judenfragen und Maßnahmen der nationalsozialistischen deutschen Reichsregierung zur Lösung dieses Komplexes in den Jahren 1933 bis 1945’ ” (Re: My Findings on the Matter of the Jewish Question and Measures Taken by the National Socialist Government of the German Reich Toward the Solution of This Complex in the Years 1933 to 1945). This was originally planned as an open letter to Konrad Adenauer.
There is a poor-quality copy of the sixty-nine-page handwritten text “Betrifft: Meine Feststellungen zur Angelegenheit ‘Judenfragen und Maßnahmen der nationalsozialistischen deutschen Reichsregierung zur Lösung dieses Komplexes in den Jahren 1933 bis 1945’ ” (prosecution document T/1393), identical with Servatius Estate, BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6/95-111. So-called File 17, (incorrectly) dated February 19, 1959. The text is occasionally taken to be a commentary written in jail but clearly belongs to the Sassen interviews and was written before Eichmann was captured.
General Essays, Notes, and Speech Texts, 1956–57
Circa two hundred pages extant, including handwritten originals, copies, Sassen’s typed versions and microfilms in several archives: Eichmann Estate and Servatius Estate, BA Koblenz,; BA Ludwigsburg, “Miscellaneous” folder, and film.
“Tucumán Roman” (Tucumán Novel)
Manuscript, still privately owned by the family and inaccessible. Probably written in 1958–59 for Eichmann’s children. Said to be 260 handwritten pages. We cannot rule out some overlap with “The Others Spoke.”
Sassen Interviews
TAPES
Audio material in Eichmann Estate, BA Koblenz, N/1497. Ten tapes (29.5 hrs.), audiocassettes (K) (32 hrs.), and DAT cassettes (DAT) (32 hrs.) (Shelf mark Ton 1367, 6-1 to 6-10). Not all tapes are originals from Argentina but are later copies, as traces of more modern recordings underneath the conversations reveal. Audio and DAT cassettes are copies of the originals and are largely identical. The audio material also contains some conversations that were not transcribed.
TRANSCRIPTS
Listed in the order they came to light.
Life. Copy of 600 transcript pages and a few copied pages of handwriting
. Not accessible to researchers.
Stern. Copy of transcript pages and 80 pages of handwriting. Cannot be found in the publisher’s archive.
Israel (Hagag)/Servatius. Israel State Archives 74/3156. Copy in Servatius Estate, BA Koblenz, All. Proz. 6/95-111, available for use in BA Koblenz since 1979. Transcript of 62 tapes (1–5, 11–67 with pages missing), with Eichmann’s handwritten corrections on tapes 6, 7, 9–26, 31–39, 48–67, divided in Israel into 16 +1 files. Transcript is 713 pages in total; including File 17, it totals 795 pages (the official number of 798 is due to double paginations). No transcript of tapes 68–73.
Linz. Stolen from the office of Dr. Robert Eichmann in March 1961 and transferred to microfilm by Hermann Langbein. The copy comprises 900 pages (tapes 1–5, 11–67), also with pages missing, but different pages from the Israel copy. Extensive corrections by Eichmann and typed copies of these, as well as further Argentina Papers. Langbein gave copies to Henry Ormond, Thomas Harlan (used for Polityka), and other public offices. Harlan gave the remains of the Ormond copy, as his own was lost, to Irmtrud Wojak. One of the two copies in BA Ludwigsburg clearly also comes from the Linz copy.
Sassen. Original transcripts with original corrections, and Sassen’s microfilm copy, which was given to the Eichmann family in 1979 and has now been deposited in BA Koblenz by a Swiss publisher, Eichmann Estate, N/1497. This copy is the most extensive, at 835 pages plus 78 pages of Eichmann’s notes on the transcript. It includes tape transcripts 6–10 (except “7,” which never existed), and the rest of 68–73, though without tape 29 and page 41:3.
Early Editing and Ordering of Argentina Papers