INDEPENDENT - LONDON Eichmann memoirs to be released by Israelis Phil Reeves in Jerusalem 02/29/2000 The Independent - London (Copyright 2000 Newspaper Publishing PLC) THE MEMOIRS of Adolf Eichmann will be released to the world today, nearly four decades after the Nazi leader penned them inside an Israeli jail as he waited to be hanged for his part in the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. Israel has dramatically accelerated an earlier plan to publish the manuscript, and is releasing it immediately in the hope of helping an American professor defend herself in a libel case brought in London by the right-wing historian David Irving. Israel's state archivist, Evyatar Friesel, said yesterday that the 1,300- page document - which is written in German and has so far been examined by only a handful of scholars - would be released to the public in Israel for the first time today. Earlier, Israel had planned to give the memoirs to a German research institute to prepare them for publication, along with lengthy historical footnotes - a process that could have taken months. But the attorney-general, Elyakim Rubinstein, said he had concluded that Israel had a moral obligation to help Professor Deborah Lipstadt defeat the lawsuit, which was brought by Mr Irving after she branded him a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book, Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. The Jewish state had a commitment to give the public access to the memoirs, he said - "all of us being survivors of the Holocaust". Exactly how useful the document will be to Professor Lipstadt and her co-defendant, Penguin Books, remains to be seen. The attorney general said that, in it, Eichmann - chief organiser of the SS's anti- Jewish policies - states that the Nazi killing of the Jews was the worst crime in the history of mankind. The Nazi, who was abducted in 1960 by Mossad secret agents from Argentina and then tried in Israel and hanged, also provided details of the workings of the death camps and an insight into how decisions were made in the Third Reich, said Mr Rubinstein. One of the points at issue in the British Holocaust trial is whether Hitler personally ordered the Final Solution. David Irving contends that there is no evidence that the Fuhrer did so. Although the outspoken British historian accepts that more than one million Jews died, he has also disputed whether millions of Jews were gassed in concentration camps. Israel clearly hopes that the Eichmann papers will add to the evidence that systematic mass slaughters occurred. The few who have examined the documents during the decades in which they in the Israeli state archives have indicated that there is little fresh material in them that was not already used by Eichmann in his trial, which was public. The defence mounted by the former Nazi - who oversaw the transport of millions of Jews to the gas chambers - was that he was a mere cog in the killing machine, only obeying orders. He became the first and only man to be hanged in the 52-year history of the Israeli state. Israel's leading historian of the Holocaust, Yehuda Bauer, last night said the memoirs contained no new materials, adding that there was no good reason why they should not have been published before. While the decision to publish will delight Second World War historians, it will not be greeted with any joy by Eichmann 's family - in particular his elder son, Dieter, who has in the past threatened legal action to claim the manuscript as family property. Israeli officials are also concerned the documents will be used by neo-Nazis to support Eichmann . Caption: Eichmann : Killings were `worst crime in history' TORONTO GLOBE & MAIL International News WORLD REPORT ISRAEL Eichmann diaries to be released today 02/29/2000 The Globe and Mail Jerusalem -- Executed Nazi "technician of death" Adolf Eichmann called the Holocaust a terrible crime against humanity in prison memoirs that Israel kept secret for nearly 40 years but plans to reveal today. A transcript of the memoirs, written by Eichmann as he awaited hanging for war crimes in 1962, will be released on computer disks in the original German. Reuters GUARDIAN - LONDON Eichmann diary to test Irving case: Long-neglected Nazi memoir brought in as Holocaust proof SUZANNE GOLDENBERG IN JERUSALEM AND STUART MILLAR 02/29/2000 The Guardian A long-neglected prison memoir by Adolf Eichmann , written soon before the execution of the man who devised the systematic extermination of Europe's Jews, was on its way to London last night, as evidence in a trial which puts the Nazi genocide under the microscope. Israeli justice ministry officials said the diary, on computer disk as well as in manuscript form, was being sent to help the defence of an American academic, Deborah Lipstadt , and Penguin Books in a libel suit brought by the author David Irving, who denies the Nazi leadership systematically murdered millions of Jews. Locked away and almost forgotten for 40 years, the diary runs to 1,300 pages in Eichmann 's Gothic handwriting. It was written in the months between his conviction, and his execution in 1962, and for decades was seen only by a handful of scholars. They say it is a meticulous and detailed record of the ghettoes, cattle train cars and death camps of eastern Europe that were the Nazis' Final Solution. 'There was no denial of the Holocaust there. He tried to show that he was a minor cog in the machine and he had to obey orders, but he describes how terrible it was," said Gavriel Bach, who was the first person to read the diary. 'In court he admitted it was the most terrible crime in history. He says how he almost fainted when he saw the geysers of blood coming out of the bodies in the ditches.' Mr Bach, who was assistant prosecutor during the Eichmann trial, which took place in a Jerusalem theatre, was charged with reading the manuscript to see if it added to the mountain of evidence - 3,000 pages from about 100 witnesses - gathered during the proceedings. During the investigations, Mr Bach, whose family fled Berlin in 1938, was Eichmann 's main contact with the outside world and questioned him almost daily. He was among the scholars and justice ministry officials who decided on Sunday night that the diary should be made pub lic immediately to aid in Ms Lipstadt 's defence on a libel suit arising from a book published in 1993 that calls Mr Irving a 'Nazi partisan" for denying the organised murder of Europe's Jews. Ms Lipstadt 's defence team is believed to have been keen to have the diaries before the court to test arguments by Mr Irving for which he has cited Eichmann as evidence. In court 37 of the high court, it is the interpretation of the new historical documents that will matter. Mr Irving is understood to be one of the few people to have detailed knowledge of Eichmann 's account. According to his website, he was handed two packets containing 426 pages of Eichmann typescripts by a member of the senior Nazi's family in Buenos Aires during a lecture tour of Argentina in 1991. He has used parts of this account to back up his arguments that there was no systematic genocide and that Hitler had no knowledge of any mass killings of Jews. In a 1997 letter to Robert Jan van Pelt, a Canadian Holocaust historian, Mr Irving cited the memoirs to cast doubt on the existence of gas chambers. The letter, published on his internet site, claims that while Eichmann , the architect of the extermination programme, makes reference to witnessing an 'experimental" truck gassing, he was never shown a gas chamber at Auschwitz. While the Eichmann memoir seeks to deny the Nazi officer's responsibility for mass murder, it does not disclaim the systematic murder of millions. 'There is nothing there that would lead anyone to the conclusion that this did not happen,' Mr Bach said. Eichmann begins his record in his childhood and writes about his entry into the SS and his oath of allegiance. 'He wanted his family to see it, and to see his role. Maybe he wanted to convince his family he did not take a central part in the Final Solution,' Mr Bach said. But after Eichmann was hanged in 1962 - the only time Israel has carried out the death penalty - and his ashes scattered over the Mediterranean, the manuscript lay forgotten in the Israeli national archives in Jerusalem. 'Nobody was aware of this document,' said Ido (correct) Baum, a spokesman for the justice ministry. No one was aware of the fact that the notes were in the archives until last August when Dieter Eichmann , Eichmann 's son, approached the attorney general and requested the manuscript. According to Mr Bach, the prevailing sentiment in Israel at the time was against the immediate publication of the memoir, but there was never any intention to bury it in the archives indefinitely. 'We always knew that sooner or later the diaries would be published,' he said. Typewritten versions of the manuscript could be made available to scholars and journalists as early as tomorrow. Although Israel does not intend general publication of the manuscript, it is unclear what Eichmann 's sons envisage. Mr Baum said last night that the copyright remained with the Eichmann family. ### ASSOCIATED PRESS The Associated Press State & Local Wire February 29, 2000, Tuesday, PM cycle 05:14 Eastern Time Nazi leader Eichmann described Holocaust as biggest crime in history by KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer DATELINE: JERUSALEM Overseer of Nazi death camps Adolf Eichmann described the Holocaust as the biggest crime in history, but portrayed himself as only a small cog who had no choice but to follow orders, according to his prison memoirs released today by Israel. Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who historians say played a key role in the genocide of 6 million Jews, penned the 1,300-page manuscript in the months leading up to his 1962 execution by Israel. It was titled "False Gods," an apparent reference to his claims that he had been blinded and led astray by Nazi ideology. Although long reluctant to release the document, Israel relented so that it could be used as evidence in a pending libel suit against Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt. British historian David Irving says a book by Lipstadt maintains that he denies the Holocaust and distorts statistics. Irving said he does not deny Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths. The case is being tried in a British court. Leading Holocaust scholars in Israel have argued the document has no historic value because Eichmann distorted events to diminish his own role. The manuscript had been locked up for nearly four decades in Israel's State Archives because Israeli leaders feared the writings could be misused by Holocaust deniers or that Eichmann's family could profit from its publication. Several months ago, Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein agreed to give the manuscript to a German research institute, which was to eventually publish it with footnotes. Rubinstein changed his mind and agreed to an immediate publication without restrictions after he was asked to help Lipstadt. The document has already been forwarded to Lipstadt, and Israeli Justice Ministry spokesman Ido Baum said today he expected the memoirs to be entered as evidence in the case. Israel hopes the memoirs will help bolster legal arguments about the killing process at the death camps. Baum said Lipstadt's attorneys were especially interested in passages where Eichmann is more forthcoming than in his trial on the workings of the camps. In his introduction, Eichmann wrote that he witnesses the "gruesome workings of the machinery of the death machine; gear meshed with gear, like clockwork." The Nazi leader, who was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina and brought to trial in Israel in 1960, said the Holocaust "was the most enormous crime in the history of mankind," but immediately diminished his own role. He said he felt a need to give his own account "because I have seen hell, death and the devil, because I had to watch the madness of destruction, because I was one of the many horses pulling the wagon and couldn't escape left or right because of the will of the driver." Today's publication of the document - the State Archives handed out computer disks with the material - was met with some criticism. Amos Hausner, whose father, Gideon, had prosecuted Eichmann, questioned the wisdom of using the memoirs in court. "We still have many Holocaust survivors with us. They can testify on the gas chambers," said Hausner. "But instead of believing those people, we take the document of a Nazi criminal before he was executed." Yehuda Bauer, head of the Holocaust research institute at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, said Eichmann changed his tune to win favor with his Israeli captors. Bauer said that in an interview Eichmann granted five years before the trial, while still a free man, the Nazi leader said he regretted he hadn't taken harsher measures against the Jews and that the creation of the state of Israel was a catastrophe. "There is nothing to be learned from this" document, Bauer told Israel army radio. "This is a demon who writes with a pitiful justification that repeats his claims in court." In a separate section of papers released today, Eichmann gives instructions to his lawyer to pass on to a future publisher. Eichmann said he preferred an editor familiar with Bavarian idioms. He said he felt most comfortable with a light writing style, but that "respecting the nature of the subject," this was not practical. He asked that his wife get 10 copies of the book, so she could pass them on to friends and his sons. The book should have the dedication, "At the request of my husband, with best wishes" and the remark, "That's the way it was," he wrote. NEWSDAY Copyright 2000 Newsday, Inc. Newsday (New York, NY) February 29, 2000, Tuesday NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION EICHMANN'S MEMOIRS SET FOR RELEASE TODAY REUTERS Jerusalem-Executed Nazi "technician of death" Adolf Eichmann called the Holocaust a terrible crime against humanity in prison memoirs Israel kept secret for nearly 40 years, but which it plans to reveal today. A transcript of the memoirs, which have been kept under lock and key since Eichmann was hanged in 1962, will be released to the public by the State Archives on computer disks in the original German. Even the spelling mistakes will be left intact. Eichmann, who organized the trains that carried millions to their deaths in concentration camps, wrote the 600-odd pages of neatly bound manuscript in Gothic-style lettering from a prison cell as he awaited hanging for war crimes in the only execution in Israel's history. In advance of the memoirs' release, State Archivist Evyatar Friesel hinted at their content yesterday: "He wrote those memoirs as a very efficient bureaucrat ... He described it the Holocaust as one of the worst crimes against humanity and the worst crime perpetuated against the Jewish people." Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, one of a handful of scholars allowed to study the memoirs, says Eichmann tried to play down his role in the Holocaust in the hope he would be granted a stay of execution. Bauer said Eichmann continued the line of defense he pleaded from the bullet-proof glass box where he sat during his 1961 Jerusalem trial. "His whole argument that he was a small cog in the machine was disproved in the trial," Bauer said. Eichmann's account of the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews is already on its way to a British legal team fighting a libel suit waged by a controversial historian in a case that many Jews fear puts the Holocaust itself on trial. David Irving is suing author Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for her book on Holocaust deniers that described Irving as "a dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial." Irving said he was slandered by the reference. In a recent interview, Irving told Reuters the Auschwitz concentration camp was a sort of "Disneyland," built by Polish communists after World War II to attract tourists. Lipstadt's legal team sent an urgent message to Israel's Justice Ministry, asking for permission to present the Eichmann memoirs as evidence in the London court hearing the case. Copyright 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London) February 29, 2000 The man who came to symbolise an evil regime As head of the Gestapo's department B4, Adolf Eichmann organised the 'final solution' to the 'Jewish problem' and in doing so he, perhaps more than any other Nazi, redefined our conception of evil. But the man dragged into an Israeli courtroom and then executed in 1962 did not square with anyone's idea of a monster; he seemed neither a sadistic bully, nor a sinister intellectual. He claimed he had no stomach for the reality of genocide. Sent to Chelmno in 1942 to report on the use of gas vans, he said, 'I couldn't even look at it. All the time I was trying to avert my gaze from what was going on The screaming and shrieking ' Eichmann did what he was told, even when the orders he received were inhumane. 'I was a relatively young man and used to being led, in business and in everything else', he later said. A failure at school and college, Eichmann drifted through a variety of jobs before being recruited into the SS in 1932 at a beer hall rally in Linz, his own, and Hitler's home town. He became the SS intelligence service's leading expert on Jewish issues. In 1938 got his first important post when he was put in charge of the deportation of Jews from Vienna. There is evidence that, as late as the mid-1930s, Eichmann's own solution to the 'Jewish problem' was essentially non-violent. 'The Zionists wanted a territory where the Jewish people could finally settle in peace. And that was pretty much what the Nazis wanted,' he said. Yet the same man who had once applied for SS money to study Hebrew with a rabbi became someone who, in the closing stages of the second world war, could say of the mass graves: 'I shall gladly jump into the pit, knowing that in that same pit there are 5m (sic) enemies of the state'. The imminent release of his memoirs is important because they promise an insight into one of the most disturbing minds of the Third Reich. John Hooper AGENCE FRANCE PRESS Copyright 2000 Agence France Presse Agence France Presse February 29, 2000, Tuesday 2:29 AM, Eastern Time Israel opens Eichmann journal to public after nearly 40 years of secrecy Tanya Willmer JERUSALEM, Feb 29 (AFP) - Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann thought the Holocaust the worst crime in history but he himself guilt-free, according to his prison memoirs made public by Israel Tuesday after 40 years under lock and key. "It's not an apology," Israel's state archivist Professor Evyatar Friesel told AFP. "He thinks that a terrible crime has been committed but the crime is not his responsibility and therefore he has nothing to apologise for, that he was a public servant who had to obey orders." Attorney General Eliyakim Rubinstein agreed to open up the 1,300-page document after a request from lawyers in a Holocaust libel case in London involving controversial British historian David Irving. "We think as part of Israel's obligation and commitment as a Jewish state, all of us being survivors in fact of the Holocaust, we felt that we should enable the public to have access to what was written," Rubinstein said. The memoirs were handwritten in German on ruled, now slightly yellowing paper, over the summer of 1961 while Eichmann was in a jail cell awaiting the verdict in his trial for crimes against humanity. Eichmann was one of the principal architects of the final solution, the genocide of Jews by the Nazis during World War II, in charge of organizing and coordinating the deportation of millions of Jews to the death camps of eastern Europe. The manuscript has been kept in a safe at the state archives since Eichmann was hanged in 1962, the only execution in the Jewish state's history, following his abduction from Argentina by Israeli agents and trial in Jerusalem. "The document was kept in our archives for 40 years and nobody asked for it," said Friesel, 69, who keeps his office computer perched on a black-bound copy of "The Trial of Adolf Eichmann." Freisel says Eichmann was not penning a personal diary as it was clearly written for public consumption, contained little private or spontaneous thoughts and was organised in three parts, a biography, an account of events during the Holocaust, and "philosophical remarks." The manuscript, now in a cardboard box in Friesel's office, reveals an intelligent, if not well-educated man, and a highly organised bureaucrat, he said. "He was very efficient, I would say horribly efficient. It comes through all the way through the manuscript. Every page is signed." The manuscript has been made available by Israel on computer disk for perusal only, because of uncertainty over the copyright. The attorney general's office has also despatched a copy to lawyers in London who are fighting the libel suit by Irving against author Deborah Lipstadst for her 1994 book "Denying the Holocaust." Irving, banned from several countries because of his views on the Holocaust, is suing Lipstadst and the book's publishers Penguin for branding him a "dangerous spokesman in the service of the Holocaust deniers." Yeduda Bauer, a leading Holocaust historian who had pushed for publication of the document, described Eichmann's attempt to downplay his role in the slaughter of millions of Jews as a "pack of lies. "He says that the murder of Jews was the worst crime in history. But he presents himself as a small cog in the machine," she told AFP. "I think he probably hoped it would be published as a counter to the verdict he knew was coming." Israel Gutman, chief historian at Yad Vashem, the memorial to the six million Jews massacred by the Nazis, said he welcomed the disclosure of the Eichmann documents although he considered they added little to the world's knowledge of events. "It is more important for people who ask themselves what kind of human beings were these murderers, these executioners," said Gutman, a Holocaust surviovor whose family was wiped out at the Auschwitz concentration camp. ASSOCIATED PRESS Copyright 2000 Associated Press AP Worldstream February 29, 2000; Tuesday 2:30 AM Eastern Time Israel releases Eichmann memoirs to help defeat those trying to diminish scope of Holocaust KARIN LAUB, Jerusalem For nearly four decades, Israel locked away Adolf Eichmann's jailhouse memoir a rambling 1,300-page manuscript with many self-serving passages for fear it could be misused by Holocaust deniers. In a sharp about-turn, the Jewish state on Tuesday published the Nazi leader's account, penned in the shadow of the gallows, to help fight a court battle against British historian David Irving, who has challenged the scope of the Nazi genocide. Israel's State Archives released the Eichmann document at 9:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) Tuesday. Journalists were given a copy in German _ the original is written by hand in Gothic script via e-mail or on computer disk. Israel's Justice Ministry said the manuscript has already been forwarded to American professor Deborah Lipstadt whom Irving has sued for libel. Irving says a book by Lisptadt maintains that he denies the Holocaust and distorts statistics. The case is being tried in a British court. Irving says he does not deny Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths. In his memoirs, written in the months leading up to his 1962 death by hanging in Israel, Eichmann said the Holocaust was the worst crime in history, according to Israel's attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein. Rubinstein had decided several months ago to release the memoirs with many restrictions. The manuscript was to be handed to a German research institute and published months from now as a scholarly work. Even that decision apparently was made reluctantly, only after one of Eichmann's sons, Dieter, said he considered taking Israel to court for holding what he said was his family's property. Rubinstein said Monday he changed his mind about publication because of the Lipstadt-Irving case. Israel has a moral obligation to fight those trying to play down the genocide, said Rubinstein. The attorney general noted that like many fellow Israelis, he lost family in the Holocaust. He said his grandparents were buried in a mass grave in Belarus. However, Amos Hausner, the son of Eichmann's Israeli prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, questioned the wisdom of using the memoirs in court. ''We still have many of Holocaust survivors with us, they can testify on the gas chambers,'' said Hausner. ''But instead of believing those people we take the document of a Nazi criminal before he was executed.'' DEUTSCHE PRESS AGENTUR Copyright 2000 Deutsche Presse-Agentur Deutsche Presse-Agentur February 29, 2000, BC Cycle 12:51 Central European Time Eichmann's handwriting reveals "well-oiled machine": graphologist Jerusalem The handwriting of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann revealed a person who was "a fanatic who worked like a well- oiled machine," an Israeli graphologist said in an analysis published Tuesday in the Yediot Aharanot daily. Graphologist Eliyahu Ben-Tovim, who analysed the handwriting after the Israeli government made public journals Eichmann wrote in an Israeli prison while awaiting execution, found that it showed a person who was "dry, petty, technical, lacking in inspiration and imagination." "The writer has rigorous self-discipline, his personality is very well-developed, his horizons are narrow, he is very fanatical, but he has excellent powers of concentration," asserted Ben-Tovim, who, according to Yediot, did not know whose handwriting he was analysing. "The writer's personality is obsessive. He seems to be living for a purpose to which he concedes his independence ... The person seems to have extinguished every spark of feeling and of emotion inside himself. It can be assumed he has no understanding of morality and values," Ben-Tovim said. The Israeli graphologist also found that based on his handwriting, Eichmann was "very demanding, judging people in light of their usefulness to matters he is responsible for." "It must be emphasized that his intelligence is very impressive, and that his ways of thinking and of acting are methodical, organized and clear. If a mature, inspired personality and a rich emotional world had been added to them, the writer may have developed in the direction of research and development and perhaps even music," Ben- Tovim concluded. Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews during World War II, fled from Germany after the war. Israeli agents tracked him down in Argentina in 1960, and brought him to Israel to stand trial. Found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was hanged in 1962. Copyright 2000 Associated Press AP Worldstream February 29, 2000; Tuesday 7:43 AM Eastern Time Excerpts from prison memoirs of Adolf Eichmann, overseer of Nazi death camps With Israel-Eichmann Here are excerpts from Adolf Eichmann's 1,300-page prison memoir, released Tuesday by Israel's State Archives in the original German. The passages were translated by The Associated Press. Eichmann played a key role in the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews and was executed by Israel in 1962. Holocaust historians have dismissed the memoir as little more a self-serving document. About the Holocaust: ''I said (in court) that what happened with the Jews, which the government of the German Reich brought about during the last great war, was the most enormous crime in the history of mankind.'' ''And I witnessed the gruesome workings of the machinery of death; gear meshed with gear, like clockwork.'' ''It was the biggest and most enormous dance of death of all times.'' About his beliefs: ''I had thousands of ideals and I slid, like many others, into a situation from which there was no exit. Time has given me distance to the events. ... Many things that were valid then, are no longer valid now. Things I considered to be basic values, I have thrown overboard over the years.'' About his involvement in the Holocaust: ''Because I have seen hell, death and the devil, because I had to watch the madness of destruction, because I was one of the many horses pulling the wagon and couldn't escape left or right because of the will of the driver, I now feel called upon and have the desire, to tell what happened.'' About his relationship with Jews: ''I was never an antisemite.'' ### == HA'ARETZ 02.29.00 http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=14&datee=02/29/00&id=70525 Eichmann's diary opens to public today By Yair Sheleg Adolf Eichmann's diaries, written while he was on trial and later awaiting his death sentence, will be opened to the public today at the National Archive at the same time that a copy heads for London to be presented as evidence in the case of historian David Irving's libel suit against American professor Deborah Lipstadt. Israel's moral obligation to help defeat a lawsuit challenging the scope of the Holocaust outweighed strong misgivings about publishing the jail-house memoirs of the Nazi technocrat who organized the transport of millions of Jews to their death in the concentration camps, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said yesterday. The 1,300-page document is already en route to Lipstadt's defense attorneys. Lipstadt accused British historian David Irving of denying the Nazi genocide and he is suing her for libel in a British court. State archivist Evyatar Friesel said the manuscript would be available to the public starting today and that any publication of it would be the responsibility of the publisher, since the copyright issues have still not been resolved. Israeli had initially planned to give the Eichmann memoirs, locked up for three decades in the state archives, to a German research institute for publication, a process that was expected to take months, if not years. Even that decision was made only reluctantly, after one of Eichmann's sons, Dieter, threatened legal action to claim the book as family property. Until now, only a few scholars have seen the memoirs. Irving has claimed that he had access to another Eichmann diary, written before his capture by the Mossad in Argentina in the early 1960s. Some Israeli officials have expressed concern that the document could fall into the wrong hands and that self-serving passages could be used by Holocaust deniers. Amos Hausner, whose father Gideon prosecuted Eichmann, questioned the wisdom of using the documents in court. "We still have many of Holocaust survivors with us, they can testify on the gas chambers," Hausner, a lawyer himself, said in a phone interview with the Associated Press. "But instead of believing those people, we take the document of a Nazi criminal before he was executed." Irving is suing Lipstadt for libel in Britain for writing in a 1994 book that he denied the Holocaust and distorted the truth of what happened in World War II. Irving says he does not deny that Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths. Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and her codefendant, Penguin Books, deny libel. Israel hopes the memoirs will provide more proof of the systematic killing of Jews by the Nazis, as well as the scope of the genocide. In the trial, Irving disputed historically accepted witness accounts that hundreds of thousands were gassed to death at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. "We think as part of Israel's obligation and commitment as a Jewish state, all of us being survivors in fact of the Holocaust, we felt that we should enable the public to have access to what was written," Attorney General Rubinstein told reporters. According to Rubinstein, Eichmann wrote that the killing of the Jews was the worst crime in the history of mankind. The Nazi leader also provided details on the workings of the death camps, as well as insight into decision-making in the Third Reich, Rubinstein said. Scholars who have seen the memoir say that it repeats arguments Eichmann made at his trial, insisting that he was only a mid-level official following orders. Tom Segev of Ha'aretz, who has written widely on the Holocaust and its effects on Israeli society, said the decision to release the Eichmann memoirs should have been made long ago. "The principle must be that no material on the Holocaust remains locked in the archives," he said. Eichmann wrote the diary while in jail from 1961 to 1962, after Israeli agents captured him in Argentina and brought him to trial in Israel. Eichmann was executed by hanging in 1962. GUARDIAN 02.29.00 http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/irving/article/0,2763,141723,00.html Eichmann diary to test Irving case The David Irving libel trial: special report Long-neglected Nazi memoir brought in as Holocaust proof Suzanne Goldenberg in Jerusalem and Stuart Millar Tuesday February 29, 2000 A long-neglected prison memoir by Adolf Eichmann, written soon before the execution of the man who devised the systematic extermination of Europe's Jews, was on its way to London last night, as evidence in a trial which puts the Nazi genocide under the microscope. Israeli justice ministry officials said the diary, on computer disk as well as in manuscript form, was being sent to help the defence of an American academic, Deborah Lipstadt, and Penguin Books in a libel suit brought by the author David Irving, who denies the Nazi leadership systematically murdered millions of Jews. Locked away and almost forgotten for 40 years, the diary runs to 1,300 pages in Eichmann's Gothic handwriting. It was written in the months between his conviction, and his execution in 1962, and for decades was seen only by a handful of scholars. They say it is a meticulous and detailed record of the ghettoes, cattle train cars and death camps of eastern Europe that were the Nazis' Final Solution. "There was no denial of the Holocaust there. He tried to show that he was a minor cog in the machine and he had to obey orders, but he describes how terrible it was," said Gavriel Bach, who was the first person to read the diary. "In court he admitted it was the most terrible crime in history. He says how he almost fainted when he saw the geysers of blood coming out of the bodies in the ditches." Mr Bach, who was assistant prosecutor during the Eichmann trial, which took place in a Jerusalem theatre, was charged with reading the manuscript to see if it added to the mountain of evidence - 3,000 pages from about 100 witnesses - gathered during the proceedings. During the investigations, Mr Bach, whose family fled Berlin in 1938, was Eichmann's main contact with the outside world and questioned him almost daily. He was among the scholars and justice ministry officials who decided on Sunday night that the diary should be made pub lic immediately to aid in Ms Lipstadt's defence on a libel suit arising from a book published in 1993 that calls Mr Irving a "Nazi partisan" for denying the organised murder of Europe's Jews. Ms Lipstadt's defence team is believed to have been keen to have the diaries before the court to test arguments by Mr Irving for which he has cited Eichmann as evidence. In court 37 of the high court, it is the interpretation of the new historical documents that will matter. Mr Irving is understood to be one of the few people to have detailed knowledge of Eichmann's account. According to his website, he was handed two packets containing 426 pages of Eichmann typescripts by a member of the senior Nazi's family in Buenos Aires during a lecture tour of Argentina in 1991. He has used parts of this account to back up his arguments that there was no systematic genocide and that Hitler had no knowledge of any mass killings of Jews. In a 1997 letter to Robert Jan van Pelt, a Canadian Holocaust historian, Mr Irving cited the memoirs to cast doubt on the existence of gas chambers. The letter, published on his internet site, claims that while Eichmann, the architect of the extermination programme, makes reference to witnessing an "experimental" truck gassing, he was never shown a gas chamber at Auschwitz. While the Eichmann memoir seeks to deny the Nazi officer's responsibility for mass murder, it does not disclaim the systematic murder of millions. "There is nothing there that would lead anyone to the conclusion that this did not happen," Mr Bach said. Eichmann begins his record in his childhood and writes about his entry into the SS and his oath of allegiance. "He wanted his family to see it, and to see his role. Maybe he wanted to convince his family he did not take a central part in the Final Solution," Mr Bach said. But after Eichmann was hanged in 1962 - the only time Israel has carried out the death penalty - and his ashes scattered over the Mediterranean, the manuscript lay forgotten in the Israeli national archives in Jerusalem. "Nobody was aware of this document," said Ido (correct) Baum, a spokesman for the justice ministry. No one was aware of the fact that the notes were in the archives until last August when Dieter Eichmann, Eichmann's son, approached the attorney general and requested the manuscript. According to Mr Bach, the prevailing sentiment in Israel at the time was against the immediate publication of the memoir, but there was never any intention to bury it in the archives indefinitely. "We always knew that sooner or later the diaries would be published," he said. Typewritten versions of the manuscript could be made available to scholars and journalists as early as tomorrow. Although Israel does not intend general publication of the manuscript, it is unclear what Eichmann's sons envisage. Mr Baum said last night that the copyright remained with the Eichmann family. == Israel releases Eichmann memoirs to help defeat those trying to diminish scope of Holocaust By KARIN LAUB 02/29/2000 Associated Press Newswires Copyright 2000. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. JERUSALEM (AP) - For nearly four decades, Israel locked away Adolf Eichmann 's jailhouse memoir - a rambling 1,300-page manuscript with many self-serving passages - for fear it could be misused by Holocaust deniers. In a sharp about-turn, the Jewish state is now releasing the Nazi leader's account, penned in the shadow of the gallows, to help fight a court battle against British historian David Irving, who has challenged the scope of the Nazi genocide. Israel's State Archives is to publish the Eichmann document at 9:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) Tuesday. Journalists are to receive a typed copy in German - the original is written by hand in Gothic script - via e-mail or on computer disk. Israel's Justice Ministry said the manuscript has already been forwarded to American professor Deborah Lipstadt whom Irving has sued for libel. Irving says a book by Lisptadt maintains that he denies the Holocaust and distorts statistics. The case is being tried in a British court. Irving says he does not deny Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths. In his memoirs, written in the months leading up to his 1962 death by hanging in Israel, Eichmann said the Holocaust was the worst crime in history, according to Israel's attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein. Rubinstein had decided several months ago to release the memoirs with many restrictions. The manuscript was to be handed to a German research institute and published months from now as a scholarly work. Even that decision apparently was made reluctantly, only after one of Eichmann 's sons, Dieter, said he considered taking Israel to court for holding what he said was his family's property. Rubinstein said Monday he changed his mind about publication because of the Lipstadt -Irving case. Israel has a moral obligation to fight those trying to play down the genocide, said Rubinstein. The attorney general noted that like many fellow Israelis, he lost family in the Holocaust. He said his grandparents were buried in a mass grave in Belarus. However, Amos Hausner, the son of Eichmann 's Israeli prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, questioned the wisdom of using the memoirs in court. "We still have many of Holocaust survivors with us, they can testify on the gas chambers," said Hausner. "But instead of believing those people we take the document of a Nazi criminal before he was executed." == Sydney Morning Herald, Australia 02.29.00 [reprinted from the Telegraph - London] Israel offers up Eichmann to skewer Irving http://www.smh.com.au:80/news/0002/29/text/world15.html Date: 29/02/2000 Israel has authorised the release of the unpublished prison memoir of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Nazis' "Final Solution" for the extermination of European Jewry, for use by lawyers refuting the British libel suit mounted by historian and Holocaust revisionist David Irving. The memoir has been locked away in Israeli archives since Eichmann was hanged in 1962, the only time Israel has imposed the death penalty. According to the few researchers who have seen the document, written between Eichmann's conviction by a district court and his appeal to the Supreme Court, Eichmann offers a detailed description of the systematic attempt to exterminate European Jews. He minimises his role, describing himself as a minor cog in the Nazi killing machine. Forgotten over four decades, the document resurfaced last year when one of Eichmann's sons asked for it. The Israeli Attorney-General, Mr Elyakim Rubinstein, son of Holocaust survivors, decided instead that the handwritten notes would be made available to the public, and agreed to rush a copy to American scholar Deborah Lipstadt, who is being sued by Irving in the London trial. Israel's Justice Ministry said the defence team in the libel case had asked for the memoir to be released. A decision to hand it over was taken at a meeting on Sunday. A 600-page transcription was recently completed, according to a Justice Ministry spokesman. Lawyers for Lipstadt, a Holocaust specialist at Emory University, had sought the manuscript. In a 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Lipstadt called Irving a "Hitler partisan" for his assertions that the Nazis did not carry out genocide against Jews in World War II, that Hitler knew of no mass killings of Jews, and that Hitler was no more guilty of war crimes than was Winston Churchill or Franklin Roosevelt. Holocaust experts in Israel say the document could be crucial to Lipstadt's defence, as it refutes Irving's charges that hundreds of thousands of Jews - far fewer than the commonly accepted figure of 6 million - were killed in haphazard incidents on the Eastern front of the war, often at the hands of local residents rather than in concentration camps. The rest of the Jewish population may have fled to what would become Israel, Irving has said, accusing Jews of turning the myth of a meticulously planned and executed genocide into "big business". With the burden of proof under British law on Lipstadt, the defendant, commentators have noted that the Holocaust itself is on trial, making the current case an extraordinarily important one in the annals of Holocaust denial. Given Eichmann's efforts to downplay his role, Israeli officials declined to publish the memoir in 1962 to avoid accusations that they had executed an innocent man. In a statement on Sunday night, however, Mr Rubinstein said the state had a "historic duty" to make the material public and send it to Lipstadt's aid. The trial, which began on January 11, is expected to continue for another two weeks. The Telegraph, London REUTERS 12 Noon EST 02.29.00 ISRAEL: Eichmann acknowledged Holocaust "dance of death". By Paul Holmes 02/29/2000 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2000. PHOTO of Diaries http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/20000229/wl/mdf53085.html JERUSALEM, Feb 29 (Reuters) - Adolf Eichmann recognised the Holocaust as the greatest crime in history before an Israeli hangman placed a noose around his neck in 1962 but never acknowledged his own guilt in the genocide of six million Jews. Prison memoirs written by Eichmann in the months that led up to his execution for crimes against the Jewish people and humanity paint a chilling picture of what he calles "the greatest and most violent dance of death of all time". "I want this only to be a warning," Eichmann wrote in a manuscript to which he gave the title "False Gods". "Words of warning are neither honey nor milk. They are hard and dry like the thorn bushes of the Pampas or like bleached bones in the desert." But the voluminous writings, made public by Israel on Tuesday for use in a Holocaust denial trial in London, reveal no sense of personal responsibility for the Nazi German death machine that worked to wipe out Europe's Jews. Instead, the man sentenced to hang by an Israeli court for his part in organising the Holocaust depicts himself as a troubled soul who fought with his conscience in the face of evil and lost to a misguided compulsion to do Adolf Hitler's bidding. He describes himself variously as a cog in the giant wheel of the Third Reich, a man hitched like a horse to a wagon driven by others and a "playball of circumstances". "My position is the same as that of millions of others who had to obey," he writes. "The difference is simply that I had a much more difficult task to perform in carrying out my orders." REUTERS 02.29.00 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000229/wl/israel_eichmann_3.html Israel Releases Memoirs of Nazi Murderer Eichmann By Christine Hauser JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel released the prison memoirs of Adolf Eichmann on Tuesday, nearly 40 years after the Nazi ''technician of death'' was hanged for war crimes in the only execution in Israel's history. A transcript of the memoirs was released to the public by the State Archives on computer discs in the original German. ``It was not a secret,'' State Archivist Evyatar Friesel said. ``The memoirs were kept in state archives and we decided after so many years to open them. Everybody can read them for perusal.'' The disclosure of the diaries was approved by Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein on Sunday after intensive deliberations with legal experts and historians. Eichmann's account of the Nazi mass murder of Jews during World War Two is to be used by a British legal team fighting a libel suit brought by controversial historian David Irving in a case that many Jews fear puts the Holocaust itself on trial. Irving is suing U.S. writer Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for a 1995 book on Holocaust deniers which described him as ``a dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial.'' Irving recently told Reuters that Auschwitz concentration camp was a sort of ``Disneyland,'' built by Polish communists after World War Two to attract tourists. 1,100 Pages Of Memoirs Lipstadt's legal team asked Israel's Justice Ministry for permission to present the memoirs as evidence in the case. Only a handful of historians have had access to the Eichmann memoirs. Eichmann, who organized the trains which took millions of Nazi victims to their deaths in concentration camp gas chambers, wrote the 1,100 pages of manuscript and draft notes in longhand in the summer of 1961 while he was in jail awaiting the verdict in his trial. Eichmann calls the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's systematic extermination of six million Jews during World War Two, a terrible crime against humanity, according to an archive synopsis. Friesel said his job was only to release the manuscript and not to comment on it. ``The public can judge for themselves. I expect everything from indifference to excitement.'' Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper columnist Tom Segev said the newspaper tried for years to see the document but was denied access for legal reasons concerning copyrights. Segev said he thought the manuscript was withheld because there were fears it would serve neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. ``Very Orderly Autobiography'' ``Our position was it is inconceivable the state of Israel would not make public a document related to the Holocaust,'' Segev said as he read the document on Tuesday. ``It strikes me as a very orderly autobiography, including very, very exact directions for the publisher, including the color of the jacket,'' said Segev, author of a book on Israel and the Holocaust. Eichmann was kidnapped from his Argentine hideaway by Israeli Mossad agents and brought to trial in Jerusalem in 1960. In the manuscript Eichmann stresses that he was never anti-Semitic nor hostile to foreigners, according to the synopsis. A biographical account describes deportation and exterminations of Jews from Germany and his attempts to refute evidence against him in the trial. He tells of private connections with Jews and attempts to learn Hebrew in order to gain information from the Jewish press. Eichmann recounts the extermination of Jews after the outbreak of World War Two and his need to consume large quantities of alcohol after witnessing their killings by gas and shootings. ``Of course it's chilling. What else?'' Segev said. ``There it is, the killer talking.'' A former travelling salesman who sold vacuum cleaners, Eichmann rose in the Nazi Party ranks to direct the deportations of European Jews from across Europe to death camps as head of the Department of Jewish Affairs at Gestapo headquarters. His writings are largely an attempt to disprove that he had a decision-making role in the genocide and argue that he had no personal animosity towards Jews. KILLINGS AT AUSCHWITZ The account, in places autobiographical and at times rambling and pseudo-philosophical, nonetheless contains grim insights into how the Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust. Eichmann recounts how he was assigned in early 1942 to visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and report back to superiors on the killing of Jews. Methods were still crude but a gruesome foretaste of the factory-style gas chambers and crematoria that were to follow. "Hoess, the Kommandant, told me that he used sulphuric acid to kill. Round cotton wool filters were soaked with this poison and thrown into the rooms where the Jews were assembled. The poison was instantly fatal. "He burned the corpses on an iron grill, in the open air. He led me to a shallow ditch where a large number of corpses had just been burned." In another section, Eichmann tells how around the same time he befuddled his mind with alcohol after witnessing the machine-gunning of a large number of Jews near Minsk. "As I arrived I saw a Jewish woman with a small child in her arms in the ditch. I wanted to snatch out the child but a bullet smashed into the child's skull. My driver wiped small pieces of brain from my leather coat," Eichmann wrote. "I got into my car. 'To Berlin,' I told the driver. But I drank schnaps as if it were water. I had to drink. I had to numb myself. And I thought of my own children..." Born in Solingen, Germany in 1906, Eichmann moved to Austria with his parents when he was eight years old. He joined the Nazi party in 1932 and became a member of the SS. In 1934, he was assigned as an SS corporal in the Dachau concentration camp and later that year joined the Secret Service (SD). As a member of the SD's Jewish Section, Eichmann recounts how he tried to learn Yiddish and Hebrew and travelled to Palestine to gather intelligence on Zionist aspirations. Eichmann was sent to Austria in 1938, after it became part of the Third Reich, on a mission to force Jews to emigrate. He carried out the same task a year later in Czechoslovakia. By 1942, Eichmann had been given extensive powers to direct the deportations of European Jews to death camps. NEVER AGAIN Eichmann 's account of the Nazi mass murder of Jews during World War Two is to be used by a British legal team fighting a libel suit brought by controversial historian David Irving in a case that many Jews fear puts the Holocaust itself on trial. Irving is suing U.S. writer Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for a 1995 book on Holocaust deniers which described him as "a dangerous spokesman for Holocaust denial". Eichmann 's memoirs, which the Israeli state archives released in the original German, come across in places as a plea for humanity never to embark on the same evil again. Eichmann muses at one point on the need for a worldwide government committed to peace and harmony, set up by women if men prove unsuited to the task. He recounts how the perceived injustices imposed on Germany by the victors of World War One in the Treaty of Versailles led him to the Nazis but ultimately acknowledges that the appeal of Hitler took Germany to crime and ruin. "I joined the National-Socialist German Workers Party because it fought against the injustice of Versailles, against the diktat, against occupation, against national shame, against the plunder of land," Eichmann wrote. "And what did we bring? Injustice, diktat, occupation, national shame, the plunder of land." Eichmann was taken prisoner after World War Two but managed to flee to Argentina, where he lived under the name of Ricardo Klement with his wife and three sons. Israeli secret agents kidnapped him in May 1960 in Buenos Aires. He went on trial in Jerusalem in April 1961 and was hanged on June 1, 1962. "I had to obey the law of the war and my flag. I am ready," were his last words. Eichmann 's writings, which he notes he had wanted published in a pearl-coloured or dove grey jacket, are accompanied by his last will and testament. It contains the only explicit apology in some 1,100 handwritten pages. "For the work that I leave to be done after my death I can only apologise and thank those people who will take care of it," Eichmann concludes. ### ASSOCIATED PRESS 02.29.00 In prison memoir released by Israel, Eichmann plays down his role By KARIN LAUB 02/29/2000 Associated Press Newswires Copyright 2000. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. JERUSALEM (AP) - In Adolf Eichmann 's 1961 prison memoir released in full for the first time by Israel on Tuesday, the overseer of the Holocaust minimizes his own role, but describes in pedantic detail the workings of the Nazi death machine. In the 1,300-page manuscript, penned in precise German Gothic script, Eichmann portrays himself as a misled idealist and an obedient bureaucrat who abhorred his frequent trips to the killing fields of Eastern Europe and drowned his nightmares in alcohol. Some Israeli historians say the account by Eichmann , who was sentenced to death in Israel and hanged in 1962, is so self-serving and distorted that it is historically worthless. Still, Israel hopes Eichmann 's methodical description of the genocide, including timetables of death transports, will help undermine the court case of British historian David Irving, who has challenged the scope of the Holocaust. Irving says he does not deny Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths. Irving says a book by American professor Deborah Lipstadt maintains that he denies the Holocaust and distorts statistics. Irving is suing Lipstadt for libel in a British court, and the Eichmann memoirs will now likely be entered into evidence. Eichmann grew up in Austria and joined the Nazi party in 1932, a year before Hitler came to power in Germany. Eichmann said he fervently believed in Hitler's promises to wipe out the "shame" of Germany's World War I defeat, but was never an anti-Semite. As proof, he presented a Jewish boyhood friend and Jewish relatives by marriage. In 1936, he was transferred to the "Jewish Department" in the headquarters of the Nazi security services. He said that at one point, he bought a booklet, "Hebrew For Everyone," because he was asked to read the newspapers of Jewish communities, most written in Yiddish with Hebrew lettering. Eichmann claimed that in the beginning he pushed for "humane solutions," such as encouraging Jewish emigration, creating a Jewish protectorate in Eastern Europe or sending Jews to the island of Madagascar, off Africa. In 1939, he was put in charge of deporting Jews to Eastern Europe. Eichmann claimed he had no authority, simply coordinated timetables for trains and that all decisions were made by his immediate superior, Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller. Soon he was sent by Mueller to the killing fields of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. In January 1942, he arrived in Chelmo, a town in Poland. "I saw naked Jews, men and women, get into a bus without windows," Eichmann wrote. "The doors were closed and the motor was started," with poisonous exhaust fumes pumped inside. He claimed he was so shocked that he was "unable to carry out Mueller's order to time how long the killings were taking." The bus was driven to a nearby pit and the corpses were dumped inside. "Then a civilian jumped into the pit, checked the mouths and pulled out the gold teeth with pliers," Eichmann wrote. Eichmann said he could never fathom why Mueller kept sending him from "killing site to killing site." He said he drank heavily on his trips back to Berlin, red wine from a large flask, if available, or hard liquor, but was always careful not to get drunk because he was, after all, in uniform. Eichmann , who was abducted by Israeli agents from his hide-out in Buenos Aires in 1960, persistently played down his role in the genocide he himself described as the most enormous crime in human history. He said his job was just to observe, and that most of the time he was sitting behind a desk in Berlin, carrying out orders. Israeli scholars have dismissed Eichmann 's account as a crass distortion. Yehuda Bauer, a senior researcher at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, noted that in an interview Eichmann gave five years before the trial, the Nazi leader said he regretted he hadn't taken harsher measures against Jews and that creation of the state of Israel was a catastrophe. "This is a demon who writes a pitiful justification that repeats his claims in court," Bauer told Israel army radio. Tom Segev, an Israeli historian and author on the Holocaust, said Eichmann probably lied about his own role, but that the document is important nonetheless. "Here we have a senior official in the Nazi bureaucracy who describes in great detail the extermination of the Jews," Segev said. The memoir was locked in the State Archives for nearly four decades because Israeli leaders feared Holocaust deniers could misuse it. Several months ago, the Justice Ministry reluctantly agreed to give the manuscript to a German research institute for eventual publication. However, when Lipstadt 's attorneys asked for help, Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein agreed to immediate publication. Segev said the Israeli government mishandled the sensitive documents from the start. "The whole thing is very ironic," said Segev. "They (the archives) refused to give it to us. They said it will serve the purposes of the Holocaust deniers. Now it is being published to fight the Holocaust deniers." ### == Copyright 2000 AAP Information Services Pty. Ltd. AAP NEWSFEED February 29, 2000, Tuesday SECTION: Nationwide General News; Australian General News LENGTH: 354 words HEADLINE: fed: Jewish lobby group angered by Darville's Irving story BODY: Darville By Chris Herde BRISBANE, Feb 29 AAP - A Jewish lobby group today accused a magazine of "cheap sensationalism" for commissioning an article by controversial author Helen Darville about Nazi historian David Irving. Darville, who fabricated Ukrainian ancestry as Helen Demidenko for her first award winning novel amid claims that the book was anti-semetic, interviewed Irving for Australian Style magazine. The interview has angered the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council community affairs director Jeremy Jones, who claimed it was a cynical move to increase sales of the magazine which goes on the news stands tomorrow. "It's cheap sensationalism. Helen Darville is notorious as a person who perpetrated a literary fraud with a book that was widely viewed as justifying anti-semitism," Mr Jones told AAP today. "She was then asked by a magazine to go and interview somebody who has a status in the eyes of many far right wingers as an icon. "How is the cause of public information served by the combination of these two personalities." The interview was conducted in London during a libel case against an American academic whom Irving, who has been refused a visa to Australia, is suing for allegedly depicting him as denying the Holocaust and as a "Hitler partisan". However Australian Style editor Jack Marx criticised Mr Jones' stand, claiming there was "no gimmick involved" and he would use Darville for other articles. "It's a totally expected kneejerk reaction by a bunch of people who are pro-censorship," Marx said. "The article is balanced and anyone who reads it will see that she pokes holes through many of Irving's arguments. "She is actually quite knowledgable about the topic." Darville, who now lives in London and was not contactable, won the Miles Franklin award for her book, The Hand That Signed The Paper. A few years ago Darville apologised for claiming Ukrainian ancestry saying she was sorry if her book or actions were perceived as anti-semitic. She said she condemned without reservation the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
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