Archive/File: people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-113-01
Last-Modified: 1999/06/14

Session No. 113
28 Av 5721 (10 August 1961)

Presiding Judge: I declare the one hundred and thirteenth
Session of the trial open.

Attorney General: With the permission of the Court, I shall
first submit our list of written summaries.  As I have
already said, these were prepared by my colleagues, Mr. Bar-
Or, Mr. Bach and their assistants, and, for the benefit of
the Defence, we are translating the material into a language
they can understand.  I am submitting three folders
containing the summaries of thirty-one different chapters
which follow in the main the opening speech in this trial,
but contain some special chapters as well, as the Court will
see from the printed list which is attached to each folder.

Presiding Judge: Thank you.  I shall mark the first copy
with my initials.  Are you also going to submit, in
addition, the opening speech with the references?

Attorney General: No, this is already included here.  Those
passages in the opening speech which need an explanation as
to what this or that sentence refers to - the Court will
find this in the corresponding passages in the written
summaries.

Presiding Judge: And shall we later also receive the summary
with references?

Attorney General: The summing-up speech with marginal
annotations will be submitted to the Court by Friday or
Sunday, I hope.

Presiding Judge: It is not important when it will be
submitted.

Attorney General: We shall first submit it to Counsel for
the Defence.  I hope the Court will not hold this against
us.

Presiding Judge: No.

Attorney General: We think that it is more urgent for him to
receive the annotations, and therefore we are preparing this
for him first.

Now, with your permission, I shall say a few words about the
evaluation of the evidence in this trial, and first of all
about the evidence which we have adduced.  We have made use
of oral evidence, sworn declarations, and other items of
proof from persons who were in league with the Accused,
i.e., war criminals and partners of his in committing most
serious crimes.  There was no alternative to making use of
such evidence, because these were the men who knew what was
happening inside Nazi Germany, and because they, and only
they, could testify from first-hand knowledge about the
goings-on in that inferno.

Judge Raveh:   Do you think that Section 15 has a bearing on
this question of the need for corroboration?

Attorney General: We needed Section 15 in order to ensure
that such evidence would be admitted, and the Court was in
fact asked from time to time to use its power under this
Section, in order to make evidence of this kind admissible,
and only after it had exercised it power was proof from such
sources accepted.  But now that it has become evidence
before the Court, i.e., since we have overcome the problem
of the admissibility of such proof, I do not think that we
need Section 15 for the purpose of weighing it.  In other
words, I am not asking you, Your Honours, to go beyond the
confines of ordinary law, ordinary criminal law, for the
purpose of weighing the evidence in this trial.  In order to
enable us to submit this material to you and to let you hear
these things, it was absolutely necessary that you should
somewhat loosen the strict rules of evidence - as the law
permits you to do and as, in fact, you did.

And now: What does Adolf Eichmann say about all these
witnesses?  Wisliceny is lying.  Hoess, that symbol of
correctness and pedantry, as he called him, and who had no
reason to shift the blame from himself - Hoess is lying.
Veesenmayer is lying - here I am prepared to agree.
Mildner, his friend, with whom he met in Argentina (I read
you this passage from his statement), Mildner is lying.
Six, a witness for the Defence, is lying.

Presiding Judge: Is this Mildner the same Mildner who was
the head of the Gestapo in Katowice?

Attorney General: Yes, afterwards he was in Denmark.  The
same Mildner met Sassen and Eichmann together in Argentina,
as he himself relates, and there they clarified Eichmann's
exact functions and his part in the machinery of the
Holocaust.  His witness, Six, is lying.  Hoettl lies.
Becher is a liar.  Morgen, the SS judge, lies.  Grell lies.
His own witness, Winkelmann, lies.  They are all lying; he
alone speaks the truth.

In his opinion it is permissible for him to retract what he
said to the police, because he realized that he had been
mistaken.  And what made him realize this?  Lo and behold,
he tells you, Your Honours: "Look, in my Statement to the
police I took upon myself the arrest of the Reverend Dr.
Grueber, for instance, while here it became suddenly clear
to me, to my surprise" - says he - "that it certainly was
not I who arrested him, but some Stapostelle (Regional
Office of the State Police), which shows that I did not
remember correctly."  But in his Statement to the police he
spoke, after all, in great detail, and in two places (pages
1636-1645 and 2108) he mentioned the instructions he gave
for the arrest of Grueber.  And when Grueber came here, not
knowing who caused his arrest, knowing only that some police
station carried out Eichmann's instructions and did it - an
excellent excuse is found: "Lo and behold, I incriminated
myself without cause, Grueber says that someone else
arrested him, not I, and I thought that I was guilty of this
crime, and I have carried it on my conscience all this
time."

How far is he willing to go?  In that passage, in which
there are corrections in his handwriting, he described to
Sassen the extent of his authority, his general power of
command, his position.  And when he is asked about this he
says: "I realized from the documents which you showed me
here that I was mistaken."  Your Honours, does he need
documents in order to explain what was his position, his
authority and his power?  Does he have to learn from
documents in our possession, from fragments which were left?
Does he not know this?  He who, even in Argentina, proudly
uses the title "Obersturmbannfuehrer a.D." (a.D. - ausser
Dienst - retired).  Does he not know what he was authorized
to do, to whom he could give orders, who was subordinate to
him, and from whom he himself received orders?  He realized
that he was mistaken.

The Court will remember that, when I gave him one passage
from Sassen to read, he read - impromptu, on the spur of the
moment, from his booth twice: Once instead of "Chef der
Sicherheitspolizei" (Head of the Security Police), he read
"der Reichsfuehrer-SS" (Session 102, Vol. IV pp.xxxx).  By
the way, the correction was his own, in his handwriting, and
here, on the spur of the moment, in front of you, mind you,
while reading, he corrects his own version.  And the second
time, instead of something which was deleted, he inserts the
word "not" in a way which changes the entire sentence, the
whole meaning of the quotation.  But how is this done?
Extemporaneously.  That is how this brain operates.

And here, Your Honours, is perhaps the crucial element for
the evaluation of this evidence.  Anybody who is able thus
to stand up under examination, and thus to keep his bearing
among all its convolutions, and to react as he reacted to
every stumbling block, is no little cog, he is not a small
dwarflike personality.  Here is a man of very high
intelligence.  Of course, it is very difficult to
disentangle oneself reasonably and intelligently from the
network of proofs that was spread around him, and therefore
he is forced to contradict himself time and again, and
therefore he is forced to use pretexts which have no
foundation.  But the stature of a personality, albeit a
satanic personality, manifested itself during this
examination.  Here we could see a man who was able, under
the questioning of the Court and under cross-examination, to
twist and turn, to give replies, replies not to the point,
but who could invent an excuse on the spot, cunningly,
shrewdly, a picture of capability, power of reasoning, and
instant orientation.  But just as his extraordinary memory,
which he displayed before us, became his undoing, so his
very comportment, the way he stood in the witness box,
became his undoing, as he tried to reduce himself in size,
to belittle, to dwarf himself and to say: "What was I after
all, who am I, and what am I within the total structure of
the Third Reich?"

Why did he not rise in rank?  We have heard the reason:
Because Himmler apprehended that there would be difficulties
with other Section Heads (Session 102, Vol. IV, pp. xxxx).
But his status grew and expanded, he was given additional
duties time after time, the Section also expanded, and above
all, his personal standing within this whole machinery was
apparently not connected with his rank, but with his ability
to put himself in control of things.  Adolf Eichmann knew
how to do this.

He tried to tell you that he was not an anti-Semite at all.
This is of course one of the absurdities you reach if you
want to say: "I did everything under pressure, forced by
orders from his superiors, not voluntarily and not from
conviction."  But Dr. Grueber has told us already that with
such people National Socialism was tied up with fierce anti-
Semitism and boundless hatred of Jews.  Just look at the way
he expressed himself that time in Argentina.  Let us assume
that he has to thwart efforts by the Swedes to save Jews;
let us assume that he was told - and I accept his version
for the sake of argument, although I do not believe it for a
moment - that he was told by Mueller: "Write that they are
not to help the Norwegian Jews, write that they are not to
grant Swedish citizenship to a few dozen Jews who are trying
to save themselves," and so on.  But the hatred and
viciousness of his tone, how he expresses himself about
anybody who tries to extend a helping hand to the Jews, how
he fumes with wrath against Raoul Wallenberg, the "Jew dog",
as he calls him, "I shall finish him off," he says, "he
dares..."

Presiding Judge: This was not in writing, it was orally.

Attorney General: It was orally.  It appears in writing in
Kasztner's Report.  The Swedish Embassy in Berlin complained
about this, and the German Foreign Ministry did not deny it,
but held that these things were said in a moment of anger.
So be it, in a moment of anger.  But what did Wallenberg do?
He did his best to save a few thousand Jews from his
clutches, he tried to extricate a few hundred souls from the
death march, or a few thousand.  "Jew dog, I shall shoot
him," he says.

And Loesener - he is the one of whom Dr. Grueber says that
of all the top Nazis he was the one who would sometimes lend
an ear and extend help in secret, and Grueber was even
prepared to testify to this after the war, in order to help
Loesener with his de-Nazification - but here (as it says in
exhibit T/526) he still wants to denigrate Loesener and to
place him together with himself, as one of the extreme
fanatics.  That document describes Eichmann as being in the
same category as Reischauer, one of the arch-oppressors, who
was not prepared to accept even the small concession which
Hitler was ready to weigh, for reasons of war only: That one
eighth or one-quarter Jews who serve in the Germany army
would not have to watch the killing of their parents with
their own eyes because of their being Jews.  Hitler was
therefore prepared to postpone solving the problem of mixed
marriages until after the War.  Not so Reischauer.  Not so
Eichmann.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini was a man who obviously found in
Eichmann a precious jewel.  He had begun the spilling of
Jewish blood in Palestine, his heart was wide open to an
unclean partnership with the spiller of Jewish blood in the
world, and in his Section Eichmann trains the minions of the
Mufti, among them the man who was dubbed "Heydrich of the
Near East."  And what was meant by this, Your Honours?
After the victory, which was coming as they hoped, these
people were planning the same bloody work in the whole
world, which  would fall at their feet.  And the Mufti, who
had spilled the blood of the Jews in Hebron, in Jaffa and in
Jerusalem, in the riots of 1921, 1936 and 1939, was looking
for a man like himself who would help him finish the job. He
saw that they did it better there.  Eichmann does not deny
at all that something of this kind existed.  But he does not
remember whether Wisliceny was the person to be honoured
with this offer.  He doubts it, even though Wisliceny says
that this wonderful proposal, to be the adviser of the Mufti
for the solution of the Jewish Question in occupied
Palestine, was intended for him.

Wherever their foot trod, they would immediately turn their
wrath against the Jews.  The "Africa Corps" had only to
reach North Africa and immediately there begins the chapter
of the Jews of Tunisia, the attempt to displace them and
persecute them.  It infuriates him that there are Jews who
hide in outlying places in Monaco, it bothers him that there
is Jewish influence in Liechtenstein.  His hand reaches out
to get the Jew wherever he may be, to throw him into the gas
chambers.

In Argentina, when he was already free of all his
connections and also of his oath, as he told you, what does
he write about a man who dared to criticize the path of the
Fuehrer?  By what dirty names does he call a man who thinks,
in hindsight, that Hitler may have been wrong (and he writes
it in the margin of the book, which he has just read)?  And
what had been Hitler's mistake?  The way in which he
conducted the War.  Eichmann remained faithful to his
Fuehrer to the end, even after the death of the Fuehrer.  "A
man like this ought to be skinned," is what he wrote in the
margin of that book.  "With people like this we were bound
to loose the war."  And the venomous, poisoned National
Socialism bursts forth, rises and foams in his every remark
and marginal note.  When we asked him, he did not deny that
he wrote these remarks, but said that this was his personal
affair: "How did this book come into your hands?  I did not
lend it to anybody."  This is what made him angry, that a
book which he had not lent to anyone had fallen into the
hands of a newspaper, and that the editor had published the
matter, complete with the remarks, which revealed his hidden
secrets.

What does he say in File 17, which he wrote when he was
calm, when he was sitting relaxed somewhere in Argentina?
"Typical wily Jewish machinations," he writes when he learns
that his comrade, Krumey, is going to be tried, or has
become involved in legal proceedings in Germany.  What does
he say - and this he admits, these are passages which were
not contested at all?  What does he say when he hears that
some Jews were saved from his clutches in Hungary?  What is
his reaction in Argentina in 1957?

     "All right, if this is so, it is not on my conscience
     that the Magyar state groans to this day under the yoke
     of Jewish secret policemen.  Wisliceny and Krumey, they
     are the ones whose fault this is."

If he talked like this in Argentina, twelve years after the
end of the War, can there be room for doubt that what
Wisliceny wrote about him, about his expression of "jumping
into the pit," that this is absolutely true?

I would ask Your Honours to remember that we have two
versions about this: Eichmann maintains that in that mood of
"twilight of the Gods" towards the end of the War, he
gathered his soldiers and told them: "The end has come, this
war has cost millions, five million enemies and Germans have
perished.  Now the time has come, now I, too, will jump into
the pit."  What he told you was that he spoke of five
million enemies of the Reich.  Far more than five million
Jews perished, and many millions, more than three times five
millions died in that war, in the effort to destroy the Nazi
monster.  But let us assume that he is not an expert where
figures are concerned.

What enemies did he have?  About what enemies could he have
spoken to his Section, what was the front with which he
dealt?  What enemy did he destroy?  He dealt with only one
enemy - he said so explicitly - with the Jewish enemy, both
he and his officials.  And if he really wanted to give his
people words of encouragement and consolation, or a summing-
up of their work and achievements, before the end, he must
have said: "We have lost, it is true, but our enemies have
also gone down with us."   He has no enemy other than the
Jewish enemy.  This is whom he fought, and this was his
front.  And this is, in fact, what he himself said here
during his examination, that he was speaking about Jews,
about five million Jews, and he said so twice: Once when the
Court showed him that passage in exhibit T/43, and once when
I showed him the passage from his statement which says that
it was a matter of five million Jews.  But he wants to
convince you that he spoke in sorrow about the enemies who
perished.  Let us compare what he said here about the five
million - the five million Jews - with Wisliceny's evidence
stating that he told him, Wisliceny: "It does not matter to
me, I have done my share.  If we have lost the War, I have
not lost my war, and I shall gladly jump into the pit if I
know that I have taken five million Jews with me."  He
actually said these words.

He did not fight the Soviet army or the Western Allies; he
did not fire a single shot against them, nor did he take
part in the battles on the other fronts.  The Reichsfeinde
(enemies of the Reich), of whom he could speak, were Jews.
The six million on his conscience - as he told Grell - were
Jews.  It seems that sometimes he also takes on his
conscience the victims of the Einsatzgruppen, and at other
times he apparently deletes these from his count, and this
is why we move between the figures of five and six
[million], the way he tells it.

To Hoettl he says explicitly: "We finished off six million
Jews."  He states this gladly, not in sorrow, and only once
did he speak with regret, when he talked to Sassen, towards
the end, where he explained to him why he did not finish the
job, why there are still some Jews left.  Of course, today
he denies this vehemently, saying: "One would have had to be
mad to say such things."

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor