Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichmann
SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann
Birth name	Otto Adolf Eichmann
Birth date	19 March 1906(1906-03-19)
Place of birth	Solingen, Rhine Province, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Death date	1 June 1962 (aged 56)
Place of death	Ayalon Prison, Ramla, Israel
Allegiance	National Socialist Germany
Service/branch	Allgemeine SS
Awards	Iron Cross, War Merit Cross

Otto Adolf Eichmann (19 March 1906 - 1 June 1962) was an SS officer involved in Jewish emigrations and later Jewish deportations to so-called Holocaust camps, before and during WWII. After the war, Eichmann was captured by Americans, but managed to escape. In 1950, he left for Argentina. Eichmann was kidnapped by Mossad agents in 1960 and was illegally transported to Israel. His extensively publicized show-trial began in 1961. He was hanged in 1962.

Eichmann and the Holocaust

Adolf Eichmann in his glass cage during the 1961 trial, communicating using microphone and headphones.

Eichmann in his glass cage is sentenced to death.

Overview

See Holocaust testimonial evidence regarding argued general problems with Holocaust trial confessions and in particular the section Holocaust testimonial evidence: The legal strategy of acknowledging the Holocaust while attempting to shift blame, which Holocaust revisionists argue was a frequently used legal strategy by accused National Socialists, and the only one having some small chance of success.

See also the article on Superior orders, a variant of the above legal defense used by several accused National Socialists and also one used by Eichmann.

Eichmann may have been aware that, for example, many of the Einsatzgruppen commanders (who were arguably more directly involved in real or alleged mass killings than Eichmann) who used the superior orders defense in practice had received surprisingly mild punishments. Some SS officers who testified in support of the Allied Holocaust version were not even prosecuted, such as Kurt Becher, a relatively high-ranking SS official involved with the Holocaust camps and Jewish population transfers during the war.

Revisionists have argued that this is the reason for Eichmann's "confessions". Arthur Butz writes that "Eichmann’s fundamental defense, thus, was that he had merely organized the transports of Jews in obedience to orders that could not be disobeyed. In one respect, his defense was partially successful, for his (accurate) picture of himself as a mere “cog in a machine” has been more or less universally accepted by those who have studied and written about this trial. (e.g. Hannah Arendt’s book). Actually, Eichmann inflated himself a bit beyond “cog” status, for a secondary feature of his testimony is that he claimed that he, Eichmann, had done whatever a person as lowly as he could do in order to sabotage the extermination program, and his interpretations of the meanings of many of the documents used in the trial were obviously strained in this respect."

Also non-revisionists state that Eichmann's testimonies contain many lies and fabrications, but they despite this often claim that other statements that support the politically correct Holocaust version are correct.

"Memoirs"

Eichmann is stated to have given politically correct statements on the Holocaust both before and after his capture. In 1956, before his capture, Eichmann was extensively interviewed by an ex-SS man, Willem Sassen, with the intention of producing a biography. Tapes, transcripts, and handwritten notes by Eichmann were produced. These "memoirs" were used after Eichmann's capture by Sassen as the basis for a series of articles that appeared in Life and Der Stern magazines in late 1960.

Eichmann stated regarding this material that the intention was that he and Sassen would be co-authors in order to primarily produce a commercially marketable book, as distinct from a primarily historically accurate one, and that the book would use "poetic license" when Eichmann could not remember details. Eichmann was told to say something on every point, so that necessary quantity could be obtained. Furthermore, in the trial "Original documents were evidently not procured, thus raising the possibility of tampering and editing" and "The defense challenged the accuracy of the documents, claimed that the majority of marginal corrections were not included in the document, and further claimed that if Sassen himself could be brought to court to testify, it could be proved that: “[…] he changed and distorted what was said by the accused, to suit his own aims. He wanted to produce a propaganda book; this can be proved, how the words were distorted.” However, the prosecution assured the court that if Sassen were to come to Israel, he would be put on trial for his SS membership." In regard to the original tapes, the prosecution commented: “We do not know about the tapes themselves – I don’t know whether the people who took part in this conversation kept the tape or whether the tape was erased and re-used for other recordings.”

A revisionist explanation for "confessions" in the "memoirs" is that Eichmann knew that he was being hunted and could soon face trial. His "memoirs" is therefore argued to be a preparation for this trial and to contain various false statements, which would strengthen his defense, such as being a passive receiver of orders, a bureaucrat who took no initiatives and made no decisions, but simply obeyed the orders. Also some non-revisionists have stated that the "memoirs" are consciously calculated attempts at legal defense in court and contains lies.

There is a draft letter dated 1956 and supposedly sent by Eichmann from Argentina to the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, proposing that Eichmann return to Germany to stand trial. Regardless of what happened regarding this proposal, this may strengthen the view that Eichmann in the late 1950s was preparing a defense for a possible future trial, with the interview with Sassen also taking place in 1956.

Examples of argued absurd and false claims

In his "memoirs", Eichmann alleged that in July 1941 he was summoned to Reinhard Heydrich, who allegedly stated that Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler had given the order for the physical destruction of the Jews.

The July 1941 date alleged by Eichmann is today rejected even by most non-revisionists, who today typically allege a later date for the alleged Hitler Holocaust decision and order (and sometimes reject any such order). See Holocaust intentionalism and Holocaust functionalism.

A non-revisionist historian has stated that

"When I have suggested to my colleagues that we must take seriously Eichmann's repeated testimony to the effect that he learned from Heydrich in the fall of 1941 of Hitler's order for the physical destruction of the Jews, I have met with either embarrassed silence or open skepticism. How can I be so gullible? Don't I know that Eichmann's testimony is a useless conglomeration of faulty memories on the one hand and calculated lies for legal defense and self-justification on the other? From it we can learn nothing of value about what actually happened during the war, only about Eichmann's state of mind after the war. These are documents that reveal how Eichmann wished to be remembered, not what he did."

Another example of non-revisionists declaring statements by Eichmann to not be credible is that

In his precapture statements, Eichmann claimed that he saw the alleged homicidal gas chambers of Majdanek, a concentration camp in Poland. Browning informed his readers in 2003 that these “observations” are not credible: “In both precapture accounts, Eichmann’s dating is vague. Furthermore, the claims that gassing was already taking place in this first camp, or that it was Majdanek, are contrary to what we know from other sources. The precapture testimonies, in short, are helpful to neither the historian nor Eichmann’s credibility [p. 23].” In plain language, Eichmann never saw the “gas chambers” he claimed to have seen at Majdanek.

Yet, how many millions of people were convinced of the “existence” of “homicidal gas chambers” after they read this untrue statement from Eichmann’s testimonials that appeared in the November 28 1960, issue of the immensely influential Life magazine. The Eichmann memoirs falsely declared: “It was the latter part of 1941 that I saw the first preparations for annihilating the Jews. General Heydrich ordered me to visit Maidanek [sic], a Polish village near Lublin. A German police captain showed me how they had managed to build airtight chambers disguised as ordinary Polish farmers’ huts, seal them hermetically, then inject the exhaust gas from a Russian U-boat motor. I remember it all very exactly because I never thought that anything like that would be possible, technically speaking.”

According to the Majdanek museum, the alleged gas chambers began to be constructed much later, in August 1942, and was finished in September 1942.

A submarine engine would be a diesel engine. See Holocaust material evidence: Gas vans and gas chambers using diesel exhaust on criticisms of diesel engines as murder weapons.

This statement and others by Eichmann have been as so absurd that they have been seen as a form of covert signalling by Eichmann that his "confessions" were involuntary and false.

A revisionist critique of claims by Eichmann is

Eichmann is unchallenged by interrogator, editors, or translator in a whole series of ludicrous mistakes about the version of the "Holocaust" that currently enjoys the imprimatur of recognized Exterminationist experts. The ex-SS officer claims to have witnessed mass slaughter on a grand scale at Auschwitz in the fall of 1941, where the camp commandant, Rudolf Hoess, informed him that the great, factory-like buildings, the chimneys of which belch smoke, are "working to capacity: Ten thousand!" This months before the Auschwitz crematoria were constructed, let alone in use. In a Cook's tour of mass murder sites which Eichmann claims he took that memorable Fall, on the urging of Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller and Reich Security Main Office head Reinhard Heydrich, he obligingly admits to visiting half a dozen places where killings are already being carried out, including Treblinka – although he's not sure if it's Treblinka where gassings are being carried out with a submarine engine; places near Minsk and Lemberg, where mass shootings are taking place (including one mass grave from which "blood was gushing out ... like a geyser," although it had already been filled in); and again Treblinka (this time there's no doubt: phony railway station and all) where gassings are being carried out with the insecticide Zyklon-B. The gushering geysers are a nice touch, and jibe well with the propensity of other "Holocaust" mass graves to quake and spew forth blood, sometimes for months after the killings; Treblinka, however, is supposed not to have been functioning as an extermination center until the summer of 1942, nor was Zyklon-B ever claimed to have been employed there.

Another revisionist critique:

Take the geysers of blood. At one point, Eichmann narrated being present at a shooting massacre of Jews in Minsk, and, indeed, such an event can be triangulated from a number of sources. But that event leads Eichmann to free associate from another "memory", this time about seeing a mass grave in which the blood from the bodies continues to rise up out of the soil in spurts. This memory is physically impossible, and was probably copped from an SS man's affidavit at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1947, which described how the man once saw clods of dirt sliding down a slope where a mass grave had been dug months before. Of course, no one remembers that story: but everyone remembers Eichmann's version, particularly Elie Wiesel, who managed to embellish even this extravagant tale in one of his schlocky memoirs.

Or take the gas chambers. According to Eichmann, once upon a time he came upon a couple of houses set up like cottages and someone told him these were the gas chambers, and they ran on a submarine engine. Of course, the idea that someone would truck a submarine diesel hundreds of miles into the flatlands of occupied Poland is absurd, but what makes the story interesting is where Eichmann probably got his ideas. The idea of houses set up like cottages is a direct rip off from the famous Becker forgery on gas vans (PS-501) while the idea of using a submarine engine no doubt came from the Gerstein statement which alleged that the hair of the gassing victims was used to make booties for submariners.

Or take the gas vans themselves. We know that the Germans used vans to transport dead bodies to remote locations in order to bury or burn them, but Eichmann was the first to describe extermination gas vans with peepholes in the cab where the driver could watch the people while they were being gassed. Eichmann probably got that riff from the gastight air raid shelter doors that were frequently mistaken for "gas chamber" doors in the postwar period.

The most egregious of the Eichmann narratives concerns Auschwitz, and that must have certainly disappointed the Lipstadt defense team. Although Eichmann adamantly declared that he never saw any gas chambers at Auschwitz, his description of the killing agent at Auschwitz contradicts the standard lore: for Eichmann described not the blue-white kitty litter granules that are always mentioned, but rather the flat wooden beer coaster Zyklon discoids which were only used at Auschwitz in the beginning and whose use was discontinued before any "extermination program", real or imagined, got underway.

Yet another revisionist criticism involve the allegation in the "memoirs" that Jews in ordinary buses were gassed by using engine exhaust. This is argued to be false, since such buses are not airtight and the passengers would have opened or smashed the windows as soon as exhaust fumes entered the interior.

Wannsee Protocol

Eichmann claimed that he was the author of the Wannsee Protocol. However, there is no other evidence for this and it is not mentioned in the protocol. Furthermore, Eichmann's statements was contradictory, in one instance stating that the conference discussed "The various possibilites for killing", but in another instance stating that "there was no specific talk of killing methods".

Holocaust demographics

See the articles on Wilhelm Höttl, Dieter Wisliceny, and Holocaust demographics regarding claims during the Nuremberg trials that Eichmann had confessed specific numbers of Jews killed and on Eichmann later rejecting these claims as well as stating that the Nuremberg demographic claims were impossibly high due to the transportation problems this would have caused.

"The Banality of Evil"

See Holocaust testimonial evidence: "The Banality of Evil" on Eichmann's claimed lack of expressed hatred or guilt, despite the horrible crimes he confessed to, and that has been considered puzzling by politically correct observers.

Possibly false memories

Another revisionist view on Eichmann is that Eichmann may have started to falsely believe the politically correct view on the Holocaust, due to various psychological processes and pressures and may have formed false memories in support of this. Thus, Eichmann has been described as "pliable, he was easily impressed, he was complacent, and anxious to please" and "very impressionable". Eichmann has also been criticized for he himself admitting that he had difficulty distinguishing between politically correct descriptions of the Holocaust that he had read and what he had seen himself. Thus, the Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson testified in court at the second of Ernst Zündel's Holocaust trials on Eichmann. "Faurisson testified that in another portion of Eichmann's testimony, he had been asked about the killing installations in Auschwitz and whether he had seen them. Said Faurisson: "...his answer is 'Oh, yes', and suddenly he says, 'I am not sure I have seen them because I cannot remember the surroundings. Maybe I have been told about that'. Then he says, 'Oh, maybe I have read about that,' and you could see the drama of Eichmann in that place. He didn't remember what he had seen, what he had read, etc. And we understand that because in his jail, he had the right to read people like Poliakov, and exterminationist people and as many, many German, he believed. He said, 'My dear, in Auschwitz, they might have [done] those things after all -- ...That's to give an idea of Eichmann having to answer to those questions. Because you might be surprised to...see how hesitant he is in his answers. And it could be that he is lying. It could be that he is sincere." Faurisson had read in a British newspaper that Eichmann had lived in very, very difficult conditions during his incarceration." Faurisson has also stated that "when Eichmann is asked a question about the gas chambers he doesn't say "gas chambers," he says, "Oh yeah, Höss told me about the murder installations," things like that. And then he says, "Now, wait a minute. I don't remember the circumstances. Maybe I read that, or maybe somebody told me that... this is possible." He was very impressionable, the poor man, even before being taken to Jerusalem. He was impressed by Poliakov and all those stupid people."

Faurisson has also written that "While waiting for his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann, in his cell, was fed like a Christmas goose. He ended up no longer knowing what he had heard, what he had seen, what he had read. Here, for example, is a very important passage from his interrogation by the Israeli government commissioner regarding the ‘gas chambers’ directly from Transcripts, J1-MJ at 02-RM:

“The Commissioner: Did you talk with Höß about the number of Jews who were exterminated at Auschwitz?

Eichmann: No, never. He told me that he had built new buildings and that he could put to death ten thousand Jews each day. I do remember something like that. I do not know whether I am only imaging that today, but I do not believe I am imaging it. I cannot recall exactly when and how he told me that and the location where he told me. Perhaps I read it and perhaps I am now imaging what I had read I heard from him. That is also possible.”

See also Holocaust testimonial evidence: Holocaust confessors believing the argued Allied propaganda

Criticisms of testimonies at the trial

Abba Kovner testifies at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Kovner himself was not prosecuted despite his involvement in a plan to kill six million Germans and other crimes. See Nakam.

The Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt criticized the trial, such as that "eyewitnesses" who testified only rarely were able to distinguish between what actually happened to them years earlier and what they had read, heard or imagined in the meantime.

Alleged "memoirs" given to David Irving

In 1991, David Irving was given an alleged set of "memoirs" by Eichmann, but the authenticity has been questioned.

Focusing public attention on the camps in Poland

By 1960, even politically correct historians had abandoned the claim that mass exterminations of Jews by gassing had occurred in the Western Holocaust camps, as discussed in the article on this topic.

These dramatic developments regarding the Western Holocaust camps were, however, followed by the widely publicized Eichmann trial (1961) and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials (1963-1965), which focused public attention on the camps in Poland.

Argued mysterious circumstances surrounding postwar years and arrest

Eichmann, despite his later notoriety, received little official attention during the early postwar years. He lived undisturbed in Germany until 1950, when he left for Argentina. An arrest order was only issued in 1956. It has been argued that intelligence agencies knew his location since the early 1950s. Eichmann has even been argued to have had contacts with such intelligence agencies. His capture in 1959 has been suggested to have been due to other causes and to have occurred in other ways than those officially stated. Such theories may also state less politically correct explanation for Eichmann's "confessions".

Eichmann's glass cage during the trial

During his trial, Eichmann was enclosed in a glass cage, stated to be for his own protection, speaking to the court through a microphone. Other speculated explanations for this arrangement include that the purpose was to be able to quickly stop Eichmann from communicating if he would start to say something problematic. One suggestion is possibly damning testimony against a number of then-prominent Israeli leaders over collaboration with Eichmann on issues such as Jewish emigration from National Socialist Germany to Palestine that occurred in the 1930s, before WWII started.

Alois Brunner

Alois Brunner, "right hand man to Adolf Eichmann", stated in an interview that he had never heard about the alleged gas chambers during his period of service.

See also

• John Demjanjuk - accused in another well-known trial in Israel

External links

• An Enduring Symbol of Holocaust Evil or Holocaust Falsehood?
• Jewish Conspiracy Theory, the Eichmann Testimony and the Holocaust: Deborah Lipstadt’s Contribution to Holocaust Revisionism
• Was Adolf Eichmann kidnapped by Mossad for his involvement in the Holocaust?
• Eichmann Interrogated: A Review
• The Eichmann Gambit
• Do Not Kill Adolf Eichmann: Selection from "The Case of Adolf Eichmann"
• “Talking Frankly” about David Irving, A Critical Analysis of David Irving's Statement on the Holocaust - Discusses alleged Eichmann memoirs given to Irving in 1991 on page 10
• The Hoax of the Twentieth Century - Chapter 6 Et Cetera: Adolf Eichmann
• The Myth of the Six Million: 9. The Case of Adolf Eichmann
• The Adolf Eichmann Trial

Article archives

• Codoh: Israeli Trials