As Israel marks the 50th anniversary of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, new documents and witness accounts are coming to light in Germany that reveal more details about the postwar life of the Nazi war criminal right up to his capture by the Mossad.
Over the weekend, the German weekly Der Spiegel published a transcript of a tape recording in which Eichmann, who lived in Argentina after the war, can be heard bragging to his friends about his role in the Holocaust. Eichmann is even heard expressing regret for not being able to complete the task.
“We didn’t do our work correctly,” he said. “There was more that could have been done.”
In the recording, Eichmann, who masterminded the expulsion and transfer of millions of Jews from their homes to the death camps, contradicts statements he later made in his defense during his 1961 trial in Jerusalem. Eichmann was found guilty and executed.At his trial, Eichmann’s attorneys claimed that he was a low-level cog in the Nazi system who simply followed orders. “It was not my desire to kill people,” he said. “The mass murder is the fault of the political leaders only.”
Yet Eichmann is heard on the tape saying: “I was no ordinary recipient of orders. If I had been one, I would have been a fool. Instead, I was part of the thought process. I was an idealist.”
The conversation is purported to have taken place in a Buenos Aires suburb between Eichmann and two friends who were also former Nazis. The recording is being kept in the German Federal Archives.
