Adolf Eichmann's Letter of appeal

[Laika]

Whilst rather unsettling, I thought this was worth sharing. Below is an English Translation of Adolf Eichmann's letter to Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (President of Israel) on May 29th 1962 the day his appeal was denied. Two days later he was executed. I saw this in the Guardian article first as well as commentary, but decided to find a full copy of the text.

Spoiler: Full Text

To Mister President!

I join the appeal of my defense lawyer and allow myself to point out the following:

The judges made a fundamental mistake in their judgment of me, because they are not able to empathize with the time and situation in which I found myself during the war years. The mistake was caused by the fact that at the time of my trial, only individual documents were presented, which, without being seen in connection with the general documents of the orders, gave an incorrect picture.

It is not true that I was personally of such a high rank as to be able to persecute, or that I myself was a persecutor in the pursuit of the Jews, in the face of such an abundant rule it is clear the judges in their ruling ignored the fact that I never served in such a high position as required to be involved independently in such decisive responsibilities. Nor did I give any order in my own name, but only ever acted “by order of.”

Even had I been as the judges assessed the driving, zealous force in the persecution of the Jews, such a thing would have been evident in my promotion and other awards. Yet I received no such advantages.

It is also incorrect that I never let myself be influenced by human emotions. Specifically after having witnessed the outrageous human atrocities, I immediately asked to be transferred. Also, during the police investigation I voluntarily revealed horrors that had been unknown until then, in order to help establish the indisputable truth.

I declare once again, as I did in the presence of the court: I detest as the greatest of crimes the horrors which were perpetrated against the Jews and think it right that the initiators of these terrible deeds will stand trial before the law now and in the future.

Notwithstanding, there is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders. I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.

I am not able to recognize the court’s ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honor Mr. President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out.

Adolf Eichmann

Jerusalem, 29.5.1962

If I were to take his word for it, I find the fifth paragraph rather jarring and then just plain terrifying given that he was so central in executing the orders and may still have felt so dissociated from "his" actions. I think most people will at least share my incomprehension on that.

Any thoughts?

 

[LuisDantas]

If I were to take his word for it, I find the fifth paragraph rather jarring and then just plain terrifying given that he was so central in executing the orders and may still have felt so dissociated from "his" actions. I think most people will at least share my incomprehension on that.

Any thoughts?

This paragraph?

I declare once again, as I did in the presence of the court: I detest as the greatest of crimes the horrors which were perpetrated against the Jews and think it right that the initiators of these terrible deeds will stand trial before the law now and in the future.

I fail to see what is so surprising about it. People dissociate themselves from the consequences of their actions all the time. That is what makes our current militaries possible, for instance.

 

[Jumi]

I agree with what Luis said above. Atrocities happen and people who participated, supported or were part of the decision making don't take any responsibility for them though they might have fully agreed at the time.

 

[Nietzsche]

Banality of evil and all that, ect. Eichmann is far from the worst example of this. This was a bureaucracy founded for the sole purpose of murdering large groups of people. What the **** are you expecting their appeal letters to be?

 

[RRex]

Adolf Eichmann's Letter of appeal

Thanks for posting this. I've never seen it before.

I'm a serous student of history.

 

[Valjean]

...people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders.

As Luis pointed out, it's this capacity to abdicate personal responsibility for one's actions that makes war possible in the first place.

"just following orders" doesn't make it. Your captain can't take your sins upon himself.

 

[Baladas]

"just following orders" doesn't make it. Your captain can't take your sins upon himself.

This is exactly how I feel about the issue.
I couldn't agree more.

 

[Baladas]

If I were to take his word for it, I find the fifth paragraph rather jarring and then just plain terrifying given that he was so central in executing the orders and may still have felt so dissociated from "his" actions. I think most people will at least share my incomprehension on that.

Any thoughts?

I have never seen someone abdicate responsibility on this kind or scale.
Having aided in orchestrating so many senseless deaths, he sought to further his own life.
It's what we do as human...typically we avoid death as best as we can.

It could be argued that if he had a shred of courage or honor, he would have admitted his crimes and faced his sentence with dignity.
Then again, he was a Nazi. How much honor could be expected of him?

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Whilst rather unsettling, I thought this was worth sharing. Below is an English Translation of Adolf Eichmann's letter to Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (President of Israel) on May 29th 1962 the day his appeal was denied. Two days later he was executed. I saw this in the Guardian article first as well as commentary, but decided to find a full copy of the text.

Spoiler: Full Text

To Mister President!

I join the appeal of my defense lawyer and allow myself to point out the following:

The judges made a fundamental mistake in their judgment of me, because they are not able to empathize with the time and situation in which I found myself during the war years. The mistake was caused by the fact that at the time of my trial, only individual documents were presented, which, without being seen in connection with the general documents of the orders, gave an incorrect picture.

It is not true that I was personally of such a high rank as to be able to persecute, or that I myself was a persecutor in the pursuit of the Jews, in the face of such an abundant rule it is clear the judges in their ruling ignored the fact that I never served in such a high position as required to be involved independently in such decisive responsibilities. Nor did I give any order in my own name, but only ever acted “by order of.”

Even had I been as the judges assessed the driving, zealous force in the persecution of the Jews, such a thing would have been evident in my promotion and other awards. Yet I received no such advantages.

It is also incorrect that I never let myself be influenced by human emotions. Specifically after having witnessed the outrageous human atrocities, I immediately asked to be transferred. Also, during the police investigation I voluntarily revealed horrors that had been unknown until then, in order to help establish the indisputable truth.

I declare once again, as I did in the presence of the court: I detest as the greatest of crimes the horrors which were perpetrated against the Jews and think it right that the initiators of these terrible deeds will stand trial before the law now and in the future.

Notwithstanding, there is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders. I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.

I am not able to recognize the court’s ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honor Mr. President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out.

Adolf Eichmann

Jerusalem, 29.5.1962

If I were to take his word for it, I find the fifth paragraph rather jarring and then just plain terrifying given that he was so central in executing the orders and may still have felt so dissociated from "his" actions. I think most people will at least share my incomprehension on that.

Any thoughts?

Hmm...I don't find him particularly terrifying, to tell the truth. He was a tool. Based on what I've read, I don't think he particularly hated the Jews, I just think he was able to mentally disassociate himself from reality. People buying expensive shoes made in sweat shops do this all the time.

To be clear, I wouldn't for a second have considered pardoning him. It was his choice to disassociate and allow such great evil to happen without much pause. He may not have been a driving force behind Jewish genocide, but he was happy to grease the wheels and ignore his conscience. Or not have one. In either case, good riddance to bad rubbish.

 

[Nietzsche]

Hmm...I don't find him particularly terrifying, to tell the truth. He was a tool. Based on what I've read, I don't think he particularly hated the Jews, I just think he was able to mentally disassociate himself from reality. People buying expensive shoes made in sweat shops do this all the time.

To be clear, I wouldn't for a second have considered pardoning him. It was his choice to disassociate and allow such great evil to happen without much pause. He may not have been a driving force behind Jewish genocide, but he was happy to grease the wheels and ignore his conscience. Or not have one. In either case, good riddance to bad rubbish.

He showed no greater anti-semitism than any other person in 20th century Europe. Eichmann was just a careerist. Nothing more and nothing less. The government that held power a few decades prior would've had him granting or taking visas, dealing with the logistics of over-seas colonies, or enforcing immigration standards. Someone who just stamped papers. It just so happened that in this instance, those papers were about the forced relocation and, from 43 onward, the deliberate destruction of groups of people.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

He showed no greater anti-semitism than any other person in 20th century Europe. Eichmann was just a careerist. Nothing more and nothing less. The government that held power a few decades prior would've had him granting or taking visas, dealing with the logistics of over-seas colonies, or enforcing immigration standards. Someone who just stamped papers. It just so happened that in this instance, those papers were about the forced relocation and, from 43 onward, the deliberate destruction of groups of people.

Yup, that was always my take on it. A bureaucrat, basically.

 

[LuisDantas]

Same here.

A few months ago I learned from a visitation to the local Museum of the Holocaust that the German soldiers felt a psychological toll from enforcing their orders. That was actually used as an official justification for conscripting Jewish people in the concentration camps to be involuntary enforcers in their place.

Cruelty is easy to sell, when it is wrapped in a veneer of duty and bonding against a common threat or enemy and called by names that evoke a sense of duty and union.

 

[Nietzsche]

Same here.

A few months ago I learned from a visitation to the local Museum of the Holocaust that the German soldiers felt a psychological toll from enforcing their orders. That was actually used as an official justification for conscripting Jewish people in the concentration camps to be involuntary enforcers in their place.

It should be stated that Germany or at least Northern Germany(Prussia, basically) had a bit of a problem. Traditionally, a soldier(from conscript to field-marshal) did not question orders from the Head of State. This made them incredibly good at their tasks because they'd do it to the best of their ability without defiance. This was also true of the civil service. Service to the State was held as a high ideal.

When the state in question is not, well, cartoonishly evil that doesn't really make many problems. Nazi Germany is what happens when the state is cartoon-evil.

 

[LuisDantas]

When the state in question is not, well, cartoonishly evil that doesn't really make many problems. Nazi Germany is what happens when the state is cartoon-evil.

I take it that you do not believe that such a state of things leads to the state becoming cartoon-evil, then?

Because I sure do.

 

[ShivaFan]

Not "all of them are bad" in any collective action, be it from the Mickey Mouse Club to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Not "all of them" ever, even the Khmer Rouge.

Some NAZIs might have been good people. They just signed that membership card in 1929 or in 1932 or in 1939 or whatever because they admired the German workers and were angry over losing the war (WWI) and the economy went really bad in Germany due to the reparations and inflation went nuts, and it gets really cold in Berlin when you are an unemployed soldier thrown in the streets without a warm jacket and you have seered lungs from mustard gas and try to make a living hanging wallpaper or selling charcoal pencil sketches on the street, or can only get a job with the government monitoring opposition political parties and clean underpants cost 40,000 Marks and stuff.

But anyone, myself included, knows, if you get involved in some collective action and you realize that some bad stuff is going on coming from orders on high, and you are at any "middle management" position, and there is no guarantee your side is going to win but you stay with it even if you get a "transfer", that no matter if you were just a nice person who wanted to do good for comrades, well when the **** hits the fan you are likely to get the gowl and especially if you are middle management, in fact middle management always gets it first.

So be a man Eich and stop making excuses.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I take it that you do not believe that such a state of things leads to the state becoming cartoon-evil, then?

Because I sure do.

That's an interesting comment.
*ponders*

It is an enabler of evil, I guess, but whether it causes evil...I don't see it. But I'll have a think, since it's worth examination.

 

[Valjean]

George Bernard Shaw had an interesting equation concerning decency, intelligence and Nazism in the Third Reich:
If a man were Intelligent and a Nazi, he was not decent.
If decent and a Nazi, he was not intelligent.
If decent and intelligent, he was no Nazi.

 

[Nietzsche]

George Bernard Shaw had an interesting equation concerning decency, intelligence and Nazism in the Third Reich:
If a man were Intelligent and a Nazi, he was not decent.
If decent and a Nazi, he was not intelligent.
If decent and intelligent, he was no Nazi.

I assume "Nazi" here means "died in the wool Nazi" and not "joined the party for fringe benefits"?

 

[Nietzsche]

I take it that you do not believe that such a state of things leads to the state becoming cartoon-evil, then?

Because I sure do.

But it didn't. There was a whole period in Germany between the fall of the Kaiserreich and the rise of the NSDAP. It took many, many other factors unrelated to the way the Reich was ruled for them to take power. Hitler had the devil's luck, and to be frank that seems to have had more to do with the success of the NSDAP than anything else.

 

[Laika]

Banality of evil and all that, ect. Eichmann is far from the worst example of this. This was a bureaucracy founded for the sole purpose of murdering large groups of people. What the **** are you expecting their appeal letters to be?

I expect to read it and hear something else. If its something you read when its someone who is all fire and rage, hate and fury, it makes "sense". it fits the sterotype more, but then you have to start to question that and ask again what makes a person commit mass murder. instead, his letter it is so mundane, so pathetic and yet so grossly dissconnected from his own experiences and personal history. you'd at least expect someone to believe in what they are doing as "right". the only way that shows at all- is in the complete self-denial and submission to authority but there is no discernable sense of "self" there. only a wretched moral cripple devoid of comprehension of his own actions. "a mere instrument" as he put it.

of course, in the therapists chair- that wouldn't be the whole story of what's going on behind the mask. I can only guess on that though.

This paragraph?



I fail to see what is so surprising about it. People dissociate themselves from the consequences of their actions all the time. That is what makes our current militaries possible, for instance.

You'd think that great crimes demand great men, monsterous as they are, you expect to see a monster. that the crime is an act of will and conviction. Instead you have a "nobody" who prides himself on being a "nobody". that doesn't strike you as "odd"?