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All efforts made to reconcile him with religion failed. “The closer Eichmann came to execution, the more defiant he became in rejecting Christianity.” (Hausner 446) He also rejected the offer of the black hood, saying, “I don’t need that.” He began his last words with the statement that he was a Gottglaubiger, a man who believed in God but was no Christian and did not believe in the afterlife. He continued by saying, “Gentlemen, after a short while, we shall meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, and long live Austria! I shall not forget them.” (Papadatos 232) Then as the trapdoor was sprung and Eichmann’s lifeless body swung from the gallows, a time in world history that few will soon forget, had finally come to an end. Yet, one will realize that although the holocaust was ultimately Hitler’s vision, it was in fact, the creation of Adolf Eichmann. Adolf Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906 near Cologne, Germany, into a middle class Protestant family. His family moved to Austria early in Eichmann’s life, following the death of his mother. He spent his childhood in Linz, Austria, which also is the hometown of Adolf Hitler. As a child, Eichmann was teased about his looks and dark complexion, and was given a nickname by his classmates. He was called “ the little Jew.” After failing to complete his engineering studies, Eichmann had various jobs including working as a laborer in his father’s small mining company, working in sales for an electrical construction company, and he also worked as a travelling salesman for an American oil company. In 1932, at age 26, he joined the growing Austrian Nazi Party, and was sworn in as a member of the SS, thus beginning the infamous military career of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann left Austria and traveled to Berlin, once there, he was attached to the SD, Sicherheitsdienst, the Security Service of the SS under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich. This section of the SS was dedicated to intelligence work. In his original SD post, Eichmann was assigned the task of collecting information on the Freemasons. At this time, Eichmann was convinced that the Freemasons were collaborating with the Jews to dominate the world. Eichmann was a hard worker who was consistently complemented by his superiors. When Heinrich Himmler decided to create his Scientific Museum for Jewish Affairs as a section of the SD, he appointed Eichmann to head this project. After sometime had passed, Eichmann had won the reputation around the Nazi circles as the Party’s leading authority on Jewish affairs. His immediate goal was to combine his work as an intelligence agent with his growing knowledge as an expert on Jews (Papadatos 121). It secretly delighted Eichmann that he discovered in a report filed as “Top Secret” that Hitler’s cook was 1/32 Jewish. (Shirer 189) Being an expert on Jewish affairs, Eichmann was assigned the task of investigating possible “solutions to the Jewish question.” In 1937, he visited Palestine to discuss the possibility of a large-scale immigration of Jews to the Middle East. Then he went to Cairo to meet with Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was known as a Jew hater and a Nazi admirer. Yet, when he tried to return to Palestine, the Palestine Mandate authorities refused to allow him access to Jerusalem. Eichmann then returned to Berlin disappointed in what he classified as an unsuccessful mission. After the Nazi takeover of Austria in March of 1938, Eichmann was sent to Vienna where he created the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. This agency had the sole authority to issue permits to Jews desperately wanting to leave Austria. Eventually, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration became involved in extorting wealth from the Jews in exchange for safe passage. Nearly a hundred thousand Austrian Jews managed to leave with most turning over their worldly possessions to Eichmann’s office. This concept was so successful that similar offices were established in Prague and Berlin. On November 7, 1938, Eichmann was in Vienna when a Polish Jew assassinated Legation Third Secretary, Erwin vom Rath. A nationwide pogrom called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) took place on November 9-10, 1938. Eichmann was ordered by Reinhard Heydrich to lead the raids in Vienna. Eyewitnesses reported that Eichmann was seen moving from one synagogue to another to supervise the destruction. He was described as exhilarated by the assignment (Liverpool 222). Within a few days of Kristallnacht, Eichmann sent his first shipment of Jews to the concentration camps. In June 1940, after the invasion and subsequent fall of France, Eichmann presented his Madagascar Plan, a plan proposing the deportation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar. He would organize a special fleet of German ships to transport four million Jews to Madagascar after paying their own way. Nothing ever came of the proposed Madagascar Plan despite Eichmann’s attempt to make it happen. By the summer of 1941, Eichmann had been promoted to Chief of Subsection IV-B-4 of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the Reich Central Security Office. This is the subsection that was to become the most notorious agency of the Nazi killing apparatus. This is when he was told that the Fuehrer had ordered the physical extermination of the Jews. Eichmann was informed that he was the one chosen to annihilate the remnants of European Jewry. That same winter, Eichmann traveled to Auschwitz to discuss the details for the construction of the largest and most important death camps in Poland. This expert on Jewish affairs had now become the man responsible for the Nazi’s new program of genocide. This program was put into effect at the Wannsee Conference held on January 20, 1942. It was decided that the following would happen: deportation to the East, forced labor, and mass executions. This task would be delegated to Adolf Eichmann, who was elated by the news. In this new post of authority, he set up a network of stations all over Europe. He issued orders to round up Jews, deliver them to transports, and then dispatch them to the East. Once in the camps, the Jews would be worked to death and the survivors executed. Eichmann once said, “The people who were loaded on those trains meant nothing to me. It is really none of my business (Hausner 307).” His business was to set up the destruction of the Jewish people. In the summer of 1944 Himmler ordered Eichmann to write a report detailing the total number of Jews who had either died or been given “special treatment” in extermination camps. Eichmann did not know for certain, he set the figure at approximately six million, four million who had died from natural causes and the rest shot by mobile units. Eichmann’s career in the military ended with the fall of the Third Reich. He was arrested at the end of the war, but managed to escape from an internment camp in the American Zone of Occupation. He then disappeared for fourteen years, until an Israeli team of secret service men captured him in Argentina He was brought to Israel, where he stood trial for crimes against the Jewish people, humanity, and crimes during a time of war. His defense was that: he never acted from base motives, he had never had an inclination to kill anyone, he had never hated Jews, he had only done his duty, and his role in the Final Solution was an accident and almost anybody could have taken his place so that potentially all Germans were equally guilty. The courts found him guilty of producing; “Suffering on so gigantic a scale that it is beyond human understanding. (Shirer 1073)” Shortly after midnight on May 31,1962, Adolf Eichmann was hung outside Ramle. With his death, a time in world history that few will soon forget, had finally come to an end, and one will realize that although the holocaust was ultimately Hitler’s vision, it was in fact, the creation of Adolf Eichmann. Bibliography: Works Cited Harel, Isser. The House on Garlbaldi Street. New York: The Viking Press. 1975. Hausner, Gideon. Justice in Jerusalem. New York: Harper & Row. 1966. Liverpool, Lord Russell of. The Trial of Adolf Eichmann. New York: Alfred A Knopf. 1963. Papadatos, Peter. The Eichmann Trial. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Inc. 1964. Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: MJF Books. 1959. Word Count: 1487
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