The Devil's Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes

Eichmann came once a week.

The family had to withdraw, you know, from the living room etc.

because they were going to have this conversation.

But we would open the door and we would listen.

My father recorded all that stuff.

WILLEM SASSEN Belzec 600,000.

Sobibor 250,000.

Treblinka 700,000.

Chelmno 300,000.

Total - 1,850,000.

Concerning the terrible Camp Auschwitz,

its commander Rudolf Höss

stated the number of gassed Jews as 2.5 million.

So, is that correct?

ADOLF EICHMANN From where did you get these things?

- Office of the Reichsführer. - Yes.

- Is there a copy? - Yes.

Let's get rid of this fly here.

It's a fly of Jewish nature.

WOMAN My sister and I

detested the figure.

The persona was so weird.

Trouble.

Always darkness.

There was something about him that...

the child could detect,

something very negative, the child in me.

MAN All rise!

Adolf Eichmann.

The extended arm of Hitler's evil regime.

NARRATOR Nazis have always denied their role in the Holocaust

ADOLF EICHMANN It could not have been me, because it was not my decision in such cases.

NARRATOR After the war, many fled Europe,

including the architect of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann.

He's practically the last important Nazi

who arrived in Argentina after the war.

While hiding in Argentina,

Eichmann records a series of interviews

with Nazi journalist Willem Sassen,

admitting his role in the Holocaust.

Sassen came up with this crazy idea

that he would interview the mastermind of the Holocaust.

This is him boasting about what he did.

But after his capture by Israel,

Eichmann denies everything...

I did not see any murders, I did not see any torture.

I did not know at all at that time such things happened.

NARRATOR Hoping the tapes will never be heard

during his trial in Jerusalem.

One should see to bring the tapes

and if I didn't say it, it will be proven.

Yes.

MAN The story of the Eichmann Trial,

60 years later,

still not fully told.

After mysteriously disappearing for years,

the tapes are rediscovered

and now, for the first time

we'll hear Eichmann admitting his crimes...

a true Nazi confession.

Had we killed 10.3 million Jews,

then I would be satisfied and would say,

good, we exterminated an enemy.

REPORTER I am standing in front of the courtroom

where Eichmann is going to face his judges

and as you see, there are a lot of people already very interested.

People are coming and waiting outside this courtroom.

Eichmann is in one of the rooms

on the fourth floor, we think,

and as you see, it's very heavily guarded, the building.

I don't think there have ever been so many

correspondents and writers, and observers

on any story since the war, not even the Nuremberg Trial.

This trial was of critical importance.

It was the beginning of the process

of the emergence of the Holocaust

from the shadows of history.

The trial begins on the 11th of April.

This man is standing before the court

and also before the many expectations of the audience.

All they heard about the crimes he was accused of

was so extreme that no image of a human befitted them.

MAN All rise!

Case 704061.

The Attorney General of Israel,

Mr. Gideon Hausner against Adolf Eichmann.

DEBORAH LIPSTADT Gideon Hausner was a commercial lawyer.

He was chosen to be Attorney General.

He comes into office

and he is relentless to getting this story out.

GIDEON HAUSNER When I first saw him,

it was only on the day of the trial. I didn't want to see him before.

Shakespeare expressed it in "King Lear,"

"The prince of darkness is a gentleman. "

"The prince of darkness is a gentleman. "

And Eichmann looked like a lowly post office clerk,

someone you could encounter

in an office, on the bus, in the street

and you would walk by him without giving him a second look.

Adolf Eichmann.

Tell him to stand.

You are Adolf, the son of Adolf Karl Eichmann?

Please translate.

Yes.

You are charged before this court

with an indictment containing 15 charges.

Immediately after the outbreak of World War II

the defendant served as Head of the Gestapo in Berlin.

His role was to locate and deport Jews

in Germany and the other Axis countries.

MAN Eichmann, in many ways,

was the Chief Logistical Officer

overseeing deportations of Jewish persons,

largely from Western Europe, to killing centers.

He does this with full awareness

that the result of deporting

is that they're going to be killed.

MOSHE LANDAU Do you plead guilty or not guilty to the first charge?

I plead not guilty as charged.

Quiet.

WOMAN Eichmann refused to accept any guilt on himself.

He was a civil servant,

the laws of Germany are as they are

and he tried to detach himself completely

from the ideological dimension.

GIDEON HAUSNER The defendant caused the slaughter of millions of Jews

as the person in charge of carrying out the Nazis' plan

to physically exterminate all the Jews,

a plan known as "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. "

Eichmann continually insisted

that he was simply following orders.

I plead not guilty as charged.

In the spirit of the charge, not guilty.

NARRATOR Eichmann's appearance in court

and the crimes attributed to him

catch the attention of both the public and the press.

Among the many journalists who go to Israel to cover the trial,

is the famous Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt,

who reports on the proceedings for the New Yorker magazine.

Arendt expects to find a devilish killer

with a strong hatred of Jews,

but surprisingly sees a man whose appearance

does not match the crimes attributed to him.

She describes the moral gap between his bureaucratic demeanor

and the atrocities he committed

with the term "the banality of evil. "

I think Eichmann tricked basically everyone.

We had 400 reporters in the courtroom, like Hannah Arendt,

and I didn't see a single report in which someone said,

"You can tell that he did it. "

Instead, they said, "Wow, who is this?"

NARRATOR So, who is the real Eichmann?

Is he simply a soldier obeying orders

as he presents himself in the Israeli court?

Or is he the fervent Nazi

that Hausner is trying to prove him to be?

The missing evidence, from four years earlier in Buenos Aires,

as he boasts to his fellow Nazis,

reveals the truth.

ADOLF EICHMANN We did what we could.

Had 10.3 million of

these enemies been killed,

then we would have fulfilled our task.

I know that what I am telling you is hard and I will be condemned for it,

but I cannot say it to you otherwise. It is the truth.

Why should I deny it?

Right?

ADOLF EICHMANN Nothing irritates me more than when a fellow

afterwards denies

the things he's done.

Isn't this how it is? You see, after 1945…

NARRATOR On the recordings, Eichmann criticizes other Nazis

captured by the Allies after the war

who deny responsibility for their actions.

To understand Eichmann's rationale

for participating in these conversations,

one needs to examine his character and life after 1945.

In April-May 1945,

there was not much left of the Third Reich.

The Nazis realize it's over

and they're trying to figure out what to do next.

Eichmann must have understood, because of what he did,

that he is wanted by the Allies.

And so he tried to get to an area

still controlled by Nazi forces,

the last holdout, so to speak,

and particularly popular were the mountains of Austria,

the Austrian Alps.

Like many of his fellow Nazis,

Eichmann flees to his former home,

the last stronghold of the Third Reich.

He feels protected there,

but very quickly discovers

he cannot escape his involvement

in the crimes he committed during the war.

Even his own comrades of the SS, his own superiors,

wanted to get rid of him,

because he was so obviously involved

in the mass murder of the European Jews and had blood on his hands.

Eichmann secures forged identity papers