The Eichmann Trial (16 page)

Hausner soon suffered another public blow. As he was jousting with Eichmann, Servatius rose to object. Hausner turned to him and rather derisively said, “I would ask the Counsel for the Defense not to interfere in the course of the cross-examination.” Landau immediately interceded: “Mr. Attorney General, you do not know yet what Counsel for the Defense wants to say.” Then, sounding as if he were explaining courtroom procedure to a novice, he added, “This occurs in trials every day.” Even though the judges rejected Servatius’s objection, it was not a good moment for Hausner: he had won on content but lost on stature. It is hard to explain his outburst, given that even novice courtroom-watchers knew that such interruptions occur in a trial. Hausner may have unconsciously considered himself as more aligned
with
the judges than appearing
before
them. In fact, giving the lie to any notion that this was a “show trial,” throughout the proceedings the judges clashed with Hausner. They had a far more traditional perception of the structure and limitations of the trial. Hausner wanted to tell the entire story of the Final Solution. They wanted a narrowly constructed judicial proceeding that focused on Eichmann’s misdeeds, whereas Hausner wanted a broad educational exercise. They thought they were in charge; sometimes Hausner acted as if he was. This was not a result of Hausner’s limited courtroom experience. It was a reflection of two conflicting perspectives on the goal of the proceedings. The judges’ primary objective was to conduct a scrupulously fair legal proceeding that would win the respect of the world. Hausner’s goal was to tell the story of the Holocaust in all its detail and, in so doing, to capture the imagination not just of Israel’s youth and world Jewry, but of the entire world. Landau’s frequent admonitions of Hausner and Eichmann’s refusal to capitulate illustrate just how much of this case was out of the Israeli government’s—read Ben-Gurion’s—control.
¹⁴

Hausner soon regained his footing. Eichmann had insisted that the notation
“im Auftrage”
(“by order of”), which appeared on each of his letters, demonstrated that “I had received the order … [and] was acting … on behalf of someone else.” Hausner pointed out that Gestapo protocol stipulated that all correspondence include “i.A.”—a required formula, it signified nothing. Then, yet again, Hausner pushed too far. He introduced a letter Heydrich had written shortly after Wannsee. “Since happily now the basic design has been established with regard to the practical implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question … I would ask you to instruct your official in charge to contact my Specialist Officer responsible for this matter, SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.” Did this not demonstrate, Hausner asked, that Heydrich gave Eichmann a “free hand … to run Jewish affairs as he saw fit …?” Once again Hausner overplayed his hand. Eichmann was Heydrich’s “Specialist Officer” and, as such, handled many aspects of the Final Solution, but certainly not all of them, and, contrary to Hausner’s contentions, he did not run Jewish affairs as he saw fit.
¹⁵
The documents in Hausner’s hands proved that and nothing more.

Hausner was at his strongest when he maintained a steady pace and did not let himself be drawn into extended exchanges. A report submitted to Ribbentrop regarding the fate of Italian and Greek Jews began with the words “In the opinion of the Reich SS Leader—SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.” Hausner asked Eichmann to explain this. After claiming that the Foreign Office wanted him to provide “a concrete expression” of Himmler’s wishes, Eichmann tried to segue into a discourse on the transmission of information. Hausner stopped him. “Look at the document—this does not refer to any concrete expression of wishes.” Rather lamely, Eichmann tried to shift the discussion to the deportation of Greek Jewry and argued that he had had no hand in that. Hausner stayed on point. “In an official document, which dates from the time of the War, at a time when no one could have intended to shift any blame on you, an official body describes you in a document submitted to Ribbentrop as the Reich SS Leadership [sic] in Jewish Affairs. How can you contest it?” Abandoning his claim that the Foreign Office wanted a “concrete expression” of Himmler’s views, Eichmann contended that he did not need to contest the report because it was a “mistake and erroneous.” A somewhat skeptical Judge Landau asked for clarification. If the attorney general was wrong, “then how and why does your name appear in the document?” Now Eichmann, rather lamely, claimed that this was a matter of “bureaucratic sloppiness.” He had “passed on the information”; hence his name was mentioned. Hausner, having made his point, could have stopped here. Instead, he began to taunt Eichmann. Did he expect people to believe he was just “a messenger boy, a megaphone when the Foreign Ministry called you Reichsführung-SS?” It was Judge Halevi who, without taunts or sarcasm, cut to the heart of the matter. He called Eichmann’s attention to one word. The document did not say, “According to information from the Reich SS Leadership; it says ‘In the
opinion
of’. How do you explain this?” In what seemed like a reflexive action, Eichmann blamed Rademacher, the Ministry of Justice official who had dictated the document: he was a “very slipshod bureaucrat.”
¹⁶

Some court watchers kept waiting for Hausner to elicit from Eichmann an unambiguous admission of guilt and contended that because he never did, he failed. They thought that Hausner should “give up” because Eichmann was besting him.
¹⁷
In fact, these exchanges revealed Eichmann to be both a wily and a desperate man, ready to pile excuse on top of excuse. As I read them, I was reminded of David Irving’s behavior at my own trial. When my barrister presented him with a document that conclusively demonstrated that he had misrepresented the truth—that is, lied—he would initially try to reinterpret it. When that failed, as it invariably did, he would cite other documents to try to prove his point. When they, too, contradicted his version of events, he would try yet some other avenue of escape. When all had failed and he was completely boxed in by the evidence, he would turn to the judge and, with a shrug of his shoulders, declare, “I made a mistake.” He repeatedly engaged in this dance. Every author makes mistakes, but this, we pointed out to the court, was different. Rather than move, as genuine mistakes do, in numerous directions, Irving’s so-called mistakes
always
moved in one direction: denial of the Holocaust, exonerations of the Third Reich, and implication of the Jews. As these putative mistakes piled up, it became clear to all—except possibly to Irving—that they were hardly inadvertent. It certainly was evident to Judge Gray, who, in his lengthy judgment, declared that Irving’s “falsification of the historical record was deliberate.” So, too, with Eichmann. The more Eichmann piled one excuse on top of another—“it was a mistake,” “this is a forgery,” or “this is the work of a sloppy bureaucrat”—the more he sounded like a drowning man grasping at straws, and the more it must have been clear to the judges that this man would say anything if he thought it would clear him.

Hausner kept the pressure on. One document spoke of Eichmann as “the person who could have given me details about the persecution of the Jews.” Yet another mentioned, “There was a special apparatus for all extermination … matters.… And the Chief of the operation was SS Obersturmführer Eichmann.” Finally, after having laid out an array of such documents in which high-ranking Nazis referred to his “special assignment” regarding Jewish matters, Hausner asked whether these high-ranking Nazi officials “are all lying and only you are telling the truth.” Eichmann’s response—“I am basing myself on the documents”—sounded rather unpersuasive. Hausner scored again when he challenged Eichmann’s claim that his subordinates stationed in other countries took their orders from the German officials there. Eichmann contended that if they did have a hand in murderous activities, responsibility rested with their superiors in the particular country, and not with him. Why, then, Hausner wondered, had he referred in various documents to “my office in Paris,” “my office in Oslo,” and, regarding The Hague, “my office”? Why, Hausner asked, all these “my office”s if he did not decide anything? With that simple exchange, yet another of Eichmann’s claims collapsed.
¹⁸

Without digressing or engaging in histrionics, Hausner kept the interrogation moving at a steady pace. In September 1943, the Foreign Office asked Eichmann about the status of a Jewish woman then interned in the Netherlands. She was married to an Italian Catholic, and the Italians wanted her returned to Italy. Eichmann responded that, given Italy’s recent withdrawal from the war, there was no reason to agree. “I have therefore instructed my office in The Hague to transfer the Simons woman immediately to the East.” Hausner observed that Eichmann had simply been asked about her status. Yet he had responded by having her deported. Hausner next took note of the dissonance between Eichmann’s claim that he was an officer of low rank, and a 1942 request by SS officials in Paris that he “induce” the Wehrmacht’s High Command to instruct its officers in France to supply army escorts for deportations. Why would SS officials assume that he could influence high-ranking army officers? What, Hausner asked, did that have to do with you? Eichmann began a discourse on the French deportations. Hausner cut him off. “But why to you?” Eichmann claimed they had asked him because it was a “transport matter.” Yet, Hausner reminded him, he had earlier denied any connection to the escorts who accompanied the deportations. Why did they come to him? “Why you of all persons?” Hausner offered yet another example that seemed to belie Eichmann’s claims of lowly status. At the end of September 1943, the Foreign Office approached him regarding the refusal of the senior commander of German forces in Denmark to permit his forces to assist in operations against Jews. (The reasons for his stance are open to some debate.) Hausner, clearly aware that he was drawing blood, asked, “How did you influence the High Command of the Armed Forces?” In Belgium, the military governor, an army officer who disliked Nazi extremism, initially refused to introduce the obligatory wearing of the Jewish badge. Eichmann was instructed to break down the military governor’s opposition. How, Hausner asked, did he “get the military to bend, to go along with you?”
¹⁹
Eichmann’s answers were all variations on a theme:
I was just passing along requests
. The more he repeated it, the less persuasive it sounded, and the less he looked like a low-level bureaucrat.

Finally, Hausner turned to Hungary. In light of Eichmann’s denial of having devised the foot marches from Budapest, whose horrific condition dismayed even high-ranking Nazis, Hausner asked him to explain a note he had written on one of the edited pages of the Sassen tapes: “In accordance with my proposal … I had them march from Budapest to the Lower Austrian border on a foot march.” Unable to explain away this clear-cut statement, Eichmann insisted that he had handled only the technical aspects of the march. Continuing to draw on Eichmann’s edits from the Sassen transcripts, Hausner read Eichmann’s gleeful boasts about how well the deportations went in Hungary, and how the “Hungarian Government set such a pace!” He had told Sassen that, even when the Allies bombed the railway stations “to smithereens,” he had remained resolved to “show my iron fist to the Allies,” and that, despite the Allies’ attempt to “destroy the lines of communication to the Reich and bomb them to pieces,” he remained resolved to “still march” the Jews.
²⁰

Hausner’s cross-examination lasted two weeks. Again, some observers contended that, because Hausner never got Eichmann to specifically and unambiguously acknowledge his guilt, Eichmann “won on points.” But even if an unequivocal admission of guilt might have provided some observers with psychic satisfaction, on a forensic level it was of limited value. How significant would an admission of guilt be, coming from a man who had willingly participated in a murder program, then claimed he was not responsible because he was following orders, and then subsequently lied about what he did? Despite sometimes badgering Eichmann in a clumsy and inelegant fashion, and holding him responsible for acts to which he was not connected, Hausner had presented an overwhelming body of incriminating evidence to prove that Eichmann’s excuses were shams. He demonstrated that Eichmann had a very good memory: he remembered his salary when he trained at Dachau; he recalled the special brandy a colleague had served him; even his own lawyer marveled that he remembered what he had eaten at a 1934 SS dinner—but not the number of Jews he’d forced into deportation trains.
²¹

Hausner’s “failure” to get Eichmann to admit his guilt reminded me, yet again, of what happened during my legal battle. Before the trial, many people expressed the hope that my lawyers would get David Irving to acknowledge that his claims about the Holocaust were lies. I told one such person that I did not anticipate Irving would fall on his sword in such a fashion. Moreover, I added, startling him a bit, I didn’t think it mattered. What value was there to an admission from a man who so consistently manipulated and lied about evidence? Expressions of contrition from people who brazenly lie even when confronted by evidence to the contrary are of limited value. Today they might admit their guilt. Tomorrow they might deny it. And on the next day they might redefine their retraction. Comparisons between these two men are, of course, limited. It is one thing to trample on the truth, and quite another to trample on human lives as Eichmann did. Yet, ultimately, there is a link between those who perpetrated these horrors and those who deny them. One of the first things that became clear to me as I immersed myself in the sewer that is denial was that, even though according to deniers’ absurd logic, the Holocaust is a myth, the Jews’ nefarious behavior made them nevertheless deserving of being destroyed. In short, it did not happen, but the Nazis would have been justified if they had made it happen. During my trial, David Irving’s historical lies and distortions shocked me less than the delight he seemed to take in denigrating, attacking, and ridiculing Jews. The indispensable element of the ideology of both perpetrators
and
deniers is a deep-seated Jew hatred. Not all expressions of anti-Semitism are the same, but these two men seemed to me to share a similar worldview.