MEMOIRS PART I

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200520018-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 62
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 25, 2000
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: November 1, 1960
• Content Type: NOTES

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MEMOIRS : PART ONE
Row much time fate allows me to live, I do not know. I do know that
someone must inform this generation and the next about the happenings
of my era. I am writing this story at a time when I am in full pos-
session of my physical and mental freedom, influenced or pressed by
no one. May future historians be objective enough not to stray from
the path of the true facts recorded here.
I have slowly tired of living as an anonymous wanderer between
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first Nurnberg trial, my most treated subordinate testified against
me. So did others. Perhaps these people referred to me in order
to whitewash, themselves. But when such a thing goes on for years
and everyone joins in, thus fixing the blame for past deeds, a legend
is created in which 'exaggeration plays a large part.
In actual fact, I was merely a little cog in the machinery
that carried out the directives and orders of the German Reich. I
am neither a murderer nor a mass-murderer. I am a man of average
good qualities, and many faults. I was not the "czar of the Jews,"
as a Paris newspaper once called me, nor was I responsible for all
the good and evil deeds done against them. Where I was implicated
in the physical annihilation of the Jews, I admit my participation
freely and without pressure. After all, I was the one who transpor-
ted the Jews to the camps. If I had not transported them, they would
never have been delivered to the butcher.
Yet what is there to "admit?" I carried out my orders. It
would be as pointless to blame me for the whole Final Solution of
the Jewish Problem as to blame the minister who was in charge of the
railroads over which the Jewish transports traveled. Where would we
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do that today in the new German army. But with us an order was an
order. if I had sabotaged the order of the one-time Fuhrer of the
German Reich, Adolf Hitler, I would have been not only a scoundrel
but a despicable dog, like those who broke their military oath to
join the ranks of the anti-Hitler criminals in the conspiracy of
July 20, 1944.
At the Nurnberg trials the world was given a new interpreta-
tion of justice. Not one Russian, no Israeli, no Englishman or North
American was punished in even a single instance because he carried
out commands given to him while he was in an official position or
under military oath. Why should the gallows or the penetentiary be
reserved for Germans only?
But I am getting ahead of my story. It is time to outline my
rank and duties in the events which I shall discuss, and to intro-
duce myself.
Enme: Adolf Otto Eichmann
Nationality: German
Occupation: Lieutenant Colonel SS (retired).
The area of my section's authority was those Jewish matters
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the problems of finding out whether a person was a Gentileor a Jew,
If he turned out to be a Jew, we were the administrative authority
which deprived him of his German citizenship, confiscated his pro-
perty and declared him an enemy of the state. After the one-time Ger-
man Fuhrer gave the order for the physical annihilation of the Jews,
our duties shifted. We supervised Gestapo seizures of German Jews
and the trains tk took them to their final destination. Throughout
Europe my advisers from my office saw to it that the various local
government turned their Jewish citizens over to the German Reich.
For all this, of course, I will answer. I was not asleep during the
war years.
LINESPACE
I began my work with the Jewish question in 1935, after I was trans-
ferred to Berlin after service with one of the first SS training
companies. At the beginning my work was extremely dull, running what
ultimately became a huge card-index of Jews, Freemason, members of
various secret societies and other subversive elements in the Reich.
Soon, however, I found myself in charge of the Reich government's in-
vestigations on the Jewish problem alone.
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apathy of an ox being led to his stall. On the contrary, I was
fascinated with it. My first chief, General Reinhard Heydrich, en-
couraged me to study and acquaint myself even with its theological
aspect. In the end I learned to speak Hebrew, although badly.
Some of my early work was with the Nurnberg Laws, in force
since 1935. Under the formula adopted at that time for "Final Sol-
ution of the Jewish Question," the laws were intended to drive Jews
out of all phases of German life. My experience in this field was
often of a confidential and rather embarrassing nature--as when I
cf: brackets established that the Fuhrer's mistress (Eva Braun), who was officially
listed as his diet cook, was 1/32nd Jewish. My chief, General Muller,
immediately classified my report as Top Secret.
In 1937, after I had been struggling with Hebrew for two years,
I had the chance to take a trip to Palestine. We were most inter-
ested in the Palestine emigration, and I wanted to find out at what
point the new Jewish state in Palestine might be set up. Unfortun-
ately' Palestine was then in turmoil, and the British turned down
my application for an extended stay. I did see enough to be very
impressed by the way the Jewish colonists were building up that caun-
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was myself an idealist.
In the years that followed I often said to Jews with whom I
had dealings that, had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical
Zionist. I could not imagine being anything else. In fact, I would
have been the most ardent Zionist imaginable.
In those days before the outbreak of the war, the former gov-
ernment of the Reich hoped to solve the Jewish problem by forced emi-
gration. This was easier said than done, since one had to reckon
here the difficulty of emigration as a mass project. The Jewish or-
ganizations with the widest experience in this had already been closed
I
down as unacceptable to the government. There was also a tendency
among many Jews to wait it out on the theory that the Hitler regime
would be of short duration. Of the 500,000 practicing Jews who were
in Germany in 1933, plus a number who were considered Jews under
the Nurnberg Laws, not more than 130,000 managed to leave before 1938.
In the same year, at the reunion of Austria with the German
Reich, SS General Heydrich gave me the order, in my capacity as a
specialist in Jewish affairs, to go to Vienna to set the Jewish emi-
gration in motion there.
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Jewish organizations had already been closed down by the police and
their leaders put under arrest. To speed up the emigration process,
I called in the local Jewish leaders and established a central of-
fice for Jewish emigration. It was located in the Rothschild Palace
on Prinz Eugen Street.
As with the other similar central offices, the Vienna office
permitted emigrating Jews'to take all their household goods with
them. For the custody and administration of Jewish property, so-called
administrative and accounting centers were later created, which worked
with splendid thoroughness. Reichsfuehrer Himmler, who surprisingly
enough often busied himself with the smallest detailscf the Jewish
problem, personally set up the strict administrative standards which
were observed in this field. In Vienna alone we were then preparing
about 1,000 Jews daily for emigration.
One of the most useful of the Jewish cit'ficials in those days
was a Dr. Storfer, a senior civil servant who had been a major in
the Austrian army in World War I. I had a weakness for this Dr. Storfer.
He never took a pfenning from his racial comrades and he had a very
nice, proper way of negotiating. Unfortunately, years later Storfer
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never liked him and he had him shot at Auschwitz.
In general, we respected Jewish veterans of World War I like
Storfer. We even had some Jewish SS men who had taken part in the
early struggles of the Nazis--about 50 of them in Germany and Austria.
I remember giving my personal attention to a Jewish 5S sergeant, a
good man, who wanted to leave for Switzerland. I had instructed the
the border control to let his passport through, but when he reached
the Swiss border, he apparently thought something had gone wrong.
He tried to cross illegally through the woods and he was shot. He
was a 100% Jew, a man of themost honorable outlook.
LINESPACE
Through all this period I saw the Jewish problem as a question to be
solved politically. It was not a matter of emotion. My comrades
in the SS and I rejected the crude devices of burning temples and
stores and maltreating Jews on the streets. We wanted no violence.
One of my former officers was expelled from the SS for beating up
four or five Jews in the cellar of our offices. Barring such excep-
tions, each of us, as an individual, had no wish to harm the indi-
vidual Jew personally.
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small incident in which I myself violated this code of correctness.
one day I had a visit from Dr. Richard Loewenherz, whom I made dir-
ector of the Israelite Community in Vienna. He answered my ques-
tions with evasions and, I believe, untruth. Owing to a temporary
lack of self-control, I hit him in the face. I mentioned this affair
to Dr. Loewenherz later in the presence of some of my subordinates
and expressed my regrets to him over the matter.
As late as 1940, after we beat the French, we were divising
plans for further mass emigration of the Jews to Madagascar. I had
my legal experts draft a complet6 law covering the resettlement of
Jews there on territory which was to be declared Jewish. They would
live there without restraint, except, of course, that they would be
under the protectorate of the German Reich. Unfortunately by the
time the obstacles created by bureaucracy for this plan had been over-
come, the scales of victory were balanced in such a way that Madag-
ascar was out of our grasp.
The continuance of the war finally changed our attitude on emi-
gration entirely. In 1941 the Fuhrer himself ordered the physical
annihilation of the Jewish enemy. What made him go on to this extreme
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measure do no ow. or one thing a war in Russia was not going
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along in the blitz fashion he had planned. The ruinous struggle on
two fronts had begun. And already Dr. Chaim Weizmann had declared
war on the German people in the name of Jewry. It was inevitable
that the answer of the Fuhrer would not be long in coming.
Soon after the order General Heydrich called me to his office
in the Prinz-Albertstrasse. He told me about Reichsfuhrer Himmler's
order that all emigration of J we was to be prohibited--with no more
exceptions. He assured me that the Gestapo and the Security Service
would not have anything to do with the physical liquidation. We would
act only aspolicemen; that is, we would round up the Jews for the
others.
By this time the formula "Final Solution for the Jewish Ques-
tion" had taken on a new meaning: liquidation. In this new sense
we discussed it at a special conference on Jan. 20, 1942 in the
Wannsee.section of Berlin. Although Himmler and Heydrich were to
preside, I myself drafted Heydrich's speech to the gathering. And
it was I who had to bustle over to Heydrich with the portfolio of
invitations on which he scribbled his "Heydrich," stroke for stroke.
So we sent out the whole thing. Only a few people had declined to
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After the conference, as I recall, Heydrich, Mullerand your
humble servant sat cozily around a fireplace. I noticed for the
first time that Heydrich was smoking. Not only that, but he had
a cognac. Normally he touched nothing alcoholic. The only other
time I had seen him drinking was at an office party years before.
We all had drinks then. We sang songs. After a while we got up
on the chairs and drank a toast, then on the table and then round
and round--on the chair andon the table again. Heydrich taught it
to us. It was an old North German custom.
After our Wannsee Conference, however, we sat around peacefully,
not just talking shop but to give ourselves a rest after so many
taxing hours.
It is not true that Reichsfuhrer Himmler, set down in writing
anything ordering the annihilation of the Jews. Do you think he sat
down to write, "My dear Eichmann, the Fuhrer has ordered the physi-
cal annihilation of all Jews?" The truth is that Himmler never set
down a line in writing on this subject. I know that he always gave
his instructions orally to TITLE KOMING Pohl, who ran the concentra-
tion camps. I never received any order of this sort.
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gave a single annihilation order. We were responsible only for de-
portation. In every European country under our control we would
first organize a roundup of the Jews. It was then the job of the
Jewish Adviser (the representative of my office) to work through
his local superiors until he had attained our goal: final delivery
to the transports.
I had Captain Richter sitting in Bucharest. Captain Wislis-
ceny in Pressburg (Bratislava), Dannecker in Paris.. Burger in Athens,
etc. All these Jewish Advisers enjoyed the greatest respect, for
each of them was really the long arm of Himmier himself. Although
I myself hhd a relatively low rank, I was the only department head
in the Gestapo or Security Service with my own representatives in
foreign countries. If one of my specialists got in trouble with a
local commander, he need only come to Berlin to report. I would
then have my Bureau chief, General Muller, give the necessary or-
ders. Muller was more feared than Reichsfuhrer Himmler.
I carefully set up my time tables for the transports with the
Reichs Ministry of Transportation, and the trains were soon rolling.
But through tye years we met many difficulties. In France the French
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project, the Laval government itself became more and more cautious.
Italy and Belgium were by and large failures. And in Holland the
battle for the Jews was especially hard and bitter. The Dutch, for
one thing, did not make the distinction between Dutchmen and Jews
with Dutch citizenship. A person was either Dutch, they said, or he
wasn't. Denmark posed the greatest difficulties of all. Even the
king intervened for the Jews there, and most of them escaped.
Yet we managed after a struggle to get the deportations going.
Trainloads of Jews were soon leaving from France and Holland. It
was not for nothing that I madeBo many trips to Paris and the Hague.
My interest here was only in the number of transport trains I had
to provide. Whether they were bank directors or mental cases, the
people who were loaded on these trains meant nothing to me. It was
really none of my business.
In general, I found that there were fewer problems with local
authorities the farther east you went--with the exception of the
assimilated Jews in Hungary. The Romanian operations went off with-
out friction. I had a good man, Captain Richter, in Bucharest. Eager
to strike against these parasites, the Romanians, astonishingly enough
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offered its Jews to us like someone throwing away sour beer. Tiso,
the Catholic priest who ran the government there, was an anti-Semite.
Tiso's attitude contrasted with mine. I am no anti-Semite. I
was just politically opposed to Jews because they were stealing the'
breath of life from us.
LINESPACE
It was in the latter part of 1941 that I saw some of the first pre-
parations for annihilating the Jews. General Heydrich ordered me
to visit Maidanek, a Polish village near Lublin. A German police
captain there showed me how they had managed to build airtight chamb-
ers disguised as ordinary Polish farmers' huts, seal them hermetical-
ly then inject the exhaust gas from a Russian U-boat motor in the
next building. I remember it all very exactly because I never thought
that anything like that would be possible, technically speaking.
Not long after ward Heydrich had me carry an order to General
Globocnik, SS coi wander of the Lublin district. I cannot remember
whether Heydrich gave me the actual message or whether I had to draw
it up. It ordered Globocnik to start liquidating a quarter million
Polish Jews.
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Minsk, then recently come under German occupation. I was sent by
my immediate superior, Lieutenant General Muller. Muller never stirred
from his desk at Gestapo headquarters on the second floor of the
Prinz Albertstrasse building, but he knew everything that went on
in Europe. He liked to send me around on his behalf.
feet a traveling salesman for the Gestapo, just asI had once been
a traveling salesman for an Austrian oil company.
Muller had heard that Jews were being shot near Minsk, and he
wanted a report. I went there and showed my orders to the local
SS commander. "That's a fine coincidence," he said. "Tomorrow 5,000
of them are getting theirs."
When I rode out the next morning, they had already started, so
r
I could see only the finish. Although I was wee ng a leather coat
which reached almost to my ankles, it was very cold. I watched the
last group of Jews undress, down to their shirts. They walked the
last 100 or 200 yards--they were not driven--then they jumped into
the pit. It was impressive to see them all jumping into the pit
without offering any resistance whatsoever. Then the men of the
Commando banged away into the pit with their rifles and submachine guns.
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I had children myself. And there were children in that pit. I saw
a woman hold a child of a year or 2 into the air, pleading. At that
moment all I wanted to say was, "Don't shoot, hand over the child...."
Then the child was hit.
I was so close to this cone that later on I found bits of blood
and brains splattered on my long leather coat. My driver helped me
remove them. Then we returned to Berlin.
The Gestapo chauffeurs did not like to drive tae, principally
because I rarely spoke more than 20 words during a 12-hour trip, as
for instance the long haul from Berlin to Paris. On this trip back
from Minsk I spoke not a word at all. I was thinking. Not that I
had become contemptuous of National Socialism after watching this
previously unimaginable event. I was merely reflecting about the
meaning of life in general.
Having seen what I had in Minsk, I said exactly this when I re-
ported back to Muller: "The solution, Gruppenhuhrer, should ideally
have been a political one. But now that the Fuhrer has ordered a
physical solution, obviously a physical solution it must be. But
we cannot go on conductingexecutions as they were done in Minsk and,
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sadists. We cannot solve the Jewish problem by putting a bullet
through the brain of a defenseless woman who is holding her child
up to us."
Muller did not answer. He just looked at me in a fatherly, bene-
volent fashion. I could never figure him out.
That winter Muller sent me to watch Jews being gassed in the
Litzmanstadt area. I must stress that the gassing was not done on
his orders, but Muller did want to know all about it. He was a very
thorough government official.
Arriving at Litzmannstadt, I drove out to the designated place
where a thousand Jews were about to board buses. The buses were nor-
mal, high-windowed affairs with all their windows closed. During
the trip, I was told, the carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe was
conducted into the interior of the buses. It was intended to kill
the passengers immediately.
A doctor who was there suggested that I look inside one bus
through a peephole in the driver's seat. About 50 or 60 people were
locked up there. I refused. I couldn't look. This was the first
time that I had seen and heard such a thing and my knees were buckling
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utes, but the buses lade along for about a quarter of an hour.
We reached our destination andhell opened up for me. The bus
in which I was riding turned and backed up before a pit about two
meters deep. The doors opened. Some Poles who stood there jumped
into the buses and threw the corpses into the pit. I wasbadly shaken
by what I then saw. Another Pole with a pair of pliers in his hand
jumped into the pit. He went through the corpses, opening their
mouths. Whenever he saw a gold tooth, he pulled it out and dumped
it into a small bag he was carrying.
When I reported back to Muller in Berlin, he chided me for not
having timed the procedure with a stop watch. I said to him, "This
sort of thing can't go on.. Things shouldn't be done this way." I
admitted that I had not been able to look through the peephole. This
time, too, Muller behaved like a sphinx. He forgave me, so to speak,
for not having looked. Perhaps "Forgive" sounds like an odd expres-
sion here.
The executions at Litzmannstadt and Minsk were a deep shock to
me. Certainly, I too had been aiming at a solution of the Jewish
problem, but not like this. Of course, at that time I had not yet
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yet to see the heavy, imploring eyes of the old couple in a Berlin
air raid shelter who lay crushed beneath a beam, begging me to shoot
them. I couldn't bear to shoot them, but I told my sergeant to do
so, if he could. If I had known then the horrors that would as ter
happen to Germans, it would have been easier for me to watch the
Jewish executions. At heart I run a very sensitive man. I simply
can't look at any suffering without trembling myself.
LINESPACE
I never had anything directly to do with the gas chambers, which
later evolved from early measures like those at Minsk and Litzmannstadt.
I visited Auschwitz three or four times and never stayed more than
a few hours. It had an unpleasant smell.
It was not until after the war that I learned the exact techni-
cal processes later involved in the camps. Even a man like Hoess,
the commandant at Auschwitz, had described the matter to me in a
rather rose-colored way.
I knew Hoess well. He did his duty at Auschwitz, as any other
man would have done it. It was Hoess who once told me that Reichs-
fuhrer Himmier, taking a personal look at the entire liquidation ac-
tion, had declared that this was a bloody fight which our coming
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cellent oD mrade and a very proper fellow. He was a good family man,
and he held the Iron Crone from the first World War.
Since the war I have read that two and a half million Jews were
physically liquidated under Hoess's command. I find this figure in-
credible. The capacity of the camp argues against it. Many of the
Jews ccnfined there were sent on work details and survived. After
the war the Auschwitzers sprouted like mushrooms out of the forest
floor after a rain. Hundreds of thousands of them are today in the
best of health.
Along with the liquidation camps we continued to maintain the-
ghetto system. I would not say I originated the ghetto system. That
would be to claim too great a distinction. The father of the ghetto
system was the orthodox Jew who wanted to remain by himself. In
1939 when we marched into Poland, we had found a system of ghettos
already in existence, begun andzmintained by the Jews. We merely
regulated those in existence, sealed tl m off with walls and barbed
wire and included even more Jews than were already dwelling in them.
The assimilated Jew was of course very unhappy about being moved to
a ghetto. But the Orthodox were pleased with the arrangement, as
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accustoming Jews to community living. Dr. Epstein from Berlin once
said to me that Jewry was grateful for the chance I gave it to learn
community life at one ghetto I founded, for it made an excellent
school for the future in Israel. The assimilated may have found
ghetto life degrading, and non-Jews may have seen an unpleasant ele-
ment of force in it. But basically most Jews feel well and happy
in their ghetto life, which cultivates their peculiar unity.
The uprising of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943) however, taught us
a bitter lesson about putting excessive numbers of people into these
enclosures. Not long after this uprising I received in my office
a photo album with an accompanying memo from Reichsfuhrer Himmier.
The album showed the phases of that battle, whose severity surprised
even the German units fighting in it. I still recall today how we
in the SS and other units of the Wehrmacht suffered disproportion-
ately high casualties putting down this revolt. I could not believe,
seeing the pictures, that men in a ghetto could fight like that.
Following this great blood-letting in Warsaw, the order went
out to the German occupation authorities to comb the country relent-
lessly. This was done so thoroughly that after a while there was
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Elsewhere, even inside the Reich itself, the Warsaw Ghetto up-
rising had its affect in stringentmeasures against Jews working in
the armament factories. It was not in vain that Himmler put his en-
tire weight behind this severity. Previously the directors of the
big German factories, the directors of the Four Year Plan, even Goring
himself, had intervened on behalf of sparing Jews for the labor force.
Now we in the Gestapo said simply, "Very well, you take the respon-
sibility that things do not come to an uprising like the Warsaw Ghetto."
When we said that, the urge to intervene left them.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising had an equally strong effect with
authorities in the other occupied countries. Every national leader-
ship was anxious to remove factors of unrest. Nor advisers now had
a perfect entre into the countries where they were assigned. We could
and did use the Warsaw example like a traveling salesman who sells
an article all themore easily by showing a special advertising attraction.
With Hungary we were particularly concerned. The Hungarian
Jews had lived through the war relatively untouched by anything but
light restrictions. Nov Himmler made it clear that he wanted Hungary
combed with a tremendous thoroughness and haste before the Jews there
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For this reason, he chose me to lead the march into Hungary, in person.
LINESPACE
On the night of March 18, 1941+ I led an SS convoy out of the Mauth-
ausen concentration camp toward Budapest, on these orders from Reicha-
fuhrer Himmler to clear the Jews out of Hungary. My men were equip-
ped with combat gear in case the Hungarians resisted. We had sev-
eral air raid warnings along the way. Suddenly my advance guard
halted. The column came to a stop. Tipped off probably by one of
my assistants, the unit commanders gathered around my personal truck
and drank a toast to me with the rum they were issued for the march.
.It was my 38th birthday, my sixth as an SS officer.
On the following Sunday morning in brilliant sunshine we crossed
the border into Hungary. Instead of rifle fire or rebellious shouts
we were greeted with cheers by the villagers and treated to white
bread and wine. We put away our small arms then, because it was ob-
vious there would be no resistance. That afternoon we rolled into
Budapest and I immediately set up a small office in a corner of my
bedroom in one cf the great hotels. I worked almost all that night
putting out decrees calling the Jewish political officials to the
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collect these Jewish officials in advance. Because I planned to
work with them, I wantdd to insure that they would not be harmed by
any right-wing hysteria in case of trouble.
In Hungary my basic orders were to ship all Jews out of the
country in as short a time as possible. Now, after years of work-
ing behind a desk, I had come out into the raw reality of the field.
As Muller put it, they had sent me, the "master'" himself, to make
sure the Jews did not revolt as they had in the Warsaw Ghetto. I
use the word "master" in quotation marks because people used it to
describe me. I did not use it first.
Since they had sent the "master," however, I weed to act like
a master. I resolved to show how well a job could be done when
the camnander stands 100% behind it. By shipping the Jews off in
a lightning operation, I waisted to set an example for future campaigns
in other countries.
All told, we succeeded in processing about half a million Jews
in Hungary. I once knew the exact number that we shipped to Auschwitz,
but today I can only estimate that it was around 35,000 in a period
of about four months. But, contrary to legend, the majority of the
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mines. That is why there are thousands of Jews happily alive
today who are included in the statistical totals of the "liquidated."
Besides those we sent to Auschwitz, there were thousands and thou-
sands who fled, some secretly, some with our connivance. It was child's
play for a Jew to reach Romania if he could muster the few pengoes
to pay for a railroad ticket or an auto ride to the border. There
were also 200,000 Jews left in a huge ghetto when the Russians ar-
rived, and thousands more waiting to emigrate illegally to Pales-
tine or simply hiding out from the Hungarian gendarmerie.
It is clear from the statistics, then, that our operation was
not a battle fought with knives, pistols, carbines or poison gas.
We used spiritual methods to reach our goal. Let us keep this dis-
tinction clear, because physical liquidation is a vulgar, coarse action.
Soon after we arrived in Budapest I met a Dr. Laszlo Endre, then
a Budapest district official, who was eager to free Hungary of the
Jewish "plague," as he put It. One evening he arranged a little sup-
per for me and my assistants, Captain Dieter Wisliceny and Major Richard
Krumey. Two or three other Hungarian officials were present and an
who
orderly in livery/stood at Dr. Endre's side. Oa this evening the fate
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As I got to know Dr. Endre, I noticed his energy and his ar-
dent desire to serve his Hungarian fatherland. Bas made it clear that
in his present position he was unable to do positive work toward
solving the Jewish question. So I suggested to General Winkelmann,
the ranking SS officer in Hungary, that Dr. Entire be transferred
from the district government to the Ministry of the Interior. The
transfer took several weeks, which I spent conferring pith various
Jewish officials and learning about Jewish life in Hungary. Then
one day Dr. Endre became second secretary in the ministry of the in-
terior and a certain Laszlo Baky became first secretary.
Over the years I had learned, through practice which hooks to
use to catch which fish, and I was now able to make the operation
easy for myself. It was clear to me that I, as a German, could
not demand the Jews from the Hungarians. We had too much trouble
with that in Denmark. So I left the entire matter to the Hungarian
authorities. Dr. Endre, who became one of the best friends I have had
in my life, put out the necessary regulations and Dr. Braky and his
Hungarian gendarmerie carried them out. Once these two secretaries
gave their orders, the Minister of the Interior had to sign them.
And so it was no miracle that the first transport trains were soon
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rolling toward Auschwitz.
The Hungarian police caught the Jews, brought them together
and loaded them on the trains under the direct command of Lieut.
Colonel Laszlo Ferenczy of the gendarmerie, wio came from an old,
landed family. If I may digress a moment, I remember that he in-
vited me once to his country estate, where we had aa, little Hungarian
snack of slices of ham and onion stuck on sticks and roasted over
a fire. We ate them with wine from the lieutenant colonel's vineyards.
I since have read that he was hanged after 1945.
I never watched the Jews being loaded on to the trains. It
was a minor matter for which I had no time. Since the job was the
responsibility of the Gendarmerie, it would have constituted an in-
terference witk the internal affairs of Hungary if I had even ob-
the
served/loadings. After all, the Hungarian government was still a
sovereign power, although it had reached certain agreements with
the Reich.
Himmler's instructions. were for me to comb the Jews out of $ast-
ern Hungary first. The two secretaries gave the appropriate orders
to the Hungarian police. I was also instructed to send almost all
transports to the railroad station at Auschwitz, and I ordered Captain
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 MEMOIRS PART I
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Novak to draw up a time table and arrange for the necessary trains
from the Reich's transportation ministry. To each train I assigned
& squad of 30 Orpos--.uniformed German police--from the several hun-
dred assigned to me.
My men had as one of their basic orders that all avoidable
harshness was to be avoided. This fundamental principle was also
accepted by the Hungarian officials. In practice they may not have
adhered to it 100%. But that did not and could not interest me,,
because it was not my responsibility.
There were, however, individual cases where my men were shocked
by the inhumanity of the Hungarian police. Wislicany reported to
me that the Gendarmes were driving the Jere into the cars like cattle
to a slaughterhouse, not everywhere but in some districts. Several
times I reminded the Hungarian government in writing--nothing was
done orally in my offices--that we did not want to punish individual
Jews. We wanted to work toward a political solution. Nevertheless,
even our own units were guilty of roughness here and there. I once
saw a soldier beat a frail old Jew over the read with a rubber club.
I spoke to the moldier, reported him to his commander and demanded
he be punished and transferred.
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kind of thing. That is sadism.
I would like to add here that when millions of Germans were
deported by the Allies after the war, the operation was not carried
out the way we did it, with Prussian exactness about provisions and
transportation. Although we had the greatest difficulty in obtain-
ing trains, the Jews were always shipped in covered cars, not flat-
cars, and always by the quickest possible routes.
In Hungary it sometimes happened that there were too few slop
buckets on the trains, too little drinking water, or no drinking water
at all, or that the provisions were bad or stolen during the loading.
The Gendarmes sometimes overloaded the cars to empty the debarkation
camp as quickly as possible. You can imagine how it was when the
Hungarians ordered "Everybody in, in, in. The border comes in 21+0
kilometers, and then Germany. Let the Germans finish things up."
Matters were different on Reich territory where we had full powers.
The lieutenant of the guard, for example, could hold the train up
itntil fresh water was provided and the slop buckets emptied and cleaned
out, if only to avoid epidemics. After all, we were supposed to bring
the material to the concentration camp ready to start work, not sickly
and exhausted.
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In spite of our efforts Commandant Hoess at Auschwitz often
complained about the condition of the Jews who arrived from Hungary.
This proves that Auschwitz was not primarily a death camp. If Hoess
simply tossed the Jews into the oven, it would not have made any
enant
difference to him. He would not have complained to LieutJ General
Pohl, his chief, when a few corpses were lying around in the cars
because people had given them too little to eat or drink. And Pohl
would certainly not have asked to see me, making the complaints known
to me in rather blunt terms. I replied of course that I was not
responsible because the Hungarian government arranged the loading.
As the transportation trains rolled into Auschwitz, sometimes
bringing as many as 10,000 units a day, the camp staff had to work
day and night. I was on close, comradely terms with Hoess and he
told me he could not understand why I took absolutely no consider-
ation of #im and his staff. But how could I? I was just as limited
a specialist in my own sector as he was in his. Yet I liked to visit
him. He lived with his wife and children in a five-room house on
the camp grounds. It was a homey place, clean and simple and furnished
in SS-style natural wood.
I remember clearly the first time he aided me around t
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He showed me everything, and at the end he took me to a grave where the corpses
of the gassed Jews lay piled on a strong iron grill. Hoess?s men poured
some inflammable liquid. over them and set them on fire. The flesh
stewed like stew meat. The sight made such an impression on that
today, after a dozen years, I can still see that mountain of corpses
in front of me.
Hoess may have seen disgust in my face, but I spoke to him stern-
ly: "When I see your corpses, I think of those charred German bodies
in the air raid shelters in Berlin."
Once the deportations to ,Auschwitz were running smoothly, I
turned to concentrate on negotiations with the Jewish political and
community officials in Budapest. In this I was following the second
basicorder of Reichsfuhrer Himmler: to arrange if possible for a mil-
lion Jews to go free in exchange for 10,000 winterized trucks, with
trailers, which we needed to use against the Russians on the Eastern
Front.
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MMOM: PART TWO
Only Heinrich Himm7er could turn off the liquidation machine. It
was after the July 20th assassination attempt on Hitler, when Reichs-
fuhrer Himomler had taken over as commander of the Replacement Army
and Minister of the Interior, that he authorized me to propose an
exchange: one million Jews for 10,000 trucks and trailers, equipped
for winter. The world Je .eh organization could choose for itself
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trucks, Thanks to Himm]er's directive, I could assure them, on my
word of honor, that these trucks would be used only on the Eastern
front. As I said at the time, "When the 10,000 trucks with trail-
ers are here, then the liquidation machine in Auschwitz will be stopped."
In obedience to Himmler's directive I now concentrated on nego-
tiations with the Jewish political officials in Budapest. One man
stood out among them, Dr. Rudolph Kastner, the authorized represen-
tative of the Zionist movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man
about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed
to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation--and even keep or-
der in the camps--if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or
a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was
a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000
to 20,000 Jews--in the end there may have been more--was not too high
for me.
Except perhaps for the first few sessions,. Kastner never came
to me fearful of the Gestapo strong man. We negotiated entirely as
equals. People forget that. We were political opponents trying
to arrive at a settlement and we trusted each other perfectly. When
he was with me, Kastner smoked cigarets as though he were in a coffee
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house. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigaret after
another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a lit-
tle silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have
made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.
Dr. KAstner's main concern was to make it possible for a select
group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel. But the Arrow Cross,
the Hungarian fascist party, had grown strong and stubborn--especia-
lly after the overthrow of the Horthy government. Its inspectors
permitted no exceptions to the mass deportations. So the Jewish of-
'icials turned to the German occupation authorities. They realized
that we were specialists who had learned about Jewish affairs through
years of practice.
As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between
our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of this immensely ideal-
istic Zionist leader who was fighting what might be his last battle.
As I told lcastner: "We, too, are idealists and we, too, had to sacri-
fice our own blood before we came to power."
Kastner would sacrifice a thousand or a hundred thousand of
his blood to achieve his goals. He was not interested in old Jews
We ass ted into Harian society. But he was in-
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credibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish
blood, that is, htn material that was capable of reproduction and
hard work. "You can have the others," he would say, "but let me
have this group here." And because Kastner rendered us a great ser-
vice by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his
groups escape. After all, I was not concerned with small groups of
a thousand or so Jews.
At the same time Kastner was bargaining with another SS offi-
cial, a Lieut. Col. Becher. `Becher was bartering Jews for foreign
exchange and material on direct orders from Himmier. A crafty opera-
tor, Becher had come to Hungary originally to salvage a stud farm
which the SS wanted. He soon wormed his way iAto dealings with the
Jews. In a way Reichafuhrer Himmler was Becher's captives Becher
showed me once a gold necklace he was taking to our chief, a gift
for a little lady by whom Himmler had a child. There were other agen-
cies, German and Hungarian, which tapped Kastner for foreign exchange
in return for Jews, but I held aloof from all money affairs and left
the material transactions to Becher.
Men under Becher's command guarded a special group of 700 Jews
whom Kastner had requested from a list. They were mostly young peo-
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pie, although the group also included Kastner's entire family. I
did not care if Kastner took his relatives along; he could take them
wherever he wanted to.
This is how most of the illegal emigrations were arranged: a
group of special Jews was taken into custody and brought together
in a place designated by Kastner and his men, where they were put
under SS guard to keep them from harm. After the Jewish political
organizations arranged transportation out of the country, I instruct-
ed the border police to let their transports pass unhindered. They
traveled generally by night. That was the "gentleman's agreement"
I bad with Kastner.
After leaving Hungary, the Jews could then travel through neu-
tral foreign countries or stay hidden, usually in Rumania, until the
necessary steamships arrived to take them on board. When they reached
Israel, the ships waited off shore until a few courageous Jews helped
the passengers land against the orders of the British mandate authori-
ties. Since the refugees had no valid papers, the Jewish organiza-
tion must have spent enormous sums of money to bribe Rumanian offi-
cials, who did not do these favors for nothing. All these minor ship-
and so forth--were made
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with Ri tier's permisgiOn. I would never have dared dance to my own
waltz. It I demanded rigid obedience from my own subordinates, I
had to be gust as rigid in carrying out my superiors' orders. Other-
wise I would have been a bed SS commander, and I pride myself on hav-
ing been a good one.
By the same token my relationship with Dr. Kastner was strict-
ly correct. He never saw me or my subordinates ever drink a single
glass of wine or schnapps, and there were certainly never any drunk-
en orgies with Jews. If anything like that had happened, I would
have heard of it and I would have punished the offenders the way I
punished my chauffeur, Breustedt, who once unscrewed a toilet lid
from my office because he needed a new toilet seat for his rented
room. He was expelled from the SS. Once, when the same man fell
asleep while driving my car, I made him march on-foot all the way
from Dresden to Berlin. That:is how I would have treated any of my
men who got drunk, or even had a drink, with a Jew.
All my own agreements with the Jewish officials were more or
less side-transactions to the exchange of the million Jews for ten
thousand trucks with trailers. Becher and I were twice ordered to
i B rlin to discuss it. Whether Himmler settled the actu-
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al terms of the exchange, or whether he left it to me, I do not re-
member. When I think back, though, it seems to me that Himmier may
have authorized the offer "for an appropriate number." I then set
the figures at 10,000 to one million, because I was an idealist and
wanted to accomplish as much as possible for the Reich.
It was clear that I could never have squeezed a million Jews
out of Hungary for lack of numbers. But it was obvious that Jews
were piled on Jews in Auschwitz and the various other concentration
camps, although Auschwitz was the only one I had seen. So I assumed
that we could easily produce'a million Jews--all the Jews in Hungary,
supplemented with Jews from Germany, from Austria, from wherever they
wanted to take them. It would be a tragedy if the international Jew-
ish community was not able or willing to accept them.
I do remember Himmler's specifically saying to me, "Eichmann,
motorize the 8th and 22nd SS Cavalry Divisions."
This indicated the personal concern of Himmier, as head of the
"replacement army," in receiving those trucks. They were far more
important than the lives of individual Jews. What did he care about
a million Jews? His concern was his divisions. He apparently did
motorize these two divisions but rather to equip them
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as a sort of fast-moving task force. It was then that he gave in-
structions to General Pohl, who was in charge of the concentration
camp system, to kill no more Jews--to save them up, more or less.
After I received Himmler's order, I told my assistant Krumey
to bring me Joel Brand, the man we sent to Palestine to take a pro-
posal to the Jewish leaders. Brand left on his trip some time be-
fore summertime when the grain was high--as an old country boy I re-
member the time well. Krumey brought him to Vienna, had him furnished
with the proper papers, and shipped him by plane to Istanbul, because
Turkey was still a neutral country. Then, when he ventured into Pales-
tine, he was arrested by the British, interrogated as a possible Ger-
man spy and imprisoned. The Jewish leaders never accepted our pro-
posal.
I knew at the time that Brand was being held by the British,
because KAstner was giving me constant reports.. But when I let Brand
leave the country, S had made.'..sure his family.Btayed in Budapest so
that I could have a guarantee of his return. Then as the weeks went
by I said to Kastner, "Kastner, you know what we agreed. Brand's
family stays here because he must return. Why doesn't he cane back?"
And so for the first time I did use family pressure, but I never turned
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pressure into practice because Dr. Kastner's reports still held out
some hope. For that matter, I never took any steps to keep Brand's
family From emig t .ng illegally. If they had, I would never have
known it.
Meanwhile the deportations had to continue in spite of our pend-
ing deal. But the Jews were to a certain extent "put on ice," held
in a camp ready to be moved at any time. Suppose Brand had come back
and told me, "Colonel, the matter is settled, five or ten thousand
trucks are on their way. Give me a half million or a million Jews.
You promised me that if I brought you a positive report, you'd send
100,000 Jews to a neutral country as a deposit." Then it would have
been easy for us to ship the Jews off.
If there had been any delay, it would have come from the side
of the receivers. If the deal had succeeded, I believe I could have
arranged to ship the first 20,000 Jews in two days via Rumania to
Palestine or even via France to Spain. I know that Himmler would
have been ready to send the million Jews abroad at any time, and I
em sure he would have approached the entire Jewish question different-
ly afterwards. But the plain fact was that there was no place on earth
that would have been ready to accept a million Jews.
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er
linespace
We had a hearty, comradely relationship with the Hungarian secret
police until they learned that we were letting Jews emigrate behind
their backs. Then the gentlemen reacted strongly. They refused to
visit or consult with us, and it became my job to smooth things over.
Fortunately I bad formed a warm friendship with Dr. Entire, the second
secretary in the ministry of the interior. I had even given him my
on machine pistol as a gift (naturally with the approval of my superi-
ors). The two of us managed to restore good relations, although
they were never as hearty as before.
As the Russians advanced farther and the first symptoms of the
coming chaos were noticeable, the whole affair came to a stop. The
transports were halted.
A series of Allied air raids had torn up the Budapest-Vienna
railroad track so that no trains could get through. This made Dr.
Entire impatient. He wanted to get on with the solution of the Jew-
ish problem. So I resolved to teach our opponents a lesson, to say
"Look, it does you no good when you bomb out our railroads, because
your allies, the Jews, have to endure the consequences." I proposed
a f r c of t ~ii Jews to the Reich's border. Kaltenbrtraner, the
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new chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, gave me
orders to that effect.
As it turned out, the march cost more trouble than if I had sent
100, no, 500 trains to Auschwitz. Hungary was the window that showed
the Reich to the neutral foreign countries, and we had accordingly
to preserve appearances. If people described us as thorough and methodi-
cal, then we had to give an example here. "You smashed our transpor-
tation routes, but we will carry on in the most elegant manner." That
was what the trek was for. The actual number of marchers was so un-
important that I have forgotten it. In any case it was less than
20,000.
The plan was for the Jews to march to the border at Burgenland,
about 180 kilometers away. Only "personnel capable of marching" were
to make the trip. How the Hungarian gendarmerie interpreted "capa-
ble of marching" was not our concern because we could not interfere
in Hungarian internal affairs. I remember setting the age limits
at 16 and 50, and under some circumstances up to 60. Every day a
unit of 2,000 Jews began the march, and in ten or twelve days the
first of the marchers must have reached the border. Everything pos-
sible was done to make the trip hygenic and safe. I drove the route
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once myself, and on the whole distance I saw only two corpses. They
were old people. It is clear, as they say, that where planning goes
on, chips will fall. The overall natural decrease on the trek, how-
ever, was only one per cent. When the groups arrived on the bord-
er, they were put to work helpI.German women, children and old peo-
ple at digging tank traps to defend tie Reich.
After the march was over, Dr. Endre congratulated me on the splen-
did fulfillment of the mission, and I must admit we had a drink to
celebrate, a kind of schnapps called "Stallion's milk" which I had
never drunk before. It was excellent.
My superiors were delighted when I performed assignments like
this one so exactly and correctly. I always kept within the juris-
diction of my rank, worked hard and, above all, thought things through.
With the Russian advance westward, conditions in Hungary became
more and more chaotic. After the deportations stopped, I was called
upon forcibly to deport 10,000 ethnic Germans before the Russians over-
ran their homeland in eastern Hungary. When I returned to Budapest
the situation was tense. My old friend and comrade, General Zehend-
er, commander of the 22nd SS Cavalry division which we had hoped to
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his artillery ran out of shells. Zehender's position was near a street-
car station on the eat side of the city, but his ennnunition depot
was several kilometers beyond the last streetcar stop to the wes
He told me in despair that the Russians were about to attack his divi-
sion and he had no ammunition for his hundred guns.
I proposed a living chain of dews to carry shells from the de-
pot and load them on streetcars at the west end station. The street-
cars could carry them through the center of Budapest to the eastern
end of the line where his own units could move them to the front
line. My idea worked. I told Kastner the plan and he furnished the
necessary number of dews. We made a living chain of them, six or
eight kilometers long to carry the shells from the depot to the sta-
tion. Then dozens of streetcars, one after the other, sped across
Budapest to meet Zehender's men in the east. The guns b]?azed away.
As Christmas approached, I had nothing more to do in Hungary
but no orders to withdraw. I was having a drink with Zehender one
day when he told me that many of his officers had been killed and
a whole company had gone over to the Russians.
"Give me a squadron," I told my friend, "and I'll stay here
through New Year's Day." Then, in the presence of my aide, Zehen-
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.cr
der telephoned Kaltenbrunfer. I put my head close to his ear to hear
what my_ chief said, but Zehender broke the news
aiKaltenbruer
tells me it's impossible. You are too valuable. Hin=ler would have
his head..
And so my hoped for action at the front was reduced to absurd- 4.._:
ity. One or two days before Christmas Eve', 1944, all the German
police.' it s ve] a ordered to withdraf, except for one Gestapo group
which stayed behind as a gesture to the Hungarians. They were all
killed. So was mom' comrade Zehender,.: ehot as he fought off the ene-
my with his machine pistol. I left Budapest at 3 pem. on Christ-
mas Eve, the last member of the German police to leave the city.
As my Mercedes raced westward, the road was already under Russian
artillery fire. A great flood of refugees streaming toward Vienna
bad choked the highway for days, but now it was suddenly empty. It
was as though the road had died,.
I made my last report to Hisrinler less than a mnonth before the
final surrender of Germany. The Reichsfuhver had been for some time
negotiating with Count Bernadotte about the Jews. He wanted to make
sure that at least 100 of the most prominent Jews we could lay our
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 NADIRS PART II
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or
hands on would be held in a safe place. Thus he hoped to strength-
en our hand, for almost to the end.Himmler was optimistic about mak-
ing separate peace terms. "We'll get a better treaty than the one
at Huburtusburg," he said to me, slapping his thighs. "We'll lose
a few feathers, but it will be a better one." It was then mid-April
191+5.
Himmler went on to say that he had made some mistakes.
tell you one thing, Eichmann," he said, "if I have to do it over again,
I will set up the concentration camps the way the British do. I made
a big mistake there." I didn't know exactly what he meant by that,
but he said it in such a pleasant, soft way that I understood him
to mean the concentration camps dhould have been more elegant, more
artful, more polite.
A few days later I called my men into my Berlin office on the.
Ku rfurstenstrasse and formally took leave of them. "If it has to
be, " I told them, "I will gladly jump into grave in the knowledge
that five million enemies of the Reich have died like animals." (C'Bne-
mies of the Reich," I said, not "Jeers.") I spoke these words harsh-
ly and-with emphasis. In fact, it gave me an extraordinary sense
e io t think that I was exiting from the stage in this way.
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cr
General Muller himself had just said to me: "If we had had 50
Eicbmanns, then we would have won the war." This made me proud even
though,, ironically, he spoke on the same day that I learned all was
finally lost. By that time my department was one of the few offi-
ces which were not burned out from the bombing. I had set my subordi-
nates like bloodhounds on the trail of every falling incendiary bomb.
I helped them myself. So the office was in good condition. Later
the whole Gestapo head office moved in and squeezed me out.
There were hundreds of civilian letterheads on file in that of-
five, and if a particular one was not available, we could always have
it printed. Each one of the high officials of the Gestapo was now
able to select the civilian firm for which he could say he had worked
during the last few years. He could receive employment certificates,
"instructions" or correspondence from the company--in a word., any-
thing that would permit him to hide his real job from post-war investi-
gators.
You could see how closely they crowded around the official in
charge, who made detailed notes on haw each man wanted his faked pap-
ers to read. The press was so thick, Muller and I had a large space
in the bacl o f the rocs to stand by ourselves. It was the same room
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where I used to play music with my subordinates. (i had played second
violin; my sergeant Glaser played first violin--he was a far better
musician than I.) "Well, Eicbmann.," Muller said, "What's the matter
with you?" Since my return from Hungary I had carried a Steyr army
pistol. I said to Muller, indicating the gun: "Gruppenfuhrer, I
don't need these papers. Look here, this is my certificate. When
I see no other way out, it is my last medicine. I have no need for
anything else."
This is the truth: of all the Gestapo department beads in Ber-
lin I was the only one who spat on those false certificates. Muller
must have known I was a regular guy. I was full of quiet pride at
the thought that in me, at least, be had not been mistaken.
My last journey was to Prague, where I visited Karl Frank, the
SS commander there. He told me I could not go back. "Nothing is
left in Berlin," he said, "the Russians have broken through somewhere."
I was finally able to get through to Kaltenbrunner. Frank put
me on the telephone with him at his own desk. When I spoke with Kalten-
brunner, he ordered me, because of the breakthrough, to proceed to
the resort town of Alt Aussee in the Austrian Tirol. I arrived there,
according) , at about the beginning of May and went directly to the
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Loserhang, the mountain Just outside the village. In one of the tidy
summer villas on the Loserheng the chief of the S'curity Service was
quartered.
I was received by his aide, an old and trusted friend of mine,
Sturmbannfuhrer Gscheitler. I walked into the next room to report
and found Kaltenbrunner himself sitting behind a table, clothed in
the uniform blouse of an Obergruppenfuhrer and some wedge-shaped ski
pants tucked into some wonderful ski boots. It was an odd costume
for the "Last Days of Pompeii" feeling that then oppressed us all--
at least it did me. It was after lunch and he was playing solitaire,
with a small cognac on the table. I asked him how things had come
out. "It's bad," he said, "the solitaire, I mean."
He bad Gscheitler bring me a cognac myself--the usual orderly
was not around. The white snow of the Loserhang'a slope gleamed through
the window. It had snowed heavily in this region, which would not
be clear of snow until the end of May. The room was comfortably warm.
It was a nice stopping-point, especially when I thought that I had
to camp days and nights in the cold. The cognac tasted awfully good
despite my gloomy mood.
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realize that at this time, just as before, I had been ordered to re-
port here in the line of duty. Yet now the the had been cast and
all these matters had become of secondary importance. One's brain
was in a sense only half present. It would only concentrate on what
was happening that very moment or what lay just ahead. This was the
beginning of that nervous shock which a few days later hit me like
a hammer. For it was now a fact that the Reich, for which we had
feared and cared so much, was smashed in pieces.
Answering Italtenbrunner's questinn, I told him that I was go-
ing into the mountains. "What's good," he said. "Good for Reichs-
fuhrer Hiznmler, too. Now he can talk to Eisenhower differently in
his negotiations, for he will know that Eichmann is in the mountains
and Eicbmann will never surrender, because he can't."
So we concluded our official business and I went off to become
a partisan chief in the Tirol. I took nay leave formally without
any personal overtones, as did Kaltenbrunner. He remained sitting
at his solitaire, only his expression revealing a certain friendli-
ness to me. Just before I left I heard him say quietly, "It's all
a lot of ctap. The game is up:" These were the last words I ever
heard from my good friend Kaltenbrunner.
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linespace
I had quartered my people at one of the large resort hotels in
Alt Aussee, The hotel proprietor years afterward kept railing against
"that dog Eichmann" who requisitioned his hotel and let his gang
run it, inflicting all sorts of fancied damages. The complaint was
C
merely something rooted in his wretched shopkeeper's mind. By no
means did we wreck everything in his hotel. On the contrary, I fin-
ally yielded to the pressure of the doctor in charge of the neighbor-
ing field hospital, who had tearfully begged me to take my combat
troops out of Alt Aussee so that he might declare it an open city.
So we evacuated. Just before my troops left, I personally saw the
Red Cross nurses scrubbing and cleaning up, room by room, since the
overcrowded hospital had to expand into this pig's hotel. It was
set up as a hospital wing. The beneficiary of all this clean-up opera-
tion was thus enabled to feather his own nest.
Since Kaltenbrunner had given his orders, I collected all the
heavy equipment we had there and set out to organize a resistance
movement in the Totengebirge, above the town. The whole thing had
now been dumped in my lap. Besides the regularly assigned people
in my department, I had some groups of Waffen SS soldiers and a thinned-
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or
out bunch from Schellenberg's Intelligence Section of'the SS. Schellen-
berg's crowd had been burned out of the Kremmuenster Monastery. I
think they set it on fire themselves, but they managed to get a few
truck-loads out with them. In the trucks were scattered piles of
uniforms, including winter equipment and ski gear, sleeping bags and
emergency rations--chocolate, hard sausage, etc.--of ,a sort that we
hadn't seen for a long time. They also brought a small chest full
of dollars, pounds and gold coins.
I decided to head for the Blaualm, a stretch of mountain pasture-
land about two or three hours' march from Alt Aussee. Suddenly it
began to snow heavily. I had the Burgermeister order out 150 of the
Hitler Youth--they were all we had--to shovel the snow out of our
path. It was already one or two meters deep in spots. At least we
could get through with the vehicles.
There was only one inn on the Blaualm and I requisitoned some
rooms from the innkeeper to store the weapons and the uniforms. An
old Party man in the town had warned me about the innkeeper. He said
I would do well to have the traitorous Catholic done in, and I deci-
ded to do so. It was that time when everybody was doing everybody
in. But when I saw him, a little sausage of a man, I said to myself:
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"No, you don't need to do away with him." 6.rid so we didn't.
The SS boys had brought a barrel of wine with them from the Krem-
muenster storehouse. I set it up on the street so that all the sol-
diers coming up to the mountain could stop for a few glasses before
going on. I allowed each man only a five minute stop. The barrel
was soon empty.
At sun-up on the first day that we reached the mountain, a Haupt-
sturmfuhrer from the Intelligence Section came up to get some emer-
gency rations "by order of Obergruppenfuhrer Kaltenbrunner." He was
a fresh, arrogant fellow, and my Obersturmfuhrer Burger said to me,
"Shall I rub him out?" I told the man he could have half a case and
no more. "Otherwise," I said, "I'll have you done in." So he took
off somewhere with a half case full of chocolate and hard sausage,
perhaps to Switzerland.
Another SS man came four or five times with a note saying that
we should deliver a quantity of gold bars to him. The signature was
always Ernst' Kaltenbrunner's. I knew the writing and it seemed gen-
uine to me, although I had no way of testing its authenticity. In
any case gold or money meant nothing to us in the mountains, while
bread and emergency rations were everything. Although I was harsh
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cr
to this fellow at first, I finally had Hunsche pay out the gold that
he requested, thus translating Kaltenbrunner's wish into fact.
The second morning we were there I heard loud noises and confu-
sion outside my window. There was Burger boxing a civilian's ears.
Through an orderly I ordered Burger to report to me in my room. He
told me the man was a teacher from one of the villages in the valley
who was trying to make off with the supply of fat in one of the trucks.
Burger was giving him a tangible answer for his conduct. I told Burg-
er that an officer never hits anybody. If the man was looting, he
should be hauled before a court martial and shot but never beaten
linespace
What a bunch of good-for-nothings you have here, I said to my-
self. Guys from the Waffen 88, who probably are just out of the
hospital and at the disposal of almost any unit, rounded up and turned
over to me by the MPs; this absolutely insubordinate gang from the
intelligence section, a few women, our own people. And add to this
150 of the Hitler Youth. Then there were some Rumanians on my neck,
too. With this I was supposed to fight a war in the Totengebirge.
I bad plenty of the most modern weapons, however. I had never
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 MEMOIRS PART II
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before seen assault rifles, and now I had piles of them. I had ne-
ver seen as much armnunition as I had up here--bazookas lying in heaps.
But what good was it without trained personnel? I gave the order to
evacuate the Blaualm and go farther away to the Rettenbachalm, which
lies even higher in the Totengebirge.
Burger, who was my best skier, I sent on patrol ahead of us
to investiage snow conditions and the chances for finding lodging.
Meanwhile I had all the weapons which we were not using thrown in
a stream. I had decided to release the majority of the men. Disci-
pline had suffered irreparably. I had five thousand reichsmarks paid
out to each one against his signature. I was hard and brusque with
them. Each man, on hearing he was no longer needed, gladly took off
down the mountain without further formalities. I was even hard on
a little SS girl, a clerical worker, who had begged and implored me
to take her along. Scorning all her feminine wiles, I said: "Pay
out five thousand marks. Dismissed."
in the middle of our move an orderly arrived from Kaltenbrun-
ner with a directive from Reichsfuhrer Himmler ordering us not to
shoot at Americans or Englishmen. I countersigned it and the boy
rushed off back to the valley. The- next day after we were settled,
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I cof#-eye4 this order to the men. It looked like the end. The Ameri-
cans were now sitting in Bad Isehi, not very far away, and we heard
that our girls were already dancing with the Americans in the market-
place. The so-called Austrian Heimatschutzler (home guardists) were
crawling around us in the him. There 'were other Austrian 'hunt-
ers' and assorted trash bearing the red-white-red monarchist armband
--all of them punks. They were all probably people who had shout-
ed themselves hoarse yelling Heil Hitler in 1938. Now they prowled
about us, with weapons of course. Whether or not they would actual-
ly have fired on anyone, I did not know, nor do I know now if they
ever did. There was shooting everywhere at that confused time.
My driver Polanski asked me if I would give him a car and a truck
or two so that he might go off and set up a peacetime trucking con-
cern on his own. It occurred to me that I no longer needed any cars,
so I decided to fulfill his wish. After all, he had served me loyal-
ly for many years. "Take a truck for yourself," I told him, "or what-
ever you need from the Blaualm, and make off with my Fiat.Topeliho."
I later heard that he drove my Fiat Topelino into a tank trap
on the road to Bad Ischl, but he did succeed in taking off with one
truck. I wish him success in his trucking business.
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My trusty Burger sought me out for a private conversation. "Herr
Obereturmbannfuhrer," he said, "yoii'are being sought as a war crimi-
nal. The rest of us are not. We have thoroughly discussed this mat-
ter. We feel that you would be doing your comrades a great service
if you would leave . us., and appoint another commander."
I had already decided the answer myself. "Men," I said, "I
will leave you alone on the Rettenbachalm. The war is over. You
are not allowed to shoot at the enemy any longer.. So take care of
yourselves."
Lieutenant Jenisch, my aide for many years, asked if he might
accompany me. We drank a last schnapps together.
There was only one thing I regretted. If I had not remained
in a state of shock at this time, I would have done more for my wife
and children.' Unfortunately I did not make provision for them ahead
of time, unlike the gentlemen from the Intelligence Section, the so-
called kid-glove boys in the SS. I, too, could have had my family
securely wrapped in a cocoon of foreign exchange and gold. In fact,
I could easily have sent them on to the furthest, the most neutral
of foreign countries. Long before the end, Kastner, Brand, Loewen-
herz a o the Jews I dealt with would have set u~+ foreign exchange
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for me in any country I had named, if I had promised special privi-
leges for them.
As it was, I was able to give my wife only a briefcase full of
grapes and a sack of flour before going up into the mountains from
Alt Aussee. I had also given them poison capsules, one for my wife
and one for each child, to be swallowed if they fell into the hands
of the Russians.
linespace
I gave myself up to the Americans under an assumed name. I knew
the Allied investigators were searching for Eichmann, but luckily
I was always just a shade more clever than the C.I.C. officer who
interrogated me. I started off in one small American prison camp,
posing as a Luftwaffe corporatl named Bart.
After studying the psychology of the American C.I.C., however,
I changed my rank at the first opportunity from corporal to second
lieutenant in the SS. Lieutenant Eckmann, Otto Eckmannn, became my
name. I moved my birthdate ahead one year to March 19, 1905, and
the place to Breslau. I did this so I could remember the figures
more easily, avoiding the fiasco of a momentary lapse of memory when
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or
After a few more moves I vas transferred to the huge POF1 col-
lection center at Weiden. By coincidence, my former aide, Lieuten-
ant Jenisch, had been sent to the same place. I volunteered to head
a work detail and in this capacity moved to Camp Oberlagstetten in
Franconia. It was then August, 191+5. I remained there until the
beginning of January 1946.
All this time we were being interrogated by the C.I.C. office
in Ansbach, to which we were periodically taken. It occurred to me
that the passage of a few months had been enough to make the C.I.C.
suspicious of me, in case any questions had been raised. So I deri-
ded to escape. Due to the fear of reprisals, there existed an un-
written code of honor that no officer could escape from a camp with-
out his fellow officerst approval. Since there were about ten offi-
cers in the camp, I asked the camp leader, a major, to call an offi-
cers" meeting.
Just before the meeting I revealed to the major my real name,
rank and official position. "My dear comrade Eicbmann,p1 he said.,
"I have known that for a long time. Your Lieutenant Jenisch told
me about it in confidence. As long as you said nothing to me, I kept
the i''rm tin locked in heart."
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At the officers' meeting I explained merely that I was probab-
ly wanted by the Americans because I had been politically active.
Nobody asked many questions in those days, and the major, as camp
leader, gave his approval. It was simply a matter of form. After
all, I could hardly imagine that any group of SS officers would have
withheld their approval, knowing that one of their leaders found
it necessary to get away.
After leaving the prison camp, I managed to procure papers which
gave my name as Otto Henninger. I lived in a wooded heath-district
of the Kreis Zelle and it was there that my hosts showed me a pile
of newspapers with articles about me. They were under headings like
"Mass-murderer Eicbmann" or "Where is 'Lieutenant Eckmann' hiding
out?" The articles noted that I had escaped from the camp.
I started to think about who could have given the name Eckmann
to the C.I.C. There seemed to be only two possible informers. One
was my Lieutenant Jenisch. The other possibility, which seemed high-
ly unlikely, was that the C.I.C. had interrogated the major who pro-
bably reasoned that I was far enough away by then to be safe. I rather
think it was Jenisch who told theca. He had a type of pigheadedness
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linespace
Through the intervening years since then people searched for,me
in vain. I would like to find peace with my former opponents. And.
I would be the first to surrender myself to the German authorities
if I did not always feel that the political interest in my case would
be too great to lead to a clear,, objective way out.
If there had been a trial in 19I5, I would have had all my sub-
ordinates with me. Today I am not so sure. Some of them may be
serving with the new police. Others may have had a hard life through
these years, each damning the stupidity that led him to become a Nazi
in the first place. And prosperity and democratic re-education have
borne their fruit in Germany, so I would not know today what witnes-
see an attorney for the defense might properly call. I believe, in
fact, that if I brought on Jews as witnesses for the defense, I would
come out almost better with them than with my own men as witnesses,
sad though it may sound. Dr. Loewenherz, if he is alive, Dr. Epstein,
Dr. Rothenberg, Dr. Baeck, the entire council of Elders in Theresien-
stadt ghetto--all of them I would summon. After all, there were al-
so relatively harmless actions which took place under the general
heading, "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem."
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er
But to wind it all up, I must say that I regret nothing. I will
not htunble myself or repent in any way. I could do it too cheaply
in today's climate of opinion. It would be too easy to pretend that
I had turned suddenly from a Saul to e. Paul. No, I must say truth-
fully that if we had really killed all the 10.3 million Jews that
Kerherr pretends to account for statistically, I would say, "Good.,
we have destroyed an enemy." But here I do not mean wiping them
entirely. That would not be proper--and we carried on a proper war.
Now, however, when through the malice of fate a large part of
these Jews are alive, I must concede that fate wanted it so. I al-
ways claimed that we were fighting against a foe who through thou-
sands of years of development and indoctrination had become superi-
or to us.
I no longer remember exactly when, bAt it was even before Rome
itself had been founded that the Jews could already write. It is
very depressing for me to think of that people writing laws over 6,000
years of written history. But it tells me that they must be a people
of the first magnitude, for law-givers have always been great.
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