Eichmann Prosecutor Interview

An interview with Justice Gabriel Bach, an Adolf Eichmann prosecutor.

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The Interview

Part One: Gabriel Bach´s Background

This part follows the early part of Bach´s life, leaving Germany at the age of 11 with has family for Holland, leaving Holland a month before the German invasion for Palestine, traveling to Palestine on the ship Patria, its last successful trip to Palestine.

This narrative includes the story if his family´s harrowing period of detention at the Dutch border after which he was literally kicked out of Germany by an SS officer. There follows a brief review of his education including law studies in England and his early career as a young lawyer.

Part Two: The Investigative Stage

How Eichmann fortified the commandant of Auschwitz when he felt a weakness at the knees in killing children.

How Eichmann was manipulated into acknowledging his awareness that his deputy, acting on his behalf, was pivotal in arranging for lethal Zyklon B gas to be brought to Auschwitz.

Why any signs of remorse by Eichmann had to be taken with a huge grain of salt in light of an interview Eichmann had given while living in Argentina a few years earlier.

How Eichmann overrode a General of the German Army who unsuccessfully wanted to spare the life of one Jewish scientist, a radar expert of great value to the German Army.

The poignant story of how, when trying to authenticate documents in preparation for trial, the prosecution team discovered that one of their own had survived Auschwitz.

How Eichmann revealed that once it was clear that Germany would lose the war, he was going to win his own war against the Jews.

There is also the rarely told story of Eichmann´s shocking psychological profile.

Part Three: The Trial and Sentence

Rebutting the arguments of Dr. Servatius, Eichmann´s very capable trial counsel, that the court in Israel had no jurisdiction over Eichmann because:

  1. Eichmann was charged with violations of the laws of the State of Israel which was not in existence at the time of the alleged offenses;
  2. Since the principal charge against Eichmann was crimes against the Jewish people, an Israeli court could not try him fairly;
  3. The laws Eichmann was charged with violating were not in existence at the time of the alleged offenses, contravening fundamental principles against ex post facto laws.
  4. Eichmann´s abduction from Argentina was itself against international law.

The infamous Wannsee Conference: Eichmann explains how this conference was called several months after the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was implemented to bring the entire German bureaucracy on board, the fear that it would be difficult to do so, and the elation when it turned out that anticipated opposition never materialized. Eichmann and his superior, Heydrich, celebrated how smoothly the conference went.

Eichmann´s revelation that once it was clear that Germany would lose the war, he would win his own war against the Jews.

How Eichmann overrode the request of Germany´s ally Italy to spare the life of a Jewish woman married to a deceased Italian army officer as well as the request of Marshal Petain the collaborationist French leader, who asked that a Jewish army officer and recipient of the Croix de Guerre, France´s highest military award, be spared.

Eichmann´s irritation, expressed to the German foreign ministry, that the deportation of Danish Jews did not proceed effectively and that Sweden was complicit in saving about half of Norway´s Jews.

Evidence that Eichmann, who claimed just to be following orders,

  1. Overruled the Regent of Hungary to insure the deportation of a trainload of Hungarian Jew
  2. Disregarded the directions of the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, for which he was reprimanded, when those directions would have spared Jewish live
  3. Tried to frustrate the directive of another superior, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, with respect to killing captured Jewish parachutists
  4. On one occasion, even undermined an agreement which Hitler had reached with the Hungarian Regent which would have saved 8,700 Jewish Hungarian families

Eichmann´s perfidious role in arranging for [postcards to be sent from Auschwitz] to still un-deported family members, encouraging them to hurry to Auschwitz.

Eichmann´s bizarre reaction when first seeing a film taken at the liberation of the concentration camps.

Gabriel Bach´s comments on [Hannah Arendt]´s coverage of the trial. What to do after the Israeli Supreme Court denies Eichmann´s appeal. Wait or execute?

Part Four: Photographs and Stories

A short narrative and view of photographs of the persons involved in the trial.
These photographs evoke one of the more amazing stories of the Holocaust: a photograph of Bach, taken during the trial, triggers the amazing saga of the only person locked in the Auschwitz gas chamber who lived to tell about it.