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Organization: DICKINSON STATE UNIVERSITY
Author: Moshe
Kam
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999
There was a flurry of articles about
the Eichmann memoirs in the Israeli Press last week. The
memoirs were composed by the Nazi officer in the months
before his execution in Israel in May 1962. The
manuscript was stored in the State Archives of Israel
since then. It was mentioned and quoted in a book written
by Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor in Eichmann's
trial. Eichmann's son Dieter has now requested the
original manuscript.
In interviews given by the Attorney General of Israel,
Elyakim Rubinstein, he indicated that Israel wants
the document to published in Germany, with annotation and
footnotes added by certain German scholars. Clearly a
plain straightforward publication of the manuscript was
ruled out.
Several articles in the Israeli press quoted the
historian Yehuda Bauer claiming that Israel does
not have enough researchers who can do the work at the
required pace (though the manuscript was in the Archives
for almost 40 years.) Bauer also stated his strong
objection to allowing unrestricted access to the
material.
The episode is truly bizarre. The right of the Israeli
Archives to put restrictions on publication of this
material is shaky at best, and the claim that Israel does
not have the intellectual wherewithal to prepare its
publication properly is equally strange; after all,
holocaust research is and was done by a large number of
Israeli scholars - including Bauer himself - for many
years (and mostly at the State's expense.) If it is
indeed an Israeli interest to have the material presented
with annotation and footnotes, why are the Israeli
scholars unable to do the work? Are they on a collective
sabbatical? What other, more important tasks are they
engaged in? Moreover, as soon as the manuscript is sent
to Germany, the courts there will decide its fate, and if
there ever was a legitimate Israeli interest in editing
it before publication, this interest would play a very
minor role in the proceedings.
Taking a broader view, it is not clear what are the
Israeli officials and people like Bauer afraid of. They
behave as if Eichmann was wronged, or as if he was not
the arch-criminal that he was. There is no doubt that neo
Nazis of all kinds will find in Eichmann's memoirs
"facts" and "reasons" to justify their distorted views on
the holocaust. No amount of editing and explanations
would help such individuals.
(Interestingly enough it is
unlikely that the Eichmann book will be of great
assistance to holocaust deniers; in his trial, Eichmann
did not so much dispute the facts, as challenged the
claim that he had legal responsibility for creating
them.) There is no danger that the writings of
this evil and wicked man will prove his innocence in the
mind of informed readers, and as to uninformed readers,
it is doubtful that they can ever be helped.
The case against Eichmann was solid. There have been
and there may still be disagreements about some of the
trial's procedures, and we all know of philosophical
objections to his trial and verdict by Hanna Arendt
and others. Still, with the exception of the usual
lunatics, every serious student of Eichmann's activities
will find his actions abominable and criminal, memoirs or
no memoirs. Those for whom he was a martyr will continue
to see him as a martyr, memoirs or no memoirs.
The continued activity surrounding the Eichmann's
manuscript serves only to glorify it, attract popular
interest, and make the book a best seller when it finally
appears in print. The claim of the
Israeli holocaust researchers that they are "too busy" to
prepare the work for publication raises serious doubts
about their professionalism and ethics. A quick
and simple word-by-word publication will to serve the
interests of all but the neo Nazis much better.
Moshe Kam,
Philadelphia.
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Mr
Irving: Dr
Moshe Kam has clearly hit the nail on the head with this
letter. When I obtained Eichmann's transcripts and
reminiscences, dictated in 1956-58 in Argentina, in October
1991 it generated a worldwide furor, with newspapers
printing major articles around the globe for several days.
There was near-panic among the world's Jewish historians,
and I did not at that moment understand why, not having at
that time had the leisure or requirement to study the pages'
contents in detail. I now understand better: the
negotiations between the Hungarian Jewish leaders, who
declared themselves willing, indeed eager, to sacrifice the
Jewish "mob" as they put it to Eichmann, in return for his
allowing the ten thousand or so elite to emigrate to
Palestine, made a very unattractive story. 
write to David Irving