Eichmann
Papers Found in Germany By PAUL GEITNER
Associated Press
Writer Berlin
(AP) -- Adolf
Eichmann's apparent first attempt at a
prison memoir has been found in files
brought to Germany decades ago after the
Nazi war criminal's trial in Israel, a
German Nazi hunter said today. Prosecutor Willi Dressen, who
heads the agency coordinating efforts to
track down Nazi crimes, came across the
127 handwritten pages two days ago after a
German newspaper asked him whether his
agency had a copy of the 1,300-page memoir
Eichmann wrote while in an Israeli
prison. "We don't have that, but I found
something else," he said in a telephone
interview. The pages titled "My Memoirs"
were located in prosecution files brought
to Germany after the Holocaust
mastermind's 1962 execution. "Apparently
they fell into oblivion," Dressen said.
The subject of Eichmann's memoirs came
under public scrutiny Tuesday when Israel
announced plans to release the 1,300-page
version for publication by German
scholars. The manuscript
has been locked in Israel's national
archives for decades. Israel decided to
get it published after one of
Eichmann's son's, Dieter,
claimed the manuscript as family
property. Dressen said that in the 127
pages in Ludwigsburg, where his agency
is based, Eichmann uses bombastic
language and tries to justify Nazi
crimes. "I think it would be very interesting
for psychologists," Dressen said. "But
there are no new facts that will require
us to rewrite history." Dressen said all
of his agency's Eichmann files are open
for historical research, but not to the
general public. He said his agency has no
plans to publish the 127-page
manuscript. The pages Dressen found apparently were
written earlier than the version stored in
Israel. Notations on the pages say they
were handed over to Israeli police on June
16, 1960. That was a month after Israel's
then-prime minister, David
Ben-Gurion, announced Eichmann was in
Israel. Eichmann escaped to South America after
World War II, but was kidnapped in
Argentina in 1960 by Israeli agents. At
his 1961-62 trial, he maintained that he
was a midlevel official who was only
carrying out Adolf Hitler's orders. That
view is repeated in the longer memoir,
according to two Israeli historians who
are among a handful of people to have read
it. [Eichmann
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