Eichmann still speaks

An Israel Museum exhibition displays Nazi memoirs, as well as other documents never seen by the public.

By LAUREN GELFOND FELDINGER
eichmann nazi jslm 224.88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
eichmann nazi jslm 224.88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Looking at the unpublished prison memoirs of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann now on display at the Israel Museum many questions come to mind: Where did he get a pen and paper? Why did he record his memories? How much freedom did he have in his cell during his trial and final days, until he became in 1962 the first and only prisoner to be officially executed here? Eichmann apparently received all the benefits accorded to prisoners by law. "He had the conditions of any Israeli prisoner and more. The only thing he didn't get was smuggling out and publishing the memoir," said Gil Weissblei, senior archivist at the Israel State Archives, who has been involved in the manuscript's preservation and now display. Eichmann prepared the memoir with exact instructions for publication in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and to be translated into many languages. Every page is signed, proving authenticity. "Eichmann or his children or heirs could have benefited financially, but according to international law adopted by many countries, including Israel, if you are sentenced to death and wrote something during this period, you and your heirs have no rights to benefit from publication or sales of this material," said Weissblei. According to comments made by Eichmann's guard and executioner, Shalom Nagar, whose identity was made public in 2002, Eichmann was highly protected to ensure he would not be killed by distraught Israelis who had lived through or lost family in the Holocaust, or by Nazis who didn't want the Jews accorded this conquest. Nagar, of Yemenite ancestry who was personally responsible for tasting Eichmann's food to make sure it was not poisoned, also said that guarding the adjacent cells to Eichmann and the entire floor were only Jews of Middle Eastern - not European - descent, to help curb the risk of vigilantism. At the time, only a decade and a half had passed since the Holocaust, and not only was the country populated by tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors, but many survivors were actually working in the prison. Shackled safely in the Ramle prison, where he was transferred after the trial, Eichmann spent his last six months reading and writing, Nagar said. The memoir of nearly 1,000 hand-written pages in German was transferred after the execution to the Israel State Archives, where it was sealed to the public until 1992. According to law, all documents in the archives remain closed from public viewing for 30 years. In 1991, the declassification committee allowed researchers to view the Eichmann manuscript on scanned CDs, after signing a waiver not to use the material except for research. There was one exception. In 2000, British historian David Irving sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt in the UK for libel for publishing a book naming him as a Holocaust-denier. When the Israel State Archives provided Lipstadt with photocopies of portions of the Eichmann memoir to corroborate the number and manner of concentration camp deaths - which helped the court to rule in her favor and brand Irving a Holocaust-denier and racist - it was the first time that any portion of the manuscript was allowed outside the country. Now, surely, the public, historians and psychologists of crime are enticed to read the memoirs of a so-called ordinary man - one whom psychologists found to have no particular anti-Semitism nor psychological disorder, except for being a conformist, who felt it was his moral duty to follow orders and the law, regardless of his own personal opinions and feelings and in spite of the immeasurable suffering and millions of deaths that caused. But despite its historical significance, the Eichmann memoir has still never been and may never be published. "There is no translation because of the same moral and legal problems - who will benefit from such a book?" said Weissblei. "The State of Israel won't publish it. "The state is not the owner because we did not create it, but on the other hand we don't want Eichmann's family to benefit from it," he explained. "It is important for research, but it's still a question of who can publish it, because someone will benefit." The state is not publishing it, but it is now showing the yellowed but impeccably kept pages to the general public for the first time, albeit under a glass case and without translation. Visitors to the Israel Museum can, at best, try to examine the style of script to get clues about Eichmann's personality, or if possible to decipher the first page of German writing, in which he recounts mundane details of his early childhood. But even though the public cannot flip through the pages to learn more, the viewing of the memoir invokes its own chilling power. Like in the presence of a strong work of art, even one whose meaning is obscure, the memoir provokes feelings, thoughts and questions that are as relevant today as when it was written. Nearly 100 other rare documents also give glimpses of the familiar and unfamiliar pivotal moments in state history. Such details as an exclamation point on the 1954 handwritten note of archeologist Yigael Yadin to the Prime Minister's Office informing it he had purchased the Dead Sea Scrolls; instructions for the exact color blue to use on the first Israeli flag; and the 1947 UN General Assembly list of member state votes on the plan to partition Palestine, give a sensation of being closer to the "aha" moments. Austerity food ration books, a referendum abolishing punishment by flogging and a photo of Jewish immigrants from Middle Eastern countries in traditional dress signify how much Israel has changed since the early years. Other material also reminds the viewer that time does not witness all changes. A 1948 letter from the parents of POWs, the blood-stained song from Yitzhak Rabin's pocket and a 1951 David Ben-Gurion letter suggesting that new sites in the Negev be named for Hebrew historical sites not for the Arab villages previously there echo the political debates still going on. The Israel Museum also contributed more than a dozen ancient items, including a hand-penned note from the Bar Kochba revolution, to show the continuity of local history. "We asked ourselves how to bring documents into an art, ethnography and archeology museum," explained curator/designer Ido Bruno. "Some of the documents are important. Others are also visually compelling. It's beautiful to see how different cultures create documents." The legend of the 'Jewish palm' During World War I, Rishon Lezion farmer Avshalom Feinberg didn't like the way the Ottoman authorities were treating the locals. In 1917, he joined the Nili spy ring, to help British troops in Egypt conquer Palestine. But on a trek across Sinai with pal Yosef Lishansky to deliver intelligence, Feinberg was killed by a group of Beduin. How Lishansky escaped the gunfire remains a mystery, but explains how the story made its way back to Israel. A legend also made its way home that Feinberg was buried somewhere in Sinai under a palm tree. There was no additional information for 50 years, until the war in 1967, when Israel captured the area and officer Shlomo Ben-Elkana got permission to go in search of the Feinberg mystery. Ben-Elkana traveled around Sinai asking questions, until he met a group of Beduin who knew the story of the the "Jewish palm tree." The brother of Feinberg's killer, now an elderly man, apparently gathered his family and took Ben-Elkana to the spot where a lone date palm grew. Ben-Elkana brought a crew and dug under the tree, and sure enough, a skeleton was found tangled in the roots. The remains were brought to the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir and were confirmed as being those of the Jewish spy. Today, the legend of the Jewish palm tree grave lives on in Sinai, and the remains of Avshalom Feinberg are interned on Mount Herzl, beneath a tree that grew from date pits found in his pockets. Documents that tell a story Interview with Israel State Archives senior archivist Gil Weissblei How many documents are in the Israel State Archives? Millions. Billions? We don't count by the document, but by the meter of shelves. There are 45 kilometers of shelves, each stacked with approximately six boxes, filled with thousands of pages each. What is the oldest document in the archives? We have state documents that date to the end of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine, the departments of the Palestine government during the British Mandate and from the German and Prussian consulates in Palestine at the beginning of the 19th century. As far as I know, the oldest document is a circa 1795 map from the time of Napoleon. How did you determine which of these hundreds of millions of pages to put into this show? We only used documents from 1948 [onward] because of the theme of 60 years of statehood. The Israel State Archives worked closely with the Israel Museum staff, chief curator Yigal Tzalmona and curator/designer Ido Bruno. We chose only documents that were the crème de la crème, like the Declaration of Independence and the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. We also tried to show the great moments through small and lesser known documents. What do we learn, for example, from a Ben-Gurion note to Teddy Kollek that says: "First and foremost, invite teachers, authors [and artists] to all official events"? You can see that the word "artists" is crossed out. Could artists be problematic? We have assumed that artists, after all, have radical ideas. In the first years, we see how Israelis leaders saw the status of culture in the newborn state. In the 1991 Operation Solomon airlift photo, why do the Ethiopians have numbers on their foreheads? Israel needed to identify the Jews who had permission to go on the plane. Because of the situation with the communist and revolutionary regimes then, Israel was frightened that enemies would take over the operation or that people would sneak on board. Also we needed to identify people, but they didn't have the language to communicate. There is a 1967 note from a Druse leader congratulating Israel on the reunification of Jerusalem, the eternal, shared capital, which might surprise a lot of people. Yet there are no items showing the response of Arab communities that felt dispossessed, which surely was a more common response. Was there an effort to show Israel in a certain light? We do have a display case about conflicts. From 1948 to 1966, all Arab villages and cities were under a military regime, even the police didn't deal with any matters, just the army. We presented a document in which prime minister Levi Eshkol in 1966 cancels the military regime for Arabs. It is a very small exhibition hall and we had to choose few documents and few topics. With 100 documents, it is impossible to show all the topics. There were many things we wanted to show but we had no choice but to limit. What were the security concerns about presenting these valuable documents? The Israel State Archives acts according to the Archives Law, with strict regulations about using archival material. It's impossible to show material that would harm state security. There are also a lot of restrictions to avoid displaying any document that would harm the privacy of an individual. Even with Eichmann, who deserves no privacy, we didn't want to display pages that [had nothing to do with the Holocaust and] might be too personal or embarrassing. The archives are full of personal letters stating very private problems that individuals have written about to public officials. This is the first time that the state archives has arranged such a big exhibition with some very precious documents outside of our own building, which is very well secured. So of course there were all kind of suspicions about security arrangements in the museum, but we had very good contact with the museum and all our requests were fulfilled. For the Declaration of Independence, we even built a special case. This exhibition was arranged according to very detailed security requests, from climate control to display and guards, to avoid every possibility of harm. Obviously these documents are extremely precious; there is only one copy of each. Why arrange the exhibition with a museum? The Israel State Archives has so many hidden treasures, but we don't have our own museum or even our own building. We rent a place and are still looking for a permanent housing solution. During the last 50 years there have been different plans, but I think that finding a solution wasn't important enough to the state. Now at the Israel Museum is a great opportunity to see some of our treasures. It is not even the tip of the iceberg of what we have. It is important for every citizen in Israel to see these things and learn about the history of the state. If we have a building, people could see even more documents and more exhibitions.