Eichmann Before Jerusalem

by Bettina Stangneth

  In Warsaw it is reported that the Gestapo agent Ehrmann [!] has arrived. He was previously the “Expert on Jewish Affairs” in Vienna and later in Prague. He was born in the German colony of Sarona in Palestine, speaks Yiddish and Hebrew, and is an intimate friend of Julius Streicher. In Prague, he threatened the Jews with a massacre if they did not emigrate quickly, though he also created the greatest difficulties for those applying for emigration permits.

  Even the typist’s mangling of the name cannot disguise the subject of this article.64 There is only one man (as we will see in more detail over the following chapters) to whom this erroneous description could apply. The reference to a friendship with Streicher is incorrect, and Eichmann must have found it irritating. The rest of the article gives an impression of the press outcry caused by the Nisko campaign, naming Danish, Swiss, and Polish papers. The first deportation attempt attracted such a lot of media attention that it is difficult to see why additional eyewitnesses were invited along. It is unlikely that the National Socialists had simply underestimated the campaign’s public profile, particularly as they believed that every little Jewish community leader possessed more international influence than even the important ones had in reality. Perhaps Eichmann and his superiors were initially trying to reassure the public by sending Jewish authorities to accompany the transports. The presence of prominent people, in their experience, gave the impression of respectability, and respectability was vital here. This was the first attempt to put thousands of the Reich’s inhabitants onto trains whose destinations were unknown, in full view of the public. The National Socialists were particularly concerned about public opinion in this test case and compiled detailed notes on every public reaction to what was going on.65 Conversely, it is entirely possible that the witnesses to this doomed experiment were principally there to increase the pressure to emigrate, which had begun to falter.

  Now the alternative to emigration was no longer life in Vienna under straitened circumstances, with violence and harassment; it was life in a swamp, with no contact with the outside world. As Eichmann explained to Jakob Edelstein on his return to Prague, “the daily contingent of emigrants gathering at the Prague Central Office for Jewish Emigration” had to grow, “otherwise the Prague Central Office for Jewish Emigration will be closed.” At the same time, he allowed Edelstein to leave the protectorate for negotiations abroad.66 If the Nazis’ project had really been a complete failure (or as Eichmann phrased it, using one of his awful formulations, a “deadly disgrace”67), then once again Eichmann managed to make the best of it: he used the swamps of the San as the ultimate threat. Edelstein traveled to Trieste and took the opportunity to smuggle his report on Nisko abroad. The resultant article in the London Times ran to nearly three hundred lines. Appearing under the headline “The Nazi Plan: A Stony Road to Extermination,” it made no bones about what had happened, giving a conservative estimate of ten thousand people dead in Poland and hundreds of thousands expelled. It reported that Jewish communities “are forced to cooperate in this gruesome work.” The article gave full details of the deportation process, using the German terms “Judenreservat,” “Lebensraum,” and Polish “Reststaat.”68

  We don’t know how the Nazis reacted to this article, but they doubtless read it. It did no harm to Eichmann’s career, which continued to progress rapidly. Not even the rage of Governor General Hans Frank, who tried to stop the transport from entering his jurisdiction, could touch Eichmann. When word got out that Frank had issued an arrest warrant for Eichmann if he should ever set foot in the General Government of occupied Polish territories again, Eichmann took it as an extremely childish joke. “He gave the order,” Eichmann would explain in Argentina, “to arrest a member of the RSHA, an adviser at the highest level. You see how high-handed he was. That was Frank’s manner … he was a megalomaniac, starting to behave like a dictator—imagine, arresting me just like that.” And Eichmann’s reasoning for this flagrant presumption? “He obviously saw me as competition.”69 Eichmann is the one exploding with megalomania here, claiming that Hans Frank, Hitler’s lawyer and the governor general of the occupied eastern territories, stood no chance in a power struggle against Adolf Eichmann. Neither Frank, nor the people who laughed at Frank’s faux pas, could have taken Eichmann for a little man with a bureaucratic soul, acting under orders, with no influence of his own.

  The Perfect Hebraist

  Three days after the article appeared in the Times, Eichmann was put in charge of Special Department R, in Office IV (otherwise known as the Gestapo) of the Head Office for Reich Security (RSHA). On January 30, 1940, this department was amalgamated with the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration and became Department IV D 4 in the Office for Occupied Territories (Office IV D). The change broadened Eichmann’s remit considerably: in addition to forced Jewish emigration, he was now responsible for coordinating plans to relocate Jews to the east. There was no doubt about Eichmann’s talent for organizing large-scale population displacements, as his subsequent promotion shows. From April 1940, he and one of his colleagues also took over the Central Resettlement Office in Posen, responsible for implementing Himmler’s plan to “evacuate foreigners from the Warthegau.” Poles and Jews were forcibly relocated, to the advantage of ethnic German settlers from Volhynia and Bessarabia. Interestingly, by this time Eichmann’s fame must already have spread to Poland. Frieda Mazia, who lived in Sosnowiec at this time, would testify at the trial in 1961:

  By about the start of 1940, we knew that if a senior German functionary or an officer arrived, it was best to stay hidden, and not show your face on the street.… People were saying you should have no contact with them, because there was one among them who was born in a German colony in Palestine, and spoke Yiddish and Hebrew, and was familiar with all the Jewish customs.70

  Frau Mazia was not simply projecting what she discovered after the war onto her experience at the time: her memory is corroborated both by the Pariser Tageszeitung article quoted above and by one of the most potent articles ever written about Eichmann. On December 6, 1940, Aufbau in New York ran a small piece on its front page, this time entirely focused on Eichmann:

  THE PERFECT HEBRAIST

  The Gestapo’s new informer and hangman in Romania is Kommissar Eichmann, who arrived in Bucharest this week. Eichmann comes from Palestine, and was born in the Templar settlement of Sarona, near Tel Aviv. He is fluent in Hebrew and is familiar with the history of Zionism, as well as all the personalities, influences and tendencies of the Zionist movement’s various groups.

  Almost nothing in this article is accurate, and Eichmann may have found it flattering for that very reason, since the source of the fairy tales was none other than himself. Eichmann came from Solingen, in the Rhineland, but he had heard of the exotic-sounding Templar settlement (though it wasn’t even in Meyer’s Lexicon). It was probably Leopold von Mildenstein (one of his first commanding officers and an expert on the Middle East) or his acquaintance Otto von Bolschwing who told him about Sarona. A mob of radically anti-Semitic Germans who had settled near Tel Aviv in 1871, the people of Sarona were still clinging to their aim of being the last bastion of Christianity in the Holy Land.71 Alternatively, Eichmann may have stumbled across the name while searching through Jewish newspapers.72 He is known to have used Sarona very early on, both to impress people in his own camp and to intimidate the Jewish representatives and their milieu. In 1940 Heinrich Grüber, the pastor in Berlin who advocated for Jews who no longer practiced their faith, asked Eichmann directly about the place where he was supposed to have been born. It’s not entirely clear what Eichmann told him, but Grüber was certainly convinced of the legend afterward.73

  Eichmann even told the Jews in Vienna about it. He chatted with feigned fluency about Vladimir Jabotinsky and Chaim Weizmann and their differences over Zionism, and he mentioned names that would be of little interest to anyone who wasn’t Jewish.74 According to Benjamin Murmelstein’s statement, he also heard this story from Eichmann.75 Dieter Wisliceny
(Eichmann’s colleague and friend, bound to him by a complicated, jealous love-hate relationship) gave several different versions, which can all be summarized as: Eichmann told the story and was tickled pink that people believed him. He was well aware of how useful this legend could be: it explained, for example, why he (supposedly) spoke Hebrew and knew so much about the Jews.76

  The story is a common thread winding through the public’s perception of Eichmann: in 1943 people were talking about it in Holland;77 in 1944 Eichmann used it offensively in Hungary to underpin his authority. Wisliceny used it to make the Jewish community afraid of his commander, who knew everything, could read everything, and—a masterstroke of caricature—looked so Jewish himself that he could move undetected among the Jews at any time. This terrifying scenario made such a lasting impression that after the war, people were frightened Eichmann might secretly have gone to Palestine, posing as a Jew, and could be hiding there among the survivors.78 Apparently Eichmann also told the Sarona fairy tale in passing to Richard Glücks, the concentration camp inspector from SS Leadership Main Office, who was considerably higher ranking than Eichmann. It helped his reputation in many respects.

  A glance at the modest means with which Eichmann managed to present himself as a perfect Hebraist, even to his colleagues, teaches us something about his use of role-playing and image-making.79 Eichmann spoke no Hebrew and only a little Yiddish. He had attempted to learn—probably inspired by his admiration for Mildenstein, who was at home in both languages—but had quickly reached his limits. He dated his first attempts back to his honeymoon, in March 1935.80 In summer 1936 he submitted an application for a Jewish teacher, but Heydrich rejected it, recommending an “Aryan” language teacher who had also applied to his office, but nothing came of the offer.81 Mildenstein left at around the same time, and over the following year the department’s language problem became increasingly apparent, as no one else was able to read Hebrew. In spite of his “self-study,” Eichmann failed to learn—and yet his second application for a teacher in June 1937 was also rejected.82 Eichmann said he then bought a textbook: Hebräisch für Jedermann (Hebrew for Everyone) by Saul Kaléko.83 Contrary to the title—and to Eichmann’s version of the story—this book was not exactly straightforward, even for proficient autodidacts. It must, however, have made an impressive desk ornament in Eichmann’s office.

  In 1938 Eichmann paid for a few hours of instruction out of his own pocket, with Benjamin Murmelstein in Vienna. This didn’t get him any further.84 Witnesses in both Austria and Hungary were convinced that Eichmann was just a skilled bluffer, using a few set phrases in both languages.85 In Israel in 1960, he would show himself to be unable to read or understand any Hebrew. But the few nuggets he had gleaned, and the ability to hold a Hebrew book the right way round, proved to be enough for him to play the role of an “insider.”

  He achieved this success thanks to his gift for role-playing and his good memory, but also because German Jews were entirely unused to this sort of interest from National Socialists. The fact that Eichmann’s knowledge was so remarked upon must mean that he was already a particularly interesting and well-known character in the Nazi regime—otherwise these legends could not have grown and spread.

  Eichmann always kept a close eye on his public image and did his best to influence it. Even his last notes were prompted by other people’s books and depictions of him. In 1961 his anti-Semitic paranoia would make him overestimate what he saw as the closed nature of academia and journalism, just as in 1939 he overestimated the impact of the foreign press in his own country and screamed at the Jewish representatives in Berlin. It was forbidden to bring these newspapers into Germany, and even owning one was dangerous. The unbroken chain of information between “international Jewry,” the “international press,” and “Jewish-infiltrated academia” existed only in the Nazis’ nightmares.

  However, the public image of Eichmann in the European and American press was no fantasy, dreamed up at a safe distance. The sources were informants from Nazi-occupied Europe, meaning that even inaccurate articles show us something of the effect this man created.

  The Ideal Symbol

  Adolf Eichmann was not the first person to realize how useful a public image can be. The use of ideals and symbolism was one of the secrets for the Nazi Party’s success. Hitler’s Mein Kampf also provides a warning never to underestimate the effect of a symbolic figure. Speaking in the 1950s in Argentina, Eichmann would say that wartime was when he had finally become famous: “They knew me wherever I went.”86 He even turned up in a book published by some of his comrades in Vienna,87 though his name was spread largely through his visibility to his victims: “Through the press, the name Eichmann had emerged as a symbol.… In any case, the word Jew … was irreversibly linked with the word Eichmann.”88 And his various official departments with their nondescript and frequently changing names soon just became known as “Eichmann’s office.”89 These concepts were so powerful that they can be found in witness statements from the Nuremberg trials, along with the term “Eichmann’s special commando” for his representatives abroad.90 This usage cannot be wholly explained by the fact that Eichmann, unlike many officials in the RSHA, remained in his post throughout the war. He would never have gained this reputation without the public performance that went with it, and without that reputation, “Eichmann’s office” would not have had the position of power that it achieved over the years. A single person’s influence extends only as far as his arm or his commands can reach. His image, however, can have an impact in places he never goes, provided he finds someone to carry it there—even if that someone is his enemy. “Much more power … was attributed to me than I actually had,” Eichmann explained. And “this fear” of his presumed power meant that “everyone felt he was being watched.”91

  The Nazi Party’s concept of power was very personalized, and the rapid success of this concept was repeated further down the organization. Eichmann and his colleagues quickly learned how useful a Führer-like figure can be, as a focal point for gathering power. This was one of his fundamental reasons for not hiding in the shadows or shying away from public displays. The Nazis needed a shop-front sign to which the Jewish question could be “irreversibly linked,” and Eichmann was the name to fulfill that symbolic function. Eichmann would later try to make this choice look like pure chance—a view that surfaces occasionally in books and articles on his role. But what other name could even have been considered for the position?

  Eichmann kept a close watch on his growing reputation, and it could not have escaped him that his exploits were becoming increasingly notorious. The international press reported on them, and the Nazis went over the press of “international Jewry” with a fine-tooth comb. Reviewing the press was a reconnaissance mission in a war that was partly being fought with “intellectual weapons.” Eichmann’s significance, both in his own estimation and for his colleagues, grew in direct proportion to the number of plans and campaigns to which he managed to link his name. By this time, many people were also familiar with Eichmann from his appearances at interministry meetings and planning conferences. With all due caution about viewing history through an individual biography, it is surprising how many of the participant lists for important meetings feature Eichmann’s name. He was involved right from the start, leading experiments—like the Vienna Central Office, Doppl, Nisko, the Szczecin deportations, ghettoization, and even the first attempts at mass extermination—which can now be seen as prototypes for practices that later became standard. At the notorious Wannsee Conference, Heydrich officially enthroned Eichmann as the coordinator of all interministerial efforts toward the “final solution of the Jewish question.” It was the logical next step for his career. A lunatic project like this required someone who had experience in unconventional solutions, someone who wouldn’t get caught up in the usual bureaucratic formalities. Eichmann’s leadership of the Vienna Central Office, and everything that came after, proved he could do just that. He had a talent for organization
, and for making possible things that had never been done before. When others were at a loss, he was the man they called on. For example, a professor at Strasbourg University was adamant that he wanted the “skulls of Jewish-Bolshevist Commissars” to add to a collection of skeletons, despite the fact they were still alive. With Eichmann on board, this too could be organized.92

  Eichmann enjoyed his reputation for being the man for tricky assignments. Even when he was neither the initiator nor the driving force of a project, he still managed to convince others he had originated it. The so-called Madagascar Plan is still linked to his name today, although the original idea was verifiably not his, and he never worked on its details.93 But still he triumphed: in spite of all evidence to the contrary, even today no one can talk about this resettlement plan without mentioning his name. In later years, when circumstances had changed, Eichmann would make an immense effort to divert attention away from himself and play down his role. But that effort only provides further evidence of the position he had really held during the Nazis’ glory years. No one would do that unless they had something to hide, and Eichmann did it surprisingly effectively.

  It has therefore taken some time for historians to recognize the significance of the gigantic eviction and resettlement plans in which Eichmann played a substantial part. As head of Special Department IV R, he was responsible for “the central processing of Security Police matters during the implementation of the eviction in the East.” The connections were clearer to Eichmann’s contemporaries, as we can see from a report by the Ministry of the Interior, claiming that in September 1941 Eichmann advocated extending the definition of Jews to include half Jews. He was “strongly in favor of the new ruling, though with no real view on the form it should take.” The biographical note on him read: “Eichmann set up the Central Offices in Vienna and Prague, and led the deportation of Jews from Szczecin etc. to the General Government.”94