Description:

ADOLF EICHMANN COMMENTARY ON HIS DEATHS ENTENCE
Startling typed manuscript, 5pp. legal folio, [Jerusalem, ca. Jun 7, 1962]. A week after the pronouncement of his death sentence and the drafting of a more-softly-worded statement concerning his fate, Eichmann issues this commentary, signed in type, with the excuse for his actions which he used throughout his defense: "following orders", and blaming others for his crimes. This historic document reads in part: It is over. I heard the verdict last week: Guilty. I know the sentence already: Death. And for this, my fate, I feel nothing. Nothing at all...I confess a moral guilt...I was a part of the inferno. But I will never confess to being more than a loyal obeyor of orders in a state where all values had been reversed...It was the Great Ones - Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich - who turned their backs on the crying of the people...No, I do not want a clergyman...They cannot send me to Hell because I am in Hell...I'm longing to be dead - the quicker the better...". Eichmann describes his readiness to commit suicide should he have been recognized while in American custody, speculates that a friend betrayed him to Mossad, and says that he hopes that he may meet him before he hangs. He states that all that matters to him at this point are his memoirs and his family. Ironically, he discusses the fact that his own children would never undertake a task without wondering if he would have asked them to do so. He writes: "I like that. I am proud when they ask for my orders. That is the result of my care for them...I am only sorry that I cannot finish the job...I like it that this son of mine hides his feeling for his father...I wish, without hypocrisy, to apologise to the Jewish people for what they suffered in the years of the last Reich...". Rusty staple marks, else very good to fine. From the files of Robert Servatius, Eichmann's defense attorney who also defended Fritz Sauckel, Karl Brandt and Paul Pleiger at Nuremberg.

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September 10, 2013 11:00 AM EDT
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