XPost: soc.culture.israel, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.society.liberalism
XPost: can.politics
Nazi's spectre haunts Israel anew
Adolf Eichmann snatches a victory from the grave,
writes Abraham Rabinovich in Jerusalem.
THE release for publication of Adolf Eichmann's version of the
Holocaust, written just before he was hanged for directing the mass extermination of European Jewry, has been a subject of controversy in
Israel.
Eichmann's sons in Germany, as well as Israeli Holocaust researchers,
have demanded release of the 1300-page memoir written by Eichmann
while in an Israeli prison in 1961 and 1962 awaiting completion of his
trial.
After Eichmann was executed at age 52, then Israeli prime minister
David Ben-Gurion ordered the manuscript be kept secret for 15 years,
which the petitioners note has long passed.
The Israeli Justice Ministry decided yesterday to release the memoir,
but did not set a date.
Leading the fight against release has been Jerusalem attorney Amos
Hausner, the son of Gideon Hausner, who led the prosecution at
Eichmann's trial.
The younger Hausner cited the memoirs published by his late father, 15
years after the trial, in which he revealed the existence of the
Eichmann manuscript.
Gideon Hausner, who was Israel's attorney-general, revealed that he
told Ben-Gurion that publication "would challenge the verdict (of
guilt against Eichmann) and raise doubts in the world as to its
validity".
The official said that Eichmann "had rewritten the history of the
Holocaust so as not to include Eichmann". He added: "There is no need
for us to publish his lies across the world."
The attorney-general said that Eichmann took true details, removed
them from their context, and then added completely imaginary details.
"There is always a grain of truth to each story," Gideon Hausner said.
"This is a clever last attempt to portray himself as different than he
really is."
The younger Hausner says that publication of the Eichmann memoirs
could assist Holocaust deniers, who contest the fact that some 6
million Jews were murdered. It is inconceivable, he says, that
Eichmann's family should profit financially from publication of the
memoirs.
Israel must legislate, he says, that income from publication of such a
book must belong to the State.
However, Israeli author Tom Segev, who has written books on the
Holocaust, says refusal to publish the memoirs would itself be a form
of denying it. "All material on the Holocaust must be published," he
says. "Eichmann's memoirs are an important historical document."
Eichmann is the only man to have ever been executed in Israel by court judgement. He was kidnapped by Mossad agents from Argentina, where he
had been living with his family under an assumed name after escaping
from Europe after the war.
One of the few historians to have read the memoirs, Evyatar Friesel,
of Israel's State archives, says that Eichmann remained unrepentant in
his writings. He says the memoirs offer no substantial new historical
insights.
The Austrian-born Eichmann contended, as he had at the trial, that he
had only been a cog in the Nazi bureaucratic machine and had simply
followed orders.square
https://fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Eichmann/Australian110899.html
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