Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, gracious, Jiminy Christmas, it's behind the Bastards
Speaker 2: a podcast about Adolph Iikman for the last two weeks,
Speaker 2: mister Holocaust himself as I shouldn't have titled these episodes
Speaker 2: what's wrong with me? Uh?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: Enough time for that?
Speaker 2: Whatever? Yeah, whatever is wrong with me? It's not what's
Speaker 2: wrong with our guest for today Joe Kassalian, who actually
Speaker 2: necessary similar kind of person in some way. So anyway, Joe,
Speaker 2: welcome to the show. Hello, what is wrong with us?
Speaker 2: Why do we do this?
Speaker 4: And I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: All I know is that we're talking about friend of
Speaker 2: the pod, Adolph Iikman, who is, you know, the head
Speaker 2: of the Jewish Desk for Genocide at the SD at
Speaker 2: this point. He is, prior in the previous episodes, established
Speaker 2: himself as the Czar of the Jews, partly by taking
Speaker 2: credit for a lot of acts of genocide that he
Speaker 2: actually didn't orchestrate or that he had a smaller part in.
Speaker 2: You know, he's been kind of pissing off a lot
Speaker 2: of his colleagues prior to this point by lying about
Speaker 2: what he's done and taking credit for shit they've done.
Speaker 2: And now we're at the point in the war where
Speaker 2: things are bad enough that everyone's like, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 2: shit I did Iikman definitely did it. This was absolutely him, right,
Speaker 2: And they're going from being like throwing his name around
Speaker 2: to get shit done to being like, oh, Iikman, I
Speaker 2: hardly know him.
Speaker 4: You know Iikeman showing up at the Nazi table to
Speaker 4: see if everybody could like show off the ranks of
Speaker 4: war crimes. To find out he's the only one still
Speaker 4: doing it.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, ah fuck, oh yeah, you're it's all on you.
Speaker 2: Oh buddy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I would have done that too, because I know
Speaker 4: he would have taken credit for it. Yeah yeah. It's like, look, man,
Speaker 4: you've been stealing my content for years now, you could
Speaker 4: have it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Heinrik Kimler's like, hey, you want my coat, my
Speaker 2: name documents, Yeah, buddy. So in the final two years
Speaker 2: of the war, sas perpetrators, particularly the crew of men
Speaker 2: around Iikman, would go through a rapid process of flipping
Speaker 2: from wanting the Holocaust to be on their CVS to
Speaker 2: wanting to hide their involvement, and this was often done
Speaker 2: by pinning their own actions on Iikman, who is their
Speaker 2: most famous coworker in the field of genocide. He's the
Speaker 2: He's the Alan Smithy or whatever that fake director name
Speaker 2: that you like put on a movie if you don't
Speaker 2: want your name on it. He's the Alan Smithy of
Speaker 2: genocide where you're like, yeah, let's just say he did it.
Speaker 2: The Allies consciously sought to spook top Nazis and the
Speaker 2: final years of the war. And it's very fair to
Speaker 2: critique the Allies, to critique Roosevelt, to critique even Eisenhower
Speaker 2: of not doing enough to put a stop to the Holocaust,
Speaker 2: because they don't.
Speaker 4: They absolutely don't.
Speaker 2: Choices were made not to bomb railroads, and they knew
Speaker 2: what was happening, they had reports. This is on them, right.
Speaker 2: It's part of why Eisenhower acts so strongly to document
Speaker 2: what had happened afterwards is he feels bad. He knows
Speaker 2: he could have done more.
Speaker 4: Right, they all do, and they straight up refuse to
Speaker 4: bomb Auschwitz when there is an agent inside. I'm probably
Speaker 4: mispronouncing his name of it. Told Pilecki, yes, like beg
Speaker 4: them to bomb it.
Speaker 2: It's like, look, we would all rather die stop it now, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was like the undergrounds, take inside the cams
Speaker 4: like we would rather all fucking die.
Speaker 2: Yes, please blow this place up with us in it.
Speaker 2: If it's just said no, yeah, and they said no.
Speaker 2: One thing the Allies do do that does save some lives, right,
Speaker 2: not enough, but some is. They start broadcasting the names
Speaker 2: of ss mass murderers on illegal radio stations that are
Speaker 2: broadcasting into occupied territory, saying we know who you are,
Speaker 2: and if you cut the shit off right now, you
Speaker 2: might have a chance of surviving post war the old
Speaker 2: doc sing right, Some number of guys are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pull back a little bit, right, and that
Speaker 2: does save some number of life not nearly enough, but
Speaker 2: it's a thing that they're doing, right, And this is
Speaker 2: partly why people start pulling back and letting Iikman take
Speaker 2: more credit and trying to because they're like, oh, I
Speaker 2: heard my name on the radio. That's not good. Have
Speaker 2: you heard how fast the Russians are advancing?
Speaker 4: Shit, I am already running west.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Expunging the evidence of their own complicity and
Speaker 2: putting it on Iikman was made easier by the fact
Speaker 2: that the self proclaimed Czar of the Jews seem to
Speaker 2: have no overt sense of self preservation or desire to
Speaker 2: deny his role even once it became clear that this
Speaker 2: was going to be bad for him. He must have
Speaker 2: noticed the rapid change among his colleagues, but Tina Stangnath
Speaker 2: rights than the last year of the war, his friends
Speaker 2: stopped meeting him for lunch quote even though the and
Speaker 2: I love this part, even though the canteen and Iikman's
Speaker 2: office building was one of the few who have to
Speaker 2: have remained untouched by the air raids. Right, he's the
Speaker 2: only guy of the working kitchen, and we won't go
Speaker 2: to lunch with him. That's how mad his position.
Speaker 4: Is, said Aikman, sitting alone at lunch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, does no one know that my kitchen is still working?
Speaker 4: You guys want to trade by Bob ppa.
Speaker 2: J Yeah, and they are all starving and they're like, nah,
Speaker 2: but I'm not gonna eat there. Bro, Like, you don't
Speaker 2: want to be seen next to that motherfucker right.
Speaker 4: Fuck that, I'm boiling my boots. This sucks.
Speaker 2: He is so toxic people will give up the guarantee
Speaker 2: of a full belly to be avoid being seen next
Speaker 2: to him. He would later complain about the whiplash of
Speaker 2: being dumped so unceremoniously by the whole less ass elite
Speaker 2: and complain that a few years earlier people couldn't do
Speaker 2: enough to invite me to minister's meetings or to unofficial meetings,
Speaker 2: private dinners and such like. But once the Russians broke
Speaker 2: through in Poland, he became a sort of ghost. Right.
Speaker 2: He's like man a year ago, two years ago, I
Speaker 2: was at every dinner. No one even wants to eat
Speaker 2: at my place anymore.
Speaker 4: We used to be cool. Man, What happened?
Speaker 2: What happened? Right. For his part, while Eichmann didn't seek
Speaker 2: to erase his own record, he did later claim that
Speaker 2: he spent the last months of the war engaged just
Speaker 2: in simple logistics tasks. Right, Oh, I wasn't doing any
Speaker 2: more genocide at this point. I was trying to make
Speaker 2: sure enough food made it into Berlin for the defenders, right,
Speaker 2: and my office had enough defenses for the fighting, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I wasn't involved in anything horrible, right, just normal war stuff.
Speaker 2: This is a lie. By the end of forty four,
Speaker 2: even the most deluded SS officials knew their goose was cooked,
Speaker 2: and also they had no more goose to eat. A
Speaker 2: decision was no more goose to step. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 2: more gooses to step or to eat. A decision was
Speaker 2: made that even if the war against the Allies was
Speaker 2: going to be lost, they still had to win the
Speaker 2: war against the Jews. Therefore, the killing would continue right
Speaker 2: up until the last possible minute. Even if, and they
Speaker 2: make the choice, trains with critical war materiel are diverted
Speaker 2: from propping up the front line to the task of
Speaker 2: sending Jews to death camps. They choose. The high command
Speaker 2: Hitler in the military breast choose the Holocaust over delaying
Speaker 2: the Russians.
Speaker 4: Outstanding, well done boys, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Heinrich Himler personally approved such actions, and he had one
Speaker 2: on one meetings with Eikman to ensure that Eichman was
Speaker 2: properly briefed and supported to manage this task. While Hitler
Speaker 2: retreated to his bunker and travel within the Reich grew
Speaker 2: increasingly dangerous, Eikman spent the last months of the war
Speaker 2: on the move constantly. Stegnath writes Aikman was involved in
Speaker 2: the very last extermination campaign, the gassing of Ravensbrook concentration
Speaker 2: Camp on January twenty sixth, nineteen forty five. Auto moles
Speaker 2: Notoria's Special Commando was sent to the camp with its
Speaker 2: gas fans, and gas chambers were also erected there. One
Speaker 2: of his duties. Eichman's duties was to gather up famous
Speaker 2: Jews and turned in different lower security camps. Some prominent
Speaker 2: intellectuals and celebrities have been kept in comparatively survivable accommodations
Speaker 2: in places like theresan stat in order, which is treason
Speaker 2: stat is like the nice concentration camp. And as we'll say,
Speaker 2: I don't mean it was a nice place. I mean
Speaker 2: it was the best of the camps to be in, right.
Speaker 4: If memory serves me correctly, it was the one that
Speaker 4: they set up to bring the Red Cross to.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what we're about to talk about. That's s.
Speaker 2: Eichman's job, right, And this is treason stat is comparatively
Speaker 2: nice because as you said, it's meant to be a
Speaker 2: show camp that you can display to the death camps. No,
Speaker 2: these are just camps for like political you know, we've
Speaker 2: got to everyone has some of these, right, and that's true.
Speaker 4: Just h it's just a labor camp for y undesirables.
Speaker 2: England has concentration camps for Germans, right, they're not death camps.
Speaker 2: They're just constant. And there's a difference between the two. Right,
Speaker 2: you're just concentrating people in a concentration camp, and that's
Speaker 2: the Germans. You're like, No, our camp is just like
Speaker 2: with the English hat for Germans. Right, these are people
Speaker 2: who are politically unreliable, but we're not killing.
Speaker 4: Them, no, right, we would never do that.
Speaker 2: This is why if you're a Jew who's internationally famous
Speaker 2: and gets caught, you saw, Obviously a good number of
Speaker 2: those people do get killed, but a lot of them
Speaker 2: are put into reason stat for a while, because well,
Speaker 2: people are kind of want to know what's happened to
Speaker 2: this guy, and if we can show him or her
Speaker 2: into reason stat, right, it'll keep the international community from
Speaker 2: thinking things are as bad as they are, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we can handle them later, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we will handle And again, a lot of these
Speaker 2: people do get killed, they're just kept there for a while, right,
Speaker 2: And these same prominent Jews that it was hoped might
Speaker 2: provide leverage for men like Himler right, once the warg
Speaker 2: is late enough to like, well, now we don't want
Speaker 2: to kill these guys, but like, if we've got these
Speaker 2: famous Jews that we've kept kind of in the fridge. Right,
Speaker 2: they're preserved, we can maybe trade them to let guys
Speaker 2: like Himmler escape, right to you know what, We'll trade
Speaker 2: them to the Allies postwar to keep our own asses safe.
Speaker 4: So, oh, man, I don't think there's anybody famous enough
Speaker 4: for that to work.
Speaker 2: No, no, not by the end of this shit.
Speaker 4: Nope.
Speaker 2: Iikeman's job then is to both ensure some of these
Speaker 2: people are safe and also you have to convince them
Speaker 2: to keep their mouth shut about the murders they'd witnessed.
Speaker 2: For example, after that last gassing at Ravensbrook, Iikman transfers
Speaker 2: several women from Ravensbrook Brook to Theresenstat in February of
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, and he meets with them personally to
Speaker 2: basically be like, hey, y'all are gonna live. The Red
Speaker 2: Cross is going to come here soon. What did you
Speaker 2: see at Ravensbrook, Right, you didn't see any genocide, did you?
Speaker 4: And let me remind you this is a pinky swear. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is a pinky swear. Right.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't break a pinky swear to Aikman, would you.
Speaker 2: One of these women, Charlotte Salzberger required Eikman questioning her
Speaker 2: in a very polite manner about the extermination. His fame
Speaker 2: was such that even with that, he doesn't introduce himself
Speaker 2: as Adolph Eichman. But he's famous enough that she guesses
Speaker 2: who he is, right, She later says, quote, we knew
Speaker 2: who Aikman was even in a holland. We knew he
Speaker 2: was a man who used to a lot of Yiddish
Speaker 2: and Hebrew expressions. And there was also a rumor that
Speaker 2: he spoke Hebrew and was born in Sarona. This was
Speaker 2: very clear from the way he spoke, right, because there
Speaker 2: are rumors that he's basically Jewish, and that's why he
Speaker 2: knows all this stuff.
Speaker 4: Ah, yeah, right, right, he's had those servers for a
Speaker 4: while now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he spent some time asking them inconsequential details about
Speaker 2: their lives. Be like, well, well you have to you know,
Speaker 2: how are you like? Try to be friendly, right, He's
Speaker 2: he tries to be good cop before he pivots to
Speaker 2: the bad cop part of his routine.
Speaker 4: Quote, how was your weekend? How was your weekend? You know,
Speaker 4: death camping?
Speaker 2: This is a nice place, right, We got you some
Speaker 2: chocolate last week, Right, everything's been good? Huh. After this,
Speaker 2: he pivots to the bad cop part of his routine.
Speaker 2: He told us we now had the right to go
Speaker 2: to the Theresian stat ghetto, but if we said anything
Speaker 2: about our experience in Ravensbrook, or about anything we knew,
Speaker 2: then you will this was the phrase he used, be
Speaker 2: going up the chimney. Ooh god, yeah, he's still our Reikman.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Within days of this, Eichman himself was in too Reasonstad
Speaker 2: to prepare for what would be the last visit by
Speaker 2: the International Committee of the Red Cross. So again, Eikman
Speaker 2: is the guy who is show managing these Red Cross
Speaker 2: visits at the camp.
Speaker 4: While being internationally famous for murdering millions of people.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's already known that he's doing a lot of this.
Speaker 2: As I noted before, this was the Nice concentration camp.
Speaker 2: Nazi propaganda describes treason stat as being located in a
Speaker 2: SPA town where elderly juice could retire. Right, this is
Speaker 2: a Spa. Basically, we're sending him to a fucking Spa.
Speaker 2: You're calling us genocide.
Speaker 4: Come on, everybody's gonna leave there with their hair all
Speaker 4: redone and like you know, Veneer's in it.
Speaker 2: It's the shit you saw with a Brago Garcia, where
Speaker 2: they give him like water and a glass with salt
Speaker 2: on their to be like he's drinking margaritas at El Salvador.
Speaker 4: Come on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So some famous Jewish internees are kept there, but
Speaker 2: the camp is also used as a transit camp for
Speaker 2: Chech Jews on their way to the killing centers. So
Speaker 2: this is not a nice place by any objective standards.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty two alone, so many people were dying
Speaker 2: due to starvation and disease at Theresa Stat that the
Speaker 2: Nazis built a crematorium capable of handling two hundred bodies
Speaker 2: a day roughly. And again, this is the nice concentration camp.
Speaker 2: Thirty three thousand Jews die into resent Stat itself, and
Speaker 2: this is the nice place. Yes, I just I can't
Speaker 2: exaggerate how bad all of this is. Even accounting for this,
Speaker 2: the living conditions there are still better than everywhere else,
Speaker 2: because Eichmann and his colleagues they don't want it nice
Speaker 2: all of the time. But you've got to be able
Speaker 2: to clean it up enough that at a moment's notice
Speaker 2: you can take the authorities there, right, so it can't
Speaker 2: get too bad.
Speaker 4: I mean, the bar is so low in all of
Speaker 4: the other camps. It doesn't have to be good at
Speaker 4: Karisenstadta other than like, well they ate today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we get the corpses out of here, it
Speaker 2: looks okay, right, yeah. In early nineteen forty five, his
Speaker 2: main concern was that rumors of the death camps had
Speaker 2: percolated widely within the community of Jews being held there,
Speaker 2: and Eikman did not want those rumors getting to anyone
Speaker 2: at the Red Cross. And you can't make some of
Speaker 2: this shit up. You want to guess what day they
Speaker 2: pick for this Red Cross visit to teresen Stott.
Speaker 4: April first April. You are literally right, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: oh no.
Speaker 2: April Day nineteen forty five is when Aikman personally meets
Speaker 2: Red Cross representative Hans did Not and announces himself to
Speaker 2: be quote the direct agent of the Reich's fewer ss
Speaker 2: for all Jewish questions. They literally pick April Fool's day, right,
Speaker 2: It's it's so fucked.
Speaker 4: This is this is my least favorite thing I've ever
Speaker 4: been right about, Thank you, Robert.
Speaker 2: So as soon as Eichman meets with this guy, he
Speaker 2: gives a kind of rambling diatribe about his theories are
Speaker 2: the Jewish question and has now ended planned. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna make a reservation for these guys, you know,
Speaker 2: like America did with the Native Americans. We're not going
Speaker 2: to kill him.
Speaker 4: Have you guys ever heard of Oklahoma? And we're gonna do.
Speaker 2: That, right, Obviously, the United States killed a lot, we
Speaker 2: did a genocide several of them against we. But the
Speaker 2: average European wouldn't call what we did a genocide in
Speaker 2: this stage, in part because the ward doesn't exist yet.
Speaker 4: Right, to be fair, the average American today says, it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is the way this they're
Speaker 2: trying to be Like, No, what we're doing is no
Speaker 2: worse than what the Americans did, right, That's all that
Speaker 2: we're trying to do here. And what's weird though, is
Speaker 2: that Eikman also tells this guy, you know, Himmler supports
Speaker 2: the humane treatment of Jews in Nazi custody, and I
Speaker 2: don't entirely agree with my boss here, but I'm following orders, right,
Speaker 2: so I'm keeping things nice too, which is such a
Speaker 2: weird line for him to ride, being like, actually, Himmler
Speaker 2: wants the Jews to be treated well, and I think
Speaker 2: he's kind of crazy, but you know that's what I'm
Speaker 2: doing anyway. It's such a weird line.
Speaker 4: Imagine being told this is a Red crossworker by a
Speaker 4: man where skull and cross boat.
Speaker 2: Stolen Cross votes by literally Adolph Eikman. You're just like
Speaker 2: rolling your eyes so fucking hard now. So I bring
Speaker 2: this up to point out there's very little sign at
Speaker 2: all that the Czar of the Jews has any plans
Speaker 2: to flee from justice before the fall of the regime.
Speaker 2: And this is one time where we have to give
Speaker 2: Aikman credit for being a lot smarter than his colleagues,
Speaker 2: because this is part of his tactic. Right. He's not dumb.
Speaker 2: He's not. Actually it seems like, wow, he's either so
Speaker 2: committed that he's ready to die. He's just trying to
Speaker 2: kill as many guys as possible, or he's really stupid
Speaker 2: for not trying to get his name off of stuff
Speaker 2: and to get out what he's doing is actually smarter
Speaker 2: than all of his colleagues. He knows your fault. You're
Speaker 2: idiots for thinking you can escape this. Anyone at my
Speaker 2: level is a fool for thinking that you can get
Speaker 2: away I'm going to take I'm going to hide by
Speaker 2: pretending to be the guy that I've been pretending to
Speaker 2: be up until the last minute here, so that no one,
Speaker 2: none of my colleagues expect that I am setting up
Speaker 2: secret plans to get out right, But he is the
Speaker 2: whole time where he's doing this. He is making plans.
Speaker 2: He's getting fake identities printed, he's using like SS. The
Speaker 2: SS has a printing press for fake IDs. He's getting
Speaker 2: multiple fake IDs. He's making an exit plan with his
Speaker 2: wife and with his dad to hide out in the
Speaker 2: countryside under a new name, like in the last stages
Speaker 2: of the war. He'd started laying the groundwork for his
Speaker 2: escape months earlier, when he lied to close colleague Deeter Weislinsky,
Speaker 2: who's a member of the SD and who would later
Speaker 2: try to sell Iikman out to the Allies. Eichman knows
Speaker 2: well Wasslinsky's a worm. He's going to sell me out
Speaker 2: the instant he can, So he tells Weslnsky, you know,
Speaker 2: I actually cut ties with my dad, my family years ago.
Speaker 2: They don't believe in all this Nazi stuff as much
Speaker 2: as I do, so I'm not even in touch with them. Anymore. Now.
Speaker 2: The reality is Iikman's father is a committed fascist, right,
Speaker 2: and Iikman's still close to his dad. But by doing this,
Speaker 2: Weslnsky will tell the Allies, Oh, no, he wasn't really
Speaker 2: in contact with his family, right, which is who he's
Speaker 2: going to be relying on. Eikman would also. So there's
Speaker 2: this guy, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who's an Arab
Speaker 2: nationalist and a Muslim leader with deep Nazi sympathies, and
Speaker 2: he spins a lot of World War two hiding out
Speaker 2: in the Third Reich, and he is super on board
Speaker 2: the genocide. Ikeman lies a lot and pretends that he
Speaker 2: and the Mufti are really close. They have nothing more
Speaker 2: than like a passing connection, right. They're not actually that tight,
Speaker 2: which isn't I'm not saying that to say that the
Speaker 2: Mufti isn't The Mufti is a monster, right.
Speaker 4: It seems like a real piece of shit.
Speaker 2: He and Eikman don't know each other well, but Iikman
Speaker 2: pretends they're close friends. And at the end of the
Speaker 2: war he's telling Weslinsky and his other colleagues, I'm going
Speaker 2: to flee to the Middle East. The Mufti's got my back.
Speaker 2: I'm going to hide out somewhere like Syria, right, which
Speaker 2: some guys in the SS do. And so when Wislinsky
Speaker 2: starts being questioned by the Allies, he's like, oh no,
Speaker 2: his family wouldn't hide him. They hated him. He's got
Speaker 2: some connection with the Mufti. He's fleeing for the Middle East, right,
Speaker 2: you got to start looking for him there or trying
Speaker 2: to make his way there. Right. So Aikman has seated
Speaker 2: a false story for his plans for the escape with
Speaker 2: his colleagues in the SS, knowing they're all going to
Speaker 2: rat on him. He wants them ratting and he wants
Speaker 2: them giving up the wrong info.
Speaker 4: Of course, he knows that they're pieces of shit. They're
Speaker 4: in the SS.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he works with these assholes. He knows how much
Speaker 2: they suck.
Speaker 4: You guys, stop doing loud with me. You're all fake
Speaker 4: friends anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he knows they're fake friends. And you hate you
Speaker 2: don't want to give it to a guy like Eichmann.
Speaker 2: But he's really smart here. He knows like this is very,
Speaker 2: very intelligent and it's going to work extraordinarily well.
Speaker 4: Game recognized game. He knows what kind of pieces of Yes, well,
Speaker 4: if he's one of them.
Speaker 2: He's one of them. He's the worst of them, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Through all of this, he vocally expounds upon his commitment
Speaker 2: to the Nazi cause and the genocide he's orchestrating, so
Speaker 2: no one will expect that he's planning to flee or
Speaker 2: that he's been lying to them. He takes to posing
Speaker 2: with guys like Himmler in pictures carrying his service revolver.
Speaker 2: He didn't really needed to wear a gun. He starts
Speaker 2: wearing it, being like, I'm an old fighter. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go down shooting. You know, when this ends, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: die on the field, you know, in the last minute
Speaker 2: that I can still loyal to the cause. In his
Speaker 2: last meeting with his subordinates in Berlin, he told them,
Speaker 2: if it has to be, I will gladly jump into
Speaker 2: my grave and the knowledge that five million enemies of
Speaker 2: the Reich have already died like animals. Right, He's telling them,
Speaker 2: I'm happy to die because I killed five million people,
Speaker 2: you know, so I can go out with my conscience clear.
Speaker 2: Now this is a lie. He was committed to killing
Speaker 2: those people, but he doesn't want to die. He's going
Speaker 2: to do whatever he can to escape. So April first
Speaker 2: is when the Red Cross visits treasonstat Hitler dies at
Speaker 2: the very end of April, the same month that had
Speaker 2: begun with that show tour. Peace and an end of
Speaker 2: the war in Europe is not far behind. By the
Speaker 2: point that Hitler kills himself, Eichman has already disappeared into
Speaker 2: the mass of Nazi war prisoners under a new name.
Speaker 2: He just bounces one day, destroys his old info, picks
Speaker 2: up one of these fake IDs, and starts living under
Speaker 2: a new name, Adolf Karl Barth. Now. His last order
Speaker 2: that he had gotten as Eichman was given by his
Speaker 2: childhood friend kalten Brunner, and kalten Berner had told him,
Speaker 2: You're going to go and ca on this guerrilla struggle
Speaker 2: in the Alps, right, We're gonna keep on fighting, you know,
Speaker 2: in the mountains, will hold out to the last. And
Speaker 2: Iikman's like, yeah, totally, absolutely, and then he just leaves
Speaker 2: one day, shows up a new clothes and like gets
Speaker 2: taken prisoner right as like a low ranking enlisted member
Speaker 2: of the SS. So he gets put in a pow
Speaker 2: camp with all of these thousands and thousands of other
Speaker 2: low ranking SS guys. And while he's in the camp,
Speaker 2: he actually transitions and destroys that old I D and
Speaker 2: takes on yet another new ID. And there's a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons for this, but he starts going by he
Speaker 2: had been pretending to be Carl Barth, who's this enlisted
Speaker 2: member of the SS, and he upgrades himself to an
Speaker 2: officer to unterstorm fewer otto Eckman. Now, the logic of
Speaker 2: this was both, first off, Barth pretty far off from Iikman.
Speaker 2: If somebody recognizes me and calls out Aikman, I could
Speaker 2: be like Ekman, Ekman, No, No, I'm Ekman. Yeah yeah, yeah, Akhmen.
Speaker 2: That's gate right, it's smart, right, like it's it's close
Speaker 2: that it won't draw suspicion if he responds to the
Speaker 2: name Eichman or something. And the other reason that he
Speaker 2: upgrades from being enlisted to a low ranking officer in
Speaker 2: the SS is that as an officer, he doesn't have
Speaker 2: to do labor on a daily basis.
Speaker 4: I fucking knew it. I knew that was gonna happen.
Speaker 4: I knew he was going to switch himself to be
Speaker 4: either a Wehrmacht officer or an SS officer because no
Speaker 4: labor and better treatment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And for the record, most of the SS, most
Speaker 2: of the AST's GROUPA, even the officers, get off essentially
Speaker 2: scott free after the war. Of course, I am of
Speaker 2: the opinion we should have executed every member of the SS. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: as well as every member of every person in government
Speaker 2: in the Nazi state. There were so many more people
Speaker 2: we should have killed that we didn't.
Speaker 4: If you want to be embraced by something warm and nice,
Speaker 4: just to know that most of the ones that fell
Speaker 4: into Soviet captivity died horribly.
Speaker 2: Yes, And in this case you do have to give
Speaker 2: it to the Soviets, like the fact that we let
Speaker 2: so many of these go off is why this kind
Speaker 2: of shit keeps happening, Right.
Speaker 4: Ninety nine percent of SS men got away with little
Speaker 4: more than a slap on the wrist and a quote
Speaker 4: unquote rehabilitation process.
Speaker 2: If there had been another millionaire or two that had
Speaker 2: been taken out by the Allies after this, because there
Speaker 2: were that many who directly took part in the Holocaust,
Speaker 2: they deserved more. You could have justified even more. Maybe
Speaker 2: this wouldn't have kept happening, right, Maybe there would have
Speaker 2: been enough of a warning, you know, but we don't.
Speaker 2: We let most of these guys off.
Speaker 4: Hey. And you know, once once you cut in, you know,
Speaker 4: take away the clean behr Mokdabeth, you got a whole
Speaker 4: lot of Germans achility. He'd still be all right with it,
Speaker 4: and I know I would be, yeah.
Speaker 2: And part of what's so fucked up here is that
Speaker 2: like this shows how how soft we are on these guys.
Speaker 2: The fact that just by being like, no, I'm an
Speaker 2: SS officer, well, of course you don't have to labor
Speaker 2: in the prisoner of war camp as an officer. Why
Speaker 2: would we make an SS officer work? He did not
Speaker 2: have this is done. He's a gentleman. You can't make
Speaker 2: him do art labor.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: So you might expect were something like this out where
Speaker 2: he's like shifting identities while in at POW camp to
Speaker 2: be hard, but it really wasn't. His father outside the
Speaker 2: camp is able to fetch these forged documents that he'd
Speaker 2: squirreled away for him and smuggle them to him. And
Speaker 2: because all of the central records in Breslau had been
Speaker 2: destroyed at the end of the war, there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of that no one can find out that this
Speaker 2: guy wasn't real, right Eikman had made sure that Ekman's
Speaker 2: birthday was exactly one year later than his, so it's
Speaker 2: not hard to remember. He doesn't have to keep it
Speaker 2: in his mind. It's his own birthday. It's just a
Speaker 2: year later. You're just pretending you're a year younger. In
Speaker 2: the immediate wake of the war's end, most of the
Speaker 2: top players in the Nazi party, like Hitler, Himler, and
Speaker 2: Gerbels were dead. Now Hermann Gering is in custody, along
Speaker 2: with a handful of other Reich notables. By far, the
Speaker 2: largest Nazi in the Wind at the war's end was Aikman,
Speaker 2: who was noted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine as
Speaker 2: being the highest ranking wanted Nazi as of June eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five. So everyone is very aware. Everyone who
Speaker 2: cares about the Holocaust is very aware. This Iikman guy
Speaker 2: is a real big deal and he's in the Wind
Speaker 2: and something needs to be done about it. Right, So
Speaker 2: that is known from the jump, and there's a there
Speaker 2: was a few Nazis that at the end of the
Speaker 2: war they did just vanish, and people thought they could
Speaker 2: have done a runner like everyone else. But yeah, then
Speaker 2: they just came was like, I think Alfred Rosenberg is
Speaker 2: one of those guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they're like, oh, they're just one of the
Speaker 4: thousands of people who died in fighting and just namelessly
Speaker 4: died on the soide of like a fucking dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, beget the name of it. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of there are some hiring because like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you were in Berlin at the end, and like it's
Speaker 2: not easy to get out, right, it's a pretty dangerous place, man.
Speaker 2: So you know who didn't escape Berlin at the end
Speaker 2: of nineteen forty five, Mitchubshi. That is right, they went
Speaker 2: pretty far away from Berlin. Let's not talk about what
Speaker 2: else Mitsubishi was doing. Oh god, no, So we're back,
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, just like Mitsubishi. You know, we're back,
Speaker 2: and we're cleansed of whatever crimes that we were implicated
Speaker 2: in previously. Right, all we made was engines, guys, Come on,
Speaker 2: all ig Farban made was medicine and some other you know,
Speaker 2: zyclone be a little bit, you know, not as that much,
Speaker 2: just a.
Speaker 4: Little bit, just a little bit. Look, I was all
Speaker 4: on board with the Mitchibishi rehabilitation until they came out
Speaker 4: with the Model seven thirty one as a little too
Speaker 4: on the nose Jesus.
Speaker 2: Christ, Oh, guys. So it had become clear by June eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five that there are going to be war
Speaker 2: crimes trials, and the World Jewish Congress asked later that
Speaker 2: month for Aikman to be tried as one of the
Speaker 2: main architects of the Holocaust. Since he was missing, Allied
Speaker 2: prosecutors had to interrogate his former friends like Weslinsky, who
Speaker 2: sang like a canary and blamed all of his own
Speaker 2: crimes on Iikman. Right, he made me doet. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to be in the SS. This is all Iikman.
Speaker 2: What a dick. We all hate him, right.
Speaker 4: Everybody would agree with me. Everybody hates him. You should
Speaker 4: get him, Yeah, you should get him. I'm basically a victim.
Speaker 4: He was so mean to me, like you don't even know.
Speaker 4: So while Eichman is interned as Eckman, there were attempts
Speaker 4: to catch hiding war criminals within the massive SS prisoners.
Speaker 4: They allies know some of the big dudes are in
Speaker 4: this massive like prisoners that we got to get some
Speaker 4: of them are hiding as Wehrmacht prisoners.
Speaker 2: Right. He later recalled the days when quote Jewish commissions
Speaker 2: would visit the camp. Quote, we had to line up.
Speaker 2: They sized me up, yes, seeing if they could spot
Speaker 2: any mugs they recognized. We had the lineup by company,
Speaker 2: and there was a commission of maybe fifteen of these
Speaker 2: And then he uses a slur. They went carefully up
Speaker 2: and down the roads, staring each of us right in
Speaker 2: the kisser, Yes, me too, right in the mug, all smiles.
Speaker 2: We weren't allowed to speak, or we'd have called them
Speaker 2: all kinds of names. And when they were done, two
Speaker 2: steps forward and on to the next line.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And he recalls this later while he's like in fucking
Speaker 2: Argentina with a sneering sort of arrogant glee that like
Speaker 2: they had me, they were face to face with me
Speaker 2: and they couldn't catch me. HAA. Now this is true
Speaker 2: that he does get away, that he is like that
Speaker 2: close to these guys and they miss him. But he's
Speaker 2: also he doesn't feel safe, right, He doesn't actually feel
Speaker 2: like No, this is a very dangerous position for him.
Speaker 2: Part of why is that the comradliness a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys in the SS. No Ekman is in our company.
Speaker 2: I don't remember there being an Ekman in our company.
Speaker 2: This guy must There's something sketchy here, right.
Speaker 4: And all these guys got captured together. They're probably in
Speaker 4: units together. They probably didn't know each other all that
Speaker 4: long due to you know, all the mass casualties, right,
Speaker 4: but they were at least familiar with one another. And
Speaker 4: now this guy comes in his.
Speaker 2: It was this Ekman guy.
Speaker 4: Was that guy your commander? He wasn't my commander.
Speaker 2: Do you remember Ekman being around? I don't remember. Ekman
Speaker 2: sounds like Iikman a lot.
Speaker 4: You know, he looks fucking familiar.
Speaker 2: You know, in the war, these guys are all comrades.
Speaker 2: We're all on the same side, right, and that com
Speaker 2: radliness between not the burns up very quickly after the
Speaker 2: regime falls and its crimes become impossible to deny. There
Speaker 2: are enough soldiers in the camp who know that this
Speaker 2: guy isn't who he says he was, and they don't
Speaker 2: feel safe there, so Eikman begins to arrange his escape.
Speaker 2: I want to be clear that Eikman's fame, which he
Speaker 2: had aggressively cultivated, was the only reason that he was
Speaker 2: in danger here. The Allies did not consider the Holocaust
Speaker 2: a priority in terms of prosecution. During the Nuremberg Trial,
Speaker 2: only one man was assigned to documenting and charging prisoners
Speaker 2: over the genocide. Stagnath notes quote. The prosecution was also
Speaker 2: cautious about placing too much emphasis on Jewish affairs for
Speaker 2: fear of being criticized by their own countries. So during
Speaker 2: Nuremberg we're like, oh, you don't want to do that
Speaker 2: much Holocaust prosecuting, because then our own people might say
Speaker 2: we're like being too soft on the Jews, that this
Speaker 2: is all about the Jews to us, and like there's
Speaker 2: still a lot of anti Semitism.
Speaker 4: You're going around here just so fucking much.
Speaker 2: And this had been part of what Roosevelt doesn't do
Speaker 2: more prior to and during the war to save Jewish
Speaker 2: people is consciously there are people in his administration they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we didn't want to be seen as we didn't want this.
Speaker 2: We were trying to work up. Getting America involved in
Speaker 2: the war was hard, right, It was super controversial, and
Speaker 2: it would have been bad for our effort to get
Speaker 2: the US involved if we'd made it look like this
Speaker 2: was all about the Jews. Because they're just not popular, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like similar to Churchill as well, Right, the
Speaker 4: Nazis and Fascism were wildly popular within the British upper class,
Speaker 4: to include the fucking king, all the way up until
Speaker 4: they got dragged into the war.
Speaker 2: And this is a thing where it's like in terms
Speaker 2: of Roosevelt, it is like that you wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: be in his position, where it's like, well, the right
Speaker 2: thing to have done would have been to put the
Speaker 2: Holocaust first and foremost, but maybe that stops you from
Speaker 2: being able to get involved as quickly. Maybe it cuts
Speaker 2: the support you need to try and start to keep
Speaker 2: getting arms to the UK. This is a hard I
Speaker 2: don't think he makes the right option, but it's a
Speaker 2: everyone is. It's oh shitty, right, It's such a difficult
Speaker 2: position to be in where you're like, well, maybe doing
Speaker 2: the right thing here makes it harder to actually beat
Speaker 2: these guys, right, That's how they're thinking now. By the
Speaker 2: time Nuremberg is happening, it's just cowardice, right, and lingering
Speaker 2: anti Semitism on behalf of the Allies. So they're like,
Speaker 2: we don't want to be seen as being you know,
Speaker 2: is this all being about the Jews to us right.
Speaker 2: So Weislinsky is the guy who gives most of the
Speaker 2: testimony about Iikman that would become a central part of
Speaker 2: Iikman's post war mythos as the architect of the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: As we've stated, this is an exaggeration. Weslinsky makes Iikman
Speaker 2: out to be a bigger player than he was because
Speaker 2: he's trying to protect himself. The bigger Wislinsky's like, the
Speaker 2: bigger a deal I make Iikman, the less likely they
Speaker 2: are to kill me. And this does not work out
Speaker 2: for Weslnsky. He is extra tited to Czechoslovakia and hanged
Speaker 2: for war crimes in nineteen forty eight. So it doesn't work,
Speaker 2: but it does create the myth. It does help really
Speaker 2: bolster this myth in the public eye. Theodore Daniker, who
Speaker 2: had been Eichman's right hand man, was smarter. He avoided
Speaker 2: capture like his boss at the end of the war
Speaker 2: until he was caught by the US Army in December
Speaker 2: of nineteen forty five. He committed suicide in a prison
Speaker 2: camp before he could go on trial.
Speaker 4: He was almost certainly going to hang as well.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he would have fucking hung He was
Speaker 2: just too big, too implicated, and too much. You know.
Speaker 2: Unlike Westlinsky, he doesn't trick himself into believing he's got
Speaker 2: a chance. Eikman proved remarkably successful as a fugitive, working
Speaker 2: with a mix of a few former SS colleagues he
Speaker 2: could trust and their family members. He hid out on
Speaker 2: a farm in northern Germany, while he lived in a
Speaker 2: rustic college and engaged in a simple peasant life, working
Speaker 2: basically as a forester. Right, he's doing like lumber work.
Speaker 2: What remained of the Third Reich's leadership When on trial,
Speaker 2: Eikman's name came up repeatedly in segments of Nuremberg that
Speaker 2: dealt with the Holocaust. Weslinsky blamed his old boss for
Speaker 2: being abusive and violent and basically was like, he threatened
Speaker 2: me into doing it.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, shut up, you fucking bitch.
Speaker 2: Another mess man, I think his first name was Otto
Speaker 2: Ollendorf entered into the record. Eikman's claimed that he would
Speaker 2: leap laughing into the pit of hell because he'd killed
Speaker 2: six million shows. Right, that's where we get that quote first,
Speaker 2: is Ollendorf being like, that's how bad Aikman was.
Speaker 4: He said this, you can just go get him still
Speaker 4: not me.
Speaker 2: And it's Gering is really the only member of the
Speaker 2: Nazi high command who doesn't do what Weislnsky does, where
Speaker 2: he's like trying to throw everyone under the bus. Right,
Speaker 2: Gerring states while he's watching Westlinsky on trial, this Westlinsky
Speaker 2: is just a little swine who looks like a big one.
Speaker 2: Because Eikman isn't here, Ekman is no longer there either.
Speaker 2: Three months after escaping the prison camp, Eikman is registered
Speaker 2: under a new name, Otto Henninger. He just turned forty.
Speaker 2: He managed to stay employed, working for a lumber company
Speaker 2: and lived alone, a thing Westlnsky told Allied interrogators his
Speaker 2: boss could never do. Westlinsky says, anyone who knows Iikman
Speaker 2: knows he's too cowardly to be alone. So we see
Speaker 2: how well Eikman's cultivation of a fake per personality has
Speaker 2: worked to protect him. He really lied to the right guys. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's unfortunate how good he is at this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is impressive that he was able to hide
Speaker 4: effectively and play the sights. And I do wonder if
Speaker 4: he was oldly able to get away with this because
Speaker 4: the people that I mean, of course he trusted some
Speaker 4: SS men, but the people that knew him as this
Speaker 4: fake person also kind of knew he was Iikeman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So by April of nineteen forty six,
Speaker 2: his friend Calton Brunner had taken the stand and claimed
Speaker 2: that Iikman was the man who carried out the whole
Speaker 2: extermination operation against the Jews. Now again, Calton Bruner is
Speaker 2: his boss. Calten Brunner brings him into the SS right,
Speaker 2: it's he did it, full isshuit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's all him. Ah, he did it all by himself.
Speaker 4: Was the craziest thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was so fast. Now this was a massive exaggeration,
Speaker 2: but it's one that sticks. Lying does not, however, say
Speaker 2: Calton Brunner. He's executed in October of forty six, but
Speaker 2: it serves to continue building the Aikman legend. Rudolph Hess,
Speaker 2: former commandant at Auschwitz, adds to this legend by crediting
Speaker 2: Eikman with helping to decide to use Ziklon beat to
Speaker 2: gas inmates. We never would have come up with that
Speaker 2: idea without Iikman.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was trying to make a summer camp until he
Speaker 2: came around.
Speaker 4: I was just trying to give people veniers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the only guy in.
Speaker 1: This life Joe's obsession with me.
Speaker 4: That's a health Boh.
Speaker 2: Only Julius Striker, who is the Nazi propagandist. We've covered
Speaker 2: him on this show and he gets executed for war crimes.
Speaker 2: He's the only guy here to give an honest account,
Speaker 2: being like, fuck it, I've never even heard of this dude.
Speaker 2: Iikman's supposed to be the chief anti Semi. I'm the
Speaker 2: chief anti Semi. I don't even know his name, right.
Speaker 2: He's like offended the fuck this guy, But there's a
Speaker 2: certain amount of respective. It's like, no, he knows he's
Speaker 2: gonna die no matter what. At least he's not gonna
Speaker 2: lie about it as he goes. He's committed to being
Speaker 2: like he's just angry that Aikman's getting all of the
Speaker 2: credit for the Holocaust.
Speaker 4: I'm a piece of shit. Everybody knows about it so hard.
Speaker 2: Why is he getting all the credit for sucking. While
Speaker 2: the legend of Iikman takes shape, the real man used
Speaker 2: his time in semi captivity to start writing his memoirs.
Speaker 2: This is a bold move for a man who knows
Speaker 2: he's going to be captured and tried at any minute,
Speaker 2: or he could be. And it speaks to the fact
Speaker 2: that Eikman is still very much a true believer and
Speaker 2: he wants still to get credit for his work furthering
Speaker 2: a great historic cause. He thinks, someday the worm will
Speaker 2: turn again and will be seen as heroes. And I
Speaker 2: have to document how cool I was during the war, right.
Speaker 4: Real Stringer bell moments though, right, like are you taking notes? Tomal?
Speaker 2: He's taking notes on a criminal on the Holocaust. So
Speaker 2: while he's in hiding out, he reads voraciously about every
Speaker 2: news article on the on the trials, and he documents
Speaker 2: the Nazi genocide, cutting out mentions of his own name.
Speaker 2: He's cutting out the articles that mention him and pasting
Speaker 2: them into like a scrap book. Right while he's hiding
Speaker 2: as a forestry guy.
Speaker 4: Now there's something off putting about him scrap booking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's fucking scrap booking. He follows the growth
Speaker 2: of his legend and the increasing obsession among different Jewish
Speaker 2: organizations with finding him and bringing him to justice. Aside
Speaker 2: from this, though, he lives a normal life. He even
Speaker 2: attends a coworker's wedding in nineteen forty seven, where he's
Speaker 2: photographed in this rural location, and the fact of it is,
Speaker 2: if he'd stayed there forever, he might have lived the
Speaker 2: rest of his life in isolation. But he doesn't want
Speaker 2: to live in isolation. He wants to live with his
Speaker 2: wife Sarah and raise his kids, and they're never going
Speaker 2: to be able to do that. In Germany, Vera is
Speaker 2: under constant surveillance. Right The Allys are watching her, figuring
Speaker 2: he's going to reach out at some point and then
Speaker 2: we'll catch him. Right. She is claiming at this point
Speaker 2: that she divorced Eikman in March of nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: and she and Iikman's father tried to report him dead
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven, claiming that they'd heard that he
Speaker 2: died fighting in Prague. The Allies don't really buy this,
Speaker 2: but you know that's kind of what they're attempting to do.
Speaker 2: It's not fully clear when Eichmann makes the decision to
Speaker 2: flee Europe for Argentina, but we know that he starts
Speaker 2: the process of getting his paperwork in order in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight. From pop culture alone. You're probably aware that
Speaker 2: a lot of Nazis escaped into Argentina after the war,
Speaker 2: and it's worth discussing why and how. The first reason
Speaker 2: is that Argentina has a long tradition of hiring German
Speaker 2: military officers to train their soldiers. This is going on
Speaker 2: way before World War Two, right, So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of sympathy for Germany and for fascism in Argentina. Future
Speaker 2: dictator Juan Peron of Argentina received training in Mussolini's Italy
Speaker 2: while he was a young soldier, and it was attached
Speaker 2: to the Italian Army from thirty nine to forty. The
Speaker 2: Argentine government was formally neutral but deeply sympathetic to Nazi Germany,
Speaker 2: as was a sizable chunk of the Catholic Church. In
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six, Cardinal Kagiano, the Bishop of Rosario and
Speaker 2: leader of a far right anti communist Catholic Action group,
Speaker 2: visited Pope Pius the Seventh. David Csarini writes quote, Kagiano
Speaker 2: proposed to set up Upontifical Commission of Assistance that would
Speaker 2: provide identification papers for displaced persons and refugees in Europe.
Speaker 2: More precisely, Kagiano wanted to help anti communist fascists, Nazis
Speaker 2: and their collaborators who are now on the run. So
Speaker 2: Kagiato goes to the Pope is like, we have to
Speaker 2: create a humanitarian commission to help refugees from Europe, you know,
Speaker 2: get their documentation. And by refugees he means members of
Speaker 2: the SS. Right, there's a chunk of the Vatican agrees
Speaker 2: to this plan and becomes a major active player in
Speaker 2: helping hundreds of SS war criminals escape. Right, that's the
Speaker 2: the Vatican is doing this.
Speaker 4: I mean, at least it's I can't think of anything
Speaker 4: else the Vatican's ever done recently. So that's at least
Speaker 4: they've seen the the Vatican Jesus normally they're on the
Speaker 4: up and up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, and this is key. Adolph Eichman escapes Europe with
Speaker 2: the help of a Catholic cardinal who provides him with
Speaker 2: the documents he.
Speaker 4: Needs, with the permission from the Pope. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the cardinals working with at least some degree of
Speaker 2: permission from the bo Beer. Now to escape, Iikeman also
Speaker 2: has to enlist the services of a people smuggler, and
Speaker 2: a people smuggler who had the personal approval of Wan
Speaker 2: peron his identity papers were issued by Catholic Bishop Alois Houdahl,
Speaker 2: who had appointed himself Protector of persecuted war refugees, a
Speaker 2: term here that means Nazis who did the Holocaust. It
Speaker 2: takes two years, but Iikman makes the journey to Argentina
Speaker 2: safely in nineteen fifty. His family follows a short time after,
Speaker 2: and they are soon living together, a fassimile of a
Speaker 2: normal life with a few compromises. In light of his notoriety.
Speaker 2: Vera had to call him Otto, and he had to
Speaker 2: use a new name yet again, Ricardo Clement, But those
Speaker 2: who knew him said that he used his real name
Speaker 2: often enough with old comrades who were now made up
Speaker 2: a sizeable ca unity in Argentina. Iikman described his own life.
Speaker 4: The world's most cursed diaspora.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Nazi diaspora in Argentina. Yeah. Oh, and he's
Speaker 2: like he's going by Aikman fairly often whenever he's around Germans.
Speaker 2: It's not super hard to figure out this guy at all. Oh,
Speaker 2: this guy Ricardo Clement, whose wife calls him Otto and
Speaker 2: who goes by Iikman whenever he's drunk. I wonder if
Speaker 2: he's eightolf Iikman.
Speaker 4: That must be a different guy.
Speaker 2: He lives a boucolic life in this period, though. He
Speaker 2: works for a hydro electric power station for a while,
Speaker 2: and he leads survey missions deep into the mountains, exploring
Speaker 2: on horseback and climbing mountains. He takes his two young
Speaker 2: boys with him regularly and teaches them to hike and
Speaker 2: fish and ride horses while he worked. That job eventually
Speaker 2: falls apart in the mid fifties, but he gets a
Speaker 2: better one managing a rabbit farm. Right, there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of like historical symmetry here. Heindrich Himmler before joining
Speaker 2: the Nazi Party is a chicken farmer, right yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: and Eichman after the war runs a rabbit farm. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: while they're in Argentina, his wife gives birth to two
Speaker 2: additional sons. He has to build a home with his
Speaker 2: own hands for his newly expanding family to live in,
Speaker 2: and they'd taken two dogs, a German shepherd on a dosin.
Speaker 2: In short, he lives the kind of calm, pleasant life
Speaker 2: that his work had denied millions of European Jews. David
Speaker 2: Cesarini writes relations within the family were much as in
Speaker 2: any other His sons were good looking and sociable. There
Speaker 2: was no shortage of girlfriends. Klaus had already been engaged
Speaker 2: to a local girl and took him on and was
Speaker 2: the first to marry, move out and bring grandchildren into
Speaker 2: the family. But generational relations were not smooth. I've been
Speaker 2: looked upon his sons as boorish, interested only in trivial pleasures.
Speaker 2: They in turn, thought he was authoritarian. Klaus told journalists
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty six, you will not believe how strict
Speaker 2: he was. Our old man was very strict.
Speaker 4: You all believe this.
Speaker 2: But Adolf Eichman was kind of a dick as a
Speaker 2: dad man.
Speaker 4: My dad is a real nut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's kind of a Nazi. If he gets
Speaker 2: my drift.
Speaker 4: My dad, Adelfhikman is a real Adulf Iikman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's real Aikman character. So when Ceserini's book was
Speaker 2: published in two thousand and four, his understanding was that
Speaker 2: Eikman didn't talk politics with his kids and forbade them
Speaker 2: from bringing anything about the family up outside of the house.
Speaker 2: This is an exaggeration, to say the least. However, even
Speaker 2: back then, before Stangnet's book, there was documentation of Eikman
Speaker 2: writing on the war and his connections to other old Nazis.
Speaker 2: Cesserini wrote quote his marginalia in works that fell into
Speaker 2: the hands of investigators indicate that he remained an unrepentant Nazi.
Speaker 2: For example, he took exception to Jerhalard Bolt's The Last
Speaker 2: Days of the reich Chancellery because the author took an
Speaker 2: anti Nazi line at one point in the book, Iikman
Speaker 2: scrawled in the margins with swine like these, the war
Speaker 2: was bound to be lost. On the end papers, he
Speaker 2: jotted down his three line credo. It could all be
Speaker 2: summed up as duty and obedience to orders Christ. One
Speaker 2: good friend post war was the former SA Special Forces
Speaker 2: commando Otto Skorzeni, who introduced him to a Waffen SS
Speaker 2: veteran named William Sassin, who'd himself been tried for war
Speaker 2: crimes and absentia. These men helped to induct Aikman into
Speaker 2: a community of unrepentant fascists, and Eichman leaned into the
Speaker 2: reputation he decrued as the architect of the Holocaust. Among
Speaker 2: these friends, it was an asset again Eikman and other
Speaker 2: Nazis of the Sassin set felt no need to hide
Speaker 2: their opinions from the world. Sassin starts editing a far
Speaker 2: right German language newspaper Der Veg, which was so fascist
Speaker 2: that Perne's government eventually suspends it from open publication. Right,
Speaker 2: that's how bad this is when they get heat internationally.
Speaker 2: And it was Sassin who introduced Aikman to the only
Speaker 2: other Nazi immigrae at his level of notoriety, doctor Joseph Mengela.
Speaker 2: Evidently the two did not get along. Aikman's frustrated because
Speaker 2: Mengela has got family money, so he's still rich while
Speaker 2: he's hiding. Well, Iikeman, they're like kind of poor while
Speaker 2: they're while they're hiding out in Argentina, they're not like
Speaker 2: super comfortable. And he's like, why does Mengela get to
Speaker 2: have money? You know, I suck just as bad.
Speaker 4: My family did build tractors.
Speaker 2: He also, this is this is so funny Mengola, and
Speaker 2: this is kind of like Mengoa is being a dick
Speaker 2: to ike when he's like, well, you know, if you
Speaker 2: guys are having trouble with money, I can be your
Speaker 2: family doctor for free, and Iikeman declines, I've seen your work.
Speaker 4: I'm not a fan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think doctor Mengelea is gonna be the
Speaker 2: family doctor.
Speaker 4: Oh at all. It seems that your daughter has a
Speaker 4: bit of a cough. Have you considered injecting bleach into
Speaker 4: her eyes?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's so funny. It's so funny too that
Speaker 2: that Mengeli does that as kind of like a dick move.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, if you're having trouble with money, I
Speaker 2: can be the fan. Like he knows what it means
Speaker 2: to offer to be the family doctor.
Speaker 4: He knows nobody wants him to be the family doctor. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The man just smells like corpse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he knows he's Joseph Mengola.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Sassin had been a military propagandist during the war, and
Speaker 2: he wrote ghost wrote after the war. He ghostwrites biographies
Speaker 2: for several SS veterans. He proposed working with Eichman to
Speaker 2: lay out a full history of the Final Solution, one
Speaker 2: that told the Nazi truth. Sassin meant to minimize the
Speaker 2: number of people who had been killed and a clans
Speaker 2: Germany of its war guilt over the Holocaust. He also
Speaker 2: wanted to clear Hitler's name. Eikman has Let's say different ambitions,
Speaker 2: and the result of their interviews was, in Cserini's words,
Speaker 2: sometimes blackly comic. And I'm going to quote from Csserini's
Speaker 2: book Eichman, His Life in Crimes here. Eikman initially welcomed
Speaker 2: the chance to unburden himself to someone who was both
Speaker 2: knowledgeable and supposedly sympathetic. I was happy to be able
Speaker 2: for once to talk about the whole complex matter and
Speaker 2: to some extent, dispose of it. But he discovered that
Speaker 2: Sassin had a perspective that was not wholly in accord
Speaker 2: with his own. While he was happy to record that
Speaker 2: Hydrich had received a fewer order to exterminate the Jews,
Speaker 2: Sassin questioned whether Hitler was truly responsible and wanted hard
Speaker 2: evidence for such a directive. At one point, Eikman expressed
Speaker 2: incredulity that anyone would expect there to be a written
Speaker 2: order from Hitler himself, protesting that that was not how
Speaker 2: the Reich worked. Where Assassin wanted to diminish the number
Speaker 2: of Jews to ported to the death camps, Aikman was
Speaker 2: happy to brag about his achievements. At Sassin's insistence, the
Speaker 2: dialogue returned again and again to statistical assessments of the
Speaker 2: numbers killed, with Sassin and Eikman arguing in opposite directions.
Speaker 2: The wine consumed during the sessions loocid, to Eikman's tongue,
Speaker 2: more than was good for him. His self pity and
Speaker 2: self aggrandizing equally led to incriminating statements. He regretted his
Speaker 2: weakness in not being able to overcome the obstacles in
Speaker 2: the way of eliminating all the Jews impervious, or in
Speaker 2: caring as to what the transports meant in terms of
Speaker 2: human suffering. He lamented delays and rejoiced in trouble free deportations.
Speaker 2: We had the same thing in Slovakia. We had the
Speaker 2: same thing in France, and although it started there very hopefully,
Speaker 2: we had the same thing in Holland, where the transports did, however,
Speaker 2: roll at the beginning, so that one can say it
Speaker 2: was magnificent, and where subsequently there was one problem after another.
Speaker 2: He remembered with satisfaction the times the deportations went well,
Speaker 2: notably in Hungary. So that's so Sassin's like, like, Hitler
Speaker 2: wasn't involved. Do you have any evidence that Hitler ordered it?
Speaker 2: And I was like, you don't understand how this fucking worked. Like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is wrong with you?
Speaker 4: I don't think that many people died. I would have
Speaker 4: killed more.
Speaker 1: I do like that the reason like I couldn't hold
Speaker 1: his wy.
Speaker 4: No no light. Yeah he was a lightweight and got
Speaker 4: really moody afterwards.
Speaker 3: Yeah he drank wine, got a little weird.
Speaker 2: You know who also gets a little weird whenever they're
Speaker 2: drinking wine.
Speaker 1: Mitsubishi.
Speaker 2: Boy, you do not want to get Mitsubishi drunk. They'll
Speaker 2: start talking about the forties and it doesn't go well,
Speaker 2: We'll take your money Mitsubishi. Please, for the love of God,
Speaker 2: we're back and we just got reached out to by Mitsubishi. Uh,
Speaker 2: and this is very good. I think this is going
Speaker 2: to be really positive for the whole podcast. They stated, quote,
Speaker 2: if you continue referencing our name, we will bring you
Speaker 2: into court. So yeah, very excited. U super psyched.
Speaker 1: Uh huh?
Speaker 4: This and more in Wake Island Drift.
Speaker 2: Yeah so Iikman's post war friendships all have one thing
Speaker 2: in common, his utterly repentant openness about the scale of
Speaker 2: crimes he'd committed. He told one Dutch Nazi immigray to
Speaker 2: be frank with you, had we killed all of them,
Speaker 2: the ten point three million European Jews. I would be
Speaker 2: happy and say, all right, we managed to destroy an enemy.
Speaker 2: So you know, he continues to be iikman.
Speaker 4: Yeah he's still a piece of shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still a fucking Nazi assle.
Speaker 4: Oh h.
Speaker 2: Now, Ricardo Clement lives with his wife and sons outside
Speaker 2: of Buenos Aires for almost a decade. As I noted earlier,
Speaker 2: his boorish sons grew up there and began dating. One
Speaker 2: of them started seeing a young girl who was also
Speaker 2: a German immigray, Sylvia Hermann. Now you might think this
Speaker 2: would make the two a good match, but there was
Speaker 2: a problem. Sylvia's family were the other type of European immigray. Right.
Speaker 2: Her father, Lothar, hadn't informed her of this, but he
Speaker 2: was a Holocaust survivor who had fled Europe after surviving docow.
Speaker 4: Now, oh, this is the world's worst fucking Hallmark movie.
Speaker 2: Fuck You're the worst Meet cute. By this point, Lothar
Speaker 2: was old and blind as a result of repeated beatings
Speaker 2: by the Gestapo. As his daughter courted this eikman boy,
Speaker 2: Lothar starts putting things together in his head and is like, oh, fuck,
Speaker 2: I think this kid might be the son of like
Speaker 2: a major war criminal. Right now, these are initially just suspicions,
Speaker 2: and the family moves away from the area not long afterwards.
Speaker 2: So Lothar doesn't think a lot more about this until
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven when he comes across news coverage of
Speaker 2: another Nazi back in Frankfurt. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: from an article by the Museum of Jewish Heritage here.
Speaker 2: Lothar's realization that Ricardo Clement may in fact be Adolf
Speaker 2: Eichman led him to the chief prosecutor of the West
Speaker 2: German state, Hessen Fritz Bauer, in order to pursue Eikman
Speaker 2: and make a case for investigation. Bauer needed evidence. Bauer,
Speaker 2: who acted outside his official role as chief prosecutor, was
Speaker 2: concerned that his colleagues were Nazi sympathizers and would thwart
Speaker 2: the investigation. At Bauer's request, Lothar went in search of
Speaker 2: more details regarding Eikman. Soon enough, Lothar was able to
Speaker 2: positively identify Iikman, sending good word back to Bauer. So
Speaker 2: fucking Lothar is like, well, this German prosecutor has been
Speaker 2: prosecuting Nazi war criminals. I'll reach out to him and
Speaker 2: say I think I know Aikman. Bauer's like, I can't
Speaker 2: do this as part of my legal job. There's so
Speaker 2: many fucking Nazis still in the German state. They'll warn him.
Speaker 2: If anyone becomes aware in Germany that I'm looking for Aikman,
Speaker 2: he'll get warned because again I'm surrounded by Nazis still.
Speaker 4: So the ally should have killed way more of my code,
Speaker 4: so many more of these guys.
Speaker 2: So Bauer is like, basically he once he gets like
Speaker 2: confirmation from this dude in Argentina, Bauer rather than like
Speaker 2: going after going through the German government to try to
Speaker 2: prosecute this guy, He's going to go directly to the
Speaker 2: massade because he's like, again, I'm surrounded by Nazis and
Speaker 2: this is not an uncommon state of affairs. Post War
Speaker 2: West Germany talked a great game about war guilt and
Speaker 2: hatred of the regime, but a ton of second and
Speaker 2: third tier Nazis were by now running the show.
Speaker 4: Oh fuck yeah they were.
Speaker 2: And one of the people responsible for this is a
Speaker 2: famous anti Nazi Conrad Eidenhauer and Aidenauer had been he'd
Speaker 2: been an opponent of the party prior to Hitler's rise
Speaker 2: to total power, and he had been imprisoned several times
Speaker 2: by the Nazis. But he was like a liberal politician
Speaker 2: who hated the Nazis but was willing to govern beside them,
Speaker 2: right and.
Speaker 4: Well, well, well if it isn't the consequences of my
Speaker 4: political ideology.
Speaker 2: Right, And the good news is that Aidenauer was such
Speaker 2: a committed anti Nazi that the Allies let him form
Speaker 2: a government and become West Germany's first chancellor in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine. The bad news is that because he was
Speaker 2: such a committed anti Nazi, he was able to personally
Speaker 2: accept a ton of Nazis into his guyver and his
Speaker 2: own reputation acted as a shield for them, per the
Speaker 2: Irish Times quote. Challenged on this many times by political
Speaker 2: rivals and foreign critics, Aid and Hour hit back that
Speaker 2: one does not have to throw out the dirty water
Speaker 2: as long as one doesn't have any clean water.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, everybody who knows how to run the state is
Speaker 2: so implicated in Nazism we can't afford to punish them all.
Speaker 2: Otherwise we won't be able to have a Germany. And
Speaker 2: we got to have a Germany.
Speaker 4: Right. Uh, counterpoint, what if we didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, in nineteen fifty seven, Eikman had actually written
Speaker 2: an open letter under his own name to Aidenauer, right,
Speaker 2: and the letter was negative. He and Sassen both wanted
Speaker 2: to destroy Conrad's government. But it shows how much impunity
Speaker 2: he felt by this point that he could write a
Speaker 2: letter to the fucking chancellor right and feel like it
Speaker 2: was not a super dangerous thing now since he couldn't
Speaker 2: trust his colleagues anymore, but did trust Lothar snooping our boy.
Speaker 2: Bauer sent the information about Eikman back to the Masad,
Speaker 2: who had a whole Nazi hunting division at this point,
Speaker 2: and we're ready to use it. In May of nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: they sent eleven agents to Argentina after weeks of gumshoe
Speaker 2: work to track Iikman down and case his home in
Speaker 2: the pattern of his daily life, they launched an operation
Speaker 2: to kidnap him and spirit him to the Jerusalem. Now
Speaker 2: there's a whole long story here, and I am really
Speaker 2: boiling out the details because it's the best known part
Speaker 2: of Iikman's life and it's really not superworth into us
Speaker 2: getting into detail here about it. But the short of
Speaker 2: it is, they capture the fucker and he winds up
Speaker 2: on trial for his many crimes in Jerusalem. Now, the
Speaker 2: exact form that this trial takes is the work of
Speaker 2: David Ben Gurion, who's the Prime Minister of Israel and
Speaker 2: for whom this was not just a manner of justice
Speaker 2: but a matter of personal political pride. Hannah Arint, in
Speaker 2: her famous coverage of the trial, described Ben Gurion's motivations
Speaker 2: this way quote and this is from Eikman in Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: there was the lesson to the non Jewish world. I
Speaker 2: went to establish before the nations of the world, how
Speaker 2: millions of people because they happened to be Jews, and
Speaker 2: one million babies because they happened to be Jewish babies
Speaker 2: were murdered by the Nazis. That's been Gurion's words, or
Speaker 2: in the words of Devar, the organ of Ben Gurian's
Speaker 2: Mapi party. Let the world opinion know this that not
Speaker 2: in Nazi Germany alone was responsible for the destruction of
Speaker 2: six million Jews of Europe. Hence, again in Ben Gurian's
Speaker 2: own words, we want the nations of the world to
Speaker 2: know and they should be ashamed. The Jews in the
Speaker 2: diaspora were to remember how four thousand year old Judaism,
Speaker 2: with its spiritual creations, its ethical strivings, its Messianic aspirations,
Speaker 2: had always faced a hostile world, how the Jews had
Speaker 2: degenerated until they went to their death like sheep, and
Speaker 2: how only the establishment of a Jewish state had enabled
Speaker 2: Jews to hit back, as Israelis had done in the
Speaker 2: War of Independence, in the Suez Adventure and in the
Speaker 2: almost daily incidents on Israel's unhappy borders. And if the
Speaker 2: Jews outside Israel had to be shown the difference between
Speaker 2: Israeli heroism and Jewish submissive weakness, there was a complimentary
Speaker 2: lesson for the Israelis. For quote, the generation of Israelis
Speaker 2: who have grown up since the Holocaust were in danger
Speaker 2: of losing their ties with the Jewish people and by implication,
Speaker 2: with their own history. It is necessary that our youth
Speaker 2: remember what happened to the Jewish peoples. We want them
Speaker 2: to know the tragic facts of our history. This is
Speaker 2: a rent writing that Ben Gurian. He's not just trying.
Speaker 2: He doesn't just want to see this guy brought to
Speaker 2: justice because he's a Nazi. He wants to see this
Speaker 2: guy brought to justice because the story of Iikman highlights
Speaker 2: how cowardly the European Jews were, that they let themselves
Speaker 2: be slaughtered, and that that's different from the heroic Israelis
Speaker 2: who are willing to fight.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: That's part of why Ben Gurian puts this trial on.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: There is a propaganda angle here.
Speaker 4: There is a lot of very disgusting language that was
Speaker 4: used towards yes, European Jews, despite the fact that a
Speaker 4: lot of these guys are descended from them, or they're
Speaker 4: the kids or their neighbors or whatever. Yeah, it's absolutely horrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is something a Rent is very critical
Speaker 2: of Israel and sees a lot of the problems that
Speaker 2: are going to result in the shit we're seeing today.
Speaker 2: Very early on, she sees a lot of the horror
Speaker 2: of like what's done to the Palestinians. She sees a
Speaker 2: lot of what's coming, and she's deeply critical of why
Speaker 2: this trial. Not that Aikman's on trial, she obviously thinks
Speaker 2: he needs to be, but she's deeply critical about why
Speaker 2: he's being put on trial and what else is happening here.
Speaker 4: You've heard of the Imperial boomerang. This is their genocidal boomerang.
Speaker 2: Right, And there's a lot of good modern criticism of
Speaker 2: a Rent and of her writing in Eikman on Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: because in Jerusalem, because her picture of Aikman as this
Speaker 2: banal pencil pushing figure is wrong.
Speaker 4: He is.
Speaker 2: I think we've made the case a pretty outwardly bombastically
Speaker 2: villainous Nazi.
Speaker 4: She fell for his right personal portrayal of himself while
Speaker 4: submitting himself to a Jewish court.
Speaker 2: Right. But when it comes to dissecting Israeli policies and
Speaker 2: the message that this trial was meant to show, a
Speaker 2: Rent is incredibly incisive. And I want to make it
Speaker 2: clear here she's not saying that what she lays out
Speaker 2: on the paragraph uncritically right. She's not saying and it's
Speaker 2: good that Bengaren is doing that she has deep reservations
Speaker 2: about what he's doing and about the treatment of Holocaust
Speaker 2: survivors in Europe. I'm going to quote again from Eikman
Speaker 2: in Jerusalem. Equally superfluous was the lesson to the Jews
Speaker 2: in the diaspora, who hardly needed a great catastrophe in
Speaker 2: which a third of their people perished to be convinced
Speaker 2: of the world's hostility. Not only has their conviction of
Speaker 2: the eternal and ubiquitous nature of anti Semitism been the
Speaker 2: most potent ideological factor in the Zionist involvement since the
Speaker 2: Dreyfus affair, it must also have been the cause of
Speaker 2: the otherwise inexplicable readiness of the German Jewish community to
Speaker 2: begin to negotiate with Nazi authorities during the early stages
Speaker 2: of the regime. This conviction produced a fatal inability to
Speaker 2: distinguish between friend and foe. The German Jews underestimated their
Speaker 2: enemies because somehow they thought that all gentiles were alike.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's such an important point to make too.
Speaker 2: And this is why while we have to point out
Speaker 2: what a rent got wrong, you need to keep this
Speaker 2: in mind, right that both like, well, this is a
Speaker 2: lot of what Bengurian's doing is totally unnecessary, and it's
Speaker 2: also based on him kind of falling into the same mistake,
Speaker 2: a different version of the same mistake that a lot
Speaker 2: of European Jews made early on, which is thinking that
Speaker 2: all the gentiles are alike, right, which leads them to
Speaker 2: misunderstand their enemies. One thing that really gets lost in
Speaker 2: casual discussion of Eichman's trial in Jerusalem is that Israeli
Speaker 2: authorities also kind of put Holocaust survivors on trial for
Speaker 2: their timidity. They of course needed witnesses to call to
Speaker 2: discuss the details of the killing system Iikeman had helped
Speaker 2: to implement. A Rent describes quote the prosecutor asking witness
Speaker 2: after witness, why did you not protest? Why did you
Speaker 2: board the train? Fifteen thousand people were standing there and
Speaker 2: hundreds of guards facing you. Why didn't you revolt in
Speaker 2: charge and attack these guards? Harped on for all it
Speaker 2: was worth. But the sad truth of the matter is
Speaker 2: that the point was ill taken, for no non Jewish
Speaker 2: group or non Jewish people had behaved differently sixteen years ago,
Speaker 2: while still under the direct impact of the events. A
Speaker 2: former French inmate of Bukenvault, David Roussette, described in his
Speaker 2: book the logic that obtained in all concentration camps. Quote
Speaker 2: the triumph of the ss demands that the tortured victim
Speaker 2: allow himself to be led to the news without protesting,
Speaker 2: that he renounced and abandoned himself to the point of
Speaker 2: ceasing to affirm his identity, and it is not for nothing.
Speaker 2: It is not gratuitously out of sheer sadism that the
Speaker 2: essmen desire his defeat. They know that the system which
Speaker 2: succeeds in destroying its victims before he mounts the scaffold
Speaker 2: is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people in
Speaker 2: slavery in submission. Nothing is more terrible than these processions
Speaker 2: of human beings going like dummies to their death. The
Speaker 2: court received no answer to this cruel and silly question,
Speaker 2: but one could easily have found an answer had he
Speaker 2: permitted his imagination to dwell for a few minutes on
Speaker 2: the fate of those Dutch Jews who, in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: one in the Old Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam dared to
Speaker 2: attack a German security police detachment. Four hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: Jews were arrested in reprisal, and they were literally tortured
Speaker 2: to death, being sent first to book involved and then
Speaker 2: to the Austrian camp of Ma thousand. Month after month,
Speaker 2: they died a thousand deaths, and every single one of
Speaker 2: them would have envied his brethren in Auschwitz had he
Speaker 2: known about them. There exist many things considerably worse than death,
Speaker 2: and the SS saw to it that none of them
Speaker 2: was ever very far from the mind to an imagination
Speaker 2: of their victims. In this respect, perhaps even more significantly
Speaker 2: than in other's, the deliberate attempt in Jerusalem to tell
Speaker 2: only the Jewish side of the story, to distorted the truth,
Speaker 2: even the Jewish truth. And this is such an important
Speaker 2: criticism that not only are the victims of Iikman also
Speaker 2: on trial in Jerusalem, but that by framing it this way,
Speaker 2: by being so obsessed with well, why didn't they fight more?
Speaker 2: Why didn't there And by being so obsessed with just
Speaker 2: the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, they're distorting even the
Speaker 2: story of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. That that's
Speaker 2: also happening here.
Speaker 4: Mmmmmm. It's something that continues to happen with unfortunately Israeli history,
Speaker 4: of the downplaying of the other victims and even other
Speaker 4: genocides as well, in order to tell their own crafted
Speaker 4: version of it, of going like sheep to the slaughter
Speaker 4: as a famous quote yeah and was even used as
Speaker 4: a rallying cry by I believe his name is Abner kovnor.
Speaker 2: Yes yeah, conor yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to launch attacks against surviving ss men and even
Speaker 4: attempt to poison an entire city in Germany.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we talked about the part of a group
Speaker 2: called NACAM, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And that was like the rallying cries,
Speaker 4: like we did not go like sheeps to the slaughter.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they did, And there were so many other
Speaker 2: examples of resistance. Right. But the point that our rent
Speaker 2: is making is both that like, you can't imagine the
Speaker 2: position these people were in and what had been done
Speaker 2: to them already, and also like the degree of like
Speaker 2: critiquing them for this. They acted like everyone else. And
Speaker 2: we know this because every other group that was targeted
Speaker 2: by the Nazis that was put into this system, they
Speaker 2: more or less all behaved similarly.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Of course, this is not just a problem with Jewish
Speaker 2: people in Europe. This was just something. This was a
Speaker 2: result of the sheer amount of violence that was deployed
Speaker 2: and what it does to people.
Speaker 4: It happens with every genocide, and this story gets told
Speaker 4: with every genocide. I am Armenian, and Armenians tell the
Speaker 4: same thing that they they put their own history through
Speaker 4: the same Well why did they why did they just
Speaker 4: walk off like that and do as they're told? They're like,
Speaker 4: how fucking stupid, are you? Yeah, it's it's how fucking
Speaker 4: dare you.
Speaker 2: It's this desire both to avoid what you see is
Speaker 2: the shame that like they didn't fight back more, and
Speaker 2: also this belief to think that, like, well, I would
Speaker 2: never be in that position. I'm built different, I'd fight back.
Speaker 2: And I can see it because like now that I'm
Speaker 2: on the side, now that I'm part of a country
Speaker 2: that has a military that's capable of like fighting, I'm
Speaker 2: you know, we're we're we're fighting, right, Like we would
Speaker 2: never just give up, you know. And it's this desire
Speaker 2: to believe that, like you were now safe from this
Speaker 2: horrible thing. Yeah, and this desire to believe also that
Speaker 2: it's it's it's this deeply insidious attitude that like people
Speaker 2: who suffer something that badly, even if they're your people,
Speaker 2: they must have done something wrong. Yeah, exactly, they didn't
Speaker 2: fight hard enough. Right, There's something that they could have
Speaker 2: done that I would do if I was in their situation, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody, Oh, that couldn't happen to me. I would
Speaker 4: do this, I assure you will. Yeah, it would be me, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it fucking would.
Speaker 2: And I think a rint's work is so valuable in
Speaker 2: part because she brings this criticism up. That is, it's
Speaker 2: very hard to talk about this. It's very hard to
Speaker 2: be critical of, like, especially in public, of how Israel
Speaker 2: handled the Aikman and what they did, And the story
Speaker 2: of Israeli treatment of Holocaust survivors is much deeper than
Speaker 2: just this, and it's difficult to be for a lot
Speaker 2: of people to be critical about it because it's hard
Speaker 2: to not seem like you're saying something fine, and like
Speaker 2: a Rent is a Holocaust survivor. She has smuggled out
Speaker 2: of Europe right like she is, and she is the
Speaker 2: one making these criticisms of Israel during the trial, right
Speaker 2: as she's reporting for I think the fucking New Yorker.
Speaker 2: You know, Uh, it's very important, and her and Iikman
Speaker 2: in Jerusalem, for all of its flaws, is still very
Speaker 2: important to read for these reasons. Now, I find stuff
Speaker 2: like this much more interesting than Aikman's actual performance on trial.
Speaker 2: In short, his defense council tries to use the argument
Speaker 2: that Hans Globke had drafted the Nuremberg racial laws in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, and thus Eikman had only been following orders.
Speaker 2: Eichman himself sought to inhabit the image of a timid
Speaker 2: middle manager. Oh, we'd handled some logistics. Sure, he'd helped
Speaker 2: send Jews to camps. He was making the trains run,
Speaker 2: but he wasn't putting people in gas chambers. He testified personally,
Speaker 2: I had nothing to do with killing Jews. I've never
Speaker 2: killed a Jew, and I've never ordered anyone to kill
Speaker 2: a Jew. The German government, for their part, when he
Speaker 2: brings part of what Germany's doing, when Eichman brings up
Speaker 2: Globka to try to be like, no, this was the
Speaker 2: guy responsible. Germany tries to hush that up, right, and
Speaker 2: they're like really taught, like pushing internationally, like we've got
Speaker 2: to keep this shit quiet because Globca at this point
Speaker 2: is the senior most civil servant in West Germany working
Speaker 2: under Conrad Idenauer.
Speaker 4: Right there it is, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The guy who drafted the Nuberg racial laws is working
Speaker 2: for the government. Again, he's the senior most civil servant
Speaker 2: in West Germany under Edenow. So obviously the outcome of
Speaker 2: this trial is never really in doubt. And there are
Speaker 2: some very valuable things that happen during the trial and
Speaker 2: that get out, and it's very valuable that a lot
Speaker 2: of Eichman's victims are allowed to talk about what happened
Speaker 2: to them, are allowed to put that on the historic record.
Speaker 2: I'm not claiming that like this is all a failure
Speaker 2: or bad. A lot of good does come of his trial, right.
Speaker 2: That is also a part of the story, and it's
Speaker 2: an important part of the story. And the fact that
Speaker 2: a lot of victims of the Holocaust get to go
Speaker 2: in front of a perpetrator and lay out what he
Speaker 2: did to them is good. There are also horrifying moments, right.
Speaker 2: One of the worst moments of the trial is a
Speaker 2: former Auschwitz inmate is shown a camp uniform while he's
Speaker 2: on trial, and he has a stroke in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Oh geez, it's fucking nightmarriage. And in this case they
Speaker 2: are trying to do like the right thing, where it's
Speaker 2: like we need this on the record, but like, of
Speaker 2: course that's what happens sometimes, right, Like it's just it's horrible,
Speaker 2: Like there's no easy way to handle all this stuff.
Speaker 2: On December eleventh and twelfth, in nineteen sixty one, laired
Speaker 2: Adolf Iikeman guilty of crimes against the Jewish people and
Speaker 2: humanity as a whole. He was sentenced to death by
Speaker 2: hanging and executed on June first, nineteen sixty two. He
Speaker 2: died unrepentant, and that's the Iikman story.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not surprising he went screaming to hell,
Speaker 4: refrising tod not that he was wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that scance.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, uh good, I guess. Yeah, I'm glad to
Speaker 4: end it that way rather than going out the mangal away,
Speaker 4: which I dying of a people swimming.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, oh man. Anyway, No, admittedly, I.
Speaker 4: Feel like drowning would be a lot worse. So who's
Speaker 4: to say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, who's to say? I mean, I don't know. My
Speaker 2: grandma nearly drowned to death and always had said it
Speaker 2: was a pretty pleasant way to go, like you feel
Speaker 2: really warm and nice at the end. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've never drowned.
Speaker 4: Uh do we know? If Israel did it right and
Speaker 4: he didn't strangle to death. I feel like that's something
Speaker 4: that an Israeli prison guard would fuck up on purpose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I don't think he like it wasn't like,
Speaker 2: because that happens to a lot of the Nuremberg guys,
Speaker 2: like the hangman, like purposefully fucks up.
Speaker 4: Oh Yeah, that hangman ruled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've done episodes on him as like a pretty
Speaker 2: cool guy.
Speaker 4: Just a drunk guy who wanted to strangle a lot
Speaker 4: of Nazis and accidentally kind riped their heads off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was the right man for the job. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he is executed by hanging. I don't I don't think
Speaker 2: he was particularly fucked up. It should have been.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's unfortunate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do it the slow way, like, oh no, we
Speaker 2: built it too low a isreel.
Speaker 4: You can't fuck up the one thing we want you
Speaker 4: to fuck up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, really screw over this hanging. Yeah. Anyway, Well,
Speaker 2: if you ever get a chance to hang a Nazi,
Speaker 2: be bad at it exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The only way to be good at that job is
Speaker 4: by fucking it up harder than you fucked up anything
Speaker 4: you fucked up before you.
Speaker 2: Need to get drunk. You've got to really practice to
Speaker 2: be incompetent at this.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, everybody.
Speaker 1: Listen to listen to Joe's podcast.
Speaker 2: Listen to Joe's podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, if you want to know more about actually
Speaker 4: weird that this everything you bring up keeps coming back
Speaker 4: to a series that we've done. But we did a
Speaker 4: series in Auto SCORESMI. Uh yeah, he's a psycho. You
Speaker 4: can listen to that. You could listen to that series
Speaker 4: that we did, or one of the other three hundred
Speaker 4: or so episodes we've done over the last seventy years.
Speaker 4: You'll find something you like. Gold Lines led by Donkeys.
Speaker 4: Listen to it. We have a Patreon check it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, check out their Patreon and uh yeah, go do
Speaker 2: something happy now have fun.
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