Eichmann's Trainees.
The Canadian Jewish Chronicle · 23 June 1961. p.10
Eichmann’s Trainees..
By a Special Correspondent.
The trial now taking place in Jerusalem, of one of the greatest of Nazi criminals, has shocked all people, whether present at the proceedings or following them up through the radio and the press. The evidence given by the victims of Eichmann and his gang is staggering in its awful truth, as the calm factual accounts come from the witness box. One the sole survivor of a whole Jewish townlet; the other a woman whose arms babe had been torn from her arms and rent to pieces before her eyes; still another was shot but in some miraculous way succeeded in crawling out from the grave which she had shared with hundreds of others who had been killed; another was miraculously saved from the gas chamber, and another had fought in the ghetto and with the partisans, against the Nazi exterminators.
Placid and Unmoved.
In his glass cell, the extermination bureaucrat, sits placid and unmoved, in the same nonchalance in which he had sent millions to their death. He continues to jot down his notes in his well-kept and orderly files. His victims had been divested of their clothes and sent to their cruel death; no defence had been given them nor a new suit of clothing not a briefcase in which to keep defence documents.
The world press carries reports full of deep emotion. For the press of the European countries which had experienced the scourge of the Nazi beast and had heard, when the war was over, of the horrors perpetrated against the Jews, this trial is a sort of sombre reminder. For the American press and the newspapers in those countries of the world through whose streets the marching of the SS troops and the cries of their victims had not reverberated, the evidence at the trial is a revelation of a stark and terrible truth. The dry juridical quibbling that marked the accounts during the early stages of the trial, is now giving place to a note of satisfaction at the fact that the arm of justice has at long last apprehended him who is accused of having planned the implementation of the “final solution” — the extermination of six million Jews.
Now and again, it is true, some open or veiled neo-Nazi tries to utter a word or two in favour of that “mere cog in the Nazi machine”, “who only carried out the orders of his superiors”, but world public opinion, which stands in shame and horror at what took place in civilized Europe, the home of culture and civilization, is heedless of these voices, or quickly suppressing them.
Arab Defence of Eichmann.
There are only a few countries in which the defence of Eichmann and of his deeds has become a moral and political duty. Blind hatred of Israel and idle dreams of its destruction are behind this defence of his diabolic crimes. It is most painful and depressing to thumb through the pages of the Arab press these days and to find tones on which even “Der Stuermer” could have prided itself. But perhaps this should not surprise us. It is well-known that Arab nationalism already in the ’30s of the present century rejected the proposals of the Jewish National Movement to “live and let live”. As opposed to Zionism that believed there is living space and room enough in the Middle East for a Jewish national revival side by side with an Arab national revival, Arab nationalism revealed traits of religious intolerance and chauvinism, and its leaders did not hide their dreams of “slaughtering the Jews and throwing them into the sea”. Nor is there any surprise in the notorious evidence of Dieter Wisliceni, one of Eichmann’s close friends and associates, as given at the Nuremberg trial. In 1946 Wisliceni told of the understanding and collaboration between the Nazi leaders and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, who was one of the leaders of the Palestine Arabs, and even today occupies an honoured place in the Arab world. During his visit to the Gestapo Headquarters and to the extermination camps, the Mufti of Jerusalem was so impressed with the implementation of the “final solution” and the “efficiency” of Eichmann that he asked Himmler to place at his disposal a staff member of the 4B IV (Eichmann’s department) to act as his personal adviser. He had similar plans in regard to the Jews of Palestine, and he thought he would be able to implement them after the victory of the Nazi-Fascist “Axis”. At any rate he cannot be accused of the lack of readiness and good-will to learn from Nazi experience.
Nevertheless, the words of solidarity and identification expressed by the Arab press with one of the leading Nazi criminals once more show to what abyss Arab nationalism has fallen and what the spirit that directs it.
We shall quote a few examples from this press. According to the editor of the Egyptian weekly “Akhir Sa’a” (15.3.61) all talk about the holocaust of European Jewry is pure American “bluff[sic]”. This is what Mr. Mohamed al-Tabii writes:
“The huge historical lie being circulated by the American press, which alleges that the Nazis exterminated six million European Jews. On the basis of this charge, this lie, Israel is about to try the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.”
We find another note in the Jordanian ("
Palestinian") newspaper “Al-Difaa” of April 13. There is no disputing of figures here. Eichmann had “
purged” Europe and in the opinion of the Arab writer, this is his greatest merit.
“But why should we try Eichmann for his share in purging Europe from a plague called the Jews and, refrain from trying Truman for the crime of killing 500,000 Japanese...”
Remaining Six Millions will be Liquidated
Nor is this all. Only a few hundred metres away from the hall where this shocking evidence is being given, an open letter to Eichmann was printed in “The Jerusalem Times” appearing in the Old City of Jerusalem, on April 24, 1961. In this letter we read:
“What a pity, Eichmann, that you allowed those swine[sic] to arrest you... Don’t worry, Eichmann, it will in the end fall on their heads. You are accused of decimating six millions of this breed. Whether this is correct or not, it is not our object to debate this issue; but what we would like to say is... that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million, to avenge your blood...”
Another
Arab Nazi, Abu al Nadin, writes inter alia, in the Syrian paper “Al Akhbar” of March 8, 1961:
"It is a great honour[sic] for Eichmann that he is the greatest blood purger[sic] that ever arose in humanity: I should very much like to be in Eichmann's shoes, even if he is subject to capital punishment or to the electric chair...
Allah has preserved us alive in order to exterminate the Jews and the Zionists. We shall purge the Holy Land from this most detestable[sic] nation."
Arab Nazism imagines that it will be given an opportunity of one day completing the work of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich and Eichmann. But the very fact that -the arm of Israel has overtaken one of the greatest enemies of the Jewish people and of humanity, and has brought him over from his distant hiding place to trial in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, must serve as a reminder and a warning that the Jewish people are no e longer defenceless; that they now I have some one to stand up for their rights.
