Original subtitles

Belzec 600,000.

Sobibor 250,000.

Treblinka 700,000.

Chelmno 300,000.

Total - 1,850,000.

Concerning the terrible Camp Auschwitz,

its commander Rudolf Höss

stated the number of gassed Jews as 2.5 million.

So, is that correct?

From where did you get these things?

-Office of the Reichsführer. -Yes.

-Is there a copy? -Yes.

Let's get rid of this fly here.

It's a fly of Jewish nature.

All rise!

Adolf Eichmann.

The extended arm of Hitler's evil regime.

It could not have been me, because it was not my decision in such cases.

I did not see any murders, I did not see any torture.

I did not know at all at that time such things happened.

One should see to bring the tapes

and if I didn't say it, it will be proven.

Yes.

Had we killed 10.3 million Jews,

then I would be satisfied and would say,

good, we exterminated an enemy.

All rise!

Case 704061.

The Attorney General of Israel,

Mr. Gideon Hausner against Adolf Eichmann.

When I first saw him,

it was only on the day of the trial. I didn't want to see him before.

Shakespeare expressed it in "King Lear,"

"The prince of darkness is a gentleman."

And Eichmann looked like a lowly post office clerk,

someone you could encounter

in an office, on the bus, in the street

and you would walk by him without giving him a second look.

Adolf Eichmann.

Tell him to stand.

You are Adolf, the son of Adolf Karl Eichmann?

Please translate.

Yes.

You are charged before this court

with an indictment containing 15 charges.

A: Immediately after the outbreak of World War II

the defendant served as Head of the Gestapo in Berlin.

His role was to locate and deport Jews

in Germany and the other Axis countries.

Do you plead guilty or not guilty to the first charge?

I plead not guilty as charged.

Quiet.

The defendant caused the slaughter of millions of Jews

as the person in charge of carrying out the Nazis' plan

to physically exterminate all the Jews,

a plan known as "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

I plead not guilty as charged.

In the spirit of the charge, not guilty.

We did what we could.

Had 10.3 million of

these enemies been killed,

then we would have fulfilled our task.

I know that what I am telling you is hard and I will be condemned for it,

but I cannot say it to you otherwise. It is the truth.

Why should I deny it?

Right?

Nothing irritates me more than when a fellow

afterwards denies

the things he's done.

Isn't this how it is? You see, after 1945…

From June 1945

-I was in various camps. -Yes.

Jew commissions would come into the camps.

And when another Jew commission arrived, and we all had to line up.

They were wondering whether they would encounter known faces anywhere.

And what were you thinking

during this first inspection?

I didn't care at the time, I didn't care.

I would see to find some warm water and with a

razor blade simply cut my wrists open. Done.

So often I wanted to resist,

stupidly, by throwing my life away.

Fate didn't let me. I couldn't care any less.

They were, without exception, taken to Auschwitz

and there they were submitted to the Final Solution.

Occasionally Eichmann also sent

summary reports to the Reich Security Main Office and to the Head of the Gestapo.

But tell me, you said that you went through Bavaria?

Yes, I traveled through Bavaria.

From there I traveled to Hamburg,

From Hamburg I went to the Rhineland.

From the Rhineland I went to the Lüneburg Heath,

and nearby had been the camp Bergen Belsen.

-There was the smell of garlic everywhere. -Yes.

And only of garlic! And who sold garlic at that time?

-Only the Jews. -Yes.

I was astonished and thought to myself,

who would have thought? Weren't they all supposedly killed?

Because they accused us of having sent all of them to the ovens

and now these guys are haggling with me.

"In squares and street corners and parks,

everywhere the Soviets have their positions…"

I didn't even care about the Jews that I deported to Auschwitz.

I didn't care if they were alive or already dead.

There was an order from the Reichsführer

that said…

Jews who are fit to work

must be submitted to the work process!

Jews who are unfit to work

had to be submitted to the "Final Solution." Period.

And with that, you clearly and openly meant physical extermination?

If that's what I said, then yes. Obviously.

We can't do this.

We can't do this.

Suppose, for example, that I needed to

organize 50 trains in the next two months.

I heard they had to go to Auschwitz.

I received an order, for example,

to get a certain city "Judenfrei"

(cleansed of Jews).

I'm sorry, I wasn't able to get cigarettes.

There were none left.

Thank you so much for trying, dear lady, but no worries at all.

This happened against my will. I didn't want to cause any trouble.

And…

I asked Pohl to supply me with the final destination.

That was my main task.

Then, in this instance, I went to Auschwitz.

I told them, "These are the orders I received from the head office."

"How many can you take in per day?"

So you weren't just responsible for the trains?

But you always had to add…

that they were designated for special treatment.

-Yes. -That's an important point.

I had to announce it.

That they were designated, for special treatment?

Of course.

You know, it was routine.

It was always the same.

I am opening the session of the trial.

I remind the defendant that he is still under oath.

Yes, I'm aware of that.

Yes, please, Mr. Hausner.

When you're talking about transporting to the East,

do you mean transporting to extermination?

Regarding transport for extermination, I cannot assess this

as it wasn't determined beforehand if they

would be submitted to extermination or not.

That information wasn't known

by the authority in charge of train schedules.

And have you seen the abuse, the murders,

perpetrated by the German occupiers on the Jews of Poland

in the first days of the occupation?

I did not see any murders, I did not see any torture.

At that time, I did not know at all about such things there.

And even at this moment, I can't say if such

events had already taken place at that time.

At the time I was there, not only did I not see,

I also did not hear of such things.

We heard here about what the German armies did in the early days of the war.

Had you not seen any of it?

How could I have heard of or seen any of this

when I was sitting at my desk in Berlin

and had nothing to do with it?

When my father was appointed for the job,

he gathered the close family and told us

that he would be Eichmann's prosecutor.

He said that because it would be a very difficult trial,

he would often be absent from home.

And that is indeed what happened.

And every time he did come home,

he would come with suitcases full of documents,

scatter them throughout the house and sit down to read

and prepare the case.

I don't think Eichmann had any specific craving for power.

He was the typical functionary.

And a functionary, if he is really nothing but a functionary,

is really a very dangerous man.

I don't think ideology played a major role.

It's very hard to accept the things she said.

It really hurt my dad.

You take the person

who is the pinnacle of the Nazi ideology

and turn him with a single blow into a small cog.

So much so that people were really tempted to believe

that under the right circumstances

such "Eichmann" can come out of any person.

This is so wrong

when we are dealing with a person who is an ideologist.

I'll tell you now in conclusion,

I, the cautious bureaucrat,

that's who I was, yes.

This cautious bureaucrat was joined by

a fanatical

fighter

for the freedom of my blood, the race that I belong to.

I changed from the once

cautious bureaucrat who, of course, I was.

And how blind I was then, but then came the inspiration that guided me.

Whatever is to the benefit of my race

is, for me,

holy order and holy law.

I must inform the Knesset

that some time ago

Israel's Security Services discovered

one of the greatest Nazi criminals,

Adolf Eichmann.

Adolf Eichmann is already in detention in Israel.

Another officer and I were charged with a special assignment.

He guarded him inside the cell.

I guarded him outside the cell.

So Eichmann was never out of sight.

When he went to the bathroom, the door was open.

When he slept, we were awake.

I hated him in my heart.

Head of Bureau 06, in charge of the Eichmann investigation,

reported that Eichmann's actual investigation

is being conducted on a daily basis by a police officer.

When I heard that Eichmann is in Israel,

I was shocked.

Because I knew who Eichmann was, I knew they were looking for him.

So I started thinking how I could volunteer

to assist the unit that would be formed to interrogate Eichmann.

When Eichmann was called into the interrogation room,

when he entered,

as a Holocaust survivor,

I couldn't believe that this nerd

controlled

millions of Jews, their lives and their deaths.

Throughout the entire investigation, which lasted nine months,

he decided that his line of defense would

be that wherever he signed with his name,

he instead would say now, "I got an order to write this."

"I got an order to do this."

To prove that he didn't initiate anything on his own.

I knew he had sent my parents

on a train to Belzec

to the gas chamber.

And my ten year old sister.

How could I treat him?

He's a pretty good actor.

Everything recorded and transcribed here should be stored.

Only when I die, it is my wish,

may it serve as the basis for scientific research.

But in no uncertain terms: I don't wish

to come out of the shadows

into the light.

I have no ambition to do that.

We knew one thing:

With us, he lied the entire time.

To Sassen, he told the truth.

Where are the recordings?

What did you tell them? Where is the money? Where are the tapes?

Damn liar! Do you think this helps him?

Where are the documents?