Original subtitles

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

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

Jews unfit to work

are to be submitted to the Final Solution. Period.

Previously on

The Devil's Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes...

Adolf Eichmann evades capture by the Allies for 15 years,

fleeing to Argentina.

Following Eichmann's capture in 1960,

Nazi journalist Willem Sassen takes advantage of the media frenzy

and sells excerpts of the interviews toLife Magazine.

The publication of the Life Magazineinterview

I think was an astonishing moment.

Almost worldwide sensation.

MAN Where is it?

This enrages Eichmann's family and supporters,

who demand Sassen turn over the tapes.

When the Eichmann story blows into the public,

the Nazis who were still around in Argentina,

they moved against my father,

because my father betrayed, in their eyes.

But fearing for his life, Sassen denies knowing their whereabouts.

MAN All rise!

Adolf Eichmann.

The extended arm of Hitler's evil regime.

Nazis have always denied their role in the Holocaust.

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

After the war, many fled Europe,

including the architect of the Final Solution -

Adolf Eichmann.

He's practically the last

important Nazi who arrived

in Argentina after the war.

While hiding in Argentina,

Eichmann records a series of interviews

with Nazi journalist Willem Sassen,

admitting his role in the Holocaust.

Sassen came up with this crazy idea

that he would interview the mastermind of the Holocaust.

This is him boasting about what he did.

The tapes are rediscovered, and now for the first time,

we'll hear Eichmann admitting his crimes,

a true Nazi confession.

With so many people seeking the tapes,

Sassen knows he needs a safe hiding place

and gives them to an old ally before fleeing to Paraguay.

There was a former Luftwaffe officer

who had also escaped to Argentina after the war.

This man called Dieter Menge.

And Menge made a lot of money.

And Menge had a very large house outside Buenos Aires,

a meeting place for Nazis.

They actually had a flag post where they raised the Nazi flag,

they saw Nazi movies, they toasted to the Fuührer.

Maybe he made a deal with Sassen to sell the tapes to somebody

and they split the money.

You have to bear in mind, you know, these are Nazi adventurers, ex-SS men.

These are people who had no problem with lying

and they had no problem with lying to each other.

Menge takes no risks and buries the tapes

in his backyard outside of Buenos Aires.

Eichmann's taped recollections were self incriminating.

And if accepted at the trial,

Eichmann admitted the charges against him.

But Eichmann and Sassen aren't the only ones interested in the tapes.

Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner,

knows the tapes will prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt,

that Eichmann's repeated claims that he was simply following orders

are nothing more than lies.

The governments of Israel, West Germany and the US

also have a variety of interests that make the very existence

of the tapes problematic.

The BND, the West German foreign intelligence service,

had great concern about what Eichmann

had told Sassen and would tell the Israelis.

It wasn't simply the trial of the century.

It was the trial of the century

at the height of the Cold War.

With the whereabouts of the recordings still in question,

Attorney General Hausner is forced to rely on the excerpts

published inLife Magazine

as evidence of Eichmann's guilt.

If I were Hausner, I would have been pleased.

Because it's showing the world who this man was.

It's sort of tilling the soil before we plant.

Regarding Life Magazine and its publication

that we showed the defendant during the interrogation,

he did not deny

that this publication relied on material that came from him.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS You could say it simplifies

some of the work of the prosecution

in that it complicates any kind of defense that Eichmann is going to mount,

because it sounds as if he is now acknowledging

his participation in this genocide,

and doing so without the remotest expression of regret.

You were given the Life article for your review.

You said, when you saw the Einsatzgruppen in action:

"Our people will turn into sadists,

we must find a different method of execution. " True?

The last part, that we must find a different method for executions,

this seems foreign to me. I'm hearing it for the first time.

Well, you said that if extermination must be physical,

let it be physical, but not by gunfire.

To prevent a Jewish baby's brain

from splattering on your leather coat as it did in Minsk.

Right?

No! This is a totally wrong interpretation of my words.

I did not express them like this.

The meaning was that you cannot go

and kill people. I explained this clearly.

In principle, it doesn't matter if you use gas or bullets.

Eichmann lied to 2.5 million Jews into their own death

and we seriously believe that we can tell

whether he is telling the truth or not?

Forget it.

But you are stating here: "Now, as the Führer ordered a physical solution,

it must be a physical solution. " Physical solution!

- Did I sign that? I don't think so. - You didn't make any comment on that!

Obviously, it must have slipped my sight.

Otherwise, I would have certainly corrected it.

BETTINA STANGNETH Eichmann is used to being in such a situation.

He is fighting a war on several fronts.

He has the judges, the prosecution, the audience,

and he needs to figure out his role.

Of course he chose the role that he had already performed for Sassen, but in reverse.

To Sassen, he always said:

"I really wasn't a little bureaucrat!"

And it is precisely this role

of the annoyingly bureaucratic and petty-minded guy

that he chooses to play in court.

Eichmann in Jerusalem is a man without a uniform.

He is a man in a slightly oversized suit.

Eichmann knows how to appear different,

with attitude, posture, clothing,

glasses, and haircut.

He knows how to look harmless.

Eichmann said he was a clerk who always cooperated

and did what he was told to do.

The psychiatrist who examined him said that it was all a mask.

He didn't really try to please people.

That was how he presented himself to the world.

To determine his fitness for trial,

Hausner asks for Eichmann to be evaluated by a psychiatrist.

It was a tool, trying to figure out who these people are

who committed murder on such a scale, in such a way,

with such composure.

Maybe we can learn something that will be of relevance in the trial.

The psychiatrist recounts Eichmann's childhood as Eichmann had told him.

He said that his father was very strict. He would often slap him.

He was scared of his father and he learned from his father that he must not be weak.

He realized that he should never show weakness

and he did everything with such loyalty and precision

so that any inkling of the fear in his life wouldn't come out.

The childhood and youth of Adolf Eichmann lack any aura or glamour.

He has no profession until he enlists to the SS.

His senses tell him that there in the SS

he will have a significant career.

When you got this black uniform,

everyone was looking at you

with respect, also with fear,

and you were on the top

of the pyramid of the German people.

You were part of an elite even if you were a worker

or had no school,

no university study, and so on.

Eichmann becomes an important man.

He has an official car, he has a driver, he has secretaries,

and he must have dreamt about all of this his entire life.

His personal frustration was the reason for the zeal and passion

to achieve at least one big achievement.

And this big achievement is connected

to the persecution of European Jews.

The Nazis were obsessed with their racial theories

about the inferiority of the Jewish people.

The Nazis had this insane belief

that a person's ethnic group or the national group you were part of

or the religious group you were part of were different,

this were the eugenics.

And he really believed

that Jews were inherently different

from Germans.

In late 1934, Eichmann is appointed to the new department

responsible for Jewish affairs at the SS.

The agency is tasked with surveillance

and terrorizing enemies of the Nazi-German state.

Eichmann was devising systems

for identifying Jews,

for following Jews in their activities, for monitoring,

trying to work out for the SS

a systematic way of tracking Jews.

During his conversations with Sassen,

Eichmann takes the liberty of disclosing

one of Adolf Hitler's biggest secrets.

I myself looked into the Führer's dietary cook

in terms of her origins,

and I concluded that in the context of the Nuremberg Laws

she is to be addressed as a 1/32 Jewess.

Who?

Eva Braun,

the "dietary cook" of the Führer!

I say that with air quotation marks.

In reality, she was the Führer's bride.

The bride of the Führer of the Greater German Reich.

Eichmann not only tracks the Jews,

but is also responsible for forcing them

to emigrate to different countries.

Looking for potential destinations,

he visits Palestine, then under British rule,

but is quickly detained and expelled.

In his report about the trip,

he describes his anti-Semitic views,

which he also expresses to Sassen.

The Jewish population acquired

such an exaggeratedly high share of the economic assets

compared to their proportion

of the population

that here, how should I say…

the Jew had understood to violently grab everything with brutality

and leave others hungry.

You've always been a devoted antisemite, right?

I've never been an antisemite, but a nationalist.

And there's a written as well as an oral record of that.

I've never been an antisemite.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS Eichmann characterizes himself in all sorts of ways.

"Look, I was never anti-Semite

and I harbor no ill will towards the Jewish people. "

The Sassen interviews

and the Sassen tapes gave a lie to that.

The things you said in Sassen's conversations

indicate severe antisemitism, don't they?

I said it is difficult for me to remember if I said such things.

What does Dr. Servatius say at this point?

He just always confirmed that there was a recorded conversation,

but he never said that what is written down is the content from that recording.

Dr. Robert Servatius is chosen

by the family to defend Eichmann,

and in the interest of staging a fair trial,

the Israeli government agrees to pay his salary.

He is a well-known attorney in Germany after representing

a number of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials.

Servatius was a respectful defense lawyer

at the same time that he tried to defend his client

and he tried to rely on the defense that his client himself supplied.

Namely, that he was just a cog in the machine.

Servatius has to defend his client

and that can only be done if you know what to expect.

And Eichmann, the idiot, doesn't tell his lawyer

that in Argentina he gave an interview

that was a thousand pages long.

Partially, Eichmann lied without end.

Attorney Robert Servatius has stated

that he will withdraw from the defense of Adolf Eichmann

if it turns out that the claims attributed to his client

byLife Magazine are genuine.

Servatius also added that he would check

the credibility of Eichmann's confession with his brother,

Dr. Robert Eichmann, in Linz, Austria.

Naturally, they all wanted their friend, husband, brother

to be properly defended.

And Eichmann's extended family was always ready to help.

They stayed in touch with him and still lived in Austria.

But here, too, it's unknown who

we are dealing with exactly.

The Eichmann family in Austria, at least in part,

benefited from their brother's career.

Eichmann's father, who joined the Nazi party on the same day as his son,

couldn't explain after the war why he owned several things

that formerly belonged to Jewish people.

And in this respect, the family was clearly a part of the inner circle.

Despite his misgivings, Servatius is persuaded

by the Eichmann family to continue defending him

and in exchange, they agreed to cover his many expenses.

The family also passes encoded messages

through Servatius to Eichmann in Israel.

Eichmann's personal conferences with his lawyer

lead to a secret meeting of Israeli cabinet members.

The government session focuses on

whether or not to allow a meeting in private

between Servatius and Eichmann.

At the meeting, it is decided that Eichmann and Servatius

should no longer be allowed to meet in private.

But, Isser Harel, Head of the Israeli Secret Service,

informs everyone that, in fact, the meetings are being secretly recorded

and confirms that Servatius is passing encrypted messages to his client.

GADI WARSHA Isser just says, "We listened in on them

and they don't know it," and moves on.

Hausner himself reassures Servatius

that his attorney-client meetings are not being listened to.

He knows the illegal wiretapping might allow him

to obtain vital information about Sassen's recordings.

BETTINA STANGNETH The "oak tree" we are talking about

is of great significance to Germans.

When one says that an oak tree won't fall,

it always means that the person shall stand straight,

that he will overcome what he faces,

that everything will be resolved.

With this code, Sassen was saying to Eichmann,

"Don't worry, I hid the tapes. "

With Hausner unable to locate the Sassen tapes,

the court's ultimate decision on whether or not to admit

the Life Magazine article into evidence

will be crucial to him proving Eichmann's guilt.

The prosecutor submitted the defendant's comments to us

in response to the article that appeared in Life Magazine.

Yes.

His primary claim

is that "Life" published only a summary of his remarks

and therefore, the meaning in the full source may be different.

HANNA YABLONKA Eichmann is right, of course.

He claimed that what a journalist does

with his freedom of speech

does not apply to him.

There was no way that Hausner

could actually verify

the truthfulness of the Life Magazine article

and the court is trying to demonstrate that look,

we are a court of law.

Even though it looks like highly probative evidence,

we don't really have the resources to authenticate it

and so unfortunately we can't accept it in as evidence.

Did the prosecution procure the original?

No, we don't have the original.

Based on our information,

it was recorded and submitted to a journalist in Argentina,

a Dutch Nazi, we are told,

but we don't have the original tapes.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS Sassen was not about

to cooperate with the Israelis.

The contract that he signed with Life Magazine

permitted Lifeto supply some of the materials

to some other media organizations,

but specifically barred Life Magazine

from sharing anything with the Israelis.

So it raises the question of how do you get hold of this material?

So you can't get the full transcript from "Life"?

If the court so wishes, the prosecution will try to do so

and contact Life Magazine.

Our experience, typically,

in newspaper inquiries to request the sources of their information

is not encouraging and hopeful.

TIMOTHY NAFTALI This is a document showing

that the assistant editor of Life Magazine

gave the CIA an advanced copy of the text

of their article on Eichmann.

What interests Americans

is the propaganda value

of what Eichmann is saying in Life Magazine.

They were worried about how the East Germans

and the Soviets would use this.

With the battle lines of the Cold War

literally running through the middle of Germany,

many worried about what sensitive material

the Eichmann recordings contained.

This was not just about history.

It wasn't just about memory. It wasn't just about justice.

It was also about politics

and foreign policy and security matters,

and it was also about the climax of the Cold War.

To get a sense of where the Cold War was

at the moment of the trial,

keep in mind that the Berlin Wall goes up

while Eichmann is on trial.

We must, and we will look into the future with full confidence.

Because also the West woke up to the threat from the East.

TIMOTHY NAFTALI There were two Germanys warring

for the right to be Germany,

but also for the right to be the Germany

that came after Hitler.

Germans were very concerned

that this trial was going to be a source of all sorts of embarrassment,

demonstrating that there are a lot of Nazis

who remained in positions of high power within Germany itself.

REPORTER While Eichmann was standing trial in Jerusalem,

many of his accomplices are still free

and hold senior positions in West Germany.

TIMOTHY NAFTALI The East Germans saw this

as an opportunity to remind the world

that, yeah, there's only one Eichmann,

but that doesn't mean there's only one bad Nazi left

who deserves justice.

And some of them worked for Konrad Adenauer.

Konrad Adenauer is the first Chancellor of West Germany

after World War II, and is charged with leading his country

from the post-war chaos into the modern era.

The person with perhaps the most to lose

if the tapes are heard during Eichmann's trial

is Adenauer's right-hand man, Hans Globke,

who oversaw the plan for the enforcement

of the Nuremberg Race Laws later carried out by Eichmann.

Hans Globke is one of the most powerful men in West Germany.

He is the closest advisor to Adenauer.

Now we know that as a lawyer,

a bureaucrat in the Nazi system,

he helped draft the Nuremberg Laws,

which established the "legal basis"

for discrimination against German Jews.

Why would Adenauer employ someone like Globke?

It was an open offer to all German people:

We integrate all of you, even with a Nazi past.

We're not going to lock you all up.

You may continue working within our establishment.

Since Israel is trying Eichmann,

one cannot overlook the Nuremberg Laws,

because it's obvious that Eichmann will say,

"What do you want from me?

I applied the laws of the Third Reich. "

And who made these laws? Hans Globke.

This was a major problem for Adenauer.

And just as East Germany went into overdrive

to start pumping out propaganda,

West Germany was worried about what Eichmann might say.

The BND was very key

in trying to make sure that they had an ear on

what was going on in Israel,

tried to manipulate things a little under the table.

Eichmann's connections to not only Globke,

but other former Nazi officials who were integrated

into the new West German government could be exposed

if Sassen's recordings are played in court.

Hausner knows that this is against the interest of the West German government

and therefore against the interest of his own government as well.

Hausner is aware that Ben-Gurion,

against strong opposition from within the country,

and despite protests and riots led by Holocaust survivors,

is negotiating with West Germany to support Israel.

Three months before the trial took place,

Ben-Gurion met Adenauer in New York.

He had a clear interest for the sake of Israel

to establish relations with Germany.

It was an encounter of vested interests -

Israel desperately needed support

and West Germany was in desperate need of rehabilitation.

For someone to say that West Germany is different,

that it is not Nazi Germany.

I said, in the Knesset,

in the Israeli parliament, last summer,

that Germany of today is not the Germany of yesterday.

The story of the Eichmann affair from the Israeli perspective

is a nostalgic, heroic, a very romantic story,

how David demanded justice from the already defeated Goliath.

But this is nothing but a shadow boxing,

a smoke screen that conceals the true story.

And the true story is the Israeli-German nuclear project.

Once a decision is made that Israel will launch a nuclear project,

there are things that have to be done.

It demands a certain technology,

certain materials,

and first and foremost,

a lot, a lot of money.

Money that the newly established State of Israel doesn't have.

Very quickly, David Ben-Gurion

and Shimon Peres, his political partner,

realize that the way to continue with the nuclear project

is by partnering with De Gaulle's France

and Adenauer's Germany.

Adenauer and Strauss, his defense minister,

put a gun on the table, so to say.

You want us to continue funding the nuclear project?

So do not mention the name Hans Globke at the trial.

And that certainly was communicated

from Ben-Gurion to Gideon Hausner.

I don't think we should be entirely surprised

that there was some kind of, what we might say,

cross-fertilization between Ben-Gurion

and the Attorney General of Israel.

Ben-Gurion tried to prevent the prosecutor

from submitting a document at trial

that shows that Globke took part

in a meeting with Eichmann's representative

where they're talking about seizing property.

This is a very important document.

Hausner comes to Ben-Gurion and says, "I have this document. "

Ben-Gurion says, "Perhaps don't make it public. "

And Hausner says, "I can't not make it public. "

And Ben-Gurion has no choice.

Then they even decide to notify Adenauer

that such a document is going to be presented,

which is contrary to all legal logic.

Who does such a thing?

Ben-Gurion was well aware of Globke's part

in phrasing the Nuremberg Laws.

And yet, he has to take care

of the state he's responsible for - Israel.

A couple of days before the trial,

Hausner gives Ben-Gurion

the text of his opening speech.

GIDEON HAUSNER When I stand before you here,

Judges of Israel,

to lead the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann,

I do not stand alone.

Standing here with me, at this time,

are six million accusers.

But they will not be able to point the finger of blame at the glass cell,

because their ashes are piled up among the hills of Auschwitz,

in the fields of Treblinka.

DEBORAH LIPSTADT I know many Israelis of a certain age

who can quote the opening paragraph

of that speech.

And Ben-Gurion makes very few comments about it,

but just the only thing he asks

is that wherever Hausner refers to Germany,

he refer to "Nazi Germany. "

GIDEON HAUSNER The fracture of the people of Israel in this generation

was discussed in a few of the trials

that were held after Nazi Germany was defeated

in World War II.

It is certainly the case that Ben-Gurion did exercise

some influence over the prosecution.

Ben-Gurion knew Israel needed arms.

Israel needed financial support of Germany.

He may have hated doing it, but he was a practical man.

With this trial, Ben-Gurion also wanted to show

why Israel, why Jews, must have the bomb.

So there won't be another Holocaust.

The story of the Holocaust is, in fact,

the story of Eichmann's career.

After establishing methods to identify the Jews,

he is promoted and sent to Austria,

which was annexed by the German Reich

and empowered with the task of ridding the country of Jews.

Eichmann arrives in Austria, and immediately,

he is establishing his old idea

of creating a central emigration bureau for the Jews.

He took over the Rothschild Palais,

a famous place for Jews.

There he creates a pattern, how to get rid of the Jews

and to force them to leave at least some of their property

to the Third Reich.

Meaning, an official robbery

plus deportation.

One of those Jews came to the trial

and testified at the trial

that you walked into the Rothschild Palais

with a business, with a home,

with bank accounts, with possessions,

and as you went from desk to desk, you gave up these things

and you came out at the end with permission to leave Austria.

DR. FRANZ MAYER There was a big room

in which Eichmann sat.

- You instantly saw him. - Yes, of course.

This was a man with the temperament of a ruler over life and death,

rude, crude.

When we entered,

he didn't let us approach his desk.

We had to stand the whole time.

RONI STAUBER Eichmann gained power and control.

By now, he realized that this is the way

to promote his career and to gain achievements.

It's his success with the Jews that will be his test.

Can you confirm that what you did in Austria was actually

forcing the Jews into deportation?

You boast about having organized the Jewish emigration

according to the assembly line method.

I did not force any Jew to emigrate.

On the contrary, Dr. Löwenherz came to me-

I'm asking for an answer.

I had demanded from Löwenherz to present me with

at least 1,200 to 1,400 Jews per day at the time.

It was a coming and going, the whole day.

If I tell you that for multiple weeks

every day we had 1,000 Jews ready for departure.

The German hierarchy was so impressed

by the way Eichmann handled this

that this sort of skyrocketed him into this organizational task.

ADOLF EICHMANN They recognized my department

as a treasure chest

where everything

in regards to Jewish life in Austria

could be found.

GIDEON HAUSNER You controlled the lives of the Jews in the Reich.

No, that is not correct. That is not correct.

It is more clear,

after we heard about that period from Dr. Löwenherz

and the other testimonies.

So everyone is lying besides you who is telling the truth?

No, the documents tell the truth. And they confirm what I just said.

and they confirm what I just said.

GIDEON HAUSNER If you want to call black white and white black,

I can't do anything about it.

HANNA YABLONKA Within six months after his arrival to Austria,

Eichmann succeeds to expel more Jews from Austria

than Germany has succeeded in all the five years

since Hitler's rise to power.

This really caught the eyes of the Fuührer

and soon enough, in November of 1938, the Kristallnacht happened.

In January, Hitler will set up

a Central Authority for Jewish Emigration in Germany.

Eichmann was one of the key characters

leading to the "Final Solution" as we know it.

Perhaps the most damning part of Eichmann's legacy

is his participation in the Wannsee Conference,

where the plan for the vicious extermination of all Jews in Europe

is meticulously laid out.

The Conference is led by Eichmann's commander, Reinhard Heydrich,

head of the Reich Security Main Office.

On 20th January 1942,

15 high ranking members of the Nazi state

met here to discuss in 90 minutes the organization

for systematic mass murder of all Jews in Europe.

The house that we know as the house of the Wannsee Conference

was an SS hotel.

People come here to spend leisure time,

to take a swim in the lake that we know as Wannsee,

and then the house was also used

for talks and conferences.

We know that the men were invited here

to have the talk on the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question"

as they put it in the invitation,

accompanied by breakfast.

They had food. They had alcohol.

Eichmann refers to "cognac. "

The session lasted 90 minutes.

It's astonishing to see a group of 15 people discussing the murder

of millions of Jews and nobody's concerned,

as if they're talking about moving a table

from one side of the room to the other side.

Gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed your meal.

We now proceed to the main question in regards to the "Final Solution,"

namely determining which group of people will be considered for evacuation.

The decision for systematic mass murder is closely related

to other decisions of dominating the whole world,

wanting to keep the world free of Jews.

The "Final Solution," or what most people call the "Holocaust,"

takes place only at the end of the Holocaust, from late 1941,

when Nazi Germany changes its policy

from forced emigration to a total annihilation.

Once the Nazis invade the USSR,

they realize that they have to tackle

huge numbers of Jews and Communists

and largely everything they hate.

They conclude that the solution must be immediate.

So they begin to murder.

And while murdering, they realize

that it creates difficulties

for their troops, mostly mentally.

The negative effect of the murdering on the soldiers

forced the Nazis to find another solution.

The new solution came in the form of organization and order.

There is a German proverb...

"There must be order. "

It is a big operation, millions of Jews have to be transported

to the place of death. How do you organize it?

And here is the man who knows how to do it professionally.

Do you know

if several years before the war

there had already been a plan meticulously detailed by Heydrich

down to the smallest detail,

for the so-called solution of the "Jewish Question?"

No, I would have had to know about that.

After we started marching,

the moment dictated these things.

But was Heydrich not mandated at the Wannsee Conference

with the solution of the Jewish question?

In fact he was authorized to…

to initiate, to take over the final solution to the Jewish question.

He was empowered to do so.

Heydrich wanted to get the certification to deal with Jewish affairs as he wished.

He received it at the Wannsee Conference.

You were his qualified referent

for all matters arising from the "Final Solution. "

That is not true.

I was simply tasked with the administrative process

of invitations for these people to

the conference in March '42.

In most of the movies that were made on the Wannsee Conference,

you would rather see him sitting aside,

only taking notes.

That is what he himself claims.

The topic that is being talked about is his topic.

Eichmann was in charge of organizing the deportations,

of coordinating activities.

He's the one preparing the numbers.

This very famous page six

of the minutes that summarizes

all European countries where the line is drawn

and 11 million European Jews are mentioned

that are going to be deported and killed.

So that is Eichmann's role.

Eichmann later ensures that explicit words

like "murder" or "execution" will not be mentioned

since he's very much aware of the need of secrecy.

One of the mechanisms that makes it easier

for the German society, for the German institutions

and even, in part, for the rest of the world,

not to be aware of what's going on.

There is a word

that is used in this document

and that is the word of "behandelt" - the treatment.

They would be suitably treated.

At that point of time, for most of the perpetrators,

to my knowledge, is clearly understood as killing.

Eichmann writes the protocol of the Conference

and sends it to the relevant offices.

Then he carries out the decisions of the Conference,

being sure that this is what the angel of history

has asked him to do.

The Führer has given the order for physical extermination…

I had heard these words for the first time.

I know that all too well.

I even thought to myself, "physical extermination…"

You see, the word in itself is already rather peculiar.

If it had been, "The Führer has ordered the extermination of the Jews…"

But like that? "Physical extermination…"

It seemed incredible to me.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS Eichmann is something of a logistical mastermind

and he wants to make sure

that he is highly successful in the deportations,

and he does this with full awareness

that the result of deporting these Jewish persons

to these killing centers is that they're going to be killed.

You saw in the Jews an enemy that had to be exterminated,

like any other enemy.

The slogan was: "The enemy must be exterminated. "

The word "extermination" is not appropriate

because you don't exterminate an enemy,

you need to fight the enemy.

But not a physical extermination, like the one Hitler commanded.

GIDEON HAUSNER Do you know of a non-physical extermination?

GIDEON GREIF Adolf Eichmann visited Auschwitz many times.

He went there to inspect and to be sure

that his instructions are being carried out.

He even had some improvement suggestions.

We know this from the camp commander, Rudolf Hoöss,

who welcomed him there each time.

You need to know that,

if someone is already in a concentration camp

it is rather easy to get in, but extremely difficult to get out again.

Very difficult.

GIDEON GREIF He was asked by some cabinet ministers

of the German Nazi government to make them a personal favor

and release some important Jews

who have made some important inventions

for Nazi Germany.

Nothing helped.

He always said, "I make no exceptions. "

He was... there's a saying in Hebrew, "Meshuga ladavar. "

He was crazed to kill

every Jew he could find.

GIDEON HAUSNER It's more elegant to kill with gas.

Isn't that what the people from the Eastern Ministry said?

Yes, but that definitely wasn't my opinion.

That should be clear from what was said before.

I don't know who introduced the physical extermination.

DEBORAH LIPSTADT If Hausner had had access to the tapes,

that he could have played the tapes in the trial,

then the next question he would have asked Eichmann was,

were you lying then or are you lying now?

With Hausner still unable to get his hands on the tapes,

he presses Eichmann to admit to his culpability

in the extermination of the Jewish people.

Here, on the tapes, Eichmann clearly admits

to the deceptive techniques used by the Nazis

to make the gas chambers appear like innocent shower rooms.

A brigadier general,

he reported to me

that they installed sprinklers that looked like shower heads.

This would be a shower room.

And they would put in the idiots and throw in cyanide.

Still unable to get Eichmann

to admit his guilt in open court

or locate the whereabouts of the tapes,

Hausner finds another solution.

He drops a bombshell on the defense,

shocking everyone in the courtroom

by miraculously introducing copies of the actual transcripts

that Sassen has made of his interviews with Eichmann.

GIDEON HAUSNER I must inform the court

that efforts were made to procure the transcript.

And we have it.

Not from Life Magazine.

Is it a copy or…?

It's a transcription. It's not brief.

It's several hundreds of pages.

We do not have the tape, but…

there are also remarks by Eichmann

in his handwriting.

What he called

"side notes. "

DEBORAH LIPSTADT The transcripts of the tapes become available,

and not just the transcripts, but the transcripts

with corrections in Eichmann's handwriting.

Because Sassen transcribed the tapes,

gave them to Eichmann and said, "Go over them

and see if there's anything wrong. "

And you have his corrections in his handwriting.

So this was firsthand evidence.

When you want to sell such a document around the world,

while everybody is talking about the issue of Nazis on the run,

it's not such a smart idea to put thousands of pages in a heavy suitcase

and take it for a trip.

It's heavy!

Nowadays, it can be a PDF file on our cellphones,

but in those days, it was several kilos of luggage.

Very noticeable, large, and heavy.

It could have been stolen.

So Sassen did what any smart person would do.

He made copies, backup copies.

That means he simply took pictures.

One of these copies reaches Gideon Hausner,

who never reveals how he obtained

the transcripts of the Sassen recordings,

taking the secret to his grave.

But we do know that Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal

was in touch with Hausner during the trial

and may have assisted in procuring the evidence.

In July 1945, I obtained from the Jewish Agency

a wanted notice against Adolf Eichmann

that proved that he was the main culprit for the mass murder of the Jews of Europe.

After reading this notice and other documents,

Eichmann was also, in my eyes, the murderer of my family.

RENEÉ BIENERT Individuals like Simon Wiesenthal

made those former Nazi criminals

being concerned and not sleeping well,

fearing of being uncovered.

I heard this story that his landlady came

and saw over his shoulder

what documents he has on his desk

and there was the name "Eichmann. "

And she said, "Oh, Eichmann, I know his parents.

They have their Electricity Store just around the corner. "

Wiesenthal reveals that the transcripts reached the Eichmann family in Linz.

So Eichmann was entitled to a copy,

and Sassen brought this copy to Linz, to Eichmann's brother.

And as far as we know, he kept it in his desk,

where it remained for quite some time

until it occurred to someone to break into Robert Eichmann's house

and steal the document.

There's a possibility that by this occasion

Wiesenthal received one of these copies

since, I mean, he was very well networked.

You had Eichmann's handwritten notes.

You had 80 something pages,

so it was obvious that these were real.

We didn't need tapes to justify that they were real.

MOSHE LANDAU Mr. Hausner, when did the prosecution obtain this document?

Approximately…

It's hard to say…

it's hard to say.

- It's hard- - Because the question is

what Your Honor calls the prosecution.

If Your Honor is asking me when I obtained it?

Yes.

It arrived only three weeks ago.

But it arrived in Israel beforehand.

Please don't pressure me with questions.

Hausner dodges the questions

about how he got the transcripts.

The evasiveness is calculated

As he begins to realize his trial strategy may be starting

to interfere with the secret Israeli nuclear agenda.

On the next episode of The Devil's Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes...

Can Eichmann and Servatsius find a way

to keep the transcripts out of the trial

or will the court allow them to be admitted as evidence?

Eichmann plays full risk and is 100 percent sure

that the tapes will never be heard.

Because he knows what else is on these tapes.

In the meantime, Hausner makes the historic decision

to call to the witness stand Holocaust survivors...

So they can directly confront Eichmann

with the horrors he inflicted on them.

They came from Lida - the Germans.

I turned my head, he asked me whom to shoot first.

As Hausner presses to get the tapes, he suddenly is confronted

with the ghost of the Nuremberg trials.

And even more secrets that the Israeli government

would rather keep buried in the past.

Gideon Hausner's great fear

was that quarrels amongst the Jews would enter into this trial.

As the trial continues, will Hausner be able

to overcome these mounting obstacles?