Best Quotes from Eichmann Before Jerusalem by Bettina Stangneth with Page Numbers

"They are finally realizing a bomb is beginning to strike."

"I was an apprentice in the years 1934/35/36.… But by the time I went to Palestine, I had already become a Bachelor. And when I came back, they made me a Master."

"I have brought the leaders, at least, up to speed, as you can imagine."

"This is how I became the famous Eichmann, all the way up to the RF [Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler] and the other ministries."

"The king is always played by others."

"Much more power ... was attributed to me than I actually had."

"If you are made to view an SS man as the master over life and death, you have little room for doubt."

"It is easier to deceive someone who doesn’t expect hell than someone who fears the worst."

"Nobody else was such a household name in Jewish political life at home and abroad in Europe as little old me."

"I will leap laughing into the pit, because millions of Jews will be lying there with me."

"When a person discards his name, he ultimately loses control over it."

"The sheer number of people who knew Eichmann’s name, whether Nazis, regime opponents, or victims—vanished from sight."

"He said he would leap laughing into the pit, because the feeling that he had six million people on his conscience would be a source of extraordinary satisfaction for him."

"Eichmann was now, for the most part, alone in the forest."

"The symbol was perpetuated by other people’s perception and by his own behavior, but it was also how he saw himself."

"Their unity rapidly began to crumble as more and more details of the Nazi war crimes became known, shocking and shaking the faith of even devoted National Socialists."

"Eichmann was the crucial witness when it came to victim numbers."

"It was this department of the Gestapo which had primary executive responsibility for the rounding-up of the Jews of Europe and the committing of them to concentration camps."

"Being thought of as a man in the shadows could have its advantages."

"Eichmann’s incomprehension, bewilderment, and personal disappointment over the lies told by people who had once been his friends and comrades was so pitiful, you might almost think he believed it himself some of the time."

"His writing was not an attempt to comprehend his own actions; it arose from the fact that people were condemning the crimes he felt to be his life’s work."

"He must have started formulating this view of his incredible career—a story that would exonerate him as far as possible—when he was still a prisoner of war."

"All his energy was focused on survival."

"On the Lüneberg Heath, it was near where Bergen-Belsen had been, and everything round there smelled of garlic and it was all Jews... and I said to myself, I, I who was bargaining with Jews over wood and eggs, I was amazed and astounded."

"The people who met Otto Heninger... had no idea about his fears and his inner turmoil."

"He was such a quiet, unassuming person... he played Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven,"

"Nobody liked to ask too many questions."

"Eichmann might have agreed with the commandant of Auschwitz that the murder of millions of Jews was nothing more than the 'battles' that 'the next generation will no longer have to fight.'"

"The sheer number of former National Socialist officials who found their way to northern Germany points to something more than a collection of individual escape plans."

"His escape organization was a highly professional affair."

"When the ship, the Giovanna C., left the harbor at Genoa, I felt like a hunted deer that has finally managed to shake off its pursuer. I was overcome by a wave of the sense of freedom."

"Eichmann had played such a canny game of hide-and-seek that, prior to his arrest ten years later, no one had hit upon his refuge in northern Germany."

"The false trail that Eichmann laid was the route that some of his former subordinates, like Alois Brunner, really took."

"In the end, even these false trails contributed to Eichmann’s downfall."

"The method of those seeking revenge was simple... They would knock on the door, ascertain the identity of the man, and ask him to come with them for some sort of routine procedure."

"Eichmann was ultimately caught out using one of his own lies."

"How could someone who had been a member of the master race, overstepping the boundaries of human nature to such a degree, be satisfied with a nameless existence in some little town somewhere?"

"The vehemence with which he had always propounded his National Socialist ideology made it seem highly implausible that he could just resign himself to the new era and its legal norms."

"What would have happened if one of the many bombs had got me during the war. This way, Fate gave us all those extra years. We must be grateful to him for that."

"Sitting in an Israeli cell in 1961, pondering what had caused him the most suffering after 1945, his answer was clear: 'the mental burden resulting from the anonymity of my person.'"

"My heart was filled with joy. The fear that someone could denounce me vanished. I was there, and in safety!"

"Tucumán was a happy time."

"I spent many hours in the saddle, on horseback treks."

"I also had the opportunity to indulge one of my greatest pleasures: riding."

"I brought him newspaper clippings, 'Murderer, Mass Murderer Eichmann,' and when he saw that, he said: 'They’ve gone mad, I’m no murderer, I won’t stand for it, I’m going to go back to Germany.'"

"The reunion was indescribable."

"I was not allowed to be the father of my own sons. For Klaus, Horst, and Dieter, I was 'Uncle Ricardo.'"

"I taught the boys to ride," Eichmann said proudly.

"In Argentina, no one would have thought to pass on information about a Standartenführer."

"I was an idealist," Eichmann liked to remind people—and an idealist works for honor and the cause, not for money and splendor.

"For Wiesenthal, this was final confirmation that the trail Eichmann had laid in the Middle East was a red herring."

"Wiesenthal was aware of this fact: contrary to his story of a serendipitous meeting between two stamp collectors, he had met Heinrich Mast before."

"Höttl welcomed his fame, bolstering it at every opportunity, though he always posed as simply the man fate had chosen to bear this knowledge."

"Their National Socialist stance was primarily defined by what they opposed: the Western integration of the Federal Republic; rearmament; the United States; and Konrad Adenauer, the man who stood for it all."

"One of his principal strategies for protecting himself and his friends was to incriminate a small group of former colleagues."

"What might have been accomplished if this action had done something beyond just causing Wiesenthal’s heart to skip a beat and had actually succeeded in telling 'the Jews' where Eichmann was?"

"The only thing Eichmann’s statements would reveal was the monstrous scale of this German crime and the immeasurable suffering of the people who had fallen victim to the German mania."

"Even statements from the representatives of the new West Germany often sounded like stock phrases and political correctness."

"Today we have the testimonies of the concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höß, the Wannsee Conference transcript, reports from the Einsatzgruppen commandos, descriptions of concentration camps, murder statistics, and of course Eichmann’s testimonies, not to mention brilliantly edited collections of documents—enough secondary literature to fill a library, and more images than we can bear."

"Wiesenthal was now certain that all the information he had obtained in the hunt for Eichmann would lead to something."

You must understand that I was reluctant to release a subject expert and specialist like Eichmann from Head Office, and today he seems irreplaceable to me.

Our struggle is a dream, and because our blood dreams that dream within us, our physical life is meaningless.

We were simply the bookkeepers of death.

We wanted to expel the Jews from our midst, and we failed.

Yes indeed, my dear friend, we are a forsaken bunch in a forsaken position. This is our strength, and this is why we have no worse enemy than our own despair.

If millions of Jews are murdered once again, they will only have themselves to blame.

This was a symbol of freedom, and life triumphing over the powers that sought to destroy me.

I have, with painful self-discipline, worked through a thick tome containing essays and documents on the relationship between the Third Reich and the Jews.

I knew the cry was simplistic; it sprang from my own helplessness.

The truth is probably relative.

I passed on the evacuation and deportation orders I received, and oversaw the compliance with and following of these orders that I received and passed on.

I began to tire of living between worlds, as an anonymous wanderer in a 'submarine'.

The drive toward self-preservation is stronger than any so-called moral requirement.

I do not wish to court the limelight of publicity in any way. I have no ambition.

My conscience and my hands are clean. I have not killed any Jews, or given a single order to kill.

What is right, is what aids the people.

From the tellurian worldview of Copernicus and Galileo, to the hyper-galactic worldview of Homo sapiens today: the law creates and expects order.

Only thinking based on ethnicity offers a chance of final victory in the battle of all living things.

We Germans were also just doing our duty and are not guilty!

The important thing is always the will of the nation's leaders—not simply because they have the power to force people to obey, but because they act only on behalf of the people.

The awareness of his own authority must have allowed him to enter into discussions with the Dürer circle with confidence.

It is clear that even after the collapse of the Third Reich, some continued to feel that they had a role to play in the 'great game' of history.

No, of course he had never talked about millions of murdered Jews, only "enemies of the Reich."

The integration into the whole, because in the whole lies the völkisch, one blood.

What I told you must serve as an apology: one, that I lacked a profound intellect. Second, that I lacked the necessary physical toughness.

What benefits my people is a sacred order and a sacred law for me.

Each document the Dürer circle read became a paving stone on an entirely different road.

Mass murder and gas chambers had happened, they were part of German history, and National Socialists like Eichmann had played a decisive role in creating them.

The extermination of Jews in Europe is seldom called that in the country that perpetrated it.

I have to subordinate myself to fate and destiny. I am just a little man and don’t have to fight against this, and I couldn’t, and I don’t want to.

"Now the murderer and mass murderer has completely vanished."

"I knew it, and yet I could not change anything."

"You learn nothing about a mirror by gazing in fascination at your own reflection; the trick is to concentrate on the reflective surface itself."

"The bureaucrat sounded far more harmless than an SS man."

"Ultimately, whether Eichmann managed to sell himself as a bureaucrat, a schizophrenic, or an amnesiac didn’t matter, as long as no one sniffed out his convictions."

"You can avoid falling into Eichmann’s 'Götzen' trap only by keeping a wary eye fixed on the perfidious philosophical swamp of the Argentina Papers."

"Instead of letting history be a guide, he hoped to manipulate the narratives to his own ends."

"One thing unfailingly made Eichmann incautious and therefore vulnerable: his pronounced need for recognition."

"In the end, the most powerful revelation was not just the confessions, but the silence surrounding them."

"This was part of the mechanism of power that governed the National Socialist system to perfection."