Wednesday, March 24, 2010

"I was never an anti-Semite. ... My sensitive nature revolted at the sight of corpses and blood... I personally had nothing to do with this. My job was to observe and report on it."
As quoted in Consensus and Controversy: Defending Pope Pius XII (2002) by Sister Margherita Marchione, p. 71

I found this quote very interesting, Adolf Eichmann states the above but he also talks about wanting to kill all the Jews "If we would have killed 10.3 million Jews, then I would be satisfied and would say, good, we annihilated an enemy. ... I wasn't only issued orders, in this case I'd have been a moron, but I rather anticipated, I was an idealist."* Also Ellie Wiesel states, in the movie that we have been watching, that he could see the remorse on Eichmann's face. "[Eichmann] was sad, he was sad that it was over, he wanted to send off more Jews, but there were no more left in my town" (Ellie Wiesel). Also Eichmann says that he does not regret anything, and what does personally mean because I think he did have a personal touch with the camps and trains.

Note:
All quotes are from wikiquote.org or recited from the movie we watched in class

*"Hätten wir 10,3 Millionen Juden getötet, dann wäre ich befriedigt und würde sagen, gut, wir haben einen Feind vernichtet. ... Ich war kein normaler Befehlsempfänger, dann wäre ich ein Trottel gewesen, sondern ich habe mitgedacht, ich war ein Idealist gewesen."Post-war correspondence with Willem Sassen om Eichmanns Memoiren. Ein kritischer Essay (Zuerst 2001) Frankfurt/M.: Fischer TB, 2004 ISBN 3-5961-5726-9

1 comment:

  1. I found this stunningly similar to Nightfather when the father says, "The only reason I want to bring him back to life is so that I can murder him all over again. I did it much to quickly the first time. This time I'd take it nice and easy… the only thing I regret is that I didn't make him suffer in mortal fear long enough."

    To me this was the exact opposite of the effect the Jews of Israel wanted to have in the trial of Eichmann. I think these two different desires say very different and interesting things about the two parties.

    ReplyDelete