Original subtitles

The Führer has given the order for physical extermination…

literally… I had heard these words for the first time.

I know that all too well.

Efforts have been made to obtain the manuscript,

and indeed, it is now in our hands.

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.

All rise!

Okay, so now take this text,

analyze it sentence by sentence

and tell us what is true and what is false.

Take a look at the section I marked,

"I wasn't an ordinary receiver of orders.

If I was, I would be stupid.

I was an idealist."

Did you say that?

That's…

I must say, this is completely made-up nonsense.

Being an idealist has nothing to do with receiving or giving orders.

I just thought of something, Mr. Prosecutor.

You said that there are tapes.

One should try to get these tapes.

And it would prove if I said it or not.

Look, I can do my job without advice.

I ask that you tell me

if you said those things or not?

After the middle of May 1944,

we were led to a villa

that later turned out to be the private residence of Adolf Eichmann.

I saw him when I was digging, I heard shouting.

Yes.

I saw Eichmann's driver walk over to one of the Jewish boys working with us,

I knew him as Shalamon,

and he yelled at him,

"You stole cherries off the tree,"

and I saw Eichmann standing on the upper balcony.

Then I saw the boy

being pushed into the warehouse and locked up there.

Then I heard horrible screams, pounding, beatings.

The screams went on for 10-15 minutes.

When I heard no more screams, the door opened,

and Eichmann emerged.

He left quickly and the boy's body was dragged out.

In response to this question, I can only say

that I have never killed a human being,

that I have never beaten a human being to death,

and that I have never hit a human being.

Eichmann never shot anyone himself.

He only shot with his pen.

The commander of Auschwitz

once asked him when he visited him

if perhaps the babies could be spared,

not be put

with their parents in the gas chambers.

Eichmann replied, and this appears in Rudolf Höss memoirs,

the children must be exterminated,

for they could grow up

and want to seek revenge on us.

That was Eichmann.

To the end.

And this is what Höss did.

That's what he did.

I told you already, he was not

the brutal concentration camp commander

one imagines with the face of a bulldog,

he was a father to a load of children.

He had sympathy for human needs and worries.

He had orders that bound him.

Had I received the order

to gas Jews or shoot Jews,

I would have executed these orders.

Rudolf Höss,

in the statements you know…

-Yes, I met with Höss. -He was at your place in Budapest.

Yes, he visited me in Budapest.

To determine Auschwitz's capacity to absorb Hungarian Jews?

Even in Hungary, I was not giving orders, but receiving orders.

He had to address the higher ranks.

In Sassen's transcript, page 737,

you made a comparison between the various countries.

As for Holland, you said,

"It was a splendor how it was all rolling."

As for Denmark, you said,"It was almost a scandal," or similar words.

And as for Hungary, you said,

"Hungary really offered us the Jews like in a fire sale!

Hungary was the only country

for which we couldn't work fast enough."

"On March 31st, 1944 the Judenrat

had a first discussion with Eichmann at the Majestic.

'You don't know who I am? I am a bloodhound',

Eichmann declared at that time."

Yes, maybe I said that,

how shall I say, sarcastically, and…

with a combination of humor and sarcasm.

Just as I occasionally said

to the important Jews, when I met them,

when they arrived.

Something like, "Do you know where you are?

You are with the Tsar of the Jews, dear friend!"

This is how I wanted to address them

so they wouldn't have worries or concerns.

Because I am not the bloodhound that people accuse me of being.

You told Sassen that Hungary was the only country

in which you weren't able to keep up with the rate of deportations.

That's what you said to Sassen, true?

No, that cannot be true.

Many things were written, as you said, Mr. Prosecutor, and this is not correct.

We have concluded that the deportations from…

Hungary, under the leadership of the master (Eichmann)

were conducted in an exemplary manner.

Can one say that in 46 days all this happened?

It seems exaggerated.

Too fast?

Of course it happened fast.

But 46 days seems a bit exaggerated to me.

Maybe you are referring to 46 work days?

But not in 46 days,

meaning, a month and a half.

There were only whispers and rumors

about a place in Poland where terrible things are happening.

But the people who were deported to Auschwitz,

they all sent a postcard that said the same thing,

that they feel fine, that they're working, something like that.

These were uniform postcards that were sent to the relatives.

Once we arrived in Auschwitz, we got an order to get out.

And I saw my wife. How did I recognize her?

My daughter was wearing a red coat

and that red dot was the sign

that she is there

and the dot became smaller and smaller.

I walked away and never saw her again.

When I heard that,

I fell silent. Why?

Because my daughter was two and a half years old

and shortly before that I bought her a red coat.

I couldn't get a word out of my mouth.

Even before we entered the barracks,

a command came down: all the boys to the soccer field.

Those days were the pinnacle of Auschwitz.

Within seven weeks, from May 16 to June 10,

438,000 Jews were brought to Auschwitz on 150 trains.

Four chimneys emitted flames and black smoke day and night.

When those didn't suffice, they dug pits and burned bodies to ashes.

It was horrible.

Some days the smoke did not rise into the sky,

but spread over the Auschwitz camp

and covered the camp with a black cloud.

-Do you see the defendant here? -Yes.

Can you identify him?

In my memory, Herr Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.

is in uniform, in high boots,

standing with his legs spread and his hand on the gun in his belt,

shouting at me in a tone that was so characteristic of the "Master Race."

But despite that, I know that this is him.

When did you find out what was being done to the Jews in Auschwitz?

I received letters once, and among them

was the report on Auschwitz.

It says

that to date, one million and 450 thousand

Jews have been killed.

Detailed, in France, numbers.

And the last sentence -

"And now we are preparing to receive the Jews of Hungary."

Our leaders fed us sedatives in the ghettos so that we don't revolt!

Silence in the court.

I request silence once again and this is the last time!

Get this man out of here. I am stopping the session.

You can imagine that with such people,

Storfer, Löwenherz, Eppstein,

that one Jewish lawyer Kasztner…

My father told me,

"You'll hear a lot of bad things about your dad."

I remember laughing, because he didn't know how much I already knew.

He was spit on. He couldn't get on a bus.

He couldn't buy a newspaper.

They actually spat in his face.

I got spit on too once.

My parents didn't know that I was beaten up and got stones hurled at me.

That I was tossed into a pit of lime and almost died.

Father was sent to the Nuremberg Trials on behalf of the Jewish Agency

and the Israeli government. It's as simple as that.

I found all the documents related to the trip,

also the expenses he received.

And when he said so, they said he's lying.

He knew they were going to murder him.

He knew.

I came home from school

and he called me over

and there was an urgency in his voice,

as if to say, if he didn't tell me now,

he may never have the chance.

That I should always remember - he tried his best

to save as many Jews as possible.

Was it Becher

who led the negotiations regarding the takeover

-of the Manfred Weiss enterprise? -Yes.

Followed the negotiations between Eichmann and Kasztner

and reported to Himmler about the progress?

We decide by a majority of opinions

to accept as evidence from the Sassen document

only things that were written in the defendant's handwriting.

In this ruling, we dismiss the Attorney General's petition.

I set up the Central Department for Jewish Emigration.

I couldn't fool these people,

I couldn't tell them, "Guys, I don't know anything."

Or Kasztner, who told me

I should stop the annihilation machine.

He was so outrageous, he asked me directly

what was happening to the Jews, etc…

I can't say to him, "I don't know anything."

I call on Avraham Aviel.

Avraham Aviel.

Put the kippah on your head,

your right hand on the Bible,

say: I swear to God

that my testimony in this trial

will be the truth, the whole truth and only the truth.

It was no pleasure saying that I came from the Holocaust.

Because there were bad opinions too,

that the Holocaust survivors are not decent people,

they endured such trials and tribulations,

they're not decent people,

so they hid it.

Tell us what happened on May 7, 1942.

-They came from Lida… -Who?

The Germans came,

in battle uniform,

armed with automatic weapons.

My mother…

said, "Children…

say a prayer.

We will die as Jews."

I didn't want to cry, I wanted them to hear the testimony.

I took a breath to continue the testimony,

I took a second…

Gunfire rang out

and they fell into the pit.

What is the reason you use the literary name Ka-Tsetnik, Mr. De-Nur?

Their name was

the number Ka-Tsetnik.

I see them…

they are looking at me…

-I see them… -Please sit, Mr…

I remember…

-No, Mr. De-Nur, listen to the prosecutor. -Then…

Just a minute, listen to me, no, Mr. De-Nur.

Quiet, quiet, quiet!

Yechiel De-Nur, Ka-Tsetnik, fell unconscious.

The audience in the courtroom stood up in astonishment

and cleared a path for the stretcher bearers

on which the witness lay and was taken to the hospital.

My role was then the news coordinator of the Voice of Israel.

Ka-Tsetnik's testimony was, in my opinion the most dramatic

of the witness testimonies.

Not only as a result of the Eichmann trial did

more people become familiar with the Holocaust,

they became familiar with the Holocaust of every single survivor,

every survivor had a Holocaust of their own,

I had my own Holocaust.

People learned about that from the testimonies.

It was possible to rely only on documents

but…

this would not have become the Holocaust trial.

He hit one boy 80 times

with a stick.

Do you see in court the boy that was hit 80 times?

Everyone started to look to all around

to see where the boy was sitting.

It's the officer sitting next to Mr. Hausner.

I was unable to move.

It's a story I'm not eager to tell.

Once I told it to a man and his wife

and he said to her: these people suffered so much

that at times they mix truth with fantasy.

Then and there I decided

that no one would hear that story from me anymore.

It was the 81st blow that I received.

We walked towards the pit. I turned my head.

He asked me who to shoot first.

I did not answer anything.

I felt my daughter being torn away from me.

I heard her last cry and how she was shot.

My father wanted there to be a trial of testimonies,

look what a visionary he was.

We have hardly any survivors.

-Is that it? Can we get started? -Please.

Can this light…?

Yes, that's it.

I had recurring encounters with the dead

and I always had the same feeling.

I still remember seeing the ones that were burnt, I told you already,

my knees shook.

Do you know what I said?

You will laugh.

"I believe in God, the Father almighty, the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,

died under Pontius Pilate," and so on and so on

"resurrected from the dead…" and so on,

to stop my knees from shaking.

Otherwise, I would have felt embarrassed.

As a Obersturmbannführer Colonel in uniform,

wearing a thick leather coat,

with ranks on my shoulders, saying, "I feel nauseous."

I'm showing you a section from the Sassen document

that has many corrections in your handwriting.

Look at the segment in parentheses in red pencil.

Page 282.

You said the following,

"And now, in conclusion, I must tell you,

I regret nothing.

I am unwilling to regret.

I must tell you honestly,

had we put 10 million Jews to death,

then I would say with satisfaction,

'good, we have exterminated an enemy'."

That's what you said.

No, I didn't say that.

I definitely didn't say that.

…and now I want to tell you… to conclude…

all these recordings:

I regret nothing.

Every fiber of my being resists

to say that…

we did something wrong. No.

I must tell you honestly,

had we killed 10.3 million Jews,

then, I would be satisfied.

And would say,

good… we have exterminated an enemy.

Then we would have fulfilled our task.

But since it is not the case….

I still have some brief questions here…

It's harsh what I am telling you, I know it…

and I will be judged.

If I'm… so harsh in my wording.

But I can't tell you anything other than… That's the truth.

Why should I deny it?

Right?

No, I didn't say that.

I definitely didn't say that.

This has been patched together out of…

It's a combination of imagination and truth.

That is not my question.

The question is if the transcript is right?

I can't give a detailed and precise answer to that,

because I was under the influence of alcohol

and I don't know if I was under the influence of alcohol in this moment.

Under the influence of alcohol or not,

did you say those things or not?

I don't remember.

If you want to continue making a fool of yourself, go ahead.

Excuse me?

If you want to keep making a fool of yourself, then go ahead.

I don't want to make a fool of myself, I'm just saying that I don't know

and I have only one thing…

I officially ask to have the recordings.

And he came to you to write his memories?

Yes.

We can give this book a title: "Accountant of Death"

And… "Accountant of Death."

Yes, you have not killed anyone. I know.

You have been an accountant.

And… That was something, those sessions…

Now, are we finally done with this recording?

No, actually not, I have a few more pages of questions,

but we can do this quickly.

We're not done with the book?

That's why I just gave my little concluding talk.

That hardly matters.

But what do you say about these things,

which so spontaneously came from my heart?

-What do you say, Comrade Sassen? -I'm quite intrigued.

Intrigued?

Yes, very important.

This court sentences Adolf Eichmann to death.

That man, Eichmann, whose sole purpose was to destroy the Jewish people,

had to stand trial in an Israeli court

with the symbol of the State of Israel on the wall behind the judges,

for me, that is an unforgettable moment.

It's something that provided us with extraordinary satisfaction.

It was six months after the liberation.

You see this shirt?

A Jewish U.S. Army officer who liberated us said,

"Come, boy, the war is over for you,

come, let me dress you nicely."

This is the shirt. I've kept it with me until this day.

"I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,

the Lord hath chastened me sore; but He hath not given me over unto death."

And you will be able to tell future generations

that you heard about Auschwitz firsthand.

The fact that the Jewish people arose and are able to judge their murderers,

we are a nation that cannot be trampled on.

The first time I visited Auschwitz,

in the same barracks I had been in Birkenau then,

I put on Tefillin and prayed.

I put on Tefillin and prayed.

The human revenge is five children,

12 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, a wonderful wife.

That's my personal revenge, but there is no revenge,

it is consolation.

He didn't leave the Holocaust

and the Holocaust didn't leave him, not for a single day.

And I think that… it wouldn't be farfetched to say

that it also brought him closer to his end,

because his soul was scorched opposite that glass booth.

He really turned into a different person.