Original subtitles

WOMAN: Eichmann came once a week.

[dog barking in the distance]

The family had to withdraw, you know, from the living room etc.

because they were going to have this conversation.

But we would open the door and we would listen.

[door creaking]

[indistinct chattering]

My father recorded all that stuff.

WILLEM SASSEN [speaking German]

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German]

[fly buzzing]

[thuds]

WOMAN [in English]: My sister and I

detested the figure.

The persona was so weird.

Trouble.

Always darkness.

There was something about him that...

the child could detect,

something very negative, the child in me.

MAN [speaking Hebrew]

NARRATOR [in English]: Nazis have always denied their role in the Holocaust

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German]

NARRATOR [in English]: After the war, many fled Europe,

including the architect of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann.

MAN: He's practically the last important Nazi

who arrived in Argentina after the war.

NARRATOR: 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.

NARRATOR: But after his capture by Israel,

Eichmann denies everything...

[speaking German]

NARRATOR [in English]: Hoping the tapes will never be heard

during his trial in Jerusalem.

[speaking German]

MAN [in English]: The story of the Eichmann Trial,

60 years later,

still not fully told.

NARRATOR: After mysteriously disappearing for years,

the tapes are rediscovered

and now, for the first time

we'll hear Eichmann admitting his crimes...

a true Nazi confession.

[speaking German]

REPORTER [in English]: I am standing in front of the courtroom

where Eichmann is going to face his judges

and as you see, there are a lot of people already very interested.

People are coming and waiting outside this courtroom.

Eichmann is in one of the rooms

on the fourth floor, we think,

and as you see, it's very heavily guarded, the building.

I don't think there have ever been so many

correspondents and writers, and observers

on any story since the war, not even the Nuremberg Trial.

PROF. DEBORAH LIPSTADT: This trial was of critical importance.

It was the beginning of the process

of the emergence of the Holocaust

from the shadows of history.

[chattering]

DR. BETTINA STANGNETH: The trial begins on the 11th of April.

This man is standing before the court

and also before the many expectations of the audience.

All they heard about the crimes he was accused of

was so extreme that no image of a human befitted them.

MAN [speaking Hebrew]

DEBORAH LIPSTADT [in English]: Gideon Hausner was a commercial lawyer.

He was chosen to be Attorney General.

He comes into office

and he is relentless to getting this story out.

GIDEON HAUSNER [speaking Hebrew]

[in English] "The prince of darkness is a gentleman."

[speaking Hebrew]

[speaking German]

[speaking Hebrew]

MAN [in English]: Eichmann, in many ways,

was the Chief Logistical Officer

overseeing deportations of Jewish persons,

largely from Western Europe, to killing centers.

He does this with full awareness

that the result of deporting

is that they're going to be killed.

MOSHE LANDAU [speaking Hebrew]

[speaking German]

[murmuring]

WOMAN [in English]: Eichmann refused to accept any guilt on himself.

He was a civil servant,

the laws of Germany are as they are

and he tried to detach himself completely

from the ideological dimension.

GIDEON HAUSNER [speaking Hebrew]

[in English] Eichmann continually insisted

that he was simply following orders.

[speaking German]

NARRATOR [in English]: Eichmann's appearance in court

and the crimes attributed to him

catch the attention of both the public and the press.

Among the many journalists who go to Israel to cover the trial,

is the famous Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt,

who reports on the proceedings for the New Yorker magazine.

Arendt expects to find a devilish killer

with a strong hatred of Jews,

but surprisingly sees a man whose appearance

does not match the crimes attributed to him.

She describes the moral gap between his bureaucratic demeanor

and the atrocities he committed

with the term "the banality of evil."

BETTINA STANGNETH: I think Eichmann tricked basically everyone.

We had 400 reporters in the courtroom, like Hannah Arendt,

and I didn't see a single report in which someone said,

"You can tell that he did it."

Instead, they said, "Wow, who is this?"

NARRATOR [in English]: So, who is the real Eichmann?

Is he simply a soldier obeying orders

as he presents himself in the Israeli court?

Or is he the fervent Nazi

that Hausner is trying to prove him to be?

The missing evidence, from four years earlier in Buenos Aires,

as he boasts to his fellow Nazis,

reveals the truth.

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German, on recorder]

ADOLF EICHMANN

NARRATOR [in English]: On the recordings, Eichmann criticizes other Nazis

captured by the Allies after the war

who deny responsibility for their actions.

To understand Eichmann's rationale

for participating in these conversations,

one needs to examine his character and life after 1945.

MAN: In April-May 1945,

there was not much left of the Third Reich.

The Nazis realize it's over

and they're trying to figure out what to do next.

Eichmann must have understood, because of what he did,

that he is wanted by the Allies.

And so he tried to get to an area

still controlled by Nazi forces,

the last holdout, so to speak,

and particularly popular were the mountains of Austria,

the Austrian Alps.

NARRATOR: Like many of his fellow Nazis,

Eichmann flees to his former home,

the last stronghold of the Third Reich.

He feels protected there,

but very quickly discovers

he cannot escape his involvement

in the crimes he committed during the war.

GERALD STEINACHER: Even his own comrades of the SS, his own superiors,

wanted to get rid of him,

because he was so obviously involved

in the mass murder of the European Jews and had blood on his hands.

NARRATOR: Eichmann secures forged identity papers

with plans to escape the country,

but is caught by the Allies.

MAN: Eichmann was arrested by the Americans

and he was held in a prisoner of war camp.

The Americans had about 3 million Nazis prisoners at that time.

So Eichmann was just one more among those many millions.

There was an incredible number of soldiers imprisoned

and he pretended to have a very low military rank.

At the time, photos were not at all as common as they are today,

so it was relatively easy to remain unidentified.

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German, on recorder]

WILLEM SASSEN [on recorder]

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German]

UKI GONI [in English]: He managed to forge an ID in the name of Otto Eckmann

while he was being held by the Americans.

So he was fairly safe at that moment.

No one was looking for him.

Until his name came up in the Nuremberg Trials.

Attention! Tribunal!

REPORTER: Judges from Britain, America, Russia and France

assembled in Nuremberg's courthouse.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS: The Nuremberg Trial

that is the trial of the major Nazi war criminals

that took place between 1945 and 1946.

This was the first international criminal trial in human history

dealing with spectacular crimes.

Eichmann is mentioned surprisingly often in the Nuremberg Trials.

We hear about what he was involved with

and that he was the main contact for Hitler's favorite project,

the extermination of Jews.

[speaking German]

UKI GONI [in English]: In the Nuremberg Trials his name was mentioned.

That appeared in the newspapers the next day.

The next day he was gone.

He escaped from the American prisoner of war camp.

Being held by the Americans was much better

than being held by the Russians.

So it was not difficult to escape

from the American prisoner of war camp.

Many Nazis did.

[clicking]

NARRATOR: Eichmann tells Sassen in Argentina

the story of the strange escape route

he used to avoid capture.

WILLEM SASSEN [speaking German, on recorder]

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German, on recorder]

[birds chirping]

UKI GONI [in English]: Eichmann had thought

that if enough time went by,

his name would be forgotten

and he would be able to live a normal life in Germany.

NARRATOR: Eichmann believes he will be able to stay in hiding for years.

He is surprised to discover

that the genocide of the Jewish people

continues to preoccupy the world, even in Germany

where the public is slowly realizing

the scope of the crimes committed

and hoping to put the past behind them.

Eichmann looks for a new hiding place

and decides to leave his family behind

to take advantage of the Nazis'

well-known escape route to Argentina.

[slow music playing]

MAN: At the end of WWII,

Juan Peron and Eva Duarte Peron see an opportunity

to take in people with scientific,

technological and engineering training from Germany,

people who supported the Nazi regime or served in the German army,

and at the end of the war

they want to get as far away as they can

from the "crime scene."

GERALD STEINACHER: And many asked the same question,

why did the Allies not just stop

this escape route?

It could have been easy.

They knew everything, they knew the players,

they knew the structures, they knew the institutions involved.

I think at some point they focused their energy

on the new enemy.

And the new enemy was Communism and the Soviet Union

and not the Nazis anymore.

RAANAN REIN: If you're not a Communist,

who cares if in the past you sinned?

So there was no one internationally

that applied any pressure on Argentina

or tried to prevent the entry of people

who were involved or at least suspected of involvement

in war crimes.

GERALD STEINACHER: Eichmann gets a new identity

by the name of Ricardo Klement

with the help of the Vatican Aid Commission for Refugees.

We have proof that in some cases

they know exactly who these people were and who they were helping.

And very often, they did not have to hide their backgrounds.

And when you look at the application forms of these various criminals,

they wouldn't say, "I'm an expert in torturing people,"

or "I'm a mass murderer,"

or "I'm an expert for deporting people

to extermination camps."

Of course not.

BETTINA STANGNETH: He has the ability to transform from a rigid-looking SS man

to a somewhat sloppy-looking bureaucrat.

UKI GONI: Eichmann, when he arrived,

was received at the dock by Carlos Fuldner,

who was another SS man.

So the idea that these Nazis lived

in secrecy in Argentina was not true.

I lived a couple of years in Buenos Aires as a kid

and my neighbor was Carlos Fuldner,

the SS officer who helped Eichmann

and probably hundreds of other Nazis escape.

[German music playing]

NARRATOR: Eichmann becomes part of the ex-Nazi community in Argentina.

He gets a job as an assistant to an engineering crew in the Andes.

Finally, he feels that his life is back on track.

UKI GONI: But at some point,

his luck seems to have taken a turn for the worse

and he was left without any real job and he started...

He had a laundry firm,

he worked in a rabbit farm

until, towards the end

he managed to work for a real company again, which was for Mercedes Benz.

RAANAN REIN: He is profoundly frustrated.

He feels like someone whom history and destiny have marginalized

and that this is something he does not deserve.

Eichmann said that he suffered most

from becoming anonymous.

This is unfathomable!

For him, it was horrible

not being able to be "Eichmann."

IRMTRUD WOJAK: So this was the time when he

connected with Sassen, Willem Sassen,

who was a propaganda officer from the Netherlands

um, who also lived in Buenos Aires.

UKI GONI: Now, the question is, who is Willem Sassen?

And Willem Sassen, he's an absolutely Hollywood figure.

A Dutch journalist at the time of the war.

Goöbbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda,

sent him to the Russian front where Willem Sassen sent radio reports.

WILLEM SASSEN [speaking German]

[in English] After the war, Willem Sassen was arrested in Holland

for treason, of course, because he'd become an SS.

He managed to escape to Buenos Aires on this tiny ship

and set himself up as a journalist

and as a publisher in Argentina,

publishing books for other Nazis who lived here.

BETTINA STANGNETH: He had already been in Argentina for three years.

He had close ties with the Nazis

because he was a Nazi himself.

So if one has a political agenda like restoring Nazism,

then you need allies, and in this regard Eichmann was the jackpot.

UKI GONI: Eichmann met Sassen at the ABC restaurant.

It was a German community restaurant in downtown Buenos Aires.

The waiters clicked their heels like in military fashion,

saluted the Nazis who went for lunch there.

NARRATOR: The men meet occasionally until the mid-1950s

when a series of groundbreaking books are published

that reveal for the first time

the original documents, certificates and minutes

that catalog the Holocaust inflicted on the Jewish people in Europe.

Sassen manages to locate copies of the books

and has them delivered to him in Argentina.

Then these Nazis in Argentina encountered a problem.

They wondered how it could be that these crimes actually took place.

They felt disturbed when they were told

that little children were sent to the gas chambers.

This crime took place in front of everyone,

but the whole dimension of it and the actual dirty work

weren't visible to everyone.

Sassen at first assumes

that the mass murder of the Jews is a lie.

Then he looked for somebody who knew about these things

and, in that respect, Eichmann was a gift.

UKI GONI: Sassen came up with this crazy idea

that he would interview the mastermind of the Holocaust

and in Sassen's mind

the idea was that Eichmann would prove

that Hitler had nothing to do with the extermination of the Jews.

Unfortunately for Sassen and his friends,

Eichmann insisted that, of course, Hitler knew. [laughs]

BETTINA STANGNETH: The Nazis burned books,

but not because they hated books.

They wanted to empty shelves for their own books.

Eichmann dreamt very early, in his 30s, of writing books.

He finds it meaningful.

It is part of his understanding of being cultured.

And in Argentina, he suddenly gets the opportunity through Sassen.

And also to earn some money for the family.

They meet every weekend and sit together for hours.

Five, six, seven hours.

The gentlemen sit together and discuss.

This was kind of a public event

where other Nazis went to.

Very high ranking Nazis.

[chattering]

BETTINA STANGNETH: Eichmann was a celebrity.

People fought to be close to him.

He was always being asked, "Tell me, what happened in Auschwitz?"

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS: There's 67 reels of tape.

A lot of the tapes were taped over.

At the time when Sassen was conducting these interviews,

these audiotapes were somewhat expensive.

[voices on recorder]

[typewriter clacking]

BETTINA STANGNETH: They recorded the conversations

and then transcribed them to paper,

then rerecorded more, transcribed again.

And thus, they were left with a few thousand pages.

Obviously, Eichmann is flattered when he's told,

"We need you."

He is a specialist once again.

He again is "The Jew Expert."

MAN: This was the first time anyone had taken an interest in him.

"Herr Eichmann, tell me what you did."

He's very happy anyone even wants to listen.

So he blossoms. He flourishes.

He suddenly returns to his good old days,

the most beautiful time in his life, as he himself defined it.

And thereafter, he loosens all the restrictions he imposed on himself

and he went with it.

BETTINA STANGNETH: Eichmann says, "Yes, this is all real. Wonderful,

I haven't seen this in a long time.

This is Heydrich's signature, it's all so nice."

It makes him happy to see all his things again.

He even finds his signature,

which is obviously very important to him.

And he also, and this is the biggest problem,

he is proud of his life's work.

And the life work of Mr. Eichmann

consists of mass murder of Jews.

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German, on recorder]

MAN [in English]: It is just striking

that Sassen, for whatever reason,

decided to continue taping Eichmann

even once he understood

that Eichmann was not about to deny

the nature of the Holocaust and his role in it.

[suspenseful music playing]

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German]

WILLEM SASSEN [speaking German]

NARRATOR [in English]: On the recordings, Eichmann elaborates

about his work during the war,

freely answering the questions asked by Sassen.

Four years later, in the Israeli court,

he sounds like a different man.

[speaking Hebrew]

[speaking German]

[speaking Hebrew]

[speaking German]

[speaking Hebrew]

[speaking German]

GIDEON HAUSNER [in English]: I was aware

that he is following the old line of many other Nazi criminals

who didn't have the courage

to stand up in court and admit their guilt.

So, in order somehow

to minimize the enormousness of their deed,

they were trying by small lies

to hide

at least part of the most hideous deeds.

MAN: Gideon Hausner as Attorney General

was the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial.

He got the job as soon as he took office as Attorney General.

He wanted it to be the Nuremberg Trial

of the Jewish people, for the Jewish people.

GIDEON HAUSNER: You see, actually, I was aware all the time

that there were two trials going on-

one in Jerusalem

where we were trying Eichmann,

and the other in the world's public opinion,

uh, with the proceedings

televised throughout the world.

I was well aware of this,

that every word I say, every movement I make,

is recorded and commented upon the next day

in very many countries.

MAN: In the Eichmann Trial, I was working as assistant

to the television director.

The trial had to be shown to the world.

The trouble was,

there's no television in Israel,

that was the crazy thing.

So they had brought over a team from London

and decided to film the trial with four cameras.

It then went out all over the world.

Now remember, we're talking of 1961

and there was very, very little information out at that stage.

So the purpose of the trial was to show the world, "Look,

six million Jews died.

This is how it happened."

During the actual filming of the trial,

well this is the main question-

Who is the real Adolf Eichmann?

What is he feeling?

Can we see anything in his face?

You know, I keep coming in for a closeup on him to see what he's feeling.

In practice he showed nothing.

He showed no feelings at all.

NARRATOR: The speculation about Eichmann's character continues to this day.

Is he an evil idealist

or a simple bureaucrat carrying out orders

in the service of the Nazi regime,

as Hannah Arendt claimed?

HANNAH ARENDT [speaking German]

[in English] She thinks that Eichmann believes that what he's doing

is simply complying with the law of the day,

and I think that is unfortunate,

because I think that is a misleading filter.

MAN 1: In terms of theory, I think it is a good theory.

I think it explains quite a few people who were in the Nazi regime.

But her theory did not fit Eichmann.

You cannot make the distinction

between his war on the Jews and his career.

It has become basically one and the same.

MAN 2 [speaking German]

[in English] I suppose there's a very interesting question we can ask,

which is whether Hannah Arendt would have changed her tune

if she had been able to, um, hear the Sassen tapes.

NARRATOR: On the tapes, Eichmann confirms his strong belief in the Nazi cause.

He admits he was not only a bureaucrat, but also an idealist.

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German]

UKI GONI [in English]: This was not done in hiding,

in a secret cave, high up in the Andes,

or hidden away in the Amazonian jungle.

This was done in suburban Buenos Aires

in the full view of all their neighbors.

In the tapes, you can hear Sassen's daughter

playing in the background.

SASKIA SASSEN: My sister and I were always singing.

You know how that is with children.

My mother would say: "Stop that singing!"

It was my weapon.

I used singing as a weapon,

because he interrupted our fun life,

you know, my father was really a lot of fun as a father.

But when the meetings happened,

my father was extracting information.

[children singing]

SASKIA SASSEN: He was a journalist

and he wanted to get at the story.

How well did you know him?

-Whom? -Eichmann.

I think I knew him completely.

What did you make of him?

A tragical figure, a tragical figure.

Because he was really not...

it was not his business in reality.

He would have liked to be a common soldier on the front.

That was his dream.

NARRATOR: As time goes by, Eichmann's confidence increases

and he feels comfortable enough

to bring his family to Argentina.

DEBORAH LIPSTADT: German parents in Argentina

came to the embassy to register their children

for their German citizenship, German passport.

And his children were registered under the name "Eichmann."

BETTINA STANGNETH: The kids of German immigrants still remember

that on Sundays, they would meet to cook orange marmalade

with the Eichmanns, not the Klements,

not with that family with the strange guy.

With the Eichmanns!

It was his only mistake

that he didn't want to leave his family behind.

DEBORAH LIPSTADT: This myth that grew up

that nobody knew he was there...

the German ex-pats who were loyal Nazis

knew he was there. He met with them, he talked to them.

And the Argentinian police, they knew he was there.

The thing that was true is that

the people who knew he was there

did not care enough to go and get him.

MAN [on TV]: Fritz Bauer survived Hitler's death camps...

NARRATOR: Even though the Allies stop searching for Nazi fugitives,

individuals like the German Jewish lawyer Fritz Bauer,

continue to try to bring the escaped criminals to justice,

using information they receive from around the world.

GIDEON HAUSNER: If not for private individuals,

Adolf Eichmann would have never been captured in Buenos Aires.

First and foremost, Lothar Hermann,

a Holocaust survivor

who happened to be Adolf Eichmann's neighbor.

UKI GONI: Lothar Hermann, who was the survivor who came to Argentina,

had a daughter called Sylvia

and his daughter made friends

with one of the Eichmann kids.

It was not unusual for German Jews

to make friends with German Nazi families,

because, in the end they were all Germans in Argentina.

Sylvia knew that her friend was called "Eichmann."

And Lothar Hermann, I can't say he was reading the newspaper,

because he was blind,

but I think he was having the newspaper read to him by his daughter

and Eichmann's name appeared

and, of course, Lothar Hermann realized,

"that must be the father of your friend."

So Lothar Hermann went

and immediately wrote to Bauer in Germany,

saying it's definitely him.

[typewriter clacking]

IRMTRUD WOJAK: For Fritz Bauer, it was safer to bring him on trial in Israel.

If the Germans would ask in Argentina

to bring Eichmann to Germany,

he would have been warned.

And this would be the possibility to escape.

I also think there was no interest in Germany

to capture Eichmann.

They didn't want to talk about the past.

[telephone ringing]

DEBORAH LIPSTADT: Bauer gave the information to the Israelis

and nothing happened.

One has to remember that this is the late 50s

and Israel is barely a third-world country at that time.

I think the feeling was that,

we have current enemies in the Arab lands, etc.

Should we fight our current enemies

who stand possibly to destroy us now

or should we go to settle scores from before?

HANNA YABLONKA: Bauer insisted,

he threatened the authorities

that he will bring the information

into the knowledge of the public.

That there is a credible source

that Eichmann is in Argentina

and this worked.

NARRATOR: Ben Gurion, the country's founder,

is persuaded to bring Eichmann to trial in Israel

and a secret mission to capture the fugitive is launched.

BETTINA STANGNETH: When Eichmann was kidnapped,

he was no longer living in Buenos Aires.

He was on the outskirts in a kind of no man's land.

And one fine day he arrives home on the bus.

He then had to walk some distance to get to his house.

There was no electricity,

It was an unprotected area.

It was easy to pick him off the streets.

He walked on the Garibaldi street

about 50 meters from his home

and I walked on that side.

We looked at each other, I saw...

fear in his eyes, and I said, "Uno momentito,"

and I didn't finish the question

and he retreated.

I jumped on him. We fell into a ditch there.

He then started howling and screaming and shouting.

The three of them dragged him, still howling, into the car

and the race was on.

[suspenseful music playing]

[speaking Hebrew]

MAN [speaking English]: The Yagur base is a detention facility

of the northern district

and until Eichmann's arrival,

there were dozens of prisoners there.

They were removed

and the detention facility was transformed into a fortress.

Dozens of police officers are guarding just Eichmann.

All this for only one inmate.

There are many risks with such a detainee as this.

The primary risk is that he could try to harm himself.

Then there are also threats that neo-Nazis might try to break him free.

And the third scenario

is that someone from within Israel,

either a Holocaust survivor or someone connected to the Holocaust

or even one of the policemen close to him,

might try to settle a score.

[speaking German]

[clamoring]

REPORTER [speaking German]

MAN [in German]

NARRATOR [in English]: During his interrogation by the Israeli police,

Eichmann claims that he was only following orders.

But in Sassen's living room,

Eichmann is aware that his words could incriminate him,

so he asks that the recordings never be heard during his lifetime.

ADOLF EICHMANN [speaking German]

UKI GONI [in English]: When Eichmann was kidnapped,

suddenly Sassen realized,

here I have a chance to make a large amount of money

by selling this.

Uh, and I'll finally be able to make some money out of this project

that I spent so much time on.

And at the same time, he realized,

if I do that, the other Nazis are going to kill me,

because he's being the worst traitor of all.

In the end,

the opportunist won the battle

over the more cautious person inside him

and he sold the story to Life Magazine in the United States.

NARRATOR: Four months before the trial,

Life Magazine publishes sections of the Eichmann recordings.

The confessions shock the world.

Never before had a Nazi officer admitted publicly

that the Holocaust was meticulously planned and carried out.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS: The publication of the Life Magazine interview

was an astonishing moment

in the international community, to have Eichmann's words

suddenly splashed in front of Life Magazine,

which at the time was one of the crucial magazines in the U.S.

Obviously, it also had kind of a world audience as well.

DEBORAH LIPSTADT: "Life" meant that this is important to America.

It shocked people.

For many Jews

it meant the world was,

for the first time really,

taking notice of what had happened.

Suddenly the world was looking at the tragedy

that had destroyed one out of every three Jews alive

on the face of the earth.

Americans realized that this man

who is being tried is really a monster.

The article says,

there are tapes of this man talking about what he did,

telling the stories of what he did, describing what he did.

Everyone at least who has the least bit of interest in this topic:

Where are these tapes?

YUVAL ELBASHAN: This is the smoking gun.

If Eichmann says: "I acted, I took action,

I wanted, I planned,"

he is no longer just a bureaucrat

shifting papers from one place to the other.

He changes things,

embellishes them

and sends them as a command.

In this sense he becomes the leader.

MICHAEL GOLDMANN-GILEAD [speaking German]

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS [in English]: When Hausner read this interview,

he immediately had to think, "Oh my God,

"there's a whole wealth of information out there

"that I don't yet have access to

"and how do I get my hands on it?"

Sassen, he bought himself a fantastic car with the money he made.

He bought a Mercedes Benz.

SASKIA SASSEN: The Nazis were still around in Argentina.

They moved against my father,

because my father betrayed, in their eyes.

When the Eichmann story blows into the public,

I was 13.

My mother decides to leave.

She couldn't take it.

And I suddenly was in charge of the household.

At 13.

And my sister was simply terrified.

Suddenly there were like three or five people in my house

with big guns and I don't know what,

they were Nazi affiliates.

MAN [speaking German]

MAN 2

SASKIA SASSEN: I wasn't afraid,

but it was another kind of experience that I had.

It was more like... closer to horror than to fear.

[arguing]

NARRATOR: Among the intruders

are the sons of Adolf Eichmann.

they demand to know why Sassen betrayed their father?

Sassen shocks them,

claiming that he had the permission

of their mother Vera to sell the transcripts.

Knowing their father's defense strategy is reliant

on keeping the tapes out of the hands of Gideon Hausner,

they demand to know the location of the recordings.

Sassen denies knowing their whereabouts.

[arguing continues]

Terrified, Sassen knows the tapes could be the prosecutor's smoking gun.

He hides them in a safe place.

Can he keep the tapes away from those looking to use them against Eichmann?

On the next episode ofThe Devils' Confession:

The Lost Eichmann Tapes

Hausner focuses on obtaining the transcripts

used for the Life Magazine article

as the smoking gun that will prove Eichmann's guilt to the world.

During a meeting with his lawyer,

Eichmann is passed an encrypted code

from the Nazi journalist Willem Sassen

that emboldens his defense.

"Don't worry. I've hidden the tapes."

NARRATOR: As the Berlin Wall is being built

and sides are taken in the Cold War,

West German officials fear Eichmann's recordings

will reveal that their new government is riddled with Nazis.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS: The Germans were very concerned.

There were a lot of Nazis who remained in positions

of high power within Germany itself.

NARRATOR: And the fledgling State of Israel

decides the security of their country

far outweighs the importance

of Attorney General Hausner's case

against Eichmann.

[closing theme music playing]