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The
Eichmann Interview
Flavian
Ed.
Note: Author Flavian
Adolf
Eichmann. Welcome
to Fresh Air.
Guten Tag, Terry.
Colonel Eichmann . . .
Please, call me
Adolfo.
You
were tried for war crimes in 1962, convicted, and hanged. Could you tell our audience how you managed
to be with us today?
I received a
special dispensation--one day outside Hell to walk among the living.
A day off from Hell? I find that
surprising.
Ja. But
the Overlord of the Underworld is really a sweetheart when you come down to
it. And I am one of his pets.
I’m
surprised as well that you chose to come on this show.
Where else?
O’Reilly? That dummkopf never lets his guests get a word in edgewise. No, despite our political differences, I
enjoy your show much more. I guess you
could say I march to the beat of a different drummer. Not so banal after all, am I?
You’re
referring, of course, to Hannah Arendt’s famous description of you. She said you personified the “banality of evil.”
Would you care to discuss that?
Ja, natürlich. When you put your heart and soul into
concentration camp management and
somebody refers to your work
as banal, it hurts. Especially
when it appears in The New Yorker. I always liked that magazine, even thought I
got only half the cartoons.
Well,
she wasn’t out to write a puff piece.
No. But we kid about it now. “Hey, Hannah,” I sometimes say to her. “The brimstone this week is pretty banal, eh,
liebschen?”
My goodness. Hannah Arendt in Hell. I wouldn’t have guessed.
It’s the ones who don’t expect it who have
the toughest time adapting. I mean, I
knew I was going to Hell. But as Gandhi
was saying last week--
Wait a
second. Gandhi is in Hell?
Oh, sure.
Him, Rosa Parks, Kurt Vonnegut. A lot of people you wouldn’t have
predicted. One of the
most surprising to me? Joe
Strummer.
The musician?
Ja Shocked the Scheiße out of me.
If the front man for The Clash ends up in Hell, you can pretty much
imagine what’s in store for the Eagles.
You see, Terry, it turns out that the ancient Greeks were close to the
mark in their description of the afterlife.
Almost everyone goes to Hades!
You cross the River Styx . . . they got it wrong about the dog, though.
You’re
referring to Cerberus, the three-headed dog who prevents people from leaving
Hades?
That’s the one. No dogs.
Instead they make you fill out kilos and kilos of paperwork if you want
to leave. Takes
forever. Everybody finally gives
up.
Despite your role in the Holocaust, after
World War II ended you managed to live comfortably in Argentina for many years.
Comfortably? I don’t think so. Have you ever tried to find a good
Gewürztraminer in Buenos Aires?
What I mean is, you lived an
ordinary life until the Mossad caught up with
you. You must have had a lot of help.
Oh, some of the old gang lent a hand here and
there. Mostly, the
West German government and the CIA.
They just kept their mouths shut about where I was.
Why did
they do that?
Goodness, Terry. With all the former Nazis they brought on
board? It would have been embarrassing
to say the least, possibly counterproductive as well.
Counterproductive to what?
The fight against
Communism, natürlich. Come on, everybody knows that when you bring
Nazis to the party, you bring a certain style.
Some things are simply done better when we’re involved: military uniforms, downhill skiing, sports
cars. Also fighting the Commies.Are you saying the West wouldn’t have won the
Cold War without Nazis?
Are you saying that a Corvette is a
Porsche? The West probably would have
won, just not with the same flair. As it
was, they missed so many opportunities.
Ach, if they’d put me in charge of the Eastern Zone after German
reunification, I could have built some camps for those Reds that would have
made Auschwitz look like Disneyland.
Any
regrets about your life?
Ja. I was a workaholic. And it’s true what they say, Terry. When you’re on your deathbed--or in my case,
the gallows--you don’t find yourself wishing you spent more time at the office.
I was thinking more about whether you regretted killing
all those Jews.
You must understand that I didn’t hate Jews
personally. I found that insane variety
of anti-Semitism practiced by, say, Goebbels or Mengele
or Henry Ford . . . a little off-putting.
Did you know I had a Jewish mistress?
No, I didn’t hate the Jews. But
don’t let me give you the wrong impression.
Some of my best friends were anti-Semites.
You
feel no sense of guilt?
My guilt came from my obedience, something we
normally praise as a virtue. I guess you
could say I was loyal to a fault.
I
presume you mean loyalty to your former boss.
Do you ever run into him in Hell?
Der Führer? Oh, sure, sure. He mostly keeps to himself. Doesn’t socialize much with
us “banal” evildoers.
Your
use of the word “evildoers” reminds me that some people would compare your Führer with our--
Nein, Terry.
For one thing, mein Führer
didn’t duck his military service. More
to the point, he was responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, twenty
million Russians. The
gypsies? Gott
in Himmel! We
didn’t even count them. Your Bush killed
only a million, right?
A
million deaths is nothing to sneeze at.
Sure, it may not seem like much compared to the ‘30s and ’40s but for
our era--
Nein!
Look, maybe if he had der Führer’s
work ethic. A million dead doesn’t make
him a little Hitler. It makes him a
little Pol Pot.
That
makes me wonder what you thought of Ward Churchill’s remark that the victims of
9/11 were “little Eichmanns.”
It’s flattering to be remembered. After all, I was no Himmler or Göring or Bormann, was I?
But these days how many Americans--or Germans for that matter--can tell
one of them from the other without Wikipedia?
The name Eichmann, on the other
hand, still resonates. Still has that je
ne sais quoi.
What do
you think the name Eichmann means to people today?
Oh, following
orders, of course. I must say, that does
betray a certain narrowness. It overlooks my terrific logistical skills
that made the camps work so efficiently.
And my dedication. Did you know, Terry, that
I kept up the exterminations in ’44 even after Himmler ordered me to stop?
I don’t think most people are aware of that.
Ja. Himmler went soft at the end. A disappointment to those
of us who looked up to him. Although maybe he was being pragmatic. Once the Fatherland started losing, Himmler
calculated that dismantling the camps would be regarded as a nice gesture. You see, up until then we never really
thought about what a public relations problem we were making for
ourselves. We called it the Thousand
Year Reich, remember? That means we were
off by, oh, 988 years. Anyway, my
lawyers advised me to say I was just following orders.
Looking
back, do you wish you had tried a different defense?
Such as? If there was one thing we did well in my
department, it was keeping records. Made
it hard to argue I was innocent. Maybe
Himmler was right. Maybe if I’d had
Johnnie Cochran on my legal team . . . That guy runs around the Underworld
telling everyone he could have gotten them off--Nixon, Socrates, Ted Bundy. Well,
water under the bridge. “Just following orders.”
That’s my legacy. I think that’s
what Churchill was driving at.
So you
didn’t find the little Eichmann metaphor offensive?
No.
Except I don’t think Churchill explained it properly. See, especially in America, there’s a little
Eichmann in everybody. Some of you just
cultivate him more than others.
That’s
an interesting concept.
Isn’t it
obvious? When you drop a bomb that kills
five terrorists and a dozen civilians, and you sincerely feel good about
minimizing the collateral damage--that’s the little Eichmann in you.
I
hardly think--
The very term “collateral damage” is the
little Eichmann in you.
And you
think a lot of Americans have this little Eichmann in them?
Almost everyone,
Terry. When you draw distinctions
between torture and enhanced interrogation, that’s your
little Eichmann parsing the words.
When you have reservations about government agents listening to millions
of phone calls, your little Eichmann comforts you that they’re doing it for
your own good. When
you pay your taxes to support the most powerful war machine in human history,
that’s money in the pocket of your little Eichmann.
But
you’re saying that many activities of daily life make you a little Eichmann.
Precisely, Terry. Slap a Support the Troops magnet on your
SUV? Fund your 401(k)? Take your shoes off to get on an airplane? Eichmann, Eichmann, Eichmann.
Many of
our listeners would disagree with your characterization.
Bitte, Terry, NPR
listeners are some of the biggest little Eichmanns. Especially the ones who whine about how
they’d love to end the Iraq War, but there just aren’t enough votes in your
Congress. Boo-fucking-hoo.
You seem to take pleasure in that.
Schadenfreude is a German word, Terry.
Is
there anyone you can think of who doesn’t have a little Eichmann inside them?
Well . . . Cindy Sheehan, maybe.
I’m sure she’ll take that as a
compliment. Some people argue Cindy
Sheehan has been counterproductive because of her threats to run against Nancy
Pelosi.
We had people like Nancy Pelosi back in my
day. The Vichy French.
Herr Eichmann, do you think that if you were alive today,
you’d be able to function in contemporary society?
Able
to function? I’d be in demand. Look, you have twelve million Mexicans you
want to get rid of. What Americans have
the skills to carry out a mass migration of that magnitude? You need to plan how many Mexicans to move here,
how many to move there. You need to
synchronize arrivals and departures. You
need to make sure that the receiving centers have sufficient absorptive
capacity. You need to secure enough
rolling stock from the railroad authorities.
America needs somebody like me to succeed at this. And it won’t be easy. Even I didn’t have to move that many people, and I had the German rail system. I don’t need to tell you that the American
railroads are kind of a joke. But I
could straighten things out . . .
I’m
afraid we’re out of time--
Oh, Terry, I’m quite confident I’d fit in
today.
The
Chickasaw Plum - Volume V - Number 11 - November 2008
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