"If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, 'Good, we destroyed an enemy'. Then we would have fulfilled our mission [to slaughter all of Europe's Jewish population]."

"Jews who are fit to work should be sent to work. Jews who are not fit to work must be sent to the Final Solution, period."

"It's a difficult thing that I am telling you and I know I will be judged for it. But I cannot tell you otherwise. It's the truth. Why should I deny it?"

Adolph Eichmann, oral testimony/interview, 1957

 

Interview tapes held in private hands, known to exist but never publicly aired contained in a 180-minute, three-part document produced in Israel of a war criminal who, at the time of the trial holding him to account as the individual instructed by Adolf Hitler to personally oversee, plan and operate the Final Solution, denied at trial his role in the Holocaust, repeating he was a mere "little cog" in the machinery of genocide. The responsibility was not his, but rather that of the Third Reich which had mandated it.

The series now being shown on Israeli television represents a joint production between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sipur, an Israeli company formerly named Tadmor Entertainment, Toluca Pictures and Kan 11, Israel's public broadcaster. With the completion  and public airing of this three-part documentary on the Holocaust and its prime mover-and-shaker, the consortium is in search of licensing partners to enable the documentary to be given global airing.

In Eichmann's view his dedicated work of eliminating Europe's Jews was not completed when a mere six million Jews were systematically murdered. The goal had been all of Europe's Jews to be destroyed, so the plan was only half-completed. The Israeli documentary series, titled The Devil's Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes, has been released in Israel where it has reminded the nation of its desolately terrible loss.

The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob

 

Though the tapes' existence has been known of in the public realm for years, this marks their public debut. Following the end of World War II, Eichmann had recorded 70 hours of interviews in Buenos Aires years after he had fled for safety from detection to Argentina. A Dutch journalist and Nazi sympathizer, Willem Sassen had conducted the interviews.

During the 1961 trial in Israel efforts had been extended to gain possession of the tapes to augment the 700 pages of transcripts introduced at the trial. "He could hardly have been able to deny his own voice", observed Gideon Hausner, the chief prosecutor, of the man who steadfastly denied  his critical role in the prosecution of the Final Solution. 

A year after Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Mossad agents and flown to Israel, the transcripts were denied as evidence by Israel's Supreme Court, except for Eichmann's hand-written notes of his denial of the veracity of the printed transcripts. Other evidence was made use of to convict him of the charges laid against him as the architect of Jewish genocide. 

 

Bodies lie piled against the walls of a crematory room in a German concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. The bodies were found by U.S. Seventh Army troops who took the camp on May 14, 1945  AP Photo

To the very last, the man who revelled in his appointment by the Nazi regime to oversee the deaths of millions, insisted he was in charge of small tasks, like train scheduling, not responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany. The recordings, however chronicle the truth in their depiction of a cold-blooded man nursing a vicious hatred for Jews, happy to play the lead role in exterminating Europe's Jewish community.

 

Courtesy: USHMM

"This is proof against Holocaust deniers and a way to see the true face of Eichmann", stated the documentary's co-creator, Yariv Mozer. In the hands of private owners the tapes were transferred eventually to a German government archive in Koblenz. The owner intended their use for academic purposes. To prove the existence of the tapes, a short clip was released decades ago. Until 2020 when Kobi Sirt and Mozer, creators of the documentary, were given clearance to make use of the recordings revealing the extent of Eichmann's culpability.

 Some 15 hours of recordings were made available to the duo for investigative purposes.After escaping an American prison camp, Eichmann lived in Germany under an assumed name until he travelled to Argentina in 1940. Following his trial in Israel, Eichmann was hanged on June 1, 1962 for his unspeakable crimes committed against the humanity of the Jews of Europe.

Images from the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann at an exhibition in Jerusalem in June. A documentary, “The Devil’s Confession,” has aired recordings unheard during the proceedings.  Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times