Eichmann’s final barb: ‘I hope that all of you will follow me’
Rafi Eitan, the Israeli intelligence officer who seized him in Argentina, tells TV documentary of Nazi war criminal’s last mumbled words before he was hanged
Nazi war criminal Adolf
Eichmann’s last words, before he was hanged by Israel for war crimes, crimes
against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people, were “I hope that all of
you will follow me,” the Israeli intelligence officer who accompanied him to
the gallows said.
Rafi Eitan, who had
commanded the operation to capture Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, told an
Israeli TV documentary broadcast on Monday night that he was standing behind
Eichmann at the gallows, at Ramle jail in 1962. “I accompanied him to the
hanging. I saw him from the back. I did not speak with him at that moment,”
Eitan said.
Did Ecihmann say
anything? The interviewer asked. “What he said was, ‘I hope that all of you
will follow me’,” said Eitan.
That was what he
mumbled before he was hanged? The interviewer asked. “Correct,” said Eitan.
Adolf Eichmann, on
trial in 1961
Adolf Eichmann, on
trial in 1961 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Eichmann’s last words
have generally been reported as having been: “Long live Germany. Long live
Argentina. Long live Austria. These are the three countries with which I have
been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family and
my friends. I am ready. We’ll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die
believing in God.”
Eitan, speaking on the
Uvda investigative news program on Israel’s Channel 2, described the task of
capturing Eichmann in Argentina, operationally speaking, as “one of the easiest
missions we did.”
He described the
physical maneuver performed on Eichmann to twist him quickly into the back seat
of the car in which he was taken to a Mossad safe house after being captured in
Buenos Aires, and recalled the Nazi’s head resting on his knees in the silent
car.
In the safe house, they
stripped him naked, blinded his eyes, and checked to make sure he was not
carrying poison on his body or in his mouth.
The Shin Bet
interrogations officer assigned to the team, Zvi Aharoni, asked Eichmann once
for his name, Eitan recalled, and was told Otto Henninger. He asked a second
time and was told Ricardo Klement. The native German speaker then asked
Eichmann for his SS number and was given the precise ID number. Then, Eitan
said, Aharoni asked for his name again and he said, Adlolf Eichmann.
“Immediately afterward he says, ‘May I have a glass of red wine,'” Eitan
recalled.
Charged with washing
and feeding Eichmann, Eitan said he found himself curious about the man’s
capabilities and whether or not he was superior to him. “I found that I was his
better,” Eitan said, noting that Eichmann was loyal to his new masters, adhering
to all of the Israelis’ orders. “That would not have happened to me. If I was
in his situation, that would not have happened to me.”
Former Mossad official
and government minister Rafi Eitan (photo credit: Kobi Gideon/Flash90)
Former Mossad official
and government minister Rafi Eitan (photo credit: Kobi Gideon/Flash90)
The TV program provided
a look into the interior world of Eitan, formerly one of Israel’s top spy
masters — an unrepentant man who deemed regret a “non-practical word” for which
he, even at age 88, has no use.
Eitan, in a blue dress
shirt and black Adidas sneakers, spoke of the first time he was asked to take a
life for his country, in the mid-1940s. His officer chose him and another man
to lay an ambush for the German – often pro-Nazi – Templers, who remained in
pre-state Israel and to kill some of them in order to deter their
co-religionists from returning to Palestine after the Second World War. Eitan,
then 19, found the appropriate spot, stopped the carriage near the Jezreel
Valley town of Alonei Abba, and quickly and randomly shot two men.
He said he remembered
their faces well but neither now nor then felt any need to learn their names.
“We did not feel any feeling of guilt,” he said. “On the contrary, we felt we
were doing our duty as sons of the Jewish People.”
Eitan also revealed
that he turned his back on US spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard, giving the order
to bar Pollard from the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC in 1985 as Pollard
attempted to enter and gain asylum. For all intents and purposes, he further
divulged that former prime minister Shimon Peres and defense minister Yitzhak
Rabin were well aware of the fact that Israel was running an agent within the
US armed forces.
Asked whether the two
Israeli leaders were aware of the spy’s actions prior to his capture, he said,
after some deliberation, “of course.”
Pollard, a civilian
intelligence analyst for the US Navy, passed reams of classified material to
Israel from the summer of 1984 until November 1985. He has been serving a life
sentence in US federal prison since 1987 and will be eligible for parole in
November 2015.
Described by his wife
Miriam as “destructively emotionally detached,” Eitan said in the TV interview
that he felt no regret at the way the Pollard affair played out. Although it
was he who gave the order “to throw him out” of the Israeli embassy on November
21, 1985, he said that he made his decision “in accordance with the interests
of the state of Israel” and that anyone “who is in a role such as mine and decides
otherwise, is mistaken.”
He further alleged that
Pollard had an escape plan that he failed to execute – a suspect claim, since
the American US Navy analyst was under tight surveillance – and that “the
moment he decided to come to the embassy as he decided to come, he decided on
his own that he was going to prison.”
That night he went to
Peres and Rabin and told them that Pollard had been arrested. Pressed to
express regret or to admit to a guilty conscience, Eitan told the interviewer
Ben Shani, “look for that on other people. I’m built differently.”
Pollard was recruited
by an up-and-coming Israel Air Force officer, Col. Aviem Sella, and run by
Eitan.
Jonathan Pollard (photo
credit: YouTube screenshot)
He described the
crucial moment when he learned that Pollard had fled to the embassy, bringing
his FBI tail to the gate.
A call from the
embassy’s encoded phone explained the predicament to Eitan. “What do you say to
yourself then?” the interviewer asked Eitan.
“I don’t say anything
[to myself],” he recalled. “I said right away: throw him out.”
According to the
documentary, Eitan knew about Pollard’s impending arrest three days before it
occurred, and informed the prime minister and defense minister that Pollard
would soon be detained.
Peres, a 2012 recipient
of the Medal of Freedom, the US’s highest civic award, is portrayed in Michael
Bar-Zohar’s authorized biography as being “stricken by shock” upon Pollard’s
capture, leaving the reader uncertain as to whether the cause for surprise was
the capture or the espionage.
Visibly bemused, Eitan
recalled in the TV interview that, “I said in advance, I take all of the
responsibility on me. I gave the order. Only I gave the order. No one
authorized me.”
That arrangement, he
added, “solved the problem for the people of Israel.”
