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In the face of death, he [Eichmann] had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was ‘elated’ and he forgot that this was his own funeral. It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us – the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem p252, 1963
The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied – as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels – that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong. ibid. epilogue
This [Eichmann] is a sane man, and a sane man is capable of unrepentant, unlimited, planned evil. He was the genius bureaucrat, he was the powerful frozen mind which directed a gigantic organization; he is the perfect model of inhumanness; but he was not alone. Eager thousands obeyed him. Everyone could not have his special talents; many people were needed to smash a baby’s head against the pavement before the mother’s eyes, to urge a sick old man to rest and shoot him in the back of the head; there was endless work for willing hands. How many more like these exist everywhere? Martha Gelhorn, article Atlantic Monthly 1962 ‘Eichmann and the Private Conscience’
3 April 1960, San Fernando, Argentina: One of the world’s most notorious Nazi war criminals – Adolf Eichmann – was living incognito with his family near Buenos Aires ... Now the man branded the architect of the Final Solution was in Mossad’s sights. Nazi Hunters: Eichmann, History 2010
April 1960, Tel Aviv, Israel ... The plan was simple but daring: a team of secret agents would kidnap the war criminal and smuggle him to Jerusalem nine thousand miles away. ibid.
For the agents the mission was personal. Adolf Eichmann was the man who’d made the Nazis’ death trains run on time. He was the man who’d helped to send millions of Jews from all over occupied Europe to the gas chambers. ibid.
But in 1950 fearing capture Nazi sympathisers in the Catholic Church helped to organise Eichmann’s passage to South America from the port of Genoa under the name Ricardo Klement. ibid.
The Mossad agents holding Adolf Eichmann encountered a serious problem. The agents insisted Eichmann sign a statement that he was returning to Israel of his own free will. If caught by the Argentinean authorities it might be the only thing that saved them. ibid.
I was three months at the trial of Eichmann ... This was terrible for me. This was terrible for me also. Not just for me but for the others. Simon Wiesenthal
They [Mossad] practised throwing Eichmann into the car, putting him down on the floorboard and driving off. They practised the route that they would escape from numerous times. Neal Bascomb, author Hunting Eichmann
We asked why a man like Eichmann goes to a dump like that. Avraham Bendor, former Mossad agent, interview Nazi Hunters
What he wanted most of all was to be received by Hitler and thanked. He never made it, and he never got over that. Wilhelm Hottl, colleague of Eichmann
He is directly culpable for the murder of six million Jews ... Eichmann was called the Architect of the Final Solution and he was very good at doing his job ... He was a very rabid intensely fiercely efficient and virulent Nazi. Towards the end of the war Eichmann tells a fellow Nazi he will happily go to his grave knowing he had killed six million Jews. He was a specialist on Jews and he knew quite a lot about them. Guy Walters, author Hunting Evil
Garibaldi Street in 1960 was the worst street in the whole of the southern hemisphere to conduct a kidnap. It was completely exposed. The Eichmann house is just this concrete block. It’s like putting a dice on a pool table. It’s just there. And there’s not much else around. Guy Walters
The Mossad agents are running a terrible personal risk in going on this Operation. If you were caught in Argentina in 1960 as a known foreign spy you wouldn’t have been executed but you would have been in prison for ages and ages. And of course your mission probably would have been denied back home as is the tradition of many spy stories. Guy Walters
They tell him to shut up, and this is the first order that Eichmann has ever been given by a Jew. Guy Walters
He is taken out his cell and hanged quickly. Efficiently. He is then cremated straight away. And his ashes are put in a bucket. And the boat sails off the Israeli coast, out of Israeli waters, they don’t want to be touched by the ashes of this man, and they tip the ashes into the water. There are a few ashes left in the bucket. They rinse out the bucket and go back home. Guy Walters
I have surrendered to my fate. Adolf Eichmann
It was late summer when Heydrich summoned me. He said, ‘The Fuhrer has ordered the extermination of the Jews.’ So I knew then. I said nothing because there was nothing to say. Adolf Eichmann
I regret and condemn the orders of the then German government to carry out acts of extermination on the Jews. Adolf Eichmann, Israeli trial
To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing. Adolf Eichmann, awaiting trial, cited Life magazine December 1960
My political sentiments inclined toward the left and emphasized the socialist aspects every bit as much as nationalist ones. Adolf Eichmann, memoir cited Aly’s ‘Hitler’s Beneficiaries’
Whether they were bank directors or mental cases, the people who were loaded on those trains meant nothing to me. It was really none of my business. Adolf Eichmann, cited Wolterstorf’s ‘Religion and Public Education’
I was never an anti-Semite ... My sensitive nature revolted at the sight of corpses and blood ... I personally had nothing to do with this. My job was to observe and report on it. Adolf Eichmann, cited Marchione’s ‘Consensus and Controversy’
I witnessed the gruesome workings of the machinery of death; gear meshed with gear, like clockwork. It was the biggest and most enormous dance of death of all times. Adolf Eichmann, memoirs
When I arrived at the place of the execution, the gunmen fired into a pit the size of several rooms. They fired from small submachine guns. As I arrived, I saw a Jewish woman and a small child in her arms in the pit. I wanted to pull out the child, but then a bullet smashed the skull of the child. My driver wiped brain particles from my leather coat. Adolf Eichmann, memoirs
Because I have seen hell, death and the devil, because I had to watch the madness of destruction, because I was one of the many horses pulling the wagon and couldn’t escape left or right because of the will of the driver, I now feel called upon and have the desire, to tell what happened. Adolf Eichmann, memoirs
In Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, a man was being hunted for the crime of planning the murder of ten million people. He said his name was Ricardo Klement, but the Israeli secret service were certain he was SS chief Adolf Eichmann. Great Crimes and Trials s1e14: Adolf Eichmann, BBC 1993
The court had to face the question of how humanity after centuries of civilisation could descend to such barbaric and sadistic behaviour. ibid.
It was at this time that Adolf Eichmann was said to have coined the most chilling phrase of the twentieth century: on the main file in his Berlin headquarters he wrote the words Final Solution. ibid.
Before the Israeli court stood the man who had sent millions of Jews to their deaths. Hitler’s Henchmen II: Eichmann
Eichmann was driven by a desire for recognition and a career in the SS. ibid.
He studied the enemy keenly. A thorough smattering of Knowledge. The Tsar of the Jews, he later called himself. ibid.
Eichmann used his victims as assistants. ibid.