How many people did eichmann kill

Money was extracted from well off Jews to fund the emigration of the mass of poor Jews. Finally, he established an 'assembly line' system whereby a Jew could up at the Central Emigration Office with his papers and proceed from desk to desk until he arrived at the end, with a passport and an exit visa but stripped of his property, cash and rights.

Within a few months, the office had emigrated , Jews. After this triumph, Eichmann was ordered to set up a similar office in occupied Prague, and in October was appointed to Department IV D 4 of the Gestapo in Berlin, which handled emigration from the Reich. The rational 'Jewish policy' advocated by the SD men now held sway, but emigration opportunities were few and Germany had just acquired over a million more Jews in conquered Poland.

Eichmann explored a fresh option: deporting the Jews to a designated Jewish territory. He travelled to Poland to identify an appropriate location and then ordered that thousands of Czech and Viennese Jews be rounded up and sent eastwards to lay the basis for this 'territorial solution'.

Within a few months, however, the plan was scrapped. Eichmann's office lacked the resources for it and other SS projects had preference. At the same time he was brutally evicting hundreds of thousands of Poles and Jews to make way for ethnic Germans transplanted from Eastern Europe into the newly annexed areas of the Reich. As a temporary measure the displaced Jews were packed into ghettos, but where would they go eventually?

He devoted great energy and research skills to the scheme, but it too foundered. When Germany invaded Russia in June an expectation swept through the agencies responsible for Jewish affairs.

It was anticipated that soon Jews could be transported to the east and dumped there. Meanwhile, mobile killing units, Einsatzgruppen, swept across Russia slaughtering Jews who were deemed Bolshevik enemies. Eichmann had little to do with this, but in the summer his office now designated IV B 4 and, significantly, no longer concerned with emigration was called upon to investigate ways to dispose of 'unwanted' Jews.

By this time decisions had already been taken to murder those Jews in the Polish ghettos who were not deemed capable of work. Eichmann was advised to check on how it was being done. Over a few months he saw gassing operations at Chelm, mass shootings in Minsk, and visited Auschwitz. He prepared the ground for the Wannsee Conference in January , at which Heydrich secured the co-operation of the various departments of state, the Nazi party and the SS in the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'.

Eichmann later claimed that he was shocked to hear that 'evacuation to the east' meant death, but the concurrence of high-ranking officials absolved him of responsibility and guilt. It is hard to reconcile this with the zeal he devoted to organising the registration, expropriation, rounding up and deportation of Jews from Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Belgium, Slovakia, Greece, Italy and, above all, from Hungary to the death camps.

He sent out trusted assistants to make the local arrangements, chivvied them if they did not make fast enough progress, and belaboured officials who prevaricated or objected. He made numerous interventions to prevent a single Jew being exempted from the transports. In March , after German forces invaded Hungary, he travelled to Budapest with a special task force and personally directed the plunder, ghettoisation, and deportation of over , Jews in the space of eight weeks, most of whom were murdered on arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

When, under international pressure, the Hungarian regime stopped the deportations he circumvented its orders and dispatched a last trainload to the gas chambers. He even defied his chief, Himmler, who at the end of finally commanded the killing to stop. In hiding in Argentina in the mid s, Eichmann recorded on tape his recollections of these final days. The Jews were the enemy. He had nothing against them personally, but in war the enemy has to be destroyed. Eichmann did not kill a single Jew with his own hands and he was often courteous towards Jewish leaders who did his bidding.

Yet he could also be abusive and violent: as his power burgeoned and his bourgeois inhibitions were eroded, he became increasingly coarse. Even so, Eichmann was not the central, demonic figure of the Nazi regime he was made out to be in his trial, and as he has become in popular memory. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check here if you would like to receive subscription offers and other promotions via email from TIME group companies.

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