Notes:
Captain Avner W. Less was the Israeli police officer who interrogated Adolf
Eichmann, prior to his trial and subsequent conviction in Jerusalem.
Comments, designated by brackets [], are those of the editor, Jochen von
Lang.
Typos are mine, not the author's.
LESS: You have touched on the final solution to the Jewish question.
Would you like to speak about it now, or about the war with Russia
first.
At that time Reich Marshal Göring issued a document conferring a
special title on the head of the Security Police and the SD. I'm trying
to remember the wording. Was it "Deputy Charged with the Final
Solution," or was it "with the Solution of the Jewish Question?"
Globocnik sent for a certain Sturmbannführer Höfle, who must have been
a member of his staff. We went from Lublin to, I don't remember what the
place was called, I get them mixed up, I couldn't say if it was
[See URL http://www.nizkor.org/camps/aktion-reinhard/treblinka]
Treblinka or some other place. There were patches of woods, sort of,
and the road passed through - a Polish highway. On the right side of the
road there was an ordinary house, that's where the men who worked there
lived.
A captain of the regular police (Ordnungspolizei) welcomed us. A
few workmen were still there. The captain, which surprised me, had taken
off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, somehow he seemed to have
joined in the work. They were building little wooden shacks, two, maybe
three of them; they looked like two- or three-room cottages. Höfle told
the police captain to explain the installation to me. And then he
started in. He had a, well, let's say, a vulgar, uncultivated voice.
Maybe he drank. He spoke some dialect from the southwestern corner of
Germany, and he told me how he had made everything airtight. It seems
they were going to hook up a Russian submarine engine and pipe the
exhaust into the houses and the Jews inside would be poisoned.
I was horrified. My nerves aren't strong enough ... I can't listen to
such things... such things, without their affecting me. Even today, if I
see someone with a deep cut, I have to look away. I could never have
been a doctor. I still remember how I visualized the scene and began to
tremble, as if I'd been through something, some terrible experience. The
kind of thing that happens sometimes and afterwards you start to shake.
Then I went to Berlin and reported to the head of the Security Police.
(von Lang, 75-76)
(Ed. note: After discussing visits to Chelmo and Auschwitz, Less brings
Eichmann back to Treblinka.knm)
Work Cited
von Lang, Jochen, ed., in collaboration with Claus Sibyll. Eichmann
Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police.
Translated from the German by Avner W. Less. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1983.
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
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