Israel makes public a decades-old handwritten plea from Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann for clemency for his role in the Holocaust, dated just two days before he was executed.
In the request, written after he was brought to Israel in 1960, then tried, convicted and sentenced to death, Eichmann says the Israeli court overstated his role in organizing the logistics of the Final Solution.
“There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders,” the letter says. “I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.”
The Nazi continues: “I am not able to recognize the court’s ruling as just, and I ask, Your Honor Mr President, to exercise your right to grant pardons, and order that the death penalty not be carried out.”
The letter was signed and dated: “Adolf Eichmann Jerusalem, May 29, 1962.” He was hanged around midnight on May 31.
The first page of a handwritten clemency plea by Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann revealed to the public on January 27, 2016 during a ceremony at the presidential compound in Jerusalem marking 55 years since Eichmann’s trial, as the world observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day. (AFP/GALI TIBBON)
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From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
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