Adolf Eichmann may have saved the lives of 800 Jews, but his motives were not humanitarian.
Eichmann, the notorious Nazi executed in Israel in 1962 for crimes against humanity, saved the Jews by holding them in Berlin’s Jewish Hospital, the British Sunday Times reported
Red Army soldiers searching the area at the end of the war encountered the Jewish survivors. Eichmann protected some because they either had collaborated with the Nazis or were married to influential Germans. Others worked for the hospital, including the director, Walter Lustig, who was supervised by a Gestapo officer under Eichmann’s oversight.
Eichmann’s intention was to make Berliners think that Jews were being well cared for, the Times report said. In fact, Eichmann is known as one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, responsible for organizing mass deportations of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps.
The Russian soldiers who found the 800 people in the hospital “swept through in an orgy of rape,” according to the Times. Ultimately the commanders learned that the soldiers had uncovered one of the last hiding places for Jews in Germany.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
