Eichmann Anticipates Death Sentence; Leaves Testament

A testament allegedly written in his Israeli prison by Adolf Eichmann, and smuggled to People, a Sunday newspaper here, was featured by that newspaper today. “Eichmann’s Amazing Last Message,” as People calls the purported testament, is a mixture of remorse, defiance and accusations against his former Nazi superiors.

Eichmann, according to the document, has presumably no doubts about his fate, being sure he will be sentenced by the Israeli court to hanging. “If I had my way,” he is quoted as saying, “I should like to hang myself in a public place as a warning to future generations and to anti-Semites throughout the world.” Eichmann then gives, specific, macabre directions on the disposition of his remains.

He requests that medical authorities in Austria, where he was born, should first perfom an autopsy on his body, then have it cremated. He wants his ashes to be divided into seven parts. One part is to be buried in the grave of his parents at Linz, Austria; another part is to be interred in the garden of the home he had built for himself at Buenos Aires; the five remaining parts are to be divided among his widow and his four children.

The alleged document continues: “It goes without saying that I have greatly changed my opinion of my previous superiors who are still alive and who have made depositions against me to shield themselves. Never in Germany’s history have her generals and Ministers been such cowards after the battle had been lost. Never before have they evaded responsibility for their own orders by putting it all on the shoulders of other subordinates–orders of which, at the time of issmance, they were so proud.”

“Meanwhile,” the document continues, “I carry my share of responsibility. What was done cannot be undone. It was done as the result of mass hysteria, artificially stoked up and then used by individuals for their own ends.”