A Munich newspaper, Abendzeitung, claimed today that former Gestapo colonel Adolf Eichmann had turned Communist in his jail cell in Israel where he is awaiting a verdict on charges of having directed the Nazi wartime slaughter of 6,000,000 Jewish men, women and children. Dieter Wechtenbruch, who served as assistant defense counsel during Eichmann’s trial last summer, declined to comment on the report.
According to the newspaper, the political testament which Eichmann has been writing in his jail cell has reached West Germany through the Egyptian secret service. Eichmann reportedly has written that he felt that “for security and peace of the coming generation, nothing could be more suitable than the implementation of Marxist-Leninist doctrine.”
He was also cited as declaring in this testament that he was convinced that Hitler and other Nazi leaders were just “figures in a game of international fatalism.” Reading of the verdict against Eichmann will begin in Jerusalem next Monday.
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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.